Track and field video is released accusing Clemson of only caring about Black athletes if they can make money of them

It clearly was a racial decision. Clemson wanted to cut scholarships to black athletes and this was the most bang for the buck.

My Life does not matter wrote:

It clearly was a racial decision. Clemson wanted to cut scholarships to black athletes and this was the most bang for the buck.

You think Clemson really cares if black people are getting scholarships for athletics?

It is obvious. I expect the other black athletes to picket.

My Life does not matter wrote:

It is obvious. I expect the other black athletes to picket.

That's a hell of an accusation. Do you think that it was solely a racist decision or do you think that there were multiple factors involved.

Translation: "I wanted to support my fellow track athletes and find ways to try to help keep their collegiate track and field program until they told me life is hard for black people and then I said f*ck 'em."

go tigers wrote:

Do you really think that the administrators who made this decision got statistics on the percentage of black people in each sport and made cuts based on that alone?

No. I don't think they made the decision based on race or intentionally were trying to be racist but the fact that they didn't consider the disparate racial impacts may be the whole point. You need to be extra cautious when making decisions that will disproportionally impact underrepresented groups.

Do I love the video? No. Do I love parts of it? Yes.

For me, the implication that the NCAA system was set up to exploit blacks is absurd because NCAA sports were big a LONG time ago and in fact used to be all white. The first black football player wasn't allowed at Clemson until 1971.

But again, the fact that they aren't very worried about the impact this will have on blacks may be the whole point. It's not intentionally racist but the lack of attention to race may be the crime.

I think the video is a little over the top but sometimes you need to go over the top to be heard. In my mind, it's not worth it to Clemson's reputation to be viewed as racist to save $2 million a year. Plus one football recruit a year may want to also do track so you think they'd just keep the team for that alone.

If soccer is a bigger loss leader than track as the video claims, the soccer should go or is it soccer + baseball combined? I'm very interested in knowing how much each program at Clemson makes/loses a year.

The NY Daily NEWs has an article out about the video and Russell Dinkins work to produce it.

Read Russell Dinkins article.

rojo wrote:

go tigers wrote:

Do you really think that the administrators who made this decision got statistics on the percentage of black people in each sport and made cuts based on that alone?

No. I don't think they made the decision based on race or intentionally were trying to be racist but the fact that they didn't consider the disparate racial impacts may be the whole point. You need to be extra cautious when making decisions that will disproportionally impact underrepresented groups.

Meanwhile, Stanford cancelled a bunch of "elite white" sports like squash, sailing, fencing. Apparently so they wouldn't look like an elitist white school.

Track and Field is a drop in the bucket. It's a pretty absurd move by Clemson to cut it. If you google it Clemson's student body is just 6.3% Black in a state that is over a quarter Black. Remove football and basketball, who feel almost separate from the student body as quasi-pro athletes and the numbers are just pathetic. Sports like track are an easy way to help in this regard and the cost/prestige can be a positive as well if you can generate some Olympians and have some football players make noise etc. Clemson has a diversity problem and it's tone-deaf to make an already overly-white school that is wrapped in the identity of great Black football players being cheered on by fratty Southerners even more this way.

The average ACT is 30. That is why there is a lower percentage of black students there. Clemson disregards the standards when it comes to sports. They are happy to do it for football but track is not a money maker.

The average ACT at the University of South Carolina is a mere 2 points below that and their student body is 27.9% African American. Keep trying.

rojo wrote:

But again, the fact that they aren't very worried about the impact this will have on blacks may be the whole point. It's not intentionally racist but the lack of attention to race may be the crime.

So are administrations supposed to consider race or not? What does the racial makeup of a sports team have to do with it's value to the University? Obviously revenue sports come first. So when they're looking for cuts, I assume they consider money, program history, student interest (an area where track really loses out. Soccer/baseball might not draw huge crowds but they at least have multiple home games a year on campus), donors, team performance, etc. If they looked at those factors and came to the conclusion that track was the sport to cut, are they then supposed to go back and say, "wait there's a bunch of black people on that team, let's target a white or latino or asian sport instead."?

