A white student born in Africa has been suspended from medical school (specifically, the euphoniously named University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey) for calling himself a “white African-American.”
I suspect there’s a tendency on both the left and the right to blur the distinction between this kind of lunacy and, e.g., the censure of white students who dress up in Klan costumes or blackface to reenact lynchings (as occurred on my fair campus a few years back). Many on the right would like to insinuate that making a fuss about demeaning minstrel shows is just as crazy, just as much a symptom of (as they like to say) “political correctness run amuck” as making a fuss about an American from Africa describing himself as African-American. Likewise, many leftists of the authoritarian variety might have us believe that the latter is a serious racist incident just like the former – a kind of verbal blackface, if you will.
Both reactions are wrong. These are cases where we need to, um, discriminate. (But don’t expect university administrators to figure out the difference without the help of a bit of pressure.)
I can not remember the African Historian who observed that the French regime in Algeria was worse than the white rule of South Africa, because, the latter, for all of its many atrocities recognized itself as part of Africa, whereas the French tried to make Algeria part of Europe. The man identifies himself as African, he certainly has as good a case to designate himself an African as a non American Indian resident of the United States does to call himself an American.
Wow I didn’t know Count Gobineau posted here.
Agreed. I’ve been told that the student might have wanted to make a big deal out of it, but even if that’s true, so what? They opened the door by doing things like this:
Many liberals claim (absurdly) that there is no such thing as race. If so, then a ‘white’ person born in Africa would be as much an African-American as a ‘black’ person whose ancestors were born there.
As Murray Rothbard pointed out when the Bell Curve came out, we all know deep down inside that there are profound differences between groups and races.
Those people who think we can have open borders and maintain the same country as we have are fooling themselves. It’s almost certain that the differences observed everywhere between whites and blacks as far as IQ and criminality go are genetic.
Right, because America has never had any Africans in it before. It would be a totally different country if it did.
Mexicans too. The last thing we want is for them to suddenly start moving into Texas or California.
I’m a little pressed for time, so can I just call you racist and let that suffice for now?
I see there are still a couple of hills to take in the Left-Libertarian Civil War. Cock-ringed queers, forward!!!
And the great thing is, appealing to what “we all know deep down inside” has historically proven to be the most reliable method of scientific discovery.
Steven Colbert at the Press Club Dinner (2006): I’m sorry, but this reading initiative. I’m sorry, I’ve never been a fan of books. I don’t trust them. They’re all fact, no heart. I mean, they’re elitist, telling us what is or isn’t true, or what did or didn’t happen. Who’s Britannica to tell me the Panama Canal was built in 1914? If I want to say it was built in 1941, that’s my right as an American! I’m with the president, let history decide what did or did not happen. The greatest thing about this man is he’s steady. You know where he stands. He believes the same thing Wednesday that he believed on Monday, no matter what happened Tuesday. Events can change; this man’s beliefs never will.
This objection will no doubt be devastating to those libertarians who consider themselves radical defenders of the status quo.
How do people who claim that racism is the only or major cause black people are on average not as economically successful as whites explain that one?
How do people who claim that racism is the only or major cause black people are on average not as economically successful as whites explain that one?
For those who think it’s the only cause, it would be a puzzle. For those who think it’s the major cause, there’s no conflict. (Cultural differences arising from presence or absence of a background of slavery could be another cause — as, frankly, could accent-ism.)
California is a good example of why open borders are a bad idea.
The issue is not racism, which I oppose.
However, we should be realistic about racial differences. Looking at adoption studies and other evidence (for example, the fact that black IQs regress to a mean lower than white IQs) is strong evidence of innate differences in intelligence.
Take a country such as Haiti, which has been independent for around 200 years. Or consider the nations of black Africa.
If the issue is black culture, then why have blacks never developed a culture on the level of whites or Asians?
Why do high IQ black parents tend to have children with lower IQs, whereas lower IQ white parents tend to have children with higher IQs?
I was reluctant to accept a genetic explanation, but I really don’t see a way around the evidence.
“Look, I don’t want to believe in leprechauns, but you leave me no other choice.” “No, you can choose the more plausible explanation: hail.” “Look, I don’t want to believe in leprechauns, but you leave me not other choice.”
“Of course my house is being attacked by leprechauns! Look at the damage to my roof!” “That damage is more likely to be caused by hail, a phenomenon for which we have independent evidence, rather than leprechauns, for which we have … not so much evidence.” “I’ve given you strong physical evidence of leprechauns, and you talk about balls of ice falling from the sky? Give me a break!”
ROTFLMAO!!!
The house elves did it! It’s all their fault! We’re only giving them what they deserve when we kick them and make them repair the roof for us!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rixkck8QnjY
Not that there’s anything racist in the tuatha de danaan thing, anyway.
Brandon,
Does that really explain all the differences? Look at what has happened to South Africa since the blacks too over. Look at Rhodesia. And again, why is it that blacks haven’t developed the economic strength or cultural ability to repel invasion?
In addition, virtually all the adoption studies (for example looking at blacks adopted into white parent homes) have shown innate differences.
It’s not a conclusion I’m happy with, but if there’s a better explanation, I haven’t heard it.
Wow. It’s a leaner, meaner Roderick Long these days, ladies and gentlemen.
Brandon,
Eurotrash monsters subjugated Singapore and Hong Kong as well.
-MM
Hey, he have a chessmaster among us, Nick “Natashe” Manley, who’s won like actual $$$! playing chess. I’m also very pleased to see how forceful and well-reasoned Nick’s writing has become of late.
