I think you’re onto something here. The high jumper dude who couldn’t find his shirt but won gold anyways is white.
hmm… so why would white people dominate swimming? Doesn’t it take more muscle and endurance to swim a 200m than it does to run a 200m? Why are white people better at swimming in America? did we swim here from Europe?
As several have said in this thread, its all about economics. A poor black kid would turn to sports that can be done anywhere… track, football, baseball, etc… It’s not that they aren’t good swimmers, but not to many swimming programs in inner cities.
For whites, the sports options tend to be better. they can swim, fence, dive, etc… as those programs are found more in the suburbs etc… and in the olympics whites excel in those areas.
DNA, selective breeding, natural selection, is all crap and just simply not supported. its all about opportunity and the availability of it, and resources to take advantage of it.
See, it’s all about the selective breeding. Slave owners wanted slaves who could run really really fast because everyone knows you want your slaves to be able to outrun things.
But slave owners didn’t want slaves who could jump. In fact, plantations were surrounded by a fence that was three feet high and none of the slaves could get over it. True fact.
According to a previous thread, it’s because black people are denser. Which also would explain the utter lack of jumping ability. Bricks can’t jump very well at all.
I also noticed that at the 1500m (which, as a distance race, sees a lot of relative but clearly not absolute dominance by Kenyans), the three medalists were 2 North Africans (so not “black” as poorly defined in this thread) and 1 Mexican-American. I’ll also note that 4th place was a non-black American, as well.
Apparently the idea that genetics are the predominant factor in distance running is not so well founded.
Just a quick review to re-focus those of you congratulating yourselves for these various one-off observations:
The patterns you should be looking for—if you want to argue against genetics as a driver for average differences–are proportionate representation where nurturing is normalized.
To get to proportionate representation, you need a case example where the starting pool of candidates has X% of the total starting pool, and about X% is represented in the elite pool.
To normalize nurturing you need to make an estimation of what influences and opportunities existed for the starting pool on their way to success or failure.
This is why the NBA in the US is a good case study (markedly high ratio of whites to blacks at the starting end, and markedly low ratio of whites to blacks in the successful pool). This pattern suggests that the black candidates are more likely to have access to the right genes than the SIRE group of white candidates, unless you buy the argument that blacks have nurturing advantages.
If you can’t figure out the two prerequisite concepts–proportionate representation of starting pool versus success pool, and normalized nurturing–your odds of successful proselytization into the Religion of Genetic Equality fall off for all but the stupid or the gullible. (This is a succesful approach for religions, where confirmation bias is an old standby, but in the world of science is not very persuasive.)
I take it you’re focusing on sprinting and not distance running, then?
The OP (and other like minded posters) also stated that, for the same or similar reasons as given for sprinting, East African distance running dominance was clearly genetic in nature.
Maybe you’re making a different argument for why this is the case (or maybe you don’t buy that nurturing has been normalized for distance running vs sprinting), but, if so, you seem to be disagreeing with the OPs evolutionary theory, as well.
So, to clarify my understanding of your own POV and how it fits in with the OP, I’d like to know:
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whether or not you buy into the OPs theory that the descendants of slaves brought to the Western hemisphere enjoy the result of a selection process that makes them genetically better at sprinting than not only ‘white’ sprinters but other ‘black’ sprinters from western Africa whose ancestors did not get similarly selected for.
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whether or not you buy into the OPs theory that western hemisphere (in particular, the US, apparently) slaveowners engaged in a centuries long selective breeding experiment to produce faster slaves.
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whether or not you buy into the OPs related theory that a similar selection pressure made ‘black’ distance runners (particular those from Kenya) genetically superior to other distance athletes. And/or if you are taking a different stance and claiming that nurture hasn’t been properly normalized in this case (meaning you have a fundamentally different argument than the OP).
Here are the number of athletes of primarily African ancestry among the all-time top 10 hurdles times:
9/10 Mens’ 110m (including present WR)
10/10 Mens’ 400 (including present WR)
4/10 Womens’ 100
7/10 Womens’ 400
So the performance of men of African ancestry performance is dominant in the mens’ events.
Since less than 40%-70% of the world’s population have a recent African ancestor women of
African ancestry are overrepresented in their field.
Define “recent”.
