April 30, 2007

Are African-American cultural interests narrowing or expanding?

Something that everybody in about 1975 knew was inevitable was that African-Americans would expand into a much wider variety of pursuits as greater opportunity became open to them.

But, has that happened? Or are blacks increasingly focused on a handful of black-dominated areas? We've had enormous amounts of various kinds of affirmative action -- both quotas and additional recruitment and training -- aimed at getting blacks into more careers. And yet, they seem to want to move into narrower ruts.

I'm not talking just about, say, theoretical physics, but also about fields like tennis. After Althea Gibson won five Grand Slam singles titles in 1956-1958, and Arthur Ashe won three from 1968-1975, it seemed inevitable that such famous role models would lead to an infusion of numerous blacks into professional tennis. And, yet, ... with the exception of the Williams sisters, who are closer to the exception that proves the rule (their strong-willed father pretty much bred them with the goal of physically outdoing white women in tennis), blacks haven't made much of a mark in tennis since. Half-black Frenchman Yannick Noah won the French Open in 1983, but his son is now a college basketball player at Florida (granted Joakim Noah is around 9 feet tall so it only makes sense for him to play basketball, but still ...)

Now, part of what is going on is that tennis today requires more childhood training than in the old days. Most tennis pros of this decade were sent away by their parents to live at tennis academies as adolescents. So, it costs more to raise a tennis star than in Gibson and Ashe's day, so that works against blacks.

One possibility is that while middle class black adults are reasonably culturally open-minded, black youths are more ethnocentric than before, are more into keepin' it real and not acting white. For example, I've played golf over the years in foursomes with dozens of black guys (and over the last decade I've finally started to see black women playing golf), but none that I can recall under age 25. Golf isn't as youth-dominated as tennis, and you can have a fairly normal upbringing and become a professional golfer, but you still almost always have to start playing as a teenager. That of course is expensive, but you also have to want to be a golfer when you are a teen. I suspect that is much rarer among black teens.

So, are blacks avoiding non-traditional careers? It's hard to say for sure.

In contrast to tennis, there has been a slow but pretty steady movement of blacks into, say, film directing, including directing films with non-black casts. F. Gary Gray did a good job with "The Italian Job" in 2002, and Antoine Fuqua has directed a number of conventional Hollywood films, like "Shooter" and "King Arthur," although his best remains "Training Day," which won Denzel Washington an Oscar.

So, please help me out. Can you think of more non-traditional careers, such as movie directing, in which blacks have been doing better and better? Alternatively, can you think of careers where there aren't significant IQ barriers to success, such as tennis, but blacks just don't seem to be choosing to enter?


James B. Shearer said...

It seems like there are more black coaches and managers in pro sports but I don't have any stats.

Steve Sailer said...

It will be interesting to see whether African-American employment as baseball managers trends downward. African-Americans' share of major league baseball rosters peaked in 1974 at 26%, and is now down to 8%. As older managers like Dusty Baker retire, the black manager will probably almost disappear, unless a big affirmative action campaign is mounted.

Anonymous said...

"It will be interesting to see whether African-American employment as baseball managers trends downward."

Steve -- does this mirror trends of black players?

theDOC said...

Well just look at the youth population: Hip-hop (and hip-hop infused R&B, too, I suppose) is king. I live near NYC and almost never see African-American high school aged boys who don't at least dress in the hip-hop fashion (w/ the big iced out earrings, etc..) Only a very, very tiny subset are into the rock music scene. Living or even dressing the hip-hop lifestyle seems to preclude oneself from having divergent cultural interests. It' sad, but I am pretty sure the answer to Steve's question is: narrowing.

Anonymous said...

Steve --

Boxing. Used to be African-American. Now tough-guy Eastern Europeans.

Baseball. Blacks fled it for other sports.

Cross over Soul Music. Used to be dominated by guys like Barry White and Marvin Gaye. Now it's Brits like Seal. Who is very African but not American Black.

It seems my theory of fear of integration is correct, nearly EVERY time African Americans have had the opportunity to integrate they have for the most part rejected it. Choosing cultural isolation and rejection of the mainstream.

Rapper KRS One said that 9/11 was "justice" and that attitude (celebrating 9/11) is prominent among rappers. Particularly the less "hard" guys.

Rivnut said...

