Sports and Race

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

Have you ever debated with people who claim that sports are racially backed? It seems to be the new thing that has taken the place of "races" are smarter than other "races" due to IQ differences.

I have seen on the web is that people are arguing that certain races are good at certain sports because of their racial attributes make them superior than other races at those sports. Now, I can find no peer reviewed studies that confirm this, but I find several that seem to dispute it.

I recognize that athletic ability is based on at least three things:

1. Willpower
2. Genetic endowment
3. Training.

But they are trying to say there are more blacks in football and basketball becaues those are "racial" sports. I don't see how that's true any more than it would be true that you don't find many computer science nerds who are also top of the line professional wrestlers.

I am especially skeptical, since the majority of scientific sources seem to dispute notion of race itself. My bio texts and physical anthropology texts seem to concure with a variety of scientific reports I have been exposed to showing that race is a weak concept.

If so, however can one can that sports are judged by racial attributes in membership?

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

I should add:

They say blacks are in basketball and football (overrepresented) because the sport caters to black traits. It's a black thing.

Well then, could you say the same thing if we saw statistically that not many blacks play tennis, golf, or baddmitton as whites..so what? Does that mean they are "white sports?"

[Cairber]

I read an economic argument on this once, but it really only concerned youth sports. It posed that expensive sports (rowing, hockey, I think it named a few more) were white dominated for that reason.

For the life of me I can't remember where I read this, but I think it was for some education class I took.

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

Ahh, I was thinking something along those lines too. These arguments on racial sports make no sense. They are trying to say blacks are superior at football and basketball, since they dominate it on TV, asians cannot play baseball (but cubans can!).

I have yet to see any studies on this, though. I mean, I don't see many blacks in badmitton and bowling either. But I see lots of whites. I don't think that means anything racially.

They don't even try to provide evidence of this, which pisses me off. The only "source" they use is "Well, I watch monday night football, and it's dominated by blacks. Coincidence?"

[skotos]

But they are trying to say there are more blacks in football and basketball becaues those are "racial" sports. I don't see how that's true any more than it would be true that you don't find many computer science nerds who are also top of the line professional wrestlers.

That is a false analogy. It takes considerable training to become a computer science nerd (at least, one who makes their living at it). It also takes considerable training to become a professional wrestler. The fact that you find few computer scientists who wrestle professionaly is a reflection of the fact that very few people take the time to train in both disciplines. On the other hand, nobody has to invest any time in being born black, white, purple, or whatever.

As for football and basketball, both of which are dominated by blacks, you need to come up with a hypothesis that explains why they are dominate. The people you are talking to seem to have advanced the hypothesis that blacks, on average, are better than whites at football and basketball. That's a perfectly workable hypothesis, you could formalize it by saying "X percentage of blacks are good enough to play professional basketball or football, while Y percentage of whites are". You could then look at the actual number of players in each category, compare it to each population, and determine whether you were approaching the equilibrium point or not.

They say blacks are in basketball and football (overrepresented) because the sport caters to black traits. It's a black thing.

That is also not an unreasonable hypothesis, although its difficult to prove. Race is indeed a very difficult topic, there is no agreement on what race is. Certainly, there are no enormous differences between whites, blacks, asians, and others on a genetic level.

Nevertheless, when one talks about "blacks" in the context of basketball and football, one is not talking about random races but rather a specific popluation, namely, the population of descendents of Africans who were enslaved and brought to America. This is a population whose antecedents were brought over from Africa under hellish conditions (thereby weeding out many members), and who were then enslaved under very unpleasent conditions, conditions which moreover, tended to select for stamina.

In any case, when it comes to sports, we are not talking about some kind of vague concept of race, we are talking about a distinct population of people. These people may well have a above average ability at shooting a basketball or throwing a football. The reasons could be genetic, economic, cultural, or mere coincidence, but nevertheless the theory that "blacks are overrepresented in football and basketball because football and basketball cater to common traits in blacks" is in no way unreasonable.

