black athletes

[alaskaboy]

Originally Posted by Indentured Servant

The thing is this. Once you open the door to the belief that "race" and racial genetics play a large part in athletic performance....then you open the door also to the possibility and probabilities that race plays a role in intellectual and emotional performance as well.

Aside from the spiritual, there is only the physical and the mental, as it relates to humans. Obviously they are interconnected and symbiotic, however, people need to be more MENTAL to survive in this era than physical. Its the era of the mind and people who hold onto racial theories about the physical, I dare say, also hold onto racial ideas about the mental. Thus, socioeconomic inequality between the races can be seen as the natural outcome of racial genetic differences being played out, just as they believe they are played out in the physical realm via athletics.

I submit to you this. Nearly all of my essays and rants, if you will, is predicated upon the demonstration and exposure of these hidden cognition in many whites. What I have been trying to demonstrate is that Many, if not most, whites think in such a way that one can only conclude that the unstated premise is the mental inferiority of the black race. People who hold these believes tend to be conservative and vote republican, although I am not saying that everyone who is such is guilty of such. One can easily see this through the process of elimination, if not deductive and inductive reasoning because few will admit such beliefs, if they are conscious beliefs, because they do not want to be seen or exposed as "racist" (and racism does not mean that you hate or dislike or cannot and do not get along with other races).

There is no way that you can start from the premise or belief of the inherent equality of the races, and then eliminate all the historical and external reason paths which leads to the current racial inequality. In other words, logically, one cannot create an inequality from an equality, while arguing that the current inequality is NOT the result and consequence of the different treatment of each side of (the impact and consequence of past and present racism) the equation. If the inequality is NOT the result of unequal treatment, then one is arguing that the two sides were never equal to begin with. Hence, you cannot get to inequality, while dismissing the role of unequal treatment (racism), if you assume that there EVER WAS EQUALITY in abilities and capacities .....especially MENTAL ( which control intellect,
temperament, emotions.....ie....test scores, violence, responsibility, laziness etc.) in the first place. people cannot accept and dissent against the idea the society NURTURED two different cultures and and realities, as a result of "ISMS", in regards to race, then they are saying that the reason for the socioeconomic differences is INHERENT.

I'm not a conservative republican. but I have to call this the most bundled liberal rubbish for an 'intellect" I've read in a long time of these forums. I'll be the first to tell you, that I believe we are all equal and the same, because we share common emotional attributes, we are all human, we all feel and hurt for the same reasons and we all have the same aspirations and desires. (within the overall confines of the big picture.) With that said, only a blind, denial-monger can say there are NO DIFFERENCES BETWEEN RACES, physically or mentally. There are differences! And blacks in America will be the first to tell you so! Do those differences make one race better or worse then the other? NO!!! But there are differences! Why do we have to deny this all the time?

Blacks are better at certain sports because overall they possess different physical characteristics that make their pool of potential athletes superior within certain sports. Just like the small island from Samoa that has full-time NFL scouts camped out and recruiting, large, fast and fierce Samoan men to get into NFL shape! A small island of only 100,000 total population, yet they yield 100 NFL starters! WHY DO YOU THINK THAT IS? CAUSE WE ARE ALL PHYSICALLY THE SAME GENETICALLY? Come on man!

How many 110 pound Korean men are starting linebackers in the NFL?

We are slightly different and it's ok to accept that. As long as we all remember we are all human, have the same needs, desires, wants and bleed the same! It's not a big deal! We don't need to have a superiority complex just because we recognize that each race of people is slightly different from the next.

[caribny]

Originally Posted by eddie gein

This is the most pathetic defense you position that you have put out there as of yet. Science has advanced quite a bit in 100 years. The field of exercise physiology really didn't even exist as such until JS Haldane began measurements in the 1920s.

And by the way, ANY elite athlete of ANY race in ANY sport has a genetic advantage of the average person of ANY race and in ANY sport.

I stay away from football and basketball because they are complex sports with skills that are more integrated and harder to measure. However, COMPONENTS of these skills can be measured, For instance we have already discussed that basketball selects for height. It also selects for vertical jumping skills. And we find that time to peak torque during vertical jump is faster among african american basketball players than it is in white basketball players.

Again, you misunderstand my point about swimming. Swimming is more complex than sprinting on a track, because of the fluid environment however, it isn't hard to measure. The point is that efficiency in stroke technique and reducing fluid drag is the most important part of swimming. A swimmer can produce all kinds of power that is wasted in trying to pull himself down the lane thus power is less important than efficiency with that power. Because sprinting on a track isn't in a fluid environment, drag isn't as big an issue.

Now let's take on Cullen Jones AGAIN. A few posts back I said that African American blacks had denser lean tissue than did whites and this was a disadvantage in establishing buoyancy. Now you are claiming that I said that Cullen Jones has an genetic advantage? Ok, Cullen Jones is a sprinter. He likely has a high fast twitch percentage like ALL swimming sprinters do. And he works hard like ALL elite swimmers do. We could biopsy Cullen Jones to establish his fiber type. We could also do bone densiometry and get a T score on how dense his bone tissue is. We could do this on all elite 50 meter swimmers and see what differences there are between them. However, we are likely to see a lot more similarities than differences. If we took these measures amongst 1500 meter swimmers we would see a different profile.

