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.

  • shalafi@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Ah!

    wouldn’t expect the Middle Passage to be more of a selective force for a population than any other disaster (war, famine, plague, etc) where healthy, strong people have the highest chance of survival

    Never looked at it that way! Still, I’d call the Atlantic crossing to be especially brutal. Given my druthers, I’d chance any of the four horseman over a ride in a transatlantic slave ship.

    Something to think on, as well as:

    he majority of Black Americans have at least some white ancestry

    Knew that one, it’s obvious to us Americans, but still, some good food for thought.

    • OrteilGenou@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Slightly beside the topic, did you know that Barbados and some other islands in the West Indies were prized because their location was directly in the path of the prevailing winds/currents that brought ships from Africa? As one person put it, you could practically launch the ship from the port in Africa and do nothing and it would likely end up in Barbados