December 1, 2007

VDARE.com's Unique Selling Proposition restored!

The boys over at Slate.com are busy engaging in Maoist-style self-criticism, leaving VDARE.com as the only professional publication that writes abundantly and honestly about IQ.

From today's New York Times:

I.Q. Debate Adds a Chapter Online

By PATRICIA COHEN

Ever since the Nobel prize winner James D. Watson asserted six weeks ago that Africans have innately lower intelligence, fervid debates about race, genes and I.Q. have sprung up on the Web, in publications and in conference rooms.

But in recent days, along with long-simmering arguments over evidence, have come others about whether the topic is even worth studying, or whether it can be discussed openly without spurring charges of racism…

The risk of giving ammunition to racists or undercutting principles of equality hovers over such conversations like an uninvited dinner guest. That unwelcome visitor has been loitering at the online magazine Slate since last week, when it ran a three-part series arguing that hard science is showing that blacks’ I.Q. scores are lower than those of whites — and whites’ scores are lower than those of Asians — because of genetically based differences in intelligence.

Appearing on a site with a liberal bent and written by its generally liberal science and technology columnist, William Saletan, the articles drew particular attention — and particular scorn. “William Saletan and the Editors of Slate Demonstrate That They Are Not Members of the Genetic Elite” was the headline on the Web site of the economist Brad DeLong (delong.typepad.com). On his popular political Web site, talkingpointsmemo.com, Joshua Micah Marshall referred to it as “Will Saletan’s nauseating foray into black genetic ‘pseudo-science.’” …

On Wednesday, Mr. Saletan posted a fourth article labeled “Regrets,” confessing that he had not realized that J. Philippe Rushton, a researcher on whom he had heavily relied, is the president of an organization that has financed a segregationist group. He also amended his previous position, stating that it was too early to come to any firm conclusions about the causes of racial differences in intelligence.

“If I had to do it again, I would have been much more circumspect about judging” the evidence, Mr. Saletan said in an interview. He later added that he should have written about inequality and left race completely out of it.

Jacob Weisberg, the editor of Slate, said that since Mr. Saletan is a senior writer, his posts went up without anyone there reading them. “Given the sensitivity of the subject, Will’s commentary should have been carefully edited in advance of publication, and it wasn’t,” he wrote in an e-mail message.

Mr. Weisberg said he was disturbed by the casual “what if” thought experiment and some of the sources Mr. Saletan cited. “I wouldn’t have stopped Will from writing on this subject, but I would have challenged him on these and other issues,” he wrote.

He added that a rejoinder by another Slate writer, Stephen Metcalf, was scheduled to be posted Monday.

Metcalf, by the way, is a complete ignoramus on the topic, as I pointed out after reading his 2005 Slate article, "Moral Courage: Is defending The Bell Curve an example of intellectual honesty?"

Metcalf's denunciation of Charles Murray's Commentary magazine article "The Inequality Taboo" was full of howlers such as:
"Before I casually took up the cause of the race realists and assumed that only an overprogrammed PC hysteria had kept their work from gaining widespread legitimacy, I'd want to know a couple of things. I'd want to know why "the data" are always so selective and incomplete, if not hidden or misrepresented, and I'd want to know a whole lot more about the movement's two leading lights, J. Philippe Rushton and Arthur Jensen. Rushton and Jensen came to my attention when Murray fingered them, along with Lawrence Summers, as the impetus for his new Commentary article."

Slate is paying Metcalf to write about the validity of IQ research, and yet Metcalf admits that he had never heard of Arthur Jensen until a few weeks ago! Jensen, who has published 435 articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals, became a national figure in 1969 with the publication of his long meta-analysis "How Much Can We Boost I.Q. and Scholastic Achievement?" in the Harvard Educational Review. President Nixon even assigned his top domestic policy advisor, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, to keep him updated on Jensen's research.

You really have to read this article to believe the quality of screeds that can get published these days.

Metcalf's only qualification to write about this topic is that he's named "Steve."

Back to today's NYT:

Mr. Saletan said he was completely unprepared for the voluminous and vehement reaction. “I did not mean to start a wildfire.”

A subject as sensitive and complicated as this deserves to have a higher level of proof, he said, adding that he erred in treating it like any other topic.

