April 28, 2008

Rev. Wright on black-white cognitive differences

Here's an interesting excerpt from Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr.'s Sunday night Detroit NAACP speech:

Turn to your neighbor and say different does not mean deficient. It simply means different. In fact, Dr. Janice Hale was the first writer whom I read who used that phrase. Different does not mean deficient. Different is not synonymous with deficient. It was in Dr. Hale's first book, "Black Children their Roots, Culture and Learning Style." Is Dr. Hale here tonight? We owe her a debt of gratitude. Dr. Hale showed us that in comparing African-American children and European-American children in the field of education, we were comparing apples and rocks. [Ha-ha.]

And in so doing, we kept coming up with meaningless labels like EMH, educable mentally handicapped, TMH, trainable mentally handicapped, ADD, attention deficit disorder.

And we were coming up with more meaningless solutions like reading, writing and Ritalin. Dr. Hale's research led her to stop comparing African-American children with European-American children and she started comparing the pedagogical methodologies of African-American children to African children and European-American children to European children. And bingo, she discovered that the two different worlds have two different ways of learning. European and European-American children have a left brained cognitive object oriented learning style and the entire educational learning system in the United States of America. Back in the early '70s, when Dr. Hale did her research was based on left brained cognitive object oriented learning style. Let me help you with fifty cent words.

Left brain is logical and analytical. Object oriented means the student learns from an object. From the solitude of the cradle with objects being hung over his or her head to help them determine colors and shape to the solitude in a carol in a PhD program stuffed off somewhere in a corner in absolute quietness to absorb from the object. From a block to a book, an object. That is one way of learning, but it is only one way of learning.

African and African-American children have a different way of learning.

They are right brained, subject oriented in their learning style. Right brain that means creative and intuitive. Subject oriented means they learn from a subject, not an object. They learn from a person. Some of you are old enough, I see your hair color, to remember when the NAACP won that tremendous desegregation case back in 1954 and when the schools were desegregated. They were never integrated. When they were desegregated in Philadelphia, several of the white teachers in my school freaked out. Why? Because black kids wouldn't stay in their place. Over there behind the desk, black kids climbed up all on them.

Because they learn from a subject, not from an object. Tell me a story. They have a different way of learning. Those same children who have difficulty reading from an object and who are labeled EMH, DMH and ADD. Those children can say every word from every song on every hip hop radio station half of who's words the average adult here tonight cannot understand. Why? Because they come from a right-brained creative oral culture like the (greos) in Africa who can go for two or three days as oral repositories of a people's history and like the oral tradition which passed down the first five book in our Jewish bible, our Christian Bible, our Hebrew bible long before there was a written Hebrew script or alphabet. And repeat incredulously long passages like Psalm 119 using mnemonic devices using eight line stanzas. Each stanza starting with a different letter of the alphabet. That is a different way of learning. It's not deficient, it is just different. Somebody say different. I believe that a change is going to come because many of us are committed to changing how we see other people who are different.

Rev. Dr. Wright resents not being taken seriously as an intellectual, and I think he has a point. So, I'll respond at some length.

This is pretty similar to a lot of stuff that I wrote in the late 1990s: for example, "Great Black Hopes" in National Review, my "Nerdishness" essay, and my review of Arthur Jensen's The g Factor.

The problem, of course, is that while Rev. Wright's ex-parishoner Oprah Winfrey can make a billion dollars being America's best nonrational subjective interpersonal improvisational thinker, it's a limited market. If you are the 100,000th best accountant in America, you probably live on a golf course. But if you are the 100,000 best talk show host, you are unemployed.

In my NR review of economic historian David Landes's The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, I wrote:

Interestingly, many of the most striking racial differences can be thought of as resembling faint sex differences. For example, contrast the triumph of Japanese manufacturing with Japan's near-total failure in the brutally competitive global market for celebrities. (A recent survey revealed that Americans believe the most famous living Japanese person is Bruce Lee, a dead Chinese guy.) It's the mirror image of African-Americans' undistinguished technological achievements versus their outstanding performance in producing media personalities.

Why? Japanese talents extend far beyond chopstick-handling to a set of extremely masculine intellectual skills. Tests show they tend to excel at objective abilities like mathematics and mentally manipulating 3-d objects through "single-tasking" (focusing deeply upon a one impersonal logical problem). Blacks, on the other hand, are often better at typically feminine, more subjective cerebral skills like verbalization, emotional intuition and expression, sense of rhythm, sense of style, improvisation, situational awareness, and mental multi-tasking. Michael Jordan's brain, for instance, enables him to anticipate his opponent's every move while simultaneously demoralizing his foe with nonstop trash-talking. (Try it sometime. It's not easy.)

