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 5 of 8)
61. Lord have mercy on my bones
Can anybody help me find my homes?
One in sedona or maybe it was five
Wonder how long I gots me left to be alive
A real man of the people. I can picture myself hangin out with him and Charles Keating and joe bananas in his private cellar tossin' down a bottle of Chateau Mouton Rothschild '37 and after a couple or three goblets maybe listening to him talk about what a cunt his wife is.
Clif Kuplen at 3:44PM on Aug 22nd 2008
62. The CYA from the republicans on this is so far digging him in deeper! Now he's not in touch with his personal finances and Cindy apparently wears the pants in the family. Does he get an allowance?
Whaddya think? He knows all his domestic servants by name - yes? no? How big a domestic staff do you have to have to keep seven or eight homes together? Any of you republicans have any idea? It's, uh, beyond my pay grade since I'm worth less than five mil.
His condo in downtown phoenix is worth 3.2 million and comes with valet service. How much charles keating was involved in his housing purchases is now apparently being looked into.
Clif Kuplen at 3:49PM on Aug 22nd 2008
63. Not an elitist? He has a hell of a spread on his sedona remodeling in a 2005 issue of Architectural Digest. He lives like Michael Jackson!
Clif Kuplen at 3:51PM on Aug 22nd 2008
64. DD writes:
"Equality is not a factual proposition, derived from biology. It is a moral proposition, derived from Christianity."
Is this why Christians believe that everyone else but them is going to Hell...because they think we are all "equal"? That's some definition of equality! We are all "equal" except that only our group is favored by God and your group is damned to everlasting torment!
John Galt
John Galt at 3:57PM on Aug 22nd 2008
65. Understanding Black Athletic Superiority
Yup, they farmer is at it again!
It always reverts to the same time warn posts.
So nice to enjoy a day of discussions without hearing the usual diatribes. Now I know why I the other blog has been rather enjoyable today.
M2D5 at 4:01PM on Aug 22nd 2008
66. After reading, I have a question. Is Gonesh a black athletic supporter or just an athletic supporter?
Clif Kuplen at 4:04PM on Aug 22nd 2008
67.
Could DoubleD be an athletic supporter for atheists?
JefFlyingV at 4:16PM on Aug 22nd 2008
68. "Equality is not a factual proposition, derived from biology. It is a moral proposition, derived from Christianity."
xx
I'd like to see the biblical quote. As to the biology, it's an obvious survival trait to a social species and existed millions of years before man or his superstitions.
Love your neighbor as yourself doesn't specify you have to make him equal. There is no trace of christianity in constitutional government. Christianity as it's been practiced historically is on both sides of good and evil.
Instead, the constitution tries to be fair to all citizens, a concept republicans exist to oppose as do fundamentalists. They like castes.
Republicanists always have to fantazize that their polotical opponents are seditious immoral enemies living among them to validate the bigotry that attracts them to the party in the first place. You can't be sane and buy their garbage.
Clif Kuplen at 4:19PM on Aug 22nd 2008
69. JFV,
Atheists only have an athletic advantage because they use eugenics. Ben Stein told me.
Mokele Mbembe at 4:23PM on Aug 22nd 2008
70. "Equality is not a factual proposition, derived from biology. It is a moral proposition, derived from Christianity."
I throw my two cents in on this quote too. It's actually a moral proposition derived from the secular French Enlightenment. The very inequitable feudal system was in place for the majority of Christianity's existence?
Ryan Anderson at 4:27PM on Aug 22nd 2008
71. 58. It will be very difficult to exceed the groaner quotient of this pun today.
Pliny-the-in-between at 2:47PM on Aug 22nd 2008
------------------------------
I used to think that McCain was home-ophobic, but I can see that I misjudged him now.
Saint Brian the Godless at 3:14PM on Aug 22nd 2008
xxxxxxxxxx
I stand corrected....
Pliny-the-in-between at 4:35PM on Aug 22nd 2008
72.
Would DoubleD support me even when my cup runneth over?
JefFlyingV at 4:40PM on Aug 22nd 2008
73. Could DoubleD be an athletic supporter for atheists?
JefFlyingV at 4:16PM on Aug 22nd 2008
xxx
I don't know. He seems awfully arrogant and is probably inexperienced. With that beezer he'd probably have to double as a butt plug. Could you attach him via suspenders to the ears?
Maybe he should just be more like the red missouri corn cob instead. You use the red one, then the white one to see if you need the other red one.
Clif Kuplen at 4:55PM on Aug 22nd 2008
74. "Groups can be unequal physically and still be equal intellectually".
Dinesh: You are absolutely right here. It has been shown that African-American basketball players can be distinguished from white basketball players by the electronically measured impact patterns obtained by having subjects jump onto a transducer and then off again....But the reason African-American and Amerindian Americans do worse in reading in gradeschool is simply that white families are more likely than minority families to have their kids practice writing alphabet letters at home before they begin school...reading problems are rare in all kids who enter kindergarten simply able to print the alphabet....When they reach a specific degree of fluency, they learn to read spontaneously....So Jefferson was wrong...We really are all created intellectually equal (unless born with organic brain disease).
Bob at 5:42PM on Aug 22nd 2008
75. Genotyping, Phenotyping, and Stereotyping
If everyone had a clear grasp of the differences inherent in these categories and were committed to an honest dialogue regarding where the first 2 leave off and the latter begins, then we might make some practical progress. Until that day, best to stick with the broadest possible interpretations of legal fairness.
Pliny-the-in-between at 5:58PM on Aug 22nd 2008