The prestigious philosophy of science journal Biology and Philosophy has published an attack on the Race Does Not Exist conventional wisdom:
Race: a social destruction of a biological concept
Neven Sesardic
Received: 11 August 2009 / Accepted: 22 December 2009
Abstract: It is nowadays a dominant opinion in a number of disciplines (anthropology, genetics, psychology, philosophy of science) that the taxonomy of human races does not make much biological sense. My aim is to challenge the arguments that are usually thought to invalidate the biological concept of race. I will try to show that the way ‘‘race’’ was defined by biologists several decades ago (by Dobzhansky and others) is in no way discredited by conceptual criticisms that are now fashionable and widely regarded as cogent. These criticisms often arbitrarily burden the biological category of race with some implausible connotations, which then opens the path for a quick eliminative move. However, when properly understood, the biological notion of race proves remarkably resistant to these deconstructive attempts. Moreover, by analyzing statements of some leading contemporary scholars who support social constructivism about race, I hope to demonstrate that their eliminativist views are actually in conflict with what the best contemporary science tells us about human genetic variation.
Those who subscribe to the opinion that there are no human races are obviously ignorant of modern biology.
Ernst Mayr, 2002
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
Much of the anti-race thinking of the past ten years boils down to the following logic: because there are people of medium height, the concepts of tall and sort cannot exist.
ReplyDeleteWorth it for the quote from Mayr alone.
ReplyDeleteLOL. Next I suppose these pointy head Platos will argue that gender and sex are not merely social constructs.
ReplyDeleteIt's a good article, but for someone who has been following the HBD-sphere for many years, there's nothing new in it. In fact, just about all the arguments Sesardic makes have been made many times by various HBD bloggers and commenters. But hopefully the article makes a few poorly informed philosophers reconsider their views on the issue.
ReplyDeleteSesardic has very carefully and clearly explored this issue. See also his earlier work on heritability.
ReplyDeleteThat's only the outer layer of the onion.
ReplyDeleteThen there is the "Of course biological race exists! I never would deny such an obvious fact! Its just that biological race doesn't matter except for the social significance attached to it!" layer.
How many layers are there to the race denial onion?
Walking around with one's eyes open, or just reading the news, is also a vindication of the concept of race. Footnote-free, but valid. (And peer-reviewed, to boot.)
ReplyDeleteInterestingly, if you look at Neven Sesardic's recent publications you'll see he has an interest in race and IQ. This is hardly a surprise though. Given that the primary underlying motivation for denying the existence of race is to make it impossible by definition for one race to be more intelligent than another, I suspect that anyone who goes out of his way to challenge the no-such-thing-as-race meme probably has to have such an interest.
ReplyDeleteHe's clearly a legitimate academic though, which is good, and he has an interesting list of publications. I'd particularly be interested in reading the one about gay marriage, but unfortunately it's in Croatian!
Gee, you mean I can trust what I see with my own eyes once again? After all these years of listening to the "experts" I can now come back full circle to what I thought I knew way back when I was a mere youth. Race as a social construct has been the Lysenkoism of the USA.
ReplyDeleteFor sure the dam is beginning give way under the pressure of science and common sense. It's happening.
ReplyDeleteMy moron alert goes on overdrive as soon as someone mentions they don't believe that there are different races. Its amazing people cannot see what is right in front of them.
ReplyDeleteI took a quick look at the paper. My first blush reaction is that it is generally quite useful.
ReplyDeleteOne thing about the argument of the paper is how easy it is in this domain to make some quite well known names look like utter fools.
Do the likes of Richard Lewontin, Ned Block, Philip Kitcher, Richard Heck, Ian Hacking, Clark Glymour, etc., really imagine that their absurd pronouncements and arguments won't in the fullness of time catch up with them?
This comment isn't off topic because it occurred to me while I read the cited article.
ReplyDeleteYou can breed a lion and a tiger, but which is the father and which is the mother matters. If the male is a lion you get a Liger. If the male is a tiger you get a Tiglon.
The Liger is much bigger than a Tiglon. Indeed it's bigger than either of it's parent species. Ligers easily reach 900 lbs when young and healthy or 1200 lbs when old and fat. Tiglons are merely the size of normal Lions and Tigers.
So I began to wonder if any of the subspecies crosses between blacks and whites showed a similar asymmetry. Most mixed couples, in America at least, have a black man and a white woman, but there should be enough while male/black female pairings to do some statistics.
Are the progeny of mixed couples different depending on the race of the father?
Science is slowly vindicating the "big three":
ReplyDelete* Race
* Human biological diversity
* Biological determinism
It's unpopular, however, because everyone wants to believe they can become superman just by wanting to.
I don't know anything about the biological concept of race, but I know a black guy when I see one.
ReplyDeletewell, it is technically true that there is no such thing as race. the various human groups got that way because they all accumulated a particular set of shared mutations. so from that strict perspective, the modern claim is true. we're all only mutations apart, not a species apart.
ReplyDeletefor all practical purposes though, those shared collection of mutations that create seperate human groups, are a real thing with real effects.
almost all humans also behave as if the groups are real, so even if the shared group mutations were very trivial in effect instead of being fairly prominent in effect, human behavior would still reflect on the groups being "real enough". for instance, humans still on average prefer to date other humans from their own group. they do this automatically, as if it were built-in to their brains. this is something they would not do if the modern ideas about race were accurate. humans should be dating interracially almost at random if the modern ideas were true about differences between human groups not being real or important.
But we have to be cautious and intelligent on the Right. There never would have been a taboo on race if it weren't for the dumb dumb crazy crazy ideas of the Nazis which led to the death of millions.
ReplyDeleteThere are correct views on the reality of race, wrong views on the reality of race. Nazi nonsense like "the 'Aryan' is the greatest thinker and athlete" was stupid racism, not smart and true racism.
"I don't know anything about the biological concept of race, but I know a black guy when I see one."
ReplyDeleteBlacks say the same about white folks on the dance floor.
"My moron alert goes on overdrive as soon as someone mentions they don't believe that there are different races. Its amazing people cannot see what is right in front of them."
ReplyDeleteIt's because people confuse 'race' with 'species', and indeed liberal thinkers intentionally mix up the two as if to suggest that the evil Right is claiming that the difference among races are akin to differences between humans and horses. It's silly.
Races are like breeds of dogs.
Btw, are African and Asian elephants or buffalos different breeds or different species?
Are dogs and wolves considered different breeds or species? I heard that the offspring of a dog and wolf is fertile. Doesn't that mean they are different breeds?
>well, it is technically true that there is no such thing as race. the various human groups got that way because they all accumulated a particular set of shared mutations. so from that strict perspective, the modern claim is true. we're all only mutations apart, not a species apart.<
ReplyDeleteStraw man. Who ever conflated race and species?
Race exists technically and every other way, and always did.
The Liger is much bigger than a Tiglon. Indeed it's bigger than either of it's parent species. Ligers easily reach 900 lbs when young and healthy or 1200 lbs when old and fat. Tiglons are merely the size of normal Lions and Tigers.
ReplyDeleteWow, that is really interesting.
And your thoughts about differing gene expression depending on the sex and race of the parents are plausible too.
More than appearance though, I wonder how behavior could be measured.
Vindication of race. Just compare Haiti with Dominican Republic. Isn't DR better off because it's somewhat less black?
