On black athletic superiority

One need only look to look at the annals of athletic success to see that blacks are obviously superior athletes. No white athlete has reached an Olympic 100m final in over a quater of a century. 82 people have run sub 10 second 100m. Only one of them was white. This is just sprints. Just look at the huge amount of long distance running medals that have gone to Kenya. In 2011, the NBA reported that only 17% of the players where white.

The idea has been put forward that those of West African descent are better at sprinting - as is show by the dominance of Afro Americans and Jamaicans for example, and that long distance running is the domain of East Africa - Kenya and Ethopia, for example.

Indeed, there's genetic evidence too - the ACTN3 gene helps with sprinting (by affecting muscle composition - it makes more "fast twitch fibres, which are the kind for explosive power, and not so good for prolonged endurance) and is found in 98% of Jamaicans. Indeed, the slave trade has been put forward as an explanation of how this situation could have evolved - the slave trade selected those that were fitter, and thus their athletic dominance was born.

The case seems clear cut: black people make better athletes.

The trouble is, it's all nonsense. To explain why, we need to consider a few things, because there is a predominance of black athletes.

Before we begin, there is a related, and important, point to make. When talking about differences in populations, you're never far from cries of racism (or sexism or any other -ism). This is because people tend to think of traits of populations as discrete points, and not overlapping bell curves. People misinterpret a saying like "Women are better at visual memory" as meaning that all women are good at visual memory, and all men are bad at visual memory.

Here's a simple example. Men are taller than women. Here's a graph to show this:

As you can see - men tend to be taller than women, but there is considerable overlap with their heights. So it is when it comes to other differences. Saying that one group perform better than another is not to say that the other group are incapable. Their performance will overlap like the graph above. Also, such data do not support discrimination. Just because men are better at mentally rotating shapes, doesn't mean that women can't, and so, one should always base one's assessment of an individual on their own merits, and not from whatever particular group(s) they belong to.

So, with that out the way, back to the black athletic superiority.

Firstly, the notion of race is a misleading one. Genetic studies show that genetic diversity is greater within a population than it is between populations. If the zombie apocalypse happens and all that remains of humanity is the Masai tribe from Africa - the entire genetic variability of Homo sapiens will be found within their members. Of course, this is counter intuitive because we can't see genetic differences with our eyes - we can only see the colour of their skin, the shape of their face, how their hair grows etc. However, these differences are superficial and trivial in the grand scheme of things.
Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, a population geneticist from Stanford University says "Classification into races has proved to be a futile exercise... All populations or population clusters overlap when single genes are considered, and in almost all populations, all alleles are present but in different frequencies. No single gene is therefore sufficient for classifying human populations into systematic categories."

Which leads us to ACTN3 gene mentioned earlier. 98% of Jamaicans may have it. But so do 82% of Europeans. And in Kenyans it's more prevalent than in Jamaicans - which is curious given their dominance in the long distance running. Genes may help, but aren't the entire story. Athletic success is largely down to one's environment - where one lives, the societal factors there, the facilities available.

Take Kenyan long distance runners for example. 90% of their runners are actually found within a sixty mile radius around the town of Eldoret. The conditions there are perfect for developing long distance running - it's at high altitude, which helps the athletes produce more red blood cells and move oxygen around their body more efficiently; children have to run to school - sometimes as far as 20km, that's a lot of running for a child, and by the time they're grown, they can reap the athletic rewards; since Kip Keino in 1968 children aspire to be athletes; running is cheap to get into unlike other sports; traditional Kenyan diet is very good for long distances runners; and Kenya has developed a good system for developing and nurturing promising young runners. All these factors contribute to their success.

This leads on to another point. One of over generalization - it's not being Kenyan that means you've got a better chance at making it as a long distance runner, it's being a Kenyan around the town of Eldoret. Likewise, generalizing that all black people are naturally better athletes because of those that do dominate the sport is likewise an overgeneralisation. There are a lot of African nations that aren't producing a surfeit of athletic success.

So what about the NBA line up and other stats about the predominance of black athletes? The overrepresentation of of African Americans in sport is mirrored by their underrepresentation in positions of economic power, suggesting that socio-economic factors are involved. If there are barriers to positions of economic power, then it makes sense to go into sport where such barriers don't exist.

Does this false notion that black people make better athletes matter though? Racism sadly isn't a thing of the past and so surely it's good that black people can show the world what they can achieve?

Sadly this isn't the case.

Received wisdom used to hold that:

"The Negro does well in certain disciplines because he is closer to primitive man than white people. It is not long since his ability to run and jump meant the difference between life and death in the jungle. He has supple muscles and his light-minded disposition is useful in the mental and physical relaxation necessary for someone who runs and jumps" Dean Cromwell, leader of the American team at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

These sentiments haven't entirely disappeared - black athletes are rated higher in natural athletic ability than in sporting intelligence. White athletes are rated higher in sporting intelligence than in natural athletic ability. When listening to exactly the same radio basketball commentary, those that thought the player was black rated them as high in natural athletic ability. Those that thought the player was white, rated them as low in natural athletic ability, and an inferior player. This was for the exact same commentary.

Stereotypes influence how we see the world and other people, and can lead to unconscious discrimination, which can help perpetuate the false stereotypes. White athletes getting passed up for sporting opportunities and black scholars missing out on potential educational success, can lead to disproportionate mixes of the two in various fields.

Stereotypes also affect how we, ourselves, behave, via what psychologists call the Stereotype Threat. White and black former high school athletes were given a golf putting task. Both groups performed equally well, until you told them that it was a measure of "natural athletic ability", then the whites' performance dropped. It's not just in sporting tasks. A standardized test was given to undergraduates. When told it was a measure of intellectual ability, white students out performed the black students. When the test was presented as a laboratory tool, with no relevance to intellectual ability, the scores between black and white students were the same.

There may be a predominance of black athletes, but this is not because they are naturally better athletes than non-black people out there. Likewise, there is a predominance of white people in other areas of life, but this is not because they are naturally better at them than black people.

The information for this post mostly came from the excellent book Bounce by Matthew Syad which you should read.