Why are African-American athletes better than white american athletes

Great Debates
21

Money.

Take running for example. African Americans have excelled in track and field, but not road races. There was no money in road races. Basketball always looms as a good source of “making it.”

At first you would think the fast twitch muscles predominate in blacks, but now look at the Ethiopians and Kenyans, winning all the marathons. And the Ethiopians are winning all these marathons here in the USA, because they’re making money hand over fist. It’s not only the marathons, but all road races, from the 5K on up. Locally, the organizers of the Cooper River Bridge Run were going to limit the competition to Americans only, but the Mayor put the nix on that.

So, OK. Why aren’t the black Americans doing what the Ethiopians are doing? For one thing, the Ethiopians grew up without cars or any means of transportation other than running. Running 20 miles a day, up hills, was the routine. Here, no one even walks to the corner grocery. Probably the African Americans can do as well, as any American can do as well, if they started at a very early age running long distances every day. We haven’t.

On a related topic (I would open up a new debate, but I think this is going to be quite limited), the number of Americans running sub 3:00, sub 2:30, and sub 2:20 marathons have dwindled in the last decade. Why? My own theory is that we are just not putting in the miles. I talk to younger runners who are much faster than I ever was and they’re having a hard time qualifying for Boston, when they need nothing faster than a 3:20 or 3:30. I did it twice when I needed a 3:10. Why? They’re only putting in 40 miles a week. If one or two get up to 50-60, they think they have it made. I used to put in 70+ routinely.

Basketball is a lot more fun than running. And there was a lot more money. If you’re a poor black in a ghetto and want to get out, basketball seems to be the easiest way. More fun, less work, and why bother studying?

22

Collounsbury :

I think you should save that response and just post it as a form reply to any of these threads… :slight_smile:

In short : African-American athletes predominate in sports only because of a culture bias. Americans are good in sports because of good training. African-Americans per capita may focus on sports more often than other cultures due to a lack of role models, etc, but it is not my job to speculate on this – I am going to be a geneticist. As Collounsbury has said, there is no genetic advantage.

23

If you do some digging, you can find that in the 1920’s and 1930’s basketball was dominated by Jewish players, and many of the arguments as to why sound VERY familiar. Here’s an article you may be interested in:

http://www.jonentine.com/articles/question_of_race_recon.htm

24

In med school, one of our professors said he believed blacks made more use of the hexose monophosphate shunt during glycolysis, which might give them an advantage. I have heard this before, but don’t know if it is true. I agree that race is, to some degree, a fiction. I don’t think the original assumptions are altogether true.

25

The idea of race (the classic big three and similar groupings) is entirely a fiction, biologically speaking, if we mean in terms of shared traits. You should enjoy many of the cites I provided in the prior discussions.

I would say this professor’s claim is crap for the reasons explained previously. One would heed to presume that blacks --how are we definiing the population?-- shared a set of alleles favoring greater use of hexose monophosphate while other populations did not (if I understand the claim.) However, we don’t find, as of yet, any such kind of allelic distribution across “racial” populations. No reason, therefore, to expect Blacks in general to share this while excluding other populations.

(Edwino: Look how many times I simply cut and pasted my citations in prior discussions, in a desperate attempt to get someone to pay attention to the science. Ever get the feeling we’re digging a hole in mud?)

Barbitu, thanks for the added analysis. I’m glad SD has some folks capable of thinking logically about these issues.

26

Question: If this is true, should not the percentage of African-Americans be roughly the same at different positions within the same sport? The evidence is overwhelming that this is not the case. African-Americans seem to have a greater advantage in speed than they do at strength, and a far lesser advantage (if one at all) at throwing. Note that the overwhelming majority of the speed positions in football (i.e. RB, WR and defensive secondary) are held by AAs, whereas quarterbacks are predominantly white. Furthermore, the is a definite difference in the percentage of AAs on the offensive and defensive lines - difference being (apparently) that the defensive line is more of a speed position. Same with baseball, where almost all the great base-stealers these days a black, a lesser percentage of the power hitters, and few of the pitchers.

