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Jakotak's avatar

The only answer is to bring in Diversity Partners International. Its visionary CEO Kmele Foster should be able to diagnose and fix all the league’s diversity issues.

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Chris S's avatar

Brilliant. One of your best

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TJNash1's avatar

Scathing. But where else would I read this? Certainly not the Times, Post, The Athletic or, God forbid, ESPN.com. Race hustlers, no matter what their color, are elevated by the media (see: Sharpton, Rev. Al) and do nothing but make things worse.

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Brett's avatar

Ethan committed a murder today.

I’m not sure which line is my favorite. Both come from the same paragraph:

“The rule’s premise is that these old White owners just need exposure to Black candidates and then their racism will disintegrate upon impact.”

OR

“It didn’t happen because Janice McNair was forced to meet with Ryans, who played six seasons for her Texans, and she thought, “Wow! This Black guy’s alright!”

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SM's avatar

Always telling: who journalists decide to be curious about who they don't. Fantastic read, ESS.

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Simon Kilday's avatar

Great piece as always Ethan. I do have one tangential question:

A few years ago, probably during the “racial reckoning” you referenced in your article, I began to notice mainstream publications were capitalizing the “B” in black when referring to African Americans, but did not do the same with the “W” in white (i.e George Floyd, who is Black, Chauvin, who is white). ESPN, NYT, and many other mostly left leaning outlets adhere to this editorial principle. It wasn’t difficult for me to discern the intent, but it did make me curious as to when and why editors and journalists decided to eschew basic grammatical standards. Admittedly I do not have a journalism degree, but it would appear to me that “black” and “white” are colors, not ethnicities or references to geography, and therefore should not be capitalized. I noticed in your article you capitalized both “Black” and “White” so at least you are logically consistent, but I would love if you would shine some light on this topic for me. My first question is, has this always been a journalistic practice, and I was just late to notice? And secondly, why did you choose to capitalize those words in your piece, and have you always done that? Thank you,

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Ethan Strauss's avatar

I didn't give much thought to my method beyond, it sort of made sense to capitalize Black if other ethnicities were capitalized (Asian, Jewish) and so let it all be capitalized, including White.

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Wigan's avatar

Late to this party but this post alone was worth buying the subscription. I first heard you on Meghan Daum's show yesterday and I'm already a big fan.

In case you're curious: The older convention of black and white treated those terms as skin color, not ethnicity. It made sense when the colorblind ideal dominated ("we're all Americans!") In 2020 "Black" was capitalized to denote the shared culture and history of "Black" people in this country in a manner consistant with the other groups you mentioned. Originally they did not recommend capitalizing "White" because:

"The AP said white people in general have much less shared history and culture, and don’t have the experience of being discriminated against because of skin color...But capitalizing the term white, as is done by white supremacists, risks subtly conveying legitimacy to such beliefs.”

https://www.ap.org/ap-in-the-news/2020/ap-says-it-will-capitalize-black-but-not-white

But it's all strange and confusing if you think about, though, because we have this root problem of confusing census categories, appearance and descent-based racial categories, ethnic categories and geographic origins. For example, Asian is merely geographic with some physical overlaps, as Indians, Japanese and Afghanis have little else in common as an ethnicity" Hispanic is also geographic with some ideas about appearance and language mixed in.

But in some ways "White" and "Black" are the strangest, because newly arrived immigrants from Iran or Somalia aren't really "White" or "Black" in cultural or ethnic terms, but are basically "white" and "black" in appearance.

So I think there are decent arguments for either capitalization scheme and personally I could pick either depending on when I'm referring to an ethnicity, physical description or census category.

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Matt S's avatar

FWIW, there was a long and interesting discussion of this change a few days ago on Matt Yglesias's mailbag column on his Substack -- Yglesias seemed to suggest that consistency requires capitalizing both Black and White, and his commenters pushed back (unusually forcefully, from what I could see) on capitalizing either one, largely on the grounds discussed in Simon's comment here. The other thing that came up there that seems important to add -- many left-leaning people advocate for an understanding of language in which it evolves naturally, in a grassroots way, and claim to be disdainful of elite attempts to gatekeep or impose right answers on how language should be used. That's cool, but this was the most clumsily top-down attempt to impose linguistic change imaginable -- if someone claims to be against prescriptivism in general, they ought to be consistent and be against it here.

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Daniel Bailey's avatar

If "diversity is a business" then why have the ratings of the NBA - the tip of the spear when it comes to DEI - plunged? If "diversity is a business" then it is a poor and ineffective one - except for this fellow obviously - when it actually comes to the business of business which is making money. If live sports wasn't the holy grail of broadcasting at present then the NBA would be in real trouble.

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Larry Legend's avatar

Less a business that produces good, and more a business for the grifters. Similar to TV evangelism. Its the oldest con in history.

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Oxyartes's avatar

We all know why some people get jobs we all know who they are and why they got the job... why was Jamelle Hill hired by ESPN back in the days? She obviously didn't care about sports as much as other things and it showed, and she's better where she writes now. At least Maria Taylor is young and attractive and comes off as decently personable but she brings almost nothing to the conversation and her ascendency at ESPN was not about sports either, I'd rather kick Jason Garret off SNF than her, but that's not saying much.

BS has done podcasts with Jackie MacMullan in the past and its refreshing to hear how she came up as a beat writer as only women doing that job, but she paid her due's when guys would still be guys and she took her lumps, and has genuinely good well thought out sports takes that she got because she really cares about sports and covered it from the ground up like a proper journalist! But now we get the Maria Taylor saga on how she left ESPN, they created the monster and that's what we get.

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EK's avatar

The ending of this is chef's kiss

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Drewski's avatar

I was just about to accuse you of insincerity for your choice of profile photo, but google seems to indicate that IS his profile photo 🤣. I think he's trolling.

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Drewski's avatar

Never heard this name before today super invested in how this story unfolds now lol

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Gene Parmesan's avatar

This was very good- great topic, research, writing.

I don't even know what to say about the world anymore

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Teutonia World's avatar

Pulitzer.

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WLalley's avatar

Superb.

I have a hard time believing that DEI initiatives/departments produce excess returns. Seems that these units are starting to be trimmed.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-24/tech-layoffs-are-hitting-diversity-and-inclusion-jobs-hard?utm_source=website&utm_medium=share&utm_campaign=twitter

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Gene Parmesan's avatar

Yeah - thats my one disagreement in the article. I don't think they are doing this to make money. It's some combo of fear/guilt/moral crusading

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Larry Legend's avatar

Great story. Expose them all.

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Matt S's avatar

Fantastic. I had seen these diversity reports being trumpeted on espn dot com for years, and it always seemed a somewhat shady way of driving change (or conferring legitimacy) -- it always seemed to beg for a more thorough analysis. But I never would have imagined that Lapchick's backstory is what it is; I learned a lot. I agree -- one of your best.

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