Critique this: Why blacks run faster

[Ibn_Warraq]

@Polerius

You need to provide a cite for that. I don’t think it’s remotely true.

Yes, during the days of the Soviet Union, there basketball were dominated by and depended on Lithuanians.

Look at the Soviet Olympic team of 1988, the last Olympics in which the Soviet Union competed.

The team was mostly Lithuanians and the four top scorers, Valdemaras Chomičius, Rimas Kurtinaitis, Šarūnas Marčiulionis and Arvydas Sabonis, were all Lithuanians.

Considering that Lithuanians represented less than 1% of the Soviet populace while African-Americans represent about 12% of the US populace, I think it’s safe to say that Lithuanians were even more overrepresented amongst the Soviet teams than African-Americans were overrepresented amongst US Olympic teams of the 80s.

You’ll also notice that Lithuania, a country of only about 1.5 million people then went on to win the bronze medals in 1992, 1996, and 2000 and has put a number of players in the NBA while I’m not sure if a single Russian has played in the NBA.

I’m pretty certain, though not 100% that more Lithuanians have played in the NBA than members of any other European countries, though Croatia, another tiny country, has put up a number.

Now, you’ll notice that race realists don’t shit up either the Dope or the internet with rants about how Lithuanians have some genes that enable them to produce so many more high quality basketball players in comparison to the Russians, British, French, Spaniards, and Italians.

The reason for this of course is that Lithuanians don’t, to borrow Treis’ phrase, “look black”.

It’s also the reason that whenever basketball announcers described a player as having “a great work ethic” you knew they were talking about someone who was “white” while if they said the player was “a great natural talent” that meant the player was “black.”

For those unfamiliar, basketball, in the words of one player “is a second religion in Lithuania” the way sprinting is second religion in Jamaica.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/travel/destinations/lithuania-steeped-in-history—and-basketball-stats/article592084/

Of course, because Lithuanians “look white” people who squeal about genetics when it comes to Jamaica don’t rant about the Lithuanian basketball gene.

[Inbred_Mm_domesticus]

@Iggy

So to put it in terms of muscle development and atheletic ability…
I can look at populations with maternal ancestry in a certain region of West Africa and note a prevalance or lack of a particular mtDNA haplogroup in that area as compared to the worldwide population of all people.

I can note that persons with/without a certain mtDNA haplogroup have a biologically identifiable difference in muscle development and function.

I can hypothesize that therefore the group of persons having/lacking a particular mtDNA haplotype will, on average and as a whole, have a different muscle characteristics that might tend to give them advantage in certain athletic endeavors.

It does not mean that all persons with ancestors from that region of West Africa will outperform all persons without ancestors from that region.

It does not mean that all persons with ancestors from that region of West Africa have the particular trait of interest.

Judging from a very simple google scholar search, you can find a number of studies that show top level athletes, regardless of their ethnicity are enriched for the alleles associated (be careful with that word associated) with different muscle masses. All of them. Not just West Africans. The alleles you linked to are not even especially prevalent among African-Americans

@Iggy

You made assertions without citing any evidence.

No…YOU made the assertion. You said African Americans went through a bottleneck without providing any evidence for it other than your assertion. You should bring the evidence with you like you did in your later post concerning ACTN3. Here’s the evidence I was referring to:

No evidence of a population bottleneck in hypertension-related genes (warning: pdf; the abstract says it but the article should be educational on slaveship theories)

No differences in the genetic diversity of West-African genomes and the West-African proportion of African-American genomes

Comparison of the inferred West African segments of African-American genomes with contemporary West African populations (Table S3) reveals that the ancestry of the West African component of African Americans is most similar to the profile from non-Bantu Niger-Kordofanian-speaking populations, which include the Igbo, Brong, and Yoruba, with FST values to African segments of the African Americans ranging from 0.074 to 0.089%. That these FST values are all nearly identical (and quite small), coupled with the small pairwise FST values of the Igbo, Yoruba, and Brong populations (Table 1), suggests that considering the set of West African populations sampled, any of these three populations may serve as a proxy for the ancestral population of the African Americans

Also, those of you thinking you can trust self-report data as a proxy for genetics should think again, the discussion addresses the wide variation found in people who self-identify as African-American.