“I don’t agree that it’s best not to discuss it,” he said, but “you have to do it in a responsible way and always with a constructive purpose.” Judging from his own experience, he said, the Internet is not a place where that can be done at the moment.

“I’m a little disappointed in myself,” he added.

So, the enemies of free speech win again, due to the cowardice of people with nice jobs who want to keep them.

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

46 comments:

  1. At this point, the idea that all races are genetically the same in terms of IQ has become so entrenched, that even discussing it in the coy "what-if" scenario is impossible in newspapers and magazines.

    It isn't just the editors of those said publications making the calls here, it's the readership at large. If there had been no backlash, or even just a slight one, Saletan would'nt have retracted his statements.

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  2. I'm currently involved in a vicious litigation with no aim other than harming myself (I can't get into it). The man suing me is wealthy. I am really dismayed by how many 'friends' now see our dispute in a Salomon-type way, not wishing to take sides, primarily because if they did take my side, they might miss out on favors that potentially can accrue from the rich.

    Most people are intellectual cowards, and can't take criticism or defend their positions, they go with the flow. They think they are morally superior, but those same beliefs they hold as self-evident of their righteousness today, 100 years ago, they would have taken the opposite: that *all* blacks are genetically inferior, because that was conventional wisdom then. The truth wins out, but people have been, and always will be, cowards, on average. That is why courage is a virtue.

    The unfortunate thing is that because reputable groups do not touch upon racial differences, only racists (whom I disagree with) support research in this area. Thus the Pioneer fund, or
    American Renaissance, or Stormfront.org, address issues that are, in part, correct. That doesn't make their slant correct, but to assume that all races are equal in every way, on average, is hope, not science.

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  3. "At this point, the idea that all races are genetically the same in terms of IQ has become so entrenched..."

    I disagree. Nobody, and I mean nobody believes that the races are the same in intelligence, regardless of what Saletan says or how he prostrates himself. If the leftists and liberals want to beat up on each other fine, it is a fun spectacle to watch. But everyone can see it is all about keping your jobs, perks and party invites.

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  4. "I disagree. Nobody, and I mean nobody believes that the races are the same in intelligence, regardless of what Saletan says or how he prostrates himself. If the leftists and liberals want to beat up on each other fine, it is a fun spectacle to watch. But everyone can see it is all about keping your jobs, perks and party invites."

    I totally agree. Or, maybe I'm just blinded by the many people I hang with. However, nobody except left wingers really espouse the pure blank slate idea for all the races. It just seems like that in the media because its tone is controlled by the liberal elites and constrained by national political correctness.

    It is sort of like how a lot of TV is skewed to show events in a 'bi- coastal' flavor than otherwise should be present.

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  5. Vdare can't move the needle in public opinion, because the public shuns racists. Not that Steve or The Derb are racists, but if you lay down with dogs, you wake up with flees.

    If you want to change people's minds, you need to distances yourself from the racists, segregationists, "white nationalists", etc. Otherwise, you're just preaching to the choir.

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  6. I agree as well. Even most from the left take a "some day" approach.

    They believe that some day they will if we can just get all the evil whiteness out of the way.

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  7. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  8. Steve I, I needlessly used a perjorative in the original post, so I deleted the post, changed it and reposted. I was feeling a bit Saturnine and didn't excercise full self-discipline. I apologise for the inconvenience.

    The risk of giving ammunition to racists or undercutting principles of equality hovers over such conversations like an uninvited dinner guest.

    This is an example of a leftist brazenly admitting that his moral philosophy requires that the world be a certain way, and then candidly admitting in the next breath that that's why investigation of how the world actually is should be stifled. However, he is of course, right that civil rights laws, etc. are built upon the foundation of unquestionned inate racial equality.

    Lyndon Johnson, who signed the 1964 civil rights act said:

    You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, 'You are free to compete with all the others,' and still justly believe that you have been completely fair."

