Posted on 02/09/2004 1:09:47 PM PST by CobaltBlue
Edited on 04/13/2004 2:49:37 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
More than half of the class at San Jose's Piedmont Hills High School, students from numerous racial and ethnic backgrounds, are linked in their DNA to the same ancestor, born more than 100,000 years ago in central China or Taiwan.
(Excerpt) Read more at mercurynews.com ...
The definition of species is pretty objective: can two animals breed with one another?
Where does this leave us? Nowhere, really. I chalenge anyone to truly define who is and isn't "black" or "white," exepcially in America today (scratch any family tree in the South, and you're sure to find that the bllod ain't lily-white).
It's been asserted that there is no defining gene that can be used define a race. Whether that is true or not, I don't see how it makes any difference. There are a set of genes that identifies what has been called a race there doesn't need to be a single one that defines the difference.
In polite society we should not need to make the distinction, but we are forced to by our legal system. Businesses get sued if they don't have the appropriate "diversity levels", city governments give contracts to black-owned businesses and schools count the number of black and white students. And now we are told there is no such thing as race.
No. That's why we all look like identical twins. /sarcasm
| In the stratified world of high school, where cliques often form along racial lines, Carolyn Abbott's biotechnology students recently made a startling discovery: More than half of the class at San Jose's Piedmont Hills High School, students from numerous racial and ethnic backgrounds, are linked in their DNA to the same ancestor, born more than 100,000 years ago in central China or Taiwan.
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So it comes out at last. You're assuming that a low IQ is the cause of the problem, rather than a symptom. Could it be that in Africa dysfunctional cultures and governments, which in turn cause poverty, which in turn cause malnutrition, lack of schooling and high rates of childhood diseases, create a situation where, for all we know, the next Einstein or Newton is living in a village that doesn't have clean water, never mind the internet? Could it be that, in America, 300+ years of slavery followed by nearly a century of racist oppression and poverty, followed by 30 or so years of disastrous liberal welfare programs, have created a culture of despair in inner-cities that makes developing one's mind a very difficult thing to do?
No, I don't think so. Low IQ isn't really a pathology caused by poverty cultures of despair. It has has been verified that poverty has little effect on IQ except in extreme cases of starvation.
IQ isn't developed either. Attempts to do so cause temporary increases but they don't last. You are pretty much born with it and it does not change much over your lifespan.
The races with higher IQs are the great biological experiment and the value of it has yet to be proven. If you count the size of the population, then whites aren't doing as well as others, since their numbers are declining in many places.
Higher IQ comes at a price. The birth canal is the bottleneck for IQ. The infant's head comes with skull plates that have to knit after birth to accommodate the larger brain. Caucasian woman need to have a larger pelvis and that hinders her ability to run.
Not to mention, you can't just choose and enforce mates for humans....
Even if you meant North Dakota, Wyoming and Kansas, I doubt very much that many white people would go all day without seeing Native Americans unless they are wilfully blind. But of course, the way you have your argument set up, it doesn't matter how rare this is, you only argue that it's possible in "most places" regardless of how deserted they are.
Everyone who was born in America is a Native American so yes that's true.
Too bad. In a democracy, "places" don't vote. People vote.
That is exactly why so many whites have abandoned the cities for the suburbs.
And, in this country, we can't avoid the obligation to get along with people of other races.
You just used the word "races". Do you agree there is such a thing as race?
Again, your argument is circular. Just because people have historically lived separated by race does not mean this is "natural" behavior.
My argument is circular because the effect is circular. When an effect causes conditions that enhance the effect it is called "positive feedback" and it has a tendency to cause non-linear effects such as black cities and white suburbs.
It just means that, historically, few people have had a chance to interact with other races.
Even people who have a chance to interact with other races often don't. In the American South there are mixed race schools where blacks and whites have every chance to interact with other races but very few of them choose to.
Race is a mindset we have, but not all civilizations have historically thought on those terms. The Romans, for example, thought in terms of Citizens and non-citizens, which had nothing to do with race. Some of the Roman emperors who were from North Africa would probably qualify as "black" in our society today, but that was irrelevant to the Romans since they were Citizens.
And in America we have black mayors, but how integrated are we? We really don't know how the Romans felt about it because it was probably just as taboo a subject back then. But even if some people did not practice racial separation, it does not mean it is not natural. It just means that some people thought about it differently.
So, yes, race is a mindset. But the mindset maintains real genetic differences that we interpret as race.
Does ignorance enrich lawyers? Jeez, Louise, I hope so. Why on earth should it impoverish us?
If juries knew half the truth that lawyers and judges keep from them most lawyers would need to find other employment. Ignorance of this subject has been used as a legal bludgeon against whites for decades now and the popular wisdom that no one has the courage to refute is that social differences between whites and blacks is a result of white discrimination. I think it is only fair for someone to present an alternative theory.
Let's assume best case, let's assume equality. Let's assume you rise or fall, stand or fall, on your own ability, and so do I.
You're the one arguing that the "niggas" have an average IQ of 70. You need that to win; I don't.
Excuse me, ma'am, but I didn't use that word and I resent your implication that I did.
Where's the proof?
What would you accept as proof?
I would not call that a bad hand.
I have reason to believe that there are different kinds of intelligence (and I include emotions as part of intelligence), some parts of which are hard-wired into the brain via natural selection.
And I am not so sure that Western man's standard of intelligence is the better one when it comes to ultimate survival of mankind.
It may well be that the indigenous people of Sub-Saharan Africa had a good thing going: Their various ways of life before interfered with by Europeans and others, might have been the better ways in the long run.
Not that it was all fun--just that I think their way of life would be less likely to render the human race extinct.
It might be more uncomfortable for many individuals, but for the species, perhaps healthier than Western man and his overdeveloped technology.
Oh, puh-LEAZE...
That's one of the sloppiest, silliest, longest-reaching bits of nonsense I've read in a long time.
Short form: The author, a socialist/Marxist, tries hard to claim Gould as "one of their own" in order to add some shred of respectability to their ranks, through the goofy tactic of a) admitting that "Gould did not openly identify himself as a Marxist nor did he claim to use dialectical reasoning" (because he *wasn't*), b) in the author's view some of Gould's arguments could be called "dialectic" in form (whoop-de-doo, it's an empty buzzword in this context), and c) Gould rejects attempts to stratify society as if certain classes, races, or genders were predestined to be above the others, and (gasp) so did Marx. Well so do most decent people of any philosophy, duh.
Swallowing this idiot author's "conclusion" about Gould (i.e. that he was therefore a flag-waving closet Marxist) is the height of gullibility. And since when have we believed Marxists?
On a side note, he completely misrepresents punctuate equilibrium as well.
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