Requiring High Graduation Rates is Racist: Why Arne Duncan's Suggestion for the NCAA Tournament Will Not be Implemented

Remember the article on Auburn and the Opiate of America? Consider this the basketball version of that piece.

Duke and Butler had 3 or 4 white players on the court each during their 2010 championship game

The U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has inadvertently shown the Disingenuous White Liberal (DWL) hand and, worse, illustrated that impeding any part of the United States' sprint to ruin will be greeted with howls of protest.

Yesterday we illustrated the gross disparity between white and Black basketball players in graduation rates for NCAA Tournament teams. Knowing that more than 60 percent of the NCAA rosters are Black and that these players are recruited in spite of their academic abilities, it is becoming increasingly clear that any attempt to reform college athletics in favor of athletes actually being students first is an impossibility.

Unless you lower the qualifications for earning a degree at colleges and universities, Black athlete-students will continue to weigh down the graduation rates prompting Richard Lapchick to continue documenting Black failure while blaming the nurturing of these students, dismissing the nature argument as 'racist.'

In 2009 Jeremy Fowler of The Orlando Sentinel showed that recent Final Four teams lack white players, while Lapchick's research continues to show that it is these few white players that help prop up graduation rates.

Why is it that white players, who make up only 35 percent of major NCAA teams, have graduation rates far exceeding - by 32 percentage point in the most recent data - those of Black players? They both receive the same amount of tutoring and access to multi-million dollar athletic centers?

Yet it is the token few white players - many who ride the bench - at major colleges in the NCAA Tournament that make the graduation rates appear acceptable at all in many of the teams cases.

And so we come to what Mr. Duncan said should transpire for those teams whose Academic Progress Rate is below 925 (meaning they graduate less than half their players):

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan says schools not on track to graduate at least half of their basketball players should not be allowed to compete in the NCAA men's and women's tournaments.

If such a standard were in place now, three women's teams and 10 men's teams, including traditional powers Syracuse and Purdue, would not be in the tournaments.

Duncan said in an interview with USA TODAY that the NCAA should use its own Academic Progress Rate as the metric to measure tournament teams. He proposes bans for teams with a score lower than 925, which predicts a graduation rate of roughly 50% of a team's players.

"The math on this is not complicated," Duncan said. "If you can't graduate one in two of your student-athletes, I just question the institutional commitment to academics. And I think if the NCAA were to draw a line in the sand, you'd see this behavior change very rapidly."

The NCAA believes that figure is no more than 20%, vice president of communications Bob Williams said.

"Money talks," Duncan said. "So right now there is an absolute perverse incentive. Folks follow the money, and the money says, 'We don't care about academic outcomes.'

"If the NCAA stepped up and said, 'Well, we actually do care about academic outcomes' (by banning teams with low rates) I guarantee you behavior would change very, very rapidly. This is eminently solvable."

This makes sense. Punish those schools that rely on "one and done" style players -- read the Fab Five mentality-- while promoting teams that rely on basketball players who will actually utilize the scholarship their athletic ability earned them to attain a degree (see Duke University).

The problem: the schools that will be punished primarily utilize Black athlete-students that come from a community with students performing at a level far below that of every other racial group.

Duncan, like Lapchick, is a Disingenuous White Liberal and his proposal goes against the rules of Black Run America (BRA) so they cannot be taken seriously. Punishing teams that rely on Black athlete-students will be seen as racist (like Prop 48 and 42 were) and denying these schools the opportunity to play in the NCAA tournament will prompt Lapchick to publish a study blasting the NCAA for instituting Jim Crow-style laws to keep Black players from showcasing their athletic skills, all because their academic ability is less than proficient.

Take a quick look at the 10 NCAA schools that Duncan would have banned from the tournament because they have APR scores below 925. One of the schools is Alabama State, a Historically Black College and University (HBCU) primarily known for that awesome cafeteria brawl. HBCU's are already known for producing graduates of little value to employers, and the ASU graduation rate is 71 percent (they have no white players) or a APR of 907.


The University of Alabama Birmingham has an APR score of 825 and a Black graduation rate of 18 percent. The white graduation rate is 100. 


Texas-San Antonio has an APR score of 885 and a Black graduation rate of 50 percent. The white graduation rate is 100.


UC-Santa Barbara has an APR score of 902 and a Black graduation rate of 33 percent. The white graduation rate is 100.


Morehead State has an APR score of 906 and a Black graduation rate of 33 percent. The white graduation rate is 50 percent.

Syracuse has an APR score of 912 and a Black graduation rate of 44 percent. The white graduation rate is 75 percent.

Purdue has an APR score of 919 and a Black graduation rate of 50 percent. The white graduation rate  is 83 percent. 


Kansas State has an APR score of 924 and a Black graduation rate of 14 percent. The white graduation rate is 100. 


All of these schools would be punished in spite of their white athletes, who graduate. They represent individuals whose ability in the classroom off-sets the inability of Black athlete-students to get the job done in that same environment.  

In fact, if you look at the graduation rates of the schools that have an APR rating over 925, the vast majority of them rely on the high white graduation rates to off-set the poor Black graduation rates. 


How many more teams would graduate less than half of their roster if they had more Black players and less white players improving the graduation rate average? Michigan, Michigan State, Georgia, Florida, Arizona, Kentucky, Washington and UNLV all have white graduation rates of 100 percent and Black graduation rates of under 40 percent (Washington is 17 percent; Arizona is 14 percent).

Duncan's idea to bounce low-grade teams would negatively impact teams with low Black graduation rates, thus it will be disregarded without a moments hesitation.  In Black Run America (BRA), Black people can never be portrayed as a problem. All solutions to fixing problem must center around improving Black people's inability to perform at levels that their white counterparts routinely exceed (not to mention Asians). 

So Duncan's suggestion for banning teams that lack actual students and instead relying on athlete-students is inherently racist and will not be seriously entertained, even though Lapchick said the Department of Education was needed to fix this situation:

Lapchick continued, “Race remains a continuing academic issue. By itself, the increased 32 percentage point gap between graduation rates for white and African-American student-athletes demonstrates that.

“However, it is equally important to note that African-American male basketball players graduate at a higher rate than African-American males who are not student-athletes. The graduation rate for African-


American male students as a whole is only 38 percent, a full 21percentage points lower than for African-American male basketball student-athletes. Presently, too many of our predominantly white campuses are not fully welcoming places for students of color, whether or not they are athletes. There are lessons that our campuses could learn from athletics. We have to find new ways to narrow this gap and that includes looking at the urban high schools which many of our African-American student-athletes graduate from…answers there must come from schools systems themselves, perhaps with help from the Department of Education.”

The following results from 2011 also are alarming. The GSR data shows:
 30 men’s tournament teams (54 percent, an increase from 49 percent in 2010) have a 30 percentage point or greater gap between the graduation rates of their white and African-American basketball student-athletes. 

36 men’s tournament teams (64 percent, a decrease from 65 percent in 2010) have a 20 percentage point or greater gap between the graduation rates of their white and African-American basketball student-athletes.

