Christophe Lamaitre is the answer, as he was the first in 2010, is he still the only one?
It is a striking statistic as it isn’t as if the skill of fast running can be hidden. It is of use in so many sports that an outlier of genuine excellence is going to draw attention.
I think the 100m metres is one of those rare events that can be susceptible to a genetic advantage and the west african connection may (note…may) explain the demographics of the champion short sprinters.
Bullshit. The NBA is predominately black, yes. A lot of those folks come from inner urban areas. Ever see a hockey rink in a poor area of town? Tennis courts? My guess is no, but you see vacant lot basketball rims everywhere. Pro sports is a way out of an oppressive life in many cases and poverty is a great motivator to work very hard at getting there. Whites are every bit as talented as blacks on the court and there some outliers on both sides like Jordan and James and Bird and Ginobli who are truly gifted at it. The recent large influx of European players alone puts your argument in the toilet.
Three men of European heritage
Two men of Asian heritage
Two Africans not from West Africa
Patrick Johnson (half white Irish/Australian, half indigenous Australian) is one example – he has zero African ancestry.
There are numerous others with white ancestry – many or most of the top US and Canadian sprinters have some white ancestry. It might be convenient for the argument to assume they’re all “black”, as if that means something, but many or most of them are “white” too.
Jamaica is way-over represented among top sprinters. Is this biological? If it’s cultural, then is it really that outlandish that culture could also be part of the explanation for perceived disparities among other sports?
I don’t know why “now” is so special. Only certain sports seem to fit in the “blacks are more athletic” narrative. Boxing, which at one time seemed to be dominated (in America) by black people, now is much more heavily represented by Asian and Latin American fighters, and at the heavyweight class, Eastern Europeans. Is this biological, or cultural?
I’ve been struggling with this for a while myself. The whole “dark-skinned people are better at basketball” deal seemed reasonable to me until I realized that African basketball teams don’t do much in the Olympics so there must be more to it than just that. I don’t think this is a question that’s particularly easy to answer but I will submit that in many cases - at least in the U.S. - it seems that a higher percentage of dark-skinned young men than lighter-skinned ones seem to put more stock in excelling at sports (mostly basketball and the U.S. form of football) than they do in excelling at academic pursuits (not to say that they cannot excel at academic pursuits if they choose to put their minds to it…Neil DeGrasse Tyson - one of my and my wife’s favorites - springs readily to mind). To me that seems to be a major reason why the NBA and the NFL each have a higher percentage of dark-skinned athletes in them than they used to. Which brings up the question: “Does that mean that African-American boys aspire to excelling in sports more than they used to?” Good question. Maybe one for another thread.
It’s like any other endeavor: in order to be wildly successful at anything, it takes dedication and massive amounts of hard work. Ask any pro athlete and he’ll tell you that he was consumed by the sport at an early age, spent every spare waking moment working at it, and had the support of his family. The money available in major sports is a huge draw for a kid in a miserable environment, as well. Boxing was (and still is) a traditional way to escape poverty, particularly in Latin America.
I read that excellence in certain sports is correlated with where your centre of gravity is. A high centre of gravity makes you a better sprinter, while a low one makes you a better swimmer. So West Africans, who tend to have a high centre of gravity, tend to be better sprinters, while Europeans, who tend to have a low centre of gravity, tend to dominate in swimming.
So it’s not that race makes you a natural athlete…but race can make you more likely to be a natural for a specific sport.
Go to downtown Shanghai and observe 500 persons at random. Go to downtown Warsaw and do the same.
Race (of some form) obviously exists, observationally.
Meanwhile, define “chair.”
There is only one race: the human race. Individuals within that race might excel over others, but that’s all.
All I know is that every time I enter the human race, I lose badly.
One place to start would be to look at studies which try to determine whether or not genes are differently distributed among “races.” (They are; the specific functions and consequences are not.)
But if you look at sports, what you should look at is the starting pool and then nurturing advantages and then reasons for drop out.
In the US, ask yourself how many kids of all races have opportunity for basketball. Then ask which kids have a nurturing advantage (cultural inclinations; coaching; social helps/roadblocs). Then ask why kids drop out.
You can’t make a decision about nurture versus nature until you reasonably evaluate the variables.
If almost every kid in the US gets exposed to basketball, and the starting ratio is 4:1 whites to blacks, then if the NBA ratio is 4:1 blacks to whites, you need a nurturing explanation that reasonably explains away why white kids drop out and black kids succeed–not just at the top level, but all the way through.
A useless, politically-correct, bullshit line that betrays what our eyes see, our noses smell, our history demands, and our genes show. People of different ethnic backgrounds look different, smell different, are susceptible to different diseases, and (as this thread explores) perhaps perform differently in different physical activities.
That’s not race.
Although Patrick Johnson is about half indigenous Australian, the genetics of that group are an early out of africa group, probably before the eurasian split.
Here are the top 90 100 meter dash sprinters.
You can decide for yourself if men who are mostly european/asian drop out of running along the way because they think it’s a lame sport, or because they get beaten. You can probably also go to any track meet in the world and decide if you see a pattern. Then you can decide for yourself if that pattern has reasons other than an average innate advantage driving it.
There’s no question culture and nurture drives us to what we naturally excel at. The question is whether or not a starting pool is more or less equally exposed to a sport in the first place, and whether those who drop out do so because they cannot compete at higher levels or out of a simple choice to do something else despite the fact that they were the best when they dropped out.
I am not inclined to think white kids excelling at basketball or sprinting are dropping out all along the way because they’d rather do something else. Nor am I inclined to think they don’t have better nurturing advantages than do black kids at things they are good at.
My thoughts are as follows:
:rolleyes:
Race is a classification system used to categorize humans into large and distinct populations or groups by anatomical, cultural, ethnic, genetic, geographical, historical, linguistic, religious, and/or social affiliation.
Watching an NFL or NBA team ought to inspire more intellectual curiosity, unless you’re afraid of what you’ll discover.
It’s weird to see the word “inspire” in this discussion. I’ve read more than my share of threads on this subject, so I have a deep understanding of the scientific and statistical ignorance that comes from the side you appear to be advocating. Bonus points for the arrogance of assuming other people are afraid rather than merely better informed. So what these threads inspire in me is a combination of boredom and disgust. Hence :rolleyes:.
The sign of intelligence is to identify patterns and seek understanding. The statistics are undeniable, worldviews notwithstanding. :rolleyes: