Analogies: Fair Play

Imagine you’re playing a basketball game, but for some arbitrary reason the refs decide your team only gets to put four players on the court against your opponent’s usual five. Clearly, that’s unfair, and you complain, but the refs won’t change their decision. What do you do? You play as hard as you can. Your work your butt off, you expect your teammates to do the same, and you give it everything you have. But the result is most likely you will be way behind by half-time. So maybe the refs then decide it wasn’t really fair. So for the second half you’ll get to play with five players. All good, right? No, not really. Even at five on five, is it really fair? After all, the refs who disadvantaged you are still calling the game. How likely are they to be fair in the second half? Especially if you look at the stats and see that they call more penalties on your team. Wouldn’t it be quite reasonable to be suspicious of their ‘fairness’?

But even if the refs were truly impartial, the game wouldn’t be fair. You’re starting the second half way behind. Maybe if they forced the other team to play with four players against your five in the second half, that would be fair? But do you think the other team will agree to that? No, so you’re still likely to lose the game. How long do you have to play at five on five before it’s fair? The next game? The rest of the season? No, that loss will still affect your chances of making the playoffs. You’d have to play a long, long time, much longer than the one half you were disadvantaged, before it would approach fair. And everyone deserves fair play, right?

We had slavery on this continent for three hundred years. We had Jim Crow laws for another hundred. We still have a lot more fouls called on African Americans and people of color than on white Americans. It isn’t fair yet.