Lapchick concluded, “As always, there are schools that win big enough to be here in March and graduate their student-athletes. If we were to choose a Top 10 for Graduation Success Rates, these schools would be there: Belmont, Notre Dame, Villanova, Wofford, Illinois, BYU, Utah State, Vanderbilt and Arkansas – Little Rock. All of these teams had GSR greater than 92 percent. Seven teams achieved a 100 percent GSR: Belmont, Notre Dame, Villanova, Wofford, Illinois, BYU, and Utah State.”

 Those teams with high graduation rates for both white and Black student-athletes are known for being academic rigorous institutions. Notre Dame and BYU are teams that play four and five white players routinely, showing that relying on Black athlete-students is unnecessary.

Teams with players like Jimmer Fredette can succeed, both academically and on the hardwood. I'd also wager that the primary reason Notre Dame's Ben Hansbrough - the Big East's Player of the Year - transferred from coal-Black Mississippi State to lily-white Notre Dame was to have the opportunity to play the white style of basketball and not be treated like Pistol Pete.

Duke University's shunning of Jalen Rose type players -- Black thugs-- and recruiting, in his words, Uncle Tom's like Grant Hill, has consistently turned out to be a recipe for winning. Having high IQ Black players utilizing the white-style of play with a plethora of white players (Duke played 4 white players in last year's run to the championship and have 4 white players contributing heavily on this years team) is an equation that equals victory:

This week in a way to usher in the upcoming  NCAA Championship Tournament, ESPN aired a new documentary of Michigan's victorious teams of the early '90s titled "The Fab Five".

Rose had this to say about Duke and Hill in the documentary:

Schools like Duke didn't recruit players like me. I felt that they only recruited black players that were Uncle Toms. ... I was jealous of Grant Hill. He came from a great black family. Congratulations. Your mom went to college and was roommates with Hillary Clinton. Your dad played in the NFL as a very well-spoken and successful man. I was upset and bitter that my mom had to bust her hump for 20-plus years. I was bitter that I had a professional athlete that was my father that I didn't know. I resented that, moreso than I resented him. I looked at it as they are who the world accepts and we are who the world hates.

Hill was respectful and mature in his response but obviously a tad sensitive when it came to discussing the slur Rose hurled upon him and his teammates.

"In his garbled but sweeping comment that Duke recruits only 'black players that were "Uncle Toms,"' Jalen seems to change the usual meaning of those very vitriolic words into his own meaning, i.e., blacks from two-parent, middle-class families. He leaves us all guessing exactly what he believes today," Hill wrote Wednesday in a New York Times college basketball blog.  

"To hint that those who grew up in a household with a mother and father are somehow less black than those who did not is beyond ridiculous. All of us are extremely proud of the current Duke team, especially Nolan Smith. He was raised by his mother, plays in memory of his late father and carries himself with the pride and confidence that they instilled in him," Hill wrote.

Black Run America (BRA) cannot be reformed. It must fall apart on its own accord. It is falling apart. DWLs, like Duncan and Lapchick, cannot reform college basketball without relying more on white players to compensate for the intellectually inabilities of Black players.

Since DWLs refuse to acknowledge what every standardized test confirms and since they worship at the altar of BRA, they will be unable to defend rule changes that deny teams with Black players the opportunity to compete in the NCAA Tournament.

The Fab Five created the thug mentality in basketball -as did Sony Vaccaro - and helped ensure that Black players who do graduate are labeled Uncle Tom's and Acting White. I'd wager 90 - 95 percent of Black people agree with Rose's analysis of Hill and Duke.

But it is this reliance on Black athlete-students who have no business being at anything called a major college or university that puts schools at the disadvantage.

In virtually every level of American life whether it is academics, politicians, executives of Fortune 500 companies, pastors and clergy, DWL-thinking dominates the decision-making process. How a decision will impact Black people is the number one concern for the government, businesses and universities.

It is for this reason that BRA will ultimately collapse. The sad thing is that almost every facet of American life will be negatively impacted in its demise.

Arne Duncan is to be commended for stating that low-grade teams should be bounced from the NCAA Tournament, but if such a suggestion was implemented that would mean all-Black teams would be impacted the most.

And in BRA, that just can't happen.

But remember last year's NCAA Tournament. Teams with white players excelled, not just in graduation rates, but also on the court.

Black Thanksgiving is upon Us: NBA All-Star Weekend

The NBA needs great white hopes, but that means Black players must pass them the ball

Editors Note: I am Number Four was exactly like we said it would be two weeks ago. An all-white cast in which white people are the heroes, American flags in virtually every scene, and not one non-white had a speaking part.American flags in virtually every scene and not one non-white had a speaking part. It was an homage to Pre-Obama America. Somebody get Michael Bay a script of Camp of the Saints.

NBA All-Star Weekend is upon us again (and one does hope it won't be a repeat of the 2007 All-Star Weekend in Las Vegas) and, finally, it has earned a worthy name - The Black Thanksgiving - that accurately nails the vibe surrounding the event:

So, you want to know about Black Thanksgiving?

That's what sports writer Mike Wilbon calls NBA All-Star Weekend.


First of all, what you need to know about Wilbon, whom I love, is that he has been known to exaggerate just a touch on occasion. But on this one, he's on point.


For those of us who cover the NBA for a living, like me and Wilbon -- now an ESPN yakker and writer, formerly a Washington Post yakker and writer, and my friend --All-Star Weekend is a long four days of work.


But for most of the people who descend into town -- this year it's Los Angeles, with its still sparkling Staples Center and the surrounding "L.A. Live" area -- it's an opportunity to go wild (sometimes a little too wild, as happened in Las Vegas a few years ago) and get together.


Other folks have Tweetups. Black people have All-Star Weekend, or ASW. It's a national holiday, sort of.


ASW is the only time of the year that people call me. I don't say that to be maudlin, 'cause most of the time, I don't want people to call me. (Dirty little secret: I don't really like talking on the phone.) But they come out of the woodwork this time of year, because NBA players are royalty in Black America, and everyone wants to be near them. The old saying is that ballers want to be rappers, and rappers want to be ballers. That's really, really true.


Basketball is a culture. It isn't for everyone, though the game is loved by people of all colors. There is a rhythm to it, just as if McCoy Tyner was dribbling a ball instead of playing piano.


"Considering that the culture of basketball in a predominantly black league like the NBA is so strongly connected to African American culture, the NBA All-Star weekend has turned into a celebration of African American culture by extension," says Todd Boyd, professor of critical studies at the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts.

Bill Simmons in his Big Book of Basketball called the sport a "Black game" and wrote fawningly over the athletes who have played in a sport just a hair's breadth of legitimacy above professional wrestling. The NBA has become a "Black game" with the people charged with making the rules of the game deciding to favor an individual aspect over any team aspect of the sport (The same, by the way, in the NFL, with rule changes favoring speedier receivers and tiny corners).

Our friend Richard Lapchick - who always criticizes sports for a lack of the right kind (that's the Black kind) of diversity - loves the NBA and gives it an "A" rating for diversity, though the league is 80 percent Black. He does attack, however, NCAA basketball for having Black players that earn such anemic grades compared to the white players who earn their grades and degrees.

