9 ms·

Is it wrong to note 100m winners are always black?

120 points by trustfundbaby 15y ago

deleted 15y ago
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Lukeas14 15y ago
This phenomenon has nothing to do with being black but everything to do with genetics. The defining characteristics of world class sprinters is not the fact that they're black but is rather attributed to either genes passed down from their ancestors or their own genetic mutations. My theory is that if we traced the family trees of top sprinters we'd find that many are descendants of slaves who were bred to be bigger, faster and stronger.
- hackinthebochs 15y ago
  I think this is a stretch. I don't think there was enough selective pressure to really cause that much of a change in gene distribution in such a short period. Furthermore, unless the mutations for being "bigger, faster" were novel to the slave population, there is no reason to think that any breeding practices would have had any meaningful influence. What is more likely is that genes for excelling at sprinting probably came from the same area of Africa.
  - Lukeas14 15y ago
    I certainly don't believe that any "bigger, faster" mutations are novel to the slave population as they can occur within any group of people. But through breeding these mutations are likely to be more prevalent in the target population. This explains why the 400m race can be dominated by blacks but Jeremy Wariner (white guy) can still be the fastest. If that were true you would see similar numbers of sprinters from West Africa. If your last point were true we would see world class sprinters coming out of one of the West African nations. I can't think of any.
tokenadult 15y ago
It appears, based on the interesting submitted article, that it would be more informative to report about 100 meter dash winners where they trained, and who their coaches were. Much the same could be said about marathon winners, who tend to train in a different part of the world. After edit: the kind first reply to my comment here mentions a possible study design for looking at what might influence athletic success among athletes from one place or another. A "genetically sensitive" design for such a study would have to consider quite a few other issues, not least actual individual genes, which have been surprisingly neglected in genetic research over the years. (Rather than actually looking at genes of each individual in a study, which continues to be a generally expensive and occasionally error-prone enterprise, most previous genetic studies of human behavioral characteristics have been based on proxy assemblages of genes, by studying closely related family members, or in the best cases monozygotic twins.) Readers who haven't seen this pair of links before, which I share fairly often here on HN because they are by world famous human behavioral geneticists, may be surprised by what they learn from reading about what twin studies can and cannot say about genetic influences on human behavior. http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/Articles%20for%20Online%20CV/Turkheimer%20(2008).pdf http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/Articles%20for%20O... http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/Articles%20for%20Online%20CV/Johnson%20(2009).pdf http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/Articles%20for%20O... Meanwhile other readers have commented, and tying in what I've written (and linked to) above to what several comments here say, a common fallacy comes from assuming that "race" (as socially defined in one place or another) has anything much at all to do with what genes one would find in a particular individual. Serious geneticists are actually some of the leading scientists in suggesting that in medicine, law, and education we should pay less attention to "race" than formerly, to avoid inherent cognitive biases in explaining individual differences.
- geuis 15y ago
  You're right, but that's only part of the extended question. If most 100m runners are from a tiny part of the world, it would be interesting to do biological studies to see if the people living there have different genetics that let them become better runners. Your control in this type of study would be to put non-locals under the same lifestyle and training as how the winners live and see how they perform.
techiferous 15y ago
On a side note, this also shows how ineffective resumes are at connecting employees and employers. If you repeated the same experiment with github accounts, perhaps less bias would show up.
- SoftwareMaven 15y ago
  I wish I believed that geeks were above generalizing based on names, but I have no doubt if your github user name was "Tyrone" or "RapDaddy", you could run into similar issues. I do think you would have less discrimination that way, though. I bet you could accomplish similar things if resumes focused less on names and more on accomplishments.
  - techiferous 15y ago
    And also, with github, you are looking at actual code produced instead of making assumptions about the quality of code produced based on bullet points. Closer to facts.
- deleted 15y ago
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TomOfTTB 15y ago