ReplyDeleteApparently the Chinese government stopped a "Mr Gay Chinese" pageant before it happened.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/15/mr-gay-china-police-force_n_424498.html
That should be our plan to tame red hot China! Make them lazy and decadent just like us, and they won't want to take over the world!
>Just compare Haiti with Dominican Republic. Isn't DR better off because it's somewhat less black?<
ReplyDeleteHard to compare the 1946 8.0 magnitude quake in DR with the recent 7.0 quake in H. But economically, we can measure the two nations in a IQ-and-Wealth-of-Nations way. Look 'em up on Wikipedia and compare per capita income and racial composition. US interventions occurred in both DR and H, hard to gauge any difference in effect of those.
One angle no one wants to talk about is how overseas aid may have hurt Haiti in this recent earthquake. Much of the H's government's income is aid income. Public projects build modern buildings in every direction there; Port-au-Prince is a simulacrum of a thriving modern capitalist capitol. But, they can't maintain or rebuild without aid. So when a quake hits, down comes all that concrete of office buildings, on the heads of people who would have been safer, better off, living in more-easily-rebuilt or restored grass huts. The only problem they would face then is food and water lack; but since 95% of pop is rural farmers, they should be in good condition to rectify that - unless they're made to similate urban Westerners, in a modern economy. They would be better off, after this disaster is over, to deindustrialize and return to safer conditions, ones they can handle. This would reduce IMO the mass starvation, desperation, looting, etc. that now attend their natural disasters - and get rid of the cry for and needs of loads and loads of Western aid.
Sorry, "needs of" s/b "need of."
ReplyDeleteThere is no "race". But "population substructure" seems to do the same job.
ReplyDeleteWithout races, there can be no species. Development of new species must be preceded by development of new races.
ReplyDeleteFor example, horses and donkeys(domesticated version of the 'African Wild Ass'; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donkey) are different species with a common ancestor. Let call this common ancestor 'horkeys'. It's not like the horkeys split overnight into two species--the horses and donkeys. Indeed, such is IMPOSSIBLE. First, the horkeys had to split into two races of itself. One race of horkeys(call it 'race A') was on the path of becoming horses and the other race of horkeys(call it 'race B') was on the path to becoming the African Wild Ass--eventually to be domesticated into the donkey.
In other words, evolution--so dear to liberals--cannot happen without the development of new races. Taking race out of the equation of evolution is like taking puberty out of human development.
Horkeys could not have split overnight into two species(but we have to assume this must have been so if we deny the reality of race). For a long long time, Race A horkeys and Race B horkeys, though genetically slowly diverging from one another, remained of the same species. But, after many many many yrs of environmental variations and genetic mutations in isolation from one another, there developed two separate species of horkeys. One became the Horse, the other became the African Wild Ass.
Indeed, it's possible that if the human races remain isolated from each other for a million yrs, they too would eventually develop into separate species. We've all been separated by 80,000 yrs at the most.
But, there were probably earlier forms of hominids who did develop into separate species from one another due to 100,000s of yrs of separation and genetic isolation/mutation.
Another correction: only about 2/3 of H's pop are rural farmers.
ReplyDeleteImagine putting up a bunch of primitive farmers in a high-rise urban building and leaving them on their own to live there. They may get by, poorly. But when a hurricane blows through, or a quake comes, can they restore the building largely on their own resources? No, they must seek massive assistance. And they get buried under rubble. Yet, if they had stayed on the farm, they could recover proudly without avoidable suffering and without massive need for outside aid - and the cynicism and "compassion fatigue" this often provokes. I wish Clooney's fundraiser well, but in a recession he'll need more luck than he would have needed in, say, 1999.
Anonymous asks ...
ReplyDeleteAre dogs and wolves considered different breeds or species? I heard that the offspring of a dog and wolf is fertile. Doesn't that mean they are different breeds?
Perhaps a dog breed is a partly inbred domesticated form of the wolf's extended biological family analogous to Mr Sailer's description of a human racial group as a partly inbred human extended biological family.
Today there is probably no clearer illustration to the general public of the power of genetic selection over environmental determinism than the BBC 2 science and nature documentary The Secret Life of the Dog .
The BBC Horizon's documentary was made as celebration of the sequencing of the canine genome and is enlightening while being entertaining.
The most entertaining chapter is about Betsy, a border collie, and her ability to immediately recognize and retrieve any object from a similar object or paper drawing makes her an Einstein among dogs. The most salient and informative chapters are Nature vs Nurture parts 1 and 2 illustrate while giving a wolf cub a warm, loving, home environment (even sleeping with it) does not remove it's intrinsic selfishness and destructiveness, yet the careful manipulation over generations of silver foxes bloodlines will make a fox a tame and loving pet.
Can we soon expect a hastily constructed political attack entitled, 'The Mismeasure of Max' on the BBC documentary's producers and admirers?
David and anonymous,
ReplyDeleteDon't go there, LOL! Podhoretz and a few other of Steve's enemies are probably prowling around here as a result of Haiti...
Bio-equality fills the dumb masses with the soma of False Hope, thus rendering them easier to control by the manipulative elites made up of people who know very well that they are smarter(and look for smart partners).
ReplyDelete"Imagine putting up a bunch of primitive farmers in a high-rise urban building and leaving them on their own to live there. They may get by, poorly. But when a hurricane blows through, or a quake comes, can they restore the building largely on their own resources? No, they must seek massive assistance. And they get buried under rubble. Yet, if they had stayed on the farm, they could recover proudly without avoidable suffering and without massive need for outside aid..."
ReplyDeleteI dunno. Blacks took over white farms, not white highrises in Zimbabwe. For some reason, crops stopped growing.
"Are dogs and wolves considered different breeds or species? I heard that the offspring of a dog and wolf is fertile. Doesn't that mean they are different breeds?"
ReplyDeleteIt is simply untrue that only two members of the same species can produce fertile offspring. A dog, a wolf, and a coyote are usually classified as different species, but a cross between any two of the three produces fertile offspring.
"there is less mtDNA difference between dogs, wolves, and coyotes, than there is between ethnic groups of human beings" http://www.gnxp.com/MT2/archives/004046.html
Why be "careful?"
ReplyDeleteHaiti is a perfect example of a dependent, and failed people. In Mexico City's earthquake, even Mexicans, themselves in a failed and failing state, self-organized and started pulling people from the rubble, burying the dead, caring for the wounded, improvising sanitation and clean water. The Government being largely absent.
The same probably would be the case in Mauritania, or Niger.
Instead, JUST LIKE KATRINA, the populace sits around and waits for "the authorities" to do everything.
Lesson: NO GOVERNMENT is capable of responding immediately to a crisis, even in a place like Japan, where during the Kobe Quake aftermath the government dithered and did nothing for three days, at which point the Japanese people stopped waiting for direction and self-organized. [Note: for all their dysfunction, including 7K drug cartel murders a year, Mexicans did not wait at all -- they never expected the government to help them.]
The Crotch Bomber was not stopped by the government, but by ordinary people. No government can put police and emergency people everywhere, and crisis do happen. Even a poor nation can self-organize.
The US Military can and should do what it can to provide immediate rescue, Israel and a few other nations are also providing Search and Rescue. This helps because it can save lives now.
