Charles Murray (1943- ) is a White American libertarian and right-wing thinker. He is best known for writing “The Bell Curve” (1994) with Harvard psychology professor Richard Herrnstein. He works for the American Enterprise Institute, a right-wing think tank in Washington, DC. In the 1980s he was with the Manhattan Institute and did much of the research that supported the welfare reform of 1996.
He has a new book out, “Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010” (2012). It is in effect “The Bell Curve” updated but without black people. The stuff he talks about affects everyone in America, but by making it only about white people he can sidestep charges of racism and get his message across.
The cognitive elite and the underclass: His big thing is that since about 1950 people in America have been rising and falling according to their IQs. He says that IQ correlates with things like marriage, low rates of out-of-wedlock births, success at work, obeying the law, religious faith, education and so on. So all the good people have been rising to the top while all the losers have been sinking to the bottom. That makes the bottom even more screwed up than it was and harder to escape.
Because your IQ is heavily determined by that of your parents, the working, middle and upper middle-classes are slowly turning into castes.
The Bubble: Further, the classes are becoming more and more separate in terms of where they live, who they know and what their life experiences are.
For example, there are Americans in the upper middle-class who have rarely or never:
- seen a factory floor,
- felt bodily pain at the end of the work day,
- been poor,
- watched the top Hollywood films and television shows,
- ate at places like IHOP or Ruby Tuesday
That is how cut off from mainstream American experience the top is becoming.
Black people: Because black IQs are generally so low, most blacks are pretty much stuck at the bottom of American society with no way out. He thinks affirmative action is a huge waste and should be done away with. He does not see blacks as Real Americans. Apparently they are kind of just in the country for hundreds of years.
The SAT: This is the test most American universities go by when making decisions about who to admit. It is the old army IQ test changed up for the universities. At first it was a good thing – it is how a person like Charles Murray from nowhere Iowa was able to get into Harvard. It was the friend of the little guy. But it is what has mainly created the cognitive elite and the underclass. Further, these days most people just see it as a way for the well-to-do to maintain their position since they can afford the good schools and special courses to make sure their children get top scores.
Welfare: Giving money to the poor does more harm than good since it rewards failure.
Ayn Rand: He is a fan.
See also:
Ok , Abagond, this one should be a very interesting debate on this thread…..
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“The stuff he talks about affects everyone in America, but by making it only about white people he can sidestep charges of racism and get his message across.”
That’s funny, and it looks to me like he’s succeeded. I’ve seen some criticisms of some of the arguments that are in Coming Apart, and people tend to pick isolated parts of the book that they think are wrong. But with the bell curve, even though it’s an 800+ page book with many arguments and lots of lots of data, people tend to label the entire book and every argument in every chapter “discredited” just because they didn’t like the one chapter that had something to do with race.
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So basically his book is what…a strawman argument?
And we’re to take him seriously because he’s white and went to Harvard?
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Charles Murray is the Ron L. Hubbard of Race Realism
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And Were To Take Him Seriously Because Hes White And Went To Harvard?
Why not? I am like him, I take Bugs Bunny seriously. It’s people’s fault they are in the streights they are in. There is no outside influences! It’s all your fault! It helps if you are white though!
Charles Murray Is The Ron L. Hubbard Of Race Realism
Hey now, Ron L. wrote some pretty good sci-fi. So what if he was one of the greatest charlatans ever? There is a sucker born every minute, he just took advantage of some. Isn’t that what free markets are for?
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Abagond, why would you even waste your time peddling his drivel? Personally, I feel that trying to defend the worth of Blacks (including myself) is a waste of time. It’s almost like, when you dignify it with an answer, you give it power. I feel that loving myself and accepting myself begins by not engaging in ‘debates’ with those who would seek to belittle me or tell me I am less capable. Once I do that, they’ve already won. I can never win these ‘debates’ because the preoccupation with ‘intelligence’ has more to do prejudice and faulty thinking and other issues.
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I find his work has a certain resonance with a “Divine Right to Rule”.
That aside, I’m perplexed at his worship of the “Elites” who rarely, if every, produce something tangible. For now they’re parasites, for the most part.
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@Abagond: “The stuff he talks about affects everyone in America, but by making it only about white people he can sidestep charges of racism and get his message across.”
Why would Charles Murray be concerned with sidestepping charges of racism?
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The concern isn’t that he’s arguing that we could just get rid of the lower classes. His problem is this:
We’re fracturing. Permanent, inescapable underclasses are developing. Members of this underclass will be hopelessly incapable of moving up in society. It’s happening globally, too. It means that instead of competing with other Americans, the lower classes are now abandoned b the upper classes to dependence, welfare and despondency. And it’s not just class. Old-style marxist analysis won’t help.
They will literally be less bright, less capable of good decisions, less capable generally. They will sink to the bottom and stay there.
That this has always been true is now irrelevant. The economies pre-info age were more democratic, in the sense that IQ made some but not a great deal of difference. Now, to get the real money, a stratification along IQ lines is emerging and you need to be in the upper end.
And his contention, and what is the absolute common opinion among geneticists (no longer controversial in science, regardless of what anthropology majors say: the evidence is just so utterly overwhelming as to be perverse to deny it), is that genes are at least 50-80% of IQ and much of behavior.
This means, … as the economy develops high-IQ positions for the elite, reinforced by those who need to get there every generation, the smart from every class will float up–
the rest will sink down.
If, then, more blacks float down, it could be racism.
very soon, correlations between many genes and intelligence and personality traits will start to emerge in science. We’re going to paint a new picture of people: As largely genetic machines, with deeply programmed tendencies. Musical skill, overall IQ, ability to abstract, ability to empathize, ability to get angry and violent, ability to delay gratification, tendency to seek adventure and novelty, tendency to fall in love, susceptibility to everything from drug addictions to fears – all of this will start to have mapped genetic links.
We are not blank slates. This means : When a baby is born, or even just a fetus, we’ll be able to tell much of what potential it has. Potential to be criminal, violent, to perform in school, what kind of education would be best, musical and mathematical skill, etc.
What then?
It’s not just racism that’s getting hard-coded in our society’s structure. It’s an entire view of what it means to be human that’s being dismantled.
If you can’t see this, then it’s very unfortunate.
Actually, racism is the least disturbing part of this “revolution”. Now that we’re studying what it is to be human on a very basic level, much of the basic assumptions we have about the world are going to come up for debate.
A lot of sacred cows are about to be sacrificed. Liberal America has a Marxist-inspired absolute belief in the perfectability of mankind, the ability to engineer any kind of society, and the ability to socially redefine everything about people – this is all going to be discarded.
What will happen when we then learn how to alter these genes?
Customized, predesigned people? Whole populations? Genetically-programmed castes?
All of this is possible. Imagine breeding humans the way we breed dogs: Hot sexy humans for sex, 7′ tall massive humans for soldiers, bred to be loyal and love discipline before they’re even trained, bred-in-the-bone artists and hyper-geniuses – or combinations of all these?
Gattaca, anyone?
Racism fades away to almost near-irrelevance compared to the ethical kettle of fish we’re opening up.
By just mapping the genome and linking everything from traits to behaviors to specific gene complexes, we gain huge power to control what it is to be human. We’ve got the technology now, and much of the knowledge; the next 50 years will see this perfected beyond the ability of “social conditioning” academic believers to promote their reform agendas. This is happening right now. Murray is nothing. Wait until you see what science departments start generating. Eliminating genetic diseases is just the very beginning.
The next step – the engineering of humans, the mixing and matching of genes, the creation of true “versions” of humans from our genetic mix, and even the introduction of new genes that have never before been in humans – maybe 100 years away. That’s likely too long an estimate: I guess this development will occur simultaneously.
Seriously, Murray is just making note of a real social phenomenon. You can question his motives, but take a look around you. It’s happening right now. If these classes ossify – and if the capable move up and the rest fall down, with modern medicine preventing mass randomness from disease, population shuffling and maybe even allowing controlled breeding – then the game will change. The lower classes will actually be dumber, less capable and economically imprisoned by their own natures.
What to do then?
This is a serious social issue. Racism is a complete tangent. it’s not related to it in a serious way except as a possible side-effect.
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And his contention, and what is the absolute common opinion among geneticists (no longer controversial in science, regardless of what anthropology majors say: the evidence is just so utterly overwhelming as to be perverse to deny it), is that genes are at least 50-80% of IQ and much of behavior.
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You had me up until here (in fact i stopped reading altogether). Genes do not determine behavior. There are innumerable variables between genetics and behavior that mediate behavior. Genes are only one factor in the regression analysis.
I think you have outed yourself with such a statement as a rigid and dogmatic thinker. People should attach the grain of salt to your point of view because it is clouded with the doctrine of eugenics. Something largely poo pooed in contemporary science (up there with Freud, just in a different way. I know because I am in a top 20 institution, in a science as we speak).
@ Mamzer Hakodesh,
I agree with you to a large extent. I think Abagond should reexamine the use-value of engaging with these types and what consequences come out of alotting this type of attention to them. While the thought that is synthesized from these debates might be stimulating, it has a plethora of negative consequences as well that I don’t think are being fully considered.
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@ Gorbachev
Yeah….sure.
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PS, this is likely to be global.
Whatever inherent differences are already there, … are going to be exaggerated out of all proportion by differential success.
If some countries were “smarter” than others before, even if only a little, they will get smarter still. As soon as it becomes possible to do selective breeding on a mass scale, even if it must means genetic surgery on fetuses or choosing the best genes from any given couple (thus allowing all people to breed, but weeding out the combinations from each couple that aren’t optimal), then the countries that don’t adopt this technology will be very, very quickly left behind economically, culturally, politically and in every sense that matters.
Call it racist. Racism in this context is so irrelevant it’s almost sad. We’ll wish for simple white-black-Asian racism.
Instead, we’ll get hard-core vicious discrimination along so many vectors, so many levels, it’ll be whiplash territory.
And the elites, the new elites, will actually be better looking, smarter, more capable and socially more successful than everyone else. Naturally. From birth. Without help. With no assistance, they’ll rise to the top of the class, be better in most ways than everyone else.
This is guaranteed to happen. When the first country to start doing this in a concerted fashion will guarantee that all others need to do it, too.
Incidentally, it might end racism.
It means that you could just eliminate any genetic tendencies that lead to lower IQs. You could average whole populations, and average them high.
What you’ll end up with are “Alphas”, “Betas”, “Gammas”, and other castes – and any money that these will be mutually self-supporting and dynamically self-segregating?
Racism could even be engineered out of people, even.
Who knows.
It’s all possible.
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@Gorbachev
I think you give too much precedence to genetics. All the IQ in the world can’t save you from societal collapse.
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Look what happened to those blasted Martians!
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Alas, I’m going ti out myself.
I was a hard-core social-programming-is-everything liberal until I went to college and got a degree in experimental genetics. No BS.
What the public knows and what scientists believe and can demonstrate are two different things. The disparate nature of it is staggering. Even non-geneticists are stymied by it. For example, most anthropologists still fall hook, line and sinker for Lewontin’s Fallacy, and Gould’s Mismeasure of Man.
In the 1980’s, the just was almost in, but it was possible to hide out in the fringes of hard science.
No longer.
I’s not just IQ that appears to be largely genetically determined. A whole host of behaviors, even infidelity (in the sense of increased risk – likely related to novelty-seeking and sexuality), are being linked to genetic factors. It’s shocking.
If you want a parallel, then try this.
Christian scholars know all kinds of things about early Christianity that would appall mainstream laypeople. Most believing Christians would think Christian scholars were a bunch of Christian-hating unorthodox monsters. In fact, the gap between what Christian scholars know and what the public perceives is so vast, there’s almost no way to bring them together.
You think I give IQ and genetics too much credit. Alas, not the case.
I was a hard-core liberal. I decry racism. Alas, there are virtually no serious scientists in the field left who don’t view humans as just another kind of animal that can be described like every other animal.
The notion of special creation, immunity from natural laws and genetic determinism on some level – all gone.
It’s irrelevant if you believe me or not. It’s happening right now: Your world is being torn out from under your feet, as you watch. You just don’t see it yet.
Unlocking the human genome was easily the most revolutionary thing that humans have ever done. It will utterly transform the way we see ourselves. it will completely transform humanity in ways we can’t yet fully imagine.
Your belief or disbelief is irrelevant.
Inevitably, we’re going to invent new forms of discrimination so amazingly complex that our racism will seem trite and charming.
Just wait.
PS-
I don’t believe genes are absolute rules.
They’re boundaries for statistical probabilities. These play out depending on local, somatic and experiential factors.
Don’t straw horse me with “Determinism”. Call it more, … boundary delimiters.
It’s not either-or. It’s not social determinism or genetic determinism. It’s both.
