April 12, 2010

The cure for race realism discovered: Williams syndrome!

From Yahoo News, a summary of a paper in Current Biology:
Individuals with Rare Disorder Have No Racial Biases
Robin Nixon

Never has a human population been found that has no racial stereotypes. Not in other cultures or far-flung countries. Nor among tiny tots or people with various psychological conditions.

Until now.

Children with Williams syndrome, a rare genetic disorder that makes them lack normal social anxiety, have no racial biases.

Well, a lack of social anxiety is not the only characteristic of Williams syndrome. From Wikipedia:

The most common symptoms of Williams syndrome are mental retardation, heart defects, and unusual facial features. ... Individuals with Williams syndrome are highly verbal and overly sociable (having what had previously been described as a "cocktail party" type personality), but lack common sense ...

"Highly Verbal But Lack Common Sense" would pretty much describe most propounders of the conventional wisdom about race.

A 2007 NYT Magazine article on Williams syndrome reported:

These deficits generally erase about 35 points from whatever I.Q. the person would have inherited without the deletion. Since the average I.Q. is 100, this leaves most people with Williams with I.Q.’s in the 60s. Though some can hold simple jobs, they require assistance managing their lives....

The low I.Q., however, ignores two traits that define Williams more distinctly than do its deficits: an exuberant gregariousness and near-normal language skills.

Political correctness, in effect, demands that our intellectual discourse aspire towards Williams syndrome.

From the news report:

They do, however, traffic in gender stereotypes, said study researcher Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg of the University of Heidelberg in Germany.

Normally, children show clear preferences for their own ethnic group by the age of three, if not sooner, other research has shown.

Actually, the interesting thing is that toddlers tend to develop an insight into race that is generally lost by grown-up intellectuals when writing about race: race is about who your Mommy and Daddy are, topics that are deeply interesting to children (and to all humans), but aren't recognized in conventional discourse about race.

In Race in the Making, the liberal U. of Michigan anthropology professor Lawrence A. Hirschfeld sums up the finding of his research on children.

As comforting as this view may be, children, I will show in this book, are more than aware of diversity; they are driven by endogenous curiosity to uncover it. Children, I will also show, do not believe race to be a superficial quality of the world. Multicultural curricula aside, few people believe that race is only skin deep. Certainly few 3-year-olds do. They believe that race is an intrinsic, immutable, and essential aspect of a person's identity. Moreover, they seem to come to this conclusion on their own. They do not need to be taught that race is a deep property, they know it themselves already.

For example, if you show preschoolers drawings of people and ask them to match the children with their mommies, on average they will correctly tell you that the skinny white child belongs to the fat white mommy, while the fat black child belongs to the skinny black mommy (or vice-versa). They consider race a better predictor of family relationship than body shape.

From the news report:

And, indeed, the children in this study without Williams syndrome reliably assigned good traits, such as friendliness, to pictures of people the same race as themselves. When asked something negative, such as "which is the naughty boy," they overwhelmingly pointed to the other race.

Children with Williams syndrome, however, were equally likely to point to the white or black child as naughty or friendly.

While this study was done with white children, other research has shown that blacks and people of other races also think more highly of their own, Meyer-Lindenberg told LiveScience.

Williams syndrome is caused by a gene deletion known to affect the brain as well as other organs. As a result, people with Williams syndrome are "hypersocial," Meyer-Lindenberg told . They do not experience the jitters and inhibitions the rest of us feel.

"The whole concept [of social anxiety] would be foreign to them," he said.

They will put themselves at great peril to help someone and despite their skills at empathy, are unable to process social danger signals. As a result, they are at increased risk for rape and physical attack.

Indeed.

Nature or nurture?

While the first human population to demonstrate race-neutrality is missing critical genes, "we are not saying that this is all biologically-based and you can't do anything about it," Meyer-Lindenberg said.

"Just because there is a genetic way to knock the system out, does not mean the system itself is 100 percent genetic," he said.