But long term, Haitians need to be told by the WORLD that the disaster was far worse than it needed to be because they were dependent, failed, incapable of acting on their own, and that the World will not bail them out anymore.
Long term aid is terrible, it will merely line the pockets of thieves and gangsters. Not help average people which requires a MASSIVE change in Haitian culture and self-organizing.
Even rural Turkey, itself largely illiterate, poor, and pathetic, was capable of self-organizing after a devastating earthquake. There's always going to be earthquakes. There will always be bad building codes and corruption in construction. Taiwan offers a good example. But death tolls can be much lower even in a poor nation if people self-organize to provide sanitation, water, food, etc.
We do Haitians no favors and only keep them in dependent bondage if we don't constantly point out their failures and challenge them to say, meet Indonesian or Turkish or Mexican or even neighboring Dominican standards. Haiti will never be Switzerland (and Haitians surely would not want to become Swiss). But they don't have to be what they ARE.
So what Race is Tiger again?
ReplyDeleteWhile reading the paper, "Race: a social destruction of a biological concept", it occurred to me that part of the controversy about race results from our failure to appreciate the innate human ability to recognize visual patterns.
ReplyDeleteThis talent transcends the ability to identify different human populations. Facial recognition is something that is very easy for any human toddler to accomplish, but which is only now becoming reliable for artificial intelligence using sophisticated computers and software.
In medicine we are using computers to identify abnormalities in mammograms, but it has been a struggle to teach a computer how to identify an abnormality as reliably as a human radiologist. In astronomy we have recognized for some time now that human beings are much more reliable at discriminating between different types of star clusters than any computerized algorithm. This is the rationale for the Galaxy Zoo project. Ordinary people (NOT astronomers) are being recruited to classify galaxies that have been giving the astronomers' computers problems.
Computers are actually pretty good at sorting out or identifying objects of interest, but it is very hard to take the human out of the loop entirely.
In other words, we are a lot better at the intuitive process of visual discrimination than we are at defining exactly how we are doing it.
Anthropologists with a politically correct bias are able to use this to discredit commonsense reality; that there is such a thing as race. Not only that, people are very good at recognizing the visual differences which divide the human population into these racial subgroups. Race IS a real, scientifically valid concept.
And (despite what his PC anthropologists might think) the emperor is STILL naked.
Ah, but do you think the reality will ever affect public policy?
ReplyDeleteDid you see that MIT has been told it hasn't been hiring enough blacks?
Do the likes of Richard Lewontin, Ned Block, Philip Kitcher, Richard Heck, Ian Hacking, Clark Glymour, etc., really imagine that their absurd pronouncements and arguments won't in the fullness of time catch up with them?
ReplyDeleteTo his credit, in 2006 Hacking published an article where he rejects many of his old social constructionist views about race, and moves towards race realism to an extent. What changed his mind seems to have been reading Edwards' Lewontin's Fallacy article, and some genetic clustering studies by Risch et al. Few constructionists are that honest intellectually (Lewontin certainly isn't). You can download Hacking's article here.
In his article, Sesardic makes the interesting point that JB Mitton made the Lewontin's Fallacy argument popularized by Edwards already in his 1977 and 1978 articles published in The American Naturalist. Those articles seem to have had little impact, because Lewontin's claims spread like wildfire, becoming a part of liberal conventional wisdom. If someone has the Mitton articles, I'd love to take a look at them.
I doubt that even the intellectual gentry who make such claims as the nonexistence of race actually believe such claims (it's really just anti-white propaganda). The real question is: given that there are races, what are the implications of such a state of affairs? That is an interesting and challenging question well worth study by real scientists (i.e., non-ideologues).
ReplyDelete"Culture Matters. Race Doesn't."
ReplyDeleteLawrence Harrison seeks to show that culture matters and race doesn't by comparing Haiti with Barbados (on p.16-17 of is book The Central Liberal Truth).
Both countries are largely populated by the descendants of slaves - but Barbadian slaves became increasingy acculturated to British values and institutions.
Today the differences are startling - with Barbados receiving a perfect score for political rights and civil liberties from Freedom House (while Haiti is judged 'not free').
In fact, Harrison devotes a whole chapter to Hispaniola - the island shared between Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
He mentions about the denuded border on the Haitian side, which Dalrymple also mentions in his new piece on Haiti in City Journal.
Take a look...
PS Also, do read Linda Gottfredson's interesting new case study on academic freedom - 'Lessons in academic freedom as lived experience' - it's about how academia tried to bring her down, due to her IQ research. It's on her website at her Uni.
Here: http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints/index.html#Publications
It will appear in 'Personality and Individual Differences'.
"Race exists technically"
ReplyDeletei simply do not see it. human groups exist because isolated breeding groups create populations which accumulate the same mutations. in a zero technology environment, you can generally only have sex with people a few miles from where you are. only men in an army or navy might find themselves having sex with women from a different, isolated breeding group.
if earth had one huge continent that was a flat plain with no mountains, instead of several continents seperated by oceans and mountains, there would many less "races". there would only be a few groups. latitude, which is how we measure the geometry of a rocky sphere's exposure to a burning ball of fusion, would be the primary major effect on mutation accumulation.
personally, i choose to accept the hypothesis that 100,000 years ago, my ancestors were black africans, who became north africans, who became europeans. this may not be accurate, the out of africa hypothesis might not be true, but if it is true then i do not have a problem with it. i do not consider myself to be african, but it seems goofy to deny the actual history of humans. other groups went east across asia and turned into south asians, east asians, crossed the bering straight, and turned into american indians. this seems plausible to me.
" Most mixed couples, in America at least, have a black man and a white woman"
ReplyDeleteReally? Where'd you get this info from?
I thought most mixed couples in America involved white men and asian women.
Earlier, I meant tall and short, sorry for the typo.
ReplyDeleteA further thought about race: if there is no such thing as race, how can affirmative action be justified? How do the liberal reconcile those two notions?
Regarding ligers and tigons, the reason ligers get so big is because the male lions have the growth gene and the female lions have the corresponding growth inhibitor gene; but when a male lion mates with a female tiger, those corresponding growth inhibitor genes are lacking, so the ligers become huge. Fro whatever it's worth, I've heard that these ligers are lethargic and not particularly graceful.
Next thing we'll learn from these folks is that racial affinity is real too. Imagine Danny Glover and Barack Hussein Obama et al being as compassionate (with other people's money) with Caucasian/Asian folk instead of Negroes in Haiti.
ReplyDeleteAny word on whether Obama will "walk the walk" and donate his entire $1.4 million Noble Peace Prize money to the needy Haitians?
"Make them lazy and decadent just like us, and they won't want to take over the world!"
ReplyDeleteI noticed that a) Iranians just attacked Chinese websites because Chinese "NETIZENS" have been supporting the Iranian Green (liberalization) Movement, and b) Chinese were among the first to send rescuers and money (albeit a measly $1 mil last I checked) to Haiti.
Which is to say they are beginning to act not just like white people, but SWPL white people. Hmmmm....this could get interesting.
Oh, and I should note that China just opened up its first gay bar, and it's backed by the government! It's only a matter of time...
ReplyDeletehttp://www.pinknews.co.uk/2009/12/21/chinese-governement-backs-first-official-gay-bar/
See also:
BEIJING (AFP) – State press splashed a front-page photo of China's first publicly "married" gay couple on Wednesday -- the latest sign of new openness about homosexuality in a country where it has long been taboo.
