"Shall we make the usual bet?"
The author’s premise is that most sprinting records are held by people of West African descent....but how many of these record holders actually grew up in West Africa?
Very few.
Most elite sprinters may be of West African descent; but, they live on the American continents. Why is this important? Nobody really likes to talk about it; but, slave holders in the Americas essentially ‘bred’ their slaves, for a couple hundred years, to be big, tall, and strong. I know its not polite to talk about it; but, it happened.
For starters, the slave traders picked the largest and most powerful from Africa, to ship over to the US. Would you pay top dollar for Spike Lee? Nope...so no use shipping him over. Shaq, on the other hand, would bring top dollar...so he gets shipped to he America’s.
And every other step in the slave trade would be similar, with a further weeding out of the small and weak, until the plantation was filled with large powerful slaves.
Ergo, blacks in the US, and all throughout America, are more likely to be big, strong, and athletic. The same holds true for why modern cattle is larger than they were 200 years ago, or why people are able to breed really fast horses. Again, I know its impolite; and, I may be having a Jimmy the Greek moment...but its still true.
As far as swimming goes...the US team did have a black swimmer, named Cullen Jones. I think we will be seeing more and more black swimmers in the future. The reason there aren’t more right now? Here I go again: top level swimmers are usually the result of years of training, which include having mom or dad getting up real early in the morning, to drive the aspiring swimmer to practice. Also, it usually consists of multiple weekends, on the road, driving hundreds of miles to some meet. Culturally, I see this as more possible in a two parent household (I know Phelps is a notable exception). Its just easier for a stay at home parent to make the time committment to swimming, than a single mom...which is the situation most black kids in this nation find themselves.
Also, you don’t see a lot of African-American distance runners. The East African runners tend to have tooth-picks for legs.
"Shall we make the usual bet?"
And yet he is here.
Menial agricultural work does not require unusual size or strength - any ablebodied person can do it, since it was the main occupation of 90+% of ablebodied humans for the past few thousand years.
There is zero record of slaveholders intentionally breeding humans for traits, but there are extensive records kept by those same slaveholders of their progress in breeding livestock and plants.
An interesting corollary is that it appears that many ancient civilizations bred for intelligence.
I believe that this technology, purposeful breeding, allowed some groups to rapidly raise the average IQ in a few generations. This IQ advantage allowed the birth of empires with accompanying advances in science, warfare, the arts, and organization.
Kinda the opposite of what we are currently seeing as we ignore genetics and stagger on to Idiocracy.
Excellent posting of yours at #28!
I have personal knowledge of your example regarding the swimmers and it does require many hours of early morning training and weekend trips to swim meets by the athletes and their parents.