Why Racism and Conservatism Don’t Mix
I think we should have a frank conversation about race… because I always take my moral cues from second rate political hacks.
A week or so ago, National Review severed its connection with self-described “benign racist” writer John Derbyshire over a controversial column he wrote for Taki’s Magazine. Reading the commentary and comments about this event, I began to notice that the word racism is not well understood. Leftists, of course, feel that racism means “any uncomfortable facts spoken by a conservative.” Some conservatives seem to have been bullied into accepting that definition and go about on tiptoe speaking in hushed voices to avoid getting pilloried. Other conservatives, in angry rebellion against the bullying, seem to feel that whatever trash they want to talk about their fellow man is A-OK as long as some set of statistics gives them cover.
Personally, I’m a big fan of dictionaries in these situations since, for words to work properly, they have to have definitions. Thus, at the risk of great personal hernia, I have hoisted down my Webster’s Third New International Unabridged, circa 1976, which I keep around for when I want a definition untainted by political correctness or stupidity. But I repeat myself.
“Racism: The assumption that psychocultural traits and capacities are determined by biological race and that races differ decisively from one another which is usually coupled with a belief in the inherent superiority of a particular race and its right to domination over others.”
Thus, as we see, it is not racist in itself to point out, say, that black people commit an inordinate amount of the violent crime in this country. (My terrific City Journal colleague Heather Mac Donald does this regularly and, far from thinking to fire her, her editors value her highly, as do I.) Facts are facts.
What is racist, however, according to Webster, is the belief that high crime rates among blacks — or any other psychocultural outcomes — are somehow biologically determined; that you can tell who will win or lose the game of Life by the color of his skin.
I do not believe you can be a true, thinking, coherent conservative and a philosophical racist at the same time. Here’s why:
I believe that you are taking cover behind the same strawman that leftists have devised to shelter themselves.
Leftists love to find a exception to the rule and proclaim that that exception justifies their schemes. Is it impossible to find a white supremacist who has attended a TEA Party rally? Is it impossible to find a family of Mexican illegals who are a net benefit to America? Is it impossible to find a person who cannot afford therapy for cancer and to whom no one will give aid? Do those things justify “hate speech” laws, refusal to patrol the Mexican border, and Obamacare?
We have a disconnect in that “blackism” — the ghetto culture that glorifies illiteracy, violence, misogyny, and homophobia — is deliberately confused by leftists with African ancestry. In fact, African-Americans despise the term for the reasons I have given (and it won’t do you any good to be smiling if you call a West Indian “black”). Despite Herrnstein and Murray’s The Bell Curve, we still can’t do a decent job of disentangling ethnicity and culture — precisely because leftists scream “Racism! You’re a RACIST!!!” at any attempt to do so (and note that The Bell Curve ad subsequent efforts didn’t claim that a person’s intelligence is determined by genetics, but is influenced by it).
To say that the outcome of a person’s life is determined by sheer luck is Rawlsian leftism.
I think you are missing one key distinction between left and right: the left often believes the exception PROVES the rule, while the right sees the exception as just that. Of course, the examples you cite can be found, just as one can find a pro-life Dem or a liberal Repub. Neither example, however, does anything more than demonstrate how much of a one-off each is.
When confronted with race, the right usually responds with cowardice, backing down and going into defensive mode. Just once I would like to hear a conservative answer that question with something like: “when you get your head our of your ass and want have a discussion based on substance, let me know. In the meantime, just keep making a fool of yourself with name-calling.” But, that’s just me.
No, no, no! Maybe some of you can actually play the video.
A Conservative does not look at people as groups at all; he sees individuals. (That used to be called liberal, by the way, before the Leftists ruined the term.)
Black culture? Which Black culture? My wife, African American, recalls her White friends being taken aback at the strict rules she had to follow. What I am reading here among the comments is generalization, the pursursor to bigotry, a more generic term than “racism”.
As a religious Jew, I run into this all of the times. I hear we are A, B, and C – never mind that they are combining features of three different sub-groups.
Treat people as individuals. No-one voted for CAIR or the NAACP. That’s not only Coservative, that’s American.
And I wonder how well known it was in the US Deep South of the 1940s how black US troops were made to feel welcome – and also defended – by a then almost entirely white BRITISH civilian population. Many years ago I heard a program on the radio here in the UK entitled “The Chocolate Soldier from the USA”. It was about a US GI called Leroy Henry, who was convicted by a US court-martial of raping a white British woman.(Under the yerms of the Visiting Forces Act it was allowed for US military personnel to be tried nuder US jusrisdiction). He was convicted and sentenced to death – and also showed signs of having been beaten while in custody.
Enter the local British people. They know more about this woman than the US military seemed to care; they got up a petition of some 33,000 signatures against what they perceived to be gross caricature of justice. At one time, questions started to be asked in Parliament over this. General Eisenhower promptly refused to confirm findings and sentence, and Mr Henry was freed.
It would have been a foolhardy GI who ever dared insult a Gurkha in British hearing – those hill fighters from Nepal were, and still are, loved by the British people.
I fear that the incubus of Madison Grant’s teaching as set out in “The Passing of the Great Race” and the culture of negro subjugation still runs as a subsurface current in the minds of many white people, though not as many as before. Also, the damage that must have done to many a black American’s expectations will take a long time to repair.
Myself? I am a native-born, WHITE Englishman; I am often the only white face in church; my immediate neighbours are Iranian, Ghanaian, and….I cannot pin down his ethnic label.
I know exactly what you mean by “blackism”: GHETTO CULTURE and its toxic norms, no matter who practices them. It has, perhaps regrettably, become associated with blackness because in a very visible way many urban blacks GLORIFY this shoddy lifestyle instead of aspiring their way out of it!
There used to be a word for this [anti-]cultural attitude — the now reviled “N-word” — and a saying to go with it that still hold true today: “N-words come in every color.”
• Andrew Klavan – I’ve been thinking about the definition of racism since you gave it to me, and I guess I disagree with you on the definition. Here are three other definitions from Dictionary.com:
1. a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one’s own race is superior and has the right to rule others.
2. a policy, system of government, etc., based upon or fostering such a doctrine; discrimination.
3. hatred or intolerance of another race or other races.
Definition 1 inclines towards Webster’s definition, although it includes the following words I would omit: ” … usually involving the idea that one’s own race is superior and has the right to rule others.” The latter I would classify as racism, as I would definitions 2 and 3.
It is quite one thing to recognize empirical reality (blacks do have lower IQs, mostly due to biology but also partly to culture) and they do have high crime rates (mostly due to culture), etc. It is quite another thing to discriminate against blacks by legal means because they are black. Every American should be treated equally and judged on his or her behavior and performance, but not on the basis of skin color or ethnic origin.
There is no empirical evidence that the lower IQs of blacks is linked to genetics.
There is some evidence that lower IQ is linked to heritability. But culture, not just biology, “runs in the family.”
The human genome has now been sequenced. AFAIK, no link has been found between the genes that code for melanin in the skin and genes that code for cognitive development.
It’s been quite a while since I read Bell Curve, but I do remember that one of the problems with the authors’ premise was that they ignored “prenatal environment”; when they looked at racial differences in intelligence, they looked at African-Americans adopted by whites and pointed out that those children did more poorly in school than one would have expected. But they didn’t look at why the children were given up for adoption. I would expect that those children are more likely to have been exposed to drugs, alcohol, nicotine, poor diet, lead, etc than children who were allowed to remain with birth mothers. It’s not surprising that academics would be reluctant to talk about prenatal children of course; if they did, they’d have had the usual suspects screeching about “blobs of tissue”.
I’m more interested in this than most people, I guess, since my children are part Filipino, and among my nieces and nephews are all-white children, part African-American children, part Native American children, and part Thai. The children who do well are from intact families, whatever the background. The one who is doing most poorly was raised by her alcoholic, lesbian mother, and the one whose parents divorced while he was still at home is struggling too (his older siblings were already out of the house).
Or maybe the problem is that Hernstein was a psychologist and Murray is a political scientist, neither of which disciplines actually deal directly with genetics, so both were functioning as secondary data analysts, yet another discipline of course, with an innate political intent via observer bias.
Social scientists have a long tradition of looking for data to prove their beliefs rather than using data to form coherent theories.
A severe skepticism regarding any such claims is not merely merited, but mandatory until significant supporting evidence appears.
AFAIK, no link has been found between the genes that code for melanin in the skin and genes that code for cognitive development.
We don’t know which genes affect cognitive development, so it would be difficult to find any links between them and other genes.
I was referring to genes like these:
http://omim.org/entry/610295
http://omim.org/entry/603783
On the chromosome maps, notice what other genes are located closest to these genes. Those genes are more likely to travel together with these genes in a mutation.
“(blacks do have lower IQs, mostly due to biology but also partly to culture)”
Biology? Bunk.
Culture? True!
There is a term used for a Black Child who applies himself and attempts to express his intelligence and make his way in this world.
The term is “Acting White!”
The purpose of this term is to apply Peer Pressure Not to improve one’s self and Not to Succeed in the current society.
That’s not biological, it is a conscious Choice.
Multiculturalism was a liberal bandaid devised to co-opt troublesome minorities. Progressives started it in the 19-teens and reasserted it after the mid-60s urban riots. I wrote about undoing it here: http://clarespark.com/2011/02/11/undoing-multiculturalism/. My whole website is devoted to the ramifications of faux antiracism in our culture and political life. What is most needed is a re-visioning of our entire education system, but the teachers unions and the Democratic Party stand in our way.
Here is an example of how the conception of racism evolved, as managed by “anti-imperialists” who were also anti-urban, anti-market, antisemitic, anti-science, and other forms of anticapitalism: http://clarespark.com/2010/04/08/racism-modernity-modernism/. It has been a popular little essay.
jd – You miss my point entirely as do others focusing in on the IQ issue. I think IQ is genetically determined and I think the lower IQs in the black population is due to genetics. That, though, is a scientific hypothesis, and ultimately should be testable, and I willing to entertain the possibility that I am wrong. (I frankly wouldn’t mind being wrong.) But say I’m not what. What implications would there be? Politically and legally I think none. That is because every American must be treated equally irrespective of race, creed, color, ethnic origin, religion, etc., and every American must be allowed to excel and whatever he/she can do. If there are any implications at all, they would be of an academic nature being of interest to sociologists, economists and genetic scientists.
But let’s come back to the issue of Mr. Klavan’s column. It is how to define racism. An important point I have been trying to make is that in my view it is not racism (as I understand it) to state facts, or apparent facts, about groups, and to argue that those facts exist because of genetic differences. It would be racist to use those facts for legally and politically discriminating for or against particular groups.
Jack, you apparently did not read Klavan’s article. He specifically states he dug out his old 1976 “Websters New International Unabridged” dictionary to avoid the liberal definitions that you found at “Dictionary.com.”
There is where you have lost your objectivity, sir.
Catherine – I did read Mr. Klavan’s article. It is an expansion of comment he made to one of my comments in an earlier article of his (on the firing of John Derbyshire from National Review). In his comment he used the Webster definition of racism (though he didn’t cite the dictionary at the time). I thought about how he defined racism, and it simply did not comport with my understanding of racism. My understanding fits definitions 2 and 3 of Dictionary.com (and for the life of me, I don’t understand why those are Leftists definitions). To me, it is not racists to recognize that differences do exist between humans when grouped in particular way, and that such differences derive in part from genes and in part from culture. What I would deem racist, though, is to use a finding of such differences to treat individuals of one group differently than individuals of other groups (and thereby treat the group differently).
Read the rest of my comments, and you will see me saying the same thing over and over again. Read also Francis W. Porretto’s comments @15; he essentially says the same thing but in different words.
Jack,
So, you’re a Lefty and you’re ‘sticking to your fallacious guns;’ I get it. Believe what you want, but open your eyes to the fact that your definition source for the word “racism” is rather self-serving to your racist agenda.
