# Why are people of African descent such bad swimmers? (Not as racist as you might think) **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 9, 2010, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-people-of-african-descent-such-bad-swimmers-not-as-racist-as-you-might-think/553218 "2010-09-09T20:00:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 11
**Author:** ![Chen019](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f19dbf/32.png) [@Chen019](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chen019)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 10:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-people-of-african-descent-such-bad-swimmers-not-as-racist-as-you-might-think/553218/201 "2010-09-13T10:08:49Z")
> [@](#): > > deal with people based on cultural/ethnic groupings. Yes, there’s some overlap there with older “races”, It seems like you get almost perfect correspondence with genetic clusters & self reported ethnicity. > [@](#): > > Numerous recent studies using a variety of genetic markers have shown that, for example, individuals sampled worldwide fall into clusters that roughly correspond to continental lines, as well as to the commonly used self-identifying racial groups: Africans, European/West Asians, East Asians, Pacific Islanders, and Native Americans (Bowcock et al. 1994; Calafell et al. 1998; Rosenberg et al. 2002). > > Subjects identified themselves as belonging to one of four major racial/ethnic groups (white, African American, East Asian, and Hispanic) and were recruited from 15 different geographic locales within the United States and Taiwan. Genetic cluster analysis of the microsatellite markers produced four major clusters, which showed near-perfect correspondence with the four self-reported race/ethnicity categories. [Genetic Structure, Self-Identified Race/Ethnicity, and Confounding in Case-Control Association Studies - PMC](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1196372/) ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 1:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-people-of-african-descent-such-bad-swimmers-not-as-racist-as-you-might-think/553218/202 "2010-09-13T13:13:25Z")
> [@The\_Flying\_Dutchman](#): > > And yes, cultural factors will explain the prevalence of disease such as diabetes amongst blacks in America, but sickle cell is purely genetically induced. And occurs among “white” people where malaria is as prevalent as it is in those regions of Africa where sickle cell occurs. Beyond that, you missed my point. I did not claim that diabetes was cultural. I noted that identifying the population that was more predisposed to diabetes was cultural. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 1:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-people-of-african-descent-such-bad-swimmers-not-as-racist-as-you-might-think/553218/203 "2010-09-13T13:35:37Z")
> [@Don123](#): > > I love these boards where only the moderators get to call others massively ignorant—ha ha—or you are banned. I noted that he demonstrated massive ignorance in his reply; I made no claim that he was, himself, massively ignorant of all things. > [@Don123](#): > > Uduah Mod, you are trying to solve the “nature v. nurture” argument and that shows how massively ignorant you are. Only in the far extremes can the nature v. nurture argument be solved. In other words pigs do not build space ships they simply do not have the genetic brains for it, and it makes no matter how you try to educate them in piggy schools. > “There is no record of slaves in North America being “bred” for any purposes, at all.” > The blacks were bred for being slave labor and that is a purpose, say it isn’t so, Joe.’ You are simply wrong. Slaves were generally permitted to select their own mates and there is no evidence–not a single record has been produced\*–showing that any two slaves were specifically told to procreate to produce a particular offspring. They were certainly allowed to procreate to produce more slaves, but breeding implies the selection of specific parents to produce a specific outcome and that never happened. > [@Don123](#): > > “..there simply was not time for any breeding program” > > If you knew anything about Darwin, even the slightest, you would know “survival of the fittest” only takes one generation of massive deaths and the physical attributes of a population can be enhanced (or diminished) centered around the existing genetic make up. And where is your record of massive numbers of black slaves dying of or being killed to allow only the strongest and stupidest to reproduce? This is nothing more than a ludicrous straw man. It is entirely possible for a significant die-off to produce a founder effect, but the fact that such a death never occurred renders the observation irrelevant to this discussion. > [@Don123](#): > > Blacks in the USA during the slave years were bred as any one would do with dogs and pigs. Being mentally stupid and physically strong were ideal features that white slave owners wanted out of their black slaves for hard labor. \*\*Those blacks that did not make the grade were killed or not allowed to reproduce \*\*—oh well live with it. The selection process started in Africa and was continued in the USA. The selection process is still in progress even for whites. You don’t like it then go argue with Darwin and show off your ignorance. The bolded and underlined claim is simply false. It never happened. If you think that plantation owners had the resources to kill slaves for for breeding purposes, then produce some evidence that this actually occurred. Unlike a pig or dog that can be ready to eat or field trained in three years, it takes at least fifteen years–and more like twenty–to produce a “useful” human being. Slave owners could not afford to invest that much time in “breeding” individual slaves to a certain specification–and certianly not on the massive scale required to affect the entire population of blacks in North America. If you have any actual citations for that occurring, produce them. Otherwise, we will have to dismiss this nonsense as just more crank, racist bullshit. = = = - It is possible, of course, that someone, somewhere, actually told two slaves to “mate,” but there clearly was no large scale program to engage in that behavior. It is simply a racist legend. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-people-of-african-descent-such-bad-swimmers-not-as-racist-as-you-might-think/553218/204 "2010-09-13T15:50:40Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > > [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > > > I have a lot of doctors in my family (it must be my race), several of them are public health types and they all seem to agree that race is a useful medical identifier. You can’t look at a person’s skin color and say, “they have diabetes” but you can look at a population with a certain skin color and say “there is where we will have the biggest problems with diabetes” > > Yes. Race and ethnic identity can be useful identifiers for medical risk. To use your diabetes example, we know [that](http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/290/14/1884) the risk is highest for Hispanic females (lifetime risk of 52.5%) and lowest for White males (lifetime risk of 26.7%) with Blacks closer to the Hispanic numbers than to Whites. Higher yet in [native American populations](http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/18/5/599.abstract) and [South Asians](http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/014067369191164P) have nearly 5x more diabetes than do European populations. And it is often an open question as to how much (from all to none for each) of that increased risk explained by genetic markers, or due to cultural factors, to access to care factors, to non-genetic biologic factors, or interplay between multiple combinations. > > It would be much “better” to subdivide the population according to the at risk behaviors, exposures, and specific genetic markers of greater risk (that may or may not best correlate with “race” or ethnicity). Unfortunately we neither know all of them nor have access to information about the ones we do know with any consistency. So we use “race” and ethnicity just like we look for keys under the lamp post - because that’s where the light’s good. OK, so you are saying that there are better indicators that correlate with high incidence of diabetes but that we use race (a suboptimal indicator) because it is the one that is easiest to see (much the same reason why racists pick race rather than diet or specific genetic markers (that are not specific to any race but are more commmon in some races than others) to decide who to hate). Still doesn’t answer the overall question of how you can say “there is no such thing as race” ---
**Author:** ![Don123](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e19adc/32.png) [@Don123](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Don123)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-people-of-african-descent-such-bad-swimmers-not-as-racist-as-you-might-think/553218/205 "2010-09-13T16:41:14Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > > [@Don123](#): > > > > I love these boards where only the moderators get to call others massively ignorant—ha ha—or you are banned. > > I noted that he demonstrated massive ignorance in his reply; I made no claim that he was, himself, massively ignorant of all things. > > You are simply wrong. Slaves were generally permitted to select their own mates and there is no evidence–not a single record has been produced\*–showing that any two slaves were specifically told to procreate to produce a particular offspring. They were certainly allowed to procreate to produce more slaves, but breeding implies the selection of specific parents to produce a specific outcome and that never happened. > And where is your record of massive numbers of black slaves dying of or being killed to allow only the strongest and stupidest to reproduce? > > This is nothing more than a ludicrous straw man. It is entirely possible for a significant die-off to produce a founder effect, but the fact that such a death never occurred renders the observation irrelevant to this discussion. > > > [@Don123](#): > > > > Blacks in the USA during the slave years were bred as any one would do with dogs and pigs. Being mentally stupid and physically strong were ideal features that white slave owners wanted out of their black slaves for hard labor. \*\*Those blacks that did not make the grade were killed or not allowed to reproduce \*\*—oh well live with it. The selection process started in Africa and was continued in the USA. The selection process is still in progress even for whites. You don’t like it then go argue with Darwin and show off your ignorance. > > The bolded and underlined claim is simply false. It never happened. If you think that plantation owners had the resources to kill slaves for for breeding purposes, then produce some evidence that this actually occurred. Unlike a pig or dog that can be ready to eat or field trained in three years, it takes at least fifteen years–and more like twenty–to produce a “useful” human being. Slave owners could not afford to invest that much time in “breeding” individual slaves to a certain specification–and certianly not on the massive scale required to affect the entire population of blacks in North America. > > If you have any actual citations for that occurring, produce them. Otherwise, we will have to dismiss this nonsense as just more crank, racist bullshit. > > = = = > > - It is possible, of course, that someone, somewhere, actually told two slaves to “mate,” but there clearly was no large scale program to engage in that behavior. It is simply a racist legend. They were slaves and the white owner bought the females. Not hardly black males having access to a large pools of females to choose from