LIBERAL RESPONSE: What can be done to correct this inequity???
Posted on 10/17/2007 1:36:52 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
'Black people are less intelligent than whites', claims DNA pioneer
One of the world's most eminent scientists is at the centre of a row after claiming black people are less intelligent than whites.
James Watson, who won the Nobel Prize for his part in discovering the structure of DNA, has drawn condemnation for comments made ahead of his arrival in Britain tomorrow for a speaking tour.
Dr Watson, who now runs one of America's leading scientific research institutions, made the controversial remarks in an interview in The Sunday Times.
The 79-year-old geneticist said 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".
He said he hoped that everyone was equal, but countered that "people who have to deal with black employees find this not true".
He claimed genes responsible for creating differences in human intelligence could be found within a decade.
He includes his views in a new book, published this week, in which he writes that "there is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically".
"Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so," he says.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission is now studying Dr Watson's remarks "in full".
Dr Watson arrives in Britain to promote his latest book, Avoid Boring People: Lessons from a Life in Science.
Keith Vaz, the Labour chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee, told the Independent: "It is sad to see a scientist of such achievement making such baseless, unscientific and extremely offensive comments.
"I am sure the scientific community will roundly reject what appear to be Dr Watson's personal prejudices. These comments serve as a reminder of the attitudes which can still exist at the highest professional levels."
Dr Watson was hailed as achieving one of the greatest single scientific breakthroughs of the 20th century when he worked at the University of Cambridge in the 1950s and 1960s, forming part of the team which discovered the structure of DNA.
He shared the 1962 Nobel Prize for medicine with his British colleague Francis Crick and New Zealand-born Maurice Wilkins.
He has served for 50 years as a director of the Cold Spring Harbour Laboratory on Long Island, considered a world leader in research into cancer and genetics.
He has courted controversy in the past, reportedly saying that a woman should have the right to abort her unborn child if tests could determine it would be homosexual.
He has suggested a link between skin colour and sex drive, proposing a theory that black people have higher libidos.
He also claimed that beauty could be genetically manufactured, saying: "People say it would be terrible if we made all girls pretty. I think it would be great."
Steven Rose, a professor of biological sciences at the Open University, told the Independent: "This is Watson at his most scandalous. He has said similar things about women before but I have never heard him get into this racist terrain.
"If he knew the literature in the subject he would know he was out of his depth scientifically, quite apart from socially and politically."
LIBERAL RESPONSE: What can be done to correct this inequity???
Watson sounds like a Democrat...
(Has anyone considered that the old guy may be aware that the controversy makes a large final deposit toward his nest-egg?)
I can only imagine how this thread is going.
Would be nice to see Mean IQ data
lots of groups have higher IQs than others.....
I know Jews are “smarter” than my group (southern crackers)...doesn’t bother me any
1000s of years of geographical isolation has effects on groups....in many ways...good and bad
it’s the way of the world
wishing it not true won’t make it go away
“Swedes are taller than Italians but that doesn’t mean that Swedish jockeys are taller than Italian basketball players. Even if Watson is correct, and no one can even define intelligence so I don’t know how he can be, knowing someone’s ethnicity tells you very little about the individual.”
Fifteen years ago I lived in an ethnicly diverse inner city neighbourhood in Vancouver BC, and used the bus system for travel.
I soon discovered that the shoes a person wears tells you more about them than skin color or language ever could - seriously!
so what is ruling the this thread....statistics or emotion?
haven’t looked past the first page of replies.
I can already see the usual indignant pollyannas (isn’t she at wideawakes)
versus the racist realists
God I love this forum, but emotive conservatism is hardly better than liberalism
there has never been a stronger emotion collectively shown in my lifetime than white guilt and the unbelievable willingness to basically submit themselves as a group to any notion that whiffs of racial redress
has it helped?.....no, it’s only made the original problem worse
when blacks regain free will regardless of mean IQ levels, then we will be getting somewhere
but continuing to place responsibility of their successes or failures with the white community is a guaranteed recipe for continuing failure as a group
Did Watson say EVERY white is smarter than EVERY black?
I doubt it
I would not advise that in Jackson Mississippi as a white man after dark.
> I think the old man is talking about intellect.
You could be right. I know a fellow with an IQ on 149: he cannot balance a checkbook and most folk would classify him as a social moron. He cannot hold down a decent job, yet he can thump me at chess. Were it not for our modern social support structures he would surely starve.
Go figure.
