Steve Sailer (1958- ) is a white American blogger, a sort of a thinking man’s skinhead. If you are looking up stuff on the Internet about race and intelligence or interracial marriage or things like that, you are bound to come across his writings. Although he tries to sound like a scientist, he is not. He is just a self-appointed expert with strong, well-written opinions.
This, however, has not stopped his writings and opinions from appearing in places like the American Conservative, National Review, New York Times, Slate, NBC and, of course, countless Google searches.
Here are some of the things he says, but stated in the way I would say it, not dressed up like he does:
- So many black women are unmarried because they are ugly, they look too much like men. Likewise, Asian men have a hard time getting married because they are too unmanly.
- Most black Americans have poor judgement and are not particularly bright. They require “strict moral guidance” from whites. Katrina proved that. The ones in Atlanta and Seattle are not so bad, but the ones in New Orleans and Miami are the worst, almost as bad as the blacks in Haiti.
- Some races just have more natural intelligence than others. Here is the order along with their mean IQs:
- 110: European Jews
- 105: North-east Asians, like Japanese and Koreans
- 100: whites in North America and Europe (not counting Jews)
- 90: the world as a whole
- 89: Hispanics in America
- 85: black Americans
- 70: black Africans
- Only the Japanese, north-western Europeans and those like them, like white Americans, are capable of clean, democratic government. Blacks and Latin Americans are not: they are incapable of the level of trust among themselves that is required. That is why Latin America and Africa are such a mess.
- Mexico is trying to take over America by sending millions of Mexicans to live there.
- Barack Obama is a wigger: he was brought up by the white side of his family, knowing little about blacks other than what he saw on television. His blackness is an act.
And so on.
He prides himself in speaking the truth that the politically correct will not touch. Like about IQs.
Like Pat Buchanan, Sailer is against letting Mexicans into America. Both men are Catholics, like the Mexicans themselves, but skin colour seems to matter to them more than religion. They have both bought into an old-fashioned, hard-right Anglo Protestant view of the world.
The blogs in his blogroll he calls the Steveosphere.
Sailer’s views on race are like those that whites had a hundred years ago: whites are naturally better than everyone else, they are Evolution’s Chosen People. Science proves it!
These days most white Americans still think blacks are not as good as they are, but they say it is because of their “background”. They believe in a cultural racism instead of Sailer’s scientific racism. But either way they both point the finger away from themselves, their own racism and the unfair advantages they have in society.
See also:
People like Steve Sailor work for demons and after them, May the Lord have mercy on their soul.
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Much of his stuff is bullshit but the IQ part is backed by tests
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“but the IQ part is backed by tests”
***************
Those “tests” are pseudo-science at best. Anyone make up a “test” with questions aimed at favoring one group over another and justifying it with racist BS.
Steve Sailor needs help.
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Thanks Abagond for posting that evil man. This entry ought to warn people against this racist guy who write lies on people of Color on a daily basis. For example, “Black women are ugly.” How many Black women does Steve knows personally? None. Because he and his family chose to live in an all-white neighborhood free of Blacks. He doesn’t have contact with Blacks beyond the superficial rite of shopping in a mall, grocery store, or office building. He sees beautiful Black women in the media, but because he puts down Blacks so much that he doesn’t acknowledge their humanness.
A lot of right-wingers and liberal whites get their ideas from Steve Sailer and pass them off as “gospel”.
I hope Steve’s website goes belly up, his henchmen exposed for who they really are, white supremacists.
Stephanie B.
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The Sad thing is that this will generate more hits for his site, exactly what he wants.
By even paying attention, we are giving him what he wants.
-Stal
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It’s funny because a friend and I were just talking about these issues 20 minutes ago over the phone.
Scientifically proven? That’s laughable..seriously. People seem to often equate “smarter” or “higher IQ” as having an advanced capability of learning. This is not necessarily true. It’s not that anybody of any race lacks the capability of learning—unless they have mental health issues— just as much, if not more than the next person, as it is that their educational backgrounds and/or lack of opportunity did not make such things readily available. In fact, there are many blacks and others who have excelled regardless of biases with nothing handed to them—but no one talks about them.
These IQ test are indefinitely biased; why are they biased? Let me give you an example. In Asia, most children are taught at an accelerated rate and are given more advanced courses at younger ages, compared to those here in America—even in the most prestigious, private schools.
If ANY child, of ANY race—grew up in that culture and went to the same schools, given the same opportunities, they would excel just as much on an IQ test, if not more than the other children native to that land. Just like ANY child of ANY race not given the same opportunities and resources to excel are not likely to.
Look at children in poorer areas, like parts of LA, in America—yes, even Asian and white kids who have the mostly positive stereotype of being “smart”…their story is the same as black children in a poor area with lack of resources and opportunities.
The public school system and private school system are completely different from each other and the public school systems differ as well based on where one lives–underfunded, understaffed, and what I call poorly staffed—creating an environment not ideal for educational purposes. Some teachers are just there to get a pay check, and children sense this; they need more than someone who calls him/herself a teacher but truly doesn’t embody what it is to be a teacher.
Besides this, one has to ask—who set the standards, and why were THESE particular standards chosen—especially knowing the standards in pubic and private schools AND across different countries greatly vary—how do they prove anyone’s intelligence? Why is everyone else expected to follow someone else’s standard of intelligence as if it is some divine doctrine?
It’s all an illusion..white, European features being more “attractive” is subjective even though the idea has, over years of dramatized media and such, become universal; Jews, Asians, or anyone else being “smarter”, progressive, etc…is all an illusion—all of it. If given the same opportunities, education, etc, any one could be deemed “smarter” on THEIR “smart-barometer”.
I’d say, it’s identical to attending a magic show; the magician will only let you see what he/she wants you to see, of course that would exclude the “trap door” beneath because then, frankly—it’d be game over, and in my eyes, the game has long ended.
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Those IQ test certainly don’t favor whites, why can’t full black americans just accept facts?
I’m half Korean and black and I have no problem accepting the fact that Eaast asians on average do have a higher IQ than blacks and whites.
Black people have a huge pride problem, makes me glad to be mixed.
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BTW he is correct about Obama, Obama wasn’t raised by blacks, he was raised by his WHITE mother, much like alicia keys. They were raised by their WHITE MOTHER. Who probably got alot of crap from BITTER BLACK WOMEN yet those same women are gonna vote for him and can’t keep alicia keys songs from playing.
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lluvYubin you are an idiot. If you believe everthing the white media tells you then you are a lost cause to the black race.
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I would not want to see Sailer’s site shut down. He is only saying what many whites already think. Not talking about it will not help.
I will do a post on IQs and also on Black IQs in particular. But my quick take on it is that they are measuring something but it is not intelligence as most people think of it. It is something closer to what we call education, like what indigoblu was saying.
Whatever they are measuring it is not something you are born with that you get from your parents: during the First World War blacks had low IQs, lower than now. But what is even more, Jews and the Irish in America also did badly on the same tests. They were poor back then too. But now Jews are among the richest in the country and do well on IQ tests.
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Sailer says the tests are not racist or biased because they are designed by white men and yet Jews and some Asians do better on them than whites do.
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I agree with Stephanie: it seems like Sailer does not know any black people to any deep level. If he did he would not talk like that. It seems he is going by what he sees on television.
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IluvYubin,
You reek of self-hate.
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All I can do is laugh. At both Steve Sailer and IluvYubin. Pathetic… truly pathetic
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I hadn’t heard of him before seeing him mentioned on this site, but I do plan to check out his blog one day when I have some free time (won’t be in the foreseeable future).
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“Those IQ test certainly don’t favor whites, why can’t full black americans just accept facts?”
—–
I mean, are you serious?
You, my friend, are the one who cannot accept the facts. Step outside into reality, please.
Even worse is that these facts go beyond IQ tests. The same holds true for all standardized tests because there is no catch-all standard. The playing field is not level.
Abagond: I’m excited to have stumbled upon your blog, you have great insights!
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The fact that Chinese don’t appear to be capable of the rational, consensual government demonstrates the limits of IQ-reductionist thinking. That being said, IQ is unquestionably a factor contributing to the civilizational competence, although obviously not the only one.
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don’t waste good time on bad rubbish
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Most white people in 2008 agree with Sailer’s analysis. They just can’t say it without consequences they aren’t willing to endure.
But they live it out everyday.
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I agree: Sailer is just more honest.
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Sorry, but I think Sailer is more right than wrong. I’ve spent my whole life around black people and while I’m very fond of some and have a great respect for them as individuals, on average, blacks are like small children in the bodies of huge, strong men. They are not “evil” but they have short fuses, do not think far ahead, and tend to have poor cognitive abilities. They do not use “good judgment”.
I am a corporate trainer. For the next two weeks I am working with a training class of 23 people, two white males, three white females, six black males and twelve black females. There are no “Hispanics” or Asians in the group. Of the white females two have children, both born in marriage. Of the black females three are (visibly) pregnant and at least five others have small children and only one pregnant girl and two of the other mothers have _ever_ been married. I find this out with some probing questions over a few days on each class and keep notes. This is all typical of stats across the 15+ new hire classes I have taught.
The business is a call center and does not have a bilingual or Spanish queue. There are only a handful of “Hispanics” among the 400+ CSRs on the floor and most were hired specifically for bilingual queues when those were present. There are one or to Filipinas or other Asians, non-Chinese, non-Japanese.
When we did have a “bilingual” queue the staff for that queue were all “recognizably Hispanic”, that is, not White or Black, but mestizos. This can be determined from group photos for every department that are taken regularly. I volunteered to digitize them all from the negatives or Polaroids so as to further my research, so I have unfettered access.
CSR jobs in our call center pay about $13 an hour to start. We do require proof of citizenship and run background checks but we will hire legal non-citizens. Virtually none apply.
This exactly agrees with Sailer’s predictions and observations. Therefore, I tend to believe Sailer is, whatever his personal feelings, a highly cogent observer with valid statements to make.
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Sorry indigoblu, you do not understand IQ tests. IQ tests are designed NOT to measure what one has been taught, but whether one can reach a given conclusion or result from a set of information provided to test cognitive ability. There are IQ tests that can be taken by illiterate people or those literate only in languages the testers have no knowledge of.
Now in practice, most conventional IQ tests do not perfectly null out educational achievement, but they do it to a great degree. IQ tests using different methodologies correspond closely, but not perfectly, and independently of educational achievement tests. That means they are performing properly and we can have confidence to a high degree they are accurate.
By measuring populations of Blacks in Asian schools abnd vice versa we have a useful cross check. The results closely corellate with what other IQ tests predict.
There is such a thing as cognitive ability, it is independent largely of educational level, and it varies greatly by racial group. Ashkenazi Jews have very high IQ and Sephardic Jews have average IQ. Sub-Saharan Africans and Aboriginal Australians have very low IQs on average.
In other words, Sailer is saying what corresponds pretty closely with decades of testing and you are in denial.
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First, let me say, I am no expert, nor have or do I claim to be, on the ins and outs of IQ tests, but there are simple, and valid, things I stated that you have quite conveniently overlooked—primarily the main point of my comment. Moreover, I never stated that it measured one’s ability to regurgitate what they have been taught, neither did I say it tests one’s ability to read (although cognitive skills can be farther enhanced by challenging, timed reading material). It’s unfortunate that is all you got out of it, yet it doesn’t invalidate what I’ve said…
Do you think an individual with little to no educational background would do well on an IQ test? When I looked up what an IQ test actually tested, on a more specific level, this is what I found…apparently, you missed this memo or selectively picked what was convenient to you:
You said…
One thing we do agree on is that it does vary, but have you asked yourself why it varies? As it varies with racial groups, I’m sure it also varies within racial groups too. Perhaps, that is not fitting to your argument, but it is still important all the same, in understanding this. Although it is much easier to look at people based on collective grouping, it is not so easy when you look at them on an individual level. Children of all hues and races are known to have weak cognitive skills, it’s not unique to black children, nor do all black children have weak cognitive skills.
It varies because cognitive skills are mainly learned, there is no denying this. You have to take into account that children (Asian, African, African American, white Americans, Jewish) grow up independent of each other—the effects of different cultures as well as social interaction that help these skills develop do vary based on group and within groups as well.
Cognitive skills are developed as an infant and education most defiantly hones cognitive ability as the child grows older; I wouldn’t call education largely independent when it can and does effect how well you learn and perceive things.
You said…..
They have cross checked blacks who know the culture, particularly the language, and have grown up there? Where is this information disclosed?
Children with normal cognitive skills can enhance their cognitive skills for better performance in learning. To elaborate on what I’ve already mentioned, since you have presented no data…..
If you have Asian children who, while in class, are daily given 9 advanced math problems, and it doesn’t have to be math, I’m just using this as an example, where they have to correctly answer in under say…5 minutes….are their cognitive skills becoming sharper? Of course.
Compare that to a child who is given 10 of the same things but they are given 20-30 mins to do them. Obviously, their cognitive abilities are not as utilized as the Asian children. Both would probably carry this type of learning throughout their childhood and/or into adulthood.
What about a black child, who was born and grew up in the same culture and educational institutions as that Asian child-therefore given the same 9 problems and 5 minutes to answer correctly, do you think they would lack in their cognitive abilities as maybe a white student in poor neighborhood in the US whose cognitive ability is not as challenged (10 problems, 20 mins)? Of course they would not. The fact still remains, as I said:
Cognitive skills can be improved at any age, so this includes children with weak cognitive skills (black, white, or otherwise), because it is like a muscle, and muscles need exercise, but the truth of the matter is, as I said:
If they will not invest in proper educational material, teachers, and the likes, it is highly unlikely they will invest in things that may improve these children cognitive skills.
This brings me to something else. It is well known that most people with very high IQs are very lonely and mostly misunderstood. Not to say it’s a bad thing, but just to say it’s a little more to it than what meets the eye, perhaps a trade off.
You said….
My response to this is…
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To answer your questions, first, illiterate people’s IQ can be measured fairly well by tests designed to do just that. These same tests work well with individuals who are educated and literate but not in the language(s) the test-givers are. That’s why the relative IQs of simian species can be determined although they have no power of speech and what we would call language.
Secondly, there are a number of variables that CAN definitely influence IQ, such as good nutrition from conception to late childhood, intellectual stimulation, etc. No one denies this. BUT they are not the primary factor. Genetics are the primary factor.
Thirdly, no one is saying all members of racial group X are dumb (or smart). What they are saying is that in every group there is a distribution of every quantifiable characteristic, certainly including cognitive ability. That distribution has a height and a width when graphed out and is called “the bell curve”. No two groups are the same in distribution, mean or high and low points. Further, when different types of cognitive ability are broken down different groups have wildly varying distributions.
This is hard science when rigorous controls are put in place. Unfortunately there is a lot we don’t know because this has been a field the better researchers have mostly avoided. Mr. Sailer has been most bold in saying even as much as he has, and the only reason he has gone this far is because he just is not a very money or adulation-motivated person. He is a nerd, a geek. But he has pointed out what others have not in exactly the same way and for similar reasons as the boy in the famous story about the emperor’s new clothes.
The race deniers and equalitarians are skyclad and pocked with mosquito bites, but so far the mass delusion has been to pretend otherwise. As with tulip bulbs and other mass bizarre behavior the screen will come down sooner or later. The problem is if it is later our social fabric may be irreparably rent.
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Bret, you said:
By measuring populations of Blacks in Asian schools abnd vice versa we have a useful cross check. The results closely corellate with what other IQ tests predict.
Can you give us the source for this statement?
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sometimes i wonder why black people or so called people of colour choose to defend themselves against these bigots. if asians or jews have the highest IQ who cares. i think it is a folly to pay attention to this kind of people. the energy black people put in this kind of issues if they were directed at the mental, spiritual and physical well being of our people we'” be just fine. we dont owe either of the races apologies for being who we are. we were made and created this way if you dont like us , we dont like you either. we are a people darker than blue and we are proud of it. to hell with what sailer thinks. im a very proud african from the ancient king of benin.
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and to add to my comment mahatma gandhi was once asked by a european journalist what he thought about the so called western civilization , he replied answering that a wsetern civilization would be a good idea. mos t of this people like sailers are deluional sycophants. in my school of thought IQ does not exist but only the human spirit. the well groomed and conditioned mind gave the world its gandhis, martin luther king, saint francis of asissi, mother theresa and malcolm x, patrice lumumba,bob marley,samory toure, frederick douglass , akhnaten and countless others. ignornace has taken the place of wisdom and truth. we are only answerable to GOD. we should worship only him and only him must we show reverence. what can compare to his creation. what has the western democracy given other than death and destruction. no african ever droped a nuclear bomb on anyone. you call that IQ.
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“How many Black women does Steve knows personally? None. Because he and his family chose to live in an all-white neighborhood free of Blacks”
Free of Blacks – interesting choice of words there La Reyna. Unconsciously telling us something there were you?
Btw if Blacks get an upper case ‘B’ why do Whites not get one too?
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The problem with Black people is that we give too much energy to people, places and things that work against us. Like my father use to say, if you see crazy coming cross the street! Just keep putting out positive energy out there. Even if it’s in the form of blogs.
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Steve Sailer is a racist. Racism is the belief that one race is naturally better in general than another. Sailer seems to believe that when he said this about the blacks of New Orleans:
“The plain fact is that they tend to possess poorer native judgment than members of better-educated groups. Thus they need stricter moral guidance from society.”
and:
“With the national black average IQ around 85, New Orleans’ mean black IQ would probably be in the lower 80s or upper 70s. “
Source: http://vdare.com/sailer/050903_new_orleans.htm
If he thinks the blacks of New Orleans are like that because of lead paint, poor nutrition or bad schools, he is NOT racist. But if he thinks they were pretty much born that way, then he is racist.
But please note: to even come to these conclusions in the first place – that half the blacks in New Orleans are pretty much retarded – requires a racist view of blacks. Only a racist would find them believable.
Note that racism is just a set of beliefs. Even if they can be proved true, they still count as racism. Just as Marxism is still Marxism whether it is true or not.
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This guy quotes Phillipe Rushton in one of his articles! Nah, this man isn’t racist, he’s misunderstood.
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Just went to look at Steve’s blog.
The boy’s really a piece, isn’t he?
This is the kind of crap that happens when racists get their hands on a little bit of genetic data without understanding jack about genetics.
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Wow RR you really are brainwashed about Steve Sailer 😦
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I’m jockin him, admittedly.
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Not to get off on another tangent (I know you blogged about the IQ question) but how is it inherently racist to wonder whether blacks and whites differ with respect to native intelligence?
Because “blacks” and “whites” are social constructs and simply do not exist in coherent genetic packages (by “native intelligence”, I presume you mean natural, biological intelligence). To presume that something as multifaceted and genetically complicated as “native intelligence” could have a connection to “Blackness” or “whiteness” indicates a strong belief not only in human biological race, but in the idea that these races can be cast along simple, heirarchical lines of comparsion.
That, RR, is racism. Simple dicitonary definition.
Black men are more prone to other diseases (prostate cancer) compared to white and Asian men. Asians have a harder time metabolizing alcohol than other groups. Asians are shorter on average than other groups. These are inherent realities.
“Inherent realities?” Surely you jest. In the first place, you seem to confuse causality with linkage. Black men tend to have more trouble, on average, with prostate cancer due to cultural and not genetic issues – cultural issues which they share, for the most part, with white men from the same class and regional background.
