Does race or ethnicity influence athletic performance

opps i want to change my answer to:
Yes, certain racial characteristics might be advantageous for certain sports

well im arab... and Most arab women are short... trust me i could't make any of my high school teams because they were looking for tall girls -_-

so i think that feature wise 75% depends on the race... (tall, short, fast, slow, strong, weak) but performance wise has nothing to do with race

But doesn't one's physical features (height, strength, speed) obviously affect someone's athletic performance?

mmm. i guess its depending on what sport they are playing
but im pretty sure if the person gives it their best then it doesn't really matter what their race is... if a short person trains hard enough i think s/he can be as good as a tall person... right?

I disagree. I am about 5'5" and knew from a young age that no matter how hard I trained there would be no chance I could become an NBA basketball player. Obviously, training, motivation, nutrition, etc. are all important. Necessary, but not sufficient for becoming an elite athlete.

oh... well even though you can never dunk it in.. you can easily slip through the fingers of the other players.. you know steal the ball from them and you will be really small for them to catch you... lol sorry im not taking this really seriously but i have strongly belive that if a person has a strong passion for doing something they love.. then they can do it no matter the struggle

no it is not but some people who do are not chossen on count of race

As a sports fan and a former high school athelete, the obvious answer is "YES". I do think that culture has more to do with it than may first appear though. Black folks make up about 12% of American population, but something like 77% of NFL players. Hispanics make up about 12% of the population also, but I would guess that they represent much less than that on the NFL field. In pro baseball though, Hispanics dominate and represent some of the best ever. White folks seem to do pretty good in all of these sports, but don't really dominate any of them. Orientals are very rare in the NFL, NBA, and aren't too common in baseball. But, that Yao Ming dude from China is great, and I have seen a few MLB pitchers that kicked ass from Japan. You don't see many black golfers, but Tiger woods is probably the best ever.
I think a lot of this is probably cultural too, though. African black folks are even more rare than Orientals in pro sports. European white dudes seem to be better basketball players than their American counterparts. Cultural tendancies and a child's raising and diet all seem to have an effect. While race does seem to be a factor in most pro sports, I think culture and attitude have a lot to do with athletic success. And there is nothing wrong with that. Its just the way things are.

i don't mean to sound racist, but those kenyans are pretty fast.....;)

Yes! Sweet Pea & I are white. We are pretty slow!

Of course it does. Thats what I've been trying to tell this guy over here! lolol

LOL Riiight :-)

The black African has evolved as more of a hunter gatherer where speed is required compared to the Asian and Caucasian peoples.

Cultural and genetic.

Cultural: because you are a product of your environment. People in Central and South America don't play football and only play a little bit of basketball, but they play the heck out of baseball and soccer.....which if you look at the financial make-up of the countries there probably aren't too many Basketball courts or $$$ to buy football equipment. All they need for baseball and soccer is open space!

Genetic: I went to a game last week and watched Barry Sanders son play running back in high school....damn he's almost as shifty as his dad, except he's taller. But, on that private school team there were a few other kids of Div 1 college football players playing as well. Those kids had both: they had their parents genes and their parents probably promoted the sport their entire lives...i.e. their culture/environment.

Has Barry Sanders Jr. committed to a college yet? I am a big BAMA fan and I know he took an officail visit in Tuscaloosa this past season. ROLL TIDE!

Hasn't committed yet. Of course his dad would like to see him at OSU, but he keeps telling the paper that his dad has encouraged him to choose what felt right for himself. He's really a good kid. He goes to the same high school that Wes Welker went to, and they just won the class 3A state tittle on Friday.

Thanks for the info. He would be an obvious fit at OSU. His dad is a class act. I am convinced that Barry Sanders Sr. is the best ever. He played on a horrible team and still made all of those records while at the Lions. NFL defenses knew he was getting the ball, but often couldn't do anything about it. Walter Peyton is a very close #2 or maybe even tied for #1. Just my humble opinion though.

Oh I agree, Barry Sanders Sr, was the purest runner ever, with 'Sweetness' a close second; and both of them were class acts.

And, I was disappointed when Emmit passed Walter Payton...everyone talked about how great he was, but hell he had HOF QB, WR, FB, OL - 5 of them, and an HOF TE. I could have run behind them. Barry ran a 1-back set most of the time. All Emmit had over Barry was longevity.

