Dr. Souaiaia is bright and knowledgeable, but he tends to overthink things. He gets hung up on sub-sub-theories and misses the big picture.
The big picture is that people of sub-Saharan ancestry tend to be, on the whole, really good at running, better on average than people of any other major racial group.
A sub-theory is that some types of sub-Saharan ancestry tend to be better at sprinting and other sub-Saharans at distance running.
Evidence for both the theory and sub-theory includes that in the last 11 Olympics, the 88 finalist slots in the men's 100 meter dash, the race for the world's fastest man, were filled 87 times by sprinters of at least significant sub-Saharan ancestry and once by a Chinese runner. 87 of 88 times is pretty remarkable evidence.
Similarly, among the top 100 all-time 100 meter men (9.94 or lower) as of March 2024, there is one East Asian (Su Bingtian), one white (Frenchman Christophe LeMaitre), one half Austrialian Aborigine and half Irishman (Patrick Johnson), and one Cape Coloured (Wayde Van Niekerk). I believe there are three half-blacks (Lamont Marcell Jacobs of Italy, Jimmy Vicault of France, and the half-Japanese Michael Norman of the USA, although I could be be understating this number). The other 93 men with the fastest 100m times ever appear to have two parents who identity as black.
Among those 93, there is now one East African top man in the 100m, Ferdinand Omanyala of Kenya. Yet, note that he is of the Bantu Luhya tribe, which is quite distinct from the Nilotic Luo tribe of former president Obama. (The Bantu expansion began in West Africa on the border of Nigeria and Cameroon.) Omanyala is much wider and more muscular than the Kenyan Nilotic Kalenjin distance runners, such as marathon great Eliud Kipchoge.
The authors make a big deal about the fact that there are now five Southern Africans (and one Southwest African, 1990s star Frankie Fredericks of Namibia). The other 86 of the top 100 appear to have two parents of more or less West African descent.
Likewise, at the other end of the spectrum of distances in Olympic running, the marathon, as of March 2024, the last time I checked, the top 100 marathon runners ever included 1 Japanese, 1 black Brazilian, 2 North Africans, and a whole bunch of East Africans, almost all of them Kenyans or Ethiopians. Among the top 100 all-time marathoners, there are 46 running for Ethiopia and 44 running for Kenya. Distance runners from Ethiopia and Kenya tend to come from higher altitude regions, so they benefit both from the nature of their ancestors evolving at altitude and the nurture of growing up at altitude.
(On the other hand, East African migrants who grow up at low altitude seem to do pretty well as well. For example, the Ethiopian-American Yared Nuguse who won the bronze medal in the greatest race of the 2024 Olympics, the men's 1500m, grew up, IIRC, in sultry, low-lying Louisville. But now I'm getting into sub-sub-theories, which is Dr. Souaiaia's strong suit, not mine.)
Dr. Souaiaia is ready to pounce on my not being able to perfectly define the racial sub-groups associated with sprinting success (West Africans? Atlantic sub-Saharans? Bantus?) versus distance success (East Africans? Indian Ocean sub-Saharans? Nilotics?) But the pattern is pretty clear even if it's hard to specify precisely. Let's just call them Sprinter Africans and Distance Africans.
The middle distances, 800 meter and 1500 meter, have been more up for grabs, with less dominance by either Sprinter Africans or Distance Africans, leaving people of European and other descent with a better shot at gold medals.
Cultural patterns will thus have a bigger effect at more competitive distances like 1500m, where it's more likely to see different cultures going thru eras of success and frustration. As I wrote in 2004,
"Why don’t American distance runners run as fast as they once did? It appears to be an instructive interaction of nature and nurture.
"The decline has been absolute, not just relative to the rest of the world. From 1965 through 1967, three American high school boys (Jim Ryun [now a GOP Congressman from Kansas], Marty Liquori, and Tim Danielson) ran the mile in under four minutes. It didn’t happen again until Alan Webb did it in 2001. I suspect that what took the air out of the American middle distance balloon was Kenyan Kip Keino beating Ryun at Mexico City in the 1500m in 1968. This was at high altitude, where Keino was at home, so it didn’t seem so bad at first, but then the Kenyans just kept on winning. A huge boom in recreational distance running started in America in 1972 when Frank Shorter won the Olympic Marathon, but it didn’t lead to a new generation of world-class runners. The top endurance talent must have gone into mountain climbing or triathlons or bicycle racing or something else where they didn’t have to compete with the Kenyans."