    By this Lyndon Johnsom implied, with the footrace analogy. at least two things 1) any sort of advantage gained from group-membership (and by extention familial and national membership) is essentially ill-gotten and 2) failure of blacks to perform economically on par with whites was the result of whites having once enslaved them and/or whites exclucding blacks from their institutions. Point 1 has little historical or philosophical precendent and is thus ad hoc moralising probably done with ulterior motives. Nothing much in the way of evidence is ever proffered in support of point 2, and there is plenty of evidence of counterfactuals (e.g. blacks are on average less intelligent than whites), but this evidence is suppressed because of "The risk of giving ammunition to racists or undercutting principles of equality" (from above).

    Lyndon Johnston also said, tellingly:
    No member of our generation who wasn't a Communist or a dropout in the thirties is worth a damn.

    On Wednesday, Mr. Saletan posted a fourth article labeled “Regrets,” confessing that he had not realized that J. Philippe Rushton, a researcher on whom he had heavily relied, is the president of an organization that has financed a segregationist group.
    That subject has been brought up several times. Obviously, if the Pioneer Foundation didn't support Rushton, he would have no funding at all.

    A subject as sensitive and complicated as this deserves to have a higher level of proof,

    Required degree of proof shouldnt have anything to with sensitivy. Speaking of sensitivity, reflexive aversion and ferocious defensiveness in the face of some idea generally only happens when the idea is both true and threatening to something very dear.

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  9. Another observation on the Metcalf-doesn't-know-what-he's-talking-about point: "Far from having held up as a 'careful' work of scholarship, The Bell Curve has inspired a lot of suspicion on the part of the properly accredited. In his own book on human intelligence, The Mismeasure of Man, Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould pointed out that Herrnstein and Murray had buried key data in remote appendices."

    Actually, TMOM came out in 1981; a revision contained a new essay making this point. Not exactly an error, but the phrasing makes it clear this guy neither follows the debate closely nor researched it thoroughly for the article.

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  10. "Vdare can't move the needle in public opinion, because the public shuns racists. Not that Steve or The Derb are racists, but if you lay down with dogs, you wake up with flees.

    If you want to change people's minds, you need to distances yourself from the racists, segregationists, "white nationalists", etc. Otherwise, you're just preaching to the choir."

    Yes, we must continue to repress the truth because of the quality of people currently trying to spread it. [/sarcasm]

    One of the problems with our current society is that we can't challenge people to duels anymore (stay with me on this one). If there were real world consequences to the current era of reckless slander (as it is used to suppress certain forms of discourse and ostracize "undesireables") than I am sure that the Orwellian PC police would not have had such success in shaping American thoughts.

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  11. Well, I tried to warn people that this major breakthrough into the public square was nothing of the sort. SNAFU

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  12. In other words, "pas d'ennemis a gauche," but anybody to the right of you has to be shunned as something reprehensible. So white nationalists must shun neo-nazis, nativists must shun both of them, paleoconservatives must shun all of them, and moderates all of THEM.

    A very good prescription for the victory of the left, and the fall of civilization.

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  13. If one can ignore another illiberal attempt at social shunning, this really is pretty funny.

    Saletan, who is most likely now penning an essay entitled "How stem cells may one day help with more insular naval-gazing", is about to be eaten by those he once considered friends.

    What's not to love?

    Did we really think that Slate was about to meaningfully deal with something other than a cultural analysis of pop icons in our super-sweet ipod playlists?

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  14. Anonymous said...Vdare can't move the needle in public opinion, because the public shuns racists. Not that Steve or The Derb are racists, but if you lay down with dogs, you wake up with flees. If you want to change people's minds, you need to distances yourself from the racists, segregationists, "white nationalists", etc. Otherwise, you're just preaching to the choir.

    Sailer and Derbyshire regularly and explicitly 'distance themselves' from the 'racists;' the segregationationists; and the White - and Black nationalists (though never from the Jewish nationalists), yet they still attract these puerile smears.

    For as long as WNists and Sailer and Derbyshire are honest about race and Jewish ethnic activists believe that it suits Jewish interests to lie about race, Sailer and Debyshire shall be so smeared, and people like you will attack WNists while remaining silent on JNationalism.

    It's not Sailer and Derb who are misguided - it's you.

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  15. The risk of giving ammunition to racists or undercutting principles of equality hovers over such conversations like an uninvited dinner guest.

    Most people are not only intellectual cowards, they are not able to separate in their minds two separate issues: 1) whether or not all peoples are actually equal (in the sense of being exactly the same intellectually, etc.) and 2) whether or not we should decide that ethically and legally everyone should be treated equally -- i.e. afforded the same opportunities in life and so on.

