Hear No Genes, See No Genes, Speak No Genes--the Jargon of “Culturalism”
The following address was given to the H.L. Mencken Club’s Annual Meeting; November 21-23, 2008
My study at home in Long Island has bookshelves on all four walls. When I originally stocked those shelves, I worked out a system for doing so. The shelves on the north wall, directly behind me as I sit at my desk, are all reference books. I am a great fan of reference books, and find that they have by no means been made redundant by Internet services like Wikipedia and the Google search engine, as some people say.
Then at the northeast corner of the study, at eight o’clock from me as I sit at my desk, are math books. As all good Aristotelians know, math is supposed to be the one subject whose propositions are indisputably certain. The angles of a plane triangle will add up to two right angles, now and forever, here or in the Great Galaxy M31 in Andromeda.
From math, the most indisputable type of knowledge, I then go clockwise round the study to the most disputable. So proceeding along that east wall from the math books are books on the sciences, with the so-called “hard” sciences—physics, astronomy, computer science—at the northern end, shading off into biology, psychology, sociology, anthropology, religion—a branch of anthropology so far as I am concerned—economics, and linguistics.
Continuing clockwise round my study walls, the south wall is all history, advancing (or retreating, depending on your point of view) to political science and plain politics in the southwest corner — continuing, you see, the descent from the pure certainty of math to topics softer and fuzzier.
Turning that southwest corner and now coming up the west wall, there I have my small collection of military books, my even smaller collection of philosophy books and courses—I mean, Teaching Company courses, as I find philosophy hard to digest off the printed page—and a lot of current-affairs opinionating by authors like Pat Buchanan and Laura Ingraham.
There is then a block of shelves given over to biography. Looking at them, I’m mildly surprised at how many biographies I have — a good half of them I reviewed for someone or other. These tail off into books of diaries and letters, and some essays and belle-lettres. Having pretty much exhausted the world of fact, the remaining fifty feet or so of shelving are taken up by fiction, then poetry, and finally music, these being the least fixed of literary realms, the anti-math.
In any scheme like this, as a librarian will tell you, there are problems of classification. Should E. Royston Pike’s book Britain’s Prime Ministers from Walpole to Wilson be shelved in politics, or in history? Does a biography of Carl Friedrich Gauss belong among the biographies, or on the other side of the study among the math books? Never having made friends with the Dewey Decimal System, I resolve these knotty issues by whim, placing troublesome books according to my own estimation of how long it will take me to find them. This doesn’t work very well, as whatever algorithm I apply when shelving the book, I’ve completely forgotten six months later when I need the darn thing.
* * *
Recently a new class of books has started to come up that presents classification issues of this kind. The first was John Entine’s 2007 book Abraham’s Children, which I reviewed for VDARE. Then came Michael Hart’s book Understanding Human History. The first of those books is a history of the Jews, but informed by genetics. Because the Jews have been keeping pretty much to themselves for three thousand years, and writing down everything that happens to them, they form an ideal group for the study of inherited traits. The second, Michael Hart’s book, was more ambitious, attempting a history of the entire human race informed by genetics, and offering genetic explanation for problems like: why are conquests of southern people by northern people much more common than vice versa?
What are these books? How do I classify them? Are they history, or biology? I’m starting to think of them to myself as biohistory.
The issue got acute last week when Basic Books asked me for a blurb note on a book they will be publishing soon. The book’s title is The 10,000 Year Explosion. The co-authors are Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending, names that I am sure will be known to some of those here today. I read the book at one sitting and fired off an adulatory blurb note with totally uncharacteristic speed and efficiency. It’s a very fine book, and I urge you to get a copy when it comes out. I can’t go into much detail about it, as it is very bad manners to publish a review of a book before the book is formally published. I’ll just describe the book’s theme in outline, and hope to make up for this slight trangression of etiquette by urging you to keep an eye open for the book and buying a copy when it does come out (in February, I think).
The 10,000 Year Explosion is yet another example of biohistory—history informed by genetics. It leans hard on the fact—and it indisputably is a fact, as the authors amply demonstrate—that not only is evolutionary change going on among human beings, it has been speeding up across human history, and is probably still accelerating right now.
In the present intellectual climate—outside the human sciences, I mean—this is a very shocking thing to say. State dogma in the Western World, clung to very tenaciously by our academic elites — again, outside the human-science departments — as well as by our media and political elites, says the exact opposite thing—and doesn’t merely say that opposite thing, but demands assent, and casts into outer darkness all who resist.
* * *
There is now not much disagreement that a small group—likely just a few hundred, perhaps less than two hundred—of our species, homo sapiens, left its home in eastern Africa 50 or 60 thousand years ago, and thereafter gradually spread across the whole world. There were other species of hominid in the world at the time, lineages that had separated from ours hundreds of thousands of years before. These other species — the Neanderthals are the ones everyone knows about—became extinct, and homo sap. populated the world, though of course the process was very gradual, spread over tens of thousands of years.
The aforementioned state dogma asserts the following thing: That evolutionary change in our species ceased when that small group emerged from Africa fifty thousand years ago. There has been no further evolutionary change since that date. Observed difference in human beings and human groups are due to something called “culture.” They have nothing whatever to do with biology—and when I say “biology,” I include genetics as a sub-science thereof.
The reason why this dogma has such a grip on our non-scientific elites, and indeed even on some of the scientific ones, is that it preserves the “psychic unity of mankind.” This phrase, the “psychic unity of mankind,” was coined by a 19th-century German anthropologist, Adolf Bastian (though of course he coined it in German—“die psychische Einheit des Menschen) and was then taken up enthusiastically by another German anthropologist of the following generation, Franz Boas. In 1887 Boas emigrated to the United States, and became the most influential American anthropologist of the early twentieth century.
This idea of the “psychic unity of mankind” is a sort of blank slate principle. It says that all human beings everywhere have the same physiological nature, most especially the same brains, and that all observed differences, both group and individual, are the result of “culture” acting on this infinitely plastic substratum—writing words on this ”blank slate.”
“Blank slate” is in fact sometimes used as an identifier for this point of view—this belief in the psychic unity of mankind. It is also sometimes called a “Boasian” viewpoint in honor of Franz Boas—poor Bastian seems to have been forgotten. I have tried to float the word “culturist” as a descriptor for this viewpoint. I haven’t had much success there, but I keep trying, and shall use the words “culturist” and “culturism” in what follows.
Those of you who like to trace things back through the history of philosophy will recognize culturism as an extreme form of existentialism. In philosophical jargon your essence is what you are, as it might be put on a police WANTED poster: white male, 190 lbs, married two children, etc. Your existence is that you are—the fact of your being in the world. The old philosophical conundrum is: Which comes first, essence or existence? Do you come into the world with preset atrributes—the essentialist position? Or do you come in as a blank slate, and have to get some attributes for yourself, as the mid-20th-century Existentialists argued, or have them imposed on you by your social conditions, modes of production, and so on, as classical Marxism argued?
Well, our state dogma is an extreme existentialist one. This can be seen all over the place. Charles Murray, who is here among us today, brought out a book on education this summer. The New York Times sent an reporter to interview him about it. Here is a snippet from that interview, as reported in the Times. The interviewer was a lady named Deborah Solomon, so I’ll tag the speakers as “Deborah” and “Charles.”
Deborah: Europeans have historically defined themselves through inherited traits and titles, but isn’t America a country where we are supposed to define ourselves through acts of will?
Charles: I wonder if there is a single, solitary, real-live public-school teacher who agrees with the proposition that it’s all a matter of will. To me, the fact that ability varies—and varies in ways that are impossible to change—is a fact that we learn in first grade.
Deborah: I believe that given the opportunity, most people could do most anything.
Charles: You’re out of touch with reality in that regard.
Now, I would guess that most of the people present in this room would agree with Charles: Ms. Solomon has lost contact with reality. Yet her opinion on this — that “given the opportunity, most people could do most anything” — is official dogma. She is merely saying what everyone around her, all through her life, has been whispering in her ear: in a nutshell, that there is no such thing as human nature; in philosophical terms, that existence is anterior to essence.
* * *
“Dogma” is by no means too strong a word for the socio-political status of this belief. It is enforced with great ferocity. Harvard President Larry Summers found this out in January 2005, when he suggested to an academic gathering that the paucity of women in high-end science and engineering positions might have non-culturist causes. There was a terrific fuss, a vote of no confidence in Summers by the university’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and Summers eventually resigned.
James Watson, co-discoverer of DNA’s structure, learned the same sharp lesson two years later when a British newspaper quoted him as saying he was “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours — whereas all the testing says not really.” That is indeed what the testing says; but to voice the fact out loud is a gross violation of culturist protocols. Watson, like Summers, had to perform a full medieval-style recantation. If Africa isn’t doing well, that can only be because the infinitely plastic minds and personalities of Africans have not been acted on by the right forces. They have been acted on by wrong forces: colonialism, imperialism racism, and so on.
At a somewhat lower level, there is a great hunger for books about human nature that reinforce the state dogma—the dogma I call “culturism.” Jared Diamond has made a nice bundle for himself with books explaining human differences without breathing a word about human biology. Plenty of lesser lights have done the same. I picked up Harvard psychologist Richard Nisbett’s book The Geography of Thought with great expectations, but I found that the book was weakened by its punctilious culturism.