Secondly, you mistake statistical tendencies within a given population as proof of race. Race is quite clearly defined by science as stable, discrete subspecies, not a population group with given statistical tendencies. Whether or not a given populational group is “shorter” or whatever on average has to do more with where YOU decide to place the so-called “racial boundary” than mother nature. Any characteristic you care to name as “typical” of any race you care to name will also be found to be “typical” of another “race” – it all depends on how you decide to cut your racial boundaries.
“Note that racism is just a set of beliefs. Even if they can be proved true, they still count as racism.”
What I conclude from this statement is that racism should not elicit value judgments. In other words, racism is not necessarily bad.
I do not understand why you would conclude that something is “not necessarily bad” simply because it is a set of beliefs. There is no logical link between those two statements. For example, the idea that having sex with kiddies is a great and fun thing to do is likewise “just a set of beliefs” and I think we can both agree that it’s bad, correct? There are several good reasons why racism elicits value judgements and why, in fact, it should, beginning with the fact that it’s a thoroughly debunked scientific concept, on the level of creationism. And that’s not even bringing in the millions who’ve died and suffered in racism’s name and the pure human potential which has been pissed down humanity’s drain because of it…
1) Whites are smarter than blacks.
2) Blacks run faster than whites.
Both statements are racially absolute and both are easily falsifiable.
🙂 Oh, the arrogance of the scientifically unsophisticated….
To begin with, you need to define “white” and “black” in a scientific and objective sense. To do that would be the very first step to “easily verifying or falsifying” your thesis.
So time to put up or shut up, RR. You claim all this is “easy” and “obvious”. OK, then: give us a decent qualitative definition of “black” and “white” so that we can go about testing your hypothesis.
(This should be fun….)
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@Ao:
Ditto.
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If what Sailer says about IQ is true, why is there an average 13.5 point difference between the IQ scores of adopted black children who were raised in black homes and those who were raised in white homes? The difference should be negligible if intelligence is inborn (whether IQ measures intelligence adequately or not is another discussion altogether).
Yup, Sailer is wrong. Among other things.
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And why has black IQ increased so drastically in the past half century?
Did we go through a radioactive cloud or something back in 1960, causing mass mutations or what?
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Natasha W,
Could you give a citation for that statistic.
Thaddeus,
Black IQ, relative to white IQ, has remained constant for the last 80 years. IQs have increased over this time (Flynn Effect), but the IQ gap between blacks and whites has not narrowed. Please give a citation showing otherwise if you can.
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Natasha W,
Could you give a citation for that statistic.
Advantage and disadvantage: a profile of American youth by R.D. Bock and E. G. Moore.
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Hello Natasha,
I found your citation via Google, but unfortunately only the first couple of chapters of the book are on line. I did find this though:
http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=buy.optionToBuy&id=1977-07996-001&CFID=5107331&CFTOKEN=19065208
The abstract corroborates your assertion, although it doesn’t state the number of mixed race children involved in the study. It also doesn’t account for the higher average IQ of the white biological children.
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It also doesn’t account for the higher average IQ of the white biological children.
If I recall correctly the IQ scores of the adopted black children raised in white homes and the IQ scores of white children were about the same; I believe there was a point or two difference.
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The IQ gap between blacks and whites has not narrowed. Please give a citation showing otherwise if you can.
RR, do you even bother to read the authors you cite or do you just repeat their names, rather like a shaman intoning power words whose meaning he does not understand?
The “Flynn Effect” is so named after James Flynn, author of
“Black Americans reduce the racial IQ gap: Evidence from standardization samples”, together with William T. Dickens, published in the October 2006 issue of the Journal of Psychological Science.
And then there’s Richard Nisbett’s article “Heredity, Environment and Race Differences in IQ: A Commentary on Rushton and Jensen”, published in Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, in 2005.
There’s quite a library out there regarding this topic. The Bell Curve was debunked as science 12 years ago when I was still in undergrad, yet strangely enough, people such as yourself still seem to think that it’s fresh and relevant.
In fact, about the only serious practicing scientist (and I use “serious” advisedly) out there who still wholeheartedly believes that blacks are genetically less intelligent than whites is James Rushton (and, of course, his students). Rushton’s work, it will be noted, is funded by a highly conservative right-wing think tank and it generally get’s trashed by peer reviewers for many of the reasons which I’m bringing up here. Rushton, in fact, wouldn’t be doing much science at all if it weren’t for funding from people who have vested political interests in proving the genetic superiority or inferiority of this or that group. In short, Rushton is producing politically correct science: science whose goal is to prove a political faction’s point.
Wikipedia is no substitute for an education, son. 😦
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Natasha W,
What was the racial composition of those “black” children raised in white homes?
Thaddeus,
You contend that race is a social construct. This is the crux of your argument (the rest consisting wholly of invective). I believe that race is a reality and that race is relative. I do not believe in racial absolutes. I believe that races are defined by their differences relative to each other. There is no need to define specific races in absolute terms, because race is a nebulous concept. Race is a continuum, as Sailer has said. We are all part of the human race, but we vary genetically along a continuum. I will not give a definition of “white” to you, because it could never be comprehensive enough to encompass the various perturbations of “white” which is, no doubt, what you are banking on. This does not mean that race is meaningless or solely a social construct. I will give you Sailer’s definition of race:
“A race is a large extended family that inbreeds to some extent.”
I am fond of this definition because it more or less comports to what most people perceive as race. Han Chinese mostly mate with other Han Chinese and are thus more genetically related to each other than they are related to Northern Europeans. Race is hardly a debunked concept, being that scientists and laymen use it constantly and consistently. For instance, my doctor told me that I needed to have my prostate examined yearly starting at age 40. I asked why. He said because I am African American, and that African American men have a higher rate of prostate cancer compared to other groups of men. He explained that the cause was both genetic and environmental. He then told me to lay off the ham hocks and bend over…..
Your pedophilia analogy is inapt. While racism, in Abagond’s line of reasoning, is not NECESSARILY bad, pedophilia in Western society is always bad. You could have constructed a more apt analogy using sex generally. Sex is not necessarily good (as in the case of pedophilia or rape). This comparison would have been more fitting I think.
I know this might like be hard for you to believe, but I do, in fact, like read stuff. I…like…read….those…IQ…people, like Arthur Jensen, who…is…like…a…what do you call it….a titan…in the field of…what’s that word…psychometrics. Yeah, that’s the ticket. The other psychometric dudes, like worship him. Except for those…like…that paleontologist dude before he died…what’s his name…Steven Jay Gould. Even that dude I mentioned before, James Flynn felt the need to…like…dispute Jensen…because Jensen was like…the Man… In psychometrics, even though Flynn’s day gig was in political science. He had no training in like mind stuff, but I’m not mad at the dude. And those two Bell Curve dudes, Murray and Herrnstein, their book was a best seller for like…umpteen weeks on the NYTimes list. I guest just stupid mofos like me read that stuff. It was a big thick book with lots of words I couldn’t like pronounce (I was sweatin that book yo), but I did finish it. I read a bunch of reviews in that magazine…what was it…The New Republic..trying to bust a cap in the IQ argument. They were using a lot of big words that I didn’t understand, but it sounded like M & H withstood the slings and arrows and came out smellin like…victors. But what do I know? I’m just a black man tryin to maintain his sense of…whatyacallit…integrity in a cold and cruel world.
And that other n*gga, Skip Gates, the one from Harvard. He is 50% European! Dig it! How did that happen? If race is like, a figment of dumb mofos imaginations, why is that Harvard dude using the lingo. And those forensic scientist dudes trying to solve crimes from DNA evidence…why do they like make sentences like “Assailant was 80% sub-Saharan African” if race is like, just made up (http://www.bioforensics.com/conference04/Racial_Identification/index.html). And why do doctors use race in their…um…prognoses…in cases of hypertension, sickle cell and that disease…what is it…Tay-Sachs. Why is it that…Ashken…Ashkena….f*ck it…white Jews are more likely to get that Tay-Sachs sh*t than brothers? I don’t even know a brother who has known anybody with a relative with that Tay-Sachs thing. But I do know a number of Nubians who have relatives with sickle cell.
Peace out, my n*gga. And if you could like define “tall” in a scientific and none relativistic way, this n*gga here would surely be most appreciative.
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Natasha W,
What was the racial composition of those “black” children raised in white homes?
….They were black. 😉 They are even referred to in the book as “full black.” Biracial children were a different group.
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The problem with these categorizations is that they are social. “Biracial” is generally only a state remembered in family lore beginning 2 generations ago. Before that, black was black.
So a person may have 80% of their ancestors coming out of Africa and STILL be called “black”.
This is the number one problem behind Rushton’s work (which Sailer loves to cite).
Even setting aside all the known and well-documented problems with presuming that I.Q. is an unambiguous measure of intelligence (which, because he can’t refute, Rushton and Sailer just handwaves), and sampling problems (Rushton handpicks the groups he’s going to study and has not yet, as far as I know, done a statistically ssignificant selection of “black” or “white” people), there’s STILL the “what is black/white?” problem.
Rushton basically takes people at their word – i.e., he uses self-ascription to determin what’s black and white. But self-ascription maps very poorly onto genetic content. Take Brazil, for example: supposedly, only 6% of our population is black. You heard that right. So what do most of those Brazilians you see on T.V. (who look exactly like most black americans) call themselves then? “Mixed”, “brown” and occasionally even “white”. Furthermore, “blackness” traditionally correlates with class in Brazil. Thus, the further down the class scale you go (and the more a child is exposed, due to poverty, to all sorts of negativeI.Q.-impeding influences), the more likely someone is to call themselves “black”. In our country, then, two people with the exact same genetic composition might end up self-classifying as white, brown, or black. Worse: these classifications aren’t stable: they “float” depending on circumstances.
Rushton, who uses Brazilian stats in his international IQ comparisons, touches on this dilema not at all.
So this is the main problem with Rushton’s studies: they correlate a social constant to a genetic constant without dealing with the fact that said social constant is not immutable and unchanging from society to society – or even within one society.
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Now, responding to my wayward student, RR…
I believe that race is a reality and that race is relative.
Son, that’s just another way of saying “race is a social construct”. If it is relative, it is us doing the constructing of it, not mother nature. Any racial classification, being relative, only makes sense from a given point of view.
Now, you hold onto this word “relative” as if it were your lifepreserver, probably because you think that it means that using it means you don’t have to qualify your key variable, “race”.
Unfortunately for you, nothing could be farther from the truth.
From Descartes on down to Weber and Einstein, the preachers of relativity are very clear on one thing: if something is relative, then in order to scientifically study it, one must very carefully define one’s initial point of view first and actively construct a transparent definition.
This is why we CAN claim that a group is taller or shorter, even though height is a relative trait. We can carefully construct and define what we mean by average height beforehand and anchor that definition in an objective reality. I have already shown how this can be done.
Now, if you want to treat race as a similar variable, you need to define it in a similar way. You need to clearly state “by black people, I mean such and such and by white people this and that”. This is how one properly works with relative variables, not by handwaving them.
Race is hardly a debunked concept, being that scientists and laymen use it constantly and consistently. For instance, my doctor told me that I needed to have my prostate examined yearly starting at age 40. I asked why. He said because I am African American, and that African American men have a higher rate of prostate cancer compared to other groups of men. He explained that the cause was both genetic and environmental. He then told me to lay off the ham hocks and bend over…
Sorry, race is a seriously debunked concept. The only reasons scientists such as your doctor use it still is that it makes communication with superstitious laymen such as yourself easier. In your doctor’s case, he IS using race in a relative way: relative to YOUR experience. The same octor, however, wouldn’t use that sort of phrasing if he lived here in Brazil. Not if he were competent. He wouldn’t, because it’s doubtful that a person who looks like you probably do would imagine himself to be black.
So yes, we scientists use race all the time when we talk to laymen. But if your doctor SERIOUSLY believes that blackness causes prostate cancer, then for your own sake, I suggest you find another doctor. Blackness has nothing to do with prostate cancer: a certain genetic complex is to blame and said complex, while statistically linked with blackness in the American south is not caused by it. If you have ancestors with said complex, you are at risk to get it. And in the U.S. south, there are plenty of “white” people who have ancestors with this complex.
I know this might like be hard for you to believe, but I do, in fact, like read stuff.
RR, if you think that a book’s scientific quality is judged by how many weeks it spends on the NYT best seller list, then you need to start reading far more carefully. New Republic, whatever its journalistic qualities, is also not well known as a scientific journal. I suggest you read “The Bell Curve” yourself and THEN read its principal detractors, rather than the wiki version of it, which from what you say, is about the level where you are now.
Dude.
By the way, RR, I SERIOUSLY doubt that you are African American. I have never, ever met an African American – or even heard of an African American i real life – who believes that blacks are genetically less intelligent than whites. Nice try, though!
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Just an aside, but does anyone else here get the urge to say “Well hello Sailer!” in a fruity Monty-Pythpnesque voice when this topic comes up?
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I agree with you on the “what is black exactly” bit, Thaddeus. But one, this was not a Rushton study, and two, there is absolutely no reason to believe that the adopted blacks in white homes had significantly less African ancestry than the adopted blacks in black homes whose IQs were much lower on average. The children of both groups were chosen from the same two agencies. I’m not sure if your point was tangential to mine or not, but I’m replying just in case.
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I’ve never heard of this guy before. I’ll read some of his stuff, but IQ story alone is crazy enough for me.
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Natasha, I should clarify…
My comments regaridng Rushton were directed at RR as his guru, Mr. Sailer, believes the sun shines out of Rushton’s rectum.
I agree with your commentary, but have you considered the following…?
Unconscious white racism.
If even half of what Abagond says here is true, we can expect that whites who adopt black children will, on average, adopt lighter-skinned black children. So yes, there is a significant reason for suspecting that the “blacks” who are adopted may be genetically different from the “black” population in general.
My point is that if someone is trying to ground IQ as a genetic product of race OR prove that it has no biological link at all, the very first thing they need to do is offer up a genetic or biological definition of race, something none of these studies do.
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If even half of what Abagond says here is true, we can expect that whites who adopt black children will, on average, adopt lighter-skinned black children. So yes, there is a significant reason for suspecting that the “blacks” who are adopted may be genetically different from the “black” population in general.
You have no basis for that claim. At all. Because, in fact, much of what Abagond has written here says the exact opposite — when whites are choosing significant relationships with blacks (as in dating/marriage), they tend to go for darker-skinned blacks. They are more “authentic.” If they wanted some lighter-skinned, they could simply go for a white person. See posts “Black women that white men like” and similar posts.
My point is that if someone is trying to ground IQ as a genetic product of race OR prove that it has no biological link at all, the very first thing they need to do is offer up a genetic or biological definition of race, something none of these studies do.
I can agree with that. Which is why I find the idea of IQ (as marker of intelligence) and race in the same discussion to be laughable. Both are very questionable in the first place. But alas, the studies have been done on “race,” so I find the study that I’ve cited to be as valid as any other study on the same topic.
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You have no basis for that claim. At all. Because, in fact, much of what Abagond has written here says the exact opposite — when whites are choosing significant relationships with blacks (as in dating/marriage), they tend to go for darker-skinned blacks.
There’s no basis for any of this, because research has not been done. You claimed there were no possible reasons to expect a difference. I gave one. My point is not that this bias does exist, but that it very well could. Responsible research construction should take it into consideration and either show it doesn’t exist or correct for it. Right now, what we’ve got is a lot of handwavium – on both sides of the debate.
I, too, agree that race is a ridiculous marker for IQ. And you’re correct: the study you cite is indeed as valid (or not) as any other. What that goes to show is just how poorly rooted in anything that approaches objective reailty this whole debate is.
For the record, I believe that it would be impossible to link race to IQ, given that it has been conclusively shown, time and again, that race is such a flexible object. If one were to make a relative definition of race that could be used to study IQ, one would ipso facto be including so many social considerations in said definition that it would be impossible to tell whether nature or nurture created the difference in question.
But I always invite racists to give such a definition the old college try, mainly because their fumbling attampts to define race point out just how ridiculous and subjective sich definitions are.
What it all boils down to is that guys like Rushton, Sailer and RR are trying to make an absolutist, objective claim by using extremely relative variables – variables, which (as should be obvious by now) they can’t even be bothered to define in relativist fashion.
Their argument works – to the extent that it works – on the force of rhetoric alone simply because so many people naturalize race and can’t conceive that such an important thing could be constructed by anything other than transhuman divine providence (or Mother Nature, take your pick).
In close to a decade of debating race with racists, I have yet to see any one of them, no matter wehat their scientific credentials, offer up an acceptably neutral definition of race – relative or not. They don’t do this because, as has been shown time and again by forensic anthropology, it can’t be done. It’s like trying to claim that astrological signs determine someone’s IQ.
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There’s no basis for any of this, because research has not been done. You claimed there were no possible reasons to expect a difference. I gave one. My point is not that this bias does exist, but that it very well could.
Amongst black children adopted by celebrities, the overwhelming number are of darker skin.
Madonna’s children:
Joely Fisher’s daughter:
Steven Spielberg’s son, Angelina Jolie’s daughter. The list goes on. In fact, the only lighter-skinned adopted black child in Hollywood that I can think of offhand is Connor Cruise, son of Tom Cruise.
Everything points against your claim.
But even further than all of the above, lighter skin does not prove by any means that a person is not of “pure” African descent. There are pure Africans of lighter skin in all regions of Africa, including the Sub-Saharan regions (more on this in the post “Melyssa Ford”). So assuming there was a white bias for lighter skin children, which nothing so far suggests, that still wouldn’t prove that children have been mixed in the recent past and thus why there IQs are higher.
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*their
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Amongst black children adopted by celebrities, the overwhelming number are of darker skin.
That’s what we call “annecdotal evidence”, Natasha. And, seriously, where has a scientific study on these kids been done? Who’s counted them up? What backs up your claim regarding the “majority” other than your own personal feelings on the matter?
What you have there is properly a hypothesis, not a proof. Could be true, might not be true. We’d have to test it and see. Madonna and the Jolie-Pitts are not “the majority of celebrities”, in spite of what E! might think.
As for the “lighter skin does not mean less African” point, you’re correct. Again, this is one of the reasons why “black” isn’t a natural or obvious object of study.
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That’s what we call “annecdotal evidence”, Natasha. And, seriously, where has a scientific study on these kids been done? Who’s counted them up?
I’m well aware of that. I do not know of any studies done on the topic, or else I would have linked them. The only reason I brought them up at all is because you also cited anecdotal evidence in the form of abagond’s ideas (incorrectly, I might add).
In other words, this discussion is kind of pointless since none of this can be proven or disproven (although I’d look at any anecdotal evidence you have for your claim 😉 ). Also kind of off-topic, so I hope abagond doesn’t mind.
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Oh boy. I knew it would come down to “RR, you can’t be black because you don’t think like most blacks”. If that’s not racist, I don’t know what is. Negroes are so predictable. Oops! I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be racist. But, hey, it’s Ok because everyone knows blacks can’t be racist. But I forgot, you people don’t believe I am black. Damn! I’m in a Catch-22! This brother can’t catch a break! In any event, my race should be irrelevant to this discussion.
Thaddeus,
In response to my assertion that race is relative, you wrote:
“Son, that’s just another way of saying “race is a social construct”.
