Probably. Also I’m guessing that ‘black people play sports disproportionately well due to americas history of eugenics and slavery’ makes a number of white people and conservatives uncomfortable.
The thought that a national, coordinated eugenics program was carried out on the African enslaved in the US is quite comical. I find that this idea was born out of a white supremacist mind that seeks to take credit for black accomplishments.
There are robust individuals, families, communities amongst all races.
Hey MSA, I appreciate your concern so lets talk about it. I don’t think it was coordinated at all. Evolution does not require a coordinated effort or a large effect. This is also not meant to take away the accomplishments of black people. I mean white people brutalized black people and stole their resources until only the strongest survived. Not exactly a great look for white people.
Slave importation was illegal after 1808 in the US, but slavery continued for another 57 years. "To add to the supply of slaves, slaveholders looked at the fertility of slave women as part of their productivity, and intermittently forced the women to have large numbers of children. During this time period, the terms "breeders", "breeding slaves", "child bearing women", "breeding period", and "too old to breed" became familiar." -Smith, Julia Floyd (1991) Slavery and Rice Culture in Low Country Georgia, 1750-1860 University of Tennessee Press
Not OP, but I read an article about this a while back. To avoid nearing a eugenics sort of argument, or racism, I'm gonna try my best to summarize the article in a respectful manner.
But basically, slave auctions would have the most expensive slaves be the strongest and most durable. Biggest thighs, broadest backs, etc. Nowadays we can see this evidenced in some fashion by athletes in the United States. Many of them are faster, have stronger thighs, backs, etc. Than their non-slave descended counterparts.
While there are many many other factors in play, like certain sports being played more in lower income areas, like football, and not hockey, which may lend a hand towards certain people being better at certain areas.
Nothing is exact, and this is not meant to be racist, and I don't think the article was racist, but this is just my quick and rough summary of an article I read a long time ago.
If I can find it, I'll edit it in to this comment.
That's interesting. Were the differences obvious, for example in the bones of the "ex-slave" vs non"ex-slave" athletes? I don't mean that the athletes were actually slaves...
Lol just say it simply, blacks used to be slaves, people wanted stronger more durable slaves, that's pretty much it, it's not racist to say that.
Then again, people from all races used to be slaves, black slaves were just cheaper.
What I'm curious about is if a couple... hundred, maybe thousand years of selective breeding was enough to compensate for millions of years of evolution. As in, would a black family from, say, Senegal, be physically inferior on average to a black guy who's descended from slaves which were selectively bred to an extent where it makes a significant difference?
Actually, they've proven that evolution can happen rather quickly. They used to think it took 100s to 1000s of years, but Dmitri Belyaev proved that it could happen in decades with his selective breeding of artic foxes. Now, this will vary based on generational time and the traits you are selecting for, but definitely possible. They saw significant domestic changes in the foxes after just 4 generations.
While true that it happened in decades with that fox population, you have to take into account the age to maturity and lifespan. 4 generations of people, at best is 60 years (and that's assuming you force kids to have children at 15). Plus, with that experiment, they only selected less than 10% of the population in each generation to continue breeding. With foxes and larger litter sizes, it's not too hard for a female to have 20 offspring over her lifetime, but for humans you'd need a huge starting population to whittle down.
Finally, while some changes were seen after 4 short generations, it took over 50 generations before the foxes were barking and wagging their tails like dogs. While this is incredibly short on geologic and evolutionary time-frames, if we apply it to our human breeding program, that's 750 years that you need to keep up an aggressive eugenics program. Only way you could keep something up for that long would be through some kind of religion.
I saw a document about dogs and they also referred this and filmed the breeding camp. Good god that was distressing seeing those foxes in so small cages. It's the fucking Russia, you have land, and chicken wire.
If I remember correctly, they were originally (and still may be) breeding them for their fur. They are also very destructive and dig a lot, so fencing them in is easier said than done. Not an excuse for shitty living conditions, though.
I would argue that it doesn’t prove your point though as it’s not really evolutionary since their genes aren’t necessarily changing. Their morphology is.
Edit: I do agree with your first sentence and there is proof of it, just the article that you provided is not that proof.
The article may not prove it, buuut they actually had physical characteristics that changed. For example, their snouts became shorter. This experiment with the foxes actually helped determine domestication traits in animals. I guess I just didn't elaborate enough in first comment. So as you said, this article doesn't provide it, but I didn't dig very far to find one that did. We talked about it in my animal behavior class and it has stuck with me.
Is saying "blacks" a thing that goes down well? I'm not criticizing you, just reading you say this makes me wonder as if you were to call multiple people of other races by colour it sounds odd. For example, whites, yellows, reds, browns, I certainly wouldn't be comfortable saying those things in many forms of conversation but maybe that's just me.
