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

Great Debates
141

Nobody has said that and, even if people had said that, it’s not a reason to deny racial difference. If some people adamantly believed that red apples tasted bitter and green apples tasted sweet, would you try going around trying to convice people that red apples are really green? Of course not, you convince them that there are sweet red apples.

Again, it’s an asinine belief and shouldn’t affect the factual basis of racial difference. Every reasonable person and certainly every athlete knows that it’s impossible to achieve at the highest level without a whole lot of blood, sweat and tears. Innate ability counts for jack if your not willing to use it. However, that doesn’t mean innate abilities do not exist. Would you tell a 5’0" man he has just a likely chance of playing in the NBA as a 6’8" man? Of course not. It’s obvious that his innate height is going to significantly hamper his chances and it would be stupid not to acknowledge that.

Except this hasn’t happened and it doesn’t explain all phenomena. Mexicans aren’t dominating NFL, even though they apparently should be next on the list. And there are plenty of disenfranchised people all around the world who would love to compete in the steeplechase, it doesn’t account for why only a single country actually does well in it. And it doesn’t explain why sprinters come from west africa and long distance runners from the east. Are eastern runners just irrationally prejudiced against sprinting and refuse to even try it? Are western runners not poor enough to consider long distance running? The hypothesis doesn’t fit the facts and must be discarded or amended until it does. That’s how science works.

142

It doesn’t matter unless you can posit a reason why it would be only whites potential runners who have never considered running as a career and, moreover, why 64 times as many whites would do so.

143

I was thinking the same thing. In the past year I learned a new term from a SDMB
thread discussing evolution vs intelligent design. Falsifiable. Evolution is falsifiable, Intelligent design is not and therefore has no role in science.

Certainly, a hypothesis that elite black athletes can owe their athletic prowess to genetics is falsifiable particularly when the geneticists inevitably and finally determine the genes responsible for swiftness . If elite black athletes have the same swiftness gene or genes as white athletes then there is no longer any argument. If that is.

But how can the hypothesis that elite black athletes are as successful as they are solely due to culture be falsified ? Unless someone comes forward and explains that to me, I can only conclude that to suggest the sole cause is culture has no scientific basis.

144

For those of you who seem to have a real hangup with the definition of race. Yes, I readily concede there exists no clear and non-controversial definition of black. But… so what? We can’t come up with that for any human categorisation. We can’t even come up with that for “chair”. What is a chair? Is a stool a chair? an ottoman? A dentist’s chair? a foldout bed? A dolls chair? Can you come up with an all encompassing definition that would include all chairs and yet exclude all non-chairs? No. Can two people agree on whether each and every instance of what and what isn’t a chair? No. Yet most people would agree that this and this are chairs even if they might not agree on whether this or this are chairs.

So what does that mean? Are we unable to talk about chairs? Must all chair debates be bogged down in tedious definitions of the word chair? Clearly not. We accept such difficulties and work around them, generally talking about stereotypical or platonic examples with chairs while implictly acknowledging that such generalisations might not apply to more things which are on the very edge of chairness.

So why is this so hard to do when talking about race? I think we can all agree that these people are black while these people are not.

Can we stop treating the definition of race like it’s somehow different from every single definition that is used in the human language?

145

In a nutshell, it means you can’t make sweeping generalizations based on phsyical appearance alone. Biologically speaking a race is a subspecies and Caucasiods, Mongoloids, Negroids, and Australoids are not subspecies of homo sapien sapien.

Sure, in our culture you could do that because we have our own standards, but could you go to Papua New Guinea and do the same thing? Go there and tell me which person is black and which person isn’t. Heck, then tell me what race they are.

It depends on which definition of race you want to use. Sure, use the common definition of race and I guess we’ve got no problem so long as we remain in our own little culture. Just recognize that it’s a social construct and not a biological truth and that when we step outside our own culture that our social definition of race isn’t shared by everyone. So if you say black athletes are better based on racial characteristics we’ve got to examine blacks everywhere. Not just those from Kenya or Ghana but the whole of Africa. I haven’t seen many fast Bushman since that dude from The Gods Must be Crazy, but I think they may have sped up the film on that one.

Anyone remember what happened when Asian soldiers trained in places like Alabama and Georgia during WWII? They had to seriously think about which drinking fountains these soldiers were going to drink out of. Are they colored? Dod they drink out of the white fountains?

Marc

146

So what can we make sweeping generalisations about? If all categorisations suffer from the same problem, then we can make no claims about anything. Thats not knowledge, thats ignorance.

Again, your exploiting boundary conditions to complicate the issue. Give me a single assertion that you could make that contains natural, human categorisations and I’ll find boundary conditions that complicate it. In fact, here is the specific challenge: Make an assertion about chairs. Any damn assertion you want. I will be able to attach it using the exact same methods that you have used to attack my assertions about race.