Since the majority of NBA players lack the intelligence to last more than, at most, two semesters of college, the moniker "Black Thanksgiving" makes perfect sense. It makes perfect sense because of the utter thugnicity surrounding the NBA has reached levels that only World Star Hip-Hop can rival (the same could be said for football).

College Basketball thrives while the NBA withers because "the great white hope" has an academic advantage over Black athletes as well as rule book that dictates a more defensive game. The NBA thought that offense and slam dunks would bring viewers, though that hasn't been the case. To understand why college basketball thrives, one would be wise to consult this fantastic data that shows the political inclinations of sports fans. Conservative, right-leaning people watch college basketball, while the NBA has incredibly left-leaning fans.

Look at Duke Basketball, Jimmer Fredette, the 2010 NCAA Tournament. All the evidence you need to understand that college basketball primarily utilizes the "white game" blueprint while the NBA has decided the "thugnicity" is the way to economic success and a wonderful way to celebrate a Black Thanksgiving. The problem is, however-- at least for the NBA -- is that white fans are heading for exists and leaving in droves:

No one wants to acknowledge why the NBA is losing popularity. Buzz Bissinger on why white fans have trouble getting excited about African-American athletes.


My editor thinks I should write something about professional basketball. The timing is certainly right—the National Basketball Association’s All-Star extravaganza starts today in Los Angeles, culminating in the All-Star game on Sunday night.


The problem is, I don’t really know what to say about the NBA other than I almost never watch it anymore.


I am not a basketball junkie and I have no desire to be one. There are maybe three players I would pay to watch. The first is LeBron James of the Miami Heat, because whatever you think, and I think a lot less after his free-agency melodrama despite writing a book with him, he is the best athlete in the world today. The second is Kobe Bryant of the Los Angeles Lakers, and the third is Kevin Durant of the Oklahoma City Thunder.


The game is in trouble and I don’t think there is much dispute about that. Attendance was down last year and is slightly down so far this season. Although basketball is supposed to be a team game, it has become more one-on-one in the NBA than a boxing match. The style has changed and it is a definite turnoff.


But a major problem with the NBA, one that is virtually never spoken about honestly, is the issue of race. I have no hard-core evidence. But based on my past experience in writing about sports, I know that whites ascribe very different characteristics to black athletes than they do white ones. I also make a habit of asking every white sports fan I know whether they watch the NBA. In virtually every instance, they say they once watched the game but no longer do. When I ask them if it has anything to do with the racial composition, they do their best to look indignant. But my guess is they felt very differently about the game when Larry Bird and John Stockton were playing.


Based on various statistics, the percentage of African-American players in the NBA has remained relatively constant over the past decade, fluctuating between 72 and 75 percent. The number of foreign-born players has increased exponentially to about 18 percent. The number of white American players, meanwhile, has decreased from 24.3 percent in the 1980-81 season to roughly 10 percent now.


The one white American player today who comes the closest to being a star is Kevin Love of the Minnesota Timberwolves. He is averaging 21 points a game and 15 rebounds. He is on the West roster in the All-Star Game. Do you know anyone who would pay to see Love play?


It boils down to this: Are whites losing interest in a game in which the number of white American players not only continues to dwindle, but no longer features a superstar?


Yes.


My good friend and colleague Stephen Fried, who has had season tickets to the Philadelphia 76ers for a decade and has written about the NBA, says he thinks my argument is more than simply terrible. “While racism is a part of America and American sports and always will be, I really don't think the main problem with the NBA is racial, and I think it's kind of racist and certainly reductionist to say it is,” Stephen told me.


In a piece for Parade magazine last year, he wrote that the NBA game needed to be significantly modified to regain its former popularity. In talking with NBA watchers, he came up with six solutions to improve play, including shortening the 24-second clock, increasing the number of fouls for a player before fouling out, and shortening the season.


They are good ideas. But I still believe race is a key deterrent in getting more whites reengaged and increasing interest. It has to do with racial stereotyping. Those stereotypes are wrong. They are malicious. But to act is if they do not exist is disingenuous. When I wrote the book Friday Night Lights about high-school football in Texas, I saw the racial stereotypes of some whites up close—their firm belief that white athletes admirably succeeded because of hustle and hard work and brains, and black athletes succeeded solely on the basis of pure athletic skill. In other words, white athletes virtuously worked their tails off whereas black athletes simply coasted because they can.

White racism is always the evil problem behind any problem in America, even the lack of ratings for NBA games. Larry Bird tried to make the game whiter in Indianapolis but was attacked for being, well, a racist.

There is no shelter from the accusation of white racism, though the future of America continues to look more and more like the sad ending of the film Mars Attacks where a mariachi band plays the Star Spangled Banner. When whites are the minority, white racism will still be the trusty whipping boy for all of America's problems.

If Black people can complain about the lack of Black people in baseball, is it not reasonable that white people will boycott the paucity of white basketball players by sitting on their wallets and changing the channel when ESPN highlights a league that represents a Black Thanksgiving every day?

The NBA will continue to lose popularity. It is solvent now because ESPN had decided to keep it on life support by broadcasting games and acting like people still care about a sport that lacks a great white hope.

Another theory as to why great white hopes are few and far between is courtesy of Pistol Pete Maravich. When he was drafted by the Atlanta Hawks, people thought he would revolutionize the game but his predominately Black team wouldn't pass him the ball, deciding to practice reverse racism instead. He finally snapped, saying, "I hate you. I hate all of you niggers."

Just like Peyton Hillis in the NFL, the Black players in the NBA don't want to see a white guy succeed on their turf. If you have played any level of sports against Black players (high school, college or professional) you know this to be true.

Black Run America (BRA) stigmatizes white athletes; those that excel are still just pretty good... for a white guy.

Let the NBA have their Black Thanksgiving. The NCAA Tournament is a white man's  feast, where white players who have no shot in NBA captivate the nation.

Without ESPN, the NBA would be in serious jeopardy of having to fold many franchises that aren't producing financially. Enjoy your Thanksgiving, Black people.

At Stuff Black People Don't Like, we'll just remember that one Thanksgiving where Black people decided Las Vegas was just another major metropolitan city.

That white shadow that stalks the NBA will remain forever haunting a league that slides into financial ruin thanks to a bunch of overpaid thugs. All the while, Richard Lapchick will be courtside applauding a league the diversity of which he fanatically gives his seal of approval.

#519. Jimmer Fredette of Brigham Young University

Jimmer Fredette scoring yet again in a BYU game

Basketball, as Bill Simmons makes clear in his tome The Big Book of Basketball, is a Black sport. Time magazine wrote this in 1977:

Nearly 65% of National Basketball Association players are blacks. Says Jerry West, the former superstar who is now coach of the Los Angeles Lakers: "When I first came into the league [in 1960], it was just starting to turn into a black league. And let's face it. This is a black league now." 

The growing black dominance in sports is evident in college athletics too. During the recent N.C.A.A. basketball playoffs, for example, Champion Marquette and Contenders Michigan and University of Nevada at Las Vegas each had only one white in their starting lineups. In N.C.A.A. football, most of 1976's top-ranked teams were loaded with black stars—in numbers far out of proportion to the percentage of black students on campus.

