I don’t want anyone to take this the wrong way. I know this can be a touchy topic and I assure you all I am not racist. I don’t remember where exactly my husband read it but he read from a reliable source that says that races aren’t necessarily all equal. We are fairly the same but as far as blacks and white’s I heard that white’s are mentally superior and blacks are physically superior. So from that I accept that we are relatively the same in the fact that we are all human but we’re all a little bit different. Nothing wrong with that hey if you can’t beat em at chess kick their a$$ it’s more fun anyway. 
Bnile
Let me be the first to “welcome” you to the SDMB. I’m always happy to see someone confide in sotto voce ignorant crap as if it’s some kind of bloody revelation. As if we lack that already. Next time read a bit of the fucking thread before posting precisely the same ignorant rot which has amply been refuted thousand times before, in this very thread alone, let alone in prior threads.
Your husband’s “reliable source” is racist bullshit. If you desire to know why, follow the links on the very first page --yes indeedy the very first motherfucking page-- of this thread to discussions which linked the more relevant scientific literature as well as some more popular summaries thereof.
Save the cutsey closers for MPSIMS.
Good gracious, Collie! Forget Sysyphus; now you’re starting to sound like Hal 9000 on a very bad day. What’s a smart lad like you doing in an ugly discussion like this? Same B.S., same players, same results ad infinitum, yet you keep anteing up. Life is too short, man. Go for a bike ride.
Easily the most sensible statement I’ve seen on this thread.
I’m off (on my bike) to Barney’s for a cheeseburger. With bleu cheese. Yum.
Peace,
mangeorge
Just be sure the cook is an African American with a high concentration of slow-twitch beef. Making good cheeseburgers is in their blood, you know.
Well I’m afraid I may have to revise my entire position that West Africa has produced the fastest sprinters in the world.
Congratulations to Block, who has accomplished this feat without the backing of the financially mighty USA, and without the impoverished culture that Loonie claims is responsible for the fact that no “whitey” has ever broken 10 seconds in the 100 meter.
No such luck,tsunamisurfer. Their regular cook is off training for the olympics. Some white dude cooked my burger. Sucker wiped the grease off my burger.
Sheesh!
Peace,
mangeorge
grienspace:
Please stop with the unabashed antagonism – it lends nothing to the debate. You are not furthering your cause. Collounsbury came up with an alternative hypothesis to your “race based” one: one which is at least not disproved by modern genetics and anthropology. Nowhere (this thread is long so I may have missed it) has he claimed that the impoverished culture of Africa is unique in producing fast runners. He has just claimed a societal basis which may be replicated at other places in the world. Granted, the defeat of Marion Jones in a 100m race does not prove anything – it is an n=1 event and this one 100m race lends little data to any type of reasonable analysis of the data. It is just a point which shows that there is not a monolithic racial stranglehold on the running world, as you have repeatedly claimed.
The scientific facts, which are not based on athletic records, are that no cohesive genetic similarity exists between these people, despite what you and people like Jon Entine (see link below) claim. It is all IMHO a crock of shit, as the genetics don’t support it. You can point at 100m results until you are blue in the face – the science does not support it.
Here you go everyone, just to continue to stir the pot. I haven’t read the book, but it sounds like the same old shit rewarmed.
Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We’re Afraid to Talk About It by Jon Entine (amazon.com link).
Do you have any evidence at all for this “explanation”?
Do you have any evidence at all for this “explanation”?
Unthinking Knee jerk boy,
The statement you’ve ripped out of context is a hypothetical, connected with the hypothesis that having longer limb-torso ratio might be advantageous, as well as any other factors I hypothesized. As I NOTED previously, it was advanced as an example and a hypothesis only. Learn to read for comprehension.
Let me rephrase my question:
Do you have any evidence at all for your hypothesis?
And from the tone of your response, I believe the answer is NO.
sjgouldrocks, do you ever read what has been written?
Let me spell it out:
(I’ll type slowly so you can follow)
Col presented an hypothesis (which he has neither endorsed nor attacked) as an example of how one would go about a scientific investigation.
He has not proposed that the hypothesis is true.
He has made no assertion regarding his personal opinions or beliefs or thoughts.
He placed an example of a thought experiment on the board, then showed, (had you bothered to read what he wrote, rather than what you wanted to see), several specific tests and examinations that could be applied to that hypothesis had one wanted to discover whether it was correct.
