1) Nobody has been 'proven completely wrong' here. Why would you say such a thing? Ego? What am I complete;y wrong about---not to mention 'proven to be'? That a better man than Rose would apologize to Hill? That Duke is snobbish? That Jimmy Walker being an absentee dad is a FAR bigger deal than Duke not recruiting Rose?
2) Neither the Rose documentary nor Neil's intro to this thread set THE issue as 'Duke's Recruiting Practices'. Your insistence that it be just that that is amusing, in a myopic, egoentric kind of way. Please stop trying to control what the larger issues are.
3) Rose spent 1 year NOT being recruited by Duke. He spent his whole life not being loved by his dad. What's the bigger issue?

My take on Duke is that they are snobs. I don't believe my pedigree would pass muster with them. I don't sweat it. I know that none of us can fit in everywhere. The Duke snobbiness ISN'T racist-------it's classist... There is nothing that can be done about who some people consider 'their type of people'. There has been class division since the beginning of man. It's not going away. It would be nicer if more people were more inclusive of EVERYONE. At least it SOUNDS better... but the honest truth is that people ARE different. They have different ways, values, priorities. People have different sets of things they consider 'no-nos' and different things they let slide. Jalen Rose and the Fab 5 seemed to really enjoy themselves at Michigan. I don't know if they could've made a better choice for themselves. You want EVERYONE to want you/ like you as a child. But that's just not going to be. I've been in jobs and schools where I really didn't feel like I fit in. I found my niche and couldn't be happier. No anger. I can't control how anybody else values me. Duke valued Rose and 3 of the other Fab 5 less than the guys they recruited (including Webber).

You do what you can to take care of personal responsibilities and don't worry about who's 'kind of people' you aren't. I'm not Duke's king of people, either-----it doesn't make their recruiting practices criminal or mean they have to change them.

What has to change---and everyone to a man can actually inact this kind of chage---------is that people have to be responsible with their kids and be good, loving parents. That's something that can happen that we all can control.

These are all the black NBA players (outside of Hill, who we already know about) who played for Coach K (according to his website) at Duke. It is obviously far from a comprehensive, but offers some insight into the types of black players who go to Duke (I limited myself to NBA players because they had the most biographical information available). While we can quibble with how I might have chosen to define "middle class" or "predominantly white", it is clear that none came from poor or urban areas.

Again, this doesn't necessarily "prove" anything, as it is far from exhaustive and does not include white players (who may have come from equally privileged backgrounds). But it does prove interesting that Duke does not have a single NBA-caliber player from an urban area, when such a large share of NBA players grow up in that environment.

Two great posts. However, I would not be so quick to exclude race entirely from the conversation. While I agree that class seems to be the driving force, it'd be interesting to compare whether the class exclusion applies across the board or is unique to AA and/or other PoC. Many institutions (educational and otherwise) have well-defended class biases that only seem to manifest themselves when dealing with racial minorities. They have no problem taking poor or lower class whites, but suddenly "culture" and "fitting in" and other BS becomes issues when dealing with poor or lower class blacks or Hispanics.

4.) So you have a point that if Duke isn't recruiting the Jalen Rose's of the world, then someone else will. That's true, but how much better is that than, if my restaurant won't serve you than someone else will.

5.) You have a point about Michigan. That's bad. They need to do better. But they've tried. How so? By creating affirmative action programs for their law school to help minorities. These programs were so in favor of minorities that some actually got pissed and sued, leading to two famous Supreme Court cases:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grutter_v._Bollinger
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratz_v._Bollinger

Clearly Michigan has tried to help minorities.

1. But, I don't think this is a case of racism, but clearly a case of classism. If Duke was really racists, why would they even let in Hill in the first place, or the countless other A.A. Dukies. This was Rose's main argument, hey Hill comes from a different class than I do, and that's why Duke accepted him.

2. Duke doesn't have any Rhode Scholars. However, FSU football and Alabama football's teams have over the past couple of years. Myron Rolle, and Bama's Qb. You can't honestly think that the Duke's athletes are smart simply because they go to Duke. Jay Will graduated in communication (3 years) great. Emeka Okafor graduated in biology, who's smarter. Luol Deng and Kyrie Irving stayed and would have stayed for one year. Corey Maggette and Elton Brand left too.

So what does this prove? What evidence do you have that Duke basketball atheltes are smarter than their peers. Or is it simply their private school background which they were probably tutored through.

3. You're right Duke does have 10% A.A. students. But this isn't the point as those student couldhave grown up in the best of areas. More importantly, 37% of Duke's students are legacy students, meaning soemone in their family went to Duke. Does this mean that they perform better than others? No.

http://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/paper-trail/2008/09/09/duke-study-says-legacy-students-underachieve

So really Duke is recruiting kids from a specific class, who are not as smart as their peers in the classroom, giving suspicion that they weren't qualified in the first place.