By arguing with Klavan over his better definitioin source, you are making the claim that he is wrong. His source is ‘better’ because it is unbiased.
The idea you have that people are different from each other based upon their physical attributes is fallacious. God created each and every one of us humans. Our natures—ALL of our natures—are inherently selfish and evil. The mark of good character is one’s own struggle to deny their own natural desires for the sake of being loving and considerate to others WITHOUT consideration for any of their attributes, physical or otherwise.
I don’t know how anyone can run around talking about empirical data when they provide no links to said empirical data. Everything that racists complain about comes from a cultural standpoint. And that’s sociological, not biological. With that thinking we may as well say that all white men are serial killers because a disproportionate number of serial killers are white.
It is not straw man to say that all the arguments made by racists are moot because they argue biology versus sociology. It’s a fact. Why? Because there aren’t different classifications of humans by biology. Homo Sapien is all there is. Our differences come from culture or society.
Because if you’re saying it’s biological, then there is no way for a person to overcome biology. There is no self determination as Klavan is SANELY arguing. And that is the very antithesis of what conservatives are always talking about. If you say black people can’t help themselves because they are biologically wired to be dumber and more violent…then you agree with folks from the far left.
All I know is, thinking blacks are nothing more than dumb animals…is part of the reason this country is STILL dealing with it’s sordid past. It was that thinking that said it was okay to enslave one group to do another’s because that group was LESS than.
And no, you aren’t just being truthful…you’re just selling the lie in a different package based on nothing scientific but based solely on the subjective.
Miss Malevolent: I did not cite sources because they are pretty well known. The violence in the black community is from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports, and my statement on IQ is based on Herrnstein & Murray’s The Bell Curve.
Miss Malevolent: You miss several important points on this issue. One is that there is a bell curve, and a priori we do not know where anyone of any color or ethnic origin is on the curve. Hence, the important point I made at the end of my comment: “Every American should be treated equally and judged on his or her behavior and performance, but not on the basis of skin color or ethnic origin.”
Parenthetically, I also made the point that I think the violence we observe in the black community is primarily due to culture. Charles Murray in his last book, Coming Part, observes the same kind of dysfunction is now occurring in the lower income levels of the white community. One of the reasons he thinks that has happened is the loss of strong affiliation with religion (Christianity) to keep people on the straight and narrow. I think that if there were a real religious revival in the black community we might see a lessening of the dysfunction that exists today.
Coming back to the bell curve, what it tells us is that we should expect that blacks will sort out to different occupations than whites, but that there will be white in occupations where blacks predominate and there will blacks in occupations where whites predominate. It would be racist, though, to treat, or consider blacks to be ‘dumb animals.’
I also think that we are “ … STILL dealing with it’s [sic] sordid past” because black hate mongers like Sharpton, Jackson, Wright and Farrakhan stoke the embers of hate in our society. Without doing so, they might have to do some real work. The consequence of such people is that they have spawned a whole grievance industry that has only biased blacks against whites.
Finally, we, as society, are also partly to blame, but not for the reasons you think. It is because we have continued the practice of affirmative action which treats blacks differently by favoring them over any other group. According to one of the definitions I cited from Dictionary.com, that is racism. As someone before has said: The best way to end racism is to end racism, and that would mean ending affirmative action.
You said that your statement on IQ (that is, that “blacks do have lower IQs, mostly due to biology,” if I understood you correctly) is based on the book, “The Bell Curve.”
I decided not to read The Bell Curve because I had previously read Dr. Thomas Sowell’s writings on the subject. Sowell had pointed out, using empirical data, how the IQ’s of large, homogenous populations had significantly changed over short periods of time. Changes far, far too large to be accounted for by genetic changes.
Sowell covers this briefly here, in a review of The Bell Curve: http://holtz.org/Library/Social%20Science/Sociology/Bell%20Curve/Bell%20Curve%20by%20Sowell.htm
The last I knew, Murray and Sowell considered each other friends and had praise for each other’s work. I’ll assume that hasn’t changed. Furthermore, Sowell defended Murray and his book. But there was a disagreement on this one subject. I haven’t read Murray’s response to Sowell. I don’t know how it turned out.
Dikehopper – You are entirely correct about IQ drifting up over time. In other words, if the current generation took IQ tests of the previous generation, the mean of the test would exceed 100. (IQ is set so the mean is 100.) That was pointed out by Herrnstein & Murray in the Bell Curve. They also pointed out that everyone’s IQ has drifted up, so that when the mean is reset to 100 then we get a standard result of some groups having lower IQs than other groups. Just for the record, Herrnstein & Murray also pointed out that IQ appears to be 60-80% inherited and 20-40% culture. That suggests, if black culture were not so dysfunctional, we might see an increase in black IQs.
Finally, Thomas Sowell himself in one his books in pointing out the problem with affirmative action said that black scores on SATs are quite low, and the SATs are much like IQ tests. I don’t quite remember the numbers, but when he wrote the book, he said there was something like 1500 black in the entire country that scored 1600 or better. I do not recall whether he thought those numbers could be improved. (As for the problem with affirmative action, it is that when upper tier colleges try to recruit blacks for affirmative action, they quickly find they exhaust the population of better performing blacks, and then they have to start going further down in the pool of applicants. They then find they’re picking students who can’t compete. Those students will only get frustrated and drop out.)
Dikehopper – I should have read the Sowell review before I replied to you. My apologies on that. One thing he points out, which I think is fairly important, is the performance of black females relative to black males, something I have observed as well (anecdotally). Without knowing for sure why that is so, I would speculate that it may be reflection of the greater dysfunctionality of black male culture relative to black female culture. If the black males could become less dysfunctional, their tests scores might indeed improve.
One thing I would reply back to Sowell regarding the Flynn effect is that for whatever reason it exists. Hence populations in general remain in same relative position. Consequently, on average, populations will continue to sort out to various occupations based on relative IQs, not absolute IQs.
And differences in I.Q. have been noted since WW I at least
One claim that I’ve heard several times over the years is that IQ tests are culturally biased in a way that causes lower scores among blacks. I don’t recall specific instances of questions that are clearly biased but it seems possible that this may indeed occur.
Allow me a brief sidetrack to illustrate why. I’ve just started watching Season 1 of Downton Abbey. This program features a wealthy British Lord Grantham and his family who live in a palatial home with a substantial retinue of servants. The story is set in 1912. Lord Grantham’s two immediate heirs have died in the sinking of the Titanic and he has determined that the next in line is his third cousin, a successful lawyer named Crawley. He invites Crawley and Crawley’s mother to dinner as his splendid home to meet the rest of the family for the first time. Everyone is dressed in formal attire. While Crawley is polite and intelligent, he is clearly out of his element. For example, he is unaware of the correct way to speak to servants and of addressing the Granthams. Grantham wants to acquaint Crawley with the great estate that he will inherit and is slightly horrified when he discovers that Crawley means to keep his job as a lawyer. Crawley assures him that he will find the time to learn about the estate and the responsibilities he will have when it becomes his. Crawley also points out that he will have plenty of time on the weekends. Lord Grantham’s mother makes it clear that she is unfamiliar with even the term “weekend”; she is a Great Lady who has never worked in her life so the concept of a weekend is foreign to her.
Clearly, in this story at least, the middle class and the upper class have great differences in their outlooks and expectations and even use words that are unfamiliar to the other. With examples like this in mind, it seems plausible to imagine that blacks may do more poorly on IQ tests because of similar differences between the people creating the test questions and those taking the tests who may belong to very different social strata. If that’s true, the tests may be severely skewed against blacks in a way the inappropriately diminishes their scores.
Has that factor, the inbuilt cultural biases of the questions, been eliminated from IQ tests at this point? If so, perhaps we need a new generation of IQ tests so that we can get more reliable results. We might find that the differences between “races” becomes negligible – or greater, I suppose – than existing results would indicate. But at least we’d have presumably more accurate results.
Sparky – Herrnstein & Murray attribute some 20-40% of intelligence to culture (nurture). Tom Sowell (in the link so kindly provided by Dikehopper) makes the following interesting point: “Whatever innate potential various groups may have, what they actually do will be done within some particular culture. That intractable reality cannot be circumvented by devising “culture-free” tests, for such tests would also be purpose-free in a world where there is no culture-free society.” Now lets combine Herrnstein & Murray’s statement with Sowell’s statement: Together they suggest that it is incumbent on those in an American culture who want to succeed in that culture to become part of it and to know it, not to stand apart from it.
Sparky – Having said that, I frankly do not think it is important what the average IQ of a particular group is. As I pointed out to Ms. Malevolent, there is a bell curve and a particular individual can be anywhere along the bell curve. Hence, we need to treat individuals for what they are and how they perform, and not because they are of a particular color or ethnic origin. On the other hand, we should expect a particular group’s IQ to be indicative of the the occupations in which its members will predominate, although (because of the bell curve) we should expect to find all groups spread across all occupations, albeit, unequally.
I frankly do not think it is important what the average IQ of a particular group is.
Suppose we have two groups of potential immigrants. Group A has an average IQ of 105, while group B has an average IQ of 85.
Is it really your contention that it is not important which group comes to this country?
You may say “Groups do not come to America, individuals do”. In which case you need to familiarize yourself with American immigration law. (And American immigration policy, which is at least as important as law)
““Whatever innate potential various groups may have, what they actually do will be done within some particular culture. That intractable reality cannot be circumvented by devising “culture-free” tests, for such tests would also be purpose-free in a world where there is no culture-free society.”
That’s an interesting statement and true, as far as it goes. But it’s not quite relevant to my point.
I agree that any actions that anyone takes are going to be based on the culture they are in. That just makes sense. It’s virtually impossible to eliminate culture from the things we do. But my point was that if the questions on the IQ test are culturally biased, they WILL tend to skew the results. And that’s just unfair if the questionss are indeed biased.
Another anecdote. I remember a documentary about gang violence in a black inner-city housing project. The interviewers, who were apparently white, asked a little black girl living in that project about some gunshots from the previous night and asked if she’d heard the shots, which purportedly came from a 9 mm pistol. I was slightly shocked when the girl snorted and said “That was never no nine!” In her world, gun knowledge was apparently pretty advanced; she had apparently heard the shooting and knew full well that it was some other caliber of weapon. Now, if identifying guns by sound was on an IQ test, we might expect blacks from rough neighborhoods to do quite well if this little girl is any indication. White children the same age from the suburbs might not to nearly as well, especially if they grew up in liberal households that disdained guns.
We can imagine inverting this sort of test in a way that blacks would be at a disadvantage. Let’s say the question was about where a salad fork should go in a place setting on the dinner table. Here, we might find that a white child – or a child of any color who grew up in a well-to-do neighborhood – might do considerably better than a child from a rough neighbourhood. The suburban kid is probably eating at a dinner table while the inner city kid is perhaps more likely to be eating from a tray while watching TV, a setting where salad forks are not as likely. If an IQ test had enough questions like this, I would expect to see the test scores of people from these poor neighborhoods – who are probably still predominantly black – to do less well than suburban kids.
That just doesn’t seem quite fair to me. Kids don’t choose to grow up in nice neighborhoods or bad ones; their parents decide that, usually based on what they can afford. A kid who doesn’t know where to place a salad fork isn’t stupid because he doesn’t know that but it seems like he could be labelled as such anyway if something like that factors into an IQ test.
I need to stress that I’m concocting these examples out of thin air. They may bear no relation at all to what is on a real IQ test. But questions DO have implicit biases in many cases and it doesn’t seem right to me for an IQ test to have those kinds of biases in them. If I was in charge, I would examine the questions used very carefully and make them as unbiased as humanly possible, then see whether there was indeed any difference between blacks, white, asians and other groups. But until you’ve ensured the questions are unbiased, I don’t see how you can take the results of those tests very seriously.
if the questions on the IQ test are culturally biased, they WILL tend to skew the results. And that’s just unfair if the questionss are indeed biased.
You spend a lot of time and effort beating up on a hypothetical.
