How race unlevelled US playing fields

I came across this article a while back about the Barca academy in the US:
http://www.espn.com/soccer/club/bar...nd-how-barcelona-deliver-their-global-message
You can certainly argue they're here to get their share of the youth sports $, but I found it refreshing that they don't suggest/promise "pathway" to anything. When asked if there is a path for US Barca academy kids to go to Barca, they candidly answered: "We are not there to scout players,"................"It's unlikely we will find them." ............"if you saw the La Masia [real Barca academy in Spain] U-14s against ours, you would understand very quickly why they're not bringing them over."

Nice article but too bad in their us "academy" like residential program they parntered with at casa grande is - 70-80k annually pay to play program for the very wealthy.
https://www.barcaacademy.com
 
Nice article but too bad in their us "academy" like residential program they parntered with at casa grande is - 70-80k annually pay to play program for the very wealthy.
https://www.barcaacademy.com


I know that part of Arizona well. We go to a ranch near there every other spring. I'm wondering what the summer camp is like....by mid summer we can't even take out the horses for a ride after 9 am because it would be too cruel on the horses. o_O (hey horses needed a mention too!)
 
I know that part of Arizona well. We go to a ranch near there every other spring. I'm wondering what the summer camp is like....by mid summer we can't even take out the horses for a ride after 9 am because it would be too cruel on the horses. o_O (hey horses needed a mention too!)
The genetic diversity from horse to horse is ... ohh nevermind.
 
how do the kids in brazil that play on the streets and not on fields get so good? ----same argument for baseball. kids here say the white kids can afford new gloves and bats etal. you feel sorry for them until you see the amount of dominicans (who are so much poorer) make their own gloves out of milk carton make it in MLB

pay to play? gas, grass or ass nobody rides for free

most places have you pay up front, you are not special
 
You just answered your question. First, the match you were looking for had nothing to do with race as your condition occurs in all of the so-called races. Second, there is no dispute that a population within a limited geographic area tends to have more genetic similarities due to inherited traits. These inherited traits follow random rules and become diverse and/or similar. The closer we are to cousins, the more likely traits will be randomly similar.

HLA markers are complex, half come from each parent. Thus, a brother and sister have a 25% chance of being close enough. The HLA markers let your body know that the cells are yours v. foreign. The match simply needs to be close enough for your body to accept the cells, if not close enough your body says "Wooooaaaa, who the f' are you ... die, die, die!!!" to the new cells.

Unlike bloodtypes where there are 4 major types, and we simply fall into one of the buckets. HLA is far more complex HLA-A,HLA-B and HLA-DR. There are many different specific HLA proteins within each of these three groups. (For example, there are 59 different HLA-A proteins, 118 different HLA-B and 124 different HLA-DR). The potential combinations are great 59 x 118 x 124 = 863,288, but fortunately we don't need exact matches.

Because these combinations are inherited there is simply a greater chance of finding close enough matches within a biologically related family because we are dealing with fewer combinations from the larger pool. The farther we move out from siblings the more diverse set of proteins we have. But ... we can find HLA matches within different geographic/ethnic groups just the same.

There must be some sort of confusion:

Regarding your first statement: The match of stem cells has nothing to do with AML Leukemia or any other disease that a stem cell transplant is used to treat and I wasn't trying to make that link.

As stated on the Donor Bank website, you are more likely to find a close enough match from someone with your ethnic background. That seems to go against your point that "inherited traits follow random rules". Why would finding an appropriate match be more likely within your ethnic background if inherited traits follow random rules? For me and my friend, the close enough match was outside of the family. The likelihood of finding a match within your family is 30% because you received different combinations of your parent's ethnic backgrounds. I guess that would follow the random rule but at the core it would appear "race" (or biological element) plays a role.

While you are correct you can find an HLA match within different geographic/ethnic groups the likelihood of finding a good match within different geographic/ethnic groups is not that high.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa1311707 The study shows rates of finding suitably HLA-matched grafts in the NMDP adult-donor registry, with donor availability taken into consideration as follows:

"Most patients will have a 7/8 or 8/8 HLA-matched unrelated adult donor available in the registry. The likelihood of finding an available 8/8 HLA-matched donor is 75% for white patients of European descent (hereafter referred to as white Europeans) but only 46% for white patients of Middle Eastern or North African descent. The likelihood of finding an 8/8 HLA-matched adult donor for other groups is lower and varies with racial and ethnic background. For black Americans of all ethnic backgrounds, the probabilities are 16 to 19%; for Hispanics, Asians, Pacific Islanders, and Native Americans, they range between 27% and 52%."

At the core it would appear "race" (or biological element) plays a role.

