OT and Potentially Controversial-- Winter Olympics "The White Man's Olympics"?
After a couple of days watching the Winter Olympics, it all of a sudden occurred to me that other than the three Asian athletic powers of China, South Korea and Japan, and a smattering of persons of colour here or there, that the Winter Games are astonishingly lily white. It is the factor of the demographics of the sending countries, no doubt, but after a couple of days, especially in a diverse, cosmopolitan country such as Canada, the Winter Olympics certainly seemed to have that feel as the "White Man's Games."
Bit of an understatement.
People tend to do well at sports they can grow up playing. It's a little hard to grow up doing alpine skiing in say Egypt or India.
For the most part, first world countries with disposable income tend to do well at the Olympics. They can dump money into funding athletes, so they get people who train full time and are better. You also get factors of hertigage. The guy who has a family history of skiing is more likely to pick it up than the guy whose parents say immigranted in from Mozambique and never saw a ski pole before in their lives.
Looking over the list of countries in this category its basically white folks and Japan/South Korea, so its no shocker they win the medals.
I don't even get why you'd bring race into this.
Not to steal your thunder as I agree with your overall point, but India does have regions that get serious amounts of snow.
Yeah but high povert rates and little in the way of disposable income to fund athletes. I have no doubt a lot of the people that live in the mountainous regions of India could easily pick up some of these sports.
It's like how China has a billion people and all kinds of climate, but they never did well at the Olympics until the government started up a central program.
Track is cheaper than Cross Country Skiing.
Basketball is cheaper than ice hockey.
Etc.
That was going to be my point. Not only does it depend on climate, but most winter sports are expensive. I grew up in a southern state, where you had to join rather expensive sports clubs to play hockey or skate. Basketball, baseball, and football were either free or inexpensive. So instead of white man's games it could also be wealthy man's games, it depends on where your from.
This is the stupidest fucking thread I have ever seen.
But Bryant Gumbel thought it was AWESOME!!1!
You've been here since Oct 2008 and this is the stupidest thread you've seen?
yeah lets sit here and out all of our black people, asian people, and hispanic people. How disgusting. We should implement Affirmative Action so people feel less guilty about there not be more "colors" in the winter games.
P.S,
NBA is owned by blacks. We should start a post about that too!!!!
Don "Moose" Lewis is already doing something about that, if you can believe it:
Man to start Whites-Only Basketball League.
They already have that, it's called Duke basketball.
I know what you meant, but actually most (if not all) NBA owners are white. I knew this thread wouldn't end well when I saw it. As far as picking your battles, bringing up race in relation to the Winter Olympics won't open anyone's eyes.
Yeah. I mean, this isn't even a discussion. It is blatantly obvious. The demographic of people living in winter related sport climates are generally of Caucasian race. They have the sports available to them, thus participate. If luge was the major sport in Kenya and they used luging as their mode of transportation, instead of running, perhaps Kenya would dominate the luge.
I don't think this is controversial at all. Between the geographic and economic requirements to participate in these winter sports, I think its clear that "white" people will be in the majority of participants.
Moreover, a lot of these sports require culture/know-how: Even if an African country dedicated tons of money to bobsledding, who would coach them?
making Jerome Iginla feel bad.
Canada, a "diverse" country?
There literally are as many black people in Detroit as in all of Canada. So it's either ironic or ignorant that you'd try and contrast the lilywhiteness of the Games with the supposed "diverse and cosmopolitan" Canada. What the hell is diverse about Canada, other than a slightly higher percentage of Asians?
There are white Canadians AND white French-Canadians
I had to laugh when I was up in Toronto. The vendor on the street near the construction sites had spaghetti instead of tacos. I made a joke about Mitch Hedberg with stubborn McDonald's owners. The Canadians obviously didn't get it, but they did inform me that all their manual laborers in the area are Italians and not Mexicans. It seemed wrong yet so right at the same time.
I'd like to nominate this for "worst thread of the year." You are obviously drinking the Canadian Kool-aide. Vancouver is one of the "whitest" cities in North America. Blacks/Arabs make up less than 2% of the Vancouver population.
Vancouver is almost 30% Chinese and 40% asian on the whole... LMFAO at you.
I don't necessarily consider Asians to be "people of color." If I'm understanding the OP's point correctly, it doesn't seem like Asians are who he is referring to as being underrepresented. LMFAO back at you!
Granted this is just from wikipedia, but you can follow the citations from there:
In 1981, less than 7% of the population was visible minority. By 2008, these proportions had grown to 51%.In other words, more than half of the population of Vancouver is not white. (But, yeah, the original post is dumb.)
The city of Vancouver may be diverse, but Canada as a whole, not so much. Altogether, Canada is 83.8% "non-visible-minority" (which I assume is Canuck for "white people").
It's funny how it's fashionable for countries to talk this stuff up. I knew someone from Australia who wouldn't stop talking about how it was one of the world's biggest melting pots, "just as much as the U.S." Uh...
84% of all Canadians are invisible?
They blend in with the snow.
What an absurd topic. IOC always trying to hold the black man down.
Sumo Wrestling has been dominated by people of Japanese descent. I just can't figure it out.
They must be racist AND xenophobic.
No Fat Foreigners allowed.
I can't figure out how a competition featuring Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Iceland, Russia, Canada, Germany, and Poland doesn't display more racial diversity.
Well, we know why Germany doesn't display more racial diversity...
Don't worry, this isn't controversial at all. It's just straight up dumb.
In other news, water is wet.
Is it possible that the OP is Drew Sharp?
will say to themselves, "I can do that!"
Uh, wouldn't the Jamaican bobslead team fit?
in the winter olympics? wow. just...wow
I went downhill skiing with a buddy of mine (black guy). On the top of the hill, his cell phone rang. It was his sister. When he said - "Hey, I am skiing!"
She said, "But....you're black." We got a good laugh out of it.
In other words, I concur.
Isn't that the whole point? That we keep making up new sports because we get beat out in the real ones? I mean how else do you explain curling?
/sarcasm
and the sport of curling was born(no pun intended)
We've still got baseball basketball football golf darts.
You will always have bowling.
This is one amazing ass game. Asians dominate this one. You have to be one helluva athlete to excel in this game
I've seen that played. It's wild. I don't know how you even start to be semi-functional at that game, let alone good.
That's amazing and watching that, it occurred to me that I have no interest in ever even trying it for fear of bodily harm when I land wrong...
BTW, follow the link to the finals match between Thailand and Malaysia- awesome highlights.
That hurts me just lookin' at it.
He's the Wes Welker of the Winter Games.
Deleted!
Nat X (Chris rock) skit from SNL:
"I was watchin' a hockey game and I noticed there were no black people. So I looked into this example of the white man once again keepin' the black man down and found out why there were no black people in hockey. First, it's cold out there! Second, we might get our gold teeth knocked out! Third, we have no desire to dominate another professional sport. And, finally, no brother is going to go anywhere there is a bunch of crazy white people wearin' masks and carryin' sticks!"