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To: TradicalRC

There's no way culture is genetic.

Certainly there is a lot of artifice in a more complex advanced culture, but it stretches credulity to say that physical aspects of persons are genetic but personalities are not. Cultures cultivate certain aspects of personality which in turn can affect a culture if it is dynamic enough. Intellect is another ball of wax and is dependent, I think more on the person.

The problem is simplistic "either/or" thinking, ie, the notion that race is only genetics, or that culture is entirely unrelated to genetics or race, etc., ergo, it's either/or, nature vs. nurture, and never both.

Anyone who has observed children and animals, for instance, can recognize distinct personalities that emerge very early in life, long before "nurture", that is, deliberate enculturation, has had a chance to take effect. We know, and it has been demonstrated (to all who care to study the matter honestly) that more than just physical appearance is genetically influenced. Intelligence and personality and other behavioral characteristics are influenced by genes. This doesn't mean that "nurture" can't also be an influence.

Rather than thinking in such simplistic terms as "race" or "ethnicity", I find that Evolutionary Psychology has the better idea: look at how groups of people behave; those who tend to group together over time and who pursue the same group strategy and share the same group psychology, are therefore part of the same evolutionary group which you can call a "tribe" or a "race" or a "nation" or whatever term seems appropriate in context.

In other words, look at what people do, both as individuals and as groups, in order to recognize what "race" or "ethnicity" or "nation" or "tribe" or "sect" or whatever they belong to. This will tend to strongly correlate with "race" in the sense of "what people look like" but it's not an absolute category and there's plenty of room for overlap and intermixture.

As to blacks, it's obvious that they are badly served by their current culture. Blacks in the USA didn't use to have most of the problems they currently have, or had them to a much less degree. The welfare state has had a big role in creating this problem. Taboos about race make it very difficult to talk about the problem, and if we can't talk about the problem, we can't do anything to fix it.

393 posted on 09/06/2005 9:01:08 PM PDT by Vast Buffalo Wing Conspiracy
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To: Vast Buffalo Wing Conspiracy
As to blacks, it's obvious that they are badly served by their current culture. Blacks in the USA didn't use to have most of the problems they currently have, or had them to a much less degree.

Well said!

398 posted on 09/07/2005 3:38:16 AM PDT by airborne
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