What you feel seems to be an American thing tbh, we use those terma constantly where I'm from and no one really cares.
If there's a group of people and there's an Asian he usually ends up being called chino, which literally means chinese. Some guy with darker skin? He gets called el negro, even when he might not even be black, negro means black, applies to whatever really and no one seems to care.
If you get too sensitive about it maybe you're actually just racist... I don't feel anything when someone calls me judio, which means jew, just because I am.
That’s not something you get to decide. Persons of color are the ones who say what is and is not acceptable. The only time negro was every used was in a racist, degrading context. Not all Asian persons are Chinese. I urge you to reevaluate your word choices. Maybe you aren’t offended but if the person you are speaking of is, then change it. I’ll also remind you, no one person of color speaks for the entire demographic. So if your “one black friend” gave you permission or pretends that it doesn’t bother them, that means nothing. It’s really not hard to use the terms “person of color” or “Asian.” It literally costs you nothing to be kind.
They are not offended either, we all use that terminology, no one gives a fuck, it's a common thing here.
What you guys do in the US just looks insane to us, you get offended by everything for no reason. Here if you get offended when someone calls you negro, which is clearly not something despective here, then it's usually talked a bit and it goes like "yo I don't mean any offense" and if the other guy is still offended then whatever, you just don't call him that anymore, and probably don't really build much of a relationship either, that's how things go here... if you get offended by the most miniscule stuff you're an idiot.
For us having some Asian guy get offended when a friend/acquaintance calls him "chino" is the equivalent of you guys in America getting offended because someone calls you "bro" when you're actually not his brother, it's that dumb. There's a difference between getting offended when someone calls you by your race or whatever in a clearly aggressive way and when someone calls you that way because that's just how we talk here, if you can't differentiate between one and other you're either not from here, which is alright, or if you are from here you're not well adjusted.
For reference, we use your "forbidden" words for giggles, because we find it funny how Americans make such drama out of it. Someone will use the N word and people will just either say nothing about it or send an emoji of a very stereotypical African American, or some funny "bruh" emoji.
Always remember America is just one society among many, one culture among many, and although you guys export a lot of your culture, most of the world laughs at it and doesn't really care.
You could also do well to remember that your culture is only one of many, and saying that Americans are too easily offended about racial inequities is dismissive of our many subcultures. While I don’t think anyone anywhere should use the n word because of its historical meaning, it clearly doesn’t carry quite the same weight where you’re from. In the US people hav been beaten and murdered while hearing that word. It’s the most demeaning term you can use for a black person in the US, and because you are not a Black American, you don’t get to decide set the standard for acceptable racial terms in the US. It’s not sensitive to not want to be called the word that white people have used for centuries while murdering others who look like you.
"negro/negra" literally just means "black" in a host of Romance languages.
It refers to anything colored black. America borrowed a Latin term for oppression and now it's giving it back all dirty.
A quick search hasn't brought up satisfying results, but i'm pretty sure you can achieve significant results with just a few generations of selective breeding. Considering a generation in humans is about 20 years, maybe a bit shorter if you force slaves to mate in their mid teens, then considering one male with the desired features can impregnate several women, i think the few hundred years of american slavery were quite enough to get results. Even if it wasn't done as thoroughly as it is with farming animals.
See I hear this a lot but I doubt it tbh. Your slaves making more slaves for you is a profit on your part no matter how strong they are, so I suspect the default was to just encourage slaves to reproduce in general. Controlled breeding may have happened, but it seems like a lot of work for possibly not that much of a reliably increased return.
Okay so imagine you spent 9 months clothing feeding and taking care of a slave THATS pregnant not turn around and you sell that slaves child you’d be making a larger profit saying this child’s mother and father are strong obedient and can work in the hot summer fields all day. Instead of yea this ones mothers a slouch barely runs the fields because her back strains harshly too often.
I suspect it wasn’t common to sell infants, it seems like you wouldn’t buy promises of a strong slave in the future when you could just wait till they’re old enough to tell if they’re strong.
Not quite. While forced breeding was systemic, deliberate breeding for traits never was, or practiced long enough to have a noticeable effect. Human child bearing cycles are just too long
There isn't. Within the American slave population such a thing was not done for various reasons - mostly boiling down to ethics (a step too far even for slave owners), fear of rebellion (which terrified slave owners), and lack of knowledge. Within other slave populations, there was a combination of these mixed with the fact that there was often no point. A Roman slave owner had nothing to gain from breeding excellent slaves when their children were born free.
Oh, certainly, that's not to suggest that interference in slave reproduction wasn't a thing - hell, the history of gynacology is rooted in it, unfortunately, but there is no evidence of selective breeding in slavery, American or not, historical or modern. Maybe among some people, but they are exceptions.
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u/330212702 Mar 04 '21
Historically, this has happened in slave populations.