So, I've always argued for the moderate position that both nurture and nature play important roles in human life. But the conventional wisdom during my lifetime has been the extremist position that only nurture could possibly matter.
For example, we got deep into the weeds over Ferdinand Omanyala Omurwa, Kenya's only world class 100 meter man ever, even though Kenya began winning Olympic track medals 60 years ago in 1964. But Omanyala Omurwa isn't even that good: he's twice made the Olympic semifinals, coming close to advancing to the final in 2021 but finishing way back in 2024. And he got suspended for doping in 2017.
Keep in mind that Kenya won the 4x400 relay gold medal way back in 1972 (when America got disqualified) and the 4x400 silver in 1968, so it's not like Kenya hasn't ever thought about sprinting. They're just better at long distances.
Is it possible for something to be both true and racialist? Is it, say, racialist to say that Nigerians usually have darker skin than Europeans? If it isn't, then the accusation of racialism rather falls apart once you have conceded that your opponent's claim may well be true.
Thank you, Noah. That's what I would have expected. Seeing Tade use it as an example at that way made me wonder if there was something relevant I didn't know.
I don't think he was suggesting that it's a function of socialisation. Rather, he was pointing out that variance in height is explained by many genes of small effect size (rather than a few genes of large effect size).
A general problem with Souaiaia's article is that he is sophisticated enough to have read and appreciated rare heretical articles from a generation ago so he now treats them as the conventional wisdom, when in fact they were out of the blue at the time. For example, he emphasizes subtle mistakes in Amby Burfoot's 1992 "Runner's World" article "White Men Can't Run" that introduced the West African sprinting vs. East African distance distinction to American magazine discourse.
I can vividly recall picking up that copy of "Runner's World" in 1992 at a magazine stand, scanning the article and saying to myself, much like Edward O. Wilson said to himself in 1964 when reading William D. Hamilton's landmark article on kin selection: No, this can't be true, or I would have figured it out myself already!
Then I bought the magazine and reread the article a couple of times and admitted to myself that Burfoot had made a major discovery that I hadn't.
32 years later, Souaiaia et al point out that Burfoot made a few minor mistakes.
But, really, so what? Burfoot made a massive breakthrough in 1992 that demolished the conventional wisdom of the era, although he didn't quite have the vocabulary to describe it perfectly.
I tend to agree. At the risk of sounding arrogant, or perhaps “stupid”, I never saw/understood the argument being made. Never in all my readings on the subject of race and sprinting—or even general athletic prowess in sportsball— have I considered such as a complete function of genetics or environment. To lend the weight of causation toward genetics is not great feat of imagination and allows for all sorts of “anomalies” as the author attempts to point out as “meaningful”. Once one allows for “outliers” (record holders) are to be expected in the environmental camp. The science however is not based on outliers, but rather the typical or average for the group. Larry Bird was an impressive example of an overwhelming White athlete, but that does not negate the fact that he rose to fame in an 80% Black NBA—and there was a good reason for that proportion of Black pro basketball players, they simply were the best and still are.
It seems pretty clear that Sailer made a typo, and simply forgot to include "Luhya" before "Bantu tribe", in the same format as he wrote "Nilotic Luo tribe". He was not inventing a "Bantu tribe". And also, Souaiaia misinterprets the relaiton between Bantu languages and Niger Congo languages of West Africa. Bantu is a branch of the larger Niger Congo family, and looking at a map of Niger Congo territory will tell you which people in Africa share a very significant degree of common ancestry, even if some in the South do have notable Khoisan ancestry and in the East, Nilotic and Cushitic ancestry( primarily). All the Bantu languages spread out from West Africa around 2,500 years ago.
I'm sorry, I made a typo when I wrote "There is now one East African top man in the 100m, Ferdinand Omanyala of Kenya. Yet, note that he is of the Bantu [Luhya] tribe, which is quite distinct from the Nilotic Luo tribe of former president Obama." I wrote that to keep people from making the natural mistake of confusing the Luhya and Luo tribes, but I got ahead of myself in focusing on Obama's Luo tribe and accidentally left out the name of Omanyala's Luhya tribe.
It is likely that genes for athletic ability, such as sprinting, can express more commonly in one race or another. This is the case with many gene functions.
Dr. Souaiaia is bright and knowledgeable, but he tends to overthink things. He gets hung up on sub-sub-theories and misses the big picture.
The big picture is that people of sub-Saharan ancestry tend to be, on the whole, really good at running, better on average than people of any other major racial group.
A sub-theory is that some types of sub-Saharan ancestry tend to be better at sprinting and other sub-Saharans at distance running.
