Fri 28 Oct 2005
The Fisher DeBerry Case (With a Self-Indulgent Williams Perspective)
Posted by admin under 1
Posted at 2:07 pm“It just seems to be that way, that Afro-American kids can run very, very well. That doesn’t mean that Caucasian kids and other descents can’t run, but it’s very obvious to me they run extremely well.” These are the words that U.S. Air Force academy football coach Fisher DeBerry said in remarks broadcast Tuesday night by Denver television station KWGN. Given that his comments were about race, and may have been courting a stereotype, I suppose we should not be surprised that he is in hot water. I hope that my civil rights/anti-apartheid historian credentials are enough that what I am about to say does not get me in hot water, but I hope Air Force does not punish DeBerry, who, in addition to being a very successful coach, also did not really say anything wrong.
Now don’t take me the wrong way - I would not place DeBerry as the most eloquent spokesman on race in America. But look at what he said - from his years of coaching football, in general black kids run well. There are white ids and others who run well, but black kids run well. Now I do take issue with the implied inclusion that “all ” black kids run well. They do not, of course, and I am sure DeBerry knows this.
Let me illustrate my argument by way of two anecdotes, both related to my own years as a track athlete in college, one of which may not make me look all that great, so I will tell it first:
I competed in events that Fisher DeBerry might associate with black success: The jumps, especially the long and the triple jump. Williams had a very good track team, and one of the great things about track and field is that you get to find out exactly where you are in the global hierarchy. In addition to being very numbers driven, if you are good enough at a lower level you will qualify for bigger meets. Williams is a division III school, but we routinely competed against DI schools. I was a good enough jumper to compete against the big boys, but I was well aware of where I fit into the overall world of track and field. In any case, when I would get to bigger meets where I may have known fewer of the athletes, or if I competed away from New England, say in the South, I would look around and scout out the competition. When I was trying to size up the other jumpers, when I was looking at strangers wearing university of Miami or Florida State or Christopher Newport or whatever other jerseys, I would tend to focus more on the black jumpers than the white guys. I am not proud of it, but I am also not ashamed. And I certainly would not say that it was an illogical conclusion to draw. I would guess that I have a batter grasp on track and field than most of my readers, but even acknowledging that, I think I am on pretty firm ground to ask anyone who would criticize me the following question: Name five truly great white American long jumpers in the last ten years. Twenty years. Now the irony, as I discovered many times, is that there were times when I should have been watching out for the big white guy from Western Carolina or Albany State or the University of Miami (at the biggest meet I ever competed in, the Florida Relays in 1993, I got beaten out for third place by a Miami [Florida] guy on his last triple jump who was, if it is possible, paler than I am. There were even times when those guys maybe should have been looking out for me, as I ended up winning.
Anecdote #2: When my fellow jumper and teammate “Boogie” (His name was Stuart, but we called him Stu, and then it became “Boogie” after the Led Zeppelin song “Boogie With Stu”) would get to the really big meet, the DI/All New England meet, say, we’d always joke as we watched the early rounds of the sprints about the white guys and how they had better enjoy their time, because they would be watching the finals. Boogie was also a sprinter. He was also black. And lo and behold, once the finals of the 60 or 100 rolled around at the All New England meet or the Florida State relays or nationals, the finals were overwhelmingly African American. We were always joking, but the joke, like many jokes, had an element of truth to it.