The study does show, however, that racism requires social fear. "If social fear was culturally reduced, racial stereotypes could also be reduced," Meyer-Lindenberg said.

Despite their lack of racial bias, children with Williams syndrome hold gender stereotypes just as strongly as normal children, the study found. That is, 99 percent of the 40 children studied pointed to pictures of girls when asked who played with dolls and chose boys when asked, say, who likes toy cars.

The fact that Williams syndrome kids think of men and women differently, but not blacks and whites, shows that sex stereotypes are not caused by social anxiety, Meyer-Lindenberg said.

This may be because we learn about gender within "safe" home environments, while a different race is usually a sign of someone outside our immediate kin. (Studies to test this explanation, such as with racially-mixed families, have not yet been done.)

Racial biases are likely rooted in a general fear of others, while gender stereotypes may arise from sweeping generalizations, Meyer-Lindenberg said. "You watch mother make the meals, so you generalize this to everyone female."

Perhaps, but another explanation for why people with Williams syndrome would be unable to notice racial patterns is because they are mentally retarded.

Sex is simply more obvious than race. Very young children typically notice differences in sex before they begin to notice differences in race. People with Williams syndrome are typically verbally facile but oblivious to the obvious.

Here's a question I have about Williams syndrome. Say you would have had a 140 IQ without it, but you were born with genetic defect, so you have a 105 IQ and not a lick of sense. But you are really good at laying out a spiel of words. Is Williams syndrome just too all-around debilitating for you to ever amount to much in the world?

Or, could there be, say, a prominent media figure who suffers from Williams syndrome?

If so, who would your candidate be?

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

33 comments:

fasfasdfasdfds said...

Williams syndrome can be found in most golden retrievers. They love everyone.

fsadfasdfdsa said...

Gladwell Syndrome: a common disease where white liberals have no racial honesty.

robert61 said...

Forrest Gump sort of fits the bill and not coincidentally was presented as a cultural ideal.

The post above on the religions of SCOTUS members hinges on the confusion of religion as a practice with religion as an ethnic marker. Here there is a similar confusion about the meaning of "discrimination". On the one hand, it means being a jerk to people who are different, an unattractive trait. On the other, it means noticing difference, an essential cognitive and social ability. Williams sufferers lack the capacity to discriminate (meaning 2), and thus their non-discriminatory attitude (meaning 1) is not even a virtue.

l said...

If only we were all retarded and had no judgment...

TH said...

Very fitting: if you want to be an anti-racist, you must become a blithering idiot.

It seems that people with Williams syndrome lack the normal ability to discriminate betweeen ingroups and outgroups.

Anonymous said...

It's such BS that Gehrig and Williams got a disease named after them but Mantle didn't.

Dan in DC

Tom Regan said...

I want to congratulate National Review, Time, Newsweek and the New York Times for assisting the afflicted, and employing so many sufferers of Williams syndrome.
I'm sure Messrs Hirschfeld and Meyer-Lindberg would concur.

rob said...

could there be, say, a prominent media figure who suffers from Williams syndrome?

They're underdosed or overdosed on a bunch of genes, so they're FLKS. It would probably not be possible for some with it to "pass." To my eye they're in the uncanny valley. They're quite freaky looking.

Seeing race is probably not part of some "generalized fear of the other" or whatnot. Children notice that race exists before they form general impressions of different races. A child will also notice that lions are not housecats before he knows that lions might eat him.

Can Williams Syndrome kids be taught to be frightened of strangers?

AMac said...

> Or, could there be, say, a prominent media figure who suffers from Williams syndrome? If so, who would your candidate be?

This calls for a survey of iSteve readers. Meanwhile, the list of nominees (beyond the obvious) is sure to be amusing.

Often, as severe genetic syndromes become better understood, it turns out that there are milder forms present in the population.

It'd be easy to imagine a variation of Williams Syndrome that causes, say, half the pro-social and anti-common-sense effects, along with a reduction of IQ score by, say, 15 to 20 points. And so forth.

