The thread on racism

Today for sure. But remember that what we call races (wrongly or correctly) are differences which shaped themselves during many thousand years.

And in the past, in prehistory especially, the gene flow between populations of distant regions was much smaller than today.

For example what was the scale of the gene flow between Australia and Europe during some 40,000 years?

It was minimal. There could be some gene flow between Australians and Pacific Islanders. And then between Pacific Islanders and South-East Asians. And then between South-East Asians and populations living further to the north-west. Etc., etc. But in general it was - probably - a very small gene flow.
 
I'm not making a statement about past human racial classifications, but about the discussion of race in the modern world as introduced in the original post.

I might be able to accept an argument that, say, pygmies are a race in themselves because of their significant phenotypical (and possibly genetic) differences with the general population. Male pygmies average about four feet in height, which is significantly shorter than the general population. (and even then there are plenty of non-pygmies of similar stature)

However, pygmies are exceptional deviances from the human norm. A broad nose or more or less melatonin in one's skin are not sufficiently exceptional to create a separate classification by race

Gene flow isn't a deciding factor at all. Genetic drift may certainly give rise to differing races, but evidence of lack of gene flow is not indicative in itself of a racial difference.

Edit / Clarification: use of the word "indicative" in this and my previous post in the same thread may be confusing. I should have probably used "determinative."
 
So basically might is right.

Aristotle said 2,500 years ago the same thing that I am saying today.

That things happen according to cause and effect. That all the moral grand standing in the world means squat. Moralists need to get real.

Which means anything is right which means might is wrong is right by virtue of that concept existing. Might makes right is the ultimate postmodern reactionist philosophy, by which I mean John Locke in the Social Contract used little effort in successfully dispelling the notion, meanwhile the present-day supporters of the idea completely lack any perspective of why rightwing nihilism is so meaningless that there's absolutely zero point in promoting it.

Let me put it another way:

"Might" is whatever succeeded in happening.

Right means it was the best possible thing for that circumstance.

Might makes right means that whatever happens is inherently the best thing to happen, which means that no matter what anyone does, the best thing always happens.

This means that no thought or action has any consequence whatsoever. So when you judge people for not understanding why might-makes-right is such a superior philosophy, you could also state how superior and smarter everyone else is for not buying into such a defunct non-philosophy and that too would be just as equally a positive and truthful statement celebrating might makes right.

Which is to say, well, nothing.

But the overwhelming majority of slaves in Greece were, in fact, Greek!

And I don't agree that racism can be anything but biological. If the belief is that people X are barbaric and as such "deserve" to be conquered / enslaved / whatever, but are capable of becoming civilized and thus equal to the dominating people, I'd call that a non racist form of bigotry.

Haha but he still wrote it! It's why I think he (and Plato) was trolling the Athenian body politic. Let's not forget he was a barbarian himself, writing for an audience of superior unconquered peoples, lead by the homegrown elected Athenian statesman Alexander the Great....

Anyway, racism is a cultural phenomenon regarding a cultural difference. Intrinsic superiority that underlies orthodox racism could also be religious to pick an obvious example. There's no needed appeal to biological science, though that was a popular one for a while.

The races that exist in a culture are the races the culture decides. Historically it just means a fundamentally classifiably different grouping of people. That our modern racism is tied deeply to the skin color of one's ancestors is a modern feature suited for modern (i.e. post Atlantic slave-trade) economic purposes.
 
You'll be aware that many German racists invented similarly spurious claims about "Slavic" physiology, to the point where Slavs who didn't match their stereotypes were declared to be "Slavicised Aryans", a logic which is more than a little tortured.

And here such an interesting quotation from Konrad Adenauer:

"We Rhinelanders are the true Germans. The Prussians are Obotrites, Wends, Slavs and the like who put together their state by theft and violence."

- Konrad Adenauer recalling what one of his schoolmates (who was from Rhineland) told him.

Also Austrians regarded their enemies - Prussians - as Poles who hid their heritage by Germanizing their names.

Another quotation (concerning our times):

"Today some of the Northern Germans look down upon Bavarians and label them as Austrians, who according to them happen to be non-Germans."


Ironically, the same Northern Germans (who consider Bavarians non-Germans), were considered by Western Germans non-Germans (see Adenauer).

I suppose Shlomo Sand's next book should be "The Invention of the German People".
 
So I suppose the problem with your Black people is, that they came to the USA as slaves.