One area that most people never consider underrepresented by blacks in employment is aviation. But IQ does not account for this. Only an average IQ is needed to become either a pilot or an aircraft mechanic, for the most part. Piloting and aircraft maintenance are both highly procedure-driven, checklist oriented activities, although some spatial relationships are crucial.

I have known a few Blacks on both sides of the business (I'm a ATP rated pilot and an A&P mechanic, though I've never worked on airplanes other than one I owned). There are few enough of them they stand out, but enough to draw tentative conclusions. Mine is that they are astonishingly indifferentiable in performance on the job both in the cockpit and on the shop floor (although the sample base might not be high enough for true astonishment). However, they seem to get into trouble more than average in terms of extracurricular activities. Usually things that indicate poor judgment rather than serious malice-they'd get busted for tax evasion, Peeping Tomism, petty fuel theft. (Good rule of thumb-any mechanic and most pilots with diesel cars are putting jet fuel in them.)

Since roughly average intelligence is at least a strong asset, many Blacks are indeed behind the power curve smartswise. But at least 25% and perhaps 35% of Blacks are smart enough.

The military has relatively few Black pilots, but a fair number of Black maintenance troops. This means Blacks should be modestly well represented in the shop. But they are not (though the percentage is higher than on the flight deck.) For military AFSC's/rates/MOS'es in the aviation maintenance fields leaving service, I'd guesstimate 60% or White or non-Black personnel never touch an airplane again, but among Blacks it has to be well over 90%.

I'm not sure why this is. Certainly the Black underclass from the hood may regard it as for Whitey, not keeping it real, etc. but they aren't the Blacks smart enough. The Black middle class is, and they are staying away too.

Dave said...

One factor that may be keeping blacks out of other areas is their ability to get civil service jobs. In some parts of the country, including mine, many civil servants make more than typical private sector workers, with better benefits and far-better job security.

Karl K said...

Why would blacks, who can expect to benefit from affirmative action in whatever they choose to do, not avoid sports like tennis that are extremely competitive and require a lot of practice? I don’t understand how this can be considered surprising. If a black athlete can do a jig in the endzone and make millions of dollars why on earth would he devote the early part of his life to learning how to hit a ball 100mph over a net and into a sliver of court on the other side?

And why is this important? Can we count depriving us of a potential Arthur Ashe or Althea Gibson amongst affirmative action’s more lamentable consequences? Is there any point in mentioning the negative side effects for blacks of affirmative action, as if they didn’t know what they were doing? Are we to expect that the chance that they might not have produced as many such second-tier champions in these low profile sports as they could have would be enough for blacks to demand a level playing field and give up the hundreds of millionaire, civil service jobs they occupy now in NFL, NBA, and MLB?

I don’t see that there’s any mystery to the career paths blacks have taken since affirmative action. It seems obviously a function of power and not any racial genius. If the roles were reversed, and, in sports, whites were suddenly to gain the favor of the big three, then it would be whites coming up with new touchdown dances and not laboring in the back pages of the Sports section at a very frustrating game.

Anonymous said...


But black Americans are still considerably wealthier on average than Eastern Europeans and Latin Americans who are prevalent in tennis.

Eva said...

I thought I was pretty right-wing, but this article and some of the comments have shocked me. Specifically, some of the implied assumptions and some of the explicit statements I find disturbing. OK, first of all, the assertion that blacks have lower-than-average IQs is a running assumption. I won't dispute that. However, why do you think that is? My theory is that crappy nutrition/upbringing/culture -- software -- stunts the development of the human brain (hardware). And blacks' prevailing "software" does appear to be pretty crappy. But if you guys think blacks are fundamentally different, as a group, in their brains' hardware and their brains' potentiality, then I am very, very disturbed by your outlook.
Karl K -- you're joking, right? You don't really think the dominance of blacks in NBA and NFL (NOT the MLB) is due to affirmative action, do you??? If you are serious I just find that off the deep end. I can't imagine an endeavor where a ruthless meritocracy is more necessary than big-money pro sports.

Anonymous said...

Blacks play sports where it is easy to spot talent. Most professional basketball players developed early and were great atheltes in sixth grade. It is easy to look at a 7th grade class and spot the potential basketball or football players. Golf, baseball, tennis, running, hockey, lacrosse, volleyball, etc do not tranlate the same way. Great golfers look the same as bad golfers. Great tennis players (other than the Williams sisters) look the same as average players.

