The Black Athlete

The latest controversy concerning sports and race concerns former Notre Dame Heisman Trophy winner Paul Hornung saying the solution for Notre Dame's recent football struggles is to get 'more black athletes'.

A little confused about what the 'controversy' is? (it's not like he said "Notre Dame needs fewer black athletes"...) It's not obvious what the problem is by looking at the headlines surrounding the story; you have to dig deeper into the article to see that Hornung's full comment is "Notre Dame needs to lower their academic standards for admission in order to get more black athletes."

The standards issue (I'm presuming...) is the source of the controversy, and its implication that blacks are inherently less intelligent than whites and thus need to be held to a lower academic standard in order to be accepted into the school. Yet, is Hornung's comment really racist?

Grades and standardized test scores, which serve as the core of most schools' standards for admission, are--grade inflation aside--fairly objective means of judging someone's academic capability. (Note: I didn't say they were accurate means, nor do they actually measure intelligence--which is impossible to quantify, even by an IQ test--but rather, a person's capability to complete school work and take tests, essentially) Saying 'whites are smarter than blacks' would be considered racist, but saying 'whites have higher test scores on average than blacks' is not inherently racist, because it can be objectively proven with statistics. And, in fact, it has been shown to be a true statement, as studies have shown over the last decade the average SAT score for whites and Asians has been significantly higher than the average score for blacks and Hispanics.

Back to Hornung, there's nothing in his comments saying that 'blacks are inherently less intelligent' (although, who knows, he might believe that...), but rather IF blacks have on average lower test scores than their white counterparts (which seems to be true) and IF blacks are inherently better football players than whites (arguable), THEN the school would have a better football program if academic standards were lowered to encompass a greater number of black athletes. This seemingly objective analysis doesn't really pass any kind of prejudiced judgment on any one race (well...other than football playing ability).

Furthermore, assuming Notre Dame does lower their academic admission standards as per Hornung's idea to allow more black students into the school, how would this be any different than the affirmative action programs put in place by any of the other colleges in the country who give minority applicants a 'bonus' in admissions to make up for the matter-of-fact differences in test scores? The only difference I could see is that Notre Dame would be openly lowering standards for everyone, instead of secretly judging minority applicants by a reduced standard behind closed doors.

Note: I'm not arguing for or against affirmative action. I'm merely saying that Hornung making comments that adhere to statistically proven facts, and suggesting a course of action for Notre Dame that most other colleges are already following to some degree isn't really all that 'controversial'...

Postscript: Ironically, according to the statistics in the article, Notre Dame already has a larger percentage of blacks on the football team than most other Division I schools...