Racism

[Chi Ag]

rac·ism (rhttp://img.tfd.com/hm/GIF/amacr.gifhttp://img.tfd.com/hm/GIF/prime.gifshttp://img.tfd.com/hm/GIF/ibreve.gifzhttp://img.tfd.com/hm/GIF/lprime.gifhttp://img.tfd.com/hm/GIF/schwa.gifm)n.1. The belief that race accounts for differences in human character or ability and that a particular race is superior to others.

I am curious about people's opinions regarding intellectual quotients, athletic ability, physical development, etc. NBA? BASEBALL? FOOTBALL? COLLEGE PARTICIPATION?

[adamrod]

Without getting into cultural differences, I do believe that some races demonstrate specific characteristics, particularly in the US. Specifically, I believe that blacks are better athletes than other races in the US because of slavery. When teh Eurpoeans were taking the Africans to the US, they chose the biggest, strongest, healthiest people. They inadvertently were genetically engineering the black race to have superior strength and endurance, and eventually become the best athletes.

Also, looking at Asians/Indians: eastern countries choose to send their best students to the US to get their educations. When those minorities wed and have children, they generally procreate within their own races, again producing genetically superior academic offspring.

Sorry to make to this so long, but I also have a theory that if you were to average all of the characteristics of all members of each race across thew world, all races would be generally equal. (the weak blacks in Africa would balance out the strong blacks here, and the dumb asians in China would balance out the smart Asians here)

[The Massacre]

i knew who started this thread before i even opened it. :laugh:

[phatbc]

They have already done studies on African runners that basically showed that they had superior muscle fibers (fast twitch, sprinters; slow twitch, marathon) and localized this genetic-based morphology in muscles to the east and west coasts of Africa.

[whitelightnin_23]

according to my sports dr...(when I was in HS)

many of the better sprinters have an (either) elongated tailbone or add'l vertebrae which physically makes them better suited to run faster (according to physics).

He told me this, because I had a stress fracture of my lower back and had the "additional vertebrae".

He mentioned that it is common among African Americans.

I have never done any research to validate his statements...but would be interested in any confirmation/denials of anyone (ahem paging Dr Phat...) that has heard of this before...:popcorn:

This was one of the Drs in the group that did a lot of work w/ the Houston Rockets (at the time)...so I took him for his word...(and not some kook).

[phatbc]

I actually hadn't heard that before, but I'm about to see what I can find :cool:

[whitelightnin_23]

just did a quick google search & found this:
http://sci.rutgers.edu/forum/showthread.php?t=14282
(NOTE: This is from a message board, but provides sources within...and confirms what I was told by a reputable Physicians Group)



Rus,

Very interesting. A number of people (I was not able to identify a reliable source of the incidence of such an occurrence) have a 13th rib, usually from L1 vertebra. This is often associated with a 6th lumbar vertebra. Such an extra vertebra is sometimes called a transitional vertebra. Accordin to the following web site

http://www.vh.org/Providers/Textbook...Vertebrae.html (http://www.vh.org/Providers/Textbooks/AnatomicVariants/SkeletalSystem/Text/LumbarVertebrae.html)

the incidence of a transitional vertebra is 4.2% in a very large series of skeletons (4200). Also, lumbosacral transitional vertebrae vary by race.

Quote:
Lumbosacral transitional vertebrae were found to vary by race. It was reported that they were present in 18% of Australian aboriginals (Mitchell), 16% of Indians (Bustami), 10% of Arabs (Bustami), 8.1% of natives of Britain (Brailsford), and 5.8% of Japanese (Toyoda). Bustami studied 340 sacra of two population groups (Arab and Indian). Of these 340 sacra, 32 or 9.4% showed evidence of unilateral sacralization and 14 or 4.1% showed bilateral sacralization. Lumbarization was no found in the 340 sacra examined. Sacralization was present to some degree in 46 specimens (13.5%). The incidence of total sacralization was 10% in Arab and was 16% in Indian population groups. Arab males had a higher incidence in all stages of sacralization while it was the Indian females that showed the higher incidence in their group.

You may be interested to find that while the homo sapien is characterized by having five lumbar vertebra but homo erectus (the first of the human skeletons found in Africa, including Lucy and australopithecus africanus skeletons) typically had 6 lumbar vertebra. The presence of a 13th rib is of passing interest from the point of view of the Bible which suggests that God made Eve from the 13th rib of Adam.

http://www.angelfire.com/mi/dinosaurs/erectus_ribs.html (http://www.angelfire.com/mi/dinosaurs/erectus_ribs.html)

Animals generally have more vertebra than humans. For example, most animals have 12-15 thoracic vertebrae and 6-7 lumbar vertebrae although some whales may have as many as 20 lumbar vertebrae. Cows have 13 thoracic and 6 lumbar vertebrae. Pigs have 13-17 thoracic vertebrae and 5-7 lumbar vertebrae. Sheep have 13-14 thoracic vertebrae and 6 to 7 lumbar vertebrae. In contrast, almost all mammals have 7 cervical vertebrae, including human.
http://www.earthlife.net/mammals/skeleton.html (http://www.earthlife.net/mammals/skeleton.html)

Wise

[thissamguy]

Russians are better at chess

[Thisjeffguy07]

Sorry to make to this so long, but I also have a theory that if you were to average all of the characteristics of all members of each race across thew world, all races would be generally equal. (the weak blacks in Africa would balance out the strong blacks here, and the dumb asians in China would balance out the smart Asians here)

I'm going to have to disagree with you theory. There have been many studies done on this topic, and they always find that the different races have pretty significant differences in their avg intelligence and athletic ability and pretty much anything else that's measurable. Why do you think that they'd all be equal?