If, on the other hand, you publish a book that contradicts the “culturist” dogma, you had better get the wife and kids filling sandbags, beause you are going to take a lot of fire from the intellectual establishment. You could ask Charles Murray about this.
Geography is in fact a great friend to the culturists.
Question: Why is this human group over here different from that one over there?
Answer: Ah, because they’re different places, you see. Different fauna, different climate, so the inhabitants react differently.
Question: I see. But then, over a few hundred generations, wouldn’t the selection pressures from these different environments cause these two populations to diverge in average characteristics, as Darwin observed with lesser animals?
Answer: Guards! Guards!
* * *
It’s a bit odd that this “culturist” dogma should prevail here in the United States, the homeland of modern capitalism, for “culturism” shares many of its roots with Marxism. The great biologist E.O. Wilson pointed this out in his 1978 book titled On Human Nature. Wilson is best known for his advocacy of sociobiology—the project to find biological explanations for human behavior, including human social behavior. Well, here’s what he says:
Marxism is sociobiology without biology. The strongest opposition to the scientific study of human nature has come from a small number of Marxist biologists and anthropologists who are committed to the view that human behavior arises from a very few unstructured drives. They believe that nothing exists in the untrained human mind that cannot be readily channeled to the purposes of the revolutionary socialist state. When faced with the evidence of greater structure, their response has been to declare human nature off limits to further scientific investigation. A few otherwise very able scholars have gone so far as to suggest that merely to talk about the subject is dangerous.
Key figures in the establishment of the 20th century’s great Marxist despotisms were all adherents of a culturist view like the one I have sketched. Mao Tse-tung, for example, wrote the following thing in 1958 with the Chinese “masses” in mind: “On a blank sheet of paper free from any mark, the freshest and most beautiful characters can be written.” Mao then put his Thought into action by launching the Great Leap Forward. Like all “culturist” projects, the Leap ended in tears. China’s industrial development was set back a decade and some 30 million Chinese people starved to death. In its extreme forms, “culturism” can be hazardous to your health.
* * *
So what is this peculiar doctrine—such a perfect fit for a revolutionary world-transforming ideology like classical Marxism—what is it doing as the state religion of a capitalist republic? I don’t know the answer, though I have pondered the question long and hard.
Is it just the promise of human equality there in the Declaration of Independence — the founding assertion that “All men are created equal”? Hardly. It is plain if you delve into the minds and writings of the Founders that none of them believed the thing Deborah Solomon believes in that exchange with Charles Murray I replayed up above. The common 18th-century opinion was that while education and moral instruction might improve a person, there were incorrigible innate differences between persons. Everyone of that period believed, for example, that some of us are just “bad in the bone.” At any rate, if they did not believe that, it is hard to understand why their system of criminal justice and punishment was as it was.
And if our forefathers did not believe in individual equality of ability—of “parts,” as they would have said—neither did they believe in the equality of different races. Or if they did believe it, it is hard to explain their deep pessimism that black and white could live together in harmony, a pessimism shared by, for example, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt.
The Founders’ assertion of equality was in fact only a statement of intent that no system of hereditary ranks or privilege should take root on American soil, no formal aristocracy. They were in fact what we should nowadays call meritocrats. They did not believe that Joe and Steve, plucked at random from the population, possessed equal abilities, nor even the potential of acquiring equal abilities if raised up properly from birth. They only believed that if Joe and Steve were of equal ability, then neither of them should be held back behind the other by any disadvantage of birth or station.
All right: If this passion for the psychic unity of mankind does not spring from our founding ideals, why is it so dominant, and policed with such ferocity? Is it something to do with our being a multiracial society? Well, possibly, but the chain of cause and effect is not clear to me. The “culturist” dogma is held just as strongly in places like Scandinavia, which until recently were perfectly monoracial. If you were to write up a complete history of the culturist paradigm, you would need to give a prominent place to, for example, Gunnar Myrdal, the mid-twentieth-century Swedish economist and social scientist, who wrote a key book about America’s race problem, and was a signatory to the 1950 United Nations declaration The Race Question, a founding document of culturism. It’s all a bit of a mystery to me.
* * *
The culturist dogma is in any case false. We knew this a priori, once 19th-century biologists had established the basic principles of evolution. If you take some population of a uniform species, divide it in two, and arrange matters so that the two sub-populations don’t interbreed—for example by putting one sub-population over here and the other one far away over there—and if you then run the clock for a few hundred generations, the two populations will diverge. That’s biology 101. If you run the clock for tens of thousands of generations, the two groups will diverge so far, they won’t be able to interbreed — and that is the origin of species! This is basic a priori stuff. It’s why there are different breeds of dogs. It’s why a room full of Australian Aborigines looks nothing like a room full of Hungarians.
The last line of defense for culturists is—or would be, if you could ever get them to engage in a conversation about biology—that the observable divergences among human groups are only in superficial qualities. Australian aborigines and Hungarians simply haven’t been separated for long enough to develop non-superficial differences. Your two roomfuls may not look like each other, but their thoughts, behavior, and social arrangements might be anything at all; and any behaviors or arrangements the one population might have, the other might equally well have, if appropriately trained.
This was never very plausible, and comparative analysis of the human genome proves it false. Our behavior, including our social behavior, issues from the brain; and the brain is an organ, like the liver or lungs. Populations who live at great heights for many generations—in Tibet or the Andes—develop lungs that can cope. In just the same way, a people who made the change from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to a pastoral or field-agriculture lifestyle, will gradually change their personalities and ways of thinking to adapt to their new social circumstances—the higher population densities, more demanding work schedules, and more complicated social arrangements.
(After I had written about this on the internet one time, I had an email from a lady dog breeder, who said: “Duh. If I couldn’t breed for personality, I’d be out of business.” Dog breeds are not “socially constructed.” The great example here is the Russian breeder Dmitri Belyaev, who succeeded in developing a tame, domesticated breed of fox in only forty years.)
Not only is the culturist dogma false, it is also poisonous and divisive. Think of the racial composition of our prisons. According to the Department of Justice website, one in every 22 adult black males in the U.S.A. was in state or federal prison in June 2007. For Hispanic Americans, it was one in 57; for whites, one in 130. And think of those recurring newspaper stories about black and Hispanic test-takers failing to get jobs or promotion in the police or fire services, and black and Hispanic kids defying every effort to get their school test scores up to white and Asian averages, even in prosperous middle-class areas. What’s going on?
A culturist explanation would be that blacks and Hispanics are held back by “racism"—basically, by malice on the part of white and Asian people.
A non-culturist explanation would be that a population whose ancestors went through some key transiton—say, from hunting-gathering to pastoralism—ten thousand years ago, if compared with a population whose ancestors passed through that transition only one thousand years ago, will have, on average of course, different gene sets conferring different abilities, personalities, and social skills. Natural selection can just get more done in ten thousand years than in one thousand. This is not scientifically controversial.
Now consider the effect on a black or Hispanic person of the two explanations. If he accepts the first, the culturist explanation, he will be mad as hell, and rightly so. He looks out at the world and sees people like himself stuck at the bottom of society. Why? Because of malice on the part of other groups. That’s what the culturist model tells him. He’s just the same as those other groups—the differences are only superficial. Why isn’t his group doing as well as their groups? Malice, the culturists tell him, wicked malice! Why wouldn’t he be mad as hell?
If, on the other hand, he accepts the biological explanation, there is no-one to blame. That’s just how human biology has shaken out across the deep history of our species. It isn’t anybody’s fault.
Thus, a culturist explanation of human group inequality—or of human individual inequality, for that matter—breeds rage and rancor. The true, biological explanation, by contrast, offers at least the hope of acceptance. We do, after all, accept our individual differences without pain. Everybody in this room is better than I am at something or other: playing tennis, appreciating music, writing, attracting the opposite sex. Many of you are undoubtedly smarter than I am. I don’t lose any sleep over this. Millions of American men and women go out and play golf every weekend, by no means sunk in listless despair at the knowledge that they will never be as good as Tiger Woods. If we can so placidly accept individual inequality, why can’t we accept group inequality—especially since it is supported by an ever-growing mountain of evidence? Perhaps we like rage and rancor, I don’t know.
* * *
Well, back to Cochran and Harpending, and this latest volume of “biohistory.” The authors take us through a number of great changes in the lives of human groups, through history and prehistory. There was the encounter with Neanderthals, and the tricky question of whether there was some interbreeding. Then there was the really big one, the hydrogen bomb of human evolutionary change: the transition from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to pastoralism and settled farming — “horn and corn” cultivation. Then there is a chapter on Ashkenazi intelligence, which these authors, and a couple of others, published a much-discussed paper on a couple of years ago.
The evidence is plain, and our ongoing investigation of the human genome confirms it: our evolution did not stop dead fifty thousand years ago. The “psychic unity of mankind” is a myth. The big old paleolithic populations of humanity differ—slightly, and of course statistically, but incontrovertibly. The evidence is right there in the genome; and we could anyway deduce it a priori from the known laws of biology. Now all we have to do is convert our nation’s cultural, political, and intellectual elites to these true facts.
I’m going to start up a new space on my bookshelves for this new discipline of biohistory. My guess is, though, that there’ll be a couple of dozen books in that space before I next hear the president of any Ivy League college, or the director of any prestigious genetics lab—let alone any politician or op-ed commentator!—speak out clearly and unapologetically against the poisonous, divisive, and false culturist myth.
