It was a real point about Ashkenazis used as a setup for a joke.
Gotcha...
Your point about “blacks” being spread out all over the planet is well taken. It makes perfect sense.
I hope it's fully understood that there is no ethnic group of "Black" people. These folks didn't necessarily mix, and I think sometimes people forget just how massive (land area) the continent of Africa really is given how it looks on using the standard Mercator map projection.
But do you disagree with the theory that slave owners selecting for athletic body types still has an impact on current body types today?
I disagree with it largely, but not entirely because there is some truth that slavery had an effect on African-American DNA. But to assert that American Blacks are radically different due to slavery than other Blacks around the world for the express reason that they were bred that way is simply
not sound science, it's ahistorical, and given present-day information, it's simply counterfactual.
It may seem intuitively derived; looking at African-American men compared to African men and thinking "hmm, they seem bigger, more developed;" but without taking into account these folks aren't (1) the same ethnicity, (2) the same socioeconomic class, (3) enjoying the same diet, cultural norms, etc.
Consider, just for a moment, that African people have the highest genetic variance of any people,
anywhere. It's just not reasonable to make these kinds of eyeball comparisons; i.e., LeBron James is a big guy, ergo
Black people must be
xyz -- while that might seem intuitive, in reality, it's simply
naivete.
It's also obvious that anyone asking this question isn't realizing the #1 genetic influence on African-American DNA is not the breeding of particular traits, but the massive influx of White European DNA and the significant contribution of Native American DNA; so much so that the average African-American (regardless of skin color) who is at least 2 generations of ancestry in the North is generally only around 3/4th's African and at least 1/5th White European. There is only a 3% variance towards African ancestry as you move to present-day Southern Blacks.
Rape and sexual exploitation had the largest influence on the African-American population; with generally affluent European DNA that was not "bred" to work or be physically superior to some baseline population.
With that said, if we're to look at former slave populations and compare them to Africans, and even among themselves; you do not see generalities along the lines you would expect for a population "bred" for such traits. That is to say, Afro-Caribbean populations and Afro-Brazilian (especially) populations are not equally known for their physical or athletic prowess as it relates to their degree of genetic closeness to former slave populations.
Simply put, these kinds of questions have been asked and answered by geneticists for the past several decades; and while there do exists variations along ethnic lines (obviously), many folks assume those variations are wildly larger than they really are as it relates to genetically causative factors.
Many of the ideas that are often thrown around about topics like this are simply antithetical to
modern scientific understanding particularly as it relates to concepts surrounding
race - which, again - many people confuse with
ethnicity. Moreover, many of the properties being discussed of various ethnicities are NOT actually ethnic qualities at all; but instead are
cultural.
For example; not all Asians have higher IQs, in fact, many Asian populations have
lower IQs, because
most live in poverty. Asian-Americans have higher IQs because more affluent Japanese immigrants skew results for the less affluent, non-Japanese Asian populations. I broke this down, in detail, in the BLM thread. But just looking at this for a moment, if one just looks at Asian IQ over time, the same populations that are testing higher than ever were testing below a standard-deviation or more just 30-40 years ago. That's not genetic mutation at work. That's called socioeconomic progress, and cultural changes to adapt to said progress. That's called millions of children leaving an agrarian lifestyle and going to college.
The exact same can be said of African-Americans and why you see so many in sports. Because,
sociologically, Blacks have looked at sports as a vehicle of upward social mobility - with many Black kids thinking of sports as their only way out of an economically depressed and racially oppressed life. Many Black parents will stress sports, particularly basketball and football (and formerly
boxing) as a way of, at a minimum, paying for
college. Just as many Asian parents will stress academic achievement as a way of getting into college.
What you're seeing is the manifestation of these groups interactions with their society, culture, and the realities facing each group. Sports, music, arts, and other cultural contributions are seen as a means to an end within Black society; just as academic achievement is seen as a means to an end within the Asian population. Both groups are encouraging what they believe to be the most appropriate and most likely mechanism of social upward mobility for their demographic.
What you're
not seeing is human genetic evolution playing out in real-time.