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NEWS |
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Born better? A controversial new book dissects the success of black athletes.
by
Bob Young
"I was intrigued by how we feared the debate."
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If you believe his critics, he is one of this country’s most dangerous thinkers, a man whose theories on race are so lethal they’ve been compared to deadly weapons. No, it’s not John Rocker, the hot-headed pitcher for the Atlanta Braves. It’s Jon Entine, a mild-mannered Jewish liberal, who authored Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We’re Afraid to Talk About It. Published in January, Taboo is causing a ruckus because Entine, who is white, concludes that race does matter. He says that people of African ancestry enjoy a biological edge in certain sports, which helps explain why the 200 fastest times recorded in the 100-meter dash all belong to blacks and why blacks account for nine of every 10 NBA players and why seven of every 10 players in the NFL are dark-skinned. Taboo has its critics. Entine’s theory "is a milder version of eugenics," says Larry Proctor, a professor of anatomy at Washington State University, who is black. "And it’s damaging to blacks who buy into the idea that they have a physical edge. It’s like saying, ‘Let’s take the chains off the legs and put them on the mind.’" Stupid or brave? Proctor’s reaction shows that discussions of race and sports in this country come with an explosive subtext. Too often, the topic of black physicality has implied that blacks are closer to beasts. That’s why Wesley Snipes can star in White Men Can’t Jump, but white men can’t utter the corollary, which is that black guys are built differently. And that’s why Entine may be stupid, brave or both for writing what the Washington Post says "could well be the most intellectually demanding sports book ever written." To any TV viewer, it’s apparent that blacks dominate basketball, football and Olympic running events. What’s not so obvious, until you’ve pored over the pages of Taboo, is the astonishing degree of their dominance. Consider running, which is the most democratic of sports, requiring virtually no equipment, teams or club membership. All it takes is a surface and a runner. Every record at every standard distance is owned by a runner of African descent, from the 100-meter dash to the marathon. In sprinting, Entine notes, all of the 32 male finalists in the last four Olympic 100-meter races were of West African descent. The statistical likelihood of that happening based on population alone is 0.00000000000000000 00000000000000001 percent. In marathons, Kenya, a country the size of Texas, rules the world. At Boston, the world’s premier marathon, Kenyans have not lost the men’s race since 1990. In all, as Entine writes, Kenyans have won 38 Olympic running medals since 1964. Based on population alone, the odds that Kenya could turn in such a haul are one in 1.6 billion. Running isn’t the only sport dominated by blacks. Check the NBA stats. Not one white has finished among the top scorers or rebounders in recent years. Over in the NFL, you can count the number of whites at the speediest positions – cornerback, wide receiver and running back – on your hands. Even in baseball, where only one in six major leaguers is black, the stars are disproportionately black. Since baseball was integrated in 1947, a majority of National League MVPs have been black. Conventional wisdom attributes this success to environmental disadvantage, not biological edge. For blacks, the reasoning goes, athletics is practically the only way out of the ghetto, so they have extraordinary motivation to succeed. To suggest otherwise is dangerous. ‘High thighs, big size’ Remember Jimmy "The Greek" Snyder? A football commentator for CBS, Snyder mused in January 1988 that slave owners had bred black slaves to produce the best physical specimens. Black athletes, he went on to say, could "jump higher and run faster" because of their "high thighs and big size." Snyder’s comments, caught on tape at a bar on Martin Luther King Day, generated outrage. A Washington Post columnist compared Snyder to Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels. The Boston Globe ran a cartoon showing a hooded Klansman consoling Snyder. The president of the Hollywood chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People called for Snyder’s scalp, and CBS obliged a few days later. So why do black athletes dominate sports? How could the environmental-disadvantage theory explain the success of Michael Jordan, who comes from a middle-class background, or Grant Hill, whose parents graduated from Yale and Wellesley? Those questions once nagged New York Knicks fan and NBC anchorman Tom Brokaw. In 1989, Brokaw and Entine, who then worked as his producer, made a one-hour TV documentary on the subject. Although critically acclaimed, the show drew hundreds of complaints and angered some of Brokaw’s black friends. Brokaw turned his back to the controversy and went on to write a best selling book about old white men who’d fought in World War II. But Entine, now 47, remained curious. A former football place-kicker at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., then a marathon runner and self-described "jock sniffer," he relished the chance to write something substantive about sports. "It was a dream story," he says, over a recent breakfast of waffles and ham. "It touches on so many aspects of our lives – science, sociology, anthropology." Entine knew it was a dicey subject, but that attracted him. "I was intrigued by how we feared the debate," he says. In his book, Entine connects legitimate scientific findings, which show that some physical differences exist between black and white people, to black athletes’ increasing dominance in certain sports. The book plows new