Blowing the Whistle on Black or White

Just heard an NPR interview with a rather indignant David Stern, regarding an article by a Wharton School economics professor and a Cornell graduate student which claims that white referees are tougher on black players than they are on players of their own race, and that this same bias exhibits itself as well when the roles are reversed. The article has yet to be presented or peer reviewed, and from where I sit the statistical significance seems marginal at best, while there are all sorts of problems with the methodology. Meanwhile, Stern's argument that NBA officials are the most closely reviewed and highly-rated officials anywhere in organized sport is very compelling, but he misses the main point that this study isn't really about basketball at all, but about racism in general. My own suspicion is that if the researchers had looked at many other aspects of American society, they would have found an even more profound race-related statistical bias.

But let me back up and try to unpack this whole issue from the ground up. And let's begin with the clear understanding that "race" itself is simply a fiction: a socially-constructed perception based on archaic Victorian notions of biological essentialism which have long ago been refuted by better science. Human beings are only half-a-chromosome removed from chimpanzees; the idea that there are distinct "races" (other than "human") rooted in some sort of innate biological difference is simply absurd.

But Racism -- the ideology that these so-called racial differences actually do exist, and that they matter -- is very real, and influences our society and our individual lives in ways that are sometimes difficult to see and understand, and at other times painfully obvious and hard to bear. Furthermore, skin color has in many ways become a perceived marker of social class in contemporary America, which in turn has helped create a self-fulfilling reality, as our nation struggles to untangle and heal from the legacy of centuries worth of slavery and subsequent economic exploitation, political oppression, and systematic violent repression. We've made a lot of progress just in my lifetime. But we still have a long way to go.

I also suspect that there may well be some sort of innate nepotism and xenophobia hard-wired into our brains. It seems logical to me that any creature might instinctively tend to favor other creatures which resemble its own offspring, and be suspicious of those which seem different or unfamiliar. But this "bird-brain" prejudice can be "unlearned" through experience, and the recognition (if you will allow me a religious metaphor) that we are ALL children of God, and brothers and sisters to one another.

it likewise seems obvious to me that organized sport -- and especially a sport like basketball -- is one of the few places in our society where the fiction of race is exposed for what it is, and where human beings from every imaginable ethnic and cultural background can come together to cooperate and compete in an arena where the only variables that ultimately matter are physical talent, athletic skill, and the intensity of one's own work ethic. You can toss around all the stereotypes you like, but for every "obvious" truth you are going to discover countless clear exceptions. And that's what makes the game itself so fantastic.

Meanwhile, nobody likes a zebra. Referees are without a doubt the most reviled creatures in sports, and yet they rarely deserve the abuse they receive. And I agree with David Stern -- NBA referees are unquestionably the best and most reliable officials to be found anywhere, and work in what is also probably the most difficult and fast-moving game to officiate. As someone who plays in a pick-up league where we call our own fouls (and is now sporting a huge bruise on his sternum where he received an elbow to the chest on Wednesday night -- no call, of course), I appreciate the work that officials do, even if I don't particularly like it when the calls don't go my way.

As for racism itself, I look forward to the day when Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben will seem just as innocuous as Betty Crocker and Colonel Sanders. But I also realize that this day may never come. The truth of the matter is, the more I learn about these issues, the better I understand how complicated they are, and how much I just don't get. But at least on the basketball court, NO ONE is created equal. And we all have to learn to do our best with whatever we have taught ourselves to do with the gifts that God has given us....


Q: Why did the chicken cross to the other side of the street?
A: He wanted to get away from Colonel Sanders.

Q: Why did the chicken cross the basketball court?
A: Because he heard that the referee was blowing fowls....