JT said...


Better stick around, love, you might learn something.

Ace said...


I won't be able to find it now, but, some time ago, I read an article which claimed that the South African air force was having trouble finding sufficient black pilots to fly fighter jets; this not being a job where one can take too many chances with the equipment.

Which brings to mind one of those old Space Shuttle Columbia jokes.

Q: What were the last words spoken on the Space Shuttle?

A: Don't touch that button, nigger!

peewee said...

I think that blacks in general just don't like tennis very much. It's not part of the modern American black culture, just like soccer isn't part of the modern American white culture.

jody said...

there are only so many black americans. contrary to what sports writers think, there are not enough black americans to dominate every sport at the same time. black americans are not an unlimited pool of talent. their resources are divided like any other resource.

black americans are steady in track, but are leaving boxing slowly, and leaving baseball rapidly. that talent has to be going somewhere.

concentrating this talent into football and basketball probably explains why black americans are so dominant in these sports now, more than they have ever been.

having studied this for a while, i think their domination of the NBA is fair and earned, but their domination of the NFL is somewhat artificial and due to strong and widespread discrimination against white players.

i don't know why black americans are rapidly leaving baseball, as it pays better than football and is less dangerous too.

i suspect in boxing though, that black americans don't like the prospect of having to fight 200 pound eastern europeans who were not allowed to fight professionally under communism, and who are poorer and more hungry for success than them.

MarcZ said...


The black-white IQ gap is well-documented. It persists across all socioeconomic levels at roughly the same rate. It also persists in cases of transracial adoption. This suggests strongly that it is not due to culture, nutrition or other environmental factors.

If the idea that the black-white IQ gap is rooted in genes is disturbing to you, well, I sympathize. It was upsetting to me also when I first started looking into it. (Seriously, who WANTS one of the three major races to be 15-20 IQ points behind the other 2?) However, I finally had to accept it because the weight of hard evidence suggests strongly that such is the case.

Anonymous said...


There's a lot of bullshit around here, but also a brand of perceptive analysis that isn't found elsewhere.

The NFL/NBA stuff I would take with a grain of salt.

On the 'hardware' issue- I'm with Marcz.

Anonymous said...

Here in Hollywood, I'm seeing in the past five years a lot more black people in the executive ranks, especially at lower and mid levels. This seems to be true at agencies, production companies, studios, and networks, and the people one meets are often from elite universities, suggesting that Hollywood is drawing a lot of the best of Af-Am talent. What's interesting about this is the Hollywood executive ladder requires one to spend an extended period of time as an assistant first, a traditionally submissive role which requires one to grit your teeth and take lots of crap from higher ranking, mostly white people (think Lloyd and Ari in Entourage.) Cultural stereotypes would suggest that black people would shy away from these jobs or bolt rather than smile while getting yelled at by some 45 year old Jewish guy, but they seem to be fine with it. I don't know if it's the glamour of Hollywood that's driving it or black celebrities pushing to see more black faces in the executive ranks, but it's an interesting phenomenon nonetheless. In contrast, one very rarely sees Latino executives or assistants in Hollywood, and nearly all of the ones you do meet are Cuban-American rather than from the region's vast Mexican-American population. I've met precisely one Mexican-American executive in ten years here, and he's a brilliant young Harvard graduate who could get a job anywhere.

jody said...

with golf it's not a matter of black americans not playing golf. white americans don't play golf.

nobody plays golf everyday when they are 12, which is normal for athletes in real sports. so the talent pool in golf is very small. sports that americans don't care about, like track and swimming and wrestling, are all dramatically more competitive than golf. they are played at a much higher level than golf and have significantly more research and science behind them. swimming and wrestling have real black champions, not mixed race "blacks" such as eldrick woods. the distance between golf and major ball sports is even larger.

outside of the US golf is even less competitive. as far as i know there is no golfer on the PGA tour from eastern europe or from a poor nation. the international field in golf is so small and the level of play is so low, that only middle aged white men and their affection for the game save competitive golf from the kind of ridicule that skiing and skating take during the winter olympics.

the best golfers play at a pretty low level relatively speaking. if golf became a major international sport like basketball, woods would be reduced to an average player.

that people seriously entertain the idea that a woman can play with the best men is probably all you need to know about how "competitive" golf is right now.

