Debate Rages Anew Over Race, Athletic Ability

DETROIT - Are African Americans naturally better athletes?

The question arose last week as Michigan State University sought a new president. Candidate Dale Lick, who said in 1989 that black athletes are naturally superior to whites in some sports, withdrew Saturday.

When Lick made the remark, he said, "Now this isn't me talking, this is what the research shows ..."

Even five years later, however, the research remains inconclusive. A review of studies from across the country finds the academic world split on whether and why differences exist in sports performance.

Many researchers give African Americans an edge in some sports while giving European Americans an advantage in others, sometimes for racial reasons but just as often because of economic background, motivation and other non-racial factors.

The only solid conclusion? The debate is far from over but is increasingly coming in the open.

Research lacking

At various times, Lick has said his sources were at Indiana University and at Georgia Southern College. A check on those sources finds a less-than-thorough research backing.

At Indiana University, neither the chairman of kinesiology nor the head of the exercise physiology laboratory could identify any research ever done there that related to Lick's remarks.

At Georgia Southern College, Lick's source was a now-retired dean of health and physical education, who years ago told Lick of research elsewhere on racial differences. One difference they discussed - a greater length of shin bones and forearms attributed to African Americans - has been widely documented since then. Some experts say it gives African Americans an advantage in basketball and sprinting, but that it may be less important than cultural factors such as motivation and economic background.

While Lick possesses a far-from-detailed knowledge of race and sports, a growing body of research is finding performance differences between racial groups, but the researchers differ on whether race is the reason for those differences.

"Race Is a Four-Letter Word" is the title of a two-volume work being written by Loring Brace, a University of Michigan physical anthropologist, who flatly says, "There is no such thing as race."

Says Brace, "Our theory is that important traits are distributed across population boundaries in such a fashion that it makes it impossible to distinguish races."

He and other anthropologists peer into the past, trying to understand differences in people by studying evolution.

No biological significance

"Race is really just family resemblance on a regional scale, but it doesn't have any biological significance other than simple continuity. It's neither brighter nor dumber nor stronger nor weaker," he says.

Brace says his profession is split "about fifty-fifty" on whether race is a valid concept, but he thinks that he and his supporters are gaining ground in the debate.

"You come down to asking, what is race? If you cannot identify it by its traits, then how can you identify it? I don't think you can," he says.

Taking issue with Brace is another anthropologist, Grover Krantz of Washington State University in Pullman, Wash.

He is author of "Climatic Races and Descent Groups," a 1980 academic work that explores human differences from two approaches: genetic traits and adaptations to climate.

Krantz doesn't hesitate to say there are racial and ethnic differences that affect sports performance. But he says that racial differences in physiques are probably less important than economic and social background, because those factors motivate youngsters to become athletes.

"Some groups, ethnic or racial, have more motivation to try," he says.

A simple question: `Why?'

Robert Malina is a professor of both anthropology and kinesiology at the University of Texas. He appeared in a 1989 NBC program on racial differences in sports performance.

"The bottom line is, there are disportionate number of blacks in football and basketball and, to some extent, baseball.

"The simple question is, why? A lot of people don't like to ask that `why' question," says Malina.

He says the answer leads to racism only if science is misused. Malina says there are physical differences in several areas that are linked to race, although they may not be inherited:

-- Differences in body proportions. For example, blacks on the average have longer legs and arms. But there are no differences in overall body height or weight, according to major national surveys through the last three decades.

-- Differences in body fat percentage. In general, this is thought to be largely cultural, related to diet and behavior. But the distribution of fat may be racially linked. Black Americans seem to have relatively more fat on the trunk than on their extremities.

-- Diffences in bone density. "The black skeleton is more dense," but bones are not bigger. In research on osteoporosis, or brittle bone disease, being white is a risk factor.

Unanswered and perplexing

An article in Runner's World magazine last year examined those differences in an attempt to explain the dominance of blacks in track events at the Barcelona Olympics.

The article concluded that blacks of West African heritage are likely to excel whenever a sport requires sprinting and jumping. Research has shown greater differences in physical make-up and sports potential between East and West Africans than between African Americans and European Americans, according to the article.

Ultimately, the words "black" and "white" tell little about how well a single individual will perform, experts interviewed for this story say.

Despite ongoing research, questions about the importance of race in sports ability remain unanswered and perplexing.

The late Arthur Ashe, the black tennis champion and author of books on the subject of race and sports, gave a curious answer in the 1989 NBC news special when he was asked if blacks are naturally superior athletes.

"My head says no," Ashe replied. "My heart says yes. I'd like to have somebody disprove it."