Un, and that should have been “earth, water, fire, wood, and metal”. Oops.
Yeah — I wonder why the Chinese didn’t include air in the list — especially since they believed in qi/ch’i, which played a role analogous to the Greek aether, which the Greeks sometimes identified as a form of air.
Roderick:
I certainly don’t see why Chinese premodern protoscience (even tho’ it’s lots of fun) should be taken any more seriously than Western premodern protoscience (even tho’ that’s lots of fun, too).
But as for ch’i… I’ve seen what is almost certainly publicly irreplicable, but pretty darn convincing, introspectively objective evidence that *something* is going on.
My neo-mom saw a reflexology specialist on her last trip to Thailand. She was having serious difficulties in one eye at the time. When she went in for a foot massage, the massuese said that there was something wrong with her eyes… or, more, specifically, the precise eye which was giving her trouble.
I’ve heard many people give accounts like this, including from people who consider themselves sharp atheists, even materialists. My ex-gf told me she had a biology professor send a student volunteer crashing to the floor by doing something with his hands without touching her which ‘disrupted the ch’i flow’.
I was once at a course of tantra hosted by Good Vibrations, and a man who had been spiritually shattered by 20 year of sexual impotence came within a hair of weeping on the floor after the tantrika showed him how to do something. The topic of the class was male multiple orgasms.
I didn’t get much out of that particular night, but Shawn Roop of Tantra Quest’s partner (whose names escapes me at the moment) made the air thrum like it was alive when I met her at the (2007, I think) Desiree Alliance convention. The affects were, again, irreplicable, but I felt something which was not subtle, and so did a whole room full of people.
Many sex workers in the Bay Area patronise alternative medicine practioners. Now, a great deal of this is simply because the American medical system is so awful, and so prejudiced against sex workers, that blind luck plus a placebo effect unsurprisingly outperforms a system which rewards people who like wealth and status and punishes people who like science and healing. But I’ve heard a lot of people rave about reiki and acupuncture. And what they all have in common is the ch’i model as a base.
A *positivist* acquaintance mine, who is a just-turned-18 genius aspiring hacker, floored me when he mentioned in off conversation that he’s seen something much the same (I can ask him the details again when I’m back in NZ in a week). *This* after 6 months of him having almost got me believing that everything I’d previously observed was a result of brain chemistry or the sign of a mental disorder… sigh. Homo sapiens canis. What can you do?
As for myself, I’m seen some evidence of the sense for the prana thing. Some of them too fuzzy and subjective to account for much, some of them easy to explain by simpler means, others which were Overwhelming but too batshit insane statistical outlier to mention in rational company. But some of them really have been pretty convincing. Very convincing. Very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, convincing.
I won’t say anything more, because the gods have a bad record of shooting the messenger on the issue, and besides it’s an imprudent thing for a feminist to mention.
I’m not claiming that the ch’i/prana idea makes any scientific or philosophical sense whatsover, and completely respect rational people for finding the concept utterly absurd. But I know what I’ve felt, and I know what others I would trust with my life have seen. I’m stuck at wave/particle for an answer to this and completely stumped. But people who swear by this stuff are, whatever stupid theories they dig up from same-of-the-old-boss non-Western irrational patriarchal authoritarian religions to try to explain it, not crazy.
The concept of ch’i belongs outside the political door and probably outside the university door. But something *is* going on. I’ve questioned my sanity and rationality many times, but I’ve come to the conclusion that I have good reasons to keep open the door (with a bolted chain) to the kind of thing the rest of me calls irrational mysticism.
Which doesn’t mean that some of the most intellectually visible neo-Pagans aren’t just rebranded altruist-mongering televangelists trying to pretend to themselves that they’re not taking spiritual advantage of uneducated romantics for the sake of access into the high church club. You lyin’ Tartuffe.
Mr. Onion,
Careful, if you start talking about how the Egyptians were black and related mumbo jumbo, people might wonder if you know what you are talking about.
I give strong scientific evidence. The response? White society is hurting blacks people’s self-esteem. Give me a break.
You might want to check out Rushton’s studies, which even leftist Will Saletan conceded were hard to refute –
http://www.vdare.com/misc/051207_rushton_fallacy.htm
For a lame response, check out Nisbett’s recent book about intelligence.
-MM
I’ll repeat it a little bit slower for you this time.
Nubians in Egypt, not the Semitic Egyptians themselves, the Lebu, the Meshwesh or the Greeks (Eqypt was always a cosmopolitan society, even prior to the Ptolemy’s). As in people who look like this girl.
Now that we’ve got that clarified, might you want to try addressing any of my other four examples?
I don’t profess to be a libertarian, at least not on this issue.
If you read the Vdare article, you’d be directed to a lot of scientific evidence. Rushton has published in many peer-reviewed journals.
-MM
Mr. Onion,
Does anyone dispute that black countries will do (relatively speaking) much better with the appropriate economic policies and that white countries will do poorly with bad economic policies? I certainly don’t.
But you’ve got to show that these improved policies have resulted in substantial changes in IQ. As of yet, you have not. Why have programs such as Head Start not produced significant results?
However, the evidence that Rushton and others have presented fits perfectly with a genetically based IQ difference hypothesis. For example the regression to the mean result is exactly what is predicted. The IQ of mixed-race people is also what is predicted.
