Does race matter

TheDEA.org said:
Assuming you aren't just trolling, evolution/genetics doesn't work that way. Becoming very strong or athletic because of how you live won't make your children any stronger; they only inherit your genetic POTENTIAL, not the results that you achieved through hard work.

You're also assuming that the lower economic status whites weren't working just as hard as the slaves. Who really works harder: The free guy who's fighting to survive and improve his lot in life, or the slave who only works grudgingly because somebody ordered him to?

wow, this whole post is just wrong.
 
Negros typically have a larger percentage of fast twitch A % B muscle fibres which means they are more explosive get bigger easier and stronger but not built for endurance as most white men are. There are always exceptions to the rule. Such as certain populations in Kenya and Ethiopia etc., where they have seen as much as 99% slow twitch muscle fibres in calf muscls of local runners.

If you are genetically inclined to be great a long distance running, are skinny wirey it would take you maybe 15 years to become a bodybuilder.

If you are genetically inclined to be great at sprinting,weights and pwer requiring sports you could be at the top of bodybuilding in 5 years maybe 3 if you are a genetic beast.
 
HYDRO_CHRONIC said:
not to soundlike an asshole but i would rather be a "black slave" than jewish and made to watch my friends family die in the ways they did,s id take slavery over that anyday man oh man my simpathy goes out to every jeish family that had to deal with that

I'm not real big on the concept of comparative genocide. Is it worse to be an Armenian marched across Turkey while you watched your entire family die in front of you? Worse to stand on the edge of a pit in Poland (which you dug), watch your children get shot by special cleansing units then be shot yourself, and fall into that pit still alive, packed on top of your now dead (or dying) child and listening to the stifled wails of those under you? Or be forced to kill your child, tumbling him or her into that pit? Worse to be shackled in the hold of a slave ship in piles of feces as your friends die around you? After you've been ripped from your family and everyone you've ever loved? Only to survive and live your life as a captive subjected to daily humiliation and torture, to have your children torn from your arms and sold? Worse to be one of the third of the Cambodian population trapped in a concentration camp waiting to be hacked to death in the killing fields?

This is not directed at the previous poster but rather at the thousands of historians and politicians who invariably engage in this same dialectic when rationalizing situations like Darfur or Rwanda.

Slightly off-topic and tl;dr, but still relevant to race questions I think. The assessment of incidents of contemporary slaughter often bogs down in this pointless and cynically intellectual discourse, allowing parties who could affect the situation to distance themselves from the horror in question and provide a convenient out from actually doing something about it.
 
This conversation has generally centered around blacks and white but I'd submit the ethnic group that puts on mass the easiest, has the most natural strength, and have heads like coconuts. Of course I'm speaking of Polynesians. Tongans, Samoans, and Hawaiians. I have played Rugby with these guys for years and first experienced them many years ago in golden gloves.

Although this group have never been slaves, their breeding and lifestyle is worth mentioning. First off they eat meat every meal (including breakfast) so they get big quick with the protein intake being continous. Secondly, they are very discipline oriented. In other words if you fall out of line then mom AND dad kick your ass, then grandma and grandpa, then bros and sisters, etc. They are fairly violent by nature and thats one reason they're so tuff.

All in all a damn tough group of people. Get in the gym with anyone of them and you'll see guys that "don't lift" that can move 315lbs with ease. Hit one in the head with your wood baseball bat and you'll have tooth picks afterward. The only downside: They are generally lazy as hell otherwise they'd dominate pro sports.
 
oh dear god now it's not even about lifting anymore, now we are taking about genocide and enslavement of people?

jeez
 
Gryzer said:
If you are genetically inclined to be great a long distance running, are skinny wirey it would take you maybe 15 years to become a bodybuilder.

This makes me a saaad panda... :( heh

Ie heard africans/african americans have lower density bones which makes the muscle/bone ratio greater for teh same weight. Would explain why blacks dominate running events.
 
Oh and I agree with pacific islanders having the best genetics for weight/muscle gain. Like half the Fijians I met looked like they were pro bbers when most had never even seen a barbell.
 
TheDEA.org said:

I guess it was more the latter part of the post.

