I've been watching with patriotic interest the Olympic track and field events. And I notice something about the results that is both remarkable and fascinating. Even so, this something is never commented on by NBC or any of the analysts.
Consider the sprints. The winners seem to be overwhelmingly of African, specifically West African, origin. The man and woman who blew away the field in the 100 meter dash were both from the tiny country of Jamaica
Now consider the long distance races. The winners once again are overwhelmingly black, this time from
These results are not a coincidence. They hold true of every Olympics in living memory. In the early 1990s Amby Burfoot, executive editor of Runner's World, published a lead article called "White Men Can't Run." Burfoot documented that blacks have not only dominated Olympic and world championship races for five decades, but also that black hegemony has increased over time. Along the same lines, the Sociology of Sport Journal reports that since the 1930s, "there has been no American white woman who was world class in the 100, 200 or 400 meter dashes. All the outstanding sprinters have been black."
Yet if black domination is a fact, the mysterious question is why. There are three possible explanations, two of which we need to take seriously. The first and most unlikely possibility is that there is widespread discrimination in favor of blacks in sports-not only in running but also in boxing, football, basketball, and so on. Let's call this the liberal explanation. It seems utterly obtuse, but we have to raise this argument because it uses precisely the logic of our civil rights laws.
Our civil rights laws presume that if groups are not equally represented in a given field (say university admissions or jobs or government contracts or sports teams) it follows that invidious discrimination can be inferred on the part of the over-represented groups, directed against the under-represented groups. In this case, of course, is it even reasonable to speculate that blacks are ahead because they are keeping everyone else down? Laugh out loud if you will, but you are laughing at the crazy logic that operates in civil rights jurisprudence in America today.
A second possibility is that there are cultural and motivational differences between groups. For instance, an NBC documentary preceding the 100 meter final noted that Jamaicans simply love to run and they start running competitively at a very young age. Perhaps West Africans simply have a cultural preference for short-distance sprints, and East Africans attach high social priorities to long-distance running. Using the same line of reasoning, sociologist Harry Edwards has suggested that black success in NBA basketball can be explained by the desire of poor African Americans to "jump, jump, jump out of the ghetto." Let's call this the cultural explanation.
The third possibility is that there are natural or genetic differences between the races that explain why one group is so heavily over-represented among both the contestants and the winners. Let's call this the Bell Curve explanation, after the controversial book published several years ago by Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein. Admittedly Murray and Herrnstein were writing about IQ and intellectual performance, not sport. The role of biology in sport is candidly explored in Jon Entine's book Taboo, which I'm reading during the commercial breaks.
Setting aside political correctness, I'm trying to figure out which explanation is right. I don't think we need to be scared to discuss this topic. Before I offer my thoughts, I'd like to know what you think.