The page-one story in the English-language China Daily featured a photograph of the "newlyweds" arm-in-arm during a January 3 ceremony.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100113/wl_asia_afp/healthchinaaidshomosexuality
"Israel and a few other nations are also providing Search and Rescue. "
ReplyDeleteYou're remarkably well versed in and focused on all things Israeli for a guy pretending to be Scots-Irish. Other than that quibble, though, good comment.
Regarding children of Euro-Asian couples, I've seen more than my share in CA.
ReplyDeleteIts subjective, but most of the girls usually look more Euro than their Asian parent, meaning: longer limbs, smaller head, more curves & defined facial features.
The boys are not that lucky; smart, but not handsome.
Some of the males get this effect with another generation of white admixture, or 25% Asian/75% Euro. I'm thinking of Dean Cain & Keanu Reeves.
Today, on NPR's Talk of the Nation, self-described race “agnostic” Dr. Esteban Burchard debated Pilar Ossorio and Alan Goodman (whom Sesardic quotes in the paper). This paper effectively addresses the linguistic/logical dispute with the term "race," but it essentially just leads into the substance of these biological differences. I am disappointed that the Steve-O-sphere is not paying more attention to these findings. So many of the so-called “stereotypes” relate to hormonal differences between races, so I posted a blog and a video about this. Just in the past month, some important research about this has been published, but no one seems to be talking about it.
ReplyDelete"The domestic dog is now considered a subspecies of the wolf- Canis lupus familiaris. Human races are subspecies not different species."
ReplyDeleteYeah, but that may have been a political decision that was a result of uncomfortable comparisons with the divergences between other groups. What about Canis lupus, Canis latrans, and Canis aureus? Genetic divergence between these species is still less wide than between human groups. And these different species produce fertile offspring when crossed.
The problem is that nobody has a bulletproof definition of "species," even though this is a huge legal issue due to the restrictions on development under the Endangered Species Act. A couple of dozen different definitions have been proposed. The most popular definition is Ernst Mayr's that species are not interfertile. That's not bad, but we seldom know the extent of interfertility. For example, a hunter recently shot a hybrid polar/grizzly bear. Does that mean polar bears and grizzly bears are one species? If global warming wiped out polar bears, would there be enough genetic variation in grizzly bears that polar bears would re-emerge after the polar ice caps re-emerged? Who knows?
ReplyDeleteThese kind of conundrums about "species" are why I long ago lost interest in the concept of "subspecies." Instead, I've defined a racial group to be a partly inbred extended family. We know what an extended family is and we know what inbreeding is, and we also know how inherently relativistic those concepts are, so, we have a much more useful definition of race.
ReplyDelete"So what Race is Tiger again?"
ReplyDeleteThe only mistake that Tiger made was to get married in the first place.
"In astronomy we have recognized for some time now that human beings are much more reliable at discriminating between different types of star clusters than any computerized algorithm."
ReplyDeleteThis will surely change in a few yrs.
"Lawrence Harrison seeks to show that culture matters and race doesn't by comparing Haiti with Barbados (on p.16-17 of is book The Central Liberal Truth).
ReplyDeleteBoth countries are largely populated by the descendants of slaves - but Barbadian slaves became increasingy acculturated to British values and institutions.
Today the differences are startling - with Barbados receiving a perfect score for political rights and civil liberties from Freedom House (while Haiti is judged 'not free')."
Culture and political systems do indeed matter a great deal, but certain races seem better able to absorb certain ideas and implement certain policies. Barbados may be better off than Haiti, but that alone doesn't mean it a successful place. Relatively speaking, Botswana is a success. By AFRICAN standards.
"personally, i choose to accept the hypothesis that 100,000 years ago, my ancestors were black africans, who became north africans, who became europeans."
ReplyDeleteQuestion. Did white people(original north africans) evolve out of black people(such as the bantus) or did they develop separately from a previous proto-man? Did this proto-man--who may have been dark skinned but different than modern blacks--first turn into the black man who turned into a white man OR did this proto-man split off into different races: koisan, bantu, north african white?
"Most mixed couples, in America at least, have a black man and a white woman"
ReplyDelete"Really? Where'd you get this info from? I thought most mixed couples in America involved white men and asian women."
There may be more black male/white female couples because there are so many more blacks than Asians.
And marriage aside, A LOT of white women have flings with black men out of 'jungle fever'. This has risen becaue the taboo against it has fallen, it's been promoted to kids through stuff like movies & rap music, and women today are far more candid about their sexual fantasies.
When I was young in the early 80s, it was considered weird or out-of-line--if only implicitly--for a white girl to openly admit fantasies about black men to her friends. None of my friends dared admit they would date black men.
Now, you hear it all over the place. That's what many of my friends(culturally changed over the yrs) and their daughters talk about to all their friends with no shame whatsoever. It's like Hustler Humor or the Vagina Monologue. Gossip spreads like wildfire among women. And, stuff like Oprah show is nothing but Open Gossip.
Here's something which nobody on either side of the debate (including Sailer, I think) seems to realize: The question of the biological reality of race is irrelevant to most arguments about biological differences between races. The argument typically goes like this:
ReplyDeleteA: Blacks are genetically less intelligent than whites.
B: No, because black and white are social categories, not biological categories.
A: Yes they are real biological categories, and here's the evidence...
Instead, A should have replied that B's objection is irrelevant. Blacks and whites, socially defined, differ in genetically influenced traits (e.g., skin color). So it's an empirical question whether blacks and whites, socially defined, have a genetically-influenced difference in another trait, intelligence. The entire question should be framed in terms of socially-constructed race. Instead, all race realists I've seen - again, I think this includes Sailer though I can't think of any examples - fall into the trap of arguing against B's irrelevant assertion.
The reality of biological race is almost always a red herring in practical questions of race realism.
Why does it even matter whether race is real or not? Blacks and Australian aboriginals are not the same race and are distant from one another as can be in terms of the human family tree, yet both have similar IQ's because both evolved in similar climates. Ashkenazi Jews and gypsies are both caucasoids but are as different in IQ as almost any two populations in the world. East Asians and Native Americans are arguabley the same race (mongoloid) but differ enormously in IQ. I'm not sure if the concept of race does very much to advance our understanding regardless of whether it's real or not.
ReplyDeleteThese kind of conundrums about "species" are why I long ago lost interest in the concept of "subspecies."
ReplyDeleteI think one of the commenters made a good point, though, that the value of a subspecies (i.e., race) is that it is the starting point in speciation.
***Instead, A should have replied that B's objection is irrelevant. Blacks and whites, socially defined, differ in genetically influenced traits (e.g., skin color). So it's an empirical question whether blacks and whites, socially defined, have a genetically-influenced difference in another trait, intelligence. The entire question should be framed in terms of socially-constructed race. Instead, all race realists I've seen - again, I think this includes Sailer though I can't think of any examples - fall into the trap of arguing against B's irrelevant assertion.
ReplyDeleteThe reality of biological race is almost always a red herring in practical questions of race realism.***
It's only relevant to the extent that there are different clusters, and groups that form distinct clusters are likely to exhibit different frequency distributions over various genes, leading to average group differences.
East Asians and Native Americans are arguabley the same race (mongoloid) but differ enormously in IQ. I'm not sure if the concept of race does very much to advance our understanding regardless of whether it's real or not.