This seems to confuse two different issues and in doing so leads to the wrong conclusion. The author seems to conclude it's wrong to think race is responsible for so many 100m winners being black because the assumption is erroneous. But only through making and testing that erroneous assumption (as the author did) are we able to determine it has nothing to do with skin color and more to do with a specific geographical heritage. So I disagree with the author on that point. He then tries to tie that to a study that shows "black names" on resumes are 50% less likely to get call backs from potential employers. But those employers who discriminate are making an assumption they've clearly not tested (that people are worse employees based on their skin color) So the real issue here is people who don't test their conclusions and there's nothing wrong with drawing an initial conclusion as long as you test it against actual facts.
- hackinthebochs 15y ago
  I'm trying to understand the relevance of the point you're making. While your point is true, it seems largely technical and irrelevant to real world actions. It's not like your average person will out and do a test to see if their biases have a real world basis. The more practical takeaway is that we should attempt to not form these biases in the first place.
  - phillmv 15y ago
    >While your point is true, it seems largely technical and irrelevant to real world actions. Hah! I think you're describing about 80% of content of sites like HN ;).
  - TomOfTTB 15y ago
    A bias is defined as a conclusion that is held unfairly. The only way to determine if a conclusion is held unfairly is to evaluate it and evaluating a conclusion requires drawing that conclusion in the first place. The relevance is the author is saying "Don't draw race based conclusions because they are unfair by definition". But if you prevent yourself from drawing the conclusion you can't evaluate it. Put in more human terms: People who are afraid of being called racist can't be intellectually honest. Also, just to make the point, racism tends to flourish when people who aren't racist avoid such questions. Right now the most potent rallying point for racists is "The government doesn't want you to know white people are superior". This claim seems to hold weight to people because most scientists are afraid to do race based studies. So by not disproving the racists assumption we actually strengthen it.
nkurz 15y ago
It's a fine and thoughtful article, but I'm not sure that I see the logical fallacy. Assuming that this success is driven by genes rather than environment, there is a rather obvious inference to make - black people are naturally better sprinters than white people. But here's the thing. This inference is not merely false - it is logically flawed. If we assume that sprinting performance is genetic (and realizing that there are lots of other factors), and we assume that the best 100m sprinters are consistently black (realizing that "black" may or may not be a clearly defined genetic category), is it really a fallacy to say that black people are better sprinters? Logically, so long as the prevalence of winners is greater than the percentage of the population defined as black, I would think it has to follow. The winning sprinters are also strong, lean, and young. Would it be a fallacy to say that "strong, lean and young runners make better sprinters"? The obvious fallacy is to conclude that all blacks are better sprinters. But it feels like the article goes far beyond this, and wants to redefine "better" as incompatible with "more likely to excel". And pointing out that Americans and Jamaicans tend to excel seems to run counter to the part where he asks us to assume that the success is driven by genes. Hmm. His book "Bounce" sounds interesting, though. I've requested it from the library. And oddly, I found 4 year old version of essentially the same article (minus the reference to resumes, adding reference to "yellow" domination at table tennis, and advertising a different book) here: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article2189194.ece http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_co...
- pkulak 15y ago
  The problem is in the sample size. You can't draw any conclusions from testing a few dozen or hundred self-selected people out of 7 billion. The author does essentially say just that, just in many more words.
- yummyfajitas 15y ago
  ...is it really a fallacy to say that black people are better sprinters? Yes. Data on the Olympics gives very little information on whether the average black person is a better sprinter than the average white person. It is not, however, a fallacy to say that it is highly likely that the next top sprinter will be black. (If anyone disagrees with this claim, I'm willing to offer good odds on the race of the next Olympic sprinter medalists.) Honestly, I'm finding the author's exposition to be rather confused. He seems to conflate two logically distinct propositions ("the best $x come from group $Y" and "a random $y in $Y has a higher probability of outperforming a random $z in $Z") for reasons I can't fathom.
cperciva 15y ago
The author draws the wrong conclusions from the CV experiment. He claims that it shows a bias against black candidates; in reality, what it shows is a bias against "black" names. Names are really powerful. The same is true of email addresses; how many people here can honestly say that they would treat an email from purpledinosaur28@aol.com the same way as they treat an email from john.smith@gmail.com?
- BCM43 15y ago
  Please explain your point further, because it seems to me you are equating "black" names with cheesy email addresses.
  - cperciva 15y ago
    Names say something about the people who pick them. Yes, race; but also education, socioeconomic level, and community. The black population of the US is heavily weighted towards poor education and poverty, so when people think of "typical black names" they're often thinking of typical poor uneducated black names.
    - ldd- 15y ago