27

If one did not have selection bias bec or by (i) either by coaches (ii) or self-selection (iii) societal prejudice (i.e. blacks are good runners, I place them in position x). The flip side of the question is why should one presume a perfect distribution at any given time? Are men named smith perfectly distributed in sports positions? What about jews or persons of english descent?

Your problem is your assuming genetic/biological homogeniety in the subject pop. (blacks) which is non-extent.

I hardly follow sports at all, but the obvious objections are (1) casual observation such as this is subject selection bias and the fallacy of composition and does not represent a scientific analysis (2) ignores the question of where supposed advantage arises, see prior point above.

The momentary distributions of sport positions among a percieved ethnic group does not strike me as a terribly useful way to generalize or seriously consider the issue, if the issue is till supposed fixed differences btw athletes, by race.

28

Collounsbury

While one would not expect perfect distribution by race (or by surname), a glaring difference such as that which exists strongly suggests that there is some reason for it. (It has also been this way for some time, contrary to your suggestion that it is “momentary”). Furthemore, given the competitive nature of sports these days, I find your suggestion that it arises out of some sort of bias (at which level?) to be a very weak one. If, as you say, you hardly follow sports at all, you might wish to acquaint yourself with the details in this matter, so that you might be better equipped to definitively declare what the cause for the disparity might be.

This does not mean that one can conclude on this basis that there is some genetic basis for it. Merely that the alternative - culture bias - does not do it, barring further explanation.

I am assuming nothing of the sort.

29

because the black men that fail the intense competition go to jail.

Dal Timgar

30

Why? How are you weighting cultural factors? What substantive reasons are there to exclude the factors already cited by other posters as sufficiently explantory?

how else does one hypothesize an alternative to cultural/environmental factors?

31

RE: "(Edwino: Look how many times I simply cut and pasted my citations in prior discussions, in a desperate attempt to get someone to pay attention to the science. Ever get the feeling we’re digging a hole in mud?)

Barbitu, thanks for the added analysis. I’m glad SD has some folks capable of thinking logically about these issues."

Callounsbury, there’s absolutely no need for you to speak to (and of) others in disagreement with such mocking disdain and vituperative arrogance. Sorry to break the news, old boy, but you absolutely do not have a monopoly on intellect or on insight. What is especially off-putting is your way of speaking with God-like omniscience about something (i.e., sports) with which you only now admit you know absolutely nothing. In other words, you are completely uninformed on the topic at hand, but that doesn’t stop you from speaking as though you have unmatched authority. (By the way, your overly pedantic, professorial tone does not impress.)

Somehow you feel it is your duty to enlighten us tree-dwelling hominids with your divine-like insight and genius, generously dishing out insult as you go. For the record, the bunch of us were kicking the ball around, trying to grapple with a phenomenon we found interesting but certainly not thinking someone would traipse in and impose the Oxford debate rules upon us. We certainly weren’t suggesting we speak with authority nor have any hard data to substantiate our observations or suppositions. But we also aren’t morons or racists, and we all think we can piece together certain observations in an intelligent, meaningful way.

Though I cannot speak for the others and didn’t realize my initial casual observations would be nit-picked ad nauseum, I will correct my remarks to say that never did I intend to suggest that the presumed physiological benefits under discussion can be attributed to the entire universe of AA’s. Hell, all of us knew that–even if we did not say so or seemed to suggest it due to our haste. Also, you may reject the notion of “race,” but untold numbers of respected international authorities do not and I imagine perhaps at least a handful of them might possess credentials even you might deem worthy of respect. Regrettably, your approach is to blanketly discredit any “authority” whose views do not coincide with your own and, in so doing, smear them as pseudo-scientific, stupid, uniformed, etc. Gosh you’re smart, Collounsbury. Is that what they taught you to do in college?

As someone with considerable exposure to applied statistical analysis, I can assure you that I understand the scientific method quite well, thank you very much, and as for Wendell Whomever, no one was suggesting that AA’s dominate each and every sport in the U.S.–and your inference and resulting argument to the contrary is silly.

