Another Africa thread hijacked

The BBQ Pit
521

I’m still getting ignored. I’m choosing to believe that it’s because my questions are so awesome that they just can’t answer them. I’ll show this thread to my professors. Maybe they’ll let me out of the thesis requirement! And then I’ll be offered a six figure job, a book contract, and a show on the Discovery Channel!

But, seriously, you guys are taking a really narrow, recent view of the race question. You are using tests that are clearly culture-bound, a definition of intelligence that was developed in the West, and a few populations that, over the past few hundred years, have been subject to very special circumstances. There are Native Americans alive right now who refuse to teach their children their mother tongues because they remember being beaten for that (and they’re not all old, either!). There are people in Africa who lived through Apartheid and the rear end of the colonial era. I have heard from a professor, a young one, currently alive, who had a slave’s daughter stand up in her class to put the smackdown on a young man who didn’t understand how recent the worst excesses of US racism are. Tasmanians were killed off by white colonists less than a century and a half ago. Australia’s Stolen Generation were still being removed as recently as the 1970’s.

This is a drop in the bucket, history-wise. Yes, we’ve seen some amazing changes in our technology in the last 100 years. However, cultural beliefs take a bit longer to catch up. It may no longer be “polite” to say racist jokes in certain company, but it sure as hell still goes on. Putting a traditionally black name on your resume increases the chances that it goes in the trash, no matter what the credentials are. The white presidential candidate got a pass on being born overseas, but the half-black one still is being questioned about his birth, even though, at this point, it’s clearly ridiculous to do so. My grandfather is only just now reconciling with his daughter that ran away with a black man, but he refuses to meet my cousins. A couple of generations since MLK Jr did not erase racism.

So, again: why are Iraqis not the smartest? Why do we lump together agriculturalists, pastoralists, and hunter-gatherers? How do you deal with Subsaharan Africans being, by far, the most genetically diverse peoples anywhere? Why do you think IQ tests are valid, when other kinds of intelligence exist? There’s a great story about an anthropologist giving a hunter-gatherer group a classic grouping test. The people kept insisting on putting potatoes with knives, and in general objects that are used together in the same group. When the anthropologist asked how a fool would sort the objects, the people put them in the classic groupings accepted by Western culture and IQ tests- things made of similar stuff together. All the knives in a pile, all the vegetables, and so on. What do you make of that?

Seriously, one of the reasons that biologists and anthropologists no longer accept race as an adequate biological system is because we look at things both broadly and with deep time. Y’all should try it.

522

Persecution of the Jews culminated in the Holocaust, but it began in earnest with the crushing of the Bar Kokhba Revolt in 136 AD. Nevertheless, Jews began to excel intellectually as soon as this persecution was lifted by the French Revolution.

Current theory holds that persecution enhanced Jewish superiority by selecting for Jews intelligent enough to survive against the odds. Nevertheless, persecution is considered to be the reason for black inferiority.

Also, by any criteria I can think of blacks in the Untied States are usually better off and perform better than blacks in Africa. That tells me that blacks in the United States are not being held down by whites. Instead, they have benefited by exposure to a civilization superior to anything they have been able to create on their own.

Vietnam has been by turns conquered and exploited by China, France, and Japan. It was devastated by the United States. Nevertheless, the Vietnamese have been able to create a superior culture and civilization in their home country. They usually perform well in this country. Blacks have never created a viable culture and civilization anywhere in the world. The example of Haiti indicates that they are incapable of such an achievement.

523

I didn’t realize “current” was sometimes used to mean “bullshit.”

524

I did not ignore you. I did not notice you. Nevertheless, there is nothing “awesome” about your argument. It is a cliche. Although IQ tests were developed in the West, Orientals tend to perform better on them than whites. Moreover, they are accurate predictors of success in life.

Also, there is nothing “recent” about my view “of the race question.” The Negro race was always considered - albeit with exceptions - to be inherently inferior until, with no evidence whatsoever, they were declared to be equal during the civil rights movement.

525

Not at all true, even in English speaking North America. The facts directly contradict your claim.

http://knol.google.com/k/the-invention-of-the-color-line-1691#

In general, the belief that Africans were inferior was not widespread in ancient Rome or ancient Greece, and didn’t take hold in Europe until Europeans needed to justify slavery and the conquest of Africa. The American color line, a particularly weird practice, was only established due to the need to maintain forced plantation labor in the face of repeated multiracial rebellions.

