There was a time when blacks were underrepresented at the other ‘smart’ positions in pro football as well as quarterback. (Head coach, middle linebacker, centre).
I think it 's a stretch to try and justify that as anything other than racism.
I’m not justifying or defending the result in any way. I’m offering an explanation for another factor that played into it.
Mind you, my speed-based explanation still is predicated on people’s (possibly erroneous) assumption that black guys are often faster – so maybe I’m saying that there were a couple of distinct and possibly-prejudicial stereotypes at work.
Well, nobody looks for a quarterback by picking the very fastest guy he can find. Among quarterbacks, at least, I highly doubt that the fastest black quarterbacks are much quicker than the fastest white ones (with the obvious exception of Michael Vick).
After all, Byron Leftwich is widely regarded as the least mobile quarterback in the league.
I think a lot of this has to do with the traditional progression of player assignments in youth football:
The most athletic guy on the team plays quarterback, unless he can’t throw, in which case he plays running back.
The next part is purely speculation on my part: white players are more likely to quickly progress to affluent programs with better coaching - better coaching usually (though not always) = more complex playbooks and/or play design. Thus, when they get to high school, they’re better prepared for pro-style offenses than the average black quarterback is, since he’s probably been stuck in an option- or at least run-based offense, so he’s had to make things happen by himself at times. Thus, he is used to scrambling.
When talking about quarterbacks, let’s make sure we’re not overlooking the obvious, and that is that the primary skill required by a quarterback is to be able to throw the ball accurately and over long distances. QB is the only position on the field that uses the upper body in that way.
It’s quite possible that the physical attributes needed for that position just happen to be those that are more likely found in the white population.
That thought occurred to me too. I recall reading that the track and field events that involve throwing something – discus, shot put, javelin, and hammer – tend to be dominated by whites. Also, I recall reading somewhere that white NBA players tend to have higher free throw percentages than blacks.
True enough. But this could be a phenomenon of blacks-can’t-afford-specialized-training-in-obscure-sports (the field events are hardly popular faves and it’s probably harder to find good coaches/programs for them) or blacks-are-too-smart-to-waste-time-on-a-sport-that-can’t-possibly-make-you-money (not a lot of black biathletes either).
This gets controversial. Either it leads to positing a genetic basis, always controversial, or to faulting the practice-habits/work ethic of the guys who shoot worse (European BB players I’ve listened to seem to think all Americans are lousy at shooting accuracy, FTs, because they favor a flashy and physical, but sloppy, style of play), as free throw performance can in most instance be improved very significantly by sheer repetitive practice.
I think this can be readily explained by the “And 1 Mixtape” philosophy that inner-city basketball players tend to adopt- forget the fundamentals, work on those flashy post moves, etc.
Safe to say that most white NBA players are either suburban kids who got coached well from an early age, or foreigners, who’d also be coached well.
I read an interview with Tracy McGrady a few years ago in which he mentioned that nobody ever bothered to teach him how to shoot a free throw until he reached high school.
**Tomndeb **in post #54 I said at the World championships last year with the 8 fastest sprinters on earth –one of whom was a Nigerian- just demonstrates how hard it is to talk about race and who has speed and who doesn’t as a racial group in any meaningful way. It really is a complex thing. Using that as an example in this discussion was Ridiculous! As Not Too Bright might say. I know that and a man with a higher EQ would have long ago walked away.
From that stupid $0.02 in post #54 I was swept into a debate defending my post as others tried to extrapolate my highjack to the thread at large. But I hung in. And that makes me the assh^le - not them because it was a highjack and I should have just gone away. The thread went back to the OP as soon as I stopped.
But I can’t let your your snooty and condescending post go unremarked upon.
**
Those people compose a group that, while not uniform, appears to be sufficiently related to allow some comparison and analysis.
**
I submit then when you re-read your post and you realize that you lump this as one genetic subset you demonstrate that you really don’t understand the research cited on African genetic diversity (a little shot back atcha Chief). That the scores (not 1-2) of groups that were made slaves from West Africa are not likely to be closely related – in fact they are more likely to be different from each other genetically than you and the Hispanic neighbor who you Cliff Clavin about his lawn & the Asian guy you corner at parties and talk at about theology at until Deb pulls you away. I think you probably know that and you just wanted to speak superciliously to me as is your wont. If you really want to defend that position lets go.
**
Everyone else** you all make good points. You take the last word.
It may or may not be difficult, but you have provided no reason for us to believe that your point has any validity. Dig out a map and look up Nigeria, then note where it lies in terms of the coast running from Senegal to Congo. This discussion focuses on people from the west coast of Africa and every one of the sprinters under discussion has ancestors from that region.
