No - I'm not turning into Mark Cuban and tracking NBA refs, but I am trying to determine the race of NBA refs as part of a sociology project this semester (write about what you know - right?). I was wondering if any of you with more NBA-watching experience than me (about 0 games per year) knew what race the following officials are:

Bennie Adams
Mark Ayotte
Gary Benson
Sean Corbin
Luis Grillo
Michael Henderson
Anthony Jordan
Courtney Kirkland
Ed Malloy
Monty McCutchen
Rodney Mott
Olandis Poole
Derek Richardson
Michael Smith
Scott Wall


Thanks, everyone!

Check your e-mail.

Drake

Hey Drake.
Glad yer well.
mick

Those are the ones I know for sure off the top of my head.

Michael Henderson is African American. He is #62 - the guys that other NBA refs backed when we was suspended last year for "making a bad call".

Bennie is not white. I think he may be black, but perhaps has another non-white influence. I saw him ref a game but not close enough to tell with extremely high degree of accuracy his skin colour.

What ever happened to the NBA refs website? They had picstures to match names.

Edit: I believe that Michael Smith if African American as well.

[Edited by JugglingReferee on Apr 18th, 2005 at 02:42 PM]

I found the website. It has bios, but I don't think it has any pictures.

http://www.thenbra.org

My mistake. I thought there were pictures. Sorry.

No pictures on NBRA. I basically did a Google image search for the refs and looked at pictures (thankfully there are a lot of jack***es in the NBA who argue with and get ejected by the refs :p)

I'm not quite sure I understand your question. Since the genome project, science has discarded the concept of "race" entirely. There is only commonality of genetic markers. For instance, I am a white male. I have more in common genetically with a black male than I do with a white female.

You might ask your question in the context of skin color, since that is just a genetic marker and since some people still put a non-proportional amount of importance to it. But scientifically, there really is no such thing as "race". There's not even a "human race", but a "human species".

This is going to come as quite a shock to all the racial supremascists, once someone gets them to go to school and take science.

As usual, Mark P. is correct (especially in regard to the 4th quarter not ending until one team is ahead by at least one point :p).

However, I am writing this paper for a sociology class, and I therefore used race in the sociological sense - referring to skin color. When I write my history paper on scientific attitudes toward race in the US circa 1800, I'll be sure to bring in all of the appropriate evolutionary biology.



Amen to that! Stephen Jay Gould, my favorite biologist (yes - I have one) likes to cite Charles Darwin when discussing using bad science to justify discrimination or slavery. "If the misery of our poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin."

Thanks to Padgett for keeping us honest.

Bennie Adams - Black
Mark Ayotte - White? (Rookie)
Gary Benson - White
Sean Corbin - Black
Luis Grillo - Black
Michael Henderson - Black
Anthony Jordan - Black
Courtney Kirkland - Black
Ed Malloy - White
Monty McCutchen - White
Rodney Mott - White
Olandis Poole - Black
Derek Richardson - Black
Michael Smith - Black
Scott Wall - White

Saying there is no "race" is as simplistic as saying that the races should stay separate. It just ain't that clear. Humans are one species and have more in common with each other than with other species, and the species are clearly demarcated genetically. Within the species there are sub groupings -- genetic and biological subgrouping-- but those sub groupings aren't always strongly delineated. Furthermore, as Dexter (not used in a derogatory sense!) points out, there are sociological and cultural factors that further add to the confusion. It's a knotty, complicated question, and to say "there is no such thing as race" is just too easy.

I'll get off my soap box now and let someone else climb on and rant for a while.

This is near the dumbest thread. We all knew what he meant.

I bet ya $5 it will get dumber before too much longer.

I dunno, Juulie - there are some coaches that make me question this assertion.

I'm glad you jumped in on this one. I was contemplating just exactly what words to use when I called bull****! You saved me the trouble.

Mr. Dexter, a famous old Swiss saying holds that: When the map and the terrain disagree, trust the terrain. When idealistic old codgers try to use scientific-sounding arguments to deny the existence of what clearly does exist, trust what exists.

Check out this site: http://www.bbsr.de/org/usa/org/nba_kader03-04.htm

I like the picture of Steve Javie - looks like someone just gave him a wedgie :p

Mark Davis is from Chicago, North Carolina? :confused:

I agree with you!

It's notable to point out that one of the officials on the original list, before this topic went the way of OFF-topic, (as things seem to do way too often here) Olandis Poole, worked the 2004 NCAA national semifinal between UConn and Duke. I hadn't realized he had moved on to the NBA.

I guess we all can believe what we would like.

Peace

Scientifically, he's correct.

Not so hasty.

Let's first find out if he uses the door marked "Men" or the door marked "Women".