Read Box2 to understand the relationship between inflated linkage disequilibrium and population bottlenecks. It also cites this result:

Gabriel et al. examined LD between closely spaced SNPs in the same Yoruban and Mormon populations, as well as in Japanese,Chinese and African-American populations. The average size of haplotype blocks (regions with high levels of LD) was estimated to be 11 kb in the Yoruban and African-American samples, and 22 kb in the European and Asian samples.

In three different ways we might expect African and African-American genomes to differ due to population bottlenecks, selection, and founder effects the two populations do not differ at all.

There is just no evidence supporting that element of PrettyVacant’s OP and your assertions Iggy.

[Acsenray]

@magellan01

We see strong evidence in the U.S., and on the world stage.

No. The achievements of the world’s top athletes is not evidence of anything having to do with their race. It’s a series of anecdotes. There’s nothing remotely evidential about it.

[magellan01]

@John_Mace

No, they don’t do this all the time. They look at the data that is available, how it was collected, and often agree that no conclusion can be reached. And that’s the case here.

:roll eyes: I’m not suggesting a “conclusion” can be reached. but you know that. But you are intent on weaseling out of offering any opinion on what the evidence says or offering an explanation counter to what has been presented. May the stone retain all it’s blood.

[John_Mace]

@magellan01

:roll eyes: I’m not suggesting a “conclusion” can be reached. but you know that. But you are intent on weaseling out of offering any opinion on what the evidence says or offering an explanation counter to what has been presented. May the stone retain all it’s blood.

Eh. I gave you my opinion. You just didn’t like it.

[magellan01]

@John_Mace

Eh. I gave you my opinion. You just didn’t like it.

:rolleyes: Sure, whatever you say. :rolleyes:

[Raygun99]

Something I never see mentioned in these discussions is the area of sprinting where white athletes often excel - women’s sprinting. The 2008 Olympic women’s final was unusual in that it had 8 “black” sprinters, but there are often many athletes that we’d consider “white” from Australia, England, Greece, Sweden, former Russian republics and other such places in the final. So somehow this supposed genetic advantage doesn’t exist as strongly in female sprinters. Or, because women’s athletics is often overlooked in poorer countries, the extra encouragement that female white sprinters are able to get versus their “black” counterparts in poorer countries is evidence (but not proof!) that it’s a cultural advantage.

[magellan01]

@Raygun99

Something I never see mentioned in these discussions is the area of sprinting where white athletes often excel - women’s sprinting. The 2008 Olympic women’s final was unusual in that it had 8 “black” sprinters, but there are often many athletes that we’d consider “white” from Australia, England, Greece, Sweden, former Russian republics and other such places in the final. So somehow this supposed genetic advantage doesn’t exist as strongly in female sprinters. Or, because women’s athletics is often overlooked in poorer countries, the extra encouragement that female white sprinters are able to get versus their “black” counterparts in poorer countries is evidence (but not proof!) that it’s a cultural advantage.

It is a piece of evidence. But here is some evidence that seems to be stronger: http://www.usatf.org/Athlete-Bios.aspxUse the menu on the left to control for “Sprints”.

Female and males athletes are mixed in, but you can see from the page of picture the females.

Oh wait—perhaps John Mace will object to assessing their gender via photographs! Heavens, we just CAN"T KNOW without a scientific test. Guess we can’t come to any conclusions whatsoever. :rolleyes:

[Raygun99]

So you’re arguing against my point that non-American female sprinters tend towards “whiter” athletes by showing a list of American athletes? That makes sense how?

[magellan01]

@Raygun99

So you’re arguing against my point that non-American female sprinters tend towards “whiter” athletes by showing a list of American athletes? That makes sense how?

I didn’t take your post to argue for non-American female athletes. I saw no mention of “American” either way. Some of the countries you mentioned have predominantly non-Black populations. I cited what I did because the U.S. is similar to the countries you mentioned. We have considerably more whites than black, so if your point was correct, I think one would expect to see white female sprinters on the American team. There’s not one. Don’t you think that is germane to the proposition you were putting forth? Or did I misunderstand you?

[tomndebb]

@treis

No, it makes it less useful, not useless. Grouping all black people together simply reduces the signal to noise ratio. For example, let’s posit that what we group together as black in America is genetically best described as 100 groupings. Of those 100 groupings, 10 have a higher incidence of genes that cause a greater ratio of fast twitch muscles, resulting in superior speed, while the 90 remaining are essentially the same as Caucasians. If we test black people vs. white people in terms of speed, we will see an advantage for black people wholly caused by those 10 subsets of black people.

