# Critique this: Why blacks run faster **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 6, 2012, 1:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/critique-this-why-blacks-run-faster/627414 "2012-07-06T13:42:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![PrettyVacant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/49beb7/32.png) [@PrettyVacant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PrettyVacant)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2012, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/critique-this-why-blacks-run-faster/627414/41 "2012-07-06T20:14:18Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > The same way they kept track of breeding any of the animals they owned-- in ledgers. What evidence do you have to present here that there was any significant Eugenics program? Are you citing the lack of technology as the evidence? I’ve got no evidence, I posted what I did to learn something. The internet, however, seems to have stuff - the first hit was Wikipedia. The male/female demographic in the ‘selling States’ is quite interesting: > **[Slave breeding in the United States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_breeding_in_the_United_States)** > > Slave breeding was the practice in slave states of the United States of slave owners systematically forcing slaves to have children to increase their wealth. It included coerced sexual relations between enslaved men and women or girls, forced pregnancies of enslaved women and girls due to forced inter inbreeding with fellow slaves in hopes of producing relatively stronger future slaves. The objective was for slave owners to increase the number of people they enslaved without incurring the The l... But you seem to have made you mind up already, so it’s all a bit of a waste of time. ---
**Author:** ![PrettyVacant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/49beb7/32.png) [@PrettyVacant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PrettyVacant)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2012, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/critique-this-why-blacks-run-faster/627414/42 "2012-07-06T20:18:15Z")
> [@MsWhatsit](#): > > I’m not sure I agree with you a hundred percent on your methodology there, Lou. Feel free to enlighten the ignorant, cos it seems people are very keen to disagree without explaining why. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2012, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/critique-this-why-blacks-run-faster/627414/43 "2012-07-06T20:19:06Z")
> [@PrettyVacant](#): > > How do you think the Slave masters should have recorded their breeding programs; maybe in an Excel spreadsheet? Maybe _on paper_ or _in a book_? You realize Mendel did his research without the benefit of Excel, right? Do you think Microsoft invented _the chart_? If you run a breeding program, you have to keep track of it. You would need to supervise the breeding closely and keep track of the results, which is not easy when you are talking about people having other people breed. For this to produce results in the real world, you would need a lot of slaveowners doing it for a long time (the human lifespan would be a problem), and there’s no evidence any of that ever happened. And as history buffs will tell you, most slaveowners did not run huge plantations, they had just a few slaves, which means they weren’t running breeding programs with their slaves. ---
**Author:** ![Great\_Antibob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47c2d/32.png) [@Great\_Antibob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Great_Antibob)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2012, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/critique-this-why-blacks-run-faster/627414/44 "2012-07-06T20:23:42Z")
> [@PrettyVacant](#): > > The internet, however, seems to have stuff - the first hit was Wikipedia. The male/female demographic in the ‘selling States’ is quite interesting: But you understand that such an argument actually undercuts a eugenics theory, right? You can breed for large numbers (as slave-owners in the US did) or you can breed for particular qualities. It’s not possible to do both simultaneously. Sure, you might get lucky and all your desired properties get passed to every child, but that doesn’t happen in practice. And the more you encourage indiscriminate breeding, the less likely it is you’ll end up with any particular outcome at all, except having lots of children, which was the point. Infant mortality rates must have been astonishing among the slave populations. And, in fact, the high mortality rate was a significant factor for the rebellion in Haiti (a former slave island that doesn’t produce significant number of sprinters or runners of any type). ---
**Author:** ![PrettyVacant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/49beb7/32.png) [@PrettyVacant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PrettyVacant)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2012, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/critique-this-why-blacks-run-faster/627414/45 "2012-07-06T20:24:25Z")
What’s to record and why - they’re breeding stock, stock that will either be used at home or sold on its\* self-evident physical characteristics\*. If you have a small plantation, isn’t that even more incentive to breed a second income? ---
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2012, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/critique-this-why-blacks-run-faster/627414/46 "2012-07-06T20:27:01Z")
The whole basis for your premise is an article published around 2006 by Dr. William Aiken, a urologist in Jamaica. His basic theory had to do with unusual rates of prostate cancer in Jamaicans, but he drifted into a theory about Jamaicans and sprinting, trying to tie testosterone levels to both the cancer and sprinting abilities. There has been no peer-reviewed published research on this that I can find. So, it’s all just speculation and very unscientific. ---
