Logical Implications: Fiction v. Reality

In last week’s “Racial Implications: Music v. Sports,” upper Irene Chun boldly equates musicians to athletes. She insists that there is a “blatant disregard” toward the former, and that it is “misguided and insensitive” to say that they are not the latter. Her piece demonstrates an aptitude for reading the Oxford English Dictionary—at face value. Yes, the definition of “sport” is indeed, “an activity involving physical exertion and skill, esp. one regulated by set rules or customs in which an individual or team competes against another or others.” But contextual awareness asserts that modern society has delineated musicians from athletes. Similarly, it does not recognize a prostitute, a physically skillful and competitive individual, as an athlete. For Chun to equate musicians to athletes and then to draw on this fallacy is to waste ink on non sequiturs. Regardless, we will do our best to counter this argument.

Chun makes a valid point in criticizing the absurdity of sports recruitment, which is one of many ways in which society might favor athleticism over musicianship. There are admirable qualities such as dedication and determination in both athletes and musicians, theoretically meriting equal treatment of both. Her attempt to argue for equal treatment, however, loses validity when she explicitly equates musicians to athletes. She claims in her article, “The amount of physical finesse and labor in playing an instrument is equivalent to that of an athlete’s.” In the most practical sense, this statement is false. Practicing five hours of piano does not burn nearly as many calories as five hours spent in the gym. Even if we ignore the quantitative inaccuracy of her claim, to declare that athletes’ and musicians’ labors are the same is insulting to both parties. To do so simplifies the incredibly complex emotions behind performing music into a purely physical task, while also undermining the objectively larger amount of labor that athletes endure. No one is denying the extraordinary amount of physical finesse needed to play an instrument—a talented musician possesses a unique skill set that takes years to perfect and is perhaps more technically refined than an athlete’s. Does this make them a hard-working, admirable person? Yes. Does this make them an athlete? No. To equate all forms of dedication to athleticism is foolish and impractical.

Chun’s article also argues that the competition and teamwork involved in music is reason enough for musicians to be considered athletes. Ironically, her argument seems to transform an art meant to gratify and please an audience into a competitive, college-alluring spectacle, all the while denouncing the “nonsense of sports recruitment.” This logic fails because the shared facet of teamwork in no way equates musicians to athletes. Teamwork and competition is present in nearly any scenario involving a group of people, and is not sufficient evidence to consider one an athlete. Under her argument’s logic, all students at the Academy are athletes because they are constantly competing against each other and must work together at the Harkness table. Clearly this is not true, so the presence of teamwork and competition cannot be used to define an athlete. 

Why does Chun’s article fixate on including musicians under the label of athletes? By doing so, she depicts athleticism as a more desireable trait. This false portrayal, along with her claim that there is a general “lack of admiration toward musicians,” is irreconcilable with the cultural truth that adoration of music in fact pervades our society. With a casual stroke of her pen, Chun decries the permanence of household names such as Mozart, Beethoven and Bach. These musicians and their legacies remain a venerated cornerstone of civilization. And even within a modern context, musicians are respected at all levels of society, by Spotify consumers to traditional concertgoers.

If we were to concede that society looks more favorably upon athletes than musicians—perhaps Chun makes an accurate observation here—we can sympathize with her desire to blur the distinction between the two practices. In doing so, she understandably seeks to transfer to her fellow musicians the socio-economic merits apparently bestowed upon athletes. Her justification for this desire itself, however, is one based on sentiment, and therefore one that unfortunately diverges from reality. 

Chun argues that music, just like any other dedication, is an act with a requisite of self-sacrifice. We believe this to be true as well, but disagree with Chun’s deduction that purely because music is built on effort, it merits compensation from society. In regard to her observation that colleges do not “‘recruit’ musicians,” Chun claimed that academic institutions were not “giving them [musicians] the proper credit that they deserve by guaranteeing them admission.” Is this a fair assessment of the educational system, much less the world? Society does not have an innate obligation to reward those who work hard. Very often, dedication and effort are unsynchronized with the recognition with which the world rewards them. Take, for example, the discrepancy in the salaries of a paramedic and a politician. At best, politicians dedicate as much labor to humanity as paramedics do. Yet society bases its economic reciprocations on the functions that these citizens perform, not necessarily their perseverance or commitment. 

Despite being a trio of Asians, we fail to understand Chun’s involvement of race in this hitherto-refuted issue. She points at a portrait of an orchestra, then a portrait of a football team, and notes that the former has a more Asian palette than the latter. This apparently seeds the “racial implications” of not recognizing musicians as athletes. She then draws on her claims that athletes in the conventional sense are favored by academic institutions, and asserts that there must therefore exist an institutional prejudice against Asians, who happen to concentrate musically. This persecution complex is so absurd that it devolves into the realm of surrealism.

For a moment, let us wholly accept Chun’s argument that athletes are more merited than musicians. If there actually exists a paradigm where a society favors Activity A over Activity B, and one were to observe that many constituents of Activity B happen to be Asian, we cannot automatically deduce that this society discriminates against Asians. No, the society just demerits Activity B, perhaps simply because the pursuit of B is inferior to that of A. Regardless, race and other externalities cannot be variables in a logical conclusion, at least without a case study.

And in this lack of reasoning and presupposition of a racial injustice, we are confronted by an infuriating societal trend: race-baiting. Chun’s article is unfounded in stating that musicians are athletes, and that there is a societal obligation for musicians to be rewarded. Most offensively, also unjustified are her claims of racial prejudice. Her testimony does not prove a connection between a possible favoritism of sports over music, nor does it confirm a bias against Asians. It is insufficient evidence, the citation of which merely serves to force attention on a non-issue. She calls to her Asian heritage and associates for support and consensus; we offer none. We see in her argument not only an insult to the dedication that people of Asian backgrounds have put into both music and sports, but also an unwarranted attack against other ethnicities. Poorly-justified racial arguments can only divide, not harmonize, a heterogeneous community.