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African athletic aptitude and the social sciences

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 March 2007

John Hoberman
John Hoberman*
Affiliation:
Department of Germanic Studies, The University of Texas at Austin, E.P. Schoch 3.102, Austin, TX 78712-1190, USA
*
* Email:hoberman@mail.utexas.edu
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Abstract

Scientific investigation of racial athletic aptitude has been preceded by a century of pseudo- and quasi-scientific speculations on this topic. For this reason, physiological and anatomical research on African runners is performed in a social context that is still permeated by folkloric ideas about racial differences, some of which pertain to athletic performance. A powerful stereotype of ‘tropical nature’ and its ‘superabundant’ vitality has influenced non-African thinking about African athletic potential. The idea that evolutionary adaptation in Africa is a particularly severe version of natural selection has had a similar effect on Western thinking about African runners. Romantic ideas about African athletic aptitude may, therefore, be understood as modern versions of the doctrine of black ‘hardiness’ that survives in contemporary biomedicine in various forms.

Keywords

racial athletic aptitudeAfrican athletesexercise physiologyevolutionary adaptationblack hardiness
Type
Review Article
Information
Equine and Comparative Exercise Physiology , Volume 1 , Issue 4 , November 2004 , pp. 281 - 284
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2004

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