But there’s a lot more genetics in there than most of us ever want to believe.
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@MinnieB,
Could it be because so many people refused to buy into the theories he presented in the Bell Curve. My guess is he couldn’t stand the heat, so he does not want to go back into the kitchen.
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The problem with saying genes determine everything; which to some extent I suppose they do, is that its like saying people who have genes that make them more pre-determined towards alcoholism will ultimately be alcoholics no matter what they want.
It ignores a large aspect of influence that society plays.
Just like it ignores the advantages money and connections give to the upper class beyond intelligence, good genes etc…..if your upper class and don’t do exceedingly well thats almost an indication of how blatantly inferior you actually are if you can have all those advantages in life and still do poorly or sub-average or hell even just average.
It also doesn’t involve just how much social bias can affect an individual or group, race, nationality, religion etc….
Also hasn’t intelligence been “raising” not sinking? Wouldn’t that counter the IQ is dropping statement?
For that matter, aren’t IQ tests actually harder than they used to be? Someone who got a hundred in the past might just get a 90 or 80 today?
Libertarians and free-marketers are almost amusing when they are big business types, its almost impossible to acquire vast wealth on the level a lot of business have nowadays without goverment involvement and copyright protection.
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I never thought that I would agree with you on anything Gorbachev, but I do agree with you on some points. The IQ thing not at all but the genetic breeding of humans is actually becoming a reality. I study this from a Christian perspective, however, and it scares me to no end. I don’t think that is the point that Abagond is trying to make, but you are very knowledgeable about what is happening on the genetic end of things but that part is much bigger than racism. I believe there are forces who will try to it use to as a way to genetically wipe out all minorities if left unchecked..
There is a bigger picture here, but I am wondering what side of the argument you are coming from because of your name, Gorbachev, is very disturbing if it is in reference to Mikhail Gorbachev. Besides, everyone benefits from government. The rich get richer and the poor say poor because of government. Let’s be honest. Little is left to individuals. There is always some underlying agenda and the benefits of said agenda rarely trickles to the bottom. I know people who work much harder than anyone I know but the powers that be will never allow them to become rich from their hard work. It is from design.
The problem with IQ is that it is limited and not actually an accurate measure of true wisdom. College degrees and high scores on standardized test can’t make you wise. The best car salesman in the world selling Honda’s will never get rich from his talent, but a mediocre salesman with Bentley’s will fair a lot better. To say the man selling Honda’s is somehow not as smart or capable as the man selling Bentley’s is stupid. That’s what I think of IQ test. It only measure how well you can take a test. You can put a rocket scientist on a farm and all of the real farmers will think he is an idiot because he can’t milk a cow or saddle a horse. Intelligence has many, many dimensions.
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And Gorbachev, likewise, I used to go on about objectivism (only because i was recommended ayn rand by some loonie in a bus station when i was young, while waiting for a bus). Then I educated myself in science and philosophy and in real life which has many more wrinkles in it than the typical race realist/objectivist/libetarian b.s. doctrine that hard work & intelligence = success and social supremacy. Many people that will have both of the former will never have the latter – the mechanisms are not in place for all to succeed.
Social mobility is a new invention – approximately a half a century old (and not even so much for women/Blacks). The majority of the world’s population has been living under colonial/imperial/dictatorial regimes for the last five hundred years. In no small part because of W.European monarchies (not democracies).
The fallacy that whites are superiors to blacks is the epitome of logical circularity. Blacks robbed by whites with guns/cannons/planes etc. therefore whites are superior to blacks therefore Blacks are unable to escape white economic/judicial/societal oppression therefore they are inferior which proves that their genetics are inferior. It is a snake chewing on its own tail, something i know that you “winners” in the race realist crowd are aware of but are unwilling to admit. It does not point to any sort of objectivity but a fundamental disconnect with what happens via social determinants of health, well-being, and prosperity (whiteness, maleness, heterosexuality, christian). Period.
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To the self-proclaimed race realists, he is Jesus.
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When geneticists talk about genes, they don’t mean determinism. That’s a simplistic bugaboo other people have problems with. Geneticists mean a complex interplay of genes and environment – potentials limited and defined by genes, controlled and expressed through environment.
Still ,while food will drastically alter height, genes limit its expression and statistically determine outcomes. Of course, you then also have to factor embryology and all levels of environment – not least of which is social.
But a tendency to be sociopathic is clearly genetic. ANd there are various levels of sociopathy. The root source could be as simple as a chemical imbalance or a tendency to buck authority; or it could be as complex as a whole range of behaviors converging together. Two people might have entirely different reasons for getting there, with the same symptoms.
That’s the point: We see the expression of genes (a real person). The roots are deep and complex.
But we are essentially just chemical machines. We are now learning how to read the programming code for these machines. We will soon be able to modify and alter that programming.
Kiss whatever notion you have about what it means to be human goodbye.
If you have some idea that geneticists are all about genetic determinism alone – well, that’s your bugaboo.
We never meant that at all.
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I’ve always been annoyed by people like Charles Murray, who think that because they were white and got into a good school, they’re somehow the authority to judge and evaluate everyone else. Oh please. I hate the mindset of people like him because my father grew up dirt poor in the ghetto for half of his life, then out on a farm. According to Murray, social programs which might have helped him are a “waste”, yet programs which cater to the wealthy and their children are somehow “deserved”? I remember my father telling me that the stigma was so bad against people on foodstamps and welfare that his family often chose to go hungry, and his mother was working 4 jobs. So yeah, I definitely do not like people who think like Murray.
The flaw with his logic is the same flaw that many Libertarians and Objectivists fall into. That social darwinist “If you fail, it’s your fault and you deserve it. No one should help you because it’ll be a waste. If I win, it’s my work alone, and I am just better than you, even if I’ve gotten help all my life. If I fail, on the other hand, it’s societies fault for social programs which make the poor dependent, yada yada.” There’s no consistency or attempt to even understand the people they’re talking about. I’d like to ask him, which is it? Why is it okay for him to benefit from the “programs” that take his whiteness and give him more opportunities, but the poor and blacks who use social programs to help them are somehow a waste of space? People like him are glad to take the governments money, pay less on taxes, and close off schools to only the rich. But they always freak out whenever someone needs welfare so that they don’t have to choose between bus money to work or food for the week.
Hell, if your ancestors were allowed to legally accumulate wealth, and someone else’s wasn’t, then odds are you are going to have more wealth and opportunities today. That doesn’t make you successful, smarter, etc. It just makes you wealthy and a hypocrite if you think like Charles Murray.
People like him are the sort who whine about their unfairly large piece of pie that is the “American Dream” shrinking to make room for everyone else who they never had to compete against before. Something “race realists” can sympathize with.
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Cleonette,
I never thought that I would agree with you on anything Gorbachev, but I do agree with you on some points. The IQ thing not at all but the genetic breeding of humans is actually becoming a reality. I study this from a Christian perspective, however, and it scares me to no end.
As it should. It should terrify you and keep you awake at night. You can beieve we have souls or not, believe we are special or not – but science has discovered the code that makes the program work, and is learning how to manipulate it.
Even learning how to read it is shocking. Imagine if we can determine much of a childs future just from reading its genetic code?
What does that mean, then, to be human? We turn out to be little more than programmed machines.
Alas, cockroaches and mice and whales are much the same. Hence, religion and philosophy has been able to consider humans “Distinct” for much of history. No longer. We’re just very complex chemical machines
Believe me when I say that racism, or race realism, or whatever you want to call it – is easily the very least, the tiniest of the problems all people face.
I don’t think that is the point that Abagond is trying to make, but you are very knowledgeable about what is happening on the genetic end of things but that part is much bigger than racism. I believe there are forces who will try to it use to as a way to genetically wipe out all minorities if left unchecked..
Or to change minorities so that – say they look the same on the outside, but are basically white people on the inside. Or that all people have that happen. I mean, at some point, we’re going to get good at genetic surgery: it will be possible to alter the next generation without even having to have a person come into a hospital. Science fiction?
We’re halfway there.
There is a bigger picture here, but I am wondering what side of the argument you are coming from because of your name, Gorbachev, is very disturbing if it is in reference to Mikhail Gorbachev. Besides, everyone benefits from government. The rich get richer and the poor say poor because of government. Let’s be honest. Little is left to individuals. There is always some underlying agenda and the benefits of said agenda rarely trickles to the bottom. I know people who work much harder than anyone I know but the powers that be will never allow them to become rich from their hard work. It is from design.
I was a die-hard “Liberal” and “anti-racist”. Alas, I approached this from a purely science position. It’s wholly reasonable that the “race realists” and whatnot could be talking truth, no matter how racist it seems: from a science perspective, the social effects of a belief are irrelevant. Its fact is important. This is why it’s important to know the current state of this science and more importantly where it’s going.
You can call it racist, but it’s like calling technology “evil” because people lose jobs to better technology. So what? It’s what happens. Deal with it.
On “race”, science is still out, but the signs are not good for those who think race is nonexistent or that there are no overall differences between population subgroups.
On other matters, … this issue of racism pales into insignificance.
As you rightly realize. The very last thing we should be worrying about – even as black people – is racism. We should be worried about everything else. Panicking, even.
Believe me when I say that if we walk into this future blind, then the social and political dangers are vast.
The problem with IQ is that it is limited and not actually an accurate measure of true wisdom.
It’s not a measure of “wisdom” at all – just of raw computational ability.
That said, imagine a group of people with IQs of 160. All of them. They’re born with it.
Now imagine going to school with them.
According to race-realists, the 1.5 standard deviation between blacks and whites is a huge gap. Okay. I call bullshit on that.
Imagine 4 standard deviations between the genetically partly engineered new population (maybe even of all races) and the old population.
From the moment of birth, these babies would be smarter, learn faster, learn better, and be more balanced. Match that with social skills and better training. Then add money and class.
It’s finished. You have a natural ruling elite which is smarter, more adaptable, and can pas on natural advantages even without money or social rank.
Your kids sink to the bottom of school results. The very bottom. And these kids are naturally at the top – with no work.
The ruling class… becomes … actually better than other people.
That prospect should terrify you. It gives me chills, let me tell you. It’s also virtually guaranteed to happen. Avoiding it now requires massive social chaos and civiliizational collapse – we need to unlearn and stop learning all of our science.
College degrees and high scores on standardized test can’t make you wise. The best car salesman in the world selling Honda’s will never get rich from his talent, but a mediocre salesman with Bentley’s will fair a lot better.
The smarter kid will realize this and shift what he’ selling.
To say the man selling Honda’s is somehow not as smart or capable as the man selling Bentley’s is stupid. That’s what I think of IQ test. It only measure how well you can take a test. You can put a rocket scientist on a farm and all of the real farmers will think he is an idiot because he can’t milk a cow or saddle a horse. Intelligence has many, many dimensions.
You can think what you want about IQ tests, but imagine 0 just imagine – that another person’s kid was naturally much better at music; math; sports; was better-looking; more charming; more well-adapted.
Your kids, nomatter how great, would be shunted aside.
This will absolutely happen to whole classes of people.
Many people cling to these old arguments about racism. race realists cling to tiny differences in DNA and abilities, as if they’re hugely significant.
The ability to selectively breed and / or genetically alter humans so radically changes all factors such as to render ethical problems over racism almost irrelevant.
If some people can’t see this – it’s unfortunate.
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@Gorbachev
You seem a bit shell-shocked buddy. Maybe I shouldn’t pursue a degree in Biology. Somethings really are best left unknown.
*Blatantly disregards his own advice*
FOR SCIENCE!
In all seriousness, It’s still more likely that Murray is just creating a myth to legitimize the hegemony of the elite and pacify those beneath them. The man’s not even a geneticist, he’s a political scientist. Lies and half-truths are his trade.
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Great points , Ace, I mean, where do these people get their ideas about who deserves help and who doesnt ? How can they not take into consideration that a people were brought over in slavery, had their culture banned, had families broken up, were freed with nothing to fall back on what so ever, faced enormous discrimination and obsticles, every step of the way? yet, they seem to think all that doesnt account for anything.
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D.,
Of course. Shell-shocked would describe it. s you say, “Some things are better left unknown.”
I was no scary white racist. It’s just that many assumptions we have about humanity in general are dead wrong. They’re comfortable and our political order is built on them, but still dead wrong.
Racists are also often dead wrong, too; but this is cold comfort.
Unseating the general niceness of viewing humans as special has side-effects that may sideline racists as well as anti-racists, but what it really does is utterly crush the entire liberal and conservative notion of what it even means to be human at all. And then–
it gives us tools to change what it means. Easily.