Note: I am not claiming that the people you are talking to are correct in their belief that football and basketball are "black sports". I am merely saying that the concept of "black sports", by which I mean sports which cater to the talents of the black population rather than the white populaton is not a ridiculous concept. To demonstrate such a concept, you would have to do the following:

1. Show a method by which black people, white people, and people who are neither could be distinguished from one another.

2. Show that one group had, on average, greater aptitude for some particular skill or feat than the rest.

3. Show that aptitude at that skill or feat would lead to greater success at the sport in question.

Blacks and whites in America meet the first criteria. I don't know if the second and third can be met, but if so then there would be a legitmate argument for calling some sports "black", some sports "white", and some sports "other".

Well then, could you say the same thing if we saw statistically that not many blacks play tennis, golf, or baddmitton as whites..so what? Does that mean they are "white sports?"

You could in fact claim that tennis, golf, and baddmitton are "white sports", if you could show that certain traits that are more common in whites contribute to success in those sports.

In the cases of the sports you mention, the answer is much simpler. Tennis, baddmitton, and golf all cost more than football and basketball. Whites in America are much richer than blacks, on average, and therefore it will be more common for whites to be involved in these sports than blacks. These sports might cater to talents in the white population, they might cater to talents in the black population, they might do neither, but regardless, whites will dominate the sport because whites, right now, make more money than blacks.

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

As for football and basketball, both of which are dominated by blacks, you need to come up with a hypothesis that explains why they are dominate. The people you are talking to seem to have advanced the hypothesis that blacks, on average, are better than whites at football and basketball. That's a perfectly workable hypothesis, you could formalize it by saying "X percentage of blacks are good enough to play professional basketball or football, while Y percentage of whites are". You could then look at the actual number of players in each category, compare it to each population, and determine whether you were approaching the equilibrium point or not.

That is generally their hypothesis, but the problem is, they provide no evidence for it other than "They are on TV, they seem to be the majority, therefore, it must be their race."

I don't see how this is possible, when "race" isn't even considered by the scientific community as a valid biological construct.

Nevertheless, when one talks about "blacks" in the context of basketball and football, one is not talking about random races but rather a specific popluation, namely, the population of descendents of Africans who were enslaved and brought to America

I know. That is the group they are referring to.

This is a population whose antecedents were brought over from Africa under hellish conditions (thereby weeding out many members), and who were then enslaved under very unpleasent conditions, conditions which moreover, tended to select for stamina.

Ok, but are "just-so" stories evidence?

In any case, when it comes to sports, we are not talking about some kind of vague concept of race, we are talking about a distinct population of people.

According to the NFL Progress Report on Race in Sports, the traditional reason why many blacks were kept out of the position of quaterback was due to it being a "thinking position." On the contrary, your hypothesis is exactly what they say when they say cornerbacks were mostly africans.

These people may well have a above average ability at shooting a basketball or throwing a football. The reasons could be genetic, economic, cultural, or mere coincidence, but nevertheless the theory that "blacks are overrepresented in football and basketball because football and basketball cater to common traits in blacks" is in no way unreasonable.

The problem is that how do they provide evidence of this? They don't seem to be doing any of that, and no studies seem to say anything like that.

There's no reason to assume that, by default, like they do, just by watching TV. One would think it would be based more on the individual instead of the category of race.\

You could in fact claim that tennis, golf, and baddmitton are "white sports", if you could show that certain traits that are more common in whites contribute to success in those sports.

In the cases of the sports you mention, the answer is much simpler. Tennis, baddmitton, and golf all cost more than football and basketball. Whites in America are much richer than blacks, on average, and therefore it will be more common for whites to be involved in these sports than blacks. These sports might cater to talents in the white population, they might cater to talents in the black population, they might do neither, but regardless, whites will dominate the sport because whites, right now, make more money than blacks.

I definitly think that there are economic reasons behind them, but they seem actually to imply that, since there are not nearly as many in them, blacks must not be good at them. Whereas if blacks ARE in them, and dominate, it must be that they are racially organized to be so.

