In part one I looked at the interesting new mixed swimming event that places the athletic difference between men and women into sharp focus. In part two we have a more controversial story from the swimming at this Olympics, one that centres on the racism bogeyman. You might, if you were an especially naïve toddler from a sheltered background, think that the only reference to race at the Olympics would be to the races being run by competitors. You would, sadly, be wrong.
This one’s a bit on the long side, and I may rant a bit, apologies in advance.
Simone Manuel, of the US Olympic swimming team is an African American, the first black woman to win an Olympic gold for swimming (in Rio, 2016) and she proudly wears her hair in an afro. Now, you don’t need to be a professor of swimmology to work out that a big old ‘fro will not only suffer greatly from repeated dunking in chlorinated water, it would also cause considerable drag in the water and slow our heroine down, and we don’t want that.
This is not a problem only for folk with afros, any voluminous hair style has the same drawbacks, which is why swimmers with any sort of hair beyond a crew cut habitually wear tight fitting rubber swim caps to protect their hair and prevent their crowning glory from slowing them down. This means that swimmers at Manuel’s level tend either to have very short hair, or wear a swim cap, keeping the playing field pretty level.
So far so good, we like a level playing field. However, the constriction of a conventional swimming cap on the afro is not good for the hair style that’s just gotta be free. An afro needs room, and afro needs cushioning. It also goes without saying that the more hair is squished under a swim cap, the less comfortable it is to wear. At this point two inventive young Brits, Toks Ahmed and Michael Chapman, enter the story. Having noticed that a cruel and uncaring world had failed to adequately protect the afro they came up with and marketed the Soul Cap, a swimming cap especially designed to accommodate the afro and other big bold hair styles. It looks and works much like a conventional cap, but is larger, effectively creating a dome on top of the swimmer’s head.
Naturally Manuel was going to wear hers when competing in Japan this year. Hooray! A stunning and brave black woman can compete in a white dominated sport and keep her ‘fro all nice too! Let the unicorns frolic in fields of organic clover under a rainbow sky. But don’t get too excited folks, this is where the story turns all racisty.
FINA, the international body that oversees swimming, looked at the novel Soul Cap and wondered if it might not actually have other properties than protecting the afro. As it does not sit tight to the head but bulges out, not unlike the bulges built at the bottom of the bows of modern ships, it could quite conceivably improve a swimmer’s performance just a little.
Now, strangely enough, I managed to leave a bog-standard comprehensive school at sixteen without a degree in hydrodynamics (shocking I know, but there you go), but I do know enough about how ships work and about the wafer-thin margins of victory in top level swimming to think that they might well have a point.
The time between gold and silver in the 400 m mixed relay I described in part one was only 0.71 of a second. In the men’s 50 m at this Olympics the time between gold and no medal at all was 0.35 of a second. Think about that, the first, second, third and fourth placed swimmers finished within less than half a second of each other. Clearly something does not need to have a big effect to give an advantage.
The bulge built just below the waterline on the bow of modern ships is there to modify the way the water flows around the hull, reducing drag, increasing speed and reducing fuel consumption. On large ships the difference can be up to 15%, but the effect does lessen with smaller vessels.
So, it is by no means far-fetched that the Soul Cap could make a difference to a swimmer’s times, and so FINA banned the Soul Cap. To be fair, it is also quite possible it doesn’t help, or even that it has a negative effect. Personally, I would have thought some objective tests, either in a tank or on computer, wouldn’t be too difficult to do to establish the facts either way.
Manuel’s reaction to the banning of her shiny new cap was not to question the science, but to call “RACIST!” good and loud. Hearing the call, the usual heads popped up from the usual holes and meerkats of Mickey-Mouse-Marxism got busy. I’ve read few pieces on this matter over the last couple of days, some pretty much cut and paste jobs of others, and they all repeat the same line, that the whole affair “spotlights the lack of diversity in swimming” and pretty much accusing FINA of racism.
Interestingly I’ve yet to see any of these articles actually address the science of the matter. The narrative is entirely framed in terms of historic injustice, systemic racism, etc. you know the drill. Not to be outdone British black swimmers have joined in and the whole thing is all mixed up with a few statistics in the murky Marxist gumbo. None of these stats are to do with the potential effects of the cap of course.
“According to the USA Swimming Foundation, 64% of Black children do not know how to swim compared to 40% of white American children. Additionally, 79% of children in American families that earn less than $50,000 a year do not know how to swim.”
To me that seems to suggest income is a bigger factor than race in predicting whether a child will learn to swim or not. Here’s another statement.
“Black families have been taught to fear swimming instead of embrace it.”
Now, I do know that historically there were policies of segregation and not all swimming pools were open to black people in parts of the US. This was decades ago, and only in a very particular part of the English-speaking world. In a world where there’s been a black President and arguably the most influential star in America is a black woman, the idea that the ghost of Bull Conner is keeping black folk out of the swimming pools is stretching credulity just a touch.
The emotive and utterly unscientific reaction to Soul Cap Gate contrasts strongly with a sports controversy from 2007/8. The white South African runner, Oscar Pistorius, lost his legs below the calf as a child and ran in both disabled and non-disabled events using prosthetic lower legs and feet. When he used new prosthetics especially designed to be faster (called the Flex Foot Cheetah) there was considerable controversy. The prosthetics, and Pistorius’s performance, were carefully studied. Cameras recorded things and played back ultra-slowly, scientists did sciencey stuff, percentages flew around like mayflies and opinions chased them like swallows. I remember I had a pretty firm view on it at the time, I don’t remember what it was, but it was firm, I know that. What I do remember is the fact that Pistorius was a white guy, and an Afrikaner, was not a factor at all. It was all about the science, not race, nationality or culture.
