Dirk Nowitzki might be a household name in the United States were it not that his first home was in Germany. Ronald Martinez/Getty Images

In politics, Social Security is known as the third rail. Dare touch the subject and be prepared to be electrocuted. Race is the third rail of sport. Any attempt to discuss racial matters is immediately stamped as racist. Larry Bird found this out last week. When he was being interviewed, along with his good friend Magic Johnson, Bird was asked: "Does the NBA lack enough white superstars?"

Bird straightaway replied, "Well, I think so," and then went on to explain, in simple marketing terms, why this was the case. Immediately, sanctimonious critics came down on Bird, castigating him as some kind of white supremacist nut.

Never mind that Bird is, of course, perfectly correct. Johnson, as a matter of fact, had immediately seconded the motion. "We need some more LBs, Larry Birds," Magic said.

Now understand what Bird did not say. He didn't say there deserved to be more white superstars. He didn't say that the NBA was prejudiced against whites. He certainly didn't say that white fans only cheered for white players. No, Bird simply said that, given the fact America's ticket-buying population is largely white, it wouldn't hurt for the NBA to have some players who mirror that image.

Oh yes, in a perfect world none of us in the stands would recognize race or other external factors, and we would only see through to the hearts of all of God's athletic children. But the fact is that we do tend to identify with our brethren -- not just in terms of race, but by geography, nativity, ethnicity, every which way. Short people root for short athletes, left-handed people root for left-handed athletes. It seems to be the human condition and not just a specific flaw in Caucasians.

It's interesting, for example, that the current brouhaha over changes the Nielsen media research group has proposed in measuring television audiences relates strictly to the fact that American minorities prefer programs that feature American minorities. Nielsen claims the changes would provide more accurate ratings; opponents claim the changes would undercount minority viewers.

It's no different in the NBA. Whites, for once, are the minority. And when Larry Bird says the league might benefit from having a greater representation from that minority, he's not asking for anything different than minorities are asking for from the Nielsen people, or life, in general.

Of course race is hardly the only factor here. If it was, ice hockey would be much more popular with white folks than basketball. If it was, then Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods could not have possibly become American icons and commercial darlings.

As a matter of fact, American fans -- of all races -- are much more xenophobic than they are racist. The NBA does have some white stars, but they are white European stars. If Dirk Nowitzki, the multitalented power forward of the Dallas Mavericks, were from Georgia instead of Germany, he would be exponentially more popular here, and, come to think of it, nobody would be asking Larry Bird the question that caused all this fuss.

None of this is to say that whites have not, in the past, been flat-out racist. When Jack Johnson became the first black heavyweight champion in 1908, we started searching for the Great White Hope. And some of us have never gotten over the fact that blacks dominate whites in so many sports today. American whites shamefully kept blacks out of almost all organized sports well into the 20th century. And even then there were quotas. African-Americans still fight prejudice in some areas of athletics, most notably in the football coaching ranks. But, for goodness sakes, that doesn't mean that whites can't wallow in the same kind of rather benign chauvinistic instincts that the rest of imperfect humankind does. We're all prejudiced when it comes to our own, and those who put down Larry Bird for acknowledging that fact are, well ... bad sports.

Sports Illustrated senior contributing writer Frank Deford is a regular contributor to SI.com and appears each Wednesday on National Public Radio's Morning Edition. He is a longtime correspondent for HBO's Real Sports and his new novel, An American Summer (Sourcebooks Trade), is available at bookstores everywhere.