If that doesn’t scare you, then you just don’t get it. It’s the most profound revolution in history. It makes the printing press look like a child’s toy. Agriculture is positively boring by comparison. And space exploration – who cares? Redefining human existence in a basic way – ouch.
As for Murray, …
He’s a political rightey who has, whether even he realizes it or not, hit on a real social effect. He’s using truths from science and observations and half-justified ideology to make a political case. That said, his mismatched motives don’t strip the science of fact and future. That’s the problem.
My beef with Murray is large, but he’s on essentially the right track: his is a facile message that hints at our broader future. And that future, from a nice, liberal, we’re-all-the-same standpoint is crushingly bleak.
It’s much bleaker than even Murray is prepared to argue. Remember:
The downstream effects for both conservative and liberal ideologies for genetic science are devastating in the extreme. It’s nothing less than the complete reconfiguration of how we understand what it is to be human.
I’m not joking when I say that “racism” will be the tiniest, least relevant ethical issue we’ll have, not because it’s small and irrelevant, but because other ethical issues will make it seem like a simple little problem.
So Murray has the smugness of someone who has hit on a greater truth, but isn’t sure what to really say about it. And the full implications of this branch of knowledge is as opaque to him as anyone else. And yet —
Those implications are potentially just as devastating to his progeny as yours.
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How soon should we expect genetically-designed plagues?
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@Gorbachev
Well, I never thought humans were special anyway. Hell, I’ve even entertained the notion that intelligent life existed on the planet before us.
I’m beginning to imagine the consequences: a stratified society with breeds of humans made for a specific purpose. Death to free thought, free will, and that expression of the human soul; can’t have the masses start to think after all. Would there be an elite class of “Originals”? Untampered with to better drive the slave castes towards a single goal? I’m equal parts intrigued and terrified.
Before I lost my idealism, I thought we’d avoid the Brave New World scenario. Now I’m not so sure. But who would have the audacity to manufacture humans in any way he or she pleased? And who would comply? I think (hope) such technology will go the way of the nuke: used once (okay, twice) to the horror of all and never to be used again.
On yet another hand, tempering with our genetics may do more harm than good in the long run, and not just the moral implications. We may drive our species (or the transhumans we created) to extinction.
At the end of the day, it just makes Murray’s drivel all the more worthless, doesn’t it?
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@ B.R.
He’s just a guy twisting real life situations and spreading half-truths to defend a status quo where the wealthy stay wealthy, and the poor are content with the unfairness they deal with.
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Murray has no credibility whatsoever. He’s a man who burned a cross on public property, then claimed to not know the significance of such a thing. In 1960. When the Civil Rights Movement was in full swing, and everyone understood the racial implications of something like that — particularly in a state like Iowa, which, historically, had had one of the largest Klan memberships outside of the South.
To this day, he still dismisses this act of vandalism (and implicit terror), attributing it to reckless youth, and calling it a teenage prank. Perfectly illustrates white male privilege and the double standard inherent in the justice system. According to Murray, he and his “gang” (as he himself described his cohorts) were just horsing around. Apparently, the authorities sided with him, as he got to attend Harvard the next year. Fascinating. Black youth who affiliate with gangs and partake of vandalism go to jail — regardless of their SAT scores. Murray, on the other hand, went straight to Harvard. And yet, he still writes the drivel he does. All the while claiming to have a superior IQ, but apparently one not so keen as to recognize the irony of his life path…
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Why don’t we see this fella for what he is? He is just a pathetic old guy who is getting older and believes that the world around him going trough the same slow death as he is. A scared little man, a bit lonely and certainly a looney. I personally can not see why anyone would take his seriously pathetic babblings seriously.
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Now, WITH SCIENCE!
@Gorbachev
I will of course, ignore the irony of reading your comments, right after my audiiobook version of “When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management ” finished. Well, perhaps not.
I see you have not taken into account, the various rebuttals, to Lynn, Rushton, Jensen, et al that have been posted on this blog and elsewhere. No matter, as your (race realists) infatuation with I.Q. as a catch-all for intelligence, honesty, morality and goodness ignores the many cock-ups by said genii.
The obvious example to me right now is that of Wall Street, where you have all those 140 IQ Ivy League PH.ds leveraging themselves so hard on abritrages, that they have quite literally crashed the world economy. Or the various cases of academic fraud etc.
Why is it that all you race realist types start of by seeing “I used to be a behaviorist liberal, but then I had that one life event, and now I see the truth!” You people have like a manual with all that shit in it? I mean from Asian of Reason to the various other dolts. come on man? That type of Single Issue Event only works for comic book villains.
Pro tip: Stop with the Liberal = Marxist crap. The Berlin Wall is down. With pop evolutionary psychology and computationalism running public discourse, it’s more Liberal = Scientism.
Been hearing all that jazz since they finished the Human Genome Project. But wait, good news!!! We’ve found “The Gene” that determines I.Q.
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Here’s a five part breakdown on the fallacies of “Coming Apart”. From a white conservative, btw. Just in case someone wants to play “The Liberal Card.”
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/02/09/coming-apart-the-review.html
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Hehehehe. Sometimes I wonder why I come to the comments section. Then Franklin posts something…..
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@ Satanforce
About Race Realists who “saw the light”, that seems to be the trope now. It’s the same exact story with Jared Taylor, Doug1, G.L. Piggy, Unamused, and every other white that follows this nonsense.
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@ Franklin
At least one guy has caught on. The URL in the first one should be a dead giveaway
https://robertlindsay.wordpress.com/2012/04/15/excellent-new-piece-on-liberal-race-realism/
https://robertlindsay.wordpress.com/2011/10/16/liberal-race-realism-where-we-are-coming-from/
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Ace,
You are correct. Murray is a white, privileged and racist guy making a larger point and trying to use science and his work to justify his political stance.
I want you to consider something, however.
While his motives are deeply suspect, there is something extremely uncomfortable that has to be dealt with at some point or other.
While he is a racist prick and is somewhat disingenuous, this does not automatically make his work discardable or prima facie wrong.
You should be suspicious, but I can tell you he’s onto something.
This is the risk.
This “something” that he’s onto is going to become the future in some form or another. And by sticking to old but comfortable dogma, the Left and anyone interested in racial harmony is leaving this newly discovered ground to assholes like Murray.
Instead of defending the bank slatist we’re-all-the-same notions (that science abandoned wholesale 20 years ago), we need to do something very smart and very sharp.
We need to claim this new ground for a positive value system that reinforces notions like democracy, universality and even concepts like anti-racism. But this will require compromises. Very serious ones.
Much of the Marxist analysis of human society will have to be reexamined. The simplistic class analysis of race might have to be reexamined. And I’m not making up horse shit here when I say, the abiilty of evolution to play on even short-term effects over only a few generations is profound.
I wasn’t joking when I once said that it’s wholly possible, if not even probable, that the Vikings bred themselves into superior warriors: Violent by nature, with increasing numbers of individuals prone from birth to acts of heroic savagery and vicious self-interest, as well as military discipline. The Spartans were both socially and almost assuredly biologically conditioned on some level to perform the way they did. If any aspect of these behaviors are genetically conditioned in any way, social patterns can take a minor fluctuation in gene frequencies and make radical alterations in a population in just a few generations.
Those same vikings could have easily bred violence out of themselves. Scandinavians might actually be a bunch of peaceniks by birth.
So when I was commenting at one point about the effects of slavery on American society, I wasn’t being some insane racist. Coming at this from a wholly neutral position via genetics and human biology, the following contentions are not unreasonable in genetic terms, though they require pretty good proof (which does not yet exist):
– Slavery will affect breeding patterns. *IF* selective patterns were altered, even if they were mostly random, over 5-10 generations, huge shifts in gene frequencies can occur.
– Eugenic or dysgenic social policies can radically alter the statistical incidence of genes in a gene pool. In other words, it’s not bullshit to hypothesize that the introduction of medicine or constant warfare or even the welfare state could radically alter thre genetic makeup of populations, even in a short period of time
– Such minor evolutionary effects are easily reversible given the proper selection pressures working in reverse.
This is the problem. What Murray is saying is entirely possible, from the perspective of human genetics and biology. Whether or not it’s probable or likely depends on the data.
He’s known to fudge his data. However, a casual look around us (acknowledging historical contingencies like European enslavement of much of the world and the social-catching-up that is now required to get away from that), means that – on its face – such hypotheses are not inherently unreasonable.
Socially, they may be repugnant.
This is why it’s critical, if not crucial, to get *ahead* of the science.
Because, the truth is orobably – we are just chemical machines.And programmable ones, at that.
Genes set up the patterns. Society focuses, shapes and exaggerates these initial settings.
So this is the point I always try to make. Even if Murray’s racist interpretation of the science is correct on some level, none of this is static. And the ultimate use of this k nowledge need not serve a racist cause.
This is the problem faced by genetics researchers. it’s been true for 20 years that many researchers can positively identify racial patterns in genes, have linked certain genes to many behaviors, have linked IQ and genes, have linked sociopathy and genes.
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it doesn’t need to be anti-black racism. Murray obviously has this intention on some level.
Really, it’s just interesting information about human diversity and sub-group dynamics.
This is the problem. The science itself is interpreted as racism by BOTH sides.
The racists want to assume full control over the message and the meaning because this reaffirms their position.
The left wants to tar even the discussion as racist.
The truth is – sure, there’s disturbing facts in there. The left loses because they give the science to the right. The right loses because they’re grossly misinterpreting the data (which does not send as strong a message as they think it does).
And both sides miss the true implications. And neither side would like them.
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Alan Smithee
How soon should we expect genetically-designed plagues?
The viruses and bacteria already exist. scientists at the CDC and other places already experiment on pathogens that are not natural, but represent much more virulent and nasty strains that have been artificially created. That’s old hat now.
They do this for valid research reasons.
However, were those diseases to ever get out, …
In fact, we could engineer plagues that could kill humans or any other animal species or plant soecies for that matter, and kill them in numbers vast beyond measuring.
We’ve had that ability for 40 years. it’s already been done – and many such organisms have been destroyed, as well. I mean, we need to know how they work. if they could create a brutal Ebola strain, they would, just to see it work, to understand it better. They likely have already.
Let’s hope to God terrorists never attack one of these research sites.
Within a few decades, it will be possible to select from among your own genes those that will maximize an offspring’s potential abilities. Later, it will be relatively straightforward to engineer them. After that, I’d guess in the next few hundred years, we’ll be able to create entirely new kinds of human.
Just wait. Your worst nightmares are actually coming true as you speak.
It would make a left-leaning reformer weep tears of blood. Possibly literally.
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It looks as if “Race Realism”(or at least some parts of it) has been greatly weakened by recent evidence. British data from iq and highly iq-correlated/g loaded tests show small to no Black/White gaps. The data shows the same of South Asian/White scores.
as the the author of an analysis of some of the data commented at the second link posted by satanforce:
“Race realism” is falling apart at the seams: (1) You were right about the UK Black-White IQ gap. It’s either greatly narrowed or closed. Refer here and to the related posts:
http://occidentalascent.wordpress.com/2012/04/09/more-evidence-uk-math-and-reading-achievement-gaps/
(2) You were right about the South African IQ rapidly increasing. Refer to this recent study from Kenya: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2026172
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Gorbachev
That’s all theoretical – when they can target and replace a defective gene in the blastocyst, I might start paying attention.
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@Franklin
David Duke’s book: “My Awakening”
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Satanforce,
Nobody thinks that IQ is all one gene. The bets estimates are that there are hundreds of genes alone that directly affect IQ, let alone those that have ancillary effects that can potentially affect IQ.
You don’t need to know the precise genes in play to know that something is making one dog small and one dog big. Selective breeding and assortive mating accomplishes what geneticists want to do, but it does it naturally.
Quite likely, there are hundreds of genes that affect things like neuron transmission efficiency, neuron health, brain chemistry, key points in embryology, maintenance of cellular health in certain situations, ability to process multiple inputs, brain organization and architecture – and many of them will work in concert. They might even work against each other.
Humans are jury-rigged legacy-prone information machines, programmed by genes but profoundly affected by local and proximate environments. Social environments further complicate all of this.
Teasing out single elements is difficult – but not impossible.
Over time, much like any science, this will become more and more refined.
Humans are alarmingly clever with this kind of thing. Watch us invent whole new kinds of science and watch us remake ourselves.
And if he have insufficient wisdom, watch us create whole new species of oppression and discrimination. It’s almost inevitable at this point.
I’m not too concerned with racism, going forward. I’m more concerned with the new -isms that we’re self-generating.
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“…as the the author of an analysis of some of the data commented at the second link posted by satanforce:”
I meant the first link.
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@D
Well, I never thought humans were special anyway. Hell, I’ve even entertained the notion that intelligent life existed on the planet before us.