Let's first find out if he uses the door marked "Men" or the door marked "Women". [/B][/QUOTE]"Women" is short for "woe-to-men".

Yeah, Chicago, North Carolina is a suburb of New York City, North Carolina. Just north of Los Angeles, North Carolina :D

Rodney Mott is black, not white as previously posted.

Race
 

Since we are on the topic of race, why is it that all you see is white and black officials. Basketball is grown to be an international sports but yet the officiating is black and white only at least thats all I have seen.
I was told that most evaluator look for tall white or black athletic people to officiate, which is probably true since most black and white grew up playing the sports or have a better understanding of the game than those of Hispanic or Asian culture. I have talk to many Hispanic and Asian who try to officiate but was told that its very hard to officiate at a high level meaning High school Varsity and up because they are from a diferrent culture, and also they have heard fans who made comment about there ethnic background how they need to stick to soccer and other popular international sports and they don't have a clue about american sports, comments like that probably has hurt the minority in comming out to officiate but I also believed that most evaluator do judge people by their ethnic background also instead of by there ability.

xxssmen,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_stop

Excuse my Grammar but english is a second language to me and if its not up to ur level please do not mock it and send remark about it.
Seeing that your highly educated I see no reason why you have a problem with my thread, I know you understand what am saying and if you don't than am sorry but am sure many other officials here understand what am writing.

I know here fans pay alot of attention to the race of the officials unfortuantly. Our chapter president told me one time after an all black crew worked two predominantly white schools district match that this was the first time that had probably happend and that they do have request from coaches depending on whos playing who, etc. Still in this day and age. And its mostly the guys who have been around for a while. The younger coaches dont care, they just want good officials. I learned how easy it is to be profiled this weekend when working with two white co-officils -or two black co-officials - two women co-officials. Fans will use anything against you if they feel like your screwing them.

Re: Race
 

Basketball may be in the process of becoming a much more of an international sport, but it is not that way in this country right now. I know if you talk about the amount of officials in soccer in my state, you can find people from all kinds of backgrounds that officiate soccer.

If comments are holding back officials, then shame on them for letting comments from idiots hinder their opportunities. I have been called many things over the years and that has never hindered me from trying to officiate. I have even officiated in towns where white supremacy groups have held rallies to recruit and intimidate many people of color and other people they do not like.

At least where I live it is not that people from different countries are not given opportunities, I just do not know many that even try. Soccer tends to be king amongst people that are not originally from this country. Or baseball for those that come from the Spanish speaking countries. When I look around as a baseball umpire, there are not many that look like me. There are not many that play baseball either that have my background either. You cannot control everything.

Peace

Could you be any more obnoxious?

I suppose he could be. He could be a Duke fan. . .

Mike is one of the good guys here, jb. I haven't looked at the link, but I doubt that he posted it simply to be obnoxious.

Chuck,
I suggest not looking at it.
I opened it up and <U>within hours I was seriously spammed</U>.
mick

If he's one of the good guys, he needs to work a little harder at it. The link is patently condescending.

Re: Race
 

-------------------------------
Chuck,

I am well aware that you are one of the good guys around here. Having read your posts for several years now, I can say with little hesitation that you would never post a link to a website about punctuation when responding to a post which contained some errors in grammar, syntax or punctuation.

What really galls me about JR's post is its unwarranted sanctimoniousness. It should be clear to anyone with even rudimentary understanding of linguistics that the above post was written by someone for whom English is a second language. There are several clues that, when taken together, tell the story:

1) the level of vocabulary is good-to-very good
2) the sentence construction, while at times cumbersome,
is very ambitious.
3) several of the errors involve failing to properly
pluralize nouns.
4) problems with participles

When the level of vocabulary and complexity of sentence structure exemplified in the above post are taken in tandem, the "simple" mistakes made by the writer clearly don't fit; and they won't fit until one allows for the possibility that the writer is not a life-long speaker of English. Such English-speakers simply do not make the number of errors in noun pluralization that one sees there. Furthermore, there are a couple more "simple" mistakes with participles, which are a notoriously difficult part of learning a new language.

So, the first point is to take JR to task for not having enough mastery of his primary language to recognize when it was being written by someone for whom English is a second language.

The second point is directed to XXSMen: I want you to know that I did not post this in order to criticize your English; in fact, I wrote this to praise it. Your English is excellent, and you are to be commended for what has clearly been a tremendous amount of work on your part in developing fluency. I only wish I had worked as hard at my foreign language study as you have with yours.

Good luck in your hoops career. I recognize that there are barriers before you that I don't have to face, and I can only say that I will do my best to be active in trying to break down such barriers where they exist.

jb