    Just because different individuals or groups are different in abilities doesn't mean our principles of equality would or should be tossed.

    (P.S. Saletan is apparently an invertebrate.)

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  16. The real question is: why did Saletan, with James Watson's example before him, think he could get away with it?

    Did Saletan underestimate the opposition or his own courage?

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  17. the "saletan solution" is the comfortable solution. let's mix now and ask questions later. it's the only moral path. quick, before the facts become even more incovenient.

    we must act now in order not to hurt the other's feelings! there is no higher calling.

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  18. The way I see it, everybody, Blacks and liberals alike, knows the truth about the White/Black IQ gap.
    It wouldn't even be an issue if not for Affirmative Action.

    Blacks and other minorities would lose their unevenly distributed goodies, and liberals would lose their social engineering schemes with which they have build their power over society.

    Money and power are the key, not ethical considerations. I've never met a principled liberal in my whole life. For them it's all about status and money.
    As for Blacks and other minorities, they'll never give up on AA and food coupons and other privileges for obvious reasons, even if it hurts them more than helps them in the long run. It's about resentment and short term gratification.

    The question now is how long can the USA support such twisted and evil policies? Taxes will eventually start to dwindle once Whites become a minority sooner than anybody expects. By my reckoning, in less than 15 years. Wait and see.

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  19. Here's a good way to think about such differences.

    Big any university football team. Itemize the racial makeup of all the team's players. Then do the same for, say, the engineering faculty at the same university. Repeat this process for dozens of universities.

    Then ask yourself: Do I see any differences in the racial makeup of the two groups? If so, then why is this so, especially with affirmative action in place everywhere except CalTech?

    Sometimes you really can discover things by just looking around.

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  20. It was admirable for Saletan to deal with the science honestly in his article, even if he was then forced to issue some regrets.

    The field is much wider than just Rushton, though, so his reliance on Rushton highlights the need for a comprehensive, accessible, and NPOV online guide to the subject for those who are curious and seeking to get their bearings.

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  21. "Jacob Weisberg, the editor of Slate, said that since Mr. Saletan is a senior writer, his posts went up without anyone there reading them."

    There is an admission worth it's weight in gold.
    And you'll only ever see it in the context of trying to cover over a politically correct "outing" of real, unregulated information....

    The reason the American public has the uninformed opinion it does on race is because it has been at the mercy of liberal ideologues (sometimes known as Senior Writers for Old Media publications)who have been given a soapbox from which to spew their opinions dressed up as official facts...

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  22. If blacks on average are equal to whites in mental ability, why not remove affirmative action? Plenty of non-white groups with histories of great persecution (such as Asian refugees and Jews) do well here. In fact, the founding stock of America were themselves the persecuted refugees of Europe - the diasporic rejects of the Old World; while later white immigrants (Irish etc.) faced discrimination the moment they hit these shores. They succeeded. Blacks have been free for nearly a century and a half, they have been coddled by any measure for half a century, and they face no more undeserved hatred now than any other group faced in times past; yet no one denies the black community still simply fails in many ways. (Okay, let's use the PC words, it "is dysfunctional" or "faces challenges.")

    Conservatives often imply that removing affirmative action, set asides, transfer payments et al. would remove the final barrier to black success.

    Let's take them up on it. Don't mend it, end it. Then let's see what happens.

    A bad tendency among whites is to assume we are masters of the universe. If something happens (good or bad), we caused it. If it's good, we brag; if it's bad, we blame ourselves. Black failure has nothing to do with us: we are not the center of the universe, and blacks have free will.

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  23. "On Wednesday, Mr. Saletan posted a fourth article labeled “Regrets,” confessing that he had not realized that J. Philippe Rushton, a researcher on whom he had heavily relied, is the president of an organization that has financed a segregationist group."

    NASA today publicly stated its regret that it relied on rocket technology designed and developed by Wehrner Von Braun's Peenemunde team to send men to the moon. In future they will use only rocket technology that was designed by non-racists.

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  24. “Vdare can't move the needle in public opinion, because the public shuns racists. Not that Steve or The Derb are racists, but if you lay down with dogs, you wake up with flees.”

