It's Kenya's national sport, a kind of national obsession. From a tiny age, young Kenyans dream of the roar of the crowd, the fame and success that comes from demonstrated excellence on the field.
Conventional thinking--and quite a few liberal academics--hold that this cultural obsession is the best explanation for the incredible Olympic success of Kenya's distance runners. Kenya in particular, and East Africa in general, enjoys a near-monopoly in medals in the long distance races.
The only problem--pointed out by John Entine in his fascinating book Taboo--is that the national obsession in Kenya is not running but soccer. Kenyans are crazy about soccer! "Unfortunately," Entine observes, "Kenyans are among the world's worst soccer players." Even in Africa, Kenya is routinely routed by West African countries like Cameroon and Nigeria.
Running is not such a big deal in Kenya. And when it comes to short-distance sprints, Kenyans and other East Africans aren't particularly good. Virtually every running record from the 100 to the 400 meters, male and female, is held by athletes of West African ancestry. It's only in the 5,000 meters, 10,000 meters and in the marathon that the special abilities of East African runners manifest themselves.
Entine, an Emmy winning journalist formerly with NBC News, has done his homework. He does not completely reject economic and cultural explanations of athletic prowess. He just shows their inadequacy. For instance, examing the notion that poverty is responsible for success in sport, Entine notes that most poor countries do terribly in sports. How many runners from poverty-stricken Bangla Desh, for instance, have won Olympic medals in Beijing? The "spur" of poverty is more than trounced by the benefits of superior nutrition, superior facilities and superior coaching in affluent countries.
So what about culture? Yes, culture can help to account for why Americans do well at baseball and why the Chinese usually triumph in ping pong. Americans play baseball more than most others, and no one takes ping pong more seriously than the Chinese. But Entine notes that running is universal. In every country, young people run races. "Given the universality of running," Amby Burfoot writes in Runner's World, "it is reasonable to expect that the best runners should come from a wide range of countries and racial groups." So why are there such enduring and overwhelming racial differences in the outcome?
Entine is not afraid to say that "genetically linked, highly heritable characteristics, such as skeletal structure, muscle fiber types, reflex capabilities, metabolic efficiency, and lung capacity are not evenly distributed among populations." These traits help to explain why groups succeed--and sometimes fail--in certain sports. For instance, the same body type that works so well in the boxing ring and on the track doesn't do so well in the water. How many black swimmers have there been on the U.S. Olympic team? Even countries on the African coast have a terrible record when it comes to swimming medals.
Entine's book is titled "Taboo" because he knows how controversial his thesis is, how fiercely it is hated and resisted. I suspect this is not because of powerful academic evidence that Entine is wrong. If there is such evidence, I would like to see it, but so far I've had a hard time finding it. Rather, the resistance is due to the liberal fear that if we praise black athletic superiority and attribute it to genes, this opens the door for racists to speculate about black intellectual inferiority and to attribute it too to genes.
Yet this is a non-sequitur. Groups can be unequal physically and still be equal intellectually. Men and women are clearly unequal in upper-body strength, for instance, and yet the average IQ for males and females is the same, although the bell curve distribution of that IQ is not. But I'll leave that subject for a later blog.
My general point is that many liberals are looking in the wrong place to find a justification for their support for political equality. As Jefferson noted a long time ago, inequality of endowment, whether it exists or not, is no warrant for inequality of rights. Equality is not a factual proposition, derived from biology. It is a moral proposition, derived from Christianity.
Reader Comments ( Page 2 of 8)
16.
Slavery is a concept of INEQUALITY. There are laws for it spelled out in the bible. While the laws spelled out are humane, the institution itself isn't.
