Life
Fact or fiction? 6 myths black people believe about themselves
theGRIO REPORT – There are some within the black community that are believed and continuously passed down. Read to see of these six are fact and which are fiction…
Black men are naturally athletic
More than 80 percent of the National Basketball Association and over 60 percent of the National Football League are made up of black players. Blacks hold every major running record in the world, according to Jon Entine in an article about why race matters in sports. He adds boxing to the list of sports black men dominate as well.
One theory is that black men are just naturally athletic, and can dominate most sports without additional effort.
Is this fact or fiction?
Fact, depending on the sport.
Through research on his book, Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We’re Afraid to Talk About It, and collaboration with experts on the topic, Entine makes the case that it is less about race and more about environment and ethnicity.
In the book, he explains the athletic features of particular ethnic groups:
People of West-African descent are superior in speed and jumping. With more fast-twitch fibers than other groups, muscles can contract faster and more powerfully. The athletes’ small, efficient lungs lend itself to sprinting as well.
“The best whites and Asians cannot jump as high as elite African-American athletes,” Entine says.
However, these characteristics make athletes of West-African descent less effective at endurance sports, and with their lower body fat, less buoyant when swimming.
On the other hand, East Africans win more than half of the top endurance races, and have more slow-twitch fibers, which contract for longer periods of time, and have lung capacities and a metabolism for longer races.
Whites of Eurasian backgrounds have more upper body strength and dominate in weight lifting and shotput.
And, East Asians excel at diving, ice skating and gymnastics due to an inherent predisposition for flexibility.
Black anthropologist William Montague Cobb suggested in 1939 that black Americans are physically superior due to the difficult physical trials throughout history in order to survive as a population.
“From this standpoint the black person is the most highly selected stock in America, physically strong, showing great endurance at strenuous labor under severe climactic and nutritional hardships and producing a disproportionately large number of champions in representative fields of athletics.”
Conclusion: While black men dominate certain sports, namely basketball, football, boxing and track, Entine points out that whites still dominate the majority of athletics, especially winter sports. So, it is fact that black men are genetically programmed to excel in those specific sports. However, this fact is not generalizable to all sports.