Peter said...


Primarily in the larger weight classes. Once you get below middleweight or especially welterweight there seem to be mostly Latin Americans, with some Asians in the very lightest classes.

Mixed martial arts fighting such as the Ultimate Fighting Championship is predominately white. There are a few blacks, and a number of mulatto Brazilians and Japanese.

Baseball. Blacks fled it for other sports.

Correction: African-American blacks fled it for other sports. MLB is full of dark Latins who would be considered black if they came from the United States.

Eva said...

Thank you for this ongoing and interesting conversation...

MarcZ, I know there's a well-documented IQ gap. I just think it is possible IQ testing is flawed in several ways... please bear with me.

First off, what kind of data do we have for blacks from the days (roughly pre-1960) when their cultural environment encouraged them to look up to Frederick Douglass and Jackie Robinson, instead of Snoop Dogg and Kobe, and where a kid of academic achievement was much more likely to be considered "a credit to his race" than a sellout "acting white?" I suspect that we have little data from this time period but that if we did it would show a smaller gap. It is a conservative cliche that blacks were doing just fine gradually catching up to whites economically until the Great Society programs incentivized them to embrace victim / perpetual grievance status, destroy their family structures, and lower their own expectations of themselves -- and I believe if this theory holds true, then there may be a concommitant gradual narrowing then widening of the black-white IQ test gap as well along the same timeline. I'm just curious if we have the pre-catastrophe data.

My second point is, IQ test scores are widely variable and changeable depending on how well-conditioned one's mind is at test time -- not necessarily on one's "innate" intelligence, a bizarre and elusive concept. (I tested 150 for IQ in second grade; in my early twenties I took a test online and scored 117 -- so what is my "innate" intelligence?)Conditioning one's mind is largely a function of personal motivation -- which responds favorably to outside positive pressure (unless unusually strong-willed to be unmotivated) and negatively to negative outside pressure (unless unusually strong-willed to be motivated). Not suprisingly, a small number of highly-motivated blacks may swim against the tide and achieve outstanding IQ test results -- because they are more interested in learning in school than emulating rappers in the hallways, and no doubt get teased and ridiculed for their preference -- but for the vast majority with merely average motivation, responding to the prevailing negative pressure and just getting by or even exhibiting overt hostility to academic achievement would seem the smart way to go. Ergo, lower IQ scores on average for blacks.

I just think the brain has so much seldom-tapped potential and is so flexible and responsive to conditioning -- in my personal experience, studying classical piano intensively made me significantly and measurably smarter in my late 20s -- that I just find the idea of an innate, static intelligence quotient existing within each person like a serial number or a bar code to be a dubious concept.

To put it succinctly, I really can't stand hip-hop music and its surrounding culture and attitudes and I'm sure if I had been raised in an environment of THAT I would definitely have never tested at 150 in second grade -- so then how can I hold it against a poor black kid who scores poorly on the test?

All that said, I am intrigued by the studies of transracial adoption -- perhaps a way of isolating for the "innateness" factor? Do you have any links?

thanks again for an interesting discussion.

MarcZ said...


Always good to find someone who can debate such a sensitive issue politely and in good faith. I am probably not the person most suited to answer your questions, but I shall do my best. In several parts, because my boss might drop by at any time... :-)


The Black-White IQ gap has been holding steady or narrowing for nearly 80 years. For a graph of the scores in America (compiled by the guys at gnxp.com) and Steve's own interpretation of the graph, check out
You can see that the pink line for adults has been flat, flat, flat for 80 years, stuck at around 85. Black children and teens show some improvement early on in life, but scores then decline (though there may have been some permanent improvements in the 60's and 70's). As Steve points out, twin studies have shown that IQ tends to become more genetically determined with age (in other words, great environments can boost IQ scores in kids, but the effects wear off as those kids become adults. Read Steve's interpretation, it's better than my shorthand.)

If you want a graph of international scores, grouped by primary race of each country's inhabitants, for the last eighty years, go to http://www.vdare.com/sailer/lynn_and_flynn.htm. You can see the same pattern.

MarcZ said...