In that case, it wouldn't be race (the "white sports")

That is a false analogy. It takes considerable training to become a computer science nerd (at least, one who makes their living at it). It also takes considerable training to become a professional wrestler. The fact that you find few computer scientists who wrestle professionaly is a reflection of the fact that very few people take the time to train in both disciplines. On the other hand, nobody has to invest any time in being born black, white, purple, or whatever.

I don't know why I quoted this one last, but I see your point. Poor analogy. Hmm I don't know why I picked that of all of them. I must have been thinking the stereotype.


On the other hand, bowling doesn't seem economically intensive, and I don't see a preponderance of african-americans in bowling or with bowlers. What do we conclude from bowling if there are more whites than blacks in it?

Could the fact that there are not many as many whites in basketball be that it's a reflection of something socioeconomic?

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

Edit: The notion they seem to be propagating, without any evidence, is that african americans are genetically predisposed to these forms of atheletics, which is why they are dominated by them. The only "evidence" they provide iis that they watch TV and see them dominated by these types of races.



In one paragraph, I have to correct something I said in reply to your own reply, because I don't know why I wrote it like that. This deals with paragraps three and four, dealing with the just-so stories and the NFL report.

I don't mean them to contradict anything you said at all, if that's what it implies. Oops. I mentioned the latter because it seems somewhat similiar. The NFL forwent choosing blacks for quaterback because they didn't believe africans were genetically predisposed for the position, but whites were. Yet they provided no evidence.

At the same time, they claim the opposite for africans in cornerbacks--that they are predisposed for that position, yet they provide no actual evidence.


As for the just so story, that's also what I mean. Some things sound nice, but I don't know if they are true stories, because they don't link or give any actual evidence in studies to corroborate it, so I am left going...ok. Especially when I get conflicting scientific studies on race. They lead me to believe that racial traits, which are really very limited or nonexistent, they imply, shouldn't make such a huge impact then.

[skotos]

That is generally their hypothesis, but the problem is, they provide no evidence for it other than "They are on TV, they seem to be the majority, therefore, it must be their race."

I think I may have misunderstood your original post. I thought you were claiming that their hypothesis was either logically inconsistent, or was contradicted by existing evidence (ie. the lack of a biological basis for race). My entire response was meant to show that they had a valid hypothesis, one that was not already contradicted and that was logically consistent.


Are you in fact asking whether there is any evidence that their hypothesis is in fact correct? If you are, then my answer is that I have no idea. Essentially, I was arguing that the question was valid and their hypothesis deserves research, not that I actually believe it or have any evidence for it.

I don't see how this is possible, when "race" isn't even considered by the scientific community as a valid biological construct.

As I mentioned earlier, they are not talking about race in the sense of "let's provide a scientific definition of race". They are talking about race in the sense of black Americans as opposed to white Americans. While black Americans on the whole cannot be distinguished from white Americans on a genetic level, that does not mean that blacks and whites cannot be distinguished. A cursory physical examination followed by a brief interview is sufficient, without resorting to genetics at all. We aren't talking about creating a biological distinction between blacks and whites, merely identifying members of discrete populations with the US.

I get the feeling that I am putting far more thought and rigor into this discussion than the people you are talking to are, and giving them too much credit. Oh well, I'll go with it.

Ok, but are "just-so" stories evidence?

By no means are they evidence. I was advancing a hypothesis, not trying to offer evidence for it. My statement would be the starting point, ideally in your discussion with whomever they would say, "I think blacks are better at these sports because they are descended from a slave population in which physical strength and stamina were at a premium", and then offer evidence for it. This hypothesis may very well prove to be incorrect, but again, I thought you were looking to see if their theories could be valid, not if there was any evidence that they were in fact valid.

There's no reason to assume that, by default, like they do, just by watching TV. One would think it would be based more on the individual instead of the category of race.\

The fact is, blacks are are grossly overrepesented in football and basketball. There must be some explanation for it. It could be talents inherent in the black population, there could be economic reasons, structural reasons, or who knows what? As for talents being based on the individual, in football and basketball (as with most sports) the decision to recruit a player is based on the individual's talent, it just so happens that blacks are more talented than whites in these sports. They may not be more talented because they are black, but for some reason they are.

