Source for the statistics about the announcers: https://thehill.com/changing-america/enrichment/arts-culture/562133-nba-commentators-racial-bias-is-showing-according-to/
Why is it that most of the players in the league are black but most of the voices commentating on the games over the airways are white?
It’s because we have a bias toward white voices and white-sounding people. We don’t want a “black-sounding voice” commentating on our basketball even though that would be more representative of the league today. Most of the black people who commentate games are color commentators rather than play-by-play. They provide the “basketball knowledge” while the white play-by-play man is the voice we want on the big moments. For some reason, the voices of Kevin Harlan, Mike Breen, and Marv Albert feel right to us. We say that they just have the “right voice for announcing.” But do we realize that when we imagine the “right voice for announcing” it’s basically always a white cis-man’s voice in our head? That’s what represents gravitas and dignity for us. Even black announcers like Mark Jones clearly have to whitewash their voices in order to be fit for the American airways
I think we would all benefit if we were more mindful of this disparity and found ways to give more of the radio and television jobs to black people, until the distribution matches that of the league.
92% of radio and television announcers are white yet only 27% of NBA players are white,
This is not talked about enough as a manifestation of subconscious racial bias in the league.
Playing in the league is strictly performance based.
Sports media is rife with nepotism, favoritism and racism.
Go home nephew.
100% of white people are white, this is insane discrimination we aren’t talking about
White people have a systemic advantage over black people in this country. I think we can agree on that
If there’s a profession where black people make up the majority of the elites, then it’s probably not going to be because they received an unfair advantage or because the system was oppressing the white people. It’s likely to be because of other factors like culture. Why? Because black people don’t have a systemic advantage over whites in this country, so that cannot be the reason
If there’s a profession where white people make up the majority of the elites, especially in a field that is majority black, then it’s much much more likely that the white structural advantage that we’ve proven exists in so many other fields is playing itself out in exactly the same way in that field
Why would we presume that there is white structural advantage in all these other fields (STEM, medicine, politics, etc.) but NOT in broadcasting which is EVEN WHITER than those other fields?