I am a big fan of ESPN. As a general rule, I find ESPN's coverage of sports that I follow closely to be better, fairer, and more accurate than the regular media's coverage of the legal and political issues that I'm most familiar with.
Today, however, ESPN.com made a fairly serious factual error. In its article on Cleveland Indians pitcher C.C. Sabbathia, the winner of the Cy Young Award as the best pitcher in the American League, ESPN claimed that "Sabathia is the first black pitcher to win a Cy Young Award since Dwight Gooden of the New York Mets in 1985 — and the first in the AL since Oakland's Vida Blue in 1971." This is clearly false. As any moderately knowledgeable baseball fan should know, black Boston Red Sox pitcher Pedro Martinez won the AL Cy Young Award in 1999 and 2000, and also won the National League Cy Young as a member of the Montreal Expos in 1997. Martinez's 1999 and 2000 campaigns were two of the best seasons by any post-WWII pitcher, and he had the extremely rare distinction of winning the Cy Young vote unanimously in both years.
While racial identity is often debatable, I think that it's pretty obvious that Pedro Martinez is black. Judge for yourself:
Perhaps ESPN meant merely that Sabbathia is the first black American pitcher to win the CY Young since Gooden in '85 (Pedro Martinez is Dominican). But if that's what they meant, they should have said so.
UPDATE: I should perhaps note that the Associated Press was the original source of the offending article, which ESPN.com reprinted. However, ESPN still deserves some criticism for posting the mistaken material without editing it properly.
UPDATE #2: In reading the comments, there seem to be many people who view "black" and "hispanic" as mutually exclusive categories, such that if Pedro Martinez is Hispanic (by virtue of being from the Dominican Republic), he can't also be black. This seems to me a fallacy. People with different ethnicities or cultures can be part of the same racial group, and vice versa. For example, my being a Russian Jew by ethnic background doesn't prevent me from also being white. Census data and numerous news accounts (see, e.g., here , here, and here) reveal that there are some 1 million people in the United States who describe themselves - and are perceived by others - as "black Hispanics" or "black Latinos." Moreover, Latin American nations - including Martinez's native Dominican Republic - have their own racial divisions between darker-skinned blacks, whites, and people who fall into intermediate categories. In the United States, many black Dominican immigrants are among those who identify themselves as "black Hispanics."
Denying the existence of black Hispanics/Latinos is particularly ill-advised in the baseball context, given baseball's history of racial (but not ethnic) segregation. Prior to 1947, black Hispanics were excluded from the major leagues just as black Americans were, while lighter-skinned Hispanics were allowed to play. As black Cuban Hall of Famer Tony Perez put it, "Like black Americans, we black Latinos couldn't play until after [Jackie] Robinson made his debut." Note that Perez describes himself and other black Latin American players as "black Latinos."
Given the number of people who seem to endorse the view that being black and being Hispanic are mutually exclusive, I was perhaps wrong to say that ESPN's error was "obvious." It is, however, an error nonetheless.
ESPN racial-pandering, to me, has become a joke. I don't watch SportsCenter anymore because I got tired of waiting through a 10-minute feature on some poor [insert victim here, usually someone or a group of people] fighting through some injustice so I could see some game highlights.
Sabathia won it because he was a bad ass on the mound all year. I am glad to see it because he deserved it. That he is the first black to win it in some time does not make me feel any happier for him.
If you're going to be outraged at something ESPN does, why not rail on it for continuing to employ sports analysts who apparently know nothing about sports? (See, e.g., Steven A. Smith, Joe Morgan.)
I mean, really, if you want to get pissed at ESPN for something, how about its “Who’s Now” segment? The fact that EPSN devoted a segment to discussing whether Tom Brady is more “now” than Maria Sharapova (see previous link) is way more infuriating than its decision to carry an AP story that used “black” as a shorthand for “African-American.”
