Covert racism in long distance running

Black people clearly have a physiological disadvantage when it comes to Covid survival.

It isn't ridiculous to suggest they may have other natural advantages. This is not to take away from their hard work. Or the fact they often live at altitude.

ughh... is that supposed to be a running article or a political soapbox?

first of all, the whole premise is nonsense. rarely will you hear a debate on east africans vs the world that doesnt also talk about socio-economic effects and the huge amount of early age activity and work ethic of the kenyans and ethiopians and the stark contratst made to westerners who are sendentery and lazy(will i get shot by westerners for making that comment too?)

but you cannot ignore other factors too like altitude and build.. its a combination of both and rarely will you ever hear anyone have a reasoned debate on this without discussing both factors of sheer depth and work ethic combined with physical features and location that are highly conclusive to performance.

Africans dominate for a multitude of reasons and no one denies that, many westerners are tagged as overweight and sendentary and lacking drive to achieve in athletics but they've decided to cherry pick their argument to soapbox at time where they know page hits will be high on something like this. i think the word for these kinda articles is bollixology. the africans dominate, you cant deny that so of course theories are going to be made why and how?, isnt that how things are supposed, when someone gets ahead, you try and understand why at every level

SuspectZero wrote: »

ughh... is that supposed to be a running article or a political soapbox?

first of all, the whole premise is nonsense. rarely will you hear a debate on east africans vs the world that doesnt also talk about socio-economic effects and the huge amount of early age activity and work ethic of the kenyans and ethiopians and the stark contratst made to westerners who are sendentery and lazy(will i get shot by westerners for making that comment too?)

but you cannot ignore other factors too like altitude and build.. its a combination of both and rarely will you ever hear anyone have a reasoned debate on this without discussing both factors of sheer depth and work ethic combined with physical features and location that are highly conclusive to performance.

Africans dominate for a multitude of reasons and no one denies that, many westerners are tagged as overweight and sendentary and lacking drive to achieve in athletics but they've decided to cherry pick their argument to soapbox at time where they know page hits will be high on something like this. i think the word for these kinda articles is bollixology. the africans dominate, you cant deny that so of course theories are going to be made why and how?, isnt that how things are supposed, when someone gets ahead, you try and understand why at every level

Mo Farah moved from Africa at 12. But still his physique and physiology helped him become a multiple world champion

Conversely, how many white men do you ever see in the 100m sprint final?

Inventive User Name wrote: »

At least according to the author....

A load of sanctimonious nonsense in my opinion. All reasonable people can appreciate that there are legitimate injustices evident in today's society that we're all aware of, but this pandering attitude that's rife in certain quarters doesn't help the situation.
Going by this logic, I should feel some sort of inherent guilt for my admiration of these athletes . I think common sense has gone out the window in favour of a desire among certain people to espouse their 'righteousness' in return for social brownie points.
(Mods can delete if this veers too close to 'After Hours' territory, not my intention. In my experience the athletics community has been incredible in uniting people from all walks of life. I'd imagine most people you speak to face to face have a similar outlook).

I'm sorry but the article is painfully accurate. And I think your OTT reaction reflects a certain defensiveness along the lines of "everybody else is racist but definitely not me, shure I think the Africans are a great bunch of lads!" or "shure, I can't be racist, I was nice to a black man only last week!". And this defensiveness actually verifies much of the article.

You see, it's easy to tell ourselves that a positive stereotype is a good thing, I know I believed this at one stage but after a while I was no longer 14 and I saw that a stereotype is a stereotype.

It's a form of unconscious racism that most of us carry, as much as we'd like to think we don't. And I do too.

The fact is we do lump 'the Africans' together. We look for easy 'just so' explanations of their success and peddle our favourite theories about genes, nutrition, culture, whatever.

What's hilarious is that it's not even accurate - there's far more variation in genetics in Africa than any other continent. We see 'black' skin and lump a continent together in our completely nonsensical idea of 'race' even though Bekele is as different to Kipchoge as he is to an Inuit.

Look, there is sanctimonious PC nonsense around for sure, but there is a lot more racism than we seem to want to acknowledge. Including in me. And I can't be racist, my SO is brown, shure!

Inventive User Name wrote: »

In what way have I reacted 'in an over the top' fashion? You're assuming that I "lump all the Africans together". You're assuming that I hold the ignorant viewpoint that all black people are fast based on the colour of their skin.Don't you think that's a bit hypocritical??
I never indicated this was the case. Only an idiot would determine that athletic ability is a result of a person's pigmentation. If that was the base I'd be better off focusing on getting a tan rather than logging miles :rolleyes:
I'm not stereotyping anyone. The best distance runners in the world are disproportionately from a certain parts of the world in East Africa, where a combination of hard work, genetics, geographical benefits and lifestyle allow them to dominate the sport. And they just so happen to be black. As silly as it is that this has to be stated, I'll clarify that I'm sure that the vast majority of the general Kenyan and Ethiopian population are sh!te runners!
Yet you assume that I hold ignorant racist viewpoints based on the likelihood that I'm white Irish (I am, not that it makes any difference).

Wow.
Definitely not OTT.

Definitely not defensive.

Definitely.

For clarity, I said none of the things you claim. The article speaks about we talk about 'the Africans'. You very calmly and rationally say the article is 'sanctimonious nonsense'. I say the article is quite accurate. If you deny the article, you're either saying people don't lump 'the Africans' together or you are saying that people do and this is fine.

Which is it?

I mean do you really think I said that pigment makes you fast? Are you actually serious?? I really don't know where you managed to imagine some of things you think I wrote.

The article is saying we are racist in ways we don't even realise. God knows where he got that idea.

PS I mean why would you even go to the trouble of posting the article? What's up with the psychology here? What's the agenda?

Zebra3 wrote: »

Irony off the scale there.

Nothing about the irony of the OP denying unconscious racism?

And actually what I posted is not ironic. I meant what I said: we are all subject to unconscious racism, me included. I've forced myself to reflect on this recently and I think more of us should do it too.

If you want to argue about irony, off you go, I'd rather focus on the actual issue. Anything to say on that? Is there no unconscious racism around?

Inventive User Name wrote: »

...A load of sanctimonious nonsense in my opinion. All reasonable people can appreciate that there are legitimate injustices evident in today's society that we're all aware of, but this pandering attitude that's rife in certain quarters doesn't help the situation.
Going by this logic, I should feel some sort of inherent guilt for my admiration of these athletes . I think common sense has gone out the window in favour of a desire among certain people to espouse their 'righteousness' in return for social brownie points.

The OP is of course entitled to his/her opinion, but the highlighted bits above suggest more concern with the what some people like to call 'virtue signalling' than with any nuanced discussion of racism in sport. Won't be joining in.

Mods can delete if this veers too close to 'After Hours' territory, not my intention.

Take your word for it!