John Derbyshire is a contributing editor of National Review and the author of, most recently, Unknown Quantity: A Real and Imaginary History of Algebra.
Comments
Fascinating article.
I wonder about the biological implications of crossbreeding between divergent populations--ie. Africans and European whites--on the ability to adapt to dominant cultures.
I also wonder if there is any solid neurological evidence to back up these assertions of physical genetic adaptation within the brain or whether they are sociological observations.
And, finally, I wonder what our current physical environment means for future genetic adaptations.
I am glad there’s a Takimag to run these kinds of stories.
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There is very little difference between humans and chimpanzees. Of the ~30,000 genes perhaps there is a difference of 300 or so. Less I believe. This fact, that slight differences can induce somewhat different phenotypes is of course an argument for genetic superiority. I would argue however, that in any genepool there will be differences at an individual level far moreso than tribal, at least when you see how certain people, for example love engineering, the math, the knowledge involved in building whatever it is. This is not shared simply by the Japanese and Germans. No, throughout any genepool if you place computers, and legos, there will be certain individuals who are damn good engineers. Some of us, such as myself, steer towards biology, others music, the arts, or perhaps nothing at all.
The experiment that would search for any genetic disposition towards say mathematics, can never be done. You have to take a large sampling of children from the most successful cultures and swap them with the least successful and that will never happen. Sick experiment if you think about it .....
While we’re on the topic of forbidden subjects ... here’s two that I thought I might press and show the usefulness of the internet ...
I can listen to a lecture on elementary architecture while juggling three other things…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PojYT3B_bU
or learn the most important phrases in a language while listening to interesting stories ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4DXn5rxPt4&feature=related
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This is all very shocking. Until I encountered this egregious article, I had
believed that everyone in the US was endowed with the same genes but some had
been exposed to better values than others and therefore had obtained higher grades or
found more lucrative professional positions than their value-impoverished cohorts. If
this is true and if it becomes widely believed, what will happen to all of our family
value seminars at neoconservative foundations? Perhaps we should call the guards to
sequester Mr. Derbyshire.
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Excellent piece. As one who missed the Mencken Club meeting I hope more of these club remarks will become available. Perhaps they can be collected and published for purchase.
The taboo about discussing these matters is very deep indeed. I can’t help feel that it has gotten worse in the last decade or so. I think we all fear the introduction of hate-speech laws in the near future.
The hybridization question is interesting. The “Culturalists” last refuge may be to accept the genetic argument but insist that interbreeding will improve our species. On the other hand we can play the mischievous card of insisting on inbreeding to create a Caucasian Species. I suspect also that genetic engineering will play a huge role. What will happen when Mothers can choose the race of their offspring? This may happen in our lifetime.
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Would that we had more voices of reason at the university of British Columbia! Very good article.
Is Paul Gottfried’s presentation about Nietzsche and the left going to be up?
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Great article and I hope you write a book on this topic soon. Or another on math.
I too am facing South and have math books to the left of me, double shelved. But also on the right and behind. I keep a large set of Dover math books next to the door and take one with me when I go out. The thin ones fit nicely into a pocket and I read them at the gym, walking, museums, and at coffee shops.
For those thinking of trying this, I would recommend Knopp Infinite Sequences, Lighthill Fourier Analysis and Generalised Functions, and Knopp Theory of Functions. Toeplitz the Calculus is a little thicker but a good intro. The text by Burn Numbers and Functions is also a little large for this but an excellent way to learn calculus. The Derbyshire books are a little large for this but are great reads and you learn more math than you realize. You can read the larger ones on the treadmill and build the mind and the heart at the same time.
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I fear that Mr. Derbyshire’s days at NR are numbered.
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DR. Gottfried is correct. The Derb is a danger to himself and society and must be dealt with. We should confine him to a soundproof cell and pipe in Jerry Falwell’s collected sermons 24/7. In about 2 weeks that should cure him of dealing in such divisive subjects. I’m sure he will assent to many other things as well after that.
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So then. “Conservatism” now becomes “eugenics.” Curiouser and curiouser. But I hope you won’t do a PC cop-out on us, and will share the great secret of who the Master Race is. I’m dying to know how this story ends.
It occurs to me that the ones most likely to benefit from this argument are the ones who have used it the longest: The Chinese. Despite the 19th and 20th century dust-ups with the West, which found them on the losing end, they have always believed in their superiority for pretty much the reasons you have cited. And not without some justification. After all, they were an advanced civilization when Europe, and especially northern Europe, was a collection of celtic tribes in mud huts. And since they now hold the mortgage on our country, thanks to the advanced tribe of whites who have held the White House for the better part of 30 years, they have even more reason for their thinking. “After all,” they might well say, “you’d have to have a pretty low tribal IQ to think you could borrow from your rivals indefinitely without it having some bad effects.” And they could be right.
The beauty of eugenics is that it is a game any number can play.
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‘It’s a bit odd that this “culturist” dogma should prevail here in the United States, the homeland of modern capitalism, for “culturism” shares many of its roots with Marxism.’
The fact is that American ideology is dictated by Cultural Marxists.
See Lind’s explanation at:
http://www.academia.org/lectures/lind1.html
It’s a bit odd that Derbyshire can work for a magazine crawling with Cultural Marxists and still dance around the issue of Cultural Marxism. Perhaps his days at NR really are numbered.
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John, your classification problem can be resolved quite easily by buying two copies.
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“Is Paul Gottfried’s presentation about Nietzsche and the left going to be up? “
As someone who loves Nietzsche, loves Gottfried and hates the left, I sure hope so!
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JM:
“So then. “Conservatism” now becomes “eugenics.””
I think conservatism is not Genetics, which emphasises differences, nor Christianity, which emphasises equality (all souls made in the image of God), but simply a regard for mos maiorum, the customs of our ancestors.
Genetic science is useful for demonstrating that the customs of our ancestors were well-grounded, and that modern cultural Marxist ideology is built on sand.
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“If this passion for the psychic unity of mankind does not spring from our founding ideals, why is it so dominant, and policed with such ferocity?”
I think there are multiple origins for this phenomenon whose significance differs in different countries. The promotion by the mass media that believing in a genetic origin for racial differences automatically makes you a Nazi has been a powerful deterrent to voicing reasonable views in this area. It is also notable that the most strident advocates for “hate” laws and the like are often Jewish. Although Jews commonly deride other human groups ("goyim"), I presume that they believe that “hate” laws provide them with security (provided, of course, that “hate” laws cannot be used against Jews).
“Conservatism” now becomes “eugenics.”
Eugenics is about using selective breeding to improve a group. That is neither the subject nor the implication of the article.
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Good thing everyone at NR pretty much ignores Derbyshire or he’d be in danger of being Brimelowized. And I’d rather that not happen since I like that articles like this are in part supported by NR’s idiot donors.
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But about this “culturaism,” and the claim that any differences that are rejected as genetic are claimed as cultural… It’s important to make clear that *even cultural differences* are denied to a significant extent. That is, the view that, say, racial differences in education are do to culture is considered almost as racist as the view that they are partly due to divergent selection. **Even culture** is denied if it is used to explain inequalities among the races that favor the more powerful races. Oppression is the only acceptable explanation. This is doubly important since changes in culture really don’t happen very quickly either--they may as well be genetic differences if we are talking about, say, equalizing racial test scores in the next decade or two. So the problem is a lot bigger than a denial of genes and worship of culture.
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Will
“There is very little difference between humans and chimpanzees. Of the ~30,000 genes perhaps there is a difference of 300 or so.”
Differences in sequence are not the only significant factor here. Actual amounts of gene product (ie RNA and protein) made are almost certainly very important. Where a gene is located in the genome can have a big effect on its level of transcription, and it is known that highly transcribed genes are usually clustered. There has been a lot of gene shuffling during the evolution of humans from chimp-like forebears, and this is probably very significant.
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One need only examine one’s own life to determine the value of JD’s assertions. Which is more determinative of who you are, your skin color or your culture? Is it more important that you are white or black or that you are, say, an English-speaking American of the 21st century? The genes confer slightly different potentials on each person. But even here, these potentials will be actualized only in a cultural setting. If, instead of being born into the family you were born into, would you be different if you were born with the same gene set but in Serbia, or Ossetia, or China?
There isn’t even a way to examine the effects of genes apart from the effects of culture on such things as intelligence. In looking at the person, one can only examine the actualized person in the midst of a particular culture. There is no way to separate out the results.
What JD is talking about is really “determinism,” which is more a philosophic stance than a scientific fact, at least when it comes to the humane sciences. Humans are, of course, limited by their potentials, and the physical endowments are part of those potentials. But what we actually make of what we are given is another matter entirely, and one that is not determined in advance, but the result of decisions that we make, or that others make for us.
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I don’t see that this proves your point at all, unless you are saying that French and Congolese culture are similar. But the question I am asking you to ask yourself is, if you were born with the same gene set you have, but raised in a Congolese village, would you more resemble an African or an American?
Somebody mentioned breeding foxes for mild behaviors, but that experiment doesn’t go far enough. Take half the pups and raise them normally, and take the others and beat and mistreat them everyday. Which, in this case, will more influence their behavior? Nature or nurture?
