May 28, 2014

SPLC attacks Nicholas Wade's "Troublesome Inheritance"


The good old Southern Poverty Law Center is out to get Nicholas Wade:
Troublesome Sources: Nicholas Wade’s Embrace of Scientific Racism
By Jon Phillips on May 28, 2014 - 3:25 pm, Posted in Academic Racism, Extremist Propaganda

In the ongoing on-going War on Racist Sexist White Men, the SPLC is the gold standard source since it's run by poor Southern blacks. As we all know, it was founded in 1957 by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and fought on the front lines during the great victories of the 1960s Civil Rights era. And, thus, the SPLC is legendary in the history of the Sixties.

Oh, wait, no ... that was the SCLC, not the SPLC. Funny how their acronyms are so similar. Must be a coincidence. *

The SCLC is Rev. King's Southern Christian Leadership Council.

The SPLC wasn't founded until 1971, after the triumphs of the Civil Rights Era. Its founders were Morris Dees, member of the Direct Marketing [i.e., junk mail] Association Hall of Fame, and Joseph R. Levin Jr. The SPLC's current president is J. Richard Cohen, and its endowment is $281,100,000.

Here's Charlotte Allen's amusing article on Morris and his SPLC, "King of Fearmongers."

------------
* It's also an utter coincidence that the acronym SPLC is likewise reminiscent of the acronym of the younger, edgier Sixties civil rights organization SNCC. There's no evidence whatsoever that the SPLC makes money off the confusion of the affluent elderly.
                  

52 comments:

tehtruth said...

This whole "evil racist white males" snark from you is pretty much the mirror-image of lefty social media/political correctness. I dunno why you think it's particularly effective (or funny as opposed to bitter)

C. Van Carter said...

For a laugh scroll down and read "Hereditarianism and me".

Automatic_Wing said...

Loved Morris Dees in Purple Rain. He totally stole the show.

Steve Sailer said...

He's a man of many talents.

Pseudoerasmus said...

Did you notice the SPLC "reviewer" of Wade totally goes off a tangent when he mentions Steven Pinker and the theory of Ashkenazi intelligence ? Instead of observing that Pinker clearly approves of Cochran & Harpending, the SPLC reviewer talks about Pinker & Kevin MacDonald....

josh said...

Extremist Propaganda! Great catch, Steve. Yikes.

elmer said...

Less than a week ago Te-Nehisi Coates was the talk of the internet. Then Elliot Rodgers. Coates must be pissed, but that's our 72-hour meme cycle for you.

elmer said...

Salon, being science-oriented, has daily dispatches about Neil DeGrasse Tyson and how he makes fundie's heads "explode". No mention of Wade's book yet though.

Dennis Dale said...

They went out and got a grad student. Are they running out of adults over there?

Assistant Village Idiot said...

@tehtruth - well, you are one vote for not liking it. Noted.

@C. Van Carter - thanks for following that up. It explains a lot, dunnit?

Anonymous said...

I wonder if the SPLC can provide stats on what percentages of various ethnic groups are "haters"? For example, what percentage of Irish-Americans would be classified as "haters" versus some other ethnic groups? With this information we just might be able to determine what it is that causes someone to become a "hater."

Harry Baldwin said...

When leftists like those at SPLC use the term "Scientific Racism" it's supposed to be understood to be an oxymoron, like jumbo shrimp. After all, lefties like to think they're all about science. But what if what they call racism is in fact scientifically correct?

Anonymous said...

Well, well...this ambitious graduate student/ free lance (indeed!) writer/ appears to have a factual problem re the Pioneer Fund that he mentions in some context "continues to be...". Sorry,the Fund appears to have been put into permanent hibernation before the death of the late Phil Rushton. It seems
to be a budgetary threat to $PLC for someone down there in Montgomery AL HDQ to pick up the phone and--within the bounds of at least cold civility--try to visit directly with those they wish to..ah...lance. Back in the late 90's they were content to characterize Phil Rushton as a
fringe scientist without peer regard. But when a relative of a friend of mine sent SPLC a compendium of over 40 letters in support of Rushton's academic freedom (compiled back in 1990) from renowed academic figures...well, not a peep about having been informed of what others thought about Rushton's work. The standards prevailing in this instance at $PLC were those of a shyster lawyer who has no obligation to mention facts or sources not supportive of his arguments. Free lance grad student might be closer to realism about himself if he just
got into a night school program to practice law somewhere in the Texas panhandle.