In regards to IQ tests, you said:


Well, two things. One, I wouldn't put too much faith in an online IQ test. I had one tell me I had an IQ of 178. Woo-hoo! Wait, I make $45,000 a year. D'oh! :-) As for IQ variability in a general sense, IQs can increase or decrease somewhat over the course of a person's lifetime. However, as I mentioned, twin studies show that they tend to either increase or decrease in accordance with the person's innate potential. (In other words, twins raised apart may have different IQs as children, with the child in the better environment having the better IQ, but as they grow older, their IQs converge.)

As for the IQs being dependent on one's state of mind while taking the test: there may well be some truth to this, as it sounds reasonable. But consider that the black white IQ gap has been documented in thousands of studies not only involving blacks and whites in America, but also blacks and whites in Brazil, Britain, South Africa... pretty much everywhere they live together. And everywhere its looked at, it's around 15 points, give or a take 2-3. So whatever it is that is causing this difference in scores, it trascends time (eighty years of it), space (three continents of it), and numerous cultures yet remains remarkably fixed. Genes can certainly account for this, but I don't see anything environmental that could.

joshrandall said...

Re sports and the black kid:overheard a conversation between a black mom and another black person about her sons future.He is,it seems,a top athlete(B-ball). He is being "shmoozed" hard to go to a particular Catholic HIGH SCHOOL!! Yes,he is in 8th grade! He is being offered tuition assitance,and,the mom says the coach will guarantee to add mucho points to his admissions test! Two thoughts: A)Why would this gifted kid play a "sissy" game like tennis or golf,when he can excell at B-ball and be "the man",get the girls,etc?? Tiger Woods my butt! Why would kids choose "lame' sports if they can excell at the sports they,and da honeys,love??? B) This black kid--and its obvious that black males mature(physically :) ) faster than other races--will get incredible coaching/training/teaching at the HIGH SCHOOL LEVEL! White kids,slower maturing,whose play is not as flashy as the blacks,may not be so sought after and nurtured. And yes,blacks,because sports are SO big,may be getting a type of "affirmative action" in sports--a Head Start,if you will!

jody said...

picking a specific high school for a sports program is common for the best athletes in major sports. that's not a rare thing.

black americans are in every sport. they're not avoiding tennis or any other sport, they're just a lot more serious about football and basketball. good tennis players make a lot of money, and there are a few good black players.

ricpic said...

jody, you should really shut up about a subject of which you are completely ignorant. Golf, for instance.

Anonymous said...

it may seem inevitable now, with the success of the Williams sisters in tennis, that tennis will become an increasingly black sport.

SFG said...

eva: there's a lot of outright bigotry (as in, 'black people stink' and 'Jewish people were behind 9/11') here, but there's also discussion of issues I can't find anywhere else. I am NOT convinced the B-W IQ gap is 100% genetic, but I do think it is possible it may have some genetic component. I am sure it has some environmental component as well.

Tiberius said...


Wise move, because it's probably the most documented fact that no one will tell you there is.

In reality, intelligence distribution isn't a perfect bell curve unless both the units of the X and Y axis can be jiggered (no pun intended.) Given that, and given that the distribution is at least symmetrical, you can make a bell curve.

In geek terms, sine wave AM modulate a RF generator and hook it to a spectrum analyzer. Use a high enough carrier frequency that the mod is at least 10K times slower. You can make the hump as high as you want with the attenuator and as wide as you want with the span, and move the center with the carrier frequency.

A $25,000 Etch-A-Sketch, new from Agilent anyway.

Certainly there are very intelligent Blacks, but there are not that many. And social policy in the last 50 years has made the smartest Blacks less likely to breed (as it has most whites) while it has made the stupidest and laziest Black women and the laziest and most asocial Black men far more likely to produce large-not families-but broods, nests. So the gap has been widened in the last half-century, undoing roughly 200 years of Black American upbreeding and more.

As far as Blacks underrepresentation in aviation, I don't think so. Blacks as a group tend to not like the bookwork and planning, which flying involves a lot of, although it's not too rigorous. I remember the long and boring rotework of flight planning as the worst part of getting my private and commercial licenses and instrument ratings. (I'm a CFI/CFII/ATP fixed and helo, commercial glider and free balloon...not to brag...)

Anonymous said...

Seems that vitamin D is useful for many things ... perhaps a lack of vitamin D acts to reduce cognitive function as well.

Naylor said...

Well, Africans get a ton of Vitamin D, so go figure.


