Umm yeah. My brother and his wife took their son for a second opinion after their pediatrician expressed concern over the size of his head at age 2 or 3 and wanted to propose all kinds of brain scans and discuss cranial surgery and such. The second doctor looked him over and asked if he had any Irish ancestry. My brother replied that the kid is all Irish and nothing else. To which the doctor replied, don't worry about it. Irish people have bigger heads -- especially as children. That's a really useful fact to know. I wish the PC hand-wringers find something less dangerous to screw up than health and medicine?
Risch is absolutely correct. There is exceptionally good scientific evidence that ethnic groups differ significantly in the genetic diseases to which they are subject, how they react to medication, etc.
In fact, tailoring medications to individuals based on their genetics is probably the next big thing in medicine. Presently medications are used based on how “average” people react. Which in the US means people of European descent.
That said, “race” does not mean ethnic groups, which everybody recognizes. The idea of “race” is that there are huge conglomerations of ethnic groups that are inherently significant. IOW, it’s a taxonomic question, how we as humans decide to categorize things. It’s part of the map we build in our minds to explain the world, but not necessarily of the territory that is that world.
It’s interesting that the notion of “race” is a very recent idea. Only a few hundred years old.
Historically, groups like the Romans and Chinese were as supremacist as can be imagined. But the Romans didn’t think of themselves and the Gauls and Germans as forming a “race.” And the Chinese didn’t lump themselves in with the Japanese and Koreans versus the odd-looking Southern Barbarians who smelled so funny.
In both the Roman and Chinese cases, there were Romans or Chinese, and then there were a bunch of barbarians with not a lot to choose between them other than the extent to which they acknowledged the superiority of Roman or Chinese civilization.
It has been widely commented on that Chinese society has for at least 3000 years enforced conformity. Those who violated conformity, unless they were the extremely rare person able to overthrow the ruling dynasty and set up a new one, got whacked.
In fact, they were generally not only themselves whacked, but their extended families and in some cases all their friends and their extended families.
Extend that process over thousands of years and you have a tremendously Darwinian process of conformists being "the fittest."
Meanwhile in Europe for the last 1500 years, rebels and nonconformists were also often in peril from their rulers, but if they could just get across the border, which was generally not far off, they'd find refuge and often welcome from their ruler's enemies in neighboring states.
In China, there was usually no place to flee except into barbarian lands beyond the Empire.
I found the review worth a read, and appreciate Nicholas Wade’s courage. He will be riding the Charles Murray bench for the rest of his blacklisted career.
Those of us outside the polluted mainstream of academe might have never left the positions he says the genome research returns us to, but the book would provide valuable historiographical background on the subject, plus a look down the road. Sounds like great science writing by someone who refuses to let PC overrule reality.
The review does look quite interesting albeit there is an underlying thread that evolutionary biology has to be accepted to explain it. I don’t buy that.
Absolutely!
"racism"
However - whatever that means. One of the most if not the most words ever imagined.
City Journal is excellent.
How else can you explain a group’s appetite for watermelon and fried chicken?
Once again, the PC crowd is trying to make science their whore.
bump for later