Hey, it looks like Saban is pushing....I hope this is one that he doesn't get. lol

http://coachesaid.com/Article...

here's the article.

Thanks for the tip. I have a replica Shaun Alexander jersey, #37, and will soon get a Mark Ingram one, now that he is pro. Hopefully one day I will have one with the name "SANDERS" on the back, after he helps guide BAMA to another national title with an SEC title or 2 peppered in there. Maybe even a Heisman too. Now that is Fantasy football. Get it........Fantasy.....Cool.

yeah, the sports writers here don't really think he should go to OSU and OU is not even on the list. So, of the remaining schools....I'd have to pick Bama. I mean they have a great team, good coach, tradition, and good fans. My son's god-parents had a kid that played at OU, and they went to every game for four years. They said that the "coolest" fans they met were the ones they met when OU played Bama. He said, those people know football and they understand how to leave the game to the players and have a good time. He said that he really enjoyed going there. Nebraska was a close 2nd, but that was when Solich was there and Osborne still had a grip on the program. The worst place was the Sugar bowl against LSU; he said "bar none" the rudest people he'd ever met. lol have a good one.

Who are you picking for tonight?? I'd like to see Oregon win, but I don't think that they have the defense for it. I really don't mind Auburn, but the whole "Cam" thing just like the 5 O-State players was a bunch of crap.

I was pulling for Auburn, but I wasn't wild about it. In my state, one has to declare Auburn or Alabama for the Iron Bowl, before they are given a driver's license. So on one hand, Auburn is still part of Sweet Home Alabama and the SEC, but on the other hand, my Crimson blood does not like Auburn at all. It was a good game, but Auburn played like crap. And I think Cam and company are a bunch of crooks. Auburn played really dirty, and i didn't like how they represented our state. they looked like the Miami Hurricanes from the late 80's and 90's.

Caucasians are better at hide and seek in the snow...

well put!! ahahahahahahahahahahahah

While I do think that hard work and training can overcome these barriers, I am also aware that there are some genetic differences between races and some of these could give people advantages over other races in certain sports. Before you cry racism, I did not say this was bad or undesirable - the world would be a boring place if we were all the same.

But I don't think it's pronounced enough to influence, say, how many black people play basketball. That's cultural. Black people are not, on average, taller than other races.

Asians, on the other hand--at least native East Asians from a few countries--are slightly shorter, on average, due to, probably, how they've lived or dieted or whatever over the last couple thousand years, so clearly there are some minor physical differences. I assume in some way, some of those differences might affect sports.

It still comes down to each individual. All races have clumbsy and athletic members. The biggest reason we see larger numbers of one race over another in certain sports is primarily economic. Football, basketball, baseball and such are the best ways out of a challenging economic situation(being poor) for these folks. Just another sad commentary on the inequities of our(and other) societies.

It certainly seems so.

I believe yes and well no
Sometimes the person is born with the talent other times the person trains really hard to get the talent of sports.
There is enviroment personal determination and what culture likes what
also if they are in grave need of something better like i said determination

Yes, I agree that all those things are significant in determining an individual's athletic performance. The question is, does race have any overall influence? Statistically, some sports seem to be dominated by specific races.

Well i can't say for sure any studies that say that?

I think size and build have more to do with it than race or ethnicity.

True, but do you believe that size and build (body type) might be racially correlated?

I don't know. I'm not a scientist.

Pass.

I don't think so, but some folks might beg to differ :-)

I've lived 51 years and have seen this is so. But then, I'm English/Irish white, with a little African and Cherokee. I can run fast. I love it.

It's also cultural. But certain genetic factors do have their advantages.
Basketball = Black
Hockey = Russian
Backflips = Asian
Quidditch = Wizard
Drinking = Irish
ect

You'd have to look at the average abilities of each race and compare those, not the relative abilities of the elites of each sport. NBA basketball players, for example, are such a tiny minority of the population as to be statistically insignificant, so you can't make any judgments about an entire race of people based on that tiny sample. You would need to take a sample population of hundreds of thousands of people across all statistical categories to make a scientific assessment. I think we can all agree that the most elite pro athletes are genetic freaks of nature anyway.

Such a reasonable answer, Disko. I was hoping for something a little more smart ass!

But even at the high school level (non elites), it was obvious that certain schools in urban districts would do better at basketball and track and field, while the suburban, white schools would do better at hockey or cross country.