Collounsbury, track and field events are absolutely HUGE throughout much of Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Republic, and parts of Eastern Asia. Despite the intense national investment in these sports–a virtual sports machine, if you will–black athletes from around the world routinely beat their best athletes in the events that we have been discussing and that you are completely uninformed about. These are not isolated phenomena or statistical aberrations; they can be traced back to the 1960s and form in totality a compelling argument. The same can be said of basketball in the Olympics. Despite the vast national machines that find and develop athletes in these countries, black athletes triumph almost always in these key sports.

Get a life, man.

32

I’m not saying that cultural factors could not account for an overall advantage . I’m saying that cultural factors would not conspire to make blacks excel so much more in one aspect of a sport than another. Sports are very competitive at all levels these days. I think it’s unlikely that bias (even it were known to exist) would cause such a great level of disparity as currently exists between the speed positions and other positions.

(As a general point, I would point out that those who compare previous eras when other races tended to excel at various sports (e.g. Jews in boxing) are making too much out of that comparison. In previous eras, professional sports weren’t nearly as lucrative or as respected as they are today. Thus they attracted a disproportunate percentage of whoever happened to be the underclass at the time. Many capable midle-class people would not participate, leaving the field open for ethnic minorities. As an example, Byron “Whizzer” White led the NFL in rushing in two of the three seasons that he played, but he gave it up to go to law school (ultimately reaching the US Supreme Court). This would be unheard of today, when anyone capable of playing at the pro level - from any background - would likely be doing his best to make it. This is not to say that cultural factors are not present at all today - merely that they are less than they have been historically).

What I meant was that my remarks in this thread did not argue for a genetic advantage - merely against the cultural alternative. But while on the subject, it may be that (due to the lack of genetic/biological homogeniety) the black/white populations can theoretically be divided into subgroups - not all of whom will have any (average) advantage/disadvantage at all. The discussion of differences in averages between the two groups would be from the perspective of someone who has not broken down these groups into their proper subgroups, and is merely looking at the overall group of blacks and whites. (It’s analogous to saying that the average income in Connecticut is higher than the average income in California. This is true despite the fact that there are many areas in Connecticut that have lower average incomes than many areas of California. I think this has been discussed in the other thread)

33

*Originally posted by tsunamisurfer *

So what exactly are you getting at? That there’s some inherent biological/genetic component that allows blacks to dominate in these Olympic sports? Factoring out environmetal, cultural, economic, social, etc. (non-biological, non-genetic) considerations? If you are, then I suggest reading the following and make your own conclusions.
From The History and Geography of Human Genes by L. Cavalli-Sforza, et. al (1994), pp. 19-20.

1.6 Scientific Failure of the Concept of Human Races

The classification into races has proved to be a futile exercise for reasons that were already clear to Darwin. Human races are still extremely unstable entities in the hands of modern taxonomists, who define from 3 to 60 or more races (Garn, 1971). To some extent, this latitude depends on the personal preference of taxonomists, who may chose to be “lumpers” or “spliters.” Although there is no doubt that there is only one human species, there are clearly no objective reasons for stopping at any particular level of taxonomic splitting. In fact, the analysis we carry out in chapter 2 for purposes of evolutionary study shows that the level at which we stop our classification is completely arbitrary. Explanations are statistical, geographic, and historical. Statistically, genetic variation within
clusters is large within compared with that between clusters (Lewontin, 1972; Nei and Roychoudhury, 1974). All populations or population clusters overlap when single genes are considered, and in almost all populations, all alleles are present but in different frequencies. No single gene is therefore sufficient for classifying human populations into systematic categories.

As one goes down the scale of the taxonomic hierarchy toward the lower and lower partitions, the boundaries between clusters become even less clear. The evolutionary explanation is simple. There is great genetic variation in all populations, even in small ones. This individual variation has accumulated over very long periods, because most polymorphisms observed in humans antedate the seperation into continents, and perhaps even the origin of the species, less than half a million years ago. The same polymorphisms are found in most populations, but at different frequencies in each, because the geographic differentiation of humans is recent, having taken perhaps
one-third or less of the time the species has been in existence. There has therefore been too little time for the accumulation of a substantial divergence. The difference between groups is therefore small when compared with that of major groups, or within a single population. In addition, out species and its immediate predecessor, Homo erectus, showed considerable migratory activity in all directions, some of which are likely to have resulted in admixtures between branches that had seperated a long time before. Whatever genetic boundaries may have developed, given the strong mobility of human individuals and populations, there were probably never were any sharp ones, or if there were, they were blurred by later movements. There may still exist weak genetic boundaires in some regions, but they only mean that there has been less local admixture across certain barriers (See, for instance Barbujani and Sokal, 1990; Sokal, et al., 1988).

