The Race Paradigm

Let me just point out that the last non-black man to win the NFL rushing title was Rick Casares in 1956. Obviously the racists in the NFL refuse to give the ball to the white man.
 
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Oh boy. I apologize in advance for the TLDR and the "cool story bro" but as I read this thread it reminded me of my own musings as a younger lily white girl who was practically homeless since I was 14 and who has had challenges thrown at her like the unfastened back end of a hay truck on an interstate. My life was so hard that I resented anyone playing the "race card." I used to think such things about race: what's the big deal? "Let's move on with it shall we." Ah but now I'm 43 and have gone through a roundabout or two and I think I have a little more understanding. So I'll share.

The problem with racism (especially when white people are discussing it) is that there basically three prongs of attack: perpetuation, validation and segregation. Whenever the conversation comes up these days, it's usually stuck in a form of segregation; that is: let's talk about black and white...........(and so on and so on.) And I hope among the black community that there is a little temperance sided up with their annoyance and frustration with the conversation, because there is something to be lauded about trying to understand racism.

Unfortunately, white people like to talk about racism like a child who is afraid of water likes to take a bath. If you can get them there, which is an ordeal in and of itself, they will only sit in the water and splash around. Maybe they like to make it funny or amusing by playing with the ducks or floating the soap. But they sit there waist deep in the water shifting waves. And this is why they don't understand.

In order to really understand racism, you need to put your head under the water. You need to get your hair wet, let it flood into your ears, cover your eyes so much that you can't really open them any more, stream up your nose until you choke, open your mouth until it gags you. You need to submerse yourself in it and turn a bit and stay down there and feel the way it permeates.

The problem with racism in this country, especially this country: America born on the backs of slaves and black and white among many others, is that white people never really let themselves feel their own racism. And this is the segregation that turns into denial. Some people like to use the phrase "privilege" as a way of understanding. But what this basically amounts to is a sense that "wow I'm not X so I'm lucky." This is in some ways a perpetuation of racism as it goes on. Racism is abusive, ongoing, insidious and present every single day, in every single minute of our world. Denying it is something worse than ignoring it. Ignoring it means you don't really see it. Denying it means you see it, you know, and you pretend you don't. For white Americans to really understand racism in this country, they need to first look at their own lives and to realize the way they are racist. For indeed they are.

Once we acknowledge our own racism it becomes easier to deal with it. But when white people pretend not to understand, it will never end. When I was a child I grew up in a home of horrible abuse. I was the scapegoat. I was the problem. I was the odd man out. And I remember for years afterward being so incredibly grateful to have one of my siblings admit that not only did the abuse happen, but she perpetuated it out of desperation and ignorance. I think at times it saved my sanity. (what little I have left.) But there are 6 siblings in my family and only one was witness. The others minimized and denied or just ignored it. And I often thought "how blessed am I that one person was there to be witness for me." Because of this, I am aware of how important it is to be a witness.

It does a number on a person's sense of self when people minimize, ignore and deny abuse in a personal history. It might all be well and good to quote our favorite voice narrator of Morgan Freeman as saying it's not relevant any more. All I know is that yesterday Nelson Mandela died; he was imprisoned from 1963 to 1990. So it's a bit too simplistic to talk about racism from the confused mouths of those who have not borne the burden of its understanding.

In our lifetime. In our lifetime. Now. Get under the water of racism. Let it flood into your life. Look at what you do, as you do it. Look at what we do. Let it resonate and understand it, instead of trying to open the drain and wish it away.
 
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GnaGnaMan said:
Testosterone level varies over the course of the day, being highest in the morning. However, with artificial lighting throwing our circadian clocks off, I wouldn't be so sure that simple statistics can really account for systematic differences in daily routine.
Also, alcohol, cigarette and drug use is probably self reported. At least, I'd be surprised if the testing had been that thorough.

There are a variety of factors which have been alleged to influence testosterone levels. Exposure to sunlight/vitamin D, exercise, winning/losing (even vicariously), fatherhood...
I don't know to what a degree that research is reliable.
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Well, anything as long as at the end we can dismiss any sort of differences between groups, because those are forbidden to consider, right?

