I agree with this. There hasn't been nearly enough time and separation in the non-African, Black diaspora to encourage this kind of thinking. The idea that slavery was some kind of social darwinist institution is also off-base. Sure, weaker ones died off, like they did everywhere, but slaves in America were a huge investment- masters couldn't afford to have slaves just dying all over the place because of how expensive they were and how critical they were to the plantation economy. They needed them alive. Slaves were rarely worked to death, etc.
Also, the social pressures are a big part of the situation concerning Black athletes in the status quo. It's one of the few things Black people are actually encouraged to pursue, and that has become seriously ingrained in the community to the point where a greater percentage of kids from the Black community see sports as the only viable career path for them. When you combine that with the systemic racism that actively works to slow down or prevent Black representation in other fields, it's going to produce what looks to be a grossly biased overrepresentation, the same way certain Asian immigrant cultures where kids are only expected to be laywers, doctors, or scientists produce overrepresentation in those fields. As Acri noted, the circumstance wasn't like this earlier in the century, but not just because of segregation.
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