That one human being might call another property is not moral in any sense. Yet, it's in the book of "truth." However it's spelled out, or "divinely legislated," does not in any way remove the immoral nature of the institution.
http://www.inu.net/skeptic/slavery.html
ex-christian at 9:37AM on Aug 22nd 2008
17. http://www.evolutionfacts.blogspot.com
Issac Asimov at 9:40AM on Aug 22nd 2008
18. Denise seems a little too obsessed with finding liberals behind every tree. Undoubtedly, he and J. Edgar Hoover would have been great friends, sharing their unfounded fears and all. Even in discussing our racial differences, he can't help but to distort the issue with his weird political agenda.
gshort3011 at 9:45AM on Aug 22nd 2008
19. Denise seems a little too obsessed with finding liberals behind every tree. Undoubtedly, he and J. Edgar Hoover would have been great friends, sharing their unfounded fears and all. Even in discussing our racial differences, he can't help but to distort the issue with his weird political agenda.
gshort3011 at 9:48AM on Aug 22nd 2008
20. "For instance, the same body type that works so well in the boxing ring and on the track doesn't do so well in the water. How many black swimmers have there been on the U.S. Olympic team?"
Before making a comment like that you need to look further than body type. Before you even think of saying that maybe you should investigate why there are not or have been many swimmers. As a black man I will not take offense but I would like to make sure you think and know your facts before you speak. Most Blacks dont swim, especially here in america. It is a fact and there have been pushes to teach black children to learn to swim. Ive been blessed that my mother felt it important. But many of my friends and their children are deathly afraid of water.
Secondly, I do believe that social and economic conditions do prevent some of these countries from concentrating on all sports and cause them to focus on the ones they are actually good at. Alot of the carribean countries that have swimmers (and surprisingly, many cant swim as well) dont focus on that sport.
As a football player, I have learned that your body takes the shape of the type of activity you do and your work out. So of course a boxer's body type wether black, white, asian, or other isnt going to dominate in swimming. They use different muscle groups in different ways. Phelps has a strong body and stamina but that doesnt mean he will last 12 rounds in a boxing ring.
So to say that because blacks are built for boxing and running but not swimming because there were no black swimmers is a mis-guided statement. Maybe you should really look into it and write a book on it. LMAO
Correction at 9:50AM on Aug 22nd 2008
21. Just in .... The PBS PROGRAM NOVA JUST confirmed the reality of the Dinosaur Soft tissue discovery contained with Dinosaur DNA. Even though for years Evolutionists mocked the notion as impossible because the ATHEISTS ASSUMED the bones had to be millions of years old, NOVA recently has unwittingly confirmed evidence what intelliegent design advocates had been saying for years and suffered criticism over.
You can now watch on the rightside panel area of the site below in the area leading with dinosaur discoveries.
http://www.evolutionfacts.blogspot.com
Issac Asimov at 9:56AM on Aug 22nd 2008
22. Equality is a deriviative of Christianity.
True or false.
At first glance,false makes a lot of sense.Women get what appears to be a bad rap in the bible.Slavery is justified.And homophobia runs riot.
But what is happening.
First slavery.Yeah,no free the slaves.But a command for masters to treat their slaves in the same way that Christ treats us.And the big picture is to get people to have a servant-heart,free of self-centerdness,so that when they are free(as is evidenced in Colossians 3vs 11)they would be free of the sin nature.In short,what is better,a free slave with a bad attitude or a good attitude.
Slavery in the American Colonies was not justified.Twould have been better if missionaries instead of slavers went to Africa,for that is what Christ told Christians to do,go and preach.
Women yes are not allowed to take leadership.And they were not allowed to be the head of the home.But in the Bible,husbands are to love their wives in a self-sacrificing way.Not opressive to women.And in Africa,women who were under opressive traditional systems,more opressive than any european system,were set free by the Gospel.
I could go on,but let me close with this.All the evils done in Christ's name were done by people whose hearts had not been changed by the message they heard.Just as hundreds of atrocities have been commited by atheistic communist regimes,blind to the true purpose of atheisim..freedom from opression.What is left is a call to listen to Christ,and to get your heart cleaned up.
On to today's blog
Interest is still an important determinant.
mad african Christian at 10:02AM on Aug 22nd 2008
23. Just In.... The PBS SCIENCE PROGRAM NOVA JUST confirmed the reality of the Dinosaur Soft tissue discovery contained with Dinosaur DNA. Even though for years Evolutionists mocked the notion as impossible because the ATHEISTS ASSUMED the bones had to be millions of years old, NOVA recently has unwittingly confirmed evidence what intelligent design advocates had been saying for years and suffered criticism over.