being of free will. I imagine every wicked thing you could imagine happened to the slaves. You think the white owners were so stupid they did not know about selective breeding even for farm animals? The blacks were counted as nothing more than farm animals. Maybe I should start calling you straw man because of your ignorance. Records were kept of the slaves the whites owned, and who had what child, it was nothing more than inventory, and you know it. No less than a farmer keeping inventory of his hogs. It was a nasty and filthy time in USA history, and every carnage you can think of happened to the blacks. No doubt about it, only the strongest blacks survived the rest were slaughtered on the ships that brought them to the USA and in the fields at the desires of the white owners. To have a healthy strong black child was worth big dollars on the slave market and to hell with the black mother and father; they were counted as nothing but breeding stock. Of course there was selective breeding—don’t be silly. You are developing a pattern, every time you start to loose an argument you call straw man and racist— what a joke. “Unlike a pig or dog that can be ready to eat or field trained in three years, it takes at least fifteen years’ Wrong again straw man, and all the more reason for selective breeding programs on the plantations. Children were put to work and tested in the fields and labor as soon as they could walk; child labor was common even among whites. And that is not counting the resale value of the black child at any age. Ask yourself—did the white owners want healthy black children as slaves? If the answer is YES, and the whites in some manor pre-selected the breeding stock then you have selective breeding programs—uduah. Those blacks that ran away or did not make good slaves do to illness and being too weak to labor were killed. Apparently you do not know much about USA black slaves. You asked for references OK— This is copyrighted material so you get one sentence only–live with it. DIXIE’S CENSORED SUBJECT BLACK SLAVEOWNERS By Robert M. Grooms © 1997 (THIS ARTICLE IS COPYRIGHTED AND IS PROVIDED HERE COURTESY OF THE BARNES REVIEW) > **[Black Slave Owners Civil War Article by Robert M Grooms](https://americancivilwar.com/authors/black_slaveowners.htm)** > > Large numbers of free Negroes owned black slaves; in fact, in numbers disproportionate to their > representation in society at large. “Although a successful businessman and cotton farmer, Ellison’s major source of income derived from being a “slave breeder.” By the way Ellison was a freed black man slaving and breeding his own kind. Don ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-people-of-african-descent-such-bad-swimmers-not-as-racist-as-you-might-think/553218/206 "2010-09-13T17:04:26Z")
> [@Don123](#): > > They were slaves and the white owner bought the females. Not hardly black males having access to a large pools of females to choose from being of free will. I imagine every wicked thing you could imagine happened to the slaves. You think the white owners were so stupid they did not know about selective breeding even for farm animals? The blacks were counted as nothing more than farm animals. Maybe I should start calling you straw man because of your ignorance. > Records were kept of the slaves the whites owned, and who had what child, it was nothing more than inventory, and you know it. No less than a farmer keeping inventory of his hogs. > > It was a nasty and filthy time in USA history, and every carnage you can think of happened to the blacks. No doubt about it, only the strongest blacks survived the rest were slaughtered on the ships that brought them to the USA and in the fields at the desires of the white owners. To have a healthy strong black child was worth big dollars on the slave market and to hell with the black mother and father; they were counted as nothing but breeding stock. Of course there was selective breeding—don’t be silly. > > You are developing a pattern, every time you start to loose an argument you call straw man and racist— what a joke. > > “Unlike a pig or dog that can be ready to eat or field trained in three years, it takes at least fifteen years’ > > Wrong again straw man, and all the more reason for selective breeding programs on the plantations. Children were put to work and tested in the fields and labor as soon as they could walk; child labor was common even among whites. And that is not counting the resale value of the black child at any age. Ask yourself—did the white owners want healthy black children as slaves? If the answer is YES, and the whites in some manor pre-selected the breeding stock then you have selective breeding programs—uduah. Those blacks that ran away or did not make good slaves do to illness and being too weak to labor were killed. Apparently you do not know much about USA black slaves. > You asked for references OK— > > This is copyrighted material so you get one sentence only–live with it. > > DIXIE’S CENSORED SUBJECT > BLACK SLAVEOWNERS > By Robert M. Grooms > © 1997 > (THIS ARTICLE IS COPYRIGHTED AND IS PROVIDED HERE COURTESY OF THE BARNES REVIEW) > [Black Slave Owners Civil War Article by Robert M Grooms](http://americancivilwar.com/authors/black_slaveowners.htm) > > “Although a successful businessman and cotton farmer, Ellison’s major source of income derived from being a “slave breeder.” > > By the way Ellison was a freed black man slaving and breeding his own kind. > > Don I abhor slavery as much as anybody. But tombdebb seems to have been talking about intensive breeding efforts as opposed to the arbitrary selective breeding everybody does enslaved or not. Intensive breeding as used for livestock and dogs would have been necessary to produce the kind of selective characteristics being discussed. And I’m the one who calls people racist, not tom. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-people-of-african-descent-such-bad-swimmers-not-as-racist-as-you-might-think/553218/207 "2010-09-13T17:36:25Z")
