Michael Johnson says Slave Breeding led to Slavery Descendants being better athletes

1. 9-10 generations is not enough.
2. The human life cycle is such that line breeding and selective breeding is much less effective than cows or dogs.
3. The fact that humans are selectively breeding other humans makes it mandatory for the 'breeders' to dedicate their efforts over an number of generations with the same goals and techniques.
4. control of the unwanted offspring without the desired traits would be impossible.
5. Integration of the (impossibly) created super slaves into the millions of others is impossible.

This is just off the top of my head, doesn't include economics, lack of motivation, etc. A cow can produce offspring 2 years after birth. A dog can produce 8 offspring to choose from in one reproductive cycle. It just isn't possible on the timeline given.

 

Er...what.

I don't understand why this is such a heated topic of discussion...at all.

In terms of the narrative of slave owners as generally bad people, I don't think the fact that they created conditions where only the fittest and strongest survived is as big of a sin as owning human beings in the first place.

Eugenics used to be all the rage in the early 20th century in America, so I wouldn't be surprised if that mentality existed even earlier.

It's time to live up to the fact that in the past human beings did terrible things. Learn from it, make sure it can't happen again, and move on.

 

I first heard this whole slavery/genetics issue as a reason for dominant US black athletes about 10 years ago in college but your opinion here seems more reasonable. Thanks for sharing it on the topic.

 

It's definitely possible. West Africa has always been a brutal harder place with hard conditions and rivaling tribes especially during the 1500's.

Science has shown evolution taking place in just a few generations (sickle cell anemia being the most prominent human example of natural selection affecting current population make-up).

More analysis of people's history would be needed, but the slave trade, the original harsh conditions, and eugenics practiced by slave owners would certainly have a rapid impact of a group of people.

 

Also, he is black.

 

Here are two breeds of cattle. One has been bred and is proven to work and thrive in harsh hot climates with little water. The other would never live through a summer much less work or reproduce. Pick which is which.

Number 1:

Spoiler

Number 2:

Spoiler

 

I am falling asleep, but will end with this, aggression can be bred out foxes in 3 generations. I personally do not believe what Johnson is saying, for some of the reasons I stated earlier and you did as well.. But 9 generations is sufficient.. But on a wide scale? That seems unlikely.

 

So you are showing me two cows bred differently produced drastically different results. You just proved my point, thanks.

 

Would love to see how that works if you could link me. I don't see how you can isolate the traits you want then recreate them in breeding quantities in 3 generations.

No idea? I figured. Do you know any techniques of selective breeding at all? Just curious.

 

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitry_Konstantinovich_Belyaev

Here is some information. It discusses notable changes in adrenaline after 10 generation. I remember a Russian scientist coming to our college seminar and explaining after only 3 generations the aggression level was 50%.

At this point you are looking at 50 + years of selective breeding, you could punch a silver fox in the face and it would not respond.

How does this relate to Johnson? Well it is a real stretch, but I suppose it is conceivable that it could make a minor difference but I am beyond skeptical.

If you want a tame fox look at dropping 5k

 

I confirmed my suspicion, it works with other foxes as well, in 10 generations a red fox has no fear of humans... Just a google search of "10 generations tame fox" will produce information..

Cheers

 

The problem is you could never get 3 much less 10 generations of line breeding out of a human, especially one with a expected life span of 30-35 years. You could get a max of 1, which is worthless. The ratio of time to reproductive maturity and life span doesn't work with humans. Even if those in charge lived for thousands of years, that fact alone would make isolating traits incredibly more difficult.

 

Is everyone ignoring organization? I'd have to think that sports inside Africa (very large black population) are not as well organized as they are outside in places like Germany, Brazil, Netherlands and England which all have excellent youth soccer programs. You could take any best youth player in Africa and stick him in a youth program in the above countries and he would become better. The child would have better fields, facilities and coaches than he would in his home country, Africa, which is a country.

 

Why is Yao 7-6? Random luck? What do you think is the probability of that is?