    Sure, although most people are racists according to the keepers of PC doctrine. This is the great failing of the intellectual tyranny of cultural Marxism. It relies on a psychological terror that cannot be maintained during the end game. People are already functionally racist in their private behavior. When the realization of the tangible consequences of continued public acceptance of cM solutions is a sharp drop in living standards they will stop mouthing the PC pieties as well. While your average person is now largely repulsed by the more crude expressions of White Supremacists the acceptability of other perspectives such as separatism will grow as the dispossession, a dispossession encouraged and funded by the White population’s tax dollar, becomes ever more apparent. The happy family days are nearly behind us, the soft totalitarianism will continue to harden and the mask of benevolence will slip, revealing the naked lust for power that’s been driving events for the last 50 years.

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  25. Here is what Saleton had to say about the Schiavo thing a few years ago:

    This is what happens when you deny reality. First you lose your senses, then your mind, then your soul. It isn't Terri Schiavo who's refusing to see what's happening in that awful scene. It's her dad. And it isn't her defect, or her husband's sin, that's revealed in the autopsy report. It's ours. We were blind. We could not see.

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  26. Saletan momentarily forgot about the "parallel universe" he lives in when he writes publicly. He almost lost his job, his perks, his friends . . .

    He recanted just in time--unlike Watson, Summers, and scores of others who let their guard down and childishly spoke the simple truth.

    To the left (postmodern multi-cult) there is no evidence or truth. There is only power--and how it is wielded.

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  27. I am yet to see anyone who can offer liberals a good worldview that incorporates HBD. Saletan's piece was disappointing.

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  28. Looking back at my recent iSteve comments,I realize I should have been more sensitive to how my comments would be percieved. I should have been aware of others who would use my comments to advance inequality.Not to mention liberty and fraternity. I should have made my comments more trenchant. I should have used the word "trenchant" more. The specter of my comments being used to give support to bad stuff hangs over my keyboard like an uninvited dinner guest;one who has used the bathroom without permission--and failed to flush. I have rethought my previous comments,and now I realize that what I said was not what I meant,and vice versa.

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  29. The risk of giving ammunition to racists or undercutting principles of equality hovers over such conversations like an uninvited dinner guest.

    Most people are not only intellectual cowards, they are not able to separate in their minds two separate issues: 1) whether or not all peoples are actually equal (in the sense of being exactly the same intellectually, etc.) and 2) whether or not we should decide that ethically and legally everyone should be treated equally -- i.e. afforded the same opportunities in life and so on.


    You dismiss this argument too easily. As an intellectual exercise, yes, it's simple: We treat people as individuals, regardless of race and regardless of traits that may be more common in one race than another. As a practical matter, it is not at all simple, especially when data seem to support a racial stereotype. Humans have not been treating each other as individuals since, basically, forever. It's naive to imagine that genetic proof of a common stereotype won't have an impact on the people being stereotyped.

    It is a legitimate concern that data proving lower intelligence among blacks will lead to a perception of race inferiority that will, in turn, lead to individual blacks being discriminated against just because they are black. It is reasonable to worry that serious discussion that blacks in general might be intellectually inferior, at least in areas measured by IQ tests, will seem to lend authority to racists.

    See in this light, it is reasonable to raise a question about whether race differences in intelligence should ever be studied or discussed. Race realists need to acknowledge that concern if they are ever to succeed in forcing a public discussion on this issue.

    In fact, the most honest and useful public conversation we could have right now would be whether race differences in IQ should be studied or discussed at all. Let's get the question out in the open and force PC types (which, on this matter, includes almost everyone of influence in Western societies) to confront it: Do they advocate suppressing knowledge or don't they?

    On the other hand, in that discussion, race realists need to be prepared to address the question of whether the knowledge they want to free will have an adverse impact on society, and, if so, how to ameliorate that impact.

    It goes without saying that, in such an argument, increasing racial prejudice and putting NAMs at a disadvantage must be seen as an adverse impact. No argument that appears to take racism as anything other than a dire threat to society and an unspeakable evil will ever get a hearing; furthermore, everything else said by the speaker will disregarded, and he will be shunned. That's just the reality of modern life. The sooner racial realists recognize this, the sooner they will be able to get their positions presented to public in a fair way.