Black dominance in basketball (and the slow integration of college football, which became a rampaging flood) led to the destruction of the idea of white supremacy. The notion of a starting lineup of only white players as a viable option was destroyed when Texas Western (starting five Blacks) defeated lily-white Kentucky in the 1966 NCAA finals. Coached by Adolph Rupp, Kentucky’s all-white team would undergo one of the fatal blows against white supremacy that might prove fatal.   This is how Sports Illustrated remembered the game in 25 years after the fact:

Apparently, though, Rupp could see the forest for the trees. Midway through the 1965-66 season he halted practice and gathered his undefeated Rupp's Runts—no starter was taller than 6'5"—around him. He told them about the college basketball poll he'd seen in that morning's newspaper. "Boys," Rupp said in his scratchy Kansas twang, "when you go home tonight, I want you to look long and hard at these rankings. One. Two. Three. Kentucky, Duke, Vanderbilt. All from the South. And all white. Read it and remember. You'll never see it happen again."

Five years after College Park, a 7'1" black player named Tom Payne suited up for Rupp and Kentucky. Seven years after College Park, Alabama-George Wallace, governor—started five black players. In the 1980s, 82 of the 100 starters in the NCAA championship game were black. Indeed, from 1982 through '85, only one first-stringer on a national champion was white, Matt Doherty of North Carolina. Twenty-five years after College Park, 19 of the 20 starters on the four top-seeded teams in the 1991 tournament—UNLV, Ohio State, Arkansas and North Carolina—are black. The lone white player is Pete Chilcutt of North Carolina.


The point of these numbers, the best moral of all, is that after Texas Western rose to the cusp of a revolution, the denouement was so swift and total that it was hardly noticed. Now college basketball is all Harry's brothers.

The 2010 NCAA Tournament was one for the ages, with Butler and Duke providing a championship for the ages with seven or eight white guys on the floor the majority of the game. Basketball fans hate Duke, primarily for the team’s whiteness in an almost endless Black sea of hoops stars that Predominately White Institutions trot out. 

The Orlando Sentinel published an article in 2009 stating that NCAA Tournament teams had a lack of white players, though research from our good friend Richard Lapchick continues to show that those white players graduate at a much higher rate than Black basketball players. Why is that?

That same paper published a story detailing how the University of Florida has become a haven for white basketball players, where the thug culture so prevalent on most college teams is filtered with a safety net of fellow melanin-deficient athletes to pal around with:

But one thing is obvious: White players can feel as if they belong at Florida. Billy Donovan has cultivated an environment for the white player to flourish. Florida forward Chandler Parsons said he evaluated the white-player track record of schools when he was being recruited in 2007. 


"Youlook at any school in the past that has had a white guy do well,"Parsons said. "If you're a white recruit, you look at that stuff. Butyou really want to look at a school that fits your style of play. All black, all white, all Spanish, doesn't matter as long as you can flourish in that system."

That the two big sports – basketball and football – are dominated by Black athletes mean the lone white guys in locker rooms require instant bonding. Just ask Peyton Hillis what he experienced in the 2010 NFL season. When a white player dominates a sport that Blacks have for so long presided over, you’re bound to see resentment from Black athletes. 

Enter the next great white hope in basketball, Brigham Young scoring sensation Jimmer Fredette. Sports Illustrated once asked where the white athlete went and wrote these dismissive words:

Most kids, black and white, report that coaches generally are the ones who encourage positional segregation. But Mater Dei's Rollinson often encounters white parents who won't consider that their child might be good enough to play a "black" position at the college level. He says these parents see their son lining up at cornerback or wide receiver and say, "He'll never make it because he's not black." Rollinson tries to tell them their boy runs a 4.5 40-yard dash and has great hands, but they don't want to hear it. "They come right back and say, 'Don't give me that BYU story,' " Rollinson says.


Brigham Young is perhaps the most prominent exception to the black domination of sports. Relying almost exclusively on white talent, the Mormon school has fielded teams that have continually competed at the highest level. The football team sits perennially in the Top 20, making an occasional run at a national title. The basketball team has won 15 Western Athletic Conference titles, made 17 NCAA tournament appearances and produced a dozen All-Americas, and for a week in 1987 it held the No. 2 ranking in the country—yet the Cougars have never started more than one black. "I don't think I had ever played on or against an all-white team," says Van Horn, the former Ute. "When we played BYU, it was strange."


The paucity of African-American players on BYU teams has worked against them. "We haven't had the quickness that a black student-athlete has," says Roger Reid, a Cougars basketball coach for 19 years, seven of them as head coach. Nevertheless, BYU has beaten predominantly black teams from such schools as UCLA, Notre Dame and Virginia. The Cougars have defeated black teams that started games thinking that when push came to shove, their own athletic superiority would tell. San Diego Padres out-fielder Tony Gwynn learned this. As a junior point guard in 1980 he went to Provo, Utah, with his San Diego State team and got beaten badly. "Those BYU guys were flying through the air, jumping over guys, getting rebounds, and that's the first time I thought, These guys are really athletic," Gwynn says. "Our whole club was shocked."

Perhaps it fitting that Ferdette, college basketball’s leading scorer – a modern day version of Pistol Pete Maravich – had one of his best games of the season against that same San Diego State team. Scoring 43 points and leading a BYU team that had 4 or 5 players on the court at all time against an all-Black San Diego State squad, Ferdette dominated the game. 

But it is his race that has sports writers questioning whether he can compete at the next level:

From everywhere on the floor, Fredette is a relentless, ferocious scorer. His range stretches far beyond the 3-point line, and his deftness with the ball – not to mention his toughness – gets him to the basket and the free-throw line. He’s scoring in the 30s, the 40s on some nights – averaging a nation-best 27.4 points per game – and perhaps it’s so amazing because people just don’t see that coming from a 6-foot-2 Mormon out of upstate New York. There’s no debating Fredette’s greatness as a collegiate scorer, but most fascinating is projecting what kind of pro player he’ll be.
Conversations with multiple NBA general managers and scouts who’ve tracked Fredette’s progress result in one consensus: Almost no one agrees on anything. Perhaps there’s something about a white guard with American roots which causes such prejudging, stereotyping and skepticism to abound. Perhaps there’s something about a white guard with American roots which causes such rooting interest and overhype. People are forever trying to pin Fredette into a neat little comparative box. Most agree he could top out in the late lottery around 12 or 13 but probably won’t last past the mid-20s.



It’s funny how Fredette draws comparisons to Gonzaga’s Adam Morrison(notes) and Duke’s J.J. Redick(notes). They don’t play so much like him, but they sure are white guys. Thirty years ago, the best player in BYU history, Danny Ainge, would’ve been the highest-drafted player in school history had he told NBA teams he preferred pro basketball over pro baseball. He was a different athlete than Fredette – bigger, faster and more suited for the pro game. For whatever it was worth, there was no shortage of comparable players in the NBA.


“I was a guy who could run, had good speed, and never in my college career did anyone question my athleticism,” Ainge said. “If I wasn’t playing baseball, I would’ve certainly been one of the top five or six picks. I don’t think anyone in the NBA was thinking about that with me or Doug Collins. We were bigger. We were athletic.”