Anonymous said...

Here is a comment i left at the article:

"The Southern "Poverty" Law Center has more than 250 million dollars in assets, and so one would assume that it would be able to produce an article that had at least some semblance of scientific rigor and that was not wholly reliant on logical fallacies (guilt by association, ad hominenm, etc).

But why assume that? The SPLC consistently receives an F rating( the lowest rating) from the organisation Charity Watch.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/king-fearmongers_714573.html?page=3



But what about Wade?


Orr, Coyne and Pinker agree that race exists, and everyone else says that the allele distributions differ between "populations", so either way, group differences in behavior due to genetics are possible."

Waiting to see if they publish it. I doubt it. Cowards.

Anonymous said...

The scientific method ought to
make suppositions about a scientist's emotions rather irrelevant. It has been a long, long time since I've glanced at the $PLC homepage, but it used to be that scientists like Arthur Jensen and R. J. Herrnstein were not listed as haters; nor was H. J. Eysenck. But their writings fly in the face of what this grad student wishes to advance. One is lead to conjecture whether $PLC gathers intimately personal information in order to label some scientists as "haters" and to ignore others?

Coincidence Schmincudence said...

It's literally a Cohencidence.

JayMan said...

I left a comment there... ;)

Anonymous said...

The term "scientific racism" is probably inviting of abuse? It suggests itself simply to convey that a fully knowledge based notion of race can rightfully be called race-ism. Race views based merely on folklore or crude
put-downs are hardly to be characterized as knowledge. The better approach may be to back away from the amorphous term "racism" to suggest that
"nothing scientific can be racist; nothing racist can be
scientific" ??

Coincidence Schmincudence said...

When the evangelicals embrace Darwin it's game over for the Multicult.

Anonymous said...

It would be interesting to chase down instances in which $PLC has refused to communicate with those it has in its target hairs. As far as associates of mine (who have looked into $PLC) can determine, people within $PLC simply refuse to debate via email,
or to discuss on TV, with those it is hurling accusations toward.
$PLC nurtures a "cookie cut" approach to relevant facts, seeking only that which will support a predetermined notion of
villainy.

Coincidence Schmincudence said...

It's good science.
Or bad perverted science if you are Churchill.

Anonymous said...

It would be a nice trim-the-wings
of $PLC if on state university campuses, the campus police (Security) were sent Fax copies of some of the published criticism of $PLC--at least a good bibliography of "the rest of the story". A four or five page Fax communication like this is not apt to be shredded and is likely to be read very privately but not ignored. The same can be said for police departments in major cities. $PLC does a brutal
"snow job" on various levels of law enforcement that can most often claim they were aware of no dissent to what $PLC claimed was true.

Anonymous said...

While not directly involved with misleading criticism of courageous science, $PLC does
churn a lot of money in sending out to public schools a kit for
"Teaching Tolerance" to students.
It has some aspects that could be part of a genuine program to that
effect, but for the most part is a
manipulative job upon the emotions of high school students. This distribution has been going on for nearly 20 years or so. Most of the kits seem to be used a time or two and then left on the shelves to gather dust. The important thing seems to be to send out a lot of stuff at appreciable expense and then to be rather oblivious as to how it is used or misused or not used???
This kind of "churning" of money lends an aura of suspicion to $PLC. Is it a matter of "doing something" to persuade leftist fat cats to donate big time? Then, perhaps that might be (? ) the name of the game in this skewed review of Wade's book?

Anonymous said...

New plan. Post a comment that agrees with the article so it gets published, and once it is published edit the comment to saw what you really mean.

David Davenport said...

"nothing scientific can be racist; nothing racist can be
scientific" ??


Incoherent mush.

Oswald Spengler said...

Advocating on behalf of the poor has certainly made Morris Dees and his comrades-in-alms very rich.

Oswald Spengler said...

Morris Dees and his merry band of hucksters have recently broadened their list of hate groups. They've targeted the Men's Rights Movement and the Pick Up Artist community.

http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2012/spring/misogyny-the-sites

Anonymous said...