> [@Chen019](#): > > It seems like you get almost perfect correspondence with genetic clusters & self reported ethnicity. You don’t think a study that aggregates sources of genetic material _that are themselves filtered along SIREs_ is going to find clustering? Not that I give a damn about SIREs anyway. Lots of studies have shown they aren’t really that accurate. South Africans , for instance, are notoriously lousy at guessing their own genetic makeup. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-people-of-african-descent-such-bad-swimmers-not-as-racist-as-you-might-think/553218/208 "2010-09-13T18:05:31Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > > [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > > > Of course its a continuum but its not a SMOOTH continuum. Its very clumpy. It gets clumped up into what we call races (or ethnicities if you prefer that term). > > It really, really isn’t. Some phenotype expressions are clumpy (skin colour, hair straightness, epicanthic folds), others just aren’t. But people have long ago abandoned using such obvious yet arbitrary markers as being in any way meaningful indicators of anything. Apparently anthropologists have not. > [@](#): > > You’re pointing to 3 _very_ distant points on the continuum, and ignoring the gradations in between. Would you say that the people from those geographically distant points are distinguishable from each other? > [@](#): > > Any casually obvious phenotype expression you can name has gradations. That is not what forensic anthropologists seem to think. > [@](#): > > The Middle East is not a “melting pot” of three distinct racial types. My mistake. Still doesn’t mean taht there is no such thing as race. it ceratinly doesn’t mean that the concept of race is meaningless. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-people-of-african-descent-such-bad-swimmers-not-as-racist-as-you-might-think/553218/209 "2010-09-13T18:13:52Z")
[QUOTE=Don123;12909198[/quote] “Although a successful businessman and cotton farmer, Ellison’s major source of income derived from being a “slave breeder.” By the way Ellison was a freed black man slaving and breeding his own kind. [/quote] I’m sure that slave breeding occured. It was the only way to produce new slaves after they banned the importation of slaves. The question is whether it was done selectively to breed bigger stronger slaves and if this practice was so ubiquitous and occured over a sufficiently long period of time that you created a race of athletic supermen like Jimmy the Greek implied. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-people-of-african-descent-such-bad-swimmers-not-as-racist-as-you-might-think/553218/210 "2010-09-13T19:24:44Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > Apparently anthropologists have not. Cavalli-Sforza isn’t an anthropologist? So clearly some have. > [@](#): > > Would you say that the people from those geographically distant points are distinguishable from each other? I don’t know. Where would you say [this person](http://www.meetscandinavia.com/dev/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Case-Sami-Lapland.jpg) comes from? OR So fucking what? It’s not the endpoints that matter in continuity, [it’s the interstices](http://genome.cshlp.org/content/14/9/1679.full). Read that study. It’ll tell you a lot about how poor study design influences results. > [@](#): > > That is not what forensic anthropologists seem to think. Really? Cite? Because all the references so far thrown out in this thread point to statistical study, not defining features, as being the forensic methodology. > [@](#): > > My mistake. Still doesn’t mean taht there is no such thing as race. It means the way you used it is mistaken, though. If that doesn’t cause you to re-examine your take on it, well, that’s textbook cognitive dissonance for you. > [@](#): > > it ceratinly doesn’t mean that the concept of race is meaningless. Name me a single situation where it’s even remotely more meaningful than what I advocate. ---
**Author:** ![Don123](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e19adc/32.png) [@Don123](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Don123)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-people-of-african-descent-such-bad-swimmers-not-as-racist-as-you-might-think/553218/211 "2010-09-13T19:37:57Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > > [@Don123](#): > > > > They were slaves and the white owner bought the females. Not hardly black males having access to a large pools of females to choose from being of free will. I imagine every wicked thing you could imagine happened to the slaves. You think the white owners were so stupid they did not know about selective breeding even for farm animals? The blacks were counted as nothing more than farm animals. Maybe I should start calling you straw man because of your ignorance. > > Records were kept of the slaves the whites owned, and who had what child, it was nothing more than inventory, and you know it. No less than a farmer keeping inventory of his hogs. > > > > It was a nasty and filthy time in USA history, and every carnage you can think of happened to the blacks. No doubt about it, only the strongest blacks survived the rest were slaughtered on the ships that brought them to the USA and in the fields at the desires of the white owners. To have a healthy strong black child was worth big dollars on the slave market and to hell with the black mother and father; they were counted as nothing but breeding stock. Of course there was selective breeding—don’t be silly. > > > > You are developing a pattern, every time you start to loose an argument you call straw man and racist— what a joke. > > > > “Unlike a pig or dog that can be ready to eat or field trained in three years, it takes at least fifteen years’ > > > > Wrong again straw man, and all the more reason for selective breeding programs