ReplyDeleteThe contention of Harpending's book The 10,000 Year Explosion was that the invention of agriculture and, subsequent to that, civilization, led to a radical change in selective pressures on humankind that has affected our evolution enormously. Thus the last 10,000 years have resulted in more change in the human genome than the 20-30-50 thousand years before them.
Asians and American Indians separated 15,000 years ago, at least - before that explosion, in other words.
Also it does not matter where one group lives relative to one another in regards to race. All that matters is that there not be significant amount of gene flow. Ashkenazi Jews lived right in the midst of Europeans for 2,000 years, but the gene flow between the two was relatively minimal.
"Ashkenazi Jews lived right in the midst of Europeans for 2,000 years, but the gene flow between the two was relatively minimal."
ReplyDeleteThat statement is not completely accurate per the more recently published autosomal studies (e.g. http://scienceblogs.com/gnxp/2009/12/ashkenazi_jews_are_middle_east.php). Rather, it has been suggested very preliminarily based on affinities between Ashkenazim and Southern European populations that most admixture events likely occurred before the establishment of the Ashkenazim in Central and Eastern Europe during the early Jewish diaspora in places like Western Anatolia, Greece, and Italy when Judaism was still a proselytizing religion and Christianity had not yet been made the state religion of the Roman Empire.
...I hope to demonstrate that their eliminativist views...
ReplyDelete"Your honor, I am not a nativist, but an eliminativist..."
Sounds like ethnic cleansing to me.
Next I suppose these pointy head Platos will argue that gender and sex are not merely social constructs. --Lady Gaga
ReplyDeleteSex is real. "Gender" isn't. It's not even a social construct, merely a linguistic one. If gender is so real, how come the same newspaper has a different gender in Paris, Hamburg, Copenhagen and London?
There is no "race". But "population substructure" seems to do the same job.
ReplyDeleteWhy not just define race as population substructure or subspecies or whatever?
The problem is that nobody has a bulletproof definition of "species," even though this is a huge legal issue due to the restrictions on development under the Endangered Species Act. A couple of dozen different definitions have been proposed. The most popular definition is Ernst Mayr's that species are not interfertile. That's not bad, but we seldom know the extent of interfertility. For example, a hunter recently shot a hybrid polar/grizzly bear. Does that mean polar bears and grizzly bears are one species? If global warming wiped out polar bears, would there be enough genetic variation in grizzly bears that polar bears would re-emerge after the polar ice caps re-emerged? Who knows?
ReplyDeleteDoesn't the most popular definition of 'species' contend that the OFFSPRING of the parents must be fertile? Horses and donkeys can mate, but the mule is infertile. So, horses and donkeys are not of the same species.
I heard about the offspring of the brown bear and polar bear. The relevant question is, was it fertile? Could a browlar bear have mated with another browlar bear and have produced another offspring? If so, one could argue brown bears and polar bears are still of the same species. If not, they are like horses and donkeys. They can mate but cannot produce fertile offsprings. Related but still of separate species.
If polars and browns are separate species, they demonstrate the necessity of race in order for a new species to develop. Scientists say the polar bear developed out of the brown bear. The brown bear could not have, overnight, turned into a polar bear. Gradually, the brown bear would have had to turn into different racial forms of itself--lighter coated, more adapted to the cold, etc--before eventually evolving into what became the polar bear, possibly a new species of bear altogether.
"East Asians and Native Americans are arguabley the same race (mongoloid) but differ enormously in IQ. I'm not sure if the concept of race does very much to advance our understanding regardless of whether it's real or not."
ReplyDeleteAre the differences in IQ between the two groups really that great, and if so, are they fundamentally biological?
I think all of us can agree that nurture can count for 10-15 pts on the IQ tests.
East Asians have a Confucian-based education culture. Parents judge their own worth and prestige by the success of their children, who are pressured from an early age to succeed academically. Confucianism has had profound impact on the Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, and Vietnamese.
Minus this culture and social pressure, Asian IQ scores could be 10 pts lower.
With such culture, the IQ of American natives could be 10 pts higher.
Great civilizations were built in ancient Mexico, central America, and South America. They were all the more remarkable for having developed in total isolation from the rest of the world. Near East, North Africa, Europe, and Asia were in loose contact with one another, and they traded ideas and innovations back and forth. But, the native Americans were isolated from all that. But, look at some of the wonders of the Incas, Aztecs, Mayans, etc. Nothing to sneeze at.
Of course, there was less achievement among North American Indians, but their numbers were much smaller. I read somewhere that there were nearly 65 million in South America but only 3-10 million in all of North America.
Could it be that the Spaniards wiped out the elite classes--the most intelligent--of the native Americans? Could it that the diseases brought by Europeans wiped out too many people and damaged the gene pool? Or, could it be that centuries of illiteracy, servitude, and oppression under the corrupt Latin elites kept the natives dumb and ignorant?
Suppose Japan had been conquered a 1000 yrs ago by white people. Suppose the white elite killed 90% of Japanese, wiped out the indigenous elite class, and then subjugated all Japanese to live a life of illiteracy, ignorance, indolence, and slavishness for 100s of yrs? Suppose most Japanese came to regard a book-learning as irrelevant or useless. What would Japanese IQ be then?
Of course, I could be wrong. Maybe, the hatural IQs of native Americans are really THAT low. But, I still wonder about the great civilizations they created IN ISOLATION. Could northern Europe have accomplished as much without the flow of ideas from the Middle East, Greece, and Asia? I dunno.
Btw, does anyone know the IQs of Mongolians and Tibetans? Racially very close to other East Asians but of a less intellectual culture. Same IQ or lower IQ than other East Asians? That may provide some answers.
Or, how about Eskimos? To survive in that kind of climate, surely those people must have some brain power.
And, how about comparison between Laotians and Vietnamese. Racially very similar, but Vietnam has been far more influenced by Chinese Confucian culture. It could be Vietnamese do better on IQ tests than Laotians for cultural reasons. Laotians, lacking an 'intellectual' culture, are more prone to slip through the cracks--like Central Americans.
I always got a sense that Jews are indeed smarter than us, but I never got the sense that most Asians are particularly smart. Their advantage seems to be diligence, respect for learning, and shame over failure(instilled form young age). Fear of(or shame over)failure may be a stronger motivation to work hard than love of success.
So, let us say that race exists.
ReplyDeleteWhat then?
Nothing, right?
Cool. Race exists. Good job, guys.
Here's something which nobody on either side of the debate (including Sailer, I think) seems to realize: The question of the biological reality of race is irrelevant to most arguments about biological differences between races. The argument typically goes like this:
ReplyDeleteI've made the argument myself many times, and I'm sure many other here have as well. I've also made the "nature vs. nurture as it exists on the ground is irrelevant because whatever it owes to is persistent" argument many times here as well. And the "even if you throw out every difference but skin color race is still important on account of Social Identity Theory" here many times too.
Why not just define race as population substructure or subspecies or whatever?
ReplyDeleteBecause that wouldn't involve bending knee to the masters of discourse.
Most mixed couples, in America at least, have a black man and a white woman, but there should be enough while male/black female pairings to do some statistics.
ReplyDeleteEr, black male/white female couples are roughly equaled by white male/yellow female couples.
