Fisher DeBerry and the Elephant in the Locker Room (sports and race related)

Great Debates
81

This site claims:

Let me get this strait, the race = speed question is being based, in part, on a non-white sample size of 44+ people?
BTW, Allan Wells and Marian Woronin run so damn slow.
It’s not credible to claim that whites simply “aren’t trying”, once your at the Olympic level, it’s pretty much given that you try as hard as you can. The popularity argument doesn’t work either, blacks aren’t running at over 100 times the rate of whites which is what would be necessary to produce that sort of result. How is it that there are hundreds of white sprinters at the high school and college level, yet not one has managed to break the 10 second barrier? Is it that sprinting is simply unpopular with white people? Is it that it’s more popular with black people?
Someone remind me what’s the population of the planet again.
Oh yeah, 6 billion+, and of this number, how many go out for track and field, and train to an Olympic level?
Hundreds? out of 6 billion+.
The sample size is too small to tell you anything meaningful.

How many of the greatest sprinters just didn’t know that they were capable of it?
It’s part self selection, part, running, don’t put food on the table.

Sweet Jebus, if had only known that a science geek could run the 100 metres in 9 flat! To think that I wasted all those hours in the science lab in high school, damn you Einstein!
Holy Mao, do you really think I’d be making clothes for Wallmart
in this stinking sweatshop if I knew I could do it in 8.7.
Bill Gates, what a putz, could of been the fastest man in the world, instead of the richest.
Is there any way to explain this apart from racial differences? How else do you explain it? Even if every black person in the world were to train as an Olympic sprinter, such a situation could not occur unless you posit genetic difference.
IF every person in the world were to train as an Olympic sprinter,
we pretty certainly would find the genetic difference.
And I guarantee, it would have NOTHING to do with melanin!
You guys would make lousy horse breeders.
Horse Coat Color Genetics

I tell ya Chestnut & Sorrel are the fastest.
Wrong, everybody KNOWS Red Dun’s are statistically the fastest in the world. :wally
Your both nuts it’s Roans, Roans are the fastest!

Me I’m going to the realraces!
Buy all the winners, hire all the top trainers, let the horses and trainers do what they do best for a decade or two…

Buy myself an island in the pacific, Australia might be nice, and retire! :cool:

Great bunch of scientists ya all are! :slight_smile: See ya’s at the track. :smiley:

82

What’s his claim? In the interview I linked to and you ignored, Entine says he doesn’t believe in race, right? I’ll ask you, if he doesn’t believe in race, what claim is he making to be disputed?

Are you saying you believe that as Entine states, sickle cell is specific to blacks? Do I have to repeat the links already noted to prove that statement is false? That’s part of Entine’s proof that ‘race’ exists, opps Entine says he doesn’t believe in race.

What’s his claim again? He makes so much contradictions, I can’t tell.

Sloppy race based ‘science’…again. I can’t wait till the field of athletics are dominated by the next ‘race’ and we see how THEY have superior genes.

83

His claim was that 44 black people had run 100m under 10 seconds while not a single white person has managed to. As I said, I don’t care what other crazy shit he said. It’s not relevant to the argument. The claim is verifiable and has been verified.

84

Yet, a single white person hasn’t done it yet…sort of like a single black person not winning at Wimbleton, or the Masters, or being a Quarterback or whatever sport was dominated by other groups. What happens when it does happen? Does that “white” person, become a race separate from other ‘whites’ or do we look into his ancestry for a little coffee in his cream?

Really, what’s the point of this? I’m sure you don’t care what other ‘crazy shit’ he said, because you might actually have to…oh I don’ t know; try to understand what his crazy shit really means…besides being crazy, that is.

I’ll help you. It’s illogical to point to a genetic, or a racial factor to Entine’s verifiable claim, when Entine himself denies such a factor exists and in fact denies the existence of race itself.

Yes, I could see why you would want to ignore this type of crazy shit…

85

Why not? It certainly seems at least possible, unless one wants to rule it out a priori.

But in fact, the change is more likely explained by other factors:

  1. Since the NFL & NBAs surge in popularity in the last 20-30 years, Baseball has fallen behind in popularity among African Americans. Kids who would have been playing stickball in the 50s (hence in the majors in 1975) are playing basketball now. MLB has said numerous times how concerned it is about its dwindling popularity in inner cities.