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  30. I disagree that "everybody . . . knows the truth about the White/Black IQ gap." In particular, if you're a prof. or student at a top university, every student is culled from the cream of the crop, irrespective of their race. Of course, there is affirmative action, but since people tend to self-select into subjects that match their own g-capabilities, you don't see a disparity of intelligence so much as a disparity of self-selection. Thus. if you're a student, it's easy to rationalize the disparaties in self-selection as, "Blacks are not interested in math/physics for cultural reasons" and simply leave it at that, since most black students on campus will be competitive in the other fields.

    Moreover, the problem of accepting genetic diffences in intelligence really has very little with race, per se. It has more to do with our reluctance to acknowledge absolute limitations on our abilities. Nobody wants to hear about that, regardless of what race you belong to.

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  31. Sailer and Derbyshire regularly and explicitly 'distance themselves' from the 'racists;' the segregationationists; and the White - and Black nationalists (though never from the Jewish nationalists)

    This statement is simply bizarre. Do you even read this site? Steve attacks Jewish neocons constantly and says next to nothing about "White Nationalists".

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  32. "For as long as WNists and Sailer and Derbyshire are honest about race and Jewish ethnic activists believe that it suits Jewish interests to lie about race, Sailer and Debyshire shall be so smeared, and people like you will attack WNists while remaining silent on JNationalism."

    I hadn't mentioned the Jew thing, but since you bring it up, the anti-Jew sentiment, along with the anti-Asian sentiment common among commenters here bolsters my point: when you keep company with people who hold these biases, it detracts from your claims of objectivity. Clearly the Jew- and Asian-obsessed here aren't objective. They're happy to revel in the IQ data that shows them to be mentally superior to blacks, but are quick to discount the high scores of Asians and Jews. "Jody" wonders where Asian Nobel-prize winners are. "Svigor" claims Jewish Nobel prizes are due to Jewish networking or something rather than merit.

    If you're not going to take the IQ data at face value, why should liberals? How are you different? You just start with different biases, and cherry-pick the data to support them.

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  33. Steve Wood: On the other hand, in that discussion, race realists need to be prepared to address the question of whether the knowledge they want to free will have an adverse impact on society, and, if so, how to ameliorate that impact.

    Yes, I suppose people armed with the truth about human diversity (whatever precisely that turns out to be in the end) can use that truth to their own advantage and to the disadvantage of others.

    In the meantime, though we live with what appears certain to be a pretty profound untruth -- that ALL people EVERYwhere and ALL groups of people are exactly the same in abilities and given the same opportunities we can ALL succeed in life just the same. Those who don't succeed apparently just haven't tried....

    Who benefits from such a myth?

    People with natural abilities (and who grow up in the right environment). So, what sort of adverse effect are the lies having on society? And why shouldn't we do something about those?

    How to ameliorate the impact of the truth on society? How about we spend all the gazillions (presumably!) of dollars now being spent on mis-guided education policies, diversity training and what not on better nutrition for people (especially in Africa, for instance), education programs that actually teach people useful skills and civics training in which everyone is taught that all people ought to be treated as equal citizens.

    Thanks for your comments. Very thought provoking!

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  34. ...when you keep company with people who hold these biases, it detracts from your claims of objectivity.

    The "people who hold these biases" are known as "whites". Non-whites are similarly biased against those outside their own ethnic/racial groups and, by all measures, LESS objective than whites. Yet they are qualified to participate, and whites aren't?

    This is a ludicrous double standard.

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  35. I agre with Anon that there are problems with certain commenters here who take refuge in fantasy persecution theories ("the Jews" are oppressing the world through Dennis Kucinich's UFO mind-control rays!) It's a serious problem of magical thinking just as bad as Liberals denial of average racial differences and how people act in their private lives.

    Jewish Nationalism? It's called Zionism and is argued that Jews in Europe in particular are always vulnerable to extermination-minded pogroms and so must rely on their own state for survival. It would seem Mr. Herzl was quite correct.