 

The difference between fox "aggression" and human height (Yao) is that these are more observable than the things which slave owners would likely have wanted to select for like "endurance," "athleticism" and "physical ability." With these more vague traits, you would likely have to wait until each human developed 18 years or maybe more due to levels of nutrition. With those who were already adults, you would still have to be able to parse those with more "endurance" and "physical ability" out from the rest of your slave population which would be very difficult. As we see from the NBA example, not everyone who is physically gifted is able to have the work ethic or willingness, to show-case their maximum abilities.

So, let's presume that one enterprising slave owner managed to somehow accurately identify and select for "physical ability" or "athleticism." The slave owner would still have to pursue this breeding program over multiple generations which would likely extend the program beyond the scope of his own life. Presuming a slave owning dynasty truly tried all this, even if they managed to create 50 extremely physically gifted individuals, these gains would be quickly lost because these people would have eventually been reintroduced through emancipation and be exposed to breeding with average individuals and/or die off.

Of course, none of this gets into whether these specific traits like "athleticism" can indeed change significantly over the course of a few generations in humans. This is all to say that this claim that Michael Johnson is making is extremely improbable.

 

This is the most likely answer. The selection has primarily been due to cultural rather than genetic as athletics has traditionally been one of the few avenues for black American success. Also look at the sports that are dominated by black Americans, basketball, Football, track and field. If blacks were just plain genetically superior then every sport would be dominated by blacks. Savy hockey coaches would just go recruit blacks, teach them to skate and handle a stick and watch them dominate. That isn't the case though. Hockey is dominated by people who grew up in a culture playing hockey while basketball is dominated by people from a culture playing basketball.

While there might've been some selection due to how harsh the middle passage was and plantation life. I also suspect that many slave owners tried to breed slaves for certain traits. The problem though with a massive eugenics experiment on American slaves is that slave owners couldn't control the extent of breeding of their slaves as they could their cattle. First is that slaves would breed with each other with or without the owner's consent. Second though was that slave owners were also breeding with their slaves and many genealogical studies have shown that practically all descendents of slaves in America have some degree of White ancestry so West African genes are diluted by European genes from slave owners sexually exploiting their slaves. It's possible that Michael Johnson's explosive speed could come from a white ancestor as much as a black ancestor.

 

Just to add something else to consider. If Michael Johnson is correct that selective breeding of slaves led to the descendents of slaves being physically superior what traits would a slave owner seek to breed? If you are breeding a slave population for agricultural labor the traits that you would want are strength, stamina, and docility. Basically you would be looking for the human equivalent of a draft horse. Given that escaped slaves were a problem why then would you want to breed a sprinter?

Even if we accept the idea that Michael Johnson is the product of a slavery eugnenics program from the practical point of view the program is a failure since it produced an individual who would be a terrible plantation slave. Someone whose abilities are geared more towards escape rather working in the fields.

 

I think people are overstating the selective breeding.


The actual selection process makes more sense to me. The typically looked for the largest best built people to bring over. The overwhelming majority of black people in North America can trace their ancestors back to a slave ship. Sad but true.

Considering slaves were chosen to come over it would make more sense.

I'm not sure why this offends so many people. Nobody is saying slavery was a good thing or trying to excuse it.

 

I don't think slavery really had that much impact. What is astounding is that 99% of 100m top times in world history belong to sprinters of west african descent. That's incredible and hard not to consider a genetic factor in that.

Seems to me that something about life in West Africa required fast twitch muscle and lots of it. Over the course of thousands of years, I think it's very possible that some differences evolved and quite possibly the environment favored traits that allowed people to accelerate quickly.

 

Wow. I'm impressed how few people could take the sociological aspects out of their reasoning. Throwing in references to Hitler and the brutality of slavery doesn't change any of the scientific argument.

Using the term 'selective breeding' itself is an inflammatory construct. The term in biology is artificial selection.

Can you artificially select fast twitch muscles alone over 10 generations: No, at least probably not.
Can you artificially select for a group of genetically linked attributes (like height/speed/strength) in ten generations: Of course

Everything else about what a slave-trader, plantation owner or nerf herder could or could not do is an anthropological exercise. Do I believe in a sociocultural aspect to it as well: yes. But Michael Johnson's argument has legitimate consideration from the scientific perspective.