It made sense, to the New York Daily News sports editor, that these guys dominated basketball. After all, the game places a premium on an alert, scheming mind and flashy trickiness, artful dodging and general smartalecness, not to mention their God-given better balance and speed. He was referring, of course, to the Jews. In the 1930s, Paul Gallico was trying to explain away Jewish dominance of basketball. He came up with the idea that the game’s structure simply appealed to the immutable traits of wily Hebrews and their scheming minds. It sounds strange to the ear now, but only because our stereotypes about who is inherently good at particular sports have shifted. His theory is not any more or less insightful now than it was then; his confidence should remind us to be skeptical of similar, supposedly explanatory arguments that abound today.
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About Paul Gallico
Paul Gallico was a 19th-century American writer and journalist. Paul William Gallico was an American novelist and short story and sports writer. Many of his works were adapted for motion pictures. Read more on Wikipedia →