**Author:** ![PrettyVacant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/49beb7/32.png) [@PrettyVacant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PrettyVacant)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2012, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/critique-this-why-blacks-run-faster/627414/47 "2012-07-06T20:27:32Z")
> [@Great\_Antibob](#): > > And the more you encourage indiscriminate breeding, the less likely it is you’ll end up with any particular outcome at all, except having lots of children. It’s the opposite of indiscriminate. Take the biggest, most productive slave, set him loose on the younger women, and see what happens. What’s to lose … ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2012, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/critique-this-why-blacks-run-faster/627414/48 "2012-07-06T20:28:57Z")
> [@PrettyVacant](#): > > It’s the opposite of indiscriminate. Take the biggest, most productive slave, set him loose on the younger women, and see what happens. That’s the _definition_ of indiscriminate. ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2012, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/critique-this-why-blacks-run-faster/627414/49 "2012-07-06T20:32:15Z")
> [@PrettyVacant](#): > > What’s to record and why - they’re breeding stock, stock that will either be used at home or sold on its\* self-evident physical characteristics\*. You appear to have absolutely no clue how or why farmers actually breed their stock. You record sires and dams, you record offspring, you record any remarkable achievements of individual animals (Old Snortimus sired 1000 shoats last year! Secretariat/Big Red won the Triple Crown!). If you don’t record your inputs and outputs, you’re not really breeding FOR anything. The only way for American slave owners to have had any kind of breeding program for…let’s generalize it even more here…athleticism would be to keep track of things like this, and cull out the weaker/slower/lazier slaves before they were of breeding age. There is no record of this. [Here’s a pdf from OSU on what you have to keep track of for horse breeding records.](http://pods.dasnr.okstate.edu/docushare/dsweb/Get/Document-2095/ANSI-3916web.pdf) ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2012, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/critique-this-why-blacks-run-faster/627414/50 "2012-07-06T20:32:17Z")
> [@PrettyVacant](#): > > It’s the opposite of indiscriminate. Take the biggest, most productive slave, set him loose on the younger women, and see what happens. What’s to lose … A perfect balance between silliness and ignorance-congratulations! ---
**Author:** ![PrettyVacant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/49beb7/32.png) [@PrettyVacant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PrettyVacant)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2012, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/critique-this-why-blacks-run-faster/627414/51 "2012-07-06T20:32:58Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > That’s the _definition_ of indiscriminate. Indiscriminate is letting all the males access to all of the women, and vice versa. ---
**Author:** ![Great\_Antibob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47c2d/32.png) [@Great\_Antibob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Great_Antibob)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2012, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/critique-this-why-blacks-run-faster/627414/52 "2012-07-06T20:36:52Z")
> [@PrettyVacant](#): > > It’s the opposite of indiscriminate. Take the biggest, most productive slave, set him loose on the younger women, and see what happens. What’s to lose … Nothing, but it doesn’t produce what you apparently expect. You understand, I hope, that similar techniques are used in agriculture to produce animals with certain properties. It’s not a field where we have to guess about how it would turn out. It takes several generations to consistently produce certain qualities. It’s not something that can be easily or consistently done with humans, especially with the high mortality rates among slaves. It ignores the fact that while _some_ slaveowners would have done such things, many wouldn’t care to or would have some kind of Christian objection to such practices (the salvation of even slaves’ souls was a concern for many). So, your would-be eugenicists, at best, would have a few successes, only to be outnumbered by the results of non-eugenicists. And again, it completely ignores other former slave ports (Virgin Islands, Trinidad, Haiti, etc) where corresponding results didn’t show up at all. ---
**Author:** ![PrettyVacant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/49beb7/32.png) [@PrettyVacant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PrettyVacant)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2012, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/critique-this-why-blacks-run-faster/627414/53 "2012-07-06T20:37:16Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > A perfect balance between silliness and ignorance-congratulations! You’ve posted three or four times and not made a single point. Go back to your first snide remark; educate me on African-Americans with Anglo-Saxon last names, that was the thing that made you think this was a joke thread - what was your point there; you believe African-Americans with Anglo-Saxon last names is not an indication of a slave heritage, tell me about that? ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2012, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/critique-this-why-blacks-run-faster/627414/54 "2012-07-06T20:38:51Z")
> [@PrettyVacant](#): > > Indiscriminate is letting all the males access to all of the women, and vice versa. That’s even less discriminating. But what you’ve proposed is indiscriminate. There’s no phrase that says indiscriminate quite like 'turn ‘em loose and see what happens.’ If you are breeding for a characteristic or multiple characteristics, you keep track of the traits and then breed specific people/animal/plants who have specific traits to accentuate those traits. Then you repeat that process through multiple generations. You don’t turn somebody loose and see what happens because then you have no idea what you’re going to get or how you got it. ---
