I must say, old chap, that I find myself experiencing a touch of skepticism with respect to your former statement.
Posted on 10/22/2007 11:22:56 AM PDT by reaganaut1
Edited on 10/22/2007 12:23:03 PM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
No excerpting because of copyright. The essay is at http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article3075642.ece .
PC trumps truth every time.
Isn’t saying that one race has higher or lower intelligence than another the definition of racism?
“Isn’t saying that one race has higher or lower intelligence than another the definition of racism?”
Not if there is reason to believe it’s true, on average (and if the original assertion is phrased in terms of averages). I’m a guy and think men are innately more violent than women. Does that make me a sexist or just a realist?
How can reporting the truth, IF it is true, be racist. To use that information, like the fact they have black skin ( that’s scientific ) to oppress is the definition of racism.
A racist would define it that way.
To a racist, EVERYTHING is racism, even merely saying the word "race."
Excepting themselves, of course.
Being violent or not has nothing to do with capabilities. I think that it is amazing that there are those who actually believe that when someone in essence calls black people naturally the dumbest people on Earth (which is the same as calling them the least human people on Earth), black people should just accept that as reality.
Ping! Another thread starting up. Not even Watson believes what he himself reportedly said.
“Isn’t saying that one race has higher or lower intelligence than another the definition of racism?”
Isn’t implying that all are equal, which directly opposes both historical and emperical evidence, the same?
http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/racist
Main Entry: rac·ism
Function: noun
Date: 1933
1 : a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race
P.S. (That said, I don’t believe people should not discuss this topic. Open discussion can be beneficial.)
I don’t think so. Saying that a Border Collie dog has a higher intelegence than a German Shep is not racist either. If in fact if it is the truth, it’s the truth. We may not like it but that’s the way it is. Have we gotten to the point that we can’t handle the truth? The only problem today is that our world had gotten smarter and is capable of figuring these things out. It’s a lot like global warming. It it’s not true, are we supposed to just sit back and keep our mouth shut?
Racism is the irrational and/or unfactual hatred and demeaning of another race or people of another race.
By definition then, stating empirical observations is not racist. If there are racial differences on an intelligence test, that is simply an empirical fact. Racism comes from things like saying "Race X is not very intelligent, therefore they should not be allowed to try to do Y, or should not be treated the same as humans from Race Z, etc."
Its not racist to obsere the world. Its racist to say difference must cause us to hate (or do worse).
PC Egalitarianism: the Liberal’s own Creationism...
The truly insidious thing about political correctness is that you can't even do the serious scientific inquiry testing hypotheses that would - if disproved - shed a more favorable light on the positions the politically correct prefer!
To state that global warming is science. No ! it is propaganda. What group has the highest IQ?No ! it is science !
As per my post #12, in other words, indeed your definition of “racism” is correct. So, you’re right. However, that doesn’t mean this topic shouldn’t be discussed openly.
Here is the conclusion: Do a study based on groups of people according to social/cultural constructs, and your results will be based on social/cultural influences. And that’s all. Not genetics. Other people here will call us “PC” and try to shout us down, but they have no real evidence to support their theory that “race” genetically determines intelligence.
Good question. The answer is "no".
If we empirically discover that one racial group scores lower on certain tests than other racial groups, that is just a statement of fact. If we decide to never hire a member of that low scoring racial group without considering their individual abilities, that's racism.
A given individual may fall anywhere on the bell shaped curve regardless of how his racial group scores "on average". Racism is lumping everyone from a particular race together and making blanket judgments about the group.
He didn’t pose a question, he made up an answer. Unless he has the data to back it up, it sure as hell was racist.
No more than saying one woman is prettier than another is the definition of sexism.
“How can reporting the truth, IF it is true, be racist. To use that information, like the fact they have black skin ( that’s scientific ) to oppress is the definition of racism.”