      Key difference . . . names are chosen by a person's parents, while email addresses are chosen by a person for themselves. Focusing on the name, which the person can't control, instead of on the person's accomplishments (resume), which the person can absolutely control, would seem to be an indicator of bias. I don't think your point holds up.
      - cperciva 15y ago
        You don't think that your parents' income or education level has an effect on your later success? And sure, it would be better to ignore names and focus on a resume -- but people rely on subconscious cues all the time. If your only goal is to find good candidates as quickly as possible, a subconscious cue which is usually correct works to your advantage -- whether it's "people with degrees from Harvard are stuck-up snobs", "people who write their resumes in LaTex are good coders", or "people with weird names like 'jewyl' are useless".
freshrap6 15y ago
Putting labels on people or stereotyping is never an effective way to measure their skill or the importance of their accomplishment. It seems that either one of these gives us the ability to quickly make a "informed" decision about someone without having to dive deeply in the matter. This doesn't make it right, and in my experience leads you to make incorrect assumptions more often than not.
truthout 15y ago
I'm certain many of you have no formal experience in the sciences, ie. biological sciences. It is unfortunate, since in my opinion it is the basis of an education. It is the basis of the understanding of the world. As such, one may want to inform you that over the last few years there has been considerable progress in evolutionary biology. We have discovered various genes that are statistically significant with intelligence. We have discovered evidence that certain hominids bred with indigenous european hominids (ie. neanderthals). And that certain humans have no neanderthal admixture (Africans). The IQ debate has been a consistent force in pseudo-intellectual circles. I'm sure many of you wish to voice an opinion on it, that it isn't hereditary. This viewpoint has pretty much fallen out of fashion and has been replaced with a more practical understanding of the biology. Humans aren't the same, and genes make us different. To understand why we're different you have to understand evolutionary biology, and selective pressures. Selective pressures exist on the organism as a consequence of the environment to select for the most fit organism in that environment. When you alter an environment, you alter the selective pressures on survival. This is why we have diversity. The fact is that genes code for certain functions in the body. Speed would be a result of numerous genes - probably both nuclear and mitochondrial - that regulate muscle contraction and energy metabolism. Other genes code for neural pathways, dopamine transport systems, energy metabolism. No two humans are the same. We're both our genes, and the expression of our genes. When people say that IQ or speed is not fully hereditary, that it's environmental, what they are inferring is that we express our genes differently based on our environment. The truth is that your environment is causing your genes to produce less optimal speed or intelligence, by altering the expression(1 or 0 in computer terms) of those genes. Genes can be turned on and off depending on different signaling pathways and interactions between them. So, yes, sprinting is hereditary - as is IQ.
dredmorbius 15y ago
That's a poorly written/reasoned article. Draw a set of circles. The big one is all humans. The little one is 100m finalists. Outside the finalists, you're drawing two concentric circles. The smaller of the two is Nandi. The larger is sub-Saharan Africans, or what much of the world refers to as "black". First: yes, all 100m winners are "black". More specifically, they're among the better Nandi runners. But as we're noting, Nandis are a proper subset of sub-Saharan Africans, or blacks. So ... yes, the first inference ("100m winners are black") is accurate, just not complete. The other interesting thing to note is this: humanity originated in Africa, and migrated from there to the rest of the planet in successive waves. Genetic diversity within Africa is greater than in the rest of the planet. For the most part / as a general rule. You'll find this is typically true of origin / diaspora populations, human, animal, vegetable, or even technological. So: yes, there's considerable genetic variation among various populations. There's more in Africa. And, at least based on empirical evidence, if you want to be a good sprint runner, it's a considerable benefit to have ancestry that traces to a specific valley in Kenya. As to considering all "Blacks" to be genetically uniform or similar: no, that's not valid. The other discussions of the article are largely red herrings.
- onan_barbarian 15y ago
  A quibble: Nandi runners from Kenya are distance runners, not 100m sprinters.
  - dredmorbius 15y ago
    Fair point. I didn't fact-check the article, but was thinking earlier "hrm ... aren't Kenyans known more for distance running than sprinting?". Despite specific characteristics, my point about genetic diversity within African populations as a whole should stand.
- deleted 15y ago
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taariqlewis 15y ago
As a young black boy, growing up, in the Caribbean, I always came dead last in my races. sigh
latch 15y ago
I used to be curious about why it seemed like most baseball pitchers and quarterbacks (though certainly not all!) are white. What could it be, genetically, socially or culturally that would make white people have better arms? I stopped asking because people thought it was racist. It always baffled me.