    As for how people act in private there is a vast disconnect. Black Lawyers and Doctors labor under suspicion that they are mere affirmative action products and incompetent, ala the one who treated Kanye West's mother. This attitude seems to be held by all races, including blacks. While there is no such view of incompetence in music, athletics, coaching, acting, etc. Meanwhile, whites are perceived to be unathletic, ungraceful, and relatively unmusical, NE Asians also.

    There is a huge disconnect between that intimate behavior that people exhibit on what they believe to be true about racial differences (roughly, white/asian/"jewish" = higher IQ, low athleticism, coordination, artistic ability; black/latino = lower IQ, high athleticism, coordination and artistic ability) and what PC dogma mandates they mouth in public.

    Saletan/Slate does not matter. what does is that public-private belief gap.

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  36. Martin Said:

    "NASA today publicly stated its regret that it relied on rocket technology designed and developed by Wehrner Von Braun's Peenemunde team to send men to the moon. In future they will use only rocket technology that was designed by non-racists."

    Very well said.

    It seems a fundamental intellectual immaturity that I run into time and again is attacking the source, as data.

    Another phenomena I've noticed is many people do not understand the bell curve concept at all, and when confronted with an outcome unacceptable to them, state "you're just generalizing! I know a guy who.. (fill in the person operating on the far side of the curve).

    It's immature reasoning, and it's scary.

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  37. steve wood said:

    to take racism as anything other than a dire threat to society and an unspeakable evil

    What is racism? Preference for one's own kind. ("Birds of a feather flock together.") Such preference may be a dire threat to one kind of society, the dysfunctional society of multiracialism - since if you bar the door to nature, it will come in through the window. But how is it an "unspeakable evil"?

    For something unspeakable, it certainly is spoken of a lot.

    Perhaps you mean that the reasons why it is considered evil are unspeakable (nonexistent)? Although I'd love to, I've yet to read an intelligent objection to mono-racial societies.

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  38. Anonymous wrote: "Nobody, and I mean nobody believes that the races are the same in intelligence, regardless of what Saletan says or how he prostrates himself." This is essentially true. I am a professor in a large public university, and I believe that at least 75% of the professors here believe that racial differences in IQ are largely due to genetics. Hell, it may be 90%.

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  39. What is racism? Preference for one's own kind. ("Birds of a feather flock together.") Such preference may be a dire threat to one kind of society, the dysfunctional society of multiracialism - since if you bar the door to nature, it will come in through the window. But how is it an "unspeakable evil"?

    I think you know what I meant, but just for fun:

    "Racism," in the context of my post, refers to all the many things that modern secular humanism defines as racism, and it is specifically (in America) white-on-black. Whether this is logical or correct is not the point. It's taken as a matter of faith in modern society, as is the fact that it is an "unspeakable evil."

    Racism to a modern secular humanist is as heresy was to a medieval Christian. If you keep this in mind, you'll see why any argument about race differences in IQ must be couched in terms of "how can we prevent this from increasing racism" and other disclaimers, or the speaker will be shunned and metaphorically burned at the stake.

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  40. What is racism? Preference for one's own kind. ("Birds of a feather flock together.") Such preference may be a dire threat to one kind of society, the dysfunctional society of multiracialism - since if you bar the door to nature, it will come in through the window. But how is it an "unspeakable evil"?

    I think you know what I meant, but just for fun:

    "Racism," in the context of my post, refers to all the many things that modern secular humanism defines as racism, and it is specifically (in America) white-on-black. Whether this is logical or correct is not the point. It's taken as a matter of faith in modern society, as is the fact that it is an "unspeakable evil."

    Racism to a modern secular humanist is as heresy was to a medieval Christian. If you keep this in mind, you'll see why any argument about race differences in IQ must be couched in terms of "how can we prevent this from increasing racism" and other disclaimers, or the speaker will be shunned and metaphorically burned at the stake.

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  41. This statement is simply bizarre. Do you even read this site? Steve attacks Jewish neocons constantly and says next to nothing about "White Nationalists".

    When did white nationalists become a threat to this nation worth talking about?

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  42. "This is essentially true. I am a professor in a large public university, and I believe that at least 75% of the professors here believe that racial differences in IQ are largely due to genetics. Hell, it may be 90%."