Fredette has been unstoppable this year, shooting the ball with a precision normally reserved for automatons on an assembly line, though an attempt at a breakaway slam dunk become fodder for ESPN analysts who pointed out that white guys really can’t jump.

But they sure can shoot lights out. 

Where is the diversity?

BYU is chastised for its lack of diversity constantly, as this Sports Illustrated article on University of Utah football coach Kyle Whittingham attacked the school for being, well, too white:

To get them there, Utah recruiters often must battle preconceived notions about the state. Before senior Shaky Smithson became a star returner at Utah (he leads the nation in punt returns, with 23.3 yards per touch), he was a star receiver and returner at East Los Angeles Community College. He was guarded when Utah's coaches first tried to woo him. He had visited a friend in Provo and been turned off by its lack of diversity. Persuaded that Salt Lake was different, Smithson took a visit. "It was a big eye-opener," he says. "Lot of restaurants, lot of clubs. There's a lot to do here, and the people, they accept you with open arms."


While BYU remains one of the nation's most monochromatic teams, Whittingham takes pleasure in pointing out that his is "the most diverse program in the country." A third of the Utes are white, a third African-American, a third Polynesian. Half are Mormon. Some are married, and some are married with children. "The beautiful thing about this team," Bergstrom says, "is that we're diverse, yet we can make fun of our differences and nobody gets upset about it."

If you are a parent reading this who has a talented white son that excels at football or basketball, consider sending them out west to schools like Colorado State, BYU, the Air Force Academy, Wyoming, Boise State, Montana (Division FCS), Rice, Stanford or a university that will play white athletes and offer a program such as Florida basketball does. 

Go where white players get the chance to play. The Southeastern Conference (SEC) equals 12 PWI schools (all with more than 85 percent white enrollment) that have football teams comprised of more than 65 percent Black athletes in football and 85 percent in basketball. Do they graduate? Who cares as long as they win games and championships!

If your kids play baseball, well, every college baseball program is overwhelmingly white. 

When you breakdown the decline of the United States, sports offer a direct window into how small, incremental changes through integration allowed positive images of Black people to percolate slowly into the white American mind.

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: sports offer the primary positive examples of Black people in America. Jimmer and other talented white athletes threaten these images by showing that white players can compete at levels at or exceeding the talent of Black players. 

Now when sports fans see Jimmer Ferdette of BYU dominating a basketball game, they immediately laugh at his talents because they have conditioned to believe the only legitimate form of basketball is played by Black players. 

They experience a form of cognitive dissonance watching a white guy perform at levels that exceed that of even the best Black player. Because, after all, basketball is a Black man’s game. 

Just don’t tell that to Jimmer. Or Peyton Hillis. 

Stuff Black People Don’t Like includes Jimmer Fredette, yet another great white hope in basketball who will be surrounded by nine or ten Black players on his NBA team that will undoubtedly treat him like Pistol Pete was by the Hawks. 

You can bet the Utah Jazz will try and draft him.

Until then, he provides every white sports fan with an image of what white basketball actually looks like.

#1002. The 2010 NCAA Tournament Sweet Sixteen

Hollywood dominates American life. Regional culture is gone, replaced with a monoculture from Los Angeles that governs the entertainment we watch and thus, the opinions we possess. A gatekeeper with such power that the manipulation of minds is but a film away, Hollywood reigns over the culture in an impenetrable citadel of influence no dictator in history could dream of attaining.

The 2006 movie Glory Road is an example of this immense power, as the script for this college basketball film did everything in its power to discredit the basketball played before the introduction of Black players to game:

Glory Road is an American film directed by James Gartner, released on January 13, 2006. The film is based on a true story dealing with the events leading to the 1966 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship, in which the late Don Haskins (Josh Lucas), head coach of the Texas Western College (now the University of Texas at El Paso) led a team with an all-black starting lineup, a first in NCAA history.

All good films need villains, and Glory Road has the five white starters from Adolph Rupp's Kentucky Wildcat squad, who would be vanquished by the conquering starting five (all-Black) of the protagonist Texas Western College. Oh, and Disney created evil villains that attempted to thwart the heroes rise to the title:

In the game between East Texas State University and Texas Western, East Texas State fans are shown throwing popcorn and drinks, and yelling racial epithets. In a later scene, racial slurs are shown painted onto the hotel rooms of the black Texas Western players. After verification that the events never took place, Texas A&M University–Commerce (formerly East Texas State University) asked for an apology from Disney and the makers of the film.^[4]

Disney did not directly apologize for the portrayal. Rather, it explained that the movie was not a documentary and that it had been necessary to consolidate events given the time limitations of the movie, and that Disney did not intentionally set out to misrepresent any group and was sorry for any misunderstanding.

Again, movies create false paradigms that become the accepted fact by those ignorant to the actual event and facts surrounding the game. Like the 1970 Alabama - University of Southern California football won by an integrated Trojan team over the all-white Crimson Tide squad, this basketball game stands as irrefutable proof of the dominance of the Black athlete over the athletically disinclined white person.

"Whatever Happened to the White Athlete?" Sports Illustrated famously asked in a shockingly dishonest cover story in the 1990s. They were usurped by better athletes from a larger population sample would be a logical answer, but Black people were never more than 13 percent of the population from 1960 - to present.

Thus a conundrum appears: if the available pool of eligible participants for college sports includes an overwhelming majority of white athletes (anywhere from 70 - 80 percent of the eligible population of age up until the 1990s and from 55-60 of the pool from then on due to Hispanic immigration), why have Black people come to dominate college basketball and the National Basketball Association by such impressive figures (60 percent Black in the NCAA/ 80 percent in the NBA):

The NBA added its first black players in the 1950-51 season. During the 1960s, more African Americans joined the league. Then in the mid-1970s to early '80s, the shift from predominantly white to predominantly black took place.

Last February, the NBA's black-player population was 77 percent, while the white-player population was 21 percent. Of the white players, 55 percent were American-born and 45 percent were international players.

The NFL, like the NBA, is a sport with a black majority. Yet, according to Lapchick's most recent report card, the 65 percent black representation in the 2001 season was a four-year low. And the league's feeder system - Division I college football - was 49.4 percent white and 42.1 percent black in 2000-01.

College basketball, like the NBA, reflects the decline in white players. According to the report by Lapchick - himself the son of a white Basketball Hall of Famer - the number of white players at the Division I level in 2000-01 season was 32.5 percent, 2 full percentage points below the 1991-92 numbers.

Basketball, as Bill Simmons points out in his monumental tome The Book of Basketball, is a Black game. Although invented by a white doctor in the 1890s, the game was turned into poetry by Black people, as the ESPN documentary Black Magic would have us believe:

“Black Magic” opens with the details of a secret basketball game played in Durham, N. C., in a locked gym with no fans to witness it. On a Sunday morning in 1944 the innovative African-American coach John McLendon led his fast-breaking team from the North Carolina College for Negroes in a home game against an intramural squad from Duke University’s medical school.

It was illegal. It was dangerous.

And the black team won 88-44. “They never saw anyone run up and down the court like we did,” a McLendon player says...