I have no idea why this is so. There are certainly fast white guys. And Asian guys. And Hispanics. And most people, black, white, Asian, and Hispanic, are slow, cannot jump, cannot lift things and so forth - when you are looking at college athletes you are already talking about a genetically exceptional subset, so drawing widespread racial differences from the whole population seems foolish. But I will double down my bet on the long jumpers. I’ll grant you Jeremy Wariner, the 2004 Olympic Champion in the 400. I’ll even give you the Greek 200 runner who won in 2000 (and who failed a piss test in 2004 . . .) And I will remind you exactly what DeBarry said about white athletes: “That doesn’t mean that Caucasian kids and other descents can’t run.” And then I will ask a simple question related to the one I asked earlier: Howe many white medalists have their been in the Olympics and World Championships in the 100, 200, and 400 since 1968? That is 10 Olympics, times three events, times three places in each event. I’m not much at math, but that is 90 possible medals. Even keeping in mind that the United States, the world’s most dominant sprint nation for most of that period, boycotted the 1980 Olympics, is there anyone out there who wants to bet that thirty of those medals went to athletes who were not black? Anyone want to bet on whether or not twenty did?
Now let’s bring it back o football. Jason Sehorn made some waves for the very fact that he was a decent white starting cornerback in the NFL. And in some attempts to explain why that was so, there was one compelling argument made: That one factor is that coaches simply steer black athletes toward certain positions and white athletes toward others so that irrespective of actual abilities, black kids in integrated high schools will play corner, their white teammate safety. That makes at least some sense. But whatever the case, can anyone honestly say that however anecdotal, and however clumsily stated, Fisher DeBarry was actually wrong? And can his desire to recruit more black athletes to the Air Force Academy actually be something we want to condemn? Especially when DeBarry’s black players have rallied around him? It would seem patently unfair to punish him for his comments. There is lots of very real, very serious, very disturbing racism out there. There are coaches who certainly are racists. But it would be absurd to punish Fisher DeBerry for the current reality of the nature of the sprinting and jumping events and the skill positions in the NFL (and anyone who has been to a college track meet knows that these two things are fungible).
Cross-posted from dcat.
October 28th, 2005 at 2:43 pm
just look at the 100M dash all-time list.
October 28th, 2005 at 3:14 pm
Of course, DeBerry was not talking about track athletes; he was implicitly talking about football players who run relatively fast for their respective positions. He did nothing wrong (i.e. put in context, his facts and opinion were correct) except express himself clumsily (i.e. he should have merely said that Air Force needs to get some football players with better speed than it currently has); provided that in advance he had not been instructed, directly or obliquely, to discuss racial comparisons in public.
October 28th, 2005 at 3:16 pm
Not “discuss” but “avoid discussing”.
October 28th, 2005 at 10:37 pm
1) An untenured assistant professor should not be posting on this topic, which makes Derek all the braver for doing so. Bravo!
2) Derek writes: “I have no idea why this [black speed superiority] is so.” Sure he does — he is just too wise to speculate. The only plausible causes of differences in the average for trait X between two large groups are genetics or culture or both. Is there a single reader of EphBlog who believes that the answer is all in culture? Nuture is a powerful force, but it isn’t that powerful. See here for an introduction.
3) We had debates about this back in Winter Study 1984. The class was “The Concept of Race,” a freshmen seminar. The professor was David Smith, a fine teacher with an indulgent attitude towards obnoxious freshmen. I and another student broached a similar topic and cited as evidence the fact that almost all the cornerbacks in the NFL were black. We were widely derided as racists. It was not a pleasant experience. I did not feel comfortable saying what I really thought in the class. (This was not Professor Smith’s fault, but he also didn’t make it any easier.)
October 28th, 2005 at 10:47 pm
Presumably DeBerry didn’t and doesn’t care whether speed superiority lies in nature or nurture but is only interested in gaining a lot of it in his Air Force football players.
October 28th, 2005 at 10:59 pm
David: You might want to note the irrelevant fact that in 1984 there had been fairly recently a white NFL cornerback/safety who at his time in the NFL was a Williams alumnus.
October 29th, 2005 at 12:02 am
Human beings have run 100 meters in less than 10.00 seconds 313 times, going back to Jimmy Hines in the 1968 Olympics. The ten second barrier has been broken 312 times by a man of primarily Western African descent, and once by a man who is not (he was half Australian Aborigine and half Irish).
