Documenting organic racial differences in athletes is likely to strengthen rather than subvert it. And there are other reasons to suspect that drawing blacks and whites into well-informed discussions of muscle fibres and enzyme levels would be spoor strategy for bringing about racial reconciliation. For one thing, analyzing people as if they are laboratory specimens tends to make them self-conscious. Those who share this view will find it difficult to agree that the science of athletic aptitude belong on the modern agenda for racial healing. In the last analysis we confront a familiar dilemma.
Scientific curiosity is a wonderful thing, but it pays to thing about the consequences.
John Hoberman is a professor of Germanic Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.