From Slate:
Can a black-white performance gap be hereditary but not racial?
Uh-oh. Another study is suggesting a biological ability gap between blacks and whites.
The study, just published in the International Journal of Design and Nature and Ecodynamics, starts with a puzzle about racing sports: "More and more, the winning runners are black athletes, particularly of West African origin, and the winning swimmers are white. More and more, the world finalists in sprint are black and in swimming are white."
Swimming is a white herring in this discussion. I saw a black guy, Anthony Nesty, beat the great Matt Biondi for a gold medal in the 1988 Olympics, so blacks have been modestly competitive in swimming in proportion to the numbers who take it up seriously for a generation.
There are lots of obvious reasons blacks don't do all that well in swimming -- access to pools, fear of sinking and drowning that keeps them away from water (which is a reasonable fear for low body-fat young black males, who drown in motel pools in tragic numbers), opportunities in other sports, etc. -- and morphological differences is only one of them. Sure, there are very few blacks shaped like Michael Phelps, but then there aren't all that many whites shaped like him, either.
What we have a huge amount of data about is running (and not just sprinting).
The authors—Edward Jones of Howard University and Adrian Bejan and Jordan Charles of Duke University—attribute the two trends to a common factor: center of gravity. They explain:
Anthropometric measurements of large populations show that systematic differences exist among blacks, whites and Asians. The published evidence is massive: blacks have longer limbs than whites, and because blacks have longer legs and smaller circumferences (e.g. calves and arms), their center of mass is higher than that in other individuals of the same height. Asians and whites have longer torsos, therefore their centers of mass are lower.
These structural differences, they argue, generate differences in performance. Using equations about the physics of locomotion, they analyze racing as a process of falling forward. Based on this analysis, they conclude that having a higher center of body mass in a standing position is advantageous in running but disadvantageous in swimming.
Drawing on data from 17 groups of soldiers around the world, the authors note that in terms of upper body length, "the measurements of the group of blacks fall well below those of the other groups. Their average sitting height (87.5 cm) is 3 cm shorter than the average sitting height of the group of men with the same average height (172 cm)." From this, they calculate that "the dimension that dictates the speed in running (L1) is 3.7 percent greater in blacks than in whites. At the same time, the dimension that governs speed in swimming is 3.5 percent greater in whites than in blacks."
Measurements of women suggest a similar pattern:
[U]pper- and lower-extremity bone lengths are significantly longer in adult black females than in white females. For the lower-extremity bone lengths, the difference is between 80.3 ± 10.4 cm (black females) and 78.1 ± 6.2 cm (white females). This difference of 2.2 cm represents 2.7 percent of the lower-extremity length, and it is of the same order as the 3.7 percent difference between the sitting heights of whites and blacks.
The paper calculates that a 3 percent difference in center of mass—the average difference between blacks and whites—produces for the athlete with the higher center of mass
a 1.5 percent increase in the winning speed for the 100 [meter] dash. This represents a 1.5 percent decrease in the winning time, for example, a drop from 10 to 9.85 [seconds]. This change is enormous in comparison with the incremental decreases that differentiate between world records from year to year. In fact, the 0.15[-second] decrease corresponds to the evolution of the speed records ... from 1960 (Armin Hary) to 1991 (Carl Lewis). The 3 percent difference in L1 between groups represents an enormous advantage for black athletes.For swimming, the conclusion is quantitatively the same, but in favor of white athletes. The 3 percent increase in [lower-body length] means a 1.5 percent increase in winning speed, and a 1.5 percent decrease in winning time. Because the winning times for 100[-meter] freestyle are of the order of 50 [seconds], this represents a decrease of the order of 0.75 [seconds] in the winning time. This is a significant advantage for white swimmers, because it corresponds to evolution of the records over 10 years, for example, from 1976 (James Montgomery) to 1985 (Matt Biondi).
Sure, but there are all sorts of other morphological reasons blacks tend to be faster at running, such as narrow pelvises on average, plus non-skeletal reasons involving thinner calves, higher muscle to fat ratio, biochemistry, etc.
