The MLB has only 8.2% black players. And?

The annual announcement that baseball has fewer black atheletes then ever has just arrived. The Do the Right Thing thread going on is actually a perfect segue to this.

Joe Sheehan over at BP (subscription only, I think) has my favorite take I've seen on it:

So when I read that African-American representation on rosters is at a low
point since the early days of the game’s integration, I don’t understand the
importance. I analyze baseball decision makers for a living, and I am certain
that the decisions they make are, in toto, as race-blind as the basketball
courts of Inwood Park were in my adolescence. That is to say that while
individuals may harbor biases, and may even act upon them in their words or
actions, how they build baseball teams is not subject to racial discrimination.
How they select players for their organizations is not subject to racial
discrimination. Baseball and, in fact, all professional sports at the highest
levels are as meritocratic as any entity in human history.

This is true. It may be a tad simplistic and over-general, but the point is well-taken. For whatever reason, perhaps because they are so visible and poor performance is so much harder to hide, sports offer as little racial discrimination as any other business in America. That the percentage of blacks playing baseball has steadily decreased means nothing except that young black people are less interested in the game then ever before. This is not a good thing for the sport, but it's not especially bad either, and anyone who thinks black ball-players don't get the same shots as white ones (in general of course, maybe not in the specific) is crazy.

Do you know why no one complains that the NBA is almost 80% black with a disproportionately small number of whites and hispanics compared to the population? Because that would be utterly stupid, that's why. The cultural demographics of this country mean that a young black man is going to be more likely to play basketball or football, and a young white man is going to be more likely to play baseball.

Is this a problem for the country? Perhaps because it says something about how disturbingly heterogeneous we are culturally. But is it a problem for baseball? No way in hell. It's not their responsibility to fundamentally alter the cultural divides. It's their responsibility to make their product the best it can be, and with record revenues et cetera, it is clear they've done a good job of that even with a predominantly white and hispanic player population.

I'll argue that these kinds of studies and the responses to them do more to harm race relations than benefit them. No one ever makes a big deal about how many hispanics play a sport, even though there are 25 million of them in this country. Why do blacks get singled out? Because us whites are obsessed with black culture--we feel guilty about the atrocities our ancestors committed against theirs, and we're so interested in looking like we care about black people that we'll spout whatever bullshit we can think of to give that appearance. I know it's not so simple that we can just say, "treat everyone the same regardless of color," but, Jesus, can't we draw the line at what sport a certain group of people prefers to play?