526

African-American colonists arrived in Virginia in August of 1619. Most came as indentured servants (or slaves; the two labor systems had not yet diverged). They were under no initial implication of “racial” inferiority. The endogamous color line had not yet been invented. They soon permeated all three socio-economic classes. “They accumulated land, voted, testified in court, and mingled with whites on a basis of equality.”2 Some remained slaves (or indentured servants). Forced laborers both Afro- and Euro-American, ran away together, attempted servile insurrections together, and jointly complained about both the greed of the bourgeois and the cruelty of the aristocracy.3

Others became artisans and shopkeepers as well as professional lawyers, physicians, or skilled farmers who contributed to colonial life.

If any blacks became lawyers or physicians before emancipation, the number was very small.

There can be no doubt that some blacks are capable of high achievement intellectually, or that they have been discriminated against in the past. Nevertheless, when they were allowed to compete with whites athletically they excelled, and began to dominate some sports. The same cannot be said for black intellectual performance.

527

You missed the part where a brutal, oppressive campaign was waged against African colonists to make them and their descendants into an untouchable caste to support the political and economic structure of plantation slavery?

528

Oooh, ouch. My word vomit posts were simply unnoticed.

Also, yes, your view is really, really recent. Africa had kingdoms, large civilizations, and so on. Africans invented agriculture, pastoralism, and quite possibly language and culture in the first place. Africans were formidable foes to those who surrounded them. Also, Bedouins manage to survive quite well in the Sahara. Like to see you try that.

And still curious about the Iraqis. Oh, and, come to think of it, American Indians. Where do they fit?

529

Agriculture was invented in the Fertile Crescent 10,000 years ago by Caucasians. Civilization first developed in what is now Iraq and Egypt 5,000 years ago. Again, Caucasians did it. We know from paintings and mummies that the vast majority of Egyptians were more similar genetically to the Europeans than to the Negroes further South.

American Indians began to develop agriculture on their own five thousand years ago. African Negroes did too, but they created nothing equivalent to the civilizations of the Mayans, the Aztecs, and the Incas.

530

What happened two centuries ago cannot be blamed for the fact that blacks have always tended to perform poorly intellectually.

531

Africa has kingdoms? Do you mean, those trading post like Mali and Ghana, whose main living was to capture people living in the jungle and sell them Arabs and Europeans. :rolleyes: Who could be proud of such regimes?

Large civilizations? Remember the definition of civilization.

Invented agriculture? Really? Africa was one of the regions that domesticated the less number of vegetable species.

Pastoralism? Sorry but Mesopotamia is early.

Language? Come on. That’s like to say that dogs invented to move theirs tails! :rolleyes:

Survive in the Sahara? Anyways, if it is a matter of survival, nobody was better than the Inuits. Try that.

532

Ancient Rome and Greece called “Africa” to the Maghred, settled by Berbers and not the Black Africans that suffered slavery in the Americas.

533

It will be trivial to argue they’re not intelligence genes. All that will be shown is that some gene has an affect on aspects of some kinds of expression of an a train related to intelligence.

Again, you seem to be unfamiliar with the notion that correlation isn’t the same as causation. “Intelligence” is correlated with income EXCEPT at the highest level, where the correlation reverses.

IQ is a general measure mostly of fact learning relative to the age group.

These numbers you keep citing don’t mean a lot. In psychology, if you get a 30% correlation between the condition you vary and the variable you measure, you’ve just about discovered an analog to a fundamental law of physics.

You have FAR more confidence in our ability to define psychological constructs than the state of the art supports.

534

A nitpick, but Ghana and Mali’s main trade was in gold. Slave trade was a subsidiary business, mainly for internal use and for porters on the Trans-Saharan trade routes. The international slave trade really only began to take off after Portuguese contact when a demand was created by the new sugar plantations on Madeira. By then Ghana and Mali were both long gone as states, replaced in the Sahel by the Songhai empire. You may be thinking of the Ashanti state in what is now the modern nation of Ghana, who were heavily involved in the European plantation slave trade.

At any rate slavery was a universal feature of the world at that point. All regimes were tainted by it and buying slaves could scarcely be considered more civilized and less repugnant than selling them.