Despite these caveats, the authors fear the consequences of acknowledging that heredity can produce differences in group averages. (I've wrestled with the same problem here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.) To avoid fueling bigotry, they've come up with a creative maneuver: removing the word race from theories of black/white group biology. At the outset of their paper, they write:
Our approach is to study phenotypic (somatotypic) differences … which we consider to have been historically misclassified as racial characteristics. These differences represent consequences of still not well-understood variable environmental stimuli for survival fitness in different parts of the globe during thousands of years of habitation. Our study does not advance the notion of race, now recognized as a social construct, as opposed to a biological construct. We acknowledge the wide phenotypic and genotypic diversity among the so-called racial types.
Duke's press release about the study draws the same distinction: The black/white performance gap stems from "athletes' centers of gravity," which "tends to be located higher on the body of blacks than whites. The researchers believe that these differences are not racial, but rather biological." [Emphasis added]
So, these racial differences aren't racial, they are biological.
Got it! As T.H. Huxley said upon reading The Origin of Species, "How stupid of me not to have thought of that."
This is a fascinating bit of finesse. There's nothing unusual about dismissing race as social construct. Racism watchdogs do it all the time. But they do it precisely to deny hereditary differences between blacks and whites. Bejan, Jones, and Charles are affirming hereditary differences. That's what they mean by "survival fitness in different parts of the globe during thousands of years." Evolution in Europe and evolution in Africa produced different results.
Taking "race" out of the equation makes a substantive difference: It focuses the conversation about heredity on populations, a more precise and scientifically accepted way of categorizing people.
No, it's not. The word "population" is almost never used in this sense in, say, the newspaper. "Population" is only used to mean "racial group" when somebody is looking for a weasel-word to talk about race without mentioning race. Usually, the word "population" is used in contexts like, "World population is 6.7 billion" or "The population off the U.S. is 310 million" when it's intended to denote everybody. The great majority of people won't know what you are talking about when you use "population" in this tortured way. When people talk about "the population problem" they don't mean the same thing as when they talk about "the racial problem."
Look, the fundamental problem is that the upper crust of the public has been lied to by the "Race is only a social construct meme" and they fell for it. (I suspect the crucial moment in the propagation of this lie was Bill Clinton's announcement of the wrapping up of the Human Genome Project a decade ago.) So, rather than try to finesse our way out of this intellectual dead end with every more complicated euphemisms, why don't we start by not lying anymore? As a wise man once told me, "Always tell the truth. It's easier to remember."
In the press release, for example, Jones explains, "There is a whole body of evidence showing that there are distinct differences in body types among blacks and whites. These are real patterns being described here—whether the fastest sprinters are Jamaican, African or Canadian—most of them can be traced back generally to Western Africa." Western African ancestry differs genetically from Eastern African ancestry. Population, unlike race, captures that difference.
The common term "racial group" is superior to either. Anyway, it's not as if the Belly Button Theory doesn't also work to help explain the superiority of Kenyan distance runners, too. Sprinting is a subgroup of running, just as West Africans are a subgroup of sub-Saharan Africans.
The authors also help the conversation by pointing out that "environmental stimuli" caused differential evolution in different parts of the world. There's nothing inherently good or bad about being West African or Eastern European. All of us are evolving all the time. As environmental conditions change in each part of the world, they change the course of natural selection. Ten thousand years from now, the average center of body mass might be higher in Europe than in Africa.
But the authors' most intriguing contribution isn't in biology or physics. It's in linguistics. By removing the word race, they're trying to make the world safe for clearheaded consideration of theories about inherited group differences. What they've done is more than a series of engineering calculations. It's a political experiment. Let's hope it works.
Wouldn't it be simpler and more helpful for clear thinking overall if everybody just adopted my definition of a racial group: "a partly inbred extended family?"
Posts
41 comments:
"Sure, but there are all sorts of other morphological reasons blacks tend to be faster at running, such as narrow pelvises on average, plus non-skeletal reasons involving thinner calves, higher muscle to fat ratio, biochemistry, etc."
But those may not be essential. In fact they may be present, but irrelevant.
The study pointed out something that might well be sufficient: body proportions.
Why are you always such a grouch? Why are you such a know-it-all?
Given that that's not going to happen, do you think that the solution offered here is a step forward for the public conversation, or a step back?
you rebut William Saletan but is he listening?