    Interesting...by public U. do you mean community college? That would mean the professors would actually have regular contact with NAMs. Three years of student work: certain patterns must appear. In a way, one professor who's graded 3,000 papers split by races has accumulated better and richer psychometric HBD data than all the hard science available, no? It's just not quantifiable. What does it say you're estimating ~75%, on an issue clearly so insanely propagandized, in a job infamously associated with white liberalism? A: a WHOLE lot, no? Almost as much as the all the hard data around, when you really think about it.

    Something I haven't heard from the Sailer/Derb corner, is once "diversity" becomes "reality," "reality" might just effortlessly bury smug PC ideology...just through sheer gradual accumulation of observation. All the de facto segregation just allows BS to grow on both sides (segregated NAM: "oppression!", gated community 19 years old: "they're sweet, oppressed flowers!")

    Most of the P.C. heyday humanities professors I had ten years ago would have killed themselves before admitting the possibility of HBD, even to themselves, I feel secure saying. There were no NAMs studying the humanities, though, generally; and most of the professors likely grew up in all-white communities. When they get some "theory" in them, run for the hills.

    I attended urban catholic schools my entire life with population demographics just like America 2050. All that diversity, WTF am I doing posting on Sailer's blog? And why would instructors with years of actual NAM contact come to these abhorrent conclusions so uniformly? By God, see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil!

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  43. Anonymous said..."Sailer and Derbyshire regularly and explicitly 'distance themselves' from the 'racists;' the segregationationists; and the White - and Black nationalists (though never from the Jewish nationalists)" ... This statement is simply bizarre. Do you even read this site? Steve attacks Jewish neocons constantly and says next to nothing about "White Nationalists".

    Neocons are not the only Zionists(!), and see Steve's debate with Jared Taylor at Vdare for an example of his explicit distancing from WNists - now tell me where he says Israel hasn't "the right to exist as a Jewish state."

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  44. Anonymous said..."For as long as WNists and Sailer and Derbyshire are honest about race and Jewish ethnic activists believe that it suits Jewish interests to lie about race, Sailer and Debyshire shall be so smeared, and people like you will attack WNists while remaining silent on JNationalism." ... I hadn't mentioned the Jew thing, but since you bring it up, the anti-Jew sentiment, along with the anti-Asian sentiment common among commenters here bolsters my point: when you keep company with people who hold these biases, it detracts from your claims of objectivity. Clearly the Jew- and Asian-obsessed here aren't objective.

    ***
    Anon, the first biases any real anti-racist will attack or expose are those which allow one people the most fundamental advantages - its own territory and self-determination, while denying the same to other peoples.

    So I can tell you where you start: you must explain why all the 'acceptable' (because not anti-Jew) Western politicians support "Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state" while denying to their own peoples the advantage and security of equivalent ethnic-nationalisms?

    And then you need to explain why all the 'acceptable' (because objectively anti-Gentile?) Jewish public figures support ethnic-nationalism for Jews while denying it to non-Jews?

    Only then can you lecture the biased on their biases, and the racists on racism. You won't be talking to White Nationalists.

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  45. isaac:

    Any university with AA is going to have some level of performance gaps between blacks and whites. (They would even if blacks and whites had the same IQ, so long as admissions standards were lower for blacks.) Both teachers and students will notice the differences.

    I went to a good state university, and my CS and math and econ classes were 95% male, and had very few black students. (By contrast, white, East Asian, South Asian, Arab, Iranian, etc. students were common.) It was almost impossible not to notice that the student commons had a fair number of black students hanging around, but none of them ever seemed to show up in the classes I took after my sophomore year. And there were (I think) more women than men at the school, yet they were almost as rare as blacks in those classes.

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  46. I hate your guts so this is intended to insult you but it's also honest. By labeling VDARE as a "professional" publication you are trying to bracket it with Slate.com. Even though VDARE has plenty of professional writers, it is no way a professional publication in the sense of having enough readers to be considered an enterprise. It is merely an elevated blog. I have data to back up my claims.

    The Alexa tool bar is widely distributed. It also behind the scenes tracks Internet usage and publishes the results into a ranking. Slate.com has an Alexa ranking of 2,900. VDARE has a ranking of 92,000.

    http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/vdare.com
    http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/slate.com

    Slate.com likely has a readership that is 100 times greater. So no you don't write for a professional publication, you write for a superblog.

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