While taking a little rare time out for lunch today, I came across a headline in the ass-end of our local rag’s Sports section. Headline: Study: Whites Dominate NCAA Leadership.
This is obviously unbiased, cutting-edge news gathering, so let’s take a closer look at journalistic excellence in action.
ORLANDO, Fla. Dec 13, 2006 (AP)— White men dominate the leadership positions in college sports, a new study says, with women and minorities making only slow progress moving into the top jobs.
Athletic directors, conference commissioners and university presidents overwhelmingly are white, the study released Wednesday by the University of Central Florida’s Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport found.
Aaaah, now we’re getting somewhere. UCF’s Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport put some of their alleged minds together to come up with a study that — SHOCK! — vilifies white men and the NCAA in one fell swoop. This is good stuff. The table is now set for hilarity. I wonder how deep this AP newshawk had to dig to find a study which so neatly fit his agenda. Onward ho, diversity police!
“There’s a gradual movement toward positive change both in terms of race and gender, but it’s been very slow,” Richard Lapchick, the institute’s director, said in an interview with The Associated Press. “The situation still remains that people who lead college sports in America are still white, which doesn’t reflect the student athletes on the teams they represent.”
Positive change = Throw whitey from the train.
Head coaching positions also reflected a big disparity between whites and blacks.
Basketball was a bright spot of sorts, but even in that sport 25.2 percent of all Division I head coaches were black (an all-time high), and yet blacks made up 57.8 percent of Division I basketball players.
This is puzzling. According to the 2000 Census, blacks make up 12.3% of the overall population. Therefore, blacks are grossly over-represented as both players and coaches in college basketball. Consequently, I am in the planning process of organizing a committee of one to study this race inequity in college basketball. If we have to have quotas for white players and coaches, that will just have to be the way it is. Less dunky, more passy.
Blacks make up 43.7 percent of women’s Division I basketball teams, but only 9.3 percent of those teams are coached by black women even though that number increased 1.6 percentage points in 2004-05.
And of that 9.3 percent, only 75 percent of those coaches admitted to being lesbians, which is considered low when compared to the rest of womens’ college basketball. But we’re talking about race here, not who likes to have a box lunch after practice.
Ooooh. Speaking of that, it’s unironic that the ABC News website ran this picture of Donna Shalala along with their story…
NCAA headquarters received high marks from the study, with 18.8 percent of vice president/chief of staff positions represented by blacks, and 25 percent represented by women.
The NCAA’s vice president for Diversity and Inclusion, Charlotte Westerhaus, said NCAA headquarters was demonstrating leadership but there still was progress to be made throughout college sports.
“We want to celebrate the progress but at the same time we want to acknowledge that we are not where we could be as far as diversity,” Westerhaus said. “The NCAA is doing everything we can to support our membership in effectuating open and fair hiring practices.”
Again, blacks are over-represented at NCAA Headquarters and something should be done about that – also, at what point did women become “minorities”? Even more importantly, where can I get a job like “Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion”? All you have to do is sit around your office and divide people up by race and fire off the occasional report that says “there be too many whiteys up in here.”
I think the Buffet needs a Vice President of Diversity and Inclusion. I nominate annika.