Me, too. I find the notion appealing, on some level.
I’m beginning to imagine the consequences: a stratified society with breeds of humans made for a specific purpose.</I.
This is entirely possible, even with selective breeding alone. With technology designed for this, it becomes almost inevitable.
Death to free thought, free will, and that expression of the human soul;</I.
No — just tight controls on it. I mean, why not make slaves that actively want to be slaves? Why not also make them super sexy? Resistant to disease? Sterile unless they get access to a drug? Imagine the potential.
can’t have the masses start to think after all. Would there be an elite class of “Originals”? Untampered with to better drive the slave castes towards a single goal? I’m equal parts intrigued and terrified.
Now you’re getting it.
Imagine the short-term:
Elites in many countries (India, China, Japan, the US, the UK, maybe Brazil or even, say, Nigeria) get treatments and have super-babies born. These grow up and automatically move into positions of power, out of sheer competence. They breed with each other.
Now your elite, after 2 self-reinforcing generations, are actually better people than everyone else, in almost every way. They start to self-isolate.
more and more families do this. More and more people drop out.
A true natural slave class emerges: Less bright, less competent, less able to lead themselves than the elite. The elites are smarter, faster, brighter, more attractive, better than everyone else.
Whereas before, it was just some normal rich guy who randomly happened to be smarter or lucky.
Now it’s a whole class of people who are, in every sense of the word, just better humans.
I don’t even want to consider the ethical dilemmas such a society would face.
And we haven’t discussed genetic modifications yet. Just careful selection.
Imagine: A high-class “race” of black people who had an average IQ of 160 and were supremely well-adapted. And a mass of black people who self-selected themselves out. The stupid ones. A huge class of 80-90 IQ types.
Imagine this replicated everywhere. Not just in, say, black America.
Can you say: WTF to do now?
We’re most of the way to getting into this situation now.
Before I lost my idealism, I thought we’d avoid the Brave New World scenario. Now I’m not so sure. But who would have the audacity to manufacture humans in any way he or she pleased?
Um.
You really want to ask that question? let’s try, …
Everyone.
And who would comply? I think (hope) such technology will go the way of the nuke: used once (okay, twice) to the horror of all and never to be used again.
maybe.
You’ll need a powerful government (not a corrupt one – good luck), and by the time you’ve created a new strain of people, you’ll need to start exterminating them.
On yet another hand, tempering with our genetics may do more harm than good in the long run, and not just the moral implications. We may drive our species (or the transhumans we created) to extinction.
I totally agree.
But we’re likely to do it anyway. I mean, we’ve done crazier shit before.
At the end of the day, it just makes Murray’s drivel all the more worthless, doesn’t it?
Yup.
He’s fighting the battles of yesterday.
I’ve always said that race-realists often miss the point of this science altogether.
When you rewrite what it means to be human, the conservative and racist positions collapse as quickly as the lefty – anti-racism positions.
What you end up with is something altogether new. And terrifying.
But this is what the science is saying.
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@B.R.,
I know right? I don’t understand why people are so invested in arguing over these things . Everyone knows that unless you’ve stepped in someone else’s shoes ,you don’t have a right to say if they’re redeemable or not. People like Murray just want to keep a status quo and would twist and stamp all over truth in order to be able to achieve that.
@ Franklin,
That always cracks me up. The good old, “Oh, I used to be a liberal! But then I saw the “truth”!” They never seem to mention just how convenient it is that they take those world views the very second the world doesn’t bend over backwards to accommodate them.
@ Grin and Bear it,
My thoughts exactly. It says a lot about the sort of people who agree with him too.
@ Gorbachev,
So, your point is to tell everyone not to worry about the “isms” that plague them daily, right now, in favor of focusing on possible “isms” that don’t exist now and might not in the future? Regardless…
“And if he have insufficient wisdom, watch us create whole new species of oppression and discrimination. It’s almost inevitable at this point.”
Because…that just doesn’t exist yet, hm?
“I’m not too concerned with racism, going forward. I’m more concerned with the new -isms that we’re self-generating.”
It must be a luxury to not have to be concerned with it.
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I think you have Aspergers.
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Absolutly, Ace, and, how are they going to determine real IQ when the concepts of intelligence are changing as we speak ? The current IQ tests are a dated relic.
These tests were made by self congradulating white people , who gave them to people but dont acount for a people being excluded from society.
Near the year I was born,I dont know the exact year as I type and I didnt google it up, but, Jackie Robinson just broke the color bar in baseball. That is in my lifetime that black Americans were excluded from participating. Black Americans were excluded from main stream American life in so many ways it is mind boggling , and , do you think these tests account for that ? And gene desicians are going to be made on skewed tests ?
I dont trust what a bunch of scientists from the western world define as intelligence.They ought to pay attention to new scientific discoveries of the intuitive being is making the desicians of what we do, not the logic thinking brain…
I tell you what, if there is going to be gene manipulation in the future, I bet more people are going to be requesting huge doses of melanin in their skin to fight all the ozone destrying radiation skin penetration inventions these brilliant scientists have unleashed un us.
Satan, you did it again, pulled the whool off everyone’s eyes to show how the “smartest” “highest IQ” ivy league graduates have destroyed the USA, and were responsible for the absolute chaos of this financial crisis we are living through
If that is the intelligence the gene scientists are going to lead us into, heaven forbid
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@satanforce Fri 27 Apr 2012 at 07:25:33
At least one guy has caught on. The URL in the first one should be a dead giveaway
https://robertlindsay.wordpress.com/2012/04/15/excellent-new-piece-on-liberal-race-realism/
From the referenced article
“Why should those who luck out in the genetic lottery live lives of ridiculous misery while those who rolled the bad dice be punished by having to wallow in the worst sort of misery? It’s not moral. ”
Ye gads!! Another Tim Wise! Not only do the liberals want to re-distribute our wealth, they would re-distribute our genes too, if they could!!
At least the liberal race realists admit there are biological differences between groups of people.
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@Bliff
“At least the liberal race realists admit there are biological differences between groups of people.”
Many of the claims of “Race realism” are looking increasingly doubtful.
See the post by “Chuck” near the end of the comment thread of the link you posted? I also cited it earlier here.
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Bliff,
I don’t see Lindsay’s argument as being very different from more traditional justifications for redistributive social welfare programs.
The claim that certain groups are powerless to ameliorate their own conditions has been in play for decades. The traditional arguments have primarily been along social and political lines.
Although now that I give it more thought, proponents of such programs ought to gladly embrace the inclusion of genetics as a cause of poverty.
After all, one could theoretically remove social and political barriers to success, or else argue that poorly structured social programs remove an important motivation for the poor to strive for success.
If genetics are argued, then the various subsidies would need to persist indefinitely.
In other words, traditional conservative ideology would benefit from ignoring genetic differences while traditional liberal ideology would benefit from promoting them.
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@sklok
We taking about 2 IQ studies referenced by Robert Lindsey, a self-proclaimed leftist, Communist, journalist. You have to know by now that right wing Bliff is not going to be impressed off the bat with someone with these credentials. Even after the bat, I am not impressed.
So, there are 2 IQ studies showng the black-white gap closing. I’ll wait to see how this plays out before drawing any conclusions.
I find what Chuck the commenter said interesting:
“My mind has been a bit fuzzy lately — due to a pretty horrible brain
disease that I’ve been struggling with”
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@Randy
It’s interesting what you’re saying. Charles Murray actually brought up the same thing up in the Bell Curve in one of the later chapters.
If the leftists were truly smart, they would claim blacks low IQ as genetic and then claim an eternal, inherent disability that can’t be changed. Therefore, they would be on the public dole for ever and demanding permanent privileges.
This would be an about face for the leftists, but I am confident they can do it !!
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@Bliff
“We taking about 2 IQ studies referenced by Robert Lindsey, a self-proclaimed leftist, Communist, journalist. You have to know by now that right wing Bliff is not going to be impressed off the bat with someone with these credentials. Even after the bat, I am not impressed.
So, there are 2 IQ studies showng the black-white gap closing. I’ll wait to see how this plays out before drawing any conclusions.
I find what Chuck the commenter said interesting:
“My mind has been a bit fuzzy lately — due to a pretty horrible brain
disease that I’ve been struggling with”
This is false, and strikes me as disingenuous. The references have nothing to do with Lindsay. They were linked in a comment by Chuck on Lindsay’s blog. There are more than two studies. You seem to have not read Chuck’s post on Lindsay’s blog let alone followed the link. Chuck, who is not a leftist(quite the opposite) and was formerly a strong hereditarian, presents the data, on his blog; Here in posts mostly from early-mid April 20012,some starting early Feb.)
A few of the entries:
http://occidentalascent.wordpress.com/2012/04/05/a-gaping-hole-in-the-masters-evolutionary-theory/
http://occidentalascent.wordpress.com/2012/04/09/more-evidence-uk-math-and-reading-achievement-gaps/
http://occidentalascent.wordpress.com/2012/04/13/race-class-and-cognition-in-the-uk/
He (Chuck) responds at length to many criticisms. No’one succeeds in challenging the data or his analysis thereof (and he clearly wishes they would)and there is no mental incapacity evident on his part. You can see it all for yourself if you are skeptical. Sources are cited and calculations he makes from the data can be followed also.
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@sklok
The references have nothing to do with Lindsay.
I didn’t say they did either. Your link went to Lindsay’s site and I just commented on what I found out about him, from his site.
You seem to have not read Chuck’s post on Lindsay’s blog let alone followed the link.
How could I NOT have read Chuck’s post if I was able to copy and paste the quote about his state of mind from his Post?
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@Ace
I like your comment about welfare and programs. I think you hit the head of the nail. The typical right wing argument against welfare “Giving money to the poor does more harm than good since it rewards failure” its a trap who uses a very simplified and narrowed picture of reality, who are easy to agree with. Populist argument. I think you add a wider perspective who makes this argument harder to swallow without thinking.
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It’s interesting, to observe, the posts, that most ‘racisal realists’ post in large percentages, versus ‘others’. There should be a content analysis of which ones are the most populated by certain ideological ‘groups’.
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@ Bliff, Randy,
Wow. You guys are great.
That has to be the worst thing I’ve ever read in a long time. Maybe people don’t present blacks having low IQ as a race-wide disability that they can’t help because there is no constant “low IQ” and presenting it as a disability is just ridiculous? Or maybe they just know that if they did that, people would just have another excuse to discriminate against them, keep them only working low-paying jobs, and cut all benefits because they’d be a real “waste”. Something tells me you know nothing about “disabilities”.
@ Mats M L,
Thanks. It really is a trap, because it forces people to choose between living with some manner of comfort or having to live day to day, with smaller and smaller windows of success as they get older. If it were up to people like Murray, my father would still be in a ghetto, choosing between legal money that people will always stigmatize him for, or illegal money he would be locked away for trying to get. Many good people come from poor neighborhoods or very poor families, and it’s always so unfair that they have to deal with these “elite” trying to convince them that they should be content with nothing because of some mental or moral deficiency they must have.
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The world laughs at us (Americans) with good reason.
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@B.R. & Satanforce
And that’s another reason why I think a genetically engineered society is doomed to fail. Even if humans were so malleable, our idea about what is an advantageous trait vs. a deleterious trait is so marred by Human Chauvinism, we’re likely to overvalue some traits, haplessly dispose of underrated traits, and make ourselves so overly specialized we’d embarrass koala bears.
And ultimately, environment still trumps genes. Social evolution suggests just as much. And since it is the environment that determines which genes are viable. . . .
Humans are best off as they are. We’re adapted to the environment that we evolved within. Tampering with our biological evolution using our limited cognitive abilities would destroy us.
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Absolutly , D
The geneticists better wait for all the data to get in about the real nature of human beings and intelligence, or they are going to just put the wrong genes in action…like the scientists who invent all this stuff that is biting us in the rear now…
If they have their way , we will all become gentetic Frankensteins
For sure amped doses of melanin will be in demand…
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Of course all this talk about genetics etc…..won’t mean anything if we ever get cybernetic technology off the ground and make it so we can combine computers and the human mind.
Or AI
If we ever get to the point were we can just “download” information or already have the vast majority of human knowledge already imbeded from your brain…..whats the point of trying to make an “elite”, the flesh will be considered such a tiny start off point that any improvements on an intellectual basis will have almost no meaning.
One problem here is; who wouldn’t amp up their children’s physical and mental potential, drop down their tendencies towards cancer and other defects?
I mean even if its expensive if only becomes the companies want to make serious mojo of it, you know black market underground stuff will spring up pretty quickly.
And one problem with people like Murray is this; if black people really are inferior as they claim doesn’t that almost counter act their argument? Most black people in their scenario, the vast majority will simply lack any copacity to succeed or act any more intelligence or mature than the average teenager.
