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What if race is more than a social construct?
Globe & Mail ^ | 5/10/2014

Posted on 05/10/2014 12:45:28 PM PDT by Altura Ct.

Nicholas Wade, a leading science writer whose specialty is human evolution, likes to ask interesting questions. Here are some examples:

Why has the West been the most exploratory and innovative civilization in the world for the past 500 years?

Why are Jews of European descent so massively overrepresented among the top achievers in the arts and sciences?

Why is the Chinese diaspora successful all around the world?

Why is it so difficult to modernize tribal societies?

Why has economic development been so slow in Africa?

Contemporary thinkers have offered lots of provocative answers for such questions. It’s all about geography. Or institutions. Or rice culture. Or the devastating legacy of colonialism. Or Jewish mothers. Now comes another explanation, one that bravely explores the highly dangerous elephant in the room. Mr. Wade argues that human history has also been profoundly influenced by genetics.

Part of his new book, A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History, is a summary of new findings in genetic science, and part of it is highly speculative. All of it is bound to be deeply unpopular among social scientists, because it challenges their entrenched belief that race is nothing more than a social construct. The wide diversity in human societies around the world can be explained entirely by culture, they insist. We’re all the same under the skin.

Except we’re not quite. Since the sequencing of the human genome in 2003, evidence of subtle genetic differences has been piling up. As our ancestors branched out of Africa, different groups of people evolved in slightly different ways to adapt to local conditions...

(Excerpt) Read more at theglobeandmail.com ...


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society
KEYWORDS: genetics
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To: cripplecreek

I’ve often wondered how modern day African american rationalizes their own self-segregation. And frequenly self-destructive subculture. I know that many of them such as Bill Cosby recognize the self-destructive subculture embraced by their youth.

But your right in that the Democratic party which holds this group as political race slaves has no interest in promoting integration or long term equality with any other group. They need theses people to be stuck to the cultural and economic plantation that keeps them voting Democrat no matter what.

So strong is this hold that even God, formerly one of the lynch pins of the African American community has been abandoned in-favor of embracing yet anther self-destructive sin of Sodomy.


81 posted on 05/10/2014 3:15:30 PM PDT by Monorprise
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To: Corporate Democrat

I don’t really disagree.

I just don’t think this is something we can stop.

A frankly more pressing problem for society is that there is less and less demand (in an economic sense) for the services of those of lower intelligence. And probably one IQ point falls out the bottom every year or two.

It is probable that in ten or fifteen years all the millions of people employed primarily as drivers of vehicles will be out of a job. Computers will replace them. A computer system that will probably cost $10k or so, can operate around the clock, never gets sick, and has many fewer accidents.

The same thing applies to more and more fields. What are we to do with those for whom there is no economic demand?

One can make a case for stopping this trend, as you have for stopping research into human racial differences.

But the only way to enforce these stoppages would be to install a worldwide totalitarian system, a “solution” that is almost certainly worse than the problems.

IOW, we can’t stop this. We WILL have to deal with what is discovered.


82 posted on 05/10/2014 3:18:25 PM PDT by Sherman Logan
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To: Sherman Logan

Eye opening, ain’t it?


83 posted on 05/10/2014 3:19:34 PM PDT by null and void ( They don't think think they are above the law. They think they are the law.)
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To: JimSEA

One other thing I forgot, Wade treats evolutionary change in the individual as causing or adapting to cultural necessities. That is if you live in an area where interpersonal cooperation is beneficial to survival, your culture will value group cooperation. Which came first the genetic change or the cultural adaptation? Has science isolated any thing in the DNA which might account for more cooperation in one group than another?


84 posted on 05/10/2014 3:20:27 PM PDT by JimSEA
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To: Monorprise

That’s a good point, and an answer to the fallacy of black opposition to sodomy-the fact that black rates of AIDS and other SIDs are higher than the rates for other races.

They also have the highest rate of abortion, so there goes that fallacy about their staunch opposition to abortion.

Black churches are hotbeds of racist liberation theory, not God-fearing houses of worship.


