Letters to the Editor
A Bit of Satire
Having read the latest cases involving racial balance in admissions to Harvard College and Fairfax County’s Thomas Jefferson High School, we, in our influential journal, have realized that what the United States needs is more power for progressives to change American society from a meritocracy, with its clear and obvious biases due to gross systemic racism, to a truly equitable society, where an outcome is successful only if it represents pre-determined thresholds of inclusiveness and diversity. I agree with the powers that be, who are trying to increase non-Asian entry into these institutions, that having a generation of science, engineering, and math experts who represent the exact proportion of racial and gender and sexual orientation differences in U.S. society trumps any goal to become the best country in the world for those fields of study, despite other countries surging ahead of America in objective markers of achievement.
Major league and college-level sports are the most egregious examples of the (so-called) best athletes succeeding while other athletes of more diverse backgrounds are not given the same outcomes. Why is it that players of Pacific Islander and African-American ancestry are over-represented in the NFL and the major college conferences? Why is it that players of African-American ancestry are over-represented in the NBA and college tournaments? Why is it that players of French-Canadian ancestry are over-represented in the NHL? Why is it that players with Hispanic heritage are over-represented in high-level baseball? Specifically, it is common knowledge that Samoans have a 56-times higher chance of playing in the NFL than non-Samoans. Yet, despite Asian-Americans representing at least 5.9 percent of the U.S. population, we do not see anywhere near 5.9 percent Asian representation in the NFL, MLB, NBA, or NHL.
I have heard the same tired, irrelevant, racist, and misogynistic arguments that baseball is followed religiously in many Latin countries, that children born to French-Canadians are usually taught to skate and shoot pucks from infancy, that Polynesians have the most strength and power to succeed in the explosive sport that is American football, and that basketball is the most popular sport in many urban centers. I have heard it said that Asian kids are good at math and science because their parents value education and encourage extracurricular tuition in academic areas, while non-Asian kids are “just being kids.”
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