Given that racists and slavers used the “natural physical strength” of black people to justify putting them on hard labor and some medics still think that blacks has higher resistance to pain, I wonder if when black athletes started to join mixed race sport teams, some racist would have used the same “biological advantage” argument that now transphobes use against trans athletes to claim it was “unfair” for black to compete against whites to justify segregation.
To me, what’s interesting about that case is that Snyder didn’t think of himself as a racist, and neither did his coworkers. He thought he was merely citing a known historical fact. Racism can sneak up on you even when you think you know better.