I asked this question in the other thread but got no real response. What I don’t understand, for people who think Slavery and Captivity contributes to African Americans abilities in sports, why, do they think this. Let me clarify:
If blacks are better at sports: football, basketball, baseball or track… and it is because they were selected for size and strength and stamina, well, what do physical characteristics that make one good at growing and picking cotton or sugarcane or tobacco or any similar crop or similar activity… how does proficiency in those physical characteristics translate into being better at football or basketball or the 100 yard dash?
The movements for sports and the movements agriculture are significantly different, are they not?
If you want to know the reason people think this, it’s because most people don’t understand science and evolution, in general, and genetics, in particular.
I don’t think much of the initial hypothesis, but I don’t think the OP here makes much sense either.
If you grant the premise of the initial hypothesis, it’s unlikely that any slaveowners were scientific about it to the point of selecting for physical characteristics that were specific to picking cotton. More like a general idea that a big strong guy is probably going to be a better worker than a weak runty one.
If there was some sort of selection bias, it’s most likely that it happened earlier on: big, strong, well-fed slaves were more likely to survive the horrifying conditions at sea and the working conditions on plantations (particularly those in the Caribbean, from where they might later be shipped again into the US.)
Though it should be noted that smaller people actually have an advantage when food is scarce, since they need less of it. (It’s thought to be for this reason that women tend to survive at higher rates in such situations - e.g. the Donner Party; if available food is distributed evenly, then the ones who need less of it will have a better chance at survival.)
Not necessarily. It might be the slaves who were better at storing fat reserves who survived the voyage. But the point really is that there could be any number of reasons for survival of the middle passage, one of them being luck (being on board a ship with one of the “kinder” captain and crew). But this sort of stuff is not really a testable hypothesis, so it’s more in the realm of folk science than real science.
Former slaves and their descendants aren’t all bigger than average. Jockeys in horse racing were predominantly slaves, former slaves, and their descendants for a long period of time until someone decided to ‘purify’ the sport. I can’t see selection as that great a factor here, many people who survived in the days before modern medicine were healthier than what is considered normal these days. The opportunities to compete on a fair basis is what made a difference. If you look at sports before the various color barriers were broken you see clear dominance by Americans of European descent.
One thing we can consider, though, is that Africans have the largest genetic diversity of any population on earth. It should therefore not be surprising if Africans produce the largest % of “genetic outliers”. But the other thing to remember is that African-Americans are, on average, are about 20% European. If there actually is a skew in the distribution for African-Americans in terms of sports ability, it might be because they are an admixture of different population rather than the descendants of one particular population (and, of course, “Africans” can’t even be considered “one population” in the first place, so let’s keep that in mind).
Strength is strength. If someone is strong enough to be good at toting barges and lifting bales, then they would be strong enough to push someone out of the way (football and basketball) or hit a ball a long ways (baseball).
Yeah, I assume that is true. But is it also true that the whole idea is junk science, in other words, is 300 years too short a time to significantly alter the genetics of a group of people… see, it seems to me like maybe it could be but that is just my uninformed opinion.
Except that men (and women) not good enough at those things were not kept from reproducing. There were all kinds of slaves in the South, and the cotton plantation that most people think of as typical was actually late on the scene.
Well, the real answer is that they want to justify racial disparities in a way that doesn’t make them feel uncomfortable about our current society (and, often, particularly lets them feel superior to others based on something other than personal accomplishments), so they search for some (any) quasi-scientific sounding explanation that doesn’t implicate social organization, and also doesn’t contradict their assumption of the white race’s inherent moral superiority.
So you know, when someone starts with a conclusion and looks for an argument to justify it, you’re not going to get them to change their mind by using scientific evidence and logic.
I mean, nobody argues that slavery instilled a capacity for hard work and mental toughness that lazy whites simply lack, and that’s the real reason for relative success of African-Americans in sports, even though that’s no less plausible that ‘slaves were bred for strength’ . Do you really wonder why that is?
Great answer. Thank you. I admit, I am trying to clear up some of my own prejudices on this topic. In that regard could you please take a look at post number 12 and respond…
I really want to echo what John Mace said about Africa being incredibly diverse. People need to stop lumping them all together as if they were one uniform group. They aren’t.
Several recent sprint champions have West African ancestry. Several recent long distance champions have East African ancestry.
But not all champions come from those areas. Nor do all people from those areas excel at those sports.
One of the biggest factors seems to be having the opportunity to develop in those sports. Something a lot of people never get the chance.
Maybe it’s genetics. Maybe it’s due to the diversity, genetic pool thing. Maybe something else.
Also note, the Watusi and the Central African Pygmy groups might have some people that excel at sports of some type, and quite different ones at that.
I don’t see slavery/European crossbreeding as being anywhere as near as significant as well as borderline (and sometimes no-so-borderline) racist.
It could be enough time, but it depends on the circumstances. Keep in mind that the Slave Owners weren’t all part of some huge eugenics project, and there is very little evidence for ANY attempts to “breed” a certain type of slave. Remember that most farmers were small farmers and didn’t won any slaves. They would be doing farm work themselves, as would peasants all over the world. 18th Century agricultural life was tough, so you’d similar selective pressures all around the world.
Ok well I actually mean this, I am not being sarcastic, you seem to know what you are talking about so I have a specific question, about plantation life in general and slavery. AS to your comment above:
There were all kinds of slaves in the South, and the cotton plantation that most people think of as typical was actually late on the scene.
Yes, but how different, in any and all aspects, how different really was picking or planting cotton from working with sugarcane or tobacco or wheat or corn or any other crop… ?
It should also be pointed out that when breeding for particular traits in domestic animals, breeders select from an extremely small pool of individuals - probably less than 1% of the total population. They also practice close inbreeding, mating siblings or offspring and parents. Even so, it normally takes many generations in order to produce a consistent change in phenotype. And once you allow interbreeding with the non-selected population, those traits will often be lost or diluted.
Even if selective breeding of slaves occurred in some limited times and places, it was never sufficiently intense or prolonged that it would have produced any long-lasting effect.