85 posted on 05/10/2014 3:21:39 PM PDT by mrsmel (One Who Can See)
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To: cripplecreek

The adamant push for “affirmative action” despite a generation and a half of equal or even preferential treatment for minorities actually supports “the Bell Curve”’s findings.
If blacks two generations removed from Jim Crow discrimination are still incapable of equal test scores and academic achievement, on average, there is either a genetic or cultural inferiority. Saying you have to accept blacks with test scores 10% or 20% less on a broad scale has remained the law because they cannot otherwise get into top colleges and honors programs means they as a group are not equal.
There are intelligent blacks. I’ve worked with several. But a lower average means fewer in the high IQ area. Or it means there are fewer blacks willing to rebel against the culture of low academic expectations and the ridicule of those who get straight A’s as “acting white”.
But either way, it is something that group must confront and correct on its own.


86 posted on 05/10/2014 3:21:57 PM PDT by tbw2
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To: mrsmel

I think of the world a bit more optimistically than that. The world is still moving forwards, including the United States, despite Obamanomics. Not as fast as before, and while incomes have stagnated since the Clinton era, technology and innovation is still advancing at a brisk pace.

3D printing, which could potentially be the second Industrial Revolution, is closer to viability than ever before. If that happens, production will explode to a point where even socialism can’t stop it. Computing power has also vastly increased along with technical and material knowledge of the world. Even fusion technology has made advances.

Whites are also nowhere near extinction in the United States, Europe or Australia and continue to occupy the vast majority of technical professions along with East Asians and some Indians. So yes, I do think the status quo is preferable to what could be the alternative.


87 posted on 05/10/2014 3:23:52 PM PDT by Corporate Democrat
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To: mrsmel

A Tasmanian might disagree, if there were any left to speak...


88 posted on 05/10/2014 3:24:35 PM PDT by null and void ( They don't think think they are above the law. They think they are the law.)
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To: Sherman Logan

Blacks are in a dysgenic downward spiral, because the lowest common denominator-the majority-are being subsidised to breed while the “talented tenth” are not havimg children, just like whites.

Then there’s regression to the mean-one study showed that the male black children (Prince George Co, a buppie bastion) of affluent, two-parent black families have been shown to have higher crime rates, higjer drop-out rates, and lower academic scores than white male children from poor families in West Virginia.


89 posted on 05/10/2014 3:26:00 PM PDT by mrsmel (One Who Can See)
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To: null and void

Were Tasmanians a unique race?


90 posted on 05/10/2014 3:26:45 PM PDT by mrsmel (One Who Can See)
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To: mrsmel

Dunno, let’s ask one...


91 posted on 05/10/2014 3:28:53 PM PDT by null and void ( They don't think think they are above the law. They think they are the law.)
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To: BenLurkin

God also doesn’t care a whole lot about cultural prosperity, and he tends to be rather big on people following his rules rather than just their own predispositions.


92 posted on 05/10/2014 3:31:21 PM PDT by Monorprise
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To: null and void

Absolutely.

Got cornered by one guy who was rather like Sheldon Cooper on Big Bang Theory. Spent an hour trying to convince me that the world should turn itself over to be run by Mensa members.

Out of curiousity, I queried him about what he would do if in charge. Turns out he was pretty much a Marxist. (Which didn’t speak well of his intelligence, of course.)

I pointed out that my goals and methods for running the world were diametrically opposed to his, so how could Mensa ever be put in charge?

I’ve always thought there are three aspects of intelligence.

There’s IQ or g, as the psychometricians call it, which is merely potential intelligence. Some guy running around the mountain jungles in New Guinea today may have the highest g in the history of humanity, but it isn’t going to do him or anybody else a lot of good.

Then there’s knowledge, acquired by education and experience. The higher a person’s g, the more he can potentially benefit from education and the more knowledge he has the potential to acquire. The greater his intelligence and knowledge, the more potential he has to impact the world around him. That impact can be for either good or evil, of course. Highly intelligent people can do more damage as well as greater good.

