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Are Blacks Really Better at Sport Than Whites?
By KEVIN O'CONNOR
The statistics are stunning: blacks make up more than 80 per cent of American professional basketball players, 67 per cent of American footballers, yet only 13 per cent of the population of the USA is black. In Britain, 2 per cent of the population is black, yet 20 per cent of professional footballers are black; the 10-second barrier for the 100 metres has never been broken by a white man – the 200 fastest times for the distance are held by black athletes, all under 10 seconds. Forty seven of the world's top 100 marathon runners in 1999 were Kenyan.
The controversy over the relative performance levels of blacks and whites in sport has been re-opened by the publication of John Entine's new book Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sport and Why We're Afraid to Talk About It.
Entine predicts that "no white man will ever again win an Olympic 100 metres." This is an area of great intellectual fascination since at its heart is the nature/nurture debate which is found in many aspects of life and indeed can mould our own understanding of ourselves.
Put simply, are university professors, great musicians, outstanding athletes and so on born with these attributes (given by nature) or are they brought out of them (nurtured) by the individual's interaction with the environment, especially family and school.
The first explanation is genetic while the second is socially/environmentally based. The degree of discomfort caused by an assertion that, for genetic reasons, blacks are superior to whites at sport is not hard to fathom.
For centuries, and certainly since the beginning of the Slave Trade, some whites have believed that while blacks may be physically stronger (good workhorses for the cotton fields of America's Deep South, for example), they are intellectually inferior.
This, of course, is racist nonsense. There are two ways of questioning the statistics apparently proving black superiority at sport.
Firstly, the statistics, as with all statistics, only tell part of the story. For example, Britain's three top 400 metre runners are separated by just one-hundredth of a second, and are amongst the best in the world. Yet two are white (Roger Black and Iwan Thomas) and only one is black (Mark Richardson).
Also, while the male 800-metre world record is held by a black (Kenyan-born Dane, Wilson Kipketer), for the previous 18 years it was held by the great (some would argue the greatest middle-distance runner of modern times) Sebastian Coe.
The second way of questioning the statistics is to accept them, but argue that they have their foundation in social or environmental, rather than genetic, explanations. Thus, Mark Richardson argues that "there are a huge number of reasons why black people make great athletes, and most of those are socio-economic.
You don't need to have much money to take part in track and field – some clothes and a pair of shoes and you're off. But in Britain there are very few blacks taking part in tennis, rowing, rugby, golf or show-jumping because, says Richardson, "it is expensive to join the local club and to buy the equipment."
Similarly, in America, Ernest Cashmore has argued that sport has served as an important avenue allowing blacks to escape the ghetto for a better life. And black Canadian writer Malcolm Gladwell feels that "Blacks dominate sport, because they lack opportunities elsewhere."
But most outspoken is Professor Harry Edwards of Berkeley, a top class sprinter in the 1960s who believes that "the argument that blacks are physically superior to whites is a racist ideology camouflaged to appeal to the ignorant, the unthinking and the unaware.
The East African experience also provides arguments against genetic explanations. For, if Kenyans are great at athletics for genetic reasons, why has neighbouring Uganda achieved so little success at middle and long distance running? This is despite sharing many common tribal characteristics along their border areas.
I have always been persuaded by a social/environmental explanation for Kenya's amazing success at athletics. For whatever historical reason, Kenya got a critical mass of runners competing overseas. They won medals, but more importantly in the last 20 years, they won dollars – dollars which were used to buy land and build houses.
For every success story there would be a hundred youngsters back in the village wishing to do likewise, some becoming the champions of the future. Such emulation is a fundamentally social process.
Uganda never achieved this critical mass of athletes competing overseas, partly because of the chaos in the country in the 1970s and early 1980s.
But Ethiopia, Morocco, Tunisia and other countries are achieving it and we may be witnessing the beginning of the end of Kenya's domination of middle and long distance running.
One genetic theory that I find easier to accept is based on the DNA testing research of Professor Kidd of Yale University.
Kidd has shown, according to the distinguished athletics writer Tony Ward, that "there is more genetic variation within any one African tribal people than in all the rest of the world put together. Africans have the broadest spectrum of variability, with rarer versions at either end."
Olympic champions are in some way physical freaks. Their bodies are exceptional, and especially for distance running, they have extraordinarily efficient cardiovascular systems, often with an incredibly low pulse rate. Kidd's research could indicate that such exceptional bodies are more likely to come out of the greater African genetic variation (passed on to blacks in America and the Caribbean by the Slave Trade migration). Where the truth lies in this debate I do not know. I am just a humble coach who holds a stopwatch at the edge of a running track. But one thing is for sure, when it comes to explaining relative success of blacks and whites at sport – the answer is far from black and white!
