So, your position is that if you wander in to a discussion and cherry pick something with which to disagree and the person whose argument you have challenged does no more than re-assert the overall position he had actually made by noting that your challenge is limited, (and not really all that successful), without making any further claims, then he is creating a straw man?
Your “logic” is unimpressive.
Your scarecrow erecting is when you think you’ve discredited a particular point that was made by expecting someone to defend a point which he did not make and reflects a position he does not hold.
Let’s see if you get it this time: I, nor no one else in this thread, is of the opinion that a particular group dominating a particular sport indicates that there is likely a genetic advantage at work. NO ONE. Yet, you expect people to defend that position. You do this repeatedly. We’re talking about sprinting; not basketball, not boxing and not hockey. Perhaps you intended to post in some other thread on some other message board where those sports were being discussed. Look up at the thread title: there’s “blacks”, “running” and “fast”. Really…look! Now, if your goal is to simply distract and derail the discussion, I’ll give you an A+. God knows, that sort of behavior is your strong suit, so it’s no real surprise. On the other hand, if you think you’ve actually shed any light on the actual positions being held, or moved the discussion along in any helpful way, uh, no.
Let me recommend you read Taboo more carefully to understand the history of the Hebrew league.
Like many pursuits–business and athletics–basketball and basketball leagues have a long history of being closely related to culture. Just because lawn bowling is highly popular among Sicilians doesn’t mean they have a special gene for it, even if the Sicilians set up lawn bowling leagues highly popular within their culture. It’s a niche activity. It is a bad example to parse out nurture and nature. And it’s a specious argument to pretend that history of the Hebrew leagues has anything to do with the argument being made here about today’s NBA as if the basketball world back then bears any resemblance to today’s NBA culture.
You know this, but you cling to this pretense that there are simply cultural shifts with one culture superseding another as the whims of society and interests make their way through history.
Nonsense. Bullshit, even.
Today, the NBA is a pinnacle career, offering fame and fortune, not to mention an endless supply of loose women, to all who get there. It is a prize sought as the first goal by almost any young man who picks up a basketball. The culture has embraced basketball so broadly that it is not limited to a niche segment.
So now we have a good test case for looking at disproportionate outcomes when the playing field is leveled–i.e. the nurturing component is normalized. In fact, the nurturing advantage still accrues to the young white man with good aptitude: the best coaching; the most stable social and family life; the greatest adult participation in their lives; the best choice of schools and programs; the best opportunity for summer camps…you name it, and as a typical average boost, the nurturing favor is overwhelmingly in favor of the young white basketball wannabe.
The ratio of white wannabes to black wannabes is 4:1 or so, in round numbers. I don’t follow basketball closely, but based on my occasional observation of who is actually playing and who is actually a key player, with the exception of a handful of tall gawky Eastern Europeans from a fairly small population group there (and yes; that’s genes, too), the ratio of white to black players must be closer to 1:4–perhaps even more lopsided if you take away the tall guys and focus on ability-per-height, so to speak.
To let this obvious performance difference get packaged up as a simple cultural shift similar to the Hebrew league is beneath you.
Now if you just want to argue that “black” and “white” are stupid groupings, and that we should fine-tune our populations, I’m on board. I’m not sure the Mbuti are well represented in the NBA. Nevertheless I’m confident that the NBA is an excellent proof that there are average differences in physical performance ability between the SIRE grouping black and the SIRE grouping white.
I’m inclined to add that, of the young wannabes for the NBA, we lose a far greater percentage of blacks than whites to such things as the idiotic war on drugs and the generally chaotic social structure facing the young black man. From a wannabe-to-success ratio standpoint, this makes the case even more compelling for an overwhelming physical performance advantage that drives their superior outcome. Consider how many more candidate blacks than whites are lost to circumstances having nothing to do with their performance ability.