Next, think about physical and emotional/personality traits. Here the races are arrayed in the opposite order. Blacks tend to display more of typically male qualities like muscularity, aggressiveness, self-esteem, need for dominance, and impulsiveness. In contrast, the Japanese economy benefits from a male workforce endowed with more typically feminine virtues like small fingers and fine motor skills, cooperativeness, humility and anxiety, loyalty, long-term orientation, diligence, and carefulness. Combined with their first-rate masculine mental skills, these make Japanese companies powerhouses at exporting superbly engineered machinery.

Compared to Japanese organizations, black communities tend to be physically and psychologically masculine, sometimes to the point of disorderliness. Yet a relatively high percentage of individual black men achieve fame by possessing charismatically masculine looks and personalities, without the nerdishness that Dilbert-style male intellectual skills often induce."

The problem, of course, with the difference not deficiency approach is that there's no subjective way to keep the bridge from falling down. Thus, I suggested in NR in 1996:

The nice liberal white who beseeches black men, "I'm your friend, be like me," isn't always somebody they could be like and frequently isn't somebody they would be like, and thus can't give them a job they'll do themselves proud in. On the other hand, the not-so-nice white often holds the keys to what could be the right career. Another little-understood problem that will also continue to slow black male economic progress is that while Asian immigrants have flourished in part by their objective skills with numbers, blacks' advantages are typically in working with people. Thus, blacks are more susceptible than Asians both to residual bias and to debilitating fear of bias. I don't know of any quick solutions to either of these difficulties.

That said, what careers should black men consider more seriously in the next century? Since this type of question has been unthinkable under the reigning intellectual orthodoxy, my answers haven't yet been adequately assayed by public debate. But somebody has to stick his neck out first. So here goes:

Conservatives often advise blacks to start their own small businesses. However, African-Americans tend to face fierce competition from immigrants who can call upon more dependable relatives for advice, loans, and labor. Thus, for those African-Americans who are the most ambitious members of their families, integrated profit-seeking companies often provide better opportunities. But which jobs within those firms? For better educated black youths, the good news is that there are some fairly lucrative corporate careers that blacks have not yet widely discovered, but that especially reward persuasiveness and masculine charisma. There is always a price to be paid for breaking into new sectors, but these might hold long-run promise: selling big ticket contracts, stock-brokering, headhunting, and motivational speaking. In a word: Sales.

Unfortunately, the media climate saps the confidence blacks need. A salesguy must overflow with the assurance that the next account will love him more than the last one did. By automatically ascribing all gaps between whites and blacks to discrimination, the press drums up the menace of racism to the point of paranoia. This saps both motivation and that virile self-confidence that inspires customers to buy. Of course, some clients are anti-black, but over time blacks can mitigate that by discovering the less-biased industries and sales territories. Anyway, unfair as it is, the relevant question for a young black career-seeker is not whether he'd get richer if he was a white salesman. No, he needs to ask himself whether he'd ultimately end up generating more money and pride as a black salesman than as quota fodder in a make-work posting like Diversity Sensitivity Liaison.

And finally, here's how I summed it up in my review of Arthur Jensen's The g Factor:

Ironically, while diversity models are now popular in the abstract, it's nearly a hanging offense in the current mainstream media climate to actually mention particular talents in which minorities are superior to whites. (Today, "celebrating diversity" is automatically assumed to mean "insisting upon uniformity.") Gardner, for instance, coyly refuses to discuss the obvious racial and sexual disparities implicit in his seven factor model.

In the most publicized recent attempt to honestly flesh out a diversity model, the Reverend Reggie White of the Green Bay Packers asked the Wisconsin legislature, "Why did God make us so different?" He then listed what he saw as the different strengths of America's races, and concluded, "When you put all of that together … it forms a complete image of God." Despite being black, a football hero, an outstanding citizen, obviously well-intended, and in at least some of his examples undeniably right (e.g., Asians are gifted at invention, "they can turn a TV into a watch"), the Rev. White was pilloried by the press: "Stereotypes!"

Of course, none of the tut-tutters asked: Is a diversity model needed to describe specific black mental advantages overlooked by g? As a Reggieist (i.e., one who considers human biodiversity both a reality and a net blessing), I'm pleased to point out that IQ tests can't accurately measure at least one mental faculty in which blacks tend to outperform whites and Asians in real life. Despite lower mean IQ's, African-Americans are not a race of talentless dullards, but are instead the most charismatic contributors to 20th Century popular culture. What mental factor underlies the black revolutions in music, sport, oratory, dance, and slang? Subjective, improvisatory creativity.

For example, like a lot of NBA stars, Scottie Pippen's below-market contract, ill-timed trade demands, team-damaging pouts, and numerous child-support obligations imply that when given time to think, he often chooses unwisely. Yet, in the flow of the game, he's a Talleyrand at real-time decision-making. Leading a fast break, there are no permanent right answers. Even "Pass the ball to Michael Jordan" gets old fast as defenses habituate. Similarly, the NFL running back, the jazz soloist, the preacher, and the rapping DJ all must heed others' expectations and instantly respond with something a little unexpected. IQ tests -- by necessity objective and standardized -- can never measure this adequately.

