Essay 2 "Blacks Are Naturally Good Athletes" PDF

ESSAY 2 “Blacks Are Naturally Good Athletes” The Myth of a Biological Basis for Race Daniel Buffington University of North Carolina–Wilmington J ournalist Jon Entine opened his 2001 book, Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We Are Afraid to Talk About It, with the following scenario: I...

ESSAY 2 “Blacks Are Naturally Good Athletes” The Myth of a Biological Basis for Race Daniel Buffington University of North Carolina–Wilmington J ournalist Jon Entine opened his 2001 book, Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We Are Afraid to Talk About It, with the following scenario: Imagine an alien visitor chancing upon a basketball arena on a wintry night. It sees a curious sight: most of the faces of the extended tree trunks scampering around the court are black; the crowd, on the other hand, is almost all white. This alien would see much the same racial division at football games, boxing matches, and at track meets and running races around the world. Even in sports in which blacks are not a majority—baseball, soccer, rugby, cricket, even bobsledding in some countries—blacks are represented in a greater number than their share in the population. (p. 3) Entine goes on to argue that genes are the primary explanation for athletes of African descent being overrepresented in elite levels of sport. He is hardly alone in making this claim. On the eve of the 2012 Summer Olympics, former gold medalist sprinter Michael Johnson contended that slavery caused people of African descent to have a “superior athletic gene” (Beck, 2012) that manifested in success in the 100-meter sprint. In doing so, he joined the likes of Al Campanis and Jimmy “the Greek” Snyder, who have made similar comments. For Entine (and others coming from this perspective), skin color demarcates an unambiguous boundary between distinct populations and thus explains a pattern of human social behavior. That an alien visitor would do the same would be as surprising as it would be unlikely. Yet, to a human being, especially one socialized within American culture, the idea that 14 Essay 2 “Blacks Are Naturally Good Athletes” 15 “Blacks are naturally good athletes” seems to make sense. That this myth exists to such a degree within our popular culture tells us a great deal about how the biophysical diversity of our species has been (mis)understood. For this reason, it serves as a useful starting point for debunking the biological basis for race. In contemporary biology, the term race refers to a unit of taxonomy—like kingdom or phylum—and is used synonymously with subspecies to indicate two or more biologically distinct populations within a species. For example, zoologists divide tigers into nine subspecies, including the Bengal, Siberian, and Sumatran types. They do so on the basis of genotypic and phenotypic traits, although the amount of variation necessary to constitute subspecies separation is not agreed on and, therefore, is the subject of debate (Keita & Boyce, 2001). Genotype refers to the genetic makeup of an organism, including all genetic material inherited from one’s parents or a portion of this material, such as chromosomes that code for eye color. Phenotype refers to the observable characteristics of an organism, such as body size, fingerprint pattern, or color of skin, hair, or feathers. While phenotype expresses an organism’s genetic inheritance, it is also modified by environmental conditions, such as when exposure to sunlight darkens the color of human skin. Applying the biological meaning of race to humans suggests that our modern species, Homo sapiens, can be divided into a number of discrete, mutually exclusive subspecies based on phenotypic and genotypic differences, and that each subspecies will contain nearly uniform individuals who are more similar to each other than to members of other races. If race strictly referred to a unit of taxonomy, it would be of no more than minor interest to sociologists. However, race has an even longer history of use outside biology. Although its origin is uncertain, the best evidence suggests the term entered the English language during the 16th century as a folk concept that referred to a breed of domesticated animals reproduced for specific behavioral or physical qualities (Smedley & Smedley, 2011). Over time, this meaning was applied to human beings such that race was used as a marker of social distinction, indicating membership in particular social groups. While physical appearance and ancestry played a crucial role in distinguishing between groups, so did behavior and social status. Indeed, as well-worn sayings such as “Blacks are naturally good athletes,” “Asians are good at math,” and “Whites can’t dance” attest, in its more common, everyday usage, race was thought to influence a whole range of behaviors, from the athletic to the intellectual to the artistic. Even more, these different behavioral capacities were thought to naturally account for the unequal positions racial groups came to occupy in society. A useful starting point, then, is to recognize at least two distinct uses and meanings of race. In the strictest biological sense, it refers to intraspecies variation measured by some unspecified amount of phenotypic and genotypic divergence, a meaning I will refer to as biological race. In contrast, the term social race will refer to its everyday use as a form of group identification, including how people identify themselves (self-identity) and how they are identified by others (social identity). This essay will focus on biological race and, in particular, whether or not the concept is useful for describing diversity within the human species. 