Vicious Rants of an Angry Yellow Man

In the 1970s I read an article about dominance of drivers with blue eyes in auto racing.  It asked:  Is blue eyes an advantage in auto racing?  It was not a subtle way of saying whites are better drivers.  In the years since, Italian, Brazilian, Argentine race champions make this blue eye argument absurd.  But it was not until Lewis Hamilton won the F1 championship that one can definitely say that no one race has a monopoly on driving skills.  That point was driven home again yesterday when Takuma Sato won the Indy 500.

I think most reasonable people would agree that chances of participation rather than genetic makeup is the prime reason some groups are more dominant than other groups in certain fields.  That is why I find it interesting John Hawkins wrote "We live in the strongest, most powerful, most prosperous nation in human history and if we are being honest, white men probably deserves 95% of the credit for that."  He did also say: "That may be unfair because women and black Americans weren't given the opportunity to significantly contribute for most of our nation's history, but it is true."

I think there is truth in the first statement by itself.  But the second statement makes the first statement absurd.  It would be like saying in 1960 that the NBA is by far the best basketball league in the world and white American players are responsible for that.  That statement would be true in itself  but it would be nonsense looking at it now.  So Hawkins' statement will be nonsense 50 years from now.  The rest of the world was way behind us in basketball in 1960 so that we did not need black players to win easily.  But can we say the same today?  We need the best players to beat the likes of Spain, Serbia, Croatia etc.  The same with our nation in general.  China was a sleeping giant in 1960.  Even Japan and Germany had not fully recovered from WWII.  But we need everybody in the country, regardless of race or gender if we are going to stay on top. 





So the race of the winner of Indy 500 is not important but the racial makeup of our politicians, scientists, generals etc are important.  So it is imperative that we let everybody have the opportunity to contribute or we are not going to stay top. 

By the way, VP Pence was at the race yesterday.  I wonder what his thoughts are as a Japanese driver win in his home state.  I wonder if he is worried that an openly gay driver will win in the near future?