on the plantations. Children were put to work and tested in the fields and labor as soon as they could walk; child labor was common even among whites. And that is not counting the resale value of the black child at any age. Ask yourself—did the white owners want healthy black children as slaves? If the answer is YES, and the whites in some manor pre-selected the breeding stock then you have selective breeding programs—uduah. Those blacks that ran away or did not make good slaves do to illness and being too weak to labor were killed. Apparently you do not know much about USA black slaves. > > You asked for references OK— > > > > This is copyrighted material so you get one sentence only–live with it. > > > > DIXIE’S CENSORED SUBJECT > > BLACK SLAVEOWNERS > > By Robert M. Grooms > > © 1997 > > (THIS ARTICLE IS COPYRIGHTED AND IS PROVIDED HERE COURTESY OF THE BARNES REVIEW) > > [Black Slave Owners Civil War Article by Robert M Grooms](http://americancivilwar.com/authors/black_slaveowners.htm) > > > > “Although a successful businessman and cotton farmer, Ellison’s major source of income derived from being a “slave breeder.” > > > > By the way Ellison was a freed black man slaving and breeding his own kind. > > > > Don > > I abhor slavery as much as anybody. But tombdebb seems to have been talking about intensive breeding efforts as opposed to the arbitrary selective breeding everybody does enslaved or not. Intensive breeding as used for livestock and dogs would have been necessary to produce the kind of selective characteristics being discussed. > > And I’m the one who calls people racist, not tom. You can take any population, select the desirable traits that exist in that population, kill all the rest and in the next generation—in one generation— you have a much larger pool of those same traits you are looking for. Just that easily done. What you are implying is creating a new species of what many thousands of generations of natural or man made selection would have to happen. On the other hand we are only looking for the most desirable traits of slaves, big strong bodies with limited intellect. That is easy enough to produce in one or two generations, just kill off all the weakly smart ones and see what you have left. Did the slave drivers from Africa have “selective breeding” in mind? More than likely not but their actions were the same. They knew about 30 to 50% of the blacks would die on the boat trip to the Americas, so of course they started with the strongest and most controllable slaves they could get from the bushes in Africa.— uduah—that is called a selective process. This is nothing new with humans, the Muslim Turks did the same with the large bodied, blond, blue eyed whites. In fact made an army out of them from birth and controlled their off spring in a selective breeding program. So what is the problem here? Is slavery horrible to its very core, an abomination,— well let me think on that—YES. Big fucking deal tell me what I don’t know. But that does not change the process any, nor the end results. The fittest survive and hopefully breed the most, that is the entire foundation of evolution. Or do you want me to argue the validity of evolution that NEVER stops on this earth. The question is in context, was this evolution process natural or controlled by man? It is controlled by man for the last 5 thousand years of recorded human history, and perhaps over the last 45 thousand years. That is what human culture is all about; the selection and mating process and controlling the features of the next generation. Tell me, what kind of stupid person being a young adult and starting a family does not think of what kind of children they will have with a prospective mate? You do not think that is being “selective”? What cage were you born in? Why do we have state laws that forbid the marrying of first cousins? That is not controlling the out come of the next generation, then what is? Oh I get it you think the human mating process all is about “love”—ha ha ha-- it sounds like you worship the god Cupid and are struck with lust. I guess in the end the white slave owners were very stupid at protecting their own race. Dumb by all accounts, no doubt about it. Fortunately for the human race our genetics are wide spread and intellect can be retrieved by selective breeding, even if it is by an individual basis. And as a side note these black ball players don’t seem to be very smart, but smarts is not the name of the game, or a requirement, but rather brute strength and athletic ability is. Are these black ball players any less of a human? Absolutely NOT, but they got their genetics from some place and it did not happen by accident. There are plenty of deaths behind them in fact all prior generations are dead save for a few and human life marches on and humans are not going to stop making value judgments. Don ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-people-of-african-descent-such-bad-swimmers-not-as-racist-as-you-might-think/553218/212 "2010-09-13T20:12:06Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > > [@DSeid](#): > > > > Yes. Race and ethnic identity can be useful identifiers for medical risk. To use your diabetes example, we know [that](http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/290/14/1884) the risk is highest for Hispanic females (lifetime risk of 52.5%) and lowest for White males (lifetime risk of 26.7%) with Blacks closer to the Hispanic numbers than to Whites. Higher yet in [native American populations](http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/18/5/599.abstract) and [South Asians](http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/014067369191164P) have nearly 5x more diabetes than do European populations. And it is often an open question as to how much (from all to none for each) of that increased risk explained by genetic markers, or due to cultural factors, to access to care factors, to non-genetic biologic factors, or interplay