From a moral perspective, how can you not do welfare etc…..to help keep their society stable and less criminal?
The view who are “elite” will by nature achieve more, work harder and have greater ambitions so welfare will only push them on, not hold them back.
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The white racialist that everyone quotes and conservatives use when making domestic policy. You should check out Heather Mac Donald from the Manhattan Institute, she has some really enlightened about about race and crime and helped Rudolph Guiliani implement his anti- crime polices in New York.
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Ace,
Bliff and I were discussing the alignment of genetic studies with traditional politics. If you believe that pointing out the exploitative nature of politics is “the worst thing you’ve read in a long time”, then perhaps you have a less cynical view of the subject than most.
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It’s hard for me to accept Charles Murray’s theory about IQ and caste in America. Many developed countries like South Korea, the Nordic countries, and other OECD nations have a higher rate of social mobility than the United States.
The US is a relatively new civilization, with a richer migratory history compared to the aforementioned nations. If Murray’s theory were correct, wouldn’t those older, more established civilizations of the Old World have more cemented economic spectrum considering their genetic history?
Plus, other relatively new countries like Canada and Australia differ from the US when it comes to the rate of mobility.
I could be wrong, but that was the first thing that came to mind upon hearing about his new book, months ago. Check out the bullet points from page 5 of Ch. 5 from the OECD’s 2010 report, Economic Policy Reforms: Going for Growth 2010. Pretty cool stuff.
Click to access 45002641.pdf
“Intergenerational earning, wage and educational mobility vary widely across OECD countries. Mobility in earnings, wages and education across generations is relatively low in France, southern European countries, the United Kingdom and the United States. By contrast, such mobility tends to be higher in Australia, Canada and the
Nordic countries.”
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Abagond, what ever happened to that post you planned on doing about Affirmative Action. I was really looking forward to that one. I wanted to know if AA is even effective in the workplace. From what I have seen, discrimination seems to still be moderately strong when it comes to hiring in the United States.
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Abagond:
Human beings are dynamic, not static. Meaning, we’re constantly evolving mentally, emotionally, physically, sexually, etc. The notion that black people will always be at the bottom and whites will always be on top is a false premise. Before slavery, black people were on top in Africa. As i say, there is no forever. Whites got the upper hand on us, and they’ve been runnin’ ish for the past 500+ years. Life is about cycles, therefore, our time is coming again…No Doubt! As far as Charles Murray is concerned, his opinions don’t matter, he’s not a black person. As a general rule, i don’t care what others not of our race think. I care about what we think. It’s not about being an angry blackman, simply put, I Don’t Care! No matter how many roadblocks are put in front of us, we have to be victorious…Bottomline!
Tyrone
PS…No matter the politics of black people, we should not get emotionally invested in either party. Black people can’t be all democrat and all republican. A combination of conservatism and liberalism on certain issues will get us over the hump…Black First, Politics Second.
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@ Randy,
No, like to spin it as “objective” but that’s not what you were saying. You guys were talking about how liberals should be the ones using black inferiority to get black people on the “dime” forever, and going so far to suggest it being seen as a handicap. I personally find that awful from an ethical and logical standpoint. .
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Abagond..
I beg of you to ..
Please .. please do a post about the Herero genocide of Namibia ..
It is a very detailed genocide I just heard of yesterday ..
Thanks in advance ..
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Also to do with the content ..
To take this drivel to heart is a disservice to God ..
Too many distractions in this modern day to separate you from the light ..
Meanwhile, there are 4 or more nuclear arms races taking their place as outdated concepts of Africa & her children steal the show ..
My only advice to any & all that is ailing you Black people is STOP participating because you most definitely are ..
I do not acknowledge these inferior tests .. It is the tests that are inferior not blacks .. the test is LOW, incompetent, lacking intel that are inferior & generally stupid not blacks ..
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How Soon Should We Expect Genetically-designed Plagues?
As soon as you open your mouth.
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What I will say will add nothing knew to the arguments given and obsessed by “race realists”, but here goes.
“Race realists” really want with all their hearts and souls for black people to be inferior. Not only that, they want black people to not only accept it, but be happy about it too. There are a few obvious reasons why they obsess with black inferiority so much that it should go without typing.
Charles Murray, to them, is like a minister preaching the gospel of white supremacy without using racial epithets, name-calling or any other type of propaganda like the jokers that show up here.
So, that does not make him a racist to certain race realists because he doesn’t include those habits in his documentations. That’s one reason why race realists don’t identify themselves racists even if they do engage in those habits.
As for those that claim they were liberal before they “saw the light”, I call bullshit on that because in my opinion, they ALWAYS had those racist sentiments, but were trying to either hide or suppress them. Then one day, something happened, and they decided not to be “liberal” anymore and lo and behold, their white supremacy emerged.
Race realism is nothing more than the son of white supremacy, and that is the core of racism in this country.
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@Ace
Maybe people don’t present blacks having low IQ as a race-wide disability that they can’t help because there is no constant “low IQ” and presenting it as a disability is just ridiculous?
Ace, I don’t think you understand what Randy and I were discussing.
Currently, blacks and liberals don’t buy what the IQ studies have shown – that blacks have an IQ distribution that is shifted down from the white IQ distribution. Much effort has been made by the left to discredit this.
Consider now, a big IQ Flip – what if liberals and blacks embraced the idea that blacks had lower IQs and that represented a permanent disability. The blacks could now claim an eternal disability.
At this point, its just a thought experiment; no one has advocated it. But given the increased entiltlement mentality in the US, it’s not completely out of the question.
BTW, your statement above is not really clear to me.
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Hey Bliff, why do blacks have shapelier buttocks than whites? Does that have something to do with IQs or is it evolutionary? The shapelier the buttocks the dumber the person? Also, is there a correlation between the ability to drink copious amounts of liquor and race? I find whites have a huge capacity for drinking and then going to blogs to write nonsense whilst drunk. Again is this IQ? Perhaps the whites are too smart and drink to deal with the pressure of having high IQs! Oh and Bliff, stop drinking and typing please.
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@Herneith
You’re not funny, still lame. And black women have fat asses, not shaplier one, at least according to this presently imbibed white guy – let’s see… 3 black-and-tans at the Castle Tavern, and 2 glasses of wine currently.
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Tyrone’s comments illustrate the dilemma.
“My tribe over all else”.
If blacks think this way, then everyone else can, too.
Tribalism in America will be its downfall.
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Brothawolf,
Instead of imputing motivations on white people (because we’re all obviously the same, amorphic, “Whiteness” evil, right?), why not trying to listen to different white people speak.
You’ll find the differences in opinions telling.
Not all white people want blacks to be “inferior”, as you say. Some want the opposite. Some believe one thing or the other/
As far as everyone being the same – this is obviously not true on an individual basis. And there’s strong evidence that on some level it’s not true on a group basis. either.
I’m not surprised that a global technological- economic system devised by Western Europeans and Northeast Asians and pushed on everyone around the world, with comparative political orders, best plays to the advantages that Western Europeans and Asians have.
Forcing people who didn’t have this cultural (and possibly genetic) tendency to do well in this situation to adapt to it is possibly unfair.
Stop thinking of humans as people when you do this kind of analysis. Think of them as animals.
Both racism and ideological anti-racism cease to make sense at that point.
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My father’s a fucking computer genius, analyze that asshole.
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Gorbachev,
In the first place, people of color, blacks especially, were severely forced to listen to white people for centuries. If we didn’t, we got beaten, raped, humiliated, and even killed.
Why should blacks listen to whites, but whites don’t have to or won’t listen to blacks? Why not try and listen to black people for a change who have a different view other than the limited scope you’re used to? Why not stop assuming that whatever black people say about racism is wrong based on your own opinion?
Furthermore, I never said all whites wanted blacks to be inferior, but the likes of Brahms, Bliff, Doug, and all so-called race realist are obsessed–that’s right–OBSESSED with the idea of black inferiority that they don’t know or rather don’t care that it is harmful to the people they are referring to.
Lastly, it seems like you’re telling me to forget about the concept of racism and anti-racism. To me that’s like saying that if I buried my head in the sand, it will go away. That’s not possible, nor is it logical.
Racism exists and as such, there is a counter-force called anti-racism. Both will end when one group with with an immense number of privileges based on skin color, genitalia, sexual orientation, and cumulative wealth will change their minds, hearts and souls and do what’s right instead of what’s right for them and only them.
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@ Bliff
“Ace, I don’t think you understand what Randy and I were discussing.”
Oh yes I do. I don’t agree with it. And I find it passive-aggressive. There is a difference.
“BTW, your statement above is not really clear to me.”
What part? Up there I am mainly saying that perhaps people like “liberals and blacks”, as you’ve suggested, do not believe there is some race-wide mental deficiency to exploit because there isn’t one. To them, presenting such an idea would be ridiculous, and unethical. They just aren’t going to exploit a racial stereotype that a racist came up with, in order to hope that society would throw them a bone.
Honestly, I think a conversation about this would not only be off topic, but could possibly be very emotionally jarring for people who’ve grown up with disabilities (especially while being PoC). I don’t feel comfortable debating it further past this.
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Ideas are not unethical. No idea should be “unethical”. It’s unfortunate if you think this is a necessary part of being a moral person.
Actions are moral or immoral. Ideas are.
This is what’s wrong with political correctness. Some ideas remain unthinkable.
Science has no pity, no remorse, no morals and no feelings. It crushed mythology and sucked the sap out of religion. It has no sympathy for ideology. Racists lose as surely as blind lefty liberals.
For a time, it’s possible to believe the Earth is the center of the universe. Alas, eventually, a Galileo and Copernicus will come along.
In this case, unlocking the human genetic code is going to make almost all people uncomfortable. You think black IQs are even a big issue? It doesn’t even figure as an interesting note on the scale of scary stuff being unlocked.
Whine and complain and call it more white people telling others how to think. Say it’s unthinkable because you don’t want it to be true. Say it’s social and nothing is genetic because we want humans to have free will and be special creatures under the Heavens.
And like geocentricity, this too will be abandoned.
Wishful thinking is a total waste of time.
So those who might be thoughtful about it will let the Murrays of the world frame, set and conclude the debate, while you debate the ethics of even having the conversation.
Great idea. I wish you good luck.
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My sister’s husband – a very robust black man that would freak the bejeezus out of the average lily-white neighborhood – is a high-performing finance type managing over 50 people in a high-profile setting who never wanted nor needed AA.
The guy who attacked my SO and I last summer on the street, thinking white guy with Arab-looking GF were easy marks, with a cowardly sucker punch was a black man, too. Odd how the very first reaction he had when the cops came to see if both bleeding men were okay heard this from black man: “Racist etc.s “, with his two buddies chanting the same thing.
Ultimately, black thug got off free to go and randomly assault someone else. I was told point black by the cop that because the perp was black and was more or less human trash, but was black, unlike a white human trash who sucked off the teat of society like a parasite, the black one gets a free pass the second he cries racism. Case closed.
I guess I should take these single incidents and notes and make grand social policy on them, too.
I never said blacks were a bunch of gorillas. I’m not Murray. But if I carefully point out that not all of the science behind this is bogus – and we should consider this from a social-policy point of view, with an aim not to creating extermination camps but to bettering everyone’s lot – then perhaps that makes me the same as a cross-burning KKK racist in your mind.
How sad for us all.
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As I read these comments, I shudder to think that we , Africans, have mixed blood with these so-called superior beings.
There are times when I’m filled with rage but then I ask what’s the point?
Rage is left up to God. He created us, all of us for a purpose. How bad can a person be if God created all of us in his own image. If He wanted us to look the same, he would’ve done it.
You know something, Abagond?
My heart weeps for whites. They are so lost, spiritually, that they will wander the Earth for perhaps, eternity, feeling that empty, baseless longing for a connection that they will never satisfy. The evil that seeps through them is so cancerous, so potent, they are powerless to find the antedote. Which is funny because blacks and Natives have known all along that the antedote for a poisonous soul is love.
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@Gorbachev
Who the hell mentioned ethics? Come back to planet Earth.
I don’t care about morals, because all that matters is power. I don’t care about your racism or race realism, because I destroyed one of your kind before and ultimately you are inconsequential in the grand scheme.
What I do care about is the unfeasibility of your idea. We as a species are lacking in genetic variation enough as it is. Manufacturing the population genetics of our species is sure to kill us. Evolution and natural selection are the best means of surviving the fluctuating World we live in.
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Planet Earth?
First, a commenter did say that it was unethical to think these things. That’s nice. But irrelevant. People will think them.