-MM
Well, I see there’s a hornet’s nest brewing here — and I’m on a tight schedule at the moment and won’t have time to respond to particular comments until later. So let me toss in two general points for now.
a) It’s a scientific fact that the entire class of people socially classed as “black” have no more in common with one another genetically than they do with the entire class of people classed as “white.” So in that sense, yes, “race” is a social construct.
b) See my older post A Dark Faith for some of the reasons why I don’t think alleged scientific arguments for innate racial differences deserve to be taken especially seriously.
I saw this post this morning and was dismayed by Mark Martinson’s racist stupidity. Happy to see it has been responded to adroitly. Unhappy to see Martinson is still grasping at straws, trying to pass of his own shameful prejudices as scientific fact, and projecting them onto other people (“we all know deep down inside that there are profound differences between groups and races.”).
I believe that Christopher Hitchens said it rather well.
Tangentially — have you noticed how often Americans apply the term “African-American” to blacks in other countries?
To perhaps return to the subejct. What would the reaction have if Berber from Morocco had made the same statement? The Rif Berbers in particular are very “white” in appearance. According to Wikipedia, (I know) the percentage of the population that has light hair or light eyesis higher there than in Spain or Italy. Yey the Berbers have lived in North Africa throughout recorded history.
For those who are interested –
1. Here is the Rushton & Jensen piece –
http://www.ssc.uwo.ca/psychology/faculty/rushtonpdfs/PPPL1.pdf
2. Here is Nisbett’s response –
http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/sloth/nisbett-on-rushton-and-jensen.pdf
3. Another response to Nisbett by Jensen and Rushton –
PDF — Intelligence and How to Get It (Working Paper)
Roderick,
I take it your claim is that the differences in IQ as well as their persistance (in adoption studies for example) are best explained by environmental factors (such as racism). I think this can explain most of the evidence, but not all of it.
This is from Rushton’s later piece:
_______
We placed greatest weight on the Minnesota Trans-Racial Adoption Study because it is the largest and best-known of these studies and is the only one that included a longitudinal follow-up, with testing of the same children at ages 7 and 17 years [146,147]. It compared the IQ and academic achievement scores of Black, White, and Mixed-Race children who were adopted into upper-middle-class White families in Minnesota, whose parents had a mean IQ of 120 (much higher than the population mean of 100). The biological children of the adopting parents were also tested.
The first testing of 265 children was carried out in 1975 when they were 7-years-old and the second in 1986 when they were 17-years-old. Table 3 gives the results. The evidence for genetic influences became more evident as the children grew older. At age 17 adopted White children had an average IQ of about 106; Mixed-Race adoptees, 99; and adopted Blacks, 89. Although the Black mean of 89 was slightly above the national Black mean of 85, it was not above the Black mean for Minnesota. Further, school grades, class ranks, and aptitude tests also showed this same pattern. Growing up in a White middle-class home produced little or no lasting increase in the IQs of the adopted Black children.
_______
I’d like to know more about this study, most importantly the ages of the children and their health when adopted. The results seem to go beyond even what hereditarians would anticipate because they generally claim environment contributes 20-30% to a person’s intelligence.
Roderick and Araglin,
I haven’t looked at these studies themselves, so I don’t know the details. I do know that statisticians have developed sophisticated tools to “weed out” variable factors, but math isn’t my strong suit.
You point out that: (1) the adopted children are still raised in the same environment (Northern children raised in the South have Southern accents); and (2) that the home environment of black children in white homes might not be the same as white children in white home.
I don’t know if these factors are enough to change the results. (1) How racist is the environment of upper-middle class whites in Minnesota? And the general environment is the same. I assume a black child raised in a black home will encounter racism and a black child raised in a white home will as well. (2) Parents who adopt children of different races are probably very concerned about their education. Even if they treat the children differently from their white biological offspring, it’s better to be in a high IQ home than a lower IQ home.
In other words, the adopted children should be no worse off in the general environment and better off in the home environment. Yet this apparently produced no improvement.
Roderick,
If a black female came to you and said “I’m going to put my newborn up for adoption. One family that wishes to adopt her has an IQ of 120 and will send her to an elite school; the other has an IQ of 89 and will send her to an inner city school. Which is most likely to be beneficial for her intelligence and success in school?” Would you say “it likely doesn’t matter”? I doubt it. I doubt Murray (or Rushton) would.
That’s why if this study is to be attacked, I think it has to be along the lines of how Nisbett apparently did — the age of the adoptees, their history of foster homes, and our ignorance of the IQ of the biological parents.
Many liberals claim (absurdly) that there is no such thing as race.
In some sense they are right. I mean, it’s not like one kind of monkey evolved into the African-American and another kind of monkey evolved into the Caucasian.
As Murray Rothbard pointed out when the Bell Curve came out, we all know deep down inside that there are profound differences between groups and races.
I’ve never heard this attributed to Rothbard, but if he did in fact say this it would have been late in his life when he was well into his cranky old “paleolibertarian” phase and trying to reach out to some of the more wacko right-wing groups. But whether Rothbard actually said it or not, it’s a silly statement. Arguing that something is true because “we all know [it] deep down inside” is the very basest form of appeal to intuition, and can be used to justify anything. I’ve heard similar arguments used to claim that homosexuality is wrong, that homosexuality is right, that various deities are the One True God, and that Dane Cook is funny. Of course not everyone “knows” any of these things “deep down inside,” and even if they did it wouldn’t mean that these things were actually true.