I was not attempting to be snooty or supercilious, just attempting to keep the thread from being hijacked. However, if you wish to make an issue of this, please provide documentation that the African diversity (which is real) actually applies to the specific population of the African West coast (which you continue to assert, but which you have failed to demonstrate).
However, those events tend to be heavily dominated by European whites, specifically, and (at least in the past) the winners were hugely overrepresented by Communist nations who engaged in mass cheating operations. You didn’t see a lot of Australian champions in such events, even though Australia has as many white people as East Germany did. I can’t remember a Canadian white guy ever winning a medal in those events but we’ve got lots of white guys. And, considering their utter dominance in so many events, even American white guys are surprisingly underrepresented in such events.
But you do see a lot of Australian swimming champions, Canadian hockey stars, and American gymnastics champions. Again, a sport’s popularity has to be considered.
I pulled up the world record progression for discus throw in Wikipedia. There were plenty of American world record holders.
Of course. Popularity counts for a lot. Nevertheless, the disparity is suggestive.
I most certainly did. Twice. I even provided a non-scientific journal cite so that I wouldn’t confuse people who at an emotional level didn’t want to deal with the truth of the matter by citing a lot of “scientific facts” that they would be suspicious of.
“Most African Americans in the U.S. came from West Africa and are undoubtedly as diverse, genetically, as those individuals who remained in Africa,” says Tishkoff. "The causes of genetically based diseases in African Americans may be different from the causes of the same diseases in Americans whose roots are in Europe."
Dr. Sarah Tishkoff Penn State
You sir “do not understand” the extent of African human diversity nor did you even read my post or cites before you simply piled on.
I now invite you to provide a cite that your genetically ridiculous assertion :
**Those people compose a group that, while not uniform, appears to be sufficiently related to allow some comparison and analysis.
**
is true (its not btw) or let me go in peace & don’t jump in my sh^t like that again unless you know what you are talking about.
I’ll even offer this backward compliment - my apelike sh^t throwing fury at your post was based in part that you knew and understood the genetics of this -if you really did not I apologize to you for about 60% of my “edge”.
And then the article goes on to claim
If hypertension is endemic to the people imported from Africa, then it is a uniform characteristic of that group. Only if hypertension (or sprint speed) was limited to a single population of Africa (as long-distance running appears to be limited to a single, rather small population in the region of Kenya) would it be possible to rule out a “West African/sprint” connection. While the American and Canadian sprinters may have had their origins obscured in the slave trade, there is no similar vagueness regarding African sprinters who do not all come from a Ghana or Cameroon or Lesotho. (Similarly, there are no record holding sprinters from Kenya, Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania, or other locations outside the West African coastal region which further strongly suggests (not proves) a West African connection.)
Quite so- in the U.S., there are lots of athletes who’d probably make great discus throwers or shot putters or Greco-Roman wrestlers. And you you know what they’re doing? They’re protecting Tony Romo and opening up holes for LaDainian Tomlinson. Americans who are big and strong enough to be champions at those sports gravitate to the offensive and defensive lines of the NFL.
In the same way, there are loads of Americans who’d make great decathletes- but they wind up playing baseball or football! Bo Jackson would probably have been a superb decathlete, but he knew he could make a heck of a lot more money playing for the KC Royals.
Or not playing for the Buccaneers. I hate Bo.
I think inevitably, as others have said, people are for various reasons reluctant to admit that there is a race factor in athletic performance. But if we move away from focusing on blacks of West African descent, our politically correct tendencies go away a little bit. Look at this for last years World’s Strongest Man competition. 6 out of the 10 best are from Poland or Latvia, Baltic coat countries. If you poke around on the site, the majority of top 10 finishers from the last 10 years are from Baltic Sea countries. I think many people might agree that there is a bit of a correlation there.
Without commenting on the Baltic dominance of weightlifting, (since I do not follow it and do not know how true it is, how lasting it is, or what other factors enter into it), I will point out that that is not a “racial” situation.
The whole point of the wrangling over West African presence among sprinters is that “West Africans” are not a race. Science recognizes populations and if someone can set up sufficiently bright boundaries, we can examine groups of people as populations. Where race gets thrown into the mix is when someone makes a claim that “blacks” or “whites” or “Asians” or whomever have some trait that sets them apart from the rest of humanity. The term “race” has been clouded by too many all-encompassing claims for the many and disparate populations that have been gathered under the umbrella of race at one time or another, making the word useless in any biological context.
Prior to this decade, the same contest was dominated by Scandinavians. Not a big enough statistical sample, then.
Race was the wrong choice of word. I should have said population.
Two areas that are pretty close to each other really. I wouldn’t be surprised if there wasn’t quite a bit of similarity in the two populations.