How about forum posting, that could be a pretty good sport. Just gotta figure out how to keep score.

The fact that you totally ignore the obvious physiological differences between different "races" of people shows that it is you who lack the mental capacity to understand even the most basic facts of life. Just because someone points out that different races have specific physical, mental and psychological predispositions in no way gives anyone the right to call them a Nazi. I would submit that it is you who have the problem. I do believe that these difference have been wrongly used in the past and in the present to unfairly subjugate members of those ethnic groups who have been targets of hate-speech and genocide. But everyone who points out these differences or asks questions about is not a Nazi or a skin-head or a white supremacist. Face it...there are differences. Ethnic differences...cultural differences...racial differences and individual differences. These differences should be celebrated and taken advantage of to their full potential. To ignore them on a closed-minded "everyone is a nazi" basis is just like walking blindfolded through a mine field. Sooner or later you're gonna step in something you're not gonna like.

I agree, slone.

Me three.

Ok, so after reading all of 531's articles (very good stuff...I think I'll look for that book in my library), one might think that the East Africans could be competitive in cycling if they had the resources and the desire to do so. They certainly excel at endurance events, but a few problems are in the way. For one, cycling is expensive. Their economy may or may not be coming along, but those sorts of things seem to take a long time to develop. Secondly, cycling is not exactly the sexiest sport out there. I mean, they are on top of the endurance running game and I'm talking out of my ass here, but it doesn't seem like there is more money in cycling than there is in endurance running. What would be their motivation to choose cycling over running?

The last issue is what I'd like to ask you guys about. Do you think their advantages in running would translate to cycling? Certainly their metabolic advantages would be a benefit to them, but how different are the demands of cycling from the demands of running? Would successful body types for these two sports be a little different? Sprinting and climbing seem to have a bit of an anaerobic aspect to them, do they not? Would their average lack of anaerobic power hurt them on the hills and in close finishes?

DX,
That is one part of cycling the East Africans may have a problem with. Not only does cycling require aerobic capability, but also alot of strength, especially when dragging your bike up large hills. So, that was kind of what I was wondering in the beginning as to whether or not they may be able to be a very competitive force in Pro cycling in the near future, as those nations slowly emerge from third world status.

I think as caucasians, the physical makeup may just be the right balance of physical frame size, muscle mass, and cardio-vascular capability to allow caucasians to essentially provide the very few that can excel well beyond the norms of what other ethnic backgrounds can provide.

The money issue is also one that I raised earlier. To set up a Pro team takes some pretty pennies, and even most mid-sized American companies don't like to flip the bill for such a heavy expense in a sport that does not have the popularity of other major sports.
I guess, all we can do, is just wait and see.

Slone, there are NO obvious physiological differences between so-called races of people. I challenge anyone on this forum to produce any scientific evidence whatsover to support this view. It's one thing to classify a group of people on the basis of some minor inherited characteristic (e.g., skin color). It's quite another to credit them with some genetic advantage or disadvantage based on that classification. Within the human species there is no legitimate biological reason to classify anyone on the basis of so-called "race". This is the standard scientific view. And, yes, it IS racism to make the false claim that one national group has superior genetics to excel in a particular sport. There should be no tolerance for racism on this forum!

Poppaspoke, go read the links 531Aussie posted eariler. You'll find what you're looking for.

Did anyone catch the Olympic 400m final this year. Some crazy white guy ignored all the 'black guys are better than white guys' rhetoric and won the gold medal. I hope someone puts a stop to that kinda thing happening again in the future. Its bad for stigmas and generalisation.

Ever heard of pygmies?



Dude. When someone starts spouting racist comments I'll be sure you are the first to know about it. Until then, go back under the covers and keep telling yourself that you're a good person and people like you. Ask alanbikehouston if he'll join you.

Just as a side note that nobody cares about....

I lived in a Mayan village for a week and a half last winter, and at about 5'6" I was one of the tallest people there. It was really strange to be "tall"....maybe even more strange than speaking Spanish, living in a stick house with thatched roofs and satellite TV, and taking showers out of a bucket.

Oh no....he's back.

I think Alan & Poppaspoke should re-read the original question. It is a fair one. Adaptation to certain climates, terain, etc. could lead to advantages in specific areas of sport. Also, is it being implied that anyone willing to propose such a discussion is evil, along the lines of a Nazi? That idea seems to lean more toward fascist control than others.

do you think you're the only one who's bothered to read those articles?

Darts

I'll betcha Will Smith would spank George Wallace in one-on-one basketball.

You have just stated Hitler's racial theory, almost word for word.

Hitler's racial theory consisted of two points, both of which are false, and both of which are at the root of most of the conflicts, wars, and violence in human history.

