Why Don’t We Care That There Are So Few Asian Basketball Players in the NBA?

At some point in a conversation about racial inequality, an anti-racist will have this question posed to them by a skeptic:

“There are so many black folks in the NBA. Why is the NBA is not seen as racist?”

Of course, it is manifestly true that black players dominate the National Basketball Association (NBA). Just look at the basketball court. I had difficulty finding hard data from an original source, but a reference from Wikipedia reports that the racial composition in 2015 was 74 percent Black, 23 percent White, 2 percent Latino, and 0.2 percent Asian-American.

I will focus on Asian-American in the NBA. They are only 0.2 percent of the NBA but are 5.6 percent of the total American population. There is a clear disparity. Also, I was personally excited by the splash that Asian-American point guard Jeremy Lin made in the NBA in 2012.

Given this dynamic, I will focus the question:

“There are so many black folks in the NBA — and so few Asian-Americans, why is the NBA not seen as racist?”

Photo by David Tran on Unsplash

This question is meant to push back against the notion that group disparities in society signify racism. Are we to believe, the question implies, that the NBA is discriminating against Asian-Americans? Is…