So we can do an hour of mental gymnastics of the most elaborate sort as long as the end result is that it all comes out exactly even in the wash, somehow... miraculously.

Even though blacks are observed to have all the hallmarks of higher testosterone levels when compared to whites... just as males exhibit as compared to females. Deeper voices, higher aggression, superior athletic performance, higher crime rates, higher sex drive (and the accompanying higher rate of STDs which is inseparable from that) etc.

But I'm sure that's all just cultural and probably artifacts of slavery and such right? though somehow sub-Saharan Africa seems to be largely a permanent basket case of the globe... no connection, I'm sure. The government study on testosterone clearly got it wrong and didn't take enough things into account...

... no possible way that ice age winters might select for greater impulse control, greater ingenuity, greater paternal role in child rearing, fewer sexual partners (because otherwise your offspring might freeze/starve to death if you were off trying to make more instead of sticking around helping) etc. Nah, not possible.

And I'm sure it's a pure coincidence that east Asians, who were subjected to even colder climate at that time, consistently score higher on IQ tests than whites and had advanced civilization, for the most part, a lot earlier than most whites did.

In all seriousness, I really do think it is an unavoidable conclusion that cold weather environments act as a crucible and have a culling effect. Disproportionately trimming off the "grasshoppers" and leaving the "ants" with a larger market share of the gene pools which moved into those environments. In fact, I consider this a genetic inevitability and am aware of no possible mechanism which could prevent it from happening. Other than perhaps what we have now, in the form of coats, and lots of heated indoor environments. Those can certainly fend off natural selection.

To those who steadfastly refuse to consider that there can be differences between what are commonly thought of and referred to as "races" - let me propose two very simple mental exercises which I believe prove that such differences are inevitable:

I'll try to keep these very short because I tend to be wordy.

1.) It's well known and firmly established that incest leads to depressed IQs and a whole host of defects, susceptibilities to disease, etc. This isn't contested. Now, if you have Group A living in one part of the world and Group B living in another, and Group B has had a cultural practice for 2,000 years of marrying first cousins being a common and desirable behavior, how can this possibly not result in Group B's average IQ and gene pool health being lower than Group A's if Group A either didn't have that practice or had it much more sparsely?

I would really like to have someone explain to me how that situation could play out in any way other than Group B having a less healthy gene pool and a lower average intelligence. Is there some magic force which ensures that this doesn't happen so that later down the line, nobody's feelings are hurt?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/4442010.stm

"Communities that practice cousin marriage experience higher levels of some very rare but very serious illnesses - illnesses known as recessive genetic disorders."
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2.) It's very, very hard (and laughable) to deny at this point that blacks have athletic advantages over whites and other races on average. Note: the first non-white player entered the NBA in 1947, and the NBA was 78% black by 2011. Throughout that entire time, the vast majority of the coaches, team owners, and fans were white. Particularly in the earlier portions of that time. Why would the racist white society we hear so much about, have ever allowed such a shift? I think the answer is obvious. The pressure for teams to win is a good proxy for natural selection, and it tends to be similarly unsympathetic and single-minded. A pronounced genetic advantage outweighed other concerns like racism, etc. Numbers for the NFL aren't far behind.

How about Olympic running?

"The trends are eye opening: Athletes of African ancestry hold every major male running record, from the 100 meters to the marathon. (Although these same trends hold for female runners, the pattern is more dominant among male runners. This analysis focuses on men because the playing field for them is far more level, as social taboos remain that restrict female access to sports in many parts of the world.) Over the last seven Olympic men’s 100-meter races, all 56 finalists have been of West African descent. Only two non-African runners, France’s Christophe Lemaire, who is white, and Australia’s Irish-aboriginal Patrick Johnson, have cracked the top 500 100-meter times. There are no elite Asian sprinters—or, intriguingly, any from East or North Africa.