Further, despite his data's inevitable shortcomings in this regard, Jensen does report that blacks possess particular mental weaknesses and strengths. Among individuals with equal g's, whites and Asians (like males) are typically stronger in those visual-spatial skills so useful in engineering and many skilled trades. In contrast, blacks (like females) often enjoy better short-term memories and thus can mentally juggle more balls in social situations. (This probably contributes to the black advantage in improvisation). Jensen's findings confirm my intuition (NR, 4/6/98) that while whites and Asians tend to be less masculine than blacks in physique and personality, they are typically more masculine than blacks in mental abilities. Put bluntly, whites and Asians tend to be nerdier than blacks. How many blacks would sincerely disagree?

Thus, the IQ disparity is less apocalyptic than is generally assumed. In fact, it's not all that unique -- diversity is among the oldest and most pervasive problems / opportunities inherent in the human condition. Because everybody is less innately talented than somebody else at something, the human race has worked out some pragmatic ways to deal with this.

Since Adam Smith and David Ricardo, economic theory has recommended specializing in whatever's your greatest comparative advantage. The peculiar problem facing blacks, though, is their specific talents are most valuable in winner-take-all professions like entertainment and sports. Still, the masculine bermishness common among blacks should also be helpful in more broadly remunerative occupations like sales.

Even if blacks had no special skills, just a deficiency of g, methods used by white and Mexican athletes to deal with black superiority in team sports might offer blacks practical hints in partially mitigating the g-gap. Specialization, for instance, is still valuable. (As illustrated by their most famous star Fernando Valenzuela, Mexicans don't tend to be endowed with ideal, Ken Griffey Jr.-style bodies for baseball. Yet, through an intense focus on the game they've built a critical mass of baseball expertise.) Avoid affirmative action programs that prevent critical masses from emerging. Look for fields where the inherent demands are less (e.g., golf rather than football) or competition is lighter (e.g., volleyball instead of basketball).

Work harder than your more gifted rivals. Master the fundamentals. Nail the easy stuff. (E.g., the only category in which whites are over-represented among NBA leaders is free-throw shooting). Don't improvise: listen to your coach's wisdom. (E.g., the decline of traditional sexual morality has not lead to a high pregnancy rate among coldly logical Dutch teens. For African-American teens, though, the rise of do-it-yourself morality in the 1960's was a disaster.) Challenge yourself, but realistically. (E.g., I need to get in shape, but an affirmative action program for Sedentary-Americans that sets-aside for me an opening in Evander Holyfield next heavyweight title bout might not be in my best interest. The same goes for racial quotas at elite colleges.)

Finally, the U.S. Army offers the bracing example of an institution that has elicited a high level of black achievement, in part by demanding that those with high-IQ's search out what Richard Epstein calls simple rules for a complex world. In dismal contrast, research universities fail blacks because the publish-or-perish system encourages the high-IQ to wallow in abstruseness. Denouncing Jensen proclaims one's faith in empirical egalitarianism, which serves as the perfect excuse for ignoring the irksome demands of moral egalitarianism. By declaring that everyone could Be Like Me (if only they were properly socialized), the clever can, with clear conscience, continue to surreptitiously wage class war against the clueless.

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

39 comments:

  1. Steve, a couple things about the Japanese. During the Edo Period, well no one would call someone like Miyamoto Musashi lacking in masculine qualities. Notorious Duelist, hired killer, author of a book on strategy (Book of Five Rings) still read today by most serious strategists he's the equivalent of John Wesley Hardin meets Machiavelli.

    Point being is that Japan underwent, fairly rapidly, a tremendous transition from Big Man fighting, with really no real abstract thinking skills, with most of the people illiterate, ill fed, and trampled down by over a thousand years of that stuff, to the nerds they are today. Other than a habit of not bathing much, Musashi would hardly be called a nerd.

    I would also take issue with Jazz not being analytical. Most of the greats could discuss in detail not just emotional expressionism but musical theory on why certain changes worked, and others would not: Thelonius Monk, Art Blakey, Charles Mingus, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins, and in particular John Coltrane. All the bop guys in particular experimented deliberately with harmonics, tonal scales, etc. To create a new jazz beyond just swing music. As an abstract, intellectual exercise combined with terrific fine motor skill honed by concert-pianist level practice, it's fairly staggering.

    What's tragic is that this tradition has been mostly passed on to whites, with the exception of the Marsalis family.

    IMHO there was a fairly abstract, intellectual tradition, in jazz, but Whites liked it so Blacks reacted in horror, mostly, and fled to other more "authentic" stuff where ... once again whites liked or imitated it. Vanilla Ice.