As for Calipari or Tarkanian, I'm sure they would not turn away a Rhodes Scholar who could play basketball. If they did, that is a problem. But there is no evidence to suggest that they did. The absence of Rhodes Scholars on their team is not an indictment given that I'm sure 95% of coaches never had a Rhodes Scholar on their team.

As for the numbers, that is such a facile look at the situation as to be useless. You can't just a blanket comparison of the population at large and the populations in the colleges. The issue is far more complex than that. African-Americans are not evenly distributed across the nation. You are comparing a public and a private school. You are comparing a school that can use affirmative action to one that cannot.

Again, the question is not whether or not Duke or Coach K recruit black players (clearly they do, as they have had many blacks on the team); but whether Duke/Coach K limits the recruitment of black players (or players in general) to those coming from a certain socio-economic group or culture. If they are, that is incredibly concerning. Even if race is not a factor, but if they limit themselves to kids from two-parent homes or suburban schools or wealthy families, it would be incredibly classist and biased and just as problematic.

I still find it amazing that you are unwilling to even entertain the idea that Duke might be classist or racist in their recruitment practices but are so quick to throw Jalen Rose under the bus. I guess anyone pointing fingers at Duke is just an "agitator" playing the "race card" while the accusations of Rose are nuanced, legit, and categorically undeniable.

http://offthebench.nbcsports.com/2011/03/08/jalen-rose-i-hated-duke-they-only-recruited-black-players-who-were-uncle-toms/

“Well, certain schools recruit a typical kind of player whether the world admits it or not. And Duke is one of those schools. They recruit black players from polished families, accomplished families. And that’s fine. That’s okay. But when you’re an inner-city kid playing in a public school league, you know that certain schools aren’t going to recruit you. That’s one. And I’m okay with it. That’s how I felt as an 18-year-old kid.”

That cuts both ways, Jalen. Guys like Jerry Tarkanian and John Calipari weren't/aren't recruiting Rhodes Scholars or Physics majors either, even if they can play ball. Some schools take their academics seriously.

This is what is remarkable about Coach K's success: because of the sort of academic standards Duke has, he can't just go recruit anyone he wants - yet the program wins anyway.

But JALEN ROSE made allegations of racism, at least according to BSK. So what did that wiki link show us earlier?

The demographics of the Duke student body in fall 2010 showed that 10% of the enrolled are African-American. (Nationally, the African-American population is 12.4% of the total)

This is RACISM, right? Well, what about Jalen's alma mater?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Michigan#Student_body_profile

The demographics of the University of Michigan student body in fall 2010 showed that 5.8% of the enrolled are African-American.

I guess the answer is that we have two racist schools, rather than just one. Or I went in and edited the wiki pages, something like that.

(I still can't wait to hear what's messed up about Duke's recruiting process)

Rose's failings:
1.) Referring to blacks that Duke recruited (not Grant hill explicitly, but certainly implicitly) as Uncle Toms
2.) Offering apparently sub-par NBA analysis
3.) Potentially overstating the significance of the Fab5

BSK's failings:
1.) Having a complex racial identity development which included at what time idolizing and emulating black, urban culture and, at a much later time, feeling embittered towards being white in a predominantly African-American community, both feelings of which I've moved away from and disavowed
2.) Growing frustrated with an online poster who made ad hominem attacks and demonstrated himself to be intellectually dishonest, willfully ignorant, and deliberately obtuse (an admittedly biased assessment)

Duke's failings:
1.) A history of recruitment that could lead to legitimate questions of how the race, class, and culture of players impacted Duke's level of interest in them and, by extension, how this limited the opportunities for poor, black, urban youth to attend one of the most prestigious academic and athletic institutions in the country

Clearly, Rose has the MOST failings, in quantity. I certainly have the ones that are most directly relevant to the people on this board. But, in the aggregate, are we really going to say that either mine or Rose's failings on this matter match those (potentially) of Duke? Perhaps Duke is innocent of every charge levied against them, but given the severity of those charges, is it not at least worth discussing? Many here seem to be arguing that it is not, largely because of the failings of the first (or maybe first two) people on this list. To me, that is killing the messenger. Yes, Rose has his shortcomings. But I haven't seen anyone here come up with a compelling reason why there isn't room for a legitimate discussion regarding Duke's recruiting practices. If Duke is innocent of these accusations, I will be the first taking steps to clear their name, because I know that there are few things more damaging to the cause of anti-racism than false claims of racism. But right now, I stand convinced, as does Rose and others on this board, that there is legitimate reason to investigate his accusations further, as horribly as they may have been framed. Not everyone will think this way. Which is cool. But to act as if it is absurd to even raise the question... especially while harping on the question of just how racist/classist/offensive Jalen Rose is... well... I call that screwed up priorities...