And yet, you have already imposed more limits on the discussion than was originally noted. You are now discussing people in the U.S. with African ancestry. that pretty well reduces the discussion to people from the stretch of West Coast Africa from Sengal to Congo, eliminating people from Eastern or Southern Africa as well as West Coast people from Angola, Namibia, Chad, Sudan, and, probably, Niger and Mauretania. So any claim that you are discussing issues regarding “black” people, (or even sub-Saharan black people), is false.

And, depending on what claim you make, you are liable to be excluding people who need to be included within the discussed group. For example, if you are talking about people susceptible to Sickle Cell, you have incorrectly excluded Maltese, Sicilians, Greek, and Lebanese.

@treis

Similarly, of course it would be better if we dispensed with the broad terms black, asian, caucasian, etc. and went with classifications based on genetic similarity. Just like it would be better if we used something that split high BMIs into athletes and couch potatoes. Why don’t we? Because it is a lot harder to do.

Oh, it’s hard! Sorry. Using the language that imples that there really are “three great races” simply leads to the furthering of the sort of nonsense that New Deal Democrat enjoys promulgating. If we want to dicsuss the possibility of one group actually having a genetic propensity for sprinting, it makes more sense, (regardless of difficulty), to actually try to identify the genuine group we want to study. Using shortcuts like “black” does nothing to actually discover anything useful and merely clutters up any future discussion with misunderstandings regarding the actual targets of any study or discoveries made. It does not reduce “noise” to explicitly include millions of people and hundreds of groups whom we actually wish to exclude from studies or discussions.

[Raygun99]

@magellan01

I didn’t take your post to argue for non-American female athletes. I saw no mention of “American” either way.

I mentioned a number of specific countries and regions, none of them American.

Some of the countries you mentioned have predominantly non-Black populations. I cited what I did because the U.S. is similar to the countries you mentioned. We have considerably more whites than black, so if your point was correct, I think one would expect to see white female sprinters on the American team. There’s not one. Don’t you think that is germane to the proposition you were putting forth? Or did I misunderstand you?

Yes, you did misunderstand me. What I’m saying is that these countries likely place a higher value on female athletics, and specifically sprinting, and thus produce more top-notch female sprinters. That they tend to have less “black” population is precisely the point. They produce top-notch sprinters from the athletes they have.

Another example to show the likely cultural bias of athletics - During the 60s through 80s, a large number of major league baseball players were what we’d call “black”. However, that number has steadily dropped - from a peak of 27 % down to 8% this season. Cite. Now, it’s possible that MLB has reverted to some latent racism, but given that it’s occurred at the same time as the rise of the Hispanic baseball player (many of whom could also be called “black”!), I doubt it. Did African-Americans suddenly get bad at baseball? That seems exceedingly unlikely, and it’s more likely that a cultural shift towards other sports is the reason why, instead of some genetic reason.

[treis]

@tomndebb

And yet, you have already imposed more limits on the discussion than was originally noted. You are now discussing people in the U.S. with African ancestry. that pretty well reduces the discussion to people from the stretch of West Coast Africa from Sengal to Congo, eliminating people from Eastern or Southern Africa as well as West Coast people from Angola, Namibia, Chad, Sudan, and, probably, Niger and Mauretania. So any claim that you are discussing issues regarding “black” people, (or even sub-Saharan black people), is false.

And, depending on what claim you make, you are liable to be excluding people who need to be included within the discussed group. For example, if you are talking about people susceptible to Sickle Cell, you have incorrectly excluded Maltese, Sicilians, Greek, and Lebanese.

None of this addresses what I said. You claim that grouping black people together is “useless”, when it clearly isn’t.

@tomndebb

Oh, it’s hard! Sorry. Using the language that imples that there really are “three great races” simply leads to the furthering of the sort of nonsense that New Deal Democrat enjoys promulgating. If we want to dicsuss the possibility of one group actually having a genetic propensity for sprinting, it makes more sense, (regardless of difficulty), to actually try to identify the genuine group we want to study. Using shortcuts like “black” does nothing to actually discover anything useful and merely clutters up any future discussion with misunderstandings regarding the actual targets of any study or discoveries made. It does not reduce “noise” to specifically include millions of people and hundreds of groups whom we actually wish to exclude from studies or discussions.

