If one race is faster, more athletic, stronger in sports - what's bad?

[octopus]

@Ramira

No, in fact you did not. You made a vague and incorrect, inaccurate references showing you did not understand Kimstu.

Funny how these type of responses completely ignore the actual genetic information that people like Kimstu present and go to the asserting of the Politics (and the distorting, straw man claim of 100%…).

It speaks directly to what is the frame of the understanding.

@octopus

Asking for at the moment impossible proof while asserting something even more unlikely is willful ignorance. You are in fact saying that success in sports is 100% cultural?

But here’s more evidence you are incorrect in asserting that it’s 100% cultural. Why Kenyans Make Such Great Runners: A Story of Genes and Cultures - The Atlantic

Here’s a short excerpt from that article.

With a few months training young men beat the best Western professional runners. Who have access to the best sports science, money, and food in the world. Seems likely that bus riding Kenyan’s just happen to have the ‘culture’ that disproportionately represents them in a long distance running compared to every other ethnicity or tribe in the world. Hell, it seems like the cheapest method for western runners to compete in long distance running is to take a multi-year teen sabbatical to Kenya. Screw training.

But since we don’t have definitive proof that at least some success in sport which is dependent on body can be attributed to genes it therefore must follow that it’s more likely that it’s 100% cultural? That’s purely ideology clouding reason.

@octopus

And you have the genes to beat a prime Mike Tyson in boxing? If you trained til you were 20 and you were fighting a Mike Tyson who trained til he was 20 he’d whip you in boxing probably 999/1000. That’s the difference in genetics. And for some populations you can say their genetics provide a definitive advantage in certain physical activities, even if medians or means are the same, at the outliers.

The linked paper about the tribe in Kenya with regards to distance running is an excellent example that is as close to proof as you can find without being able to control for all variables in humans.

John Mace is just being silly. Noone is obligate to provide definitive proof where it does not exist. Yet we can be fairly certain, i.e. 99.999999% that since sport relies on the physical body interacting in the physical world, and that humans are in no way supernatural and are constrained by the laws of physics that biology has an impact.

Again, in the year 2015, there is not one starting non-black NFL cornerback. If outcome were solely based on the culture of participation we would not have that result, nor the dominance of whites as centers. We’d have equal numbers in each position since biology is obviously of no factor. Unless it’s the culture of whites all of sudden to focus primarily on being an NFL center as their means of escaping poverty. Nah, white culture says “NO!” to being a receiver or a cornerback. Such an undignified position, but center yeah. That appeals to us white guys. The 100% cultural argument fails when examining football alone.

Regarding the Kenyan runners. Here’s another link. How One Kenyan Tribe Produces The World's Best Runners : Parallels : NPR Though NPR is probably some crazed, racist source and you might want to take it with a grain of salt.

You were saying? The problem is YOUR politics cloud your mind.

@tomndebb

If you think that all of these questions have settled definitions in the scientific community, it would seem that we have found one of the issues that renders the question of the OP so problematic.
In point of fact, several of these terms do not have a scientific definition. Intelligence is definitely among those questions that do not yet have a “scientific definition,” (or, at least, a single definition that applies in all cases to all species and all individuals), the proponents of g notwithstanding.

Gender, for example, is being revisited almost daily.

How convenient. Humpty Dumpty would be pleased.

@HumptyDumpty

"I don’t know what you mean by ‘glory,’ " Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. "Of course you don’t—till I tell you. I meant ‘there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!’ "
“But ‘glory’ doesn’t mean ‘a nice knock-down argument’,” Alice objected.
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”

@Urbanredneck

For several years men from northern Europe and especially Iceland dominated the “World’s Strongest Man” competition. And for the population size of Iceland (about 300,000), you would wonder if their was a genetic component.

But I wonder if this has more to do with how the athletes are recruited for the competition.

Genetics play some role. Culture/environment play some role. Interesting question is how much of a role does genetics play in culture?

@Ramira

No no Dibble it is only politics that we do not see the great Truth that Brown Haired Dogs are a Race and the Very Important Possibility that they all are sharing the inferior differences. It is only some “politics” that could lead to one to pay attention to the actual genetics datas or the observation that there is no science based reason in this data to presume the Brown Haired dogs share the same genetic heritages… They’re BROWN! Can you not see it?

You might want to look a bit at set theory. No one is claiming all black is X or all white is Y. The claim and evidence is that the distribution within black and white is different. Now even if black is 500 diverse ethnic sets and white is 100 diverse ethnic sets (as an example) and even if the sprinting gene (as an example) is only in 1 of those 500 it’s still more disproportionate in the black set. It’s not as precise but it’s still true.

@Mijin

When it comes to race and science, I’d put it this way:

It’s not very useful to find that Group A is smarter than Group B, say, since it’s an average with a lot of overlap. If you’re hiring someone for a job, better to actually assess them as an individual. If you’re trying to find genetic correlates of intelligence, again, better to individually assess the candidates and sort them into groups on that basis.

So why do so many people want to talk about these averages so much?
Well, it’s because it comes very naturally to us to generalize and be tribal. We want to be able to look at people and immediately categorize them.
Even if we accept that there are “outliers” day to day we want to make some mental judgement about everyone of a particular appearance.

So in summary, not useful, only causes divisions in society. That’s why science tends to steer clear.

Addressing the OP more specifically, I would guess that there are some advantageous genes for certain sports that certain groups have a greater prevelance of. It’s difficult to separate that out from different numbers of people participating in said sports and the level of focus they apply. And blacks as a group are extremely genetically diverse, at the least it would be something like “People of West African ancestry are on average faster sprinters”.

And yet these racist rags are reporting on how genes influence voting!

Study Of Twins Reveals Surprising Link Between Genes, Political Views

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/09/opinion/thomas-edsall-how-much-do-our-genes-influence-our-political-beliefs.html?_r=0

Where is their 100.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000% with triple blind and repeatable studies? How do we know it’s not the amount of selenium in the soils these people live near? How do we know it’s not the phase of the moon they were conceived under?