Given that racists and slavers used the “natural physical strength” of black people to justify putting them on hard labor and some medics still think that blacks has higher resistance to pain, I wonder if when black athletes started to join mixed race sport teams, some racist would have used the same “biological advantage” argument that now transphobes use against trans athletes to claim it was “unfair” for black to compete against whites to justify segregation.
For a while there was a persistent myth that black people had an extra muscle in their leg that allowed them to perform better at sports.
It’s kind of similar to phrenology in trying to justify racism.
While there is no extra muscle, it is factually true that people of West African descent tend to have more fast twitch muscle fibers which is a pretty big advantage in many sports.
This is likely why the myth of the extra muscle originated.
Is that really true though? Many of these sports myths hold true until they suddenly don’t. Tall people were believed to be awful sprinters until Usain Bolt somehow just smashed everyone. Koreans nerds were the supposed chosen SC2 players but now it’s a chad from Italy
Yes, those people are outliers. Usain Bolt especially is a genetic rarity, being as tall as he is with crazy amounts of fast twitch muscles.
It’s true, but some people go way too far with it. All it means is that people of West African descent tend to have more fast twitch muscle fibers. You could be white as sour cream and get lucky with your genetics and end up the same way. It’s having those muscle fibers that’s the advantage, not having west african heritage. In sports like basketball or sprinting where fast twitch fibers are a big advantage, you tend to see populations of people who are predisposed to that getting over-represented.
Wasn’t there a basketball coach that got fired for saying basically this, albeit not as…elegantly?
classic
This was taught to me in grade school. I feel pretty betrayed.
Suffice it to say, I found it dubious even as a child and as an adult, learned better, but WTF.
Was it one teacher or multiple? I live in a fairly progressive US state, but I definitely had a one or two backwards teachers with axes to grind.
Just the one.
There was mention in a textbook of native Americans having slightly different shaped teeth, sorta scoop shaped on the inside to be good at scraping stuff. Can confirm tho, my teeth are a little scoopy, am a bit native American.
While it wouldn’t be weird for there to be slightly different bone shapes between ethnicities, it’s concerning that it would be part of a grade school curriculum and not an advance college course for dentists or forensics.
It wasn’t fully without context. We were learning how native Americans were able to tan hides without tanneries. One of the methods that they used is to scrape the skins clean and some other stuff that I don’t remember because it was like 5th grade or something, damn part of that involve them scraping the skins with their teeth, which were specifically adapted and well suited for the task.
I remember my friend’s mom telling me this when I was like 6 and then I told my mom what I learned and she told me not to listen to that lady.
My dad told me as a kid black folks have more fast-twitch muscle fibers.
This may have been the time when dissecting cadavers was very, very looked down on. It was seen as desecrating the body. So knowledge of the body just wasn’t there.
No, this shit was pretty prevalent in the 90s and I guarantee some people are still parroting it today.
Ergh I’m guilty of repeating this bullshit when I was younger. It had been sold to me as a fact, not in what I perceived was a racist context per se - more a ‘oh cool, lucky them, that makes sense gestures at basketball’ way. Believe me, I get it now. Also, my mum’s black… Where did I get this bullshit from? White men can’t jump?