Evidence for both the theory and sub-theory includes that in the last 11 Olympics, the 88 finalist slots in the men's 100 meter dash, the race for the world's fastest man, were filled 87 times by sprinters of at least significant sub-Saharan ancestry and once by a Chinese runner. 87 of 88 times is pretty remarkable evidence.
Similarly, among the top 100 all-time 100 meter men (9.94 or lower) as of March 2024, there is one East Asian (Su Bingtian), one white (Frenchman Christophe LeMaitre), one half Austrialian Aborigine and half Irishman (Patrick Johnson), and one Cape Coloured (Wayde Van Niekerk). I believe there are three half-blacks (Lamont Marcell Jacobs of Italy, Jimmy Vicault of France, and the half-Japanese Michael Norman of the USA, although I could be be understating this number). The other 93 men with the fastest 100m times ever appear to have two parents who identity as black.
Among those 93, there is now one East African top man in the 100m, Ferdinand Omanyala of Kenya. Yet, note that he is of the Bantu Luhya tribe, which is quite distinct from the Nilotic Luo tribe of former president Obama. (The Bantu expansion began in West Africa on the border of Nigeria and Cameroon.) Omanyala is much wider and more muscular than the Kenyan Nilotic Kalenjin distance runners, such as marathon great Eliud Kipchoge.
I posted a photo of Omanyala and Kipchoge here:
https://www.unz.com/isteve/has-the-theory-of-racialized-running-performance-been-debunked/
The authors make a big deal about the fact that there are now five Southern Africans (and one Southwest African, 1990s star Frankie Fredericks of Namibia). The other 86 of the top 100 appear to have two parents of more or less West African descent.
Likewise, at the other end of the spectrum of distances in Olympic running, the marathon, as of March 2024, the last time I checked, the top 100 marathon runners ever included 1 Japanese, 1 black Brazilian, 2 North Africans, and a whole bunch of East Africans, almost all of them Kenyans or Ethiopians. Among the top 100 all-time marathoners, there are 46 running for Ethiopia and 44 running for Kenya. Distance runners from Ethiopia and Kenya tend to come from higher altitude regions, so they benefit both from the nature of their ancestors evolving at altitude and the nurture of growing up at altitude.
(On the other hand, East African migrants who grow up at low altitude seem to do pretty well as well. For example, the Ethiopian-American Yared Nuguse who won the bronze medal in the greatest race of the 2024 Olympics, the men's 1500m, grew up, IIRC, in sultry, low-lying Louisville. But now I'm getting into sub-sub-theories, which is Dr. Souaiaia's strong suit, not mine.)
Dr. Souaiaia is ready to pounce on my not being able to perfectly define the racial sub-groups associated with sprinting success (West Africans? Atlantic sub-Saharans? Bantus?) versus distance success (East Africans? Indian Ocean sub-Saharans? Nilotics?) But the pattern is pretty clear even if it's hard to specify precisely. Let's just call them Sprinter Africans and Distance Africans.
The middle distances, 800 meter and 1500 meter, have been more up for grabs, with less dominance by either Sprinter Africans or Distance Africans, leaving people of European and other descent with a better shot at gold medals.
Cultural patterns will thus have a bigger effect at more competitive distances like 1500m, where it's more likely to see different cultures going thru eras of success and frustration. As I wrote in 2004,
"Why don’t American distance runners run as fast as they once did? It appears to be an instructive interaction of nature and nurture.
"The decline has been absolute, not just relative to the rest of the world. From 1965 through 1967, three American high school boys (Jim Ryun [now a GOP Congressman from Kansas], Marty Liquori, and Tim Danielson) ran the mile in under four minutes. It didn’t happen again until Alan Webb did it in 2001. I suspect that what took the air out of the American middle distance balloon was Kenyan Kip Keino beating Ryun at Mexico City in the 1500m in 1968. This was at high altitude, where Keino was at home, so it didn’t seem so bad at first, but then the Kenyans just kept on winning. A huge boom in recreational distance running started in America in 1972 when Frank Shorter won the Olympic Marathon, but it didn’t lead to a new generation of world-class runners. The top endurance talent must have gone into mountain climbing or triathlons or bicycle racing or something else where they didn’t have to compete with the Kenyans."
So, I've always argued for the moderate position that both nurture and nature play important roles in human life. But the conventional wisdom during my lifetime has been the extremist position that only nurture could possibly matter.