I'm not sure why exactly it is important (it all seems vaguely "culture warrish") for Illya to conflate the two, but that is what he has done.
I agree that his complexion is hardly Nordic, but given that many African Americans are more lightly complected than Arab, Asian or Latin-American individuals that we would not consider "black," is it really fair to make the determination on skin color?
African/African-American ought to replace black in popular usage not because it's politically correct, but because it is, as this illustrates, considerably more precise.
Andy, Martinez is latino. He could be classified as black, but that term is usually used to refer to someone with largely unmixed black racial ancestry. It'd be most accurate to call him afro-latino, but I'd suspect that recordkeepers probably err on the side of choosing latino (If I had to guess, I'd imagine that Martinez would self-identify as latino, rather than black. At least, that's the case with the few afro-latinos that I personally know.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afro-Latin_American
By that standard, most AFrican-Americans aren't black because most have at least some white ancestry. Yes, Martinez is Latino. But he is black too. The two groups are not mutually exclusive. In the same way, I am of Russian Jewish background, but also white.
Using "African-American" to describe race is considerably less precise than "black" because a great many people who live on the continent of Africa are not racially black. Someone who emigrated to the U.S. from Egypt meets the obvious geographic definition of "African-American", but doesn't have much racially in common with someone who's roots lie in sub-Saharan Africa. Similarly, a Caucasian Afrikaner who's ancestors lived in South Africa for a hundred years can lay a much better claim to being African than someone who's ancestors were brought to the Americas as slaves centuries ago.
I'm a bit confused as to what you're saying here. It seems to be that Ilya has specifically avoided conflating race and ethnicity here. Pedro Martinez is definitely Hispanic, but that doesn't preclude him from being black as well.
Is this post for real, or were you just trying to incite people into a frenzied response?
(2) The modern trend among demographers is to treat Hispanic as an ethnicity, so one can indeed be black Hispanic, white Hispanic, mixed white-American Indian Hispanic, and so on. The Census, for instance, takes this view.
(3) I don't see why Pedro Martinez's coming from the Spanish-speaking Dominican Republic (or having some American Indian or Spanish ancestry, if he has that) makes him not black, while someone who looks just like Martinez and has similar ancestry but comes from the neighboring country of Haiti -- or for that matter from Alabama -- would be black.
Your points are good as far as they go, but look at the title of this post: "Obvious Factual Error . . " Pedro Martinez is arguably black. But it is not an "obvious" or "factual" error to claim he is not. Exactly how much black ancestry it takes to make someone "black" is a matter of opinion. The post is way off.
What some might disagree on is whether being from the Dominican Republic keeps Pedro Martinez from being black even if someone with the same black ancestry from Haiti or Alabama were broadly acknowledged to be black. And I agree that this isn't a "factual" question. Still, I agree with Ilya that simply asserting that "Sabathia is the first black pitcher to win a Cy Young Award since Dwight Gooden of the New York Mets in 1985" is indeed a mistake: It silently assumes that Martinez wasn't black, and this assumption is controversial enough that it shouldn't be silently made.
It seems to me that the question of whether someone who 1) looks like Martinez, and 2) has the kind of ancestry he has, would be described as "black" in ordinary American usage is indeed a factual question. It's factual in much the same way as the question of whether Eugene and I count as "Russian Jews" in ordinary usage.
what was ironic was that these were not "african americans". they were BLACK. they were in fact citizens of various countries and NOT american. some were african african (so to speak) etc. mayor schell reflexively used the PC term for black and thus made a factual error by referring to citizens of other countries who happened to be black as "african american."
and of course is teresa kerry "african american?" she was born in africa and is now american? that's why this term is kind of stupid.
latino (and hispanic) are cultural designations NOT racial.
one can be of asian ancestry even and be hispanic. it has nothing to do with race. if one is "racially asian" (such as your parents being from japan ) but you were born and spent your life in cuba, you would be hispanic, even though you wouldn't "look hispanic" to borrow a phrase.
i didn't realize tiger now considered himself black. last i heard he referred to himself (somewhat jokingly) as cablinasian (caucasian-black-asian). i find it somewhat ironic that many of the same people who would be horrified by blood quanta arguments and such insist (or assume) that tiger woods is "black" when in fact he is of mixed racial ancestry and is roughly just as much asian or white as he is black.
