Running sub 4 in the mile is racist now

+1. Question for you Rojo, did you or Weldon ever speak with that writer (and your friend) who wrote the article calling you racist for saying D'amato's performance was performance of the decade? I would have been FURIOUS with him.

(Btw, I thought it was entirely unfair and basically libel from him).

This tweet is fantastic. If he wants to play the woke game, it has to be played on himself.

The 4-minute mile is certainly a man's achievement since no woman has ever broken 4 for the mile.

To the point of Americans idolizing milers because they run the mile and not idolizing 1500m runners... I don't know that that is due to systemic racism. People in America like what they are familiar with--actually, people in every country like what they are familiar with. Coincidentally, most people aren't familiar with track and field names at all. But, among people who follow track and field in America, the mile means more than the 1500 since we all grew up running the mile (well the 1600, in reality).

Americans also just have quite a bit more exposure in their home country than do Africans in America. That seems pretty natural to me. We see the Americans running in NCAA competitions for years and then running in US races. Unless you're a very serious fan of the sport, which again most people aren't, you're not seeing people from other countries race outside of major international competitions (e.g. Olympics and World championships).

Agreed. I was a patreon supporter for years until they released that episode with Hiltz and Melly who praised "heroes" like Cece Telfers. Chris isn't so bad, it's mostly just Melly who has the awful "takes". 

Did David Melly change his twitter handle because of the hate he was getting after trying to "cancel" Mara Yamauchi on twitter? 

You can count on me never listening to any more citius mag garbage ever again

From podcasts to this citius mag take, it seems David Melly is a performatively woke cisgender white gay male who, first and foremost, is a cisgender white male. Being an ally and making space for others is one thing. This guy just takes up space.

tawdry-hepburn.medium.com

On Allyship and Performative Wokeness

https://tawdry-hepburn.medium.com

I need to talk to you about being an ally. As hashtag movements like #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo have grown into national conversations…

Open link

Agreed. Get rid of these media companies by voting with your wallet and attention.

No more money, clicks or attention for Citius Mag.

As for the author of the article, there are some people who should be censored.

To who? Maybe to you? Jim Hines is pretty immortal and legendary to me as is Bannister.

As for choosing who we celebrate - since when did that become a crime or an egregious act? Maybe a mile means more to you because you have context as someone who may have run a mile. Maybe the 100m means more to someone because they run the 100m. Furthermore, that choice doesn't make someone biased or in the extreme case racist. Once again it's a stupid take of somebody who thinks they are much smarter than they clearly are.

An odd comment considering the general public seems to be more interested in the 100 meter dash which is almost exclusively dominated by people with West African heritage. This seems to be another case of recreational outrage

If math itself is racist, as our CRT superiors have established without a doubt, then it follows axiomatically that sub-4 would be as well.

It occurs to me that in the interest of equality, that WADA should stop testing women, and take the resources previously used for that and employ them to double down on the men. "Voila'!", the first women's sub-4:00 to be embraced as a milestone in trans-human devolution.

So silly

Apparently the mile world record holder "doesn't run the mile"

You quoted part of my post, so if the person you mentioned as JackHammer was in reference to me, I thank you for the new user name. Actually, I'm for some weird reason really flattered.

I don't post on here to cause conflict. I put my 2 cents in and you responded with your 3 cents. So now between us we have a nickel. Now how do we spend our windfall?

Predictably, a lot of you aren't really engaging with what Melly actually wrote and are just complaining about SJWs instead, which is fine but kinda boring. Still, I don't find his argument very convincing.

As we all know, America is the only country that cares about the mile, and American distance running in general is dominated by white people, even as the best distance runners in the world are African. So the issue comes down to why there aren't more African-American distance runners, and Melly would probably argue that it's about systemic racism and a lack of opportunities for black kids. There's probably some truth to that, but I think that it's more of a cultural thing, distance running just isn't cool or high status. Of course that's also the case for white kids, but in general white parents are probably more likely to steer their kids towards such endeavors. Then there's also the whole East African vs West African genetics thing, but that's another can of worms.

Anyway, I wish we paid more attention to African distance runners because they're incredible, but track is sadly a niche sport, and a sub 3:30 1500 or sub 13 5k just isn't relatable or marketable to the average American. It's fair to say that racism is always a factor on some level, but Americans are generally okay with celebrating black people in sports that we care about. Melly is a smart guy and I like a lot of his takes, but this one seems to have been written mostly for clicks, which I guess worked pretty well.

Do I upvote this thread if I think that running sub-4 is racist? Or do I downvote that because it is racist?

"Our sub-four heroes, from Roger Bannister to Jim Ryun to Hobbs Kessler, tend to be white and are always male"

I think there's a pretty obvious reason why these individuals are always male...

The mile is measured in imperial units. That gives US, Liberia, and Myanmar.  Last time I checked Liberia and Myanmar were not hotbeds of running.  America is 58% white, 19% latino, 12% black, 6% asian.  By that measure the mile is very very racist against latinos and asians.

Every other country does the 1500 because they use metric units.  It's not that complicated.

I feel like at some point you gotta ignore stupid people. However, if stupid people are ignored long enough by reasonable, sane, intelligent individuals, they build an army of stupid people.