Books in Brief

Darwin’s Athletes: How Sport Has Damaged Black America and Preserved the Myth of Race, by John Hoberman (Houghton Mifflin, 341 pp., $23.95)

LIKE most cultural-studies professors, Mr. Hoberman denounces as “racist” any who doubt that all ethnic differences have purely social origins. He rushes into one topic, though, where his allies fear to tread: Dredging up various historical data, he tries to show that the increasingly apparent link between race and athletic success somehow stems solely from cultural conditioning. His struggles with the evidence recall the old joke about the Soviet worker on the Leningrad Baby Buggy Factory’s receiving dock. Unable to buy a buggy anywhere, he pilfers a set of parts. Sadly, the only way they turn out to fit together is as a machine gun. Likewise, Mr. Hoberman ends up strafing himself in the foot with his own theoretical baby buggy. Revealingly, he deplores integrated sports precisely because they “create the proverbial level playing field.” Letting us fans watch lean East Africans outdistance the rest of the world’s runners, or brawny Samoans flatten NFL quarterbacks, or lithe Chinese dive and tumble for Olympic gold, or muscular athletes of West African descent out-sprint, out-jump, and out-hit all comers—well, it just encourages us couch potatoes to believe our lying eyes rather than the visions of the anointed, such as Mr. Hoberman.

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Darwin’s Athletes: How Sport Has Damaged Black America and Preserved the Myth of Race, by John Hoberman (Houghton Mifflin, 341 pp., $23.95)

LIKE most cultural-studies professors, Mr. Hoberman denounces as “racist” any who doubt that all ethnic differences have purely social origins. He rushes into one topic, though, where his allies fear to tread: Dredging up various historical data, he tries to show that the increasingly apparent link between race and athletic success somehow stems solely from cultural conditioning. His struggles with the evidence recall the old joke about the Soviet worker on the Leningrad Baby Buggy Factory’s receiving dock. Unable to buy a buggy anywhere, he pilfers a set of parts. Sadly, the only way they turn out to fit together is as a machine gun. Likewise, Mr. Hoberman ends up strafing himself in the foot with his own theoretical baby buggy. Revealingly, he deplores integrated sports precisely because they “create the proverbial level playing field.” Letting us fans watch lean East Africans outdistance the rest of the world’s runners, or brawny Samoans flatten NFL quarterbacks, or lithe Chinese dive and tumble for Olympic gold, or muscular athletes of West African descent out-sprint, out-jump, and out-hit all comers—well, it just encourages us couch potatoes to believe our lying eyes rather than the visions of the anointed, such as Mr. Hoberman.