Did racist use the "biological advantage" argument when Black athletes started competing alongside white athletes?

vis4valentine@lemmy.ml to No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world – 139 points –

Given that racists and slavers used the "natural physical strength" of black people to justify putting them on hard labor and some medics still think that blacks has higher resistance to pain, I wonder if when black athletes started to join mixed race sport teams, some racist would have used the same "biological advantage" argument that now transphobes use against trans athletes to claim it was "unfair" for black to compete against whites to justify segregation.

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While there is no extra muscle, it is factually true that people of West African descent tend to have more fast twitch muscle fibers which is a pretty big advantage in many sports.

This is likely why the myth of the extra muscle originated.

Is that really true though? Many of these sports myths hold true until they suddenly don't. Tall people were believed to be awful sprinters until Usain Bolt somehow just smashed everyone. Koreans nerds were the supposed chosen SC2 players but now it's a chad from Italy

Yes, those people are outliers. Usain Bolt especially is a genetic rarity, being as tall as he is with crazy amounts of fast twitch muscles.

It's true, but some people go way too far with it. All it means is that people of West African descent tend to have more fast twitch muscle fibers. You could be white as sour cream and get lucky with your genetics and end up the same way. It's having those muscle fibers that's the advantage, not having west african heritage. In sports like basketball or sprinting where fast twitch fibers are a big advantage, you tend to see populations of people who are predisposed to that getting over-represented.