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Everything I’ve read by Cochran the past few years gave me a lot of food for thought. He’s an original. Great mind. I will surely read his new book.
Harpending is great as well.
Btw, nice article too.
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Painfully obvious to the reader is that this article could not be published in Mr. Derbyshire’s main outlet, National Review.
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“What JD is talking about is really “determinism,” which is more a philosophic stance than a scientific fact, at least when it comes to the humane sciences.”
It is hard for me to understand this. If A can’t do calculus because of low IQ and B can’t do calculus because he never went to school, what is the difference? An off-the-cuff answer is that B could have done better if furnished with a better environment, but of course A could have done better with a little gene engineering. Why is one “deterministic” and the other not?
Von
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Of course it is all about the old “nature or nurture” argument. Most, even the “culturists” would hold that we are products of both. The argument then is which is anterior, to use Derb’s terms, and which is posterior.
For a thing to be nurtured, it first must be. The opposite construction of, pardon moi, Descartes, for a thing to be, it first must be nurtured is nonsensical. Therefore, I would hold that biology is anterior to culture.
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I wonder what the basis for Mr. Derbyshire’s statements about the racial beliefs of America’s Founders is. Thomas Jefferson always held out hope that the condition of slaves in America was a product of nurture, that is, their systematic oppression, although he expressed unhappy skepticism. James Madison, on the other hand, was rather more confident that nurture was the explanation. If there is any ground for Mr. Derbyshire’s assertion that “everyone” among theh Founders believed that some people are just “bad in the bone,” let’s see the evidence from the writings of Jefferson and Madison, please.
Locke posited in “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding” that the human mind is a blank slate at birth. He elaborated on this by saying that everything about one’s personality was a matter of his received sense impressions. Locke’s notion underlay Jefferson’s and Franklin’s pithy statement that it was self-evident that all men are created equal. It’s hard to see where Mr. Derbyshire’s biological determinism finds any footing on this ground. In fact, one might write quite a long book on the popularity of the idea of the natural equality of man among the people, common and elite, who made the American Revolution.
“Scientific Racism” did come into vogue in the 19th century, however. Mr. Derbyshire would perhaps do better to look for antecedents of his speculations in that fetid swamp.
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We are the product of both nurture and nature, but The racists would have you believe that race determines everything else. There is not the slightest hint of evidence for this; there are simply not enough differences in the so-called “races” for it to make any difference at all. There are any number of people who can’t do math; there are no races that can’t do math. For the obvious reason that there is no biological category called “race.” It is a social construct. Which doesn’t mean it isn’t real, such social constructs are also real; just in a different way.
And that’s good for us that it isn’t a biological category. The danger of a bunch of white boys talking about racial superiority is that some others “races” might take them seriously, but might come to different conclusions about the master race. The Chinese, for example. Or whose to say it isn’t the Jews, or the Arabs? The fact that we had a run of luck in the 19th and 20th century proves nothing.
Think it over. I don’t think you want to go there.
In any case, “conservatism” is getting nuttier and nuttier. Is this what Taki spent his fortune on? Is this our platform in the next election?
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John Medaille
“but The racists would have you believe that race determines everything else. There is not the slightest hint of evidence for this”
It is obvious that you either know nothing about this subject or are happy to tell lies. Why bother posting such nonsense, it fools few at this site? Hint: strong evidence for the genetic theory of intelligence comes from twin studies.
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For the obvious reason that there is no biological category called “race.”
Mr. Medialle. The Catholic Church, in <I>Gaudiam et Spes, Universal Catechism (#1935), Church and Racism Document, etc etc etc all condemn racism; Mit Berrender Sorge condemns racism, the old Catholic Encyclopedia has two entries on race…
and yet you write that racism is a social construct.
And which is a liberal lie buried deep within the black heart of modernity which seeks to extinguish all distinctions.
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Not Spartacus, right; it is condemned because it is a social construct masquerading as a scientific fact. And since the Church condemns it, I (as a Catholic) cannot endorse it.
Modernity doesn’t extinguish all distinctions, it merely marginalizes all religious and social distinctions not compatible with modernism. I agree that modernism is the great problem, but racism is part of that modernity, part of a pseudo-science. The word “race” doesn’t appear in the English language, and doesn’t acquire its modern connotations until the 19th century when Linnaes divides the race of men into four races, according to skin color and “humor” (the four humors of the blood). Race has never been anything but a pseudo-science, and a modern one at that.
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Left out a phrase: The word “race” doesn’t appear in the English language until the 16th century, and doesn’t acquire its modern connotations until the 19th century…
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You’re arguing whether genes or culture are more important, gang. Useless argument; the two are intertwined. Japanese genomes are under the strict observation of _________ mothers all over Honshu at this moment. Is it their genes or their culture?
Anyway, within any genepool you’re going to have Michael Jordans, Larry Birds, Adrei Sakarovs and Nikolai Teslas. Each culture however encourages different outcomes do they not?
The real problem in America is ... well, people do not study enough. Many get there news solely from the TV or radio and we all know how sad it is to live in the parallel universe of Sean Hannity. [Take it, Jack!!!}
The Asian’s are coming on strong and all because they as a people crave knowledge.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eOpZMBcYdw
I bet you if you could get a computer in front of every kid and the fertility rate of humanity down to 0% that many of these children would perform feats in various fields none of us here shall.
I want to emphasis something, the overall birth rate of humanity hovers around 1.5%. The wealthiest ten% is ~ 0.4% and that of the poorest ten% of humanity is 2.5%.
The Japanese success can be repeated, but a nation must [should] limit it fertility level so any economic gains are not outstripped by more mouths to feed. That and more jobs to provide.
I will bet you that if the Nat Rothschilds, the Gadaffis, the Gates and Jobs of this world decided to get a computer in front of every child in any nation that successfully and voluntarily achieved a 0% fetility rate or less, ... that nation could repeat much of Japan’s success.
Will it happen? Not likely. Africa is a fractured continent and the idea of stability or a tourist Mecca ... would take some prayer and a miracle or two.
The point I want to make about fertility is this. Nations such as Russia, Italy and Japan all can achieve prosperity far easier thanks to their low birth rates.
If the Russian fertility level was 2.4% over the last decade, their economy would be no where near as prosperous.
Ecological reality is another argument for limiting fetility as our species approaches seven billion individuals, but I won’t touch that here.
There’s been an effort to get cheap laptops to the poorest kids in the world. Also to eliminate malaria. Africa adds ~ a million people every three to four weeks. Those kids, those people have to be fed, sheltered, clothed, educated and then you have to find jobs for them. Well, guess what, .... you do the math when it comes to finding them jobs. What’s the point in eliminating malaria and providing computers if you have to provide a million more jobs where there aren’t enough jobs already? The logic of it all.
Of course, those nations like Italy, Japan, tUSoA and even Russia in the east believe it or not, then attract people if any surplus jobs are available and then you get into the thorny issue of immigration and I have already touched on enough thorny issues haven’t I?
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The great obsession of the Cultural Improver is that some day, everybody will be just the same and that until that time, it is impolite and impolitic to draw any attention toward differences because in humanity, unlike the “lesser” animals, differences are a pejorative. Hence , we have the idea of “nurture” and its chief refutation, the current United States of America where the last 50 years of technological triumph and affirmative action has created the biggest generation of slothful dopes in all human history. Success is the nursery of indolence...a point proven by most hereditary monarchies and it would also appear to be the incubator of willful devolution. Primitivism is breaking out all over....only better because it’s aided by more lethal technology.
On the other hand, the only essential difference between the Cargo Cults of New Guinea and her fellow cultists of the industrial West is the size, lethality and mobility of the cargo. Neither love their icons any less but it would appear that the more “advanced” party is the most avowedly suicidal.
The French, always the better if more hapless colonist possess a saying that we all might come to adopt in the depths of our xenophobic depravities: “vive le difference”.
By the way, only one published issuance from the Mencken -fest? To quote Pryor, “You be a little tardy with the food”
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Please forgive the length of this post.
On the subject of race and genetics, a quick perusual of the research (Witherspoon et al 2007) shows that given enough genetic data individuals can be consistently assigned correctly to their populations of origin. So as it stands right now, the argument that says race has genetic roots is winning. As an interesting aside, a scientist in Canada recently took mitochondrial DNA from graves of a long extinct Navajo tribe, and tested it against a number of people thought to possibly be descendants of that tribe. The tests found while the tribe is gone, pieces of their DNA live on.
Within the race argument is the concurrent argument on whether there is greater variation between genetic clusters (races) or between individuals across clusters. In this debate, right now the leading view is the long standing theory there is more variation within clusters than between individuals across clusters, meaning that randomly selected individuals often will have more in common genetically with a randomly selected individual outside their cluster than within.
There has also been a debate about how much genetic variance there is amongst the human species. Data from the Human Genome Project went a long way to answering this, and the result is the variance is very small.
On the other end of bio-historian’s stories are the various physical and psychological attributes assigned to current populations from different geographies through the soft science of sociology--the key one being intelligence.
Study after study has shown different average IQs amongst the different populations, although more recent studies show in North America, at least, those differences are narrowing. On the nature versus nurture argument, even the most strident genetic advocates such as Rushton say intelligence is around 50 to 80 per cent genetic.
The real question, of course, is what do these racial differences mean, and do they matter?
