Author:
Entine, Jon.
Edition Statement:1st ed.
Imprint:New York : PublicAffairs, c2000.
Descriptionix, 387 p. : ill. ; 24 cm.
Note:"Entine, a journalist and news producer, uses sports as a metaphor to examine alternative explanations in accounting for biodiversity. He argues that competitive outcomes lead to ranking of performances. Rankings invite perceived differentiation among social categories, invidious distinctions, and socially constructed explanations accounting for differences. The preponderance of elite performances by blacks in football, baseball, track, and the growing numbers of black participants in sports previously dominated by whites stimulates the politically incorrect and inflammatory question of whether such differences in performances are explained by cultural, psychological, genetic, or physiological factors. Entine traces the logical shifts in biological explanations (evolution, DNA, gene mapping); sketches the origins of race science, the myth of white superiority, and rise of American eugenics; and reviews Jim Crowism, integration, and the rise of black consciousness. He evaluates the debates over opportunity, environment, and genetics as alternative explanations for biodiversity. This well-written, highly provocative study addresses thorny issues and will stimulate reactions from blacks and whites, academicians and polemicists, liberals and conservatives." -- from a Choice Review
Note:Recommended in Best Books for Academic Libraries ; Resources for College Libraries
