No. I will rewrite your statement so that it will be correct.
I am saying that “a subset of a group” of people that I have identified as West African descended have an inherent advantage over all other groups of people (including their own) in speed.
If you believe bell curves are meaningless , I won’t pursue it.
So you take one race, not the Olympics, in Moscow with two Russians running, and base an argument on that. Not all the best athletes bother to compete in the world championships. And the Russian presence might suggest a bias in the eligibility rules for the host country. In any case, if I made an argument based on the results of one World Championship, I’d rightly be heavily criticized.
Dutchman Cool and OK. I am pretty fine with all you said in the last post.
I know I should leave this at that but I seem to be constitutionally unable to leave it when someone misrepresents what I said [and in fact that is how I got so far into this in the first place]. I guess I would say that I never said Bell Curves are meaningless. I said, and am still saying, a distribution curve that is shaped like the NYC skyline or the Pyramid of Khufu (exaggeration for effect) is not a Bell curve. The end of a true “bell curve” should be tapered off and that is not what we see in what we are talking about — not even close. The elite 1-2% are still one quarter non-“black”
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brazil84** I am not ignoring you but think I’d rather leave it. I don’t think we are connecting and I bet sitting across a table we would find we don’t disagree about much and/or would reach some level a mutual eye rolling and move on to other topics and I appreciate the low key tone you have taken.
White wide receivers over the last thirty-something years - Ed Mcaffrey, Steve Largent, Ray Berry, Don Hudson, Lance Alworth, Fred Biletnikoff, Wayne Chrebet, Chris Collinsworth, Mark Boerighter, Dwight Clark, Tim Dwight, Danny Abramowicz, Roger Carr, Steve Watson…
Black quarterbacks over the last twentysomething years - Doug Williams, Warren Moon, Randall Cunningham, Joe Gilliam, James Harris…
The above are from memory. I could go do some research if those aren’t long enough lists for you…
Thanks. I wasn’t really sure what Elvis was saying. Of course there were more white WR’s back in the day…there was LESS ethnic diversity in the league then than there is NOW.
Back then, you could point to the Biletnikoffs, the Alworth’s of the game and say “those are the best WR’s in the NFL” (along with the occaisonal Swan and Stallworth, who were actually considered something of an anomoly due to their incredibly athletic, leaping receptions…)
Now, you cannot include a white WR in that statement and have it be true. Now it’s Moss, Owens, Chad Johnson, etc…
And FTR, I don’t care that it became this way, it just is and that’s fine. But it bears pointing out due to the OP’s origiinal question and I thought that the WR position group is one of the better suited ones to show the paradigm shift in racial makeup of the position.
We aren’t talking about 1 to 2 percent. For America alone that would suggest 400,000 elite African descended runners. If that was the case, we’d have better quality football in Canada.
If you continue to insist on the 1/4 non black elite based on the video of one world championship finals as a basis for defining the “elite” then either of us have no traction in convincing the other to their view.
No we are not seeing a bell curve. We are seeing a scenario where the elite are 25% white not where 1-2% are. That is not a “Bell Curve”. For it to be a “bell curve” you would need a bell shape. What we have is decidedly not a Bell shape. It is a distribution curve with 25% in one end. Not 1-2%. 25%not 1-2%. I agree that if that can’t be grasped and understood we can’t talk about this.
Dutchman I agree that the “1/4 non black” of one championship as a basis for defining the “elite” is too small it was the best I can do without going through and finding all the World Championships over a reasonable period of time and doing some kind of analysis. The whole thing just kind of swept along.
Then again, we would be back to what I believe is a logical flaw - that by eyeballing these folks you can somehow identify their genotypes as a subset of a group" of people that you would have identified as West African descended have an inherent advantage over all other groups of people (including their own) in speed.
Suppose there are 10,000,00 people in the population. 1,000,000 from Group X; and 9,000,000 from Group Y. The height of people in Group X is normally distributed with mean 5’6" and standard deviation 6 inches. The height of people from Group Y is normally distributed with mean 5’0" and standard deviation of 6 inches.
Three questions:
Is it fair to characterize Group X as being, on average, significantly taller than Group Y?
What percentage of the total population (from either group) can be expected to be 7’0" or taller?
Of all the people who are 7’0" or taller, what percentage can be expected to come from Group Y?
I’m starting to think you’re being deliberately obtuse.
Of course we can’t precisely identify individuals of mostly West African descent by eyeballing them - but you can certainly identify those who definitely are not.
It’s interesting to see how many people in this thread “know” things about genetics that geneticists themselves don’t know. I look forward to a flurry of papers being published and seeing the scientific community rocked to it foundation with all this new “knowledge”.
