Kenyans won both the men's and women's Boston Marathon again. I always feel vindicated when they do, having been an early-understander of the genetic reality.
So...there's nothing genetic about their oxygen processing at elevation or their narrow calves and ankles. It's because of their culture, raiding for cattle in the mountains and needing to run very fast to get home with them. To say otherwise would be racist, even though none of these runners have been raiding cattle for a couple of generations now.
To those who protest that this is a ridiculous exaggeration on my part, and reasonable people of course recognise a genetic component to their dominance from the 1500 meter races on up, remember that I vividly recall a time when we were not even allowed to say even that, and discussion of fast-twitch vs slow-twitch muscle fibers was tantamount to being a Nazi eugenicist, practically Hitler.
I would be much happier entering nature-nurture discussions if the nurture advocates could be at least minimally honest about themselves, never mind about the data.
3 comments:
I recall the first time I saw this happen when Jimmy the Greek was fired. He said, "breeding" but we understand that a more appropriate word today might be, genetics. His infamous remarks after that were probably what killed his job though.
I remember the incident. It was genetics, but it goes back way further than American slaveholding, which is quite recent.
I was a mediocre runner in high school and college, but it did make me a genetic realist. I never had to race against Kenyans, thank goodness, but I routinely lost to young men who had no more discipline or desire than I. Since then all culture talk has found me very stony ground. I remember in those days being lectured that blacks were good at basketball because our racist society snuffed their dreams of becoming certified public accountants and urologists. Even then these lectures seemed to be cruel. I and most white boys I knew would have given anything to be a basketball star. Our desire was white hot, the discipline with which we practiced in our driveways was like iron. And yet we still sucked. Genetic realism is actually the kindest theory because, sooner or later, every man runs up against his natural limitations.
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