Viewpoint: Challenging yet another scientifically silly article claiming Black domination of sprinting and long distance running has nothing to do with genetics and ancestry

The latest effort to disprove racial differences in athletic ability is a paper by Tade Souaiaia and colleagues titled ‘Revisiting Stereotypes: Race and Running’. Specifically, these authors challenge the “racialist paradigm” that West Africans have an inherent advantage in sprinting and East Africans have an inherent advantage in long-distance running.

[I]n the 100m, 97 of the top 100 times were achieved by men with West/South African ancestry. And in the marathon, 96 of the top 100 times were achieved by men with East African ancestry. In other words, West/South Africans still overwhelmingly dominate sprinting, while East Africans still overwhelmingly dominate long-distance running.

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As an alternative to the supposedly erroneous “racialist paradigm”, Souaiaia and colleagues propose the “psychocultural hypothesis”. It’s not entirely clear what they mean, but they seem to be saying that stereotypes and role model effects explain the patterns in the data. Although I can’t rule out such effects completely, this seems to me an extremely unlikely explanation.

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[T]he evidence that West/South Africans have an inherent advantage in sprinting and East Africans have an inherent advantage in long-distance running remains highly compelling, while the notion that racial gaps in athletic performance are the result of stereotypes and role model effects is totally implausible. Some groups are better at certain things than other groups – and that’s okay.

This is an excerpt. Read the full article here