From a scientific point of view, the concept of race has failed to obtain any consensus; none is likely, given the gradual variation in existence. It may be objected that the racial sterotypes have a consistency that allows even the layman to classify individuals. However, the major sterotypes, all based on skin color, har color and form, and facial traits, reflect superficial differences that are not confirmed by deeper analysis with more reliable genetic traits and whose origin dates from recent evolution mostly under the effect of climate and perhaps sexual selection. By means of painstaking multivariate analysis, we can identify “clusters” of populations and order then into a hierarchy that we believe represents the history of fissions in the expansion to the whole world of anatomically modern humans. At no level can clusters be identified with races, since every level of clustering would determine a different partition and there is no biological reason to prefer a particular one. The successive levels of clustering follow each other in a regular sequence, and there is no discontinuity that might tempt us to consider a certain level of reasonable, though arbitrary, threshold for race distinction. Minor changes in the genes or methods used shift some populations from one cluster to the other. Only “core” populations, selected bacause the presumably underwent less admixture, confer greater compactness to the clusters and stability to the clasification tree. Although the hope of producing a good taxonomy is a lost cause - a minor scientific loss - that of reconstructing evolutionary history retains full strength and has the advantage that hypotheses can be tested on the basis of other, independent sources of data. Greater confidence in the conclusions must come from agreement with external sources of relevant evidence rather than from internal analysis.

The word “race” is coupled in many parts of the world and strata of society with considerable prejudice, misunderstanding, and social problems. Xenophobia, political convenience, and a variety of motives totally unconnected with science are the basis of racism, the belief that some races are biological superior to the others and that they have therefore an inherent right to dominate. Racism has existed from time immemorial but only in the nineteenth century were there attempts to justify it on the basis of scientific arguments. Among these, social Darwinism, mostly the brainchild of Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), was an unsuccessful attempt to justify unchecked social competition, class stratification, and even Anglo-Saxon imperialism. Not surprisingly, racism is coupled with caste prejudice and has been invoked as motivation for condoning slavery, or even genocide. There is no scientific basis to the belief of genetically determined “superiority” of one population over another. None of the genes that we consider has any accepted connection with behavioral traits, the genetic determination of which is extremely difficult to study and presently based on soft evidence. The claims of a genetic basis for a general superiority of one population over another are not supported by any of our findings. Superiority is a political and socioeconomic concept, tied to events of recent political, military, and economic history and to cultural traditions of countries or groups. This superiority is rapidly transient, as history shows, whereas the average genotype does not change rapidly. But racial prejudice has an old tradition of its own and is not easy to eradicate.

34

Oh, if Jimmy the Greek could read this thread!

I think there are many factors such as already having been mentioned that can explain the awesome predominance of African American athletes in the big money sports. The African American athlete can also display a grace such as an artistic dunk following a choreography of deceptive hand and footwork that makes me drool with envy.

African Americans are very rarely pure African as I understand it. A combination of characteristics more common to Caucasians with the counterpart of African specific characteristics would undoubted result in specific small groups that are superior but the rest mostly average in a wide variety of categories.

When we view professional sports, we are seeing the cream of the collaboration between white and black.

When we review the history of American music particularly jazz, we see this phenomenon again.

35

God help me! I am sick of this thread and regret having ever waded into discussion at all. I SURRENDER! Do you hear my Callounsbury and Eponymous? I SURRENDER! (pseudo-grin.)

A few, half-baked, off-the-cuff observations on my part have escalated into a supreme court landmark case. For the record, here’s my confession: I am NO expert on this subject. Problem is, no one is. Half the participants have no sports expertise while the other half have no anthropologic/sociologic expertise, so both halves are screaming past one another. And there’s no way I’m going off to a grad library to try to resolve this issue to my liking.