16 PART I LAYING THE FOUNDATION Evidence for the Belief in a Biological Basis for Race There is ample evidence that a significant portion of the general public believes there are biologically discrete human races. For example, a survey of Georgia residents found that 61.3% of respondents agreed with the statement that “genetics plays a primary role in determining an individual’s race” (Condit, Parrott, Harris, Lynch, & Dubriwny, 2004, p. 260). Further evidence can be deduced from questionnaires that ask about racial differences in more limited ways. For example, a survey conducted in 2001 found that 74% of White men and 65% of White women believed that genetics contributed to differences in athleticism across racial groups (Sheldon, Jayaratne, & Petty, 2007). While support for genetic explanations of racial differences tends to be higher for Whites than other racial groups regarding athleticism, intelligence, the drive to succeed, and tendency toward violence, non-Whites (such as sprinter Michael Johnson) also express these views (Jayaratne et al., 2009). Open-ended questions show that beliefs about racial differences involve a complex mixture of biological, cultural, environmental, and personal explanations (Buffington & Fraley, 2011; Condit et al., 2004; Morning, 2011), with biology playing a particularly important role. Longitudinal evidence, however, suggests that these beliefs may be fading. In the 2010 version of the General Social Survey, only 10.3% of all respondents agreed that Blacks had lower socioeconomic status due to an “inborn disability,” compared with 26% in 1977, the first year this question was asked. However, it is unclear whether this decline is due to an actual change in attitudes or increasing social stigma attached to such responses (Bonilla-Silva, 2010). Indeed, responses to surveys and interviews should be interpreted as a conservative estimate of the belief in a biological basis for race, given the well-documented tendency for respondents to supply socially desirable answers. It is clear, then, that a significant portion of the general public—including some minority-group members—believe, to some degree, in the idea of biologically distinct human races. Yet a number of scientists who specifically study human biodiversity (biologists, geneticists, and physical anthropologists) have questioned biological race’s ability to accurately capture the type of variation found in the human species. To understand this doubt, we must return to the definition. Recall that race implies several things of note: that the human species can be divided into a number of distinct groupings on the basis of genotypic and phenotypic differences; that these groupings are mutually exclusive (a person can fall into one, and only one, of these groupings); and that these subpopulations contain individuals who are only minimally different from one another. It is important, therefore, to examine the degree of genotypic and phenotypic diversity within the human species. Reviewing the Evidence: Variation Within the Human Species Considering genotype, humans are remarkably similar. On average, human beings are 99.9% identical in terms of nucleotide pairs (one of the building blocks of DNA), Essay 2 “Blacks Are Naturally Good Athletes” 17 far more than many other species (Barbujani & Colonna, 2010). The vast majority of the remaining 0.1% variation (ranging from 80%–95%, depending on the specific markers examined and samples used) is found within any local population—meaning two nonrelated individuals from the same population will, on average, be only slightly more genetically similar to each other than two unrelated individuals from different continents. Furthermore, only a small portion of all alleles in the human genome are “private”—that is, found in only one region—and none of these are found with great frequency in the region where they occur (Rosenberg et al., 2002). This tremendous genetic similarity augments archeological evidence regarding the recentness of our species, suggesting there has not been much time for subspecies separation. How is this minimal amount of diversity distributed across human populations? Most of this genetic variation is clinal (Barbujani & Colonna, 2010; Cavilla-Sforza & Cavilla-Sforza, 1995; Rosenberg et al., 2005); that is, it varies gradually over geographic space in correspondence to transitions in environmental conditions. Not surprisingly, phenotypic traits that are significantly impacted by climate also display this type of continuous variation (Relethford, 2009). The classic example is skin color, a trait that has been central to a number of racial classification systems, especially in the United States. Of course, there are human populations with relatively dark skin and those with relatively light skin. However, when we arrange all human beings from dark to light, we find gradual variation—that is, innumerous shades between the light and dark extremes. These differences correspond strongly to environmental conditions, such that darker skin is found most frequently in the