# At what level is racialism accepted in the scientific community? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 10, 2014, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/at-what-level-is-racialism-accepted-in-the-scientific-community/695257 "2014-08-10T18:55:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 18
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2017, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/at-what-level-is-racialism-accepted-in-the-scientific-community/695257/341 "2017-05-02T14:57:20Z")
> [@SamuelA](#): > > Well, I mean the very first most likely explanation is misguided attempts at affirmative action. Nigerians who are economic elites getting the benefit of being rich _and_ being treated by key institutions (like Harvard and other Ivy League schools) as if they are severely disadvantaged. The Ivy League advantage to your future career is apparently pretty large. AFAICT they are refugees fleeing those guys that kidnapped an entire girl’s school. Perhaps they are the cream of Nigeria’s crop but by the reckoning of Murray et al, even the cream of the Nigerian crop should be doing worse than poor Appalachian whites. How have they managed to not only do well academically (which probably has something to do with affirmative action) but economically as well. AFAICT, these Nigerian immigrants are doing better financially than Asians or whites. I economics also practicing affirmative action? ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2017, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/at-what-level-is-racialism-accepted-in-the-scientific-community/695257/342 "2017-05-02T15:01:20Z")
> [@Evil\_Economist](#): > > Cool. Link to the top, say, 10 posts within this thread that say the things you claim they say, which, I may remind you, is: > > Side B says that since racism is evil, it can never be justified. Therefore, people must be equal. Therefore there are no genetic differences. And I’m hearing a few ways people are wiggling out of it : one is that there’s “no such thing as race” (even though it is possible to build a blind laboratory test looking for certain markers to determine race) or “it must all be nurture” (even though nurture doesn’t let a midget play basketball) or “the author is racist”. > > There are 339 posts in this thread (340 now) that, according to you, are in either group a or group b, so finding 10 that say the things you claim for group b should be easy. Why does it have to be in this thread. There are certainly people who take the extreme view that all the disparity in IQ scores and socioeconomic status MUST be the result of racism and that absent racism we would see virtually proportional representation of IQ and socioeconomic outcomes. And for others who do not take this extreme view it is an unstated assumption in their arguments that racism must exist because inequality still exists. I think racism exists but even with the absolute absence of racism, there could still be differences in IQ and socioeconomic outcomes. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Economist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/c89c15/32.png) [@Evil\_Economist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Economist)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2017, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/at-what-level-is-racialism-accepted-in-the-scientific-community/695257/343 "2017-05-04T15:15:25Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > Why does it have to be in this thread. I’m having trouble understanding this question. Are you seriously asking why a summary of the posts made in this thread should in some way summarize the posts made in this thread and not posts made in some other thread? ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2017, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/at-what-level-is-racialism-accepted-in-the-scientific-community/695257/344 "2017-05-04T20:48:06Z")
> [@Evil\_Economist](#): > > I’m having trouble understanding this question. Are you seriously asking why a summary of the posts made in this thread should in some way summarize the posts made in this thread and not posts made in some other thread? I thought he wad pointing out a pattern that they have seen and not just in this thread. ---
**Author:** ![Hector\_St\_Clare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2017, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/at-what-level-is-racialism-accepted-in-the-scientific-community/695257/345 "2017-05-06T17:47:42Z")
> [@Weisshund](#): > > Feel free to say hey idiot you are wrong shut up, but… > asian, polynesian, native americans etc > Those are all of the asian or mongoloid race, family, group, what ever is a good name for it. > > Germans Nordics Arabs Jews Indians etc running from pale white to very nicely browned. > All Caucasian > > All the people from the majority of the african continent, the aborigine from australia > and i am sure places along the way that are long forgotten. > All African or Negroid > > That is pretty much it, all of us. > 3 little tribes of not very much appreciable difference, and only some very mild environmental adaptations, and those can vary even within a tribe. > > As far as i know, those 3 are the only distinctions > I guess you might call that lumping, but there is so damned little differentiating those 3, that anything else seems like splitting hairs and i only ever see it presented as a means to promote one over the others if you know what i mean. > > Mother Nature did a good job of nearly offing us twice in 200,000 years, pretty much assuring we would not have any appreciable diversity. This is a really dumb way of thinking about race. “Race” is a subjective concept that we invent to make sense of the fact of biological (and to some extent culturel) variation, and so the number of races we define is going to depend on the exact parameter we want to look at. If you wanted to look at physiological adaptation to high altitude for example you’d want to classify Tibetans vs. Chinese, Aymara vs. lowland Bolivians, and Amhara vs. lowland Ethopians as six different racial groups. Another recent study on genetically rooted differences in aggression between two different groups compared two ethnic groups living in close proximity in Tanzania. There is a lot of very interesting variation between human groups, but how we classify it is largely subjective and is going to depend on exactly what questions we’re tryung to answer. For the record, Australian Aborigines are not at all closely related to any African group. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/at-what-level-is-racialism-accepted-in-the-scientific-community/695257.md?page=17)