- SageRaven 15y ago
  Anyone remember the NFL spoof video "We Are Kickers" that Saturday Night Live did in the 80's poking fun at kickers being of a certain ethnicity? I want to say middle-eastern, but I can't remember for sure. If I followed the sport at all, I'd probably know. I tried to find it on Youtube, but couldn't. Anyway, it seems that certain ethnic groups have long been perceived to gravitate towards certain athletic functions.
- mattdeboard 15y ago
  They probably thought it was racist because the thing that makes a great quarterback (for example) isn't just an incredible arm. There are many more factors that go into it, and I'd wager the reason so many black quarterbacks get weeded out at the collegiate level is because their superior physical prowess is better utilized in other positions that rely more on speed, power, explosiveness, etc. I mean, you've got a guy like Peyton Manning for example. He's not an athletic guy relative to other NFL players, but historically he has this incredible hand-eye coordination and mind for the strategy of the game. No one was going to look at Manning and say, "Hey you know, you have a great arm and are frighteningly smart at this game, but we could use your slow clumsy ass at running back." To me quarterbacks and pitchers specialize into that position because oftentimes their other physical gifts don't even come close to their arms. In other words, I'm pretty sure there are plenty of black QBs out there in high school football teams who have the potential to be just as great as Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, etc., but coaches are going to want the speed and power elsewhere.
  - trustfundbaby 15y ago
    Thats's the first explanation for it that has actually made sense to me. good one.
dbrannan 15y ago
A relevant article: http://www.newstatesman.com/200009180009 http://www.newstatesman.com/200009180009
jamesrcole 15y ago
irrespective of the article's content, that's a poor title: of course there's nothing wrong to simply note it.
waffle_ss 15y ago
I don't disagree with his conclusion, but the article is just a puff piece with a link to his book at the end, in which he "...debunks many cherished myths" including "that we are restricted by our genetic make-up". "Our tendency to generalise rests on a deeper fallacy - the idea that 'black' refers to a genetic type. We put people of dark skin in a box labelled black and assume that a trait shared by some is shared by all." I'm no geneticist, but I wonder then how the author would explain the seemingly racist drug BiDil, which is more effective for African Americans? A more difficult question to answer - that can't be explained away with extreme examples - would be why the regular professional sports (e.g. NFL, NBA) have a disproportionate number (compared to population) of black players. May have nothing to do with genetics at all, but would be much more interesting to read about than this article.
- brazzy 15y ago
  Re BiDil - note that African Americans are a small, not very genetically diverse, subpopulation of black people.
monkeypizza 15y ago
"The truth is rather different. There is far more genetic variation within racial groups (around 85%) than there is between racial groups (just 15%). Indeed, surface appearance is often a highly misleading way of assessing the genetic distance between populations." This doesn't prove what he thinks it proves. This is the exact same argument: There is more variation within male heights than there is between the male & female average height. This is true - the difference between the average male height and female height is only a few inches, and it is quite a bit smaller than an interval which covers 90% of men. But, this has nothing to do with his point. The height difference between males and females is still relevant to us, even though the in-group variation for males & females is also high. tl;dr: male height variation is much bigger than the gap between male & female heights, yet we still think the male-female height gap is a real & meaningful phenomenon. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_genetic_diversity:_Lewontins_fallacy_(scientific_paper) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_genetic_diversity:_Lewont...
olegious 15y ago
The author mentions that most successful sprinters have been Jamaican or American rather than African. Many American professional sports leagues have a greater percentage of black players than white players. Both of these facts lead me to believe that the black people in the Americas have a genetic advantage due to filtering out of weaker individuals through the trials brought on by slavery. Consider- many modern American and Jamaican blacks are descendants of slaves. To arrive in the Americas those slaves had to survive a horrendous journey across the Atlantic in a slave ship (a far more physically challenging experience than the one experienced by the average European colonist on his trip across the ocean). They then had to survive the physical challenges associated with being a slave. The net result is that descendants of these slaves have a genetic profile that was passed down from the strongest survivors, making them physically stronger than either African blacks or non-black Americans.
hncommenter13 15y ago
The following Malcolm Gladwell article from 1997 is exactly on this topic: http://www.gladwell.com/1997/1997_05_19_a_sports.htm http://www.gladwell.com/1997/1997_05_19_a_sports.htm Not everyone loves Gladwell's writing, but I found the article interesting and thought-provoking.

