Good observation and worth discussion. It is appalling that some posters would so quickly dismiss this observation. Although there are significant number of black and hispanic players in the league, I would venture to say that an overwhelming percentage of the US born players are indeed white. A key MLS objective is to develop US born players and presumably US born coaches as well. That being said, the current lack of diversity in the coaching ranks is not a reflection of any racism, rather it is a reflection of the fact that a majority of the US born players are white. This assumes that your player pool is your coaching pool for the future. Hopefully in the years to come MLS and US Soccer will put the infrastructure and player identifcation structure in place to first, get more kids from other demographics to chose to play soccer (who currently may be choosing to play baseball, am. football or basketball) and then second, to recognize and identify these athletes. If this is done we will see more diversity in the US-born player pool, and subsequently an increased likelyhood of more diversity in the coaching and management ranks. I am confident we will see increased diversity in the coaching ranks in the future and I would not be suprised to see the Eddie Pope's and D Beasley's of the world standing on the sideline one day.
What you are saying isn't that it isn't in the picking of coaches, but in getting the credentials. If you look at my last post then you can say its because NCAA opportunities haven't been around for minorities like they have for whites. I think the player to assistant to head coach route has at least produced minority coaches (Clavijo? anybody else) and should produce more in the future.
I guess I'm safe now since we killed one in Raleigh this week. 1??????? Did that not register for one second in your brain as pure bulls***??????
So you are generalizing to complain about people who you think generalize. Yeah, that's a healthy way to state your point. I'm not disagreeing with you in principle. I wish there were more minorities in leadership positions in MLS. I just hate when people who take up causes like this misrepresent things to further their cause.
I am. The way that many of the respondents on this thread can't even consider the question, the way they instantly dismiss something that's obviously very skewed statistically, tells me that they are so comfortable in their white privilege that they can't imagine anything else. The pluperfect exampel was when someone shot back, what are Valderrama's qualifications, without considering one Peter Nowak. Less striking than the lack of blacks, given the particulars of this situation, is the lack of Latinos. But then, OZ and Clavijo got their chance.
Exaclty. The "something that isn't there" is any shade darker than Brian McBride in MLS front offices.
whatever senyor brainiac... Why didn't you quote the moronic reductionist argument that stated that there is ZERO correlation between race and economic opportunity. Seriously, what's wrong w/ pointing out systemic flaws that lead to a inequal distribution of the spoils of a nation? Is that "playing the race card?"
Re: Re: Race and MLS Two points. First, whenever these discussions come up, alot of the statistical arguments are wrong because they forget a) that the coaches and the players are of different generations, so the racial makeup of TODAY'S players isn't relevant to who is a coach today. Second, there's this casual but wrong assumption that in order to coach at a certain level, one must have played at that level. Bill Belichick's football career was nothin'. Anyway, you're wrong, unless you're using an incredibly loose definition of "overwhelming", and/or you're counting Latinos as white. Think back to the WC. Who were our key players? Friedel, Sanneh, Pope, Agoos, Berhalter, Hejduk, Stewart, Reyna, Mastroenni, O'Brien, Lewis, Beasley, Donovan, McBride, Mathis. Those 15 all had at least 2 starts, and without taking the time to look it up, nobody else started twice. That's 9 whites, not my idea of "overwhelming." Cobi Jones played in each match, and I think he's biracial. But to tie it together...it's not terribly relevant how many minorities there are today. It's how many minorities were playing 15-35 years ago.
I expect Dennis Hamlet might get an opportunity to become one of the first black coach in MLS sometime relatively soon. Since a number of our current stars are of African descent, we'll likely see a number of coaches and assitant coaches, as well as league and team executives of African ancestry in the near future. Regarding Hispanics, I think the league might actually be consciously avoiding filling leadership spots with Hispanics in order to establish a notion that MLS is an American league and not a league for transplanted foreigners. And, no, I am not aware that aside from Native Americans, all those who now call the US home are descendents of immigrants. I am also totally unaware of the fact that one who is not born an American can in fact obtain US citizenship. Chivas USA will do wonders for ushering Afirmative Action into MLS. A few years later when the Philadelphia Brothers start playing, the problem will be solved. By the way, how many disabled chinese lesbians are head coaches?
