# 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:** 7
**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 11, 2010, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-people-of-african-descent-such-bad-swimmers-not-as-racist-as-you-might-think/553218/121 "2010-09-11T03:37:40Z")
> [@Rand\_Rover](#): > > > [@TriPolar](#): > > > > Sure. Chromosomes, ovaries, testicles, etc.. Height, weight, bone density, no. Aside from the exceptions of uncommon chromosomal configurations, the distinquishing features are mutually exclusive. That’s kind of the definition of a distinquishing characteristic. > > OK, so why couldn’t someone make a list of characteristics and then say that people with those characteristics are “white”? And why couldn’t they do the same thing with “black” etc.? They could. But that is not the common usage of term race. Some people called Bill Clinton ‘the first black president’. Were they using the characteristics you are talking about? Is there a blond race? A short race? At least the short race could be determined by measuring a skeleton. ---
**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 11, 2010, 3:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-people-of-african-descent-such-bad-swimmers-not-as-racist-as-you-might-think/553218/122 "2010-09-11T03:47:32Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > > [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > > > Why is it that the people most sensitive to racism - even to the point of making accusations of racism where it doesn’t exist - are also the quickest to claim there’s no such thing as race? > > Does this really need to get asked every thread? Because it gets answered in every thread and keeps popping up. > > There is no biological basis for stereotyped notions of race, which is what people mean when they say “there’s no such thing as race.” Culturally, people have been dividing themselves up along racial lines for ages and discriminating against other groups of people forever. That’s real. So if some idiot says “I hate niggers,” he’s really hating a group of people even though the connection between those people is nonsense or doesn’t exist. I gotta say I never understood the “there’s no such thing as race” argument. Sure we are all the same fucking SPECIES and we are all capable of breeding with each other but you really think there is no genetic difference between groups of people that bred more or less exclusively amongst themselves for tens of thousands of years? You don’t think that this geographic segregation might have led to lighter skin pigmentation in one group than in another. IF so then is it possible that there are other genetically heritable differences between the two? I am only offended by the racist use of science to try and justify and perpetuate their racism but I don’t think the concept of race is something the racists made up so they would have something to hate. ---
**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 11, 2010, 3:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-people-of-african-descent-such-bad-swimmers-not-as-racist-as-you-might-think/553218/123 "2010-09-11T03:50:29Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > > [@Marley23](#): > > > > Does this really need to get asked every thread? Because it gets answered in every thread and keeps popping up. > > I suppose it needs to get asked in as may threads as it takes. I’ve never seen it before and I’ve never read reverberations of it either. But then how many times does it have to be said that “Bush sucks” or that Republicans and conservatives are “teh evil”? I don’t recall much in the way of admonitions from you or anyone else as to how many times they were proclaimed. Well those things were true and they frequently needed to be said because someone was saying something contrary to that. Marley is saying that positing race is somehow false. ---
**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 11, 2010, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-people-of-african-descent-such-bad-swimmers-not-as-racist-as-you-might-think/553218/124 "2010-09-11T03:58:03Z")
> [@marshmallow](#): > > They’re denser? OK, but a combination of length, strength and speed is still good right? We’re still talking about swimming right? ---
**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 11, 2010, 4:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-people-of-african-descent-such-bad-swimmers-not-as-racist-as-you-might-think/553218/125 "2010-09-11T04:01:19Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > Some people called Bill Clinton ‘the first black president’. Well, that’s only because they never thought they’d actually get one. Was Bill Clinton a very good swimmer? ---
**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 11, 2010, 4:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-people-of-african-descent-such-bad-swimmers-not-as-racist-as-you-might-think/553218/126 "2010-09-11T04:43:13Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > > [@TriPolar](#): > > > > Some people called Bill Clinton ‘the first black president’. > > Well, that’s only because they never thought they’d actually get one. > > Was Bill Clinton a very good swimmer? Monica liked his strokes. Who are they? Must be the Jews. It’s always the Jews. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2010, 4:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-people-of-african-descent-such-bad-swimmers-not-as-racist-as-you-might-think/553218/127 "2010-09-11T04:52:18Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > Why is it that the people most sensitive to racism - even to the point of making accusations of racism where it doesn’t exist - are also the quickest to claim there’s no such thing as race? Because various posters who would really like to make claims based on some perceived “race” will continue to bring it up to hijack threads instead of paying attention to what is actually said. You will note that you changed Marley’s actual statement from “There is no biological basis for stereotyped notions of race” to “there’s no such thing as race” and went on to make a wholly fatuaous claim that then there could be no racism, at which point magellan01 jumped in with his equally vapid “me too.” The point of noting that the claims for “biological races” is lacking in scientific rigor is that the the “stereotyped notions of race” tend to lump together large numbers of dissimilar people with the intention of making broad assumptions about the larger group that cannot be born out by evidence. It allows people to claim that “the black race” is the best “race” for runners, since “they” win both sprints and marathons while completely ignoring the fact that the people who tend to win marathons are a completely separate group from the group who tends to win sprints. Now, there are posters who get caught up in your rhetoric and employ the “there is no such thing as race” claim, (TriPolar fell into that trap in this thread), but the actual position laid out by Marley, DSeid and others was not that “there was no such thing as race” but that when used in the broad categories in which it is often employed, (such as the OP), it tends to be misleading and not scientifically supportable. Clearly, there are populations among humans in which specific traits are more or less prevalent. None of those identifiable populations, however, are congruent with any of the four (Linnaeus), five (Blumenbach), or three (common 20th century) races that most people associate with the word. This makes the word misleading in any discussion of human biological traits. = = = Chief Pedant’s citation to the Rosenberg study is also misleading, at least as he employs it. Rosenberg discovered that there were various alleles (none of which are yet identified as giving rise to any particular human traits), that could be examined, statistically, for clusters to identify geographic origins. However, it is interesting to note that no one in any of the groups had to share any specific allele with any one else in the same region to still show up as a having a particular geographic origin. What was studied was whether any individual had a certain percentage of those alleles (without necessarily sharing any allele with any other person). It demonstrated nothing except geographic origin. It would be a bit like finding one person whose grandparents were named Murphy, O’Brien, Callahan, and O’Keefe and another person whose grandparents were named McCaffrey, Keegan, Boyle, and Fanning. We could draw the conclusion that both persons were from the island of Ireland even though there is no indication that they were related. That is what the Rosenberg study demonstrated, not that there are some “races” in which all Africans or Asians or Europeans or pre-Colombian Americans participate. To misread Rosenberg’s study is to claim that persons who share NO studied alleles are somehow bound together in a “race” simply because they happen to live on the same continent. ---
**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 11, 2010, 5:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-people-of-african-descent-such-bad-swimmers-not-as-racist-as-you-might-think/553218/128 "2010-09-11T05:02:51Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > (TriPolar fell into that trap in this thread) I didn’t fall into a trap. That was the bait:rolleyes: Now you scared off the game. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Parker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/35a633/32.png) [@Richard\_Parker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Parker)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2010, 2:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-people-of-african-descent-such-bad-swimmers-not-as-racist-as-you-might-think/553218/129 "2010-09-11T14:05:01Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > I won’t comment on the rest of your post right now as I have to be away for a while, other than to ask what it is that the proponents of the no-race position hope to accomplish by taking it? It seems to me that by parsing genetics this finely you’re only giving ammunition to genuine racists who will use the claim that there is no such thing as race to defend themselves from accusations of racism, claiming instead that they are merely criticizing or making fun of certain ‘cultural’ groups, with the justification in mind that wrongful cultural behavior is learned