Remarkably, the story of East African runners is the mirror image of the West African success story. While terrible at the sprints, runners from Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda and Somalia, along with a sprinkling of North and Southern Africans, regularly dominate endurance running."
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I think it's a safe bet that this dominance in specific sports is tied to the previously mentioned testosterone gap, as well as differences in bone structure and muscle structure (which are established and proven.)

So those who gasp at the idea that there could be differences between racial groups, especially in the area of behavior and intelligence, are really left with only two options on this point:

Either blacks are the Übermensch of humanity who have strong, undeniable physical and athletic advantages over other groups while also having identical cognitive powers, and the story of migration by humanity into Eurasia is basically just all about how humanity got weaker, less manly, and slower... OR those changes were done in exchange for something else. They purchased something else in Eurasians. Something which explains the civilizational contribution gap... the lack of written language, advanced structures, or the wheel in sub-Saharan Africa prior to outside contact... the status of Africa, Haiti, and Detroit as we speak... and the persistent gaps in IQ scores which have barely budged for decades.

Perhaps our society could come up with better solutions for things like disparities in incarceration, school discipline, and representation within certain walks of life which either require great physical, or great cognitive resources if we permitted ourselves to face unpleasant truths. Perhaps we'd all be happier if we admitted the very obvious, and very logical basis for these observed differences: different evolutionary histories.

For anyone who takes issue with anything I've said here, I would just politely ask you to answer this one question which I eluded to earlier:

What mechanism would prevent a population which moved into an environment where winter had the power to kill from shifting toward being comprised of more "ants" than "grasshoppers" Or at least more ants than a population which remained in an area that did not have winters?

Unless of course someone wants to claim that human behavioral tendencies aren't subject to biology or evolution somehow... despite them being susceptible to it in every other species.
 
I read about empires in Africa when Brits were painting themselves blue and living in trees.
 
Skeptic Tank said:
Well, anything as long as at the end we can dismiss any sort of differences between groups, because those are forbidden to consider, right?

So we can do an hour of mental gymnastics of the most elaborate sort as long as the end result is that it all comes out exactly even in the wash, somehow... miraculously.
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Well, it's pretty obvious that you haven't read a word I've written so that's that...

Perhaps our society could come up with better solutions for things like disparities in incarceration, school discipline, and representation within certain walks of life which either require great physical, or great cognitive resources if we permitted ourselves to face unpleasant truths. Perhaps we'd all be happier if we admitted the very obvious, and very logical basis for these observed differences: different evolutionary histories.
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What would such solutions look like?
 
Black people are lazy, stupid, dangerous, criminal and incestuous. But, on the plus side, they sure do have rhythm. There's one whole study which proves it.

Did I leave anything out?
 
Squeegee Beckenheim said:
Black people are lazy, stupid, dangerous, criminal and incestuous. But, on the plus side, they sure do have rhythm. There's one whole study which proves it.

Did I leave anything out?
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Apparently they also have lovely white teeth and tremendous athletic ability ;)


edited to add....

The last word on the subject :)

 
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Vortigern99 said:
The idea of race has been scientifically discredited. Trait clusters exist (EG epicanthic folds and lanky black hair among east Asians; dark brown skin and higher levels of testosterone among persons of African descent. etc.) but these groupings of characteristics are too vague and non-universal to be useful or practical. And besides, the idea of race as it tends to be used today involves far more than mere physiology.

The concept of race depends on a multiplicity of affiliated factors, such as anatomy, culture, ethnicity, genetics, geography, history, language, religion, and social relationships. But these overlap among all populations, to the point of rendering the idea of race wholly inaccurate, especially today when there is so much global interaction. Yet the general public, the media and even scientists continue to employ the term race as though it's definable, real, present and quantifiable.

In American media today, accusations of "racism" are routinely brought against public figures who acknowledge, celebrate, emulate or poke fun at the differences that exist among human populations. Recently, for example, a young actress was excoriated in on-line news articles for dressing up on Halloween as a character from the TV show Orange Is the New Black. The actress in costume is called "white" and the character and actress she was dressed up as is called "black". Despite the young woman's explanation that she admired the character as whom she dressed, claims of racial insensitivity were made, references to "Minstrel shows" and "blackface" were invoked, and the costumed actress was generally portrayed as "stupid" for applying a light mocha-colored make-up to her own face. This kind of horrified reaction to a simple acknowledgement, or even celebration, of distinct physical traits among populations is common in the US, both publicly and privately.