If IQ tests are culturally biased, they must be culturally biased towards Jews and Japanese!
SteveM – I can’t link to your comment because the thread has run out, so I’m linking to my comment. Your supposition is correct about how I would answer your hypothetical. I would not have immigration status based on groups but on the qualifications of the individual immigrant. Don’t hold me accountable for the U.S.’s foolish immigration laws that may allow some below average member of a smart group and keep out some smart member of a below average group.
Sparky – same comment as to SteveM about linking to my earlier comment.
You are right about kids growing up in rough neighborhoods, but black kids have to learn about the majority culture if they want to succeed. Knowing whether a gun is a 45 or a 9 is not going to get someone ahead in America (although it might in the rough neigborhood). A problem in black society that I have pointed to in some of my comments here is its dysfunctionality. After having read Charles Murray’s Coming Apart (which examines the same kind of emerging dysfunctionality in the lower income clase of white society) I think a good part of the reason is the unmooring of black society from Christianity. (I know atheists would not agree, but I think religion keeps people on the straight and narrow; note, I am Jewish.) A return to religion and its strictures (a good Christian ethic) would lead to an enourmous improvement in how black society functions and how its members would function in the wider American society.
I would not have immigration status based on groups but on the qualifications of the individual immigrant.
By all means, let’s give an IQ test to prospective immigrants.
Of course if all people are equal and interchangeable then it is meaningless to talk about the “qualifications of the individual immigrant”. Because every individual is as good as any other individual, right?
Jack,
“Hence, we need to treat individuals for what they are and how they perform, and not because they are of a particular color or ethnic origin.”
You make an awful lot of assumptions about people based on their particular “group” definition. If you had Love in your heart (from the Source of Love), then you wouldn’t be using your EYES, nor your EARS, to make such assumptions; as the data collected by our human senses are filtered through our evil human natures. So, any result you might gain from LOOKING at, or LISTENING to, people is going to be skewed by your own fallacious and hateful viewpoint.
So, it is YOUR own hate for those who seem physically ‘different’ from you that makes them APPEAR to be ‘less’ than you. It’s your filter, NOT their reality.
Sparky – Having said that, I frankly do not think it is important what the average IQ of a particular group is. As I pointed out to Ms. Malevolent, there is a bell curve and a particular individual can be anywhere along the bell curve. Hence, we need to treat individuals for what they are and how they perform, and not because they are of a particular color or ethnic origin. On the other hand, we should expect a particular group’s IQ to be indicative of the the occupations in which its members will predominate, although (because of the bell curve) we should expect to find all groups spread across all occupations, albeit, unequally.
I must disagree (slightly) with the unimportance of the average IQ point. As long as we are using such standards as “disparate impact” and “community makeup” to test for discrimination against (or for) any group, the average IQ matters a great deal as if it is not the same among all groups, those tests will give false positives for discrimination resulting in either real discrimination (affirmative action), or vast expenses to the organization failing the test to prove that they are not discriminating.
I have become addicted to Downton Abbey and choose to overlook many of its inconsistentlies. At first I thought Mr. Crowley would bring “fresh blood” to that aristocratic family but his mother has turned out to be an unroyal pain in the neck and Crowley himself is sort of a wimp. I find myself admiring the Dowager Duchess in her anti-political correctness fight to maintain standards. She may be a snob but she is a worthy snob. Most of the females including Mom, who gave up all her money to her husband with nary a coniption, would benefit from fom some hard tinme in the kitchen
Like the Dowager, I sit back and watch all the racial brouhaha and refer to my own experiences. What prejudice I have I learned myself as I taught racially mixed classes in suburban Washington,DC. I could see the smoke emanating from that city when many inhabitants burned parts of it following M.L. King’s assasination. I experienced accucations of prejudice for such things as placing a black child’s artwork in the least noticible spot because it was so lousy….but I also spent part of my lunch time each day reteaching the math lesson to the same kid. I wondered how he ever got into MIT but kept my mouth shut. I was brought up in the Northeast where I never experienced any prejudice. I am pretty sure all the woes of blackness are not due to mistreatment by whites.
Agreed!
I am NOT trying to make excuses for anyone. People still ought to take responsibility for their actions and choices, regardless of their skin color.
All I’m saying is that _if_ IQ tests are culturally biased – and I have no idea if they really are – those biases should be eliminated as far as humanly possible. Then, let’s measure people again and see if the tendencies claimed by The Bell Curve hold up. We might then find that all the differences between “races” are negligible. Or not. But let’s start with the best possible data before we start prescribing changes that may be inappropriate once we see what IQs are in unbiased tests.
You didn’t cite sources because there are no credible sources that say that blacks are biologically different than whites. Crime statistics don’t make that leap…as for the bell curve that once again can be explained away by culture and sociology.
The only biological “evidence” is probably the subjective assumptions by James Watson, and even he said he based his opinion on how is black employee(s) didn’t work as hard. Just because he was the “father” (ignoring the mother he more than likely stole the research from) of DNA sequencing, doesn’t mean he didn’t let his sociological ideals cloud his judgement and data.
Like I said, show me credible scientific data, not crime statistics and opinions, and then I’ll accept you using the word, empirical…otherwise…you’re using it wrong.
Miss Malevolent – You’re right – the only source I cited was the Bell Curve. Herrnstein & Murray’s finding in the Bell Curve is based on studies of identical twins raised apart and of adopted children (if I remember correctly). The identical twins raised apart tended to be more like each other while the adopted children tended to be more like their biological parents. From those observations, it stands to reason that genes play a role in such outcomes. It also stands to reason that if genes play a role in physical characteristics of groups then they play a role in the mental characteristics of groups as well.
These, of course, are scientific hypotheses that in time may be validated or invalidated. Whatever the case, I do not think it is racist to say that the differences observed between groups may be due to genes, which is the Webster definition of racist. I do think it is racist to use findings of genetic differences as a way of legally favoring or disfavoring one group over another.
A couple of points.
I notice you referred to identical twins raised apart; exactly how far “apart” were they raised. In short did one get adopted by a blur collar family, that lived in that lived in trailer parks, where the child attended public school. While the other was adopted by an upper middle class, professional family, who lived in a house in the burbs, where the child attended private school? Or by adopted, and raised apart are we simply talking about being raised in exactly the same socio-economic strata in different physical locations.
The other thing is why do people keep referring to the “black community”, as if any such thing existed. For some reason people, act as if blacks form some monolithic group; in reality we are often as diverse as any any other group. The only thing we have in common – and often not even that – is pigmentation. And when we talk about crime rates – are we speaking of the rates for similar socio-economic classes, or are we simply lumping in all whites and all blacks.
Incidentally, the fact that – with the exception of most native born blacks – most ethnic groups are self selected for the more ambitious, and harder working members of their former communities. IOW when you compare American blacks to America whites, are you allowing for the “creaming” effect of voluntary immigration? When blacks were carried off into slavery, they tended to take a cross section of the entire community as opposed to the “best and the brightest”.
We think of them as dumb animals because they ACT like dumb animals. It’s the culture they have cultivated themselves NOT what their past dictated for them. Somewhere along the line it became “cool” to be a violent thug victimizing your own community while blaming “whitey.”
Every group on this planet has past grievances and has somehow gotten past it – except these people. And it’s cultural, not race. Black people from Africa come here all the time and do just fine as happy contributing members of society, so don’t give me this “it’s whitey’s fault” mentality.
These people are to blame for their own situation and I’m not taking it anymore. Shoot, I’m not even going to blame liberals anymore because they EMBRACED it. On their own head be it.
“Somewhere along the line it became “cool” to be a violent thug victimizing your own community while blaming “whitey.”
From what I can tell, it all started about the time large masses of them got shuttled into gov’t housing & figured out that they could rake in more free $$ with each tricycle motor they downloaded. I recall, at the age of 10 or so, hearing my parents complaining about this unfortunate arrangement, as news stories emerged on a regular basis about how they tore up their surroundings & were having kids out of wedlock like nobody’s business. This is what happens, they would say, when people don’t have to earn their keep. May LBJ et al rot in hell for all of eternity for what they did to the black community with his “great society” policies. Thanks to stinking liberals being allowed to be in charge, the black community may never be the same.
As I said at the end of my piece I’m not going to blame liberals anymore for their lot in life. They embraced it. They could have taken a step back and said: Well, this isn’t right. We’re getting nowhere with this. But they didn’t and if anything they’ve gotten even more debased over the years. Rock bottom is this whole rap/thug culture they’ve embraced. The smart ones left the cities and made their way in the burbs and country. Those are our friends and neighbors and they share our values.
Lolly, I disagree about not blaming the liberals aka marxists/progs. I believe it is precisely the white progs/marxist who have manufactured the culture of black decay. White progs in the lsm, colleges, entertainment and politicians are all to blame for the degredation of blacks in America. And on top of it, they have enslaved blacks by making them dependent upon their largesse.
From the lack of any judgement on their aberrant behavior, to looking the other way regarding their violence, to excusing their ignorance, to defending their loss of family values, to rationalizing their drug use, and embracing and pushing the noise they listen to at 150dbs, it is all due to white progs.
Do you really believe that without the cover of the lsm and Dems that Capt. Zulu (farrakhan), Sharpton, JJ and the other race baitors would get any traction, be able to extort money and be able to turn America on its head over race. Do you believe that the dim-wits blacks elect to Congress actually speak, vote and lobby on their own without white progs telling them what to say, think and do? Not a chance. To the white progs, blacks are their victims due jure and muscle. That’s all.
“Somewhere along the line it became “cool” to be a violent thug victimizing your own community while blaming “whitey.”
Again. Why do people keep taking the actions of a small sub group of blacks and keep extrapolating them to all blacks. I’m black. I live out here in my house on Long Island. My neighbors are black and Hispanic. I have a college education. I don’t listen to rap music. And the only thing I blame “whitey” for is a tendency to lump all blacks together as inner city thugs.
Oh, hogwash. There are obvious biological differences between the races. Skin color is one. Eye shape is another. Some are less obvious, but no less real and biological. Some can be measured very directly – skin texture is one of these. Some must be measured statistically. Bone thickness is in this category. And when was the last time you saw some blue-eyed blond-haired fair-skinned guy with an AFRO that wasn’t chemically induced?
Pretending that these objective biological differences don’t exist helps nobody. Worse than that, it’s harmful. Because it is so obviously NOT TRUE, all it does it get in the way of honest discussion.
The question that must be addressed is, do these REAL biological differences correlate to biological differences in brain structure that would translate to differences in intelligence, creativity, laziness, etc., or are they minor variations on a common theme of humanity?
We cannot possibly deal with the underlying assumptions of racists if we pretend that black, white, yellow, and red are all exactly the same, when they obviously are NOT.
I’m sick and tired of people talking about physical differences, in the color of skin, texture of hair and LEAPING to say that means people are wired differently.
Ever look at a leopard? Do all leopards look alike? Don’t some leopards have different spots? Do we then say because leopards have different patterns of spots that they are biologically different? No we don’t. Homo Sapien is all there is folks, sorry if you can’t deal with that.
If you want to argue cultural failings…fine…but if you want to argue biology, you’re out there on the fringe and you’re not being more honest…you’re just being woefully ignorant. There is NOTHING that supports your theories, by any credible biologist out there.
Miss Malevolent: Try again; the leopard is a bad example. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopard
You missed the point entirely. Let me try to help you:
If you pretend that differences don’t exist, nobody will listen to you at all, nor should they, because you are obviously NOT dealing with reality.
If you acknowledge that differences exist, you can THEN have a conversation about whether or not those differences extend to qualities like intelligence, etc. If you can have that conversation, you may be able to arrive at the truth, and along with that, educate people as to the truth.
Of course, if all you want to do is preach to the choir and bolster your deluded sense of moral superiority, it’s probably just fine to just keep pretending that differences do not exist.
You won’t be helping anybody, but you’ll feed good about yourself.
AMEN, Miss Malevolent!
