Article pointing finger at Racist Referees

[Camron Rust]

Originally Posted by JRutledge

What I am actually considering is you consider everything. Where people live, experience, conferences the officials are from, physical fitness, big game history or any number of things we talk about here as "qualifications." I do not see the harm in looking for diverse crews to work certain games if the result is to give an appearance of fairness.
...

A few years ago the diversity of the officials was a big deal in a post season game where a coach put it front and center. You do not hear that constant complaining anymore. Out of the 12 officials that worked the State Finals in my state for the Boy's Class 3A and 4A Tournament (big schools), 3 were Black. Out of the 8 teams, 5 were entirely Black teams from the Head coaches, all the players and the water boy. And the top players on the other teams were mostly Black except one school. And that school beat on of the teams out of that five by a last second shot by a player that was Black. Are you telling me that if our state wanted to have more than 3 African-American officials would have been unacceptable considering what the tournament looked like?

Peace

Yes, that is unacceptable. Answer this....Since Illinois is ~75% white, do you, in the name of consistency, suggest that several of those teams should have been disallowed from the tourney since they didn't match the population of the state?? ... I didn't think so.

In fact, the officials exactly matched the population of the sate. I'd say that, from looking purely at the numbers, the mix of officials was not suspect no matter how much noise someone made about it.

Originally Posted by JRutledge

At the high school level I feel strongly that this is about education. This is not even the college level. I feel like the participants should have the right to see people in leadership roles that look like them. To me it sends a bad message if you say to the players, you can play the game, but when it comes to running the game you cannot participate. And that is why for younger people what happen in this past election was so emotional for some many.

Peace

If 50% a team is black but only 20% of the school is black, should they kick 3 black kids off the team to make room for 3 white kids...all to make sure the team looks like those around them? (and no, I don't).

Again, the officials in your example above seem to represent the general society almost perfectly. The fact that the all-black team(s) beat the all/mostly-white team(s) from some other area doesn't imply anything about the ability of the officials and should have no influence one way or the other about who is selected to work the tourney. It should be the best 12...and in a large pool, that 12 will resemble the general population.

I can tell you that from the Portland area, the representation of minorities in the state tournament is at a level that is both greater than their proportion of the population and also greater than their proportion of basketball officials. And they're not selected by color either....they are simply getting the recognition of their peers (all officials)..who put them there based on their abilities. In other words, they earned it...it was not handed to them to make some numbers look good.