Air Force coach's racial comments

[judgesmails]

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DeBerry raised the topic Monday while discussing Air Force's 48-10 loss to TCU, telling The Gazette of Colorado Springs the academy needed to recruit faster players and noting, "you don't see many minority athletes in our program."

Asked about it Tuesday, DeBerry noted that TCU had more black players than Air Force.

"It just seems to me to be that way," he said. "African-American kids can run very well. That doesn't mean that Caucasian kids and other descents can't run, but it's very obvious to me that they run extremely well."

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He said this after his predominantly white team lost to a predominantly black TCU team. His comments brought about some controversy.

I don't see anything controversial about these comments. He was just stating a fairly obvious observation. Look at the 100 meter finals in the world championships or Olympics. Look at almost any sprinting championship for that matter. Blacks dominate. Is it really controversial or somehow demeaning to black athletes to say something like this?

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Is it really controversial or somehow demeaning to black athletes to say something like this?


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It's pretty demeaning to white athletes. "hey team, you're all so damn slow! Why cant you be more black?"

[pudley4]

It shouldn't be. It's the truth - people whose ancestors come from the Western part of Africa are in general quicker, faster, and more athletic. There's nothing wrong with making a true statement like that.

The problems come when the knee-jerk PC police get involved and start crying about racism. Um, hello, what's racist about saying another race is superior to your own in some way? [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

The true problem is that there are some people who make these statements and their underlying meaning is that these athletes don't work hard to be successful (which is almost always completely false).

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It shouldn't be. It's the truth - people whose ancestors come from the Western part of Africa are in general quicker, faster, and more athletic. There's nothing wrong with making a true statement like that.

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ok, then try this on for size:

people of Indian and Chinese are generally more intelligent than people from Western Africa. this is just natural intelligence, very similar to running and jumping. this means that people from Western Africa are less intelligent.

I hope you're ok with that.

My personal feeling is that there are inherent differences between all races - some are taller, some are shorter, some are faster, some are smarter. I'm ok with that. We're all different.

But you can only get in trouble by expressing some of these opinions, b/c of the PC police.

remember, whenever you say that one group of people is naturally good at something, you are infeerring that another group of people has natural disadvantages at the same task.

so, while it might be ok to say "those Chinese kids are sure good at math tests", it is certainly not ok to say "boy those (insert group here) kids aren't that good at math"...even though for the first to be true, the 2nd must also be true.

[JayLear]

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remember, whenever you say that one group of people is naturally good at something, you are infeerring that another group of people has natural disadvantages at the same task.

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And you're also inferring that everybody in that group is naturally good at that task, when that's nowhere near close to the truth.

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remember, whenever you say that one group of people is naturally good at something, you are infeerring that another group of people has natural disadvantages at the same task.

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And you're also inferring that everybody in that group is naturally good at that task, when that's nowhere near close to the truth.

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of course

do you think it's racist of me to say that the vast majority of Swedish people are taller than the vast majority of Italians?

[2+2 wannabe]

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do you think it's racist of me to say that the vast majority of Swedish people are taller than the vast majority of Italians?

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worst. analogy. ever.

[jedi]

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The problems come when the knee-jerk PC police get involved and start crying about racism. Um, hello, what's racist about saying another race is superior to your own in some way? [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

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While I don't think this is relevant, racism is racism, whether directed at your own race or others. We should be treating others as individuals, not just as robots off the assembly line where you belive someone is "faster" than someone else just because they have a particular skin color.

That having been said, I think DeBerry was expressing frustration that he didn't have as many minorities to choose from, which really means that he doesn't have as big of a talent pool to choose from since the Air Force has poorer minority enrollment than other football factories.

There are plenty of really slow black people in the world, like every race. You just don't notice them because they don't play college football.

[holeplug]

Well he shouldn't have said it because it could cost him his job since we live in such a politcially correct world right now. I agree that all he did was make a correct observation though.