Anonymous said...

Gregariousness, verbal facility, but no common sense -- functionally retarded. Hmm. Why, doesn't that describe 80% of a certain ethnic group that turns up most often on the police department blotter?

Oh, but wait. Even with an IQ of 60, a member of this ethnic group can still figure out that whitey is easier to assault, more likely to have cash in his wallet, and more satisfying to cause physical harm.

MQ said...

I think the explanation in the article -- that racial distinctions are connected to social anxiety and fear, while sex distinctions are not -- is much more sensible than a pure intelligence-based distinction. After all, key physical sex differences are generally hidden under clothes while physical race distinctions are completely obvious at all times.


It's pretty clear in both everyday and intellectual life that people emphasize tribal identity due to fear, hostility, and distrust of the population outside their tribe. This makes total sense given the way resource division works in human communities.

Paul Mendez said...

The Yahoo article implies that "social fear" is a bad thing.

For all of history, there has been a good reason to fear strangers who show up in your village without invitation. Especially if they are young males wearing clothing different from what your village's young males wear.

From what I know of chimp behavior, the same rule applies. So, I'm guessing Homo Erectus also had good reason to be wary of strangers.

Evolution has probably selected against kids who take candy from strangers for a long, long time.

Anonymous said...

Williams syndrome is a serious defect. People with it cannot read. I guess the take away point is that racial indifference is correlated with mental defects/deficits.

Kylie said...

Steve Sailer said: "'Highly Verbal But Lack Common Sense' would pretty much describe most propounders of the conventional wisdom about race."

Yes, you could call it "Williams Syndrome With A Twist". Where people who have the syndrome don't see race, proponents of conventional wisdom about race see nothing but race.

From the article: "'If social fear was culturally reduced, racial stereotypes could also be reduced,' Meyer-Lindenberg said."

Let me guess which race would get the most help in reducing social fear so that its members would be less prone to racial stereotyping. Oh, and never mind that the lessening of social fear with come with an increased risk for rape and physical attack. Even to address that issue would doubtless be to offer oneself up as a prime candidate for aid in fear reduction.

Anonymous said...


"Highly Verbal But Lack Common Sense"


I would erase this posting, because you are going to be called a racist pretty soon.

Sideways said...

That is, 99 percent of the 40 children studied

Journalism at its finest.

rich s. said...

"...who would your candidate be?"

This is the control question for a polygraph test, right?

Anonymous said...

O/T You are my favorite VDARE columnist. I hope Brimelow finds the funds to continue the good work there.

Anonymous said...

Steve, this reads like Onion news.

@fasfasdfasdfds or fsadfasdfdsa

Dude, you have to make up your mind about your nick. People with Williams syndrome will confuse you with fsaddsafasdf or fdsafsadfasd.


JT

Anonymous said...

"Highly Verbal But Lack Common Sense" would pretty much describe most propounders of the conventional wisdom about race.

Classic.

Excellent article Steve, the mainstream media is an informational black hole.

No media figure could have Williams Syndrome, they would be too guileless for such a cynical business.

rast said...

These deficits generally erase about 35 points from whatever I.Q. the person would have inherited without the deletion. Since the average I.Q. is 100, this leaves most people with Williams with I.Q.’s in the 60s

How disgusting! I'm deeply offended. Intelligence, like Williams syndrome, is merely a social construct. IQ tests don't measure intelligence, anyway.

Steve should be ashamed of himself for even linking to this hate-filled garbage.

corvinus said...

Too bad we don't control academia. Then we could call race-denying liberals mentally ill -- like they try to do to us -- and have science to back it up.

Oh well... at least we have the science.

Enoch Powell Was Right said...