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  2. But if you are the 100,000 best talk show host, you are unemployed.

    -Steve Sailer


    Not so. You are a black preacher.

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  3. Well, it would probably be at least a small improvement if what Wright's saying here was made an explicit part of our reigning educational pieties.

    A lot of education school involves ways to adapt teaching to students' alleged learning styles ("tell stories"), to the point that it severely clashes with the political piety that our schools are failing because of low standards. What would have seemed utterly juvenile in the high school I was a student in may well be the best way to engage the students in the high school I now assist in. I'd have thought that was pretty vile bigotry of low expectations a few years ago, but now I think it's more likely Rev. Wright is right (And even with the theatrics and creative engagement and such, the kids _still_ move around and talk a lot.)

    The problem is that Wright and the racial-learning-differences crowd are only willing to go so far with it. It doesn't follow that adapting teaching to racial learning style is going to take us to Lake Wobegon.

    But as it stands now, education is squeezed from above (political world) by the assumption that Wright is being a racist nut here and the problem is low expectations, and squeezed from below (ed establishment/academe) by the idea that Wright is largely right and the problem is not connecting with students in the right cultural style.

    The latter view can't be expressed too far outside academe because it will be met with the same response that this part of Wright's speech has been getting from mainstream conservatives.

    But it can't get far working discreetly on its own in the bowels of the ed blob either, because it's still operating under the lefty assumption that racial differences will somehow lead to above-average equality, if only we accommodate them correctly.

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  4. Interesting points. However if its the cognitive elite that captures the lionshare of income gains, then there's something to Christopher Jencks argument (which I first read about in your VDare column this week) that equality of opportunity is an illusion if many have no chance, due to genetic or life lottery, of equality of success.

    Therefore, some level of redistribution may be morally justified (and perhaps, politically required). Beyond replacing FICA taxes with a more progressive income tax, Charles Murray's startling (and excellent) "In Our Hands" offers the best example of such a redistribution plan.

    Murray suggests eliminating all federal transfer payments and subsidies-- to individuals, corporations, states and local governments (the latter two can raise their own taxes if they want more services) and instead pay out the equivalent sum to each adult US citizen.

    The annual payment works out to be $10,000 per adult. We'd then all be mandated to use the first $3,000 to buy community rated health insurance.

    I may have some numbers wrong or may be confusing some of the details with Brian J. Finegan's similar and also excellent "The Federal Subsidy Beast". But the gist of Murray's plan is more liberal in its egalitarian outcome than anything Democrats has proposed since George McGovern and more conservative in its dismantling of big government since, well, ever.

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  5. "Christopher Jencks argument ...that equality of opportunity is an illusion"

    I remember reading a Rawls quote at Half-Sigma in which Rawls acknowledges a "natural lottery" of talent. He said that liberal freedom of opportunity was still insufficient precisely _because_ of this morally arbitrary distribution of talents.

    And GB Shaw said something like "Give me and your average man a pen and paper and ask us each to write a play. There's equal opportunity." Meaning that the ever modest Shaw and the average guy still weren't equal because of the natural playwriting lottery.

    Sadly, this more realistic starting premise seems to be unthinkable to modern liberalism.

    Also sadly, I've never gotten around to finding out what the above socialist gentlemen actually proposed next based on those clear-eyed perceptions. Incremental socialism, I guess, but that doesn't seem to work.

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  6. "Right brain that means creative and intuitive"

    Yeah, I'm so intrigued by the creativity in Africa that I'll be buying a one-way ticket to go and live in Zimbabwe where people think about whites like the Rev does. Man, I just have to find an airline willing to fly there.

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  7. I think Wright has an important point that black children are often labelled as deficient/retarded when they are perfectly normal black children. However that doesn't mean schools should be even more indisciplined/do your own thing-ish. Successful education systems in black majority countries are highly disciplined, strict and regimented.

    Similar arguments could be made re boys and girls - boys these days are often labelled as deficient, and even drugged, for being regular boys. But that doesn't mean they should be allowed to run wild, they need a disciplined learning environment. Conversely the modern US, UK etc education systems' lax approach is well suited to girls.

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  8. Steve, Your good will is commendable, but the problem is more difficult than that. Real life shows that Japanese are superb salesmen, while Africans are not. It is quite possible that some environments have pushed local peoples into acquiring capabilities and behaviors that are ineffective in other environments and become useless when the original environment (such as a savanna full of meaty herbivores, or an Arctic sea boiling with fish) disappear. These evolutionary cul-de-sac are very common. As things appear to me today, there is a chance that more and better paid Diversity Sensitivity Liaison positions will be created in the near future.

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  9. I've worked with some very talented blacks in sales, and I agree with this analysis. The problem is that black men also tend to be very proud, and sales is about supplication, and black men don't do beseeching. This is a legacy of not wanting to be Mr. Yes-Massa, so blacks often go in the opposite direction.

