Is the domination of African- Americans in sports a sign of superior intellect?

B

BLACK NATION(suspended)

New member
Professional athletes and especially those involved in team sports must operate within highly dynamic and multi-dimensional situational contexts (Vickers, 2007) requiring a very complex set of cognitive skills (see Kioumourtzoglou et al, 1998; Horgan and Tienson, 1992). Often these skills resemble, or share close relationships with the kinds of skills that, in the not so distant past, helped to make our ancestors successful hunters and gathers. Hunting is assumed to have been in practice for 99% of human prehistory. So that “intelligence” in the past was never a measure of one’s academic aptitude or potential for formal schooling, but was instead a measure of one’s potential for real life survival, while this largely depended on hunting and gathering. This kind of survival also depended on the same intellectual abilities as those employed by athletes during competition. Formal schooling of the kind familiar to most in the West today did not become a part of most people’s lives until the early 20th century.
In 1899, when the schools of Washington, D.C. were racially segregated and discrimination was rampant, there were four academic high schools in the city--three white and one black. When standardized tests were given that year, the black academic high school scored higher than two of the three white academic high schools. Today, nearly a century later, even setting such a goal would be considered hopelessly utopian. But this feat was not a fluke. That same black high school was scoring above the national average on IQ tests during the 1930s and 1940s. Yet its physical plant was inadequate and its average class size was higher than that in the city's white high schools.

--Thomas Sowell. (1998). Race, Culture, and Equality
 
I wouldn't call it superior intellect. Unless what you are wanting is skill sets that easily translate into warrior skills. As a subculture athletics is not more needing intelligence than a vast array of other severely specialised groups. Only this one takes physical skills especially and all the coordination skills that go with it. I think it may more likely derogatory than complimentary to equate athletes with those who were great hunters of old, in whatever country. A hunter works for food. A great deal of athletics is humans competing against other humans. A fine thing to do if the other humans mean to destroy your country, but not much sense for just the fun of it. Though it does build up muscles and promote good health all that. Hunters had a reason hence the respect accorded them by the peoples they fed. I can see it does work for some individual sports now. A man who hunted for his own food with a rifle beginning at age 5 could be the same who wins later on an Olympic event using rifles. Still, I do not see that as a sign of "superior intelligence" but of superior physical skill sets. Those who excel at the top levels of athletic professions often are also be highly intelligent, or have great managers, or both. But you could say that of archaeologists who work in the field too. And great warriors. To me, it seems athletics has a serious lack of intelligent participants. Again, warriors can not be stupid and remain functional in the field for long. And to me, war more often than not seems the great waster of serious intelligence. Hunters, real hunters, have an intelligence uncommon in the city dwellers. Athletes could have some similar skills. Mere ability of any kind does not intelligence make.
 
The slave owners bred blacks to be stronger.

How many Africans have you seen that could play basketball or god forbid,football.
They would get broke in half.
 
hahahahahahhahahahahahahahhahahah

Its a sign of

I dont have a job so ill go play basketball

i dont take care of my kids so ill go play football
 
No one is superior to anyone else so please stop asking these types of questions-- this is white people stuff.
 
Back
Top