Scottishness is not some pedigree lineage
Posted Aug 23, 02:50 PM
Last week I’d never heard of Usain Bolt, the Olympic Sprint Champion – Wow! Awesome! My pal, a sports physio, says that folk who originate from West Africa have a genetic advantage in sprinting, which has to do with muscle tissue. Europeans have around 2% fast twitch muscle fibre – West Africans have around 25% – it’s no contest. Similarly with distance running – Kenyans and Ethiopians win everything – as though they’re made for it – I’ll never forget the barefoot Abebe Bikela in Rome. If we leave politics aside, it’s obvious from the stats that black athletes dominate world sports. But this is a big taboo subject – we’re afraid to talk about why – it’s PC to pretend that there are no inherited racial differences – which is nonsense.Genetically, I’m full-blooded Italian – all 4 grandparents from the same mountain tribe. Unusually, the Italians had two shots at greatness – the Roman empire and then the Renaissance – though I don’t think my forebears had much to do with either. Our remote valley was settled by Saracens, Normans, Spanish and, finally, Bourbons. I like to imagine I contain all these varieties – a mongrel. I can remember Dec. 1992 – the march for Democracy – 30,000 of us in Edinburgh’s Meadows – William McIlvanney’s proud words: “Scottishness is not some pedigree lineage – this is a mongrel tradition.” For some reason, this proclamation released great joy – the crowd cheered on and on.
source-Senscot