1. So why do we increasingly automatically assume that any racial disparity where any racial minority group is less represented than the average is caused by racism?
2. Same with NBA basketball players: if white players and hispanic players are disproportionately less represented in the NBA compared to black players, does that mean they were racially discriminated against and racism is the cause of these disparities? Obviously not.
You wrote a thoughtful post, albeit one I disagree with. So I took care to answer it. Here goes:
Your hesitation to accept the premise that all disparity is rooted in racism is completely reasonable. But, rather than reject the premise, let's use that disconnect to explore some of your questions and possible answers:
1. Do we accept that any human, raised in the same circumstances, will - with normal variability - matures to the same potential ? It seems that the "American dream" and our liberal values tell us that, right ? It's actually a premise that is used to justify that racism is "over" now - ie. that we all have the same opportunities. The public has, at least, rejected that there's some innate ability for some races to be able to do certain things.
If that's true, then racial representation in any activity is necessarily a result of social constructs right ? Calling it "Racism" may colour these constructs as negative but still they are differences due to social constructs, right ? Because it's not biology so what else could it be?
Well what about mere social customs and habits? Can it not be that Asian Americans just have the custom to work harder ? Of course, that could be true but there are still some questions I have:
Don't all immigrants work harder when they arrive onshore ? I have seen studies and read books that said this of Africans, German Jews in the 1800s, Indians etc. When you look at the motivation for coming to America this makes sense. So is it so easy to separate one race ? Why do we hear about Asians doing this and not Jews or Africans ? So there's a perception question.
Secondly, when you compare these people to those who share the race in the home country - are there differences ? I would say so. And from what I have seen there's no race or country that dominates in intelligence.
Now, you will get a country that has customs in which they are interested but again it's social constructs, not nature.
And there are large scale effects, such as geo-cultural forces that work to embed certain characteristics into a culture over time. For example, the mountainous terrain of Afghanistan creates myriad enclaves of social groups, the fertile crescent of the Tigris and Eurphrates rivers made a crossroads for cultural interchange that gave birth to civilization, the effects of Christianity with the Monarchy together on the peoples of Europe (see Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond) are such effects.
So does it mean that Afghans are naturally insular, Iraqis of the era were friendly, and white Europeans greedy etc. etc. etc. ? No - these are still constructs. Adopting an Afghan baby and raising her in Toronto means you'll get a Toronto baby.
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So instead of having incendiary conversations of racial blame, can we have a conversation about such effects as these and accept that - yes - some groups and subgroups may be better at some things sometimes ? At some point, sure. There are academic conversations as such right now, even.
We may be APPROACHING a time when we can actually discuss race with something like a 'public' but we're not there yet. People are too inclined to blame racial/national/ethnic groups for their characteristics, effectively because those characteristics are different from some other group.
2. Why are blacks good at basketball and not hockey ? Do you think that there aren't social factors involved such as the placement of hockey rinks, cost of competing, placement of basketball courts in areas where black kids grew up vs. baseball diamonds, etc. ?
Did you know that in the mid 20th century Jews were noted for basketball abilities for the same reasons of urban access to facilities ? Did you know that people expounded on the reasons:
Jews were believed to have a genetic edge, being endowed by nature with superior balance, greater speed and sharper eyes -- not to mention, in the words of one sportswriter, a ''scheming mind'' and ''flashy trickiness.''
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/00/04/16/reviews/000416.16holtlt.htmlSo - until we educate the masses that perceptions on race need more than observational/knee-jerk assessments (rather than just getting them to accept that racism is "wrong") then we will not be able to have such discussions productively. They will, instead, serve the short-term purpose of inflaming and garnering support from the in-group.