You, if you wish, can find similar racial disparities in speed records for balloon animal tying. Not making this up. White people are clearly superior to all other races GENETICALLY in the skills involved in this task.

And yet the best spear chuckers (javelin) are white men....Show me a black man in the top 10 longest javelin throws. Whites must have a genetic physiological advantage when throwing spears.

This thread is so full of epic fail...I love it.

Actually, if other races were represented at the lower levels of these endeavors (similar to white people at RB/WR/track in high school and college), I argue that the burden of proof would be on you to show that sociological factors can fully explain why there is a difference at the highest level. There's no prima facie reason to believe that there must be no genetic differences: If you are going to hold an extremist view, be prepared to be asked to justify it. My answer regarding the spear-throwers and the ballon-tiers would be that it's possible there could a genetic component to them that results in the difference. I have no evidence to confirm or deny that statement.

Note that there is evidence to confirm genetic differences between (races, subraces, populations, whatever) in terms of running.

OP: how many children do you have? how many do you want to have? I'm guessing something between 15-35 based on your posts.

If that is wrong, pls. explain.

Also, you are confused about nature v. nurture, but, admittedly, the trend has generally been to be confused about this because it is more fun to overemphasize nature.

You are also seriously confused about how much it matters what percentage of the population has attribute X.

Be very specific: what evidence?

So whites are over-represented among NFL quarterbacks, MLB starting pitchers, and javelin throwers. Why is that epic fail?

Because: so what? From over-representation one ought not immediately leap to "zomg, genetic difference must be the explanation!"

I apologize. You're right, there is exactly one. I hadn't kept up with the sport the last couple years and missed Lemaitre. The rest of my post stands however. The fastest group of people on average seems to be the subset of slave descendants from Western Africa. I'm not claiming a genetic cause, this is more a development of the selective breeding that took place while the slave trade was active.

Per your other post, distance events are dominated by Eastern Africans. Mainly because all they do is run their entire lives.

LXThrottle posted a link about the first piece of evidence I came across for it, fast twitch muscle fibers.

I also posted a link about fast twitch muscle fibers and the ACTN3 gene. http://www.slate.com/id/2197721/

"The team has just begun to analyze the genetic data it has collected, but preliminary findings suggest that 70 percent of Jamaicans have the "strong" form of the ACTN3 gene—which produces a protein in their fast-twitch muscle fibers that has been linked to increased sprinting performance. That's a significantly higher percentage than in the United States, where about 60 percent have the gene variant. A further 28 percent of Jamaicans are heterozygous for the gene—which has the same effect, but to a lesser degree—compared with about 20 percent of Americans. The rest, by contrast, have the "null" form of the gene that produces no protein at all, apparently making for lousier sprinters but perhaps better endurance runners. (Ironically, a sample of Kenyans showed a lower incidence of the null form than Americans.)"


"Of course the vast majority of Jamaicans with active ACTN3 genes don't go on to become world-class athletes. Cultural factors are likely to contribute to the success of Jamaican sprinters. For example, track and field has historically held a high place of honor in Jamaican culture. The annual high school Boys and Girls Athletics Championships—known simply as Champs—is a major national event the importance of which to Jamaicans rivals that of the Super Bowl to Americans. A long history of high-profile accomplishments at Champs—plus the 45 Olympic medals Jamaicans have now won in track—helps inculcate a deep sense of national pride in the sport."


One of the more difficult things to deal with in regards to genetic differences is that societal constructs quite possibly will mirror them. As we see above...If a certain group of people are naturally strong runners, is it any shock that running is looked highly upon in their culture (such as in Jamaica)? This makes it very easy to jump to a blank slate conclusion in regards to the origins of these differences. But such a conclusion is an incredibly difficult one to make, and the fact that it is promoted zealously throughout education has little to do with it's justification or merit.