Taki’s resident White Nationalists will argue that because the evidence points to a genetic root for race, race must matter. And even if variation between the different geographical populations of people are subtle (JD’s word), the devil is obviously in the details, and played out over thousands of years has resulted in major irreconcilable differences between races.
I don’t share this view. First, all the sociological studies are about averages, and we all know there is no average man. Secondly, despite the differences in averages, all the racial categories in the U.S. score high enough on average to be law-abiding, productive citizens. Yes, there will be a greater number of some populations on the wrong side of the bell curve, facing more significant challenges, but that’s just life and hardly a reason to reorganize the lives of over 300 million people.
Being an Agnostic and Libertarian, for a long time my inclination on these issues was, so what? In a free society, there will be winners and losers but at least those winners and losers will be chosen on their merit, unlike in today’s ugly corporatist environment.
However, reading many of the writers here at Taki and over at Chronicles the past few years has tempered my Darwinist instincts, as I recognize they would likely lead to chaos. I am now willing to admit the social value of an educational system that teaches cultural knowledge along with valuable technical tools, religious institutions to pass on moral values, and small (very, very small) government institutions to administer the rule of law and necessary defense and infrastructure.
I guess all I need to do now is get a little faith
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75% of all DNA is common to all humans. Only 0.24% is associated with “race.” This means that if you select, say, two random Chinese, they are more likely to be more different from each other than they are to an Italian.
But okay. Let’s say we all drop “culturalism” and convert to this. What’s the next step? What are the policy implications? What do you actually want anybody to do?
Is our next campaign slogan to the Blacks, Hispanics, orientals, and Jews, “Vote for us; we’re smarter than you!”
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Mr. Stonehouse’s very sensible post needs a minor correction or two. First, the statement that “… randomly selected individuals often will have more in common genetically with a randomly selected individual outside their cluster than within” is true for a single locus. As the number of loci or markers increases this possibility goes to zero.
Second, the claim that variance among human groups is small is derived from a famous paper by Templeton in which he compared human races to races of other large mammals. However he compared human nuclear differences to mtDNA from other mammals, and these are not measuring the same thing. Done correctly humans are right in the middle of the large mammals, neither much more nor less different that any other large mammal.
Von
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John Médaille writes:
“What are the policy implications? What do you actually want anybody to do?”
Nothing, nothing at all. Napoleon, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, FDR, Lyndon Johnson were all committed to doing something to make society better and they all crafted some of history’s greatest tragedies.
I take the policy implications of this to be that people ought to be left alone.
Von
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Not Spartacus, right; it is condemned because it is a social construct masquerading as a scientific fact...
Those are your words not the words of the Church.
The Church does not teach it is sinful to eat the flesh of Unicorns on Good Friday.
As far as I can tell the Church teaches the unity of the Human race while acknowledging the reality of other races as a subset of the human race.
How can racism be condemned if such a thing as race does not exist?
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Here’s part of Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Banneker, August 31, 1791: “No body wishes more than I do to see such proofs as you exhibit, that nature has given to our black brethren, talents equal to those of the other colors of men, and that the appearance of a want of them is owing merely to the degraded condition of their existence, both in Africa & America.” As I said above, Jefferson was hopeful though skeptical on this score.
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Vonagan, if it is nothing that you want, you hardly need eugenics to support it. Nothing requires nothing. And I seem to remember a tale of some eugenicists in Germany who did indeed do something, and with rather dramatic results. What was his name again...?
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“Culture” in its modern non-agriculture meaning is largely a popularization of the 19th century and seems to presuppose deracination.
Older, more traditional societies spoke in more concrete terms. There was not “culture,” but actual people: Celts, Germans, et al. They emphasized - not an abstraction like “culture” - but kith and kin, blood and soil, tribalism, kin networks, blood ties, etc. Both Athenian democracy and Roman republicanism were predicated upon tribal systems. N.B. Aeneas was to found the gentem Romanam (Roman race), not spread or invent “Roman culture.”
As traditional conservatives, I think it best to dispose of “culture” all together.
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Gaudium et Spes
Nevertheless, with respect to the fundamental rights of the person, every type of discrimination, whether social or cultural, whether based on sex, race, color, social condition, language or religion, is to be overcome and eradicated as contrary to God’s intent.
Catechism: 781 “At all times and in every race, anyone who fears God and does what is right has been acceptable to him. He has, however, willed to make men holy and save them, not as individuals without any bond or link between them, but rather to make them into a people who might acknowledge him and serve him in holiness. He therefore chose the Israelite race to be his own people and established a covenant with it. He gradually instructed this people. . . . All these things, however, happened as a preparation for and figure of that new and perfect covenant which was to be ratified in Christ . . . the New Covenant in his blood; he called together a race made up of Jews and Gentiles which would be one, not according to the flesh, but in the Spirit."2
Nostra Aetate
Furthermore, in her rejection of every persecution against any man, the Church, mindful of the patrimony she shares with the Jews and moved not by political reasons but by the Gospel’s spiritual love, decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone...The Church reproves, as foreign to the mind of Christ, any discrimination against men or harassment of them because of their race, color, condition of life, or religion...
I am at a loss to understand what we are supposed to gain by denying the reality of race.
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Not Spartacus, the question isn’t whether race is real, but whether it is really a biological category rather than a social one. The quotes you proffer do not speak to that issue. What they do suggest is that there is no difference of race applicable to the basic dignity and rights of a person.
But then, the eugenicists on this list haven’t told us what they want us to do with the information; they won’t tell us what policies would result from adopting their point of view. I suspect I know, because we have been here before, in Germany, in the American South, in various other places. But I will not speak for them. I can only wonder at their reluctance to tell us what they actually mean, what they actually want, and how (or if) they distinguish themselves from these other instantiations of a belief in the importance of race differences.
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MAR, although I agree with you that it is better to speak in concrete terms, I think you are making a distinction without a difference. When speaking of “Germans,” authors referred not just to a tribal group, but to a set of beliefs and behaviors known as culture. This is explicit, for example, in Thomas Aquinas (e.g., ST I-II, 94, 4) and specifically in regard to the Germans. But then, slapping the Germans is what you’d expect of an Italian professor teaching at a French university. <g>
As for the Romans, the whole justification of the Empire was that it spread Roman culture, and citizenship was offered to non-Romans, such as St. Paul. Clearly, their idea of “Roman” evolved to be more than a mere tribal description.
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Human reality is largely and seminally biological. Since biology preceded culture, biology created culture. “Culture” is what we make of our biology. And whether a race of people has an average IQ of 100 or 85 or 70 has a profound influence on what kind of culture and nation they create and sustain.
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SK, while what you say is true of lions and tigers and bears, it is not really true of humans. True, there are biological limitations, physical requirements that must be met, but even these are not decisive. Humans are not directed by instinct, but are self-directed to ends they freely choose. They may freely participate in the divine order. So while humans have one foot firmly planted in the biological order, the other foot is pointed towards the Holy City, whatever city they may regard as Holy.
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Mr. Medaille. Here are two links to Mr. Sailer’s writings on race (Of course I could link to others, as you well know).
http://www.vdare.com/sailer/cavalli-sforza_ii.htm
http://www.isteve.com/RealityofRace.htm
In any event, it appears to me to be merely a matter of common sense to admit the reality of race and I have not seen you post anything issuing from The Church teaching that race is just a social construct.
You have made mention of the, relatively, modern use of the word “race” but I am not sure what that is supposed to indicate as the practice of arguing race does not exist as a biological category is an even newer phenomenon.
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Not Spartacus, I have never said that the Church made any statements about what kind of category “race” is; in fact I said the opposite: they do not categorize it, so you can’t quote them in support of your own categories. Mother Church merely says it is not an important category, no matter what kind of category it may be.
As for Sailor, the second article doesn’t get above the “You’re wrong--so there!” level of argumentation, and the first is disingenuous at best. For example, in speaking of the “master race,” he merely says that different races have different abilities (and he says this without offering the slightest bit of evidence.) But of course, he slides over the issue of which race is more intelligent, since no one is going to argue over which race is better at menial labor. This is always the implied issue.
But then, neither Sailor nor Derbyshire, nor anyone on this list is willing to tell us what they really mean, what they really want, and what we are to do with this information. I conclude the reasons they will not do so is that once they do, they will be exposed for what they are.
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Obamazi, do I take it from your remarks that you believe Africans and Hispanics to be our intellectual inferiors for genetic reasons? Well, at least someone in this conversation will say what they mean.
But where in all of this is the evidence for this belief? Even if you can ascribe a biological meaning to the notion of race, where is the evidence that the genes which control intelligence (assuming intelligence is entirely genetic) are one’s that are involved in race? True, its implied by a lot of what people are saying, but they are reluctant to say it (other than yourself), and even more reluctant to present any evidence for this remarkable and far-reaching conclusion. They haven’t presented evidence in the form of, “intelligence is limited by such-and-such a gene, and this gene can be shown to vary by race.” Until that evidence is presented, all of Sailer and Derbyshire is just bigotry and prejudice based on no real evidence.
There is a reason the Church condemns this sort of thing, and conservatives ought to condemn it as well.
