Oh, and as for Chinese race car drivers, you probably won’t see any from China any time soon, but I bet Asian drivers are just around the corner.
Several major racing circuits (including F1 and NASCAR) now run events in Japan, and one of the biggest prerequisites to starting a race team - having a lot of money - shouldn’t be too great an obstacle there.
“Nothing is so firmly believed as what is least known” - Michel Gyquem de Montaigne
I, too, was a lifeguard a large water park (during my high school days), and our training made a point to identify blacks as a high-risk group.
Whether they are not, I can’t say – that’s just what we were taught.
For what it’s worth, in my two summers at that park, I made one save that I believe actually saved a life (the rest were to assuage nervous parents, or ‘just to be on the safe side’). The girl I rescued was a light-skinned black, but I’d say the biggest factor that led to her needing a rescue was her size – she was spread-eagled on an inner tube to keep from falling through the middle.
She never should have been allowed on that ride, and when she went under, the pool was too crowded for her to find room to come back up for air.
~ Complacency is far more dangerous than outrage ~
Rich “G7SUBS”
Some years ago, a VP of a baseball organization, I **think[/] it was the Dodgers, in an interview espoused the view that black males were better athletes because they had been selectively bred for increased muscle back during slave days. He went on to say that Blacks were poor swimmers due to “heavier” bones and less body fat. He was fired within the week, IIRC, for publicly airing his views.
Ray Campanis (sp?)! Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder went down in flames for making similar comments.
Point of clarification: Campanis got canned for saying that blacks didn’t have the “necessities” to be in Major League Baseball management.
Jimmy the Greek made the comment about blacks’ selective breeding for strength from the slavery days.
I don’t think either one of them addressed the swimming issue. I could be wrong though.
“Nothing is so firmly believed as what is least known” - Michel Gyquem de Montaigne
That was Al Campanis.
Gary
“Master of the uncalled for.”
Homepage: Gary’s Place
(The original thread is here.)
Remember, some of the people who complain about “political correctness” stifling free discussion are genuinely engaged in an impartial quest for the truth and fear that a left-wing political hegemony can be just as oppressive as the worst kind of totalitarian regime
Some of them are just racists.
I recall seeing some stats on body fat vs type of sport in a sports physiology book in college and it was clear that the swimmers had more fat that the runners. The book even had nude pictures of the athletes taken from behind (shut up,this is serious science) and the swimmers literally had “fat asses”
compared to the track athletes. It is possible to have an athlete with dense bones and high muscle mass with a density greater than water. I used to race bicycles for a living years ago and none of the guys on the team could swim well at all, not enough fat in the right place and you had to spend too much energy just staying afloat. I float much better these days. As far as race being an issue with body density, I dunno.
“Everybody smokes in hell”
Homer, I agree with you in your reaction to RTA, but try and be a little more diplomatic next time - take it to the pit.
The fact is, there does appear to be some legitimate physical differences between races that seem to be due solely to race. It can’t just be a coincidence that the fastest guys on the football team, or the highest jumpers on the basketball team almost always invariably turn out to be black - there has to be a connection between race and athletic ability. I don’t intend any sort of derogatory or hateful or prejudicial meaning to that statement - that’s just an observation of fact.
And as far as extending that observation to mental capacity - I don’t think there is sufficient evidence or opportunity yet to gather evidence to make a conclusion in one direction or the other. Intellectual achievement appears to be far more dependent on socio-economic factors than is athletic achievement and our society has not progressed enough to even begin to think that those factors, on average, can be considered to be equal between the races.
And in response to all of you amateur Jimmy the Greeks out there: these differences are most likely due to thousands upon thousands of years of evolution within the gene pool. Modern genetic theory would say it’s impossible for these fundamental genetic differences (if they are found to exist) to be due to such a small period of time (in the grand scheme of things) as African slavery.
As far as the OP goes, I think that the race element is an unrelated corollary to the real answer - which, IMHO, could just as easily be the body fat answer or the socio-economic factor. It’s just an unfortunate coincidence that blacks, on average, happen to fall into both groups and thus lead people to jump to an incorrect conclusion.
Certain to be flamed, but I’m just trying to be honest. 
Some black men are denser than water, but that doesn’t necessesarily preclude their learning to swim. Some species of fish are denser than water, I believe I read somewhere.
An amusing story I heard from my high school physics teacher: At his former school it was a requirement that students traverse the school’s swimming pool as a graduation requirement. One of the black students couldn’t swim, so he he held his breath, jumped in the pool and walked across the bottom to the other side, and climbed up the ladder.
I have no idea if this is true, maybe someone here can tell me. I don’t remember where I heard it, but I did hear that black people have better muscle tone from birth [this might help explain the denser body theory, if it is true]. I was told that on average, black babies hold their heads up sooner than white babies.
Anyone know the straight dope on this? I never really cared one way or the other enough to check it out, I just filed it in the “things people have told me” part of my brain and it hasn’t come up as relevant til now.
–
I have over 2000 posts, dammit! Show some respect.
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O p a l C a t
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This is a bit of a guess, but couldn’t a lower percentage of body fat be a climate adaptation? A black skin is adapted for strong sunlight, which is an advantage in the tropics. A low body fat percentage may also be an adaptation for high temperature. (You don’t see many skinny eskimos, after all.) Which would result in a higher power-to-weight ratio, which gives an advantage in explosive track and field events such as sprinting, long jump etc. but would also make it harder to float.
