“Whatever the White man has done, we have done, and often better.”
- Mary McLeod Bethune (1935)
“Does race have anything to do with this? Now I’m sure the people who do the hiring say no, but it surely has to be something more than wins and losses. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, eventually you have to say it’s a duck.”
- Al Attles (2005)
***
In 2005, David Leonhardt and Ford Fessenden of The New York Times looked at a troubling trend presenting itself in the NBA: black head coaches had less of a chance to succeed than their white counterparts in the same league. At the time, there had been a spate of puzzling terminations that seemed to indicate that more sinister racial forces were at play; something beyond wins and losses. Byron Scott had just been let go by the Nets, despite the fact that he had just taken his team to two straight NBA Finals and won 50 games in both seasons. Isiah Thomas had been released by the Pacers in the prior year, even though he had gone 48-34. Paul Silas had just been let go by the Cavaliers, even though his team was 34-30 at the time. It seemed as if black head coaches were being terminated, even though, strictly by wins and losses, they were having success coaching their teams. The two looked at the numbers, and concluded that the smoke did indicate the presence of a fire: from 1995 to 2005, white coaches lasted, on average, 2.4 seasons with their teams before being let go, while black coaches lasted only 1.6 seasons. It certainly seemed like the NBA matched other industries in America, where black employees faced the prospect of a swift termination, despite the fact that the results indicated they were doing as good of a job as — if not better than — their white counterparts.
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