A guy I knew in college actually got an African-American scholarship. One of the terms was that he join the BSA--Black Student Alliance. Well, his mom was Danish and his dad a very light-skinned Arab Egyptian, so that probably gives you a clue what he looked like..
And for that matter why don't we stop making victims out of people by tying the anchor of their ethnicity around them as well.
Some people enjoy their ethnicity, I once had a friend who liked to describe himself as a half-black half-puerto-rican czechoslavakian polock. If someone wants to identify themselves by ethnicity, why not let them? Of course, if they reject being identified by ethnicity there is no reason to force it on them. And some chose ethnic IDs which are hard to accept, Michael Jackson is as much a african american as M&M is.
Some commenters have already said that Ilya is mixing "African-American" with "black", and I agree. The problem is that even if we agreed that were true, Pedro isn't "black"; he's Latino (not "Latin").
I don't think this is something controversial or worthy of an apology. But I do think it was a mistake for Ilya to be outraged by the "obvious factual error" without first getting the facts.
For example, the Yankees actually have only one black player--Derek Jeter. Cano doesn't count; Luis Vizcaino doesn't count. And I could go on. This massive grouping of individuals that you are perpetuating contributes to the ignorance in society on the distinction between different races and ethnicities.
What Ilya is complaining about, again, it seems to me, is the writer's word choice. Ilya doesn't like it.
But in context (ejusdem generis anyone?), I think Ilya's wrong.
Ilya didn't say anything about "African ancestry," if I'm not mistaken. He said that Martinez is "black" -- which is a skin color that Martinez unquestionably does possess. Indeed, there are a lot of Americans who identify as "black" but who have a much lighter skin tone than Martinez.
Some commenters have already said that Ilya is mixing "African-American" with "black", and I agree.
Ilya didn't say anything about "African American." And if he did, he wouldn't be the one "mixing" up the terms. To the contrary, it was the AP writer mixing up the terms by assuming that "black" = "African American," such that if someone is the "first" person who is literally an American of African heritage to do something, that makes him the first "black" person to do that thing.
Which just isn't true. There are lots and lots of people in the world who are "black" but who are not "African American."
I am aware that other institutions use the category "Hispanic of Any Race". So those who object to Prof. Somin' analysis are thinking along the lines of this category; one is Hispanic OR Black. Not both.
But these guys from the DR, and other Caribbean Basin states, are descended from slaves who were brought there to work sugar plantations. It's not clear to me how they are made Not-Black by the fact that their overlords spoke Spanish, and so now they do too. Had they been on the other side of the mountains, and spoke French, they'd be black? Now THAT'S "social construction of race".
Nowadays, it seems that a lot of the pressure for mixed-race people to identify as black comes from African Americans rather than from white people. But the question of what to call Latinos who appear to be of African heritage is a good illustration of the limits of binary racial categories. The flap over the "multiracial" box on the last census was another one, and I think these arguments will only increase as racial categories get more blurred. I expect we'll ultimately end up with a list of words for skin color similar to the ones we use to describe the shades of variation in hair color. Even then we'll need a term for people of African heritage in the US who identify with a shared history and culture, but that word doesn't have to be an exact synonym for any of the words that describe physical appearance.
At this point I'd be happy if I could get people to stop referring to unambiguously black people with British passports as "African American." They aren't any kind of American. The question of multiracial people from other countries in the Americas is a lot trickier than that one, but even that one seems to be unsolvable in the current environment. Are there any British people reading this who can supply a current, courteous term to fill this gap?