So, by your line of reasoning, “tallness” is also a social construct. Tallness is definitely relative, so tallness is a social construct (and you have yet to define “tallness” in a scientifically non-relativistic manner as you had agreed to initially). And the relative term “youth” is a social construct. “Big” is also a social construct as is “sharp”, “opaque”, “far” and a countless number of other notions we use every day to help use navigate our world. One could argue that family is a social construct. One would be partially correct in this, because family is partially a social construct. People adopt unrelated children all the time and call their constructed unit family. People marry and call themselves family. Good friends might refer to each other as brother or sister. But what about relatedness itself? We come to the real question at hand: Is relatedness a social construct? I was begat by my father (I have taken my parents word for it). I have lots of blood relations: grandparents, great-grandparents, nieces, nephews, aunts, uncles, cousins, 2nd cousins, 6th cousins, etc. My lineage extends outward in concentric circles, as does the lineage of every human being. At root, as humans, we are all related on some level. But I am more related to my parents than I am to you, Thaddeus. I think you would agree with this statement. Most of my American relatives have mated with other “black” Americans. Assuming that you are a black American, I would wager that I am more related to you than I am to, say, Vladimir Putin. This gets to the heart of my argument. Because ethnic groups (i.e. racial groups writ small) mate with other members of their ethnic group mostly, members of ethnic/racial groups are more related to each other than they are related to those outside the group. Thus, race is relative. Note, I don’t have to define precisely what race is to know who my immediate relatives are.
You wrote:
“From Descartes on down to Weber and Einstein, the preachers of relativity are very clear on one thing: if something is relative, then in order to scientifically study it, one must very carefully define one’s initial point of view first and actively construct a transparent definition.”
This is a very curious paragraph you have unbosomed here. If one is a scientist of some sort and one establishes a relativistic position on some matter and is actively working to construct a transparent definition of some phenomenon, is one required to refrain from constructing models of behavior for said phenomenon before that phenomenon is well defined? Clearly, this is not the case. The phenomenon of electricity was known and widely used well before the advent of quantum physics. Similarly, race is a scientifically useful concept despite its fuzziness. We don’t have to know the exact nature of the universe in order to go to the moon. We don’t have to know what race is precisely to observe the influence of race.
“Sorry, race is a seriously debunked concept.
Making this statement often and loudly does not make it true. The concept of race does not exist for those of a certain political bent (or people seeking funding for their research projects and don’t want to be labeled “racist”) but for other less politically constricted souls (which describes most of humanity), race is alive and well. People of your ilk think that by merely redefining a word out of existence that you can eliminate the problems associated with the hated word. Race is hardly debunked just because the concept offends you.
”The only reasons scientists such as your doctor use it still is that it makes communication with superstitious laymen such as yourself easier.”
Superstitious laymen? You not trying to, like, make a homo gesture at me, right. I don’t glide like that, yo! Anyway, they be usin’ really big words in that doctor magazine…what it be called…The Journal of The American Medical Association. Yeah, that’s it. Now that is a mag that is for scientific mofos. Only like, doctor people read that jammy. Now, because of all the big words, I couldn’t really understand what them doctor folk was talkin’ about, but a simple Google search
http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/search?fulltext=race
told me that even those doctor mofos talk about race to each other. Ain’t that a blip! Even these here scientist dudes be talkin’ bout race:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/search?src=hw&site_area=sci&fulltext=Race
It be seemin to me that you are like, a jumbled tangle of intellectual pathologies. Could you, like, extricate yourself from these weeds and give answer to the following sentences:
1) Define “tallness” in a scientifically non-relativistic manner as you had agreed to initially.
2) If race doesn’t exist, how is it that forensic scientist are able to determine the “race” of deceased individuals and of alleged criminal perpetrators with a high degree of probability from DNA evidence?.
3) Do you believe relatedness is a social construct?
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I’m convinced that there are IQ differences between various population groups or races or whatever you want to call these phenotypically clustered groups of humans. I think IQ tests do measure something meaningful and not all groups score identically.
The question for me however is how much is genetic and how much is environmental. I’m sure the very low scores of Africans have a lot to do with growing up under extreme poverty. There is an IQ gap between white Americans that live in the north and those that live in the south. I don’t remember how much the gap is, I think it’s 10pts. That can’t be explained by genes since it’s the same race. It has to be poverty, environmental and cultural, at least between N. and S. whites.
Intelligence is both genetic and environmental, not one or the other. We still aren’t sure what the biggest contributor to the trans-racial gaps are. There are compelling arguments on both sides and I’m totally agnostic on the matter myself. My position though is that Africans do not have IQs in the 60 range. First off, anyone with an IQ that low would be functionally retarded. They would not be able to drive, cook meals, get married, have normal family and social lives, go to work or do anything under the supervision of an adult. The average African can do all these things. So I’m quite skeptical of some of these ultra low IQ scores I see coming out of Africa. I’ve also read that there is an inverse correlation between poverty and heritability of IQ. So the greater the poverty, the less IQ correlates with genes. Madonna and Angelina Jolie have been adopting African kids. They will live in the west by extremely wealthy parents who will give them the world. I doubt their IQs will end up being in the 60s. They’ll probably go to college, get normal jobs and be perfectly fine and functional adults one day.
I do think it’s quite possible that Asians have a gift in math. They so outperform other students it’s hard to believe it’s only cultural. Although their culture does factor in. But even the Asian kids that weren’t that well off seemed to kick ass in school. I also have a hard time believing that the quite high average IQ and productivity of Ashkenazi Jews is only cultural.
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Tulio said:
“My position though is that Africans do not have IQs in the 60 range. First off, anyone with an IQ that low would be functionally retarded. They would not be able to drive, cook meals, get married, have normal family and social lives, go to work or do anything under the supervision of an adult.”
Right. People like Steve Sailer and Robert Lindsay say that Africans have IQs in the 60s and Caribbean blacks in the low 70s. Come on, if those numbers are at all right and not just racist lies, then how in the world can you take IQ seriously? At the very least you can say these tests do not work well outside of the country they were designed in.
If there was an IQ test that worked well in Nigeria but then showed White Americans have IQs in the 60s – who in the world would take those numbers seriously?
Sailer is letting his racism override his common sense.
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tulio said:
“I do think it’s quite possible that Asians have a gift in math. They so outperform other students it’s hard to believe it’s only cultural. Although their culture does factor in. But even the Asian kids that weren’t that well off seemed to kick ass in school. I also have a hard time believing that the quite high average IQ and productivity of Ashkenazi Jews is only cultural.”
I wrote about that here:
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RR, I don’t know any jews who believe that the Holocaust was fake. I don’t know any Blacks who think that Africans are genetically less intelligent. In fact, I haven’t even read or heard of such an animal. Go out on the intertubes and tell me if you can find one published black author who believes this. Just one.
On the other hand, I have met many, many, many white idiots who sign on to race boards and make outrageous statements while claiming to be black.
So – absent other proof – what should Occam’s Razor tell me about you? 🙂
Now, you’ll note that I’m not using your amusing contention that you are black to trash your ideas. That would be something of an ad hominem wouldn’t it? (Well, maybe not an ad hominem, but you get the idea…)
I’m trashing your ideas based on their limited intellectual content alone.
So please quit with the baaaaaaaaaaawing, son. It ain’t dignified.
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Thaddeus said:
“On the other hand, I have met many, many, many white idiots who sign on to race boards and make outrageous statements while claiming to be black.”
How do you know they are not black?
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abagond said:
“If there was an IQ test that worked well in Nigeria but then showed White Americans have IQs in the 60s – who in the world would take those numbers seriously?”
Too bad no one has ever been able to devise an IQ test where blacks can outscore whites. Not even a black “person” has been able to do this? Why not? Is it because of “racism?” Or is it because blacks are less intelligent than whites? The answer is obvious.
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How do you know they are not black?
A couple of years ago, I helped moderate a race board. Every once in awhile, we’d get Stormfront clowns or folks who claimed to be from other white supremacist organizations trolling the board. We let them do so, because it was our belief that engaging these guys in debate inevitably shows them up for the fools they are. It’s like scientists battling creationists: argument can only help us.
Well, on a couple of different occasions while this was going on, we’d get “black” people coming into the conversation who’d either act like the worst sort of stereotypical inner-city idiots (at which point the racists would say “See? This is exactly what we mean!”) or who’d say stuff like “As a black man, I really must agree: most blacks are criminals”.
Well, on every one of these occasions, we’d trace the ISPs and lo and behold if they weren’t they same as some Stormfront feckwit.
This has also recently happened on another board I monitor. A confirmed eurofascist whose long haunted the discussions recently had one of his “black” sock-puppets revealed via ISP trace.
I guess nazis and proxies don’t mix. [shrug] You gotta admit: they aren’t exactly the brightest shooters in God’s marble bag.
So like I said, absent other proof Occam’s Razor indicates that RR is a white boy trying to cop some spurious cred for his whacko ideas by claiming to be black.
Tell me true, Abagond: have you ever met a computer literate black man with at least a high school education who has said: “Y’know, I think white people are genetically more intelligent than black people”?
Occam’s Razor, man. I don’t know, but that’s the best, most logical explanation.
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I have never heard a black person say anything like that.
Interesting: black sock puppets.
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RR’s Ebonics seems fake too.
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Peter Lerman said:
“Too bad no one has ever been able to devise an IQ test where blacks can outscore whites. Not even a black “person” has been able to do this? Why not? Is it because of “racism?” Or is it because blacks are less intelligent than whites? The answer is obvious.”
There is a black IQ test like that:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Intelligence_Test_of_Cultural_Homogeneity
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abagond,
Thaddeus has no way of knowing my race. He knows this. He just doesn’t what to address the issues I raise because the issues themselves offend him. Even if my race were objectively known to this board, what difference would it make? One either makes a cogent argument or one does not, regardless of race (unless one gives affirmative action points. Please spare me that!). I think the idea of race being relative is compelling. Thus far, no one, especially Thaddeus, has refuted this idea.
tulio,
There was, at one time, an IQ gap between white Northerners and white Southerners. I don’t think that is the case currently.
I understand your skepticism regarding low African IQ scores. The depressed environments of many African countries no doubt depress IQ scores, but how do we explain the low average IQ score (78) of a relatively wealthy black country like Barbados? It has been observed that technical mental retardation is somewhat different for whites than for blacks. Blacks who are technically retarded are more socially functional than mentally retarded whites. Mental retardation among whites is often caused by afflictions such as Down’s syndrome, whereas for blacks, low IQ scores are not automatically associated with a mental condition and consequently low IQ blacks are more socially functional and similar to other blacks.
Thaddeus,
You are equating the belief in non-uniform average IQ distributions among populations with Holocaust denial. You are hysterical now. Can we just stick to the discussion at hand? Could you please answer the questions I put to you:
1) Define “tallness” in a scientifically non-relativistic manner as you had agreed to initially.
2) If race doesn’t exist, how is it that forensic scientist are able to determine the “race” of deceased individuals and of alleged criminal perpetrators with a high degree of probability from DNA evidence?
3) Do you believe relatedness is a social construct?
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So, onto RR’s more substantive claims, such as they are…
So, by your line of reasoning, “tallness” is also a social construct. Tallness is definitely relative, so tallness is a social construct (and you have yet to define “tallness” in a scientifically non-relativistic manner as you had agreed to initially).
No, that definition I proposed is relative, indeed: it is relative to a guideline that we scientists have constructed. WE construct it, not mother nature. Mother nature is silent on the concept of “tall”. It’s a human concept that only makes sense in relation to human-defined strictures.
Now, said strictures can reference the real world and, indeed, they must in order to be scientific. But, as Max Weber points out, it’s we who determine their meaning, not God, Destiny, Mother Nature or some sort of transhuman force.
One could argue that family is a social construct… But what about relatedness itself? We come to the real question at hand: Is relatedness a social construct?
Sorry. NOTHING is more socially constructed than the concept of family, as the history of slavery definitely shows us. You may indeed be the genetic descendant of your progenitor, but whether or not society – or even yourself – recognizes that fact is something that’s completely determined by society. By the way, how do you KNOW – for sure – that your father is your progenitor? Ever do a test for it? Because that’s the only way to be sure. Plenty of people are wandering around this world erroneously thinking that their father is their progenitor.
As the man once said, “A mother is a mother. A father is an opinion.” 🙂
I am more related to my parents than I am to you, Thaddeus. I think you would agree with this statement.
Let’s just take it as a given, for argument’s sake. And I’ll even refrain from the obligatory “your mom” joke, though it’s rare to get a straight line like that. 🙂
The problem is when you make this huge leap from immediate progenitors to race. That’s an enormous distance that you’re crossing in one step.
Let’s be clear on what race historically has been, first, because it seems to me that you are confusing observable patterns in human biology with the concept of race and this is a very sophmoric mistake.
RACE is a synonym for SUB-SPECIES: stable, coherent and unique biological type. Race is not a gloss for “a group of animals who are more or less alike”. In order for a race to be said to exist, it needs to have an identifiable genetic “package” that breeds true and the genetic similarities between all members of the race, on average, need to be less that the similarities between all members of the race and all non-members.
Now, this just doesn’t happen with humans. Sure, there are patterns in human biology, but these patterns don’t map to discrete, stable, true-breeding genetic packages. Human gentics is far too chaotic and fractal for that.
So the only way you can say that there are races in humanity is to completely warp the concept of “race” so that it no longer has congruity with the way its used in biology for every other living species on the planet.
Let me give you a real clear example: syckle cell anemia. This is a “black” disease, right?
Wrong.
It’s a genetic syndrome associated with populations who’ve lived in long term contact with malarial swamps. The mutation which causes it commonly occurs all across the human race. It only expresses itself in evolutioonary terms, however, when you get people living next to malaria-ridden areas for generations at a time because only then does this “defect” actually turn into a survival trait.
Now, in the Americas, the largest group of carriers of this gene originally came from Africa. However, there are other populational groups all over the planet who’ve developed this mutation on their own and none of these groups are “black”.
This is one simple example, but it holds true across the genetic board. There is not one gene or gene complex that any human “race” you care to name has that other human groups also don’t have, to some degree or another.
So you’re building a strawman, friend, if you claim that I’m saying humanity is all the same. The real problem, from the scientific racist’s point of view, is that humanity is too genetically DIFFERENT and chaotic to have races. Were too young a species for that. Give us another 500,000 years and maybe. Then again, I’m betting that within 100 years, you’re going to be able to buy cosmetics at the corner drugstore that will allow you to switch your “race” to anything you want.
If one is a scientist of some sort and one establishes a relativistic position on some matter and is actively working to construct a transparent definition of some phenomenon, is one required to refrain from constructing models of behavior for said phenomenon before that phenomenon is well defined?
Garbage in, garbage out, RR. If you don’t have an operative definition of what is a sparrow, then you can’t very well be counting sparrows, can you? Let alone compare sparrows’ population growth or shrinkage with, say, thrushes.
The phenomenon of electricity was known and widely used well before the advent of quantum physics. Similarly, race is a scientifically useful concept despite its fuzziness.
You mistake usefulness for understanding and neither your point, nor Sailer’s nor Rushton’s, relates to any practical application of race whatsoever: you are attempting to assert an explicatory hypothesis as proven truth (i.e. “black people behave the way they do because they are genetically less intelligent than whites”). Now, if you were a forensic scientist trying to establish a murder victim’s identity, then yes, you’d be justified in using race, even though it’s a fuzzy concept. Your goal is to communicate a certain bit of data to people who share the same general social definition of race, so it’s of no nevermind whether or not race is “real” in that case or not.
To use your analogy with electricty, it’s not as if you’re saying, “Hey, there’s this weird force here that we can harness to do stuff with. Let’s mess with it.” What you are saying is “Electricty is, in fact, the life force of God, ejaculated right out of His holy penis and into the ether. Thus, every electrical station should include an altar praising His holy virility or, sooner or later, God will get mad and electricity will cease to flow.”
To bring it back to the main point, as an educator, one would be a fool to believe that IQ means nothing. To me, this is a clear sign alerting us to which groups need increased attention, increased resources, etc. You, on the other hand, are not making a practical argument at all: you are making an explicatory argument. You’re saying black IQ is lower, in general, because blacks are “naturally” less intelligent. THAT sort of exceptionally radical statement needs exceptionally radical proof to back it up – proof which you simply don’t have.
The concept of race does not exist for those of a certain political bent (or people seeking funding for their research projects and don’t want to be labeled “racist”) but for other less politically constricted souls (which describes most of humanity), race is alive and well.
First of all, I’m talking about scientists: people who study this professionally, not the hoi polloi. The hoi polloi also believ that the stars control their destinies: popular belief doesn’t make the proposition true.
AFAIK, there is NO reputable scientific organization which confirms the existence of human race as a biological given and this is quite independent of “political bent”.
The American Association for the Advancement of Science does not recognize it.
The American Anthropological Association doesn’t recognize it.
The U.S. Census doesn’t recognize it (in fact, they go to some pains to claim that their use of race is “unscientific and unanthropological”).
The American Medical Association doesn’t buy the concept of race as a biological phenomenon among humans.
I could go on and on…
So what are you saying, RR? That this litany of highly fractious and diverse scientific professional organizations has, in fact, been infiltrated by the Politically Correct Illuminati and made to bastardize science in the name of “a certain political bent”?
I think not, man. 😀
In fact, there are only a small handful of scientists who currently give race theory any credence at all and these people are generally cranks or marginalized in their fields. This is not due to politics, but to bad theories and spurious data. Nevertheless, we let them talk. They are hardly censured. The problem is, we keep asking “Where’s the beef?” and all they have to show us is a handful of pickles.
There are, you should recall, scientists who believe in creationist theory, too. Science is, after all, a big tent and everyone’s welcome to discuss. But ideas only catch on when they are very well proven. Race theory, in spite of its undeniable popularity, has frankly failed to scare up much proof of its postulates, which is rather shocking when you consider the fact that it was THE scientific paradigm for the better part of a century.
When you pour man-years of research time and billions of dollars chasing a willow-the-wisp and find next to nothing for your efforts, RR, the smart scientist says “Perhaps I’m going about this the wrong way” and tries a different tack. Such, in a nutshell, has been the story of the search for human race.
Of course, because of people such as yourself who want to believe in things like race, creationism, astrology and the flat earth, unscruplous scientists can always scare up funding and media attention by playing the race card.
1) Define “tallness” in a scientifically non-relativistic manner as you had agreed to initially.
Where did I say it could be defined in a non-relativistic manner? I said it could be defined in a scientific manner. The two are not mutually exclusive, you know. And I showed quite clearly, above, how this could be done. Must I really waste even more bandwidth repeating myself?
If race doesn’t exist, how is it that forensic scientist are able to determine the “race” of deceased individuals and of alleged criminal perpetrators with a high degree of probability from DNA evidence?.
In the same way that a forensic scientist can often determine someone’s astrological sign by looking at the physcial evidence. A forensic scientist works within those practical consdierations discussed above. His goal is not to establish what “race” an individual is, but what race YOU or the other people he’s dialoging with would perceive him as.
Let’s put it this way: simply because you believe that someone born on August 31st is a Virgo DOES NOT mean the stars control our destiny. But if it were important for you to know – for whatever reason – what a person’s astrological sign is, all we need to know is the physical fact that they were born during such and such a period and we can quite scientifically tell you what their sign is. This is because we are dialoging with you in a practical sense about symbolic content that’s important to you and which references the real world . It’s an observable fact that a person born on the 31st of August is a Virgo. That does not mean, however, means that Virgos “really” exist as a natural, transcultural given.
3) Do you believe relatedness is a social construct?
Kinship most definitely is a social construct and biological “relatedness” has very little to do with either kinship or who you consider to be members of your ethnic group or “race”. I could plotz an average Brazilian down right in front of you and you’d say “Oh, yeah. A black person. Just like other black people. Much more related to me than a white boy.” But guess what? They probably wouldn’t be, at least in genetic terms.
