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.
For a while there was a persistent myth that black people had an extra muscle in their leg that allowed them to perform better at sports.
It’s kind of similar to phrenology in trying to justify racism.
While there is no extra muscle, it is factually true that people of West African descent tend to have more fast twitch muscle fibers which is a pretty big advantage in many sports.
This is likely why the myth of the extra muscle originated.
This may have been the time when dissecting cadavers was very, very looked down on. It was seen as desecrating the body. So knowledge of the body just wasn’t there.
No, this shit was pretty prevalent in the 90s and I guarantee some people are still parroting it today.
Ergh I’m guilty of repeating this bullshit when I was younger. It had been sold to me as a fact, not in what I perceived was a racist context per se - more a ‘oh cool, lucky them, that makes sense gestures at basketball’ way. Believe me, I get it now. Also, my mum’s black… Where did I get this bullshit from? White men can’t jump?
This was taught to me in grade school. I feel pretty betrayed.
Suffice it to say, I found it dubious even as a child and as an adult, learned better, but WTF.