Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We're Afraid to Talk About It

but what of weightlifting, swimming, et al. if one looks at say, olympic medalists in these events, one might be led to believe that whites are the superior athletes.

what of soccer, the global game? the greatest players of the past and present have been and are overwhelmingly of european and latin extraction (and this doesn't even have to include the few great latins of undeniably black extraction, such as pele). blacks may be disproportionately represented here, as the authors argue, but it is very very very small compared to the usa sports race discrepancies (soccer rewards the quick also).

this book is misguided because blacks may have an advantage at the highest end of the speed spectrum, but genetics prove that all races probably only vary in different attributes (intelligence, height, speed, strength, etc.) plus or minus ten-fifteen percent or so (which makes all the difference in the world at the olympic level, or when taking the mensa entrance exams).

this book is misguided, and reinforces stereotypes. there have been many studies done that show that football coaches, when presented with the hypothetical situation of a black and a white player of absolutely equal ability competing for one position, will favor playing the black athlete because of their ingrained misguided belief that the black player will play better. so sad and wrong, but so very entrenched in american popular belief.

the authors should have spoken more of the great genetic benefit that has been given african-americans, who are on average approximately 15-20% 'white' (b/c of interbreeding between the white and black populations in the usa). this was not because whites are so great or anything like that; it is because, like with all animals, introducing 'complete outcrosses' into the population (i.e. breeding two individuals with totally distant genetic backgrounds) produces hardy individuals. or in this case, produces blacks who can run like their kenyan relatives, and gained muscle mass and strength from their european outcrosses which has helped them become the successful athletes you see today. this has been proven in racehorses, btw, where a master-horse like secretariat was produced as a result of carefully selected complete outcross breeding (but some linebred (carefully inbred) horses do produce great racers as well, but cannot be equated as being equal to not completely outcrossing without inbreeding for you sticklers out there).


A superficial, scamped and biased parody of science   January 16, 2004
 50 out of 65 found this review helpful

When I was writing a review to this book one year ago, I actually had no idea, how grotesque it is. I can't forgo one more opportunity and cut one star down. Firstly, half the book can be summarized by three words: blah, blah, blah... Really, don't expect any deep analysis and too much data. The book can be useful for you, only if you want to use it as a very expensive list of references. Although the section "NOTES" contains a list of almost all available research, about half the studies is not cited at all and from the rest just a drop of information. After I have recently got to nearly all these studies, there are three explanations that occur to me, when I am to explain the author's motivation during writing this book: 1/ The author may not be mentally normal. 2/ The author didn't read it and listed it only because he wanted to make bigger impression on readers. 3/ The author did read it, but he excluded inconvenient facts or those facts that he was not able to understand. According to recent Entine's articles, all three explanations are possible.

Further, I would especially stress Entine's animosity that goes through the whole book and makes some passages either incredibly mendacious or laughable (which depends on the degree of elaboration of his demogogy). Although I can appreciate that there was eventually written a book that deals with such an interesting topic like racial differences in sports performance, I can't agree with that this topic got into hands of somebody, who doesn't bother to keep decent objectivity and who also doesn't bother to undertake deeper research and analysis. Instead of solid scientific evidence, Entine covers tens of pages by silly anecdotes, yeasty twaddle and intellectual exhibitions that often have nothing in common with the topic. By the way, out of all those moving anecdotes in the book, my favourite is that about white kids, who desperately practise their basketball skills in summer camps, but the group that tends to be really athletic, is "more and more the black one". This explains, why the best white players in NBA are Europeans, because all these white American kids die from overtraining before reaching maturity and thus they can't be responsible for the recent decrease of the black players' percentage in NBA. Or there may be another reason that Entine overlooked during philosophizing over faster motor development in black children: that children with slower motor development are unwillingly discriminated in tailent tests and are often lost for high level sports. This is a well-documented fact that must have a marked influence on the tailent selection during adolescence in mixed black and white communities.

To summarize the topic in several sentences (which Entine wasn't able to do on 400 pages): There really exist differences in short-term performance between populations of European and West African ancestry. West Africans have about 8% more fast-twitch fibers in their thighs and this difference is about 5% between African-Americans and Europeans due to some mixing. In untrained subjects the highest difference in performance was found in vertical jump (about 7-10%), followed by sprint (40 y dash: 0,2 s, i.e. 4%). On the other hand, it was repeatedly confirmed that there exist no differences in tests of agility (sprints with changes of direction), probably due to long-legged African constitution that impairs stability and coordination. It is worth note that performance in collective sports relies more on the combination of speed and agility than on speed by itself. West Africans also tend to have lower endurance capacity than Europeans, which explains their lack of success in endurance sports. Further, the superior performance of East and South African populations in long-distance running seems to lie almost entirely in their better running economy resulting from their slender physique. However, there exist quite marked physiological differences between runners from South and East Africa, which is worth further investigation. Entine's statement that their better running performance gives them an edge in more endurance sports only confirms the comical "depth" of his research; for example, cross-country skiers have a different physique than distance runners; in cycling (on a flat terrain) there is no need for running economy, but for a better ratio between power output and frontal drag (which favorizes larger cyclists, not figures like H. Gebreselassie); rowing and triathlon really aren't good sports of choice for Kenyans either. The premium of Europeans are generally sports that rely on strength or strength+endurance. Their physiology and morphology is in a way unique, because it's the most variable in comparison with all other human races. In theory it means that Europeans have the most universal predispositions for sports participation (which is confirmed even in praxis). However, there exist some sports requiring extreme physical or physiological predispositions, where whites have less percentage of potential talents. The main reason of the lack of sports success of Asians is their smaller body size. Moreover, their physical variability is the lowest. And, eventually, I would remark that in collective games, there are no extreme trends towards a special muscle fiber composition, because performance primarily depends on a large number (mainly psychomoric) qualities. Sure, FT fibers are a general advantage of African-Americans in basketball, but the major reason of their sports dominance in USA is that its white population doesn't bother to compete (which is clear to everybody outside US, but not to Americans). See also my summary "Booboo: Why some athletes dominate some sports" that will apear in the net soon (www.webpark.cz/booboo/booboo.htm). Here you will also find another corrections of phantasies appearing in Entine's book.