As for the existence or non-existence of races, scientists have yet to settle upon a general consensus for the definition of biological species, much of the problem stemming from the fact that it is impossible, from an evolutionary standpoint, to draw hard and fast boundaries between purported species. The general thinking is that “species” is more a term of convenience than something that actually exists in any meaningful sense. If species don’t even exist, there’s not much hope for the even more vaguely defined “races”.
Many liberals claim (absurdly) that there is no such thing as race.
So science is absurd?
we all know deep down inside that there are profound differences between groups and races.
And the great thing is, appealing to what “we all know deep down inside” has historically proven to be the most reliable method of scientific discovery.
Those people who think we can have open borders and maintain the same country as we have are fooling themselves.
Okay. I don’t want the same country we have.
It’s almost certain that the differences observed everywhere between whites and blacks as far as IQ and criminality go are genetic.
And how is that any better than Aristotle’s argument that the differences between the republican institutions and cultural achievements of the Greeks and the tribal warrior societies of the Celts and Germans proved the innate mental inferiority of Celts and Germans? Or the medieval Islamic arguments about the well-known laziness, stupidity, and dishonesty of Christian Europeans? Whence this “almost certainty”?
You’re wrong. The problem is that most people have no idea how to recognise intelligence in a form or language superficially different from their own.
Racists claim that Black people are good only at music and sports. Well, I’m no sports fan, but the last time I checked sports were a form of ceremonial warfare. And yet the same people who think Black atheletes are dumb tend to be obsessed military history buffs who think the being a great general is the greatest. thing. ever. Shall we recall that the Great Tradition of I See White People started when a street performer with a disability started jivin’ about who was the man when a couple of gangs fought it out over some dumb bitch? I mean, double standard, really. WTF?
Can you play Jazz? Do you have da rhythm? Last time I checked, being a ballerina or classical composer got you into the high IQ seats and a shot at dead white male stardom (well, not if you’re a ballerina, ’cause you’re only a girl, but you get the point). If you think it’s easy to do these things, or that they aren’t clear signs of rational, focused, human intelligence, then you’re mistaking the standard of being good at the things you’ve been allowed, encouraged, and trained to be good at for stature and ability itself. And that means that on the big picture things you’re the one doing it wrong.
Girls can’t do math? In this world, if you’re a girl and run the numbers the way guys do as a matter of entitlement they all call you ugly names. You try managing your way though the extremely complicated emotional relationships of female life. Just try developing a tenth of the perception of human emotion or sensitivity to others’ needs expected without saying of the average girl. Or, just keep a purse in order without embarassing yourself. And try doing it while spending half your mind worried about how you walk and talk, and while wre at it your feet hurt, you can’t breathe, and you’re fainting from being scared to eat lest you stop looking richer than you are and lose big on the sexual auction block.
Women have been doing half the intellectual work from the beginnings and the Days of Dirt, but somehow they always forgot to be included in the credits, except when the occasional nice dead guy like Heraclitus, Socrates, Euripides, Aristophanes, Voltaire, Shelley, Baudelaire, Dumas, or John Stuart Mill would grudgingly admit to learning half their stuff from girls and doing half their work bouncing ideas off the human beings they spent the most time talking with.
I’ve been both a guy and a girl, and as soon as I became a girl I started noticing that nothing I said got taken seriously until some guy repeated it, because we’ve been taught to confuse intellectual quality with superficial adherence to certain socially hegemonic forms of speaking, writing, and being. If you say it a guy way: serious business; say it a girl way: gossip. The Japanese take this to the ridiculous extreme of having two different dialects for men and women.
Similarly, I’ve been both privileged and scarily broke at different times an my life, and been on both pretty near the top and pretty near the bottom of the social heap (sometimes on the same day). And if you don’t think that the conditions and degree of support around you influence the level of excellence you are capable of demanding of yourself and pulling off, then you need to go meet more people.
And travel more. Do forgive me, but I’ve met gentlemen of every possible race and have them show me who they really are in ways most of you don’t see. And the libertarian conservative travel humourist P.J. O’Rourke got it dead right: if we were dogs, we’d all be the same breed. Class, race, gender, and all the rest are superficial, and if you feel something else is obvious, then the problem is with your own narrowly provincial eyes.
Go read some Langston Hughes. Go read Zora Neale Hurston’s _Their Eyes Were Watching God_ Go read the exquisitely subtle and civilised Jamaican Orlando Patterson’s _Freedom_- I mean, come on, the guy answered Hegel and Nietzsche and was so self-confident he forgot to mention it. Or go read W.E.B. DuBois _Souls of the Black Folk_, which explains all this stuff and contains some of the most moving passages in any political literature. Or even listen to the current POTUS- I mean, sure, he’s a murderous imperial oligarch and all, but the guy clearly has more of a brain than any evil overlord has for the last couple of generations. Wasn’t long back that the king of the whiteys was Bush II. I mean, really good job separating the gold from the dross here people; we’ve clearly got a superior breed of men running the place.
Go have a chat with a few Latin American intellectuals. They’re more civilised than you are, and too gracious to even care to notice, even if you’re racist to them. One of the most brilliant people I know is a Mexican scholar. When he talks about the life of the mind, he means 24/7, as in ‘why do we have to focus on boring things like food and water when there are still books to read’. He studied at Harvard, incidentally, and got kicked out for offending politically correct academic feminists over some idiotic campus politics issue- he’s so perfect on sex and sexuality issues that it doesn’t really occur to him not to be. Incidentally, he’s into Emerson and Wallace Stevens.
