CPT
Posted on 01/01/2019 10:25:48 AM PST by reaganaut1
It has been more than a decade since James D. Watson, a founder of modern genetics, landed in a kind of professional exile by suggesting that black people are intrinsically less intelligent than whites.
In 2007, Dr. Watson, who shared a 1962 Nobel Prize for describing the double-helix structure of DNA, told a British journalist that 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.”
Moreover, he added, although he wished everyone were equal, “people who have to deal with black employees find this not true.”
Dr. Watson’s comments reverberated around the world, and he was forced to retire from his job as chancellor of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island, although he retains an office there.
He apologized publicly and “unreservedly,’’ and in later interviews he sometimes suggested that he had been playing the provocateur — his trademark role — or had not understood that his comments would be made public.
Ever since, Dr. Watson, 90, has been largely absent from the public eye. His speaking invitations evaporated. In 2014, he became the first living Nobelist to sell his medal, citing a depleted income from having been designated a “nonperson.’’
But his remarks have lingered. They have been invoked to support white supremacist views, and scientists routinely excoriate Dr. Watson when his name surfaces on social media.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
There are many different attributes that are genetically determined.
I’m black, got a 35 ACT and a 1100 SAT. I’m not saying a bell curve for populations don’t exist but it only matters if you’re a collectivist. If you judge each individual on their own merits then what does it matter?
hey!! short men are only angry when someone pisses us off!! :P
CPT
Fortunately that’s true, but social engineers demand statistically equal out comes.
A racial quota system for physicians and engineers is not a good thing for people who depend on physicians and engineers. A society imposing such quotas is certain to decline with respect to societies that don’t employ such quotas.
“It is this: The reaction to “The Bell Curve” exposed a profound corruption of the social sciences that has prevailed since the 1960s”
The key phrase.
No one will be allowed to tell the truth because it undermines a political goal.
Read The Bell Curve, but don’t tell anyone you did.
+++++
I did so I’m violating your rule.
Murray was talking about measurements of average intelligence. He showed that the peak in the distribution of IQ is race dependent. That is just a fact and I’ve seen no scientific evidence to dispute it.
OTOH, I have, over the years, dealt with some pretty bright black people both at school and in business. There is no doubt that there are black people out there who are much smarter than the average white, Latino or Asian.
Personally I still believe that environment is a factor, not just genetics. And I trace that to culture. European culture is simply better than African culture and has been for at least the last 2 or 3 thousand years. That has to be factored in.
And lastly, look at the NBA and NFL rosters and what do you see? Blacks dominate in the skills required to be great athletes. Intelligence isn’t everything. And we are not all alike.
Now don’t get me started on Diversity. I’ll adopt it when the NBA and NFL does.
Color is incidental. It’s merely a marker for differences that are deep and profound. No race is better or worse in any moral sense, and heaven or hell will be the epigraph of everyone. But this is not part of the argument, the argument is this. Does any ethnic group have the right to determine that there is a value in maintaining an ethnic and cultural heritage?
The variation within a race will always be greater than between races. Thus you have Black geniuses, and Black simpletons. The comments are meant in general. I would assume everyone here can distinguish general terms vs. individual people.
They essentially banished Watson for speaking the truth. That’s what matters.
The stories I could tell...
The whole governmental Equal Opportunity bureaucracy revolves around the assertion that there ARE NO differences between groups, and thus any statistical differences in hiring or promotion is legal proof if discrimination.
Acknowledging that there ARE group differences would collapse the whole con game.
Of course there are highly intelligent black people. And of course every person should be treated equally in this great country. Unfortunately we have not treated people equally for decades. Asians have been discriminated against at Ivy League schools because they are too smart. And blacks have been harmed repeatedly over the years by being placed in schools that day struggle to succeed in. Everyone would be better off, Blacks included, if we stopped looking at skin color.
I wondered what had become of Dr. Watson. I just presumed he had passed on. This is a case where one has to separate the man from his accomplishments. That is his view on that particular topic. So be it. I don’t refer to someone like Dr. Watson in order to form my views on race or sociology. His theories aren’t going to change anyone’s life today. There is enough information to the contrary. Minorities of today are individually given the opportunity to prove these theories wrong, if that is their goal.
I am still impressed at the work he and Dr. Crick and the young female scientist who assisted with xrays of a cell (her name escapes me).
Their work remains a tremendous gift to science and biology.
“If you judge each individual on their own merits then what does it matter?”
The problem comes when people say prejudice and bias are the cause of any disproportionate representation. Thus if medical schools don’t have the same percentage of blacks as the general population, it is “racism” and not even conceivably due to unequal percentages of qualified candidates.
Genetics? Culture? Opportunity? In modern America, the first two are off the plate for discussion in polite society.
I still don’t understand why they hired Sarah Jeong.
She is very loud and very proud of her hatred for white people. Why did they welcome this “Eris”, this goddess of strife and discord into their workplace?
My only answer is that Sarah Jeong must symbolize the type of people who are still buying the NYT.
The blondes of America should give Alexa Ocasio-Cortez the status of "honorary blonde."
Of course I immediately went to the article because the comments are always the best. No comment section.......I can’t figure out how the times has some articles commented & others not. And it’s not always a PC thing, but I’m always curious about why they all don’t get comments.
each person is given different gifts, talents, abilities
and yes, it is clear that most people in some population groups have gifts, talents that tend to differ from those of folks in other groups
this should not be any problem to anybody
after all, isn’t it the leftists that constantly preach that we should all “celebrate our diversity?”
I would add that we should respect the other person, even if he is a better doctor or can can shoot more baskets than us
It matters when you consider what happens to the population in general and what happens at the extremes of the distribution.
Jordan Peterson explains this in a video when he describes the difference between the sexes in "agreeableness". If you pick a man and a woman at random I think he said that there is a 60% chance that the woman is more agreeable than the man. That, in and of itself, may not have great consequences.
The great effect comes when one considers what happens to those whose agreeableness is at the low end of the distribution. Such people are virtually all male and seldom female. One visible result is that our prisons are full of disagreeable men and the population of women in such prisons is dramatically less.
Similar results can be expected with regard to intelligence. If members of one race, on average, are less intelligent than members of some other race, and, given that intelligence correlates with economic success, then one can expect that the population of economically unsuccessful people will be disproportionately made up of people of the less intelligent race.
The really significant fact from such a conjecture is that no amount of social fiddling will change the outcome to any appreciable degree. Furthermore, in so far as disparate economic outcomes in life lead to resentment, we can expect that some of our social ills will be with us forever.
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