You are never, never going to change the minds of people who think these thoughts. But you write very interesting articles and give a lot of insight from a position I have never even considered.
Maybe we need DNA testing to be sure you are my son, Nah you look too much like your dad. LOL

You missed the point of the argument that blacks were bred to perform better as athletes. There is no basketball gene or hockey gene like you seem to claim, but people can be bred to be more physically fit and better athletes, as black likely were during the slavery era. Its not a racist idea, its just a part of the history of our country.

By the way, you said "stupid" about 50 times in you incoherent essay, but the way in which you have managed to confuse genetics with skill acquisition and selective breeding with natural selection is completely stupid. Read a textbook on genetics before you post this kind of garbage, you moron.

Nice racist comment you ass. Next time be smart enough to leave an email instead of being smart with STFU.

Why is it racist? Blacks were slaves. Fact Slaveowners treated blacks badly. Fact. Slaveowners selective bred their slaves so they would be worth more. Contreversial, but also a fact. You probably have been brainwashed by all this PC nonsense that makes the topic of race itself taboo in our hypersensitive society. Heres a link that reviews a much sounder argument than the one posted here: http://www.alternet.org/story/136/. Also, if you had something to e mail me, just say it here.

As always, a lack of critical thinking prevents the requisite reading of the essay. To wit:

"It's also moronic to think that 250 years of at best spotty attempts at eugenics on a certain segment of dark-skinned humans would have any affect at all on the two-and-a-half million year evolution of the species as a whole."

And anyone who thinks the owners of this website are slaves to PC groupthink has obviously not read very much of this website. We've lost friends because we say what we think, and I regularly curl the toes of family members over things I've written here. I'm surprised my mom still speaks to me sometimes.

As to the article you reference, it emphasises genetics over behavior. Again, from my own essay:

"Want to know why Russians dominate hockey? I've never skated in my life, but I imagine that if I was learning to skate before I was learning to walk, playing a sport 4 to 8 hours a day seven days a week for twelve or fifteen years, and growing up surrounded by people that'd been practicing that much for two or three decades, I'd get pretty goddamned good at hockey."

Only academics who jog as a hobby would discount 15 years of hard-knock practice in a world where physical prowess matters and instead attribute it to simple genetics. "There's no way they could get where they are through hard work. They cheated. They've got genetics on their side. Genetics we gave them."

Please. The only difference between this guy and Daniel Carver is he happens to be slightly more clever with his straw men.

Oh, and be sure to tell Marx hi for me. Even after sixty years of abject failure, I find it depressing but not surprising his theories hold such power over weak minded fools.

It seems a bit paradoxical to talk of straw men and then go on to equate my argument with those of Daniel Carver and Karl Marx. Practice matters, but you seem to overlook the fact that a majority of people, no matter how hard they try or how long they practice, will ever be capable of dunking a basketball from the free throw line or running in the olympics. Thats where genetics come in, and thats where most non-academics seem to get really confused. How do you explain the probablities of some of these events happening given there is no difference in the population? To say those results are statistically significant is an understatement. Whatever the cause, you PC hippies should at least acknowledge the fact that there is a difference instead of walking around in denial.

To insomnia - hate to tell you this, but as someone with a BS in Genetics, it takes controlled breeding and many generations to get desirable traits in any species. The more complicated the species the more difficult it is to get desired traits. Why? Because (especially at the time of slave ownership) we simply don't know what alleles to breed for or who has them. Most folks confuse phenotype with genotype. However, it is entirely possible to have specimans with almost identical phenotypes that have different genotypes. Thusly, you start breeding that way and you fail. On top of that, the effects may not be additive - just because you breed to strong individuals doesn't necessarily mean you'll get strong offspring.

Now, before you get all happy and try to bring some examples from animal husbandry in here to show that people had been doing just what I'm talking about for years, realize that people had been failing for centuries prior to winnowing down the gene pool to select traits.

Thusly, my suggestion to you is do your own reading of a genetics textbook prior to trying to use the science as support for your invalid arguments.

Thank you for that junior biologist explanation of phenotypes and alleles, but I think you missed the point of this discussion. First off, to suggest that selective breeding for physical traits is impossible because we dont know what the genotype is is completely naive because we never know the complete genotype of an individual or animal, we can only guess based on phenotype. Second, Im not suggesting blacks are some kind of superspecies, because theyre not, Im only saying that a very small population of American blacks may have gained some kind of advantage as a result of slavery. Changing the gene frequencies of an entire species or race is difficult, but changing the gene frequencies of a small subset of blacks via selective breeding over several centuries is not. In the years following slavery these altered gene frequencies may have produced a small subset of blacks with exceptional athletic ability. It is those select few individuals that may be the ones dominating the NBA, NFL, and olympic running sports.

Thank you for that junior biologist explanation of phenotypes and alleles, but I think you missed the point of this discussion. First off, to suggest that selective breeding for physical traits is impossible because we dont know what the genotype is is completely naive because we never know the complete genotype of an individual or animal, we can only guess based on phenotype. Second, Im not suggesting blacks are some kind of superspecies, because theyre not, Im only saying that a very small population of American blacks may have gained some kind of advantage as a result of slavery. Changing the gene frequencies of an entire species or race is difficult, but changing the gene frequencies of a small subset of blacks via selective breeding over several centuries is not. In the years following slavery these altered gene frequencies may have produced a small subset of blacks with exceptional athletic ability. It is those select few individuals that may be the ones dominating the NBA, NFL, and olympic running sports.

Thank you for that junior biologist explanation of phenotypes and alleles, but I think you missed the point of this discussion. First off, to suggest that selective breeding for physical traits is impossible because we dont know what the genotype is is completely naive because we never know the complete genotype of an individual or animal, we can only guess based on phenotype. Second, Im not suggesting blacks are some kind of superspecies, because theyre not, Im only saying that a very small population of American blacks may have gained some kind of advantage as a result of slavery. Changing the gene frequencies of an entire species or race is difficult, but changing the gene frequencies of a small subset of blacks via selective breeding over several centuries is not. In the years following slavery these altered gene frequencies may have produced a small subset of blacks with exceptional athletic ability. It is those select few individuals that may be the ones dominating the NBA, NFL, and olympic running sports.