Other people can argue the scientific shit. I’ll leave that to people like my South Carolinian ex-girlfirend, who studied biology, and had professor after professor describe the concept of ‘race’ as about as scientifically meaningful as the division of all existents into the categories of earth, air, fire, wood, and metal. The point that matters to me is this: you do not know how to recognise human quality. And what makes me sick about racists is that they smugly think they’re standing up for some higher kind of human beings when one of the first lessons anyone who intends to think needs to get is to learn to recognise the activity of human consciousness and look at nature over convention, and to dig the important stuff rather than childhood secondary habits which are hard to change and don’t really matter. Anyone who says that group A is naturally more rational than group B doesn’t get that rationality is a matter of volition, choice and work. And that highly suggests that they’re either dishonest in their thinking or that they don’t know how to use the machinery between their ears in the first place.
Racism and all the other evil ‘isms’ are all about inferior people claiming superiority on ridiculously petty grounds so that they can feel bigger than they are. _Childhood of a Leader_. If you have it, then you don’t spend your scarce time badmouthing the competition. If racism was true, then racists themselves would be morally obligated to do the gene pool a favour and try for a Darwin Award, preferably by shooting themselves.
Racism fails to recognise the human spirit or to understand what it means to be a rational animal. And if you can’t do that, I don’t care how rich and white you are or how many letters you put after your name; you still just suck.
As for ‘criminality’, I believe Nietzsche wrote somewhere that a criminal was a philosopher under unfavourable circumstances. Smugglers, rebels, maquis, privateers, adventurers, Greek pirates, and counter-economists have been part of the world-historical stage for like forever. And more than occasionally, they’ve been the good guys. You say ‘breaking the law’ as if it’s a bad thing. As some dude whose name I can’t remember said, “one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws”. That’s still way too straight edge for me, but the man had a point and kinda changed the world, y’know, and he was one of the best rhetoricians of the 20th century.
“Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man
Anyone who takes The Bell Curve seriously should read Ned Block’s excellent essay How Heritability Misleads About Race.
Is this really the only problem with his statement you felt compelled to comment on?
“The issue is not racism, which I oppose. ”
Oh, phew. Good to know.
“However, we should be realistic about racial differences. Looking at adoption studies and other evidence (for example, the fact that black IQs regress to a mean lower than white IQs) is strong evidence of innate differences in intelligence.”
Wait a sec…
That’s certainly the conclusion Charles Murray reaches. I’d like to think that the differences in cultures are responsible more than genetics. Has black culture historically put as much of a premium on intelligence as other cultures? Are blacks taught to read and write as early as others? I don’t know, but I’d like to think of the mind as a muscle that can be improved through disciplined exercise. But who knows. The answer is above my pay grade, and everyone else’s too.
Africa has been the subject of repeated invasions and subjugation by eurotrash monsters like Cecil Rhodes. As for Haiti, isn’t it time for yet another US invasion?
Re: Haiti and sub-saharan Africa, what Brandon said.
Ethiopia? The Kingdom of Mali? Great Zimbabwe? Nubia, or the Nubians that were an integral part of the Egyptian Kingdom(s)?
I suppose you’ll argue that these don’t count because they fell behind by the 20th century. Well, where was China at that time? What was Japan like, comparatively speaking, before the Meiji Restoration? Korea was a Japanese colony for the first half of the 20th century.
Careful Mark. Some people might suspect you don’t know anything about the subject you’re talking about.
Say you’re born into a mental environment that carries the implicit assumption (by the bureaucrats in schools, in media portrayals, the things your parents encourage you to do and not to do, the way employers look at you) that you’ll never be quit be as good as those other people over there. Would that have a positive feedback on your belief in yourself and what you could chose to pursue with any realistic degree of success?
Suppose that were happening to some degree to everyone that shared that key characteristic with you. Wouldn’t that have the same effect on a group level?
The fact that you’re even making the case for inferiority proves that that sentiment exists. Moreover, it would have the same general effect even on children born to successful parents or adopted by whites, because the greater societal feedback is still largely the same.
It’s very similar to the argument that women are innately inferior at math and science. Doesn’t it seem reasonable that the feedback society gives in that regard would tend to discourage women from even believing that they could be good, and thereby discouraging them from pursuing those things, or doing something else just to conform to other people’s expectations?
Or consider the nations of black Africa.
Ah, if only some European colonists had gone in and smashed up their cultures and institutions and imposed a central state, that surely would have helped.
If the issue is black culture, then why have blacks never developed a culture on the level of whites or Asians?
That was Aristotle’s question about the Celts and Germans, and the medieval Arabs’ question about western Europe. Ya gotta do better than that.
Why do high IQ black parents tend to have children with lower IQs, whereas lower IQ white parents tend to have children with higher IQs?
Social environment matters, not just family environment?
I was reluctant to accept a genetic explanation, but I really don’t see a way around the evidence
Given the fairly obvious alternative possibilities, you don’t seem to have been all that reluctant.
lol good one!!
“Race-Realism” is merely racism with a non-apology apology.
Looking at adoption studies and other evidence (for example, the fact that black IQs regress to a mean lower than white IQs) is strong evidence of innate differences in intelligence.
So, mix in a teaspoon of milk and a gallon of arsenic, and when the resulting mixture proves toxic, cry out loudly “milk is poisonous!”
The lives of South Africans are no worse off now that they were back in the apartheid days.
Look at Eastern Europe, and how poorly developed their economies are. They must be from an inferior stock.
Oh wait, they lived under kleptocratic state-socialist dictatorships. Kind of like Zimbabwe. Their situation wasn’t created by “the blacks”, just one black guy named Mugabe.