This goes deep into the philsophy of language but one of the fundamental premises that allows effective communication is the assumption that the concepts in my head can be mapped into a set of phonemes and then retranslated back into identical an identical concept in your head. If I say “my cat is furry”, I make the implicit assumption that the words “my cat”, “is” and “furry” mean the same thing to you and me, otherwise, it would be impossible to communicate. For the most part this works well enough that the fiction of accurate communication can be maintained. DeBerry’s definition of black and my definition of black and your definition of black map onto a similar enough concept that we can have meaningful debate. But such would be the case with any concept. It’s not unique to race and it’s just a natural part of the human language. To imply that race is unique in this regard is simply muddying the debate.

I’ve never even hinted that race was not a social construct. In fact, looking back ov er my posts, I’ve said at least 3 times explicitly that race is a social construct. That doesn’t detract from the relevance of the argument one bit. Neither does it claim that all blacks are good atheletes. Pointing out that the best steeplechase athletes are from Kenya does not invalidate the claim that the best athletes are black in the same way that pointing out that the animals with the longest necks are giraffes does not invalidate the claim that the animals with the longest necks have 4 legs. Similarly, pointing out that the longest necked animals have 4 legs does not imply that hippos, which also have 4 legs are likely to have long necks.

147

I just wanted to say, “Excellent posts.” Not only have you made valid points (many that I’ve been trying to make, but I fear not as well), but you’ve also managed to identify key problems with the debate itself. Then again, I could be wrong a and those adamant to not give the concept of race any acknowledgment at all will ignore or contort your salient points as they have done to others throughout this thread. But I am hopeful. Well done.

148

Sure it can. Show us the gene or genes involved that validate your hypothesis. Or, show us the precise physiological difference (hormone levels, muscle structure, or whatever) that validates your hypothesis. Then, make predictions about individuals based on that data, and you will have falsified the idea that culture is in play.

The problem is, you want to make the leap from sports data (which does not constitute random samples from the various populations) to hard, phsyical data. You want to formulate a scientific theory based on unscientifically constructed data sets.

Your hypothesis may very well be correct, but you have not demostrated, in a scientific manner, that it is.

149

But doesn’t the fact that we have gold medal runners of West African descent that have been raised their whole lives in several different cultures show that culture is not the cause?

And when you say hard, physical data, not sports data, can you give an example of what you mean? Why isn’t the results from the Olympics and other world events valid or reliable data?

I’m dead. Until tomorrow…

150

Yes bloodlines, ancestry, genetic lineage.
Humans and horses are the same, you breed fast one to fast ones.
Seabiscuit was a bay horse, think THAT’S what made him fast? :smack:

151

Therefore, one of the first points to recognize in tracing the African roots of African-American culture is that enslaved Africans sold to North America came from a variety of ethnic backgrounds. About 25 percent came from ethnic groups such as the Bakongo, the Tio, and the Mbundu, groups from the Congo-Angola region. About 23 percent came from the Yoruba, the Fon, the Nupe, and the Ibo, ethnic groups from an area from the Benin River to Cape Lopez, now contemporary Nigeria, Toga, and Gabon. About 16 percent came from the Alkans, who inhabited the Gold Coast, now contemporary Ghana. The Wolof, the Fulbe, and the Serer, Senegambian captives, made up about 13 percent. Another six percent of captives came from Sierra Leone, four percent from the Bight of Benin, and less than two percent from Mozambique and Madagascar.

From here: http://www.black-collegian.com/issues/1998-12/africanroots12.shtml

The less than 2% from Mozambique and Madagascar of course representing the east African connection.

I’d participate more in this thread, but it is giving me bad flashbacks to the last 5 times we did this :).

  • Tamerlane
152

Nobody is positing that it’s the melanin that is making them fast. Just that the gene for dark skin and the gene for fast running show significant cross-correlation because the originated or were selected for in a certain geographical region.

153

So, they’re,

NOT “blacks”
NOT “Africans”
NOT “Kenyans”

They’re Kalenjins, they are (most probably) a unique genetic sub-group.
And I bet they DON’T intermarry much historically with the other tribal groups in the area.

If we isolated that family in Germany for a few hundred or thousand generations we’d get a tribe of very strong people, with a unique genetic variation.