"... another explanation for why individuals with Williams syndrome would be unable to notice racial patterns is that they are mentally retarded." Indeed, this would be the simplest explanation. According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Williams_syndrome the syndrome results from a partial chromosome deletion of about 26 genes from the long arm of chromosome 7. The victims have reduced intelligence and social anxiety and increased friendliness and musicality. They also tend to be quite short in stature and have faces with an elfin appearance. The Williams syndrome people also tend to have a net overall increase in anxieties and phobias in non-social settings. They have a strong tendency to feel better and less anxious when they are around people — including total strangers. They are free of race prejudice and fear of strangers — but this might only prove that they are permanently naively stupid.

ricpic said...

And the answer is...Mr. "I get a tingle in my leg."

weregsgses said...

@fasfasdfasdfds or fsadfasdfdsa

Dude, you have to make up your mind about your nick. People with Williams syndrome will confuse you with fsaddsafasdf or fdsafsadfasd.


JT

-------

aahhhhhhhh shaddap.

SGOTI said...

If only we were all retarded and had no judgment...

. . . we'd all be liberals? Is this some sort of ad lib game?

Toadal said...

The low I.Q., however, ignores two traits that define Williams more distinctly than do its deficits: an exuberant gregariousness and near-normal language skills.

From the movie: 'The Wizard of Oz'.
Dorothy: How can you talk if you haven't got a brain?
Scarecrow: I don't know... But some people without brains do an awful lot of talking... don't they?

I've often wondered whether people with markedly uneven mental abilities have unbalanced or unusual personalities.

Those diagnosed with Williams syndrome are gregarious, but are neither analytical or practical, being unable to maintain a household budget or plan their finances. However, on the other hand, I think those with weak verbal reasoning skills, but very strong mathematical or spatial relationships skills, on average, tend to be shy and self effacing.

A good example of this personalty type would be Dr Grigori Perelman , a Russian mathematical genius, who solved the one-hundred-year-old Poincaré conjecture, one of the most complicated mathematical problems in the world, and refused the $1 million "Millennium" mathematics prize awarded by the Clay Mathematics Institute.

Dr Perelman lives humbly in St Petersburg in an apartment with his mother and has been described as always wearing the same ratty coat and trousers. He never cuts his nails or beard. When he walks he simply stares at the ground, rather than looking from side to side.

Anonymous said...

Williams syndrome can be found in most golden retrievers. They love everyone.

The Bichon Frise is the most Williams-like of dog breeds.
http://www.dogchannel.com/dog-breeds/dog-fancy-breed-profile/bichon_frise.aspx
(...)
A Bichon Frise with the right temperament is “cheerful and pleasant to be around,” says Nancy Muklewicz of Schiller Park, Ill., who writes the Bichon Frise breed column in the American Kennel Club Gazette and also does Bichon Frise rescue in the Chicago area.

Generally gregarious with other animals, Bichons Frises usually also do well with children, and many are surprisingly gentle with even the smallest baby. Diminutive humans may not reciprocate in kind, however, and for that reason many breeders will not sell dogs to families with very young children.

Time commitment required
If the Bichon Frise’s cordial manner and playfulness sound too good to be true, there are some challenges amid the white fluff. For example, those who value their Aubusson rugs might think twice.


“Bichons are very difficult to housebreak,” Winkler says, noting that it is the primary reason they are relinquished to rescue groups.

Compounding the Bichon Frise’s mental block about proper potty procedure is a supernaturally strong need to be with humans. “They are very much a companion dog and do not like being left at home alone,” Muklewicz says. While this doesn’t mean that Bichon Frises can never be left unattended, they are not suited to solitude for long periods.
(...)

RGH said...

I nominate Joe Biden.

Anonymous said...

Robin Williams has Williams Syndrome! No doubt about it.

Average Joe said...

It is interesting to see that scientists have shown that not being racist is a symptom of mental retardation.

Anonymous said...

This explains a lot.
Now science is on my side when I say "If you can't see any racial differences, you're most likely retarded."

Anonymous said...

Based on facial features and personality: I nominate Harry Styles. http://youtu.be/QSCFLWbNQbM (curly haired one)