Every four years, the Olympics invite 64 top 100m men from around the world to compete to be the World’s Fastest Man. They proceed through three rounds of eliminations to produce the eight finalists. In each of the six Olympics from 1984 onward, all eight finalists have been of Western African descent. Even though West Africans and their Diaspora make up less than 10% of the world’s population, they’ve made up 48 of the last 48 finalists in the Olympic men’s 100m dash.
George Orwell said: “To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.”
October 29th, 2005 at 9:15 am
So, would it be OK if someone said, I need more white kids at my school because white kids have inherently better leadership abilities (and hey, I can prove it, every President of the US to date and almost every governor and Senator has been white!), or I need more Asians because they are smarter (just check out SAT scores, etc.!). I don’t see these comments as being any different, except for the fact that I guess it’s OK to say blacks, as a group, are better at some particular activity, but to say that they are worse, that suddenly is problematic. But there is no legitimate way to distinguish one set of comments from the other. Once you say blacks are better at some area of life by virtue of race, you can’t criticize someone who says they are worse at some other arena by virtue of race. And that is the danger.
Particularly for a prominent figure at an educational institution. I just think race-based stereotypes aren’t necessarily a healthy thing to propogate, even if many believe there to be a kernal of truth in the stereotype. As someone who is Jewish, I have seen over and over how someone thinks they are being complementary (e.g., wow, you guys are really good with money!) when in fact they are leading to a dangerous path, sometimes with very real consequences.
And it doesn’t help anyone. Now white kids at Air Force have an excuse: well, it’s not my fault I can’t compete, I don’t have the genetic stuff to do so. And like Jerome in Gattaca, the black kids have extra pressure: shouldn’t I be performing better due to my genetic superiority? How is this a good thing?
I am not a PC person. I don’t care if Chris Rock jokes about race or whatnot. And perhaps these issues can be discussed in an academic context as well — but that was not what DeBerry was doing, raising an issue for an academic discourse. Rather, he was making a blanket stereotyping statement.
Also, you have to consider the context here: the Air Force academy, and DeBerry in particular, are already in trouble for their blatant creation of a white Christian atmosphere at not only a public institution, but one of the most important Christian institutions in the US. It is critical that Air Force Academy appear more welcoming and open-minded, not less. After the “team Jesus” debacle, he should have known better.
October 29th, 2005 at 10:37 am
I appreciate all of the comments and will briefly try to address the most salient ones –
I agree, it is always dangerous to stereotype on race. But is what is going on here stereotyping? There is a colossal difference between an unprovable (and usually a politically loaded) assertion like “Jews are good with money” or “whites make great leaders” and speed events/positions seem for a host of reasons to be dominated by black athletes. For one thing, athgletic ability is far more geneticvally driven than the other things — there are cultural and historical reasons why an oppressed group such as Jews might move into positions (finance, medicine, law, or whetever) that have nothing to do with Jewishness per se. “Jews are good with money” is an onerous stereotype for a host of rerasons that are rather different from the observable realities I am positing here.
I do think that track is relevant here — what DeBerry was talking about was speed and “athletic ability,” and these are fungible ideas. Thus if we are looking for speed, we measure how fast a guy runs. In football the standard matric might eb the 40, but bringing in track standards is perfectly reasonable, especially if we assume that this is not just an issue about DeBerry and Air Force’s football needs.
As for Dave’s point, I tried to address this is my post — I am actually not convinced that we are dealing with a racial genetic issue per se — that is to say, what we are dealing with is a genetic issue to be sure, but it is not necessarily racial inasmuch as we are still talking about an elite subset of people who have themselves shown to be dramatically bigger, stronger, faster than 95% of society. So to isolate race seems wrong. The other thing is that race is a slippery term — the African continent has been asserted to have the most genetic diversity of any continent on earth. Therefore once you are at that level, who knows if the issue is race?
