What if Michael Vick was white? - ESPN reaches for new lows...

dmurph:

Posts like that represent everything I miss about a version of SportsJournalists.com I'm often told never existed.

Well done.

 

That articulates my feeling pretty well. It's dressed up by specifically addressing the Vick situation, but basically it says "nobody would be in the situation they are in if they didn't grow up the way they did." A whole lot of words for a basically duh concept.

 

If posts like that had been SOP during my time here, I'd be blind by now.

 

Isn't this another nature-or-nurture sociological argument that can never be answered satisfactorily because it's always some of each? It's not as if all white athletes from suburbia have been Bill Bradley. The troubled find trouble.

 

For whatever it's worth, I actually have heard a lot of people throwing that "what if he were white" thing around for the past couple years.

 

In the environment in which Vick was raised, does everyone participate in dogfighting? For those who may not, what is wrong with them? Did they somehow learn a different moral code while at summer camp one year? Maybe from a slow man while stuck at a bus stop for a really long time? What do you make of such cultural deviants?

 

Rational Thoughts 1, Snarky B.S. Response 0

 

Seriously, if Vick's culture is in play regarding what some believe to be justifiably moral actions, then how do you explain the moral code of those who grow up in the same environment and don't take part?

 

It may not be an irrational thought, but it's not a logical one. Not all children who grow up around phDs grow up to be academics. But you'd expect those who did to be more likely to be phDs than the Average Joe. Not all sons of coaches grow up to be coaches. But you'd expect those who were to be more likely to be coaches than the Average Joe, especially if they were in and around that environment all the time. Not all children of athletes grow up to be great athletes. But you'd expect those who grew up in that culture to be more likely to become athletes than the Average Joe.

 

So you expected Michael Vick to be a dog-killing criminal? Seems kinda racist.

 

I'm not sure if you're really backing the things you're writing, or if you're just trolling like someone suggested earlier.

 

I'm doing a lot of things, including waiting for an answer on what it is that makes people who grow up in a bad environment not do bad things. Are they an aberration? Why is their moral code different? Why doesn't the negative environment drive their actions?