120 points by trustfundbaby 15y ago

deleted 15y ago

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This phenomenon has nothing to do with being black but everything to do with genetics. The defining characteristics of world class sprinters is not the fact that they're black but is rather attributed to either genes passed down from their ancestors or their own genetic mutations. My theory is that if we traced the family trees of top sprinters we'd find that many are descendants of slaves who were bred to be bigger, faster and stronger.

hackinthebochs 15y ago
I think this is a stretch. I don't think there was enough selective pressure to really cause that much of a change in gene distribution in such a short period. Furthermore, unless the mutations for being "bigger, faster" were novel to the slave population, there is no reason to think that any breeding practices would have had any meaningful influence. What is more likely is that genes for excelling at sprinting probably came from the same area of Africa.
- Lukeas14 15y ago
  I certainly don't believe that any "bigger, faster" mutations are novel to the slave population as they can occur within any group of people. But through breeding these mutations are likely to be more prevalent in the target population. This explains why the 400m race can be dominated by blacks but Jeremy Wariner (white guy) can still be the fastest. If that were true you would see similar numbers of sprinters from West Africa. If your last point were true we would see world class sprinters coming out of one of the West African nations. I can't think of any.

tokenadult 15y ago

It appears, based on the interesting submitted article, that it would be more informative to report about 100 meter dash winners where they trained, and who their coaches were. Much the same could be said about marathon winners, who tend to train in a different part of the world. After edit: the kind first reply to my comment here mentions a possible study design for looking at what might influence athletic success among athletes from one place or another. A "genetically sensitive" design for such a study would have to consider quite a few other issues, not least actual individual genes, which have been surprisingly neglected in genetic research over the years. (Rather than actually looking at genes of each individual in a study, which continues to be a generally expensive and occasionally error-prone enterprise, most previous genetic studies of human behavioral characteristics have been based on proxy assemblages of genes, by studying closely related family members, or in the best cases monozygotic twins.) Readers who haven't seen this pair of links before, which I share fairly often here on HN because they are by world famous human behavioral geneticists, may be surprised by what they learn from reading about what twin studies can and cannot say about genetic influences on human behavior. http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/Articles%20for%20Online%20CV/Turkheimer%20(2008).pdf http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/Articles%20for%20O... http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/Articles%20for%20Online%20CV/Johnson%20(2009).pdf http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/Articles%20for%20O... Meanwhile other readers have commented, and tying in what I've written (and linked to) above to what several comments here say, a common fallacy comes from assuming that "race" (as socially defined in one place or another) has anything much at all to do with what genes one would find in a particular individual. Serious geneticists are actually some of the leading scientists in suggesting that in medicine, law, and education we should pay less attention to "race" than formerly, to avoid inherent cognitive biases in explaining individual differences.

geuis 15y ago
You're right, but that's only part of the extended question. If most 100m runners are from a tiny part of the world, it would be interesting to do biological studies to see if the people living there have different genetics that let them become better runners. Your control in this type of study would be to put non-locals under the same lifestyle and training as how the winners live and see how they perform.

techiferous 15y ago

On a side note, this also shows how ineffective resumes are at connecting employees and employers. If you repeated the same experiment with github accounts, perhaps less bias would show up.

SoftwareMaven 15y ago
I wish I believed that geeks were above generalizing based on names, but I have no doubt if your github user name was "Tyrone" or "RapDaddy", you could run into similar issues. I do think you would have less discrimination that way, though. I bet you could accomplish similar things if resumes focused less on names and more on accomplishments.
- techiferous 15y ago
  And also, with github, you are looking at actual code produced instead of making assumptions about the quality of code produced based on bullet points. Closer to facts.
deleted 15y ago
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TomOfTTB 15y ago

This seems to confuse two different issues and in doing so leads to the wrong conclusion. The author seems to conclude it's wrong to think race is responsible for so many 100m winners being black because the assumption is erroneous. But only through making and testing that erroneous assumption (as the author did) are we able to determine it has nothing to do with skin color and more to do with a specific geographical heritage. So I disagree with the author on that point. He then tries to tie that to a study that shows "black names" on resumes are 50% less likely to get call backs from potential employers. But those employers who discriminate are making an assumption they've clearly not tested (that people are worse employees based on their skin color) So the real issue here is people who don't test their conclusions and there's nothing wrong with drawing an initial conclusion as long as you test it against actual facts.