On the other hand, bowling doesn't seem economically intensive, and I don't see a preponderance of african-americans in bowling or with bowlers. What do we conclude from bowling if there are more whites than blacks in it?

Compared to basketball and football, bowling is quite economically intensive. To play basketball, one out of ten people have to own a basketball, and you need access to a court, which in most cases is provided for free by the government. So, basically, a basketball player needs to front capital equal to one tenth the price of a ball. To play football, you need one football for every 22 players, and a sufficiently sized open area, which is of course free in most places. To bowl, you need to pay lane fees at an alley, and you need to either rent or own shoes. Bowling costs money every time you play, while basketball and football require a small one time payment.

Could the fact that there are not many as many whites in basketball be that it's a reflection of something socioeconomic?

It certainly could. So far as I know nobody knows why blacks dominate basketball and football, I've never heard of any research on the subject and the subject is a bit taboo here in the US.

[Jalinth]

The problem is that "race" is a very crude measure of anything measurable for genetics.

Look at many Kenyans - put most of them on a football (even a soccer field), and they'd last 5 minutes, tops. Put them in a long distance race and they absolutely dominate.

As far as "propensity" goes, economics has a lot to do with it. I know in soccer, many of the true stars are from lower to middle (at most) class. The upper classes will tend to concentrate their kids on things other than a pro sports career. While some will, the lure of an MBA, medical school, etc... all beckon brightly. For someone from the lower class whose parents have never gone to university, medical school often looks out of reach and often unimaginable even if they happen to have the brains and other skills for it.

In Brazil, you have tens of thousands of very poor kids playing soccer everywhere - why? It is one of the few ways to get out of the slums. They want to be the next player whose name starts with a R who plays for the Brazilian national team.

[Infidel7]

I think it has far more to do with ariance in culture than in race. Hence, urban blacks, who often focus on basketball, become good at basketball and suburban whites focus on "country club sports". Those are the accepted norms of the culture and they yield status in the culture.

[Big Phil]

The answer is actually quite simple. Ruthless, Darwinian-style natural selection. Blacks kids today, from a VERY young age, are out on the basketball court/football field/baseball field practising every day for hours each day. The ones who aren't good fall by the wayside, so the ones that are left, having spent most of their freetime as kids practising, are VERY good. Most white kids, by way of contrast, rarely spend ALL of their free time playing sports, but the ones that do, are equally talented.

[Rye]

Have you ever debated with people who claim that sports are racially backed? It seems to be the new thing that has taken the place of "races" are smarter than other "races" due to IQ differences.

To be honest, I think that in general, "race" is more a case of genetic chance, rather than than flat out obvious collection of traits, and the genetic chance can and does narrow down even further. All human traits, as far as I'm aware, all propensities for intelligence, hand eye coordination, long distance running, whatever can exist in any "race," but it's the frequency of which they appear that crops up differently across the map, and that map doesn't stop at race, in fact, my whole life I've observed it mostly around families, the further apart it gets, the less likely they are to share the same traits that are linked to genetics.

Sickle Cell Anemia, for instance, occurs much more in people with ancestors from African regions near bodies of water, because that's where malaria lives. Now this isn't to say that they are a race, just that their evolutionary pressures in those areas has selected them that way, and that makes them different to other groups of people within their own race. However, when you work out the percentage of them to their whole race compared to the sickle cell anemia trait percentages from other races, yeah, you can see that a member of the "black race" is more likely to have SCA than some guy from the "white race".

Similar traits could explain why there's more but not exclusively black runners or basketball players since the genes that make them more likely to be good at it are just more common in the groups of people that were taken as slaves before they were taken to America or whatever. If you were a slaver, which would you take?

I have seen on the web is that people are arguing that certain races are good at certain sports because of their racial attributes make them superior than other races at those sports. Now, I can find no peer reviewed studies that confirm this, but I find several that seem to dispute it.

I don't think that being one race could automatically make you smarter or better at basketball, just make you more likely to be better at it because of intraracial variation being slightly more in your race's favour than in others. Culture and so on also play a part, but aptitude for sports is pretty rarely cultural in my experience.