My immediate questions were and remain: Why are "white" persons only allowed to dress up on Halloween as members of their own so-called race?
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Boys%20Ninja%20proper.jpg


You have a built-in assumption about "white" victimhood that is trivially disprovable, just like when some people try to claim white people can't celebrate their heritage without realizing that there are such things as St. Patrick's Day and the Italian-American Pride Parade.

I don't want to speculate about why you've placed such tinted glasses on yourself, but paranoia is very dangerous.

Oh, and if you dress up in a Halloween costume that can be seen as mocking a particular person or group's characteristics or stereotypes, there is a perfectly logical likelihood that the person in question might not like it.
 
Skeptic Magazine had an entire issue dedicated to Entine's book and the issues it purports to raise, SkepticTank. Michael Shermer even had a whole chapter of his book Borderlands of Science dedicated to a follow-up discussion of the very thing you're asserting.

You have read them, right?
 
EGarrett said:
Oh, and if you dress up in a Halloween costume that can be seen as mocking a particular person or group's characteristics or stereotypes, there is a perfectly logical likelihood that the person in question might not like it.
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This is why when I read the OP I couldn't understand why the poster was trying to connect race=unscientific with actinglikeaprick=ok.

I'm pretty sure science has verified there is such a thing as midgets, but going out for hollowe'en "as a midget because it's hilarious" shows a profound lack of social competence.

My feeling is that the general theme of this thread is something I see a lot in Skeptical social events:

"I don't understand all these social rules and appear to lack what is called common sense. I've decided that this means I'm superior - Wake Up Sheeple!"

There are several contributors (sometimes a combination). I have sorted them in order of most common in my experience:
  1. lack of experience in social situations due to introvertive personality
  2. lack of experience in social situations due to life circumstances
  3. high-functioning on autism spectrum
  4. narcissism
  5. low intelligence

[Duncan J. Watts] recent book on common sense - [Everything Is Obvious] - is worth a read. The relevant content is that he has done a great deal of research into why discussions about common sense (like this thread) are difficult and perhaps even futile - some people have it and some people don't. Those who don't have common sense need to be spoonfed manners, and are often frustrated by the complexity and perception of dependence on others to interpret what appear to be arbitrary rules.
 
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Skeptic Tank said:
15% higher testosterone on average is no small matter. Keep in mind also that the study tested African-Americans (who have on average about 15% Caucasian DNA admixture.) This would seem to strongly indicate that actual Africans in Africa would have an even larger testosterone "advantage" as compared to whites.
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No, that doesn't follow.

Hypertension is an example. American blacks have a high incidence of hypertension compared to the general American population. African blacks actually have a lower incidence of hypertension than the general American population.

It's an observation like this that strongly suggests that even if hypertension has a potential genetic component, presentment in certain populations could still be entirely due to social circumstances.

Testosterone works the same way, as another poster pointed out.

It is possible to resolve these questions, but I have not seen much research attempting to do it properly.
 
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Squeegee Beckenheim said:
Black people are lazy, stupid, dangerous, criminal and incestuous. But, on the plus side, they sure do have rhythm. There's one whole study which proves it.

Did I leave anything out?
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I've noticed "they" are more forward with meeting members of the opposite sex than us properly inhibited white guys.
 
Delvo said:
Because every time the deniers' piles of lies are demolished, they quit the thread it happened in, wait for a while, and start a new one hoping nobody who saw the previous round will notice... same behavior pattern as with other brands of woo-woo.
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Yepp, I'm starting to realise that.

A few related threads here and here.
 