A solid point. I never even thought about that. We had a very talented black basketball player at my high school who just wouldn’t bother to make the grades. He could have, he wasn’t stupid. He just decided not to, and the racist whites running the school were all to happy to let him fail, so their favored white sons could play instead. Nobody pushed him to succeed.
I believe the opposite. One key difference for whites and blacks, I think, is that whites tend to believe that they can succeed if they go to school, kiss ass, get a 9-5 and work up the ladder. Blacks tend to not believe that. I believe that the result is that blacks are much more likely to try non-standard career moves: military service, athletics, drugs/crime, etc. I don’t think a black all-star and a white CEO are really all that different, in that respect…
And you join magellen01 on fixating on the issue of Jewish basketball players, (for which, despite your handwaving, you have still failed to make a case), while ignoring any other situation.
Note, I have never claimed that any group could not be genetically inclined to dominate any given sport. I simply note that the science to support such conjectures has not yet been done and that there is quite a bit of anecdotal evidence and cherry picking being used to insist on a conclusion that has not been established.
It is nice that you imagine the previous paragraph to be true. However, like your odd straw man that claimed that I was portraying white kids as “too lazy” to make the effort to get into the NBA, your whole premise is little more than wishful thinking.
There have been only 340 openings in the NBA in the past years. It is a long shot for anyone to get into the NBA, regardless how good they are. Despite your impressive looking “ratios,” the reality is that you have presented no information regarding who does or does not actually attempt to get into the NBA. Sports has always been the “way out” for the poor, and the rich and middle class have tended to look elsewhere for careers. Given the urban association with basketball, it is hardly surprising that an urban culture would dominate it. It is all very exciting to talk about the lure of the NBA, but when even the medical profession (traditionally a very high image and good paying field) is seeing a decline in white male applicants, you have to show more than some “ratios” pulled out of the air to insist that it can only be some genetic component that has led to a majority black NBA. Other factors could include “steering.” (Remember when the accepted wisdom was that blacks simply did not have the right stuff to be quarterbacks–until someone went and interviewed a lot of black former high school quarterbacks who spent their college and NFL careers in other positions, and discovered that an awful lot of them had been placed in those positions because their coaches “knew” that they would “do better” there?) It is quite possible that the same sort of thing occurs today, with a lot of white kids spending less playing time on the court because their coaches “know” that the black kid in the next locker has the “real” chance to make it big. And if someone comes up with the nonsense claim that the coaches always play the best people because they need to win, I will point to all those quarterbacks turned wide receivers and laugh. Coaches may want to win, but in the real world, they are as constrained by preconceived notions as anyone else.
It may very well be that there is a strong genetic component to the population that provides the NBA with the majority of its best players; I have no interest in denying the possibility. However, what has so far been presented in this thread remains unscientific and little more than anecdotal and I see no reason to simply accept it without evidence, either.
Then just what are you proposing?
I think you are protesting too much and that this whole thread denies that claim.
You mean that you think your perennial atttacks on my person without providing any serious data are moving the thread along? 
Nothing I have posted is “distracting” from the discussion. I am giving posters an opportunity to provide the scientific information that supports their beliefs, (and running into a lot of personal antipathy and anecdotes, instead). *::: shrug ::: *
If you have convinced yourself, have at it. The “Jewish” example you cite is irrelevant, as I’ve said ad nauseum. Niche cultural activities are not a good way to sort out nature v nurture.
With the NBA example (or any number of power/sprinting sports such as certain track and field events), what you see is not just the handful at the pinnacle, but domination at every level, with over-representation from grade school on of blacks. This is true in wealthy suburbs and it’s true in the ghetto. It’s true in church leagues and it’s true in high school and colleges. It’s just an obvious point of observation: on average blacks are overrepresented regardless of social situation, period.
Now perhaps you want to argue it’s cultural. Blacks get steered to the NBA and whites get steered to Harvard. The evidence you want is equally a straw man, because you apparently want some un-identified allele or something. I don’t have it, so enjoy your delusion. But what I do have is a very simple argument:
That’s evidence of a very good quality. “Anecdotal” my ass. If what you are looking for is some sort of academic paper outlining performance superiority of a given “race” based on genes, you can continue to bluster. In the academic world, such blunt assertions are tantamount to academic suicide, so I think you can rest easy for a while while the academic world dances around it.