And it would be wrong to extrapolate from that tribal group ANYTHING about,

“Germans”
“Europeans”
“Caucasians”

154

I’m trying to think of any other subject that has every been debated on the Straight Dope where people were allowed to get away with sweeping generalizations. Can’t think of one. Actually in any other conversation it will get you a "Sweeping generalizations…bravo. :rolleyes: "

I don’t think I have ever heard so many people knowingly use a bad categorization, then complain about being called on it. So you at least admit that people cant be put into neat little boxes like black and white, but you still want to use the boxes. People use categorization when there is a use for it. Like in your chair analogy, there are times when a person need to make clear that he needs an office chair not a chaise. People sometimes need to use the categorization of race, like when they need to find a bone marrow donor, or they are looking for a suspect. My question to you is, “Why is there a need for race categorization in sports?” I didn’t know or care that only blacks ran the 100m in under 10s, because to me they are all human beings. I do care when people try to tell me that because of that one factoid, blacks are different from other people.

And your chair analogy is so bad. You think we are quibbling over what is a chair and what is not a chair. We see it as you trying to tell us that between two identical chairs one painted black and the other painted green, the green one is the better one. If someone were to make such a claim you better be damn sure you know your chairs and your colors, and not accuse people of muddying the waters for naturally asking.

155

They show an apparent, significant cross-correlation.
Then WHY bring up the melanin gene? Why not bring up the “body hair” gene, or the eye color gene, or ANY other gene? I bet we’d find lots of other corollary connections, that would NOT prove causation!
If you sniped out the melanin gene, the “fast running” gene would STILL be there.

Some people ARE positing correlation = causation, that’s why “race” has been part of the debate, right?

156

My problem with this comes down to using the term “black” as opposed to using the correct term which is West African. You’ve acknowledged the fuzziness of using race as a method to organize humans, yet you insist on doing it.

As noted repeatly, the term “black” is meaningless except in the broadest sense. Why would you insist on using it when you know what group you’re referring to? Also noted Entine states that this isn’t about “black” people. It isn’t about race, so again why do you keep referring to race?

The reason why I’ve been hammering on to have someone describe what it means to be black, is because there so much variation either within groups or created by society to render the term meaningless. My idea of black, isn’t going to be your idea of black and further even if it is, all blacks don’t hail from West Africa. It’s this generalization that I find lacking, because it doesn’t have to be.

If you believe that the records tell us something, then why not specify what group it focuses on…people who hail from West Africa. Yes they have dark skin, but as noted the gene that controls skin color, isn’t the one that controls muscle length or bone structure. The significance should be where they hail from, not the color of their skin; because due to admixture, we have lots of people who may have their bone structure but no longer have their skin color or a variation of it. Sure we can guess, we can eyeball and that’s perfectly fine in normal everyday events. However this isn’t a normal everyday event.

The basic premise of this thread is that blacks as a group are different in ways that allows them as a group to be faster than any other group of humans on the planet. I don’t think it’s much to ask for a clarification of what defines such a unique and powerful group of humans…especially since everyone feels, they know one when they see one.

I’ll tell a secret, in my bodybuilding days it was well known that African-Americans had no calves; that is as a group, their calves were shorter that the average white competitor and since bodybuilding is based on the European standard of beauty; they were having problems. Did they train, yep. In fact, they trained those calves crazy and while they got bigger they didn’t get longer; because they couldn’t. Now of course there’s Sergi0 Olivia who looks black, but he’s not an African-American and the genes that shaped his body, his calves are different than Lee Haney who’s different than Chris Dickerson. Are they all black? Sure, but they aren’t interchangable. If I’m doing research on why “blacks” have shorter calves, wouldn’t make sense and good science to note that Sergio is Cuban and has different admixture than Lee Haney AND that might account for Haney’s retaining his “African” calves? I mean if most of the slaves came from one place and here we have three people with closely related ancestors displaying different physical attributes, why would you lump them under the blanket term black, which tells us nothing and gives at least the illusion of interchangability?

I don’t expect a Cuban to look like an African-American or an East African to look like a West African, because they don’t and neither should you.

157

Genes

Andb]even** if you manage to somehow prove it, how does that translate to “as a group blacks are faster”, when you’re basically talking about an isolated group of people? Unless you believe that the mere “appearance” of blackness is enough to tie the groups together.

158

Assuming your tribe of Germans did develop into the strongest people in the world, the following statements would then be true:

The strongest people in the world are Germans.
The strongest people in the world are Europeans.
The strongest people in the world are Caucasians.

Just like the statement, “Black athletes tend to be faster than white athletes” is true.

Why yes, thank you. For the purposes of this discussion, one can change the statement, “Black athletes tend to be faster than white athletes” to this: “Athletes who appear to be black tend to be faster than athletes who appear to be white” and the results of the Olympics and the demographics of the speed positions of college and professional football bear out the statement quite nicely.

159

I do not see that any poster has done that. Can you point to who?

160

What might that appearance be? I’ll ask this question again, if we have a record breaker who appears to be white and we find out he’s a decendent of slaves, does he now become part of the proof that black athletes tend to be faster than white athelets or does his win go to the whites?

What should I apperance should I be looking for or is skin color enough?