and can be changed - or at least fought against - whereas genetics can’t. In other words, it seems to me that the anti-racism effort may well be shooting itself in the foot by parsing genetics so finely as to end up taking the position that there is no such thing as race. Such a position seems to accomplish nothing in terms of fighting racism but it would seem to give lots of ammo (and a fair opportunity for ridicule) to people who are racist and anxious to promote or defend their views. What I’m trying to explain by enumerating these categories is that proponents of the no-race position, as you call them, are only denying one particular conception of race. They aren’t denying that we can divide up populations of humans using a constellation of real genetic traits. Of course we can. But they question whether it is meaningful to talk about racial characteristics when we’re really talking about the likelihood that someone with some arbitrary constellation of genetic traits (which define a much smaller group that race theorists used to believe) will have some other genetic trait. “Race” means different things in different contexts. Sometimes it refers to a culturally-determined constellation of traits. Sometimes it refers to a population from a fairly specific region of the world, such as sub-saharan west Africa. Sometimes it refers to anyone with slave ancestors. Perhaps you recall the debates over whether Obama is black? These turned, in part, on the different conceptions of race. The different concepts are no more the invention of anti-racists than the multiple definitions of “bat” are the result of anti-batists. And if racists admitted that they were just cultural critics, that would be a step in the right direction, actually. ---
**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 11, 2010, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-people-of-african-descent-such-bad-swimmers-not-as-racist-as-you-might-think/553218/130 "2010-09-11T14:36:09Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > but you really think there is no genetic difference between groups of people \*\*that bred more or less exclusively amongst themselves \*\*for tens of thousands of years? See, there’s the problem. Other than some really isolated areas (Australia comes to mind), this just never happened. My favourite example is the sheer number of disparate groups around the world who have a claim to calling themselves Jews, based on genetic ancestry. Just look at this collection of [_menschen_](http://www.saudades.org/Pics/LembaYouth1_r1_c1.jpg?iact=hc&vpx=256&vpy=125&dur=2263&hovh=185&hovw=272&tx=139&ty=94&ei=hJKLTIeYMKWkOOriodwI&oei=hJKLTIeYMKWkOOriodwI&esq=1&page=1&tbnh=149&tbnw=219&start=0&ndsp=19&ved=1t:429,r:1,s:0) singing Hatikvah. **Physically indistinguishable** from their neighbours, but genetically, oh, so very different. “Race” doesn’t exist because “racial” features are a continuum. Sure, you can attempt to do statistical aggregate work on people to lump them by skin colour, bone density, sickle cell susceptibility, whatever, but this is of questionable utility IRL, and even more questionable motive. ---
**Author:** ![Lance\_Turbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lance_turbo/32/6156_2.png) [@Lance\_Turbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lance_Turbo)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2010, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-people-of-african-descent-such-bad-swimmers-not-as-racist-as-you-might-think/553218/131 "2010-09-11T15:13:15Z")
Another thing to ponder is that bone density varies in an individual due to the amount and type of physical activity that individual is engaging in at a given point in their life. A good example of this would be that a pitcher’s pitching arm will have higher bone density than his other arm during his career. However, the densities will approach one another after retirement. This could mean that social and economic factors account for some or all of the differences seen in the bone density study linked earlier in this thread. ---
**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 11, 2010, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-people-of-african-descent-such-bad-swimmers-not-as-racist-as-you-might-think/553218/132 "2010-09-11T15:16:16Z")
It is puzzling to me why those who claim no proof for a genetic reason behind athletic performance results for any particular “race” are willing to accept the other premise of cultural reasons without any scientific proof whatsoever. ---