Could be the same with penis size, that being another issue that seems to have contradictory claims floating around. Being black doesn't guarantee you a huge penis or the ability to dance well, but there might be more black people that can do it in comparison.

But they are trying to say there are more blacks in football and basketball becaues those are "racial" sports. I don't see how that's true any more than it would be true that you don't find many computer science nerds who are also top of the line professional wrestlers.

If there was a "sport" that revolved around melanin somehow, more black people would be selected than other races, however, there are several peoples on the asian continent that could give them a run for their money with melanin content and could be selected over some paler black guy that happened to be from a lower genetic frequency within the black race.

Again, I think race in sports is a case of differing chances and selection, not genetic traits only inherent to an overall race. Especially in countries like America, where it's not like the blacks came from the most massive and diverse african supplies. I wouldn't be surprised if american blacks that descended from those initial black people (rather than later immigration from other parts) were more likely to share traits than members of other races, and were therefore more likely to get selected for sports teams.

I am especially skeptical, since the majority of scientific sources seem to dispute notion of race itself. My bio texts and physical anthropology texts seem to concure with a variety of scientific reports I have been exposed to showing that race is a weak concept.

It is, in my opinion quite weak, there are racial chances that are more likely than in other races, but then, the same statistical maneuvering could work if you split the human race into a mere 2 or 3 races. It would be more accurate if we had a worldwide view of descendence and genetic traits and could work out what geographic area selected these traits the most and what family lines had them.

[theski]

Interesting article on the OP

S.L. PRICE, SPECIAL REPORT: IS IT IN THE GENES? STUDIES HAVE FOUND PHYSICAL DIFFERENCES THAT MIGHT HELP EXPLAIN WHY BLACKS OUTPERFORM WHITES IN CERTAIN SPORTS--BUT SCIENTISTS ARE WARY OF JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS, DECE Ed., Sports Illustrated, 8 Dec 1997, pp. 52+.

The best athletes on the planet are black. Stop the conversation right there and few will argue the point. It's always the next comment that burns down the house. For if there were no want or need to decide why blacks have come to dominate the sporting scene, a lot of old white men would not have disgraced themselves. Jimmy (the Greek) Snyder wouldn't have been fired by CBS in 1988 for proffering a half-baked theory based on the breeding practices of slave owners. Dale Lick, whose hope for the presidency of Michigan State sank in 1993, might be in East Lansing today had he not once said, "The muscle structure of the black athlete typically is more suited for certain positions in football and basketball." And Jack Nicklaus, who dismissed the absence of blacks in golf by saying, "Blacks have different muscles that react in different ways," wouldn't cringe each time he sees Tiger Woods tee off.

The urge to explain the black domination of sports has stained so many careers that it's a topic few want to touch. "Most people are afraid of dealing with the subject, afraid of being labeled," says David Hunter, an exercise physiologist and head of the department of health and physical education at Hampton (Va.) University, who recently completed a survey of studies of race and sports in this century. But, Hunter notes, "if we say, 'This might cause problems, let's not study it,' we simply perpetuate whatever thoughts we've had."

The "problems" Hunter speaks of stem from the longstanding fear that casual theorizing about black physical superiority will inevitably--if illogically--lead to the kind of negative stereotyping found in the 1994 book The Bell Curve, by Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray, which suggested that blacks aren't as smart as whites. But scientists such as Hunter argue that if we're willing to concede a genetic predisposition to sickle-cell anemia or the early onset of adolescence among black girls, then we should at least discuss the possibility that blacks have physical traits that give them an advantage over whites in sports.