Power: In society today, power is ultimately wielded by a cognitive elite. They hold all the strings. All Murray is pointing out is the economic mechanism for this. It’s guaranteed to get much, much worse.
Third, science does what it does. You can’t uninvent the atomic bomb.
Unfeasibility of what idea?
As a species, we have a typical holistic amount of variation. It’s a total myth that we lack it. Most large mammals have as much or less variation. That myth gets filed along with Lewontin’s fallacy (that race doesn’t exist biologically because of intra versus inter group variation).
It’s not “my” idea. I don’t want to see it any more than you do. But it will happen. I don’t want more toxic chemicals created, but it will happen.
It’s not even the ultimate end for genetic science. That will result in the side-stepping of life itself.
Here are some stages. Try to see how we can stop it.
1) Babies with genetic diseases are aborted. Sex selection spreads, spite of laws.
2) Parents start to select out genetic features from their own lines that they like and breed for them. “Still you, but the best of you”.
3) People start to have kids with maximized skills. These babies will utterly demolish the economic hopes of those who are not born with this method.
All these steps – all almost possible, the first now reality, will absolutely happen. it is now unavoidable.
This will create a natural governing class of, frankly, superior people. Likely of all races.
Legislation to stop this will be stymied by some countries ignoring these sentiments and going ahead full-steam. Irish women went to England to get abortions for years. Same deal.
The social effects of this form of human breeding will be more profound than anything to do with racism. Racism will see quaint.
The elites will, in any respect that counts, actually be better human beings.
4) The genetic markers for behaviors, once thought mostly socially induced, will be found.
4a) Psychpathies will be hunted for. It will become a crime to breed if these genes are passed on without genetic surgery. If this is unavailable, then such babies will be genetically profiled and tracked over their lifetimes. Look how easy it is to scare people today into surrendering their freedoms to watch out for non-existent pedophiles, etc. Nobody will shed a tear for families barred from having kids because they carry sociopathic genes.
b) Exemplary behaviors will be selected for. Criminals will be offered things like sterilization in exchange for release. Some states or countries will try this. The sexual offenders list now tracks thousands of harmless people. Such new laws which grind rights into dust will be no-brainers. They will absolutely pass in many jurisdictions.
c) The effects of the above changes will, despite the liberal belief in Social Influence Only, have a profound impact on the reduction of crime, misbehavior, and the production of wealth and maintenance of ordered societies.
5) New genes will be tweaked or introduced in order to create even better people. Some rogue states will go very far. Some will just tinker. But it will happen.
6) By this time, society will be stratified. Any “libertarian” notion of an even hand allowing meritocracy to work its magic will be laughable.
Whole classes of people will be far better than their co-citizens.
Expect a few wars.
Economically and technologically, the societies that are governed by these people will so grossly excel those that do not that there will literally be a “misery” belt of countries – which might actually look a lot like wealthy countries today, for all that matters – and “productive” countries, with societies without crime, or specific crimes, with absurd numbers of intelligent people, with whole classes of social disorders gone. Fewer health problems.
Should they get ambitious, watch out. But more likely they’ll just ignore the genetically not so well-endowed.
This future is now all but guaranteed.
If you’ve seen how parents react to education (Korea, China), where even the tiniest sum of money not yet spent on education or the least spare minute in the day not spent studying is exhausted in some fruitless quest to get one up on the competition, then you know this is inevitable.
Every parent who does not scrimp and save to have the highest possible quality offspring will just watch their children clean offices and get arrested and make sandwiches.
Think black urban poor America with without even the ghost of a chance to move up. Any moving up will come as welfare or handouts: the unselected-for children will be castoffs at best.
In the future, it’s likely humans will radically modify their genetic structures. Classes of people. Those who can withstand pressures to live in different environments. With IQs of 300, which means we would seem like monkeys, not even human. This is less guaranteed, but quite likely.
We’ll also likely create organisms from scratch – not jury-rigged organisms reliant on the legacy of contingent evolution. Cellular structures might be redesigned to make sense. Eyes with receptors on the exterior, not on the interior through a liquid gel. Spines that make sense, not happenstance-creations that were meant for 4-legged walking.
Skins that can withstand solar radiation. Live on light. Colonial organisms that can wander through space. That can fill space itself with living things, and consume radio waves.
Ultimately, it could mean life on Earth itself becomes not so much changed, but irrelevant.
Sure, it all sounds like science fiction. But consider this:
We are learning how to read the very instructions that make up living things, including ourselves. We will likely eventually know how to parse out social and biological factors. We will learn how to program people.
This will absolutely happen, without the smallest chance of escape, unless civilization collapses and science is lost.
And if we do those things, we will become beings that can completely command the very process of life itself. Add 1000 or 2000 years to that.
Life’s nature may not be recognizable to us by then.
Add in several things that will not just interfere with, but possibly exponentially magnify the social consequences of this:
Nanotechnology and materials science
Artificial Intelligence and enhanced intelligence
High-energy physics
Whatever God you believe in, whatever quaint philosophical beliefs you have – they’re irrelevant to human history at this point, except in a reactionary way.
We are learning how to understand, modify, create and remake life, in any form we wish.
Add in intelligence, at some point, for sure.
None of this is that far away. AI proceeds in leaps and bounds every year. Genetic science is already reading much of the human genetic code.
You may not believe it, but the whole “blank slate we’re all equal” notion of human biology is already so utterly dead it’s laughable that you can even call a debate on the subject open.
I guarantee you three things, barring civilizational collapse:
The world your grandkids will be born into will not be hostile to ideas like racial differences, genetic links to behavior and the social “necessity” of progressive genetic development of the human race. Incidentally, watch “progressives” switch overnight into proponents of, basically, eugenics. It will happen in a microsecond. “The perfectability of mankind” will take on new, more sinister “liberal tones. I guarantee you the liberals will be the principal criminals, not conservatives or racists.
Social stratification will take on terrifying new forms that will resist all attempts to modify them. The elite will be genuinely superior in most ways, and eventually, will outnumber the rest.
Genetic science will result in a number of disasters, but barring truly huge catastrophes, will fundamentally be changing what it means to be human and to live in social groups.
Genetics has absolutely buried the blank slate. More and more shovelfulls of dirt get thrown on the rotting corpse every day.
You can rail about white people until the cows come home – but if there is any difference between races that goes beyond culture and racism, they will absolutely be found.
Are you 100% sure there are none?
If so, rest easy.
But if not, consider the potential results if free-thinking liberal people do not engage in this debate – now.
All the talk of God’s love and just accepting and whatever else will help no-one.
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PS,
I’m not saying any of this is good. Maybe all of us being equal but for racism and social structure would be great.
Alas, we are animals. Not special creations. Biology continues to show us how not special we are.
And when you invent a machine gun or a spinning wheel or a computer, you will use it. And you will maximize its use. And you will refine it to the very limit of human ingenuity.
Here we get to redefine human ingenuity. Once we start down that road, there will be no stopping.
And, to restate this, the blank slate is dead. As more non-racist (non-Murray_ researchers step into the field, more and more racial differences are going to be found, some of them not just height or shape of that fine black booty. It will be disturbing stuff that happens above the neck. In the brain. That impacts daily life.
BTW I don’t think that black-white relations will be the principle nightmare in this scenario. In fact, I suspect the new debates that are emerging will overshadow that more or less immediately.
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I was no racist beyond normal white racist that all liberals are born with.
Then I immersed myself in experimental genetics for half a dozen years.
Very little sentimentalism escapes that brutal crucible, let me tell you.
To remain a liberal in the face of what seems to be a better picture of what the human race is is not the easiest thing.
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@Gorbachev
Psychpathies will be hunted for. It will become a crime to breed if these genes are passed on without genetic surgery. If this is unavailable, then such babies will be genetically profiled and tracked over their lifetimes. Look how easy it is to scare people today into surrendering their freedoms to watch out for non-existent pedophiles, etc. Nobody will shed a tear for families barred from having kids because they carry sociopathic genes.
Funny. The sort of society that would allow your predictions to pass would have to consist of sociopaths, narcissists, and other emotionally defunct and decadent people, wouldn’t it? It literally solves itself.
Then again, the Western World was destroyed and rebuilt by emotionally defunct and decadent people. How else could the American Revolutionists frame their war as a matter of victory or slavery when they themselves owned slaves?
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@ Gorbachev,
You’re ideas about what science is doing now and the aspirations for the future seems to be valid. (Science has many aspirations, shouldn’t we be like on Mars today? Shouldn’t cancer be like cured? There is no guarantee for tomorrow)
However, we are talking about NOW, what exists TODAY, not some MAYBE’s & IF’s of tomorrow. You are asking us to ignore the problems of today and start concentrating on the possibilities of tomorrow. In essence you are asking us to be COMPLACENT.
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@ Wilson,
Exactly my thoughts.
@ Gorbachev,
Ah I see “unethical”. I’m thinking your referring to my response to Bliff.
I highly doubt you’ve done what you said you done. I do think you are a racist. Your little “story” proves that. And yes . Despite the fact that people like to be cowards and hide behind “ideas” because they think they’re universally protected merely for being ideas…you are held responsible for what you say and do. There is no “basis of truth” in race realism. You can’t claim your not racist and then defend information and theories based on racism.
You are a race realist trying to defend these ideas, and then you complain about “political correctness” because someone says that one of those ideas is “unethical”? Political correctness is just a claim used to shield people from the affect of their words and actions. God forbid someone doesn’t want to read peopel speculating over whether or not black people (groups neither of them belong to, btw) would use what race realists have proposed about them, and exploit it for a hand out. Especially in claiming the black IQ as a “disability”. That is ridiculous, and passive aggressive. I knew they’d work in a silly IQ argument, and that’st he way they did it.
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@Ace
black people ….would use what race realists have proposed about them, and exploit it for a hand out. Especially in claiming the black IQ as a “disability”.
I don’t think it’s likely, either. However, we do live in an entitlement society, and people will use all kinds of ridiculous reasons to suck off the govt teat.
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Ace,
I’ve gone to some length to remain anonymous on the Internet, because in my job, I’d be canned for having the wrong opinion. Media. It’s literally that harsh. I know a guy who was a republican and he was slowly edged out of his job just for that fact. It was said as much when he was gone.
I have a master’s degree in experimental genetics. I experiments on mammals and helped develop several modified strains for laboratory testing. One thing we bred for was sociability: subjects that were more/less social with each other. This was straightforward to breed. What was shocking was how few generations were necessary to shift the population from one extreme to another. Once a critical mass of individuals sported a given trait, the rest were forced by “socializing” to adapt or suffer. I left the field to work and marry and get actual money.
Ideas are not unethical. In this case, it’s both biologically reasonable and likely genetically demonstrable that there are significant differences between races. If you don’t like the word “race”, we can exchange it for another term.
I’m sure you can acknowledge that some people have serious adaptations that merit notice.
1) West Africans and speed running over short distances. Gold medals go to countries that tend to have descendants of West African origin in them.
2) Long-distance running: East Africa
3) Height: Northern Europeans are on average much taller than most others. The Dutch are very tall. This is clearly genetic, modified by environment.
4) Inuit and adaptations to the cold
5) Andean natives and some very remarkable adaptations to high-altitude living. These are hard-coded genetic adaptations.
So it’s fine to talk about *these* very obvious, undeniable racial differences. if you don’t like the term, let’s call it “genetic lineage / ancestry”.
But for reasons of political correctness and “Ethical Thinking and Ethically Correct Ideas”, for some reason–
All adaptation, all group differences *stop* at the Brain.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that if you believe this, you’re absolutely, dead wrong.
The problem is that you so desperately need for this to be true, as do so many people, that you’re willing to believe it regardless. Well, …
Humans are nothing more than large mammals with some interesting adaptations. If genetic programs profoundly affect the sexes in other mammals, you can bet your bottom dollar that they affect the human sexes, too. You can bet your life that genetics program for gender and society reinforces it. It’s not a blank slate.
You can also bet that much of what a child can ever do is decided long before it’s born.
This is because we are animals, not special creations.
You desperately need to believe that “race realists” as you call them are a bunch of KKK white supremacy nutbars out to lynch every last black man on Earth and rape their women.
This says more about you than it ever could about me. Or many “race realists”.
The science of genetics supports the “blank slate” / “Equalist” position not at all. It hasn’t for a generation. In fact, it’s utterly destroyed it.
Every day, more and more studies and refinements are published that further demolish this idea.
It doesn’t matter what you believe, from my perspective. I actually don’t care much. I was just looking for intelligent NON-EMOTIONAL discussion of these issues free of addled ideology and wishful thinking.
I can’t get that from white racists. Despite the fact that their position is as undermined by expanding knowledge of human genetics as marxist equalists, here, apparently, the same blindness and need to believe is apparent.
