Scientific Racism In The Sports World
Unfortunately, in today’s society racism is playing a big role in our world as citizens. We are continuing to struggle in this area but there are steps being taken to make the world a safer and more caring society. When looking for a topic to write for my natural science paper I came across a very interesting topic, Scientific Racism. This describes ways scientists and researchers justify variation between races by relying on science fraud. Despite the large amounts of studies that have been conducted saying that there is no scientific evidence that race has anything to do with our biological category, theories continue to be addressed to explain the dominance of black athletes in our sports field. More specifically I will be looking at scientific racism in the sports field and how it is affecting certain athletes and their production. One of the main reasons why scientific research continues to be a problem in today’s day and age is because sport science is still driven by external interests: funding is concentrated on the pursuit of the Holy Grail, on research and subjects that improve performance at an elite level.
Scientific racism in our sports field had gone on for quite some time. The farthest back I can remember finding is in 1908 when Jack Johnson won the heavy weight boxing title. During this time there was really only so much African Americans were able to participate in due to all the segregation laws. These sports included boxing, baseball and jockeying. In today’s world we perceive these sports as being dominated by mostly by white men in American. But back in the early 1900’s these sports were dominated by the black community until culture’s belief in black inferiority, general deterioration of black rights, and eventual separation of the races. This all changed shortly after when Jackie Robinson took over the baseball world and showed that African Americans belong on the same level as whites at any sport. Sports would continue to see an increase in color in the years to follow. What is significant in relation to African Americans in sport, is that most African- American males in sport have little, if any, historical perspective passed on from their forefathers that paved the way for them to compete today. (C. Keith Harrison 2021)
This idea of scientific racism where scientist are trying to justify inequality differences between races is being displayed firsthand in today’s time. I have been a part of the sports world for almost two decades and in 2021 these ideology-based assumptions have come to an all-time high. For some reason people have continued to believe that African Americans will always be able to run faster, jump higher and be more explosive on the football field due to a genetic break down of their bodies. I’m here to tell you that yes there are some really strong and fast African American athletes out there, but there are also so spectacular white, Asian and Chinese competitors that have unmatched talent in their field of play. Being a D1 athlete, you see how people close themselves off or don’t event give themselves a chance to compete against some of the guys because of the false claims that your skin color determines how good you can be. It has nothing to do with that and everything to do with your work ethic and determinations. These scientific race ideas have jogged our brains and have been going on for quite some time.
When taking a deep look into scientific racism in sports, it has come to my attention that it is something that is very often not even noticed. For so many years we have had these unspoken tensions between the two races when playing sports that it has sort of become normalized for some people. Research with current sport scientists is being used to investigate the socio‐ethical tensions within the field of sport science between professions, research and the demand from outside interests to produce results that help people in sport win championships. It will be shown that these tensions, combined with the history of race as a category in sport science, combine to create the discourse of scientific knowing that reflects, rather than challenges, people with black athletic physicality. One major example is how some sport scientist believe that African American sprinters are more likely to run faster than a white sprinter due to their biology and genetic build. It is argued that African Americans are more likely to have faster twitch muscle fibers than white sprinters, hence making African American sprinters faster than white sprinters. This is one of the main ideas when we look at how racial differences continues to be normalized to explain the higher performance from one race to another. This claim that African Americans had this special fiber in their muscle really got me thinking. When doing some research, I found the article (Taylor & Francis 2021). In this article it expressed how there are no huge genetic differences between African Americans and white people. Your ability to be an unbelievable sprinter cannot be explained or determined just due to your genetics. That is not to say that there are not small clusters of populations that are more or less likely to be currieries of this particular gene, but you cannot claim the existence of racial difference due to such clusters. Scientist continues to assume race exists due to the myth of the holy blood.