hackinthebochs 15y ago
I'm trying to understand the relevance of the point you're making. While your point is true, it seems largely technical and irrelevant to real world actions. It's not like your average person will out and do a test to see if their biases have a real world basis. The more practical takeaway is that we should attempt to not form these biases in the first place.
- phillmv 15y ago
  >While your point is true, it seems largely technical and irrelevant to real world actions. Hah! I think you're describing about 80% of content of sites like HN ;).
- TomOfTTB 15y ago
  A bias is defined as a conclusion that is held unfairly. The only way to determine if a conclusion is held unfairly is to evaluate it and evaluating a conclusion requires drawing that conclusion in the first place. The relevance is the author is saying "Don't draw race based conclusions because they are unfair by definition". But if you prevent yourself from drawing the conclusion you can't evaluate it. Put in more human terms: People who are afraid of being called racist can't be intellectually honest. Also, just to make the point, racism tends to flourish when people who aren't racist avoid such questions. Right now the most potent rallying point for racists is "The government doesn't want you to know white people are superior". This claim seems to hold weight to people because most scientists are afraid to do race based studies. So by not disproving the racists assumption we actually strengthen it.

nkurz 15y ago

It's a fine and thoughtful article, but I'm not sure that I see the logical fallacy. Assuming that this success is driven by genes rather than environment, there is a rather obvious inference to make - black people are naturally better sprinters than white people. But here's the thing. This inference is not merely false - it is logically flawed. If we assume that sprinting performance is genetic (and realizing that there are lots of other factors), and we assume that the best 100m sprinters are consistently black (realizing that "black" may or may not be a clearly defined genetic category), is it really a fallacy to say that black people are better sprinters? Logically, so long as the prevalence of winners is greater than the percentage of the population defined as black, I would think it has to follow. The winning sprinters are also strong, lean, and young. Would it be a fallacy to say that "strong, lean and young runners make better sprinters"? The obvious fallacy is to conclude that all blacks are better sprinters. But it feels like the article goes far beyond this, and wants to redefine "better" as incompatible with "more likely to excel". And pointing out that Americans and Jamaicans tend to excel seems to run counter to the part where he asks us to assume that the success is driven by genes. Hmm. His book "Bounce" sounds interesting, though. I've requested it from the library. And oddly, I found 4 year old version of essentially the same article (minus the reference to resumes, adding reference to "yellow" domination at table tennis, and advertising a different book) here: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article2189194.ece http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_co...

pkulak 15y ago
The problem is in the sample size. You can't draw any conclusions from testing a few dozen or hundred self-selected people out of 7 billion. The author does essentially say just that, just in many more words.
yummyfajitas 15y ago
...is it really a fallacy to say that black people are better sprinters? Yes. Data on the Olympics gives very little information on whether the average black person is a better sprinter than the average white person. It is not, however, a fallacy to say that it is highly likely that the next top sprinter will be black. (If anyone disagrees with this claim, I'm willing to offer good odds on the race of the next Olympic sprinter medalists.) Honestly, I'm finding the author's exposition to be rather confused. He seems to conflate two logically distinct propositions ("the best $x come from group $Y" and "a random $y in $Y has a higher probability of outperforming a random $z in $Z") for reasons I can't fathom.

cperciva 15y ago

The author draws the wrong conclusions from the CV experiment. He claims that it shows a bias against black candidates; in reality, what it shows is a bias against "black" names. Names are really powerful. The same is true of email addresses; how many people here can honestly say that they would treat an email from purpledinosaur28@aol.com the same way as they treat an email from john.smith@gmail.com?