535

Isn’t it interesting, then, that Egyptians, Middle Easterners, and Mexicans have lower IQs than white folks who, as you may remember, did not invent agriculture ever? Modern Egyptians and Middle Easterners are more genetically related to ancient ones than modern white folks are to ancient Egyptians and Iraqis. Using the term Caucasian is overly generalizing. You’re putting in western Europeans (who got agriculture as late as 6 kybp) in the same category as Iraqis and Egyptians, while claiming that their cultural conditions led to greater complexity. Unfair, if Iraqis and Egyptians had great civilizations while Europeans were still figuring out that whole fire thing (yes, a joke).

Fun fact: the term Caucasian came about because Blumenbauch thought that people in Armenia and Georgia were the prettiest, so clearly they were the original stock for Europeans. How scientific.

You are also putting a lot of stock in what you call “civilization”, another term that has fallen out of favor. Yes, us archaeologists still use it, but not, I think, in the way you are. We use it for societies that are more materially, and often more socially, complex, but we certainly recognize that that doesn’t make it “better” or the people in it smarter. Australian aboriginals have been used since Europeans first started colonizing Australia as an example of “primitive” people. However, while their material culture is quite simple, there are well-established ecological reasons for this. Don’t get me wrong, I’m no ecological determinist (any deterministic POV is limited), but it is well known that material complexity is not necessary in hot environments (the Inuit, for example, of course require more stuff to survive than someone in a much warmer place). Also, social complexity tends to come with the accumulation of stuff. Settled peoples get complex, and it doesn’t require agriculture (see the Kwakiutl, for an example). Hunter-gatherers actually work to prevent complexity, social strata, and the accumulation of material culture because it is anathema to their survival. They’re not being dumb, they’re doing what’s best for the continued life of their social group. Besides, again, you try surviving in a hostile environment. While you don’t need the gear that the Inuit did to make it in the Sahara or the Australian outback, you certainly need a ton of knowledge of the environment and the ecosystem. And then, of course, there’s aboriginal art and the concept of the Dreamtime. Anyone who can look at that and think that these people are stupid really needs to get their head out of their ass.

ETA: Tamerlane, thank you for adding that. I don’t actually know much about African history beyond either deep prehistory or the ancient Egyptians, although I am aware that there were flourishing civilizations there. Do you happen to know any good resources on African history, so I can correct that? Thanks!

536

First of all, the article I linked showed that black Americans did not perform poorly before the establishment of the color line.

The color line was established over 3 centuries ago, not 2. It was the beginning of centuries of abuse and persecution, against both slaves and free people of African ancestry. None of the immigrant groups you mentioned would have been willing to trade places with American slaves. To suggest otherwise is absurd.

Actually the laws that were put into place in Maryland and Virginia to establish the color line stayed on the books in some form until the late sixties.

537

They certainly knew the Maghreb and it’s peoples. Romans conquered parts of the Maghreb.

They also knew Nubia and what is now Ethiopia, through trade, diplomacy, and the employment of mercenaries.

This is all grade school stuff, Omar. If you don’t know anything about Africa, and don’t care to learn, why bother commenting?

Posters here pride themselves on fact based arguments. Not appeals to emotion.

So, find factual sources to refute the existence of empires and kingdoms with complex social organizations from the Sahel to the South African veldt.

I’ll wait. :smiley:

538

Although you are right that gold was the main business of Ghana up to the discovery of the Americas, when theirs gold market fall down, you are wrong thinking that the slave business started with the Europeans.

The international slave trade starter with the Muslims, at the Middle Ages, centuries before the Europeans. There were dozen of million peoples sended into slavery to the Arab World and beyond, in humanitarian conditions that could be even worst than with the Europeans :eek: And those kingdoms profited from slavery as much as with the sale of gold, ivory, salt and other goods.

539

If you knew, then you also should know that for Romans, a Berber was an African, but an Ethiopian wasn’t.

540

What Mexicans?

Don’t you know the U.S. receive the poorer and less educated Mexicans? After all, a smart and educated Mexican don’t need to risk its life by crossing into the United States.

So, no wonder the “white” folks make better tests than Mexicans in the U.S.. The Mexican immigrants read the test with an eye and watch for the “migra” with the other.