# Black athletes benefiting from slavery **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 30, 2010, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-athletes-benefiting-from-slavery/545059 "2010-06-30T14:07:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2010, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-athletes-benefiting-from-slavery/545059/61 "2010-07-04T13:37:39Z")
**wmfellows** , if you need to indicate that a general line of thought displays less than impressive intelligence, have at it. However, when you drop adjectives expressing that opinion into every line in your post, it comes across as rather more nearly a personal attack on its author. Dial it back. [/Modding] ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2010, 2:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-athletes-benefiting-from-slavery/545059/62 "2010-07-04T14:49:50Z")
> [@wmfellows](#): > > Mace already noted the baseline is something like 10% mixed European ancestry on average, never mind the American Indian, Asian, Chinese, whatnot. The number I quoted was the average: 20%. Not the “baseline”. I’m not sure what “baseline” would mean in this context. You’ll get slightly different numbers from different studies, but 20% is going to be pretty close. However, there is considerable variance. I’m nut sure you’d find many, if any, Blacks in the US who are 100% African unless they are recent immigrants from Africa. OTOH, there are plenty of Blacks who actually have \> 50% European ancestry. ---
**Author:** ![Susanann](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/7ab992/32.png) [@Susanann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Susanann)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2010, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-athletes-benefiting-from-slavery/545059/63 "2010-07-04T16:37:03Z")
> [@wmfellows](#): > > Probably 99% of the time you say idiotic things that have fuck all to do with any history or any sense of how wars operate. > Fitness has fuck all to do with how you get caught in a slave raid, or if you army gets ambushed and defeated, and your villages get sold off into slavery. I dont know why you refuse to accept it. The entire history of man proves that the strongest, the most powerful, the fittest: WIN!!!, and thus the strongest and toughest do NOT get sold into slavery. It is the weak defeated peoples who become slaves - always was, and always will be. It was the losers who were sold into slavery and it was the losers who came to America. Nothing you fantasize is going to change that. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2010, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-athletes-benefiting-from-slavery/545059/64 "2010-07-04T16:55:54Z")
> [@Susanann](#): > > I dont know why you refuse to accept it. > > The entire history of man proves that the strongest, the most powerful, the fittest: WIN!!!, and thus the strongest and toughest do NOT get sold into slavery. > > It is the weak defeated peoples who become slaves - always was, and always will be. > > It was the losers who were sold into slavery and it was the losers who came to America. Nothing you fantasize is going to change that. What absolute nonsense. War is not a wrestling match between two individuals. On the 4th of July, of all days, you should realize that the Americans defeated the British not because we were “stronger” or “fitter”, but because we were more determined, and we were lucky enough to enlist the French (who had been warring with Britain almost forever) on our side. Any objective analysis at the beginning of the war would say that the British were “stronger” and “fitter”. ---
**Author:** ![wmfellows](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c2a13f/32.png) [@wmfellows](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wmfellows)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2010, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-athletes-benefiting-from-slavery/545059/65 "2010-07-04T17:49:20Z")
> [@Susanann](#): > > I dont know why you refuse to accept it. Because I am not an ignorant idiot with superficial understanding of war and historical conflict. > [@](#): > > The entire history of man proves that the strongest, the most powerful, the fittest: WIN!!!, and thus the strongest and toughest do NOT get sold into slavery. Utter tripe, in fact stupid utter tripe. The entire history of war in mankind proves (i) stronger armies can be destroyed by clever generaliship and strategy (that is a few good leaders) (ii) A good dose of luck is always involved in any single battle (iii) A given “fitter” force may be beaten by the chance acquisition of superior technology from an ally (See Africa, India etc proxy wars). Your idiotic claim would have it that some how Romans were more physically fit and stronger than the Celts, the Germans or Slavs that they defeated and enslaved. That is sheer and utter tripe. They simply had better organisation (for a defined period of time). Fitness has fuck all to do with it, and it is blindingly stupid to assert anything to the contrary. Exclamation points don’t make absurdly superficial, stupid and ill-informed claims any truer. Might as well be claiming it’s self-evident that maggots spontaneously generate in meat. > [@](#): > > It is the weak defeated peoples who become slaves - always was, and always will be. Uhuh. Right. See above re Slavs, Germans, Celts, etc. > [@](#): > > It was the losers who were sold into slavery and it was the losers who came to America. Nothing you fantasize is going to change that. I’m hardly the one engaged in fantasies. That’s right evident. (also what Mace noted above, I mean Jaysus what utter blindingly stupid nonsense this assertion is, worthy of a small child) ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2010, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-athletes-benefiting-from-slavery/545059/66 "2010-07-04T19:49:28Z")