You are so right! The physical markings of every animal–including us human ones!–are different (big cat zoologists even say that a tiger’s stripes are as unique as fingerprints, and can be used to differentiate between any two tigers). However, under all that exterior stuff, our bodies are so incredibly identical that the various medical fields only need to discect one sample cadaver!
In reality, we need only use our hearts to see what is in the heart of any man or woman. But, first, we must ask the Source of Love (God!) to cleans our own hearts of anything that displeases Him. Once we’ve done that, we can then make the effort to deny, or subvert, our own evil natures in the effort NOT to look upon others and see what seems DIFFERENT, but rather to look upon all others with Love and compassion; treating them as we would want them to treat US! With Love, kindness, and RESPECT!
Homo Sapien is all there is. Our differences come from culture or society.
Taken literally, that is patently untrue. Many differences have nothing to do with culture or society.
In any case cultures and societies are also the creations of groups of people. And cultures and societies vary widely. The culture and society of England is not that of Namibia, for instance. Why are they do different if the people in the two places are the same?
Hi Miss Malevolent I agree with your stand that we should look at the numbers but from a realistic standpoint, that won’t work because Political Correctness has discouraged and even censored open inquiry into this topic. Our society values, possibly over-values, intelligence and those who are politically correct won’t allow, or at least vehemently resist the publication of statistics that might be hurtful to some segment of society.
It is singular that these same individuals want evolution taught in school but they want to deny that evolution affects intelligence when any understanding of that process indicates it must do so. Evolution controls genetics and genetics controls intellectual capacity. As mammals, we are ill adapted for survival, our dentition is almost useless in defense or offense, our eyesight, our hearing, our strength, our speed etc. are far below most other mammals, and our nails are worthless in defending against predators. Only our intelligence gives us the advantage in evolution and human paleontological evidence is a continuing record of increasing intelligence.
Below is a link to a debate that took place in 1989 between David Suzuki and Jean Philip Rushton on this topic. When the debate took place, Rushton had just finished a multi-year study on racial differences. One of the outcomes of the study was the evidence that when intelligence was considered, the Asians scored the highest on IQ tests, followed by Whites, followed by Blacks. The furor over what he found was incredible and there was an immediate reaction to discredit Rushton.
Note the methodology of David Suzuki’s attack. Keep in mind that Suzuki is one of Canada’s most respected scientists (geneticist) and one of Canada’s most respected journalists and television personalities.
He doesn’t argue truth, science, fact etc. etc. He actually argues for the prohibition of such studies. As he states “I do not think we should dignify this man and his ideas in public debate.” He goes on to make it clear that such science should be removed from academic inquiry. One of the most revealing of his assertions was “his IDEAS don’t qualify as science.” Notice what Suzuki says, it is the idea that is not science. He doesn’t say the methodology used is not science. Science is the act of using a methodology to come to a truth (idea). So Suzuki had objections because he thought the idea was repugnant.
Up to that time I always believed such a contention would only be heard in the Soviet Union. Silly me. Suzuki may as well have said that Politically Incorrect ideas have no place in science. Obviously, Suzuki didn’t know that the largest portion of scientific inquiry and advancement throughout history came by disproving the ‘politically correct’ ideas of their time.
If you watch the whole debate you will hear Suzuki calling for Rushton’s dismissal ["There will always be Rushtons and we must root them out and not hide behind academic freedom".] This again sounds like Communist ideology instead of science. As far as I’m concerned, things have not improved in getting to the truth of this matter, and the leftist discourse on this topic, to which Suzuki subscribes, still censors scientific inquiry.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9FGHtfnYWY
Thank you.
My dad also gave me the talk. And even as a budding racist myself I saw the flaws in going from the general – lots of violent dumb sob’s are black, to making a blanket assumption in my own life.
So fine I said. Everyone knows what a lurking thug looks like we don’t need the racist ‘see look they are like that’ to know trouble when we see it.
Racism is the oppoiste of respect for the individual. If every member of your family is an inbred psycho and you are not, then in my America you get a chance. And if your family got a bum rap all the better.
I spent a long career in the military surrounded by exceptional people of all races. I guess if blacks were biologically inferior there would never have been a Gen. Benjamin O. Davis, for one.
The one thing with which I disagree, and will ALWAYS disagree, is the Kerner Commission Report which said that ALL the ills of the black community are the fault of white racism. It’s been fifty years since Otto wrote that little gem. Time for the black community to start taking a little responsibility of its own.
My creator guy is called “Lefty.” And not because he’s left-handed…
I think it’s difficult to apply the right labels in our current situation. Going back to Webster’s, the three relevant definitions of “conservative” are:
3a : tending or disposed to maintain existing views, conditions, or institutions : traditional
b : marked by moderation or caution
c : marked by or relating to traditional norms of taste, elegance, style, or manners
Liberals use the first definitions to damn conservatives. Since we are the ones who are “disposed to maintain existing views, conditions, or institutions,” conservatives must want to maintain all the BAD things that liberals are against – racism, sexism, income inequality, the evils of capitalism, war, gun violence, heteronormativity, etc.
Liberals are simply pissed off about the second definition. Conservatives are fine with change – we just don’t trust vast overhauls of existing systems, the sweeping away overnight of traditions and ways of doing things that have evolved over many years. Unsuccessful things don’t evolve – they are cast aside. What survives, works. It may have undesirable side effects, but those are not necessarily reasons for abandoning what works. Liberals don’t have the patience to understand this. They see a “problem,” they want to “solve” it – damn the consequences.
I think the third definition is almost obsolete. There are no more “traditional norms of taste, elegance, style, or manners” for us to cling to. Liberals wiped most of them out in the 60s and 70s. They are trying to replace them with the rules of PC, with limited success. It’s all up in the air…
Sorry about the weird formatting in my previous comment. I copied the definitions from Websters website. Didn’t see any markup but I guess there was some.
I have been bitten by that too. One way to avoid it is to paste everything into Notepad before pasting into the next website or forum. You’ll see all the formatting, and you’ll be able to edit it out.
OR, if there’s a ton of formatting, paste it into Word, then save as TEXT. You’ll get a clean version with no formatting.
This has been a public service announcement.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled discussion.
Bugs, I’m concerned about which publication of Webster’s Dictionary you used for this ‘definition.’
My Webster’s New World Dictionary, published in July 2003, says of “Conservative,” “1) Tending to conserve; 2) Tending to conserve established institutions, etc., opposed to change; 3) Moderate, cautious.”
So, every dictionary has a different slant–even those from the same source, but different year of publication.
However, I refuse to accept a human being’s definition, as every human’s nature is inherently evil; and everything is filtered through that individual’s errant worldview.
My ‘worldview’ is from the Source of Love (God); and, because of His Word and His Son, I strive to deny my own evil nature and filter what I ‘see’ through God’s Eyes. I know that God created every one of us, and gave each of us everything we need to succeed; so, every ‘difference’ is an intentional gift from God (even those who are born with what humans call “deformities”).
God is not a man, that He can lie, cheat, steal, murder, slander, hate, discriminate against, etc. Only humans do such things. So, if we want to be BETTER humans, we should try to see ourselves–and everyone else–through God’s Eyes (aka, not looking at what our senses see/hear/feel; but what our HEARTS tell us).
The leftist view of society is similar with the caste system of India. It is them who are the racist ones.
I usually enjoy your stuff, Andrew, but this is more or less twaddle.
First, Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language Unabridged (which dates to 1966) is a descriptive dictionary,not a prescriptive dictionary as was the Webster’s New International Dictionary, Second Edition (which dates to the 1930s, with minor revisions over the years thereafter, my 1946 copy has updated pictures of various things) or the Oxford English Dictionary and Supplements. Do you not remember the rather heated controversy about the Third when it came out? Although the term ‘political correctness’ was some decades in the future, many thought the Third suffered from something that seems rather like it, looking back.
Second, while ‘race’ is rather a matter of dominant genetics than any absolute purity of stock (except from very isolated populations, perhaps), there are a larger number of inconvenient, but apparently rather stubbornly persistent facts about differences between loose racial groups taken as a whole, including the distribution of cognitive ability as shown on any number of tests, from formal IQ tests to all of the standardized tests used for college and graduate school admission. The statistical observation that the average cognitive ability distribution for ‘blacks’ is a full standard deviation lower than for ‘whites’ (or that certain Asian populations or Ashenazi Jews are the better part, but not quite, a standared deviation higher) — over which many people have contorted themselves to deny — doesn’t preclude their being individual members of the ‘lower’ groups whose cognitive ability exceeds that of all but the very highest members of a ‘higher’ group, or vice versa. Just as the fact that for women even if the mean is the same, the distribution of cognitive ability seems to be more closely centered on the mean with smaller upper and lower tails.
How much of this is culture, how much biology? Much of the work in evolutionary biology suggests that at least insofar as men and women are different in many respects (other than the purely obvious physical ones) it may well be far more biological than is politically correct to admit. Culture shapes how biological inclinations manifest themselves perhaps, but the innate differences are there on the whole.
Could it be similar for different genetic populations — races, if you will? I suspect rather more than most of us would like to admit. Is there such a thing as ‘human nature’? And, how maleable is that nature? It’s of course a misreading of the Enlightenment to think there’s no such thing — at least since Hume.
One can be a liberal, a conservative, or a classical liberal and be a ‘racist’ in the sense you use it. Or not. One’s political inclination ‘right’ or ‘left’ really doesn’t affect the science, such as it is. It may well affect one’s willingness to treat every individual with dignity, and to let every individual stand on his or her own merits irrespective of group ‘likelihoods’ which means imply.
The one think I know is racist in the most opprobrious sense is the notion that the plight of each individual member of a group in this country today is the result of a malevolent conspiracy of oppression.
I take the links between genetics and specific characteristics with a grain of salt–both genetics and human abilities are far more complex in their operations and effects than we can say right now. Still, we do know that specific diseases have specific genetic causes, and we can’t exclude the possibility that one day we will get better at constructing other connections. It seems unlikely that human abilities are completely disconnected with genetics and completely equally distributed across all human populations. We should be prepared for the possibility that some groups will turn out to be better at some things than others and even that in some case such groups will reinforce those differences through inter-marriage (and, of course, there will always be lots of exceptions, and we can’t know in advance who they will be). The conservative position should be “so what”? None of this means that an individual’s life is determined by genetics, nor does it detract in the slightest from personal responsibility or the respect we owe one another. If some people are better at sports, others at math, others at music, others at business, etc., it’s still up to each of us to make the most of those abilities; and none of those abilities will determine whether you give your life to good or evil.
We should also recognize that there is a leftist trap here, insofar as leftists take better academic performance by whites (Asians obviously complicate the issue now) to be a sign of the effects of racism; it has been hard to refute them using the culturalist argument because the performance differentials exist across all classes–even upper middle class blacks, from what I know, do worse than whites in the same socio-economic group. Leftists can say, aha! the traumas of racism are so powerful that even the most privileged blacks are affected. So, if you want to engage the argument against affirmative action, you end up, implicitly at least, accepting that whites just do better at these things, and that’s all there is to it. Some people are going to be curious and “careless” enough to just make that explicit.
Let’s see…one definition of racism is attributing ways of thinking, approaches to life, and culture simply by virtue of one’s skin color.
Isn’t this also a definition of “diversity” as practiced today?
Yes…multiculturalism is racism pushed as a “good” by the left.
I prefer to blame nurture, rather than nature, for any perceived shortcomings in a given population. Thus, I call myself a “raisist.”
If a child is not raised to value things like test scores and the value of conforming, at least to some extent, to societal norms (wearing one’s pants up around ones waist, rather than on the ground, for example), then that child is going to be more easily influenced by whatever default cultural influences are dominant in his environment.
I may be throwing gasoline on the fire to use this example, but consider the images used my the MSM in the recent Trayvon Martin incident. The MSM, for the most part, initially accompanied their coverage with images of what appeared to have been a twelve-year-old Trayvon. I’ll leave to others to speculate as to the MSM’s motives for using that image, rather then the one released later, of a much more… mature… shall we say, Trayvon, at about age seventeen.
