How can I put this delicately? Who the hell cares? Why should anyone care, including Swedes “of color”? The very topic is soaked through with the core DEI myth that “diversity” has some kind of intrinsic value of its own, which it emphatically does not. Studies by “experts” with an agenda that suggest otherwise have been proven to be rigged or worse. What matters in a Chinese restaurant is not how many Nigerians work there but whether the food is any good, and may I add, “duh.” Similarly, what matters on a Olympic ski team or figure-skating team is how skilled the athletes are, not what skin shade or ancestry they have.
Why isn’t that obvious to all and irrefutable by now? Why does the A.P. think that the demographics police watch the Winter Olympics keeping score and shaking their heads in sorrow? Wait…I am being buffeted now by loud calls from the Ethics Alarms Hollywood Clip Archive… Yes, yes, I hear you, Major Clipton (“Madness! Madness!”), Inspector Wang (“Is stupid!”), Ringo Kid (“You know…morons!”), Cher (“Snap out of it!”), Dr. Ian Malcolm (“That’s one big pile of shit!”), Dudley Manlove (“Stupid stupid humans!”) and Marty McFly (“He’s an asshole!”) Shut up, all of you! Let me think!
Competitive sports are, or should be, the ultimate example of a meritocracy. Coined by Henri Didon and adopted by Pierre de Coubertin in 1894, the original motto of the Olympics was “Citius, Altius, Fortius” (Faster, Higher, Stronger). Then the Great Stupid spread its dark wings over the land, and the infected International Olympic Committee added the completely superfluous “Communiter” (Together) in July 2021. What, were the Olympics before 2021 held with the athletes never gathering in one place? No, the IOC was virtue signaling, like almost everyone else. After all, Black Bobsledders Matter, or something.
The AP and the rest of the journalistic establishment are victims of IQ-diminishing feedback: they carried the messages of the Left’s propaganda so long that they came to believe them. Nothing needs to be done to increase the participation of Tierra del Fuegans in curling. Nobody except the fatally woke cares how many Vietnamese are elite Finnish ski-jumpers. Diversity is 100% irrelevant to the Winter Olympics as well as every other sport, and the entertainment value of competition is not enhanced one lumen by the skin-color of the participants.
I guess it would be churlish of me to mention, but I will anyway, that the National Basketball League has had a steady percentage of black players in the range of 75-78% for half a century without the AP complaining about it. In the National Hockey League, about 90% of the players and officials are white. Again: so what?
Oh: It is estimated that about 98% of bagpipe players are Irish or Scottish, and if there are any Swedish virtuosos, they have remained incommunicado. Clearly, something needs to be done about that…
Back to the AP: “Researchers point to social, financial and geographical barriers, and believe a big cultural shift is needed for anything to change. “It takes not years but decades,” said Josef Fahlen, professor of sport pedagogy at Umea University in Sweden.” Is “needed!”Please note that nothing in the statistics or the article suggests that winter sports competitors of color are being discriminated against, or that one of the best lugers in Norway is Kenyan but has been left off the team out of racist spite. No, it’s just that “inclusion” is so, so, well, important somehow.
Next comes equity, where black speed skaters get five seconds subtracted from their speeds because it’s only fair.
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Ethics Alarms 
Why should it matter if an Olympic roster is “overwhelmingly white “?
It shouldn’t and doesn’t, unless the critic is a racist.
There should be more black athletes in the Olympic ski jump that way they wouldn’t have to inject their penises with hyaluronic acid.
As far as the Olympics are concerned my attitude is WGAF.
Hey, “Cool Runnings” was a good movie!
Actually, they may be saying: “Hey! African athletes dominate in most every sport they compete in. Why aren’t they dominant in winter sports? Why aren’t countries recruiting and training African athletes in Nordic sports? After all, Africans are physically superior. Don’t these countries want to win medals at the Olympics? Clearly, these countries must be discriminating against African kids by training inferior white kids rather than intrinsically more athletically superior African kids.”
