Path: utzoo!censor!geac!jtsv16!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!bionet!ames!claris!apple!apple.com!casseres
From: casseres@apple.com (David Casseres)
Newsgroups: ca.politics,sci.bio
Subject: Re: Hybrid vigor
Message-ID: <3411@internal.Apple.COM>
Date: 8 Aug 89 21:35:08 GMT
References: <4869@drivax.UUCP>
Distribution: usa
Organization: Apple Computer, Inc.
Lines: 47

In article <4869@drivax.UUCP> macleod@drivax.UUCP (MacLeod) writes:
> David Casseres writes:
> 
> :: American Blacks
> :: are highly hybridized with Whites, and exhibit the hybrid vigor
> :: so prized by athletic teams.
> 
> :If some people posted this bullshit, I would assume they didn't know it 
> :was racist ignorance.  In your case, I assume that you do know, and 
that 
> :either you are a racist or you are just being a self-indulgent wise guy.
> 
> I may well be wrong, so tell me where my analysis goes astray.
> 
> Back in high school biology, I was taught that a eugenics program should
> take a given gene pool and inbreed it for 20 generations, weeding out
> the recessive-gene problems dredged up by the increasingly homozygous
> population.  At this point, the gene pool is outbred to a very different
> one, and the F1 generation produced exhibits heterozygous "hybrid vigor",
> often exceeding either parent stock in desired traits.

I have only heard of "hybrid vigor" in the context of agricultural crops.  
I have never heard of it being applied to human populations.
> 
> European and African gene pools were at least 20 generations apart when 
> they were merged in America, and the hybridized slaves were pruned 
further
> by clever owners, so it doesn't surprise me that professional sports is 
> dominated by black Americans and black-Native American-white hybrids.
> (Native to South America, that is, where they interbred with the European
> Spanish.)

But neither the European nor the African gene pools were inbred.  "Hybrid 
vigor" is about reversing the disadvantages of a small, inbred gene pool.

Professional sports has a lot of non-white players because it is one of 
the few really good economic niches open to them.  But compared to the 
other niches available to whites, it isn't so hot; therefore there are not 
as many whites in pro sports as there might be.

By the way, a very large sector of the "white" American population is just 
as mixed as the "black" population.  I've seen estimates that as many as 
25% of white Southerners have some African ancestry.

David Casseres

Exclaimer:  Hey!