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  10. That was some good stuff from Rev. Wright. Yes, African schools are strict. What some black women say is those kids need strong physical discipline and physical work to break their rambunctiousness. White teachers (too many females) are not willing to do that.

    There is also the issue of wasting time teaching [sic] physically oriented kids to solve Algebra equations. Better to teach them physical skills they enjoy more, can excel at, and then use to find gainful employment. Hence self-respect, feeling of rootedness in the community, and prosperity.

    But stubborn stubborn white people don't want to believe that not everyone is like them. And other white people do not want to believe that white economies have not functioned in isolation from non-white labor for centuries.

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  11. I'm trying to think of Japanese celebrities, and the only one I can come up with is Akira Kurosawa, who has been dead for a while.

    Planetary Archon Mouse

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  12. "equality of opportunity is an illusion if many have no chance, due to genetic or life lottery, of equality of success."

    The problem is that we live in the real world. If one store has a ball of mud with sticks stuck in it and the next store has a ipod, which vendor are you going to spend your hard earned money with? I don't care a bit whether the people who made my car were poorer or richer - I want the best car for my money. I'm not dispensing social justice I am trading my effort and work for others effort and work.

    And using guns and handcuffs to steal a little bit of mine in the name of equality dosn't appeal to me nor work in reality. Whoever directs the taking skims off all they want because they have the power to take.

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  13. As a sales guy, I have to disagree. The talents that would make black men good at sales can be more than undermined by their macho posturing.

    One company I was with hired their first black salesman with great fanfare, only to dismiss him 3 months later. It seems that woman clients had a problem with his style, complaining that they were subjected to, alternately, being browbeaten then hit on! Those of us with an interest in his doing well tried to explain to him the necessity of maintaining a lower profile during the probationary period, but he never bought in to any "white" behaviors.

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  14. Re sales - I thought about this when Steve originally published his thoughts on black men should be salesmen. I think bjdoible is right, there is something about sales that Steve is not capturing, something that doesn't particularly fit with the typical black male personality. Sales is not just about confidence, it's about a sort of bonding that requires subtle gestures of supplication, stuff that Japanese, or white women for that matter, seem to do better than black men. Black men generally seem to do best in positions of recognised authority - police, military, Hollywood star, trial lawyer.
    A related point - Steve has noted elsewhere that black men pay the most _for_ cars; and that salesmen (of all races) consistently high-ball black customers; whereas white men pay least, with white & black women in-between. Pride certainly seems to be a factor, and salesmen can't be proud.

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  15. Well, there are a lot of things I agree with in Steve's analysis.

    But, I'm going to throw in a monkey wrench. Has anybody noticed that the Utah Jazz is fielding a team that often features four white players and one black, and that it's beating the Houston Rockets in the playoffs?

    The basketball game has been rigged in favor of blacks... a form of affirmative action. I'm not saying this is bad. Clearly, the show biz aspect of basketball is well served by the one man game preferred by blacks. It just doesn't win ball games. White men are slowly coming back in basketball at all levels as some coaches display enough cleverness and sense to field a predominantly white team. White players dominate the international game. Sports commentators religiously avoided noting that, during the recent NCAA tournament, several all white teams advanced deep into the tournament.

    The blues and jazz analogy is likewise suspect. Blues and jazz players in the contemporary world are overwhelmingly white. The business focuses on blacks because that's what a white audience wants. Thus, if you go to blues clubs in Chicago, you'll discover an overwhelming preponderance of white musicians playing in bands fronted by a black man.

    The audience has a romantic preference for a black man in this spot. The origins of this are not very pretty. Blues started as "race" music in the early 20th century. The music was sold as an expression of savagery. In short, the early blues singers were openly "n**gger-ing" it up for a white audience.

    So, the dominance of blacks in sports and music doesn't seem to me to be based on some sort of natural, unchangeable superiority. For instance, for the past 35 years, the dominant blues acts of the world have been Eric Clapton and Hot Tuna... white musicians all.

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  16. testing99 is wrong if he thinks Japan's feudal society was analogous to the typical chaotic African "Big Man" societies but simply and quickly evolved out of it. It’s hard to think of a society in human history that was as organized, complex and ritualized as feudal Japan by both written and unwritten rules of conduct. These group cultural habits translated very well in the modern world unlike African tribal Big Man societies.

    Citing Miyamoto Musashi as typical of feudal Japan is like using Donald Trump as illustrative of how large corporate bureaucracies work. They are both colorful exceptions to the rule of extremely complex, formalized and disciplined worlds. Even hostile revolts and takeovers have to follow such rules to be successful and self-sustaining. Wandering masterless swordsmen (Ronin) outside the established order were reviled in feudal Japan. I suspect Musashi, although not a Ronin, was similarly distrusted as a unpredictable destabilizing outsider wherever he went.