My argument was largely rhetorical. A commonly accepted definition of racism is the belief that one race is superior to another. In that case saying one race is smarter than other is racist whether or not it’s true. Using your example, blacks have darker skin than whites, in some environments that is an advantage and blacks are superior in that regard. Technically it may be racist, but it is also the truth. It also doesnt mean that it makes someone less human or that you should treat them poorly or as an inferior. Even IF blacks on average were not as intelligent, it doesnt justify discrimination since it says nothing about an individuals capability.
The only thing for which genetics may be usefully employed is to demonstrate that homosexuality or the predisposition to same, is an inherited condition.
Genetic investigations of intelligence are forbidden.....especially when they involve comparative studies of caucasoid and negroid populations.
Hope this helps.
This is why it will be so hard to ever get rid of quotas and affirmative action. There are people who simply will always believe that if a particular race is 34.78% of the population, they will also produce 34.78% of the theoretical physicists. If they don’t, some insidious racist force must be in effect, and we must rig everything to produce the exact desired result.
It already exists. There are many studies which show varying intelligence for different race groups with similar social/cultural influences.
Would you disagree that certain athletic traits are genetic?
Stating that all people are genetically the same is like saying that all dogs are the same. You may think it but it is not true. Some are are fast, aggressive, smart, slow, etc... It is part of the genetic character - and is fairly well characterized for any particular group.
I believe that every community/race has something valuable to share, but to claim that all intelligent achievement is a result of your environment is contrary to historical evidence. It may be PC correct but it just isnt founded in an ounce of scientific evidence.
I must say, old chap, that I find myself experiencing a touch of skepticism with respect to your former statement.
The question is that if there even is a difference, is it genetic or is it due to other factors that skew the average, such as malnutrition and availability of quality schooling for young children.
If Jesse Jackson can make money from your statement, it's racism.
So has there been a genetic marker, maybe called an IT gene, discovered and identified to back up your claim? If we all came from the same primordial HOT steaming bowl of soup what cause some to get left out carrying this intelligence gene?
What scientific evidence?
There are people whose level of intelligence cannot be raised due to a genetic disorder or as the result of an accident or illness. They are mentally handicapped, and science has provided evidence as to why they are mentally handicapped. OTOH, to date, science has not provided hard evidence that there is a genetically inherent reason for differences in performance between people of different "racial categories" on IQ tests. The evidence for a genetic (as opposed to a cultural/environmental) reason does not exist. Just believing that it exists doesn't make it so.
He would have been awarded a Nobel Prize if he had only said whites are inferior!
Remember the REV. Jesse Jackson use to say there was institutional racism... hmmmmm wonder what he was talking about.
This guy has to be the most naive person in the world.
The people who put inquiries about the distribution of intelligence out of bounds are the same ones who put questions about global warning beyond dispute. Forbidding inquiry is nor science it is a quasi-religious suppression of heretical thought, no different than the Inquisition.
The High IQ Yahoo groups are all over this. And they really believe it.
Scientist's Study Of Brain Genes Sparks a Backlash
From the article:
While acknowledging that the evidence doesn't permit a firm conclusion, Dr. Lahn favors the idea that the advantage conferred by the mutations was a bigger and smarter brain. He found ways to suggest that in his papers. One mutation, which according to his estimates arose some 40,000 years ago, coincided with the first art found in caves, the paper observed. The other mutation, present mostly in people from the Middle East and Europe, and estimated to be 5,800 years old, coincided with the "development of cities and written language."
That suggested brain evolution might have occurred in tandem with important cultural changes. Yet because neither variant is common in sub-Saharan Africa, there was another potential implication: Some groups had been left out.
Whenever a group tries to shout its opponents down, or to intimidate them into not delving into a particular field of study, you can be sure there is a powerful reason for their behavior. If the egalitarians thought there was a chance in the world that research into heredity/IQ issues would prove the nonsensical blank slate theory, they’d be forging ahead with such research. The fact that they howl like moonbats at any discussion of these issues is quite telling.
I presume you read the entire article and found out the results of Dr. Lahn’s study have been inconclusive. :P
You must mean by calling people "politically correct" and other insulting terms.