Since you’re probably not aware of this example, I’ll spin it for you quick:
At independence in 1966, Botswana was one of Africa’s poorest countries . In breaking with standard sub-Saharan political practice, the wealth was not siphoned off for the benefit of some clique but was reinvested to strengthen the country’s human and physical infrastructure, and from the mid 70’s to the late 90’s it was the fastest growing economy in world, and its largest producer of diamonds. Today it is classified as an upper-middle-income country with a per capita income not much lower than South Africa’s.
(Yeah, this is a seedy neoliberal measuring stick that I’m using, but given that you’re citing European colonialism as a success story I don’t think you can consistently discount it.)
See above.
And again, why is it that blacks haven’t developed the economic strength or cultural ability to repel invasion?
Just like — for about a thousand years, anyway — northern Europeans were unable to resist Roman expansion. I guess they were racially inferior. At least until the end of that thousand-year period, when the “northern barbarians” suddenly, mysteriously, became genetically superior (I’m betting meteorites were involved) and defeated the Romans.
In addition, virtually all the adoption studies (for example looking at blacks adopted into white parent homes) have shown innate differences.
How could they show innate differences? How do you correct for the broader cultural environment? (I notice that when northerners move down here and raise families, their kids usually grow up speaking with a southern accent rather than the accent of their parents. Wacky, that.)
It’s not a conclusion I’m happy with, but if there’s a better explanation, I haven’t heard it.
You present yourself as reluctantly forced by the evidence, but earlier you said that prior to any scientific studies you (and, you alleged, everyone else) already knew “deep down inside” that there were innate differences. Which is it?
Obviously there are genetic differences between different peoples. Black people, by and large, have darker skin. Asian people tend to have black hair.
But even granting, for the sake of argument, that there may be substantial intellectual differences between different races, it does not logically follow that this should affect policy in the slightest. Let’s say, hypothetically, that certain races are genetically predisposed to be less intelligent than others (the evidence I have seen of this has not been convincing, IMO). So what? Why does this imply that these people should be forbidden from moving into a certain region, or taking certain jobs that they and their employer willfully contract for. Their doing so does not violate anyone’s rights.
The argument that certain races are more predisposed to crime is even less convincing, but equally insignificant. Being “predisposed” to crime (however poorly I am sure that word is defined by the Prestonites of the world) is not in itself a crime. Victims of child molestation are predisposed to crime. So what? Until they commit, or threaten to commit, an actual crime, their predisposition should be completely irrelevant, from a libertarian position.
Typically, these alleged “genetic differences” arguments are used to justify policy that is not libertarian, and would still not be libertarian even if the argument were true.
Black immigrants to the u.s. from the West Indies tend to be more economically successful than native blacks, despite no significant genetic differences. How would Martinson explain that one?
Strong scientific evidence is usually cited. Cited to a source, you know? A source that’s not vdare, preferably.
Anyway, as I explained above, you can cite evidence until you’re blue in the face. The policy you’re advocating is not libertarian. No amount of evidence can change that.
Careful, if you start talking about how the Egyptians were black and related mumbo jumbo, people might wonder if you know what you are talking about.
And if you start indulging in free-association fantasies about dubious historical theories your opponents might offer, instead of confronting the hard historical facts they actually did offer, people might begin to wonder whether you’re blowing smoke.
I give strong scientific evidence. The response? White society is hurting blacks people’s self-esteem. Give me a break.
So hypotheses that behavioural differences might be based on genetic differences that science has shown to be nonexistent count as “strong scientific evidence” with you, while hypotheses that behavioural differences might be based on real and obvious environmental differences receive from you only unargued dismissal. Can you see why we might begin to suspect that your convictions are based on something other than evidence?
“Of course my house is being attacked by leprechauns! Look at the damage to my roof!” “That damage is more likely to be caused by hail, a phenomenon for which we have independent evidence, rather than leprechauns, for which we have … not so much evidence.” “I’ve given you strong physical evidence of leprechauns, and you talk about balls of ice falling from the sky? Give me a break!”
LOL — the first sentence of the vdare piece is false. Not a promising start.
I was just holding my breath waiting for this dude to blurt out Rushton
Well, it does follow from my point that everything else he says is nonsense.
I’ve found from experience–in dealing with racism–that brevity saves breath (or typing).
Except for the point about Rothbard. But that, no, I did not feel compelled to comment on. Either Rothbard’s a racist or he didn’t say it.
I hate to argue rationally with racism, but in re: the Bell Curve, I would suggest Taleb’s The Black Swan. The Bell Curve is hardly meaningful.
But I do understand your point Onion. There was absolutely nothing correct about what MM said. That takes, um, talent?
Soviet: Careful Mark. Some people might suspect you don’t know anything about the subject you’re talking about.
Racist wanker: Why do high IQ black parents tend to have children with lower IQs, whereas lower IQ white parents tend to have children with higher IQs?
Aster: You have no business playing with scientific racism when, as Soviet says, you don’t know what the fuck you are talking about. The concept of regression to the mean could only make any sense as per your application if there existed some Platonic form acausally linking all ‘black people’ and all ‘white people’ into some mystical collective entity. But there’s no such biological group as ‘race’; the relative genetic isolation of various groups of homo sapiens for an evolutionarily insignificant period of roughly 60,000 years does not grant scientific or conceptual status to so superficial a way to understand human beings that it is literally only skin deep. Do forgive me, but truth is most fluffy-headed witches who believe in the power of stones, candles, and pentagrams would ROTL laughing at this, let alone rational and scientific minds. Speaking of which, go read that politically-correct-irrationalist-enemy-of-reason-of science Stephen J. Gould’s Mismeasure of Man.