1. DIFFERENT RACES: Hitler claimed each human can be classified as fitting neatly into one of several DIFFERENT distinct races. In fact, there is ONLY one race of human beings. We all belong to precisely the same race. That only race of humans originated in Africa, and we humans migrated from Africa to Europe, Asian, and then to the Americas, beginning around 100,000 years ago (mere "minutes" ago in terms of the "hours" that the primate family has been on Earth). We are all "Africans", and today, we Africans have populated the entire planet.

2. SPECIFIC PHYSICAL, MENTAL, AND PSYCHOLOGICAL PREDISPOSITONS: Hitler's primarily goal: after first creating the lie that "distinct" sub-races of humans exist, Hitler sought to convince his gullible followers that these imaginary races have "specific physical, mental, and psychological predispositions".

If a person believes there are more than one race of humans, that the same person is likely to think that it is possible to "rank" those races as "superior" or "inferior" regarding "specific physical, mental, and psychological predispositions".

The concept that the human race can be divided into "sub-races" was invented by Johann Blumenbach in 1795. He invented the word "Caucasian" to describe pale skinned Europeans, and then claimed that his imaginary "Caucasian" race was superior to the darker skinned people of the world. His theories were used to justify slavery, and to justify the oppression of the people of Africa and Asian by Europeans.

Blumenbach used physical characteristics to invent several races, primarily skin color. However, Blumenbach was not a well traveled man. Had he traveled, he would have learned that his imaginary "race" of dark skinned people included not only many Africans, but would also include hundreds of millions of people in South India, Bangladish, and South East Asia. If brown skinned people are a race, than many Africans, Mexicans, Japanese, and people from Northern India, Egypt, and Southern Italy would be part of the "brown" race.

How about using "genetic" differences? If the gene for resistance to Malaria defines a "race", then Greeks, Yemenites, Thais and Dinkas would be part of the "Malaria resistent" race. If the "gene" for being more than seven feet tall is a race, then Yao Ming and Hakeem Olajuwon belong in the same race. We could invent the "big nose" race, the "small feet" race, the "freckles" race", or any other "race" imaginable, using any of the many variations in human appearance.

Any randomly chosen human being shares about 99.8% of his genes with any other particular randomly chosen human. If a comparison is done between the TOTAL gene makeup of two randomly selected African-Americans, the genetic difference between the two African-Americans is likely to be GREATER than the difference between a randomly selected African-American and a randomly selected Anglo-American.

That means that Malcom X may have been closer in his total gene profile to George Wallace than he was to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. And, it also means that when an African-American gets an organ donation from someone outside his immediate family, the closest genetic match will probably be an "Anglo", not an African-American.

Nothing good can ever result from pre-judging any person's abilities based on ethnic stereotypes, racial stereotyping or pseudo-scientific "genetic theory". Only the people who have been the victim of "genetic" and "racial" stereotyping, can fully understand the pain inflicted by treating someone differently based on their skin color.

When I was in fourth grade, the school board thought I was African-American, and assigned me to what they called a "Coloureds Only" school. In 5th grade, the school board decided I was white, and assigned me to what they called a "Whites Only" school. A German/Irish/Scottish/African-American/Cherokee blend was beyond the school board's simple-minded efforts to define, and then separate, races of children.

Every human being is unique. Each has a combination of skin tone, eye color, hair color hair texture, bone density, and height that adds up to someone different than their father, brother, cousin, or neighbor. Likewise, their combination of talent and interest for mathematics, art, music, literature, engineering, or leadership adds up to someone a bit different than anyone else.

What is the value of taking one unique individual, labeling him as the member of a "race", and then predicting what he will accomplish based on stereotypes about his alleged race? If you want to know what any person can achieve, simply give him a level playing field, and then watch him succeed or fail as a person, and not as the representative of his assigned racial classification
.

If you got mugged by a guy with white skin,blue eyes and blonde hair would you find it racist to tell the police he was caucasian? Is the NBA racist for hiring predominantly black players, who are genetically predisposed to be taller than average? I'm not a big fan of racism, but trying to have a dialoogue about it and burning crosses are two VERY different things, just as genetics and eugenics are. Smoke a little grass, chicken little.

Good essay. I pose this question though. If the human race as we know it originated in Africa, then why do we have different skin colors, and so many different traits between different "societies"? What caused the change? What else did it change? That's the question being posed. We are all unique, but not so unique as to change the fact that we all have brains, hearts, circulatory systems, etc. To ignore how different environments affect our genetic patterns is an extreme injustice to us as a whole. There may be one or two, because there always is, but for the most part I don't think anybody disagrees with you that racism is wrong. You're just very radical. One side says we're categorically different. You're saying we're all exactly the same. Two sides of a coin. There's a middle ground somewhere between the two perceived radical truths.

