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

[davieG]

BBC

The conclusions that are drawn from black athletes dominating the 100m final go a long way to explaining attitudes in wider society, argues Matthew Syed.

The 100m final at the World Athletics Championships this weekend will be won by a black athlete.

Every winner of the 100m since the inaugural event in 1983 has been black, as has every finalist from the last 10 championships with the solitary exception of Matic Osovnikar of Slovakia, who finished seventh in 2007.

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. Indeed, it is an inference that seems obligatory, barring considerations of political correctness.

Logically flawedBut here's the thing. This inference is not merely false - it is logically flawed. And it has big implications not merely for athletics, but for the entire issue of race relations in the 21st Century.

To see how, let us examine success not in the sprints but in distance running, for this is also dominated by black athletes. Kenya has won an astonishing 63 medals at the Olympic Games in races of 800m and above, 21 of them gold, since 1968. Little wonder that one commentator once described distance running as "a Kenyan monopoly".

But it turns out that it is not Kenya as a whole that usually wins these medals, but individuals from a tiny region in the Rift Valley called Nandi. As one writer put it: "Most of Kenya's runners call Nandi home."

Seen in this context, the notion that black people are naturally superior distance runners seems bizarre. Far from being a "black" phenomenon, or even a Kenyan phenomenon, distance running is actually a Nandi phenomenon. Or, to put it another way, "black" distance running success is focused on the tiniest of pinpricks on the map of Africa, with the vast majority of the continent underrepresented.

The same analysis applies to the sprints, where success is focused on Jamaicans and African-Americans. Africa, as a continent, has almost no success at all. Not even West Africans win much.

The combined forces of Mauritania, Guinea-Bissau, Sierra Leone, the Republic of Guinea, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Togo, Niger, Benin, Mali, the Gambia, Equatorial Guinea, Ghana, Gabon, Senegal, Congo and Angola have not won a single sprinting medal at the Olympics or World Championships.

The fallacy, then, is simple. Just because some black people are good at something does not imply that black people in general will be good at it.

Labelled boxImagine a similar argument using the Central African Bambuti, a black tribe more commonly known as Pygmies. With an average height of 4ft we could assert that the Bambuti are naturally better at walking under low doors. Would it be legitimate to extrapolate that black people in general have a natural advantage at walking under low doors?

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.

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 evidence demonstrates how absurd it is to engage in racial generalisations - how crazy it is to witness a tiny group of black people winning at, say, the 10,000m and to infer that all people who share the same skin colour share an aptitude for 10,000m running.

Consider an experiment by Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan, two American economists. They drafted 5,000 CVs and placed archetypal "black" names such as Tyrone or Latoya on half of them and "white" names such as Brendan or Alison on the other half. They then divided the white CVs into high and low quality and did the same with the black CVs.

A few weeks later the offers came rolling in from employers, and guess what? The "black" candidates were 50% less likely to be invited to interview. Employers were using skin colour as a marker for employment potential, despite the fact that the candidates' CVs were identical.

But that's not all. The researchers also found that although high-quality "white" candidates were preferred to low-quality "white" candidates, the relative quality of "black" CVs made no difference whatsoever.

It was as if employers saw three categories - high-quality white, low-quality white and black candidates. To put it another way, the subliminal assumption that causes us to think that black people are all the same has powerful real-world consequences.

For many economists, this assumption, which gets under the radar of our conscious thought, explains why black people still lag behind white people in economic development more than four decades after the introduction of race-relations legislation.

Recognising that we have these biases is a good place to start in trying to combat them. And a good way of tracking progress is to watch a 100m final and see whether we fall into the trap, when seeing eight contestants with black skin, of inferring that black people are naturally better sprinters.

Matthew Syed is the author of Bounce: The Myth of Talent and the Power of Practice

[Nick]

It's okay white guys, we still got the physiology for swimming.

[Finnegan]

It's okay white guys, we still got the physiology for swimming.

And rowing.

And cycling.

And all of the other, yknow, conveniently middle class sports.

[Rincewind]

And the guts for darts

[Phube]

My personal theory, I call it mine as I've not heard it said anywhere else, is that Afro-Caribbean's are brilliant sprinters due to their cultural preference for ladies with, how shall we say, ample bottoms!