  2. It’s so much that blacks are failing, but that others are succeeding. Twenty years ago, there were no Asians in MLB; now there are a couple dozen. More significanrtly, there are many, many more hispanics than there once were, for well-documented reasons that are more cultural and economic than anything else.

86

And this verifies what? That is the crux of this debate.

Everyone else is saying that when you factor in the fact that Black as a biological definition cannot be defined, and with all the other factors that make people successful in a field, you cannot use that one interesting statistic to ‘prove’ that it is ALL genetics. Yet you do.

When did 'Interesting Statistics" become proof?

If you saying it’s Blackness, can I assume that if I look up those 44 record holders I wont find many American Blacks. Mostly West Africans right? Because if Blackness is the magical ingredient, most American Blacks whose heritage includes White and Native American would be at a disadvantage? How can a West African have kids with a fast twitch deficient White or Native American, and end up with progeny faster than pure blooded West Africans right?

87

During the four+ years that I have been a member of the SDMB, I have run across a number of strange threads, but this one is by far the most puzzling.

This ain’t rocket science, and one doesn’t need a degree in genetics to grasp the concept. Any casual sports fan can tell you that people of African heritage dominate the sprint events in track and fill a preponderance of the positions that require speed and quickness in American football. There are some statistics posted above that demonstrate this.

There are clearly identifiable genetic traits that differentiate the races. After all, that’s how the concept of race came to be in the beginning. Why do some of you admit that the amount of melanin in the skin is an inherited trait, yet refuse to accept the idea that foot-speed could be inherited as well?

Above, it was stated that it’s obvious that the sun circles the earth. Correct, and those who wished to suppose otherwise were making the extraordinary claim. They had to prove it.

It’s obvious that taken as a group, black athletes tend to be faster than white ones. If you wish to claim otherwise, the weight of proof is on your back. Meantime, if Fisher DeBerry or I need to add some speed to our respective teams, we’re gonna’ expect that the athletes we add will be mostly black ones.

This discussion has wandered into the realm of silly.

To answer the OP:

  1. Is it racist to say that black athletes tend to be faster than whites?
    No.

  2. If the answer is yes, does anyone have a decent theory as to why?
    My answer wasn’t yes.

88

All you have to do is define ‘black’. How black do I have to be in order to be in the ‘group’ that’s faster than a white athlete? If I’m not as fast as a white athlete, am I not black, do I belong in a different group of blacks?

American football, is full of AMERICANS, African-Americans that often have as much European genetic material as African, at what point to do we perhaps suggest that’s it THAT admixture that creates what we consider ‘obvious’ fleet footedness and not the color of their skin, especially considering that the genes that control pigmentation, is not the same one that controls muscle length.

I don’t place much value for casual observation, considering it was casual observation that determined “blacks” weren’t human.

89

I am not interested in weighing in on one side or the other of this, but I have to point out that your statistical analysis here is utter tripe.

In fact, the number of people who go out for track and field is in the hundreds of thousands, in fact likely millions; the people who make the Olympics are drawn from the entire pool of competitive amateur and scholastic athletes. That’s a huge pool of athletes; even if we discount people who never tried it, you’re talking about a staggering number of candidates. They don’t have to let everyone go to the Olympics, specifically, because most have already proven themselves to be slow runners. Nobody who learns to run the 100 in less than eleven seconds DOESN’T become a competitive sprinter at least at the college level; anyone who tries and fails is simply eliminated at a lower level (my personal best was 12.6.) If you want to see a more representative sample of sprinters just look at university-level athletics and regional and national meets from all the countries in the Olympic movement.

Given the thousands and thousands of athletes who do, in fact, enter into high level competitive sprinting, it is in fact a damned good data sample. You don’t need a million sprinters out of 6 billion to form a good data sample. A couple thousand will do, and we have way, way more than that.

90

To expand on this, the culling begins way before any competitive running. Go to a playground where grade-school children are playing and ask the kids who the fastest runnres are. They’ll have a pretty accurate ranking. Now while the ranking will change as the kids mature, the kids that are really slow won’t be winning any running medals in ten years or a hundred. A large part of speed, like jumping ability, is limited by what your born with. It can be improved upon with training, but there is a ceiling.