**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 11, 2010, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-people-of-african-descent-such-bad-swimmers-not-as-racist-as-you-might-think/553218/133 "2010-09-11T15:24:46Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > Fast twitch is used in swim sprints too. Huh. That would seem to be genetic advantage to Blacks. The advantage of fast twitch muscles is lost when your limbs simply can’t move at top speed. You just can’t move around in the water as fast as you can in the air. ---
**Author:** ![orcenio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/orcenio/32/1036_2.png) [@orcenio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/orcenio)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2010, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-people-of-african-descent-such-bad-swimmers-not-as-racist-as-you-might-think/553218/134 "2010-09-11T15:27:39Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > The term “race” as a biologic concept has largely been discarded by modern academia, but the reason for discarding it is more politically and socially mediated than anything else. By taking such a position (that “race” is essentially a cultural phenomenon) one can then leave an inference that any observed outcome differences (excellence in swimming) must be cultural–i.e. it must be due to nurture in some way. We are all a single happy family, essentially equal in our genetically-based potential. “The term “race” as a biologic concept has largely been discarded by modern academia, as the reason for **continuing/keeping** it is more politically and socially mediated than anything else. By taking such a position (that “race” is essentially a cultural phenomenon) one can then leave an inference that any observed \*\*racial \*\*differences (excellence in swimming) **is far likely to** be cultural–i.e. it must be due to nurture in some way. We are all a single happy family, essentially equal in our **racially-based** potential.” Bow down before my mad-rhetoric-skillz; for, with just a few changes, I seemed to have changed your words to chime with my position. I also fixed your nasty habit of conflating ‘race’ with human genetics/variation. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Parker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/35a633/32.png) [@Richard\_Parker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Parker)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2010, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-people-of-african-descent-such-bad-swimmers-not-as-racist-as-you-might-think/553218/135 "2010-09-11T16:05:49Z")
> [@The\_Flying\_Dutchman](#): > > It is puzzling to me why those who claim no proof for a genetic reason behind athletic performance results for any particular “race” are willing to accept the other premise of cultural reasons without any scientific proof whatsoever. It is puzzling because you don’t understand the burden of proof. The OP is stating as a premise that there must be a genetic explanation. Others are wondering why it isn’t possible for cultural factors to be a sufficient explanation. It is the OP claiming knowledge. Suppose the OP started a thread that said, “hey, I wonder if there are genes associated with having afro-textured hair that might make it statistically less likely for a person with such hair to be an elite level swimmer.” Instead of having to figure out the OP’s notion of race and go through all the usual debates, we might respond by saying, “yeah, that might be scientifically interesting, is there any reason to think that is true?” And maybe we could have a fruitful discussion about what the evidence we have suggests about the incidence of genes in populations divided in this way. But when the OP’s position is that there must be such a gene which implicitly all “people of African descent” have, we are perfectly entitled to ask, “why must there be?” Or, consider if the OP had started a thread that said, “hey, some studies suggest that the incidence of the ACTN3 gene varies by self-identified race, might this be the cause of racially disproportionate swimming results?” Then we would at least have an identified genetic phenomenon to weigh against the known cultural explanations. We could discuss whether this statistical likelihood is a plausible factor given what else we know about how it is distributed (say, in self-identified Asians), and whether self-identified race is the category that most accurately captures the variance in the incidence of ACTN3 gene (very unlikely, given what else we know about population genetics). ---
**Author:** ![Peeta\_Mellark](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/bc8723/32.png) [@Peeta\_Mellark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peeta_Mellark)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2010, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-people-of-african-descent-such-bad-swimmers-not-as-racist-as-you-might-think/553218/136 "2010-09-11T16:13:49Z")
> [@The\_Flying\_Dutchman](#): > > It is puzzling to me why those who claim no proof for a genetic reason behind athletic performance results for any particular “race” are willing to accept the other premise of cultural reasons without any scientific proof whatsoever. Culture is part of your environment. Culture determines your behavior. Your behavior can have a startling impact on how your body develops. [These](http://thesameffect.com/check-out-identical-twins-otto-and-ewald/) are identical twins. One is endurance athlete, the other a power sportsman. It’s suggested by the scientist quoted in [this article](http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2004/aug/05/1) that your athletic ability is 55:45, genes to environment. Without a culture to promote the right environment and training, you can have all the excellent athlete genes in the world and they will never be expressed properly. Or they may be expressed in such a way to make you suitable for one sport and not another, as in the case of the twins cited above. Additionally, the genetic variation between different parts of Africa is actually[the greatest genetic variation in the world](http://scienceblogs.com/geneticfuture/2009/04/massive_study_of_african_genet.php). Two separate black populations could potentially have less in common than Norwegians and the Japanese. We can lump many people of African descent together based on skin color, but their genetic variability is too broad for this to have much meaning beyond being able to describe some people as “black.” ---
