Across America, I expect sports columnists to be remarking on how the crown has been passed from a black man to a brown man in what used to be the white man’s sport (largely because the only way you could get on the court if your skin was darker than manilla was by caddying). But why talk about the transition from black to brown? Why not say that a browner black man was overtaken by a blacker brown man? Or that the yellow man lost to the brown man?If you had never heard of either player, and you were told that one of the two was black, who would you pick? Face it, phenotypewise, they’re pretty similar. They both have non-kinky hair, wide noses, and medium-thick lips. If you were to tell me that one of them was of Thai decent, I could pick Tiger out easily. But, if I didn’t “know better” I would have as hard a time picking the black golfer out of this pair as I do picking the black diplomat when I see Colin Powell and Prince Bandar sitting side by side.
On a related topic, I’m becoming slightly annoyed at all the columnists that contrast Tiger and Vijay by talking about Tigers talent and Vijay’s work ethic. Yes, Tiger is amazingly talented, especially given his age. Yes, Vijay has a prodigious work ethic, while Tiger’s personal life seems to be slowing him down a wee bit. Yet these are hardly fair labels. Tiger’s work ethic is amazing, and still one of the tops in the field. It’s unclear to me whether Vijay is really working significantly harder (he plays more tournaments, but does he train more?) Similarly, to ignore Vijay’s talent is absurd.
Given that both athletes share many of the same traits — hard work, high levels of talent, coolness under pressure — why is it that they get described the way they do? Well, this division is consistent with descriptions of black athletes in other sports as innately talented, but not intelligent or hard working. Similarly, it’s a common trope to hear that Asians are hard working, but have few innate abilities. My point, which I’ve belabored far long enough, is that I get a whiff of racial stereotyping when I read about these two, not anything I could prove in a court of law, but enough to set my teeth on edge.
Instead, I’d prefer to read sportswriting like this, from FoxSports:
“… if you look at just the current PGA Tour season, the gap between Singh and Woods is even greater. After taking the money title from Woods last season, Singh is almost a lock to end his rival’s run as Player of the Year. Singh has six wins on the PGA Tour this year; no one else has more than two and Woods has just the lone win, more than six months ago at the Accenture Match Play Championship.”
So it was really only a matter of time before Singh supplanted Woods atop the rankings.”
[snip]
“On the very first hole after Woods moved into a tie for the lead, Singh took it right back, making a tricky par putt on 14, while Woods missed an almost-identical putt. Singh added to his lead on 15, sticking his approach shot within five feet of the hole. Then he made absolutely certain Woods’ 264-week run atop the rankings came to an end with back-to-back birdies to finish the round.”
“So to sum up, with the No. 1 ranking on the line and the score all tied up, Singh birdied three of the final five holes to win going away. Clearly, this is not a man who’s frightened of Tiger Woods.”
“And why should he be? Right now, he’s the better player.”
FoxSports, your home for post-racial sports reporting. (!?!)
FoxSports – Fair & Balanced sports coverage?
ennis – I am curious if you could dig up a link w/ some of the racial profiling you’re describing…
I get a whiff of racial stereotyping when I read about these two, not anything I could prove in a court of law, but enough to set my teeth on edge.
Methinks you have a low threshold for what sets your teeth on edge. btw, do you think all stereotypes are false or just these ones?
V:
For example, ESPN talks about Tiger’s ability purely in terms of his talent while the pgatour website describes Vijay Singh purely in terms of his work ethic and concentration. I recall seeing something similar happen with Yao Ming, where he was recommended more for his work ethic than for his natural abilities, but vice versa with black athletes.
GC: It’s an empirical question. On many issues, especially cultural ones, variation within the group is so much higher than variation between groups that a difference of means test on most useful measures turns up no statistically significant difference. This is not true on all matters, but I think it is safe to say that desis do not have a monopoly on hard work (the stereotypes say the opposite) and blacks do not have a monopoly on talent (again, many stereotypes say the opposite).
[Where such differences do exist, it’s hard to prove that they are inherent in the population rather than being environmental, most evidence suggests the opposite]
Is the root cause racism, or the media’s predilection for running with an easy, clear story line (e.g. in politics)?
Streak-snapper:
Also see my post and Ennis’.
GC: obviously there are some genetic differences between population groups, otherwise we couldn’t use genetic markers to distinguish between them, and we wouldn’t have diseases like CJD or sickle-cell, showing up at very different rates between them.
Does that help to clarify my position? I’m just not a reductionist on behavior, behavior is influenced by multiple genes, and highly mediated by environmental and cultural factors.
Manish: The media wants a story, but what story they pick is shaped by their assumptions and schemas about the way the world works. If you look at Earl Woods (Tiger’s dad) he’s always stressed hard work as the critical ingredient in Tiger’s success, and Tiger had a much higher level of fitness and preparation than most golfers before him; his dad claimed to have used Special Forces methods to get his mental fitness up. Story could have been framed differently easily, current frame doesn’t add much for these two.
Also, thanks for the link to your prior post, I forgot to link to it last night.
Does that help to clarify my position? I’m just not a reductionist on behavior, behavior is influenced by multiple genes, and highly mediated by environmental and cultural factors.
sure, just wondering. some people are really intense about “eradicating stereotypes”. they HATE THE “HATERS”, if you know what I mean 🙂
I agree that in this particular case it’s spin. Tiger has mad work ethic & Vijay has talent as well.
Here’s another example. Dyslexia clearly has a genetic component to it, since it runs in families. So genes influences brain behavior influences reading ability influences overall performance in the world.
You might be able to find a sub-population that has a higher than average percentage of genes associated with dyslexia and argue that they can never succeed. To me, that would be a false conclusion even though there is a genetic base to dyslexia.
For example, it turns out that if you catch children with dyslexia early, and you train them in a particular fashion, you can change their cognitive processing, and this is something we can measure directly. So environment can over-ride genetics in terms of the link between genes related to dyslexia and ability to read.
Furthermore, even amongst people who have dyslexia, people have different coping skills. Some become architects or engineers, and develop strong spatio-visual skills to compensate for difficulties processing large amounts of text. Others are briefed orally and develop very good recall, etc. There are many individuals who have dyslexia but perform very well in the modern work place.
On top of this, there isn’t just one kind of dyslexia out there, it seems there are multiple (Chinese readers can be dyslexic even though it is a different cognitive process). That means that there are probably multiple genes involved, and we don’t have a great handle on which ones are involved in producing dyslexia, or how this happens.
Even in the case of dyslexia, which is something with clear cut genetic roots, I would never jump from saying that a group has an unusual concentration of people with genes linked to dyslexia to this group will never survive in the modern world. The links at each stage are way too tenuous. The argument linking phenotype to behavior is even more tenuous in my opinion.
Behavior is highly complex, and populations are highly diverse.
‘Nuff said 🙂
I just came across your website today, and think it’s great. Being a big fan of the PGA Tour I can tell you that over the course of Vijay’s 10 year career he has built a reputation as hands down the hardest working golfer on tour. Almost daily, Vijay is the first guy out on the range and last one to come in. I can understand how it looks like they are trying to profile him, but he’s just that kind of guy … always working to get better. And in the end, it took him to the world #1 rank and put him atop the leaderboard in today’s first round of the masters.
Anyway though, you have a great site here that I’m bookmarking as I type this!