Lets define the “elite” 100m sprinters as those who have cracked the 9.8 second barrier. There’s at least a couple I know of. On second thought, lets include those who’ve cracked the 9.9 second barrier. On further thought lets include those who have cracked the 10 second barrier. Okay,now lets plot two graphs representing frequency and best 100 meter times representing West African descended people and other people. As the graph progresses horizontally you will see the non west African bell curve peter completely to zero at ten seconds while the other graph doesn’t hit zero for another full quarter second.
The world championships do not always attract the top competitors. No one turns down the opportunity to compete in the olympics
I’m not relying on eyeballing. I’m mostly relying on the observations and facts as presented by Jon Entine, and I know his works have been thouroughly investigated by others because he originally was quite controversial.
Well, I’m not convinced that you or I when we are in our prime could compete with the elite sprinters no matter how intensively we train or inject steroids.
Aziz Zakari at 9.99, and Leonard Myles-Mills at 9.98 are African , from, Ghana , not African American and are in the under 10 second club where you won’t find any “pure” Europeans.
It helps to get the facts before making misleading suggestions.
Brazil84. Dude. I said 25% was what we could see in the very small sample in a single race of the fastest people on earth was not a “Bell curve”. Do you disagree? If you do OK.
If not we are cool.
Really all not that bright and** Flying Dutchman **I will just repeat what I said before - Again I need to say you are in fact eyeballing them - you are making assumptions of the genotype based on how they appear right? I mean there really isn’t anyway around that
Given that the whites would be very close to genetically homogenous and the “blacks” and black Cuban genetically diverse – you might even say the genotype most represented at this elite level [ed in this race] are the genotype shared by the whites – we couldn’t be sure by eyeballing it – we would need to do genetic tests to prove it – but the odds are that would prove to be true.
Dutchman
Jon Entine has a degree from Trinity College (Hartford) in philosophy - doesn’t mean he is crazy or wrong or not a first class sh^t stirrer. But he hasn’t done “work” in this area.
I think this is a very complex area - genes may play a part but I do not believe that is the whole story and certainly no some reverse-PC kneejerk idea that there is evidence that “a subset of a group” of people that you would have identified as West African descended have an inherent advantage over all other groups of people (including their own) in speed.
I can’t disagree or agree because your statement makes no sense at all.
Please try to answer my question, even if you are just estimating the answers. If you truly understand the concepts you are discussing, you should be able to do so:
Suppose there are 10,000,00 people in the population. 1,000,000 from Group X; and 9,000,000 from Group Y. The height of people in Group X is normally distributed with mean 5’6" and standard deviation 6 inches. The height of people from Group Y is normally distributed with mean 5’0" and standard deviation of 6 inches.
Three questions:
Is it fair to characterize Group X as being, on average, significantly taller than Group Y?
What percentage of the total population (from either group) can be expected to be 7’0" or taller?
Of all the people who are 7’0" or taller, what percentage can be expected to come from Group Y?
It’s really a simple question for anyone who understands how normal distributions work.
I don’t know what most of these under 10 second athletes look like. even in Wikipedia you often don’t get their pictures.
Not one of your whites belongs in the under 10 second club. Sure, they may all share a particular white genotype, but there is no evidece that there is a white genotype for superior speed over blacks. The hypothesis fails in a split second after contemplation…
He refers to scientists who’ve done the work.
I don’t know what your up to, but you are contradicting yourself.
This is the second time you have attempted to make this point, but it simply means that you do not understand the actual discussion taking place, here.
In bullet fashion:[ul][li]Africa holds the widest genetic distribution of humans. (OK)[/li][li]Anyone making a claim that “Africans” or even “Sub-Saharan blacks” are some sort of monolithic group about whom one may draw any broad conclusions would have to ignore that genetic diversity. (OK)[/li][li]The genetic diversity of Africa is manifested in the large number of ethnic groups or genetic populations on the African continent; it does not manifest in some sort of random genetic spray in which neighbors in African cities or villages are more unlike than people from separate countries in Europe or Asia or the Americas. The issue is not that Africa has more distinct individuals, it is that Africa has a greater number of distinct populations.[/li][li]This topic does not address Africans or sub-Saharan Africans or blacks. [/li][li]This topic addresses the specific people whose ancestors, prior to the slave trade, lived along the Western coast of Africa from (roughly) Senegal, around the bulge and past Congo. Those people compose a group that, while not uniform, appears to be sufficiently related to allow some comparison and analysis.[/ul]If anyone on the “pro” side of this discussion were to claim that any random black person from Senegal, Kenya, Angola, or Madagascar had a statistically better chance to be a great sprinter than any random person from Sweden, Thailand, Fiji, Iran, or Kalaalit Nunaat, then your objection would have weight.[/li]However, we know from the historical record that well over 95% (probably over 99%) of people imported as slaves to the U.S. were taken from the specific range of places I noted above. The U.S. did not import slaves from Madagascar. The U.S. did not import slaves from Somalia. The U.S. did not import slaves from Botswana. Therefore, when we look at two black sprinters from the U.S., we already have a pretty good idea (based on actual history) that their ancestors were more closely related than random Europeans or Asians–the overall genetic diversity of Africa notwithstanding.