What you seem to be arguing is that different races of people produce different types of cultures, and that each is good at doing what it does best. I can’t disagree with you on that. You also seem to be arguing that it’s subjective to argue that one culture is superior to another. I can’t disagree with you on that, either. Some people may prefer to live in a Maori-style culture.
The problem is, there are people who think human beings are blank slates, and that every race of people is exactly like every other race of people. Such people expect every race to perform identically well at every task, and when that doesn’t happen, they immediately start looking for discrimination, bigotry, oppression, or some external factor to explain the discrepancy. The result is affirmative action, silly arguments about white privilege, and so forth.
what does one black intellectual whom we all admire have to do with a comparison of mean IQ scores amongst groups?
nothing.
this is not news....anyone who teaches in the Deep South public schools already knows this
and IQ tests since there were IQ tests have shown what Watson is saying.
and other groups outperform whites.
does that upset folks? I’ve never heard a peep about that, in fact it’s encouraged to show anything anyone does better as a group than whites
these prove just how so many conservatives today are very little different over race isues than are the left
the same kneejerkedness and emotion and thirst to appear righteous and morally superior regrdless of the facts
it’s like discussing black on white crime (dare I?)
> The problem is, there are people who think human beings are blank slates, and that every race of people is exactly like every other race of people. Such people expect every race to perform identically well at every task, and when that doesn’t happen, they immediately start looking for discrimination, bigotry, oppression, or some external factor to explain the discrepancy. The result is affirmative action, silly arguments about white privilege, and so forth.
I think you state matters admirably, succinctly and well. Substitute “race of people” for “breed of dog” and you would see that what you’ve said is Truth.
>>
Not suprisingly, that is the solution for penis envy too.
Nigel Parry
"Like Bill Cosby, [Morgan] Freeman has long encouraged people of color to accept personal responsibility for their lives. When 60 Minutes reporter Mike Wallace asked him, 'How can we get rid of racism?' in 2005, Freeman’s reply was swift and blunt: 'Stop talking about it. I’m going to stop calling you a white man, and I’m going to ask you to stop calling me a black man.'”
From AARP Magazine, Nov/Dec 2007
Yeah, Jews outperform white gentiles and Northeast Asians outperform whites on IQ tests. Never bothered me in the least. If it’s true, so be it.
The best laboratory, of course, is reality. How do groups perform when left alone to their own devices? What type of civilization do they produce on their own? What happens when one race replaces another in a particular area? Does that area blossom, decline, or stay the same?
As I said in an earlier post, it’s admittedly subjective to argue that one civilization or culture is better than another. It’s a matter of personal taste. But using our civilization....that is, European civilization....as our personal subjective benchmark, one can look around the world and see that some have created cultures that are somewhat compatible with ours, and others haven’t. This is why Asians can come here and don’t need affirmative action to get into UCLA. It’s why Hindus in England don’t blow up subway cars, but Muslims sometimes do.
If 10,000 Japanese immigrants show up in your town, and then 10,000 Somali Bantu show up, don’t expect the same results from both because “immigrants are immigrants”. There will be an enormous difference in how those two immigrant groups perform in terms of education, family stability, crime, welfare dependency, and so on.
I am weary of black Americans who have had slave ancestors in this country trying to beat more recently-emigrated whites over the head with it. Many who do so are professional people with no material complaints whatsoever, whereas the whites taking abuse may be, like some of my ancestors, descendants of Irish orphans whose parents were pushed off their land and starved by the English, only to come here and be used as laborers, domestics or soldiers. Life is hard, and the race is to the swift, regardless of skin color.
This is a great country for people who have ideas and energy and willingness to work for what they get. All others, get behind me.
If gramer an speling are any exsampel, that is sertanly true. /sarc
| To: puroresu; joseph20; bruinbirdman; cowboyway; Tut; JimSEA; DieHard the Hunter; NCLaw441; ...
