This is what you get when it’s even verboten to call a self-proclaimed racist a racist. Because God forbid we call someone who expresses racist views by the word that best describes them, instead of favoring nambypamby-assed euphemisms that do nothing except encourage people’s ignorance.
I disagree. The focus of discussion is on what difference an event - imperialism - made on the trajectory of african history, not on the average intelligence of Africans.
I suppose one could argue that the average intelligence of a group is the important determinant of every historical “what-if” scenario, but the absurdity of constantly harping on this must surely be evident. It reduces what is different about different questions on Africa to a boring sameness - simply put, every discussion on African historical questions would reduce to the same-old, same-old wearisome discussion about the Bell Curve.
Imagine if some group responded to every question like “What if Bismark’s unification of Germany had not happened?” or “what if the German generals had succeeded in assassinating Hitler?” with endless repetition of theories about the inherent intelligence of Germans. It would get annoying, fast.
Do you think the quality of the discussion would improve if we were allowed to call them racists?
It’s also obnoxious for orcenio et al to go all creationist when these studies come up.
Just what I’d expect a sjdjfkkkcbdist to say . . .
It is regrettable. I know enough about precolonial Africa to know that I don’t know as much as I’d like to about precolonial Africa–that there is much more worth learning. Good alternate-history speculation, of course, requires background in the circumstances which precede the “divergence.”
Personally, I appreciated contributions in the thread from even sven as always on the African front, Lemur866, Malthus, Mijin, MrDibble, orcenio and Ramira–even when there was some disagreement within that set! Thank you. Your insights, perspectives or interesting links taught me things or made me reflect.
Conversely, I’m wearied and mystified by the dedication of the anti-contributors, a smaller set than that just named. That their efforts should be capped off in this case with the remark,
makes me laugh/cry at the lack of shame or of self-awareness, depending on interpretation… if someone outside the usual suspects had said that particular line, I’d have thought it a clever (referencing this thread) strike against them! Of course there have been several attempts to engage bell-curved race theories, to little evident effect. These people believe what they believe, I must suppose, for some reason of internal necessity. Science has nothing to do with it.
What’s to be done? Shall ponies be banned for lack of tricks?
What’s your evidence for this proposition?
I’m guessing that if he didn’t want to discuss race, then he probably wouldn’t have called the thread anything like “white imperialism.”
Thank you for that in return - though I’m far from an expert on matters African. The more I read about Africa, the more I realize that I don’t know very much about the civilizations of that continent.
Just for an example - I always thought that the largest man-made artifact on earth was the Great Wall of China. Apparently, it is not - the largest is the Walls of Benin. Who knew? I’d never even heard of them.
“The” important determinant? Not necessarily. “An” important determinant? Perhaps, and therefore (IMO) something that should not be ruled out ab initio.
Regards,
Shodan
I haven’t checked that thread since it first appeared, but let me take a guess that someone also brought up Guns, Germs and Steel as if it had been published in a peer reviewed scientific journal. I enjoyed that book, but I’m really get tired of that thing quoted around here like was some sort of gospel or something.
I just can’t understand how those posts are hijacks in the context of that thread. Stupid, yes, but on point.
I find the quality of the discussion to be lessened when the word “racism” is deemed unsavory simply because it upsets people to be called racist when they are saying racists things.
So yeah, I do think discussions would be improved if we didn’t have to walk on eggshells for these people.
Racist.
(No, really, some people think that that position alone is racist.)
Guns, Germs and Steel doesn’t claim to be anything other than what it is. It may not be peer reviewed itself, but Diamond certainly has put his theories into journals too. And coming back with the 10000 year explosion, as the racists do, certainly isn’t any better.
There is no such research. There is also no such thing (biologically) as a “racial group.”
The complete lack of scientific support for their magical beliefs.
I disagree: the discussion should be about the ideas, not the moral qualities of those proposing the ideas. Creating an ad-hom flame-fest rarely if ever improves a debate.
In this case, the particular ideas under discussion were tangental to the main discussion - that is, a hijack. This would be true even if those ideas were not racist in the slightest.
I’ve rubbed your nose in this bit of your ignorance before, but looks like you need another lesson. It is correct that there’s no objective definition of “race”–you can’t rub a person with a piece of paper and blue mans “white” or red means “black.”. However, one could use subjective criteria to group people into different categories and could call those categories a “race.” There’s nothing unscientific or inherently wrong about that. And that’s all the race/IQ studies do–they do not purport to objectively identify people as one race or another.
One thing you’ve never responded to when we’ve discussed this before is that there is also no objective way to determine a person’s gender. Rather, there are various ways to define “male” and “female,” and a given person could me male under one definition and female under another. Maleness or femaleness is subjective and not binary (just like race).
Does that mean that it’s meaningless to talk amout a person as “male” or “female”? Of course not. In the same way, it’s not meaningless to talk about a person as “asian” or “white.”
Except that for 99.9% of the population, gender is binary. Try again.