ground and goes far beyond Snyder’s tipsy sound bites. Entine contends that athletes who trace their ancestry to West Africa (which includes most African-Americans) are exceptionally fast and can jump high. In short, that’s because of greater muscle mass and a greater percentage of power-enhancing fast-twitch fibers, a higher center of gravity and more anaerobic enzymes. Another population, the East African descendants who dominate distance running, have larger lung capacities, more endurance-enhancing slow-twitch muscle fibers, a typically slighter body profile and the ability to process oxygen more efficiently. Whites, according to the scientists Entine quotes, fall physically between East and West Africans. Entine is careful to stress that he’s talking about trends among groups of very elite athletes; among this small population, he argues, differences that could give a fraction-of-a-second advantage to people of African ancestry can make the difference between an Olympic medal and fourth place. Michigan State University anthropologist Robert Malina agrees. "Differences among athletes of elite caliber are so small that if you have an advantage that might be genetically based, it might be very, very significant," he says. Entine isn’t discounting the hard work of black athletes, nor is he suggesting that most blacks athletes are superior to most whites. Rather, he’s saying that the pool of potentially great athletes in certain sports is deeper and wider for blacks. In the end, Entine says, the individual’s work ethic, competitive spirit and training remain the key to success. "That’s why plenty of guys with Scottie Pippen’s talent are in the CBA (Continental Basketball Association)," he says. Two views Still, Taboo has rekindled an academic rumble that pits what might be called, in extreme terms, the culturalists against the biologists, the neo-creationists against the social Darwinists, the black nationalists against the racists. On one side are those who say race is an oppressive social construct created to explain trivial differences between people of dissimilar skin pigment. These well-meaning people worry, as one scribe wrote, what will happen to the brotherhood of man when some brothers can run faster than others. On the other side are those who say forget about the genetic similarities between races – it’s a red herring. It’s not the amount of genes that count – heck, we share 74 percent of ours with roundworms – but which genes. It’s time, these scholars say, to stop denying science and start truly celebrating diversity. Some of Entine’s critics flat-out disagree with his findings. They argue that Taboo doesn’t prove that black athletes owe their success to genes, rather than individual drive. "His evidence is not conclusive," says Richard Lapchick, founder of Northeastern University’s Center for the Study of Sport in Society. Most, though, have a different complaint: They fear the book will give ammunition to racists. "I see this like guns or uranium," says Jeffrey Sammons, a history professor at New York University. "Some information has a more dangerous content than others. Only bad things can come from research into racially based differences in sports performance." Sociologist Harry Edwards, the man who engineered the Black Power protest at the 1968 Olympics, once explained why the topic of black physicality is so incendiary. "By asserting that blacks are physically superior," Edwards said, "whites at best reinforce some old stereotypes long held about Afro-Americans – to wit, that they are little removed from the apes in their evolutionary development. It opens the door for at least an informal acceptance of the idea that whites are intellectually superior to blacks. " Some say Entine has blown that door off its hinges. "Jon’s thesis doesn’t threaten white racism. Jon’s thesis affirms white racism," says C. Keith Harrison, assistant professor of kinesiology at the University of Michigan and director of the Paul Robeson Research Center for Academic and Athletic Prowess. The comments of Entine’s critics reveal one of the strange things about the reaction to his book: It’s not being criticized for what it says, but for how a bigot might distort its findings. While it seems an intellectually flimsy critique of Taboo, it’s also understandable. For many black athletes, the mere mention of their athletic superiority carries a stigma. Former NBA star Isiah Thomas used to complain that black players never get credit for their hard work. "When whites perform well, it’s due to thinking and work habit," said Thomas. "It’s not the case for blacks. All we do is run and jump. We never practice or give a thought to how we play. It’s like I came dribbling out of my mother’s womb." Entine and his supporters argue there’s no harm in reporting on human diversity. If the discussion is about genetic vulnerability to a disease, it’s no problem. Why should it be when the subject is sports? "Why do we so readily accept the idea that evolution has turned out Jews with a genetic predisposition to Tay-Sachs disease and that blacks are more susceptible to sickle-cell anemia," Entine asks, "yet find it racist to suggest that West Africans may have evolved into the world’s best sprinters?" Human diversity should be a cause for celebration. "It’s time to say it’s wonderful," says Ralph Holloway, an anthropology professor at Columbia University, who is using Taboo in one of his classes. "Our strongest weapon against extinction is our variability." The professor has a point. What’s more enlightened: To acknowledge our differences without stereotypes, without saying one group is better or more intelligent, or to deny those differences for fear of encouraging the John Rockers of the world? "In the end, for all our differences," Entine says, "we are far, far more similar." That’s Taboo’s only real message.
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