If the point of the basketball analogy is that we (the US) lost generations of African-America kids ... maybe. Then again, so did virtually every other organized professional sport. Major league baseball didn't have a single African-American until the late '40s, and wasn't fully integrated (as in EVERY franchise) until the late '50s. The NFL had de facto roster quotas into the '60s -- one reason for the rise of the AFL, which accepted African-American talent with open arms.
FWIW, you can make the case that club and professional soccer HISTORICALLY was as ethnically diverse as any sport in our country. Among the first "great" players in American was a Portuguese American, Billy Gonsalves. And yes, that was a Haitian who scored the goal-heard-round-the-world in 1950.
What has changed has been the "rebirth" of soccer in this nation as a "pay to play" exercise that effectively discriminates against low-income and minority kids.
