If you missed Sailer’s Sunday column on the controversy*, you should catch Entine’s take on it today in the Wall Street Journal:
Let’s review Anthropology 101. Population groups have distinct body types. Elite football players, dependent on speed and jumping ability, are disproportionately of West African descent. Why? Because, as dozens of studies have shown, they have (on average) smaller and more efficient lungs, higher oxidative capacity, more fast-twitch muscle fibers, and a muscled but lean body type.
Note that sprinters of West African ancestry, including African-Americans, hold 494 of the top 500 100-meter times. Their genetically prescribed morphology and physiology is a disaster for endurance events–there are almost no elite endurance runners of West African ancestry–but a goldmine for sprinting and jumping. Allowing for individual variation, Snyder was intuitively right.
Mr. Baker’s observations are common sense. Does anyone really think an Eskimo would perform as well in Wrigley Field in July as someone of African ancestry who has spent all but a speck of his evolutionary history along the equator? “The single most important factor in heat toleration is body proportions,” says David Brown, a University of Hawaii anthropologist and morphology expert. “If the relative fitness levels are similar, those with more skin surface area to overall body mass–those with relatively longer limbs–are more heat efficient. It’s easier to sweat, dissipate heat and keep core body temperature steady.” Check that anthropology textbook: Africans have longer limbs and more skin surface area than whites, who have more than Asians. Stout-and-short Eskimos, who are of Asian ancestry, don’t perform as efficiently in scorching weather as whites or blacks. Is it racist to acknowledge this?
*Choice quote: “We’ve been lectured for years that “race is only skin deep,” that the only differences between races are surface features evolved to adapt humans to local climates. Now, though, a new dogma appears to be emerging – that race isn’t even skin deep!”
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