Yes, I do not have tenure. But I do think that my primary work — race politics and social movements in the US and southern Africa — means that I have built up enough credentials on this issue so that I can say reasonable things without being treated unreasonably. The facts are the facts thus far. Why try to pillory a guy for saying what every sports fan knows? There are surely Jason Sehorns (and isn’t Scott Perry is the dback I believe we are talking about — he holds the Williams indoor long jump record so I got to look at that awesome mark ecvery day for four years)and others who are fast — and DeBerry is explicit about this.
Racial stereotypes are dangerous. Our history on race means that we should be wary of using them. But there are so many more racial issue to fight that to fight this one is absurd and patently unfair. Even giving strict scrutiny to racial assertions, some can pass. As someone who supports affirmative action strongly and has devoted my career to civil rights issue, I maintain that race matters, that racism is dangerous and wrong, and that I’ll still bet anyone who doubts me here my next paycheck as to what the finals of the NCAA 60 meter finals will look like in February.
dc
October 29th, 2005 at 11:33 am
Stereotypes can be misleading - can be downright erroneous - but also can be valid and useful. For stereotypes are only generalities, and none of us could conduct our lives without the employment of generalities. Criticize DeBerry, if you believe that his generalizing is in error, but in this case my experience tells me that as a general proposition black football players run faster than white ones. However, that generality alone is not particularly useful in selecting better football players because, if not greatly taking into account other factors, it could easily lead to choosing inferior black football players over superior white ones (overlooking for the moment yellow or red ones). Nevertheless, in my judgment DeBerry’s generality is accurate in the subject context but not particularly useful and, of course, not politically correct. Again in my judgment DeBerry is being “horsewhipped” not because his generality was inaccurate in its context (which it was not), not because it was not useful (even though it was not useful), not because he spoke clumsily (which he did) but because he was being politically incorrect.
October 30th, 2005 at 10:13 am
Jeff claims that
There is only a danger if you are wrong about the facts.
East Asians and Jews are significantly over-represented at Williams. Why? There are two possibilities: First, Williams may have fair, meritocratic standards which it honestly applies. For whatever reasons (nature/nuture), 18 year olds of Jewish and East Asian descent do better against those standards than other 18 year olds. Second, Williams admissions may be racist, may unfairly discriminate against some and favor others.
Now, if Williams is racist, then something needs to be done. But for too long, too many (stupid) people have assumed/asserted that Williams is discriminatory because the College does not “look like America.” This bothered me 20 years ago and it bothers me today. The lack of students of type X at Williams does not mean that Williams discrimates against X’s, just as the lack of, say, Germans, in the 100 meter finals does not mean that the Olympics discriminates.
On honest dialogue about group differences is necessary because, without it, debates about policies like affirmative action are uninformed.
October 30th, 2005 at 10:40 am
I absolutely agree that it is dangerous to say that group X can be better than group Y at thing X for exactly the reasons someone (Jeff? Sorry for being so forgetful) wrote. In fact when I teach my US survey that is one of the arguments I make about women’s suffrage — that when women claimed moral superiority (one of the justifications for voting rights) it opened them up to criticism in other ways and that such generalizations are dangerous. That said, is there anyone here who would want to argue that on the whole men are not stronger or faster than women? Of course not. This is why the Supreme Court has established “suspect categorization” and applied it to race (but interestingly not to gender). The court has argued that any time a suspect categorization has been applied it warrants the strictest scrutiny — this is to pluck out all of those negative stereotypes that on further reflection are not accurate in any useful way.
This is where I agree with Frank — DeBerry made a generalization that was sloppy, not all that useful (if still true) and clumsily phrased. Football coaches do this all the time. DeBerry may not have been wise in what he said. It does not mean he should be punished for them. If the AD pulls him aside and says “Hey, keep an eye on how you speak, race is the third rail,” and so forth, I’ve no problem with that. But an actual punishment would make me ask “what precisely are they punishing him for,” which then brings us right back to my essay.
dc
October 30th, 2005 at 1:37 pm
Derek: Please drop a note to my long time estranged wife. According to her, for years I haven’t said anything to which a reasonable person could agree. If you do so, certainly be prepared for her immdeiate presumption that you are not reasonable - at the very least in this matter.
