From: wung@eecom.gatech.edu (Peter Wung)
Subject: Re: Genetic question misunderstood
Reply-To: wung@eecom.gatech.edu
Organization: School of EE, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1992 15:24:57 GMT

In article 14789@seas.gwu.edu, claypool@seas.gwu.edu (Hyok H. Lee) writes:
>|
>|mday@jukebox.lcs.mit.edu (Mark Day) writes:
>|: 
>|: You have to consider what proportion of a population seriously
>|: considers professional sports as a viable economic possibility before
>|: you start getting carried away with genetic ideas.  In today's
>|: America, a white basketball player has to be REALLY REALLY REALLY good
>|: (or from Indiana :-)) to convince himself and others that he'd be
>|: better off trying to play pro basketball than getting some more normal
>|: job.  With fewer job opportunities and generally lower wages at those
>|: jobs, a black basketball player at the same skill level has much less
>|: trouble convincing himself and others that he should go for pro sports
>|: as a career.
>|
>|I think you are wrong.  The prospect of playing professional sports is
>|almost every boy's dream.  If you were to ask a group of boys what they
>|wanted to be when they grew up, I'll bet almost half would say football
>|player.  The reason there are  more blacks in the NBA is because they are
>|the best players, not because whites chose not play.  
>|

I think you are missing the main point, which is that given the economic realities
between an economically well off kid who lives in the burbs, and a kid who lives in the ghetto, the choices are obvious.  Now, due to many reasons, not the least among them,
racism, the black kid will work harder toward achieving an athletic career just because it is a way out of their situation.  Nobody ever talks about how hard it is for 
an athlete to make it in the big leagues.  With blacks like Michael Jordan and Magic
tural born Johnson, it is their natural born talents.  With Larry Bird and Kevin
McHale it's their hard work and work ethic.  I am sure Michael and Magic had to
work their asses off to get to where they are at, and Larry and Kevin are not just your average no talent kid off the streets who by virtue of their hard work got to where they are at.  By infering that the physiological differences between the races works 
completely to the detriment of one race and to the advantage of the others, you
are propagating the myth that divides the american society. 

>|Stanfor track coach Brooks Johnson said,"I'm going to find a white
>|Carl Lewis.  They're all over the place."  Sports columnist Scott
>|Ostler in the Los Angeles Times:"Dear Brooks--Pack a lunch.  And
>|while you're out there searching, bring back a white Spud Webb,
>|a white Dominique Wilkins, a white O. J. Simpson, a white Jerry Rice,
>|a white Bo Jackson and a white Wilt Chamberlain.  This puts a whole
>|new perspective when one considers how many of today's great athletes
>|are black.  One would have to go back to the days when blacks were 
>|barred from playing professional sports to find any significant number
>|of white superstars.

So, how about a dearth of blacks or asians for that matter, in the boardrooms of america, does this imply that blacks and asians and other minorities are just naturally
unsuited for decision making in the corporate world?  

>|
>|: 
>|: This whole business of "racial differences" is vacuous, anyway: you
>|: can't do a scientific study of these questions because there is no
>|: scientific, objective definition of race such that two independent
>|: observers can always produce the same labelling of each member of a
>|: given group of humans.  "Race" is a social construct, and the notion
>|: of race changes as you move among different societies.  From a
>|: scientific view, all you can really say is that humans are a single
>|: species.
>|: 
>|: --Mark Day
>|: 
>|: mday@lcs.mit.edu
>|
>|What you seem to be saying is that races do not actually exist.
>|Scientifically, racial categories do exist.  I believe scientists have
>|identified 12 distinct racial groups.  Race is a valuable tool in tracking
>|human history, migration patterns and genetic history.
>|
>|It just seems to me that with my original post, I have ferretted out
>|people who are closeted racists.  The same type of people who, years
>|ago, would say to a successful black, "You're a credit to your race."
>|Now these closet racist attempt to hide themselves by denying any
>|differences between races.
>|
>|Hyok Lee
>| 

I'll agree with your assessment that races do exist and are important.  I do take
great offense at your insinuation that I am a racist because I disagree with your laughable assertions.  There are physiological differences between races, happy now?
There are also physiological differences between sexes.  But that does NOT 
automatically extrapolate linearly to mean that all white sprinters should just hang up their spikes and give up.  Nor does it mean that a black youngster should forget about 
their intelligence and only work on their physical "gift".  To discuss this matter
in academe for the sake of learning is one thing, because although academe is also full of uninformed opinions and cultural biases that are harmful, there is at least some
form of self policing going on that weeds out the more outrageous claims.  Whereas in
our forum, ther is no policing of the facts, and I don't believe there are that many
anthropological geneticists in this group.

---
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