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Culture is so powerful that it might as well be along the lines of race or biology. The Romanians and WASPs are both white, but who would live in backward Transylvania if they could live in Scotland? The Romanians aren’t becoming nice English gentlemen any time soon. Culture becomes second nature after a while, with hardly any change in thousands of years. As Pat Buchanan once said, if you had to choose between 20, 000 Zulus and 20,000 Scots living in your region, who would you choose? Maybe the militant anti-racists would choose the Zulus, but intelligent folks would go for the Scots! Culture might as well be nature.
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Obamazi, I have not accused Sailer and Derbyshire of being Nazis. I have accused them of something far worse: I have accused them of being intellectually dishonest and having a hidden agenda. If someone says, “I am a Nazi,” that is at least forthright, even courageous in the current environment; everyone knows where you stand and what you mean. But if someone says, “The Nazi’s do have a point about race,” (which is what they are saying, in so many words), then they do something for the Nazis that the Nazis could not do for themselves: they attempt to confer an intellectual respectability on patently despicable ideas. They strip people of the tools by which to fight the Nazis. They are useful idiots for disreputable persons and ideas, which is worse than actually and forthrightly holding those ideas. Further, they use a tactic that is beneath contempt: they accuse those who disagree of being “Marxists” or “politically correct,” as if these were the only two possible sources of opposition to their nutty ideas.
The subject of race would be entirely uninteresting if it did not have an intellectual and behavioral component. Nobody would be interested in sayings that are the equivalent of “black people have genes for black skin.” No, they are getting at something else, something they would rather not speak of, because once they do, they are shown up for what they are. When Derbyshire compares the question of race to breeding dogs for personality, he tips his hand. Yet, he has not adduced a scintilla of evidence that racial types are also personality types. This was Linaeus’s contention at the beginning of “the race question,” and in the 200 years since then, no evidence of this has been found. Nor has Derbyshire found any. Yet he persists, with dark hints that fall far short of any science.
And btw, statistics are not “concrete.” They are abstractions dependent on the way in which they are constructed and the terms involves, and always have a strong bias in one direction or another, at least when used in the humane sciences.
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I should add to the above that the fellow traveler is always more contemptible than the true believer. The true believer always bears the temptation of having to face his own beliefs squarely; the fellow traveler always has recourse to evasions and rationalizations. Holding the idea only strongly enough to destroy any opposition to it, he never really has to confront even the most obvious of consequences of these beliefs.
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Derb is welcome to apply Bayesian inference to comparing the distribution of similar capabilities within large groups , but it is to individuals that those capabilities belong, making it statistically and morally hazardous to infer much, if anything from a human’s phenotype.
The scientific problems under which genetic determinists labor have been exacerbated by the recently discovered fuzziness of genetic expression - the one enzyme one gene rule is not an iron law ,
Objecting to the characterization of race as a social construct the incomparable Spart imparts that :
“The Church does not teach it is sinful to eat the flesh of Unicorns on Good Friday… How can racism be condemned if such a thing as race does not exist?”
He seems to be equating a social construct ( baseball, metaphysics, and Mormon archaeology come to mind ) with a rigid designator in the null set-- the Unicorn.
Though african Catholics as genetically diverse as !Kung , Tutsi and Asmara may sometimes err by breakfasting on rhinoceros, none has ever got indigestion from a unicorn chop. Or been mistook for a melanesian by a gene sequencing engine.
Stay tuned for the fireworks when Ron Bailey weighs in on Derb’s essay- or Derb reads and reviews Mike Crichton’s posthumous novel .
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“...and was then taken up enthusiastically by another German anthropologist of the following generation, Franz Boas.”
I think, JD, you must’ve meant “Jewish anthropologist” or, at least, “German-Jewish anthropologist.” We are talking about genetic difference between human populations, after all:
http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2008/01/no-scientific-basis-for-race.html
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I’ve found with the cultural Marxists and their Politically Correct drones, if you just say “population group” rather than “race” when discussing significant genetic differences, they stay happy. For them, saying “race” = “You’re a Nazi”, as evidenced by JM above.
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For example, in speaking of the “master race,” he merely says that different races have different abilities (and he says this without offering the slightest bit of evidence.)
He has in many other of his writings. Why do Kenyans always win long distance foot races; why are,say, blacks faster than other races are in sprints (it’s been a few weeks since an Eskimo won the Olympic 100 meter sprint).
Just because one recognises the reality of race does not mean Hitlerism as you, continually suggest.
In fact, that was a myth Mr. Sailer addressed.
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Objecting to the characterization of race as a social construct the incomparable Spart imparts that
Mr. Seitz. Reading that caused me to experience tingling up my leg. That physical sensation is experienced solely by members of the white race as experiments conducted on Mr. Chris Matthews proved.
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“Cavalli-Sforza’s team compiled extraordinary tables depicting the “genetic distances” separating 2,000 different racial groups from each other. For example, assume the genetic distance between the English and the Danes is equal to 1.0. Then, Cavalli-Sforza has found, the separation between the English and the Italians would be about 2.5 times as large as the English-Danish difference. On this scale, the Iranians would be 9 times more distant genetically from the English than the Danish, and the Japanese 59 times greater. Finally, the gap between the English and the Bantus (the main group of sub-Saharan blacks) is 109 times as large as the distance between the English and the Danish.”
“What is a race? It is essentially a lineage. A racial group is merely an extremely extended family that inbreeds to some extent. Thus, race is a fundamental aspect of the human condition because we are all born into families. Burying our heads in the sand and refusing to think clearly about this bedrock fact of life only makes the inevitable problems caused by race harder to overcome.”
http://www.isteve.com/RealityofRace.htm
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If Franz Boas was a German then Dikembe Mutombo is a German. As Kevin MacDonald had shown, Derbyshire is a disingenuous Judaized intellectual who puts his career first and truth last.
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Johannes Paulus Magnus had this to say:
Christ is the grain of wheat who by dying has borne fruits of everlasting life. And down the centuries his disciples have followed in the footsteps of the crucified King, becoming a numberless multitude “from every nation, race, people and language”: apostles and confessors of the faith, virgins and martyrs, bold heralds of the Gospel and silent servants of the kingdom.
Mr. Medaille. I have no agenda or program that I associate with “race.” For me, it has always been a matter of common sense and reality.
But, because it does not occupy my time I, as an Irish-Algonquin Christian Catholic, am happy to let others engage further on the issue of whether or not race exists.
It does. So what? Each race is but a subset of the Human Race and that is what is crucial as we Christians enter into Advent to prepare ourselves for The Incarnation and The Second Coming.
I am grateful to you for your kindness and equanimity during our exchange and I have to write I am impressed with your other writings.
I am happy you showed-up at Taki so I could expose myself to your work.
Have a Blessed Advent, brother.
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“There is very little difference between humans and chimpanzees. Of the ~30,000 genes perhaps there is a difference of 300 or so.”
False. This is based on the finding that nucleotide sequences are 99.9% identical in humans and chimps. The figure has recently been lowered to 99%, but it still doesn’t mean what some people think it means. This 99% figure is not the number of genes that are the same. A single gene is a long chain of nucleotides, and a single nucleotide mutation can change how a gene functions. Each human gene could theoretically be 1% different from the corresponding chimpanzee gene.
So how many genes do vary within our species? In ways that really matter? (i.e., excluding neutral variation that has no visible effects). In a survey of the human genome, the anthropologist John Hawks found that at least 7% of the genes had been modified by natural selection over the past 40,000 years. This is the period when humans spread out of Africa and split up into different populations.
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Just because one recognises the reality of race does not mean Hitlerism as you, continually suggest.
It depends on what they “recognize” it for.
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One more point on the line of Derbyshire’s false statement about the “universal” belief of the Founders: Thomas Jefferson did not advocate colonization because of a fixed belief in blacks’ inferiority. Rather, his stated rationale was that whites were prejudiced against blacks and blacks couldn’t be expected ever to forgive whites for all the mistreatment whites had inflicted on them. For full exploration of this subject, see Kevin R. C. Gutzman, “Lincoln as Jeffersonian: The Colonization Chimera,” in _Lincoln Emancipated: The President and the Politics of Race_, ed. Brian Dirck (Northern Illinois University Press, 2007).
Thus, there’s no support for Derbyshire’s claim in that source, either.
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“I advance it therefore as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind.”—Thomas Jefferson
“The first difference which strikes us is that of colour. Whether the black of the Negro resides in the reticular membrane between the skin and scarf-skin, or in the scarf-skin itself; whether it proceeds from the colour of the blood, the colour of the bile, or from that of some other secretion, the difference is fixed in nature, and is real as if its seat and cause were better known to us.”—Thomas Jefferson
“The improvement of the blacks in body and mind, in the first instance of their mixture with the whites, has been observed by every one, and proves that their inferiority is not the effect merely of their condition of life. . . “—Thomas Jefferson
“[Negroes] secrete less by the kidnies, and more by the glands of the skin, which gives them a very strong and disagreeable odour.”—Thomas Jefferson
“[Negroes’] existence appears to participate more of sensation than reflection. To this must be ascribed their disposition to sleep when abstracted from their diversions, and unemployed in labour. An animal whose body is at rest, and who does not reflect, must be disposed to sleep of course. Comparing them by their faculties of memory, reason, and imagination, it appears to me, that in memory they are equal to the whites; in reason much inferior, as think one could scarcely be found capable of tracing and comprehending the investigations of Euclid; and that in imagination they are dull, tasteless, and anomalous.”—Thomas Jefferson
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“What is a race? It is essentially a lineage. A racial group is merely an extremely extended family that inbreeds to some extent. Thus, race is a fundamental aspect of the human condition because we are all born into families. Burying our heads in the sand and refusing to think clearly about this bedrock fact of life only makes the inevitable problems caused by race harder to overcome.”