I think that assumption is likely only to be controversial to someone with a limited knowledge of baseball and specifically Pedro Martinez. That's not to say that Volokh or Somin ever claimed to be baseball experts, but within the sporting world, Martinez has long been considered Hispanic and not black. Whether he should be considered a black Hispanic, a Hispanic black, or both black and Hispanic very well may be interesting questions, but the fact remains that identifying Martinez as only Hispanic, even if incorrect, has been the norm for a while and therefore I don't think continuing that norm is controversial.
At the very least, there's no basis to claim that it was an obvious factual error.
If so, what about Johan Santana, who has won the Cy Young twice since 2000?
That is the question.
To put up a picture of someone and debate about whether or not he "looks black" is pretty damn offensive.
Put up another picture! I could do this all day.
Sheesh. Get over it. Beckett lost.
You won the Series, the Pats are undefeated and the Celtics started 5-0. Isn't that enough?
Yes, it is a factual question and under "ordinary American usage" Pedro is a Hispanic or Latino, not black. That may be incorrect but since ordinary American usage supposts the AP and ESPN, it is not an "obvious factual error", it is not an error at all.
6-0
Wanna argue about Hispanic/Latino next? I don't think there's a clear consensus there either. And when we're done with that, we can argue about whether Yasser Arafat was the same race as Yitzhak Rabin. "White" can get to be a pretty shaggy category too.
If we're going to have another picture, please make it Jeter. He's cute, even if he is a Yankee.
The US breaks out Latino/Hispanic by US racial norms. As racial inter-marriage increases, these norms are becoming increasingly inaccurate. The current norm is anyone with African ancestry is considered unofficially black. The census bureau looks for 1/16th to determine if someone has right as Native American. No idea if there is such a standard for African American.
Other countries in the America’s have multiple levels describing racial mixture. For example Brazil has Moreno for anyone with mixed race but increased melanin. Other normative combinations are mulatto (black/white), cafuzo (African / Amerindian), caboclo (white / Amerindian), and ainoco (asian / white) source wikipedia. The US tends to use biracial.
As a Halley Barry / Jessica Alba fan, interracial / cultural marriages should be encouraged whenever possible.
Another factual question is whether a cab driver who didn't recognize him and therefore was unaware of his ancestry, would pick him up after dark.
I'm not sure why exactly it is important
Because defining successful people with african ancestry as "not black" is intended to hide evidence of decrease ing skin-color based prejudice in the US. "African american" political groups don't want such evidence to be seen - it raises the risk of onlookers bringing up the unwelcome possibility that their constituents' own behavior might be the real root cause of their problems.
At this point I'd be happy if I could get people to stop referring to unambiguously black people with British passports as "African American." They aren't any kind of American. The question of multiracial people from other countries in the Americas is a lot trickier than that one, but even that one seems to be unsolvable in the current environment. Are there any British people reading this who can supply a current, courteous term to fill this gap?
True story: An elderly and VERY white, English lady is meeting, for the first time, the Black British born boyfriend of her very whit niece at a family gathering. She querys him with her upper English accent: "And what part of Africa are you from?"
Me? I'm a English-American Episcopalian. Hard to believe with a name like mine. I'm often mistaken for a Frenchman (which I vigorously disavow). Ilya and Eugene don't seem to have a problem being identified as Russian-Jews. They seem to rather like the identity. For me, my identity is as an American, the rest is B.S. and really not important.
His father is African-American, his mom is Caucasian.
This post and the comments on it are just yet another example of why racial categories are nonsense. Is it skin color that carries the determining factor, or where one's last few generations had been living? Silly either way.
It seems odd to me too - but the way "black" is used in this context means non-hispanic black and has been used that way for years now. To jump on ESPN for this, now, is just silly.
