I caught part of Chris Rock’s most recent HBO special. He was edgy. He made me uncomfortable by opining that black folks are exceptional in sports because their ancestors were bred by slaveholders for physical prowess. Isn’t that the same thing that got Jimmy the Greek canned? Then again, Chris Rock was in the middle of a stand up comedy routine, and Jimmy the Greek was serious.
Political correctness aside, though, is there any truth to this assertion at all? It sounds plausible on some level. Even if slaveholders did not actively engage in selective breeding, a slave who was not a superior physical specimen might have been less likely to survive the brutal ordeal of slavery, and this might have the same result as selective breeding. I suppose that it would be possible to research the issue if you weren’t run out of town on a rail when you submitted your research proposal.
What if black people are, in fact, physically superior in ways that lead to athletic prowess to white people on average? That wouldn’t tell us anything about the abilities of any particular black individual. It might partly explain the high proportion of black people in professional sports. It wouldn’t be insulting to black people to remark on it, would it? If I said something like “black people are darker skinned on average than white people” or “people of recent African ancestry are more susceptible to hypertension on average than people of European ancestry”, nobody would raise an eyebrow. But saying anything about athletic ability is taboo. Go figure. I would be interested to know why that is the case. I suppose the suggestion that anything positive came out of slavery would be offensive.
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I wonder too if there is another tacit assumption here which contributes to the political correctness on this issue, i.e. the stereotype of the dumb jock. That is to say, if one is to say that U.S. blacks are physically superior to whites (for whatever reason), does that imply that they are, on average, mentally inferior?
Or perhaps blacks might take exception to statements like these (at least when made by non-blacks) if they believe that this notion somehow takes away from the achievements of black athletes, if they are just naturally superior athletically?
On a tangential note, most people do not realize that there is a connection between the 2 physical attributes that you cited - darker skin color and more hypertension. Darker skin color corresponds to less absorption of sunlight, which means less production of Vitamin D, which can cause a great many problems, including heart-related diseases, if there is insufficient dietary intake of Vitamin D. While a large percentage of the U.S. population is Vitamin D deficient to some degree, it is a bigger problem for blacks, as a group. If you are interested in learning more, check out this article:
http://www.westonaprice.org/basicnutrition/vitamindmiracle.html
No, Sir,
I believe there is a much simpler explanation, although natural selection plays a part. Africans as a whole were far less advanced technologically than Europeans, excepting the extreme northern portions in prehistory. I'm pretty sure the Europeans "devolved" physically. Even among Europeans you can tell the difference between those cultures that advanced early and the rest. When I think of Scandinavians, for example, I think of broad-shouldered, muscular people.
I don't know,
maybe I'm just a racist. :)
There is much in our countries history to suggest that selective breeding was very prominent, and that old darwinism that plays it's part as only the very fit survived long enough to reproduce in some of the early years of slavery. That combined with the fact that European progression in agricultural technology required less of them for centuries, it is quite undeniable that peoples of African descent, especially here in the U.S., are physically superior. This does, for some reason, offend people and I have great difficulty calling it anything but silly. Noone would deny that the people of Holland are generally taller than the people of China. There would be no problem to say that Inuit get sunburns more easily than Mayans. Therefore, to find fault in someone who makes the statement that blacks are athletically superior to whites is just insecure foolishness.
There is much in our countries history to suggest that selective breeding was very prominent, and that old darwinism that plays it's part as only the very fit survived long enough to reproduce in some of the early years of slavery. That combined with the fact that European progression in agricultural technology required less of them for centuries, it is quite undeniable that peoples of African descent, especially here in the U.S., are physically superior. This does, for some reason, offend people and I have great difficulty calling it anything but silly. Noone would deny that the people of Holland are generally taller than the people of China. There would be no problem to say that Inuit get sunburns more easily than Mayans. Therefore, to find fault in someone who makes the statement that blacks are athletically superior to whites is just insecure foolishness.
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