BCM43 15y ago
Please explain your point further, because it seems to me you are equating "black" names with cheesy email addresses.
- cperciva 15y ago
  Names say something about the people who pick them. Yes, race; but also education, socioeconomic level, and community. The black population of the US is heavily weighted towards poor education and poverty, so when people think of "typical black names" they're often thinking of typical poor uneducated black names.
  - ldd- 15y ago
    Key difference . . . names are chosen by a person's parents, while email addresses are chosen by a person for themselves. Focusing on the name, which the person can't control, instead of on the person's accomplishments (resume), which the person can absolutely control, would seem to be an indicator of bias. I don't think your point holds up.
    - cperciva 15y ago
      You don't think that your parents' income or education level has an effect on your later success? And sure, it would be better to ignore names and focus on a resume -- but people rely on subconscious cues all the time. If your only goal is to find good candidates as quickly as possible, a subconscious cue which is usually correct works to your advantage -- whether it's "people with degrees from Harvard are stuck-up snobs", "people who write their resumes in LaTex are good coders", or "people with weird names like 'jewyl' are useless".

freshrap6 15y ago

Putting labels on people or stereotyping is never an effective way to measure their skill or the importance of their accomplishment. It seems that either one of these gives us the ability to quickly make a "informed" decision about someone without having to dive deeply in the matter. This doesn't make it right, and in my experience leads you to make incorrect assumptions more often than not.

truthout 15y ago

I'm certain many of you have no formal experience in the sciences, ie. biological sciences. It is unfortunate, since in my opinion it is the basis of an education. It is the basis of the understanding of the world. As such, one may want to inform you that over the last few years there has been considerable progress in evolutionary biology. We have discovered various genes that are statistically significant with intelligence. We have discovered evidence that certain hominids bred with indigenous european hominids (ie. neanderthals). And that certain humans have no neanderthal admixture (Africans). The IQ debate has been a consistent force in pseudo-intellectual circles. I'm sure many of you wish to voice an opinion on it, that it isn't hereditary. This viewpoint has pretty much fallen out of fashion and has been replaced with a more practical understanding of the biology. Humans aren't the same, and genes make us different. To understand why we're different you have to understand evolutionary biology, and selective pressures. Selective pressures exist on the organism as a consequence of the environment to select for the most fit organism in that environment. When you alter an environment, you alter the selective pressures on survival. This is why we have diversity. The fact is that genes code for certain functions in the body. Speed would be a result of numerous genes - probably both nuclear and mitochondrial - that regulate muscle contraction and energy metabolism. Other genes code for neural pathways, dopamine transport systems, energy metabolism. No two humans are the same. We're both our genes, and the expression of our genes. When people say that IQ or speed is not fully hereditary, that it's environmental, what they are inferring is that we express our genes differently based on our environment. The truth is that your environment is causing your genes to produce less optimal speed or intelligence, by altering the expression(1 or 0 in computer terms) of those genes. Genes can be turned on and off depending on different signaling pathways and interactions between them. So, yes, sprinting is hereditary - as is IQ.

dredmorbius 15y ago

That's a poorly written/reasoned article. Draw a set of circles. The big one is all humans. The little one is 100m finalists. Outside the finalists, you're drawing two concentric circles. The smaller of the two is Nandi. The larger is sub-Saharan Africans, or what much of the world refers to as "black". First: yes, all 100m winners are "black". More specifically, they're among the better Nandi runners. But as we're noting, Nandis are a proper subset of sub-Saharan Africans, or blacks. So ... yes, the first inference ("100m winners are black") is accurate, just not complete. The other interesting thing to note is this: humanity originated in Africa, and migrated from there to the rest of the planet in successive waves. Genetic diversity within Africa is greater than in the rest of the planet. For the most part / as a general rule. You'll find this is typically true of origin / diaspora populations, human, animal, vegetable, or even technological. So: yes, there's considerable genetic variation among various populations. There's more in Africa. And, at least based on empirical evidence, if you want to be a good sprint runner, it's a considerable benefit to have ancestry that traces to a specific valley in Kenya. As to considering all "Blacks" to be genetically uniform or similar: no, that's not valid. The other discussions of the article are largely red herrings.

onan_barbarian 15y ago
A quibble: Nandi runners from Kenya are distance runners, not 100m sprinters.
- dredmorbius 15y ago
  Fair point. I didn't fact-check the article, but was thinking earlier "hrm ... aren't Kenyans known more for distance running than sprinting?". Despite specific characteristics, my point about genetic diversity within African populations as a whole should stand.
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taariqlewis 15y ago

As a young black boy, growing up, in the Caribbean, I always came dead last in my races. sigh

latch 15y ago

I used to be curious about why it seemed like most baseball pitchers and quarterbacks (though certainly not all!) are white. What could it be, genetically, socially or culturally that would make white people have better arms? I stopped asking because people thought it was racist. It always baffled me.