If there is joy in “Black Magic,” it is in the dominance of African-American players (if not coaches) in colleges and the pros. Still, if there is regret that black players entered the mainstream, it comes from Clara Gaines.

“In the end we just all wish that integration hadn’t taken place,” she says, perhaps venting frustration about her husband’s difficulty in later years in attracting top talent to Winston-Salem. “Because it did change things.”

Black magic is indeed the potion that has driven basketball from the boring days of team basketball and supplanted it the individualistic style of play that dominates the game currently. Or so it would seem.

In the 1980s, Larry Bird saved the National Basketball Association (NBA) from ratings obscurity and neglect as one of the true Great White Hopes single-handily made people care about the game again with his great Boston Celtic teams. Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan helped the resurgent capture fans attention again, but the emergence of Bird brought about hope in every white person that they could dare play in the game that Bird surmised simply as:

But it is a black man's game, and it will be forever.” -- Larry Bird

To watch a college basketball game is to view a sport dominated by young Black people who grew up in a world far removed from that depicted in Glory Road or Black Magic, but more in line with Spike Lee's 1997 film He Got Game, a movie that shows the fawning of semi-literate Black basketball players who will help lead the team to glory for a season and then split for money and fame in the NBA.

Indeed, many of the top Black athletes opt for skipping college basketball entirely to be drafted in the NBA, seemingly depriving fans of watching top talent mature and dominate at the collegiate level.

In 2009, The Orlando Sentinel published a provocative piece of journalism that analysed the NCAA Tournament Sweet Sixteen (the final 16 teams out of 65) teams and found a shockingly low number diversity in the starting lineups as white players were noticeably absent:

College basketball teams can thrive with white players.

But the odds of a team cutting down the Final Four nets aren't good if that team is stocked with many white guys, Orlando Sentinel research shows. College basketball at its highest levels is dominated by black players even if the subject makes some people uncomfortable.Look no further than this weekend in Detroit. Only two white players -- North Carolina's Tyler Hansbrough and Michigan State's Goran Suton -- will be listed among the combined 20 starters for the four teams in this year's NCAA Tournament semifinals. And two teams -- Villanova and Connecticut -- don't have a white player on scholarship on this year's active roster.

Michigan State is the only team from this year's Final Four that signed more than nine white players to scholarships between 1997 and 2008.

Recruiting numbers spell it out in black and white: Since the 2000 tournament, 34 of 40 Final Four teams played consistently with no more than one white starter during that particular year. The 2003 Syracuse team, with white starters Gerry McNamara and Craig Forth, was the only one to win a championship.

The last championship team to rely on at least three white starters was Duke in 1991, its first of back-to-back championships thanks to Bobby Hurley, Christian Laettner and Billy McCaffrey, who started most of that season.

"A lot of garbage," ESPN college basketball analyst Dick Vitale called the notion of race playing a factor in basketball success.

"I've never really thought about it like that," Florida Coach Billy Donovan said.

"We don't talk a lot in the recruiting industry about race," Rivals.com recruiting analyst Dave Telep said.

Basketball is a Black game, though analyst and coaches are timorous about admitting this simple truth, for the same reason Richard Lapchick constantly bemoans the lack of graduation rates for Black college players when compared to their white counterparts:

The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport (TIDES) at the University of Central Florida released its annual study, “Keeping Score When It Counts: Graduation Rates for 2010 NCAA Men’s Division I Basketball Tournament Teams” which is the most comprehensive analysis to date of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament‐bound teams.

Lapchick noted that “There is again positive academic news for the tournament teams when we examine the GSR and the APR. There was a two percentage point increase for all male student‐athletes to 64 percent. Eighty‐four percent of white and 56 percent of African‐American men’s Division I basketball student‐athletes graduate, increasing six percentage points for white basketball student‐athletes and by two percentage points for African‐American basketball student‐athletes compared to last year’s study.”

Lapchick went on to say, “Nonetheless, the continuing significant disparity between the academic success of African‐American and white men’s basketball student‐athletes is deeply troubling. In fact, the already large gap increased by four percentage points. One of higher education’s greatest failures is the persistent gap between African‐American and white students in general. This is also true for white and African‐American basketball student‐athletes in particular. The gaps continue to widen, even though the actual graduation rates of African‐American basketball student‐athletes are increasing.”

It is well-known that Black athlete-students don't like to graduate, however the stunning lack of graduates that are also Black is becoming an epidemic found on every college campus:

In each of the three years from 1998 through 2000 there was a one percentage point decline in the graduation rate for black men. But for the past four years the graduation rate for black men improved by one percentage point and now stands at 35 percent. Over the past 15 years black men have improved their graduation rate from 28 percent to 35 percent.

Historically Black Colleges and Universities graduate even fewer of their Black male pupils, threatening the academic integrity of the institutions themselves:

An Associated Press analysis of government data on the 83 federally designated four-year historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) shows just 37% of their black students finish a degree within six years. That's 4 percentage points lower than the national college graduation rate for black students.

One major reason: the struggles of black men. Just 29% of HBCU males complete a bachelor's degree within six years, the AP found.

Now, keeping Black basketball eligible is a major problem for many colleges, but a greater problem is the shrinking percentage of eligible Black players from the talent pool, as competition from correction and incarceration facilities is threatening to pluck the top recruits from the hardwood for some hard time:

There are more black men in jail in the United States than there are in higher education, a new study has found.

The report, by the Washington-based Justice Policy Institute, says the number of black men behind bars has grown by more than five times in the past 20 years.

According to the study, there were 791,600 black men imprisoned in America in the year 2000, compared to 603,032 enrolled in college or university.

It is lamentable that so many Black males choose violence and crime over basketball, though Jeff Benedict's book Out of bounds: inside the NBA's culture of rape, violence, and crime points out that many Black players find a perfect equilibrium (as does Gilbert Arenas).

Which brings us to the 2010 NCAA Basketball Tournament and the mindless March Madness happening across the nation. A strange sight has been viewed by millions, as teams starting majority white rosters are performing at a team level far out-pacing the individualistic mindset perfected by Black players on the courts of ghettos across the land.

Northern Iowa, Purdue, St. Mary, Duke and Cornell boast teams that have three, four and five white players on the court at any given time, far outpacing the numbers noticed by The Orlando Sentinel for the past 10 years of NCAA Tournament racial participation.

Even Baylor made the Sweet Sixteen thanks to the heroic efforts of a "big, tall goofy white guy" - Josh Lomers.

Butler also made the Sweet Sixteen, and they have a team comprised of many white players who see action on the court.

Earlier this year, a promoter made headlines when he stated a white's only basketball should form:

According to the Chronicle, Lewis said he wants to emphasize "fundamental basketball" instead of "street ball" played by "people of color."

"There's nothing hatred about what we're doing," Lewis told the paper. "I don't hate anyone of color."

Lewis pointed out recent incidents in the NBA, including Gilbert Arenas' suspension for bringing a gun into the Washington Wizards locker room, and said, "Would you want to go to the game and worry about a player flipping you off or attacking you in the stands or grabbing their crotch?"

