Why do blacks have rhythm

People with larger body size, for example, tend to radiate more heat than those who are smaller, he says. Yet, no studies have shown a significant difference merely based on race.

Researchers in North Carolina recorded the body temperatures of nearly elderly volunteers and found that black women had higher readings than the white women in the study — No difference was seen between black men and their white counterparts.

The study was too small to draw larger conclusions. All humans radiate heat throughout life, Keller explains. Temperatures can change throughout the day, even at rest, but most people — regardless of race — remain within the same narrow range. John Lienhard confirmed that there is no difference: Dark skin absorbs no more heat than light skin does. When one sees the prevalence of African-Americans in the music and dance industries, it can easily appear as though black people do have natural rhythm.

In a nightclub or simply while listening to music, it is common to find people of African descent moving to the beat of the music in a way that appears innate. If black people have innate rhythm, it is likely because of environment, not birth, says Dr. Children are often exposed to music and rhythm unknowingly.

A child carried by his or her mother, as an infant, while she works around the house, or dances and sings to herself will have an experience different from a child who is not, says Grau. In certain cultures, this exposure continues at events such as parties, church services and theatrical events.

In cultures of Sub-Saharan African descent, the music is often polyrhythmic, forcing different body parts to move uniquely to different rhythms in dance.

It is also known that children who have early access to dance and music are more likely to be better at both later in life than those who wait until adolescence. British psychologist Richard Lynn argues that the stereotype is fiction altogether. In his book, Race Differences in Intelligence , Lynn compares the IQs of African-Americans to those of European descent with respect to musicality — tone, pitch, music memory, chord analysis — as well as rhythm. African-Americans scored higher on the rhythm portions compared to musicality, but there was no difference in rhythm IQs between them and the Europeans tested.

This suggests that both cultures have the same capacity for rhythm. However, studies of identical and fraternal twins suggest that musical ability has a genetic component, raising the question of whether rhythm is also affected by genetics. She adds that even in ballet, usually dominated by non-blacks, certain techniques require fast footwork and body isolation similar to polyrhythmic dance. Yet, they are able to master those exercises without difficulty, despite not being of Sub-Saharan descent.

Conclusion: There are more sound explanations for why rhythm is a learned skill rather genetically based. The verdict is still out, but this seems to be more on the side of fiction.

More than 80 percent of the National Basketball Association and over 60 percent of the National Football League are made up of black players. Blacks hold every major running record in the world, according to Jon Entine in an article about why race matters in sports. He adds boxing to the list of sports black men dominate as well. One theory is that black men are just naturally athletic, and can dominate most sports without additional effort. In the book, he explains the athletic features of particular ethnic groups:.

People of West-African descent are superior in speed and jumping. With more fast-twitch fibers than other groups, muscles can contract faster and more powerfully. However, these characteristics make athletes of West-African descent less effective at endurance sports, and with their lower body fat, less buoyant when swimming.

On the other hand, East Africans win more than half of the top endurance races, and have more slow-twitch fibers, which contract for longer periods of time, and have lung capacities and a metabolism for longer races. Before the French took over in , that part of the world had been invaded by Vikings, Angles, Saxons, Huns, and dozens of other smaller tribes and clans.

And even before that, the Romans ruled, which in their turn came from all over the intercontinental empire, which reached as far as sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East.

Earlier still, around 4, years ago Britain was populated primarily by farmers, who had migrated from Europe across what was continuous terrain between the Netherlands and East Anglia. On the basis of DNA evidence, we think they may have been olive skinned, with dark hair and brown eyes.

And before them there were hunter-gatherers, who had even darker skin. So, when political parties or even racists say: "France for the French", or "Italy for the Italians" and talk about "indigenous" people Genealogy and ancestry fascinate us - and racists in particular. Websites like Stormfront are frequented by white nationalist, white supremacist, and anti-Semitic members who forward theories for Holocaust-denial and are obsessed with population genetics.

DNA can tell you some interesting things about family history - and it's very useful for identifying close family like lost siblings or biological parents - but its powers are profoundly limited by fundamental biology.

Over time, descendants start to shed the DNA of their actual ancestors, and the amount that vanishes builds up over the generations to be huge.. You carry DNA from only half of your ancestors dating eleven generations back.

So it is possible that you are genetically unrelated to people you are actually descended from as recently as the 18th Century. The last white man to compete in a m final at the Olympics was in Since then, black athletes have dominated the modern era of sprinting. This has fuelled a commonly held belief that people of African descent have an advantage at the sport because of their genetic ancestry. In actual fact, the genetics of sporting success are wickedly complex.

There are a myriad of factors in physiology of physicality, including the size of your heart, the efficiency with which you absorb oxygen, and muscular recovery, says Rutherford. And these are relatively well understood phenomena which do have a genetic basis.

But there are other physical traits such as flexibility and co-ordination which are less well understood. On top of that, there's the psychological dimension: determination, concentration, and risk-taking, for example.

We do know that people who are good at explosive-energy sports tend to have a higher proportion of "fast-twitch" muscle cells, that process energy more quickly. The genetics that underlie this involve a gene called ACTN3.

Jazz's knock-on effect was further seen in rock and roll's development in the United States in the s. Artists from Elvis Presley to Chuck Berry created their rock and roll using the musical influences of boogie-woogie and blues, along with jazz. Rock's popularity quickly spread around the world, with groups such as the Beatles and the Rolling Stones often crediting early 20th century American music such as blues for their inspiration.

Soul music, which grew up alongside rock and roll, also developed out of African American gospel, and rhythm and blues traditions. As the century wore on, rhythm and blues boy bands such as New Edition which could have stayed merely a bubblegum pop band of black youth created for a mainly white audience took control of their music and helped create the new jack swing movement. The end of the century saw the birth of hip-hop music and culture.

In the mids in the Bronx, New York DJs began isolating percussion rhythms from songs and talking over and between the songs. Rap music, with its semi-autobiographical lyrics and deep rhythms were just one more evolution in the blues tradition that had started at the beginning of the century, and one further, enormous transformation in the world of music created and nurtured in the African American community.