I don't think early man in his venture from Africa hit Asia and said to one another, "you have this skin color so you go East, you have this skin color so you go North, etc. It's pretty safe to assume (as it's still theory), that genetically, the cro-magnon man that left Africa shared many of the same genetic traits, derived from the same gene pool, and devoid of the vast mutations, that the extreme changes in environment would cause.

The idea that man originated in Africa is still only "theory". It's speculated that cro-magnon man led to the downfall of the neanderthal. So, the Norwegian is "exactly" the same as the Kenyan? Both originated from cro-magnon. According to you, that's a fundamental truth. Or rather, are Scandinavians unique within a certain gene pool?

Yeah, we focus on the immediately obvious too much. I'll agree with that statement. I think this question has asked not what each "race" is predisposed to genetically, but rather what each "society" is. If our physical appearance can be affected be genes, then is it not a good question to ask about what else is different.

Why do blacks have a higher percentage of sickle cell than whites (or can I use the terms negro and caucasian)?? Only through a discovery of where and why it existed in the first place can it be cured, or we can wait the thousands and thousands of years for it to be genetically mutated out. That discovery will only come from first asking the question, what is different.

Actually, there are small physiological differances found in the skeletal and muscle fiber between the differant ethnic groups. As shown in earlier posts, it was found that generally blacks have a much higher percentage of the faster reacting muscle fibers which allows for much faster agility, thus the best sprinters are usually black. I could care a less if the guy is green with orange polka-dots, their physiology is slighlty differant. If it is not, then why do we all look differant? If there were no differances in our make-up, then we'd all be clones. We'd all look like alanbikehouston. (Sorry, I just had to).
As with any sport there is always the exception to the rule. The white guy who won the gold medal is of course one of the rare competitors who happen to have the ability to do so. But, out of the hundreds upon hundreds of gold medals awarded over the last 2 decades, very few, if any, were of white athletes for sprinting.

well, keep saying that there are no differences Alan, keep denying the obvious.

What about skin color?

Are you going to tell us next that skin color does not vary generally between ethnic groups?

Are there advantages to different skin colors? Yep. Or does that one "not count" because Hitler was bad?

CL

I dare you to read those articles I posted

Oi 531,

can you summarise this thread for me?.....I'm too lazy to read it....then maybe I can contribute something like....."i'm genetically predisposed to drink beer"...does that count?

hitchy

Well, I've been a bit lazy too, so I haven't read every post -- some of them are REALLY long.
Told ya that Geneman was smart; I especially liked his story about his pet rock.

Seems the original question was something about black athletes of East African descent (Ethiopia, esp) being any good at road riding if they really tried, but the "discussion" has morphed (typically) into
an argument about racial steroetypes, with some people unwilling to concede that there are any
physiological differences at all between people from different continents.

I plan on getting into it later, and post a long, referenced message that will hopefully
convince some of the less scientific types here to maybe, slightly alter their views.

531Aussie, the "racial stereotyping" promoted by your favorite websites are the same sorts of stereotypes that infected Australia in the past, and were used to justify the murder of thousands of native men, women, and children. Classifying people as members of superior and inferior races gave rise to the Australian "final solution" with the goal of eliminating the native people of Australia.

Johann Blumenbach invented, and named the "Caucasian" race in 1795, and held that Africans belonged to a different race that was physically superior to "Caucasians", but whose group constituted a lesser form of human being. Blumenbach claimed that Caucasians were the most intelligent race, and therefore had a duty to rule over the lesser races.

Many folks on this forum have openly endorsed the theory that distinct and separate races of humans exist, and have endorsed the claim that the so-called "African" race is physically superior. It is rare for someone to buy the first two parts of Blumenbach's racial doctrine without also endorsing the third part: in non-physical enterprises, "Caucasians" are the superior race.

The same folks who say that genetics, not hard work, gets the "credit" for the achievements of African-American athletes, will, after a few pints of truth serum, also claim that genetics, not racism, explains why African-Americans are over-represented in prisons, under-represented among university students and under-represented among upper management in large American corporations. "Genetics" becomes the eternal justification for the ongoing oppression of people defined as belonging to racial minority groups.

The following links to the Australian Kooriweb.org site connect to articles detailing the human cost of Australia's venture into "racial classification". One of the articles depicts the similarities and relationship between the racial policies of the Australian government during the 1930's and the racial policies of Nazi Germany.

No person who carefully reads the articles at Kooriweb.org detailing how genetic and racial stereotyping caused the murder of thousands of Australia's native people, and resulted in the exile of the survivors into the Outback could make a flippant remark about the survivors being "aborigines...having a body type that is ideally suited to the Australian Outback".


www.kooriweb.org/foley/essays/essay_8.html

www.kooriweb.org

https://www.kooriweb.org/foley/images...ns/toon15.html

https://www.kooriweb.org/foley/images...ns/toon24.html