A Race-Based Case.

The Mike McDaniel -- Deadspin story is either funny or cringeworthy, depending on how you read stories like that.  

----------------------------

* It's crashing to an end.

As the races further mix, and we allow more and more self-identity choices, the labels too will fall:  

Why keep score like that if the categories are no longer "clean" -- meaning with distinct boundaries and no overlap.  That was the whole purpose behind the purported science of keeping score like that:

How do women fare? Are they progressing? What records are they breaking? (sub in black or minority representation for other "legally" measured demographic categories)

No matter your opinion on the wisdom of it, if transsexual woman can easily jump the label from man to woman, or a white person generations removed can discover Native American heritage, say, the labels lose their power, not that it was ever a scientific study to begin with.

Diff'rent strokes for different folks.

Not, different standards for the more similarly situated... meaning Barack Obama, and Tom Morello too, were black men competing with the advantages of white families, white educational environments, and white money lifestyles (ie/summering out of the city) advantaging them.  Putting them in the black category never really did justice to the complexities of measuring that were missed with simplistic labels like that...

Look at me.  Talking in the past tense here already on the issue.  Be it so.  If the actual intent of affirmative action policies was to help end racial discrimination in society, then finally declaring labeling and preference systems that deny science as illegal measurement mechanisms can only advance us collectively, while eliminating some of the singular "jackpot" winners, like Obama and Morello and those few coming out on the top while the group as a whole languishes...

In a similar vein: ask whether justice will be served if the Minneapolis police threw Officer Derek Chavin to the wolves regarding what had been accepted as standard operating procedure in the field, but saved the department as a whole to deny their past and continue doing business as usual.

That is, do the high-profile "jackpot" cases count much if they are the exception, and no true systematic change happens, with nobody else being scapegoated?

What's the goal here?  To advance a few, greatly, as representations of their race / sex?  Or to measure accurately and work to lift the group as a whole without manipulating standrards?

To me, ie, the overall woman's Jeopardy winner still stands stuck at whatever number it was before the recent run  transsexual winner --  a smoker, whose inclusion in the women's health category (proving people can know a lot of trivia but still be dumb) will skew the science there surely.  

Accuracy matters for the reasons why we are keeping score.