Some years ago, there was a thread on funny autocorrects. Someone mentioned that their friend once pranked a guy by making his phone autocorrect “LOL” to “let’s go down to the quarry and throw things”. Snowboarder Bo decided to adopt that, for whatever reason.
I think on balance it’s probably not worthwhile, but your assertions as to the sole usefulness and the motivations of scientists are incorrect. At least if I’m understanding you correctly here.
The main usefulness would be if someone is trying to prove that such-and-such “racial” imbalance is necessarily the result of racism. If there are in fact genuine differences in inherent intelligence between the different “races”, then this conclusion doesn’t follow. Since people are constantly making this exact derivation these days, the issue is highly relevant.
As for scientists, there might be something in what you say, but in all likelihood they shy away from it mostly because of political correctness considerations. There are things that can be studied without such career threatening potential.
All that said, I don’t think it’s worth researching, as above. Not because of the reasons you give, but because it’s likely that it’s impossible to conclusively answer anyway, so this type of study is just getting people riled up for little return.
Let me just say that this is Clothahump-level stupid. Literally probably the stupidest statement I’ve read in the past 6 months, and I read YouTube comments. Could you do me a favor and just slap yourself really really hard?
I addressed this. Murray types try to make race relevant by denying racism and then searching for a hypothesis to explain the effects of racism. It’s a logically valid way to make race relevant as a category of analysis. The problem is not the logic, but the facts. If you don’t think this denial of racism is plausible, then there’s no particularly strong reason to want to investigate genetics based on classifications invented by slaveholders.
Of course, we haven’t identified any intelligence genes and there are plenty who are actively looking. I’m sure that if we find some, we will also explore their distribution in different populations. You seem to think there’s a reasonable chance that we will find statistically significant differences between the groups created by slaveholders. I think the reason you think that has more to do with history than with science.
Actually what is telling is your assumptions about what I think.
Now you say “The telling assumption is that you think the idea of a black race must have coincided with black slavery. The reality is that slavers didn’t have to invent racism until the rights of white indentured servants became a problem”
Before you said “The idea of a black race including humans with widely varying ancestries and ethnicity does not come from the study of biology. It was invented by slavers in America.”
Bolding mine in case you don’t see that it’s you who said what you assume I think.
In any case… “The falsehood is that race predates American slavery. That’s incorrect. The word existed, but it meant something like nation or language speakers.”
Right, people didn’t notice physical differences among people of different origins and used them to ascribe all sort of values (or lack of) and judge them on that basis (AKA racism) until the American slave owners came around… :rolleyes:
Your post is quite confused. I’m making two claims. You tell me which one you dispute, or both:
(1) The idea of races of humans consisting of all the people from entire continents who share traits did not exist until around the beginning of the eighteenth century;
(2) This was more than a hundred years after transatlantic slavery in the Americas.
“Denial of racism” may or may not be plausible in any individual instance, and racism may play more or less of a role in any particular case.
As above, the question of whether and to what extent differences in outcome in a given instance can be assumed to result from racism is highly dependent on the extent to which there may be other factors at play, including inherent qualifications which vary by “race”. So it’s very relevant today, when these differences in outcome, and the role racism plays in them, are much in focus.
Insisting on dragging in “classifications invented by slaveholders”, when it has no apparent connection to the specific relevance I’m citing, seems like just a way to taint the notion by association, without resort to any logic or fact. (This is even assuming that the classifications were in fact invented by slaveholders, which may or may not be true as far as I’m concerned but seems irrelevant.)
Step 1. Create classification by “race.”
Step 2. Viciously oppress the people that you’ve defined to be part of that race.
Step 3. Claim that the result of this oppression might actually be the result of genetic differences and get indignant when people remind you about the history.
Step 4: Profit???
Do you see that “later” in there near the end? What do you think it does to your claim? (hint: it disproves it)
By the way, people back then, at least those that concerned themselves with such things, more likely than not didn’t think of the entire population of Africa as belonging to a single race and at the very least would make a distinction between Northern and Sub-Saharan ethnic groups.
You are 100% right with 2), the beginning of 18th century came about two centuries after the slave trade to the Americas began. This ranks right about there in significance as the fact that the 19th century came about three centuries century after the slave trade to the Americas began.
So, I think you agree with me on (1). But it’s hard to tell, because you keep changing the details and not realizing that the details are what I’m claiming.
And you seem to not understand or have forgotten the significance of (2). So, not sure where to go with that.
You know, if you would have listened to that podcast you’d have heard that Harris and Murray made exactly the same point you did on your second paragraph and your characterization of what they think in your third paragraph is absolutely wrong.
*Harris- The differences between groups are not so large that there isn’t a substantial overlap between them for every trait we care about so that given the variance between individuals will be much higher than the variance between groups again for any trait we care about but specially what we are talking now about intelligence. It would actually be irrational to read much into group differences…
Murray- Exactly right.
Harris- so that the truth is I learn nothing about a person’s intelligence simply by being told that he is black or white or asian, you still need to treat people as individuals and you make it absolutely clear in your book that given the overlap in these bell curves there will be many many blacks who are far more intelligent than most whites, so this is again it all comes back to honestly evaluating individuals.
Murray- I emphatically agree with everything you just said.*
Can you point to anything said in that podcast that supports your characterization of them?
Seems to me that this “great” rebuttal against Richard Parker was not as big as you think. So yeah, he was wrong about how early this was, but correct about races being a construction made to justify rule over others.
As a bit of an aside I have to thank you for reminding me why I became an Agnostic/Deist. Clearly one powerful justification of why “race” came to be used to justify slavery was thanks to following the old scriptures, and you pointed at one good reason why historians should reinstate the old fashion designation to those days (c. 5th–10th century) as the Dark Ages.
I have to agree with **Ale **here. I’m listening to the podcast now and the characterisations of Harris and Murray seem to bear no relation to what they actually say and the conclusions they draw.Their carefully nuanced discussion is so very far removed from the knee-jerk accusations levelled against them. These are not two white supremacists, far from it, and pretty much all of the concerns that people raise in this thread are dealt with in the talk.
I seriously recommend listening, I can’t imagine why, if you wanted to discuss this, you wouldn’t want to hear what an author means directly from their own mouth.
If I watched hours-long videos every time an OP tells me to, I wouldn’t have time for anything else.
In that post I was just making a general point about why people often bring up this topic.
No, I don’t agree with you on 1), I thought it was quite evident I don’t because I said you are completely wrong about that. :rolleyes:
How do you reconcile your claim that “The idea of races of humans consisting of all the people from entire continents who share traits did not exist until around the beginning of the eighteenth century” with, for instance, the last cite I provided?
Meaning, long before the 18th century people from Africa were already being lumped together based on visible racial characteristics, that on itself disproves your claim that “The idea of races of humans consisting of all the people from entire continents who share traits did not exist until around the beginning of the eighteenth century”.
Fair enough, you don’t want to spend time to hear what they say; is it too much then to put to your consideration that you shouldn’t besmirch them over what you think they said but didn’t bother to hear either?
The ironic thing is that the opening of the podcast is Harris talking about the problem of forming an opinion about a person (and a book) based only on the uncharitable characterizations of its detractors without checking the source to form one’s own opinion.
That sounds like a fig leaf once one considers that they are still allowing many to justify their **prejudging **of **most **people based on superficial differences.
Incidentally the bolded part points to yet again Murray going the classic pseudo-scientist way, not going to peer review, but yet again to the “I made a book” argument. I see it as a misguided effort to rescue his sorry legacy, as making the genetics cause poverty inside the races too.