Hear me out, whilst watching that Dr. Alice Roberts programme on the migration of homo sapiens around the globe, she said something in the first episode that made me think. The only reason humans can run upright is due to our gluteus maximus, arse muscle. It stands to reason the larger, more developed, this muscle the faster you'll run.

Then linking that with my reading of Dawkins and sexual selection and genetic inheritance. If a whole community prefer a physical trait, large bottom women say, then the large bottom gene is preferentially selected for ladies, but they also pass this large bottom onto their male offspring as well but also the genetic predication for large bottoms as well. in a few generation you end up with a group of people who have larger than average bum muscles; leading to faster sprinters!

Maybe it's crap, but it's a thought that kinda supports the article!

[Zingari]

Maybe we should take Phube's big arse theory a step further and say that it was once fashionable for white women to accentuate their arses by wearing bustles and farthingales etc , so men got confused and started chasing and reproducing with skinny assed bints , thereby diluting the big ass gene .

Our inability to compete in the sprints is down to deceitful rabbit arsed bitches in our history

sorted

[Charl91]

I'm pretty sure black people have denser bone/muscle. Hence the better running and worse at swimming.

[Rincewind]

Fat bottomed girls make the rocking world go round.

[Rincewind]

Maay come down to ancestory and how different parts of the world has progressed. Inpehistoric times Man was an hunter which required a fair bit of running. Evolution helped by allowing the genes needed to develop and be passed. Over the centeries Man in different parts of the world progressed/developed at different rates. This meant less need for hunting for food so less need for the running genes. Probably replaced by mor appropiate genes for the environtment each 'tribe' lived in

According to the evolution therory Man came from the sea so always have had the aabilty to swim. A newborn baby can float quite easily. The genes needed for swimming may still be in athelites but less prominent hence the best swimmers are usully white.

I am no anthropologiacal expert though.

[acooling08]

Africa has lions.

Europe has foxes.

That's why black people can run faster/longer.

[Phube]

Africa has lions.

Europe has foxes.

That's why black people can run faster/longer.

I believe wolves and sabretooth tigers are pretty fast!!!

Did you not read the article... it's not 'black' people who are fast. It's those from the West indies/west indian decent..

[acooling08]

I believe wolves and sabretooth tigers are pretty fast!!!

Did you not read the article... it's not 'black' people who are fast. It's those from the West indies/west indian decent..

I was just going by the title

Sabretooth cats died out before in the last Ice age and wolves aren't quite in the same league as lions/cheetahs/leopards etc

[BoneDog]

Loving some of the evolution theories in here

But the fact that there were advanced civilizations who understood advanced geometry and had excellent technology (that we cannot yet match) over 10,000 years ago debunks them all.

[Phube]

Loving some of the evolution theories in here

But the fact that there were advanced civilizations who understood advanced geometry and had excellent technology (that we cannot yet match) over 10,000 years ago debunks them all.

[Webbo]

I believe wolves and sabretooth tigers are pretty fast!!!

Did you not read the article... it's not 'black' people who are fast. It's those from the West indies/west indian decent..

But they've all still got big knobs, right?

[Raw Dykes]

Loving some of the evolution theories in here

But the fact that there were advanced civilizations who understood advanced geometry and had excellent technology (that we cannot yet match) over 10,000 years ago debunks them all.

W o w .

Are you on the wind up? Or are you actually suggesting that you don't accept the theory of evolution to be true? I'm fairly sure you're joking about the advanced civilisations 10,000 years ago, but if not, what are you talking about?

[Rincewind]

40% of Americans dont believe in evolution. They beilieve the Erth is around 4000 years old.

[shen]

W o w .

Are you on the wind up? Or are you actually suggesting that you don't accept the theory of evolution to be true? I'm fairly sure you're joking about the advanced civilisations 10,000 years ago, but if not, what are you talking about?

I think he's suggesting that because there's some of the knowledge of ancient civilizations that hasn't been emulated since, shows that if anything 'devolution' has taken place. And I'm quite sure he's saying it tongue in cheek here too

[shen]

40% of Americans dont believe in evolution. They beilieve the Erth is around 4000 years old.

I honestly believe that this is proper research.

[FoxyPV]

Isn't the current European champion white?

[Trav Le Bleu]

Why are black people so bad at polo and real tennis?

[DANGEROUS TIGER]

I refuse to comment, on the grounds that it might incriminate me!