How+does+race+affect+physical+and+mental+abilities?

//"The race advances only by the achievements of the individual. You are the individual."// -Charles Towne
 * __ How does RACE Affect Physical Abilities? __**



**//__There are many stereotypes about race and athletic ability. Are these stereotypes rumors? Or is there scientific evidence and statistics to prove them correct?__//**

Basketball, football, track, and boxing tend to be dominated by the African American race. Lacrosse, soccer, swimming, golfing, and tennis tend to be dominated by Caucasians.

Basketball, football, track, and boxing all require plenty of speed and power. African Americans tend to be very talented in these sports due to this. Their bodies are built to be able to reach higher speeds and higher powers than many others.

In America, there were many contraversies during the time of segregation in sports. African Americans were not allowed to play on professional sports teams. Here are the first black athletes in a few big sports of our time today: African American joined the sport || Athlete || To see how much sports statistics have changed just in 50 years here are some statistics from 1998: 77% of all basketball players are black 65% of all football players are black 15% of all baseball players are black
 * Sport || Year that the first
 * NBA || 1949 || Chuck Cooper ||
 * NFL || 1946 || Marion Motley ||
 * MLB || 1947 || Jackie Robinson ||

NFL diverstiy statistics from the end of 2008 65% are black 29% are white 3% are Asian 2% are other races 1% is hispanic

MLB diversity statistics from 2009 10.2% are black
 * In 2008, the MLB reached its lowest percentages for black players, at 8.2%.

Here is a list of many [|Latino MLB players] and the countries which they are from.


 * DO YOU HAVE A CITATION FOR THESE STATS? CAN YOU GET MORE CURRENT STATS THAN 1998?**

Asia consists of 57% of the world's population, while Africa consists of 12% of the world's population. However, Asians are very underepresented in sports such as running, soccer, and basketball, while Africans tend to dominate in these sports.


 * BUT THE SPORTS LEAGUES YOU ARE DISCUSSING ARE US LEAGUES, SO DON'T YOU WANT TO LOOK AT US POPULATION FIGURES?**

__Do the Olympics take race into consideration?__ There is genetic diversity between different races. Race is not simply about a skin color, it is much more complicated than just that. The Olympics is a great example of athletes from around the world, from different races, and with different body types, coming together to compete in their favorite sports. At the Olympics, there are different ways that different athletics are judged, however, they do not always take race, genetic make-up, and body type into consideration. One way that they do take different races abilities into consideration is in weight lifting competitions. People are divided up by gender and body mass. As for the awards, they look at the ratio of strength-to-weight. This makes the competition fair, because bodies can be built different way depending on their genes. However, in track and field they do not take race and genes into consideration. No Indian has ever received a medal in a track or field event in the Olympics. At the summer Olympics in 2008 at Beijing, the Chinese only won two bronze medals, when they had the potential to win 141 medals. Nearly half the world's track and field athletes are not able to compete in the Olympics in a fair situation due to the way that the track and field competitions are organized at the Olympics. Spectators do not consider inherited body differences while organizing track and field races. The way the Olympics are organized as well as previous statistics show us that different races do in fact have different Athletic ability. You would not expect someone who is 4 foot 8 to be much faster in a track competition as someone who is 6 foot 2. Your height comes from race and genetics, which plays a large role in athletic ability.

There are many races which tend to dominate is Olympics events. From Olympic to Olympic, there are many medal winners in events who havebeen the same race as the previous medal winners in the same event. For example, people from the West African Anestry have dominated in long distance running at the Olympics for many years. Below is a chart of the male world records for different running events.

In the this [|video of Cullen Jones], news reporters interview the gold medal olympic winner from the 2008 summer olympics in Beijing. In this video, Jones is trying to follow in the footsteps of Tiger Woods to promote a more diverse span of athletes in the sport of swimming, much like Tiger Woods did for golfing. Cullen feels that African are unrepresented in swimming. Jones works with the [|USA Swimming Foundation] to inspire young Latinos and Africans to give swimming a try. Cullen Jones is on the far left next to three of his fellow swimmers from the males USA olympics team from the summer olympics in 2008 in Beijing.

*Notice how under the column Ancestral Origin, there is only athlete who is not of African Origin.

This video introduces you to many [|differenet atheletes of different races]and ethnicities who are well known for their accomplishments.

Many studies have shown that when it comes to power and speed, blacks tend to be stronger than whites. Some people believe that blacks evolved differently than whites, making them more associated with animals who have more power and speed. However, many of these ideas are cultural, rather than racial. Many people believe that African Americans have a higher chance of becoming a professional athlete than others. This idea may come from their roots, beliefs, and culture. Since they believe that their likelihood of their success may be higher, this may lead them to success. William Ellerbee, a basketball coach of Simon Gratz High school in Philadelphia says "Suburban kids tend to play for the fun of it. Inner-city kids look at basketball as a matter of life or death." He also says that he is not surprised that sports have become more important to black children than white children. However, many could argue that that statement is bias and not true.

__**What I want to learn more about**__ I would like to learn more about types of physical ability other than sports. What about dance? I would also like to see how the research that I have done links up to Intellectual ability, becuase many websites that I saw mentioned the connection between the two. It would be interesting to see when and where each one of these sports that I mention were created and by whom, so that I can see if that relates to the dominance of a certain race in a certain sport.

Annotated Bibliography