A megaphone for academic elites   October 24, 2003
 6 out of 21 found this review helpful

This book contains several diatribes against Christians. No other religious group is condemned. Thoughtful people need to be careful not to finance prejudice by buying books like this one. I found this book at my local library. When everyone is being so sensitive about issues such as race and religion, why would an author take such a risk? The answer is to be found in the relationship between the author and his subject matter. He presents the genetic and anthropological evidence for the dominance of black athletes in some sports. He is able to link the leading athletes from a sport to specific, localized regions in Africa. But the author has no scientific credentials. A problem? Not if he acts as a megaphone for the academic elites, the scientists who do have the credentials. He is forced to reference them hundreds of times. But these elites do not want to be seen as being racist. They have already been pilloried by their leftist academic peers for daring to study genetic differences in humans. And the author does not want to be a pariah of his liberal friends in journalism. No problem! He takes fully half of the book to present a judgemental history, from leftist academic historians, of blacks in sports. He condemns whites ad nauseum, especially white Christians, and compares their supposed opinions 100 years ago to the moral standards of the present day. One wonders if the hateful opinions expressed in this book will be respected 100 years from now, under the standards of the future.


The link between genetics and sports   October 1, 2003
 19 out of 45 found this review helpful

Many comments could be made about the content of this book; comments concerning, first, the author's qualifications to write it; second, his apparent predispositions regarding the subject matter; and finally his own conclusions.

The last first: he projects a reluctance to declare any of his personal conclusions, but rather to show all sides of the question. Yet, there does creep in some evidence of his predilections. For example, he mentions on page 240 that Justice Harlan appears to be favorable to eugenics--a dirty word since the Third Reich--and then immediately follows that observation with the statement that Harlan had voted "for the NAACP in Brown v. Board of Education" (in favor of Affirmative Action in higher education.) A non sequitur unless the subjective perception of "racism" is viewed as a more important consideration than the constitutional requirement of equality before the law.

He begins by giving a detailed analysis of sports history--over half the book, I think--resulting in the seemingly inescapable conclusion that black athletes dominate virtually all of the sports in which they compete, far out of proportion to their representation in the population. The author is a runner, and thus much emphasis is given to running. Again, it would be difficult to come to any other conclusion than the innate physical superiority of people of black African descent, particularly in running and jumping.

He seems to be reluctant to the point of refusal, on the other hand, to grant that there can be any concomitant assumption that there is any racial (he prefers the term 'population') difference in intelligence. In fact, he seems reluctant to admit that there is any such quantifiable characteristic as intelligence in the human species. He does mention J. Phillipe Rushton's book which addresses that question specifically, "Race, Evolution and Behavior"--which I have reviewed for Amazon.com--with respect, although he told me privately that there is much there with which he disagrees. He mentions, as well, Hernnstein and Murray's book, "The Bell Curve," which I have also reviewed here.

He mentions the political impact of the genocide practiced during WWII and its negative impact on serious post-war research into racial genetic differences (hence, the book's title), and the UN-led political effort to peddle the notion that all races are genetically equal, and that individuals are 'Tabla Rasa' (blank slates), on which the only significant influence is environmental experience--the model accepted by most social scientists today, a subject addressed in The Blank Slate, by Steven Pinker.

This book demonstrates again, to me, what I have known since I attended art school in the early 'fifties: there are average significant physical differences between the major races --"populations" if you wish--of which you must be aware if you intend to depict them in pictures; specifically, the Mongoloid, Caucasoid and Negroid. That there should be average mental and temperamental differences as well seems undeniable, particularly when coupled with my own observations around the world over three-quarters of a century. To me, this does not mean that one race is "superior," or another "inferior." It is just apparent (to me) that the various populations have used differing methodologies in coping with the differing environments with which they were faced, with concomitant evolutionary differences. We are more alike than different, and there are greater differences within racial groups than between them, but to deny the existence of racial differences would be, and is, utter folly.

The Mongoloids and the Caucasoids did, in fact, generate vast diversified societies, the wheel, written language, navigation skills and other intellectual accomplishments in cold, harsh climates, while the Negroids and other aborigines languished with none of the above in a relatively benign, forgiving climate. That much is pretty much undeniable.

Altogether, this is a valuable book--particularly if you are interested in sports and black athletes' contributions--and to a lesser extent the impact of genetics on the above, since the author's scientific qualifications for writing such a highly technical book may be questionable. Although his writing skills are superlative, to what extent his potential bias colors his research is an unknown quantity. I personally accept him at face value as an intelligent, curious man seeking the truth.

Joseph H. Pierre

author, Handguns and Freedom...their care and maintenance
and other books