Are you trying to tell me whites worked harder than slaves back in the day? 8(
 
Are you trying to tell me whites worked harder than slaves back in the day?

I'm saying at best it's unknown. What *is* known from historical records is that the existence of the typical white southern sharecropper was a grim one, comprised of backbreaking labor and the almost constant risk of economic destruction and starvation.

I was actually raised on a farm. Mind you, a 'nice' modern one, with all the power tools and conveniences of modern technology. And it's still a lifestyle that, if I just dropped you on a farm today, would likely leave you sore from head-to-toe and completely exhausted. It's almost like being in the military; if can take months just to 'harden' the body enough to comfortably keep up with the physical demands. Even on a modern farm, it's nothing strange to have to work until the verge of physical and mental collapse. (I'm not complaining, though. There's something fascinating about finding your real limits, the limits of bone and nerve, instead of the limits of mere comfort.)

Some people seem to have this vision of the slavery-era south as a place where the slaves were worked to death every day and the whites sat around sipping tea on the porch, but that has little basis in reality. The rich white slave owner was a rare creature; life was quite hard for most people.

I'm not trying to downplay slavery as anything other than evil, but purely in terms of the amount of physical effort being exerted, I don't believe you can say with confidence that the slaves were working harder than the lower socioeconomic status whites. At least one scholarly book argues that blacks were, purely in economic terms, better off than the white sharecroppers:

http://www.amazon.com/Time-Cross-Ec...bs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1208446774&sr=8-1

Who's right? I don't know; I lack the sort of expertise needed to pass any authoritative judgement on the matter. What I do know is that there is grave doubt that the modern popular vision of life in the slavery-era south (particularly as it applies to the lives of slaves) is entirely historically accurate.
 
you have to admit the big slaves were probably bred with the biggest on at least SOME occasions. not to mention the strongest survived the boat trip id be willing to bet a large percentage of blacks here were brought over as slaves and not just immigrated from africa. hell my great grandmother was a slave. you have to admit there is a good possibility there has been slight genetic alteration.. also africa is probably a hard place to survive there are some of the fiercest predators there as far as long term historical evolution.

i think the question is: which environment causes the best physical specimen to evolve? is it the freezing cold, hot african, or mild moderate places.. id imagine the harshest environment makes the best specimen.. i think native americans have really good genetics, a lot of them are fat now.. but thats because food was scarce back in the day and they survived by chasing rabbits around on foot. now that food is so plentiful they cant handle it and get diabetes. a lot of blacks have high sodium retention to keep them hydrated but this can backfire in modern times in the form of high blood pressure.
 
Blacks (African Americans to be specific) generally have more fast-twitch muscles than other races. This makes them better at sprinting. Whites (Euro-Americans) have more slow-twitch muscles. This makes them better at long-distance races. In my experience, black dudes can get 'cut' or 'ripped' easier, while white dudes can build more muscle, and get bigger, though not as ripped. Their are always many exceptions to the rule, of course.

Living in America and being a huge basketball and football fan, it is difficult to think that blacks aren't better than whites at sports, or at least the sports I care about. When one race makes up 10% of the total population, and 90% or more (percentages are guesswork) of the NFL and NBA, I would pretty much say that the race has more natural athletes than the other.

My theory, based on nothing scientific, is something like this: during the slave trade, Africans were bought, sold, and traded for from West Africa. The slave owners that ran big plantations (a very large percentage, if not most of the slaves ended up in places like this) did not want their slaves to be able to communicate and conspire against them. They probably mixed slave groups so that there wasn't a big group that could talk and figure out how to escape or kill the slave owners, etc. This was possible because many of the tribes spoke completely different languages.

So you have huge groups of slaves, and everyone comes from a very different part of West Africa. The gene pool is large and varied, and black American slave children often inherited very good genes. This resulted in what we might today call natural athleticism and natural intelligence (though the slave owners did whatever they could to kill the intelligence, I could say more on this but I'll spare y'all).

Also, the slave owners often had children with the slaves, making the gene pool even larger and even more varied.