And then there’s wisdom. That’s generally acquired by knowledge seasoned by contemplation. I have never seen any particular indication that (above a certain base level of g that is necessary) there is any specific correlation between g and wisdom.

In fact, highly intelligent people seem to be unusually prone to believing things nobody else would fall for, especially when they are highly abstract theories that “explain everything.” This explains, I suspect, the immense attraction of Marxism for intellectuals for a century.

Some belief systems require a highly intelligent person to be stupid enough to fall for them.


93 posted on 05/10/2014 3:32:16 PM PDT by Sherman Logan
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To: Corporate Democrat

I don’t. I don’t think “all is well with the world” when my people, uniquely in the world, are blames and expected to shoulder the white man’s burden foe the rest of the world. Just for one thing, it means that responsible white families can’t afford to have children because they’re subsidising, through taxation, the costs of white flight, etc, the breeding of children of single black mothers, and contributing to the cycle of population explosion/famine in Africa and elsewhere, which in turn pushes those people to come to white nations in search of the better life (funny how the migration works one way, womder why, must be white “magic” that white nations are desirable), which in turn puts more pressure on the whites supporting the base of it all.

Not to mention that as a personal matter, I don’t want to see the end of the white race. We are a part of “diversity” too, and there will be less of ot when we’re gone.


94 posted on 05/10/2014 3:32:50 PM PDT by mrsmel (One Who Can See)
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To: polymuser

What a crazy thought, but here is quite obviously an example of where Scientific discovery is suppressed by political correctness.

Just because some historic and condemned enemy’s have drawn outrageous answers doesn’t mean the questions are themselves invalid.

Whenever anyone denys a questions for fear of the answer they expose in themselves a prejudice towards that answer.


95 posted on 05/10/2014 3:34:38 PM PDT by Monorprise
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To: Monorprise

Thanks, that’s exactly what I’ve been trying to say, only not as concisely.

There are entire areas of valid scientific enquiry that liberals want to close off because they are afraid of what might be found, yet conservatives are the ones supposed to be “anti-science?”


96 posted on 05/10/2014 3:37:02 PM PDT by Sherman Logan
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To: Sherman Logan

Pretty much nailed it.


97 posted on 05/10/2014 3:38:27 PM PDT by null and void ( They don't think think they are above the law. They think they are the law.)
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To: silverleaf

I started to go there;) The Romans, Greeks, Britons, etc., imposed laws that were retained by their colonies even after “liberation”, (they also created babies before leaving).

So, assimilation, integration and intermarriage can enhance progeny and pass the best genes to the next generation(s) .


98 posted on 05/10/2014 3:40:41 PM PDT by sodpoodle (Life is prickly - carry tweezers.)
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To: mrsmel
Or if you simply must have a more black and white example or two, ask a Neanderthal or Denisovan.
99 posted on 05/10/2014 3:41:10 PM PDT by null and void ( They don't think think they are above the law. They think they are the law.)
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To: Sherman Logan
I'm optimistic that developing technologies could lead to an explosion in production in the next decade or two. In that case, the surplus production may make it possible, although it would be financial suicide (and conservative heresy) today, to spend some of that surplus towards some sort of basic welfare and housing program for those who can't find a job. For altruistic purposes, and to minimize social unrest.

An easy way out of this genetic conundrum, I think, would be the invention and introduction of neural implants that could enhance intelligence, processing complex problems for us.

One can make a case for stopping this trend, as you have for stopping research into human racial differences.

But the only way to enforce these stoppages would be to install a worldwide totalitarian system, a “solution” that is almost certainly worse than the problems.

I don't think it can be stopped either, but keeping it out of the mainstream is on the whole preferable to what could easily be the alternative. That wouldn't require government repression, but rather a social and cultural consensus which already exists.

IOW, we can’t stop this. We WILL have to deal with what is discovered.

If so, let it be gradual, peaceful and not particularly subversive.

100 posted on 05/10/2014 3:43:02 PM PDT by Corporate Democrat
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