**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 11, 2010, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-people-of-african-descent-such-bad-swimmers-not-as-racist-as-you-might-think/553218/137 "2010-09-11T16:33:11Z")
> [@Richard\_Parker](#): > > > [@The\_Flying\_Dutchman](#): > > > > It is puzzling to me why those who claim no proof for a genetic reason behind athletic performance results for any particular “race” are willing to accept the other premise of cultural reasons without any scientific proof whatsoever. > > It is puzzling because you don’t understand the burden of proof. The OP is stating as a premise that there must be a genetic explanation. Others are wondering why it isn’t possible for cultural factors to be a sufficient explanation. It is the OP claiming knowledge. > > Suppose the OP started a thread that said, “hey, I wonder if there are genes associated with having afro-textured hair that might make it statistically less likely for a person with such hair to be an elite level swimmer.” Instead of having to figure out the OP’s notion of race and go through all the usual debates, we might respond by saying, “yeah, that might be scientifically interesting, is there any reason to think that is true?” And maybe we could have a fruitful discussion about what the evidence we have suggests about the incidence of genes in populations divided in this way. But when the OP’s position is that there must be such a gene which implicitly all “people of African descent” have, we are perfectly entitled to ask, “why must there be?” > > Or, consider if the OP had started a thread that said, “hey, some studies suggest that the incidence of the ACTN3 gene varies by self-identified race, might this be the cause of racially disproportionate swimming results?” Then we would at least have an identified genetic phenomenon to weigh against the known cultural explanations. We could discuss whether this statistical likelihood is a plausible factor given what else we know about how it is distributed (say, in self-identified Asians), and whether self-identified race is the category that most accurately captures the variance in the incidence of ACTN3 gene (very unlikely, given what else we know about population genetics). I appreciate the approach that you and tomndebb take to these matters, but you also ending up arming some of the racists for their next encounter. All to often their intent is to present their ‘reasoning’ in attempt to lure the responders into a slip up, and then pat themselves on the back for proving that people can be categorized in races and those that argue are knee-jerk liberals. They’ll gather with the rest of their smug comrades and laugh at how they put one over on us. Maybe it’s not useful in other’s opinion, but I prefer to let them trip over their own philosophies, call them a racist, then ignore them. Unless they operate from pure ignorance, I don’t believe they will change their minds by confronting them with science and logic. Consider the OP who claims to be some sort of scientist, but surfs for a site that he misinterprets as justifying his absurd claim that race can be determined by measuring a skeleton. I’m sure he picked that link because the page had lots of pictures. I continue to say there is no such thing as race, because it is a wholely subjective construct of peoples minds. There are certainly inherited characteristics of people, but as you’ve mentioned previously, there is no significance to the concepts they try to employ to explain their opinions that people can be categorized in their behavior or abilities based on the fuzzy definition of race that they create, and modify based on the circumstance. Of course you can find a tortured definition of race that describes a majority of people within a population group, but they intend to take the racist leap and apply that across the entire population and then into other populations exhibiting irrelevant common characteristics. Ignorance may be an excuse for a few, but you find those arguing in favor of ‘race’ are readily marked by their belief in the superiority of what they consider their own ‘race’. And they rarely show the superior characteristics of the ‘race’ they believe they belong to. I think it is just a strategy for coping with their own inferior abilities, and nothing but throwing stones while attempting to hide in the safety of the crowd they imagine surrounds them. The great danger comes only when they find such a crowd of similarly of people who still cower at night before they sleep, afraid of the dark, and blaming other for their failures and weaknesses. ---