> [@Susanann](#): > > The entire history of man proves that the strongest, the most powerful, the fittest: WIN!!!, and thus the strongest and toughest do NOT get sold into slavery. Leaving aside the patent absurdity of war and the history of man being some hyper-accelerated form of evolution or social Darwinism, the use of the word ‘fittest’ rather than ‘strongest’ or ‘most powerful’ in survival of the fittest isn’t accidental. **The fittest has fuck-all to do with the strongest or the most powerful.** It is the species and characteristics most able to survive in a given environment that are the fittest and the ones that survive. Dinosaurs were by far stronger and more powerful than anything else alive at the time, but they’re all gone. They weren’t fit to survive. The cockroach, on the other hand, has been around for 350 million years and was fit to survive whatever it was that caused dinosaurs to go extinct. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2010, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-athletes-benefiting-from-slavery/545059/67 "2010-07-04T21:02:22Z")
**wmfellows** , you have already been told to dial it back. You are about to be Warned for your misbehavior. Knock it off. [/Moderating] ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2010, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-athletes-benefiting-from-slavery/545059/68 "2010-07-04T21:45:41Z")
> [@](#): > > What absolute nonsense. War is not a wrestling match between two individuals. “Whatever happens, we have got The Maxim gun, and they have not.” ---
**Author:** ![Susanann](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/7ab992/32.png) [@Susanann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Susanann)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2010, 2:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-athletes-benefiting-from-slavery/545059/69 "2010-07-05T02:15:42Z")
Originally Posted by Susanann View Post The entire history of man proves that the strongest, the most powerful, the fittest: WIN!!!, and thus the strongest and toughest do NOT get sold into slavery. > [@Dissonance](#): > > Dinosaurs were by far stronger and more powerful than anything else alive at the time, but they’re all gone. They weren’t fit to survive. . You are confusing millions of years of evolution with who is the strongest at any given time…although you are proving my point. At the time of the dinosaur, the T-Rex was probably at or near the top of the food chain, he was the one that most likely “ruled”. It was not the T-Rex who was captured. Since the T-Rex was usually the toughest and the strongest, at the time, he usually won. It doesnt matter who is stronger millions of years ago, it doesnt matter who is stronger today, what matters is who was stronger that managed to defeat, capture, and sell into slavery the weakest…back in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. Since africans in the 1600’s/1700’s did not have cannon, nor guns, nor horses, nor wagons, no technology at all, battles and tribal wars were settled mostly by brute force. Twhe tribes that lost and were sold into slavery and shipped to America were physically the weakest, since it was physical strengths that won or lost battles back then. You have to judge who were the winners and who were the losers, in the perspective of that era and compare different tribes with each other back then , and a tribe that lost back then, meant it was physically weaker . ---
**Author:** ![Susanann](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/7ab992/32.png) [@Susanann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Susanann)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2010, 2:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-athletes-benefiting-from-slavery/545059/70 "2010-07-05T02:19:45Z")
[QUOTE=] What absolute nonsense. War is not a wrestling match between two individuals. " [/QUOTE] When primitive peoples fought each other, war very well was a sort of wrestling matches, or at the least: hand to hand combat. Who usually wins when battles are determined by hand-to-hand combat? Usually the physically stronger wins. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2010, 4:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-athletes-benefiting-from-slavery/545059/71 "2010-07-05T04:35:09Z")
> [@](#): > > Since africans in the 1600’s/1700’s did not have cannon, nor guns, nor horses, nor wagons, no technology at all, battles and tribal wars were settled mostly by brute force. Twhe tribes that lost and were sold into slavery and shipped to America were physically the weakest, since it was physical strengths that won or lost battles back then. > [@](#): > > When primitive peoples fought each other, war very well was a sort of wrestling matches, or at the least: hand to hand combat. What do you think Africa was like around 1600? Still in the stone age? Africans had horses and guns and wagons and tools and all that stuff. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2010, 4:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-athletes-benefiting-from-slavery/545059/72 "2010-07-05T04:57:56Z")
> [@Susanann](#): > > When primitive peoples fought each other, war very well was a sort of wrestling matches, or at the least: hand to hand combat. > > Who usually wins when battles are determined by hand-to-hand combat? Usually the physically stronger wins. Actually, who wins in hand-to-hand combat on any level larger than a couple of people is numbers and tactics. A group that can field fifty combatants against a group that has a dozen combatants, a dozen women, and another dozen children will wind up being the victor and will then ship the surviving men, women, and children into slavery, even if the smaller group is includes the most fierce hand-to-hand fighters. Similarly, a group that can employ better tactics will tend to overcome a group that that employs poorer tactics, regardless of the individual characteristics of the fighters within each group. And regardless which group wins any given combat, winning a battle does nothing to display the levels of disease resistance, heat resistance, general stamina, and other traits required to survive the middle passage. ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2010, 5:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-athletes-benefiting-from-slavery/545059/73 "2010-07-05T05:07:16Z")