I'm not sure anyone is convinced that the gap is 100% genetic, but the nature vs nuture distinction is not a clear-cut one, because 'man is his own environment'.

Anonymous said...

Also note that genetic <> impossible to fix, and cultural <> easy to fix. To make an extreme example, you could have some genetic difference in need for some critical nutrient, which had a 20 point IQ impact, and which could be eliminated by adding some supplement to wheat and rice in the US. Alternatively, you could have some cultural difference leading the the IQ difference, which could only be resolved by cross-adoption by a white family and complete isolation from black popular culture.

agnostic said...

At my local FedEx, all of the workers at the front counter (everyone I can see) have been Black. Granted, that's probably 4 workers total in the past 6 months, but I still found it odd. The area isn't disproportionately Black either.

kyle said...

mmm racism...tasty. there's too much here to refute, so ill keep it short. do you guys realize how completely useless it is to argue from anecdotes, as almost all of you do? do you realize that as outsiders looking in at black culture, outsiders whose main exposure is very limited (most rappers think 9/11 was deserved? SINCE WHEN? you just made that up), that you have no clue what you are talking about? do you realize iq tests are not accurate measures of intelligence (except in the sense that those who take them as such are almost certainly stupid)? half of the shit written here is completely idiotic. "reat golfers look the same as bad golfers." you obviously don't know shit about golf.
actually i dont know why im bothering with you guys. thanks for reinforcing my prejudices. thanks for reminding me there are still people who think less of me because of the color of my skin. goodbye.

Tina said...

Marcz: Your assertion that blacks score lower than whites on IQ tests across the board is incorrect. Findings have been the exact opposite. SES factors are the best predictors of IQ score. Oh! and I actually have a reference from a peer-reviewed journal:

Race and Children: The Dynamics of Early Socialization-Journal article by Rodney D. Coates, Theodore C. Wagenaar; Education, Vol. 120, 1999

These researchers (among many others) have found that children from lower socioeconomic classes have lower WISC scores (that's an IQ tests for kids) than those from higher classes *regardless of race*. How many hours one's primary caregiver (usually mom) spent working outside the home (more prevalent in poorer families) is a more accurate predictor than race for lower IQ scores.

p.s. I'm black, and my WAIS score is 134. What's yours?

Anonymous said...

I believe what what was meant by IQ differences being consistent "across the board" means that the gap exists when comparing low income whites with low income blacks, medium income whites with medium income blacks, college educated whites with college educated blacks, and so forth. That is how it has always been presented to me.

heyhey said...

I must say that sometimes I come by this website and see very intelligent discourse and then come by and see ridiculously basic anecdotal discussion.

Some of you don't seem to understand the Bell Curve - the point isn't that every black guy will be less intelligent than every white guy. It's that there are a greater number of black guys who have lower IQ than there are white guys with the same IQ.

I'm surprised to see people bringing up anecdotal evidence about "hey, the black guy I know at work seems to prove that blacks aren't good at management..."

Or whatever. But why bring that up? That random black guy could be the average black guy, but he could be part of the upper part of the black bell curve. I don't really understand why people keep mentioning anecdotal evidence, that goes against the whole point of the bell curve.

Black Woman said...

What a load of crap this is. Full of so many generalizations and anecdotal evidence.

Do any one of you here understand what it means to be an oppressed minority, being the descendants of slaves and how that shapes your worldview, your sense of possibility?

Blacks have in the past "chosen" certain career paths by default because others were blocked to us by discrimination and Jim Crow. (Remember when blacks weren't allowed to play in Major League sports)

It's interesting how these analyses of IQ and African American achievement never factor in Jim Crow.

And what, 10-15 years of affirmative action in the 1970s-1980s are magically supposed to wipe these effects out?

I have had brilliant family members... yes they ARE brilliant, who were actively restricted from going into the fields that they wanted to go into up until the 1970s.

People adapted to racial discrimination by setting their sights on what was realistic given their circumstances. That's an adaptive change.

And like most ethnic groups, you gravitate toward fields where someone in your group can help you get a job.

The truth about blacks and genetic studies is that Africans (and Africa) are the MOST genetically variant group on the planet. People of African descent are the worst group to do genetic studies on because the numbers bounce all over the place.

It is so disheartening to see this blogger base his economic livelihood on lies and half-truths.