    Corporate drones love Musashi in the same way they love to belt out Sinatra's "My Way" over Karaoke - an idealized and unrealistic self-perception that they somehow rise above the complex social machinery and matter on an individual level. It's just not the reality.

    ks

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  17. The Will Smith movie The Pursuit of Happyness was about a black man who became a successful stockbroker, ie a used stock salesman. Unfortunately, the movie was not about Will Smith using his charm to get ahead in a white world, but about Will Smith trying to find day care for his kid. The idea being that blacks would get ahead if they just had the chance (all of the whites are encouraging and benevolent), with everything after the job offer being uninteresting. Why would/did whites entrust their money with a black man? That's an interesting question.

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  18. Steve says black males might excell as salesmen.I'm doubtful of that. 1st,what would he sell? If something that is black-oriented,like hip-hop "artists",maybe his knowledge would be useful--but most things sold require a lot of techincal knowledge about the product and how to use it.They also require a willingness to "service",that is take care of the client and handle his problems.You have to be competent,available and dependable. Salesmen also have to deal with a lot of frustration,handling lots of rejection,and dealing w/cold-blooded businessmen.When BM's face frustration,they get angry, agitated & threatening. Black males as great salesman?? Nope!

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  19. Reverend Wright Advocates Separate but Equal at NAACP Dinner to Thunderous Applause – “Different is NOT Deficient”

    http://lawconinsurance.blogspot.com/2008/04/reverend-wright-advocates-separate-but.html

    “A statute which implies merely a legal distinction between the white and colored races-a distinction which is founded in the color of the two races, and which must always exist so long as white men are distinguished from the other race by color-has no tendency to destroy the legal equality of the two races” the Plessy v. Ferguson majority opinion enshired in law that different is not deffient.

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  20. bjdoible said...
    "
    ... and sales is about supplication, and black men don't do beseeching. This is a legacy of not wanting to be Mr. Yes-Massa, so blacks often go in the opposite direction."

    Well, maybe, but more likely its a reflection of higher testosterone levels that compel dominate behavior combined with lower IQ that prevents foreseeing future rewards if the need for dominance can be modulated.

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  21. But if you are the 100,000 best talk show host, you are unemployed.

    -Steve Sailer



    Steve's analysis is also good for soldiers quality. If every one want to be Rambos or alpha leaders, you will have a mob instead of disciplined army.

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  22. Blacks dominate speed chess in NYC. So right there you see a preference for abstract thinking, particularly spatial thinking.

    But they never go on to professional chess tournaments. Why?

    Perhaps because "it's a white thing" and thought to be nerdy. I.E. women-repelling, or you can't make money at it.

    Just like suburban white guys dominate swimming because you have to spend a small fortune training and competing to hope to get a lottery ticket by winning an Olympic medal. Or snowboarding, stuff like that.

    Don't underestimate the role of culture as part of the environment.

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  23. "Has anybody noticed that the Utah Jazz is fielding a team that often features four white players and one black, and that it's beating the Houston Rockets in the playoffs?"

    Interesting, but not new. 1985-86 Boston Celtics.

    "Darryl Dawkins, the former NBA center who called himself "Chocolate Thunder," has become an insightful minor league coach. "Black basketball is much more individualistic," he told Charlie Rosen of FoxSports. "With so many other opportunities closed to young black kids, … if somebody makes you look bad with a shake-and-bake move, then you've got to come right back at him with something better, something more stylish… It's all about honor, pride, and establishing yourself as a man."

    Dawkins, whose showboating Philadelphia 76ers lost to Bill Walton's Portland Trailblazers in an epic 1977 NBA Finals confrontation between the black and white games, now says, "The black game by itself is too chaotic and much too selfish… White culture places more of a premium on winning, and less on self-indulgent preening and chest-beating."

    Arguing that the best teams combine both styles, Dawkins pointed out, "In basketball and in civilian life, freedom without structure winds up being chaotic and destructive."

    With luck, this Olympic embarrassment will serve as a wake-up call to African-American males that gangsta rap attitudes are needlessly undermining not just black basketball, but also the race as a whole."

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  24. testing99 said...
    Blacks dominate speed chess in NYC. So right there you see a preference for abstract thinking, particularly spatial thinking.


    Funny you mention that. Just the other night I watched a black guy beating every opponent with only one minute of time. He'd give them five.

    I'm not particularly good at speed chess, but if I take my time I can think several moves ahead and do very well. Perhaps black brains are better at getting in "the zone", whether in sports, music or other pursuits.

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  25. As you have mentioned in other contexts, our elite culture has built up intelligence as the primary measure of a person's moral worth, and highly g-loaded occupations as possessing more status than others.