My question is, what happened during those five or so years to change that smiling little boy into a tattooed, grill-worked participant in the “gangsta” culture so prevalent among black youth? Were his parents complicit, paying for his rather expensive-looking dental work and ink, or did he somehow manage to acquire those by himself, in spite of any opposition which sane parents might have to their minor child engaging in such body modification?
If your son looks like Trayvon (whom Mr. Obama was quick to point out was the very image of what he though a son of his own would be like), is it just possible that your parenting skills are at least in part responsible for what your son contributes to society?
I think so. I also have no children, believing that a dog is more loyal, loving, and less expensive to raise than a child (I have never heard of a puppy screaming at its owner, “I hate you!”). One day I may even get one. =^[.]^=
“…what happened during those five or so years to change that smiling little boy into a tattooed, grill-worked participant in the “gangsta” culture so prevalent among black youth?”
Two words: Peer pressure. I noted too while following the storyline that Trayvon’s parents were separated; no record to my knowledge that indicates whether or not they were ever married. I gather not though, as mom & dad have different last names. So, it’s easy to assume that for some (if not much) of Trayvon’s life, he had a single parent in the picture. It’s a well-known fact that children of single parents don’t fare as well as those with both (or two) parents raising them. Back to the peer pressure thing though, as one (along with my husband) who has raised a son under the best of circumstances, peer pressure is not an easy thing to deal with.
It isn’t even peer pressure in the traditional sense of the specific kids the kid hangs with; even in today’s anti-parent world, parents still have some, not much but some, control over what kids can come over or who their kid can spend time with. It is a pressure from the whole popular culture reenforced by the schools constant diversity and tolerance propaganda. It drove me nuts with my stepsons! We’re talking about upper middle class white boys growing up in an almost lily-white town; any Blacks in Juneau, other than a couple of pimps and drug dealers, were high-level decorations in local, state, or federal government. They could have and do pretty much anything America offered but what they wanted was to look, talk, and act like urban black gangstas. If you let them pick out their own pants, they’d be four or five sizes too big. Even if you insisted that they left the house without their underwear showing, those gaudy boxers would be in full view as soon as they thought you weren’t looking. Girls were worse. Most mothers wouldn’t knowingly let their teenaged daugher leave for school looking like a stripper or a whore. So, daughter leaves home wearing sweats and as soon as she’s out of sight, peels of the sweats to reveal her whore clothes. As a theoretical matter, it is usually parents fault for buying this crap for them, but anyone who thinks that a parent has any real authority over a kid once they start school hasn’t raised kids. After having more than my fair share of quality time with the nice lesbian social workers and other assort Kid Nazis, I decided I really didn’t give a damn what they did as long as they didn’t do it to me and let it be Ms. Modern Mommy, Enabler 1st Class’ problem.
Thank goodness my son’s flirtation with that low-life, gansta culture was short-lived (I used to walk up behind him & give him a wallop of a wedgie when he went through the low-slung pants thing LOL). We were quite fortunate that, despite our son’s predilection for hedonism, we never had to face the debate of whether or not to rescue him from jail, any DUI’s or dropping out of school.
“…what happened during those five or so years to change that smiling little boy into a tattooed, grill-worked participant in the “gangsta” culture so prevalent among black youth?”
Perhaps the divorce of his parents? Liberlas love to poo-poo the idea that living in a single parent household is detrimental to children but facts speak for themselves. Since the easy divorce days started back in the 70s our culture has gone steadily downhill.
I will also go out on a limb here and state categorically that when people were forced to stay together for cultural and economic purposes we weren’t churning out career criminals by the boatload no matter how unhappy the household was.
This piece, and the comments, are further indications to me that the whole concept and language –language especially– of “racism” and “racists” is bankrupt. It is really no different from “homophobe”, “Islamophobe” or “xenophobe”, which anyone with half a brain can see are utterly loaded rhetorical devices designed to stop thinking and sort out enemies and friends of a particular set of ideological stances. “Sexist” is included. And let’s throw in “anti-Semite” and “classist”. All the isms and phobias.
I no longer care whether my current beliefs about, attitudes toward or behaviors in regard to Blacks (and other races, including my own) are “racist”.
For my part, I make regular distinctions between an individual and any of the groups he may be a part of. We have Al Sharpton, and we have Thomas Sowell, both Black. But this is all about groups. All about groups. What is true of pluralities or majorities of groups most of the time.
Seventy percent of American Black babies are born to single mothers. Most Blacks underperform on any and all tests of IQ and intellectual achievement in relation to most members of White and certainly Asian groups. Black levels of criminality, both in relation to their own people and the rest of us, are extraordinarily disproportionate.
And this is not the doing anyone but the Blacks involved. No one forces these Blacks to engage in the kinds of sexual activity and family behaviors that they do. No one makes them consistently come in at the bottom in intellectual and educational measures –oceans of time and money and adjustment over fifty years notwithstanding. No one makes them kill and assault and rob each other –and the rest of us– at rates all out of proportion to their numbers.
Thomas Sowell would be an honored guest in my house. But I will give not one more ounce of concern or sympathy –least of all any guilt– for this group as a group. And all the money and mountains of laws and regulations, to say nothing of the Orwellian language and rules about what we may say and what we may not talk about…I am fed up.
This took a long time. I was once very much on the side of these ‘oppressed’ people. After watching what they do with their freedom and privileges, and, frankly after Obama and his minions and now the Trayvon Soap Opera Passion Play…I’m done.
So you can call me what you like.
I’ll call you spot on, as you pretty much expressed my sentiments. Albeit I lay a lot of blame at LBJ’s door, enough time has passed since the “great society” for them to figure out that what they are doing (disparaging hard work & education as “acting white,” raping their women, wearing their pants below their butts, etc.) is wrong. It’s up to them now to get their collective act together & stop carrying on as stupid hooligans.
I’m with you. Four years ago I chose a very “diverse” child-care center for my kids, thinking they could learn from the onset to appreciate living in an area with a very diverse population. Now, after all I’ve seen, I am ready to get them out of there. The black kids, even at 3 years old, are little monsters. I am very sorry to say it. They are violent and constantly act up. I think a lot of it has to do with nutrition too- they usually have things like hot pockets and cheetos for lunch. It’s very sad. But I need to protect my kids.
ALL 3 yr. olds are monsters if allowed to be. The problem with black 3 yr. olds is that over 70% of them are born out of wedlock and have nothing resembling stable parenting, so they’re allowed to be monsters. Unfortunately, parenting seems to have been lost on recent generations of whites as well so we have truly multi-culti monsters.
This makes no sense either because it assumes a false dichotomy. It’s entirely possible that you had a large segment of the black community that was overcoming certain genetic disadvantages and then was pushed down hard by a white-lead nanny state government. Even if you don’t subscribe to the genetic differences argument Derbyshire makes, it’s perfectly reasonable to see how genetic differences can exist and even be badly exacerbated by bad public policy. Multiple answers are possible here, not just a simple binary set.
There are some differences that do matter. Personally, I find IQ differences to be of little interest in practical terms rather than factors like different average levels of testosterone in men of different races. The higher testosterone levels, more than anything else, is a good explanation for why many young black men with the absence of strong fathers struggle with criminal behavior. Higher testosterone = more aggressive behavior. Higher testosterone whites have the same inclinations.
Again, I think what you’re talking about is not primarily “genetics” but “prenatal environment”. It takes a few generations of healthy living to improve the blood coming through a mother’s umbilical cord to her developing child, and that improvement was halted with the advent of the welfare state and its accompanying ills.
That still doesn’t explain why blacks across the board, no matter what country, tend to have higher testosterone levels than other races. Seems to me like you’re trying hard to say that there are no genetic differences that appear along racial lines. That’s demonstrably not true given the different races’ different statistically susceptibility to various genetic illnesses such as cancer and sickle cell anemia.
Working class whites, asians and hispanics have similar living conditions to most black Americans, but haven’t shown the same signs.
Economist / commentator / author Dr. Walter Williams has argued that racism is only important to the extent it forms people’s views on individuals’ rights. This is a far more defensible proposition than any that takes a hard stance on whether the races’ statistical differences are genetically innate, produced by environment, determined by chance, or some mix of the three. Indeed, it’s the only defensible foundation upon which to argue that racism is morally bad.
The NBA is not racist for having noticed that black basketball players routinely outclass whites and Asians. Neither is the New York Philharmonic Orchestra racist for having noticed that there are very, very few symphony-orchestra quality black violinists, violists, or cellists. Ultimately, only H.L. Mencken’s “broken syllogism” really works:
Thesis: Members of group A are, on average, inferior to members of other groups at activity X.
Condition: Smith is a member of group A who wishes to be hired to do X.
Mencken’s Conclusion: Judge Smith on his merits.
Spot-on.
Bingo.
Here’s the thing that people on both side of the debate often miss:
Even if it WERE true that blacks or Polacks or Italians or Irish or blondes or WHATEVER currently despised group really DOES have a lower average IQ, that would not tell us ONE USEFUL THING about any INDIVIDUAL MEMBER of that group.
Averages are just averages. They cannot provide any information about individuals.
Ergo, it is not justified to refuse to consider hiring a member of that group.
AND, it it not reasonable to assume that group RESULTS will be equal.
By the way, has anyone done any IQ comparisons between ghetto blacks and similar multi-generationally poor whites who have a similar cultural bias against education? (Hillbillies, for example.)
I suspect if we’d control for factors like maternal nutrition, mental stimulation provided during the formative years, views about education, etc, we’d find that IQ differences quickly disappear. These environmental factors are huge influences on intelligence.
I live where the expression, “I’m ignernt and PROUD of it!” is spoken in all seriousness. It’s not a parody – they really mean it. Such people are disgusting, in many ways. The irony is, these people are usually racists. Although their accent is different, and their skin color is different, their character is very much like the people they despise. And now they even listen to rap. The sick joke is on them.
Even if it WERE true that blacks or Polacks or Italians or Irish or blondes or WHATEVER currently despised group really DOES have a lower average IQ, that would not tell us ONE USEFUL THING about any INDIVIDUAL MEMBER of that group.
That’s a bit like saying that: “Even if it were true that the atomic weight of lead were greater than that of helium, that would not tell us one useful thing about which river is the longest in the world”.
It is literally correct, but both pieces of information are true, and both pieces of information are useful in certain contexts.
If group of people X has a lower IQ than the average, that is very useful and important information in terms of public policy, which is of necessity concerned with groups of people and not individuals.
If all the people of the world are in fact inherently equal and fundamentally interchangeable, then the world we see around us – in which some countries and peoples are rich and others are poor – is incredibly unjust. The belief that people are fungible must lead to a left-wing mentality.
SteveM – Treating individuals equally is not a Left-wing mentality, it’s classical liberalism (not contemporary liberalism). You say: “If group of people X has a lower IQ than the average, that is very useful and important information in terms of public policy, which is of necessity concerned with groups of people and not individuals.” The problem here is public policy. Public policy should be aimed at individuals, not groups. As for information about groups differences, that information will explain why different groups dominate different occupations, but it should not be guide to how individuals are treated.
Bravo, Jack! Someone had to say this, and I’m a little embarrassed that I failed to do so.
A public policy that addresses groups rather than the rights and duties of individuals is collectivist. If the groups it addresses (whether positively or negatively) are defined by race, it is racist. It cannot be any other way.
You very ostentatiously ignored the point I made and just went ahead and said what you wanted to say.
If people are in fact all equal in potential, then the fact Germany is so much better off than Angola and that American Jews are so much better off than American blacks must be due systematic discrimination.
If you begin with the axiom that all people – black or white, male or female – are fundamentally equal and interchangeable and possessed of the same potential and abilities – then the only possible explanation for why the world is the way it is and not the way the axiom predicts it should be is racism and sexism and bigotry and discrimination.