And marriage aside, A LOT of white women have flings with black men out of 'jungle fever'. This has risen becaue the taboo against it has fallen, it's been promoted to kids through stuff like movies & rap music, and women today are far more candid about their sexual fantasies.
ReplyDeleteIf by "A LOT" you mean 4-7%, and by "flings with black men" you mean "at least one fling with a black man," then you're right.
Of course race exists. The question is, in a society like ours, how much should it matter? Very little, I'd say.
ReplyDeleteGradually, the brown bear would have had to turn into different racial forms of itself--lighter coated, more adapted to the cold, etc--before eventually evolving into what became the polar bear, possibly a new species of bear altogether.
ReplyDeleteIt might not have been necessarily all that gradual. Selection is a trip. Remember the Russian who tried to tame the fox? He found that within a few generations he was getting a wild amount of fur colors just by selecting the tamest specimens.
A few with white fur get out into the arctic and bam! You've got a polar fox.
I thought the latest thinking was that dogs were not descended from wolves. One observation being that if random stray dogs of various breeds interbreed you end up with, over time, medium sized brown dogs. More like the Australian Dingo. Wolf like animals dont seem to arise.
ReplyDeleteJody - personally, i choose to accept the hypothesis that 100,000 years ago, my ancestors were black africans, who became north africans, who became europeans. this may not be accurate, the out of africa hypothesis might not be true, but if it is true then i do not have a problem with it.
ReplyDeleteTrue or not I think there is a PC element to this which you touched on. One often heres this from liberals and egalitarians:
"We are all descended from Africans, therefore we are all Africans, got a problem with that you (insistent) racsit!?"
The sleight of hand is the assumption, made quite unthinkingly, that this ancestor African population is the same as the modern one.
"We are all descended from Africans, therefore we are all Africans, got a problem with that you (insistent) racsit!?"
ReplyDeleteRushton turned this idea on its head by arguing that the race that first branched off the evolutionary tree (sub-Saharans) is leat advanced, while the race that most recenlty branched off (mongoloids) is the most advanced.
"Gradually, the brown bear would have had to turn into different racial forms of itself--lighter coated, more adapted to the cold, etc--before eventually evolving into what became the polar bear, possibly a new species of bear altogether."
ReplyDeleteIt might not have been necessarily all that gradual. Selection is a trip. Remember the Russian who tried to tame the fox? He found that within a few generations he was getting a wild amount of fur colors just by selecting the tamest specimens.
A few with white fur get out into the arctic and bam! You've got a polar fox.
But, that was not natural selection but artificial selection. Nature isn't so precisely razor-sharp selective over such short period of time.
So, let us say that race exists.
ReplyDeleteWhat then?
Nothing, right?
Cool. Race exists. Good job, guys.
Jesus! Idiots exist too, no doubt. Good job.
I think the best way to define race, or any other taxonomic category is to put all the DNA of a great many different living creatures into a hierarchical factor analysis and let a computer objectively sort them into different categories and then subcategories and then subcategories within subcategories. The broadest categories could be called kingdoms (i.e. plants, animals) and the most specific could be called races, subraces, or even ethnicities depending how specific they got. Sforza did a PC analysis which showed there are roughly four sub-species each defined by a different quadrent:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.cais-soas.com/CAIS/Images2/General/Gene_clusters.jpg
NEGROIDS (including Bushmen & pygmies) in the lower right.
CAUCASOIDS (including South Asians & North Africans) in the upper right.
MONGOLOIDS (including Native Americans) in the upper left
AUSTRALOIDS (including Southeast Asians & Pacific Islanders) towards the lower left.
Each broad sub-species can be divided into different races. Mongoloids including both the high IQ East Asians & the non-high IQ Native Americans, however because the Native Americans are so outnumbered by East Asians, the average IQ of Mongoids is much higher than any other human sub-species (consistent with Rushton's theory).
"Oh, and I should note that China just opened up its first gay bar, and it's backed by the government! It's only a matter of time...
ReplyDeleteOne should not be surprised. The greatest threat facing the Chicoms is the 24 million men without the prospect of having a wife.
Uh...OH:
ReplyDeleteThe journalist who wrote Time Magizine's cover story just
MADE YOU HBD'ers INTO HIS BITCHES!
"White guys are being emasculated, and there seems to be nothing that can be done about it."
ReplyDeleteThere's something YOU can do about YOUR OWN emasculation; don't act like a wimp.
"Why Your DNA Isn't Your Destiny
ReplyDeleteBy John Cloud"
From Time Magazine.
We never said DNA is destiny. It is the potential + limit.
"I wouldn't be surprised if the MAIN object of sexual fantasy among young white females is the black male."
ReplyDeleteHuh? Who are you? A black person? Or a white liberal trying to sound like "one of us?"
Speaking as a young white female, I wonder what race or ethnicity your are? You are deeply and weirdly paranoid.
I doubt blacks figure much in white female fantasies, though I can't speak for all of womankind. Mediterraneian types are probably the most common if one had to predict a desirable race. I think race fetishes exist but are vastly overstated.
One more time: the vast majority of people end up with partners whose IQs are within 5 points of each other. That alone is enough to indicate what races pair up with each other with any sense of commitment.
Whiskey sez:The same probably would be the case in Mauritania, or Niger.
ReplyDeleteWhy?
Chris Brand's comment on the Time article about epigenetics:
ReplyDeleteEPIGENONSENSE ADMITTED
As trendy Time offered (6 i, ‘Why genes aren’t destiny’) a revival of 1970s’ ideas of ‘epigenesis,’ the notion that gene expression is sometimes influenced by surrounding cell tissue that itself can be affected by lifetime experience (e.g. gross starvation in the womb), readers between the lines would have noted the sheer lack of success of epigenomery over forty years and its total failure to quantify what proportion of phenotypic variance was attributable to epigenesis. It could only be hoped that the new ‘European Epigenome Project’ would not cost the $3B that had gone into the Human Genome Project with little improvement on classic hereditarian understandings.
http://gfactor.blogspot.com/
The most salient and informative chapters are Nature vs Nurture parts 1 and 2 illustrate while giving a wolf cub a warm, loving, home environment (even sleeping with it) does not remove it's intrinsic selfishness and destructiveness, yet the careful manipulation over generations of silver foxes bloodlines will make a fox a tame and loving pet.
ReplyDeleteFine, as long as it clear that this is not how dogs were developed from wolves. Ancient man was almost certainly not primarily seeking dogs as unaggressive and loving pets. They wanted confident dogs capable for guarding and hunting-and later herding.
"I doubt blacks figure much in white female fantasies, though I can't speak for all of womankind. Mediterraneian types are probably the most common if one had to predict a desirable race. I think race fetishes exist but are vastly overstated.
ReplyDeleteOne more time: the vast majority of people end up with partners whose IQs are within 5 points of each other. That alone is enough to indicate what races pair up with each other with any sense of commitment."
Rap music has become vastly popular among white women. Will Smith may be the #1 star for young white females. Young white women are also crazy about Jamie Foxx, Denzel Washington, etc.
Though most romance novels are about mediterranean types, things may change soon. Jungle Fever novels could be the next big thing.