Talking about the science, there is another reason why black people may have traditionally not gone for swimming as much as other athletic activities. Interestingly, again it has been ignored in the cloud of SJW squid ink that the invertebrates have been squirting on the issue. I’ve yet to see it mentioned, even to rebut it.
It is a matter of human biological fact that the bodies of people of sub-Saharan African ancestry differ slightly from those of people descended from the folk who left Africa and settled in Asia, Europe North Africa and the Americas.
“In general, blacks have a greater bone mineral density and body protein content than do whites, resulting in a greater fat-free body density.”
(From the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition)
This means that in most athletic endeavours black people have a very slight advantage. This doesn’t mean all black people are more athletic than all other people. It doesn’t mean that a black guy in his fifties who eats doughnuts for breakfast and breaks a sweat getting out of a chair is going to run faster than a Chinese guy in his twenties who eats well and trains hard. It does mean though, that if two athletes of different races but the same age, height and weight both train equally hard, the black athlete is likely to have the edge. It is marginal, not anything like as large as the advantage men have over women when it comes to strength and speed, but it is there. There are lots of other factors in play of course, and merely being black does not guarantee success, but it does go a long way to explaining the very high representation of black people in various sports in countries that are predominantly white.
One sport where this advantage does not apply is swimming. The higher density equals a lower buoyancy, effectively cancelling out that advantage experienced on land. Again, this doesn’t mean black people can’t swim, certainly not that they shouldn’t swim, or that they can’t swim at the very highest level, but it does explain (rather more convincingly than “systemic racism”) why black folk are much less prominent in swimming than in other sports. At the highest level of competition, the smallest differences matter a lot.
This brings me to the sheer blinkered, lopsided logic of this latest attempt to use black people as the vanguard of the new racial proletariat.
To immediately scream racism, to widen and weaponise the issue, does not help black people, quite the reverse. The very idea that there is a “correct” level of black participation in any given sport is an odd one, and one that does not seem to be applied to other sports. Take a look at these relay teams from the USA, UK and Canada over the last few years. Bear in mind the black populations are around 14% for the USA and less than 5% for the UK and Canada.
In the same vein, here’s a picture of the English soccer squad that spent so much of the recent European Championships bleating about racism. The team is over 45% black, despite the fact that England (as opposed to the UK) is between 5 and 6% black. Note also there are no players of Indian or Pakistani descent, even though they are around twice as numerous as black people in England.
If we take the “racial disparity = systemic racism” line, then these pictures speak of a very strong and determined systemic bias towards black folk and against whites and Asians in the US, UK and Canada. Of course, there is no such bias, the people in these pictures are there because they are very good at what they do, and well done to them.
If the people jumping on this bandwagon really want to help black people, then they would do well to talk about the actual issue of whether the Soul Cap is indeed an issue at all and not co-opt it as part of the revolution. I can understand why Simone Manuel wants to wear a Soul Cap, and I can equally understand why FINA might have concerns about it. It shouldn’t be too hard to establish the actual effects of the cap and rule accordingly.
The current loud chorus of complaint might feel good to the virtue signallers, it might warm the hearts of the neo-Marxists, but I don’t think it helps the cause of black folk, in the pool or out of it, one jot. In the context of the generally very high levels of representation of black people in sport, to pick on swimming as some sort of bastion of white supremacism just looks whiny and ludicrous. It puts ammo into the hands of the real white supremacists who can present the whole thing as part of whatever flavour of conspiracy they favour this month. It also bolsters the idea in the minds of young black people that the deck is stacked against them, I can think of nothing more likely to ensure they do fail.
FINA have already apologised for their insensitivity, we’ll see if they actually bother to do the groundwork on the Soul Cap, or if they will just fold.
No doubt lefties reading this would dismiss me as a hater, and even a racist. As if a racist would spend his time writing nearly 2,500 words on why an issue is harming black people. Still, they’d be right about the hate. I do genuinely hate the fact that race has been turned into the toxic issue it is and that it permeates everything. I hate that I now do see race where before I merely noticed someone’s skin colour the way I would notice their hair colour.
In my teens the closest thing to a sporting hero I had was Daley Thompson, who dominated the decathlon in the early 1980s. I liked the fact that decathlon was a such a broad event that required excellence in ten different disciplines. I also liked the distinct connection to the ancient Greek roots, especially javelin and discus. I liked that Thompson won medals for Britain, I liked his bright and irreverent personality and, of course, I was mesmerised by his moustache (with great moustache goes great responsibility). Obviously he was black, the son of a Nigerian father and Scots mother, born in London, but we didn’t define him as black, he was simply Daley Thompson.
The same could be said of many other black and mixed-race sports stars. I think the boxers Chris Eubank and Frank Bruno did more for race relations in Britain, simply by being themselves, than whole legions of unconscious bias trainers could ever do. It genuinely pains me that the neo-Marxists have been so successful in making us more tense and touchier about race than we were four decades ago.
Where will it all end? Well, of course it won’t. We go on, muddling through the years and decades. All we can do is resist the lefties, call them out, mock them, oppose them. More and more people of all colours are doing so. This is my little contribution. Thanks for making it this far.