Watching the 2010 NCAA Basketball Tournament, a resurgence of white basketball is obvious and a near unavoidable topic for any fan whose eyes can discern the dramatic difference in style that say Duke or St. Mary's utilize for victory than does a Xavier, Kentucky, Ohio State or West Virginia (hint, those teams play nearly all-Black players).

Basketball is an improvisational game, where quick decisions dictate the pace of the game, and Black players excel at this individualistic style:

White coaches long resisted their black players' ability to make it up as they went along. Yet, "playground jungle ball" eventually routed predictable white-style basketball. Obviously, the occasional Larry Bird or John Stockton show that some whites can master the black game. Still, whites seem less often able to meet modern basketball's demands for creative improvisation and on-the-fly interpersonal decision-making. As Thomas Sowell notes, "To be an outstanding basketball player means to out-think opponents consistently in these split-second decisions under stress." Beyond basketball, these black mental superiorities in "real time" responsiveness also contribute to black dominance in jazz, running with the football, rap, dance, trash talking, preaching, and oratory. Martin Luther King, Jr., for example, improvised the immortal conclusion to his "I Have a Dream" speech.

Oddly, the 2010 Sweet Sixteen features a shocking number of teams utilizing the white-brand of basketball where a large number of passes are incorporated into the offense scheme to garner the highest percentage shot, like the movie Hoosiers depicts (a movie about an all-white basketball team in Pre-Obama America, which plays as virtual science-fiction now) :

Q.What did you think of "Hoosiers?" Seems like some people want history to be an episode of "Friends," or go the other way and are overly sensitive about whether black folks will think a movie like "Hoosiers" is racist or willfully ignorant of the bigotry of the times, '50s Indiana, the same decade when Oscar Robertson and the Indiana state championship Crispus Attucks high school team of Indianapolis also had a compelling, parallel story, as yet to be told. Isn't that the key; if both stories are told, isn't there balance?

A. Spike Lee: I'll say this ... I definitely had an uncomfortable feeling about that film as I was watching it. I didn't stop to analyze why I had the feeling, and haven't since. But it was there. At the same time, Gene Hackman gives a great performance in that movie.

Watching the 2010 NCAA Basketball Tournament, the oddity of seeing white players excel as a team, as a unit and dismantle "superior" athletes is shocking, but reminds us of the line uttered by Gene Hackman in Hoosiers:

Coach Norman Dale: Five players on the floor functioning as one single unit: team, team, team - no one more important that the other.

Though they might not make the NBA, these white players are propelling their teams to levels of basketball not seen since the days before Black Magic took over. Oddly, the same school that once featured an all-white starting lineup Kentucky - that was featured in the film Glory Road- now has an all-Black starting roster and a near all-Black team.

Fitting irony that in 2010, Kentucky could face a near all-white roster (and will in its Sweet Sixteen game with Cornell) for the championship. Will a similar movie be made by the powers that be like Glory Road, a film that canonizes the efforts of five Black players to vanquish the evil all-white Kentucky squad?

Stuff Black people Don't Like includes the 2010 NCAA Tournament Sweet Sixteen, for the 16 teams competing for the title are no longer bereft of white players and showcase a surprising number of teams playing white basketball. Five players, one unit, one team.

Duke, a number one seed, is looking dominant.

However, like Toby Gerhart, other teams with white players are making major headway deploying the old-fashioned concept of team basketball. Larry Bird stated basketball needs white stars to survive, and the 2010 NCAA Basketball Tournament is supplying his desire with plenty of team basketball.

A white league isn't necessary. White players and the school's they compete for are dominating the NCAA Tournament. They might not win the title, but chances are, they will graduate.

March Madness indeed.

Crystal Mangum Jailed, Duke Lacrosse Keeps Scoring

Once the virtuous, virgin and darling of an incensed Disingenuous White Liberal lynch mob out for blood, the now disgraced Jezebel and lady of the night Crystal Gale Mangum is back in the news.

Not for an alleged tryst with Duke lacrosse players, but for the obviously harmful psychological effects stemming from the legal ordeal she dealt with three years ago:

Durham police arrested Duke lacrosse accuser Crystal Gale Mangum, 33, late Wednesday after she allegedly assaulted her boyfriend, set his clothes on fire in a bathtub and threatened to stab him.

Authorities charged her with attempted first-degree murder, five counts of arson, assault and battery, communicating threats, three counts of misdemeanor child abuse, injury to personal property, identity theft and resisting a public officer.

The entire world seemed to turn into Crusading White Pedagogues, who used the story of rich, pampered and elite white boys - the Duke lacrosse team - and the alleged rape of a disadvantaged, destitute and vulnerable Mangum as a dastardly tale of white privilege in the face of crushing Black poverty.

Of course, the rape charges tossed haphazardly at the three members of the Duke lacrosse team were fallacious and Mangum was left to ply her trade in the matters of the flesh.

Now, it appears she is one the verge of long-term jail time. One of the three musketeers of hate crime hoaxes, Mangum is not expected to solicit Mike Nifong for his legal services.

Stuff Black People Don't Like finds this whole situation disheartening, for we had such high hopes for Mangum's literary career.

#56. Duke Basketball

It has been stated many times that white men can’t jump. This generally accepted fact has an equally acknowledged truth that everyone knows, but few admit publicly: Black people can jump, which is punctuated by the nearly 80 percent of NBA players being of primary African descent.

However, to admit that white people might be impaired when it comes to leaping abilities is to invite a whole slew of stereotyping that could be detrimental to white basketball players development and instead, turn him into primarily an assist machine, or a mere spectator:

“This is a perfect example of the stereotype threat, a theory postulated by sociologist Claude Steele. This stereotype threat is the fear that one’s behavior will confirm an existing stereotype of the group which one identifies.

The white basketball player, no matter what his particular skill set is, fears that he will be grouped with other white players, because he might exhibit those characteristics commonly associated with them (perhaps a legitimate fear). According to Steele, this may greatly affect his performance. In a basketball sense, a white basketball player with just as much or more athletic ability than his black counterpart will fail to perform in many instances because he is aware of the stereotype that “white men can’t jump.”

Racial divisions in basketball have been brought to the forefront of the national discussion with the recent news of an all-white basketball league potentially forming (All-American Basketball Alliance):

“According to the Chronicle, Lewis said he wants to emphasize "fundamental basketball" instead of "street ball" played by "people of color."

Basketball is played differently by white people and Black people, a fact that any connoisseur of the sport could point out. Darryl Dawkins, a former NBA all-star, pointed this out in an interview back in 2007, validating the point made by Lewis:

“White basketball is pick-and-roll, spot-up, guy got his toes together and he shoots. And white guys will box you out until the ball hits the floor. Black guys will jump over you. They had all kind of shake-n-bake and would do everything to entertain the crowd. Nowadays, people appreciate both styles of ball; but back then, they didn¹t appreciate when a black guy just played white ball. They just said, "Hey, man, ain't you got no flash in your game?"