If your theory about human nature is correct, then there should be black computer programmers in proportion to their percentage of the population, and the failure of this to be the case means that something wicked is going on.
If your theory about human nature is correct, we should all embrace the left’s view of the world.
Public policy should be aimed at individuals, not groups.
Public policy by definition must be aimed at the public, which means at groups. The public is not composed of “individuals”.
As usual, Mr. Klavan, brilliant, hilarious and accurate (if you read between the laugh lines). Thank you once again for all of the above.
Also as usual, however, your accurate and humorous brilliance leaves your philosophical and research sources unreferenced (unlike liberals [i.e. “lefitsts,” as you refer to them, in somewhat asymmetric contradistinction to “conservatives”] who also don’t reference their sources, but that being because their sources are generally not peer-reviewed or scholarly). You could reference your sources because they are peer-reviewed and scholarly, but you choose to leave that to, well, Nobody Important.
Fair enough. Specifically today I would like to offer peer-reviewed and scholarly references supporting your claim that “Conservatives believe in personal responsibility. For ages, leftists have told us that poverty causes crime and we have answered, no, people rich and poor are responsible for their own actions. We are certainly right about this. If poverty caused crime, there wouldn’t be so many criminals on Wall Street.” Your assertion is accurate (as usual) but it is supported only with a logical claim that, while also valid and true, is absent any evidential support.
It is for that missing evidential support that Another Slow News Day exists. ASND’s page devoted to Poverty…
http://anotherslownewsday.wordpress.com/poverty/
… offers readers voluminous scholarly (including several peer-reviewed) references providing the evidence which your essay omits (apparently for humor’s sake).
ASND also offers a page devoted to Wealth, populated with similarly voluminous scholarly citations, accessible from the branches of the Update Topics / Economics / Wealth menu tree.
You’re welcome, Mr. Klavan. It is the least Nobody Important can do for someone who so thoroughly entertains those of us who, for no reason we are able to discern (since we are among the least deserving), have been given eyes to see.
Pretty good, Andrew. I find it easier to argue that racism and capitalism are incompatible. I keep asking my Black-coddling, capitalist-hating liberal friends why a “money-worshiping thug” like “the head of Wal-mart” would deliberately destroy 12.5 percent of their consumer base and their prospective pool of new innovators and workers.
Thanks for the insight, Andrew. I always look forward to reading and seeing your articles!
That personal responsibility, free markets, diffidence of government, and belief in God, are incompatible with racism, is a strong argument. (Or 4 strong arguments, depending on how you count them.)
However, let me remind you that, according to Encyclopedia Britannica, the first American to call himself a conservative was John C. Calhoun. I don’t hold it against you, but next time you might be reminded of this by somebody who does.
Snorri Godhi – We live an Orwellian age. Those who term themselves ‘liberal’ are quite illiberal (and those who term themselves ‘progressives’ are quite regressive). Consequently, we on the Right, who are for the most part classical liberals, are stuck with the moniker ‘conservative.’ So, I don’t know if current ‘conservatives’ would be comfortable with Mr. Calhoun and his thinking.
Jack: you don’t need to convince me, and I doubt that what you wrote will convince those who need convincing.
However let me address a few issues:
“We live an Orwellian age. Those who term themselves ‘liberal’ are quite illiberal (and those who term themselves ‘progressives’ are quite regressive).”
Indeed.
“Consequently, we on the Right, who are for the most part classical liberals, are stuck with the moniker ‘conservative.’”
You forget that you are also stuck with the moniker “right-wing”, which has even more unpleasant associations.
Again, I don’t hold it against you, but you should be aware of why some people do.
“So, I don’t know if current ‘conservatives’ would be comfortable with Mr. Calhoun and his thinking.”
I certainly hope they would not; but as long as you call yourself “conservative”, or indeed “right-wing”, you should be aware that some people will associate you with John Calhoun and his ilk, no matter what.
(I myself have started calling myself a realist and an anti-statist, though I am not sure this will save me from guilt by associaion.)
For the purposes of using terms that have less baggage, I prefer the terms Leftist and Rightist (although it is only a matter of time before a Leftist tries to coin the term “Wrongist”).
I don’t believe in genetics either: I’ve spent a lot of time in Brazil, Egypt, Belize, Livingston-Guatemala – they are completely different cultures with different values from black folks, or white, in America.
At the same time we should remember Plotinus from almost 2 thousand years ago – “To any vision must be brought an eye adapted to what is to be seen.”
That doesn’t mean success and failure is where you find it, but what we perceive as such. By American standards the entirety of the Third World is a failure. In that sense, I don’t care why, only that it is. On it’s own terms, the Third World can be seen differently. If one doesn’t aspire to the Moon one can hardly be criticized for not reaching it.
But, and it’s a big one, I don’t live in the Third World, and my definition of success precludes me wanting what I perceive as failure being imported here wholesale. Genetics or values, it simply is, and long voyages don’t raise IQs, especially when the political correctness of America encourages failure to be seen as somebody else’s fault – assimilation becomes next to impossible.
It is brutally obvious there is a gulf of values between a large component of black and white Americans. Black Americans are demonstrably obsessed by race. Why? Do they have a reason to be based on history? I don’t care. It’s 2012. Jews came out of Europe and made Israel in 3 years. They had no access to institutions, there was no generational hangover after a far longer, and in the end, far more brutal fate than slaves in America ever experienced.
What I do care about is that nearly the entirety of the black political Left in America, reaching even into the Presidency, including the platform of the Dem Party, have a philosophy about race that resembles the intellectual space of a Nazi more than it does not. It’s wholesale delusion. Like the Sudetenland of the Trayvon Martin case, the Dem Left has created controversy where there is none and outright lied or showed incredible ignorance about the source of crime in this country, preferring to portray whites as hunter-killer squads out to shoot down innocent blacks.
And yet any extreme racist is always branded a “right-winger”; the most recent example being the Norwegian mass murderer, Anders Breivik. The obvious assumption is that white racists are neo-Nazis, Hitler was a racist and also “far right”, hence anyone on the “right” must be a racist. As though Stalin was not a racist because he was a communist. The fact is that communists and fascists are both Left and about as different as Rosie O’Donnel and Rosanne Barr.
It’s the Left who see everything through the prism of race.
For all of you arguing genetics as a basis of IQ and therefore blacks are just dumber due to genetics seem to have no idea about genetics. First and foremost, genetics is a science and must follow the scientific method in order to make conclusions. So the conclusion that genetically speaking, blacks are dumber must apply to all blacks and make all whites more intelligent than all blacks. So if there is just one smart black person and one dumb white person, the entire genetics argument is null. And I think we can all agree there are some smart black and some dumb white people. Therefore there are other reasons to explain the discrepancies in IQ. I may not have an answer but it goes to show that genetics do not determine intellIgence but other environmental factors, with the exception of those born with some form of handicap.
Obviously, you have never studied genetics. Think about a trait like “height.” Measurements fall into a range, not a binary system like “tall” or “short.” This is because there are probably multiple genes all interacting with each other and with the environment to produce the final height of an individual. Intelligence is the same. That’s the basis for “The Bell Curve.”
Or statistics.
Or logic.
Where’s the “rolling eyes” smiley when you need one?
DenissRex – Please read my comments carefully. I keep pointing out the existence of a bell curve. There are indeed some very bright blacks and there are some very dumb whites, and that’s because there is a continuum of intelligence in humankind. The question we have addressed is where is the average is, and for blacks, it is below whites (as it is for Sephardi Jews compared to Ashkenazi Jews). According to Herrnstenin & Murray, citing others, a good part of that group difference (although not all) is due to genetics.
Both I and Francis W. Porretto @15 have pointed out, the implication of that for individuals is nugatory. Individuals must be judged on their own merits. When it comes to groups, though, the implicaton of IQ differences and other characteristics will determine how groups distribute into various occupations.
To get back to Mr. Klavan’s original contention, I don’t think I would classify myself as a racist when I recognize group differences that are genetically determined (although Mr. Klavan’s dictionary would). IMHO, a racist is someone who would use such racially based differences to discriminate for or against blacks and/or other racial groups.
“I know, some conservatives are much, much too intelligent to believe in God. They just believe that we were endowed by our Creator (Sam the, uh, Creator Guy)…”
I’m an athiest who agrees with conservatives on probably 90% of the issues, which actually makes me more conservative than the likely Republican Presidential nominee. On all the issues that really matter I am your political ally.
I make it a firm policy not to mock the religious beliefs of other Conservatives, for two reasons. First there’s nothing to be gained by it, it’s not like you can ridicule someone into abandoning their faith. And second, it’s just plain rude.
So how about we make a deal: I’ll continue not mocking your beliefs and you refrain from mocking my mine. I think that’s perfectly reasonable, especially since only one of us holds beliefs that defy basic laws of biology and physics.
Thank you for the civil tone of your post, and for admitting that the belief that complex information storage and retrieval systems can be created by random processes defies the laws of biology and physics.
Sigh. Just throwing in two cents from the “agnostic” side. I consider myself conservative in every regard described in this article, with the exception that I do not hold a belief (pro or con) regarding the existence of God. I don’t consider myself too intelligent for such a belief, in fact most of the most intelligent people I know believe. I simply haven’t reached a point of certainty on the subject that could be called belief. I may never reach that point, or I could reach it tomorrow. I try to remain open-minded.
Anyway… While I don’t doubt that the vast majority of conservatives are theists – as are most liberals and most humans in general – I fail to see how the definition of conservatism requires it.
Do you doubt that there is good and evil? And both are at play, Yin and Yang?
That both have a political incarnation. In this country as well as every place on earth.
Then consider , here in the USA, the manifestation of Yin and Yang, God and Satan.
Conservatives, liberals/progressives. Freedom/State.
Think about the body count as a measure of both. Stalin,Hitler, Pol Pot, Mao, Wade vrs Roe…
==========
Do you doubt that there is good and evil? And both are at play, Yin and Yang?
That both have a political incarnation. In this country as well as every place on earth.
Then consider , here in the USA, the manifestation of Yin and Yang, God and Satan.
Conservatives, liberals/progressives. Freedom/State.
Think about the body count as a measure of both. Stalin,Hitler, Pol Pot, Mao, Wade vrs Roe…
==========
Good and evil are moral, ethical, and philosophical constructs. And of course I believe they manifest themselves in countless forms, with varying degrees of balance throughout our world. And I like to think I know which side I come down on.
But you’ve made a significant leap from those constructs and their earthly manifestations, to God and Satan. Theism requires not only a belief that these constructs exist, but that they are manifested – and in fact originate – in sentient cosmic beings whose nature we humans either cannot comprehend, or can only comprehend through the guidance of a specific set of Scriptures. That’s a leap I’m simply not prepared to make at this point in my life. It could be true, I simply remain unconvinced.
You might say that, in my mind, the science isn’t settled. Surely that’s a conservative sentiment, no?
“one of us holds beliefs that defy basic laws of biology and physics.” One of us believes that the Big Bang happened when an outside force acted upon the universe, while other people believe that the Big Bang happened “all by its own self” (which is what the kids say when you ask them how bananas got on the ceiling, btw).
Your logic is flawed axiologically. First is that hatred based on race is not racism. Racism requires the ability to demand and dictate a hierarchy of practice standards and beliefs based on the skin color of the ruling class as noted by Dr. Kwame Nkrumah in his book “Africa Must Unite.” It is defined in characteristics such as definitions of good being affiliated with white [really evil should be white based on disease, conquest and barbarism alone] and bad a black – just check the dictionary; even including presupposed beauty standards [blond hair and blue eyes].
Conservativism in origin is racist in philosophy for the policies are designed to aid one group, threatened by the perceived loss of power, exercises social, economic and political muscle against the Other to retain privilege by restructuring for social advantage. Otherwise it is merely prejudice.
Simply put, in America, Racism is different from racial prejudice, hatred, or discrimination because it involves having the power to carry out systematic discriminatory practices through the major institutions of our society – something that is incessant in both democratic and conservative political philosophy in America.
