Are talented athletes the least discriminated against due to skin color? I know wealth makes skin color not matter as much but even celebrities get stopped by cops if they're the "wrong" color. Why?

not sure why people are racist but its wrong

Some people have the privilege of working in domains (professional athletics, entertainment, etc.) which are about as truly meritocratic as anything in our society can be. While there are still stereotypes (e.g. White Guys Can't Jump) and some double standards, for the most part if you can sell tickets, sell airtime, and/or win championships, people working in those domains are rewarded, regardless of their skin color.

However, outside of those domains, they go back to just being another Nig....er, person of interest, and they get treated just like other Nig....er, people of interest. Having been a professional sports fan most of my life, I have heard ***many*** athletes complain about being harrassed by law enforcement (because a black man driving a fancy carHAS to be a drug dealer, right?).

Some of this is because of what economist Tim Harford calls Rational Racism. If you're a cop, a 7-11 had been robbed, and the only possible suspects are three young men with backwards baseball caps and a 45-year-old insurance salesman in a suit, you're going to devote the vast majority of your effort investigating the young punks.

Unfortunately, what happens when that logic gets applied to a community as large and diverse as African-Americans, even though it may be that 90% of the criminals a cop encounters are African-Americans, 99%+ of the African-Americans he encounters ARE NOT CRIMINALS...and they start to resent being treated as though they were. That's at the core of the cop-black problem in America.

I agree with every word you wrote pearl. Thank you for your reply m'dear! :)

Mahalo for your thoughtful analysis OS. I guess some things will never change. :(