I learned colors around kindergarten. The parts of Pedro Martinez that show in the picture are medium brown, excepting his eyes, teeth, lips, hair, etc. Only a mistaken person would say he was "black" in color. And, since Pedro is normally not identified as "Black" either in Boston nor in the Dominican, only a mistaken person would say he's Black. In Boston, a mistaken person that pushes his point with "obvious" and "serious" is typically called an "idiot". Just filling you in on the local lingo. Ilya, you don't seem like you've been in this country very long at all.
EV, there really aren't many people of mixed Afro-Carib-Spaniard ancestry, or whatever Dominicans are, in either Haiti or old-line Alabama. So you're not really talking about anybody. Usually, EV, you are one that takes a descriptivist line on language, but here you're bucking the tide. Why is that?
If they really want to focus on the racial question, maybe they should use the Nuremburg Laws as template for determining who is "black" and who is not.
Does one drop of sub-saharan african blood make one black? Or does one have to be the descendant of african slaves in what his now the US to be black? How much does culture matter?
The inanity of this debate demonstrates why nearly all of this racial identity check box stuff is crap.
New York State
RACE
One race. . . . . . . 18,386,275 96.9
White . . . . . . . . 12,893,689 67.9
Black or African . . 3,014,385 15.9
Amer Indian and Alaska Native . 82,461 0.4
Asian . . . . . . . . . 1,044,976 5.5
Asian Inddian . . . . . 251,724 1.3
Chinese. . . .. . . . . . 424,774 2.2
Filipino . . . . . . . . . 81,681 0.4
Japanese. . . . . . . . . 37,279 0.2
Korean. . . . . . . . . . 119,846 0.6
Vietnamese. . . . . . . . 23,818 0.1
Other Asian . . . . . . . 105,854 0.6
Native Hawaii and Other Pac Isl 8,818
NativeHawaiian. . . . . . . . . 1,684
Guamanian or Chamorro . . . . . 1,931
Samoan. . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,475
OtherPacificIslander . . . . . 3,728
Some other race . . . . . 1,341,946 7.1
Two or more races . . . . 590,182 3.1
Perhaps not Afro-Carib-Spaniard, but Creole people are Afro-Franco-Native, or Afro-Spaniard-Native.
Homer Plessy was of 1/8th "african" blood according to the opinion, but if you see a picture of him, he looks a fair bit darker.
Does that make him "black" or "creole?"
People have pretty much said it already, but I think the key problem here is people use two different systems. Although it is a cultural identity, "black" or "African American" refers mostly to skin color. "Hispanic" refers to an ethno-linguistic group.
you can self-identify as martian but it doesn't change reality.
whether or not one is hispanic says exactly ZERO about whether or not one is or isn't black.
they are neither mutually exclusive, nor correlated.
TONS of hispanic blacks in cuba.
all the ['race is a social construct' arguments aside, black is a race. hispanic isn't.
we decided (for whatever reason) to group people who are from spanish speaking cultures into a word called "hispanic".
fwiw, we do the same with french speakers, we just odn't use it as often "francophone."
There are a lot of "black" major league baseball players, but very few of them are from the USA. Most are from Caribbean countries. That doesn't make them less black, it just means they aren't from here.
The bottom line is that this entire discussion/argument just further illustrates the stupidity and uselessness of categorizing people by the color of their skin, which is why it should stop.
Professional baseball is about as pure of a meritocracy as you're likely to find in this country or anywhere (players anyway). We should celebrate that fact and not get bogged down in nonsense like "he's the first [race/ethnicity] to win since..." stories.
Yep. But then in Boston, a black person is often called . . . well, I won't repeat the word. I mean, Boston-proper gave George Wallace a plurality for president in 1968, whereas he came in a very distant third here. So we don't like to look to Boston for guidance on these matters.
But the fact that East-Coasters aren't as nice as we Hoosiers doesn't really affect the matter at hand, I suppose.
...is the best comment here, and should outright embarrass Somin and Volokh.
And making the above obvious would be the "culture war-ish feeling" reason for this post.