A related question: Generally speaking, do demographers and anthropologists agree with one another on definitions of what constitutes race and culture? There must be varied opinions.

Are we in agreement then, gentlemen, that the sky is blue?

36

“CREAM” of blacks and whites, eh, Greinspace? That’s it! I move that we advance the following handicap system for the NBA:

BLACKS: (aka “folks who aren’t really black or AA, but will beat your ass if you tell them that.”)

Ebony blacks = deduct 20 points from game total
Mahogany blacks = deduct 15 points
Walnut blacks = deduct 10 point

CREAMS: (aka “mixed race” folks–except there’s no such thing as a “race” and thus they aren’t really mixed:

Caramel creams = deduct 5 points
Toffee creams = deduct 0 points

WHITES: (aka “the pure non-race race folks”)

Tan whites = add 10 points
Pale whites = add 15 points
Pasty-face whites = add 25 points
Albinos = add 40 points

From diagram A, we clearly see that albinos will receive the largest point handicap, as anecdotal evidence strongly suggests they are underrepresented in the NBA Hall of Fame yet are most clearly associated with privilege in America. Converserly, Ebony blacks will have 20 points deducted due to their selective breeding, large thighs, and uniformally poor unbringing in oppressive projects. U.S. Olympic teams will be composed of an athropologically-approved mixture of pales, pasty faces, assorted creams & toffees, and a sprinkling of hardwood blacks.

37

“CREAM” of blacks and whites, eh, Greinspace? That’s it! I move that we advance the following handicap system for the NBA:

BLACKS: (aka “folks who aren’t really black or AA, but will beat your ass if you tell them that.”)

Ebony blacks = deduct 20 points from game total
Mahogany blacks = deduct 15 points
Walnut blacks = deduct 10 point

CREAMS: (aka “mixed race” folks–except there’s no such thing as a “race” and thus they aren’t really mixed:

Caramel creams = deduct 5 points
Toffee creams = deduct 0 points

WHITES: (aka “the pure non-race race folks”)

Tan whites = add 10 points
Pale whites = add 15 points
Pasty-face whites = add 25 points
Albinos = add 40 points

From diagram A, we clearly see that albinos will receive the largest point handicap, as anecdotal evidence strongly suggests they are underrepresented in the NBA Hall of Fame yet are most clearly associated with privilege in America. Converserly, Ebony blacks will have 20 points deducted due to their selective breeding, large thighs, and uniformally poor unbringing in oppressive projects. U.S. Olympic teams will be composed of an athropologically-approved mixture of pales, pasty faces, assorted creams & toffees, and a sprinkling of hardwood blacks. Thus, the “Whitman Sampler U.S. basketball team.”

38

tsusamisurfer writes:

> For the record, the bunch of us were kicking the ball
> around, trying to grapple with a phenomenon we found
> interesting but certainly not thinking someone would
> traipse in and impose the Oxford debate rules upon us.

Your use of the term “Oxford debate rules” here shows me that you have no idea what you’re talking about here. What do you mean by the term? You contrast “Oxford debate rules” with “kicking the ball around, trying to grapple with a phenomenon.” You apparently think that an Oxford debate is one in which obeyance to the rules of logic and fact-checking is very rigorously obeyed. Exactly the opposite is true. It’s American (high school and college) debates in which the debaters are expected to spend a long time preparing their arguments. The debates at Oxford, on the other hand, are impromptu. There are debate teams, but the people on those teams are not even given the subject for the debate, nor which side they will debate, until fifteen minutes before the debate. The point of a debate at Oxford is to see which of the teams can come up with glib, clever arguments (usually only loosely backed with logic and/or facts) within fifteen minutes.

(This is also typical of British academic writing, incidentally. Americans with no experience of British academia think that it consists of white-haired, pipe-smoking Oxford and Cambridge dons who sit around the senior common room, wearing jackets with leather elbow patches, sipping at port, occasionally taking the pipe from their mouth to make a wise comment about a subject that they’ve thought long and hard about. In fact, fact-checking and careful logic is noticeably more typical of American academic writing. What typifies British academic writing is glibness. They are better writers stylistically, on average, but they don’t seem to make the same effort, on average, to check their facts or their logic.)