    I'm not precisely sure how they've gotten away with this. But the fact is, in the minds of most people, being a doctor or lawyer carries more cachet than being a sales rep, even if the sales rep makes more money.

    It follows that the under-representation of blacks in high-g professions is an unequal distribution of status, independent of wealth and income. And the left will never make peace with it.

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  26. Eh, I am not so sure about the super-smart at the highest positions of economic power. I'd say the economic/political elite is dominated by the "pretty smart" and "pretty damned smart." Super smart people are too satisfied by thoughts and ideas and too conditioned by childhood/teen social adjustment issues to be overly ambitious and status-seeking.

    The history of the Western mind (science, philosophy, religion, literature) is full of people of only modest material success with lots of poorhouse candidates in the mix. Ditto for any other culture.

    Super smart goes along too much with "Super Wierd." Being super smart means seeing through the mire of stupidity that most people use to survive, even in high up professions. And seeing through the stupidity of everyday thinking goes hand in hand with distancing oneself from the crowd. That includes distancing oneself from "elite" crowds.

    Steven Hawking made himself a scandalous laughingstock among physicists by suggesting that information can actually be lost in Black Holes. After hearing that, Kip Thorn supposedly drove up the PCH frenetically figuring out how that "must be wrong." Scientists don't have knee jerk quasi-religious beliefs? Sure, they don't. Ahem. My hunch? Hawkings was probably right, even though he published some kind of retraction. Yes, yes, folks: the earth is flat, yes indeed.

    Back to thread topic. A sure fire way to drive customers out of a retail establishment is to start playing rap or hip hop. For anyone in retail, try it some time. Nobody says anything, but watch people slip out the front door. It makes people uncomfortable.

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  27. IMHO there was a fairly abstract, intellectual tradition, in jazz, but Whites liked it so Blacks reacted in horror, mostly, and fled to other more "authentic" stuff where ... once again whites liked or imitated it. "
    Jazz developed in New Orleans from mainly mulatto musicians who had been trained in classical music. After the civil war and the decline of the mulatto class as a separate culture, the mulattos adapted their classical music. This is not new information. We've known it a while. We now know that "spirituals" do not come from Africa but are adaptations of mainly Scotch-Irish tunes, Amazing Grace being a prime example. Both music and lyrics are white composed.
    I am not an expert in jazz, and I'm sure there's a lot that happened after the initial beginnings, but it's no coincidence that it's most popular in Europe, especially eastern Europe, home of classical music.

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  28. "Blacks dominate speed chess in NYC. So right there you see a preference for abstract thinking, particularly spatial thinking."

    I'm sorry, but I just can't even imagine black chess champions playing against the champions I have seen at work, in any but minute numbers. Not when blacks are last in virtually every g loaded criteria going. We've already been through the 'different kinds of intelligence' conunundrum and over and over find that high achievers in every category but sports and drumming have higher than average IQs. High IQ doesn't make you achieve, but to achieve, you have to have it.
    But if you're so sure that chess has the possibility of replacing basketball as a forum for black prowess, you need to get more proactive.
    You're just doing that same old argument here: blacks really can do just as well as whites, they just don't want to. When actually if they try to compete, they will mostly fail. Through no real fault of their own. So it's more soothing to the ego to say that anything that needs a brain is "white" and therefore not their thing.
    If they really felt that way, they wouldn't be driving cars, playing chess or musical instruments or video games, using jacuzzis or aid conditioning. Well, you get the idea.
    Black chess champions? Bring 'em on. Like I said, if they're that worried about acting white, why are they playing at all?

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  29. "Blacks dominate speed chess in NYC....

    But they never go on to professional chess tournaments."

    If that's the case, then how do we know they dominate? I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just curious.

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  30. What happens when you mix Oriental and Black traits? Hey Steve, can you do a story or at least find some more info on this group: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Jamaican

    They are small yet massively overrepresented in entertainment esp. in the looks dependent dept. Plus one of them is a self-made billionaire. Is Chinese and Jamaican a magical combination?

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  31. re:" poor richard said...
    Eh, I am not so sure about the super-smart at the highest positions of economic power. I'd say the economic/political elite is dominated by the "pretty smart" and "pretty damned smart." Super smart people are too satisfied by thoughts and ideas and too conditioned by childhood/teen social adjustment issues to be overly ambitious and status-seeking."

    Good insight.

    Anecdote on topic. While I was in college among the students in my class were two that had gone to the same Honor High School. A Test to get in type high School and all male. I don't think they exist anymore. One was from the A class and the other the B class. The classes were from A to H. IQ screening, Grade School recommendation and the entrance interview determined what class one was placed.

    Both did well enough in college and both got into medical school. Both took the Graduate Record Exams. The one from the A class received his scores which placed him in the 96 percentile of students taking the exam. The one from the B class was in the 99 percentile. He had an 800 verbal, 800 math, and a 960 out of 970 in his Field exam ( chemistry ) he went to an Ivy League Medical School became an ophthalmic surgeon, married a ballerina and was not interested in Academic Medicine even though he won research projects while in his training and was urged to accept an academic position.