I don't buy that there's a genetically inherent racial reason for differences in "IQ" test results, just as I don't believe there's a gay gene, because science has never proven either to be true.
I thought that current science had shown that there is no such thing as race. For example a group of blacks sent to Scandinavia for 20,000 years would gradually change skin color to white and Scandinavians sent to Africa for 20,000 years would gradually turn their skin black as protection from the sun.
Race designations are just arbitrary groupings for identification purposes.
Are you aware of anyone being forced to grovel, apologize, or recant their statements because they feared being called politically correct? No. But the mere hint of anything politically incorrect brings out the PC crowd, screaming racist, sexist, homophobe, theocrat, or whatever, and soon Watson or Larry Summers or Judge Pryor is being run through the wringer.
I don't buy that there's a genetically inherent racial reason for differences in "IQ" test results, just as I don't believe there's a gay gene, because science has never proven either to be true.
Has science every proven that every racial grouping on earth is of precisely equal IQ? Why should that be the default position?
OK let’s agree that intelligence is primarily hereditary and that blacks have lower intelligence than the other major racial groups. That doesn’t prove that some races are inherently smarter than others. A Condoleeza Rice or a Clarence Thomas or a Jelly Role Morton would be as likely to produce smart children as a white counterpart. I think that this is an important issue because proponents of a welfare state in the US base their conclusions on the premise that blacks are incapable of making it on their own.
To illustrate, here’s a link to IQ scores in various cities in Europe.
http://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/NationalIQs.aspx.
Other such surveys have similar results.
Some comparisons are striking. Why are the Germans and Swedes so much smarter than the English, who are primarily descended from Northern Germans and Scandinavians. Why are the French so frigging stupid compared to their German, Spanish, Italian, English, and Dutch neighbors? How about the Jews, scattered in around Europe in small groups, who are so much smarter than anyone else and win about a third of the Nobel prizes (not counting the peace prize). In IQ scores, Germany and Poland (despite the jokes) , who if you ask them, don’t have much to do with one another, are off by themselves compared to other populous countries.
It seems to me that successful, serious cultures where there is a “need for achievement” causes high IQ’s rather than the other way around, while a silly pop culture causes low IQ’s. This is consistent with intelligence being hereditary. In a country in which the typical bloke in the street admires Mozart, it’s the smart guy that’s going to get the girls and make the babies. In countries with a less successful future, everyone’s ancestor is going to be the baddest dude in the valley, or the guy with the droopy drawers and his baseball hat on sideways.
Firstly, as I’ve noted in several posts, there is no such thing as absolute intelligence. Scientists generally list an overall quality of intelligence, with specific abilities in such things as verbal skills, spatial recognition, etc. Some dice it really fine, into as many as 120 separate categories (based on a 4x5x6t matrix.
Secondly, standard intelligence tests do have an innate cultural and linguistic bias. The standard tests given en masse are not as precise as individual tests such as the Stanford-Binet intelligence test. If the test was written for redheaded Californian grape stompers, then redheaded Californian grape stompers would be the smartest people on earth.
Thirdly, the measures of intelligence aren’t that different for most people. About 60 percent of the population is between 90 and 109 on the standard IQ test. The difference between an adult with an IQ of 90 and one of 100 isn’t very significant when you’re in your forties. Add to that measurement errors and statistical deviation, and the difference between 97 and 100 is totally insignificant.
Fourthly, Watson is not a psychologist. He’s a geneticst. He has never studied intelligence in a controlled basis, nor has he read the literature. If he did, he would find out his hypothesis has already been proven false.
Fifthly, what if there were a difference? Does that invalidate a person’s legal rights? If we can say that Terry Schiavo is a person who should not be killed, with no discernible higher cognitive functions, we cannot say that Joe Alphabet, who has an IQ of 95, cannot vote or hold office. IQ is only a number; intelligence is a totally different thing.
Sixthly, what is a race anyway? It’s a sociological construct. The difference between a black man and a white man at the cellular level is insignificant.
There's no such thing as absolute insanity, either, but we don't deny that insanity exists.
