Natural Selections

So I was watching the 133rd Westminster Kennel Club dog show, it is the 2nd oldest continuously held sporting event in the United States (the oldest is the Kentucky Derby). Only one Dog from each breed (Recognized by the AKC) can be entered. There are approximately 160 breeds of dogs, and they are divide into Groups; the winner of each Group moves on, and a Best in show is chosen between them. This idea of different Breeds, and different Groups reminded me of our discussion of Race in class. In particular the concept of "Best In Show" reminded me of the idea we left on in class, does race affect athletic ability. The movie we watched clearly pointed out that African Americans, have more natural athletic ability then Caucasians (example100, 200, 400 meter dash, and the mile 2 mile and Marathon). If you look at the 2008 Olympics you see a great examples of this, such as Usain Bolt (Fastest man alive holds world record for the 100 and 200). This holds true to longer distances too, if you look at the marathon world record holder is Haile Gabrselassie (Ethiopia) and then 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th fastest times are native Kenyans. I think this dominance in athletics is due to this idea of natural selection. Natural selection is the process by which favorable heritable traits become more common in successive generations. Organisms with traits that help it survive are able to pass on its genes; that means if you have two groups of the same organism are put in two different environments one with more limiting factors in it. The organism in the one with more limiting factors, will develop traits faster and better for survival then the other group. I believe this is a reason why, African Americans often posses more talent in athletics then Caucasians. Because Caucasians have always had the best living quality, and medical care, available (at the time) natural selection had less of an effect determining who dies and who lives, unlike in Africa were many nations are impoverished, which in turn cases a higher rate of natural selection. Thus often making African Americans athletically superior because they have better genes.

Feb 11, 2009
Today in class we finished the video, and it made me change my opinion of what i said in this Blog post. Instead of having better genes, its because of the Geography of were they come from. There is also non-Concordance between Athletic ability and skin color. Race is simply just a Social Fabrication, used to falsely classify people. Race is also not determined by genetics because we are too closely related.