(Headline Wealth) Louise Radnofsky is a sports reporter for the Wall Street Journal “with a particular interest in gymnastics and figure skating,” according to her bio. She also evidently has a particular interest in injecting financially exploitable racial grievance narratives into sports.
“Diversify or Die: The National Hockey League Has a Demography Problem,” blares the headline of her December 15, 2019 WSJ article.
It begins, “About a year ago, the National Hockey League brought in an outside expert to tell them about an existential threat. That expert was a demographer.
“William Frey, who works for the Washington, D.C. think tank Brookings Institution, conducted a couple of talks and a conference call for the league. He told them that by 2020, the U.S. Census is expected to show that two-fifths of the nation’s population identifies with a racial group other than white; and that sometime after 2040, there will be no racial majority in the country.”
How in the world does the NBA manage, with a glaringly non-representative 80% black roster, to attract large fan bases in the United States and even China? Professional basketball hasn’t diversified, and it’s far from dying!
But professional hockey has a “white guilt” button that can be pressed to extract resources to the financial enrichment of various “diversity” demographers, consultants, administrators, lawyers, lobbyists, and pressure groups.
Radnofsky continues, “The NHL, which had only 50 nonwhite players in the 2018-19 season, seemed to get the point. It kept going with ‘Hockey is for Everyone’ programs in 26 minority and low-income communities, and learn-to-play classes around the country. And it sent around a policy brief co-authored by Frey and Kimberly Davis, the league’s executive vice president for social impact, growth and legislative affairs…”
A string of events has put hockey’s attitudes toward race in an incredibly unflattering light. Now, a phenomenon the league had proactively sought to educate itself on is raising the stakes as the sport faces a broader moment of cultural reckoning. https://t.co/9jNYBLVm3d @WSJ
— Louise Radnofsky (@louiseradnofsky) December 15, 2019
