What's Mallard raving about today?
Liberals, Asians, the NBA.
Institutional racism, on the off chance that Mallard cares what the terms he uses mean, was defined by Stokely Carmichael as: "the collective failure of an organization to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture or ethnic origin."
Being allowed to play in the NBA is not a professional service they offer to people. In point of fact, the NBA is discriminates entirely based on merit, based on talent. If you are good enough to play, nothing else matters.
If the NBA were to actually exhibit an Institutional Racism, say by preventing Asians from buying tickets, Mallard would defend the Invisible Hand of the Free Market while Liberals would decry racism.
14 comments:
Given that Mallard is a minority (a pantsless talking duck), you'd think that he take the time to actually understand the different forms of racism. Wait, I forgot, he takes his cues from Fox News -- why bury yourself in facts when baseless opinion will do?
Nevermind...
Tinsley means that there are way too many niggers in the N.B.A. We need to consider the subtext in these horrendous comics!
Tinsley is especially offensive to minorities but he is, also, repugnant to Whites. Does he commit institutional racism?
Who said liberals didn't care? Line up the straw men and knock them down, right?
The NBA isn't actually responsible. That goes back to the arguments about if players are good, they get to play. To take it one step further, if players can play, players can get recruited. So the problem is more at the university level where the scouting occurs.
Which, I believe I said for the football but extends to men's basketball, depends on large sums of money from sports. With sports treated as a private enterprise to make money, coaches and recruiters engage in stereotypes for the same reasons some companies won't hire certain people based on race: they don't think they'll make money. It's wrong, but as long as the pressure remains economic and not social, it'll continue to require the few lucky individual Asians to attempt to break stereotypes on their own.
More evidence? Women's basketball at the college level, which is economically not as big of a factor, has seen a much larger increase in Asian-Americans participating.
Ah, yes. LIberals, with their snooty pony tails, and smarty-head glasses, and wine-drinking goatees. It's a good think that's not supposed to be a caricature of someone, so so help me GOD, he would have such enormous buck-teeth, it's not even funny!*
I think his point is that stupid "liberals" (see above) are more concerned with appearing to not be racist, and to force affirmative action on everyone, then they are worried about getting the people who are best able to do the job. But that message is lost in a very poor sports analogy. Of course, it's just as possible that Ducky's saying that the only thing colored folk are good for is playing basketball.
You see, ducks, in order for there to be 'institutional discrimination", there must be evidence of said discrimination. There actually are some Asians (not of the GOOD, ie American, kind, but still) in the NBA, and they play very well. Bring forth evidence that the NBA routinely picks blacks/whites over equally skilled Asian players, and then we'll talk. Maybe.
*Though, let's be honest, that last part pretty much applies to 98% of Ducky's strips.
Y'all make the points I woulda if I'd been faster, so let me move on to secondary points.
1. Tinkley's repeating a talkin'point. It doesn't have to make sense, any more than a cheerleader's cheer has to make sense (...do we really want a pitcher and NOT a belly itcher???) It's the repetition of the chant that gets the group solidarity going. So we may not need to over think his ridiculous "dearth of Asian-Americans".
2. That said, Tinkley's using an especially subtle talking point (...not one he invented; I *did* say "subtle) because it leads to a discussion of racial differences that the reichwing can exploit.
Racial differences are often explained as either nature ("many blacks are taller than average, therefore better at b-ball") or nuture ("Asian culture emphasizes education, thus fewer Asians try out for college b-ball scholarships"). If you make a "nature" argument, the reichwing says, "See! there's no such thing as racism, they're just natural inferiority.) If you make a "nuture" argument, the reichwing says, "See! there's no such thing as racism, it's just that they have bad families which is of course their own fault".
Either way, the answer is "See, there's no such thing as racism!"
We needn't play that game. Racism at the corporate level (as opposed to the personal level) is all about making money. If you divide the population into meaningless groups (the Irish Catholics vs. the Protestants) then you can pay one less because it's in a separate market from the other. The early days of pro sports is a GREAT example of how racism can be profitable: you had racially separate leagues because whites would pay a premium to avoid seeing a white get beaten by a black.
We're beyond that now, in sports, as exoanymous has basically said; the American sports fan will cheer for who-ever's on his team even if he's a purple Martian (Seattle fans Loooooooove Ichiro!)
To generalize from this that there's no racism elsewhere is just silly. There are few Asian-Americans playing high-school & college b-ball, and therefore playing pro, because, for whatever reason, they're exercising freedom of choice.
Which is the opposite of racism.
Silly Mallard. Of course liberals don't care about sports. That's the realm of Nascar Dads and Hockey Moms and is just too much for our elitist brains to handle.
It's hard to say what the fuck the man means for sure, but it sure does SOUND a lot like a Bell Curve argument, as per Rewinn's #2. In this case, if you respond by saying "could it be because Asians are smaller on average?" he would respond with "HA! YOU ADMIT THERE ARE RACIAL DIFFERENCES!" And from there it's just a hop, skip, and a jump to "blacks are naturally dumber."
(if you go on to ask for an explanation as to WHY exactly an African environment would naturally select for stupidity, do not expect an answer)
Those comments made me realize something: Tinsley implied that liberals wanted eugenics! He, basically, said, "you pretend to support racial equality but all you want is a diverse master race! This fits your belief in evolution, something which does not exist."
He likes to stick up for Asians once in a while, just to prove he's not racist. Of course, like most conservatives, I'll bet he was blaming all our economic woes on the Japanese back in the 80s
Am I the only one inferring a subtle stereotype in Tinsley's strip -- that Asians aren't in the NBA because, y'know, they're so damn short?
Mick Fleetwood should sue Mallard for using his likeness.
wv: combiang
The move practiced by Vietnamese sex workers which keeps Tinsley sympathetic to Asian issues.
Baltimore (DEMOCRAT) mayor indicted on theft, perjury charges. Sheila Dixon likes fur coats, but she used money donated to help the poor for her coat, travel and other purchases for herself. Not to sound racist but yes she is Black. I do not know if she does or has ever played in the NBA.
WV: Bozone: The substance surrounding stupid people, that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The Bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future. (particularly with the regulars on this blog).
Passive aggressive is still, at the end of the day, aggressive.
Posting deliberately that she's black when it has nothing to do with fur means the anonymous is seeking to be called racist but falling back on his comment to play the part of the victim. Which is classic passive aggressiveness. Known to the average layman as "pushing buttons".
What it means, at the end of the day, anonymous, is that you aren't here to educate us, something that would have a margin of respect.
But I will admit never failing to be amused at the non-racist racist comments. How many contortions can you do to Look Good without actually being good?
Geox: Thanks for reminding me of Herrnstein and Murray's pseudoscientific "Bell Curve" which summarizes a lot of reichwing argument about differential racial ability. Stephen Jay Gould comprehensively eviscerated the book in The Mismeasure of Man, which of course won't stop it from being cited by the same people who argue global warming is a hoax because a popular magazine wrote an article on global cooling in the 1970s.
(Is it unfair to ask reichwing pundits who still write glowingly of the Bell Curve whether they should note its reliance on the "research" of J. Phillippe Rushton and Harry Laughlin funded by the unrepentantly pro-Nazi Wickliffe Draper?)
Thanks to the magic of googlebooks you can learn as much REAL science as you want on the subject in Psychological Testing of American Minorities
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