31–40 of 212 posts
Why are there so few white people in pro basketball?
Pro basketball's viewership is also majority non-white, so there's probably some feedback loop effects going on with the people interested in becoming players in the first place (which then influences the audience, and so on).
For the same reason there are so few poor whites in STEM. America's dysfunctional education funding. Make education funding federal, and have a nationwide push to have small classes and well funded schools for everybody, and this would be fixed in 10 years. As it is, rich districts pay more taxes and get better schools. Funny that.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps some come from the 2nd Largest demographic group, Latinx, (about 16% of the population). As another commenter said, that leaves about 9% who don’t fall into these major groups.
On modern surveys of this sort (for example, the US Census), 'of Hispanic descent' is usually a separate question entirely from the 'White / Black / Asian / etc' one, in a clumsy attempt to capture the overlap of mixed-ethnicity groups.
I could venture a guess, and its probably why i'll never go from my current job as a diesel mechanic to junior python programmer no matter how badly i want to: criminal record. in the US you can discriminate against employees who have any sort of criminal record. I've served jailtime for possession of cannabis, so that automatically rules me out for a lot of white-collar jobs. Black people tend to get the brunt of po…
So your premise is all Black people have criminal records and that is why they aren't in STEM?
that same felony will also basically permaban you from any educational loans, or most other loans fwiw. Check cashing is now your friend.
Also not all black people, but the fact that black people make up 14% of america but 40% of the prison population is not helping the prospects for a more diverse STEM.
I could venture a guess, and its probably why i'll never go from my current job as a diesel mechanic to junior python programmer no matter how badly i want to: criminal record. in the US you can discriminate against employees who have any sort of criminal record. I've served jailtime for possession of cannabis, so that automatically rules me out for a lot of white-collar jobs. Black people tend to get the brunt of po…
I've heard of a lot of guys with much bigger drug charges breaking into the field. I was reading a thread a few weeks ago, where one person basically said as long as it isn't something like a serious financial crime or computer crime they'd be willing to hire someone.
People tend to be heavily influenced by their environment as they grow up. And if the majority of your peers see X as being "cool", that's what a lot of people will try to achieve.
For example, during high school years, the "popular kids" are the jocks who play sports, not a geek who plays with code all day (although this has shifted a lot lately). If you look at it this way, the guys who go on to play an the NBA do it not because they are "underprivileged" and racially profiled to be kicked out of studying, but because that IS the valuable route they want to choose. Likewise, the current state of the music industry is heavily influenced by black culture. You could say pretty much everything is black culture influenced, from rap to r&b to Jazz to dance music. So a lot of black kids look up to those artists and creative people, and they strive to excel in those areas. I think that's great.
There's a reason why fighting arcade games and strategy games like Starcraft, WoW, etc. are dominated by Korean pro gamers. Nobody said blacks shouldn't play Starcraft or Tekken, nobody told white guys to stop playing. Koreans were simply heavily socially incentivized to be good at it.
Same goes for football (soccer). Nobody said Brazilians are the only privileged race on earth who are allowed to play football. They were just heavily socially incentivized to do so because that's what's considered of value.
Once you stop thinking as a victim and start thinking more positively, there are many explanations to the "mystery" you just can't seem to figure out.
p.s.
Just to be clear, I am not denying that racism exists. I would however like to point out that the people who keep blaming everything to racism are the ones who are actually subliminally racists.
Why are there so few white people in pro basketball?
I could venture a guess, and its probably why i'll never go from my current job as a diesel mechanic to junior python programmer no matter how badly i want to: criminal record. in the US you can discriminate against employees who have any sort of criminal record. I've served jailtime for possession of cannabis, so that automatically rules me out for a lot of white-collar jobs. Black people tend to get the brunt of po…
Sorry if I ask, but how much? Three years seems an awful lot of time.
Second, for how long can companies access this kind of record? Isn't it unacceptable to discriminate candidates based on something that has nothing to do with the qualification for a job?
For the same reason there are so few poor whites in STEM. America's dysfunctional education funding. Make education funding federal, and have a nationwide push to have small classes and well funded schools for everybody, and this would be fixed in 10 years. As it is, rich districts pay more taxes and get better schools. Funny that.
First is that the federal government doesn't have the legal standing to take over the education system. I believe it would require a constitutional amendment to allow it and I don't think they'd get that passed.
Secondly, I'm not sure it is such a great idea. Currently federal level education direction comes from the teachers union and you can see the fruits of its labors in our current schools. Also I think this will make the current broken system harder to fix as it will institutionalize many of the current practices and make local experimentation much harder.
IMO what we need to do is move away from the industrial revolution era school system. We aren't training a bunch of factory workers anymore and that needs to be reflected in how we teach. We really need to do a lot more trials with alternative educational styles in public school. My understanding is that one of the biggest hurdles to this is the teachers union and their adherence to the current model.
I do think funding is an issue, but even if you could magically fix that you'd still have bad schools. There would just be less disparity between them.