Right. In any case, the number of black quarterbacks in the league is pretty obviously not a similar scenario to the numbers of white wide receivers.
Until fairly recently, coaches simply didn’t put black players under center, because “they weren’t smart enough” :rolleyes: to play quarterback.
In the modern NFL, and to a lesser extent, college and high school, coaches don’t give a crap what color you are as long as you can throw the ball, make good reads, and grasp the offense.
I don’t think you need to assume racial animus or distrust of black intellectual abilities to explain the historical lack of black NFL quarterbacks.
First of all, “smart” is a relative term, esp. when applied to athletes. I do not think I’ve ever heard (nor do I expect to hear) the word “cerebral” in the same sentence or even paragraph as the names “Marino,” “Namath,” or “Unitas.” These guys certainly had “football smarts,” but they were not thought of as (nor did they need to be) “intelligent” in the classical “Bell Curve” IQ sense.
Second, since the end of Jim Crow, there were plenty of black QBs in the high school and even college ranks. By the early 1980s, when Doug Williams was considered something of a pioneer in the NFL, it was fairly unremarkable to see a J.C. Watts or Turner Gill at QB in the Big 8. What’s the difference?
The difference had largely to do with the styles of offense. Very, very few high school or college teams ran a pro-style, dropback passing offensive scheme till the mid-1980s (if not later – the option offense persisted at elite college programs into the '90s, and I’m sure some high schools were running the single wing within living memory). Time and again, you would see black QBs moved to other positions when they moved up in the ranks. The handful of lower-level programs that were running an offense that might effectively groom a guy to play pro QB were (for whatever reason) heavily white.
Now, that raises a different question: why were blacks able to thrive in option or other offenses where a running QB was an asset, but not in dropback passing offenses? The perceived reason had little to do with smarts, a lot to do with speed (which is why black guys pushed out of the QB position were often converted to receivers or running backs). I have no idea whether there is a genetic basis for black guys being faster, but I know that a lot of black guys who were faster thrived in offenses where footspeed and running were rewarded (and hence would have had little incentive to develop pass-rush-reading or receiver-targeting skills). Slow white guys with bad knees who found themselves as QB didn’t have the option of scrambling, so they had to make a virtue of necessity with passing skills. The stereotypical knock on black QBs was not “he’s dumb.” It’s “he won’t stay in the damn pocket.”
Now, with more lower-level programs deploying sophisticated passing schemes, there’s more and more black (and white) guys who have the opportunity to develop those skills rather than just being a de facto running back at QB. At the same time, interestingly, the NFL has discovered that QBs can actually be an asset as runners (classsic dropback passers usually ran only of necessity, and with poor results), so being a speedy scrambling guy willing to take the ball and run when your receivers aren’t open is an asset for a black or white QB, rather than the knock that it used to be.
While the rest of your post is pretty good, and I’d agree with a lot of it…
…with regard to the above, I’m not assuming racial animus or distrust of black intellects.
Googling “black quarterback not smart” returns an endless stream of hits on the topic of how African-Americans were moved to other positions because of a percieved lack of intelligence.
I am sure there are/were some black and white QBs who did/do have low intelligence, objectively measured. I am not putting my money on Vince Young in an IQ derby, but nor am I putting it on Todd Marinovich.
I still think speed is a big issue. A fast guy (of whatever race) could get by on his athletic abilities in high school and college (where the difference between the fastest guy on the field and the slowest could be pretty huge). In the NFL, everyone’s fast, everyone’s strong, and just outrunning everyone is no longer a very good alternative. Now – I would be willing to say that in that context, people may have criticized blacks (disproportionately) for not understanding that in the bigs, you need to bring something more than raw speed/athleticism, just as a Marinovich or Chuck Long (to name two physically-imposing but ultimately-unsuccessful white QBs) never really developed their game much beyond “look how far I can chuck the ball.”
The passing game was developed in the first place as a way to get the ball further downfield, faster, than running. To the extent black QBs were perceived as defaulting to a scramble that might net them four yards rather than setting up a longer gain by staying in the pocket, I guess that could be perceived as lacking in “football smarts.” I’ve also heard anguished cries of “why’d he do that?” when a kick returner runs backward and loses yardage in an attempt to get to the outside of the pursuit and make a huge gain, or when a defender loses a chance at recovering a fumble by trying to pick it up on the fly and go for a touchdown rather than just fall on it. A lot of this may have to do with the fact that some black kids grow up playing more of a playground/“street” style of ball, which doesn’t emphasize particularly sophisticated playbook-style offensive schemes but does amply reward the fastest kid on the block.