ThisIsIt wrote:
Slowman wrote:
ThisIsIt wrote:
i would look to access first, genetics second, when asking why black people do well or poorly at a particular activity. if you ask black people - and i've asked a lot of them - why they don't swim in greater numbers, a lot of black people actually think they are predisposed against swimming, genetically. "i sink". there were 3 black people, entirely, on our rio olympic team, in water polo and swimming. all 3 walked with gold medals.
Well something is either true or it's not. There are either genes that confer advantage in certain sports (and perhaps other activities) that are unevenly distributed across populations or there aren't. Just because some people draw bad conclusions from that doesn't make it any less true.
I'm not arguing access doesn't matter, it certainly matters immensely for most sports. But that can matter and so can genetics. I could see how access could explain something like a dearth of African Americans participating in cycling or swimming, I have a harder time seeing how it would explain a lack of whites, etc. participating in sprinting track and field events.
as the president of our industry association in triathlon, this question of diversity has been an important, almost consuming, one for me. so i've traveled around, meeting with (for example) black leaders in triathlon, and what i come up with is that "we don't swim". it's not genetic. it's cultural. it's historical. that explains the lack of black swimmers. but it's not that black people just do nothing. they do things other than swim. and what i hear is that the promise that attaches to success in a major sport is why black kids flock to football, basketball, baseball in place of swimming. much more so, and more ardently, than white kids. football in the fall, track in the spring.
likewise, distance running is the ticket out for east africans living in the rift valley. but are they actually more genetically predisposed to distance running? or, did it start with abebe bikila and kip keino living at 6000 feet, with the habit of running as a means of conveyance, one thing leading to another, and here we are?
in cases like this, we attach a built-in predisposition to the cluster of activity around a cohort. jews can't be sprinters and ethiopians can't be CEOs, because they're acting against their genetic predisposition? because ethiopians aren't smart, like jews are? see how easy that is? does that exercise usually end well?
matthew boling and simone manual are my exhibits 1 and 2, but the onus is not on me to prove white people can sprint and that black people can swim. wiser to exhaust the access argument before latching onto genetic predisposition.
Dan Empfield
aka Slowman