Need some race-baiting to start your Thursday? Here's the TMZ headline that accompanies a post on Michael Johnson: "Michael Johnson -- Descendants of SLAVES Are Better Athletes." Did you get that? SLAVES! Descendants of SLAVES! SLAVES SLAVERY SLAVES BLACK PEOPLE ARE ATHLETES!!! TMZ... has really... outdone itself... this time.
But first, perhaps you would like some context: Michael Johnson, formerly the World's Fastest Man, gave an interview to the Daily Mail in which he claimed that slaves have passed down a superior athletic gene that makes Afro-American and Afro-Caribbean athletes dominant in their respective sports. The most salient of Johnson's quotes is below:
"All my life I believed I became an athlete through my own determination, but it’s impossible to think that being descended from slaves hasn’t left an imprint through the generations.
"Difficult as it was to hear, slavery has benefited descendants like me – I believe there is a superior athletic gene in us."
Johnson is a commentator for BBC, and while he likely won't be fired for his remarks like Jimmy "The Greek" was for his far more offensive comments in the late 1980s, it's worth examining this bizarre, pseudo-scientific theory that ties slavery to superior athletes.
First, let's call this "theory" what it is: pseudo-science. The Daily Mail references "some scientists" who give credence to the idea that slavery bred great athletes, an idea that culminates in the most offensive paragraph of the article:
"Some scientists believe a combination of selective breeding by slave owners and appalling conditions meant that only the strongest slaves endured, creating a group predisposed to record-breaking athletic performance."
WHAT LEGITIMATE SCIENTISTS BELIEVE THIS?! Oh, they quote a doctor for the Jamaican national team, Herb Elliot (also black), who says, "Only the most aggressive and fiercest slaves ended up in Jamaica." That's just too funny to criticize, the implication being that somehow these aggressive and fierce slaves turned into Usain Bolt. And yes, "aggressive" and "fiercest" are the terms most evolutionary geneticists use to describe phenotypic traits.
Not only is this "theory" almost impossible to prove thanks to the generations that separate contemporary science from the slave ships that supposedly bred the superior athletic gene, it's irrelevant. It attempts to whitewash the horrifically offensive practice of enslaving humans, and it succeeds only in exposing modern society's lingering racism.
What use is it to thank slavery for producing great athletes? In essence, this concept only claims what we already know: humans are a product of their forebears. But it needlessly simplifies genetics; do those who endorse this theory believe that those slaves with a "superior athletic gene" reproduced only with each other until someone eventually birthed Michael Johnson? Are we supposed to write a thank you note to the descendants of slaveowners for their prescience in creating athletes for our entertainment?
The Daily Mail presumably supports Johnson's comments because he is black and has more cultural maneuverability than a white person (like Jimmy The Greek) when it comes to the subject of slavery. But Johnson's race doesn't make his beliefs any less stupid. If he started talking about phrenology's contemporary benefits, we'd all point and laugh; evolutionary theories on slavery and sports are the same order of misinformed. Anyone who subscibes to these theories implicitly thanks the white man for the sins of his ancestors and undermines the very real and very legitimate accomplishments of black athletes today.
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[Daily Mail]
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