**Author:** ![PrettyVacant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/49beb7/32.png) [@PrettyVacant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PrettyVacant)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2012, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/critique-this-why-blacks-run-faster/627414/55 "2012-07-06T20:41:17Z")
> [@Great\_Antibob](#): > > You understand, I hope, that similar techniques are used in agriculture to produce animals with certain properties. It’s not a field where we have to guess about how it would turn out. It takes several generations to consistently produce certain qualities. It’s not something that can be easily or consistently done with humans, especially with the high mortality rates among slaves. We are talking about 200 years ago (plus) in a new, and in a predominately agrarian society. > [@Great\_Antibob](#): > > It ignores the fact that while _some_ slaveowners would have done such things, many wouldn’t care to or would have some kind of Christian objection to such practices (the salvation of even slaves’ souls was a concern for many). So, your would-be eugenicists, at best, would have a few successes, only to be outnumbered by the results of non-eugenicists. You think there’s a big moral/Christian step between systematic ownership of humans, rape of slaves by ‘owners’ and … selective breeding. OK. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2012, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/critique-this-why-blacks-run-faster/627414/56 "2012-07-06T20:42:47Z")
> [@PrettyVacant](#): > > We are talking about 200 years ago (plus) in a new, and in a predominately agrarian society. That would seem to increase the difficulty in getting results, wouldn’t it? > [@](#): > > You think there’s a big moral/Christian step between systematic ownership of humans, rape of slaves by ‘owners’ and … selective breeding. OK. No, he said some of the slaveowners felt that way. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2012, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/critique-this-why-blacks-run-faster/627414/57 "2012-07-06T20:43:39Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > I am skeptical of points 2, 3, and 4 for economic reasons. Many slaves were captured either in battle or by raiding parties operating in foreign lands. Either way would be very dangerous. Why would you let half of the people you risked your life to capture die before you sold them? > Likewise slave ship captains had to pay the traders large sums of money for the slaves, why let half of them die before you get a chance to sell them? Look at it this way. Say you’ve got a ship that can take ten people across the Atlantic, and give each of them enough food, water, medical care, and living space to guarantee they all survive the journey. Or you can pack a hundred slaves into that same space, let half of them die, and when you get to your destination, you’ve still got fifty slaves you can sell. That’s five times the profit, and you just mark up the prices on the survivors to cover the costs of the ones who died en route. Why not just build more ships? Because ships are expensive, and difficult to get, and slaves are cheap, and plentiful. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2012, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/critique-this-why-blacks-run-faster/627414/58 "2012-07-06T20:45:59Z")
> [@PrettyVacant](#): > > You’ve posted three or four times and not made a single point. > > Go back to your first snide remark; educate me on African-Americans with Anglo-Saxon last names, that was the thing that made you think this was a joke thread - what was your point there; you believe African-Americans with Anglo-Saxon last names is not an indication of a slave heritage, tell me about that? You told the joke, and I reacted by laughing at it. I don’t think I’m under any obligation to either explain or correct your joke. ---
**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 6, 2012, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/critique-this-why-blacks-run-faster/627414/59 "2012-07-06T20:47:43Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > Look at it this way. Say you’ve got a ship that can take ten people across the Atlantic, and give each of them enough food, water, medical care, and living space to guarantee they all survive the journey. Or you can pack a hundred slaves into that same space, let half of them die, and when you get to your destination, you’ve still got fifty slaves you can sell. That’s five times the profit, and you just mark up the prices on the survivors to cover the costs of the ones who died en route. > > Why not just build more ships? Because ships are expensive, and difficult to get, and slaves are cheap, and plentiful. Are they cheap and plentiful? ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2012, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/critique-this-why-blacks-run-faster/627414/60 "2012-07-06T20:49:53Z")
> [@PrettyVacant](#): > > We are talking about 200 years ago (plus) in a new, and in a predominately agrarian society. You think dog breeds are either a) accidental or b) new? > [@](#): > > You think there’s a big moral/Christian step between systematic ownership of humans, rape of slaves by ‘owners’ and … selective breeding. OK. Never underestimate humanity’s capacity for cognitive dissonance, and never underestimate the prevailing strength of a current paradigm, either. At that time, blacks were “obviously” inferior and NEEDED the strong hand of the white master to keep them civilized, so slavery was, indeed, a fortuitous institution for them. SOME masters thought of their slaves as completely non-human, but many thought of them as simply inferior, and still possessing of souls which needed to be cultured in a proper Christian way of life. Agreed that it’s only a slightly less offensive attitude than all-out dehumanization, but it existed. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/critique-this-why-blacks-run-faster/627414.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/critique-this-why-blacks-run-faster/627414.md?page=4)