America Is Not For Everybody

Sports are unusual in this country because they reward a select few high achievers with extreme upward mobility at a young age. Scan the roster of your favorite pro team, and you will find somebody who was scrounging for meals as a teenager and in the top 0.01 percent of earners in their 20s. They have lived both the roughest and finest of American lives, and yet many of us tell them to stick to sports. The request is foolish and self-defeating. We should be begging them to share their experiences. If we do that, we can confront the painful truth that America is not currently constructed to benefit everybody.

The tragedy unfolding in Minneapolis this week is painful and heartbreaking, but it…