Why do professional sports get a pass when it comes to affirmative action?

[Go Stillers!]

People would think it would be crazy to have affirmative action in sports and require that a certain percentage of basketball or football players be hispanic, white, or asian. We all want the best players to play, no matter their race, and that's it. But, corporations aren't allowed to simply hire the best people in their field. They have to make sure they have a certain number of women and minorities, and they have to make sure that these people get promotions too. Why is there a difference here? Why would people consider it crazy to force the LA Clippers to accept affirmative action, yet think it is acceptable to force Comcast to do it? Shouldn't all businesses be allowed to hire the best people, whoever they may be?
LexDiamonds, you gave a lot of stats, could you source them please?

 

[Amazing Asian se*pot!]

uh. They don't. They have a few white people on those teams. There aren't many Asians, but we have Yao Ming for basketball and I like that. White people have no one who is good.

 

[LexDiamonds]

You're sayin that on the assumption that our entire society is a meritocracy, which it obviously aint.

8 out of 10 job postings arent publicly solicited at all, the majority of the middle and upper management positions are spread through word of mouth, via social connections. Most of the people hired are hired based on who they know, not what they know or how talented they are, and because of that even with affirmative action minorities are still at a significant disadvantage. Who do you think make up the inner circles? White Males.

Out of the 20% of jobs actually solicited publicly, maybe 4-5% are actually reserved for affirmative action purposes, and so even if you take it into account all the affirmative action quotas the bottom line is about 95% of the good jobs out there will still go out to connected white males before they get tossed to Blacks, Women, Latinos and Asians.

And your pro sports analogy falls on its face when you think of other sports. What about hockey, soccer and lacrosse? Those are sports dominated by whites.


Our society has never been based on people who were the best and the brightest, it's always been about who you know and how you can appeal to the people higher up. Why do you think that although women are 52% of college grads, they're less that 20% of all the CEO's and upper-level executives? Because those positions are never solicited to them in the first place.

Talent was NEVER a mitigating factor in success. Otherwise, the Ivy League schools wouldnt be filled with rich C students while middle class A students get rejection lettres by the thousands.