In his early days, Eddie Murphy was a funny man.
In his early years as a stand-up comedian, he was hysterical in “Delirious”, and his sketch abut going to Texas with something of a chip on his shoulder is very funny.
Times haven’t changed much since then it seems.
For instance, Serena Williams is apparently tested for performance-enhancing drugs far more than any other female tennis player.
Of all the possible reasons that might be, she has today insinuated it’s because she’s black.
We can probably clear this right up.
Who should we test for performance-enhancing drugs?
Well, we can probably exclude everyone that isn’t performing, for a start. Unless we want to start testing members of the audience to see if their over-enthusiastic cheering is giving the player an unfair advantage?
“COME ON TIM!!!!!!!”
No.
We are trying to ascertain whether the players are using drugs, so it seems wise to start with the players.
We could spend a lot of money testing them all.
Or we could test them at random.
But wait.
We would also like to know if a player using drugs was actually winning tournaments. A second layer of defence, so to speak. In case the random test failed to catch them.
Of course if we did that, anyone who won repeatedly would get tested a lot more than those that didn’t.
But yes, the most successful female tennis player in the history of the sport is probably right – they are probably testing her because she’s black.
Eddie was right – a black man still can’t have a suitcase.
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In some sports the winners are always automatically drug tested, which makes sense. It’s how Ben Johnson was caught i memory serves
Serena gets tested more than Venus, even relative to their performance. She also gets tested more than white women adjusted for performance. But someone will probably claim that the worry is about competitors who perform better than predicted by the computer programme - so Rocky Marciano should been tested before and after every fight.
Definitely discrimination but not necessarily racial - could be jealousy.
I have never been drug-tested despite my erratic* performances (if I had been I should have shown caffeine, possibly also alcohol) in thirty-odd years and nearly a thousand races/jumps/throws. So someone has categorised me as trivial low-risk.
I might think that an intelligent person might think Serena was low-risk after she had tested clean hundreds of times in succession, but "intelligent" and "bureaucrat" are not synonyms.
* For some years my fastest half-marathon was the second-half of the London; my only measured mile is more than half-a-minute slower than my best time for 5 miles and nearly half-a-minute slower than my best time for 10 miles; my best 20 mile time is slower than my best marathon time; sundry others, but the next one of which I was thinking would tend to identify me for those who have not already done so.