But in the long run, science will win, and in the short run, everyone who shops for sperm and wants their babies to be athletic will look for athletic parents.
It’s all in the genes, no matter how fancifully you want to dance around it. If you belong to a SIRE group with a higher prevelance for genes that convey a higher maximum performance, your group is going to be over-represented because of that higher prevalence as long as nurturing influences are normalized.
And if you are looking at broad averages for broad groups in the sports mentioned, feel free to look at the pretty pictures on the sports page and ask yourself if those superiorly-performing athletes are all the same SIRE group for the same reason the Jewish kids dominated the Hebrew leagues, while the white kids of today decided Accounting was the way to go. Will the Inuit be next on the sport pages? Stay tuned.
As I said in my first post, the ONLY reason these broad average differences in physical skillsets are fought against so vigorously is to avoid letting the door crack open for differences in other skillsets such as those related to intellect. I’m not sure anyone really gives a crap if belonging to a black SIRE group gives you better odds of making the NBA because you are more likely to possess certain genes. Good on those kids. It’s still individual performance that’s being measured for any given NBA player.
I don’t want to argue it in either direction. I want you to provide evidence that there is any validity to your claims and that someone has done some actual research into the topic.
“Blacks” dominate at every level from “grade school”? They certainly never dominated in my kids’ schools and we have more than just a tiny handful of kids who are black in our neighborhoods.
So, perhaps a bit more than handwaving and grandiose declarations that we are supposed to accept on your say-so.
And the evidence that this is not just something that you hope is true?
Fwiw, according to the Chairman of the Footballers Union 25% of professional soccer players in England have some Afro-Carribean (so presumably slave) heritage. Of the eligible population (male, 18-34), I’d have to guess but that ethnicity is probably a little over 1%.
The UK - at least for that generation - didn’t really suffer disenfranchisement on the scale of the US or poverty like the West Indies, and the soccer culture is national and largely classless.
Something to think about. Breeders of dogs, horses racing pigeons etc have been aware for a long time that certain physical and behavioral traits could tip them off when selecting young that would eventualy grow up to be fast runners or fliers. Mnay of these traits are totaly unrelated to running or racing.
I know that blacks today suffer from a high incidence of hypertension due to water retention, it has been said that dehydration killed off many slaves before reaching port and those who survived retained water more. Possibly good genetic seed stock coupled with a gene to aid in survival somehow produced the right combination for fastest runners.
Ah yes, more pseudo-science from someone with an extremely recent join date.
How delightful.
There really is no point to this comment.
Stick to a critique of the statements posted and leave commentary on the postersout of Great Debates.
[ /Moderating ]
Ok, point taken.
I merely meant to convey that he was not making a logical argument, but engaging in pseudo-science.
I’m reminded of the creationists arguing that humans can’t be descended from monkeys because there still are monkeys.
I was commenting on his presentation of his case not about him but clearly didn’t express myself terribly well.
Ftr, best I can see, the semi-Finals at London 2012 comprised one Chinese, three Africans, one Brit-African and 11 descendents of slaves.
The Final comprised entirely of slave descendents:
I’m not finding the term “descendents of slaves” anywhere in that link.
It’s quite likely that the Final comprised entirely of descendants of “white” people- and almost certainly most of them were descendants of “white” people.
Not only white people, obviously.
I’m still trying to figure out how PrettyVacant takes just a name and a picture of a flag and comes out with the genetic background of a person.
I’ve asked you before to explain how, outside of deed poll, black Americans or people from the Caribbean would have Anglo-Saxon last names other than through slavery, and you haven’t. I asked you months ago now.
Please explain or leave my thread - you apear to be trying very hard to be a tedious distraction.