As you mentioned, the decision had nothing to do with race, and people playing false race cards to try to capitalize on social trends and get what they want is only going to turn people off and make them less likely to consider legitimate claims of racial bias.

Dr Yuengling wrote:

So are administrations supposed to consider race or not? What does the racial makeup of a sports team have to do with it's value to the University?

Are you being facetious? Of course, administrations are supposed to consider race. You think in admissions, they just look at a blind resume of test scores and grades? Come on, man. You think back in the good old days when there was a Jewish quotas at Ivy League schools, everything was fair and dandy? Now as we've seen Asian students have a tough time as they over-index in elite academic institutions. Someone's always going to lose out, and right now representation and diversity is a key things most schools claim to value and seek. So, no you shouldn't say let's keep track and turn to nixing all of the white sports. But maybe if you're Clemson, you basically can note they have close to virtually no African-Americans on campus who don't play basketball or football, maybe you shouldn't strip away a diverse team to save a few bucks. If you're in a cash crunch, maybe you can reign in football spending a tiny bit and cash in on the fact that you have a top college coach in Dabo Swinney and a recent run only rivaled by Alabama.

Dr Yuengling wrote:

[quote]rojo wrote:

As you mentioned, the decision had nothing to do with race, and people playing false race cards to try to capitalize on social trends and get what they want is only going to turn people off and make them less likely to consider legitimate claims of racial bias.

I t might turn off people 60 an d over or people who voted for Trump, but for most people who understand that the world has changed / is changing, they're pleased to see places like Clemson being held accountable for their actions.

Precisely. South Carolina considers race in the admissions process while Clemson does not.

Athletics administration is not the same thing as student body admissions. Even a larger team like track has a negligible effect on campus wide diversity. Trying to regulate representation in athletics is a losing battle; the whole point of sports is competition, the best win out regardless of who they are or where they come from.

Dr Yuengling wrote:

Athletics administration is not the same thing as student body admissions. Even a larger team like track has a negligible effect on campus wide diversity. Trying to regulate representation in athletics is a losing battle; the whole point of sports is competition, the best win out regardless of who they are or where they come from.

It has a 3% effect of male AA population (per the video), which is not negligible. You're not regulating who makes the team which is a meritocracy, but you can regulate which teams make the cut. That is a part of student body admissions that bleeds into athletics administration.

The racist part of this is how they are cutting the diverse sport and not the non-diverse sports. Why would they cut track and not any other non-revenue sport if not for the fact that they don't care about those athletes as much? There's really no justification here that doesn't boil down to only caring about money and not diversity, which doesn't look good for any school in 2020, nor should it. If schools are so focused on money that they're going to disregard diversity of all types (this isn't just race, but socioeconomic, cultural, and many others) they're going to make the wrong decision and hurt a lot of people who weren't born with the lucky privilege of having money at birth. That's not even close to a meritocracy, its an aristocracy, and that should be called out and protested against in a democratic nation.

rojo wrote:

go tigers wrote:

Do you really think that the administrators who made this decision got statistics on the percentage of black people in each sport and made cuts based on that alone?

But again, the fact that they aren't very worried about the impact this will have on blacks may be the whole point. It's not intentionally racist but the lack of attention to race may be the crime.

I think we can find some common ground in that it is strange that baseball and soccer were not the sports to be cut, however I suspect something is going on behind the scenes with those sports. Perhaps a wealthy alum is donating large amounts of cash to fund them. That is a part of the video that I hope Clemson will respond to.

I was a little skeptical of the impact that this actually has so I looked at Clemsons roster for track and soccer. On the Track team 21 of the 48 athletes are black, on the soccer team 7 of the 28 athletes are black. So yes the track team has more black people than soccer but does that really matter? Should race be the number one factor in these decisions?

I don't buy that these activists who stand to speak for the oppressed are motivated by empathy and sympathy or that their hearts are in the right place. They are mad that their sport got cancelled and they will do whatever it takes to get the University to change it's decision.