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THE BLACK EDGE Are athletes of African descent genetically superior? - - - - - - - - - - - - By Gary Kamiya READ THE ENTIRE REVIEW AT: http://salon.com/books/feature/2000/01/28/taboo/index.html EXCERPTS: As both black athletic domination and our knowledge of genetics, physical anthropology and physiology have grown, it has become increasingly hard to assert that environmental factors alone can explain black superiority in sports. Jon Entine's "Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We Are Afraid to Talk About It" will make it even harder. In support of his thesis, Entine relies on two different bodies of evidence: the undeniable, but scientifically "soft," record of black athletic achievement, and the still contested but increasingly accepted theories of anthropologists, physiologists and geneticists. Neither alone is decisive, but taken together, they are -- to a layman -- pretty convincing. Most important of all, Entine refutes the idea that there is any sinister corollary to black genetic superiority in athletics. It might be objected that Entine's entire argument is conceptually flawed from the outset, because "race" itself is a meaningless concept. In a lucid discussion, Entine demolishes the voguish assertion that "there's no such thing as race," explaining that the argument over the word is little more than semantic. "Limiting the rhetorical use of folk categories such as race, an admirable goal, is not going to make the patterned biological variation on which they are based disappear," he argues. Entine takes several gratifying swings at postmodern academic fog machines, who in their scholastic zeal to make sure everything comes out racially rosy simply throw science overboard. As Entine argues again and again in "Taboo," the mere fact that legitimate arguments may also have been advanced by racists, or that scientific facts may play into invidious stereotypes, is not sufficient reason to abandon those arguments or deny those facts. The mania against "essentialism," taken to its logical extreme, is nothing but an assault on the spirit of scientific inquiry itself. It's hard to regard Entine as having dubious motives for writing this book. He approaches the subject with neutral curiosity about the fascinating variety of the human race. But despite this, "Taboo" is certain to provoke cries of outrage in some quarters. -- Jon Entine 6178 Grey Rock Rd. Agoura Hills, CA 91301 runjonrun@earthlink.net [818] 991-9803 http://www.jonentine.com Author of "Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We Are Afraid to Talk About It" (PublicAffairs], available January 2000; http://www.publicaffairsbooks.com/books/tab.html (from peter.kabai@gmail.com) |
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