This is a good opportunity for me to encourage folks (especially folks of various ethnic groups) to register to be a donor. A simple blood test can put you on the bank and if you get a call, it takes a few days and you can save a person's life. While I had my stem cells harvested, I did my taxes. It isn't that hard! https://bethematch.org/support-the-cause/donate-bone-marrow/join-the-marrow-registry/
 
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@MWN I appreciated your input and observation in such a delicate topic as "race". A few years ago I remember during Jackie Robinson day ESPN goons talking about how baseball doesn't do enough in the inner cities and blah blah blah, and that the sport is so prevalent for whites. Never mind that white people are a minority in baseball which a combine amounts of dominicans, venezuelans, cubans and puertoricans have more players than white there. But then that's just mainstream media and their liberal agenda. Same thing I see here, blaming the failures into the "lack of effort" into the inner cities. Which it might be true or not, but that's not USSF biggest problem or if a problem at all.

In response to the HS Free venue. The NFL and mostly MLB takes advantage of these platform to freely recruit/scout players and manage to glamorize them in the background. Same thing for the NBA with NCAA. Notice that none of these leagues own, control nor affiliate to these scholar entities, however they exploit their value, which USSF rather get their cut from club soccer instead of glamorizing High School play.

Switching to MLS. Their business model which was great 10-15 years ago in the pre-Beckham era, is not today. The game has grown, more high quality athletes are expose or have play soccer at one point, but money drives them away from soccer. Why would anybody wants to play soccer professionally for less than a 100k/yr, when in another sports minimum is somewhere triple that. MLS execs are banking 8-9 figures salaries and that's the problem. Greed at the top, and disregarding the product.

Just imagine that players that Pulisic would had play a year with Philadelphia Union and they flip him for 10-20 millions to Dortmund and this would be the norm among top youth players coming into the league. MLS would had found the solution to have the means to pay for better rosters and create an incentive to players to start in MLS. Strategic thinking has to be done right, not all money is good money!
 
Never mind that white people are a minority in baseball which a combine amounts of dominicans, venezuelans, cubans and puertoricans have more players than white there.

Fact check. According to the Major League Baseball Racial & Gender Report Card (RGRC): With 42.5 percent of all players being of color, Major League Baseball has reached an all-time high among player diversity. However, there is a concern around baseball about the relatively small and declining number of African-American players which was only 7.7 percent on Opening Day 2017.

Link: http://www.tidesport.org/mlb-rgrc.html
 
There must be some sort of confusion:

Regarding your first statement: The match of stem cells has nothing to do with AML Leukemia or any other disease that a stem cell transplant is used to treat and I wasn't trying to make that link.

As stated on the Donor Bank website, you are more likely to find a close enough match from someone with your ethnic background. That seems to go against your point that "inherited traits follow random rules". Why would finding an appropriate match be more likely within your ethnic background if inherited traits follow random rules? For me and my friend, the close enough match was outside of the family. The likelihood of finding a match within your family is 30% because you received different combinations of your parent's ethnic backgrounds. I guess that would follow the random rule but at the core it would appear "race" (or biological element) plays a role.

While you are correct you can find an HLA match within different geographic/ethnic groups the likelihood of finding a good match within different geographic/ethnic groups is not that high.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa1311707 The study shows rates of finding suitably HLA-matched grafts in the NMDP adult-donor registry, with donor availability taken into consideration as follows:

"Most patients will have a 7/8 or 8/8 HLA-matched unrelated adult donor available in the registry. The likelihood of finding an available 8/8 HLA-matched donor is 75% for white patients of European descent (hereafter referred to as white Europeans) but only 46% for white patients of Middle Eastern or North African descent. The likelihood of finding an 8/8 HLA-matched adult donor for other groups is lower and varies with racial and ethnic background. For black Americans of all ethnic backgrounds, the probabilities are 16 to 19%; for Hispanics, Asians, Pacific Islanders, and Native Americans, they range between 27% and 52%."

At the core it would appear "race" (or biological element) plays a role.

This is a good opportunity for me to encourage folks (especially folks of various ethnic groups) to register to be a donor. A simple blood test can put you on the bank and if you get a call, it takes a few days and you can save a person's life. While I had my stem cells harvested, I did my taxes. It isn't that hard! https://bethematch.org/support-the-cause/donate-bone-marrow/join-the-marrow-registry/

I'm not clear on your first comment, but I think I understand where the confusion is.

I was not referring to HLA in the sole context of stem cell replacement. As you know, HLA matching refers to the antigens of the human leukocyte antigen (HLA) system and presents a major barrier to acceptance of transplants. The medical community is still figuring out which parts of the HLA system can be ignored and which are critical to acceptance of foreign cells from another living organism. In the beginning, the assumption was that each mismatch for HLA antigens had equal weight. Research in the context kidney transplants has shown that we can pretty much ignore HLA-A, that HLA-B is important, but HLA-DR is critical and responsible for most rejections.