It is obvious that in terms of human life, their position was that Africans were equal 3/5’s of a white European (3/5’s Compromise) and although they could be counted as such had no vote or voice in the democracy by their fiat – based on white Anglo Saxon protestant theological beliefs. Although they did seek to deal with the trade of slaves by compromise; ending slave imports after 1807, it was only because their preference was to encouraging slave breeding within the United States and slave auctions throughout the south. Outside of this, slavery is not mentioned until the 13th amendment (Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction) Now used for mass incarceration of African American males.
Even with such, as well as the bland attempt through laws, court rulings and other actions, there is a truism that cannot be ignored pertaining to how white America interacts with his darker skinned human beings. Although there is no record of the employment rates of African Americans for the first 70 years after the civil war and the emancipation proclamation, I would be willing to be that the inequity from all from education and economics to an unconditional respect for life and dignity has been less than that of those who brought African to these shores. The real political axiom in American for African Americans, in particular males is that there is no desire for those who brought us to these shore to work for free and make them wealthy to close the gap between the principle of equality and the practice of discrimination, and such will forever remain a constant in America.
Listen to yourself: what would fully counting slaves in the census have accomplished? Only the election of more pro-slavery congressmen, since the slaves themselves couldn’t vote, but their headcount would be used to generate more congressional districts for their masters.
myth buster, I completely agree with you. Suppose blacks had been counted equally with whites. The South would have been given enourmous leverage in elections. Upside: No Civil War; downside: Blacks might still be slaves. Of course, with blacks counted equally with whites, the Constitution would never have been ratified and the US would not exist. Outcome: Blacks might still be slaves.
When I hear criticisms of the 3/5th compromise, I ask myself: What are these people smoking? They clearly aren’t thinking.
Thus, as we see, it is not racist in itself to point out, say, that black people commit an inordinate amount of the violent crime in this country. (My terrific City Journal colleague Heather Mac Donald does this regularly and, far from thinking to fire her, her editors value her highly, as do I.) Facts are facts.
What is racist, however, according to Webster, is the belief that high crime rates among blacks — or any other psychocultural outcomes — are somehow biologically determined
The nicest thing I can say is that your position here is incoherent. Black people, as you admit, commit an inordinate amount of the violent crime in this country. And being black is in fact “biologically determined”. A lot of physical and psychological traits are “biologically determined”, which should not be startling news to anybody in the year 2012.
What you are suggesting (without actually coming out and stating )is that peoples personalities are not biologically determined. In this you are wrong, plain and simple.
we can’t both believe that people are responsible for their actions AND that their actions are genetically determined. We have to choose one.
The two positions are not mutually contradictory. We can believe that people are responsible for their actions AND that their actions are to a large degree genetically determined. We do this all in the time in the case of gender, for example. Men have a greater genetic disposition to violence than do women – in spite of this we do not hold men to a lower standard then women with respect to violence. (If anything we hold men to a higher standard) In the case of men and women we simultaneously accept that mens actions are genetically determined and that individual men are responsible for their actions. And nobody finds this to be in the least bit contradictory.
Having a greater disposition toward violence than someone else is not the same as being compelled to commit violence by unseen, impersonal forces. It is obvious that men as a group are more violent than women, yet it does not follow that men are “genetically determined” to be violent. We hold men responsible for their actions simply because believe in free will. Likewise, biology has nothing useful to say on the problem of black criminality.
Likewise, biology has nothing useful to say on the problem of black criminality.
I don’t see where you got your “likewise”.
It is obvious that men as a group are more violent than women, yet it does not follow that men are “genetically determined” to be violent.
Yes, it is, as long as you understand what “genetically determined” actually means. It means that men as a group will be more predisposed to violence than women are. It does not mean “all men are violent criminals” or whatever straw-man you are constructing.
Biology has nothing useful to say on the problem of black criminality because, when it comes to all but the simplest of human acts, biology does not determine what actual human beings will do. If John has more testosterone than Jack, biology might explain why John feels the urge to assault others, physically and verbally, more often and more intensely than does Jack. But if that sort of conduct is discouraged by John’s upbringing and education, John may be outwardly much more gentle and restrained in his dealings with others than Jack. Given all this, I think most reasonable people would deny that John is genetically-determined to be violent. But if they are right, the same judgement would apply to John’s hypothetical, savage twin-brother who grew up without the same civilizing influences but who has the same genetic endowment as John.
This example was of two individuals, but it can just as easily apply to two nations or two ethnic groups, as long as the said groups share common values to some extent.
Now, I have a hard time trying to figure out what you are saying. The statement that men are genetically-determined to be violent makes no reference to women at all, so how could it possibly mean that men are more “predisposed” to violence than women? And what exactly is the meaning of “predisposed”? I don’t think your definition of genetic determinism is clear enough to be of much use.
I think most reasonable people would deny that John is genetically-determined to be violent.
You are still using “genetically determined” in one sense while I am using it in another. Using your definition, we cannot even say that men are “genetically determined” to desire to have sex with women – because after all, what about homosexuals?
We cannot even say “humans are genetically determined to desire life”, because that statement is invalidated by suicide – for your meaning of “genetically determined”.
But once you understand that genetic imperatives act out in groups then your confusion is dissolved. The fact that Jack hung himself does not invalidate the proposition that “humans are genetically determined to desire life”, any more than the fact that Jim was born without arms invalidates the proposition that “humans are genetically determined to have two arms”.
The statement that men are genetically-determined to be violent makes no reference to women at all.
What on earth are you talking about? The first statement was “Men have a greater genetic disposition to violence than do women – in spite of this we do not hold men to a lower standard then women with respect to violence”.
The second statement was “as long as you understand what “genetically determined” actually means. It means that men as a group will be more predisposed to violence than women are”.
How did you manage to get “no reference to women at all” from those?
Are men more genetically predisposed to commit violence than women? Yes or no, it’s a simple question.
You are still using “genetically determined” in one sense while I am using it in another. Using your definition, we cannot even say that men are “genetically determined” to desire to have sex with women – because after all, what about homosexuals?
Heterosexual men are “genetically-determined” to desire sex with women. Homosexual men are not. I don’t see what the problem is.
We cannot even say “humans are genetically determined to desire life”, because that statement is invalidated by suicide – for your meaning of “genetically determined”.
We sure can, so long as we understand that we are stating a general truth which admits particular exceptions.
But once you understand that genetic imperatives act out in groups then your confusion is dissolved.
I think this is the real issue of our disagreement. To my mind genetic determinism chiefly makes sense when it speaks about individual organisms. Thus, I am genetically-determined to have black hair and brown eyes, or to have two arms and two legs. When you say that men are genetically-determined to want sex with women, I take it to mean that the vast majority of individual men are genetically-determined to want sex with women; in fact, I don’t see how such an assertion can be understood to mean anything different.
You on the other hand seem to be convinced that genetic determinism only applies to groups. Sometimes it does: one can conceive of an ethnic group which is “genetically-determined” such that half of its population has blond hair and the other half, brown. But one can never say of ethnic group that it is “genetically-determined” that a given percentage of its members will (say) become criminals–or win Nobel Prizes. The difference between the two kinds of statements lies in the fact that inherited physical traits like hair color are genetically-determined for each individual organism in a population, which cannot be said of such sociological abstractions as propensity for crime. That’s what distinguishes sexual orientation from (to stay with your examples) predisposition to be violent.
One more thing:
What on earth are you talking about?
When you make so little good-faith effort to understand what your interlocutor is saying that you respond with real or affected bewilderment to what is essentially a simple truism, you undermine any purpose of having a discussion. If you want to know what I’m talking about, suppress for the time-being any preconceived ideas of what my unstated preferences must be and reread the sentence that you quoted. If you are puzzled why I wrote it in the first place, go back and reread my first reply and your reply to my reply. I have been as clear about my positions as I could and I would appreciate it if you took the trouble to read what I actually wrote instead of lecturing me on definitions and on straw-men.
If we could predict outcomes for large numbers of people, our belief in the free market would be misguided.
That depends on what exactly is the nature of our “belief in the free market”.
We can and do predict outcomes for large numbers of people, That is quite easy to so. Things get more complicated as we look at at smaller numbers of people.
The reason why gerrymandering of congressional districts works so well is because it is possible to predict the behavior of of large groups of people on the basis of “group characteristics”. If the population of America were in fact 300 million pure individuals it would be impossible to predict how they would behave. But we can make certain predictions with a very high degree of accuracy about how groups of people will behave in the election in November. We can predict that Barack Obama will get approximately 95% of the black vote, for instance. So we can “predict outcomes for large numbers of people”.
People are not actually “individuals”. If our “belief in the free market” is based on the assumption that all the people in the world are equal and interchangeable units, then our belief in the free market is founded on a falsehood and needs to be changed.
Not a falsehood, but an abstraction. Like all abstractions, the idea of homo economicus is useful for some purposes and not useful for others. Race would be another abstraction. The trouble comes when people cannot tell the difference between abstractions and reality.
The point is if you believe in free markets, personal responsibility, small government and God, you can’t also believe that a person’s race determines the outcome of his life.
There is zero intersection between whether a person believes in free markets, personal responsibility, small government and God on the one hand, and whether they believe that a person’s race determines the outcome of his life on the other. There is no arrow of causality pointing in either direction there.
I don’t believe that a persons races determines the outcome of his life. But I do believe, and consider it to be blindingly obvious, that in the aggregate peoples race and ethnic background is important. It is important both to in-group members, and to out-group members.
The unemployment rate among black men is close to 20%, more than double the national average. It is fatuous to respond to this simple fact with “I don’t accept the validity of the existence of the group called ‘black men’. There are no ‘black men’, there are only individuals”.
Obama’s 2012 campaign mantra:
“A racist is someone who is winning an argument with a liberal” –Peter Brimelow
Some may recall that Howard Cosell got fired for saying that Blacks had been purposely bred for strength and speed but to some degree it was very true albeit an inconvenient truth. With the advent of the cotton gin, the device that saved plantation slavery, and the rise of upland short-staple cotton farming, the tidewater plantations turned in large measure to “slave farming.” Beyond that needed for subsistence, the primary crop of many older plantations, especially in Virginia and the Carolinas, was slaves for market and slave “couples” were matched for specific characteristics just as any other livestock was. Whether male or female, the desired characteristics were strength and stamina and with women, good child-bearing characteristics. A quick wit wasn’t really an asset. At the Founding, there were only about 400K slaves in the US and importation stopped in 1807 except for some quite minor smuggling. By 1860, there were over 3,000,000 slaves, the increase almost entirely natural and some substantial portion of it the product of selective breeding.
To the point regarding IQ differences; you really don’t have to be all that smart in IQ terms to get along quite well in this very rich Country. Anything much over 80 will get you by nicely in many, many jobs. There are still lots of jobs where not very bright but steady is a Helluva lot more desirable than very bright but flighty or unreliable. So, even if the average 20 point IQ difference is true, that isn’t what is keeping blacks from working. There really are lots of jobs that Americans won’t do and blacks have demonstrated that they really would rather sit on the sofa waiting for the check than go compete with the Mexicans for low status jobs.
I believe that was a football coach, not Cosell.
You may be right, it’s been a long time, but even a long time ago it got somebody in a Helluva bunch of trouble even though it was a true statement.
It was Jimmy the Greek, former bookmaker turned commentator
You Sir are correct.
I believe you both are thinking about Madden.
Anywho… it is PC folly to consider genetics…. and these divide along populations demarcated by many sub-categories, racial included( and likely most poignant) to be a null factor in human population diversity.
Like various variety’s of wheat or tomatoes, genetics is what makes the beast. Certainly tending the soil(pre-natal care) would make for a more robust crop…. it will not make one variety into another.
You harvest what you grow.
