Edmund says : "I have to admit I've never understood why there's such a racial disparity in QB, although part of it may be because schools like Howard and Tulane remain in a de facto segregation as a result of the HCASC system. " Part of the disparity may have this at its root. HBCs, particularly the most prestigious ones such as Howard, are attractive to the sort of African-Americans who might be interested in this activity. (Tulane, BTW, is not an HBC.) I admit I am at a loss to figure why, for instance, I never see products of Banneker HS (the only competitive HS team in this area I am aware of that is or tends to be majority black ) on the college circuit while I constantly see alumni of, say, Thomas Jefferson, Georgetown Day, or Eleanor Roosevelt around. Edmund also says : "Certainly on a high school level it's much less pronounced, although still worrisome (Washington, DC is demographically something like 70% black, but most of the heavy-hitting teams come from magnet schools in Maryland and Virginia which demonstrate classic race/wealth disparity)." Well, the population of the District of Columbia itself might be 70% black (I think it's actually a little lower than that nowadays), the Metro area as a whole has somewhat different demographics, particularly if one includes the mostly-white outer ring of suburbs (say, Manassas, VA or Fredrick County, MD) Some of it is undoubtedly wealth disparity and for that matter parental education levels, which are probably among the highest in the nation in DC's upscale suburbs and yet likely typical for disadvantaged inner cities among the poorer residents, creating an even wider disparity than usual. I think we've been more inclusive in question material over the past few years, as many tournaments have made considerable efforts to incorporate "non-Western" and/or "minority" content into distributions. So I'm skeptical that such efforts would have the effect of fixing such a disparity. There are some big forces at work here (which to save space I'll decline to adress in this post) that are probably beyond the control of the quiz bowl communiuty. I am not saying we should be insensitive, nor that we shouldn't encoruage participation by members of historically under-represented demographic groups in QB on an individual (or team) basis. I'm afraid, however, that creating a QB circuit that "looks like America" or some such thing is probably a pipe dream. -Tim Young
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