ToughJ.Riggins
Hall of Famer
I love relating genetics to sports because I'm Biology major. I hope I don't aggravate anyone by using this site for academic theories. This is politically incorrect to say, but it is my belief that Caucasians as a group have a more diversified gene pool than African Americans.
In my opinion West Africans, this is what the slaves were, had and still have a higher percentage of people in their numerous tribes that are fast than whites. If I remember correctly, much of the slave population came from a small area in West Africa. Most American slaves had originally been captured by other rival West African tribes and than sold to the Europeans.
I personally although I don't like to harp on it, believe somewhat in the Jimmy the Geek theory. I think that there was some selective breeding of slaves, maybe even slaves that were closely related. Slaves that had physical endurance and other athletic advantages like speed were much more likely to spread their genetic code to new offspring. This may have caused yet another ever so slight increase in the percentage of blacks in America that were fleet of foot compared to whites even though it went on for the most part for 200 years or so.
You may ask where I am going with this and how I am going to relate this to track. It's simple I believe that there are a higher percentage of African Americans that are athletic, but that the most athletic whites (and we have a much larger pool in America of whites to pick from) are just as athletic as blacks.
Unfortunately, there have been many evil deeds done over the issue of genetics, so it is a very touchy subject. There is still genocide that has taken place in the recent world (Kosovo and currently the disgusting crimes taking place in Sudan because of racism.)
In sports it is in my opinion simply a problem of stereotypes and stigmatism and as we've discussed cohesiveness of blacks as a group. You get a random group of blacks and a random group of whites together in the United States and race them there are going to be more black guys in the group that are fast than whites. However, in my studying of the issue you can see that the top whites are on par with blacks. Don Bebee is tied for being the fastest man in the history of the NFL with Deion. Apparently whites swept the high jump in the 2004 Olympics and took Gold and Bronze in 2000, so you can't say that the top white high jumpers are less talented than blacks. Jeremy Wariner in my opinion is the best 400 meter sprinter of all time because he is so dominant and I believe he is clean of performance enhancing drugs unlike so many other runners from our country's dominant past in Track and Field.
My analysis is based on spending time studying athletic data. Sure if you take one event like the 100 meters sure it's possible the top blacks are a little faster than the top whites. However, as has been discussed on this site there's a good chance that even most of them were on the juice. The recent Balco scandal was damaging to America's reputation in track and field. However, it leads me to believe it is nothing new to the history of American Track and Field. Why? Because if with all the resources being expended to stop cheating in track Americas top athletes were still able to go undetected through designer steroids, than it must have been even easier in the past. In the past less resources were being spent because there had been less scandals.
So going on I have looked at different athletic data and there are some differences in performance based on Nationalities and events. However, it is my belief that the differences are smaller than people would like to make you believe. And last but not least, I return to the issue of selective breeding. There have been different Caucasian groups that have attempted this also. Some of them were infamous like the Nazis and more recently the Russians, East Germany and other communist Eastern Europeans during the Cold War. If I recall correctly, from a documentary I saw on the history channel about sports during the Cold War, the Russians wanted to selectively breed superhumans to dominate the Olympics at the time, but their plans failed.
There are also many instances with whites just as much as black where two athletes meet through a mutual interest in sports. This is not done as a plotted method to build superhuman athletes but as Psycho-sexual selection. I would be willing to bet the farm that Andrei Agassi and Stephi Graf's kid if he takes up tennis would at least be good enough to play tennis at the Div. 1 college level. That is unless as a good friend of mine coined the expression there's "a gene skip." That's the excuse a friend of mine had for why both his parents, as while as five other closely related family members, either have a doctorate in science or are MD's. And him, he graduated with a 2.5 GPA in communications from an average college, go figure it's quite an anomaly!
In my opinion West Africans, this is what the slaves were, had and still have a higher percentage of people in their numerous tribes that are fast than whites. If I remember correctly, much of the slave population came from a small area in West Africa. Most American slaves had originally been captured by other rival West African tribes and than sold to the Europeans.
I personally although I don't like to harp on it, believe somewhat in the Jimmy the Geek theory. I think that there was some selective breeding of slaves, maybe even slaves that were closely related. Slaves that had physical endurance and other athletic advantages like speed were much more likely to spread their genetic code to new offspring. This may have caused yet another ever so slight increase in the percentage of blacks in America that were fleet of foot compared to whites even though it went on for the most part for 200 years or so.
You may ask where I am going with this and how I am going to relate this to track. It's simple I believe that there are a higher percentage of African Americans that are athletic, but that the most athletic whites (and we have a much larger pool in America of whites to pick from) are just as athletic as blacks.
Unfortunately, there have been many evil deeds done over the issue of genetics, so it is a very touchy subject. There is still genocide that has taken place in the recent world (Kosovo and currently the disgusting crimes taking place in Sudan because of racism.)
In sports it is in my opinion simply a problem of stereotypes and stigmatism and as we've discussed cohesiveness of blacks as a group. You get a random group of blacks and a random group of whites together in the United States and race them there are going to be more black guys in the group that are fast than whites. However, in my studying of the issue you can see that the top whites are on par with blacks. Don Bebee is tied for being the fastest man in the history of the NFL with Deion. Apparently whites swept the high jump in the 2004 Olympics and took Gold and Bronze in 2000, so you can't say that the top white high jumpers are less talented than blacks. Jeremy Wariner in my opinion is the best 400 meter sprinter of all time because he is so dominant and I believe he is clean of performance enhancing drugs unlike so many other runners from our country's dominant past in Track and Field.
My analysis is based on spending time studying athletic data. Sure if you take one event like the 100 meters sure it's possible the top blacks are a little faster than the top whites. However, as has been discussed on this site there's a good chance that even most of them were on the juice. The recent Balco scandal was damaging to America's reputation in track and field. However, it leads me to believe it is nothing new to the history of American Track and Field. Why? Because if with all the resources being expended to stop cheating in track Americas top athletes were still able to go undetected through designer steroids, than it must have been even easier in the past. In the past less resources were being spent because there had been less scandals.
So going on I have looked at different athletic data and there are some differences in performance based on Nationalities and events. However, it is my belief that the differences are smaller than people would like to make you believe. And last but not least, I return to the issue of selective breeding. There have been different Caucasian groups that have attempted this also. Some of them were infamous like the Nazis and more recently the Russians, East Germany and other communist Eastern Europeans during the Cold War. If I recall correctly, from a documentary I saw on the history channel about sports during the Cold War, the Russians wanted to selectively breed superhumans to dominate the Olympics at the time, but their plans failed.
There are also many instances with whites just as much as black where two athletes meet through a mutual interest in sports. This is not done as a plotted method to build superhuman athletes but as Psycho-sexual selection. I would be willing to bet the farm that Andrei Agassi and Stephi Graf's kid if he takes up tennis would at least be good enough to play tennis at the Div. 1 college level. That is unless as a good friend of mine coined the expression there's "a gene skip." That's the excuse a friend of mine had for why both his parents, as while as five other closely related family members, either have a doctorate in science or are MD's. And him, he graduated with a 2.5 GPA in communications from an average college, go figure it's quite an anomaly!