Now, if he would just share with us what “thinking clearly” about race means, we would have some idea of what he is getting at. But he leaves his thesis unstated, namely that thinking clearly means that there is some important differences in the “races” that have something to do with intelligence or behavior. At least, I can’t think of anything else that would be important. But neither Steve S. nor John D. will tell us what they mean. Once they did, they would have to come up with some evidence. I don’t think they will be doing that.
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JM - example of thinking clearly about race that Sailer would concur with - races in the US are never going to have equal outcomes in education, employment etc within the foreseeable future, and trying to force an equal outcome is a Procustean endeavour. Sailer advocates not discriminating by race, ending affirmative action, and recognising that equal rights will not create substantive equality of outcome, because races (and sub-racial groups) are not of median identical abilities.
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What is the possible evidence that the races are not of identical abilities? What evidence have they presented that skin color and ability are related? “Thinking clearly” here seems to mean “thinking in absence of evidence,” that is, thinking by prejudice, which is the equivalent of “not thinking at all.”
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Is it just the promise of human equality there in the Declaration of Independence — the founding assertion that “All men are created equal”?
This interpretation’s pretty funny; it doesn’t even survive a complete reading of the document in which it resides (hint: keep going until you get to the part about the “savages")
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World Distribution of IQ Scores of Indigenous (pre European migration)
Peoples (Adapted from Lynn, 2006).
http://www.vdare.com/images/092607_rushtonmap.jpg
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I am asking you to ask yourself is, if you were born with the same gene set you have, but raised in a Congolese village, would you more resemble an African or an American?
The American, you fool. You think anyone would mistake my honky ass for a real African?
Actually, I might resemble dung, since Africans have a habit of turning their others into magical reagants and such.
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And yes, to answer your question, psychologically I would resemble my fellow whites more than my African neighbors. Refer to behavioral genetics for details.
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I see that Mr. Medaille is living down to his usual standards of intellectual honesty and rigor.
“What evidence have they presented that skin color and ability are related?”
*Gasp!*
Does cluelessness get any more clueless than this?
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Medaille said: “What is the possible evidence that the races are not of identical abilities?”
What are the chances Africa is a giant coincidence?
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Obamazi, do I take it from your remarks that you believe Africans and Hispanics to be our intellectual inferiors for genetic reasons? Well, at least someone in this conversation will say what they mean.
I suspect you’re impenetrable to persuasion. How’s that for direct?
But where in all of this is the evidence for this belief? Even if you can ascribe a biological meaning to the notion of race, where is the evidence that the genes which control intelligence (assuming intelligence is entirely genetic) are one’s that are involved in race?
“Even if you can ascribe a biological meaning to the notion of race”? WTF?
I think it’s safe to assume that potential intelligence is entirely genetic, the same way potential strength is, except probably a lot less elastic. Give a plant all the water, food and sunlight you want, without changing its nature, nurture will only get you so much growth. Feed your kid as much steak as you like, you can’t exceed his inborn height potential.
are one’s that are involved in race?
That’s your straw man. The evidence shows that intelligence is largely heritable, and mostly down to genetics (.7 correlation or thereabouts, a strong correlation); race is heredity; intelligence varies by race. Ergo, the race realist expectation is that the genes for intelligence vary by race. Which of course dovetails nicely with the fact that IQ varies, in a consistent way, by race.
(Given practical realities, it’s much easier to stunt growth than it is to promote it further than it’s already being promoted.)
Seriously, does anyone here REALLY believe there’s anything holding sub-Saharan Africa back to any significant degree? The “problem” (faiing to live up to white norms, i.e., liberal white supremacy) with sub-Saharan Africa is, it’s full of sub-Saharan Africans.
True, its implied by a lot of what people are saying, but they are reluctant to say it (other than yourself), and even more reluctant to present any evidence for this remarkable and far-reaching conclusion.
No one wants to get into a detailed discussion of this in the 9-character-wide cloister of Taki Mag. Google, for gods’ sake! Try majorityrights.com, Steve Sailer’s blog, vdare.com, etc. Are you an adult or a child? Take responsibility for your own education.
They haven’t presented evidence in the form of, “intelligence is limited by such-and-such a gene, and this gene can be shown to vary by race.” Until that evidence is presented, all of Sailer and Derbyshire is just bigotry and prejudice based on no real evidence.
Are you openly leftist, or do you pretend to be something else to dupe the lower reaches of Taki Mag’s bell curve?
That said, Occam’s Razor is tilted far in the direction of the hereditarian camp. Leaving aside the mountains of evidence that don’t fit your silly “can you give me addresses and phone numbers for these genes?” criterion, several genes for intelligence have been discovered, and they vary in their distributions according to hereditarian observations.
There is a reason the Church condemns this sort of thing, and conservatives ought to condemn it as well.
You do! You pretend to be a conservative! What a fraud!
Mean of integrity should obey the moral obligation to assail the fraud of blank slate racial obfuscation; this fraud is used to perpetuate the lie that all the “problems” of blacks are the fault of whites and white racism. It’s a sin to bear false witness; is it also a sin to aid and abet the bearing of false witness?
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Ivan,
Most people of Norther European descent can be traced back to two camps of people: Celts and Germans
Celtic tribes settled: Brittany (France), Cornwall, Ireland, Isle of Man, Scotland, Wales, and other locations in Europe.
Germanic tribes settled: Austria, parts of Czech Republic, Denmark, south England (Anglo-Saxons), northern France (Franks), Germany, Iceland, northern Italy (e.g. Lombards), Netherlands, Norway, northern Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, and other locations in Europe.
While there are some differences between these two groups (e.g. linguistic), they are largely similar. Roman soldiers, for instance, would often confuse the two.
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Syigor misreads the constitution to equate “savages” with something genetic, which the founders wouldn’t have known about. They would not have maintained that equal creation led to equal cultures. You might as well read “tyrant” to prove that the English Kings were of an inferior tribe. The authors of the Declaration did not believe that they had contradicted themselves, and they would not have understood the question in the terms we discuss it today. S is projecting backwards, a common mistake when reading documents out of their time.
And Syigor believes that raised as an African, he would still be “American.”
Right.
We are offered a “map” from Sailer’s site with no further reference as to its source or its methods. However, IQ itself is a controversial subject, and its validity is not universally accepted. One wonders how many IQ tests were given, by whom, with what techniques to adjust for a cultural bias, etc.
In any case, they have identified nothing in the genes connected with intelligence that is also connected with “race” (whatever that is). At best, their conclusions are premature. At worst, it is merely a bigotry looking for a pseudo-science to justify itself.
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I’ve noticed everyone has sidestepped my point
It would help if you stated your point more clearly. As it stands, I think it means that WNs are intraracial egalitarians, which makes them “leftist lite” or somesuch.
Too bad your conclusion is based on a bad fact; this WN, among many, think of the racial bond as an integer, not a boolean.
E.g., Here’s a list of groups in descending order of perceived shared kinship (consistent distance between groups neither stated or implied):
1 Nordics
2 Euros
3 Caucasoids
4 Non-sub-Saharan-Africans
5 Sub-Saharan Africans
6 Primates
7 Mammals
8 Terran Life
9 Martians
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Syigor misreads the constitution to equate “savages” with something genetic, which the founders wouldn’t have known about.
Médaille misreads the discussion to be about the Constitution, but we’re discussing the Declaration of Independence.
The founders knew about heredity. They knew enough about race to order their society around it.
They would not have maintained that equal creation led to equal cultures.
They would’ve maintained that culture reflects the essence of the group creating it.
You might as well read “tyrant” to prove that the English Kings were of an inferior tribe.
I could’ve read it lots of ways in your imagination, I suppose. Back here in reality, I read it as blowing to smithereens the idea that the former was meant in a way that undermines the use of the latter, which is the argument of leftists (people like you).
The authors of the Declaration did not believe that they had contradicted themselves
No...shit...Sherlock.
And Syigor believes that raised as an African, he would still be “American.”
Right.
Médaille asked who I’d resemble. I don’t see how my answer is anything other than obviously right.
IQ itself is a controversial subject
With most of the controversy lying with the less-than-honest. These aside, who are the worthies causing controversy vis-a-vis IQ, and why?
and its validity is not universally accepted.
Heh, he just buried the needle on my bullshit detector. Folks when you read this kind of thing and your alarms don’t go off, you need a refresher/primer on thinking. Do I need to elaborate?
One wonders how many IQ tests were given, by whom, with what techniques to adjust for a cultural bias, etc.
People wonder when they don’t have a clue.
In any case, they have identified nothing in the genes connected with intelligence that is also connected with “race”
NONSENSE. Google is Médaille’s friend.
At best, their conclusions are premature.
But as Derbyshire pointed out, the default position is not yours, or the mainstream’s, it’s hereditarian; in the absence of evidence to the contrary, basic evolutionary theory DEMANDS differences in (behavioral, including those for intelligence) genetics.
At worst, it is merely a bigotry looking for a pseudo-science to justify itself.