It’s in your interest. Life looks much more beautiful when you get your head out of the position illustrated by Kevin Carson’s ?Studies in Mutualist Political Economy.
Why have programs such as Head Start not produced significant results?
Your faith in bureaucratic government programs is touching.
For example the regression to the mean result is exactly what is predicted. The IQ of mixed-race people is also what is predicted.
And if leprechauns really were attacking the roof of your house, you’d expect to see some damage up there — and lo and behold, there is some! So the leprechaun theory is a good predictor too.
I’m reminded of Pat Robertson’s line:
“The key in terms of mental ability is chess. There’s never been a woman Grand Master chess player. Once you get one, then I’ll buy some of the feminism.”
At the time he said it, there already were some female chess grand masters, and since then there’ve been several more. Hence I look forward to seeing Pat Robertson’s feminist purchases. (‘Cause it’s not like people who say these things are really basing their prejudices on something other than the alleged evidence they cite, right?)
That’s human quality. Beautiful.
And the DuBois quote reminds me of Machiavelli’s Letter to Vettori.
BET listed Thandie Newton as one of their top 10 performances by an “African-American” in 2008 for Rocknrolla and Sophie Okonedo made the list for Skin.
What’s even more absurd is when it’s applied to African-looking people who are about as African as I am, e.g. Australian natives.
Roderick-
“Have you noticed how often Americans apply the term ‘African-American’ to blacks in other countries?’
LOL. Yes, ans it does start looking a little strange.
But I’m sure that Americans do this in a spirit of serving their fellow man. What greater blessing could Americans give to all Black people than to speak of them as if they’re all already treasured subjects of the Empire? Maybe there’s even a carrier waiting to pick them up from their own front door and bring them right over. Really, we insist.
Isn’t it wonderful that in our post-racist Age of Obama, all we need to do is look around the room to understand that racism is dead, the past is over, history is bunk, and anyone who might still complain about it is just a politically correct whiner unable and unwilling to make it on their own?
In the essay I linked to in my other comment (wherever that is), Ned Block points out that
“if you place a pair of Black one-egg twins in different environments “at random,” you automatically fail to randomize environments. The Black twins will bring part of their environment with them; they are both Black and will be treated as Black.”
For some reason your third link won’t work even though I tried to edit it. Let’s see if this works:
http://tinyurl.com/obtqwa
Okay, that worked.
By the way, one of those essays defends the claim that racial differences are 50% genetic and 50% environmental. The very attempt to apply cardinal values is evidence of conceptual confusion: genetic and environmental traits are related as genus to species, so it’s as meaningless as saying that a red square is 50% red and 50% square (or 37% red and 63% square, or any other absurdity one wishes).
Parentheses don’t typically work in URLs.
Racist wanker: I don’t profess to be a libertarian, at least not on this issue.
Aster: Thank you. This is certainly an improvement over a previous state of affairs.
Racism and Individualism: almost (but not quite) like oil and water.
IIRC, the consensus of those who really study the issue can be summed up thusly:
1) IQ measures *something*.
2) This something appears to be heritable.
3) The identity of this something is most likely not something that could be called native intelligence.
4) In fact, evolutionary theory would suggest that native intelligence would provide a greater evolutionary pressure in primitive societies, since intelligence failures are more likely to lead to non-reproduction there.
5) IQ correlates positively with success in our current society (though not by any means perfectly).
As such, my conclusion, even before I became a libertarian, let alone a left-lib, was that what IQ measures is best described as a “Mandarin factor” – some sort of cultural and behavioral predisposition that allows one to ingratiate herself with the powers that be, thereby increasing one’s probability of success within the current power structure.
Of course my conclusion isn’t “scientific”, but it seems quite logical to me until proven otherwise by some sort of empirical study.
And of course, you always have the problem of trying to base policies that affect real individuals on assumptions that are derived from fictional entities like “nations” or ‘races”.
As such, my conclusion, even before I became a libertarian, let alone a left-lib, was that what IQ measures is best described as a “Mandarin factor” – some sort of cultural and behavioral predisposition that allows one to ingratiate herself with the powers that be, thereby increasing one’s probability of success within the current power structure.
I’ve once taken an intelligence test, twenty years ago, and if I remember correctly it contained questions like ‘which cart is most likely to fall over’, and pattern recognition questions. I don’t see how such a test could measure a “Mandarin factor” as you call it.
Still I am not convinced an intelligence test measures much more than one’s ability to take intelligence tests though.
martin,
“Still I am not convinced an intelligence test measures much more than one’s ability to take intelligence tests though.”
Doesn’t that skill strike you as one that would correlate fairly well to bureaucratic ability? The ability to navigate the countless forms, jump through endless hoops, only just to show that you can? And in our unfree market, doesn’t that skill indicate an advantage over those that lack it? An advantage that is at least arguably not going to be present in a free market?
something appears to be heritable
And of course the word “heritable” is ambiguous, as the Ned Block piece cited above shows.
quasibill,
Doesn’t that skill strike you as one that would correlate fairly well to bureaucratic ability?
No, why should it?
The ability to navigate the countless forms
Looking at three pictures, recognising a pattern and then picking the forth picture to fit in that pattern seems to me to be a very different activity than navigate countless forms.
jump through endless hoops, only just to show that you can?
