Every now and then I wonder how it is that the GOP has proven utterly incapable of receiving significant support from outside its white male base, and then I read a blogpost like this, and the answer becomes obvious. A white reporter joking that a team in the NCAA Tournament will lose a game because it has "too many white players" is not the same thing as a white pundit with a history of racial bigotry saying that a black quarterback who has taken his team to three consecutive conference championships is overrated because he is black.

Moreover, the comparison made between basketball and NASCAR is utterly bogus. Black racers were shut out of auto racing by the bylaws of the sport, which limited participation to members of the Caucasian race; today, that earlier exclusion means that there is less interest in NASCAR, both as a career objective for potential black participants and as a pastime to follow on the weekends. Either formally (as in golf) or informally, the same was true in almost every other sport. The fact that black athletes were able to take part in some college football and basketball programs north of the Mason-Dixon Line before the Jackie Robinson Era gave those sports added cache with African Americans. White players have never been shut out of basketball because of skin color or racial prejudice, no more than they've been shut out of football, baseball or hockey.