You can now watch on the right side panel area of the site below in the area leading with dinosaur discoveries.
http://www.evolutionfacts.blogspot.com
Issac Asimov at 10:05AM on Aug 22nd 2008
24. DD, wtf are you talking about? You make less and less sense every time I read your blog. Pitiful, man, just pitiful. Pick a point and stick to it. Tying everything to liberals and Hitler is just plain getting old.
web jones at 10:09AM on Aug 22nd 2008
25. Man, this guy can suck the joy out of any subject. Typical idealogue; let's take something like the Olympics meant to break down barriers and twist it to serve some vile purpose.
D'Souza, I have known many liberals in my day and you sir, are no liberal. So why not shut the hell up and stop lying about 'what liberals believe', and stick to what you think. Stop being a masterdebater and try being an intellectual. Present your position and let it stand or fall on its own merits rather than use the neocon bait and switch demonizing us poor liberal slobs who are burdened with a trait called empathy which you neither appear to possess nor understand.
Try that approach for a change - there are plenty of real liberals out here who are willing to tell you what we really think. Now, it gets a bit messy with us because we really aren't sheep marching to a single drum and we often refuse to speak for the group, only for ourselves.
So here goes, yes, I believe there are obvious genetic and morphologic differences amongst people that make some individuals better at a variety of tasks and may make them suitable or unsuitable for some jobs, careers etc.. And no, I don't think any of that has any bearing on the advanced notion of equal protection, rights and opportunities under the law. And no, I don't think that the brand of Christianity that you appear to promote has any legitimate claim to being the basis for just notions of legal inclusion for all since you frequently argue against such protections for gays, etc., using your faith as your shield.
Pliny-the-in-between at 10:11AM on Aug 22nd 2008
26. Atheists and belivers,unite and read this!
http://www.christiancentury.org/article.lasso?id=4497
Neutral at 10:50AM on Aug 22nd 2008
27. Yea that's all well and good while being quite true, but the laws of Mother Nature will take over if all hell breaks loose. Survival of the fittest (or smartest if you will)is supreme. The strong will always overtake the weak. Why didn't the Africans build ships and eventually go enslave the Europeans before the vis-versa became a true historical fact?
wapari at 10:58AM on Aug 22nd 2008
28. This just in... a reprehensible douchebag besmirching the good name of the late science fiction author, thinker, and atheist Isaac Asimov continues to post his lame-ass spam for his crappy (and SLOOOWWW) website.
Ian X. Christian at 11:02AM on Aug 22nd 2008
29. Okay I have to admit it to everyone, by the second paragraph, my eyes were rolling back in my head and I was soooo bored - so I skipped ahead and was rewarded with what Dinesh really wanted to say:
"My general point is that many liberals are looking in the wrong place to find a justification for their support for political equality. As Jefferson noted a long time ago, inequality of endowment, whether it exists or not, is no warrant for inequality of rights. Equality is not a factual proposition, derived from biology. It is a moral proposition, derived from Christianity."
But again me thinks he gots it wrong. Just read that last sentence.
- I disagree, it is not Christian based ideology that every human deserves equality. It is human based ideology. Once again Dinesh wants all the credit to go where the credit isn't due.
Christianity does not equal true morality. Anyone of us can name at least one known christian who has created their own moral code to suit them - a code that doesn't even follow their supposed christian beliefs.
And as far as the post that I didn't really read - I could care less about Entine's book or it's controversial subject matter - Dinesh doesn't make his point - as usual, I really couldn't even find one, save the last sentence.
TJ at 11:12AM on Aug 22nd 2008
30. "Equality is not a factual proposition, derived from biology. It is a moral proposition, derived from Christianity."
What has CHRISTIANITY got to do with equality. Even the ten commandment says "Non believers,even though morally upright, are sinners and doomed to go to hell" and you have repeated that many times. In contrast tell me which other religion says that all people are not equal in such explicit terms? If the Christian God is a jealous God and hates people who do not worship him, how will He even consider them as equal to even the worst Christian hypocrite. Also
Slavery has been justified in the bible at several sites. Is that equality?
R Shanker at 11:24AM on Aug 22nd 2008