Can White Men Jump?

Can White men jump? 

In the last 17  Olympics, Black men have won the high jump maybe three times. I can't tell for certain. The winners are not listed by race, of course, nor should they be. 

Charlie Dumas won the first of the 17 Olympics that I remember. He was the first person to high jump seven feet, which he did at Compton Junior College. In that college my father was once a pulling guard (and won a national championship and a small gold football on a chain).

The Olympic evidence suggests that White men usually win the high jump. So why do we commonly say that only Black people can jump?

Part of the answer has to do with class. In America the people who excel in professional sports like boxing and football often are poor, very smart, very disciplined and desperate. That is, they often come from the poorest classes, the class willing to risk concussions. That class once was the Irish and then became the Italians and Jews. Today it's Black Americans. Today Black athletes are the ones we see jumping. 

The other reason we say that White men can't jump is bedrock in the history of racism. Part of the earliest framing of American racism was the claim that God or nature made White men intelligent and compensated stupid Black men by making them muscular and lustful, useful beasts of burden, capable only of the simplest thoughts. So pervasive was that belief that today people still unselfconsciously joke about how Black people are, well, the better animals.

If you watch the NBA, you will see Black athletes who have made themselves extremely fit and learned difficult skills--but what lifted them that final step was intelligence, the ability to outthink and out-prepare opponents.