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Comment by PKop | Hacker News Reader

>so the whole idea is nonsense

In the last 11 Olympics, men with Sub-Saharan African ancestry have earned 87 of 88 finalist berths in the 100m dash. Is this random chance or does race correlate with some genetic traits enabling differentiation in physical abilities?

>grouping people by skin color or many other arbitrary groupings

This isn't arbitrary, when common ancestry and origin impart real world observable differences in a repeatable predictable way.

>there are groupings of people by genetic traits and things like that do matter

Yea exactly.

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> In the last 11 Olympics, men with Sub-Saharan African ancestry have earned 87 of 88 finalist berths in the 100m dash. Is this random chance or does race correlate with some genetic traits enabling differentiation in physical abilities?

That's not a race. That's a particular tiny subset of a particular region with unique genetics. It's not even "Sub-Saharan", it's specific regions and tribes in Ethiopia, Kenya, and other rift countries.

> This isn't arbitrary, when common ancestry and origin impart real world observable differences in a repeatable predictable way.

Where they do, great, but often the standard "racial types" share little if anything. Skin color dictates almost nothing about the other traits of a person, so if you're concerned with "how fast do they get a sunburn", by all means group away. If you're concerned with IQ or athletic ability, try again.

>In the last 11 Olympics, men with Sub-Saharan African ancestry have earned 87 of 88 finalist berths in the 100m dash. Is this random chance or does race correlate with some genetic traits enabling differentiation in physical abilities?

First, you're completely forgetting culture. Second, nobody is claiming that there is no genetic difference between humans, it's just that the races we define don't correlate very well with them. Sub-Saharan Africa has the most human genetic diversity, so why would they be all of the same race?

I think it's an Americanism to think humans in Africa are a monolith. At least here in the UK the idea of having the most genetic diversity goes hand in hand with correlating with lots of races within.

> Sub-Saharan African ancestry

Notice how they all come from specific population that is a small subset of black race. Probably more black people run slower then them than there is white people in total.

If you noticed that 99 of 100 finalists of some jumping discipline were Ashkenazi Jews or western Slovenians you wouldn't claim that white race is awesome at jumping.

That's why concept of race is useless. It focuses on superficial differences and similarities ignoring the real significant ones.

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