As blacks, who constitute 13% of the U.S. population, have become the overwhelming majority in the NBA and the NFL and at the elite levels of some other sports, the issue has reached the mainstream press. In 1992 Runner's World magazine printed a story titled "White Men Can't Run" that cited a variety of scientific studies--most of which found physiological differences between racial groups--that may explain why blacks dominate both sprinting and long-distance running. In 1995 Roger Bannister, a respected physician and the first man to run a sub-four-minute mile, helped bring the debate further into the open. "As a scientist rather than a sociologist," Bannister said, "I am prepared to risk political incorrectness by drawing attention to the seemingly obvious but understressed fact that black sprinters and black athletes in general all seem to have certain natural anatomical advantages. Perhaps there are anatomical advantages in the length of the Achilles' tendon, the longest tendon in the body." He also mentioned blacks' "relative lack of subcutaneous fatty insulating tissue in the skin" as a possible physiological advantage. Then last May, in The New Yorker, writer Malcolm Gladwell advanced a genetic argument in support of the notion that blacks are athletically superior. Clearly, the genie is out of the bottle.

Most scientists who study the subject, however, reject the simplistic reasoning that if blacks dominate sports, they must inherently be better athletes. "You've got to be very careful generalizing from the athletic population to the broader population," says Robert Malina, director of the Institute for the Study of Youth Sports at Michigan State. "Athletes are probably the most rigorously selected segment of our population, the cream of the crop. They are statistically aberrant."

Hunter, who is black, is a practitioner of hard science who believes what social scientists believe: that social forces--the emphasis on certain sports in black communities, the conviction that sports offer one of the few avenues to success for America's racial underclass--play the major role in the development of athletic excellence. But Hunter also has one foot planted in the other, more controversial camp. He knows that there are observable and quantifiable physical differences between black and white Americans, and he wonders if they provide an advantage in sports.

Generally accepted research has shown that African-American children tend to have denser bones, narrower hips, bigger thighs, lower percentages of body fat, and longer legs in relation to their upper bodies than white kids, and tests have also shown that they run faster and jump higher. That a combination of narrow hips, powerful thighs, low body fat and long legs seems perfect for sprinting and jumping has been lost on no one looking to explain black excellence at those skills.

Top athletes, however, don't always conform to laboratory theories. The physical differences found between black and white Americans are interesting--and perhaps telling--but until large numbers of elite athletes are studied, it is irresponsible to declare that one physical trait accounts for the minute margin that separates the sprinter who sets a world record from the one who finishes 10th. Carl Lewis may be tall, long-legged and narrow-hipped, but in his prime he was beaten four times by Ron Brown, who was noticeably shorter and stockier.

"It's that logic--Aha! We found a difference! African-Americans have narrower pelvic girdles!--that most people fall into," Hunter says. "But if you test whether, independent of race, a narrower pelvic girdle is a predictor of speed, even though it's a tremendous theoretical model, it doesn't hold true. Not everyone in the NBA, whether he's African-American or Caucasian, is 6'6", and not everyone has a certain percentage of fat. There's not a single characteristic that is unique and always present and responsible for the performance. If there were, I'd be able to predict at an early age who should go into certain [sports]. I'd be a billionaire." At the same time, Hunter acknowledges that a variety of physiological factors contribute to an athlete's success, and that the lack of one of those characteristics in a successful athlete does not disprove its importance.

The study of race and athletic performance is best described as intriguing but immature. Geneticist Claude Bouchard of Laval University in Quebec has determined that certain human athletic traits, such as anaerobic power and training capacity, have a powerful genetic component, suggesting that, to a significant extent, athletes are born, not made. One Bouchard study that compared black West Africans with white French Canadians found a higher percentage of fast-twitch muscle fibers and anaerobic enzymes--both thought to be essential to explosive sprinting--in the West Africans, but Bouchard is the first to point out that he was not studying athletes. Until he does, he can only speculate about how the differences he found relate to athletic performance.

Others who have performed studies have come away convinced that there is a marked difference in performance between the black and white groups they examined. They just can't say why. Gladwell's New Yorker essay used as its foundation the work of Yale geneticist Kenneth Kidd, which found that the DNA of black Africans contains more genetic variation than is present in the peoples of all the other continents combined; from this finding Kidd theorized that a higher than expected percentage of black Africans--and their descendants in the Americas--would have rare genetic combinations of one sort or another, including the combinations that would endow them with exceptional athletic talent (or an exceptional lack of athletic talent). Swedish scientist Bengt Saltin, whose comparison of Kenyan and Swedish distance runners found the Kenyans' muscles better suited to that athletic test, believes the difference could be caused as much by the Kenyans' high-altitude environment as by genetic factors. Tim Noakes, the South African sports physician whose testing of black and white South African marathoners showed that the blacks possessed higher levels of energy-producing enzymes in their muscles, allowing them to train harder longer, isn't sure whether the cause of that difference is genetic or environmental.