True, most people marry within their own race or IQ group, but in the realm of fantasy it's very different. Bill Clinton married a smart woman but he fantasized about and humped a whole lot of big-breasted bimbos. Most Mexican males marry Mexican women and most Japanese males marry Japanese females, but if you go by Mexican TV and Japanese animation, I think their sexual fantasies are about 'aryan' women. Most black men marry black women, but it's I'll bet most of them fantasize about white women. And, more and more white women fantasize about black men because black men have come to occupy alpha male status in American popular culture and sports. I wish it weren't true, but I must speak the truth.
"Fine, as long as it clear that this is not how dogs were developed from wolves. Ancient man was almost certainly not primarily seeking dogs as unaggressive and loving pets. They wanted confident dogs capable for guarding and hunting-and later herding."
ReplyDeleteBut, they wanted loyal and obedient dogs. It just so happens loyalty and obedience are related to lovableness.
It's 4-7% if you include ALL white women, even old grannies. But, among young white females, the percentage is much higher.
ReplyDeleteHow much higher? I'm looking for a number here. The salient thing to me is how little race-mixing there is, not how much. 3% intermarriage rate is low. 5-7% of white females having ever had at least one sexual liaison with a black male is low (don't know the figures for yellow or black females). Dating studies show women tend to be racist about this stuff (much more so than men), despite their empty-headed politics and all their protestations to the contrary. You know, studies? As in, numbers? As in, you're telling me everything, but you're showing me nothing?
But, that was not natural selection but artificial selection. Nature isn't so precisely razor-sharp selective over such short period of time.
ReplyDeleteSorry, I wasn't following the conversation closely; I was suggesting that as a deliberate strategy to "reconstitute" or recapitulate the Polar Bear population in the event of extinction.
"I wouldn't be surprised if the MAIN object of sexual fantasy among young white females is the black male."
ReplyDeleteHow easy is that to disprove? How about looking at the male actors who make bank in chick flicks? Team Edward or Team Jacob, anyone? Ryan Reynolds? Brad Pitt?
Oh, so you say that white women might be afraid to publicly confess that they're attracted to a black guy? Well then how 'bout looking at Google image searches for male celebrities? Which men are the most popular?
I think it;s pretty clear that most of the data we can gather from cultural sources indicates that few white women spend time fantasizing about black men.
A LOT of white women have flings with black men out of 'jungle fever'.
"A LOT" - what the hell does that mean? A lot numerically? A lot relatively (i.e., percentage)? What? One million women is a lot of women. I can easily believe that many white women have had sexual relations with black men, yet that is not a huge percentage of white women in this country.
And...we know who those women tend to be. We know what their educational level (BO's mother excepted) tends to be. We know where they tend to rate on scales of attractiveness.
The sleight of hand is the assumption, made quite unthinkingly, that this ancestor African population is the same as the modern one.
My African ancestors were very different from their African ancestors. My African ancestors left - something that in 50,000 years their ancestors never got around to doing, except by force. The adventurous Africans who left are not the ancestors of modern Africans.
It's telling that blacks did not get around to leaving Africa in mass, by choice, until the television and the welfare state had both been invented.
Twoof, leave the subject of epigenetics alone until your vast intellect has mastered the spelling of "alma mater" and grasped the concept of "crime rate."
ReplyDelete>Rap music has become vastly popular among white women. Will Smith may be the #1 star for young white females<
ReplyDeleteA bit behind the times, aren't ya, gramps?
"One more time: the vast majority of people end up with partners whose IQs are within 5 points of each other."
ReplyDeleteMaybe, but the vast MINORITY of people end up with partners that they fantasize about. If they did, there wouldn't be pornography.
"How easy is that to disprove? How about looking at the male actors who make bank in chick flicks?"
The unquestionable #1 movie star in the world right now is Will Smith, the #1 over 50 Denzel Washington, and the #1 over 60, arguably Morgan Freeman. None of these three are so called "action" stars, so I would guess that their male fanbase is small.
"Twoof, leave the subject of epigenetics alone until your vast intellect has mastered the spelling of "alma mater" and grasped the concept of "crime rate."
I'll work on it when you learn how to spell "Truth."
There is a certain type of actor who is usually cast as the supporting male lead to the female star of romantic comedy chick flicks: Patrick Dempsey, Matthew McConaughey, Ryan Reynolds, etc. Most of them are handsome, fairly masculine guys who don't quite have the star power to be the main attraction in a bigger budget film aimed at male or date audiences, so they're stuck in the chick flick ghetto.
ReplyDeleteMy impression is that romantic comedy chick flicks are pretty clearly either white or black: "Something New" a few years ago was a pretty good romantic comedy about an upscale black lady accountant dating a white landscaping contractor. It didn't do a huge amount of business, though.
Will Smith's romantic comedies usually feature him with a long-haired Caribbean Hispanic of some sort.
"1 over 60, arguably Morgan Freeman. None of these three are so called "action" stars, so I would guess that their male fanbase is small."
ReplyDeleteYou are seriously arguing for Morgan Freeman as an object of female sexual fantasy?
What a maroon.
Gazing upon an old fart with age spots portraying God ain't likely to do much stirring of a woman's loins. Being a woman, I suspect I've a better idea what effect such has on most women libidinously than you do.
>I'll work on it when you learn how to spell "Truth."<
ReplyDeleteI already do know how to spell "truth," Twoof, but I simply refuse to call you something that you obviously care about so little. If you did have any concern at all for the truth, rather than for scoring cheap points, you might be able to make a useful contribution to this blog.
"Being a woman, I suspect I've a better idea what effect such has on most women libidinously than you do."
ReplyDeleteMaybe you're right, I am after all a "maroon."
"You are seriously arguing for Morgan Freeman as an object of female sexual fantasy?"
ReplyDeleteHe's more like an object of white female spiritual fantasy. Such a noble noble Negro we have so much to learn from.
"He's more like an object of white female spiritual fantasy. Such a noble noble Negro we have so much to learn from."
ReplyDeleteOr maybe he's just a good actor. Heaven forbid that any black could achieve success based on the merits instead of some obsolete slavery days stereotype. Most of us no longer think in these racialist terms. Only the far left and the far right are obsessed with race. That's not to deny the importance of HBD, but let individuals be individuals.
"I am after all a "maroon."
ReplyDeleteCorrect. The word "maroon" was coined by Bugs Bunny as a pejorative for someone dumber than an average moron.
"He's more like an object of white female spiritual fantasy. Such a noble noble Negro we have so much to learn from."
ReplyDeleteOr maybe he's just a good actor. Heaven forbid that any black could achieve success based on the merits instead of some obsolete slavery days stereotype. Most of us no longer think in these racialist terms. Only the far left and the far right are obsessed with race. That's not to deny the importance of HBD, but let individuals be individuals.
He IS a good actor but he's been used as Noble Negro Icon in a whole bunch of movies. Sure, he's very good at it, especially with his voice thing, but it's turning into a set of mannerist patents than real performances. He used to be edgy and complex in movies like Johnny Handsome and some thriller in the 80s with Christopher Reeves. Ever since Driving Miss Daisy, he's been the Magic Negro We Want To See To Drown Our Sorrows About Social Reality. Watching him, we think 'how nice if all black guys can be like him?'
It's goo goo gumpity gump. But yes, he's very good at it and has gotten very rich by turning his shtick into an institution.
You may not think in 'racialist' terms but Hollywood uses him for race-specific terms. He's a walking racial lesson for whites(love the noble negro) and for blacks(please be like this magic negro so we can love you better).