Maybe he doesn't read you.
Bellybuttoning the issue already in full force across the MSM.
Btw, how is it 'bigoted' if it's based on TRUTH and FACTS? If whites fear black criminals more than they fear criminals of other races on the FACTUAL KNOWLEDGE that blacks are stronger, how is that bigoted? It sounds rational and enlightend to me. And how many white liberals dare live in neighborhoods with lots of dangerous blacks?
-----
I've heard Asians have the longest bodies and short limbs--in relative terms--because they evolved in the coldest climates. They had to conserve heat, and having a longer body served that purpose.
What intersts me is why people of all races tend to aesthetically prefer people with shorter bodies and longer limbs. Even Asians prefer short bodies and longer limbs than people with long bodies and stocky limbs, the human daschunds.
Steve Sailer wrote:
"Swimming is a white herring in this discussion. I saw a black guy, Anthony Nesty, beat the great Matt Biondi for a gold medal in the 1988 Olympics, so blacks have been modestly competitive in swimming in proportion to the numbers who take it up seriously for a generation."
Well I know the data is better for running than for swimming, but couldn't you honestly say "whites are still modestly competitive in sprinting even in this generation"?
I know they are not winning gold medals anymore, but they are still competitive enough to appear at the international level, which would seem to mean that the noise has not entirely been worked out on track and field either.
I was arguing with a liberal on Facebook. I was pushing the race is real idea, he was selling the usual racial flat earthism. He claimed that the ease of transracial organ transplantation proved race was irrelevant.
That was easily shot down, the problems of transracial organ transplantation are documented all over.
My argument was that the more closely related you are to someone, the greater the odds of a tissue match. All else being equal thats going to have a racial angle.
Along comes a cleverer liberal and pretends to sort of agree. He says exactly, but its not about race, its all about ancestry. So for him the weasel word is ancestry rather than population.
Priceless!
In his own head he's managed to separate ancestry from race. Surely race is just ancestry writ large?
Talk about race, but just don't call it that! I'm sure no one will notice and if you do, you're a racist.
Brilliant!
Swimming is a white herring in this discussion. I saw a black guy, Anthony Nesty, beat the great Matt Biondi for a gold medal in the 1988 Olympics, so blacks have been modestly competitive in swimming in proportion to the numbers who take it up seriously for a generation.
I'm not sure why you are so anxious to make that argument, since it undercuts the HBD position. Saletan is now more HBD than you are!
I've been pointing this out for a long time. No one says, at least as far as I know, that sickle cell anemia is "racially linked". They just say that it's more prevalent in black communities.
So low IQs are more prevalent in black communities. It's not racial. Being black doesn't *cause* it. But if your parents are black you're more likely to end up with a low IQ.
Taking race out of the description is kind of pointless, though. But that's Saletan's obsession.
Cut the guy a little slack. He's fighting your fight for you from further in the MSM. I'm surprised he's lasted as long as he has; remember what happened to that Harvard Law student?
They took Logic to Gitmo and this article is the confession.
Steve, I've seen you bring up the low body fat explanation for young black male drownings at least twice now and I just don't get it. When I was growing up and swimming competitively, I - and most of the kids I swam with - was skin-and -bones. No fat and not a lot of muscle. Not really that much difference between me (at that age) and the body type I think you have in mind so I can't believe there was any kind of meaningful bouyancy advantage.
How 'bout going with Occam's razor here and saying that they drown because they don't know how to swim? And if you're not a good swimmer it's not too difficult to drown, especially if you're goofing around (as boys will do) and there's no one around who knows what to do IMMEDIATELY once you're in trouble.
The word "population" is almost never used in this sense in, say, the newspaper. "Population" is only used to mean "racial group" when somebody is looking for a weasel-word to talk about race without mentioning race.
Newspaper - yes. But just about every commonly accepted definition of biological race involves the word "population". Your definition is as good as any but family is simply the smallest possible population.
Race is only a social construct meme" and they fell for it. (I suspect the crucial moment in the propagation of this lie was Bill Clinton's announcement of the wrapping up of the Human Genome Project a decade ago.)