It’s ridiculous common to use easy to gather proxy measurements in place of clearly more accurate but difficult to gather metrics. BMI in place of body fat % is one of the most obvious. There’s nothing wrong with using the information you have to draw the best conclusion you can.

[magellan01]

@Raygun99

I mentioned a number of specific countries and regions, none of them American.

So, you want to restrict the conversation to those and only those countries? Why? I thought you were using them simply as example.

@Raygun99

Yes, you did misunderstand me. What I’m saying is that these countries likely place a higher value on female athletics, and specifically sprinting, and thus produce more top-notch female sprinters. That they tend to have less “black” population is precisely the point. They produce top-notch sprinters from the athletes they have.

I guess I didn’t misunderstand you then. The reason a country like Norway may have white female sprinters is particular to Norway. Racism? I don’t know. But maybe they should look more closely to their black athletes. Because I don’t think their goal is to do win in preliminary races, but to win a medal. Which they’re not doing.

I brought up America because it fulfills all the criteria you mention. If your proposition was correct, wouldn’t you expect to see whites among the female sprinters that compete on behalf of the U.S. If not, why not?

@Raygun99

Another example to show the likely cultural bias of athletics - During the 60s through 80s, a large number of major league baseball players were what we’d call “black”. However, that number has steadily dropped - from a peak of 27 % down to 8% this season. Cite. Now, it’s possible that MLB has reverted to some latent racism, but given that it’s occurred at the same time as the rise of the Hispanic baseball player (many of whom could also be called “black”!), I doubt it. Did African-Americans suddenly get bad at baseball? That seems exceedingly unlikely, and it’s more likely that a cultural shift towards other sports is the reason why, instead of some genetic reason.

No, other people started to compete. I don’t know anyone holding different position. Do you? Sprinting represents an integrated reality. The fact that American blacks represent only about 16% of the population yet own virtually 100% of the speed positions in the NFL and spots on the U.S. sprinting team is striking. Is it not?

Additionally, you’re missing the difference between sports that require a great deal of learning and training and those that align with the pure skill. Sprinting falls into the latter category. You have to be taught how to throw a curve ball or the best way to filed a ground ball. Every kid with two legs knows how to run, and I venture to say, has engaged in races with his friends. And as anyone who has played sports throughout even their teen years, you are either fast or you aren’t. I and others explained this a few times in the past few pages.

[wonky]

@treis

It’s ridiculous common to use easy to gather proxy measurements in place of clearly more accurate but difficult to gather metrics. BMI in place of body fat % is one of the most obvious. There’s nothing wrong with using the information you have to draw the best conclusion you can.

When you are trying to get people to modify their behavior or to be aware of the risks of their weight, it makes sense to use what information is readily available even if it’s imprecise. So you use BMI because it’s better than nothing.

But when it comes to sprinters, where is this need coming from that makes it better than nothing to be so incredibly imprecise? Why do we “have to draw the best conclusion [we] can”? Why do you need a conclusion? Why is it so bad to say, “We don’t know” and wait until there is actual data?

[Raygun99]

@magellan01

So, you want to restrict the conversation to those and only those countries? Why? I thought you were using them simply as example.

I guess I didn’t misunderstand you then. The reason a country like Norway may have white female sprinters is particular to Norway. Racism? I don’t know. But maybe they should look more closely to their black athletes. Because I don’t think their goal is to do win in preliminary races, but to win a medal. Which they’re not doing.

Well, firstly, in the case of Norway, their sub-Saharan population is almost non-existent. Cite. But again, they are focused on winning medals - but in skiing events. They’re a world dominant power in cross-country skiing, and win well out of proportion to their population, which is only 5 million. It’s as if the city of Boston were able to enter the Olympics, and dominate. The likely reason why? Norwegians really, really care about cross-country skiing, to the same degree that Canadians care about hockey, the Dutch about speed skating, Ethiopians care about the marathon and Jamaicans care about the 100m sprint.

I brought up America because it fulfills all the criteria you mention. If your proposition was correct, wouldn’t you expect to see whites among the female sprinters that compete on behalf of the U.S. If not, why not?

