The Rise of Asian Superjocks? Uh, OK.... Tom Scocca in Slate rips John Entine's Taboo, which explains how people of African origin dominate many major sports. But Entine doesn't say they dominate all sports, just ones that tend not to require lots of equipment and where raw inborn talent matters most. In particular running sprints or marathons (west and east Africans respectively). Sports like basketball can be seen as extensions of this due to their nature. You see the pattern in the major American sports, basketball, football and baseball. The dominance of blacks declines from basketball to baseball. This makes sense, in football and baseball there is enough specialization so that slow unathletic players abound (quarterbacks, to some extent linemen, catchers, designated hitters and first basemen). Baseball in particular focuses on a lot of skill when there actually is any action (whites are probably better at standing around and spitting in the dirt than blacks). In basketball, only centers and big forwards can afford to be slow, and even then they have to be athletic enough to keep up (along with specialist outside shooters, these positions tend to be the niche of white guys, while blacks dominate hybrid positions at the 2 and 3 where speed and skill are synthesized in an all-around game, from the outside, driving to the basket and in the low post). Also, Scocca's examples are somewhat stretched. There are only a few Chinese players in the NBA. Yao Ming is not even guaranteed to dominate the game, though Scocca feels that it's a forgone conclusion (it sure helps out his case too if he assumes this). Scocca links to the case against Ichiro being as great as he's claimed to be (check his stats, he still has a low OBP at .385-OK, low for how great he's supposed to be at getting on base). But somehow he doesn't address any of the points and simply asserts that Ichiro is the "fastest man in baseball." Did someone do time trials? Then he brings forth golf and Tiger Woods, but though it is obviously a sport, it doesn't seem like pure speed is what would make a golfer stand out, so Entine's point isn't applicable here. Scocca keeps bringing up sports where skill and strength might count for a lot more than speed, and indicates that it disprove's Entine's point. Here is one of Scocca's one-liners that illustrates his style of argument:

Who led the Dallas Cowboys with 172 tackles last year? Linebacker Dat Nguyen, from Vietnam.

Well, yeah, so what? Entine isn't arguing that there won't be any Asian athletes. In fact, I think Entine might have overstretched himself a bit, but his overall position holds valid. Numerically, there are certain sports where speed and reaction time are paramount, where blacks rule the roost. Those like skating where they don't, one can posit reasonable explanations, like the fact that ice skating requires ice and skates, something that most people of African origin don't encounter that often. Even in the United States, a large number of blacks still live in southern states and there aren't exactly that many ponds that freeze over in urban areas in the northern states. In addition, many black families probably don't see ice skates as an investment they'd like to make. Surya Bonaly, who was black and an ice skater, did well, but her strength was raw athleticism. I invite our readers to join the fray on this one. Update: Check out part of this post in the fray from a "biologist."

In any case, the success of black athletes is most likely because of hard work and persistence. If they wanted to be successful biologists and physicists, there probably would be a book explaining that the genetic diversity of Africans makes them smarter -- which is a gem of a circular argument.