Hunter performed studies that, in lab testing, showed no difference in anaerobic power between black and white children. His field testing of the same group showed that the black children jumped higher than the whites by an average of some 10%. "The phenomenon of African-Americans performing better than whites in certain areas does exist, and it is worth studying," Hunter says. "But we don't have the answers yet, and it would be irresponsible for us to make them up."

Sums up Malina: "The scientific basis is just not that extensive." Especially when you consider that black may be the most slippery term in the debate. West Africans and Kenyans are both black, yet the first are thought to have bodies perfect for sprinting, while the Kenyans are distance legends. That the African continent may hold more genetic variants than anywhere else in the world would help explain this divergence. But what about the differences between either of those groups and African-Americans?

Though most black Americans descend from slaves taken from western Africa, 90% have some white ancestry, which renders the terms black and white particularly imprecise when applied to African-Americans. Does the fact that an NBA player like the very light-skinned Doug Christie, who may well be more white than black, can leap just as high and with as much body control as the dark-skinned Dominique Wilkins prove that it's wrong to assume that blacks are inherently better jumpers than whites? Or does it suggest that even a small degree of black ancestry confers upon someone the genetic variation that can lead to exceptional athletic ability?

As is the case with so many other questions about race and athletic performance, scientists do not yet have definitive answers. Given the logistical difficulty of testing large groups of top athletes under laboratory conditions, and the complexity held within the 100,000 genes that shape a person's characteristics, the only safe conclusion is this: Sports' nature-versus-nurture debate is a long way from being resolved.

A very good long read..

S

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

Hey, thanks for the article. That as informative, and it helped me articulate more of what I was thinking.

It's certainly reasonable to form population studies instead of racial statistics. That makes sense--analysing certain populations, since obviously, people are a product of natural selection. But it's far more complex than "I watch monday night football, so therefore X."

Thx.

[Darth Servo]

There may be a grain of truth to the idea that blacks (at least in the US) make better athletes due to the slave trade. The slave ships packed them in like sardines and only the strongest and most enduring completed the trip. Survival of the fittest was put into high gear. Furthermore, slave owners would sometimes try and delibrately breed stronger slaves so they could do more work.

[Elfdart]

The problem is that the Middle Passage ended by the 1850s. The enslavement of blacks in the US began as early as the 1520s in the Southeast. It began in earnest in in the early 1600s. So you have over 250 years of the hypothetically tough slaves intermingling with the not-so-tough slaves, as well as Indians and whites. Then you have about a century and a half of free blacks mingling with one another and other ethnic groups. That's too long a time and too much screwing for those tough genes to breed true.

If having African blood makes for better football and basketball players, why are there so few African-born football and basketball players? If being black was such an advantage, recruiters for the colleges and pros would be scouring Africa looking for players.

One reason whites aren't as prominent in football and basketball (basketball used to be considered the sport of Russian Jews) as they used to be is that there are relatively few poor whites who look at sports as their way out of poverty. From the 1930-1960s, there were still large numbers of recent white immigrants from Europe (mainly Eastern Europe) or first generation native born whites in the NFL. If you want to look at groups that are represented disproportionately in football, blacks have nothing on western Pennsylvania and the Ohio Valley.

Out of the 50 best quarterbacks to ever play the game, at least 7 I can name off the top of my head come from that region: Johnny Unitas, George Blanda, Len Dawson, Joe Namath, Joe Montana, Jim Kelly, and Dan Marino. Is it genetic? No. Is there something in the water? No. Just read or watch the biographies of these players and many like them and the answer is pretty obvious. Each one saw sports as his only ticket out of a hardscrabble life in the Rust Belt. If they failed, they might get a job in a mill or a coal mine if they were lucky.