tropics, where sunlight is particularly intense, and lighter-colored skin is found nearer the poles (see Figure 2.1). Clinal variation leads to a general axiom: Populations differ by distance, such that the farther apart any two populations are in geographic space, the more genetically different they will be. Importantly, gradual variation poses a serious problem to attempts to divide humanity into separate units. Although individuals and groups will have distinctive traits in such a system, there are no obvious and clearly demarcated boundaries, meaning divisions will always be arbitrary and subjective, and the result of decisions made by human beings. That small portion of biodiversity that is not clinal is mostly the result of barriers— geographic boundaries such as mountain ranges, deserts, large bodies of water, and narrow isthmuses—that made reproduction between adjacent populations very difficult (Barbujani & Colonna, 2010; Cavilla-Sforza, 2000; Cavilla-Sforza & CavillaSforza, 1995). As such, because the Mediterranean Sea is less difficult to cross than the Sahara desert, North Africans are more genetically similar to Southern Europeans than they are to sub-Saharan Africans, despite these regions being of similar distance from each other. Social barriers—such as social preferences for mating with members of one’s own social group—are also significant. Therefore, many of these differences in biodiversity appear at the borders between sociolinguistic groups (Cavilla-Sforza, 2000) or between groups that have strong social rules against intimate relationships, such as the castes in India (Barbujani & Colonna, 2010). Using multiple genetic markers simultaneously, researchers can examine these discontinuities and even classify an individual’s geographic origins accurately 18 PART I Figure 2.1 LAYING THE FOUNDATION Worldwide Distribution of Skin Color Variation 180° 120° 60° 0° 60° 120° 180° 60° ASIA NORTH AMERICA 30° PACIFIC OCEAN ATLANTIC OCEAN Tropic of Cancer AFRICA 0° PACIFIC OCEAN Equator SOUTH AMERICA Tropic of Capricorn ATLANTIC OCEAN INDIAN OCEAN AUSTRALIA 30° 60° A N TA R C T I C A 60° Range of human skin tone colour Scale by latitude 30° 0 0 Darkest 1,000 1,610 2,000 miles 3,220 km Lightest Source: Worldwide distribution of skin color variation [Map]. In Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/topic/race-human (Bamshad, Wooding, Salisbury, & Stephens, 2004; Rosenberg et al., 2002), at least for those populations whose grandparents came from a single point of origin. Similarly, phenotypes that are minimally impacted by environmental conditions, such as skull size and shape, display a form of geographic clustering that allows researchers to accurately classify individuals using multiple measurements (Ousely, Jantz, & Freid, 2009; Relethford, 2009). However, the genetic similarities produced using this method are inconsistent and vary based on the markers examined, the sample distribution, and method of analysis (Barbujani & Colonna, 2010). Furthermore, the groupings suggested by this method of clustering stray quite far from the general understanding of biological races as large, continent-wide distinctions (Long, Li, & Healy, 2009). For example, using multiple measurements of the skull, physical anthropologists can distinguish between the crania of American Whites and American Blacks with a very high degree of accuracy. However, this same technique can also distinguish with a similar level of accuracy between populations commonly thought to belong to the same racial group, such as Central and South Africans, northern and southern Native Americans, and northern and southern Japanese (Ousely et al., 2009; also see Relethford, 2009). Perhaps most surprising, the skulls of White males born in the mid-1800s and White males born in the mid-1900s display a similar amount of difference. Therefore, if the ability to group individuals on the basis of crania were taken as evidence of the existence of racial groups, there would be thousands of them and they would correspond very imperfectly with the social race categories we use in our everyday lives. Essay 2 “Blacks Are Naturally Good Athletes” 19 What About Forensics and Medical Research on Biological Race? At this point, some might argue that forensic anthropologists can determine the racial identity of unidentified skeletal remains at a better than random rate and that medical researchers use race to predict susceptibility to certain diseases. Forensicists in the United States are able to do so, in part, because the major population groups they deal with come from vastly different areas of the globe. Since differences in physical traits (i.e., phenotype) increase with geographical distance, accurate classification is possible using multiple measurements (Ousely et al., 2009). Still, identification only becomes accurate when compared against the known demographic composition of the location in which the remains are found (Konigsberg, Algee-Hewitt, & Steadman, 2009). This means that a set of bones found in rural Iowa and identified as White would be classified as Easter Island Polynesian if found in the much more diverse location of Hawaii. If found in Gary, Indiana—the city with the highest proportion of Blacks in the United States—the same skeleton would be reported as Black. Medical researchers are interested in race as a proxy for ancestry, and they are