Another thing that makes things difficult is that bias clearly exists in society, and for example in the major U.S. sports, towards certain races at certain positions. I am convinced it does, for instance, in the specific cases of positional biases in the NFL. However, that doesn't in any way, shape, or form hold as decent evidence against the possibilities of genetic differences existing at all. If you think it does, you may be trapped within a false dichotomy of nature vs nurture.

Finally, even if there were no evidence for genetic differences...there was still no evidence against them either. You have evidence for cultural bias, absolutely. But until someone constructs a proven and testable model for this bias that fully accounts for, say, all racial differences in sports, you don't have a tenable position in arguing that there is no genetic component to them. The only justified argument in this case would be to simply say, 'we don't know'.

What selective breeding? I never heard of that?

Is the following part of your argument?
Based on sound breeding practices slave masters developed breeds of African slaves that to this day astound modern biology in their difference from the messily reproduced white race (or races depending on exactly how silly you want to sound.)

And this is proof about black americans' genetics as a group in what way?!? Outliers are cool, but they say nothing about the group as a whole.

Granted, Gwen is definitely genetically gifted, but I don't see the connection, unless you mean that there are very specific families of black people who are faster than everyone else, black or white.

First, it was a response to a claim that it was not possible to be a world class sprinter without world class coaching and training. So, it was proof that it is possible to be a world class sprinter with no coaching at all.

Second, outliers say a lot about the group as a whole. How can you claim that outliers say nothing about the group as a whole? If nothing else, they show the groups maxima and minima.

Of course, genetics is important. You don't get to be the size of Shaq by working hard. You also don't get to be a successful Ethiopian marathoner by trying hard to have small bone structure.

Neither one tells you anything about how their race compares to other races genetically.

The emphasis I am trying to make is that it is not particularly useful to look at race in these things. Heck, I could argue that a combination of social, math, self-control and concentration skills are a decent analogue of intelligence. That makes the smartest person I know of Phil Ivey (Steven Hawking has a way better poker face, for what it is worth). So, that means that black people are smarter than white people.

However, I would be willing to bet that there is a direct relationship of alleles related biologically ONLY to melanin levels to IQ scores.

Even Jensen (misguided racist as he was) noted that black kids scored 1/2 to one standard deviation higher on IQ tests after he spent a small amount of time (20-30 minutes) developing rapport with them.

I cannot argue further. Well done.

To show maxima and minima, you need to demonstrate that you are including all data points. You can infer, but if you watched "Chariots of Fire" you would know that white people are the fastest people in the world. We can also jump higher.

I would be willing to bet that we do not have sufficient data to show the maxima and minima for any generally accepted racial classification on any important measure.

Of course, the most important part is that genetics do not follow a normal curve at all within a population. To simplify, either you have allele A on site X and allele B on site Y, or you don't. Knowing that one person has every favorable allele for height (and were fed sufficiently to achieve great tallness) tells me nothing about the rest of the population they are included in. I am unaware of any important specific alleles that only occur in one population/race.

It makes no coherent argument to that effect- of course there are other potential explanations, but it provides literally zero empirical evidence that any of those other reasons are correct. At best, the argument is "don't attribute it to that unless you're sure it's not something else", BUT I NEVER DID THAT, despite you strawmanning me repeatedly.

Lol wat? The only thing I attributed to slavery was hypertension, and that was (likely) selected for on the timescale of a slave ship voyage. I never attributed sprint speed to slavery, although if there's something correlated to what slave owners wanted, it could have been artificially concentrated over a few generations (not created).

Agreed, genetics are important, and singular examples are not useful in this discussion. While it may be more likely that outliers came from an 'advantaged' population given certain assumptions, without solid sample sizes you can't infer anything from them.

You can't look at a couple alleles and say 'they either have them, or they don't!' Genetic expression is far more complex than that. What happens when you combine epigenetics, environment, and classical genetics, however? You might find phenotypical variance which does accord to normal distribution. Is this variance useless to study or try to take inferences from? I don't think so, but clearly one must be very cautious in the conclusions they draw from such data.

For sure, one data point isn't useful, even if it is 'the best' given a certain definition. But I fully sympathize with your point that our definitions of 'positive' attributes are contextual in nature.