Black people know this to be true and find the individualist aspect of basketball to be liberating, considering most of the Black mentality centers around group cohesion and collectivism. Strangely, white people perform with unity on the basketball court, executing complex plays and distributing the ball equitably in an attempt to produce the highest percent scoring opportunity. Dawkins again makes a valid point on the difference between the Black and white styles of play in basketball:

"Black basketball is much more individualistic," he told Charlie Rosen of FoxSports. "With so many other opportunities closed to young black kids, … if somebody makes you look bad with a shake-and-bake move, then you've got to come right back at him with something better, something more stylish… It's all about honor, pride, and establishing yourself as a man."

Dawkins, whose showboating Philadelphia 76ers lost to Bill Walton's Portland Trailblazers in an epic 1977 NBA Finals confrontation between the black and white games, now says, "The black game by itself is too chaotic and much too selfish… White culture places more of a premium on winning, and less on self-indulgent preening and chest-beating."

ESPN and its parent company ABC are the main purveyors of basketball on television (outside of the CBS when they broadcast the NCAA Tournament in March), and this method of distribution supplies the nation with one of the few positive images of Black people in America.

The sights of Black people gracefully jumping to execute a towering jump shot over outstretched Black defenders hands is a route visual on ESPN’s Sportscenter. Without the numerous images of Black people dunking a basketball, where would positive images of Black people and their contributions to the world come from? Haiti? The Nightly news? Riotless high school basketball games? Gilbert Arenas?

One venue where Black people find themselves appreciated for their conformity to the notion of white basketball is also a safe-haven for white basketball players: Duke University.

Yes, Duke University, coached by the venerable Mike Krzyzewski, offers a sanctuary for the style of white basketball in the United States that Dawkins referred to above. And white players flock to this shelter in North Carolina to display their particularly skills, with the help of Black players (who have the academic ability to get in to the elite private school) who strive to replicate the white methodology of play on the hard court, acting white in the process.

Duke’s 2009-2010 is almost as lily-white as the one that appeared in the 1980s basketball film Hoosiers, and the past few years have seen teams that reflect Pre-Obama America demographically. Star white players leading those teams include J.J. Redick, Josh McRoberts and Mike Dunleavy, all whom currently play in the NBA.

The team is almost universally hated outside of their campus, as many basketball fans live by the acronym ABD - Anybody but Duke - when filling out their NCAA tournament brackets for March Madness. Strangely, opposing teams find their fans chanting homophobic chants -directed primarily at the white players - when Duke is in town for basketball game. Perhaps this is because the fans are less threatened by the white players, who see the Blackness of the Black players threatening?:

As to why Duke suffers so many such jests, Seyward speculates that it "has something to do with race and class." Explains Seyward, "Disparagers of Duke typically frame their opposition to the school, and its basketball team, in terms of anti-elitism," and continues on with, "Duke, according to this view, is a private school plopped in the Carolina Piedmont, where it caters to wealthy, mostly white elites who have zero regard for the local community--in Will Blythe’s words, ’those obnoxious students and that out-of-state arrogance.’" Seyward finds that to be "a defensible sentiment, as far as it goes, even a liberal one in many respects. "But, in the world of sports, being white as well as wealthy often translates into a perceived softness. (And Duke’s white players seem to attract the lion’s share of the homophobia directed at the team.) "For many Duke bashers, expressing anti-gay sentiment seems to be just one more way of delivering the message that Duke players are whiny, wimpy, pampered products of privilege.

“Duke Hating” is a popular pastime among basketball enthusiast, as they see in this asylum for white basketball an evil that must be stamped out completely. Is it a class issue (since Duke is an elite private institution) or is it primarily a racial issue (since the basketball team provides a glimpse into what an all-white professional league would look like)? Obviously, it is racially motivated:

But there’s another element we alluded to earlier, and there’s not too many ways around this: antipathy towards Duke often coalesces around the successful white players.

Whether it’s Danny Ferry, Christian Laettner, Bobby Hurley, Chris Collins, Wojo, Chris Burgess, Taymon Domzalski, Mike Dunleavy, J.J. Redick, or Greg Paulus, being a successful white player at Duke calls forth a peculiar racial response that didn’t happen at Stanford in their glory days under Mike Montgomery, nor at Notre Dame, Vanderbilt, or any other schools which tend to be perceived as elitist white-bread schools.

And Laettner isn’t the only one to have his sexuality impugned, although he managed it brilliantly and often turned it against his critics who were no doubt mortified to get their asses kicked repeatedly by a guy they thought was a bugger.

It’s long forgotten, but Tech’s Tom Hammonds regularly called Danny Ferry “fairy.” The standard taunt against Bobby Hurley “Hur-lee! Hur-lee! always struck us as being more than just his name. And J.J. Redick was taunted around the ACC for any number of things he supposedly was, but unique (thankfully) among Blue Devils, even his sisters were fair game.

Basketball inverts the American social structure which sees whites as the most powerful group and blacks as an oppressed minority. In the hoops world, whites are a distinct minority, and subject to racial taunts which are accepted, but which would be quickly shouted down if they were reversed.”

Consider the problems faced by Tyler Hansbrough – a star white player at the University of North Carolina – it is obvious that Black people find the style of play exhibited by the white minority on the hard court aggravating.

College basketball – as played by teams like Duke – is beginning to see a new crop of white players who are bringing a white style of play to a game dominated by Black people:

"African-Americans are still the dominant racial-cultural force at the high end of the college game, and (Adam) Morrison and Redick don't necessarily represent a new trend. But if nothing else, this season can serve as a reminder that basketball is an inclusive sport. It can be played on a virtuoso level by kids with braids and buzz cuts.”

What has happened to basketball fans that they feel compelled to taunt white players with chants of homosexual; denigrate their athleticism; and generally feel they are less talented and unable to compete (like the Vanderbilt team recently in the NCAA tournament)?

One reason: they fear Black people coming into the stands – like Ron Artest did – and beating the crap out of them.

Not every white player will be the next Larry Bird, but if they play for Duke they will be hated vehemently for their shocking display of whiteness on the court and flagrantly disavowing the Black style of individualistic play on the court.

Whiteness on the court means a complete lack of trust from the fans in athletic ability and any white player daring to play the Black man's game is practicing a heresy against the High Priests of the Court - Black people:

For some college basketball fans, players such as Redick represent what they believe Duke embodies: a rich private school with a privileged student body. From Danny Ferry to Laettner to Bobby Hurley to Wojciechowski, Duke's white players have often received the brunt of fans' bile. Many of Duke's great black players, such as Battier, Johnny Dawkins, Jason Williams and Hill, seemed to be respected by fans of opponents more than they were hated.

The white Duke players "seem to be so every-guy-like," said Peter Roby, director of Northeastern University's Center for Study of Sport in Society. "Guys sitting in the stands might say, 'What gives you the right to play like that when you look so much like us?' "

You want an all-white basketball league? Look no further then Duke, an institution where Black people have assimilated to the white basketball mindset and white players excel – to the dissatisfaction of opposing teams fans (current white stars at Duke include Kyle Singler, Brian Zoubek, Jon Scheyer and Ryan Kelly).

Stuff Black People Don’t Like will include Duke basketball, because this is one of the few instances where a bunch of white boys might actually rape a group of Black people, for the white style of play has chalked up plenty of titles of wins at the school.