interested in ancestry as a way of predicting the likelihood of an individual’s possessing a genetic abnormality that can lead to illness. For example, individuals with ancestors from regions where malaria was frequent (including West Africa, India, the Middle East, and southern Europe) are more likely to be carriers of the sickle-cell trait and therefore develop medical complications. Most studies of the relationship between race and disease rely on self-reported ancestry, which is problematic because the kinship systems used to trace ancestry are culturally (that is to say, socially) constructed. For example, the United States tends to practice a system of hypodescent (more commonly known as the one-drop rule), in which children of European– African sexual relations are socially designated as Black despite their mixed ancestry (Davis, 1991). This means that asking a descendant of one of these relationships his or her self-reported racial identity may provide only a partial understanding of the actual genetic ancestry. Still, medical researchers persist in using self-identity because it provides a rough (if imprecise) approximation of ancestry that is cheaper and less time-consuming than the more accurate methods of detailed genealogical research or analysis of a person’s entire genetic makeup (Bamshad et al., 2004; Collins, 2004). Clearly, then, neither forensicists nor medical researchers have discovered something about race that was missed by other researchers. The Sociological Perspective on Race Given this, many students are curious as to why sociologists continue to use the word race and specific racial group designations such as White, Black, and Native American as if these correspond to distinct entities. To argue that race is not biological is not the same thing as saying it does not exist. As already indicated, there is a “social” meaning of race distinct from its use in biology, and it is this meaning to which sociologists most frequently refer. Race in this sense refers to a type of social identification 20 PART I LAYING THE FOUNDATION in which certain physical features have been assigned social significance. Importantly, this definition incorporates, rather than discounts, biological variation. As we have seen, human beings do differ in terms of physical traits, and these visible differences became the primary criteria for placing individuals into racial categories. However, this classification process only took place once humans came to believe that physical features were salient markers of differences. Although different theoretical perspectives within sociology disagree about the exact mechanisms, all concur that the assignment of social importance to physical features occurred through social relations—such as migration and conquest, competition for scarce resources, and political challenges against the state—that brought different populations into sustained contact with each other. It was only once social importance had been assigned to physical differences that people began to act on them, treating members of their perceived racial in-group different from members of their perceived racial out-group. The result has been the formation of more-or-less coherent social groups that differ in ways that matter a great deal to sociologists: in terms of identity, cultural practices, access to important societal resources, and treatment by the larger society. It is for this reason that sociologists continue to study and use the term race. Explaining Differences in Athletic Participation and Performance Understanding the actual distribution of human biodiversity casts doubt on perspectives that rely on biological race as the primary explanation for behavioral differences, such as elite athletic performance. Conversely, recognizing that racial groups form through social interactions opens up the examination of a whole range of social forces. Considering athletic participation, it should be noted that Blacks are overrepresented in only a handful of sports1; therefore, a key question becomes, why only these sports? Sociological explanations call attention to two social features shared by members of the Black category: the occupational structure of society and the opportunity structure within sport itself. The former emphasizes that as a subordinate group, Blacks face limited employment prospects in many occupational fields. Conversely, the institution of sports was among the first to integrate and has subsequently offered a number of high-profile opportunities. These twin forces (ample opportunities in sports coupled with limited opportunities in other occupational fields) funnel a significant number of Blacks into elite sports participation (Coakley, 2009; Edwards, 1973). The opportunity structure within sports channels these participants into particular sports. A relative lack of material resources means that Black participation rates are highest in sports for which facilities, training, and competition are available in widely accessible social institutions such as schools (Coakley, 2009; Phillips, 1993). Conversely, sports in which most training occurs in private clubs or through lessons (such as golf, tennis, and swimming) are the sports in which Black participation rates are low. Essay 2 “Blacks Are Naturally Good Athletes” 21 This is not to say that biology has no impact on an individual’s ability to perform a