OT, but I made a comment on the Mexican tattoo thread a few days ago that asked when we would begin seeing major cartel violence in the USA; Mr. Sailer deleted it.

Today there is an article on AmRen about "mysterious" messages appearing on billboards in El Paso, complete with mannequins in suits and ties hanging from nooses. This is a common threat cartels use in Mexico against police and government officials.

Glad I don't live in the Southwest. :)

McGillicuddy said...


2ot: Hawks knock-off the Kings to stay alive in the Western Conference Final. Steve should talk more about hockey (has it ever been mentioned here?).

Anonymous said...

Steve, is there any substance to the allegation that Cochran was inspired by MacDonald? It would be irrelevant to his article but interesting nevertheless. Or is Phillips baselessly assuming that because these two guys tried to account for Jewish IQ in biological terms they must be connected?

Anonymous said...

"There's no evidence whatsoever that the SPLC makes money off the confusion of the affluent elderly."

Rich Jews who fund it know exactly what they are doing.
There is no confusion.

Anonymous said...

I believe that contrary to what many believe here, the future rulling elite of the U.S will be White Latinos. Not Jews, Asian Indians or East Asians, but White Latinos.

The reasons for this are: they are on average significantly more affluent and better educated than white Americans, they are more aggressive than both East Asians and Asian Indians, and they are entering the U.S by the MILLIONS.

Historically, these people did not emigrate to the U.S, because they tend to be the dominant elite of their home countries. But over the past recente decades, the political unrest in Latin American has reached such levels that they are moving out.

25 years ago, there were only the Cuban-Americans. Now, there are the Colombians, the Venezuelans and the Argentineans. These immigrant groups are all wealthier than Americans, and there are millions of them. Their sheer numbers, aggressivness and wealth will make them the most powerful political groups in America. In only another couple decades at the most, they will be rivalling with Jews for the #1 most powerful political block in the country.

This does not bode well for the U.S, because rich white Latinos, even today, still take the pains of Spain in it's long historical struggle with England, and they see the U.S.A as a continuation of England on the other side of the Atlantic.

So the real question for 21rst century America is: How to get rich white Latinos to stop resenting America and be a good elite to the country?

Anonymous said...

BLACKHAWKS WINNN!!!!!!!1111

Anonymous said...

Maybe the Steveospheric angle on this year NHL playoffs is explaining why the Chicago Blackhawks get relatively little grief for their name and logo, compared to other Indian-themed teams. My take is that the logo is just too damned cool.

Sort of like this:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/peace-activist-has-to-admit-barrett-50-caliber-sni,234/

Whiskey said...

America will be dominated not by Latinos, but wealthy Chinese. More Chinese than Latins in the world, and the have nukes and money.

Votes and demographics dontbmatter in the West. Rather money. More of that in China. More discreet too.

Anonymous said...

Off topic: no Nordic nation qualified for the World Cup in Brazil.

Anonymous said...

@Whiskey

"America will be dominated not by Latinos, but wealthy Chinese. More Chinese than Latins in the world, and the have nukes and money.

Votes and demographics dontbmatter in the West. Rather money. More of that in China. More discreet too"

There are far more wealthy Latinos from the white upper classes coming to America than Chinese. Also, as I noted before, white Latinos are more aggressive than Chinese. Must be that conquistador blood...

Anonymous said...

The best part is one of the "teaching tolerance" magazines features a glowing interview with admitted domestic terrorist and Obama ghost writer William ayers. Nothing says tolerance like pipe bombs at random civilian targets!

Anonymous said...

Although I can't link to it now because of the device I'm on, Jerry Coyne did review Wade's book on his blog(Why Evolution is True). Although Coyne believes race exists, and an interesting discussion ensued when he came out and said this on his blog, he doesn't recommend Wade's book. He thinks that it's sloppy and speculative, even if some points may be true.

Keep in mind that Richard Lewontin was Coyne's doctoral supervisor.

It was rather amusing seeing many posters disagree with Coyne's assertions about race, even by posters who don't have advanced degrees in biology. They just regurgitated what they were taught in biology 101. When all else fails, race-denialists just scream "but it's a consensus by the experts that race is not biological!".

Anonymous said...

Off topic: no Nordic nation qualified for the World Cup in Brazil.

Germany, Holland, England.

Anonymous said...

