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.
Same in the US now, but in our case it’s because although ‘people’ is clearly self-evident if you’re talking about a person/people, during the time of segregation those were the terms used - coloreds & whites. Whites Only Water Fountain. Whites Only Bathroom. Coloreds at the back of the bus, only Whites up front.