Why Do Blacks Dominate the NBA?
Study geography
Why do black athletes dominate? That’s the title of this video at Ken LaCorte’s YouTube channel Elephants in the Room (one of my favorites):
LaCorte notes that black athletes dominate some sports but not others. As for reasons why they do, he examines a number of cultural and economic explanations. There is one explanation, though, that he gets very close to but ultimately misses: Geography.
Where you are born and grow up will have an enormous impact on your future prospects, including the sports you play. For example, you wouldn’t expect people growing up in Scandinavia to spend much time surfing just like you wouldn’t expect people raised in Hawaii to know much about winter sports.
Geography explains why there are so few blacks in the National Hockey League. Men who play professional hockey grow up playing lots of hockey. Playing lots of hockey requires living in areas where lakes and ponds freeze over in the winter. There are very few black people in those areas. For example, blacks make up just over 4% of Canada’s population. About 41% of the players in the NHL are from Canada.
Geography also explains why blacks dominate basketball. Consider that in 1970 about 15% of the players in Major League Baseball were black as were 50% of the players in the National Basketball Association. Today, those numbers are 6% and 75%, respectively. Why? One reason is that space is at a premium in inner cities where many blacks live. Multiple basketball courts can fit in the space needed for one baseball field. There are other reasons why blacks do so well in basketball, as LaCorte explores at about 3:16 in the video. But Geography plays an important part.
Underlying the question of why blacks dominate a sport like basketball is the assumption that the racial makeup should be proportional. That is, if blacks are about 12% of the U.S. population, they should be about 12% of the NBA. Any expectation that races should be proportionally represented in any activity, including sports, is part of what Thomas Sowell calls the “invincible fallacy,”* that different groups would have similar outcomes if not for either discrimination or genetic determinism.
Reading Sowell’s thoughts on geography leads to a very depressing conclusion. “Nature’s discrimination completely dwarfs man’s discrimination. Geography alone makes equal chances virtually impossible,” Sowell wrote.** Consider that an infant born today in North America will not have the same chances as an infant born today in South America. That’s not fair. And there is nothing that can be done about it.
*Sowell, Discrimination and Disparities
**Sowell, Dismantling America, p.211