Is your point that the similarity is that both activities are performed to show that one is able to, but are otherwise pointless? That seems a very superficial similarity to me.
“Looking at three pictures, recognising a pattern and then picking the forth picture to fit in that pattern seems to me to be a very different activity than navigate countless forms”
Not really. Recognizing what forms are necessary and how to answer them involves the same sort of deductive logic.
Furthermore, it really correlates to nothing else meaningful, other than ability to take silly tests.
“Is your point that the similarity is that both activities are performed to show that one is able to, but are otherwise pointless? That seems a very superficial similarity to me.”
Perhaps superficial, but a much stronger correlation than to anything else. And if you’ve ever dealt with underprivileged students, you’d know that one of the biggest challenges for educating them is finding a way to make our skooling relevant to them in some way. They are *very* quick to ask “why is this something I should care about? What difference will it make in my life?” As you go up the socio-economic scale, this sort of rationalizing is far less necessary. And when you realize that even for someone who, say, will become a physics Ph.D., 99% of what is taught in secondary education is never actually going to be used.
So I’d say the ability to excel at an otherwise pointless test correlates quite well to a “Mandarin factor” and quite poorly to anything else that could support the correlation to success in the current economy (again, iirc, even the critics of the Bell Curve admitted that there was some correlation between IQ and success under neo-liberal economies, so if it’s not Mandarin, what is it?)
Quasibill,
An example of the kind of test I’m talking about:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:FiguralRelation.png
Recognizing what forms are necessary and how to answer them involves the same sort of deductive logic.
Why, because both can be categorized as recognizing? In that case the following claims should also be true:
Recognizing what management decision to take next involves the same sort of deductive logic.
Recognizing what line of code to write next involves the same sort of deductive logic.
Recognizing which player to pass the ball to involves the same sort of deductive logic.
In that case, it would appear that IQ-tests do really measure intelligence.
Furthermore, I don’t see how solving these kind of tests involves deductive logic.
“In that case, it would appear that IQ-tests do really measure intelligence.”
Only if one posits that those decisions bear directly on something that could be described as native intelligence and not learned knowledge.
“and/or motivation is a big factor.”
As I’ve noted, it most certainly is. As it can be in SATs and other “objective” tests. I know many people who are very quick to learn subjects that interest them who score very, very poorly on standardized tests. When one can understand why some activity is important to their goal, they generally do it better. Many underprivileged students do not see the connection between skool and their goals, let alone standardized tests that aren’t published for them. Ask a teacher about what their skools do around when they are giving standardized tests that used in NCLB evaluations. It’s really amazing.
And you haven’t provided any other reason why IQ correlates with success in our current economy. If you truly believe that IQ tests only measure ability to take IQ tests, (a position most of the experts in the field apparently dispute to one level or another) then you must have some explanation for why such a skill correlates to success in our current economy. What is it?
Quasibill,
While I think you’re certainly onto something important here, there’s one counter-argument I’d like to see you address:
Isn’t the ability to forecast how learning something or other — or getting high marks on this or that test — may turn out to be useful in the future, something that would directly correlate with intelligence (because greater intelligence would tend, ceteris paribus, to promote better forecasting…)?
If not, why not.
If so, then isn’t there something dubious about treating differentials in such forecasting as exogenous to any relationship that may exist between schooling/test-taking and intelligence?
Quick follow up:
Do you think you’re argument regarding testing holds up as well for IQ tests administered to 5 or 6 year olds? Specifically, could persons of so few years be reasonably expected to have already internalized (from their parents perhaps?) the ‘meritocratic’ imperative characterizing would-be members of the New Class/managerial elite?
Cheers,
Araglin
It’s known that people’s reasoning ability tends to be affected by whether the subject matter is familiar, even if the subject matter doesn’t affect the cogency of the reasoning — i.e., they can reason better with rules like “If there’s an A on one side of the card there’s not a 3 on the other” if the example is transposed to things like checking IDs at bars. In that case, greater familiarity with abstract academic examples is probably going to affect success at IQ tests.
That is indeed a good piece.
I get the problem with assigning numerical percentages to the respective contributions of heredity and environment (both experimental and conceptual), but can you otherwise flesh out this genus-species conceptual-confusion argument? Which is the genus and which is the species (genetic or environmental)? And, does whichever one that is the species share its genus with any other species? If so, what? Thanks.
can you otherwise flesh out this genus-species conceptual-confusion argument?
See the piece I linked to above (on the words “conceptual confusion”).
The second sentence is also false ….
I love that quote.
Not that I read Machiavelli or anything. That would suggest I have something in common with Keith Preston.
NP,
Just out of curiousity: Have any of these sorts of studies controlled for environment-in-utero (including without limitation micronutrient supplements and pre-natal exposures to the music of Mozart), which I suppose could be done by, for example, not turning the kid over the the adoptive parents after birth, but instead passing out fertizilized eggs (or whatever they’re called post-twinning?) to gestate within their respective adoptive mothers?
I’d say about that case what I said before — it seems to assume that the only environment that would matter would be the immediate home environment. So again I ask: why do my northern colleagues’ children have southern accents?
The fact that IQ disparity becomes more pronounced as children get older — precisely as the proportion of wider social-environment influence to home influence increases — would seem to reinforce my point.
Also, the studies seem to assume that a black child in a white family and a white child in a white family are in the same home environment — that parental attitudes and treatment would be exactly the same. Do they offer any evidence to support that hypothesis?