Sport, genetics and the `natural athlete': The resurgence of racial science

This article explores the ethical implications of recent discussions that naturalize the relationship between race, the body and sport within the frame of genetic science. Many suggestions of a racially distributed genetic basis for athletic ability and performance are strategically posited as a resounding critique of the `politically correct' meta-narratives of established sociological and anthropological forms of explanation that emphasize the social and cultural construction of race. I argue that this use of genetic science in order to describe and explain common-sense impressions of racial physiology and sporting ability is founded on erroneous premises of objectivity and disinterest, and inflates the analytical efficacy of scientific truth claims. I suggest that assertions of a value-free science of racial athletic ability reify race as inherited permanent biological characteristics that produce social hierarchies and are more characteristic of a longer history of `racial science'

Jon Entine and Kenneth Shropshire: Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We\u27re Afraid to Talk About It

A discussion of the book of the same title and issues associated with discussing stereotypes of African Americans in sports. Also highlights conjecture of genetic issues and discusses legal and business aspects of the sports and entertainment industries. Jon Entine is a television producer and reporter who first stepped into the national spotlight with his 1989 documentary Black Athletes: Fact and Fiction. Today, using clips from his documentary and drawing on genetic and sociological research, Entine argues that biology and ancestry are significant components of the disproportional emergence of world-class black athletes. The author of a book also titled Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We\u27re Afraid to Talk About It, Entine has written for several publications, including The Sunday Times of London, Chicago Tribune, GQ and the Utne Reader. A seasoned network television producer, he has worked with Sam Donaldson, Diane Sawyer and Chris Wallace on ABC\u27s PrimeTime Live and 20/20 and served for many years as Tom Brokaw\u27s producer at NBC News. Entine, a recipient of the National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for Journalists, earned a bachelor\u27s degree in philosophy from Trinity College and has taught as an adjunct professor at New York and Columbia universities. An author and scholar, Kenneth Shropshire has provided legal consultation for the National Football League, the U.S. Amateur Boxing Federation and the World Wrestling Federation. From 1982-1985, he served as assistant vice president/sports manager for the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee. A frequent contributor to various national publications, Shropshire has written for the New York Daily News, USA Today and The Philadelphia Inquirer. He is the author of five books, including Agents of Opportunity: Sports Agents and Corruption in Collegiate Sports and In Black and White: Race and Sports in America, for which he received the 1997 Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Human Rights in North America Outstanding Book Award. Shropshire, who currently serves as a professor of legal studies and real estate at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, earned a law degree from the Columbia University School of Law and a bachelor\u27s degree in economics from Stanford University

How Well Do Social Ratings Actually Measure Corporate Social Responsibility?

Ratings of corporations’ environmental activities and capabilities influence billions of dollars of “socially responsible” investments as well as some consumers, activists, and potential employees. In one of the first studies to assess these ratings, we examine how well the most widely used ratings—those of Kinder, Lydenberg, Domini Research & Analytics (KLD)—provide transparency about past and likely future environmental performance. We find KLD “concern” ratings to be fairly good summaries of past environmental performance. In addition, firms with more KLD concerns have slightly, but statistically significantly, more pollution and regulatory compliance violations in later years. KLD environmental strengths, in contrast, do not accurately predict pollution levels or compliance violations. Moreover, we find evidence that KLD’s ratings are not optimally using publicly available data. We discuss the implications of our findings for advocates and opponents of corporate social responsibility as well as for studies that relate social responsibility ratings to financial performance