For example, we got deep into the weeds over Ferdinand Omanyala Omurwa, Kenya's only world class 100 meter man ever, even though Kenya began winning Olympic track medals 60 years ago in 1964. But Omanyala Omurwa isn't even that good: he's twice made the Olympic semifinals, coming close to advancing to the final in 2021 but finishing way back in 2024. And he got suspended for doping in 2017.
Keep in mind that Kenya won the 4x400 relay gold medal way back in 1972 (when America got disqualified) and the 4x400 silver in 1968, so it's not like Kenya hasn't ever thought about sprinting. They're just better at long distances.
Is it possible for something to be both true and racialist? Is it, say, racialist to say that Nigerians usually have darker skin than Europeans? If it isn't, then the accusation of racialism rather falls apart once you have conceded that your opponent's claim may well be true.
An honest question to both Tade and Noah: how is height a function of socialisation, and not predominantly or totally one of genetics?
Height is not a function of socialisation. In advanced countries, it is overwhelmingly genetic.
—NC
Thank you, Noah. That's what I would have expected. Seeing Tade use it as an example at that way made me wonder if there was something relevant I didn't know.
I don't think he was suggesting that it's a function of socialisation. Rather, he was pointing out that variance in height is explained by many genes of small effect size (rather than a few genes of large effect size).
—NC
Thanks, Noah.
This is the kind of respectful argument/debate that gives me hope for the future. Can we make this the next social contagion?
A general problem with Souaiaia's article is that he is sophisticated enough to have read and appreciated rare heretical articles from a generation ago so he now treats them as the conventional wisdom, when in fact they were out of the blue at the time. For example, he emphasizes subtle mistakes in Amby Burfoot's 1992 "Runner's World" article "White Men Can't Run" that introduced the West African sprinting vs. East African distance distinction to American magazine discourse.
I can vividly recall picking up that copy of "Runner's World" in 1992 at a magazine stand, scanning the article and saying to myself, much like Edward O. Wilson said to himself in 1964 when reading William D. Hamilton's landmark article on kin selection: No, this can't be true, or I would have figured it out myself already!
Then I bought the magazine and reread the article a couple of times and admitted to myself that Burfoot had made a major discovery that I hadn't.
32 years later, Souaiaia et al point out that Burfoot made a few minor mistakes.
But, really, so what? Burfoot made a massive breakthrough in 1992 that demolished the conventional wisdom of the era, although he didn't quite have the vocabulary to describe it perfectly.
This is all incredibly racist.
Just kidding. I found it interesting and enjoyable.
Very interesting essay.
A complete waste of time.
I tend to agree. At the risk of sounding arrogant, or perhaps “stupid”, I never saw/understood the argument being made. Never in all my readings on the subject of race and sprinting—or even general athletic prowess in sportsball— have I considered such as a complete function of genetics or environment. To lend the weight of causation toward genetics is not great feat of imagination and allows for all sorts of “anomalies” as the author attempts to point out as “meaningful”. Once one allows for “outliers” (record holders) are to be expected in the environmental camp. The science however is not based on outliers, but rather the typical or average for the group. Larry Bird was an impressive example of an overwhelming White athlete, but that does not negate the fact that he rose to fame in an 80% Black NBA—and there was a good reason for that proportion of Black pro basketball players, they simply were the best and still are.
Please take a look at my comment below.
It seems pretty clear that Sailer made a typo, and simply forgot to include "Luhya" before "Bantu tribe", in the same format as he wrote "Nilotic Luo tribe". He was not inventing a "Bantu tribe". And also, Souaiaia misinterprets the relaiton between Bantu languages and Niger Congo languages of West Africa. Bantu is a branch of the larger Niger Congo family, and looking at a map of Niger Congo territory will tell you which people in Africa share a very significant degree of common ancestry, even if some in the South do have notable Khoisan ancestry and in the East, Nilotic and Cushitic ancestry( primarily). All the Bantu languages spread out from West Africa around 2,500 years ago.
Right.
I'm sorry, I made a typo when I wrote "There is now one East African top man in the 100m, Ferdinand Omanyala of Kenya. Yet, note that he is of the Bantu [Luhya] tribe, which is quite distinct from the Nilotic Luo tribe of former president Obama." I wrote that to keep people from making the natural mistake of confusing the Luhya and Luo tribes, but I got ahead of myself in focusing on Obama's Luo tribe and accidentally left out the name of Omanyala's Luhya tribe.
It is likely that genes for athletic ability, such as sprinting, can express more commonly in one race or another. This is the case with many gene functions.
Indeed it is. https://zerocontradictions.net/faqs/race#athletic-performance