Well, OK I guess. But I will NOT be cajoled into thinking of Ty Cobb as a "person." He lacked at least four of the key components.
bittern--You said "wicked good." You ARE from the Hub!
(I pronounce our state capital "In-dee-an-A-puh-lis," not "In-dee-uh--NA-poe-lis." So I'm clealry from *here.*)
Millions of Africans were brought to Spain's colonies in the New World and you claim that nobody with a Spanish surname can be "African American"?
The word ESPN (And I) used was "black," not "African-American." There are plenty of blacks in the world - including Pedro - who are not African-American or indeed Americans of any kind.
I lived in boston for 20 years, and I doubt that very many Bostonians would deny that Pedro is black (though he is ALSO Hispanic and Dominican as well). However, I also enjoy it when morons try to buttress their points by engaging in silly immigrant-bashing or trying to attack me for not having lived in the country long enough.
And for those of you who do not regularly interact with the hispanic community, they despise being called black, no matter how dark skinned they are. I used to live in Mississippi, and I've never encountered anti-black racism quite like that from our hispanic friends.
This is especially true of people from the Dominican Republic which shares the island of hispaniola with Haiti which operates as a conspicuous divide between a third world country with some obvious african heritage in the native population of their blood and a third world country that is infinitely poorer, disease ravaged, crime stricken and virually 100% inhabited by slave descendants (effectively a west african country in the carribean).
Sheffield (and some of hte articles in questions) specifically lamented the relative decline of American black players, and did not claim that black Hispanics aren't "black." To the extent that some of hte articles may have simply conflated being black with being African-American, they committed the same mistake as this ESPN article. The fact that more than one article contains a given mistake doesn't make it right.
Sheffield (and many of the articles in questions) specifically lamented the relative decline of AFRICAN-AMERICAN players, and did not claim that black Hispanics aren't "black." To the extent that some of the articles may have simply conflated being black with being African-American, they committed the same mistake as this ESPN piece. The fact that more than one article contains a given mistake doesn't make it right.
Agreed. That's why I listed it as African/African-American. Even those aren't perfect (I recall that an Egyptian-born friend of mine in high school was scolded for submitting an application and showing up to interview for a scholarship program offered for African Americans. They thought he was being funny, he thought they were being accurate). Still, "European" and "African" (and Asian or Latin American) work better than black, white and yellow.
We're intelligent people, we should move beyond the crayon box descriptions that worked for us as toddlers.
But you and I agree on baseball. So we are still bretheren.
THOUGHT EXPERIMENT: When Afro-Caribbeans travelled to the Old South to play spring training games, which BATHROOMS and WATERFOUNTAINS did they use?
WOW! This sentence should drive up the VC in the READING-LEVEL SURVEY! It must be translated from German or something.
What I really want to know is whether the guy is Jewish or we have some colorable claim which would allow us to claim him. Maybe we could find out whether his Y chromosome was some of the genetic markers more common among those with Jewish forebears, or some mitochondrial DNA to try to match him up with someone Jewish in his maternal line of descent. It is sometimes surprising to learn that some who self-identify as black have equal or greater claim to being a Jew (e.g., Lanie Gaunier).
Or maybe it's just the case that as an Indians fan, I'm "paranoid" . . .
In Bean-town, if you get the other guy to give you the finger, it means you win. We both win. Yay.
Thanks to none other than Cap Anson, the player-manager of my team (the Cubs), and an alumnus of my university (ND). Boy, how proud I must feel about this, huh?
I am aware of this fact but didn't mention it because it wasn't relevant to the post. If you really want to nitpick it, I merely said "prior to 1947," not AT ALL TIMES prior to 1947. Also, the major leagues did not come to their current form of organization until around 1903 (when the National League forged an agreement with the upstart American League). In the 1880s, when a few black players played in the then major leagues, there were several competing leagues with separate schedules and organizations.