Depending on the transplant procedure, we can get away with greater mismatch. To complicate this, blood transfusions (and multiple pregnancies) are known to create HLA sensitivites when recipients have developed antibodies to several HLA molecules, making finding matches even that more difficult because the matches need to be almost perfect. When it comes to stem cell transplantation the margin for error is much less, than say transplanting a kidney. The gold standard is an HLA identical donor, but finding donors with a single-allele mismatch has worked pretty well.

Finally, I do want to clarify that there are many more combinations than I wrote above (I over simplified it). When you refer to 7/8 or 8/8 you are referring to matching HLA -A, -B, -C, and DRB1 between donors. When we are referring to 9/10 or 10/10 we are adding HLA -DQB1 to the mix.

Race v. Ethnicity v. Family
Based on what you wrote, I assumed we all understood that Race is not the same as ethnicity. My statement, Race has no scientific validity given the lack of genetic diversity between 1 individual and another from a different so-called race and merely a social construct attacks the concept that Race is an anachronism from days when we all believed the earth was flat. White/Caucasian, Black/Negro, Brown/Hispanic, Red/Native-American, Yellow/Asian are too imprecise and too broad of categories that do more harm than good and we (folks that understand the earth is a sphere and can put humans into space) should replace the concept with more precise definitions that are driven by socioeconomic considerations when referring to social and political issues.

Ethnicity is much more precise and takes into consideration "culture" of people in a specific geographic region, including their language, heritage, religion and customs. Members of ethnic groups tend to conform to many of the same practices. The biology of ethnicity does have a scientifically valid role in both biological research and societal issues.

Family is a finite subset of ethnicity, but can implicate multiple ethnic groups as a result of cross-breeding between ethnic groups, thus, it deserves its own status in both science and social research.

The concept of "socioeconomics" to define groups takes into account social factors, such as, ethnicity and community participation and economics. Economic status is actually pretty darn important and it get's virtually ignored when we get lazy and use terms like White, Black, Asian. When we view various social issues through a socioeconomic lens we strip away irrelevant factors and are in a much better position to properly analyze the problem. The failure of the author/reporter/editorializer of the original article cited didn't do this, which is why I said his article lacked research and was lazy reporting.

Ethnicity, Family and HLA
Coming full circle, yes there is a biological significance to finding HLA matches starting at the family and then moving up the ethnic chain as various ethnic groups will have related family connections and greater chances that HLA factors will have recombined into the needed combination for the individual in need. So, I second what you wrote:

This is a good opportunity for me to encourage folks (especially folks of various ethnic groups) to register to be a donor. A simple blood test can put you on the bank and if you get a call, it takes a few days and you can save a person's life. While I had my stem cells harvested, I did my taxes. It isn't that hard! https://bethematch.org/support-the-cause/donate-bone-marrow/join-the-marrow-registry/
 
@MWN I appreciated your input and observation in such a delicate topic as "race". A few years ago I remember during Jackie Robinson day ESPN goons talking about how baseball doesn't do enough in the inner cities and blah blah blah, and that the sport is so prevalent for whites. Never mind that white people are a minority in baseball which a combine amounts of dominicans, venezuelans, cubans and puertoricans have more players than white there. But then that's just mainstream media and their liberal agenda. Same thing I see here, blaming the failures into the "lack of effort" into the inner cities. Which it might be true or not, but that's not USSF biggest problem or if a problem at all.

In response to the HS Free venue. The NFL and mostly MLB takes advantage of these platform to freely recruit/scout players and manage to glamorize them in the background. Same thing for the NBA with NCAA. Notice that none of these leagues own, control nor affiliate to these scholar entities, however they exploit their value, which USSF rather get their cut from club soccer instead of glamorizing High School play.

Switching to MLS. Their business model which was great 10-15 years ago in the pre-Beckham era, is not today. The game has grown, more high quality athletes are expose or have play soccer at one point, but money drives them away from soccer. Why would anybody wants to play soccer professionally for less than a 100k/yr, when in another sports minimum is somewhere triple that. MLS execs are banking 8-9 figures salaries and that's the problem. Greed at the top, and disregarding the product.

Just imagine that players that Pulisic would had play a year with Philadelphia Union and they flip him for 10-20 millions to Dortmund and this would be the norm among top youth players coming into the league. MLS would had found the solution to have the means to pay for better rosters and create an incentive to players to start in MLS. Strategic thinking has to be done right, not all money is good money!