While I don’t know about it being a racial trait, but I have evidence that being to dense to swim can be heriditary. A friend’s grandfather sinks rather than floats - he’s fond of telling about the time he fell out of a boat and walked across the bottom of the river to the bank to save himself. His grandson Jeremy tells of how in swimming class the instructor wanted to prove that everyone could float, so they dared everyone to sit on the bottom of the pool. and Jeremy did just that, sat until he had to get up to take a breath. They are of Irish decent, not black.
Another lifeguard weighing in here. It’s a silly question that race would affect swimming ability. Economic class, yes. Race, no. Kids from the suburbs were always better swimmers than kids from the city.
I attended a university which had a swimming requirement for freshmen, and yes, we had some athletes who had to walk or bounce their way across the pool bottom to qualify.
Since this thread has bounced back up:
My guess is that people who are only able to go swimming when they’re given free transport to the pool and cheap admission are likely to be less experienced swimmers than those who can go any time they like.
Are black Americans given free boxing lessons and gym membership but no access to high school swimming pools or tennis courts? It costs just as much to learn to box outside of the school system in other countries as it does to play golf or tennis. May be black people have just agreed not to play tennis so white people can be good at something.
Hm. Interesting. – Racial profiling among lifeguards. I wonder where that ranks on the ‘patently objectionable’ scale alongside police racial profiling. The arguments are the same for both: Statistical evidence, working experience, etc. but they differ in the damage done to society. Does the lack of damage caused by this practice make it acceptable to single out a group of people based on that one characteristic that is made most apparent in swimwear? The fact that statistics support the effectiveness of profiling in police work hasn’t won that case for the police because it’s recognized that the practice itself bears on the statistics. (If we only search black men, we’ll find more black men carry illegal weapons) In lifeguarding, the opposite might be thought to be the case. If lifeguards are keeping an eye out for blacks, then fewer blacks, you would assume, will drown.
I’m glad this came up. It will be interesting to consider.
Blacks have more muscle (denser than water) than fat (less dense then water), and so, they are ‘heavier’ in water and thus have a disadvantage when swimming.
Response:
Are you friggin’ high!?
White athlete-swimmers have very little body fat. Have you seen Olympic swimmers? They’re cut like pro body builders. By the above theory, they should sink like stones. (The so called ‘big butt’ observation has more to do with large gluteus maximi from straight leg kicking than it does with fat deposits.)
Swimming has more to do with muscle exertion than amount of fat. If blacks were supposedly more naturally muscular than whites, then they should be natural swimmers.
Yes, fat helps in motionless floating, but even there, body position and a full lung full of air are more important than fat in order to float – and, low-fat white athlete swimmers can do a motionless float, thus the blacks should be capable of this, too.
Blacks have X body type.
Response:
OK, you’re now just being an ignorant racist.
Are you saying that the black sports personalities of Arthur Ashe (tennis), William ‘the refrigerator’ Perry (football), Carl Lewis (running), and Michael Jordan (if you don’t know…) all have the same ‘body type’?
The ‘body type’ of ‘blacks’ are as varied as the ‘body type’ of a ‘typical white man.’ To not recognize that is racism – racism you may be blind to, and be unintentional of, but it is racism.
Once we map the genome, then we’ll know for sure what racial genes for athletics are present…
Response:
We already know – there ain’t none.
Newsflash: Real preliminary genetic science on the genome is showing that you’re not going to find a ‘black muscle genome.’
Geneticists already know that the pigmentation gene is not connected to the muscle gene. If it were, whites with freckles whould have a different ‘body type’ than freckleless people. The genetic difference between whites and blacks is in the pigment gene, not the elusive ‘athletics gene.’
Well it’s more than just pigment, blacks have thicker lips, different cranial shapes, etc… than whites. So why not a more athletic body type?
Response: Your ignorance in genetics is astounding.
Let me ask you: If a population of related people had a larger than average nose size, would that make them more or less athletic? Now, Italians and Jews are known for their larger nose sizes – how does that relate to their athletic predispositions? If you say it doesn’t matter, then you are correct. Just like you can’t use national or regional characteristics of whites to come up with a body type or athletic profile, neither can you do that with blacks.
A century ago, people (even supposedly respectable scientists) theorized that blacks were inherently dumber than whites because they had a smaller brain. Actual measurement of brains showed that we all had the same brain size. Actual opportunities for education showed that blacks were not inherently dumb. (BTW, the same argument of brain size has been used by some white national groups (the French and Germans come to mind) to explain why they were smarter than even the other white peoples. Any way you look at it, it’s bigotry based on ignorance.)
As already mentioned, blacks do not have a single body type.
Because there are so few blacks in X and so many blacks in Y, then blacks must have a genetic predisposition to be bad at X but good in Y.
Response:
Moron.
Since so few Jews have been presidents of the United States, then Jews must be missing a ‘presidents gene.’ Or…
Since so many woman are bank tellers, they must have a ‘counting money’ or ‘finance’ or ‘math gene.’ Or…
Since so many cops in New York City are Irish, the Irish must have a ‘law enforcement gene.’
Peace.