91

Because there are perfectly good sociological reasons why whites dominate in tennis. Tennis is traditionally a upper-middle class sport and requires extensive fields. Tennis requires many more skills to excel than just sprinting. Racial stigma has meant blacks have been discouraged from playing tennis, whatever. There are no sociological reasons that can explain away the non-dominance of whites in sprinting. Whites have more money, they have more oppurtunity, they even have a million dollar prize dangled in front of their noses specifically for the first white man to break 10 seconds. Yet nobody has managed to do it, and certainly not for lack of trying. And sprinting is completely objective, everything is marked by a computer. Theres no possibility of a coach erroneously thinking black people run faster based purely on prejudice, the numbers are right in front of him. Any sprinter, white or black from a first world country who manages to compete seriously at, say a college level is going to get all the support they need to compete seriously. In short, there are no barriers to white sprinters that could account for such a differences except genetic differences.

92

The relationship doesn’t neccesarily work the other way. The fact that the fastest atheletes are black does not imply that all blacks are fast athletes. In fact, DSeid pointed out a perfectly plausible model to account for this. Blacks have the most genetic diversity, therefore, you would expect there to be more genetic freaks of any stripe. Some of these happen to be exceptional runners. There are other explanations of course but none of them requires all blacks to be faster.

93

Okay, think of it this way. Aliens land on our planet but, for some reason, the only thing they can observe about animals is how many legs they have. Nothing else is directly observable. So they classify animals into two races, one with two legs and one with 4 legs. And, surprise, surprise, they find out that all the animals with long necks also have 4 legs. Does this mean that all animals with 4 legs have long necks? clearly not. Does it also mean that neck lengths are purely distributed by chance and it was only happenstance that all of the long necked creatures fall into the 4 legged category? Clearly not. Does it mean, if you want to select a creature with the longest neck, it would be prudent to start looking at 4 legged creatures first? Yes.

I readily concede that splitting animals into classes based on the number of legs is a pretty shitty classification. There certainly exists much more useful classifications such as splitting into mammals and birds say. But does this mean that a leg based classification is completely useless? No. We can still extract useful information such as “nearly all animals that can fly have 2 legs” and carnivores usually have 4 legs.

We most certainly have more effective ways of grouping people. The problem is that such techniques require about $500,000 worth of genetic assaying equipment and a 2 week waiting time. In the meantime, racial profiling in certain circumstances provides a quick and moderately effective method of discerning true differences. I’m just as against misguided attempts to use racial profiling as any other person. But to deny that racial differences exists is also a wilful refusal to deny facts and can also be harmful. We already know that certain races as a whole and taken as a trend, not all members of a race are homogenous etc. etc. does this really even need to be said? respond differently to certain medical treatments. Given the lack of any other data about their genetic makeup, race provides a crude albeit still effective tool. However, such research has been and is still politically controversial and likely to be supressed by PC groups who don’t want a hint of anything to do with verifiable racial differences because if they concede one thing, they imagine their entire house of cards would fall down. Such pressure is damaging to the very framework of science and all right-minded dopers should be against it.

Also, keep in mind that any factor, at the highest level, is going to be more strongly geneticly determined whether it’s sprinting ability or genius or living the longest You can bet no olympic sprinter had an alcoholic mother when they were small or has an affinity for greasy fast food or suffered a crippling bout of polio when they were young. All the everyday shit that happens to us normal people that stops us competing at that high level never happened to them, otherwise they wouldn’t be competing. In effect, we are selecting for those who have had almost perfect lives so far and, thus, the only real determining factor remaining is genetics. Thus, any genetic difference is magnified intensely at that level of competition.

94

Then why mention race at all? That’s my problem here. Everyone seems to be saying that being black doesn’t mean you’re going to be fast, yet in the same breath point to verification of blacks as a group being faster than whites as group based on casual observation and statistical data of a small percentage of genetic freaks.

No one is willing to define what that group is and you can’t even define what being black means.

Hell, even Entine himself recognizes that lumping this trait under “black” is wrong, it’s inacurate and does nothing to isolate what traits; whether societial or genetic come into play.

95

Well I can think of at least one. I would imagine people like you spreading the lie that blacks have an inherent advantage in running would be pretty damn discouraging.

I would imagine that a great White player who hopes to play for the Air Force Academy feels his chances of doing so are now lower because DeBerry will be looking to get more Black players.