Because there are numerous opportunities for female athletes in a variety of sports in America. America’s potential female sprinters are being pulled away to play soccer, softball, basketball, hockey, swimming, speed skating (which come on, has an obvious sprinting parallel) - you name it. Now, these other countries’ female athletes are also being pulled away to these sports - but they also don’t have as many black athletes to fill those other spots.

No, other people started to compete. I don’t know anyone holding different position. Do you? Sprinting represents an integrated reality. The fact that American blacks represent only about 16% of the population yet own virtually 100% of the speed positions in the NFL and spots on the U.S. sprinting team is striking. Is it not?

Additionally, you’re missing the difference between sports that require a great deal of learning and training and those that align with the pure skill. Sprinting falls into the latter category. You have to be taught how to throw a curve ball or the best way to filed a ground ball. Every kid with two legs knows how to run, and I venture to say, has engaged in races with his friends. And as anyone who has played sports throughout even their teen years, you are either fast or you aren’t. I and others explained this a few times in the past few pages.

This brings me to the larger point I was getting at with the baseball comparison, which was made in the article I linked, but I didn’t spell out - there just aren’t as many opportunities to play baseball in a number of areas where African-Americans exist - baseball diamonds are disappearing, both because they’re expensive to maintain and because there’s less interest in the sport, as a cultural shift happens towards other sports. Sprinting, meanwhile, is cheap. It’s the athletic opportunity most black kids are given, so they take it, practice it, and get good at it.

Some more cultural examples - Saskatchewan produces well more professional hockey players per capita than any region in the world, even compared to the rest of Canada. The probable reason why - every small town has an ice rink, even if the population is just a couple of hundred people (I came from such a town). You can have just about as much ice time as you want. Meanwhile, ice time in larger centers is hard to come by and expensive when it is.

And, Australia. After a disastrous 1976 Olympics, the Australian government plowed millions of dollars into the Institute of Sport, with a specific focus on training medal winners, They’ve since turned into a powerhouse nation finishing consistently in the top 10 (top 5, sometimes) despite have only 20 million people.

It’s all about priorities. Do all these stories constitute proof? No, and I’m not saying they do. But the evidence sure seems to weigh heavier to that side.

[treis]

@jsgoddess

When you are trying to get people to modify their behavior or to be aware of the risks of their weight, it makes sense to use what information is readily available even if it’s imprecise. So you use BMI because it’s better than nothing.

But when it comes to sprinters, where is this need coming from that makes it better than nothing to be so incredibly imprecise? Why do we “have to draw the best conclusion [we] can”? Why do you need a conclusion? Why is it so bad to say, “We don’t know” and wait until there is actual data?

I’m not anything past “Evidence suggests the genetic potential for elite speed athletes is higher in blacks than whites”.

@Raygun99

It’s all about priorities. Do all these stories constitute proof? No, and I’m not saying they do. But the evidence sure seems to weigh heavier to that side.

How do you explain the discrepancy in football positions?

[Raygun99]

@treis

How do you explain the discrepancy in football positions?

Cultural priorities and a “go with what worked before” mentality. Sports are very conservative and risk-averse. Possibly some out and out racism too - we don’t have to look back very far to see a time when black athletes weren’t considered able to play at the quarterback position, and were “converted” into wide receivers and defensive players.

[treis]

@Raygun99

Cultural priorities and a “go with what worked before” mentality. Sports are very conservative and risk-averse. Possibly some out and out racism too - we don’t have to look back very far to see a time when black athletes weren’t considered able to play at the quarterback position, and were “converted” into wide receivers and defensive players.

Just to be clear, are the cultural priorities selecting against whites in speed positions or blacks on the O-Line? In other words, is the culture failing to develop genetically advantaged whites into speed positions or failing to develop genetically advantaged blacks into O-Line positions?

What is your proposed mechanism for this? In other words, what happens to the fast 5-10 to 6’ white football players or the big 6’4"+ black football players that prevents them from reaching the NFL?

[wonky]

@treis

I’m not anything past “Evidence suggests the genetic potential for elite speed athletes is higher in blacks than whites”.

So, let’s be precise. What, exactly, is this evidence? Do you have a large sample size?

How would you react if I said, “Evidence suggests the genetic potential for elite politicians is higher in men than women”?