> [@Susanann](#): > > You are confusing millions of years of evolution with who is the strongest at any given time. It would be hard for you to be more completely wrong. You’re the one misusing evolutionary theory and verbiage by trying to get ‘fittest’ to mean ‘strongest’ when it means nothing of the sort, trying to apply it on a timescale that is microcosmic as far as evolution is concerned and trying to apply it to something it hasn’t got anything to do with. > [@](#): > > When primitive peoples fought each other, war very well was a sort of wrestling matches, or at the least: hand to hand combat. > > Who usually wins when battles are determined by hand-to-hand combat? Usually the physically stronger wins. Yes, every historian since Tacitus and before has had it all wrong. Numbers, strategies, tactics, logistics, terrain, organization, morale, politics - bunk, the lot of it. Hannibal defeated the Romans at Cannae because Carthaginians were physically stronger than Romans, so the Carthaginians were more fit to survive. This is of course why Carthage thrived with all of its Roman slaves. Oh wait… ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2010, 5:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-athletes-benefiting-from-slavery/545059/74 "2010-07-05T05:16:40Z")
Genetics aside, slavery at least (eventually) got the black athlete born in the U.S. where oodles of money reside. Had the athlete’s ancestors remained free in Africa, the athlete would (eventually) have been born in Africa, where oodles of malaria-bearing mosquitoes reside. ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2010, 10:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-athletes-benefiting-from-slavery/545059/75 "2010-07-05T10:07:26Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > Genetics aside, slavery at least (eventually) got the black athlete born in the U.S. where oodles of money reside. Had the athlete’s ancestors remained free in Africa, the athlete would (eventually) have been born in Africa, where oodles of malaria-bearing mosquitoes reside. Apologies if I’m being whooshed, but malaria and the sickle-cell is a very good example of how ‘fittest’ has nothing to do with ‘strongest’ in regards to genetics and evolution. When malaria is not a factor, the sickle-cell is detrimental, but where malaria abounds it is a positive trait for fitness to survive malaria, so much so that [one-third of all indigenous inhabitants of Sub-Saharan Africa carry the gene](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sickle-cell_disease). ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2010, 12:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-athletes-benefiting-from-slavery/545059/76 "2010-07-05T12:39:06Z")
> [@code\_grey](#): > > Which, among agricultural laborers, all boils down to, once again, the physically strongest. The sort of guy who does the most work and sometimes gets responsibility as overseer from the master. Nah, the person who’s made overseer or who gets the best setup may be the strongest or it may be the sneakiest or the most silvertongued. There is more than one path to get selected. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2010, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-athletes-benefiting-from-slavery/545059/77 "2010-07-05T15:12:58Z")
> [@Dissonance](#): > > Apologies if I’m being whooshed No, you’re not being whooshed, I’m just pointing out the regardless of genetics, being born in the modern U.S. is probably a much better deal than being born in modern Africa, and if slavery is what got your ancestors from Africa to the U.S., then slavery did okay by you, though I’m sure it sucked for them. ---
**Author:** ![peledre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/779978/32.png) [@peledre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/peledre)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2010, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-athletes-benefiting-from-slavery/545059/78 "2010-07-05T15:51:47Z")
> [@Huerta88](#): > > You get the Jimmy the Greek trophy, prospectively. > > I will before ducking out note that American black kids don’t for various reasons steer toward soccer so the Ghana data point is almost meaningless (and, the U.S. team was, accordingly, mostly suburban white dudes). The team was a mix, about half hispanic and african american, half suburban white dudes. ---
**Author:** ![code\_grey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f4b2a3/32.png) [@code\_grey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/code_grey)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2010, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-athletes-benefiting-from-slavery/545059/79 "2010-07-05T17:38:22Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > Nah, the person who’s made overseer or who gets the best setup may be the strongest or it may be the sneakiest or the most silvertongued. There is more than one path to get selected. of course! That’s why not all black people are like Mike Tyson. Some are more like Jessy Jackson 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2010, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-athletes-benefiting-from-slavery/545059/80 "2010-07-06T16:30:53Z")
The African tribes were not homogeneous. There were tall Massai types and the short Pygmies and everything in between. There are Africans who excel in marathon running and others that don’t. I suppose my Scotchmen in my breeding lines would lose in basketball to Massai heirs. But we could whip the Pygmies easy. People are people. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-athletes-benefiting-from-slavery/545059.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-athletes-benefiting-from-slavery/545059.md?page=5)