Path: utzoo!censor!geac!jtsv16!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!newstop!sun!amdahl!apple!lsefton
From: lsefton@Apple.COM (Laurie Sefton)
Newsgroups: ca.politics,sci.bio
Subject: Re: Hybrid vigor
Message-ID: <33812@apple.Apple.COM>
Date: 8 Aug 89 03:31:02 GMT
References: <4869@drivax.UUCP>
Distribution: usa
Organization: Clan Chattan
Lines: 43

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.
>
>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.)
>
>Of course, we're all supposed to pretend that none of this ever happened...
>
>
>Michael Sloan MacLeod  (amdahl!drivax!macleod)

Okay--we're talking the difference between a small group of highly inbred
animals (think thoroughbreds, Ancon sheep, Irish Dexter Cattle), versus a
fairly genertically disparate group of people. Take a look at sub-saharan
Africa--that's a pretty large place. You may find a few genetic areas in
common, but you can say the same for Mediterraneans, and incidence of
Cooley's anemia. Do you expect the same homozygocity between Spaniards and
Greeks as you do Masaai and Yoruba?


Laurie Sefton