True. But it was Craig Venter himself that sold this lie to Clinton and the Establishment. A shrewd salesman he is.
I like population better than race but not for politically correct reasons. It seems more useful and easier to tailor when discussing subcomponents of humanity. The problem with race is it is fuzzy (are Indians asian?) (are latinos white?)for no good reason. Population resolves that problem nicely for me, because it's easier to tailor for reasons separate from the problem of politically correct heckling.
Hopefully Anonymous
http://www.hopeanon.typepad.com
Call it whatever. Does anyone deny group differences exist?
I don't see the need to get hung up on the word 'race'.
If you switch to "population" [instead of "race"], then it will be only a matter of time before the nihilists attempt to turn "populationist" into the greatest epithet in the English language [replacing "racist", which currently holds that honor].
Wouldn't it be simpler and more helpful for clear thinking overall if everybody just adopted my definition of a racial group: "a partly inbred extended family?"
How about we call it 'parinexly'?
(prononunced pa-ri-nex-ly).
So, what kinds of parinexlies are there?
I think color-coding parinexlies is misleading. After all, East Asians and Europeans have similar skin tones while Asian-Indians, who are genetically closer to Europeans, are dark skinned.
Asian-Indians could be as dark as black Africans but genetically are closer to Europeans.
And Amazonian Indians are brown, thus closer to Arabs in terms of skin color. However, genetically they are closer to light skinned East Asians.
So, all this white, black, yellow, red, brown stuff is way off.
Because we color coded the parinexlies for so long, people think race is all about skin color and we get stupid sermons like, "don't judge a person by the color of his skin." Well, I'll tell ya, from my experience, there is a huge difference between Asian-Indians and Africans even if they have similar skin tones.
So, we should come up with different words to describe the parninexlies.
For whites, 'European' will pretty much work.
For blacks, how about 'subsar', as in sub-saharan people?
"Hey, them subsars sure can run fast. I just hope they do all that running inside the stadium than out in the streets."
Anonymous said...
you rebut William Saletan but is he listening?
Maybe he doesn't read you.
Sarcasm, a short memory, or the memory hole in action?
You damn ancestrists!!!
If whites fear black criminals more than they fear criminals of other races on the FACTUAL KNOWLEDGE that blacks are stronger, how is that bigoted?
Dear God, you're an annoying and stupid person.
Strength is not something which causes fear. The trouble with black criminals is that they are criminals. Their alleged physical strength is not an issue.
Stop describing your own emotional state as "factual knowledge".
Sorry, as FACTUAL KNOWLEDGE.
some interesting ideas here.
one possible problem though, is who were the people in the black group, and who are the people in the white group? different africans are pretty different from each other. europeans vary from east to west and from north to south. we would conclude that africans are OK but not great at any particular kind of running, if we use south africans. likewise, we would find that europeans are not especially strong, if we stick to france and italy and spain.
you'd have to be somewhat particular with your data to get the kind of results presented here.
also, it's really time to rethink some things about africans in water. first of all, black americans ARE FAT AS HELL NOW. the stereotype of the lean black american teenage guy is not reality anymore, on average. reality today is that over half of these guys are packing flab. black americans are by far the fattest group in the US. some black american football players are so fat today that their blubber is appalling.
another thing to rethink, which i posted in the other thread, is that africans who grow up in the caribbean are surrounded by water and participate in competitive swimming at a fair rate. these guys are all 6 feet tall and lean. if poor africans in the caribbean can learn to swim with aplomb, so can relatively affluent black americans. there are way, way more pools in the US than facilities for several other sports. this is true around the world, which is why there are many world class swimmers from poor nations like brazil and russia.
"Dear God, you're an annoying and stupid person.
Strength is not something which causes fear. The trouble with black criminals is that they are criminals. Their alleged physical strength is not an issue."
Suuuuuuuuuuuuure!!!!
So, it makes no difference if you're attacked by a black thug built like Mike Tyson or a Cambodian thug built like Haing S. Ngor.
And I suppose men fear female criminals as much as women fear male criminals.
Hahahahahahahaha.
I may be annoying but you're a laugh riot.