    The A class student did go to a lesser by far medical school, a state school. Became a cardiologist and eventually became a full professor at a top rank medical school and published more than 200 papers.

    The High School decision on where to place the students was correct. The A class one was really smart and he did do quite well.

    The B class student had a Grade School IQ test score of 163. He never studied, never studied. He constantly read novels, played sports and chased girls. He was a fraternity guy. He was frightenly smart. He entertained himself.

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  32. For instance, for the past 35 years, the dominant blues acts of the world have been Eric Clapton and Hot Tuna...

    Is that really true?

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  33. 4/29/2008

    Not that I have anything against the theory, or your anecdote in support, but the latter also supports what I'm always trying to tell IQ-fetishists; yes, IQ's very important, but it's not the sum of where personality meets success, not by a long shot.

    Seems likely to me that drive will prove roughly as determined by genes as IQ, and I think drive is more important than smarts.

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  34. "Has anybody noticed that the Utah Jazz is fielding a team that often features four white players and one black,"

    Their two best players, Boozer and Williams, are black, as is a third starter Ronnie Brewer. Their white players are somewhere between 'average' and 'pretty good'.

    "The basketball game has been rigged in favor of blacks... a form of affirmative action"

    What about the 'science' and 'medicine' games?

    "Clearly, the show biz aspect of basketball is well served by the one man game preferred by blacks. It just doesn't win ball games."

    The NCAA championship between Memphis and Kansas featured 10 black starters. Last year's Florida-Ohio State matchup featured 9.

    Last year's NBA champs had three black starters, The Miami Heat the previous year had 5 as did the Detroit Pistons the year before that. The whitest team in the NBA, the Memphis Grizzlies (4 white starters) had the worst record in the league and the last two league MVP's Nowitzki and Nash are tossed out of the playoffs in the first round once again.

    "White players dominate the international game."

    No, actually black players who weren't good enough to make it in the NBA do.

    http://www.euroleague.net/main/statistics/individual/average?ctl02_ctl00_ddlTopics=3

    "during the recent NCAA tournament, several all white teams advanced deep into the tournament."

    Actually there were only two all-white teams in the field Drake and BYU and they were both gone in the first round.

    "Blues and jazz players in the contemporary world are overwhelmingly white."

    You are right! and the genre doesn't sell albums anymore.

    " for the past 35 years, the dominant blues acts of the world have been...Hot Tuna..."

    I wouldn't say I was a jazz aficionado but..who?

    "But they never go on to professional chess tournaments. Why?"

    Aaah grasshopper, "never" is a very strong word.

    http://www.goddesschess.com/chesstories/blackgm.html

    "Interesting, but not new. 1985-86 Boston Celtics."

    That team had two black starters and a black head coach.


    http://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/BOS/1986.html

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  35. "Last year's NBA champs had three black starters, The Miami Heat the previous year had 5...."

    Jason Williams was (and is) white. Try again.

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  36. OOOOOp...You've got me. I stand corrected, the Miami Heat championship starting lineup was only 80% black. It's just that White Chocolate played so black I forgot about him.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twcgKPIRcio

    Hey, I'm human I've been wrong before. This is at least the third time.

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  37. Truth: Their two best players, Boozer and Williams, are black, as is a third starter Ronnie Brewer.

    Deron Williams's mother, Denise Smith, is white [and, predictably enough, she was ambandoned by Derons' father, Byron Williams, when Deron was an infant].

    And if Carlos Boozer doesn't have a substantial amount of white blood in him, then I'm a monkey's uncle.

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  38. (lol) What is the "substantial amount of white blood in him" thing I keep hearing about?

    I kind of like it actually, I think you guys should use it in your daughter's dating lives:

    "KATHERINE, YOUR'E DATING A N-?!?!?!?!?!?"

    "Relax dad, he's got a substantial amount of white in him...and predictably enough, his white mother was abandoned by her black husband."

    I love this board

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  39. "over time blacks can mitigate that by discovering the less-biased industries and sales territories."

    Just how many shucking-and-jiving (oops, sorry -- "intuitively socially fluid" -- will that cover it?) salesmen do you think this country needs?! And if these (how many millions? of) black salesman have no particular follow-up skills and no "innate" diligence in making sure the details of the contract are correct -- are they going to get any second sales from anyone with experience?! (And CLEARLY: judging from the lying and lying and rioting, the TRUTH of a matter doesn't seem to matter! Why would I expect *integrity* from a black salesman, when it seem the vast majority of his race do NOT care about truth?! "Hands up don't shoot"?! -- what crap!)

    Warm and hopeful words: that cannot solve the problem.

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