(I suspect I know where you’re taking the term “Oxford debate rules” from, though. In a speech during the election campaign in 1992, George Bush (you know, the older one) crticized some statement that Clinton had made in a speech. He said that he, unlike Clinton, knew nothing of Oxford debate rules. This is deceiving in several ways. First, Clinton was never a debater, not in high school, nor at Georgetown, nor at Oxford, nor at Yale. Second, what he was implying (as you could see if you look at the context of the speech), is that Bush was just plain folks, unlike Clinton, who was trying to pull the wool over people’s eyes with fancy rules of logic stolen from a bunch of furriners. This is a rather bizarre claim to make, since it’s Bush that grew up in a very rich family (and who also went to Yale) and Clinton who grew up in one that was, at best, barely middle-class. Third, it showed that Bush, like you, didn’t even know what Oxford debates are like.)

tsusamisurfer also writes:

> As someone with considerable exposure to applied
> statistical analysis, I can assure you that I understand
> the scientific method quite well, thank you very much,
> and as for Wendell Whomever, no one was suggesting that
> AA’s dominate each and every sport in the U.S.–and your
> inference and resulting argument to the contrary is
> silly.

You’re being ridiculous here. Go back and read the OP and then my post. It says:

> Why do African-Americans excell in most sports better
> than white-americans . . .

RoyCian16 clearly was saying that blacks dominate the majority of American sports. What I said was:

> Blacks are not overrepresented in American sport. They
> are actually slightly underrepresented. 10.5% of American
> professional athletes are black, while 11.8% of Americans
> are black. You only think that blacks are overrepresented
> because you’re only looking at a small set of sports. The
> only sports in which blacks are overrepresented are
> basketball, football, track and field, baseball, and
> boxing (although the percentage of blacks in the last two
> has been dropping recently while the proportion of
> Hispanics has been rising, so it’s likely that blacks
> will soon no longer be overrepresented). Look at all the
> sports where blacks are underrepresented - hockey,
> tennis, golf, soccer, horse racing, bowling, auto racing,
> skating, skiing, gymnastics, biking, martial arts,
> surfing, archery, target shooting, cricket, rugby,
> fencing, weight-lifting, swimming, wrestling, motorcycle
> racing, (horse) show-jumping, and any kind of extreme
> sports.

RoyCian16 did claim that blacks dominate most of American sports. My point was that, in fact, whites dominate most of American sports. At no point did I claim that someone was saying that blacks dominate all American sports. Incidentally, is it supposed to be really clever of you to refer to me as “Wendell Whomever”? Are you so desperate that you think that making fun of someone’s name is hilarious?

Finally, this is the Straight Dope Message Board, not the Sorta Kinda Vaguely Close Facts Message Board. If you want to post to this board, you have to play in the big leagues. Don’t expect that anyone will cut you any slack here.

39

I messed up this sentence:

> You apparently think that an Oxford debate is one in
> which obeyance to the rules of logic and fact-checking is
> very rigorously obeyed.

What I meant was:

> You apparently think that an Oxford debate is one in
> which the rules of logic and fact-checking are very
> rigorously enforced.

40

RoyCian16 did claim that blacks dominate most of American sports. My point was that, in fact, whites dominate most of American sports. At no point did I claim that someone was saying that blacks dominate all American sports. Incidentally, is it supposed to be really clever of you to refer to me as “Wendell Whomever”? Are you so desperate that you think that making fun of someone’s name is hilarious?

Finally, this is the Straight Dope Message Board, not the Sorta Kinda Vaguely Close Facts Message Board. If you want to post to this board, you have to play in the big leagues. Don’t expect that anyone will cut you any slack here.

Clever “Wendell Whomever?” Actually, I didn’t think it sounded funny until you brought it up. Now you’ve convinced me. hahaha. (Actually, I was going for vituperative and abusive. Did it work?)

Also, um, Wendell, don’t be silly. Do you really think anyone here thinks of SDMB as “the big leagues?” It’s a free for all where answers are sorta kinda vague but everyone has a good time. Lighten up, bro. You’ll get a date someday.