I think the confusion here for a lot of liberals is that yes, the political categorisation of races can be very fluid, i.e. a social construct. But that doesn't mean that genetics has no bearing whatsoever on who is in one race and who is in another. Instead, we should think of race as the recognition of the 'out-group'. Those of a different race belong to the 'out-group' and this belonging to the 'out-group' is determined by genetics/ancestry.
I've often heard it said that people haven't evolved to be racist, as throughout our evolution there was never enough interaction between the different races (as we know those races to be classified today) for such a psychological mechanism to evolve. However, humans are xenophobic, and do tend to develop animosities to those from the out-group. Just look at the rivalries between the English and the French over the past few hundred years, or the Serbs and the Croats or the Spanish and the Portuguese. Hell, look at any high school and the rivalries between the students who belong to different social cliques.
Now how does this relate to race? Well races are just the recognition of the out-group, (xenophobia) on a larger scale. And the reason why the categories are so fluid, and hence can be seen as a social construct, is based in a biological interpretation of the purpose of life for an organism.
From a biological perspective, the purpose of life is to maximise the replication of your genes into the following generations. Seeing as humans are a tribal species and live in social groups which compete with one another for scarce resources, and each particular social group will/could have its own particular set of genes different to the groups with which it competes, then it follows then that this can result in groups, (not just individual organisms), competing with one another for the maximum replication of their groups genes. Hence xenophobia can evolve and the classification of the out-group.
Now back to why the classification of these groups can be so fluid. Most groups do have most genes in common with one another such that the differences between groups are very small. As such, for the purposes of the following hypotheticals, the term unit value will be used to represent a difference in a social group’s gene(s), with a greater unit value representing a greater difference. Also, each instance of combining occurs in the next generation.
What then happens when two groups, A and B, who each differ by a unit value of 1, (A=1, B=2), and have been competing against each other for some time and have hence classified each other as the out-group, encounter another group C that differs from A by a unit value of 2 and B by a unit value of 1, (C=3)? Well, most likely you would expect A to classify C as a further out-group then B, but B would classify C as an out-group of equal value to A.
The example I like which demonstrates this in the real world is the Irish, (or perhaps the Italians and the Jewish). In the Anglo-sphere not too long ago, the Irish weren't really considered ‘white’ by the dominant English social group of the day. When they came over to Britain, America, Australia... etc, they were discriminated against by the native English social groups there. In fact, they were never really accepted as part of the in-group by the native English majority until much more different out-groups started immigrating to those countries such that the differences between the two groups were much smaller than the differences between each group, either individually or combined, and the new competing groups that came. Or put simply, the Irish weren't considered 'white' until even more 'non-white' people came along to compete with the English and Irish in their new lands. Thus, while 'race' or 'out-group' is a social construct, (i.e. fluid), its fluidity is determined by genetics/ancestry and such fluidity will only occur when it is to the benefits of both groups against a much more different competing group. The fact is, the only thing which will unite all humans in this world under one flag of brotherhood is if aliens from outer space invade and try to wipe ALL humans out and hence necessitating ALL human social groups combining together into one group, say W, to compete against these aliens and hence ensure the maximum replication of their former individual groups genes and their new W groups genes against the aliens, (who would be presumed to have no genes in common with group W.)
Interestingly enough, if one thinks about it, the same could possibly be said for ‘memes’ or ideological/cultural/political ideas.
That is why race is both a social construct and is determined by genetics/ancestry.