SageRaven 15y ago
Anyone remember the NFL spoof video "We Are Kickers" that Saturday Night Live did in the 80's poking fun at kickers being of a certain ethnicity? I want to say middle-eastern, but I can't remember for sure. If I followed the sport at all, I'd probably know. I tried to find it on Youtube, but couldn't. Anyway, it seems that certain ethnic groups have long been perceived to gravitate towards certain athletic functions.
mattdeboard 15y ago
They probably thought it was racist because the thing that makes a great quarterback (for example) isn't just an incredible arm. There are many more factors that go into it, and I'd wager the reason so many black quarterbacks get weeded out at the collegiate level is because their superior physical prowess is better utilized in other positions that rely more on speed, power, explosiveness, etc. I mean, you've got a guy like Peyton Manning for example. He's not an athletic guy relative to other NFL players, but historically he has this incredible hand-eye coordination and mind for the strategy of the game. No one was going to look at Manning and say, "Hey you know, you have a great arm and are frighteningly smart at this game, but we could use your slow clumsy ass at running back." To me quarterbacks and pitchers specialize into that position because oftentimes their other physical gifts don't even come close to their arms. In other words, I'm pretty sure there are plenty of black QBs out there in high school football teams who have the potential to be just as great as Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, etc., but coaches are going to want the speed and power elsewhere.
- trustfundbaby 15y ago
  Thats's the first explanation for it that has actually made sense to me. good one.

dbrannan 15y ago

A relevant article: http://www.newstatesman.com/200009180009 http://www.newstatesman.com/200009180009

jamesrcole 15y ago

irrespective of the article's content, that's a poor title: of course there's nothing wrong to simply note it.

waffle_ss 15y ago

I don't disagree with his conclusion, but the article is just a puff piece with a link to his book at the end, in which he "...debunks many cherished myths" including "that we are restricted by our genetic make-up". "Our tendency to generalise rests on a deeper fallacy - the idea that 'black' refers to a genetic type. We put people of dark skin in a box labelled black and assume that a trait shared by some is shared by all." I'm no geneticist, but I wonder then how the author would explain the seemingly racist drug BiDil, which is more effective for African Americans? A more difficult question to answer - that can't be explained away with extreme examples - would be why the regular professional sports (e.g. NFL, NBA) have a disproportionate number (compared to population) of black players. May have nothing to do with genetics at all, but would be much more interesting to read about than this article.

brazzy 15y ago
Re BiDil - note that African Americans are a small, not very genetically diverse, subpopulation of black people.

monkeypizza 15y ago

"The truth is rather different. There is far more genetic variation within racial groups (around 85%) than there is between racial groups (just 15%). Indeed, surface appearance is often a highly misleading way of assessing the genetic distance between populations." This doesn't prove what he thinks it proves. This is the exact same argument: There is more variation within male heights than there is between the male & female average height. This is true - the difference between the average male height and female height is only a few inches, and it is quite a bit smaller than an interval which covers 90% of men. But, this has nothing to do with his point. The height difference between males and females is still relevant to us, even though the in-group variation for males & females is also high. tl;dr: male height variation is much bigger than the gap between male & female heights, yet we still think the male-female height gap is a real & meaningful phenomenon. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_genetic_diversity:_Lewontins_fallacy_(scientific_paper) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_genetic_diversity:_Lewont...

olegious 15y ago

The author mentions that most successful sprinters have been Jamaican or American rather than African. Many American professional sports leagues have a greater percentage of black players than white players. Both of these facts lead me to believe that the black people in the Americas have a genetic advantage due to filtering out of weaker individuals through the trials brought on by slavery. Consider- many modern American and Jamaican blacks are descendants of slaves. To arrive in the Americas those slaves had to survive a horrendous journey across the Atlantic in a slave ship (a far more physically challenging experience than the one experienced by the average European colonist on his trip across the ocean). They then had to survive the physical challenges associated with being a slave. The net result is that descendants of these slaves have a genetic profile that was passed down from the strongest survivors, making them physically stronger than either African blacks or non-black Americans.

hncommenter13 15y ago

The following Malcolm Gladwell article from 1997 is exactly on this topic: http://www.gladwell.com/1997/1997_05_19_a_sports.htm http://www.gladwell.com/1997/1997_05_19_a_sports.htm Not everyone loves Gladwell's writing, but I found the article interesting and thought-provoking.