By Jon Entine. (New
York: PublicAffairs, 2000)
"White men
can't jump." Anyone raised in the US has heard that line, regularly
offered as an explanation of black dominance of professional basketball.
Why do the majority of professional athletes in the US belong to
a minority? Is it because they are biologically "superior" to the
majority population? Or is it just because sports provide a way
out of poverty? And is there a trade-off between athletic ability
and intelligence?
These are questions that are generally discussed in locker rooms.
Some people--such as Al Campanis and Jimmy "the Greek"--who have
publicly expressed opinions have lost their jobs as a result.
They are also some of the questions tackled by Jon Entine's Taboo.
Entine looks at the history of American sports and the role of
race within them, changing stereotypes about the athletic performance
of certain groups, and the role of biology as a foundation of
athletic performance. He looks at the effects of both culture
and genes, and concludes that they both play a role.
Today we take it as a given that blacks are overrepresented in
stadiums and arenas. But the integration of professional sports
occurred comparatively recently. At the beginning of the twentieth
century, many argued that blacks were physically and temperamentally
incapable of playing any sports at a professional level. In the
middle of the twentieth century, the dominant basketball players
were Jewish. As the complexion of professional athletics has changed,
so have American attitudes towards sports, and Entine chronicles
these interrelated changes.
One example of changing attitudes is intelligence, which has
always been linked to race in the popular imagination. Football
players are stupid. Everybody knows that (which, of course, is
the definition of a stereotype). And frankly, the academic performance
of most (not all) college football players is below the average
of their fellow students. But is this because they are stupid,
or because their entire "academic" careers have focused on the
gridiron, not the classroom? We do not expect football players,
whether black or white, to be scholars, and those who are are
seen as exceptional cases, worthy of newspaper articles. One hundred
years ago, the reverse was true. Football was developed in the
Ivy League to be played by gentlemen scholars. Most of them were
white, but a handful were black, and the scholar-athlete was as
powerful an icon in the black community as among whites. The library
at the school where I teach is named after one of the foremost
of these early football players, who was also class valedictorian
and went on to be a renowned singer, actor, and political activist:
Paul Robeson.
As sports have become more professionalized, athletes have been
able to earn a living. This first removed the income barrier to
participation and then made professional sports a way for a fortunate
few to join the economic elite. At the same time, the level of
play has improved steadily: If you are getting paid several million
a year, you had better be working hard, year round, to improve
your performance. Team sports, in particular, have sought out
players from the furthest corners of the earth in their quest
for talent.
As a result of these processes, professional sports, both individual
and team, have become more diverse than ever. But this diversity
has also revealed some striking patterns. Every men's running
record is held by someone of African descent. 494 of the top 500
times in the 100 m are held by men of West African descent. More
than half of the best times in long distance races are held by
East Africans. Why is this?
At the Sydney Olympics in 2000, Kip Lagat explained Kenya's dominance
in long distance racing with "It's the road signs, 'Beware of
lions.'" Is it really that simple? Does how and where you grow
up explain everything? It is certainly true that children who
grow up in western Kenya are acclimated to high altitude. Long
distance runners and other athletes regularly train at high altitudes
to boost their cardiovascular systems; it makes sense that those
raised at high altitude would have an advantage. But even those
born at high altitude may be at a disadvantage to those whose
ancestors were also born at high altitude. Kenyans, like Tibetans
and Peruvians, have been shaped by natural selection for life
at high altitude. Some of these genes may well contribute to athletic
performance as well.
Then why aren't there lots of Tibetan and Peruvian long distance
runners? They may have the physiology, but they lack the physique.
The average East African is significantly taller, skinnier, and
longer-limbed than the average Tibetan or Peruvian. And in the
marathon, no matter how efficient your lungs are at oxygenating
your blood, if you have to take many more strides than the next
guy, you are at a disadvantage. This tall and skinny build can
be traced back further than our own species can: The earliest
well preserved Homo erectus skeleton, the Nariokotome Boy,
from 1.5 million years ago, has the build of a modern Kenyan or
Tanzanian.
Of course, very few African Americans can trace their ancestry
to the eastern part of the continent, which was not a major source
for the slave trade. This leads to one of the most difficult scientific
issues that Taboo has to deal with: It addresses the high
performance of "black" athletes, while at the same time recognizing
that "black," as defined in the US, is not a biologically meaningful
category. The population of Africa is far more variable genetically
than that of any other continent. Most American blacks are descended
from a mix of West Africans, Europeans, and Native Americans.
Entine recognizes this point, and discusses the differences between
East and West Africans at some length. But when talking about
sports in the US, he has little choice but to use the traditional
racial categories. Recently, a similar debate has occurred within
medicine, where doctors are becoming sensitive to "racial" differences
in disease prevalence and treatment at the same time as racial
categories are falling into scientific disrepute.
By contrast with East Africans, many West Africans have body
proportions better suited to sprinting. Below the skin, many also
exhibit muscular characteristics ideal for anaerobic activities,
where the muscles are working as rapidly as possible for a very
brief time. I find the scientific evidence less secure here than
I would like, and I would love to see future studies that looked
at the physiologies of different populations from different regions
of Africa and elsewhere, both to document the distribution of
these traits and provide some evidence as to what evolutionary
processes have led to this distribution.
Entine is a journalist, not an academic, which has positive and
negative consequences. He writes well, and I found Taboo
an easy, fluent read. He ties together history, sociology, anthropology,
and genetics, which few scholars trained in one specific field
would try. As a specialist in one of those fields, at times I
wished he had a more solid background in that subject in particular--but
then again, any specialist would probably wish the same of any
journalist. He documents his case with thorough footnotes, but
his evidence is sometimes anecdotal, drawing from both scientific
studies of specific questions and more general observations.
On the whole, the balance works well, and I think anyone who
reads Taboo with no preconceptions will be at least partially
convinced. There are clear genetic differences between elite athletes
in different sports and the rest of the world, and at least some
of the traits conducive to athletic success are more common in
some populations than in others. Does this explain everything?
Not at all. To succeed as a world-class athlete, an individual
needs to have a body that is capable of success, and a mind that
is focused on it. Genetics can explain the first, but not the
second. As Entine writes, "Certainly no individual athlete can
succeed without considerable dedication and sport smarts, but
the pool of potential success stories is far larger among certain
populations."
Sports are based upon differences in individual performance,
and we recognize that some people are born with physiques better
suited to certain sports than others. We do not expect to see
an Ituri pygmy succeed at any major sport, because of his or her
small stature. Is this racist? No. Given the current style of
play in professional basketball, it is unlikely that the Chinese
will ever win Olympic gold, despite the huge population they have
to draw from, because a vanishingly small percentage of the Chinese
population is seven feet tall. Is this racist? No. Everyone can
see that height is an important trait in basketball, and it is
obvious that different populations have different average heights.
Why should other physical and physiological traits which are not
as visible superficially be any different?
Does this take anything away from the success of Michael Jordan,
or Tiger Woods? Not in the least. They are not superstars because
they are black; they are superstars because they are wonderful
athletes. They were born with several genetic differences from
me. Some of these genes clearly affect their athletic performance--no
matter how hard I might practice, I simply do not have their raw
athletic talent--and some do not. Does skin color itself affect
their performance? No, but in American society it is more important
than any other genetic trait. Perhaps this will change eventually,
but the fact that Taboo needed to be written, and the contentious
response it has received, demonstrate that it has not yet.
--Alec Christensen
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