I can’t accept this description of what we Conservatives supposedly believe. The tested evidence concerning race shows that there are such biological differences, differences that affect our society in profound ways, such as mean intelligence. It’s a nasty truth, on both a sociological and personal level, but it is the truth. So what does “Conservative” mean? I’m not adopting this lying catechism that you suggest. It is taking us straight down the same drain as does liberalism, and when we make it part of the political right, we are smiling and posing as respectable “Conservatives” while we swirl down. It is very tough to not be liberal on these particular things, even when you’re on the right. But we have to, or our people essentially die.
I no longer feel that this brand of “equality” is a truism, as it is not. And I no longer feel that individuals who espouse what you do are “Conservatives” anymore. They are co-opted by liberal-mainstream respectability, and afraid, and so offer extraordinarily bad advice.
No one reasonable claims that race determines such things. Even if one were to posit a genetic factor in various human qualities such as intelligence, the writers of the controversial theories admit that it is merely the _distribution_ of such factors or qualities that differs from one race to another. The only thing one can conclude about an individual, when only his race is known, is his _likelihood_ of having or not having the quality in question.
Books and papers which posit even this assertion, however, are also deemed racist by their critics.
Even if such differences were genetic, they are not intrinsic racial properties. If any members of a race in question had any members with the desired quality, theoretically one could breed for that quality thereby increasing or decreasing its prevalence within that race (contrary to the belief of ideological white supremists).
And even if heritable qualities are NOT genetic — if, say, they are culturally based — the difficulty of changing the culture means that our social options in dealing with the differences are pretty much the same either way (contrary to the beliefs of liberals). This view, too, is deemed racist.
The only view that is not called racist is the one which asserts any problem in the black community to be the fault of white people, and the burden being upon white people to fix it.
What conservatives should be saying is that even when problems in the black community were created by the bad behavior of white people in the past, it may be the case that only black people themselves can fix it. For example, if a bully broke my elbow it’s his fault, but to fix it _I_ have to be the one to wear the cast — he cannot wear it for me. Nor can he do the physical therapy for me when the cast is removed. Nor may I claim financial compensation from other people merely because they resemble him, if he has since died.
Blacks suffer from their inability to succeed in the ‘white man’s world’ we call America, and whites suffer from their inability to accept this fact.
And Andrew, if you are positing that the creation of the music style known as jazz in any way justifies the crude and violent behavior of a substantial portion of black culture, you are as clueless as any so-called intellectual of any political philosophy!
Conservative, indeed.
Some of the differences noted are present in poverty populations, without regard to race. As someone mentioned, class and culture make a difference. As I view the welfare system, it seems a deliberated and cynical tool to disrupt the family and to create a dependent class. Sadly, it seems to have been successful, especially in the black and poor, white communities.
Why is Germany so different from Gambia? Why is Ecuador so different from England? Why is Hungary so different from Haiti?
Staying within the US, why are so many different groups of people so different? Why are Jews so much better off than blacks?
If you start off with the supposition that all the people in the world are fundamentally the same, there is no good answer to these questions other than “It’s all injustice and exploitation”. If you start off with the supposition that all the people in the world are fundamentally the same, simple logic drives you towards a left-wing view of things. England is better off than Ecuador because the English are ruthless exploiters. (never mind that even this belies the whole theory that all people are the same)
If I believed that all the people in the world were basically the same, I’d be a rabid lefty, because there would exist no good reason why all these similar people were living such dramatucally different lives.
“34. SteveM
Why is Germany so different from Gambia? Why is Ecuador so different from England? Why is Hungary so different from Haiti?
Staying within the US, why are so many different groups of people so different? Why are Jews so much better off than blacks?”
It’s called climate. It’s called resources. It’s called culture. It’s called historical luck. It isn’t biology, or else there would never be any Gambians graduating from Oxford.
I don’t know if one can make the connection between intelligence and violence tenancies. Some of the sweetest people I know are functionally illiterate.
I would say it has to do with culture. If a culture glorifies violence, there will be plenty of it.
Exactly. It is culture. Mafia capos are not less intelligent than other Sicilians; rather, the Mafia culture is one that accepts murder as a tool of business and a means of acquiring status. Nor are their wives less intelligent than women who want nothing to do with men who are “connected.”
That’s why most WWII combat veterans were able to kill enemy soldiers and then come home and raise families. Their culture taught them that it is good to kill enemy soldiers, but not acceptable to commit murder.
Death Head S.S. members murdered many, many Jewish civilians in Poland without causing problems for friends and family back in Germany because they believed that the first was right and proper but not the second.
Those communities in America which have an outrageously high murder rate have it in part because the community contains many gang members who believe that it is right and proper for them to kill members of rival gangs. If they had more intelligence, it would only help them become more effective killers.
“Those communities in America which have an outrageously high murder rate have it in part because the community contains many gang members who believe that it is right and proper for them to kill members of rival gangs. If they had more intelligence, it would only help them become more effective killers.”
And for some reason we seem to have forgotten that many now peaceful communities, are the descendents of people who used to be notorious for the violence of their people. There used to be Irish Gangs (the Dead Rabbits) and Jewish Gangs (The Purple Gang of Detroit).
Klavan, why should your belief trump Derbyshire’s? The belief that human evolution stopped at the neck is on par with religion. You want to believe that human groups are equal when it comes to the contemporary life’s outcomes despite your eyes, despite voluminous research and statistics to the contrary, despite readily available data from various countries and continents.
What’s wrong with having such a belief, people may ask. Some beliefs are harmless and even beneficial. In the absence of affirmative action and disparate impact 4/5 rule, almost no one would care if human groups are equal in all traits. But… The preferred group keeps expanding to ever new people and will soon represent a majority of the population, squeezing a minority of Caucasians and East Asians. Even today, the truly discriminated against groups are poor whites and East Asians, yet these groups are not yet in your focus.
Ideally, treating each person individually would eliminate the need to talk of group differences. But this is not our luck and lot.
The problems with assigning natural rights theory to a belief in God abound. Firstly, this means that the theory ebbs and flows in direct reaction to how strongly a person believes in God. If for whatever reason you cease to believe in God’s existence, you must also cease to accept natural rights theory. Any idea that you cannot validate without reference to God is necessarily a void idea, because it becomes folded into the religion and no longer separate from it.
Secondly, this also assumes a very bad definition of morality. The old paradox: are God’s commandments good simply because they are his? Or is there some standard, –apart from God– against which his commands must be measured? The first is necessarily and solely a basis for theocracy. The second, that there is some standard for good that is apart from a belief in God, MUST be the proper basis. If it is not, the entire notions of “good” and “moral” become circular and meaningless.
from Ayn Rand Lexicon for the best definition (philosophically informed)
Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man’s genetic lineage—the notion that a man’s intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry. Which means, in practice, that a man is to be judged, not by his own character and actions, but by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors.
Racism claims that the content of a man’s mind (not his cognitive apparatus, but its content) is inherited; that a man’s convictions, values and character are determined before he is born, by physical factors beyond his control. This is the caveman’s version of the doctrine of innate ideas—or of inherited knowledge—which has been thoroughly refuted by philosophy and science. Racism is a doctrine of, by and for brutes. It is a barnyard or stock-farm version of collectivism, appropriate to a mentality that differentiates between various breeds of animals, but not between animals and men.
Like every form of determinism, racism invalidates the specific attribute which distinguishes man from all other living species: his rational faculty. Racism negates two aspects of man’s life: reason and choice, or mind and morality, replacing them with chemical predestination.
Don’t leftists believe that homosexuality is genetic? If behavior is genetic, then don’t they believe that black crime rates are genetic?
Some behavior seems to be genetically linked: Golden Retrievers are different from Pit Bulls, although even there the dogs have to be properly raised.
On the issue of homosexuality, I believe the hunt for “the gay gene” is a flop, so far — which was to be expected, since there is such variation among gay men, from drag queens to lumberjacks. But we have to be careful to distinguish two very different things: sexual orientation & sexual behavior. The current thinking is that sexual orientation seems to be settled by birth. But sexual behavior is enormously dependent on culture. In cultures where homosexuality is loathed, you’ll get a lot more Somerset Maughams and Tchaikovskys getting married.
In tolerant cultures (I live in one) what really surprises most Westerners is the vast extent of male bisexuality (which is denied in America, or swept under the carpet as “latent homosexuality” or whatever). I have had a male lover who is extremely passionate in bed AND makes goo-goo eyes at my maid, who is rather cute. This sort of stuff happens all the time. Another guy led a life which was 100% gay up to the age of thirty, when he dropped out of the scene, got married, and started a family. (That seems smarter to me than starting a family at age 23 and then suddenly going through a messy divorce at age 43 because you’ve decided to “come out.”
In summary, we don’t know as much about genes and behavior as some people apparently think.
Pace Mr. Klavan, racism is when a white person, and only a white person, thinks an uncomfortable fact. Here’s a question: for every fifty trayvons, there is a Sidney Poitier, or a Lawrence Fishburne. Understanding that they probably hate your guts for being white, what do you do?
In a counter arguement, other racial minorites, Asians in particular, have survived Democrat welfarism that destroyed the black community. Why is that? Did they have the good sense to make the proper decisions to ignore the siren call of welfare? If so, why have blacks not made that decision? Why are Hispanics basically half-way on the welfare dependancy between whites and blacks?
The new book on the cultural separation in the white community also describes a cohort of whites that have adopted the welfare mentality, but they are a much smaller group among whites than those in the black community who have adopted or accepted the welfare state goodies. Why is this?
“In a counter arguement, other racial minorites, Asians in particular, have survived Democrat welfarism that destroyed the black community. Why is that? Did they have the good sense to make the proper decisions to ignore the siren call of welfare? If so, why have blacks not made that decision? Why are Hispanics basically half-way on the welfare dependancy between whites and blacks?”
Asians were too small a minority – before the 60′s to be targeted by the Liberal establishment. And don’t forget, in many ways we’re getting the cream of the Asian crop. How they would have reacted had the majority of Asian immigrants not consisted of the most ambitious, we don’t know. As for Hispanics, compare the welfare rates of legal Hispanic residents with that of illegals who are often unable to directly tap the welfare system.
Andrew, you make miss my huge old unabridged dictionary, written before the PC police editors whacked it. Oh…. Now I’m gonna want it back! I recently had an instructor in grad school who thought the term black humor was ” racist.” God help us all.
“Mark v
Homo Sapien is all there is. Our differences come from culture or society.
Oh, hogwash. There are obvious biological differences between the races. Skin color is one. Eye shape is another. Some are less obvious, but no less real and biological. Some can be measured very directly – skin texture is one of these. Some must be measured statistically. Bone thickness is in this category. And when was the last time you saw some blue-eyed blond-haired fair-skinned guy with an AFRO that wasn’t chemically induced?”
Those are cosmetic differences. Like height, weight, and musculature. We can’t all be professional basketball players, but I notice they come out of all ethnic groups. They’re within the limits of any species. There are Lions out their that have thicker manes, or lighter and darker ones. No one ever says they aren’t all lions. Eye shape, bone thickness, hair color differ even within groups. Unless you’ve signed on with a certain infamous political group; is a dark haired, brown eyed German, any different from a blond hair, blue eyed German?
Green, black, white, or deep purple, stupid people tend to beget stupid people. You can cite as many esoteric, ridiculous exceptions as you like, until the cows come home, and they will still be stupid.
If you will have read my previous posts, my position is that we need stupid people, too. But when we have racist government that attempts to make doctors out of dolts simply because they’re black dolts, and will tax me and spend it all on a futile and dangerous social policy, I will always demand more reason be applied, and less wilful deceit.
Perhaps you have not spent sufficient time at the left edge of humanity’s bell curve. I have. Those people, white or black, are stupid and MEAN. There is nothing lovely about them. They are NOT noble savages, just savages.
White or black: stop making babies out of wedlock, stop stealing in all its forms, including welfare and food stamps, stop dealing drugs. Or go to prison forever. Getting out in 2 years for murder (’cause he wuz askin’ for it)is WRONG!
Perfectly race neutral. Guess what color most of them in prison will be? I’ll bet you any amount of money. I could use a nice Island by Tahiti.