Quote Originally Posted by Rjk View Post
Do you really believe that he was pusing those black players out of the goodness of his heart,or because he thought they could make HIM successful?

There is definitely a bias in how black players are described though, a lot of the time from people who would be shocked if anyone thought they were being racist.
When Naby Keita was signed from Leipzig he was variously described as being like Ngolo Kante or Patrick Vieira amongst others neither of whom he's really anything like as a player, the only similarity is he's black.
We have deep ingrained prejuduces about what black players can be and what they can do. Yaya Toure is another good example, always described predominantly as "powerful" when really he was phenomenally skillful. A premier league scout/analyst sais his game is most similar to Zinedine Zidane than anyone else, but you would never see that kind of comparison made.

American sports went through a similar learning curve - once upon a time quarterbacks were overwhelmingly white, but these days more and more black quarterbacks are coming through each year.
Do you think Atkinson would have failed if he'd instead NOT used Regis et al? In that era, the safe option would have been not to use them - especially several at a time. What he did was groundbreaking which led to the groundswell of black players we know see - progress still needs to be taken with regards to other BAME sections. Can't rest on laurels.

Re comments about Keita, in what respect can it be proven that those comments were made due to subconscious racial bias and not ignorance on the part of those making the comments? There are plenty of thick pundits after all.

I'd agree with Toure wasn't always given the credit for his skill, but he was a power player too - combined physicality AND skill.

My concern about the study of commentary cited would be that was there any possible confirmation bias in the way comments were selected?

With regards to NFL, there are many position overwhelmingly belonging to one skin pigmentation or another - RBs, WRs predominently black for example. Equally, basketball. Not sure why that is, but suspect external factors play a part - for example, I'd presume that in economically deprived areas, sport is a key route out of poverty?