So you go on and impute any evil motivation to me you like. If it makes you feel better, or if uttering pithy statements to the effect that “White people are injured on some level they need our pure Blackness to have something of value”, …
then fine.
There’s nothing worse than a true believer. And as much as you decry the narcissism and vainglorious ideological claptrap of the Right, you’re like the proverbial pot calling the kettle black. You wallow in the same ideological soup, it just has different ingredients. But the muck is identical.
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If West African descendants are winning Gold medals, then why aren’t West Africans winning gold medals?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11443002
Abstract:
Many physiological and anthropological studies have investigated the unique Andean and Himalayan populations that have resided for many hundreds of generations at high altitude (HA). A nonscientific survey of the extant literature reveals a relatively liberal tradition of inferring genetic (evolutionary) adaptation to HA in these groups, often based on limited evidence and/or based on study designs insufficient to fully address the issue. In order to provide some perspective, I review relevant methodological issues that should be considered before evolutionary inference is made. On the whole, this paper takes a conservative stance and cautions against evolutionary inference based on the serious limitations of currently applied research approaches.
http://www.highaltitudemedicine.ie/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=121:genetic&catid=31:general
From above
http://icb.oxfordjournals.org/content/46/1/18.full
You know what? Just stick to dolphins. I’m tired.
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But for reasons of political correctness and “Ethical Thinking and Ethically Correct Ideas”, for some reason–
All adaptation, all group differences *stop* at the Brain.
Well, it’s hard to take the “Europeans and Asians are smarter” tripe when the people with the highest IQs from Britain and Norway, were nothing short of face-painted savages for the bulk of recorded human history, while the 3 of the 4 regions where civilization was founded: Egypt & Nubia, Iran (Persia), and India have IQs in the 80s.
West Africans have their share of achievements, such as the the Empires of Ghana, Mali, and Songhai. There’s also the legendary city of Timbucktu which was renowned for its wealth, learning, and enormous cache of literature; I believe 300 texts are discovered in the city everyday.
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Some IQs going by Richard Lynn’s own numbers:
92 Greeks
87 Mesopotamians (Iraq)
85 White Americans in the 1950s (according to the Flynn Effect)
83 Egyptians
79 Mayans (Guatemala)
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79 Mayans (Guatemala)
Shame on me for forgetting American civilizations. The real Americans, that is.
Ironic that some of the most renowned ancient civilizations have descendants with the lowest IQs. Civilization seems to be inversely related to IQ! Too bad, mine is 123-130 : (
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D.,
I wasn’t suggesting that my particular ancestors were particularly bright. In fact, it’s possible that whatever set up the higher IQs in northern Europe and Asia was relatively recent. Note that the rather obvious advantage Ashkenazi Jews seem to have in this department, and by adoption studies indicate clearly seems to be genetic rather than wholly cultural in origin, suggests that evolution can act preternaturally quickly when it comes to selection for these sorts of things.
So: A genetic disadvantage now might not even exist 6 generations from now. Which is what we observed with rats and other subject animals.
As far as civilizations go, I’m with you on Mesoamerica and South America. In fact, I also suspect that the traces of civilizations found in the Amazon Basin are likely indicative of something significant.
So the hard-core racists, I think, will lose out: *IF* there are genetic factors at work in educational disparity in America, those factors are far from even remotely permanent. In fact, I’d suggest that through targeted education and 2-3 generations of “reward breeding” (okay, eugenics – of the non-onerous, non-destructive kind, of the ‘social policy” kind) would more or less wholly eliminate the disparity.
If Jews can develop a significantly higher IQ during1000 years of living in Europe as a minority, without even trying to arrange this, it’s absolutely possible to do this in 5 generations in America such that the races would be indistinguishable with regards to modern education and etc.
The problem is:
We have a tendency to see humans as “special creations” and not as animal subjects.
I don’t suggest inhumane treatment of humans. But treating us as biological agents and social learners together makes much more social policy sense than treating us as social learning machines alone.
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@Gorbachev
You’re back?! I’m surprised! The last race realist I gave that information to was so shattered she closed her youtube account. Granted, I was far more ruthless with her.
I wasn’t suggesting that my particular ancestors were particularly bright. In fact, it’s possible that whatever set up the higher IQs in northern Europe and Asia was relatively recent. Note that the rather obvious advantage Ashkenazi Jews seem to have in this department, and by adoption studies indicate clearly seems to be genetic rather than wholly cultural in origin, suggests that evolution can act preternaturally quickly when it comes to selection for these sorts of things.
So: A genetic disadvantage now might not even exist 6 generations from now. Which is what we observed with rats and other subject animals.
You’re grasping for straws. In artificial breeding, significant changes can occur very quickly, but natural selection involving millions never works that quickly, least of all for something like IQ. Uncontrolled population genetics could not account for White American IQ effectively jumping 17.6 points in 3 generations, especially if Jews required 1000 years to achieve roughly the same advantage with a much smaller population. This is the faintest shadow of a hypothesis.
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@Gorbachev
And I suppose the greatest wrench in your vaporish hypothesis, according to your words, is none other than Black America.
You see, we were subjected to artificial breeding, at least before the closing of the Slave trade. The most docile slaves would survive, while the more confrontational individuals would be swiftly and violently dealt with. And yet we are, in your words, “Sociopathic Animals”. Now, I admit that I’m green in the field of biology, but that seems a bit counter-intuitive, no?
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@ Gorbachev
“I’ve gone to some length to remain anonymous on the Internet, because in my job, I’d be canned for having the wrong opinion. Media. It’s literally that harsh. I know a guy who was a republican and he was slowly edged out of his job just for that fact. It was said as much when he was gone.”
So which is it. Opinion or fact? Remember they aren’t the same.
“I have a master’s degree in experimental genetics. I experiments on mammals and helped develop several modified strains for laboratory testing. One thing we bred for was sociability: subjects that were more/less social with each other. This was straightforward to breed. What was shocking was how few generations were necessary to shift the population from one extreme to another. Once a critical mass of individuals sported a given trait, the rest were forced by “socializing” to adapt or suffer. I left the field to work and marry and get actual money.”
Which pertains to race realism how? Any scientist should know that there are always outside variables to consider.
“Ideas are not unethical. In this case, it’s both biologically reasonable and likely genetically demonstrable that there are significant differences between races. If you don’t like the word “race”, we can exchange it for another term.”
No there isn’t No matter how much you like to pretend there is, there really isn’t. Sorry.
“I’m sure you can acknowledge that some people have serious adaptations that merit notice.
1) West Africans and speed running over short distances. Gold medals go to countries that tend to have descendants of West African origin in them.
2) Long-distance running: East Africa
3) Height: Northern Europeans are on average much taller than most others. The Dutch are very tall. This is clearly genetic, modified by environment.
4) Inuit and adaptations to the cold
5) Andean natives and some very remarkable adaptations to high-altitude living. These are hard-coded genetic adaptations.”
1. Not true. Takes a lot of hard work. I was a sprinter for ten years.
2. Definitely not true, takes a lot of practice.
3. Seen taller people in Africa. Genes relate to height, but your race doesn’t decide that.
4. I find it odd how many Nordic people like to come to warmer climates in the winter.
5.You can adapt up to high altitudes too by living there. That’s why so many long distance runners like to train in high altitudes.
“So it’s fine to talk about *these* very obvious, undeniable racial differences. if you don’t like the term, let’s call it “genetic lineage / ancestry””
No. Because they’re not undeniable or obvious. Your cherry picking traits while ignoring others, your even ignoring their exceptions. Not a very scientific way of thinking, especially for someone who claims to have worked in a scientific field.
“But for reasons of political correctness and “Ethical Thinking and Ethically Correct Ideas”, for some reason–”
Not political correctness, but logic. There is a big difference you know. And yes, I find that using racial differences as policy is by it’s very nature unethical, because your not using fact, your using cherry-picked data to fulfill a specific agenda. There is no honesty or account for deviation.
All adaptation, all group differences *stop* at the Brain.
“I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that if you believe this, you’re absolutely, dead wrong.”
And I can actually attest to the fact that you are wrong.
“The problem is that you so desperately need for this to be true, as do so many people, that you’re willing to believe it regardless. Well, …”
No I don’t need this to be true, I just know that your way isn’t accurate and has been disproven by accurate science as well as lived in experience. I have no real reason to need anything in regards to this. You on the other hand seem awfully invested in this “racial difference” thing. Anything to keep the status quo hm? Actually very politically correct of you.
“Humans are nothing more than large mammals with some interesting adaptations. If genetic programs profoundly affect the sexes in other mammals, you can bet your bottom dollar that they affect the human sexes, too. You can bet your life that genetics program for gender and society reinforces it. It’s not a blank slate.”
Which explains why there are so many transgendered and genderqueer people in the world. Oh wait, actual scientists have said that gender is mental and sex is physical?
“You can also bet that much of what a child can ever do is decided long before it’s born.
This is because we are animals, not special creations.”
Never said we were “special”. I’m just not going to blindly subscribe to an outdated theory of race and genetics because it fits my personal prejudices.
“You desperately need to believe that “race realists” as you call them are a bunch of KKK white supremacy nutbars out to lynch every last black man on Earth and rape their women.”
Never said that. I’m not even black. Odd that you’d say that if you are a “scientist”. Most scientists I know don’t think in absolutes, nor do they make those kinds of assumptions. At least real scientists.
“This says more about you than it ever could about me. Or many “race realists”.”
How? That I don’t subscribe to a theory that elevates one race above another that was used to excuse a whole manner of atrocities? How terrible of me. I should just pretend that I’m inferior to a white person based on inaccurate data that doesn’t even represent me or any of my ancestors. That’s far more appropriate. Thanks for clearing that up!
“The science of genetics supports the “blank slate” / “Equalist” position not at all. It hasn’t for a generation. In fact, it’s utterly destroyed it.”
In your fantasy world maybe.
“Every day, more and more studies and refinements are published that further demolish this idea.”
Not even. If your referring to the usual crackpot stuff that get’s corrected and deleted, then no, I don’t think those count as legitimate anything.
“It doesn’t matter what you believe, from my perspective. I actually don’t care much. I was just looking for intelligent NON-EMOTIONAL discussion of these issues free of addled ideology and wishful thinking.”
Of course. Anyone who doesn’t agree that the races are somehow different must be emotional or ideological! Although you just resorted to ideological thinking right up in your response. i suppose if I were black you would just call me a “Emotional Negro”. I do have to admit, it does get annoying when self-promoted “experts” talk about the potential of people they’ve made no effort to know and expect them all to nod and say they agree. I thought scientists were open to correction?
“I can’t get that from white racists. Despite the fact that their position is as undermined by expanding knowledge of human genetics as marxist equalists, here, apparently, the same blindness and need to believe is apparent.”
Again, you just complained about “ideology” and you throw out “Marxist”. For your info I’m a centrist who was raised in a centrist household. I even wanted to vote Republican before it became “vogue” in 2008. There goes your “marxist” theory.
“So you go on and impute any evil motivation to me you like. If it makes you feel better, or if uttering pithy statements to the effect that “White people are injured on some level they need our pure Blackness to have something of value”, …”
Yep. Never said anything like that. Ever. At all. Just called you out on your own words. You tried to use “race realism”, so you really opened the door to that didn’t you? How about you act like a scientist and don’t make statements you aren’t prepared to own up? And here I thought scientists liked to use FACTS to argue with, not ideology? Your own words right?
“then fine.”
🙂
“There’s nothing worse than a true believer. And as much as you decry the narcissism and vainglorious ideological claptrap of the Right, you’re like the proverbial pot calling the kettle black. You wallow in the same ideological soup, it just has different ingredients. But the muck is identical.”
Says you. I don’t think I even mentioned the “Right” except for the fact that I didn’t like how so many of them subscribe to these theories. I even put my own father’s example of why that way of thinking really hurts potential right up there. It’s telling that you’d much rather focus on me disagreeing with you and my supposed “ideology”.
That’s totally fine by me. I’m going to sit here and believe that using data that only seems to pop up whenever there’s time to make policy or stamp on the “darkies”, is by it’s very nature insidious and not worth serious scientific consideration.
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Alrightey then. Everyone wants to put heads in sand.
Fine.
Already, genes for things like tendency to fall in love to tendency to be unable to pay attention are being found; correlations for IQ are hot on everyone’s list to identify and quantify. Once these are identified, there will be searches to find them in global populations. Variations on these genes will be observed.
Within 15 years, I expect much of this to be mapped out.
As far as being right-wing, I’m not: I’m a civil libertarian that leans to the left. I decry any kind of oppressive government in any form. I loathe them. I hate the idea of people being denied the freedom to choose and succeed.
That’s not a recipe for right wing extremism.