Challenging him to defend an example of instruction is about the equivalent of insisting that your third grade teacher explain why the two trains are leaving the station at the same time but are going different speeds.
What Col believes on the subject is irrelevant.
If some person wanted to link athletic prowess to a particular situation,
then one could examine whether
a) longer limbs gave an advantage in running,
b) longer limbs were more prevalent in the tropics
c) people from the tropics who had longer limbs were more likely to actually win races.
If all those were found to be true,
then you would have the beginning of a hypothesis to test by ruling out other factors.
And on the quote that you snipped? You dishonestly left out the beginning of the sentence: “If true,” And you dishonestly left out the two following sentences: “In combination with other factors, we might find a partial explanation for some groups dominance. Or not.”
Would you please learn to read the words to which you constantly overreact?
I can’t help but wonder if some of sjgouldrocks fervor here is based on a disdain for the mechanisms of evolution ? Perhaps this is the equivalent of arguing school vouchers with a libertarian ?
If this plea was made months ago when Loonie your hero was name calling and hurling expletives in GD and the pit at me while all the while I took the high road I might show some respect for your request in this regard. It is only in the last month that I have sunk to his level. Such emotionalism from Loonie and his supporters belies the claim that his position is based on science. It sounds a lot more like religious zeal to me, and your request can only be regarded as an attempt to paint me as the bad guy. Science indeed.
Of course not. There needs to be a little more evidence for his hypothesis before anyone is going to spend the time and money to study it. He has admitted that obvious anomalies exist.
This is bullshit. I have never applied any superlative characterististics on any race, but you and Loonie have. You claim that there is more genetic diversity amongst blacks in Africa. Now isn’t that a racist claim???
My point in this discussion is merely to present Jon Entine’s hypothesis which claims that the success of athletes in certain sports such as basketball and sprinting identified as being black may well reside in ancestral residency in West Africa. This does not apply to a majority of your “black race”. Now I am fairly certain that in order for you and Loonie to get on your high horse and claim the “genetics doesn’t support it” You have to misrepresent my POV as racialist or racist and that I am describing a cohesive trait of the black race. Of course then you are correct in opposing this misrepresentation.
Who are “these people” ?
Races don’t exist? Okay. I suppose somebody should tell these guys.
Looks like there is some evidence that there are genetic variations according to geography at least.
kesagiri: This is a really long thread. That derives from a half-a-dozen or more really long threads. Rather than trying to trace them all out for you or just suggest that you read them all ( though you may find them interesting…or tedious 
), I’ll mention one of the main points that has been argued ad nauseum.
Genetic variation as expressed by phenotype, does not necessarily equal coherent, biological races as they were/are classically construed in humans. The key words here being coherent, biological, and classical. We can certainly go into all sorts of other definitions of “race”, but that’s the one that is generally being argued in these threads. For more information and debate, I’m afraid I’ll have to refer you to those threads .
- Tamerlane
grienspace:
I don’t see how, myself. Far as I know it’s a fact and has no value judgement assigned to it. I can’t imagine anyone claiming that populations in a particular geographic area with a little more genetic diversity are superior in some way to slightly less diverse populations elsewhere . I doubt the differences are profound unless we start looking at extremes ( everyone in Africa vs. Pitcairn Islanders, for example ).
- Tamerlane
Yes I know it’s long…very, very long. These threads always seem to go on and on and on till you run the risk of clawing your eyes from your face just to keep you from having to read anymore.
Well, actually did you look at the picture? The technique that generated that picture relied on a suite of alleles and then determined frequency distributions based on geography. If you look at the picture it seems plausible that using just genetic material a scientist could tell if a person was from Australia (i.e. his genetic material is consistent with the distribution originating in Australia) or Africa even though people from both regions have black skin.
Of course the distributions are not cleanly seperated. There would be some overlap and some people could not be classified. Further, given enough time the overlap would increase until seperate distributions probably couldn’t be distinguished.
As for intelligence…well the suite of alleles that were used were neutral. So skin color is out.
Of course, I doubt you’ll be able to use this information to determine who wins that stupid 100 meter race everybody seems to be so keen about. Did everybody place bets or something?
The “classical” definition is more likely a cultural one.