**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 11, 2010, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-people-of-african-descent-such-bad-swimmers-not-as-racist-as-you-might-think/553218/138 "2010-09-11T16:35:19Z")
> [@Peeta\_Mellark](#): > > It’s suggested by the scientist quoted in [this article](http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2004/aug/05/1) that your athletic ability is 55:45, genes to environment. Without a culture to promote the right environment and training, you can have all the excellent athlete genes in the world and they will never be expressed properly. Or they may be expressed in such a way to make you suitable for one sport and not another, as in the case of the twins cited above. On the other hand, if you don’t have the genes, you simply won’t become an elite athlete. > [@](#): > > Additionally, the genetic variation between different parts of Africa is actually[the greatest genetic variation in the world](http://scienceblogs.com/geneticfuture/2009/04/massive_study_of_african_genet.php). Two separate black populations could potentially have less in common than Norwegians and the Japanese. > > We can lump many people of African descent together based on skin color, but their genetic variability is too broad for this to have much meaning beyond being able to describe some people as “black.” This has been discussed time and time again. When we talk about African Americans, we are talking West African descent. We know they produce elite sprinters, and East Africans produce elite long distance runners. I generally shy away from arguing the case for “racial” genetics in swimming, because the cultural factors are still so overwhelming to explain the lack of elite black swimmers, but that is certainly not the case in sprinting. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2010, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-people-of-african-descent-such-bad-swimmers-not-as-racist-as-you-might-think/553218/139 "2010-09-11T16:46:44Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > I appreciate the approach that you and tomndebb take to these matters, but you also ending up arming some of the racists for their next encounter. All to often their intent is to present their ‘reasoning’ in attempt to lure the responders into a slip up, and then pat themselves on the back for proving that people can be categorized in races and those that argue are knee-jerk liberals. They’ll gather with the rest of their smug comrades and laugh at how they put one over on us. > > Maybe it’s not useful in other’s opinion, but I prefer to let them trip over their own philosophies, call them a racist, then ignore them. Calling other posters racists is discouraged in this forum because it’s detrimental to the debate. Implying other people are stupid (as in the ‘I’m sure he picked that site because it had lots of pictures’) is not allowed. Don’t do this again. ---
**Author:** ![Peeta\_Mellark](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/bc8723/32.png) [@Peeta\_Mellark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peeta_Mellark)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2010, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-people-of-african-descent-such-bad-swimmers-not-as-racist-as-you-might-think/553218/140 "2010-09-11T16:49:03Z")
> [@The\_Flying\_Dutchman](#): > > On the other hand, if you don’t have the genes, you simply won’t become an elite athlete. Absolutely. I don’t disagree there. There are basic physical factors that enable a person to be an elite athlete. If you lack them, you’re never going to excel. You still need the cultural push to express those genes, though. They go hand-in-hand, with genes edging out slightly ahead. > [@](#): > > This has been discussed time and time again. When we talk about African Americans, we are talking West African descent. We know they produce elite sprinters, and East Africans produce elite long distance runners. > > I generally shy away from arguing the case for “racial” genetics in swimming, because the cultural factors are still so overwhelming to explain the lack of elite black swimmers, but that is certainly not the case in sprinting. Elsewhere in this thread I’ve seen a much broader idea of who and what is the subject of this thread. If you only want to talk about African Americans–who are of West African, European and Native American descent and are a unique, albeit diverse, genetic group–then that’s fair. It’s the broader idea that gets muddled. Personally, I’d say that looking at the actual dimensions of the body to determine how likely a given population is to produce an elite swimmer would make the most sense. The ideal swimmer–long limbs, broad shoulders, narrow hips, large feet and hands–is an easy physical type to check for, while bone density is something that will vary based on age and athletic training. If that body type was unusual in African American populations, I’d be inclined to say, yes, there are some genetic factors at work. But _is_ that body type unusual in African Americans? [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=6) [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=8)