Erika Denise Edwards is the author of the book "Hiding in Plain Sight: Black Women, the Law and the Making of a White Argentine Republic" and an associate professor at the University of Texas at El Paso. She is also the author of a baffling article in the Washington Post titled Why doesn’t Argentina have more Black players in the World Cup?
I shit thee not - the professor actually has a bee in her bonnet about this baffling question. And to make her impossible case, she digs deep into Argentine history, although the article was already once corrected because somehow initially the author made a math mistake that thought that 149,493 divided by 46 million was one percent... cough... cough... the article has now been corrected.
Dear professor Edwards, the reason that there are no black players in the Argentine national team is that for a soccer-crazy nation like Argentina, only the best of some of the best soccer players on the planet make it to that team. I can assure you that if there was a black Messi somewhere in Argentina with an Argentine passport, he would be on that team regardless of color.
Of that 149, 493 black Argentines, we would need a subset of men aged between 18-35 to sort of be able to even be counted. The miniscule mathematical possibility is now so low, that it takes a deep breath to try to figure out why some idiot at the WaPo thought that this was a valid question.
As one commenter notes: "For the same reason why there are no White or Asian or Latino players in nearly 50 African national teams: the demographics aren't there."
Another commenter strikes the article dead and demolishes the author's thesis in a few simple words: "Can’t say for Argentina’s FIFA team, but superimposing US racial categories on a Latin American country is an intellectual blunder the author should have easily avoided, almost the same mistake the racists make..."
Perhaps Professor Edwards needs to refresh her American-centric mindset, racialized by Americaness, deeply different from Latin American culture, and take a deep look at her flawed outlook and unsupported logic on this subject. I recommend that she starts with Jorge Luis Borges who once noted that "The Argentinian is an Italian who speaks Spanish, thinks French, and would like to be English.”
Shame on the WaPo for publishing such a silly article. And yet, there's part of me which "hears" what the Prof. is saying, although her arrow errs in her aim - I am talking to you, the rest of Latin America! That's who the Professer needs to aim her arrow at instead of the New World's "whitest" country! Cough... cough...
PS - Latin American newspapers are having a lot of fun with the Professor's article.