As far as far as your comments about USA women and Jamacian women. I'm not sure what point you are trying to make, but among elite sprinters we will see the same genetic profiles among as we do among their male counterparts.

Finally, the issues with Brazilian and Cuban athletes. Again, among the best sprinters in these countries we would see the SAME genetic results. However, if we were to measure a random group of individuals from these countries we wouldn't see it as often as we would among a random group of Carribeans of west African descent. There is no doubt that if these countries focused on sprinting there would be more sprinters. However, it is highly unlikely that they would achieve anything close to the per capita success in elite sprinters that Jamaica does no matter what they did. Just like if every white kid in America took up sprinting, they would still be dominated by their black counterparts on a per capita basis.

I won't argue your point that sociology plays a part. If more blacks participated in "predominantly white" sports there would be more blacks excelling. However, white kids all over the world try to sprint. In the history of track and field there have been 87 individuals of west African descent break 10 seconds for 100. There has been one Australian who is part aborigine and part white, There has been 1 European white male to ever do it. ONE. I suppose according to you all the other good white sprinters are doing what? soccer? cricket? hockey? skateboarding? Rodeo cowboys?

Or are you saying that they are all lawyers? Or doctors? Or engineers, or managers at Lowe's?

Where are these guys?

I am of 80% West African descent (DNA Ancestry tested given that you so believe in genetics) and have the build of your stereotypical black male (firmer thighs and buttocks than most non black men have). Does that mean that I will beat you in a sprint? Maybe and maybe not. So clearly my supposedly genetic advantage is of minimal use.

Given the millions of black men on this planet don't you think that you can base genetics as a causal factor? So 87 have done well. But what about the 600 million others? Do they on average sprint fastest? You don't know.

I notice that you didn't carve up the thighs of black women to explain their domination of the sprints. Or to prove that they have more developed fast twitch muscles than do white men, so would beat most of the white males who showed up at the Olympics. Because black women dominate the sprints very bit as their male counterparts do. Note my comparison to white MEN.

I am sure that a sport where the results are over in 10 second requires a good deal more than just fast twitch muscles. So just as a swimmer must master certain skills so must a sprinter. The race is pretty much over when it starts. Indeed the race is also won by how one finishes as well. Technique again.



So why have Jamaicans, who are West/West Central African, pushed out Cubans, who have the same background?

Why have black Cubans pushed out white Cubans, many of whom have recent European ancestry, from sports where Europeans excel?

Indeed if the only information I had on the Jamaican and Cuban Olympic teams were their medals, using stereotypes, I would assume that the Cubans were mainly people of recent European descent. Instead they both have high levels of genetic origins in Nigeria/Congo, with Jamaicans also being heavily Ghanaian.

You imply that Cullen has a genetic advantage because you ASSUME that he has above the norm fast twitch muscles by virtue of being black. So you then give Cullen Jones a genetic advantage to explain his strong performance, negating of course that he is one of the few black males who have done that well. So if his victories are due to his fast twitch muscles one would expect blacks to dominate. Instead most of us were surprised to see him at the Olympic level, and many wouldn't have expected him to medal, because in this sport few black males have.

As to height. Major advantage in basket ball and yet whites are taller than blacks on average (even though many of you have now developed some sort of inferiority complex that causes you to forget that fact). How about the different style of basket ball that was developed among blacks compared to what was played by whites? Might that not explain superior jumping in basketball as that is a core feature of the touch ball games in urban neighborhoods? Black performance in the high and long jump is quite sporadic so I cant see how any one will attribute any genetic advantage to blacks.


The dominant issue is the social one. And also the range of sports that a given group focuses on. Jamaicans excel in sprints and are embarrassingly bad at other Olympic sports. So they place 100% of their energies in sprints, and their swimmers get little financial or coaching help. They have therefore become a sprint power house that allows them to fend off the Cubans, whose athletes are exposed to a broader range of activities.

Black Cubans push aside white Cubans in sports that blacks haven't been known to excel in (accounting for 11 of their 15 2012 medals) because they have fewer options to succeed in a racist society.

American blacks are like the Jamaicans, with a focus on a narrow range of sports, and like the Cuban black, are highly motivated as they see this as a route to success.

Last year a light skinned black American became news media fodder because he was being harassed by a poor white kid. The black kid was mediocre so if that avenue doesn't work out he has other avenues to explore. For the poor white kid football is it, so he had to figure out how to fit in, and how to excel. The remaining black team mates identified more with the white player than they did with the Ivy League black player, I bet because they too have a much narrower range of opportunities to succeed.


If Usain Bolt was an upper middle class Jamaican kid he would have become a doctor, business executive, or engineer. Why? Because those avenues offer a surer route to success than athletics, for those able to obtain the education. Usain lacks their advantages so had to focus more on sports.

I will add that in the case of the poor (usually black) Cuban or American, and with the poor Jamaican, societal stereotypes also steer these kids towards careers in sports if they show the talent, because people don't associate academic success with those groups, and many have internalized that view.