So as not to be a comment hog, will post multiple responses to multiple freepers in one post (there are bound to be typos):
To: puroresu Response to comment: 101 Natural selection and [Macro]evolution (and Microevolution) are sort of akin to apples and fruit. Natural selection occurs, but Macroevolution did not. However, the idea behind Macroevolution is that natural selection, over a long time, can lead to the creation of new species. Basically, natural selection is a big part of Macroevolution (and Microevolution). If homo sapiens have existed for over a 100,000 years, and humanity has existed for millions of years--and since there is still debate over whether Europeans have some Neanderthal 'blood,' East Asians Peking Man 'blood,' and now maybe Lapita peoples and Australian aborigines Flores Man 'blood,' etc.--there would be plenty of time for groups of men to evolve into more advanced forms, and a varying rates. For instance, Europeans are commonly touted (usually by Europeans or their descendants) as being the result of their ancestors living in a harsh environment in which men were naturally selected to be smart, strong, cunning, and even--according to the ideas of one freeper--to be planners. Women supposedly were bred for looks; since men died off one hunting trips (suppose teamwork skills would be another thing for men), the number of bread (or meat) winners was limited, and the relative glut of women had to compete for a limited pool of men, and hence entered into the world non-brown (or non-very-dark-brown-almost-black) hair and non-brown eyes. Sort of a fanciful idea; if you asked an Afrocentrist to come up with a hypothesis for the evolution of Africans, he would probably come up with similar crazy ideas. From a Creationist view, post-Babel, the ancestors of many Europeans apparently were not a very powerful group. They, during the Ice Age resulting from the Flood, were pushed to the western corner of Eurasia onto a large peninsula up against the polar ice cap and in a land of glaciers, ice, and cold. Their weakness could have come from them being a small group (God could have divided mankind unequally at Babel). More could have died from the elements and harsh conditions. Thus a small and inbreeding population would be more probable to produce the mutations to give non-brown colored eyes and hair. People could have gone sort of 'Hey, that's pretty' and, without getting too detailed, these people could have had comparably more babies. In this post, not going much into the ideas about European men, but while they don't seem stupid on average, then don't seem to be particularly intelligent either; they seem....average. Have seen plenty of stupid and intelligent people from various 'races.'
To: joseph20 Response to comment: 4 "His statement was not a blanket statement. " How was it not? The first, second, and fourth of his quotes in this article are generalized statements made without sufficient qualification. It could be up to you to decide whether you view his third quote in this article to be a generalized statement. Personally wouldn't; just an absurd one, and the result of Macroevolutionary reasoning.
To: bruinbirdman Response to comment: 10 These are Watson's prejudices. A few studies made decades ago and with a limited number of people attempting to test 'race' and intelligence do not constitute fact.
To: cowboyway Response to comment: 18 Few people would consider Appalachians (of European descent) to constitute a distinct race that has undergone tens of millennia of evolution separate of Europeans. While bad, Appalachians are insulted for their culture, not for the genes within them. If you take an Appalachian baby and raise the child in a more 'civilized' part of the country, people generally won't consider that child to be part of a stupid race.
To: Tut Response to comment: 22 So, you basically typing that he's a jerk with bad taste. Got it.
To: joseph20 Response to comment: 27 a). What happened to the labelling of the y axis and the incrementation there? b). That graph doesn't look all that similar to ones which have seen of "The Bell Curve" study, nor does it contain the statistics for Asians and [Latinos].
To: DieHard the Hunter Response to comment: 30 Just to point out, humans and dogs are not very comparable in terms of race. Dog breeds are quite distinct in terms of their genes (and also their appearance). The result of being specifically bred for particular traits over millennia. Humans in contrast have had many factors for choosing [spouses], and have not been put through nearly as rigorous a breeding regimen. Furthermore, humans travel a lot. There's ironic justice that many of the freepers here pronouncing the African 'race,' at least on average, to be less intelligent probably have some African blood themselves.
To: NCLaw441 Response to comment: 33 Here's another question for you (and others out there): Why is the information of that science necessary anyway? So Africans can be euthanized? Or so Europeans can [rule] it over the 'lesser races?' What good would come from the [information] that one 'race' was less intelligent than another, or that one 'race' was more intelligent than another? Answer: Close to zilch. That research should not be censored, but there is almost no need for that research to be carried out in the first place. (you can remove 'almost'). P.S. This is just a *guess*, but suspect that your reason for such research come pretty close to question number 3.
To: JerseyHighlander Response to comment: 37 You might look at the video link which posted in an earlier comment. The things you mention in your comment are not genetic, nor based on race, but based on environmental factors and (sort of recent) ancestral environmental factors.
To: Star Traveler Response to comment: 39 Generally agree with your post, but would add that not only the subculture is to blame, but also the general (yes, the European-descended dominated) society. As you can see in this thread, societal attitudes toward those of African descent being comparatively unintelligent run deep. Do you think that they don't see/read/hear this? If the conditions ancestors lived under are shown conclusively to affect future generations, then many Americans of African descent would have a very strong case for reparations for slavery. Already, even without such epigenetics (still sort of 'gushing' over that show), many Americans of African descent living in single parent households is directly linked to slavery. Slave owners were not beholden to keep families together, and many slave children were separated from their fathers early on--or if the father was European descended, their father disowned them, and even from their mothers when they were older. And that has led all the way to today, where having a single parent family is normal to many Americans of African descent. Note, this does not lessen the blame on Americans of African descent themselves for their failure to form nuclear families, but does give some new blame to those slave owners of long ago. It is similar to domestic violence, which often runs in families. A child who is beaten and who sees a parent beaten is more probable to beat his own children and spouse. A violent childhood does not take away the responsibility the man has to not beat his family, but the beater from the previous generation does deserve some blame.