In 2001 a black Olympic medalist from Kenya and a white American science writer go together due to recent discoveries in the makeup of the human genome, to rattle this idea of scientific racism. These two partners were speaking against the results of a new survey that confirmed that 50% of Americans believed that one’s athletic abilities where per-determined by their genes. These two partners were trying to prove that making a winning basketball shot or running the fastest 5k is a reflection of skills and hard training, not race. Our scientist Stephen Jay Gould and long-distance runner Kipchoge Keino took aim to dismantle the idea that sport ability can be connected to any particular human gene, or that a certain race has more of an advantage over another. In this article Gould states, “There’s incredibly little average difference among our so-called racial groups…so it is literally absurd to say that African Americans, for example, are better than others in sports.” One thing Gould stress is that to understand an athlete’s success you have to analyze their social, environmental and biological factors rather than searching through their body for a specific gene. Keino also agrees with Gould and his understanding of the subject. Keino states “We are all the same, but it depends on the training you do, we develop stamina and speed- physically and mentally…and any achievement of any sport is about how hard you work.” Keino also later talks about how it is insulting for those that work hard for others to think that a certain gene makes you better or worse than your opponent.
Another example of this happening in the real world was described in a study called “A Level Playing Field? Medi Constructions of Athletics, Genetics, and Race.” This study identifies news media coverages that believe genetic differences lead certain racial groups to have more success at sports and how it appears in news articles. Matthew W. Hughey, director of this study, researched close to 24,000 newspapers across the world from 2003–2014. Out of the articles that were researches 55% of these papers backed these narratives that African-descended individuals do better in athletics because of genetic racial differences. For instance, in the aftermath of the 2012 Olympics, almost one-third of the news articles that promoted race, genetics and athletics proposed that African Americans and West Indian sprinters are faster due to the fact that they came from testosterone-heavy ancestors who survived the brutal conditions of transatlantic slave trade.
Being an athlete, it really makes you wonder if the genetics between the races really even plays that big of a factor when actually participating in the sport. Ever since being a young kid I never bought the pitch some people tried to emphasize about African Americans being more athletic than white people. I have always believed in you get what you work for no matter what. It’s always had to do more with a mindset than some genetic make-up. I feel like people often think this way or take that stance on this idea because it is the easy thing to do. Saying someone is more athletic than you because of a certain gene is way easier to do than putting your nose down and working your butt of so you can’t be defeated. In the end this is what separates the good from the bad and the right from the wrong. As a society, once we realize and don’t seclude to these false accusations then things like scientific racism in sports and in any way, shape or form will start to denigrate. It’s all about your mindset and work ethic. With those two things we can help solve this problem and make the athletic world an ongoing competition and not a outcome predetermined by scientist.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02614360801902257
In-text: (The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail: myths of scientific racism and the pursuit of excellence in sport, 2021)
Your Bibliography: Taylor & Francis. 2021. The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail: myths of scientific racism and the pursuit of excellence in sport. [online] Available at:
<https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02614360801902257> [Accessed 3 March 2021].
https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/lib/unc/reader.action?docID=198589
In-text: (UNC Chapel Hill Libraries, 2021)
Your Bibliography: publisher. Taylor & Francis Group Ebookcentral-proquest-com.libproxy.lib.unc.edu. 2021. UNC Chapel Hill Libraries. [online] Available at: <https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/lib/unc/reader.action?docID=198589> [Accessed 3 March 2021].
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/1361332980010105?needAccess=true
In-text: (Themes that Thread through Society: racism and athletic manifestation in the African‐American community: Race Ethnicity and Education: Vol 1, No 1, 2021)
Your Bibliography: C. Keith Harrison Tandfonline.com. 2021. Themes that Thread through Society: racism and athletic manifestation in the African‐American community: Race Ethnicity and Education: Vol 1, No 1. [online] Available at: <https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/1361332980010105?needAccess=true> [Accessed 3 March 2021].
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02244-w
In-text: (arts, 2021)
Your Bibliography: Angela Saini. arts, b., 2021. Sports and IQ: the persistence of race ‘science’ in competition. [online] Nature.com. Available at: <https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02244-w> [Accessed 3 March 2021].