America will be dominated not by Latinos, but wealthy Chinese.

If we are talking about domination in terms of financial control, and not pure demographics, then the Jews will probably be in the top spot. I don't see any group displacing them. It doesn't matter whether Jews comprise 3 percent or a half a percent of the population. They will dominate just the same. Just look at all the oligarchs in Ukraine.

Anonymous said...

The comments here have made me do internet searches. I learned a few things. Morris Dees is Unitarian (raised Baptist) and has been married 4 times. Neil DeGrasse Tyson's mother was a white-Hispanic medical doctor. And when Tyson was in high school Carl Sagan tried to recruit him (called him on the phone) to go to Cornell. He ended up going to Harvard.

Anonymous said...

Re: The SPLC article, I'm actually quite surprised that they actually link to the referenced subjects! This is the first article of theirs that I've ever seen this! Usually, if they have links, it to their own previous articles. The author must not have gotten the memo.

-CW

Anonymous said...

There are far more wealthy Latinos from the white upper classes coming to America than Chinese. Also, as I noted before, white Latinos are more aggressive than Chinese. Must be that conquistador blood...

It was too bad the Conqs never had to fight the Mongols instead of the easy (or at least easier) native Americans.

Anonymous said...

Off topic: no Nordic nation qualified for the World Cup in Brazil.

Germany, Holland, England.



Okay, help me understand this.

First, I thought that Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Iceland and Finnland(?) are Nordic.

Second, those countries are teeny tiny countries, why would we expect itty bitty countries to be able to compete against much bigger ones?

Third, don't they all recruit globally such that there could be players from anywhere on any team.

Someone clear this up for me.

ben tillman said...

Okay, help me understand this.

First, I thought that Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Iceland and Finnland(?) are Nordic.

Second, those countries are teeny tiny countries, why would we expect itty bitty countries to be able to compete against much bigger ones?


Usually either Sweden or Denmark will qualify for the World Cup.

Sweden finished second twice in1950 and 1998 and third in 1998. Denmark won the European championship in 1992 and finished tied for fifth in the 1998 World Cup, so they compete just fine.

Otis said...

Anon-Conqui said: "I believe that contrary to what many believe here, the future ruling elite of the U.S will be White Latinos...reasons for this are: they are on average significantly more affluent and better educated than white Americans, These immigrant groups are all wealthier than Americans, and there are millions of them..."

Is this the Latin Yan Shen? No, there are not “millions” of them. There are hundreds. If there were millions, the countries they come from wouldn’t be such crapholes.

I live in Miami and know many of these people. The Cubans are a SLIGHT cut above the others, but bear in mind that “elite" in Latin America is a relative term. They’re the “elite” – of a continent that is a mess. And it’s a mess because it is run by these people. Spain is a mess because it is run by the cousins of these people.

You cite “Venezuelans, Colombians, and Argentineans”. They are a joke. Plus the intelligent Colombians have largely gone back home. And a guy with a degree from the Universidad de Buenos Aires is not “highly educated”. I’ll concede the Latin “elites” are good at being arrogant, but as the backbone of a society, they’re a laughing stock. They’re good at spending huge portions of their disposable income on garish displays of wealth. If you want to see some dentist spending half his disposable income on a Maserati lease, come visit Miami. Miami is ground zero for boob jobs and ass implants because of these vain idiots. Go to a charity fund-raiser or another societal gathering some time and engage one of them in conversation. Precisely zero percent of the time will it be about a book they’ve read or anything else of even moderate intellectual heft. Even travel for the sake of intellectual curiosity is too much. However if you want to know how much their watch cost, or what type of boat they’re thinking of buying (they’re often “thinking of buying” enormously expensive things in a blatant attempt to make you think they can afford it), or (if they feel comfortable around you) how much they spend on their mistress then you’re in good shape.

I have met countless – literally hundreds – of people from the countries you mention. I can think of a few off the top of my head that were impressive and that we would consider hiring at my firm (specialty finance). They do well in 2nd tier businesses such as food distribution, real estate sales, trucking, plus the professions (doctor, lawyer, dentist, etc). They also do well at laying around spending inherited or stolen money. I have met one, precisely ONE, that has done well in a business involving creativity and that required significantly above average intelligence. He’s a commercial architect. And he is 3rd generation Cuban born and raised in the US and went to Stanford.

little dynamo said...

