Sport: The Black Dominance

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Subsequent research, while limited, tends to confirm Metheny's findings. During the 1960 Olympics in Rome, J.M. Tanner, a British doctor, conducted X-ray and photographic studies of athletes. Tanner too reported that blacks had longer limbs and narrower hips, which for a runner provides a longer stride. According to Edward Hunt, an anthropologist at Penn State University, blacks tend to have lighter trunks and heavier bones. The average black's lungs are a little smaller relative to body weight. Then, too, young blacks carry less body fat than white youths. These characteristics, combined with relatively larger limbs and hands, he says, should be advantageous for sports that require quick movement. Yet they may well put blacks at a disadvantage in swimming, for example, where less fat and heavier bones make for less buoyancy. Dr. James Haines of Morehouse College tried a simple floating test on 841 students at the black school and found that 73% almost immediately sank to the bottom of the pool—"sinkers," he called them. In a similar test at nearby Georgia Tech, only 2% of white students showed the same tendency.

Yet another physician, Dr. Allan Ryan, editor of The Physician and Sportsmedicine, agrees that black athletes often have a greater leg-to-trunk-length ratio than whites, which gives them an advantage in activities requiring explosive force, such as sprinting and jumping. Dr. Lyle Micheli, director of the sport-medicine division of Children's Hospital, has made similar observations. In examining black children, he has found that they have relatively small muscle mass in their calves, but highly muscled thighs. Says he: "The combination of the two makes for very efficient running. But we don't know whether the development is a result of the running they do, or whether the better running is due to the physical capability." Other authorities, like Harvard Pathology Professor Gustave Dammin, go even further and insist that any physical differences that exist between blacks and whites have no significant bearing on athletic performance. Says Dr. Dammin: "I do not know of anything regarding blacks' physiques that would give them any special athletic advantage."

Whatever the reasons for black excellence in athletics, the surpassing skill is evident. The percentage of blacks in professional sports would probably be even higher were it not for the discrimination that still persists. Most athletes know all too well that in football, center, free safety and quarterback are still largely reserved for whites. In baseball, blacks are concentrated in the outfield. In basketball, some teams with largely black rosters will take on—or keep—a white player or two instead of hiring a more talented black, in an effort to maintain the interest of white crowds.

Blacks are particularly bitter about the lack of black quarterbacks in the N.F.L. Says Sociologist Edwards: "It's very interesting that a white man can be a quarterback regardless of what his intellectual reputation is. A black—I don't care what his intellectual reputation is—cannot be a quarterback."