Island: Another academic dismissing the racist theory

[Sir X]

I am in two minds as to whether it is a good thing that so much of our national identity is wrapped up in our athletic prowess. I have the same issue when the quality of a school is judged more by its performance at the annual Boys and Girls' Athletic Championships rather than by its ranking when CSEC and CAPE results are published.

The preponderance of athletes of African origin in the finals of the athletic events plays into the hands of racists who argue that genetics is the source of the athletic superiority of black people, just as (they argue) genetics is at the root of white supremacy in intellectual pursuits.


http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/c...ional-identity

[Islandman]

Another who sounds uncomfortable with the scientific data, and so instead of addressing it he instead chose to ignore it and make general statements about "race", a non-scientific concept, when the data is about geographic origin.

It always comes back to the same fear, that if people's genetic background makes them different physically then it at least opens the door for the argument that may be be different intellectually and that is not something we are ready to deal with. Never mind that we are OBVIOUSLY different physically.

[Sir X]

I don't think any of them ignore it ,in fact they have inferenced such data can be used to draw racist conclusion and they prove it by paralleling west Africans and Brazilians,furthermore Espuet points out like it did to you how it's used to imply dumbness or criminality as genetic .

Finally data isn't only quantitative ,its also qualitative which is also scientific, both involve environmental factors! the mistake you make is giving too much credit to one aspect of a plethora of factors,which makes your conclusion questionable,worst case racist.

[Sir X]

I will prove it to you,that its more than questionable ,one of the questions in the case study of fast twitch sprinters is how many are a 100 ℅ west African born and not mixed?

* How many are born in the Americas
" How many are 100 M finalist
* What % of the gene in the individual can we calculate qualified that person for an Olympic final.

Data......lol

[Islandman]

Can't be racist if it's not based on race.

They run dozens of events at Champs every year, we only excel internationally in the ones that require explosive speed. In the others we range from above average to non existent. Why is that?

Sounds to me like Champs, extraordinary a phenomenon as it is, has its limitations

[Sir X]

Read the article Island he addressed those short comings using data....lol.

[Islandman]

But he actually doesn't. He effectively says we don't excel in the non sprints because we have never excelled in the non sprints.

That's called a circular argument.

[Sir X]

That's what you got from it,i got we never invested in it hence his call for investment by the powers that be,he goes as far as implying the JAAA and GOV should not get any credit from champs or our Olympic success.All credit to the schools.

[Islandman]

But that is really not true. Lots of effort goes into every event to win Champs. That's why we dominate in just about every event at the regional level.

Anyway , we pick it up again next year at World Championships.

[Sir X]

The gist is lack of investment in other sports,and that's a monetary issue ( quantitative data) ...hehe ,Yep next year.

[Don1]

Data cannot be ignored

I will prove it to you,that its more than questionable ,one of the questions in the case study of fast twitch sprinters is how many are a 100 ℅ west African born and not mixed?

* How many are born in the Americas
" How many are 100 M finalist
* What % of the gene in the individual can we calculate qualified that person for an Olympic final.

Data......lol

X your questions are interesting and the answers would be useful.. but not really useful in getting to a solid conclusion on the issue.

The most compelling data re sprint success is the ~80 year history of Blacks of West African origin almost completely DOMINATING with the fastest times. Prior to that whites dominated...but Blacks of course were generally barred from serious competition by Babylon.

We're dealing with running... the simplest and most universal of sports. Where it's just man vs gravity & air resistance....and where there's a virtually level playing field worldwide. The barriers to entry to participate in running are close to zero.

In those circumstances arguing against 80 years of data establishing West African sprint dominance is a losing proposition. The only real debate concerns the reasons behind the dominance.

The difficulty lies in creating a culture where sprinting is nurtured and developed from say 7 y.o. to seniors. JA has been working on that culture for over 100 years since Champs started

The reasons for West African Blacks' sprint success are complex and not limited to any one factor. However some genetic markers are clearly involved.

Re musculature: People of all races have fast twitch muscle fibers....as well as slow twitch fibers.

People of West African descent just TEND to have a higher concentration of fast twitch fibers.

The best available science indicates that fast twitch fibers aids in "explosiveness" and thereby would tend to be an advantage in sprints.

So it's very reasonable to assume that this factor is one of the reasons for W African Blacks' success in sprinting.

The % of this success that's due to the muscle factor is unknown and is probably impossible to calculate imo

[Gamma]

That being so the undiluted west African gene pool should be dominating. How many west African 100 or 200 Olympic champs have there been?

[Islandman]

None, for the same reason Champs and Jamaica's unique track culture cannot produce athletes that consistently win 5000m and 10000m world titles. Success at the elite level requires a combination of things happening together of which genetic predisposition is just one. That is the point Don1 and others have painstakingly tried to make.

We willingly accept the "feel good" requirements for sports success such as culture, hard work, determination, great coaching etc even when some of these are not really scientifically measurable. We all accept that these traits are not just required but critical.

Suggest genetic predisposition as a factor, even a minor one though, and everybody gets nervous. Yet we don't have a problem with using it to determine health outcomes, something FAR more important in the larger scheme of things. In fact we encourage it even in cases where the link is not yet conclusive.

Some of us live in denial even when the correlation is obvious. An extreme example would be in something like basketball. World class basketball is dominated by tall people, but height deniers will go looking for the one or two basketball players out of 1000 that are not tall and say "See! You don't have to be tall to play elite basketball! Case closed!"

There is very good reason to be careful about these things given the racial history of measuring achievement , but not a good reason to throw scientific data out the window simply because it makes us feel queasy. Like most things, there is a logical way and an illogical way to think about these things.

It is not logical reasoning for example, to conclude that "black people can play basketball" simply because the majority of players who play in the best basketball league in the world today are of African descent.That is merely using correlation to assume causation. Observation of skin color is not enough to come to that conclusion in the way that observation of players being tall is. The advantage of being tall in basketball is obvious.

That is quite different from noticing a correlation among people of a certain origin, then taking the time to measure genetic markers in a population of similar geographic origin and finding a statistically high occurrence of a particular characteristic that gives an advantage, or disadvantage, at a particular physical activity.

Again, we are totally OK when the same type of genetic correlation gives a clue about a populations predisposition to diabetes or lactose intolerance, and then the scientific work is done to confirm or refute. We respond to treatment and medication based on that work. This is seen as a positive thing. When the genetic and other scientific data shows that all living humans originated from a common human ancestor in an area of the world that gives us a warm and fuzzy feeling, we praise the scientists for unearthing the truth that was hidden for centuries!

Such talk is unacceptable in sports though, apparently the implications are too much for us to bear

[Don1]

That being so the undiluted west African gene pool should be dominating. How many west African 100 or 200 Olympic champs have there been?

Native West Africans may have some genetic predisposition for fast running....but don't have the most critical part of the success equation: A culture of support for sprinting required to actualize their potential. It remains latent and wastes away....kinda like JA's youth football

So it's not that they "should be dominating" but that they "could be dominating" if they chose to focus on the sport

[Islandman]

“Evolution has shaped body types and in part athletic possibilities,” Joseph Graves, Jr. told me. Graves, who is African American, is an evolutionary biologist at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University and UNC Greensboro. “Don’t expect an Eskimo to show up on an NBA court or a Watusi to win the world weight lifting championship. Differences don’t necessarily correlate with skin color, but rather with geography and climate.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/article...-genetics.html

The interesting thing about Joseph Graves, Jr is that his most of his work has been focused on making the argument that what we define as race is NOT a scientific concept. It would be very convenient support for that argument if all genetic diversity were totally irrelevant , but the data is the data.