between multiple combinations. > > > > It would be much “better” to subdivide the population according to the at risk behaviors, exposures, and specific genetic markers of greater risk (that may or may not best correlate with “race” or ethnicity). Unfortunately we neither know all of them nor have access to information about the ones we do know with any consistency. So we use “race” and ethnicity just like we look for keys under the lamp post - because that’s where the light’s good. > > OK, so you are saying that there are better indicators that correlate with high incidence of diabetes but that we use race (a suboptimal indicator) because it is the one that is easiest to see (much the same reason why racists pick race rather than diet or specific genetic markers (that are not specific to any race but are more commmon in some races than others) to decide who to hate). > > Still doesn’t answer the overall question of how you can say “there is no such thing as race” Perhaps because, despite your use of quotes, _I have never said any such thing_. And few (one?) in this thread have. My position from the beginning has been that “race” is just a sloppy way of subdividing populations, and that incautious use of such a sloppy term makes for sloppy conclusions resulting from lazy thinking. As put in post 35: > [@](#): > > … the relationship between genetics, non-genetic biologic factors, phenotypes, and outcomes of different human sub-populations, is a very complex subject. It requires precise speech with careful definitions and a clear understanding of the difference between that which we think and that which we know. The very fuzzy means of dividing the sub-populations by certain superficial features and cultural group membership (race) automatically makes such precise speech difficult and automatically introduces many confounding factors. For most of us the issue isn’t whether or not there is such a thing as race; the issue is recognizing the _limits_ of the term’s _utility_. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-people-of-african-descent-such-bad-swimmers-not-as-racist-as-you-might-think/553218/213 "2010-09-13T20:20:01Z")
> [@Don123](#): > > You can take any population, select the desirable traits that exist in that population, kill all the rest and in the next generation—in one generation— you have a much larger pool of those same traits you are looking for. Just that easily done. > > What you are implying is creating a new species of what many thousands of generations of natural or man made selection would have to happen. On the other hand we are only looking for the most desirable traits of slaves, big strong bodies with limited intellect. That is easy enough to produce in one or two generations, just kill off all the weakly smart ones and see what you have left. You don’t know much about genetics, or simple math. > [@](#): > > Did the slave drivers from Africa have “selective breeding” in mind? More than likely not but their actions were the same. They knew about 30 to 50% of the blacks would die on the boat trip to the Americas, so of course they started with the strongest and most controllable slaves they could get from the bushes in Africa.— uduah—that is called a selective process. > > This is nothing new with humans, the Muslim Turks did the same with the large bodied, blond, blue eyed whites. In fact made an army out of them from birth and controlled their off spring in a selective breeding program. You’ll have to provide some cites for that. > [@](#): > > So what is the problem here? Is slavery horrible to its very core, an abomination,— well let me think on that—YES. Big fucking deal tell me what I don’t know. But that does not change the process any, nor the end results. I didn’t argue with your objection to slavery. > [@](#): > > The fittest survive and hopefully breed the most, that is the entire foundation of evolution. Or do you want me to argue the validity of evolution that NEVER stops on this earth. I don’t recall bring up that subject at all. Perhaps you’ve confused me with someone else. > [@](#): > > The question is in context, was this evolution process natural or controlled by man? It is controlled by man for the last 5 thousand years of recorded human history, and perhaps over the last 45 thousand years. That is what human culture is all about; the selection and mating process and controlling the features of the next generation. Tell me, what kind of stupid person being a young adult and starting a family does not think of what kind of children they will have with a prospective mate? You do not think that is being “selective”? What cage were you born in? Why do we have state laws that forbid the marrying of first cousins? That is not controlling the out come of the next generation, then what is? > > Oh I get it you think the human mating process all is about “love”—ha ha ha-- it sounds like you worship the god Cupid and are struck with lust. I noted that we have all been selectively breeding on that basis. That is not the same as intensive breeding. Which is not done in a single generation, or by making a larger gene pool, or whatever you were talking about. > [@](#): > > I guess in the end the white slave owners were very stupid at protecting their own race. Dumb by all accounts, no doubt about it. Fortunately for the human race our genetics are wide spread and intellect can be retrieved by selective breeding, even if it is by an individual basis. > > And as a side note these black ball players don’t seem to be very smart, but smarts is not the name of the game, or a requirement, but rather brute strength and athletic ability is. Are these black ball players any less of a human? Absolutely NOT, but they got their genetics from some place and it did not happen by accident. There are plenty of deaths behind them in fact all prior generations are dead save for a few and human life marches on and humans are not going to stop making value judgments. I agree the slave owners were stupid. You should have used that in your argument about the dumb athletes who got many of their genes from ‘white’ slave owners. But then I would point out that people who make 1 million dollars an hour don’t sound too dumb to me. I’m ignorant. Please explain to me how melanin affects cognitive ability? ---
**Author:** ![Don123](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e19adc/32.png) [@Don123](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Don123)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-people-of-african-descent-such-bad-swimmers-not-as-racist-as-you-might-think/553218/214 "2010-09-13T21:08:46Z")
to Tri polar: Those of you interested in history might want to read up on a very interesting group of elite, White troops - the Janissaries, who served the Turkish Muslim Sultans. When the Turks conquered the Balkans they imposed terrible taxes on the White Christians, one tax was to take a certain percentage of new born White babies to serve as lifetime slaves of the Muslim Sultan. These white slaves were trained from birth to be elite soldiers, the best troops of the Sultan I’m getting lazy this was copied because it is a good report. Read more if you like— [http://i-cias.com/e.o/janissaries.htm](http://i-cias.com/e.o/janissaries.htm) The standing Ottoman army, first organized by bey (also erroneously called sultan) Murad 1 in the late 14th century, lasting until 1826, altogether about 450 years. The term in Turkish, yeniçeri means new troops, indicating exactly what they were in the beginning: An alternative to the old regular army. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-people-of-african-descent-such-bad-swimmers-not-as-racist-as-you-might-think/553218/215 "2010-09-13T21:23:44Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > > [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > > > Apparently anthropologists have not. > > Cavalli-Sforza isn’t an anthropologist? So clearly some have.I don’t know. Where would you say [this person](http://www.meetscandinavia.com/dev/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Case-Sami-Lapland.jpg) comes from? > > OR > > So fucking what? It’s not the endpoints that matter in continuity, [it’s the interstices](http://genome.cshlp.org/content/14/9/1679.full). Read that study. It’ll tell you a lot about how poor study design influences results. Read your original statement. “people have long ago abandoned using such obvious yet arbitrary markers as being in any way meaningful indicators of anything” This is after people linked cites where anthropoligists, especially forensic anthropologists say that they think that races not only exist, you can tell a person’s race by their remains. [quote] > [@](#): > > Really? Cite? Because all the references so far thrown out in this thread point to statistical study, not defining features, as being the forensic methodology.It means the way you used it is mistaken, though. If that doesn’t cause you to re-examine your take on it, well, that’s textbook cognitive dissonance for you. > > > [@](#): > > > > it ceratinly doesn’t mean that the concept of race is meaningless. > > Name me a single situation where it’s even remotely more meaningful than what I advocate. I’m not sure what you mean? I provided a cite where an anthopoligist says that race exists. I read it, you read it and somehow I came away with the notion taht the anthropologist is arguing for the existance and validity of race and you came away with a nuanced view where he didn’t actually mean what he said. It seems to me that youa re trying to make some nuanced argument so that if seem througha special lens at just the right angle, THEN you are corrrect and race does not exist. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Flying\_Dutchman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/9fc348/32.png) [@The\_Flying\_Dutchman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Flying_Dutchman)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-people-of-african-descent-such-bad-swimmers-not-as-racist-as-you-might-think/553218/216 "2010-09-13T21:31:08Z")
> [@Don123](#): > > to Tri polar: > > Those of you interested in history might want to read up on a very interesting group of elite, White troops - the Janissaries, who served the Turkish Muslim Sultans. > > When the Turks conquered the Balkans they imposed terrible taxes on the White Christians, one tax was to take a certain percentage of new born White babies to serve as lifetime slaves of the Muslim Sultan. > > These white slaves were trained from birth to be elite soldiers, the best troops of the Sultan > > I’m getting lazy this was copied because it is a good report. > > Read more if you like— > > [http://i-cias.com/e.o/janissaries.htm](http://i-cias.com/e.o/janissaries.htm) > > The standing Ottoman army, first organized by bey (also erroneously called sultan) Murad 1 in the late 14th century, lasting until 1826, altogether about 450 years. > The term in Turkish, yeniçeri means new troops, indicating exactly what they were in the beginning: An alternative to the old regular army. Perhaps you should read the [wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janissary) entry. 1. They did not take new borns. 2. There never was a regular army before them 3. What the hell was the point in bringing them up ? ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-people-of-african-descent-such-bad-swimmers-not-as-racist-as-you-might-think/553218/217 "2010-09-13T21:42:27Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > > [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > > > OK, so you are saying that there are better indicators that correlate with high incidence of diabetes but that we use race (a suboptimal indicator) because it is the one that is easiest to see (much the same reason why racists pick race rather than diet or specific genetic markers (that are not specific to any race but are more commmon in some races than others) to decide who to hate). > > > > Still doesn’t answer the overall question of how you can say “there is no such thing as race” > > Perhaps because, despite your use of quotes, _I have never said any such thing_. And few (one?) in this thread have. > > My position from the beginning has been that “race” is just a sloppy way of subdividing populations, and that incautious use of such a sloppy term makes for sloppy conclusions resulting from lazy thinking. As put in post 35: > > > [@](#): > > > > … the relationship between genetics, non-genetic biologic factors, phenotypes, and outcomes of different human sub-populations, is a very complex subject. It requires precise speech with careful definitions and a clear understanding of the difference between that which we think and that which we know. The very fuzzy means of dividing the sub-populations by certain superficial features and cultural group membership (race) automatically makes such precise speech difficult and automatically introduces many confounding factors. > > For most of us the issue isn’t whether or not there is such a thing as race; the issue is recognizing the _limits_ of the term’s _utility_. OK, then I gues we all agree. Race is a valid term but its use is more limited than the term species. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-people-of-african-descent-such-bad-swimmers-not-as-racist-as-you-might-think/553218/218 "2010-09-13T21:43:42Z")
> [@Don123](#): > > So what is the problem here? Is slavery horrible to its very core, an abomination,— well let me think on that—YES. Big fucking deal tell me what I don’t know. But that does not change the process any, nor the end results. … > > I guess in the end the white slave owners were very stupid at protecting their own race. Dumb by all accounts, no doubt about it. Fortunately for the human race our genetics are wide spread and intellect can be retrieved by selective breeding, even if it is by an individual basis. … I don’t know about that. The way I figure it, getting pregnant for humans isn’t nearly as much of a sure thing as getting a pig in heat pregnant. So it either requires serially raping a woman until she is pregnant or letting her develop a normal relationship with another slave and let her get pregnant and take away her kids when they get old enough to sell (OMFG, how horrible does that sound). I think serial raping is probably a horrible enough thing that it wasn’t too prevalent until economic necessity promoted slave breeding (is it just me or does slave breeding sound even worse than slave trading?). If I was a slaveowner, I think I would try to keep slave families together (I can’t think of a better reason to risk my life and run away to the North with my family than because my master had started selling his slaves off peicemeal). Fuck it, this is so horrible, I can’t think straight. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-people-of-african-descent-such-bad-swimmers-not-as-racist-as-you-might-think/553218/219 "2010-09-13T21:45:29Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > I’m ignorant. Please explain to me how melanin affects cognitive ability? I think most of the racists think there is a correlation between being black and being dumb not that the melanin makes you dumb, otherwise all black people would be dumb and that is clearly not the case because there are some black Republicans. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-people-of-african-descent-such-bad-swimmers-not-as-racist-as-you-might-think/553218/220 "2010-09-13T21:47:10Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > Read your original statement. > > “people have long ago abandoned using such obvious yet arbitrary markers as being in any way meaningful indicators of anything” > > This is after people linked cites where anthropoligists, especially forensic anthropologists say that they think that races not only exist, you can tell a person’s race by their remains. I dispute that that is, in fact, the case. Yes, you can tell with some degree of certainty the likely historic geographic origin of skeletal remains, with a certain degree of coarseness. In America, a country with a filtered geographic origin set anyway. Where those “races” are the extreme endpoints of a natural continuum. This doesn’t equate to “telling a person’s race,” without already assuming the antecedent of what race is, in the American context. > [@](#): > > I’m not sure what you mean? I provided a cite where an anthopoligist says that race exists. I read it, you read it and somehow I came away with the notion taht the anthropologist is arguing for the existance and validity of race and you came away with a nuanced view where he didn’t actually mean what he said. That’s not what I said. He may very well mean what he said, but all that points to is my earlier point - it’s laziness/convenience. Forensic anthropologists are, after all, bureaucratic functionaries. They use the current paradigm because it makes their job easier. Doesn’t make it the right or good thing to do. > [@](#): > > It seems to me that youa re trying to make some nuanced argument so that if seem througha special lens at just the right angle, THEN you are corrrect and race does not exist. No, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that yeah, “race exists”, if you want it to and define things and arrange things so that it exists. But it’s all an exercise in mangling statistics and doesn’t arise naturally and irrefutably from the raw data. It doesn’t help us in any way. All it does is hinder us by dividing us into arbitrary groups, with all the resultant negative impacts I already pointed out. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-people-of-african-descent-such-bad-swimmers-not-as-racist-as-you-might-think/553218.md?page=10) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-people-of-african-descent-such-bad-swimmers-not-as-racist-as-you-might-think/553218.md?page=12)