Havent' read the whole thread... but got the jist of it in the first 3 pages. I personally would love to see my Blacks in the game, not only just playing but in management as well. However, let's be honest: Soccer in the US is predominately a white sport. It's not racism, is just the way it is. Among Black people the game is considered a sport "for white people and Mexicans". So it's no suprise that management will be filled with white people. No institutional racism. That just how it is, baby. When the game starts to attract more Blacks, more blacks will move into management. Until that time...
Re: Re: Re: Race and MLS I doubt that Pablo Mastroeni and Claudio Reyna wouldn't consider themselves to be white. I certainly do...I mean, if Pablo had been born in the US, and had the name Paul, he'd be just another Italian guy.
The always useful Metrofanatic has a historical list of Metro coaches. I believe that these past coaches were Brazilian, Ecuadorian, Serbian, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese. That seems pretty diverse to me. And of course now we have a native New Jerseyian. No african-americans, but I think most african-americans in this country began playing the game in the last 30 years or so. Anyway, that's just a sampling of one team, but I thought I'd throw it out there. http://www.metrofanatic.com/mf/team/coaches.jsp
If by 'nequal distribution' you are implying that one race receives more or less than another, the answer is yes.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Race and MLS Very true. I think a lot of people seem to be defining "White" as being either WASP or German and Scandanavian type people. White to me (and most people it seems) means "of European descent" which as far as I can tell, Mastroeni clearly is. He is darker than most Italians but he has an Italian last name and his family is from Argentina, which is a country that has a higher percentage of Euro descended people than the U.S. does. As for MLS being racist - I think the courtship of the Hispanic market (that often is quite overdone as the group that seems to be the main target (Mexicans) don't seem to care about the league in the least bit), should be enough to dispel any notion that this league is institutionally racist. Bottom line here is that certain people will not be satisfied until MLS looks like the NBA. The diversity that is being of spoken of by some here means "as few White people as possible".
Thank you so much for creating this thread. Because of this thread, I've come to the realization that in spite of a lifetime of judging my fellow man by the content of their character and not by the color of their skin, that I am institutionally racist. The numbers don't lie. Out of all the mes that exist in the world (1), all of them are white. 100% white. That's a rate of minority exclusion that would make David Duke proud. Interestingly, my lying, cheatting whore of an ex-girlfriend is slightly less instutitionally racist as myself. Although the numbers on her are the same (all of the hers in the world are also white!), she has had a little Black and Hispanic in her from time to time...and both at the same time on a few occassions, from what I understand.
Please, this will take care of itself as players age and become coaches. Bill Russell once observed when he was fired as an NBA coach, history was made as much by that as by his hiring, and in a positive way. Sooner or later non-white, non- Anglo coaching candidates must be treated in the same sometimes crappy way all coaches are treated. To talk about the ethnic makeup of coaches now (and make Balboa white Anglo to make your point) can lead you to ignore Arena, Clavijo, and others, that have coached in the past, and the increasingly influential presence of African-American and Hispanic players in the national team pool and among coaches that will lead to more diverse coaches in the future. The real challenge is marketing the league and its diverse community of stars to minority communities. I don't think African-American teenagers are that aware yet of Damarcus, Eddie, Cobi, and others, and the real change that will come when kids are inspired to follow in the footsteps.
This may happen. I certainly hope so. Ding. Ding. Ding. This is what's known as "The Point". I won't go into potential coaches in the Black community- it's been pointed out here (rightfully) that Black Americans haven't been playing long enough to establish a large coaching pool, and that there still exists some prejudice among Black people regarding the Game itself. But as far as Hispanic Americans (no hyphen)... would MLS be any less American if they had a few Americans in front office positions who happened to be Hispanic? Of course not. If, as you suggested, MLS is "establishing a notion that it is an American league" by filling coaching and front office positions with descendants of Europeans but not descendants of Central and South Americans, well, that's a part of the big picture. Might MLS' target audience comprise the same folks who stayed away from the USA-Argentina Orange Bowl match (but who would sell their children into slavery for a ticket to a USA-England friendly)? If your theory is correct, then MLS is also establishing -no, perpetuating- the notion than some foreigners are more foreign than others. Unfortunately, we'll never get to see the collective BigSoccer orgasm that would have occurred if Roman Abramovich had inquired about renaming an MLS team "Chelsea West". Nah- they'll avoid those matches just like they avoid matches against Mexico in Dallas and L.A.