Let’s go back to the basics. You have managed to skirt my and holme’s question. How do you define Black?

96

Do you deny that there is something called black? Or blackness? Would you deny that black people tend to have darker skin, more tightly curled hair, and broader noses? If you do not deny these things I then ask you, couldn’t there be other genetic differences, as well? And given the correlations that have been offered in this thread, isn’t it possibly—likley, even—that speed has a genetic component that is tied to blackness?

If I offered you a million dollars for every black person you could point out in your town, are you saying I’d be paying you $0? I doubt it. Yes, some cases might be hard to be defined, but in looking to see if this concept of race, black, blackness exists, you don’t look to the cases where it is most difficult to determine, you look at the opposite end of the spectrum, the clear cases.

Well, if that is your hypothesis, which seems quite resonable, it seems rather easy to test. But I’d look to running as a more pure indicator of speed than football, which necessitates other attributes as, as well, exposure to the sport and desire to play it, to just name two. But back to your hypothesis: just look at how those with mixed ancestery do against those that are not mixed. We have large pools of both. The question will arise, is speed something that can get diluted with mixing? Or is it more like eye color, which tends to be carried on or not? I do not thing we have enough information to say one way or another. What does seem clear is that there is something that goes alng with being black that tends to allow the fastest portion of that population to run faster thas the fastest portions of other populations.

I think that’s the whole point of this thread. To see if there is more to the idea of blacks being fasrter than what might be gleaned from casual observation. There has been information supplied in this thread that proves a very strong correlation between blackness and speed. It does not prove causation, true. Perhaps one day scientists will be able to point to the precise components that make someone fast or not. Maybe it will be one gene, maybe it will be a combination of things that need to be present. Whatever it turns out to be, it seems quite clear that those conditions occur in the black population more often than in any other.

97

Define genetic diversity. I know this is DSeid’s point, but…are we to believe that all white people are genetically similar? Hell define white. Are you telling me that a white person with Welsh, Polish, Irish, Spainish, Native American, Sephardic Jew blood, is less genetically diverse than the typical American Black?

98

Sorry for posting repeatedly but I’ve been mulling over the specific claim made by entine and I believe I can express it crudely in mathematical terms.

First, let |w| be the size of the population of white professional sprinters. That is sprinters who are serious about sprinting and have tried their reasonable hardest to run. You can come up with your own reasonable set of criterion if you like, it doesn’t really matter. Now, let P(w) be the probability that a random white professional sprinter can break 10 seconds. The chances of none of the white professional sprinters breaking 10 seconds is thus (1 - P(w))^|w|.

Now lets be conservative here and estimate the number of white professional sprinters is 1000, again, the specific number doesn’t matter so much as long as it’s reasonable. For in to be likely that the reason white sprinters haven’t broken 10 seconds due to chance, then (1 - P(w))^|w| = 0.5 or P(w) = 0.069%. Now, the hypothesis we are essentially testing is P(w) = P(b) where P(b) is the probability that a random professional black athlete can break 10 seconds. Thus, |b| = 44/P(b) = 63,500. In other words, the population of black athletes would have to be 64 times the size of the population of white athletes for there to be a 50% chance that such a situation occured by chance.

Again, feel free to plug in any numbers you want into the equation. Looking over it, the math seems sound and I can’t see any way to make the numbers seem remotely plausible.

99

Since you guys are so focused on the 100m record holders.

I have a theory that all the record holders have curly hair, so it’s obvious that curly haired runners have a an advantage over non-curly haired runners.

How is your theory any more scientifically accurate than mine?

“Group people by hair curliness? Why that’s KRAZY! Grouping people by skin color is scientific, grouping them by hair is not!”

100

Your question is vague. Do I deny that we have created artifical classifications based on arbitrary external structures or do I deny that depending on what my physical apperance is even if I appear white, if I have a 'black" ancestor, I am black?

Again define black. Ask a dark skined Cuba, if he’s black. Ask a Dominican if he’s black. If I chose him and he shows you on his passport that he’s classified as caucasion, do I still win?

Again define black. Are dark skin blacks faster than light skin blacks? What’s the cutoff being between light and dark? How wide must my nose be? How tight my curls. If I have dark skin, but straight hair, am I only half as fast as a black with a wide nose, light skin, but tightly curled hair?

And what percentage of the ‘black’ population have these conditions?