particular activity. Both rules and tactical strategies mean that sports often favor particular phenotypes, such as height in volleyball and basketball. All other things being equal, a relatively tall individual will be at a distinct advantage in these endeavors. Because certain populations are taller on average than others, some groups would appear to have an advantage. However, because of the tremendous amount of diversity within any population, many members of relatively tall groups will not be tall at all. In addition, because of the high degree of shared genes across populations, many members of other groups—including those that are relatively short—will be quite tall. Finally, it must be remembered that phenotypes are malleable due to environmental factors (such as nutrition) and are acted on in social situations shaped by cultural preferences. The Dutch, the group with the tallest average height in the world, have contributed very few elite basketball players, because of this sport’s lack of popularity. To the degree that individuals succeed because of the contribution of a particular genotype or phenotype, this would be because of their individual genetic inheritance, not biological features they share in common with members of their racial group. Conclusion By way of conclusion, reconsider how well biological race captures variation within the human species. As stated above, the clinal distribution of most of the variance within the human population makes the creation of distinct groupings difficult. Using sophisticated computer modeling focused on that small portion of human variation that is not clinal does allow for a reasonable classification scheme; however, the corresponding categories are inconsistent and reveal thousands of biological divisions. Further, racial categories are not mutually exclusive, so a person cannot fall into one, and only one, classification. While the use of multiple genetic markers allows for a highly accurate classification of individuals, even these techniques fail to accurately classify everyone in their samples. Some individuals, and even entire groups, could be classified into multiple categories. If this is the case with samples whose recent ancestors all come from the same self-identified group, this suggests classification would be even more difficult for that significant and growing portion of the human populace that lives in multicultural societies where diverse ancestry is common. At best, biological race very crudely corresponds to diversity within the human species, misrepresenting this variation far more often than it enhances our understanding of it. It is for this reason that sociologists have instead conceived of race as a social construction—that is, a way of assigning meaning to the social world. In the case of race, minor and primarily gradual biophysical differences between individuals and groups have become understood in everyday social interactions as deeply meaningful markers of boundaries between social groups. It is the actions based on this assigned meaning, 22 PART I LAYING THE FOUNDATION not the biophysical differences, that account for most of the differential outcomes among racial categories, including differences in sports participation. As such, biological race within the human species is most accurately described as a myth. Daniel Buffington is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminology at the University of North Carolina–Wilmington. He is the coauthor of “Racetalk and Sport: The Color Consciousness of Contemporary Discourse on Basketball,” published in Sociological Inquiry in 2011. He researches in the area of race, sport, and culture. NOTE 1. Black participation rates exceeded their proportion of the overall U.S. population for only 8 of 38 NCAA-level sports during the 2009–2010 season, including men’s and women’s basketball, men’s and women’s indoor and outdoor track, football, and women’s bowling (Irick & National Collegiate Athletics Association, 2011). A similar pattern emerges when examining professional and Olympic-level competition (Phillips, 1993). SUGGESTED ADDITIONAL RESOURCES Antrosio, J. (2012). Part 1, biological anthropology: Human nature, race, evolution [Web log comment]. Retrieved from http://www.livinganthropologically.com/anthropology/ human-nature-race-evolution-biological-anthropology Edgar, H., & Hunley, K. (Eds.). (2009). Race reconciled: How biological anthropologists view human variation [Special issue]. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 139(1). Herbes-Sommers, C. (Writer & Director). (2003). Episode 1: The difference between us [Television series episode]. In L. Adelman (Producer), Race: The power of an illusion. San Francisco: California Newsreel. Smedley, A., & Smedley, B. D. (2011). Race in North America: Origin and evolution of a worldview (4th ed.). Boulder, CO: Westview Press. QUESTIONS FOR FURTHER DISCUSSION 1. What is clinal variation, and why does it cast doubt on attempts to categorize humans into discrete racial groups? 2. Compare and contrast the biological and sociological explanations for different outcomes between racial groups, such as elite athletic participation. 3. If races are not biologically distinct groups, how do sociologists explain their existence in society? What factors does the author suggest contribute to the formation of racial groups? Can you think of others?