Shawshank Redemption, what a manipulative piece of crap. But, very enjoyable for gullible types who are beyond 'racialism'. Btw, Obama sells the same 'post-racial' thing. The shawshank president.
If it's ONLY about acting, do you think Freeman would have gotten so far had he been white? The original character in the Shawshank was an old white guy. Hollywood turned him into a noble black guy so as to give as social sermons about race. But, you can't see it because... well, you're beyond 'racialism'. Riiiiight!!
"If it's ONLY about acting, do you think Freeman would have gotten so far had he been white?"
ReplyDeleteIf he were white he wold have gotten even further. Statistically being white is an incredible competetive advantage in life.
"If it's ONLY about acting, do you think Freeman would have gotten so far had he been white?"
ReplyDeleteIf he were white he wold have gotten even further. Statistically being white is an incredible competetive advantage in life.
You think black singers would make more money singing like Karen Carpenter?
"If you did have any concern at all for the truth, rather than for scoring cheap points, you might be able to make a useful contribution to this blog."
ReplyDeleteThanks Dad.
"Correct. The word "maroon" was coined by Bugs Bunny as a pejorative for someone dumber than an average moron."
ReplyDeleteYou use an obscure quote of a 50-year -old Anthropomorphic cartoon rabbit in describing someone's intellect, and I'm the 'maroon' here?
Some of the posters are claiming that Africans as contemporary phenotypical Africans never left Africa until recently. Wrong! The Andaman Islanders, the Melanesians, the Tasmanians, Fijians, etc all demsonstrate what Africans looked like 60,000 years ago.
ReplyDeleteAre there different races? Not really; the genetic distnace between the different populations is not suffiently large to warrant the race descriptive.
It seems rather that there are different breeding populations on liguistic evidence. Gaelic and modern Greek obviously point to different breeding populations. The Y and MtDNA haplogroups also point to differences in populations.
"Race" is a difficult concept because those who support the idea implicitly do so in terms of "native cognitive abilities". This idea is easily falsified because wheres one could draw taxonomic lines between West Africans and East Asians one cannot do so in terms of individual cognitive abilities that were not culturally derived.
If cognitive abilties were not culturally derived in the main then how would one explain African phenotyped individuals such as Jonathan Farley(google him) who is better at mathematics than 99% of all European phenotyped individuals or Kunle Olukotun(google), a real whiz at computer science engineering and there are many others like that. the point is that there are just too many cognitively impressive "outliers" in the African phenotyped group for there to be distinct races as some would wish.
If humans were cognitively hardwired differently then how does one explain that any African could easily learn any of the world's natural languages. There a re Africans who speak Chinese and Japanese fluently. And they--LOL--can eat with chopsticks too!
Sure, on the AVERAGE, blacks run faster than whites; but they also run longer and harder than whites too. Can we infer anything from that in terms of other traits? Not really.
Eh, what's up, Twoof?
ReplyDeleteAfricans did leave the continent about 60,000 years ago contray to what some posters are saying. They travelled to the Andaman Islands(near India), New Guinea and the Melanesian Islands in genarl. They also travelled to Tasmania.
ReplyDeleteRace do no exist but intra and extra-regional populations do exist as the different intragroup languages show. Greek and Gaelic are very different and demonstrate that their speakers share a "most recent ancestor" thousands of years ago. Again, the different Y and MtDNA lineages within groups(Europeans for example) show that despite superficial appearances intragroup differences are palpable.
Similarly with Africans as the recent Tishkoff study shows.
What makes claims of differential races problematic is that taxonomic groups do not match cognitive groupings--on grounds that are non-cultural. Jonathan Farley(google him) who is of African phenotype is better at mathematics than 99% of all Europeans. Kunle Olukotun(google him) is better at computer engineering than 99% of all Asians(East and South)--but taxonomically they both will not fit into superficial phenotypcial taxa. And there are others--making the outlier thesis too flimsy to make categorical claims about "race". Another example: there are Africans who speak Chinese and Japanese fluently. And German, Russian and Swedish too. This could not be the case if the neural networks of humans were in any way qualitatively different.
"Some of the posters are claiming that Africans as contemporary phenotypical Africans never left Africa until recently. Wrong! The Andaman Islanders, the Melanesians, the Tasmanians, Fijians, etc all demsonstrate what Africans looked like 60,000 years ago."
ReplyDeleteHow do you know? Maybe Africans demonstrate what Africans looked like 60,000 years ago.
in the African phenotyped group for there to be distinct races as some would wish.
ReplyDeleteYour semantics (the entirety of your arsenal) would be improved if you dropped the "distinct" part and tendentiously assumed it was implied and inherent to "race." I mean, if you're going to lie, might as well go all out.
If he were white he wold have gotten even further. Statistically being white is an incredible competetive advantage in life.
ReplyDeleteNot at all certain, that. If he were white, I see him more as the marginally-employed TV character actor, leapfrogged by all the more talented white actors out there.
Sure, on the AVERAGE, blacks run faster than whites; but they also run longer and harder than whites too. Can we infer anything from that in terms of other traits? Not really.
ReplyDeleteA second ago it was all nuanced and stuff. Then it goes back to Strom Thurmond Hour with the black dudes (skinny lil' Kenyans marathoners and muscular west African sprinters all rolled into one race) as just black dudes.
Sure we can infer something; when the evidence is too clear-cut (and not in favor of "the wrong sort"), the race-deniers retreat. Otherwise, they keep lying. The brain is the keep in this motte-and-bailey defense, of course, and they'll slowly give all the rest to the HBD hordes.
If humans were cognitively hardwired differently then how does one explain that any African could easily learn any of the world's natural languages. There a re Africans who speak Chinese and Japanese fluently. And they--LOL--can eat with chopsticks too!
ReplyDeleteYour genius is indeed LULZ-inspiring. I mean, it's just self-explanatory that given g, or some other explanation for the ability of humans to learn languages (or at least, the inability of anyone to show an inability on the part of any given population group to learn any given language), no cognitive wiring differences exist between populations!
Seriously though, what are you, a moron? Can you show ANY real logic to that quote? I mean, beyond the obvious fact that you made no argument, and only implied one by asking a stupid non-sequitur of a question and relied on gullibility to do the rest (I'm being kind to you here)?
Are there different races? Not really; the genetic distnace between the different populations is not suffiently large to warrant the race descriptive.
ReplyDeleteI suppose we could all find out by comparing, say, the differences between the 10% of those subspecies showing the least difference, and the proposed subspecies of humans.
I mean, try and imagine a disinterested naturalist (say, from Alpha Centauri) lumping all the human races together and pretending there are no significant, inherent differences!
It is to laff!
"Well sir, I know these critters over here build skyscrapers and send craft to the moon, and these critters, well, don't, but most of the former insist they're all the same so I'm going to take their word for it. I'm still looking into this 'white flight' thing but it shouldn't impact my theory."
What makes claims of differential races problematic is that taxonomic groups do not match cognitive groupings--on grounds that are non-cultural.
ReplyDeleteWhat makes claims of differential automobile categories problematic is that taxonomic groups do not match mileage groupings.
Trucks and cars do not exist if I can find one model of truck that is more fuel efficient than one model of car.
Are adults supposed to buy this pig slop?
The El Camino proves race does not exist!
ReplyDelete