Secondly, standard intelligence tests do have an innate cultural and linguistic bias.....If the test was written for redheaded Californian grape stompers, then redheaded Californian grape stompers would be the smartest people on earth.
Then we should be able to get rid of quotas and affirmative action very soon. All we have to do is devise a test where everyone performs equally well.
The difference between an adult with an IQ of 90 and one of 100 isn’t very significant when you’re in your forties. Add to that measurement errors and statistical deviation, and the difference between 97 and 100 is totally insignificant.
If we can't measure intelligence, how do you know that?
If he did, he would find out his hypothesis has already been proven false.
Then why haven't any of the Marxist scientists, Politically Correct politicians, and other demagogues who denounced Watson provided us with that proof?
Fifthly, what if there were a difference? Does that invalidate a person’s legal rights?
I was unaware that anyone said it did.
If we can say that Terry Schiavo is a person who should not be killed, with no discernible higher cognitive functions, we cannot say that Joe Alphabet, who has an IQ of 95, cannot vote or hold office.
Without getting into the debate over literacy tests and voting, you're saying that because we shouldn't have allowed Terri Schiavo to be killed, we can never at any point distinguish between the intelligent and unintelligent. Would you hire someone with a very low IQ to be a pediatric nurse?
IQ is only a number; intelligence is a totally different thing.
Then alert us to a meaningful test of either in which blacks routinely rout whites or Asians.
Sixthly, what is a race anyway? It’s a sociological construct.
That's what feminists say about gender, and of course they're wrong, too.
The difference between a black man and a white man at the cellular level is insignificant.
If that were true, then there would be no reason why black couples couldn't routinely produce white offspring and vice-versa.
The burden of proof is on the ones making the assertions. Should I assume that you are a criminal because you have never proven to me that you are not?
In case you haven't noticed, both sides are making an assertion.
However, it's the egalitarians' assertion that goes against our daily observations, therefore the burden of proof should be more on them. A few examples should suffice.
Blacks and white liberals consistently demand affirmative action. Why? Because blacks on average don't perform as well as whites on things such as college entrance exams, job application tests, and so forth. The left thus demands that blacks be given preferential treatment on the grounds that blacks would have performed just as well as whites if not for various external factors. In other words, they're demanding that some whites who outperformed blacks be denied school admission, a job, or some other tangible thing, on the totally unsubstantiated assertion that blacks would have done as well if everything were "fair". The burden is on them to prove that.
In addition, inequality is the norm on planet earth. It is not the default position of nature. If you see an orange tree, you do not automatically assume every orange growing on it will be the same size. If you see two orange trees, you do not assume there will be the exact same number of oranges on each. If you see two orange trees, and one is a different type of orange tree from the other, you're less likely to find equality, not more.
Given the fact that we observe different levels of intelligence in individuals each day, and no one ever really disputes that, why would we expect every racial group to come out exactly the same? That would be an extraordinary result, one requiring extraordinary proof, or at least evidence.
Why is there no place on earth where blacks outperform whites on tests? Is there a place where blacks are the intellectual and scientific elite, while whites scream for affirmative action in hopes of being able to keep up?
Finally, why is it that the proponents of egalitarianism are the ones who get their panties in a twist whenever anyone suggests doing research into these issues? I'm not afraid for these issues to be studied. Walk into the president's office on nearly any college campus in the Western world and pretend to be a millionaire. Tell then you'd like to give the school a ton of money, but to get it they have to use some of it for legitimate research into race and IQ. Watch the look of horror, and see how fast the diversity officer descends on you, followed by crowds of leftist professors and students.
I hate typos!
then = them!
This has nothing to do with “politically correctness”. There is no solid evidence to back up Watson’s claims (that he himself is backing away from). To date, there has been no valid scientific research on this topic.
Here’s an example of what scientific research needs to show: Science has shown that Down Syndrome is a genetic disorder that leads to mental retardation and health problems.
Where is the genetic disorder that leads to lower scores on IQ tests of people who otherwise appear to be healthy and normal? It hasn’t been discovered, if it exists at all.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.