Middle and upper-class kids (mostly white) don't have that kind of pressure. They have a better chance of getting into college even if they can't catch a ball. They also have other ways to entertain themselves than playing ball.

[LordShaithis]

How many heavyweight boxing champions have been black? Almost all of them, especially if you only look at the Joe Louis era and forward, when racism started to be less of a factor in fighters gaining a shot at the title.

Of all these black heavyweight champions in a worldwide sport, how many have been from Africa? Zero. I've watched enough boxing to have seen African heavyweights now and then, but frankly they mostly stink.

Anyone remember Courage Tshabalala from South Africa? Got a lot of hype based on his punching power, but anyone he couldn't bulldoze ended up knocking him out. And Sam Peter from Nigeria just last week managed to win a close decision over James Toney. But Toney is basically an aged and overfed middleweight, and I've seen Peter fight. He's just not very good.

I've seen a few decent African boxers in the lighter weight classes, almost all from Ghana for some reason, but there are still plenty of tiny Latin American countries that have produced more champions than the entire continent of Africa.

[skotos]

If having African blood makes for better football and basketball players, why are there so few African-born football and basketball players? If being black was such an advantage, recruiters for the colleges and pros would be scouring Africa looking for players.

That's easy. Even if African blood does somehow give a person better abilities at football and basketball, there is still no impetus for Africans to become good football and basketball players, because so few Africans play football and basketball. (American) football is, I believe, practically unknown in Africa, and while basketball is more common, it is by no means as popular as it is in the US.

And even if the sports were popular, there is still the problem that standards of living in Africa are so low. It's hard to become a good athlete without good nutrition, sanitation, etc. Sure, blacks in the US are poor by US standards, on average, but the average American black is much better off than the average African.

[Dendrobius]

Just want to throw some more wood onto the fire: Badminton.

Looking at the current world rankings, Asians absolutely dominate. You have the occasional good Caucasian (Peter Gade comes to mind), and that's about it. No blacks to be seen anywhere.

I personally think that sports and race have something to do with each other. Why else do we get all those African long distance runners, along with the Asian badminton players, etc etc?

[Master of Ossus]

In the US, I could believe that blacks as a population are more athletic than whites and Asians (though the absolute top-athletes should be comparable). Remember that many blacks are the product of an absolutely brutal, artificial selection process in which everyone who was not physically gifted died. Furthermore, for several hundred years, blacks in the US were literally bred to select for strength, endurance, and size--traits that are also rewarded in sports. I would, of course, be surprised if this trend was similar outside of the Americas, where slavery never existed and hence where the populations were not horribly butchered.

[Jack Bauer]

Just want to throw some more wood onto the fire: Badminton.

Looking at the current world rankings, Asians absolutely dominate. You have the occasional good Caucasian (Peter Gade comes to mind), and that's about it. No blacks to be seen anywhere.

I personally think that sports and race have something to do with each other. Why else do we get all those African long distance runners, along with the Asian badminton players, etc etc?

Asians have always had a fascination with racquet sports. Orientals are on average smaller in frame than their Caucasian or African counterparts. Its no wonder that less contact-intensive sports would be more appealing to them.

[LordShaithis]

I use boxing as a benchmark sport for a reason. It's more universally practiced than hockey or basketball or what have you. And while members of more affluent populations do tend to have better nutrition and so forth, in this case it's more than balanced out by the nature of the sport tending to keep away people who have better opportunities to pursue.

For example, there are actually a number of very successful Caucasian fighters right now. But virtually none of them are from the economically comfortable white populations of North American or Western Europe. Most of them are from former communist nations in Eastern Europe. And any Third World shithole in Latin America you might care to name has produced more exceptional boxers than Spain itself.

Oh, and there are plenty of world-class Asian fighters. You haven't heard of Pongsaklek Wonjongkam or Yukata Niida, but they hold titles in very light weight divisions, and fight in markets very far away from Western television.

[Dendrobius]

Asians have always had a fascination with racquet sports. Orientals are on average smaller in frame than their Caucasian or African counterparts. Its no wonder that less contact-intensive sports would be more appealing to them.

Why is this not the case in tennis or squash then?