What then happens if C is instead a group of value 10, and the size of C is twice that of A and B individually, and A and B are of equal size? Well, for the purpose of survival, and to prevent each group A or B or both being overwhelmed with C assuming even mixing, (i.e. AwithC = ((2*10)-1) / 2 = 9.5 or BwithC = ((2*10)-2) / 2 = 9 or ABwithC=((10-1)/2+(10-2)/2)/2)=4.25, which would result in a 8.5 unit value loss for A or a 7 unit value loss for B or a 2.75 unit value loss for AB) it would make sense for groups A and B, to join together and become AB=1.5 (and hence now being able to compete with C in size and prevent its particular genes being wiped out or overwhelmed) which in total now only has an 8.5 value difference with group C yet only resulting in a 0.5 loss for A and B each in their individual unit values. Hence the two groups, when faced with the prospect of their genes being either wiped out or heavily replaced with group C's genes (also known as competed against with), both groups A and B choose to accept each other into the same social group and now both see out-group C with the same vigour (i.e. an 8.5 difference as opposed to the 9 and 8 difference before). Thus demonstrating how the 'out-group', while a social construct in that the categorisation of who is in and who is out can be fluid, is still tied to genes/ancestry, as the purpose behind all groups, animals and organisms is the maximum replication of their particular genes, and a group is only willing to allow a different group to become part of their group if it furthers the maximum replication of the genes they hold in common against a competitor that is more different from both groups either individually or combined, and that competitor poses a greater threat to the genes that the groups hold in common than the threat that would occur to the genes that those two groups don’t have in common if those two groups were to join together, (i.e. the 0.5 loss if A and B join together versus the 8.5 or 7 loss if C joins with A or B, or the 2.75 loss if C joins with AB). Basically the name of the game is to ensure the least loss possible to the genetic integrity of your particular social group’s genes if through competition one is forced to choose to reassess who will compose the in/out-group.
Semi-serious: I wonder if Africans dislike water for the same reason that cats (who are mainly of equatorial origin) dislike water. When you evolve in alligator country, avoiding rivers and ponds is a good survival technique.
These researchers should ask Kevin Drum and the readers of Mother Jones to help them understand what's going on.
So, it makes no difference if you're attacked by a black thug built like Mike Tyson or a Cambodian thug built like Haing S. Ngor.
Does Haing have a gun? If so, I'll take my chances with Tyson.
adsfasdfa...
Btw, how is it 'bigoted' if it's based on TRUTH and FACTS? If whites fear black criminals more than they fear criminals of other races on the FACTUAL KNOWLEDGE that blacks are stronger, how is that bigoted? It sounds rational and enlightend to me. And how many white liberals dare live in neighborhoods with lots of dangerous blacks?
It's bigoted because you well know the FACTUAL KNOWLEDGE is that the W.African/AfAm blacks you boast about are demonstrably WEAKER than Europeans and even Asians (see bottom of this thread).
White's dominate ALL STRENGTH competitions nearly as completely as W.Africans dominate ALL SHORT SPRINT RUNNING events. Euros also outperform Africans in all major fighting sports likes wrestling, boxing and such. Euros also do better in comprehensive and more balanced multiskilled sports like soccer, decathalon, iron man, etc.
I suspect that W.African/Euro hybrids (not pure W.African) could do better in the fighting sports with more training and access. Their good access to high level track feeder events however, shows that they are probably inherently limited by their relative lack of endurance.
American sports have become tailored for the W.African/AfAm phenotype. The best sport to judge atheleticism based upon widest accessibility, interest and most participation is unquestionably soccer. The whitest team in the world won the first World Cup held in Africa and the semi-qualifiers were among the whitests. This may be an exception in how extreme the results were, but it shows W.African explosive sprinting ability in no way makes for a complete athlete or team.
To your point about the fear of AfAm criminals, the reasons are both rational and irrational. The rational:
* much higher criminality rates in virtually every place and time in history
* intensive cradle-to-grave brainwashed victim mentality promotes aggressive antisocial behavior and irrational racists hatred of non-blacks
* inflated and fragile ego easily offended even if imagined due in part to a self-destructive under culture and pop media that demands blacks (esp testostone filled young males) to always dominate, never back down and seek out racism in everything even when it usually doesn't exists
* poor impulse control often resulting irrational and unpredictable violence whether due to SES, culture or other (eg rap music, bling culture, B/W savings rates with equal income)
* less to lose materially and less fear of consequence due to much greater familarity violating social taboos like having a rap sheet or spending time in the joint (32% of black males born in 2001 can expect to spend sometime in prison)
* social indulgences that promote dysfunctional behavior such as gaining social status by being a thug or having served time
* legal and media systems that hunts down whites for any real or perceived racism while promoting black racism (e.g. only white men cannot be victims of hate crime according to DOJ, media treatment of crime).