To: CatoRenasci Response to comment: 45 It could be pointed out, that, in contrast to the rather arbitrary 'races,' there is a genetic distinction between women and men. One has y chromosome, for starters.
To: hershey Response to comment: 48 They both need a civilization boost, not a genome boost. How does Islamic brainwashing alter genomes? (incidentally, it could alter epigenomes).
To: Godebert Response to comment: 49 Not by much. You should try looking at dress, [non-morphological] appearance, demeanor, and later behavior, conversation, attitude, and then personality. Those are much more useful factors than 'race.'
To: sportutegrl; bmwcyle; excalibur1701 Response to comment: 55 "Unfortunately, most blacks vote for Democrats." So do Ashkenazi Jews and Americans of Asian descent.....and around half of Americans of European descent (something that has seemed lost on more than one freeper). The first two groups are supposed to have a higher IQ on average than those of European descent, and the latter the same.
To: Hardastarboard Response to comment: 56 Some people bring up and rely on "The Bell Curve" too much. Wonder why? Maybe because although it's old and tested only a small segment of the American (and other) population(s), it gave an 'answer' they want?
To: driftdiver; joseph20; cowboyway Response to comment: 58 Eurocentric in that many IQ tests test for things which people in Western--and now increasingly Asian--societies consider to be useful skills or traits in the non-physical field. They don't cover all non-physical skills that people can possess. Other people may be far more skilled at three dimensional chess, for instance (to just come up with something). It isn't a secret that there is a big controversy over what constitutes intelligence.
To: puroresu Response to comment: 60 But, why must the Australian fail? He could stand a fair chance of materially succeeding in his new country.
To: Raycpa Response to comment: 69 Percentage-wise? There are more European descendants who vote to the left of the political spectrum than those of African descent. And, again half of the European descended population is not so 'hot' then, either.
To: Shamrock-DW Response to comment: 74 There are plenty of intelligent Africans, many of whom flee Africa for continents with less war, disease, famine, and more money and security.
To: SauronOfMordor Response to comment: 78 Then there's the almost pointlessness of such research.... See the response to NCLaw441's comment.
To: Wonder Warthog Response to comment: 79 And with that statement you demonstrate that you did not thoroughly read the article. Watson's quotes do not mention averages, merely his belief that those of African descent are stupider than those of European descent. *Oddly*, he didn't bring himself to state that those of European descent are more intelligent than those of African descent. Would that have been too prideful?
To: junta Response to comment: 84 Obviously, his not shutting up is a sign that he is not too smart for his britches.
To: BnBlFlag Response to comment: 93 They aren't doing a very good job at suppression, then. That the averages of the 'races' are not the same is not conclusive proof that one 'race' is more intelligent than another. You state that [Latinos] are in between European descendants and African ones. Except for Brazilians, [Latinos] are largely of European and Amerindian descent. Amerindians are supposed to be closely related to northeast Asians. Therefore, genetically, logically, if "The Bell Curve" showed a genetic basis for intelligence, [Latinos] should fall in between Asian descendants and European ones. Since they don't that is just yet another sign that the disparities in IQs (not necessarily intelligence) is not primarily based on genes or 'race.'
To: puroresu Response to comment: 97 If Finns moved to the Outback, do you believe that they would be on their own, with no logistical-type link to Finland? You mention European colonization of Southern Africa. They were supplied and protected by Europe, first the Netherlands, and then the United Kingdom. They were not on their own. They imported their own, already invented, technology and moved on from there. If a Finn moved to the Outback, he would probably be able to pick up aborigine technology, whereas an aborigine in Finland might not as readily pick up cell phone electronics (Nokia is a major part of the Finnish economy), but then again, he might. Neither show a sign of particular intelligence, merely recognition of a technology, and the ability to access it. Posted on 10/17/2007 11:07:08 AM PDT by Jedi Master Pikachu ( What is your take on Acts 15:20 (abstaining from blood) about eating meat? Could you freepmail? ) |
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