Want a simple proof of this?
I am white. My wife is black. Our child will almost certainly be considered “black” by you, an American with hypodescendent views of race. If you didn’t know my daughter was my child, you’d say “I, as a black man, am much more related to her than you as a blue-eyed white man. We are of the same race.”
And you’d be completely wrong, RR. She’d be MUCH more genetically similar to me than to any black person other than an identical twin of her mother.
So much for your theory that “relatedness” explains race, neh? 😀
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Thaddeus has no way of knowing my race. He knows this.
Occam’s Razor, man. I don’t know, but that’s the best, most logical explanation.
Absent proof, you gotta go with logic.
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Abagond,
I’m familiar with the “model minority” argument. Thomas Sowell had dealt with the issue in his book “Conquest and Cultures”(I believe that was the title, it was actually part of a trilogy so it may be one of the other two). What he said is that certain groups that have traditionally been considered “model minorities”, e.g. east Asians and Indians, also seem to exhibit the same behavior in any country they go to. The anti-model minority proponents suggest that America has constructed this hierarchy in order to stratify society and create an ethnic middle man, especially one in which whites can say, “see look at them, why can’t blacks and Hispanics do the same!” in order to justify racism.
What Sowell points out however is that these same “model minorities” tend to do just as well no matter where they end up. For example you have Chinese and Indians in Africa, in Europe, in Australia, in the Caribbean exhibiting the same behavior, so it takes away from the argument that it’s just an American phenomena constructed by whites. Btw, you can also throw Lebanese in the mix. They have values and cultural traits that cause them to perform well in any country to which they immigrate.
I think liberals hate the model minority thing because the word implies that there must be an “undesirable” minority. But I’m not really worried about that stuff. I’m worried about finding out what is working for them and learning from it and applying it to other groups to whatever extent possible.
Thaddeus,
Race exist, or why would we even have this blog in the first place? We can’t precisely define why a chihuahua is a different breed from a Great Dane in a non-relativistic way, but yet common sense tells us they differ. I don’t think it’s any different with humans. There is DNA that is unique to certain regions of this planet that can be used as markers of ancestry. Sure, we humans all share 99%+ of our DNA, yet there isn’t the genetic marker for red hair and freckles in Japan or central Africa. It’s a marker of northern Caucasian ancestry and it’s a genetic feature that arose in that part of the world and is unique to it. When you have clusters of these phenotypic genetic markers that are unique to one particular geographic part of the planet, we call this “race”.
The doctor that warns African-American men to start getting prostate screens at age 40(and my doctor has told me the same) is doing his patients a service. Prostate cancer may not be connected to black skin per se, but it is at a higher incident in the cluster of DNA that men of African ancestry share. Same with sickle cell. What causes melanin in the skin(equatorial sun) and what causes sickle cell(ancestors that lived in malaria-prone parts of the world) are casually related, but they are within this “cloud” of DNA in greater incidence that makes up what we call race.
Now sometimes race is a social construct. African-Americans are a social construct, not a race. When someone of 100% black African ancestry and someone who can “pass” for white are both considered African-American, it means that what defines “black” in America has little to do with one’s DNA makeup and more to do with culture, treatment, prejudice and perception. African-American is an ethnic group like “Latino” or “Hispanic”, not a racial group.
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Tulio, where did you read about about the IQ disparity amongst Northern and Southern whites? I remember reading something similar recently, that there still exists an IQ disparity between Northern and Southern whites, but I can’t remember where I read it.
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Race exist, or why would we even have this blog in the first place?
No doubt. But if you’ve been following the debate, you’ll see that my argument isn’t that doesn’t exist. Race exists in much the same way that astrological signs exist: as a historical and sociological product.
Race DOES NOT exist, among humans at least, in its biological sense: as objectively verifiable, discrete, stable and true-breeding sub-species.
The argument is about these two definitions of race. RR believes that race is genetic, biological and objectively verifiable. I believe that it is a human construct which only makes sense within a given historical and sociological scenario.
No one is arguing that race doesn’t exist.
By the way, in spite of what “Roots Journal” might have sold you, the existence of genetic markers do not prove the existence of race as a biological construct among human beings.
RE: afircan americans and prostate cancer, I’ve dealt with that above. Please refer to my earlier argument. “Blackness” does not cause prostate cancer: environmental factors combined with a certain genetic complex which southern U.S. blacks are more likely to have, percentagewise, causes prostate cancer. You can be white and have that gene, Tulio: it most definitely isn’t a “black thing”.
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The IQ differential between northern and southern whites was first recorded by the U.S. Army’s IQ tests during the First WWII.
But it gets better.
According to the same study, not only did northern whites have higher I.Q.s than southern whites, northern BLACKS also had higher I.Q. scores than southern whites.
This is one of the key IQ findings that all these guys like Rushton “unaccountably forget” to mention when they blather on and on about race-based IQ.
If IQ were indeed biologically determined by race, blacks should have lower IQ than whites across the board. That’s not true, however. Many black populations have higher IQs than white populations.
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According to the same study, not only did northern whites have higher I.Q.s than southern whites, northern BLACKS also had higher I.Q. scores than southern whites.
I read that study and was not surprised at all. IQ has less to do with race and more to do with culture and environment. The North has always put education at a higher premium than the South, and had more schools. Especially New England.
I’m just trying to locate the study that mentioned there was still an IQ disparity between whites in the North and South.
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Natasha,
Unfortunately I can’t recall a precise source, I read it many years ago where psychometritians were comparing various IQ scores of people within the same race. They also showed that Irish had significantly lower IQs than British despite both being white N. Europeans. The lower castes of India had lower IQs than the high castes, the Korean minority in Japan had lower IQs than the Japanese. In all cases, these were oppressed minority groups suffering in IQ scores. I’m sure you can find some of these results in a search engine.
Malcolm Gladwell did an interesting piece on his blog regarding race and IQ. He suggested that IQ may not test intelligence per se, but rather how *modern* you are as measured by western norms. That would also explain the gap between northern and southern whites, with southern whites being less modern than northern whites. The more remote Aborigines and Polynesians and San people live a nearly neolithic way of life even today. They are not modern people as it is defined by western standards, so their low IQ scores should not be a surprise. I would be surprised if the newborn of their kids were adopted by wealthy westerners and these kids grew into adults with IQs of 65. I’d like to see some studies on international adoption by westerners.
That said, I don’t deny that genes play a large and maybe even prime factor in intelligence. It may very well be possible that there is some variation in native intelligence amongst various population groups. I mean this is a big planet and people live under widely varying circumstances, so anything is possible. Eugenics have always been a reality too. I don’t mean scientist sterilizing people, I mean events that happened in history that had a eugenic effect that favored smarter people to live. The holocaust may have had a eugenic effect on Ashkenazi Jews. The smartest ones may have been better equipped to evade detection and capture. Then you’ve had artificial dysgenics such as Pol Pot killing anyone that was professional, bourgeois, or suspecting of an intellectual. Imagine what he did to his country’s average IQ killing off all the brightest people? Brain drain also is a dysgenic effect. If the smartest and most capable people are always jumping ship, what effect will that have on average IQ scores of a nation? Anway, guess I’m digressing now.
Abagond,
the problem with that black intelligence, as well as the Chitlin test is that they are test of knowledge, not test of raw intelligence. It would be like someone giving me a test in Brazilian favela slang. Of course I’m going to bomb it if I didn’t grow up there. An ideal IQ test would use things like puzzles, pictures, seeing patterns and such that test native intelligence. Not acquired knowledge. Such tests do exist I believe.
RR,
As for Barbados, where did the score of 78 come from? If it was from the book IQ and the Wealth of Nations, which is where many people get their IQ scores of various developing nations, you might want to know that the methodology in acquiring these scores is highly questionable to say the least.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_and_the_Wealth_of_Nations#Criticism
If however it is true that average Basian IQ is 78 then in one way, it gives me hope for Africa because it shows that you wouldn’t need to have an average IQ of 100 to live in a functional, middle-income nation. If they can pull this off with IQs of 78, than that’s a great thing, it means developing countries can still do well regardless of average IQ. However, I’m skeptical about the methodologies used and I take the 78 score with a large grain of salt.
As for your comment on African IQ vis-a-vis mental retardation, this is a mystery for which there are no adequate answers. Someone with an IQ in the 50 range such as a San Bushman shouldn’t be able to wipe his own ass. Such people normally wouldn’t be able to survive without the help. So we have to either conclude that
1) African IQs are not being measured accurately for one reason or another
or
2) African brains simply work differently than white brains and a black with a very low IQ can function more independently than a white with comparable IQ. Saying that the white is born with a genetic disorder doesn’t mean much. Whether there’s a disorder or not, the effect is the same. They still cannot perform mental tasks above the level of retardation.
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One problem with this IQ debate is that it’s all based on general IQ scores. Today’s intelligence theorists are the first to admit that intelligence might not “average” the way general I.Q. presumes that it does.
Gould discusses this problem at length in “The False Measure of Man”.
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Malcolm Gladwell did an interesting piece on his blog regarding race and IQ. He suggested that IQ may not test intelligence per se, but rather how *modern* you are as measured by western norms.
Interesting. Education and culture would most certainly fit into modernization.
As for your first post,
My position though is that Africans do not have IQs in the 60 range.
I didn’t even address that because I thought it was so blatantly absurd that anyone with half a brain and ability to use a search engine would dismiss that immediately. The average African has the intelligence of a mentally retarded person?… Really? African immigrants in America outperform Americans, black, white, and Asian, in educational achievement. West Indian/African immigrants and first generation West Indian/African immigrants make up a significant percentage (nearly three quarters in some schools) of the black population at Ivy League schools and other top schools in the US. As one who attended an Ivy school in MA, I can tell you that the majority of my black peers were either of those two groups or black Americans who attended private/top schools. A few were blacks from urban areas who went to public schools, but they were in the minority amongst blacks.
Selection for the smartest Africans doesn’t account for their educational level, because the same argument could be applied to Asians, whom they outperform.
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Thaddeus,
In large measure, all products of the human mind are constructs. We get by in this world using intellectual constructions. I think we agree on this. We differ on whether a particular construction, race, has any basis in science. To recap our argument:
1) I stated that white men are, on average, taller than Asian men.
2) You countered that the statement was racist, because sub-species of Asian and white don’t exist. You then challenged me to give you a “good, solid, biological and scientific definition of “white””.
3) I challenged you to give me a good, solid, biological and scientific definition of “tall”.
4) You then gave me a definition of “tall” that was relativistic, but not biological or scientific at all.
5) I then introduced the argument that race was relative, like height and age.
6) You demanded a definition of white.
7) I reminded you that you had not yet given a biological and scientific definition of “tall”, just a relativistic one. I stated that “tall” was related to environmental and genetic factors and that it wasn’t as simple as you thought.
8) You said to the effect that height was simple and unidimensional and that I define the parameters of race.
9) We talked about IQ differences for a while, then I gave you a definition of race:
“A race is a large extended family that inbreeds to some extent.”
10) In response to my “race is relative” statement, you asserted that if race was relative then it is also socially constructed.
11) I countered that if race was a social construct, then relative notions like “tall”, “young”, “sharp” were also social constructs. I reiterated my request to you to define “tall” in a scientifically non-relativistic way. A relativistic definition would not suffice because you would not extend me the same degree of freedom in defining “white”. Thus far, you have wasted bandwidth because you have not answered the question. I believe you can’t answer the question.
And so, here we are. I assert that “tallness” is analogous to “race” insofar as both are relativistic and measurable, and that we don’t have to completely define either to make good use of them. As I mentioned before, forensic scientists make good use of race. They do not make good use of astrological signs because astrology has no basis in science, while race does have a scientific basis. Race has an ill-defined basis in science, but it gets us to where we want to go (helps us catch criminals, release innocent men, etc). Race, as a theory, works, more or less. This is why both laymen and scientists (even amongst themselves) continue to use racial terms.
You wrote:
“Let’s be clear on what race historically has been, first, because it seems to me that you are confusing observable patterns in human biology with the concept of race and this is a very sophmoric mistake.
I don’t think so. Patterns in human biology are a consequence of human reproduction. Human reproduction produces human lineages. These lineages (families) are a measure of relatedness. The larger the span of relatedness, the larger the family. Family is race writ large. I don’t see anything sophomoric about this thesis.
” RACE is a synonym for SUB-SPECIES: stable, coherent and unique biological type.
This is not my definition. My definition (Sailer’s definition) is much more useful, understandable and simple:
“Race is a very large extended family that inbreeds to some extent”
I don’t think race is any more complicated than that. You mentioned Occam’s knife. Why don’t you apply it?
If you don’t have an operative definition of what is a sparrow, then you can’t very well be counting sparrows, can you?
Yes, you can. You just have to know what sparrows look like as compared to other birds, then start counting. In other words, you have to note difference. Apply Occam’s knife again.
You mistake usefulness for understanding and neither your point, nor Sailer’s nor Rushton’s, relates to any practical application of race whatsoever
Science is an iterative process. One tests a hypothesis by using it to see whether it holds up under stress or closer scrutiny. Electricity was used before the discovery of atomic and sub-atomic particles, but it was through the use of electricity that we gained increased understanding of the phenomenon itself. Neither Sailer nor Rushton claim to be the final word on race. It is an ongoing process (we continue to evolve, of course). What they are saying is that, currently, race is relative, measurable and important. It is important precisely because there are applications for understanding its influence, a few of which we have already discussed (forensic science, genealogy, medicine, education, sports, finance, economics, politics etc.)
You’re saying black IQ is lower, in general, because blacks are “naturally” less intelligent. THAT sort of exceptionally radical statement needs exceptionally radical proof to back it up – proof which you simply don’t have.
You have to define “naturally”. As tulio pointed out before, intelligence is not a either “nurture” or “nature” proposition. It is a combination of the two. No one on the nature side of the argument has stated that IQ is 100% genetic. From what I understand, genetics is estimated to account from between 40% to 60% of intelligence. This leaves a lot of room for nurture from my perspective. The problem is that those on the left become so unnerved by the mere suggestion that IQ might have a genetic component that they label anyone who suggests it a Nazi, as you did with your previous Holocaust reference.
Kinship most definitely is a social construct and biological “relatedness” has very little to do with either kinship or who you consider to be members of your ethnic group or “race”.
This is false. Relatedness actually has quite a lot to do with kinship. It is not a binary relationship, but highly correlated nonetheless. Mainly because related individuals have a tendency to look like each other.
I am white. My wife is black. Our child will almost certainly be considered “black” by you, an American with hypodescendent views of race. If you didn’t know my daughter was my child, you’d say “I, as a black man, am much more related to her than you as a blue-eyed white man. We are of the same race.”
This is a presumptuous assertion. If I saw you, your daughter and your wife together, I would first notice whether she looked like you and your wife, as would most people. Now, of course, if your daughter looks nothing like you, I think it would be reasonable to assume that she is probably not your daughter. Now if she didn’t look like you, but was nonetheless fairly white looking, I would look at her mother. In any event, more visual analysis would be required before I would leap to any conclusion about lineage.
“She’d be MUCH more genetically similar to me than to any black person other than an identical twin of her mother.”
No kidding! I gave a similar example when I wrote:
But I am more related to my parents than I am to you, Thaddeus.
So much for your theory that “relatedness” explains race, neh?
Race is defined by relatedness. My position has not changed.
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OK, party’s over. 25 minutes of fireworks on Flamengo and 30 over in Icaraí, all seen from our street. I pity the fools who packed into Copa for their 15 minute display.
Now, RR…
In large measure, all products of the human mind are constructs.
I would get rid of the “in large mesaure” part, but other than that, yes, we can agree on that. The problem here, RR, is that I’m betting you never took a philosophy of science course in your life. Because of this, you seem to think that “science” is a synonym for “reality” and “relative” a synonym of “imaginary” and this is what leads you to make completely assinine statements such as the following:
You then gave me a definition of “tall” that was relativistic, but not biological or scientific at all.
Yes, it was relativistic and yes it was scientific. Scientific means empirical, rational and “objective” in the sense that is references the independently verifiable world. It is not an absolute definition, but a definition relative to a value which we (and not mother nature) have defined. And it most certainly biological in that it references a biological reality.
Notice that you seem to use “relativistic” as if it were a synonym of “non-scientific”, which it most certainly is not. You’re hung up on the term as if it were your life-saver and, in its name, you’re imposing on me a condition that’s simp,y stupid. From the beginning, I have assumed that all human traits can only be described in a relativistic way – height, weight, what have you. Whether something is relative or not is simply not an issue here.
The problem is not that race is relative: the problem is that race is not a trait. It is a collection of traits. We can measure height, relative or no. We cannot measure race until you tell us what we are looking for.
Veeeeeery simple issue here.
Now, my question to you always has been and remains this: what traits (relative or not) go into the package which you define as “race”? You’ve avoided that question like the plague by bringing up this whole “relativity” bit which has nothing at all to do with the topic under discussion here.
My problem with your definition of “white” and “asian” is that it is “relativistic”: it’s the traits you chose to define race obviously and logically don’t do a good job of it. There are plenty of people with “white” skin in Asia. There people who don’t have round eyes and who have white skin in Europe. The problem here is that you presume that these traits are “relative” and you want to use that term to handwave any objections away. But relativity doesn’t help you here: if there are people with white skin Asia – white relative to any standard you care to choose for whiteness, unless you want to presume that all mediterraneans and a series of other western europeans aren’t white – then your use of “white skin” logically can’t be a qualifier of a divide between “whites” and “Asians”. Relativity can’t help you here, because even relative to other people you classify as “white”, these Asians are white.
So you have two issues you need to deal with: first of all, you need to define better what you mean by “round eyed” and “white”. These terms are very imprecise and unscientific. Even a freshman could come up with better terms with a little wiki activity, so don’t tell me this is “too hard”.
Secondly, obviously these two traits aren’t the only ones you are using to build your definition of race: you need to really examine your prenotions and put them down on paper. That’s the first step in the construction of any scientific, yet relativistic definition. It’s quite obvious, reading what you write, that eye form and color are not the only thing you think about when you think “race”. Hell, the word “Asians” alone is an indication that geography plays into your definition in some wierd way. (Note, btw, that NO sceintific racialist that I’ve ever read uses the term “Asian” for a race, precisely because it’s so unscientific and misleading).
I would like to go on and deal with the rest of your argument, but let’s take this a bit at a time. Do you understand what I’ve written above and now understand why “relative” is of no import for this discussion and why your definition of “white” and “Asian” is problematic? Because if we can’t get over this barrier, then there’s no sense in continuing this discussion.
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“My problem with your definition of white and Asian is NOT that it’s relativistic”…
That’s what should be written up there in the middle paragraph.
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One final thing…
The very idea that race is “relative” is itself an extreme warping of the original race concep, which held race to be absolute, objective and determinative.
You seem to want race to continue to be objective and determinative and you think that by slipping in “relative” instead of “absolute”, you can get away with saving the concept.
Doesn’t work that way, RR>
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There are many things that are difficult to define but yet we know they exist. It’s almost impossible to define what beauty is, yet we just sort of “know it when we see it.” Our brains are computers designed to see even the most subtle of difference before our conscious mind is even aware of it and to react to it.