When a group of people escape from slave hunters, the smarter ones will do it, while the dumber ones will get caught.

You caught the statistically dumber ones and transported them to the US. :lol:

Afro-Poles came to Poland of their own free will - so we got mostly the smartest and the most ambitious ones. ;)
I think that the demographic which is able to emigrate in modern times is much more important than the demographic which were taken as slaves centuries ago.

Recent immigrants from Africa to the US actually outperform recent immigrants from everywhere else (including Asia) when it comes to intelligence tests and academic achievement. This has a lot to do with the fact that those emigrating today tend to come from the most elite segments of society.

It is worth noting that Europeans rarely if ever acted as slave hunters in Africa. They almost always bought slaves from other Africans. Such slaves were usually prisoners of war. In some cases, once the slave trade had become more profitable and tribes needed to buy European firearms in order to defend themselves from local enemies that were also trading slaves for guns, native African groups would attack neighbors specifically with the aim of catching slaves. Often, however, the slaves that the Africans sold to the Europeans were the warriors and political leaders of enemy tribes. It was not uncommon for the leader of one group to sell slaves for many years and then himself be sold as a slave once he lost a battle.


While genetics plays a role in determine intelligence, I think that environmental factors are more important. (You cannot clearly separate nature verses nurture, of course, because genes are more like switches than blue prints; they work by triggering the production of specific proteins in the response to specific combinations of stimuli, not regardless of conditions.) Those who are malnourished during their early life are not as likely to become as intelligent. Having higher social status has been shown to increase levels of hormones which are linked to higher intelligence in some areas. Being poor and worried about subsistence reduces mental functions.

A really important area to consider is the use of corporal punishment to discipline children. Corporal punishment of children is strongly correlated with lower IQs as well as with higher rates of aggressive or criminal activity later in life. The difference in IQ is about as great between children who were or were not spanked as it is between blacks and whites. The effect can be seen within races, and likely is a major cause of the difference between races too. Statistically speaking, black parents are far more likely to use corporal punishment and also tend to hit much harder when they do so.

This may itself be a relic of slavery. Slaves which were beaten by their masters or drivers tended to use similarly severe methods when they were trying to control their own children. They might not have been quite as severe, but thought they had to be tough in order to prevent someone else from whipping the children worse. Such domineering behavior is not good for developing intelligence. Parents tend to copy the parenting methods used on them when they were children, so harsher corporal punishment continues as a tradition in the Black community. Methods of discipline are getting better with time, but rich white families have been much quicker to adopt more peaceful parenting styles than have poor black ones.

Another important factor in developing intelligence is paternal involvement. (Perhaps it would be better to say the involvement of more than one committed parental figure; there are not nearly as many studies on children raised by committed homosexual parents, but children raised by lesbian couples do not seem to turn out any worse than those raised by more conventional heterosexual partners.) There was a time not all that long ago when black couples were even more likely to stick together to raise children than were white couples. That has changed, perhaps in part due to the way welfare payments were structured. (Giving more governmental assistance to single mothers than to married couples creates a major perverse incentive. This could be avoided through social safety net reforms like replacing means tested programs with a basic income guarantee.) Another major factor is how the criminal justice system has broken up families by imprisoning so many young black men. The War on Drugs has disproportionately hurt the black community, as blacks get arrested more and sent to prison longer even though they don't actually use illicit drugs any more than whites do.


(Genetics may be more important when it comes to things like heart disease and hypertension, which are a huge problem for African-Americans but are not particularly common in Africa. There is a theory that hypertension is linked with traits that made it easier to survive the Middle Passage, the stage of the triangular trade where death was so common that it would seem odd if natural selection did not weed out those genes less suited for the horrible conditions. On the other hand, hypertension could also be related to their high rates of corporal punishment. I recently read that studies have linked hypertension later in life to stress experienced at the ages when children are most likely to live in fear of spankings. Obviously diet probably plays a role too. Traditional African-American foods often use the less healthy cuts of meat, which were given to their slave ancestors because the masters did not want them.)


Those trying to claim genetic inferiority of Africans is the cause of lower IQ on average among African Americans also have to contend with the fact that most African-Americans are partially of European ancestry. Many Blacks have more European genes than African genes, and only a few (like Oprah Winfrey) could take a genetic test and find not a single marker of any European ancestry. Their European genes are likely those shared by the more elite Whites too, as it was the wealthier planters who impregnated more slave girls.
 
Back
Top Bottom