I also both accept and don’t object to a “multiracial” society in America. Far from it.
Just this:
– The breaking point for genetically programmed social behaviors in rats, the threshold point where the social order must readapt and other individuals must accomodate the new genetically-selected traits begin to demand changes in the social order and thence the other individuals must alter their behavior to compensate was, depending on what we were looking for (breeding a much more docile and a much more aggressive strain of norway rat), was 5 generations, with 6 being the point where all other individuals needed to compensate.
The lone aggressive rat in a group of very passive rats actually incurred huge social losses. However, this dynamic shifted at generation 3; by the time there were 20% aggressive rats, those who were passive started to adapt (unsuccessfully, by and large) until what we noticed was this: The passive rats lashed out and were deadly when provoked. it was unmoderated aggressive behavior. Clearly, the aggressive behavior of the few rats who were, while not lethal, quite clearly abnormally agitative, inspired passive-aggressive reactions from the more passive rats.
At 5 generations, the breeding scales tipped and the passive rats lost chances to breed (as well as offspring to cannibalism). And then a new social order, a much more chaotic one, was created. By the end of the process, when we achieved some kind of equilibrium, it was an intensely violent one.
While this was true for rats, and the behavior we were selecting for was relatively simple and straightforward (in fact, related to a specific hormone that could be tested for), and humans are rather more complex–
The same process holds true. I’ll bet that social reinforcement, dynamic interplay and variable breeding success would radically shift some traits in a given human gene pool within a relatively few series of generations.
As far as Africa and the North is concerned, I’d note that the trend seems to be North – South; and a very good hypothesis exists to account for this: selective pressures in a constantly changing environment in the North, combined with the advent of agriculture and state societies. State societies profoundly changed human mating patterns, as well as transferable wealth: Wealth that can be handed down through generations.
The moment that happened, I’d suspect that self-domestication began to occur among those who could not escape these new norms back into the bush. Without the freedom to escape from state societies, the genetic distribution for certain traits would start to shift.
I’d note that not all is”bad” for Africa in this regard. Because it’s the place where Homo Sapiens originated, the original cradle, as it were, there are more diseases and parasites that affect humans there. This means that you’d expect much greater disease resistance among Africans generally, and this is what you find.
I’d also note that significant differences exist that are relatively recent: The ability to digest milk and milk products as an adult, for example. Bantu peoples, whose migrations are historically attested and very recent, have no trouble digesting milk products even as adults. Unfortunately, many of their neighbors have trouble with this: this is a digestive adaptation to a particular lifestyle.
The same is true for the ability to digest pulses and grains. It’s been suggested by Korean geneticists that various gene combinations exist in Koreans that allow Koreans to take advantage of fermented foods more easily than others; and to digest rice and related grains more efficiently. Korea’s population went through a terrible bottleneck, according to genetic evidence, at roughly the same time it acquired agriculture. The result might have been terrible selective pressure on the survivors.
I’m telling you: If these things might possibly be true for digestion, high-altitude lung and circulatory adaptations, and even such things as height (ie, pygmies are just genetically short people) – then it’s not a big stretch nor is it unreasonable to conclude that genetic differences might account for differential success at tasks originating in one culture – population zone and transferred to another culture population zone.
I’d note that the IQ maps that everyone hates so much have one thing in common: Northern origins seem to be the one powerful linking factor.
This does not mean Papua New Guineans can’t invent writing or civilization. You’re taking it to far if you think this is what I’m saying.
All it means is that in THIS economy, STRUCTURED this way for members of ONE culture or ethnic background, MAXIMIZED for a given population group —
Simple expecting members of another culture group to just painlessly adapt it to themselves without making some changes is perhaps hoping for too much.
That appears to be the case. Racism given, even with imperialism, the world does seem to be structured in this manner.
Given that humans are just animals, and replicate many of the same trends, it’s more than likely even before examining specific evidence that not all groups will be equally endowed in every area.
There is some evidence that aging affects black people different. Also, West Africans have significantly better disease resistance. I once heard a hypothesis that obligatory disease resistance among those descended from West Africans results in less metabolic (general) expenditure on other things – from an evolutionary perspective. It’s interesting. I saw no evidence for it, but it’s not implausible.
The point is:
It’s not unethical to debate these things and do comprehensive research into racial, ethnic and population differences. In fact, there’s nothing ethical or unethical about it:
Humans are just interesting rats or squirrels. No ethical considerations apply to basic research into the human genetic and social makeup. We should do whatever seems promising or productive to research the underlying features of human nature.
If this means treading on the toes of racists, sexists, feminists or anti-racists – then science should ignore all of their concerns and just plow ahead.
And this is what it’s doing.
Within 50 years, expect a comprehensive map of the human genome to include such things as behavior, natural talents, social inclinations and organizational imperatives.
Want to bet money that this map will show regional, lineage and (can I say it ) racial differences?
if not, we can come back and have this conversation in 20 years.
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Gorbachev , I dont know where to begin, except to say, better advise your genetical engineers to hold off on looking for “intelligence” genes, until the scientists really discover what true “intellignece” is.
I mean you are aware of all the recent scientific studies that are showing that the intuitive being is reacting way faster than the thinking brain.
That means what ever concepts that we thought meant real intelligence, are becoming ancient and a relic as we speak
Yes, lets have this conversation 20 years down the line when the whole world is going to start to awaken to how to get more in touch with their intuition and feelings as far as how to go about daily life with the best results. They will have to start isolating genes that will put a person in a better way to feel life and understand their intuition better…
Something I practice everyday using West African concepts about how to be more in touch with intuition and feeling .
Ace, you have a lot of stamina to argue every point Gorbachev has made, and done it well
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@Gorbachev
Gorbachev, if I thought this conversation was unethical, I’d have ducked out long ago. The uber Liberals are only in your mind. . . did you know that Whites are more prone to psychosis? We’ll get to that in a second
As far as Africa and the North is concerned, I’d note that the trend seems to be North – South; and a very good hypothesis exists to account for this: selective pressures in a constantly changing environment in the North, combined with the advent of agriculture and state societies. State societies profoundly changed human mating patterns, as well as transferable wealth: Wealth that can be handed down through generations.
The moment that happened, I’d suspect that self-domestication began to occur among those who could not escape these new norms back into the bush. Without the freedom to escape from state societies, the genetic distribution for certain traits would start to shift.
As I thought, you haven’t opened a history book in a while. Civilization started in the South. Agriculture appeared in the Levant. State societies began in Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, and the only exception is China. Agriculture has existed in the rest of Africa too for thousands of years; West Africans were the ones who brought the indigo plant to the Americas. Aside from Greece and Rome, Europe produced nothing of worth before the first century AD. Greece and Rome are about as southern as you can get in Europe, and even they were late to the show.
Now, let’s reverse the gaze, shall we?
It was quite the opposite in North Europe, actually. The feudal system was forged in an environment teeming with violence, theft, and rape. So, the farmers and crafters swore fealty to a Lord with the martial power to protect them with swords, shields, and fortifications. Then they made war with other Lords and their swords. European countries came to be after centuries of bloody conquest, conflict, and backstabbing. Most of the wealth was accumulated at the top, not through cognitive agility but through sheer brute strength of arms. The harsh climate of Europe, of course, served to foster this brutal, dog-eat-dog mentality. So, when Europe was unleashed onto the world at large, thanks to the learned Arabs and Afro-Arabs, it’s no surprise that it lead to a mass extinction and suffering of human, plant, and animal life.
As for self-domestication:
“The negroes possess some admirable qualities. They are seldom unjust, and have a greater abhorrence of injustice than any other people. Their sultan shows no mercy to anyone who is guilty of the least act of it. There is complete security in their country. Neither traveller nor inhabitant in it has anything to fear from robbers or men of violence. They do not confiscate the property of any white man who dies in their country, even if it be uncounted wealth. On the contrary, they give it into the charge of some trustworthy person among the whites, until the rightful heir takes possession of it. They are careful to observe the hours of prayer, and assiduous in attending them in congregations, and in bringing up their children to them.”
-Ibn Battuta on the People of Mali.
All it means is that in THIS economy, STRUCTURED this way for members of ONE culture or ethnic background, MAXIMIZED for a given population group –
Simple expecting members of another culture group to just painlessly adapt it to themselves without making some changes is perhaps hoping for too much.
What can I say, we just aren’t cruel and selfish enough to thrive in your capitalist/ neo-feudalist society. Perhaps in 20 years we’ll wise up and enslave/ imperialize you. /sarcasm
Yes, it couldn’t be because our still segregated education in inner cities generally sucks (and got worse when the states took over), and college is becoming too damn expensive. Or that we are disproportionally charged, arrested, and disenfranchised because of victimless crimes that White boys get away with all the f*cking time (I met those White boys, so don’t try to pull the wool over my eyes.) It couldn’t be because you’ve sabotaged the entire world aside from Japan and China to serve as a factory for goods the West wants and needs for cheap and abusive prices. And it couldn’t be because you’ve only released your imperial grip on the world about fifty years ago; there are people alive who can remember it! It couldn’t be because your neo-colonialist economic grip survives to this day. As I said before: come back to Planet Earth.
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@The Cynic
Affirmative-Action was created for black folk, but, it morphed into something else. Two specific groups of people that had no business being lumped in with blacks as minorities…whitewomen and white spaniards. How can either of them be labeled as a minority when they’re white? Wonder why local and cable news has so many whitewomen, Affirmative-Action? Another example of black people paving the way for somebody else’s success.
Tyrone
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@ Gorbachev,
Please answer this:
Brazil produces very good soccer players. The Brazilian soccer team is one of the best in the world and has been for decades now. Generation after generation of worldclass soccer players. So there must be a reason for it, can’t be mere chance(not for generation after generation), there must be an underlying factor.
Is this because of race?
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@ Gorbachev,
More information if you didn’t know.
The Brazilian soccer team doesn’t constitute one race, don’t apply North American prejudices here e.g. ice hockey mainly for whites, basketball mainly for blacks.
It is everything from black through mixed to white and has been for decades yet they produce the best players over and over and over again.
I’d be very interested to hear your reasons for this.
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I think Gorbachev has been reading too much science fiction. We’re a long way from manipulating more than very basic genetic factors.
The focus in any case for quite a while would be on correcting genetic defects. Ones I would like to see fixed are those such as the flawed gene that prevents humans from synthesizing Vitamin C. The problem even with this is the law of unintended consequences: what other impact will it have and are such experiments on humans ethical?
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Brothawolf
“Race realists” really want with all their hearts and souls for black people to be inferior.”
That’s not true. I would like to believe that blacks are stuck in their state because of welfare which is what Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams believe. Even if the IQ theory is correct, it may not be the reason for the problem (there are millions of low IQ whites out there yet blacks at 12% of population commit 50% of murders). I’d like to know what the problem really is – all you can give me is white racism but white racism cannot explain black out of wedlock birth rates and many other realities – so your theory is obviously weak.
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@Brahms
Selective reading is unhealthy, you know. You don’t know anything about African history, like Gorbachev, so you jump to conclusions. We had no problem living and building stable societies before White explorers, slavers, and conquerors showed up. Many Africans traditionally valued virginity, family, and parenthood and held to those values. Every societal ill is the result of the 2nd class citizenship we are given, previously de jure and now de facto.
You wont find your answer in the blood, no matter how hard you try.
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Gorbachev
“I can’t get that from white racists. Despite the fact that their position is as undermined by expanding knowledge of human genetics as marxist equalists”
Could you expound on this statement?
Would you also explain Lewontin’s Fallacy?
Thanks
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“Ironic that some of the most renowned ancient civilizations have descendants with the lowest IQs. Civilization seems to be inversely related to IQ! ”
Those civilizations were not advanced when compared with the West.
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They were more advanced than the West was at the time. The West has only been on top for the last 500 years. The West is not a Cradle of Civilization. Aside from Greece and Rome, they did nothing of interest for the bulk of recorded history. Don’t take it from me, there’s plenty of writing on the Germanic and British tribes, courtesy of Greek historians.
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D.
To which low IQ civilizations are you referring? I assume you’re talking about pre-Columbian America?
Yet, I’m still confused as to how whites cause black promiscuity and parental neglect.
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The Mayans, why not. Although, all of them throw a wrench in your hypothesis.
Yet, I’m still confused as to how whites cause black promiscuity and parental neglect.
Poverty + sexual revolution + 100 years of disenfranchisement + an already fragile family due to slave auctioning = disaster. That’s my crack at it. Seriously though, ask a sociologist for the details. I’m a biologist (in training) with a passing interest in history.
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Hey Brahms! Were you on vacation again? How’s Doug 666, Spliff, and incontinent truth doing? Pass on my regards to them!
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