Black Italian soccer star Mario Balotelli: Nature v. nurture
07/01/2012
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Italy won the World Cup in 2006 with an all white team by playing their traditional miserly Mediterranean peasant style (imagine the mean, cunning farmers in Jean de Florette who outsmart city-slicker Gerard Depardieu — and, yes, I know that's a French movie). They beat France's much more diverse team in the Final. The media had been in a frenzy promoting the French team as the triumph of diversity, but then France's Berber superstar Zinedine Zidane got suckered into going all Bob Hoskins on an Italian player and was kicked out and Italy won the draw on penalty kicks.

But, the times they are a changing. A reader writes:

You've got to get on top of this.  Mario Balotelli (2 goals to upset Germany in the semifinals of the Euro tournament) has biological parents from Ghana, but was born in Italy and raised from an early age by a Jewish family in a wealthy Italian village.  Sandra Scarr could only dream of case studies like this.  Read the Wikipedia article on him and guess his IQ.
From Wikipedia:
He joined Manchester City in August 2010, where his performances and off-field activities have continued to be enigmatic and unpredictable.
To summarize a long list of tabloid tales, despite his privileged upbringing, Balotelli's not strong on what psychologists call "executive function." A legal name change to something like "Metta World Peace" would seem a distinct possibility.
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