October 30th, 2005 at 5:04 pm
Again, I should praise Derek for his bravery rather than criticizing him for his caution, but I can’t help myself. Derek notes:
Give me a break! I guess that, theoretically, it could be the case that the distribution of 100 meter times for the entire population of 20 year old males in the US might be identical for all racial groups except in the right most tail. It is possible that all groups have the same mean but that there is just some strangeness in the tail which allows men of West African descent to dominate. Unfortunately:
1) There is no evidence of this.
2) Most other human abilities have nice, normal distributions. If things are different between groups X and Y in the tail, then they are different in the mean as well.
3) Almost everyone who has played sports, at any level, in a mixed race context, observes that the differences are not just in the tail.
I apologize of this is an offensive hypothetical, but imagine that we timed every male Williams student in the 100 meter dash. There would no doubt be fast African Americans and fast Asian Americans. There would no doubt be slow men of both races. But does anyone doubt that the mean time for the first group would be faster than the mean time for the second?
October 30th, 2005 at 8:59 pm
Kane, take the normal distribution analysis to its next logical conclusion. Imagine two populations A and B with a normally distributed talent. Stipulate that the mean for B is 0.3 higher than the mean for A (that is, a third of a standard deviation). For the vast majority of the population, there isn’t a meaninful difference between the two populations for this particular talent. However, once you start heading out into the tails, population B becomes far more represented than population A.
I ran some simulations on set of 10 million observations. Let’s first look at people 4 standard deviations above the mean (that is, a 1 in 31,500 talent). Within this population, 75% of them are from population B rather than A (roughly 1250 vs. 325).
Going out 5 standard deviations (a 1 in 3.5 million talent) only highlights the trend. Population A only makes up 14% of this rarefied group, leaving 86% of the field to be population B (3 vs. 18).
So even assuming normality, a small difference in the mean can make a BIG difference out on the tails. The finding would be even stronger were we to relax the symmetry in the tails. Large differences in the tails may not imply a large (or even noticeable) difference in the means.
And this also ignores all social factors.
October 31st, 2005 at 10:31 am
I agree with (d)avid. Small changes in the mean translate in the monsterous changes in the tails.
October 31st, 2005 at 11:03 am
Whoa, hold up on the normal distribution! Many things don’t have normal distributions. We use the normal because it is handy, not because it is inherently true. We like the normal because it is continuous, and has a closed form derivative and a fairly tractable “moment generating function” and is completely described by two parameters: it’s mean and its variance. It is also the limiting distribution for the gamma, beta, binomial and Poisson.
But just because something looks “bell-shaped” does not make it a normal distribution. Assumptions about normality are justified if
1) we believe this is the true distribution or
2) we need to make some distributional assumption to proceed and the normal seems reasonable and is mathematically tractable.
October 31st, 2005 at 11:04 am
That may be all well and good for you statisticians, but neither DeBerry nor any other football recruiter qua football recruiter cares one iota!
October 31st, 2005 at 1:04 pm
Good to see that we have a whole lot of commentary going on here. i can not speak to the statistical stuiff except inasmuch as at least some of it seems to bolster my case that when talking about elite athletes — even as low on the food chain as Williams, say — we are talking at essence about outliers. i would go so far as to say that if we were to line up nonathletes of a host of races at Williams and have them run a series of sprint races, there would be no serious racial breakdown of any statistical significance in the results.
There are lots of great athletes out there, white and black, Hispanic and Asian, and I think we can take the generalization too far (As DeBerry acknowledged!!!). I’m simply willing to say this — it is interesting that those who object to my argument in the post are making theoretical arguments because empirically, they have little ground on which to stand.
I’ll correct the spelling error in the title of the post. Ugh.
dcat