I assumed that they article would justify their position by stating that the Olympics were actually invented by Sub-Saharan Africans and Europeans stole the idea through colonialism. This would go nicely with the latest assertions by the British press that Shakespeare was a black, Jewish woman. The current standard narrative in Europe seems to be that all Europeans were people of color(TM) until recently, when ‘white people’ just showed up from nowhere and stole everything from everybody through colonialism and racism.
When Trump does Trump things, I think about the alternative, and I remember that Trump is crude and insensitive and petty, but he doesn’t think like a Soviet comrade who is so infused with envy that any inequality on anything sends him into a conniption.
“Next comes equity, where black speed skaters get five seconds subtracted from their speeds because it’s only fair.”
Well, after all, these poor, plucky underprivileged migrants don’t experience much snow in their countries of origin, so one could argue they are disadvantaged and need a boost, right?
Or maybe these folks just don’t care about winter sports because they’re not familiar with the games and because the poor in general tend not to care about the Olympics. But, no, it must be the whites that are at fault.
I have to admit that I do not watch a lot of sports on television. Part of this has to do that I have other interests, and part of this is because I do not like to watch an actual game all by myself.
Watching sports works best when you are with other like-minded people who all cheer for the same team, and in case of the Olympics for the same country. This experience creates a bonding experience between spectators who together cheer when their team or country wins. In other for this to work best divisive matters that do not have a direct relation to sport are best to be avoided; this include race and politics.
Associated Press acts as a spoiler here by addressing the issue of race. I would guess that AP never complains about racial disparities in basketball and football.
The USA Olympic Team Skier Hunter Hess had the following to say:
“It brings up mixed emotions to represent the U.S. right now… Just because I wear the flag doesn’t mean I represent everything that’s going on in the U.S.”
If members of the Olympic Team express shame for representing their own country, do they not forfeit the moral right to earn medals for the USA? Why would Americans be rooting for such a team? I guess that there are many Americans who now have less interest and enjoyment in watching the Olympics.
For the Super Bowl LX we see something similar. The as always super relevant Washington Post seems to think it relevant to use this occasion to tout a divisive figure Colin Kaepernick, notorious for disrespecting the National Anthem due to his racial grievances. Instead of focusing on how to enjoy the game together as a nation, they need to be the killjoy by focusing on race.
“Incorrigible, monomaniacal weirdos.” Cooke should trademark that.
Which warrants a “What is wrong with these people?”
I actually think the article is fairly even-handed in exploring one of the reasons athletes of colour are under-represented in winter sports: cultural unfamiliarity. I don’t find the author is accusing anyone of racism — just describing a case study and proposing solutions.
I think, when we see under-representation in winter sports, we don’t need to cry racism, nor do we need to flog ourselves and gnash our teeth, but we can interpret it as a sign that certain minorities may be left out of winter sports because of something other than merit. If, through (judiciously publicly funded? improved charity-supported?) outreach programs we could get more South Asians or Africans or Pacific Islanders to get into winter sports, and some of them, through leveraging some physical attribute or drawing from some cultural heritage, put on a more spectacular ice dance routine or develop a new curling technique, does that not enrich us as a people (to say nothing of enriching the lives of those athletes)?
As a (distant) parallel, I think of myself, an East Asian who was accidentally exposed to community theatre in my 20s and now aim to do 2-3 shows a year. I would have benefited from being exposed to theatre earlier in my life, and I dare say my high school theatre program could, in retrospect, have used me! East Asians (and [heterosexual] males) are definitely under-represented in the performing arts. It isn’t racism nor sexism, but in my opinion, it’s still something we, as a society, should investigate and attempt to correct, if appropriate.
My point is, so what? It’s like complaining that not enough short people play NBA basketball. Why does any group have to play any particular sport? Does anyone complain that not enough Swedes play Go? Why would they? Not enough Welsh rappers?
And my point is, if it turns out Swedes are genetically unfit for Go or the Welsh culture is diametrically incompatible with rap, that’s one thing; if, however, Swedes couldn’t play Go because they couldn’t afford it or the Welsh didn’t rap because they don’t know enough about it, I do care to rectify that
Diversity isn’t everything, but it isn’t nothing; and, the degree to which I/we/society can care about/invest in diversity can be proportionate to how much we value it.