Not too much acutal POVERTY at the Southern Poverty Law Center lo these many decades! Lotsa greed and opportunistic, cowardly scapegoating of those who (unlike Sterling) can't defend themselves, tho.



The SPLC targeted some men's sites awhile back, standard Narrative, Oh noes! horrible misogynists everwhere, hate-speechers threatening the Security of the nation. Abusers and Pre-Perpetrators. Five out of every three college women are raped each semester. Quarter.



The "Law" Center got snarled at for their trouble. Hyenas used to know better.



Our Kultural Heroes returned prompt to more docile savannas elsewhere. Whar the fat prey roam.


These gender/race predators are part of the vast, expanding, and utterly destructive Parasitic Class of 'civil rights' profiteers -- public, NGO, and private -- who have sold out America, especially the sons of the nation, for their own advancement.


Thx for the Scout Light on these bugs. Pls bring Raid next time. Cheers.

Anonymous said...

Now we see it; now we don't---
Does the Pioneer Fund "continue"
to exist? By all indications , the Fund upon the terminal illness of Harry F. Weyher,in
2002, ceased to exist in the form and function characteristic of it
from the mid 1950's when he was
carefully selected to head PF. In
the early 90's Weyher had indicated a distinct possibility that the Fund would spend itself down. There were persistent rumors in the early 90's that some small portion of Fund grants had winnowed into publishing rather than directly in support of meritorious research. Be that as it may, the decision would appear likely to have been made in late 2001 that the Fund would be (appropriately) devoted to support the outstanding research of Phil Rushton , who was thus nominated to head PF. After basic changes were made in the PF homepage that acknowledged Rushton's heading the Fund, the homepage seemed (oddly) frozen in time with no alterations month after month, year after year. This "tombstone" appearance left a kind of spooky aura that surely aided the strategies of its feverish critics. While in name, the Pioneer Fund may yet exist with some residual resources (?), the Fund as it functioning for decades in support of brilliant and monumental research, was phased out long ago. From a law school legalistic "standard" one can refer to the Fund as "yet existing", this is simply vintage $PLC devotion to what can be gotten away with in the service of sophisticated reworking of reality.

Anonymous said...

By convention "book review" as a term refers to this sort of presumed focus upon the book. Modern technology makes it easy to undertake overt recordings of reader experiences with the book.
It is far more interesting to seek to focus upon abler undergraduates, say, in terms of their reading experience with the book than to just look (yet again) at the text of the book.
In this way, a sense emerges of the baggage undergrads carry to the topic--the somewhat subconscious mental linkages, complex associations, points of misinformation, etc. There is, in fact, little understanding of what abler undergrads see in the
elements of such a text. Matters that seem very remote may in fact leap forward in such a review of
reading. My own hunch is that LUST has a very close connection to how RACE is evaded. The one "statement" of action that says over and over "genes don't matter" is the rabbit world sexual licentiousness of campus USA. Another is the shaky, somewhat self discovered or self-conjectured sense that undergrads have that their own traits seem
to be evident here and there in their lineage in a sense indicating some genetic basis---but they are not really sure. They are keenly interested, but the topic of genes and human behavior has almost been manipulated into "bathroom" "toilet" status. What we repeatedly do on the toilet stool is a vital part of life, amounts over time to a large investment, and can have occasionally intense medical relevance...but we manage to relegate it to something we are quite aware of but only at a subvocal level.

Anonymous said...

$PLC feeds off many weaknesses and
degenerations in America. One is
the increasing failure in high schools and moreso in campus undergrad education to emphasize
informed and reasoned disputation
as a means of discovery, self-correction, etc. The very ablest students get around this by virtue of their own fascination with their mental powers and those of their intellectual peers. But with discipline and training, an appreciation of a
reasoned and informed "majority of one" could reach much further down from the apex of the social
pyramid. There is by default more and more reflexively assumed merit in a mere show of hands/ a polling success. Our grandparents would have termed it "vulgarity".

Anonymous said...

I think there is no instance in which Dees or Biereich or anyone else out front in $PLC ever agreed to debate / discuss/ the role of genetics in human intellectual variation. They throw stuff---they don't play
thought "ping pong" .