Given that racists and slavers used the “natural physical strength” of black people to justify putting them on hard labor and some medics still think that blacks has higher resistance to pain, I wonder if when black athletes started to join mixed race sport teams, some racist would have used the same “biological advantage” argument that now transphobes use against trans athletes to claim it was “unfair” for black to compete against whites to justify segregation.

  • argo_yamato@lemm.ee
    6·
    8 months ago

    There was an NFL commentator named Jimmy the Greek who said something like “they are bred to be a better athlete” on air. He was fired shortly thereafter. Can’t remember when it happened though, maybe the mid 1980’s. Not sure if he himself was racist or if he was just saying what popped into his head.

    • cerevant@lemm.eeEnglish
      11·
      8 months ago

      Here’s his quote:

      The black is a better athlete to begin with, because he’s been bred to be that way. Because of his high thighs and big thighs that goes up into his back. And they can jump higher and run faster because of their bigger thighs. And he’s bred to be the better athlete because this goes back all the way to the Civil War, when, during the slave trading, the big, the owner, the slave owner would breed his big black to his big woman so that he could have uh big black kid, see. That’s where it all started!

      Racist. Definitely racist.

      • SolOrion@sh.itjust.works
        1·
        8 months ago

        Honestly I think the part of this that surprises me is that he got fired for this… in the 1980s.

        I wonder if there’s an ask historians thread on exactly when racism became “denormalized”, if that’s a word.

  • JoBo@feddit.uk
    5·
    8 months ago

    It was sort of the opposite at the very start of integrated sports. In the US and UK, at least, it was widely believed that Black men could not play sports simply because they did not, in fact, play (professional) sports. (And of course women were barely allowed to play sport at all in that era.)

    Claims that Black people are naturally better at sports came later on, along with reasons why they couldn’t swim, or play tennis or golf, or ride horses, or do any of those sports that coincidentally have more access for kids with wealthy and/or suburban parents.

    System justification is an easy game to play. A story for every occasion.