Using skin pigmentation to make other determinations can be reductive and deeply problematic. In contrast to Rob Ruck (“Where Have African-American Baseball Players Gone?”p. 168), Gladwell is more concerned with racial, psychological, and biological foundations than, say, the social and economic consequences of integration. For Ruck, the predominance of African Americans in football and basketball has socioeconomic explanations. Gladwell instead asks whether innate “racial” factors play a role in sports demographics.
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