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Vortigern99 said:
Summary and TL;DR version:[/B] Morgan Freeman once famously suggested to interviewer Mike Douglas that Douglas stop calling Freeman a "black man", and that Freeman should stop referring to Douglas as a "white man". This is the kind of thing I'm on about.
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Wasn't it Mike Wallace? Where Wallace suddenly wasn't a "white man" anymore, but jewish? :rolleyes:

The irony...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mh8mUia75k8
 
Vortigern99 said:
The idea of race has been scientifically discredited.
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Umm... not long ago [well, a while but neverthless "recent" by relevant standards] I read an article in Nature that...

Bruce Lahn and Lanny Ebenstein
Nature, 8 October 2009

Science is finding evidence of genetic diversity among groups of people as well as among individuals. This discovery should be embraced, not feared, say Bruce T. Lahn and Lanny Ebenstein.

A growing body of data is revealing the nature of human genetic diversity at increasingly finer resolution. It is now recognized that despite the high degree of genetic similarities that bind humanity together as a species, considerable diversity exists at both individual and group levels (see box, page 728). The biological significance of these variations remains to be explored fully. But enough evidence has come to the fore to warrant the question: what if scientific data ultimately demonstrate that genetically based biological variation exists at non-trivial levels not only among individuals but also among groups? In our view, the scientific community and society at large are ill-prepared for such a possibility.
[snip]

Biological egalitarianism is the view that no or almost no meaningful genetically based biological differences exist among human groups, with the exception of a few superficial traits such as skin colour. Proponents of this view seem to hope that, by promoting biological sameness, discrimination against groups or individuals will become groundless.

We believe that this position, although well intentioned, is illogical and even dangerous, as it implies that if significant group diversity were established, discrimination might thereby be justified. We reject this position.. We also think that biological egalitarianism may not remain viable in light of the growing body of empirical data.
[snip]
Genetic diversity is the differences in DNA sequence among members of a species. It is present in all species owing to the interplay of mutation, genetic drift, selection and population structure. When a species is reproductively isolated into multiple groups by geography or other means, the groups differentiate over time in their average genetic make-up.

Anatomically modern humans first appeared in eastern Africa about 200,000 years ago. Some members migrated out of Africa by 50,000 years ago to populate Asia, Australia, Europe and eventually the Americas. During this period, geographic barriers separated humanity into several major groups, largely along continental lines, which greatly reduced gene flow among them. Geographic and cultural barriers also existed within major groups, although to lesser degrees.

This history of human demography, along with selection, has resulted in complex patterns of genetic diversity. The basic unit of this diversity is polymorphisms — specific sites in the genome that exist in multiple variant forms (or alleles). Many polymorphisms involve just one or a few nucleotides, but some may involve large segments of genetic material. The presence of polymorphisms leads to genetic diversity at the individual level such that no two people's DNA is the same, except identical twins. The alleles of some polymorphisms are also found in significantly different frequencies among geographic groups. An extreme example is the pigmentation gene SLC24A5. An allele of SLC24A5 that contributes to light pigmentation is present in almost all Europeans but is nearly absent in east Asians and Africans.

Given these geographically differentiated polymorphisms, it is possible to group humans on the basis of their genetic make-up. Such grouping largely confirms historical separation of global populations by geography. Indeed, a person's major geographic group identity can be assigned with near certaintly on the basis of his or her DNA alone (now an accepted practice in forensics). There is growing evidence that some of the geographically differentiated polymorphisms are functional, meaning that they can lead to different biological outcomes (just how many is the subject of ongoing research). These polymorphisms can affect traits such as pigmentation, dietary adaptation and pathogen resistance (where evidence is rather convincing), and metabolism, physical development and brain biology (where evidence is more preliminary).

For most biological traits, genetically based differentiation among groups is probably negligible compared with the variation within the group. For other traits, such as pigmentation and lactose intolerance, differences among groups are so substantial that the trait displays an inter-group difference that is non-trivial compared with the variance within groups, and the extreme end of a trait may be significantly over-represented in a group.

Several studies have shown that many genes in the human genome may have undergone recent episodes of positive selection — that is, selection for advantageous biological traits. This is contrary to the position advocated by some scholars that humans effectively stopped evolving 50,000–40,000 years ago. In general, positive selection can increase the prevalence of functional polymorphisms and create geographic differentiation of allele frequencies.
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