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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026

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However fiercely the ethnic nationalists would protest, something you do not see in any large number are claims that this is all some harebrained DEI scheme. People by and large acknowledge that the makeup of these teams is not decided by politics, but for the most part trying to field the best squad possible. Take the blood-and-soil types and ask them to pick a starting XI for their national football team and they’d probably return something not much different than what it is already. People still want their country to win, and the reality is there is no ethnically pure replacement for Mbappé or Lamal or Bellingham.

I'm going to take the complete opposite devil's advocate position here, and say that the racial makeup of national sports teams is clearly the result of racism in the United States, at least. I'll do the always dangerous thing of advocating for my ideological opponents to do something that I think would be in their best interest:

Ibram X Kendi et al. Should Be Advocating for More White Representation in Sports

If we're starting, ad argumentum, from Kendi-ism's basic postulates:

All racial differences in representation are the result of discrimination stemming from racism

The only way to fight current discrimination and cure those differences in representation is with discrimination in the other direction

It's obvious that there can be no other reason why the number of YTs in the NBA doesn't reflect their overall population share. Done and dusted.

But even if we start from the empirical observations of international tournaments and the assumptions of HBD, we still find that YTs are vastly underrepresented in American athletics. The American Olympic basketball team, based on merit and even cheating significantly by bringing along marginal players like Joel Embiid, went to the fourth quarter against Serbia. Serbia was the only country in the Olympics with an all-white team, and they won Bronze. The United States had no white players on their team, despite having a white population multiple times that of Serbia. Argentina is fielding a World Cup team with no players of notable African descent, and they are in the semifinals. This despite having a similarly sized white population to France and England. This would suggest to us that the disparity is not based on innate talent differences.

So, sure, this particular day today there might not be a white player who could replace a superior black players on the national team, but that is all downstream of twenty-odd years of culture. There's a reason why the representation looks the way that it does, and it isn't some sacred natural phenomenon handed down from Mt. Sinai.

This would massively benefit the Antiracism(tm) industry, in that it would prove for a change that they were seeking equality, rather than ethnic grievance. Giving up useless, but symbolic cultural privileges in high profile entertainment industries may not be a fair trade for affirmative action demands, but it would at least be something that the woke are looking to give up.

That instead the "Snowtime Lakers" are being criticized by the woke press should tell us something about the goals of the movement.