I have to say your comment is a bit of a dichotomy (railing against liberal media and then greed of MLS owners/execs). Taking it all together, we probably agree on the fundamentals but disagree on how to get there. My perspective is:

Money and profit are the drivers for all entertainment in the U.S. Viewing soccer or sports for that matter as immune from basic capitalism takes a person down the wrong path. Attempting to put any entertainment vehicle (music, sports, movies, or stripping for that matter) into a non-profit motivated endeavor will result in ultimate failure if the goal is growth.

With regard to HS soccer. Its unprofitable because no viable market exists at this time and won't given the international market.
  1. Colleges rarely are able to self-fund soccer programs through ticket sales and there is no viable TV market for college soccer, thus, no media buys/sells. Growing the college game is a bad investment. To make matters worse, the market place for athletes to play soccer at the college level is much more consolidated and fertile at the "club" level. A college coach can make a single trip to a college showcase and acquire an entire recruiting class from a single trip. H.S. soccer game do not afford the same opportunity. As such, investors (i.e. colleges) should ignore HS soccer.

  2. In addition, athletes that excel at the sport typically receive 1/2 scholarships to play at the college level. The bigger problem is that from a professional perspective, college soccer is viewed as detrimental to professional development. The NCAA enforced limits on training retard development, especially when compared to international players of similar ages. Top level professional teams and leagues (International) target talent at a much earlier age (12-15) for acceptance into their academy programs.
With regard to HS football and HS basketball. These sports are profitable for two reasons.
  1. The next level for HS football and basketball players is college. Colleges actually make money selling tickets and TV rights to college football and basketball games. While "club" basketball exists, "club" football does not, thus, H.S. football is really the only viable pool of talent. Moreover, the physically violent nature of football games means that its nearly impossible for players to play year round without breaking down. HS football and basketball remain viable investments and colleges (the actual consumer of these athletes) should continue to monitor, foster and develop this incubator of talent. High performing athletes are compensated typically with full scholarships to play both sports.

  2. The NFL recruits from the ranks of college athletes, thus, HS athletes wishing to play in college find their most profitable path through college. Moreover, given the billions of dollars generated by the sport, pay is excellent for athletes making it to this level.
With regard to the MLS, I simply disagree with your assessment that it has matured to the point of being ready to compete for high-level soccer talent. The MLS's business model is that of base survival. It has abandoned market driven economics by adopting a single entity "pyramid scheme" operating model. It funds profitability through license fees. The salaries of execs and owners are a drop in the bucket and inconsequential to improving player salaries. Once MLS teams begin filling stadiums with 50,000 to 60,000 people regularly and have annual media sells of $500M or more (currently its at $60M), then it will be ready to compete on the international stage. Until that time, its nothing more than a semi-pro league.

If the goal is to improve the National Team then the USSF should focus on moving club players overseas for higher level training and play as quickly as possible. Let the MLS figure out its own formula. Empower the 2nd level (USL) to adopt a business model that works, but the USSF is simply the regulatory body, it has no direct say in how the MLS (a for profit entity) will operate and it should not. If the USSF were to make any changes to the structure of professional soccer it starts with the USSF getting off its ass and agreeing to administer the FIFA Training and Solidarity fees. Without these fees going to clubs, investors should avoid soccer in the U.S. as nothing more than a novelty.
 
Thanks for the detailed information. I went on a research bender yesterday and realized that I was very naive to what I was embarking on and the sensitivity of the "race" debate. Having said that, I learned a ton and recognize that it is best to keep my thoughts and questions to myself.
 
Ultimately, the "human race" (homo sapiens) succeeded in supplanting the neanderthals as the dominate homo species. All of us sprang from the original homo sapiens in Africa about 195,000 years ago (which means technically we are all "African-Americans" assuming one lives in America). What we typically define as "race" is nothing more than subjectively picking a few diverse phenotypes and calling it good. The subjective picking is flawed and has little to no scientific relevance. Biologically, the species to too genetically diverse to categorize ourselves into meaningful racial buckets.

C’mon that’s PC BS. The Olympic 100m final is some black dude from Jamaica vs some black dude from America vs some black dude from Trinidad vs black dude from England vs some black dude from France.

The ping pong was some Chinese immigrant from Germany vs. Chinese immigrant from Netherlands vs. Chinese dude from Singapore vs Chinese dude from China.

Spelling bee is some Indian kid from India vs Indian kid from Michigan vs Indian kid from New Jersey vs Indian kid from Louisiana, etc.

The marathon is a bunch of Kenyans vs Kenyan immigrant to England vs Kenyan immigrant to USA.

There’s tons of other examples.
 
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