I have this natural talent theory because I beleive that (specific to this case, football and basketball) athletes of all races try their hardest to get to the pro's, if they are exceptional at the lower levels. The percentages that try their hardest are the same. The "x-factor" is the natural ability. I believe that it is not racist to think that African Americans have more natural ability in certain sports, especially given the environment I grew up in. Basketball and football require very advanced coordination as well, which could say something about some of the brain wiring of African Americans, that it is on average more advanced than other races. It is just my opinion that basketball and football players are the 'best' athletes, and that their sports require more athleticism than any other sports. So my theory is based on a lot of opinion.

Then again, I was the only white kid on a black football team of about 40 kids, and was the fastest kid on the team. Their are always exceptions to the rule ;)

Edit: My theory is essentially my opinion, I am not presenting anything as fact. Please feel free to correct me if my history is wrong, just don't be mean about it!
 
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you have to admit the big slaves were probably bred with the biggest on at least SOME occasions.

What's 'probable' about it? The average height of black and white Americans is pretty much identical. As I've said before, it's not at all clear that a bigger/stronger slave would actually be useful for all that much. The primary jobs of slave based farming were of the 'nuisance' sort; planting seeds, pulling weeds, picking cotton, picking the seeds out of the cotton. For most jobs I'm not much (if any) more productive than a person half my size would be, yet I still need twice as much food to power my oversized frame. For that matter, if you were a slave owner, would you really think trying to produce a slave who had fifty pounds of muscle on you was a wise idea? :) Fear of revolt was certainly a common concern.

not to mention the strongest survived the boat trip

Those with the strongest immune systems, perhaps (the vast majority of deaths would likely have been from disease), but that may have had a lot more to do with their health when they were shipped than genetics.


i think the question is: which environment causes the best physical specimen to evolve?

How do you define 'best'? :) More muscle (and the higher nutritional requirements that come with it) might help you survive in one environment and starve you to death in another. Humans became more diverse as they spread out over the planet in part precisely because there was no true 'best' answer for all environments.

Each environment brought it's own challenges. The severe cold in the north, the waterless deserts of northern Africa, the mountainous regions of Asia.... How does it affect evolution when you need to be able to sail a boat to make your living? How about when you need to be able stick a thrown spear in a wooly mammoth without getting stomped flat? I certainly don't know.
 
aanallein said:
slavery in the USA lasted 249 years. I very much doubt that was enough time to cause significant genetic drift.

Any other arguments are pretty much irrelevant. Slave owners weren't so much concerned about producing athletes as they were producing a large quantity of slaves because slaves were so expensive and the supply was falling / demand was rising.


not a genetic drift but the slaves were chosen according to their fitness, so the fittest ones were in the most demand.
 
well, i AK nyone on here whether they went to a white or black high school...reason i ask is because i am a white guy that went to a white grade school, junior high school..then i went to a high school in the ghetto basically and i saw firsthand the genetic dfferences between white and blacks...i have always worked out and i have solid genetics but i knew quite a few blacks that had never lifted a weight in their life yet they were built like little he-man dolls..they were shredded as well despite a diet that was crap...it wasnt only that, their strength and speed was off the charts as well...maybe their endurance wucked i dunno, but you take them and compare them to the white jock and there isnt much comparison...the black is by far stronger, faster, and more explosive...

these race arguments usually end up not so well because certain 'truths' are presented and most cant handle that...just look at the nfl and Nba and you tell me who are the better athlete..it isnt rocket science...i remember watching a high school basketball game where the top white team played a mediocre black team...the white team were known for their speed but compared to the blacks, they were slow...there was such a large disparity between the 2 teams when it came to speed that the commentators almost brought up the race card...it was just too painfully obvious..
 
i dont know why this is even being argued any further. like its been said a few times its proven fact that blacks have a higher concentration of fast twitch muscle fibers which make them more exploive, especially the western african ones. the eastern african ones are geared more towards marathons and long distance shit. but the thing is what the africans may make up in phsyical genetics they certainly lack when it comes to mental prowess.
 
Christ on a cracker. Is there a mod that will lock this bitch down? I think the rubes have exposed themselves as closet racists. Nothing constructive being said......
 
This thread has quite a few interesting viewpoints and historical perspectives. But it seems to just go around and around, where and when it will end nobody knows.
 
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