Going off of Shenk's whole purpose of gene X environment, he states that evolution has made West Africans, "with shorter trunks and smaller lungs, longer arms and legs, narrower hips, heavier bones, more muscle all around.... East Africans... [have] smaller physiques, narrow shoulders, lean legs, much less muscle mass" (298-299, Footnote 102). Whites, Shenk explains, have a mix of these characteristics. Why then do we see nowadays much more blacks in sports? Although blacks have the qualities to be different athletes, why don't we see more whites taking over sports now? They have a mix of physical qualities that, with the correct environment, could possibly produce great athletes like Africans produce. Relate this to evolutionary themes and units on DNA structure with turning genes on and off.
Josh LeVay (blevay@comcast.net)
In the second footnote 102 on page 299, Entine explains that whites are stuck between the West and East Africans. The reason we see so many more Blacks in sports than Whites is that the different origins of blacks make for different specialties. West Africans make for exceptional anaerobic athletes for sports like football, basketball, and short range running. At the same time, East Africans normally produce exceptional aerobic athletes for sports such as swimming and long range running. When the two sets of genes are mixed, one would gain some attributes of each, disregarding the environment. With a set of genes coding for two different extremes, one with a mix of aerobic and anaerobic abilities is less likely to succeed at a specific sport that someone else is built for. For example, a white male with an incredibly high endurance and the physique of a West African is less likely to beat an East African at swimming because his build would not allow for fast swimming. This white male would also lose at certain sports to the West African because the training for endurance was wasted time that could have gone to strengthening the body or improving sprinting time.
ReplyDeleteNow, considering the Environment, people raised under certain conditions are more likely to excel based on those conditions, in a study titled Physical Activities and Sedentary Pursuits in African American and Caucasian Girls, the scientists analyze the activity of eight grade girls. Girls from 31 different middle schools in America were tested and overall, the results show that the white girls were more active than the black girls. This indicates that it’s not the skin color of a person that determines their success in sports, but rather their choices and environment. When the girls were looked at under similar environmental conditions, their choices and activities were nearly the same.
As Shenk explained in the experiment of maze-bright and –dull mice on pages 28 and 29, just because the mice are of a certain breed or phenotype, the environment is what overall determines the activity of the organism. To explain why it is African Americans who excel in sports after being subjected to similar environments as whites is the fact that these people, while growing up, were subject to certain cultural influences that differentiate them from the rest of the community. As suggested by several books, in African American communities, sports are major socialization factors in building healthy communities.
It is evident that it is selectively advantageous for white people to have a mix of both anaerobic and aerobic exercise capability. Because Caucasians normally live and originated in places that experience heavy alteration of seasons—as opposed to the origins of the African American where temperatures remain relatively high—since the aerobic qualities show great aid in the summer and anaerobic can aid in the winter. The biological theme of Evolution is prominent in this situation for that reason. Evolution means the change over time in natural selection and multi-generational mutation. With the heavy focus on how different sporting abilities are advantageous to different groups, the lack of whites in sports may not be an indicator of why this is happening, but rather an explanation of what it means. In relation to DNA signaling, this idea of skin color determining success could be an example of genomic imprinting as explained in Campbell on page 358. The regulation of a maternal or paternal allele could occur to preserve certain traits from a parent. If the traits are preserved through multiple centuries and an African marries another African whose kids marry another African, the traits could be preserved throughout the centuries making the African Americans, who are involved in sports today, literally built for the situation
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Jesse Pukshansky (jesse.pukshansky@gmail.com)
Over the past few decades, the blacks have been dominating many sports around the world due to how they are built. Shenks talks about West Africans an says, “are endowed with shorter trunks and smaller lungs, longer arms and legs, narrower hips, heavier bones, more muscle all around…all key ingredients for strength-based, short-burst anaerobic sports.” (Shenk 298). All these qualities of a West African make sense because these are the athletes dominating in short distance races or the Jamaicans. Jamaica is across the Atlantic Ocean from West Africa, so Jamaicans are considered West African because of their physical look. East Africans are said to contain, “smaller physiques, narrow shoulders, lean legs, much less muscle mass, and higher proportion of ‘slow-twitch’ muscles, rendering them ideal endurance athletes” (Shenk 299). This too makes sense because Kenyans are known for winning marathons. The distinct cultures and environmental factors relate to how the physical composition of one’s body is. For example, Kenyans are endurance athletes cause the terrain seen in Eastern Africa is very mountainous and the culture in Kenya revolves around messengers delivering things by foot, which means high altitude and less air pressure and a lot of endurance workouts (http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2003/11/why_are_kenyansfast_runners.html). High altitude training is beneficial to athletes because the athlete is exposing himself or herself to an environment with less oxygen causing changes in the body to occur that will help improve the delivery of oxygen to muscle cells. East Africans grew up at that altitude, so when they compete against people who trained at sea level, their performance will be a lot better because Kenyans trained at high altitudes. East African terrain is very flat, so they aren’t known for their endurance, but what makes them so strong is the grueling work that East Africans did long ago. Nowadays, all the athletic blacks have inherited their East African or West African “high performance genes,” which allows for blacks to excel in any sport. Whites are seen excelling as much as they used to, but that was because of discrimination, but Entine states, “[whites] have more endurance but less explosive running and jumping ability than West Africans; they tend to be quicker than East Africans but have less endurance” ( Shenk 299). Also, the environment whites are found in aren’t as mountainous as that of East Africa, and whites in the past rode horses to send messages so the distinction in culture has allowed the blacks to surpass the whites in sports.
ReplyDeleteThis situation can be applied to the one of the themes of biology. Evolution is defined as “organisms living on Earth today are the modified descendants of common ancestors” (Campbell 3). So, all living organisms have some sort of similarity because we all had a common ancestor that kept on evolving. An example of evolution would be, “while the sea horse, jackrabbit, hummingbird, crocodile, and penguins…look very different, their skeletons are basically similar” (Campbell 3). This is possible because of evolution. So, all humans today have the same common ancestor that evolved over an extended period of time and now we have similar features but other features that have changed. These features have changed because the organism’s body is adapting to its new environment. So, the whites move out of Africa and into Europe back when the Earth was Pangea where the environment was different and there was less sun. So, the whites developed light skin and adapted to that environment, which gave the whites “average physical features” and the blacks adapted to their respective environment and developed “extraordinary features.” The key concept is that all these changes or adaptations or “evolutions” took place because it betters the organism’s chances to survive and reproduce.
Krish Desai (kjdesai5@mac.com)