By KEVIN O'CONNOR
The statistics are stunning: blacks make up more than 80 per cent of American professional basketball players, 67 per cent of American footballers, yet only 13 per cent of the population of the USA is black. In Britain, 2 per cent of the population is black, yet 20 per cent of professional footballers are black; the 10-second barrier for the 100 metres has never been broken by a white man – the 200 fastest times for the distance are held by black athletes, all under 10 seconds. Forty seven of the world's top 100 marathon runners in 1999 were Kenyan.
The controversy over the relative performance levels of blacks and whites in sport has been re-opened by the publication of John Entine's new book Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sport and Why We're Afraid to Talk About It.
Entine predicts that "no white man will ever again win an Olympic 100 metres." This is an area of great intellectual fascination since at its heart is the nature/nurture debate which is found in many aspects of life and indeed can mould our own understanding of ourselves.
Put simply, are university professors, great musicians, outstanding athletes and so on born with these attributes (given by nature) or are they brought out of them (nurtured) by the individual's interaction with the environment, especially family and school.
The first explanation is genetic while the second is socially/environmentally based. The degree of discomfort caused by an assertion that, for genetic reasons, blacks are superior to whites at sport is not hard to fathom.
For centuries, and certainly since the beginning of the Slave Trade, some whites have believed that while blacks may be physically stronger (good workhorses for the cotton fields of America's Deep South, for example), they are intellectually inferior.
This, of course, is racist nonsense. There are two ways of questioning the statistics apparently proving black superiority at sport.
Firstly, the statistics, as with all statistics, only tell part of the story. For example, Britain's three top 400 metre runners are separated by just one-hundredth of a second, and are amongst the best in the world. Yet two are white (Roger Black and Iwan Thomas) and only one is black (Mark Richardson).
Also, while the male 800-metre world record is held by a black (Kenyan-born Dane, Wilson Kipketer), for the previous 18 years it was held by the great (some would argue the greatest middle-distance runner of modern times) Sebastian Coe.
The second way of questioning the statistics is to accept them, but argue that they have their foundation in social or environmental, rather than genetic, explanations. Thus, Mark Richardson argues that "there are a huge number of reasons why black people make great athletes, and most of those are socio-economic.
You don't need to have much money to take part in track and field – some clothes and a pair of shoes and you're off. But in Britain there are very few blacks taking part in tennis, rowing, rugby, golf or show-jumping because, says Richardson, "it is expensive to join the local club and to buy the equipment."
Similarly, in America, Ernest Cashmore has argued that sport has served as an important avenue allowing blacks to escape the ghetto for a better life. And black Canadian writer Malcolm Gladwell feels that "Blacks dominate sport, because they lack opportunities elsewhere."
But most outspoken is Professor Harry Edwards of Berkeley, a top class sprinter in the 1960s who believes that "the argument that blacks are physically superior to whites is a racist ideology camouflaged to appeal to the ignorant, the unthinking and the unaware.
The East African experience also provides arguments against genetic explanations. For, if Kenyans are great at athletics for genetic reasons, why has neighbouring Uganda achieved so little success at middle and long distance running? This is despite sharing many common tribal characteristics along their border areas.
I have always been persuaded by a social/environmental explanation for Kenya's amazing success at athletics. For whatever historical reason, Kenya got a critical mass of runners competing overseas. They won medals, but more importantly in the last 20 years, they won dollars – dollars which were used to buy land and build houses.
For every success story there would be a hundred youngsters back in the village wishing to do likewise, some becoming the champions of the future. Such emulation is a fundamentally social process.
Uganda never achieved this critical mass of athletes competing overseas, partly because of the chaos in the country in the 1970s and early 1980s.
But Ethiopia, Morocco, Tunisia and other countries are achieving it and we may be witnessing the beginning of the end of Kenya's domination of middle and long distance running.
One genetic theory that I find easier to accept is based on the DNA testing research of Professor Kidd of Yale University.
Kidd has shown, according to the distinguished athletics writer Tony Ward, that "there is more genetic variation within any one African tribal people than in all the rest of the world put together. Africans have the broadest spectrum of variability, with rarer versions at either end."
Olympic champions are in some way physical freaks. Their bodies are exceptional, and especially for distance running, they have extraordinarily efficient cardiovascular systems, often with an incredibly low pulse rate. Kidd's research could indicate that such exceptional bodies are more likely to come out of the greater African genetic variation (passed on to blacks in America and the Caribbean by the Slave Trade migration). Where the truth lies in this debate I do not know. I am just a humble coach who holds a stopwatch at the edge of a running track. But one thing is for sure, when it comes to explaining relative success of blacks and whites at sport – the answer is far from black and white!
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