Race is not necessarily binary on-off matter controlled by one factor. It is usually a cluster of properties which are on a gradient. Our brains see a person, look at a variety of features which in and of themselves may not be indicative of anything, but when certain features tend to be clustered together, we can deduce ancestry. Black skin may not in and of itself be a feature that makes someone of African descent. The person could be from Sri-Lanka. But then our face sees either a broad nose or a narrow nose, thick lips or thin lips, afro or straight hair, facial bone structure, and we realize that certain clusters of phenotype make up a race and we can define one from the other. I think this is a real phenomena, not a construct.
Now jumping back to the subject of IQ. I had read that black children and white children’s IQs start off the same. Some have even said that black kids start off as MORE intelligent than white kids. As time goes on, they start to diverge until the black IQ is about 15pts below a comparably aged white, which happens in the early 20s. This is interesting to ponder. Why are white kids and black kids comparable in intelligence, but not adults? A couple theories have been proposed:
1) Black kids mature faster, cognitively but reach a lower top speed so to speak. Sort of like a race between a Volkswagon and an Aston-Martin where the Volkswagon is given a headstart.
or
2) There is some environmental factor in education, intellectual stimulation, work ethic, parenting, economics, culture, physical environment, racism, low expectations, nutrition, etc that limits the growth of black children’s IQs as they age.
Nobody is entire sure what is going on here, but it’s going to come down to one of these two things. I’d prefer to believe it’s the latter.
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There are many things that are difficult to define but yet we know they exist. It’s almost impossible to define what beauty is, yet we just sort of “know it when we see it.”
Ahn! The Jay Persig “quality” argument from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. If you believe this, Tulio, you should really read Persig’s book. I’m fine with his argument, by the way. Seems reasonable to me. The problem is when you presume that your definitions are indeed everyone elses’ when, quite obviously and provably, they are not.
Race is not necessarily binary on-off matter controlled by one factor. It is usually a cluster of properties which are on a gradient.
Perhaps. The problem with that is that’s not how race has been defined, ever, and it’s not how the “race is caused by IQ” people define it.
I think this is a real phenomena, not a construct.
Tulio, in the previous sentence you showed very precisely how people in fact do construct and not simply “perceive” race. You have a set of characteristics in your head that you associate with race and you thus classify people who have those as that race. This is INDEPENDENT of what their actual genetic make up might be. Someone with 80% white ancestors can very well look black to you. Americans do this all the time, by the way.
It’s been proven time and again that there’s no necessary correlation between how people are racially classified and what their genetic make up is.
Nobody is entire sure what is going on here, but it’s going to come down to one of these two things. I’d prefer to believe it’s the latter.
And here’s a great example of American binary thinking: it has to be either/or and can only be one of two options. No serious scientist believes this, Tulio. What we know – for a fact – is that intelligence is so difficult to define that we have trouble even quantifying it, let along comparing it.
And yet you’ve got the whole deal broken down into two easy options, sort of like “Coke or Pepsi?”
Sorry, I just don’t buy it.
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Tulio,
Yes, I got that average IQ score from “IQ and Wealth of Nations”. I am aware that the datasets they used had shortcomings, but the estimates at least for the developed countries seem consistent. The IQ data for sub-Saharan countries, while quite limited, are not implausible, given other measures of output. In fact, Barbados seems to be overachieving.
I don’t think black brains and white brains function differently. I haven’t read anything that indicates this. But the higher social competence of many blacks who are technically retarded compared to whites of the same level of mental ability is important. Granted, both groups have significant trouble with demanding tasks like reading, but blacks without an affliction like Down’s syndrome can still function at a high level other activities, like sports (which is mentally demanding, but not like brain surgery).
You wrote:
Black skin may not in and of itself be a feature that makes someone of African descent. The person could be from Sri-Lanka. But then our face sees either a broad nose or a narrow nose, thick lips or thin lips, afro or straight hair, facial bone structure, and we realize that certain clusters of phenotype make up a race and we can define one from the other. I think this is a real phenomena, not a construct.
This is exactly right. It is easy to distinguish between a dark skinned Dravidian, a black West African and a dark skinned Australian Aborigine. Race is just a classification system just like any other system of taxonomy. It has been (and continues to be) used for nefarious purposes, but the system itself isn’t inherently evil.
1) Black kids mature faster, cognitively but reach a lower top speed so to speak. Sort of like a race between a Volkswagon and an Aston-Martin where the Volkswagon is given a headstart.
This is similar to what Richard Lynn has suggested regarding his assertion that men and women differ in terms of average IQ. What’s curious is that the sex differential in IQ doesn’t seem to hold for blacks. Black women seem to have higher average IQs than black men. It isn’t a lot higher, but significant.
Natasha W,
You wrote:
”African immigrants in America outperform Americans, black, white, and Asian, in educational achievement. West Indian/African immigrants and first generation West Indian/African immigrants make up a significant percentage (nearly three quarters in some schools) of the black population at Ivy League schools and other top schools in the US.
Whether black African/West Indian academically outperform whites and Asians is highly debatable, we can say that they do outperform American blacks and have a tendency to take away AA slots from American blacks at selective institutions. This does not invalidate the IQ data. These immigrants are a self-selected group and represent the best of their home countries’ intellects. If these immigrants were the norm for the home countries, the poverty levels of the countries they immigrated from would be much lower, thus lessening the need to immigrate in the first place. So the assertion that some black African countries have average IQs in the 60 range isn’t so implausible.
Thaddeus,
I have no problem with you defining terms in a relativistic manner. I would just like you to allow me the same freedom. I hardly equate “relative” to “imaginary” especially given the fact that a particular relativistic measure is core to my definition of race.
You wrote:
”From the beginning, I have assumed that all human traits can only be described in a relativistic way – height, weight, what have you. Whether something is relative or not is simply not an issue here.”
Actually, you didn’t assume this from the beginning, but I’m glad to hear that you are on board now. Race is just another measurable human attribute, like height, weight, IQ etc. This is why Steve Sailer’s definition:
”A race is just a very large extended family that inbreeds to some extent”
is so useful. In his definition of race, race is defined by a single parameter: relatedness. Relatedness is measurable. How related groups of people are to each other is measurable.
the problem is that race is not a trait. It is a collection of traits.
By Sailer’s definition, race IS a trait. Even if race is an aggregation of traits (a meta trait), it is still relative and measurable, and thus REAL.
We cannot measure race until you tell us what we are looking for.
I just did. We are looking for degree of relatedness. This is measurable. This is real. This is done routinely through DNA testing.
My problem with your definition of “white” and “asian” is that it is “relativistic”
I never gave you my definition of “white” or Asian. Please focus on what I actually write, instead of what you wish me to write.
”So you have two issues you need to deal with: first of all, you need to define better what you mean by “round eyed” and “white”. These terms are very imprecise and unscientific. Even a freshman could come up with better terms with a little wiki activity, so don’t tell me this is “too hard”.
A freshman could no doubt come up with a more convincing straw man than you have constructed here. I never defined “white” or Asian. I have defined race. Focus on that.
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I am aware that the datasets they used had shortcomings…
“Shortcomings”?! They were cherry picked! They are not even close to a statistically significant sample. This is a great example of how you get garbage in, garbage out with stats. The stats confirm your prejudices: Why then they must be good stats…
Race is just a classification system just like any other system of taxonomy. It has been (and continues to be) used for nefarious purposes, but the system itself isn’t inherently evil.
This is correct, as far as it goes. What you seem to forget, however, is that if we follow those taxonomic classificatory rules, we don’t get coherent races when we look at humanity. You yourself are doing this right now in fact, RR. Is “black” a race or is “Dravidian”? If you’re taking the concept of race as taxonomic subspecies seriously, this is an important point. If you’re saying race is based on “relatedness”, then why even bring up taxonomy in the first place? It would be useless to you for classification purposes.
I have no problem with you defining terms in a relativistic manner. I would just like you to allow me the same freedom. I hardly equate “relative” to “imaginary” especially given the fact that a particular relativistic measure is core to my definition of race.
Let’s be real clear here.
Once again, the problem isn’t relativity. The problem is that you have not and apparently cannot describe for us a set of traits which supposedly make up race – whether these traits are relative or not.
Actually, you didn’t assume this from the beginning, but I’m glad to hear that you are on board now.
Sorry, but I never assumed that a human trait was in any shape or form absolute. If you read such things into what I’ve clearly written above, that’s a reflection of your prejudices, not mine.
In his definition of race, race is defined by a single parameter: relatedness.
And, of course, this is why Sailer’s definition doesn’t work for the purposes you’re citing here: race and I.Q. linkage.
My daughter, after all, would be more related to me than any other white person on the planet except my mom and dad. Yet both you and Sailer would classify her as “black” if you were conducting an I.Q. test here in Brazil because that’s probably how she would self-classify herself and it is definitely how you would classify her based on looking at her.
“Relatedness” was not the category used to describe people’s “race” in any of those IQ studies you’re on about. Some of the studies used self-identification of race, others used observer classification. NONE of them grouped people by “relatedness” or genetic likeness. NONE of them grouped people by DNA testing. So even if we were to accept your definition of race as scientifically correct (which it most certainly is not), said definition wasn’t used to create the data which you now claim “proves” that blacks are less intelligent than whites. You’re using one set of classifications for the IQ tests, RR, and a completely different set here when you define what race “really” means.
By Sailer’s definition, race IS a trait. Even if race is an aggregation of traits (a meta trait), it is still relative and measurable, and thus REAL.
RR, something cannot be a genteic trait and, simultaneously, a collection of traits. This is a logical and biological impossibility. Secondly, just because something is measureable doesn’t mean that it’s “real” in the sense that you use the word here (i.e. nature or god created). As I said above, we can quite easily quantify someone’s astrological sign. That doesn’t mean that astrological signs are “real” in any transcultural sense and it CERTAINLY doesn’t mean that the stars rule your destiny.
I never gave you my definition of “white” or Asian.
Sure you did. I asked you to define “white” and “Asian” and you used skin color and eye form as your two key variables. Check out the “Black men who marry Asian women” thread.
I have defined race. Focus on that.
RR, I know you think Steve has come up with some ground-breaking new way of defining race, but I’m sorry to tell you, “relatedness” just ain’t it. In any country of the Americas, people are routinely defined as racially this or that without any referencing of their genetic make up at all.
Finally, focusing on “relatedness” does not remove the main question: what traits make up what race?
You believe “black” exists as a stable, verifiable subspecies. If you’re using biological taxonomy, you need to show which characteristics are typical to said subspecies. If you’re saying it’s “relatedness”, then you’re not giving us a definition of race at all. What you’re talking about is the clinactic distribution of traits within a given population. This is in no way, shape, or form a synonym of race because clinactic distribution does not presume that discrete racial packages (“megatraits” to use your quaint term) exist. In other words, the genes which give one dark skin are not biologically linked to the genes which gives one sickle cell anemia. Each of these traits is on its own independent cline in any given population. Any linkage between them is a statistical artifact created by human abstraction, not a biological link as part of some God-given “megatrait”.
Racial theory presumes that such traits are, in fact, biologically connected into a coherent whole, that “black” has some sort of causative connection to “anemia”.
So again, why pour new wine into old bottles? Why label a completely new way of looking at human genetic patterning as “race”, an inferior and problematic term? It’s as if you were bound and determined to force Isaac Newton’s terminology onto the theory of relativity, even where said terms are provably inadequate and lead to fundamental misunderstandings. Now, I can understand why someone would occasionally use the old term to communicate with ignorant or intellectually limited people. This is what forensic anthropologists do. But why should science incorporate such an obviously flawed and limited concept into its thinking? We shouldn’t believe that astrological signs are real simply because the man in the street does: we should follow scientific method and proof.
In my view, there can be only one reason why people like Steve Sailer want to re-label clinactic distribution theory as race: they wish to preserve part of the social and political heritage of racism.
There is simply no good logical reason for doing what they’re doing, otherwise.
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Whether black African/West Indian academically outperform whites and Asians is highly debatable
It is? Who’s debating it? I see no one, except you.
These immigrants are a self-selected group and represent the best of their home countries’ intellects. If these immigrants were the norm for the home countries, the poverty levels of the countries they immigrated from would be much lower, thus lessening the need to immigrate in the first place.
Didn’t I say this argument was invalid? Are the Asians here not the “best of their home countries’ intellects?” If so, why aren’t they leaving the African immigrants in the dust? Especially since the “mean IQ” of Asians is reportedly so much higher than the IQ of Africans — the average Asian should be able to outperform even the most intelligent African. And yet this is not the case.
Anyway, this argument is a complete fallacy amongst Americans, I guess told to make themselves feel better. The Africans that come to North America are not the best and brightest. They are the ones with the most money. All you need is money to get a student visa, especially if you applied from the period of the early ’70s to late ’80s.The most money and the desire to come to America, as there are plenty of Africans that stay and attend universities in their countries.
So the assertion that some black African countries have average IQs in the 60 range isn’t so implausible.
Some do, surely. Just like some Asians do and some white Americans do.
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I’m curious, what are the immigration policies with regards to who can come in? It seems like for some countries, it is difficult for people to even get a tourist visa, like African nations, yet it seems fairly easy for Latin Americans to come here, at least compared to Africans. I know all kind of Latin American immigrants who certainly aren’t graduate students or the “cream of the crop” of their respective countries. Why is this only the case with Africans?
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American immigration policy is extremely racist. If you want to bring your parents to America from, say, Bangladesh, they can have their green card in about 2 or 3 months. If, however, you are trying to bring them from Jamaica, it is more like 18 months.
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RR said:
“Whether black African/West Indian academically outperform whites and Asians is highly debatable, we can say that they do outperform American blacks and have a tendency to take away AA slots from American blacks at selective institutions. This does not invalidate the IQ data. These immigrants are a self-selected group and represent the best of their home countries’ intellects. If these immigrants were the norm for the home countries, the poverty levels of the countries they immigrated from would be much lower, thus lessening the need to immigrate in the first place. So the assertion that some black African countries have average IQs in the 60 range isn’t so implausible. “
This statement is wrong in so many ways I do not know where to begin.
You are assuming that these countries in Africa and the West Indies are functioning meritocracies – because you think (as does Sailer) that the ONLY way they could be as screwed up as they are is because the people there lack the brains to run the place properly.
But even if we assume that they are functioning meritocracies, then why in the world would the best and the brightest leave? What, to go to New York where the weather is cold, where they know nobody important, where their skin is the wrong colour? If they are that brainless, then how in the world do they get into the Ivy League?
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Steve probably thinks it’s due to affirmative action… [roll eyes]
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Race is quite useful for classification purposes because race influences appearance (among other things). While nobody carries around a HAP map analyzer in his pocket to test whether the individuals he encounters is 100% this or 25% that, we do categorize people based on appearance. Our observations have some connection to the reality of racial categorization. We are not always right. Looks can be deceptive. But because we have the ability to determine with a high degree of accuracy the genetic composition of people, we can determine their lineage (race) if we really wanted and needed to (such as would be the case if a person of a particular race needed a bone marrow or kidney transplant).
The problem is that you have not and apparently cannot describe for us a set of traits which supposedly make up race
I gave you my definition of race. I never said nor implied that my definition would comport with any other definition of race. You have built a straw man.
” My daughter, after all, would be more related to me than any other white person on the planet except my mom and dad.”
Wrong! Your daughter is more related to you and your wife than any other white (or black) person on the planet, including your parents. Your parents are less related to your daughter than you are. And you will be less related to your daughter’s children than your daughter will be.
Yet both you and Sailer would classify her as “black” if you were conducting an I.Q. test here in Brazil because that’s probably how she would self-classify herself and it is definitely how you would classify her based on looking at her.
You are being presumptuous again. You have no idea how I would classify your daughter. Of course, some IQ researchers do take into account degrees of racial admixture. Many psychometricians attribute the higher average IQ of American blacks as compared to other blacks to our higher degree of racial admixture.
“Relatedness” was not the category used to describe people’s “race” in any of those IQ studies you’re on about.
What does that have to do with the definition I have presented to you in this post? Stick to what I have actually written instead of what you wish I would write.
You’re using one set of classifications for the IQ tests, RR, and a completely different set here when you define what race “really” means.
No I’m not. As I stated to you before, the reason Sailer’s definition of race is so useful is because it comports to what we perceive as race currently. The definition is just broader and simpler than other definitions.
Secondly, just because something is measureable doesn’t mean that it’s “real” in the sense that you use the word here (i.e. nature or god created).
WHAT!!!?? You can’t possibly be serious? Let me see. An attribute isn’t real just because it can be measured. Its realness has to be confirmed outside of nature. It has to be confirmed outside of science. I don’t get that. Your arguments are becoming less coherent over time.
I asked you to define “white” and “Asian” and you used skin color and eye form as your two key variables.
This is what I wrote:
What if one were to observe that pale-skinned men with round eyes from Europe were, on average, taller than yellow skinned men with slanted eyes from Asia?
and
I know that the coloring of Asians (Orientals in this case) is generally different than that of Caucasians or black Africans. The exact definition of yellow is irrelevant. The important fact is that the coloring is different, on average than that of other racial groupings.
How you misconstrued these 4 sentences as being definitions of “white” and Asian is beyond my comprehension. I also mentioned electricity and quantum physics. Does that mean I have defined special relativity. Then again, I did mention relatedness, so perhaps by your logic, I have defined special relativity. You are quite remarkable, Thaddeus Blanchette.
Finally, focusing on “relatedness” does not remove the main question: what traits make up what race?
Again, this is a straw man question. The only relevant point here is that certain traits are passed down through lineages. We can again take the Sickle cell trait I mentioned earlier. This trait was passed down through generations (large extended families) of people who lived in mosquito infested areas where malaria was prevalent. I never said this was a black disease, but blacks of sub-Saharan descent are more likely to have this trait than a person of Northern European descent, where malaria was non-existent.
It’s as if you were bound and determined to force Isaac Newton’s terminology onto the theory of relativity, even where said terms are provably inadequate and lead to fundamental misunderstandings.
Newtonian physics was not invalidated by Special Relativity (ALERT: I AM NOT REDEFINING SPECIAL RELATIVITY HERE). Newtonian physics still has widespread applications (just like the concept of race). And, of course, Special Relativity could not have been developed as a theory without Newtonian Physics.
(“megatraits” to use your quaint term) exist
I wrote “meta traits” actually. There is a difference, you know.
” You believe “black” exists as a stable, verifiable subspecies.
No. You WANT me to believe this. I have never wrote this. Please focus on what I actually write instead of what you would wish me to write.
In other words, the genes which give one dark skin are not biologically linked to the genes which gives one sickle cell anemia.
No racialist would make such an assertion. You are doing the straw man dance again. What a racialist might say would be something similar to the following:
A person with dark skin would be probabilistically more likely to have ancestors that originated in an area in which malaria was widespread. Thus making it more likely that a darker-skinned person would possess the Sickle cell trait than a light skinned person
In my view, there can be only one reason why people like Steve Sailer want to re-label clinactic distribution theory as race: they wish to preserve part of the social and political heritage of racism.
That’s the problem with your view. It is presumptuous, not to mention arrogant. One cannot know what is in a man’s heart. A person couldn’t possibly be interested in say, helping American blacks trace their lineages. Or helping blacks avoid or better survive disease. Or improving quality of life for blacks. No! If one mentions the dreaded “R” word, then one is evil and deserving of punishment. So hath spaketh Thaddeus the Good.
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Natasha W,
Is this an invitation to debate? I’m not quite sure. Asian and European immigrants are outclassing African and Indian immigrants academically, especially in the more difficult hard sciences. Also, just because an immigrant’s home country might have a low average IQ, it does not mean that any individual immigrant would have a low IQ. There are clearly many bright black immigrants to this country. It does not mean these immigrants are representative of their home countries. Nor does it mean that all Asians are smarter than all Africans. Averages are averages. IQ is only important in aggregate and as a diagnostic tool for individuals.
You wrote:
The Africans that come to North America are not the best and brightest. They are the ones with the most money.
But there is a correlation between wealth and intelligence. Not an exact correlation, but a significant positive correlation nonetheless.
So the assertion that some black African countries have average IQs in the 60 range isn’t so implausible.
Some do, surely. Just like some Asians do and some white Americans do.
True, but again it is the averages that count. Unfortunately there are more lower IQ people in black African countries (as a percentage of population) than are low IQ people in Asian countries or the United States.
Tulio,
Africans have a less effective lobby than Hispanics do. Also, it is easier for many Hispanic immigrants to get into the country because the US borders Mexico, and we really don’t enforce our immigration laws. Proximity helps.
Abagond,
Your question regarding the reasoning behind why high IQ immigrants might leave their native lands is a good one, and it is also a question Sailer has addressed. Countries that are run well have a tendency to keep their best and brightest, especially if they have top flight universities. Even countries that aren’t run so well, like Mexico, still manage to keep most of their intellectual elite at home. The problem is that the intellectual elite of Mexico comprises a smaller percentage of the population than other places. Mexico is an affluent country, compared to most of the rest of the world. The elites of Mexico would rather export their problems to the US, by encouraging mass immigration of their less gifted brethren to the US. The brain drain effect is an especially nettlesome one for black ruled countries. How many Nigerian internists does the US need? Doesn’t Nigeria need Nigerian doctors more than the US?
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Son, I realize at this point you are just trying to cover your ass, so you probably don’t realize how ridiculous you look flailing away up there, but jeezis, son: take a look in the mirror.
On the one hand, you’re defending this theory of relatedness, which can only logically mean clinactic distribution of traits. Fair go.
This, however, means that there’s no way that any group of people can be labled generically “black” and have that mean anything at all on the genetic level. The “lineages” you’re talking about are far too local and micro to be applied to human groups on the order of tens of millions of individuals.
On the other hand, your whole idea that “whites are smarter than blacks” is predicated on the notion that there ARE INDEED genetically discrete, relatively homogenous groups which contain hundreds of millions of individuals. These groups, according to you, are so homogenous that the most complex genetic artefact that we can think of – intelligence – is expressed in a unifromly inferior way among all race members.
Kiddo, you don’t know if you’re coming or you’re going. 😀
Here’s a sincere suggestion: if you’re truly going to educate yourself on this topic, don’t listen to Steve Sailer and avoid using google: BUY some basic human biology textbooks and READ them.
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What do you want to bet RR is, in fact, Steve Sailer?
Hard to figure out any other reason why someone would argue that an internet pundit is, essentially, more of an expert on human genetics than the biologists of the world.
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Natasha W,
Is this an invitation to debate?
RR, you replied to my comment. So I answered you. If you didn’t want to debate, you shouldn’t have entered the blog.
Asian and European immigrants are outclassing African and Indian immigrants academically, especially in the more difficult hard sciences.
Prove it. As soon as you do, I’ll concede.
But you probably can’t prove that. Have you been to the hospital lately? How many of the physicians/nurses/pharmacists there were of Indian or African descent?
But there is a correlation between wealth and intelligence. Not an exact correlation, but a significant positive correlation nonetheless.
Completely false.
http://www.news.com.au/intelligence-not-linked-to-wealth-study-shows/story-e6frfkp9-1111113408539
http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/intlwlth.htm
True, but again it is the averages that count. Unfortunately there are more lower IQ people in black African countries (as a percentage of population) than are low IQ people in Asian countries or the United States.
The difference between you and I is that you believe that IQ is the ultimate measure of intelligence while I believe that it is an archaic assessment riddled with bias. Assessments such as the NNAT are much less biased.
I suggest you drop The Bell Curve and pick up The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould.
What do you want to bet RR is, in fact, Steve Sailer?
😀
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first time i have heard of him he sounds like a a-hole and that’s my well thought out opinion.
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@Aiyo:
I second your opinion regarding this racist douchebag.
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WOW
I really have to hand it to some of you who still have the fortitude to keep on reading RR’s comments and that go on forever and then commenting back. I gave up long ago. 😦
Also, i co-sign with Aiyo and Leigh….
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@AO:
LOL!
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Natasha W,
Obviously, I do want to debate this. It just wasn’t clear to me that you wanted to debate this.
In verifying the statistics you gave, a number of questions occurred to me:
1) Were the degrees awarded earned in the immigrants host country or earned in their native countries?
2) In what fields were most of the degrees awarded in?
3) What were the GPAs and entrance exam scores of the African immigrants?
4) To what degree were African immigrants aided by Affirmative Action?
Unfortunately, I could only find a single reference for question 3:
The following was of interest:
Moreover, although their grades were fairly similar, their standardized test scores were not. “Among indicators of academic preparation, there are no significant differences between black immigrants and natives with respect to grade point [averages] or advance placement courses taken, though both lag significantly behind whites,” the researchers report. “However, we do observe a significant difference between immigrant- and native-origin African Americans with respect to SAT scores, an indicator of cognitive skills (see Jencks and Phillips 1998).”
“Blacks of immigrant origin earn a significantly higher score on the SAT (1250) compared with their native counterparts (1193), though both are well below the score for whites (1361).”
The scores for white immigrants were not broken out, but they are probably higher than those of native whites.
I stumbled upon this chart:
Altough the data is uncorroborated, it shows that despite having greater educational credentials, African immigrants earn less money than other immigrants and earn less than Americans. They also have a higher poverty rate and higher welfare rates compared to Asian immigrants, white immigrants, and Americans.
The reference you cited indicating that there was no correlation between wealth and intelligence was…strange. The following was very curious:
The study confirmed previous research which has shown that smarter people tend to earn more money, but pointed out there is a difference between high pay and overall wealth.
“The average income difference between a person with an IQ score in the normal range (100) and someone in the top 2 per cent of society (130) is currently between $US6000 ($7200) and $US18,500 ($22,250) per year,” it said.
“But when it came to total wealth and the likelihood of financial difficulties, people of below average and average intelligence did just fine when compared to the super-intelligent.”
So the study confirmed the relationship between income and intelligence, but muddied up the wealth to intelligence figures by including the probability of financial difficulties. Sounds fishy to me, and to others:
Why did they stop at $230,000? Do not vastly wealthier people count? Or did they cherry-pick the data?
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RR, you’re just scrounging. You know a person is scrounging and the debate is lost when they start nitpicking and bringing up statements such as “affirmative action.” There always has to be a roundabout explanation for why results don’t match up to a person’s biased beliefs.
How am I to know why the researchers did what they did in their studies? I’m done debating with you.
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Probably for the same reason statisticians often use median over averages. Because when enormous wealth is so highly concentrated in few hands, it only takes a few Bill Gates and Donald Trumps to throw off the numbers and make the study meaningless.
That tends to be true in meritocracies, but when you’re talking about highly corrupt 3rd poor countries, it may be a case of who is better connected to those in power, who has the most guns, who is the most feared, who is the most cut-throat and machiavellian.
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Natasha W,
The following links were ommitted from my previous post:
Link for point 3:
http://www.academia.org/affirmative-action-through-immigration/
Chart listing immigrant educational and employment data:
http://www.asian-nation.org/immigrant-stats.shtml
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Tulio,
But $230,000? A person with a net worth of over a million dollars (in the US) is hardly an outlier. There are more than 6 million millionaires in the US:
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE52A71B20090311
Unfortunately, traits like deviousness, cunning, interpersonal networking, the ability to acquire and maximize resources are also positively correlated with intelligence. Machiavelli was quite intelligent.
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Six million people is 2% of the country. The average American makes about $40,000 a year. I’d very much say that millionaires are outliers when 98% of the nation falls outside of that bracket.
As for cunning, deviousness and such being positively correlated with IQ. I don’t know, the jury is out for me on that one. I’m not convinced that Robert Mugabe for example, is particularly intelligent.
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Allt his discussion of IQ is interesting, but it avoids the main problem. To wit:
NONE of the IQ studies quoted by anyone, above, define “race” in the way that Steve Sailer defines it, let alone in the way that trained human biologists define it.
ALL of these studies defined race based on self-ascription or observer description, not “relatedness” or “gentics” or what have you.
Ao RR/Steve is just blowing smoke up our collective asses on this one, folks. If he truly believes that “race is relatedness”, he’d be the first one to point out that these IQ studies do not correctly quantify race.
He’s continuing with this crap about IQ, even though said studies violate what he himself claims to be his “logical” definition of race. There’s no possible scientific or logical reason for this, unless Sailer’s main goal was NOT to present a scientific definition of race and explore the hypothesis that it had some connection to intelligence, but instead to preserve the myth of white supremacy.
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tulio,
Since all extremely intelligent people are outliers (by your definition, top 2%), cutting them would defeat the purpose of the exercise. I mean, if one were trying to, say, determine the average IQ for a given country or group, would it make sense to lop off the top 2% percent of scorers? It seems to me that the researchers deliberately limited the study to those with a net worth of less than 230000K because including people with higher levels of wealth would have, heaven forfend, proven that intelligence was correlated with wealth, which is the direct opposite of what the researchers wanted to find.
Robert Mugabe did get accepted to Oxford and attended for a while. This was well before the age of Affirmative Action, so the guy must of had something under the dome. He also earned a bunch of degrees through distance learning, which in those days, was a pretty serious undertaking. Mugabe probably isn’t a genius, but he is likely significanly more intelligent than the average Zimbabwean.
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Since all extremely intelligent people are outliers (by your definition, top 2%), cutting them would defeat the purpose of the exercise.
The purpose of the excercise apparently being to manipulate stats any which way in order to “prove” that “black” people are mentally deficient.
(And forget for the m,oment that we don’t even have an consistent operative definition of “black” or “intelligent” in these studies: the stats speak for themselves. ESPECIALLY when they’ve been doctored.) 😀
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Are you denying the veracity of those conclusion?
Or do you just not like them?
Do you have a problem admiting that average IQ of blacks is lower than whites which is lower than east asians? Why is that? A bizarre sense of race vanity?frankly I don’t understand.
When test after test, school results and surveys over many years show us the same results?
As for the New Orleans black IQ which must have been around 80 (70-75 among does who did not evacuate before the hurricane) it does not seem implausible. I now people with IQs around 70, considered borderline retarded, who went to the “special ed” section in school,
they are basically functional, but with little ability to plan ahead, no impulse control, prone to emotion and instict.
Many sub-saharan africans strike me as big children, this as been noticed, not just by white explorers, but by asians, arabs, civilized africans and this across many historical periods.
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You’re absolutely right! After centuries of making it illegal for Blacks to be educated, and then another century of making sure that Blacks received an extremely substandard education, it is just shocking that testing scores are not equal to those WHO WERE ALLOWED TO BE EDUCATED during those centuries!
Are you really this obtuse, dummy?
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@Babou
Do you have a problem admiting that average IQ of blacks is lower than whites which is lower than east asians? Why is that? A bizarre sense of race vanity?frankly I don’t understand.
No, I think you understand very well. I have no beef with the fact that black I.Q.s are, on average, lower. There are many excellent reasons why this is so.
What I have a beef with is the supposed linkage this has to genetics.
First of all, in these studies, there is no genetic definition of “black”: people are allowed to self-define. This means that a vast range of genetic make-ups are being defined as “black”. “Black” is thus not some sort of independent biological variable, but a variable dependent on sociology, history and politics. Without adjusting for that fact, there can be no presumed biological linkage.
And, as of yet, not a single one of theseIQ comparison studies has bothered to do that.
And that is just the most salient problem with these sorts of comparisions. There are also problems with the fact that IQ tests reify a non-objective quality. That the tests used in these comparisons have been changed over the years. That inconsistent testing methodologies were used in various populations. That the IMPROVEMENT in both black and white IQs over the last 50 years definitively shows that these tests cannot be determined by evolutionary-linked biological variables.
Etc, etc, etc…
In short, to believe that the gap between black and white IQ scores is somehow caused by hereditary biology and not cultural, historical, or environmental factors requires a leap of faith on the order of believing in creationism or a flat earth. You can “prove” that such theories are correct as long as you stick to rhetoric and narrowly argue a point at a time, rejecting, on faith, any argument which goes against your views.
But you can’t prove that these theories are correct going on scientific method.
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Bobou:
I agree with Thad: Black Americans do score lower on IQ tests, but genetics cannot account for it. For example:
1. Light-skinned blacks score no better than dark-skinned blacks, even though light-skinned blacks are presumably whiter on average genetically.
2. Americans with a black father and white mother score HIGHER than those with two white parents.
3. Black Americans now score about as well as whites did in the 1950s. As Thad pointed out, genetics cannot account for that.
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Bobou:
Steve Sailer says that the average IQ of blacks in Africa and the Caribbean is 70. To him that proves they lack intelligence. To me that proves HE lacks intelligence. Africa supports a billion people. There is no way that would be possible if the continent was full of borderline retarded people. Therefore there must be something wrong with the tests.
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Bobou said:
“As for the New Orleans black IQ which must have been around 80 (70-75 among does who did not evacuate before the hurricane) it does not seem implausible. “
How do you know this? Because they did not leave? Unlike what many whites seem to think, not everyone has a car.
Nearly everyone in New Orleans who had a car left. But 27% of blacks in New Orleans had no access to a car. (For blacks nationwide that number is 19%). So nearly all of them were stuck.
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Abagond:
“There is no way that would be possible if the continent was full of borderline retarded people. Therefore there must be something wrong with the tests.”
Sailer bases his argument on 2 books “the bell curve” and “IQ and wealth of nations”, both of which uses fraudulent methodology (like extrapolating IQ from neighbouring countries which don’t even have the same ethnic composition!) and inaccurate statistics from small and biased samples.
Both have been debunked by actual scientists.
Even now it’s almost impossible to get accurate statistics from developping nations because:
1. most of them don’t even have a public data collection agency!
2. IQ studies would have to take into account other variables like pre-natal and post-natal nutrition, lack of healthcare, non existent schooling, income level, social instability and instruction methods. It would be very expensive to lead such study in a 3rd world country.
Guys like Sailer will use anything, no matter how fraudulent, to justify their racism.
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“@ King:
a black man is a man who has more in common genetically with men of his similar racial group which has a more recent geographical jumping off point from sub-Saharan Africa. thus a black man is a man who has similar characteristics to other black men. those black men have more genetically in common with men from Africa than do white men.
i know where you’re going with this, btw. you want to derail the discussion by arguing that race is a social construct.”
This is a genetic map of Africa.
The fact is that there is no “common genetically with men of his similar racial group.”
But to understand, here is a very short article that just explains the map.
http://scienceblogs.com/geneticfuture/2009/04/massive_study_of_african_genet.php
You see, it turns out that Africa is the most genetically diverse place in the world and has extreme hyper genetic diversity.
But how genetically different are Africans peoples from one another? Genetics researcher Stephan Schuster conducted a survey that sequenced the genome of five people native to the region of southern Africa, including anti-apartheid activist Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The other four subjects were Bushmen, one named Gubi who had his entire genome sequenced.
“Gubi is the first person from an African minority population to be fully sequenced, and comparing him to the other three men from the region shows as much genetic separation as you’d expect to find between European and Asian peoples. Says Schuster: “This is despite the fact that they sometimes live within walking distance of one another”
So, basically between Bushmen and Bantu, you can find more genetic variation that you can find between say… Han Chinese and Frenchmen. YET, HBDers try to treat “Black people” as one massive genetic race, who is somehow genetically advantaged or disadvantaged in the same way. in reality, they are quite a few, genetically different dark-skinned races.
Article here:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2010/02/18/genomes-of-desmond-tutu-bushmen-show-africas-huge-genetic-diversity/
If genetics was truly the driver of things like intelligence, leadership, and superior replication value then, from a genetic standpoint, you should be seeing the greatest differences between African peoples, since there is greater genetic variation between them than anyone else. Is this the case? If not, you need to look beyond genetics to culture and environment.
Or, in other words, HBD is a crock.
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^ BTW Chuck, notice that my sources are not from assorted Google e-books, of 50 year old texts, but represent current research and reputable sources.
Both Science Blogs and Discover Magazine are well-established sources for scientific information.
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Bravo, King! Reading these types such as Steve Sailor(sounds like a name a gay porn star would have!), is like going to your neighbour to ask for a diagnosis on an ailment. They may have suffered similar symptoms to you but you should go to a doctor for a proper diagnosis. Many people are scientifically illiterate, yes I am one of them. However, with that being said, if I wanted to seek out scientific information, I would go to reputable sources. Not to someone who basically takes scientific information and reinterprets it to fit into their own world-view. There are enough reputable sources such as university libraries, journals etc. Why go to someone who doesn’t even have the credentials for the topics they are expounding on? I have access to up to date articles(pdfs) from the University of Toronto’s library. An invaluable resource! Too bad science isn’t one of my favourite subjects!
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Thanks Hernieth.
The problem to me is exactly as you have stated it. Every HBDer that I’ve ever run into, thus far, has taken other people’s research and used it to make radical conclusions that the people who actually did the research wouldn’t make.
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What’s scary is that people actually put much store in what these people write!
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Angry White Dude (www.angrywhitedude.com) is full of the same thing: crap.
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wow…i wish people would stop posting those sites. I really do, you’re right though. he is just a clone of steve sailer, just looking over some of his words…he is an angry,ugly person who is just stuck in his own little world and knows nothing about black women or black people. So, he talks alot of nonsense pretty much. people like him need help.
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The reason these guys believe this stuff has nothing to do with the science. It takes all of 5 minutes to completely debunk everything they’ve been droning on about for years and years.
The reason they believe this stuff is because they desperately need a new theory of racism that allows them to separate themselves from the blue collar stormfront morons. So they come up with this high sounding “Scientific” theory:
In it, they concede that Blacks are better an bouncing balls and running fast, and brute strength. They’re also funny, but not that smart.
They concede that Asians are human calculators and are therefore good at science. They’re smart, but can’t think individually and aren’t creative.
But Whites are really the genetically chosen ones – the people who have the best mix of genes an abilities to make them the natural leaders of the world. Their genetics makes them overall dominant, even if they do make a few small concessions to other races here and there.
The bottom line is that these losers NEED to feel superior, and rather than achieving this as individuals, and actually going out and accomplishing something, they rely on being a part of a superior racial group. Of course, the entire thing is a laughable fiction.
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It takes all of 5 minutes to completely debunk everything they’ve been droning on about for years and years.
I am scientifically challenged once numbers become involved. However, I can grasp the basic concepts of some of these theories. For example the 1% difference difference in humankind, which has to do with appearances only. So, when I read some of these HDB people, I recognize it for what it is, nonsense. Not even the science fiction dime novel were so dreadful!
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Really the best and most robust study which lends a lot of credibility to HBD are the Minnesota Transracial Adoption Studies. They are the largest cross-cultural IQ measure, and they are one of the few that did follow up IQ tests.
In these tests, it was found that black children adopted into white families had mean IQs of 97 at age 7 and 89 by age 17. In comparison, white children had a mean IQ of 112 at age 7 and a mean IQ of 106 at age 17.
Of course, in that they always have to have the bogeyman of racism waiting in the closet to dismantle any evidence of biological difference, opponents argued that “identity” problems caused the disparity in IQ scores. They ignore the fact that Asian children adopted by white families had average IQ of 108.
Also, IQ increases as skin pigment gets lighter. Lighter skinned blacks have higher IQs. This indicates that more European genes are associated with higher IQ.
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Chuck:
From what I have read (probably mainly Malcolm Gladwell) it is not as simple and straightforward as that. These numbers are from memory, so they might be a bit off, but the ranking is not:
black mother x black father = IQ 85
black mother x white father = IQ 96
white mother x white father = IQ 101
white mother x black father = IQ 105
Also, skin shade does not make a difference if both parents are black.
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“Also, IQ increases as skin pigment gets lighter. Lighter skinned blacks have higher IQs.”
Citation for both of these claims, please?
“This indicates that more European genes are associated with higher IQ.”
There are no such things as “European genes.” Such a bizarre thing to write. There are certain alleles of SNPs that usually show up mostly in Europeans (like the allele G for blue eyes in the SNP Rs12913832, but that allele is also present a significant amount in Middle-Easterners and Indians/South Asians), but even they aren’t bound to one continental group.
You may have meant that certain allele variations of SNPs related to intelligence may be more prevalent among Europeans, but as far as I know there are no SNPs strongly linked to IQ. And no proof of them being more prevalent in European populations.
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Chuck, none of that matters, because whenever you say “Black People” you are not talking about ONE genetic “race.”
Instead, you are talking about several darker skinned, genetically diverse “races” that are even more different from one another (genetically) than any of the lighter skinned races. The illusion of “sameness” is completely torn away once you begin to look at their genes.
Therefore, when tests were being done, on “BLACK people” they were never testing people with the same genetics. HOW can you blame people’s low test scores on their genes WHEN THEY DON’T EVEN SHARE THE SAME GENES???!!
Without even getting into debunking your sources and information any further (and I could) the entire premise falls upon it’s face, once the uniform genetic argument is removed.
The problem now is that you can’t except the plain and proven truth. You have invested too much in this Lie, and accepting the truth now would mean accepting that, all along, you have not been a “dispassionate scientist” but an ignorant and arrogant racist. And that, you cannot accept of yourself.
Therefore, you will continue to bow down before the HBD altar, beating your chest, shaking your beads, and making your sacrifice to the false god of false science. It has become a RELIGION to you, that even the plainest proofs cannot dispel.
It is too late for you. You will never deny your false god. You are doomed to mutter and peep—serving your dead god in ignorance, because it’s so much easier than facing the truth about yourself.
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SNP:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-nucleotide_polymorphism
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To pick up on what King was saying, “blacks as a race” gets even worse once you come to America. Because of the One Drop Rule, you can be 88% European and yet still be seen as black (as were some of Thomas Jefferson’s children). Likewise, you can be 34% African and still be counted as white, as was Anatole Broyard.
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I’m with Jason on this one – why not give the floor to the HBDers and have them layout all their thesis? What’s the harm in it? If what they say can be defended in the crucible of debate, so be it, but if not, they will have shown themselves to be whacked and dealt with accordingly. I personally think the Left does itself no good by refsuing to allow the HBDers to be heard.
To me, and this comes from someone who’s own stances regarding the HBDers are very well known, the issue ain’t whether its “true” or not, but rather what kind of public policy changes the HBDers would like to see done. So for me, I’m willing to grant that for the sake of argument, everything they say is true – now what?
Well, if the HBD blogs are any indication, and right now we’re talking about Sailer, his number one focus would seem to be putting a halt on immigration, most notably of the illegal Mexican kind. Alright then, lets say we do that – now what? Who’s gonna do the kind of work those people did at thos crappy wages who are American born? let’s say that we could find some native born Americans to do it, but it wouldn’t be enough to meet the demand, I don’t think.
And, his argument here doesn’t necessarily address the concerns other HBD bloggers have about H1B immigrants, working in the higher end of the economy. On what grounds can a HBDer argue the removal of these folks – will it be naked appeals to race and nationalism? Alright, let’s say it is, and that it comes to pass – now what?
Do we extend it to say, native born Asian/Indian kids who routinely ace various tests and spelling bees and the like? Even though they have the legitimate qualifications to get into the elite schools, the best jobs, they still aren’t White. Do we again appeal to HBD to have them removed, because, well, White kids are being shunted aside? Even when said White kids simply aren’t getting the test scores that these other kids got? And if so, isn’t that a kind of the very sort of quotas opponents of Affirimative Action complained about when “NAMs” were getting over due to that?
But alright, let’s say, for the sake of argument, we do that, we boot all the native born American kids who just happen to be of Asian or Indian background in order to make way for the White kids. Affirmative Action is done away with so we no longer need to worry about Black folks. But what about White Women, who`ve also gained tremendously as a result of AA? Well, they’re different, because White Women are the natural mates of White Men, so they get a pass. OK.
NOw, how do we address the fertility issue? Of course, HBDers are quick to suggest all manner of schemes to limit the growth of “NAM” populations, but tend to be quite mum on the fact that Smart White Folk are dying out, or at the very least, aren’t reproducing at replacement levels. But again, for the sake of argument, let’s grant the HBDers their number one request in this area – “NAMs” are effectively sterilized, their population numbers kept under a certain cap. Still, who does that address the dwindling number of White folks? Especially the smart ones? How do these guys convince Smart White Women to start having babies, and they would need to have at least two per, beginning around their early 20s? The HBDers either don’t think such a question is important, or they haven’t figured it out yet.
Nor have theyr figured out what to do with the tens of millions of Dumb White People. And not all of them sprung forth from the loins of other DWPs either – Regression to the Mean is a real thing, and scores of Smart White People spawn Dumb White People all the time. What are we to do with them? Again, the HBDers don’t seem either all that interested in the question, or, they haven’t yet figured that one out.
We can go on from there, on a whole host of public policy questions, like say, racial profiling – since it’s clear that Black males commit more street crimes than anyone else, and since we now have evidence that its genetic in origin, racial profiling isn’t just justified, it must be increased to ensure public safety. If you’re a HBDer, its hard not to support such a measure right? Of course, how this rubs up against notions like civil liberties and the like have to take a backseat to science. And so forth.
I think things like these are more likely to come out if the HBDers are given centerstage in the public square and actually debated in good faith. As it stands right now, their relegation to the shadows gives them a kind of renegade cache among a goodly number of folk online. Let the sunshine in, I say! Again. I’m with Jason on this one.
Them there’s my thoughts.
Holla back
O.
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Herneith says:
“I am scientifically challenged once numbers become involved. However, I can grasp the basic concepts of some of these theories. For example the 1% difference difference in humankind, which has to do with appearances only.”
One percent? That’s way too much. Try ~.01 percent. One percent is a lot at the biochemical level, especially considering that less than two percent of all genes code for proteins at all.
King says:
“The problem now is that you can’t except the plain and proven truth. You have invested too much in this Lie, and accepting the truth now would mean accepting that, all along, you have not been a “dispassionate scientist” but an ignorant and arrogant racist. And that, you cannot accept of yourself.”
Righter than you know.
It’s interesting that these people try to project this image of objectivity (and of their opposition as subjective and irrational), when they are simply cherry-picking data to confirm their biases. Anything that goes against it they simply ignore.
Tanya: exactly.
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Obsidian, Chuck or anyone who knows:
Is there an HBD 101 somewhere? What are some good websites (or books) where I could learn of their doctrines? I would love to do a post on HBD.
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Abagond,
The trioka of HBD blogging that I’m aware of is Sailer, which we’re talking about now, OneSTDV and Half Sigma. There are other blogs that dabble, to one degree or another, in HBD, like The Asian of Reason and Jamila Akil, and of course, Chuck Ross’ Gucci Little Piggy, but the first three I pointed out really will give anyone who wants to understand HBD as they propound it a good sense of where they’re coming from.
Again, I’ve written a great deal about all of them at my blog, and when its back I imagine I’ll write a goodly bit more, LOL. I’m much more interested in the social and public policy implications of HBD then anything else, since to me, science really doesn’t mean a heck of a lot without putting into some kind of real world context.
Hope this answers your question(s).
O.
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“To me, and this comes from someone who’s own stances regarding the HBDers are very well known, the issue ain’t whether its “true” or not, but rather what kind of public policy changes the HBDers would like to see done.”
Do you also take this stance on Alchemy, Phrenology, and Blood Leeching?
The African genetic diversity dilemma is inescapable kryptonite to HBD pseudo-intelletual theories. The two are antithetical, and one cannot exist in the face of the other.
On one side you have the ENTIRE weight of modern genetic science and research, on the other, you have three websites run by 3 besotted laymen who’s entire claim to fame is in running their blogs based on nonsense. The day they stop blogging is the day they are forgotten to the world.
The complete discrediting of HBD is no more “up in the air” than is the truth of the Apollo Moon Landing. Sure, you can always find some nut who will believe otherwise, but HBD has been proven wrong.
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@ Obsidian:
That does answer my question. Thank you.
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King,
We’ll just to respectufally disagree here as to how best to handle the HBDers. As far as I’m concernced, its something best addressed directly, because they will always be with us in one form or another. Their views may be anti-intellectual, but I’m not sure dealing with them in an equally anti-intellectual way is the answer.
So we’ll just agree to disagree here.
O.
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One percent? That’s way too much. Try ~.01 percent. One percent is a lot at the biochemical level, especially considering that less than two percent of all genes code for proteins at all.
Thanks for clarifying that. I am numerically challenged, however, I knew the differences were minuscule, LOL!
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@ obsidian
King,
We’ll just to respectufally disagree here as to how best to handle the HBDers.
Fair enough. And I will spare you the weight of your own judgements on similar statements to others elsewhere:
“Translation: Peanut can’t engage the discussion on the merits raised… LOL”
As far as I’m concernced, its something best addressed directly, because they will always be with us in one form or another.
Addressing it directly is NOT defined as acquiescing to their fallacious scientific points and then asking them “OK, so what do you plan to do about it?”
It means carefully examining their scientific claims and debunking them where they are untrue.
Their views may be anti-intellectual, but I’m not sure dealing with them in an equally anti-intellectual way is the answer.
False argument. Nobody has advocated dealing with them in an anti-intellectual way but you. The anti-intellectual method to deal with them is to lazily accept their spurious scientific claims at face value! That is the very essence on a non-intellectual approach.
So we’ll just agree to disagree here.
We certainly must.
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King,
I’ll drill down a little further to make this more precise. *People of African origin* have lower innate IQ because their ancestors weren’t forced by natural selection to develop bigger brains capable of handling more abstract higher thinking concepts.
There wasn’t much of a force compelling them to “evolve or die” given the novel environments they encountered as these peoples split off from one another.
Traversing new climates and environments – especially ones with harsher winters – would require ingenuity to stay alive which would favor smarter people over dumber people. African peoples were much less compelled to do all of this *because they didn’t have to*.
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@King and Obsidian
Perhaps theres room for both approaches. I personally don’t believe you have to take an “either or” approach when dealing with these matters. After all the objective: showing how HBD theories of race like sand castles eventually fall down; can be challenged from multiple approaches.
Simply preferring or adopting one need not invalidate the others.
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Kwamla, I agree with O. that we have to look at the politics of what HBD is trying to achieve, but it cannot be done by first ignoring the bad science.
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King:
Ha. I’ve only believed in HBD-esqe concepts for a couple of years. How long have you been black? I’m much less invested in this topic than you are. Assuming you’re black, you have all of the incentive in the world to make sure its truths don’t take hold. And if you aren’t black, you have a life’s worth of indoctrination to unshackle yourself with. You are much more invested in this topic’s outcome than I am.
You may not know it, but I grew up relatively liberal. Much more liberal than any of my friends. It was much more a crisis of intellect to switch from liberal beliefs to more conservative ones in that I was much more invested in anti-HBDism than I am in HBD proponency today.
It’s just that, to me, HBD offers compelling explanations for many of the social phenomena we see today.
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I’m curious which policies HBD is trying to achieve? As far as I know the Sailers of the world don’t want to enact any policies dealing with race; they just don’t want policy to be *implemented* to fix an unfixable problem. If egalitarianism is our goal for the races, if that egalitarianism is a pipe dream I’d rather not spend a whole bunch of money chasing it.
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@Chuck
You seriously need to check some of the assumptions you take for granted on what you build your statements on. That is if genuinely wish to be taken seriously. Show how I doubt it though.
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@ Chuck
“I’ll drill down a little further to make this more precise. *People of African origin* have lower innate IQ because their ancestors weren’t forced by natural selection to develop bigger brains capable of handling more abstract higher thinking concepts.”
1) Everyone on earth are *People of African origin*
Chuck, you’re not just beating a dead horse, you’re whipping the skeleton. I understand that you believe in this religion, but please, if you want to proselytize, at least preach sermons that make more sense.
2) You are espousing an inverse thermal impetus for advanced cognitive development. Essentially, the colder it gets, the more intelligent the people who live there must be to survive.
But think, if I stripped off your clothing and dropped you into say… the Amazon (forest, not bookstore). How long do you think it would be before I came upon your pink and naked body laying in a fen of fern, gasping and shivering, eyes bulging in horror, whilst some poisonous amphibian set atop your chest awaiting your inevitable demise?
I suppose you think avoiding death in the equatorial zone somehow requires less intelligence? How about if I dropped you down in the Nile delta and asked you to please farm the desert? How about if I asked you to survive by wandering the Sahara, or to avoid becoming prey on the Serengeti? Strangely, none of those things seems to take much intelligence in your view… only killing animals and using their pelts against the cold weather.
Do you now see the self serving fallacy of your prejudice? Why not instead confess your own desire to feel superior, then beg forgiveness for trying to impose the untruth of it on the world?
If cold weather were the only crucible in human cognitive development then the Inuits should be the rulers of the world, and igloos would be skyscrapers.
No, you must abandon your false religion. Let it go, and be free of it’s nonsense.
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“Ha. I’ve only believed in HBD-esqe concepts for a couple of years. How long have you been black? I’m much less invested in this topic than you are. Assuming you’re black, you have all of the incentive in the world to make sure its truths don’t take hold. “
Chuck… can you really be missing this much of the basic logic here? Your connection with HBD has little to do with how long you have believed in it. That is irrelevant.
Your religious connection to HBD is based on your lifelong Whiteness, and upon your own desperation to believe a theory that explains how being White makes you *special* and *superior* to most non-White people, simply by birth and genetic happenstance.
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King,
“everyone is of African origin”
Fine. People of recent African locus.
Black people have ancestors who more recently hailed from Africa.
And I don’t claim that climate is the only force which shaped white peoples’ bigger brains and higher intelligence.
And I understand your argument. It is much like Jared Diamond’s. Its the old “white people shaped history” meme tied up with genetics. But we *are* talking about intelligence as it relates to this modern world we live in, correct? So it doesn’t really matter if one group of people can survive on an African plain if we aren’t even concerned with surviving on an African plain.
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The simple fact, Chuck, is that it doesn’t take any more intelligence to fight the cold then it does to fight other natural obstacles. You’re just trading one set of difficulties for another.
Your entire primeval premise that “Moving north gives you a bigger brain” is wishful thinking. Give it a rest.
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King,
you call it wishful thinking because it undermines your argument. when humans entered evolutionarily novel terrains, climates, and locales their brain power was valued moreso than it had been in the past. brain power was selected for as humans were “forced” to do new things and create new processes and inventions.
in africa, those that remained static didn’t have an impetus to invent, and that invention didn’t beget more invention which became inextricable from intelligence.
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That’s an interesting theory but you’ve got to keep in mind that Africa itself is a huge and ecologically diverse place. My guess would be that it’s much easier to survive in temperate Italy, Spain, or Greece than the deserts of Mali or Somalia, but I could be wrong.
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FG,
yes, but since we all are ancestoral Africans we are somewhat equipped with the selective pressures that that continent threw at us. in moving on to new terrains and interacting with the inventions, strategies, and processes that were required to survive and thrive on the way to these final destinations, people of those new areas selected more for intelligence relative to other qualities. intelligence was thusly passed on through the lineage.
and yes, africa is ecologically diverse. but it remains that it was the jumping off point. it was the default locale for the human “race”. crossing the continent of africa from kenya or tanzania or ethiopia over to uganda and the congo is less mentally taxing than moving up through the sinai peninsula and up through the rest of europe or over to china.
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Chuck:
By that reasoning, Siberians or Inuits and maybe even Patagonians should be have the most highly evolved intelligence. But who ever says that?
As it turns out, Africa is the only place that has been able to evolve hominid intelligence to any great degree. And it has been doing it for millions of years. You yourself come from a wave of Africans that wiped out all the older forms of hominids before it, such as the Neanderthals and homo erectus.
Homo sapiens is an African species.
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Chuck:
Homo erectus had fire and lived at least as far north as Beijing. And yet higher levels of hominid intelligence did come from the north but from Africa.
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Abagond,
That is true. We still have no idea why, though. The first thought is, naturally, environmental factors, but somehow it seems like a way too simple explanation.
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@ Chuck:
the thing is, until the last 1000 years or so, Northern Europeans didn’t invent sh*t, despite their alleged cold-derived greater inventing capacity.
All the innovation, at least among “Caucasians”, took place in the Middle East, which Greece and Rome then built on.
Northern Europe only came into its own once it had absorbed the innovations of the people further south.
Are the peoples of the Middle East, then, not the most brilliant of all peoples, for inventing farming and cities and writing? How does that fit in with their average IQ?
The history of the world is that various civilisations rise and fall. Think of the Mongols, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Aztecs, the Cambodians, and so on. Why does the recent ascendancy of Northern Europe and its derivatives mean that they are somehow so brilliant?
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Eurasian:
Because Chuck is white and, despite what he says, is more guided by self-esteem than by facts.
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Also, please note that Homo erectus, for all we know, also originated in Africa.
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“the thing is, until the last 1000 years or so, Northern Europeans didn’t invent sh*t, despite their alleged cold-derived greater inventing capacity.
Quite so, Eurasian Sensation.
At the time of the first contacts with the Roman Empire, the White northerners were but savages, greased in rancid bear fat with cow and goat butter used in their hair. The Roman historians mention the foul smell of them on several occasions. Not to mention that they were inept and disorganized warriors who got their heads handed to them by the Roman legions at every encounter. Their military strategy consisted of screaming, yelling, shouting, and charging head-on into the Roman archers and phalanx—a great way to end up skewered for your lack of intelligence.
It was only after centuries of being defeated and later trained by, and fighting for the Romans that the barbarians became more efficient. However, they never rivaled the Romans at the zenith of their military power. Their later victories were over an already failed and fallen Rome. Justinian was but a shadow emperor when the Western empire fell, but the Byzantine Romans were still far the superior of the Gauls, Franks, Vandals and Visigoths even then.
These guys were no big brained geniuses to be sure… in fact, far to the contrary. Did all of this cold weather evolution happen within the last 1500 years?
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“Yes, but since we all are ancestoral Africans we are somewhat equipped with the selective pressures that that continent threw at us. in moving on to new terrains and interacting with the inventions, strategies, and processes that were required to survive and thrive on the way to these final destinations, people of those new areas selected more for intelligence relative to other qualities.”
HAHAHAHAHA!! How freakin’ desperate are you to belong to a *special* race, Chuck? Lol!
That’s like saying that if I was born in the New Mexico desert that I’d be “somewhat equipped with the selective pressures” that I’d face in a Klondike blizzard because my body would somehow realize that both conditions were uniquely North American!! ARE YOU SERIOUS????
This is a vegetation map of Africa
This is a climate map
There are obviously plenty of “new terrains” to interact with without ever leaving Africa. Your theories are fully bankrupt, and clearly self-serving. As I said before, you will never give up your false religion, you are far too invested in the idea of being better than other people by birthright. If you don’t have this… you are left with nothing.
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King,
you talk a lot but don’t really say anything. this concept isn’t all that difficult to grasp so i can only assume you’re being willfully obtuse.
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You’re right, Chuck.
Anyone would quite obviously conclude that living in an ice field would make your brain bigger than living in a harsh dessert, or a hyper-competetive rain forest.
Europe, of course, has a unique geography and climate that just happens to make BIG BRAINS. But people who were born in Africa were naturally, prepared from birth to deal with every challenge, climate, and terrain, on the entire continent, because they were Africans. Therefore, the things they had to adapt to and develop didn’t improve their intelligence at all, because Africans don’t grow more intelligent by solving African problems.
You’re right, it’s not that difficult to grasp.
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@King:
Europe, of course, has a unique geography and climate that just happens to make BIG BRAINS.
lol. I’m sure the Greeks, Romans, and others would stand to disagree, but I’m sure Chuck will ignore everything they wrote to support his HBD belief system.
Also, I find it hilarious that people consider “big brains” as somehow being a sign of higher intelligence, even when we’re discussing brain sizes relative to body sizes. Women, on average, have “smaller” brains than men, yet I’ve met many women who are far more intelligent than their male peers in academia. When will HBDers learn that it’s not the size of the brain, but rather the organization and processing power?
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Lol!
Yeah, Chuck is clearly struggling. You notice that he doesn’t even attempt to answering any of the clear objections, rebuttals, and counter theories above. Every answer is a brand new conversation, as if he hasn’t heard any of the clear refutations to his vacuous theories.
I certainly hope that when he says “Big Brain” that he’s speaking metaphorically.
But even if you swept all the previously presented logic aside, Chuck’s Cold Brain = Smart Brain theory is based on juvenile assumptions. For one thing, he has no idea what the climate was like in either Africa or Europe at the time that migration began. He assumes that the world looked much as it does today.
Yet, anyone who’s taken high-school biology knows that the fossil record shows that tropical fossils exist in places as far north as Greenland, and as far south as Antarctica.
http://www.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF1/188.html
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/03/06/arctic-turtle-fossil.html
He doesn’t even know if Europe was appreciably colder than Africa at the time. He doesn’t know how long Europe has been colder than Africa, in fact, he has no idea WHAT the actual primeval conditions and challenges were in either place at the time. This is the danger of playing amateur scientist.
It’s just makes him feel better to swallow the tripe of Steve Sailer, because he is a racist who doesn’t want to be seen as an imbecile, so he tries to cloak his immature “I’m Better Than You” dogma under the cover of dispassionate science. It’s just a ploy to avoid being humiliated.
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@King:
Yes, in order to believe that something is “better than” something you have to throw objectivity out the window, stomp on it, and run it over with a semi-truck, a tank, and a jumbo jet.
The fact of the matter is, biologically speaking, things evolve and grow faster in warmer climates, at least insofar as most living organisms are concerned. Think about fungus, bacteria, etc.; cold conditions either cause them to go dormant or kill them outright. Now this might not pertain to humans (other than cold being capable of killing) as I’m no biology major, but it stands to reason that similar rules would likely apply. There was a reason H. Erectus couldn’t go beyond the Caucus Mountains when it first left Africa, after all.
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King, Vagrant:
You guys say crap like:
*things evolve faster in warmer climates
*cold climates cause organisms to go dormant or kills them outright
*Africa could have very well been a colder climate in ancestoral times
To Vagrant’s ridiculous claim that cold climates “cause organisms to go dormant or kills them outrlight”. He prefaces this by saying that he is no biologist which puts him on the same level as me in terms of academic credentials. Yet he still comments on the topic.
Vagrant is unable to grasp that he has bolstered my argument. Yes, cold climates are harsh and they can kill you easier than temperate climates *which is the whole point*. “What doesn’t kill you makes you (or your group) stronger.” Ever heard that saying?
To survive, people who are now more closely related to caucasians and mongoloids had to develop strategies to overcome those harsher conditions. If they didn’t, they would perish. They didn’t perish and passed on their tools to their descendents. One of those tools was a bigger brain, higher cognitive ability, and better visio-spatial skill.
Survival of the fittest shaped humans. That’s pretty widely accepted as the general process of human evolution. What is considered “fit” differed depending on environment. In Africa, the species faced nothing new. By staying at “home base”, the humans who were there weren’t forced to compete for intelligence. Since equitorial Africa was plush with plants and berries (which most ancestoral Africans ate), they didn’t struggle for food or have to come up with novel ways to get food.
The people who migrated out of Africa developed in tandem with other forces. Those groups used language and developed tools and processes to survive. Those tools added an extra shot of juice in to the process. Those peoples’ environment came to include those very same tools and languages which thrusted them *even further* forward in evolutionary terms.
Vagrant X may be correct in saying that warm climates foster newer and more species than other climates. But this doesn’t refute the story of evolution or the story of IQ disparities. Africa got the species there; other places forced it to evolve faster than it otherwise would have.
***
King, your whole argument is unfounded. There is no reason to believe that Africa has ever been colder than the more polar or temporally polar regions. That defies the laws of nature anyway, the Earth has always been round with an equator that is more exposed to the sun than other parts of the globe. Do you deny that? Regardless, it is the being forced to move portion of the equation that propeled the brains and IQs upward. Groupifying, developing language, encountering novel minerals and landscapes (different from Africa) that allowed those groups to build upon whatever they had already built upon were part of this process.
Individuals today are a microcosm of this very same process. Generally speaking, the less intelligent people are the country bumpkins who’ve remained in their little village for their whole lives (this was much more true before TV and the internet, but the point remains.) It was the people who were lucky enough to build upon their rudimentary knowledge that they learned in that village and added to it all of the worldly experiencecs and knowledge they’d pick up at cultural meccas and through other travels. Through that lifetime the person added novel knowledge that they wouldn’t have learned if they remained that bumpkin in the village in which they were born.
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“King, your whole argument is unfounded. There is no reason to believe that Africa has ever been colder than the more polar or temporally polar regions.
STRAW MAN: Don’t be ridiculous… NOBODY said that Africa was colder than the more polar regions, the climates just weren’t necessarily different enough to make your “cold brain” argument.
The entire African continent is not now and never has been on the equator… check your map. There is more non-equatorial land mass in Africa then there is in Europe.
Climates have changed dramatically over the eons. That is why you can now find tropical turtle fossils on Greenland and tropical fish fossils in Antarctica. You have no idea what the relative temperatures were during much of the migratory periods.
You don’t even know the exact positioning of the continents when migration began!!
The time has come for you to go back to your blog and begin explaining to your readers how you have been wrong, and apologize for misleading them. Never mind about being humiliated… they may understand.
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He prefaces this by saying that he is no biologist which puts him on the same level as me in terms of academic credentials.
Oh, so you don’t know what you are talking about either!
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King:
Your tactics are futile. I notice you side-stepping every point I made in my post. Address the argument: novel environments and the development of tools and processes to deal with them greatly increased the intelligence of the peoples who entered them.
If you can’t answer that you should move on or admit defeat.
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Herneith:
these clowns like to toss around the “you have no credentials” argument but then turn to making arguments on the very same subject. talk about hypocrisy. so it then comes down to two things: a.) whose explanation is most correct and b.) who has the best grasp on the explanation of actual scientists.
so i scratched the credential ad hom out of the way which allows us to debate on equal footing. we must now compare our arguments based upon the merits of the argument and who best relates those arguments. obviously, i’m winning so far.
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Your tactics are futile. I notice you side-stepping every point I made
That’s because the fact that the whole climate, and even the geographic positioning of the tectonic plates/continents were quite different then they are in 2010 completely supplants ALL of your points.
Don’t you understand that?
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haha, no the geography and tectonic plates of africa were not “quite different”.
regardless, because those peoples remained stationary their change was much more incremental than that for the people who left africa and moved on to populate other areas.
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@Chuck:
Vagrant is unable to grasp that he has bolstered my argument. Yes, cold climates are harsh and they can kill you easier than temperate climates *which is the whole point*. “What doesn’t kill you makes you (or your group) stronger.” Ever heard that saying?
LOLZ! Well while I might not be a biologist I am an anthropologist, so perhaps that gives me a bit more credit. Regardless, your saying “What doesn’t kill you makes you (or your group) stronger” is ridiculous. Does one “get stronger” after being maimed? Does one “get stronger” after having a lobotomy? Would a group lobotomy make the group “stronger”? No, and to suggest so would be grounds for ridicule and to be ostracized.
Just because someone decides to freeze their a** off instead of migrating somewhere warm, doesn’t make them anymore intelligent. In fact, I would think it would make one appear less intelligent to do so. After all, during the time period when Homo Sapiens were migrating there was plenty of space to settle down in. Why in the world would anyone travel into the tundra? Oh, that’s right, there was easier, and substantially bigger, game to be found up there (e.g.-Mammoths, Equine species, etc.) who were too “stupid” to run away from human beings. This is the exact opposite of what occurred in Africa, where the other species of animals had co-evolved with humans and knew to either gore a human being, or get out of dodge, so to speak.
So, in all actuality, those who migrated north actually had it easier than other groups as long as they could keep themselves warm.
The fact of the matter is, like Abagond’s new post points out and King has mentioned, Europe was a back water until the Romans came in (I consider the Roman Empire to be part of the Mediterranean, not Europe).
People began to develop civilization in the Near East for some heretofore unknown reason, but it is strongly speculated that as the climate of the region began to change (i.e.-shifted from semi-arid/tropical to arid) people had to develop new means of finding food. That’s when agriculture started to develop, and with agriculture, civilizations began. This was the case in China, the Near East, and Egypt, as these were the only locations, at the time, where people had started to grow and cultivate cereal grasses. What were Europeans doing at the time? Well they were “intelligently” hunting the Mammoths and other big game animals to extinction, that’s what they were doing.
Survival of the fittest shaped humans. That’s pretty widely accepted as the general process of human evolution. What is considered “fit” differed depending on environment. In Africa, the species faced nothing new. By staying at “home base”, the humans who were there weren’t forced to compete for intelligence. Since equitorial Africa was plush with plants and berries (which most ancestoral Africans ate), they didn’t struggle for food or have to come up with novel ways to get food.
Survival of the fittest, ‘eh? You do realize that fitness, as defined by Charles Darwin and subsequent evolutionary theorist, simply means being able to propagate ones genes into the future, right? The environment does play a role in this, as if one dies before reaching maturity or birthing a new generation the species will die out, but that’s about it. Survival of the fittest, broken down to its most basic, is all about getting someone pregnant, or getting pregnant, and birthing a new generation.
Also, in Africa the species faced plenty of “new things”. Viruses and diseases were, and are, constantly evolving at a far more rapid rate than the rest of the world. Malaria is an excellent example of this. How many European groups would have been able to survive an outbreak of Malaria among their numbers before the advent of vaccinations? Lets put it this way, when Europeans first tried to permeate into Africa a significant number of them died of disease. And that is to say nothing of surviving in arid regions like the Sahara.
An easy comparison, which you have blatantly ignored or been willfully obtuse in recognizing to any substantive extent, could be made between surviving in a hostile, cold climate and surviving in a arid, hot climate. Neither one are easy, and in both cases resources are scarce and survival is difficult.
Also, I don’t know what you’ve been reading, but equatorial Africa is no more replete with “berries and bananas” than is equatorial South America. I won’t go into the difficulty concerning survival in the regions, but suffice to say the vegetation isn’t friendly, game isn’t plentiful in any real way, and there are plenty of pitfalls (quicksand anyone?).
Sorry, Chuck, but anyone with any real scientific knowledge would be foolhardy to throw any weight behind this HBD nonsense.
-DVX
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haha, no the geography and tectonic plates of africa were not “quite different”.
Great, then what was the mean continental temperature diferential between Africa and Europe through each stage of the migration?
Stop stalling and PROVIDE THE NUMBERS?
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“Sailer’s views on race are like those that whites had a hundred years ago: whites are naturally better than everyone else, they are Evolution’s Chosen People. Science proves it!”
Does he say this before or after he lists the IQ with Whites being below Jews and Asians?
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@ those who are saying IQ tests can properly measure intelligence of even illiterate people:
My first question to you: how do you define intelligence?
And secondly, how do you define absolute and relative intelligence??
I hope such people are aware of the methodology that goes behind measuring IQ, which is a measure of relative intelligence only.
Reading any basic book on the principles of measuring IQ will give you the many drawbacks of IQ tests, including but certainly not limited to:
1. exposure to the world that the test takers are part of (for eg: you are saying that illiterate people are taking the test, but the actual test formulators would themselves agree that if you ask someone who lives in a jungle and hunts for food and is completely detached from “normal” life, and obviously can be counted as an ‘illiterate’ person, CANNOT be tested by such “iq tests”..by extrapolating that same logic, those not having the right kind of exposure will hardly stand a chance)
2. problem interpretation – the so-called tests will naturally have some problems or things that will be asked to do. For people who are illiterate, and who usually have to do a lot of work just to make a modest living, this can become cumbersome
and applying that same logic:
3. interest – this is very important. And by interest I don’t just mean interest in that particular activity or question that is being asked to be done or answered, but interest in taking that very test. It must not be forgotten that people who are disadvantaged or are poor or are illiterate usually have big problems always and they can hardly be expected to have the right frame of mind needed to take such tests. I am sure you are all aware of what I mean by frame of mind, if you taken such tests. Mood is another major factor (someone who scores brilliantly in one test could fail in a very similar test on another day – just because another day brings a whole new set of variables with it, which means that test taking itself is a big test – something that you DO NOT expect people who are AT ALL habituated with such things to handle well. Go figure)
4. level playing field – it is a huge misconception that IQ tests are designed in such a way that prior preparation or knowledge is not required. That is bull shit. It has been seen that performance in any of these IQ tests becomes better and better with practise. So naturally, it is not like prior preparation or knowledge doesn’t help.
Secondly, the tests are intended to measure RELATIVE intelligence. So naturally, the RELATIVE BACKGROUNDS will also have a bearing on the outcome of the test, and every such test taker is bound to accept that. Those who make claims other than other, are simply LYING.
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Intelligence is so multi-faceted and so varied in terms of form, expression of it, applicability, utility etc. that it is hardly possible to measure it using any test or even a battery of tests for that matter. And how on earth can someone overlook the fact that inequality in society, differential socio-economic statuses and also health among other factors play a huge role is beyond me.
Just live in austerity for a week – cut off your rations, live with the bare minimum and live in extreme difficult situations. You will see that your intelligence as is tried to be measured by these tests will be found to be lacking.
(and then once again, go back to your normal ways … you will see all of it “coming back to you”)
But your intelligence may well have increased in other ways- maybe say practical ways.
Then again, this effect will be different on every INDIVIDUAL, and so the manifestations will also be very different, irrespective of race, color etc. Let alone grouping together, which would be an even bigger blunder, a test to measure relative intelligence of even any two persons accurately is pretty hard to come by, I am quite sure….
So many factors go into all this and yet…..
It is hard to accept that these IQ tests taken to show relative intelligence of races were not in fact part of the scientific racism. It is like the outcome was assumed and then something was designed as a test so that its outcome becomes exactly that and could not be anything else.
There is no conclusive evidence as yet, if intelligence is genetic or a thing of conditioned reflex. Most probably, it is a mixture of both. But there is no pin pointing definition of intelligence itself, and it is utterly unscientific to try to measure something that can’t even be properly defined.
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he is just a proud racist, he is so far from reality.
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I just did a quick search for “Steve Sailer” on Google Insight:
http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=steve%20sailer%2C&geo=US&cmpt=q
Interestingly, it looks like his fans are most heavily concentrated in politically “blue” parts of the country (e.g. DC, New York, California, Illinois). I don’t find this surprising given that most “HBD”ers come off (to me, at least) as secular, socially liberal types. The South has always been notorious for its racial antagonisms, but I think nowadays the region’s white conservatives lean much more towards religious traditionalism/patriotism than biologically-oriented racialism.
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The IQ fans would impress me if they could account for the genius of Michael Faraday. With nothing more than grade school math he contributed more to physics and chemistry than his more mathematical peers. Faraday is an anomaly for the IQ club since math counts for a lot in determining IQ.
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Some time ago I read a book which gave some statistics in IQ’s. The differences between different racial groups was on the order of tenths of
an IQ point, not whole IQ points. Australian aborigines scored slightly
higher then Irish but slightly below Portugese. But the differences were
only about 0.2 points. (The test was conducted in Australia; the Aboriginal
children were from assimilated families.) The differences were just too
small to be statistically significant. The highest IQ ever recorded belonged
to a black South African girl–about 250.
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Please tell this white male about the “unfair advantages” I have in this society that my own flesh and blood created from scratch and has that spread to other cultures and raised hundreds of millions out of poverty around the world unlike any alternative you can show.
The fact that you feel “underpriviledged” is proof that your ancestors did not make the sacrifices and innovations and give them to others as an example, and that you are merely envious of other’s achievements. Base petty envy.
Try to evolve a bit spiritually and you will realize I am correct.
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Borogrove just read your own two paragraphs there and THINK if it really makes any sense.
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A Raven-Matrice test utilizes patterns in its questions and does not require knowledge. If it did then its results would be would be affected by schooling, hence attending a private school, with a better learning environment and teaching, would be of benefit in performing Raven-Matrice tests. It is a test purely of problem solving ability. What school one goes to will have no effect on such a test. SATs and GREs do have a knowledge component to them, thus the scores are affected by schooling to a degree. Black Americans, on average, do not perform near the level of whites and northeast Asians on a Raven-Matrice test, regardless of their socio-economic status or schooling,p hence the distinct possibility of the differences in intelligence between blacks, whites, and northeast Asians being attributed to genetics.
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Michael Hanley, let’s, for argument’s sake accept your claim of “…the distinct possibility of the differences in intelligence between blacks, whites, and northeast Asians being attributed to genetics.” In light of such ‘fact’, how do you account for the recent spate of success of Black Africans on the SAT and its British and French equivalents?
http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2015/05/ahead-of-her-time/
http://www.leparisien.fr/societe/momo-17-ans-a-integre-une-grande-ecole-22-01-2008-3295994739.php#xtref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com
http://www.liberation.fr/societe/2010/07/07/deesse-dji-ala-la-plus-jeune-des-bachelieres-2010_664538
http://www.afripol.org/afripol/item/1813-uk-nigerian-academic-performance-in-destroys-the-myth-of-black-low-iq.html?tmpl=component&print=1
I would like to read your account for the flowering of genius in the de la Pailleterie (Dumas) family after a black woman, Marie-Cessette Dumas gave birth Thomas-Alexandre Dumas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas-Alexandre_Dumas who sired Alexandre Dumas, the author, who begat Alexandre Dumas, fils the author and playwright https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandre_Dumas,_fils and Henry Bauër, author and revolutionist. https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Bau%C3%ABr
Note that the white branch of the de la Pailleterie family produced no one worth remembering! I’m dying to read your reply.
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God damn it Abagond why is my comment in moderation?
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@ gro jo
Too many links.
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how many is too many?
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@Gro Jo
I believe it is anything more than two links.
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What happened to Pumpkin’s on target response to m. hanley?
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@ gro jo
If you have three or more links (or at least one YouTube link) your comment will be automatically thrown to moderation.
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@ Afrofem
Pumpkin requested I delete her comment.
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