Originated by whom? Jews (highest group IQ, with CONSPICUOUS amounts of genetic research going on into their genes)? Northeast Asians?
Yeah boy, that’s the WN schtick all right, bow to our Rightful Asian and Jewish Overlords!
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My point being: the “White Nationalists” know that their hand would be weak if they played it as “Nordic Nationalists”, thus, they try and pull in various different people, such as the “Irish”, and the “Bavarian”, and the “Pole”; thus, they deny any and all differences (genetic, even) between those groups, in order to boost their numbers (at which they are failing miserably).
Gosh, can’t you just feel the warmth in his voice? I can feel the LOVE, baby!
The politics of Joe Sixpack are not the politics of the intellectual. Joe gets Miller Lite, the intellectual gets a nice stout. If you think this is any kind of a gotcha point, you’re delusional.
Like all other forms of Nationalism, “White Nationalism” is inherently LIBERAL.
I could give a shit about being called a liberal, or any gotchas over this similarity or that. I stand outside your left-right spectrum, and adding the up-down of libertarian totalitarian doesn’t help.
I’m not picky. If it protects my race, I’m all for it, even if it means living under a monarchy or a theocracy or socialism or liberalism or fascism. I’d prefer something very close to what the founders ostensibly envisioned, but my survival instinct is more powerful than my comfort instinct so I won’t be picky.
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svigor - just fyi, Medaille is a well-known Obama-ite troll who has yet to express a recognizably conservative opinion about anything whatsoever.
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So does he pretend to be conservative? Praps I was too hasty to accuse him of trollery.
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Syigor, yes, I mistyped “constitution,” but both terms are quoted in the Declaration, and neither in the Constitution. I thought you would know that.
You limit “resemblance” to physical appearance. I guess that makes sense for those who equate skin color with intelligence. Perhaps that’s why they call them “skinheads.”
If you concede that the declaration does not contradict itself, your reading of “savages” does not stand; they too must be created equal, even if they don’t end there. Hmm. I wonder if that has anything to do with culture?
You claim with Derbyshire that the default position must be yours. Why? Because it means you don’t actually have to present any actual evidence or do any actual thinking? Mission accomplished.
And no, I don’t have a clue as to where that chart originates, nor I suspect do you. IQ tests are notoriously unreliable. And in any case, you have not (and cannot) associated intelligence with any genetic marker, much less one associated with “race.” In fact, you haven’t even defined “race.” Its very interesting for me to see an argument about a term you can’t define.
As far as being a conservative goes, I am not; I am a Catholic. And if being “conservative” means being a racist, I am certainly not conservative. Burkean yes; racist, no.
I am sorry about your BS meter. It must be terrible to go around in life with that much BS. Maybe its genetic.
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“I stand outside your left-right spectrum”
All that I care about is that you stand outside of, and wish to destroy, Tradition. Because of that, I fight you.
Ah, I see. You support egalitarianism and the multicult because Medieval Europeans did!
No tradition of merit leads to or enables ethnic suicide.
White Nationalism ... wishes to agglomerate various races into a single.
Nonsense! Where do you get this stuff?
The “Blacks” of Africa are not one race, nor are the “Whites” of Europe.
Erm, at one level of resolution (focus), yes, they are. Then at finer or coarser resolution, the picture looks different. Compared to the amoeba, blacks and whites have much more in common than they do when compared to fellow blacks or fellow whites.
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You limit “resemblance” to physical appearance.
No, actually I didn’t, I just went with the primary definition of the word.
I guess that makes sense for those who equate skin color with intelligence. Perhaps that’s why they call them “skinheads.”
Lol. I’m sure in your imagination I equate all sorts of things. I bet I kick puppies too.
I’d resemble a white man who’d been raised in Africa. What if I watched some teevee and left as soon as I was old enough to escape? What if I became chief and forced everyone to speak English and observe monogamy?
Just kidding, of course, I’m just laughing at the absudity of your point. Yes, humans are part nurture, part nature. Yes, humans are flexible strategizers. But I would not “resemble” Africans, overall, more than the average African does. I would behave like a white guy raised by blacks. I’d think more, brood more, laugh less, work harder, dance less, have less confidence, more foresight, etc., etc., etc.
And put enough Europids in one spot and you get Europe! Enough Africans and you get Africa. See history for details.
<i>If you concede that the declaration does not contradict itself, your reading of “savages” does not stand; they too must be created equal, even if they don’t end there. Hmm. I wonder if that has anything to do with culture?
Try and follow the argument, will you?
You claim with Derbyshire that the default position must be yours. Why? Because it means you don’t actually have to present any actual evidence or do any actual thinking?
Because that’s the science. Genetic drift?
Btw, the default position is mine because it’s the default, not the other way around.
Mission accomplished.
Uhm, no, the fact that the default position is divergence doesn’t say much about the direction of that divergence. And speaking of divergence, the IQ evidence clearly does not conform to WN wishes.
And no, I don’t have a clue as to where that chart originates, nor I suspect do you.
I don’t know WTF this has to do with the price of tea in China, but ok.
IQ tests are notoriously unreliable.
NONSENSE.
And in any case, you have not (and cannot) associated intelligence with any genetic marker, much less one associated with “race.” In fact, you haven’t even defined “race.” Its very interesting for me to see an argument about a term you can’t define.
NONSENSE. You’re a doozy of a troll. I can define race just fine, but anyone interested can find in-depth explanations and I see no reason to reinvent the wheel. I’ve done it a million times for cretins such as yourself and I’m burned out on educating people for free on their terms.
Funny how everyone becomes Captain Obtuse when there’s an open discussion on race and race-realists or WNs are present. Suddenly everyone’s a Babe in the Woods. There’s no discussion of definitions when the Feds start giving handouts, or the media is taking a giant shit on us. Nobody’s ever confused at that point.
As far as being a conservative goes, I am not; I am a Catholic. And if being “conservative” means being a racist, I am certainly not conservative. Burkean yes; racist, no.
And what a courageous Catholic you must be, what with your valiant defense of Mammon and all. Be not of the world, isn’t that the thing?
I am sorry about your BS meter. It must be terrible to go around in life with that much BS. Maybe its genetic.
Must’ve sucked to have that as your only comeback. I mean c’mon, “not universally accepted”? How lame is that?
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Crap, I miss one lousy closing tag…
You limit “resemblance” to physical appearance.
No, actually I didn’t, I just went with the primary definition of the word.
I guess that makes sense for those who equate skin color with intelligence. Perhaps that’s why they call them “skinheads.”
Lol. I’m sure in your imagination I equate all sorts of things. I bet I kick puppies too.
I’d resemble a white man who’d been raised in Africa. What if I watched some teevee and left as soon as I was old enough to escape? What if I became chief and forced everyone to speak English and observe monogamy?
Just kidding, of course, I’m just laughing at the absudity of your point. Yes, humans are part nurture, part nature. Yes, humans are flexible strategizers. But I would not “resemble” Africans, overall, more than the average African does. I would behave like a white guy raised by blacks. I’d think more, brood more, laugh less, work harder, dance less, have less confidence, more foresight, etc., etc., etc.
And put enough Europids in one spot and you get Europe! Enough Africans and you get Africa. See history for details.
If you concede that the declaration does not contradict itself, your reading of “savages” does not stand; they too must be created equal, even if they don’t end there. Hmm. I wonder if that has anything to do with culture?
Try and follow the argument, will you?
You claim with Derbyshire that the default position must be yours. Why? Because it means you don’t actually have to present any actual evidence or do any actual thinking?
Because that’s the science. Genetic drift?
Btw, the default position is mine because it’s the default, not the other way around.
Mission accomplished.
Uhm, no, the fact that the default position is divergence doesn’t say much about the direction of that divergence. And speaking of divergence, the IQ evidence clearly does not conform to WN wishes.
And no, I don’t have a clue as to where that chart originates, nor I suspect do you.
I don’t know WTF this has to do with the price of tea in China, but ok.
IQ tests are notoriously unreliable.
NONSENSE.
And in any case, you have not (and cannot) associated intelligence with any genetic marker, much less one associated with “race.” In fact, you haven’t even defined “race.” Its very interesting for me to see an argument about a term you can’t define.
NONSENSE. You’re a doozy of a troll. I can define race just fine, but anyone interested can find in-depth explanations and I see no reason to reinvent the wheel. I’ve done it a hundred times for cretins such as yourself and I’m burned out on educating people for free on their terms.
Funny how everyone becomes Captain Obtuse when there’s an open discussion on race and race-realists or WNs are present. Suddenly everyone’s a Babe in the Woods. There’s no discussion of definitions when the Feds start giving handouts, or the media is taking a giant shit on us. Nobody’s ever confused at that point.
As far as being a conservative goes, I am not; I am a Catholic. And if being “conservative” means being a racist, I am certainly not conservative. Burkean yes; racist, no.
And what a courageous Catholic you must be, what with your valiant defense of Mammon and all. Be not of the world, isn’t that the thing?
I am sorry about your BS meter. It must be terrible to go around in life with that much BS. Maybe its genetic.
Must’ve sucked to have that as your only comeback. I mean c’mon, “not universally accepted”? How lame is that?
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You are completely confused about the meaning and relationship between the ideas of psychic unity and the blank slate. See here for an attempt to untangle the confusion.
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