For the men, the top 10 all time lists are dominated by Americans, who are generally of mixed African/European descent. For the 110m, the non-Americans in the top 10 include 1 from China, 1 from the UK (of mixed Jamaican, Scottish, and other descent), and 1 from Cuba (not entirely sure but probably of mixed African, European, and possibly Native American descent).
Likewise, the top 10 list for the 400 meters hurdle is also dominated by Americans.
You might as well say the men’s hurdles are dominated by people of European descent while you’re at it.
Likewise, among the women, the ones you note are of African descent are primarily from the US and the 110m hurdle records are mostly Eastern European (an Eastern European X-chromosome linked jumping gene, perhaps?).
The relative US (and Eastern European among the 110m women’s) dominance in the sport tilts the argument against genetics and towards just really good athlete identification and training.
Nurturing is not normalized- or at least it has not been shown to be. I’m not even sure how you would- it seems like a monumental task… having to track where every basketball court is, how parents motivated the kids, what the kids spent their free time doing, etc.
I suppose this might be interesting to any missionaries of your straw-man Religion of Genetic Equality- but I haven’t seen any in this thread. I have seen a few people who seem to think that a genetic explanation can be supported with zero genetic evidence- using odd metrics that are virtually impossible to measure like “normalization of nurturing”.
How about since 1500, when the African slavery diaspora began?
OK so far.
Not OK. Comparison is being made between those who do have recent African ancestry and those who do not
A genetic explanation For EEU performance is not necessarily off the table, although it would have to be the result
of a mutation rather than a “jump”, a phenomenon attested in electrons, but not genes.
NB 5/6 EEU athletes set their times during the Soviet-Bloc era, when sport was government subsidzed to an extent
unknown now. Women of African descent have recorded 13/15 of the year-best times since 1998.
Identification is the first step, and the disproportion reveals itself immediately wherever there are significant numbers
of competitors of African ancestry.
How do you know those people are of “primarily African ancestry” as opposed to primarily European ancestry with some African ancestry?
So, when the Soviet Bloc stopped subsidizing sports, did the genes change?
Then, where are the Brazilian or Nigerian or Cuban or Bahamanian hurdlers? Again, American dominance in the sport keeps the question open about a purely genetic explanation.
The fact that old Soviet bloc countries did so well through training punches holes in the genetic explanation, too, even if you glossed over it. So according to your explanation, genetics matter a lot, except when there’s a ton of motivation, funding, and training to produce superior athletes from the stock you already have. Funding and motivation go away and ‘poof’, we’re back to genetics, apparently.
This point is part of ‘normalizing nurture’ sub-debate going on.
Apparently, culture matters a lot - as you yourself noted by bringing up the old Soviet bloc. How do we know we’ve actually normalized for those factors when discussing US athletes? CP thinks those factors have already largely been normalized in the US. iiandyiii, tomndebb, and others don’t see that they have been.
The fact that it’s American hurdlers who dominate in particular, rather than Western Hemisphere slave descendants in general, means that there’s a fair chance we really haven’t normalized for all such factors.
Gas* chromatography.
*Primarily hot air.
In a few years, when all of the little black girls who may be inspired by Gabby Douglas the way that Gabby Douglas was inspired by Dominique Dawes start being in the spotlight, I wonder if suddenly that will mean that the gymnastics gene was dormant in African Americans all along.
Something about this just reminded me of a comment I heard years ago re: baseball. Black baseball players are often lauded more for their innate or natural talent, white baseball players for their hard work. The same thing is cropping up here. If a black athlete shines, it’s because it’s genetic. If a white athlete shines, it’s because of their hard work and training.
To be fair, many Eastern Bloc athletic achievements were chemically aided.
To also be fair, it’s entirely possible that current athletic achievements are chemically aided as well.
Something to also note here is that the proportion of professional US black baseball players has been dropping in the last couple decades, along with a consequent rise in the proportions of Central American, Japanese, and Korean players in MLB.
While it’s now obvious that cultural factors make a relatively large difference in baseball vs genetic, the same sort of genetic arguments about black athletic dominance were levied at baseball not even a generation ago.
It might be worth pointing out that as recently as 1972 the winner of the Olympic 100 meters was a Caucasian: Valery Borzov of Russia.