I think Steven's catching some undeserved flak here.
Maybe it's not a comfortable thing to admit, but it's the truth that the vast majority of our big man recruits in the last few years have been preppy white guys. Sure, we had gangly 6'8 forward Lance Thomas, and we've got 6'7 forward Josh Hairston right now (from a NOVA-area prep school, no less
) behind our three 6'10 white guys from private schools. We had a couple of African-American post recruits in '05 who did nothing and transferred. But look at Kansas, UK, UNC, OSU, Memphis, UCLA etc. - our competitors for elite bigs - and the ratio hasn't exactly been the same. Neither is the ratio in top 100 bigs, year-to-year.
It's also the truth (whether you're aware or not) that recruits are very conscious of this. Call it a trend, a stereotype, whatever, it exists
in the minds of recruits. As a relevant example, just a couple of days ago, Parker retweeted a tweet that said (roughly) "C'mon Tony, bring the soul back to Duke!" and commented (roughly) "LOL, best Duke tweet ever!" I'm sure you can see how this perception could have a negative effect on potential African-American big man recruits, even if we, as rational adults breaking down the argument, decide that it should not be so. It's a little different when you're 17, come from a different background than the vast majority of us on this board, and your buddies are giving you a hard time.
So, if you accept that some African-American bigs are turned off by this perception - even to an extent - you can see how one could make an argument that Parker could have been a particularly important recruit, purely from a supply/demand standpoint, if his commitment could have helped make us a more viable option in the minds of a significant portion of the supply of big man recruits. There are plenties of studies that support this kind of notion if we want to play that game. I don't think Steven is being racist, he's just being realistic.
(Kedsy - you make some good points that I'll need to respond to later when I get a few more minutes...)