* Blacks can be explosively fast and many have a seething anger (rational and irrational) that gives a strong will and edge in attacking and fighting non-whites
* most non-whites, esp middle class and above, have been conditioned to be non-violent whimps who have entirely lost touch with their animalistic nature
The irrational fear of blacks are:
* Human inability to distinguish between individual and group character, intent, behavior in all situations (overgeneralization -> racism which will always exists, more often in the less intelligent and aware)
* The myth that blacks are stronger. US sports have become tailored to the explosive sprinting abilities of W.Africans/AfAm because it makes good highlight reels and entertainment. US sports media is 110% PC and propagates this. W.African much lower body fat exaggerates relative musculature that misleads anyone who hasn't visited a lot of weight rooms into believing this. The facts show this is the opposite of the reality.
* The myth that blacks are better fighters. Again, look at who dominates the strength and fighting sports and who are the bravest, most disciplined and even craziest in elite military units. Most fights
There are a number of factors that limit the individual and especially group fighting abilities of W.African blacks despite their amazing explosiveness and decent strength and size advantages. Your problem is that you're always exaggerating the case for W.African atheletic supremicism.
If blacks have a higher center of gravity, wouldn't this be a disadvantage in football? Football is about knocking people over.
Or would black's advantages in speed and power make up for this?
Maybe center-of-mass theory predicts that you are likely to have a higher percentage of whites in line positions. Dunno if that data bears that out.
adsfasdfa...
Your ridiculously extreme homerism regarding W.African/AfAm athleticism suggests that you're more of the jock sniffing type than anyone whose actually competed in many sports.
Most people, including myself, generally have a more balanced and respectful view of good athletes, regardless of color, if have fought against them.
Nah, that couldn't have been St. Darwin saying that! It must have been his Evil Cousin Twin Francis Galton.
"these differences are not racial, but rather biological"
Typical modern academic doublespeak. An absolute laughable crock.
I agree with Hopefully Anon and the following contributor. "Population" is easier to tailor than "Race" and doesn't carry out-of-date and biologically inaccurate racial definitions.
Risto
That's why so many people are so uncomfortable with the word race.
In other words, because they're morons.
A partly inbred extended family would be, by definition, interested in a quirky combination of swimming and handball.
What we don't what is for "race" to be sucked dry of "population genetics" and left as a political category for the quota system, a system needed because of differences in population genetics and a desire for group egalitarianism.
The word 'race' is very inaccurate as it bundles people primarily by skin color which as mentioned by asdasdfasdf is a very bad indicator of heredity. Especially the term black is stupid because Sub-Saharan Africans account for something like 95% of all genetic variation in humans.
In essence, people lumped as "blacks" constitute 19 races; whites, East Asians, South Asians, indigenous Americans & Australians together constitute a single race.
For this reason, populations or racial groups work much better.
"If whites fear black criminals more than they fear criminals of other races on the FACTUAL KNOWLEDGE that blacks are stronger, how is that bigoted?"
Name some of your favourite black strongmen or weightlifters, please.
Swimming is a white herring in this discussion. I saw a black guy, Anthony Nesty, beat the great Matt Biondi for a gold medal in the 1988 Olympics, so blacks have been modestly competitive in swimming in proportion to the numbers who take it up seriously for a generation.
There are lots of obvious reasons blacks don't do all that well in swimming -- access to pools, fear of sinking and drowning that keeps them away from water (which is a reasonable fear for low body-fat young black males, who drown in motel pools in tragic numbers), opportunities in other sports, etc. -- and morphological differences is only one of them. Sure, there are very few blacks shaped like Michael Phelps, but then there aren't all that many whites shaped like him, either.
Way way wait. That's one. ONE SWIMMER in 50 yrs of Olympics. That's not a trend. Fact: Blacks have never done as well as Whites in swiming. All that you have written about regarding competitive running can easily be applied from the reverse regarding how poorly blacks around the world do in competitive swimming.
And, while at it,....how come blacks DONT do well...fare poorly....in WINTER olympic sports? How come they dont dominate skiiing? Ice Skating?
How come...there are a couple dozen in NHL hockey, you never hear about it...why not?
Why dont blacks like hockey and arent drawn to it in any significant numbers?
All fair questions. But for swimming, that is at least as strong as the running component. they've never been anywhere near dominant as they have been in running.
Post a Comment