Arthur Jensen (not a 'racist' as far as I know) simply noticed something which many have: Kids are more fluid than adults. Despite training and environment, as they age, kids regress towards more static states, becoming more statistically predictable. Basically, we see some kind of developmental canalization. This is certainly the case with IQ scores, but not only IQ scores.

Selective breeding in the sense that only the strongest were able to survive the journey across the Atlantic and survive long enough to reproduce. Slave owners would then pick the strongest they could yielding concentrated populations more prone to attributes that would yield good athletes. Then for centuries, these populations were subjected to basically nothing but the hardest manual labor. That is a big part of why these populations dominate the sped events, a direct result of a sociological construct that selectively chose the strongest. Now, as noted before, there is evidence to suggest they naturally have a higher concentration of fast twitch muscle fibers.

I disagree. Artificial selection, which was prevalent in slavery, works a lot faster than natural selection. I made a post a while ago, not sure if you addressed it or not, but I'll restate it here: If whites are just as suited as blacks to play positions that required top-end speed, then why isn't a really smart coach exploiting this? Since there are so many more white people in America, and tons of white athletes, shouldn't there be a massive pool of elite white sprinters for an 'unbiased' coach to choose from? Even at the lowest levels of athletics, coaches would want to put their fastest athletes at the positions requiring the fastest athletes. Also, tons of schools have only white students. Someone is playing CB, WR, and RB on those teams. Yet these guys rarely start at those positions at D1 schools, and rarely make the NFL.

Because you're assuming that the white athletes are actually there for those positions. There may be sociological reasons why whites aren't training for those spots that have nothing to do with genetics. This is why javelin and hockey are relevant: there's absolutely nothing about being white that makes them better suited (physically/genetically) to play top-end hockey. It's entirely for sociological reasons that the NHL is dominated by whites.

So I can take your 63/64 WR's argument and run it for all sorts of WHITE dominated sports and show that the attendant conclusion that whites must have some physical (viz. genetic) attribute that explains it is absurd. There's nothing about being white that is advantageous for being a hockey goalie (or forward, or [insert position]). But there are sociological explanations.

I'm positing that sociological considerations are a much more likely explanation of the NFL observation than genetics; at least prima facie.

You seem to require a tremendous amount of evidence and data from people when they claim: "blacks are better at 100 meter dash than whites for genetic reasons"

and yet you seem to require very little evidence and data to claim "there is no genetic reason why whites are better at javelin than blacks."

This seems like a double standard to me. You should be equally skeptical of both claims and require proof/evidence equally from both.

One has a stronger default propriety than the other. It's probably because I'm coming from a position of having read some preliminary studies on this subject which indicated that there are sociological explanations.

Look at high school track . Throughout the country as a whole, whites out participate blacks by far in every single event, yet at the state and national levels, the sprinting events and fastest national times are dominated by blacks. I have competed at every level from high school through collegiate and US nationals and have seen first hand the representation of each race as you move to more elite status in the sprinting events. The more the field is thinned by ability, the fewer and fewer whites there are. The dominance of blacks at the high school level, despite being out represented by whites cannot be explained solely through sociological means. There is something innate which gives them an advantage in speed.

Durka, still waiting for an explanation of why a smart coach isn't putting those elite white sprinters at CB, WR, or RB, and having a huge advantage over the other coaches that only put the black guys there because of stereotypes. YOU DO REALIZE THAT THERE ARE ALL WHITE SCHOOLS, AND THAT THEY HAVE GUYS PLAYING CB, WR, AND RB RIGHT? AND THAT COLLEGES RECRUIT FROM THESE SCHOOLS? AND THAT, DESPITE THIS, IT'S RARE FOR A DIVISION ONE CB, RB, OR WR TO BE WHITE? I used all caps so you wouldn't miss it.

Perhaps because black kids are more motivated to choose those positions as their only viable shot at a lucrative career. Maybe the all white sources of players don't do that.