The only “stupidity” I read is a some white folks trying in vein to explain why they think they are superior.
Back off.
If you want to insult posters, open a thread in The BBQ Pit. Stick to the facrts and logic of the discussion and leave personal comments out of it.
[ /Moderating ]
Your confusion around whether or not this clinal argument has anything to do with the biological issues surrounding race is understandable. It’s a popular approach to break down any race-biology arguments by trying to get rid of biologic divisions.
But it actually has nothing at all to do with race-based biologic differences.
Race (see above) is self-defined. Self-defined.
Navin Johnson can be black, if he chooses. Shaun King can be black, if he chooses. President Obama can be black, if he chooses.
No clinal gradiations; no migration history; no evolution…–no biology of any kind puts them in one category or another, or a combination of categories.
Self-defined.
Now, if you take–as a group–all self-defined blacks, you will find there is a group average difference between that self-defined group and a self-defined group of whites for the prevalence of gene variants. There is a biologic reason that self-identification with white gives you a much higher chance of being part Neandertal. That reason is the average choice of everyone in the group. So if we looked at an outcome driven by Neandertal genes, we would see a biologically driven difference for a self-defined group.
If, for example, you looked at the average prevalence for Neandertal genes in the whole group of self-defined whites or asians, and the average prevalence for Neandertal genes in the whole group of self-defined blacks, you would find an average difference. In this case, a huge difference.
As it turns out, historic migration patterns are reflected in how we self-identify, even if we don’t coerce people to pay attention to their genetic heritage.
And therefore, that self-identification ends up creating groups with large average differences for the prevalence of gene variants which were introduced to descendant lines along the migration way.
I hope that helps; to what extent any two people are related or diverse; to what extent any two groups are smoothly clinal; to what extent a given individual has completely gone against the average self-identification his migration history would suggest–none of that has anything to do with what happens at a group average for the prevalence of genetic variants.
That’s why Shaun King gets to be black if he wants to. If he has mostly european genes, he will skew the biological average a tiny bit, but insignificantly so because the average choice is more closely aligned with genetic heritage.
But considering the complexity of human genetics (as has been pointed out before), you could take any self-identified grouping – people who identify as Yankees fans and people who identify as Royals fans – and there would be group-average differences. That there are group-average differences don’t tell us much. And all the scientists seem to agree that differences within groups are far more significant than differences between groups.
Keeping this in mind, and keeping in mind how unequal society still remains in so many areas of society and culture, I see no reason to accept that such group-average differences in genetics are responsible for statistical societal outcome differences.
Perhaps as we figure out the (non-genetic) Nurturing secrets of why race-based group averages are so intractably different, the effect of Nature will go away.
Asians will grow too culturally slothful to be STEM professionals.
The Hebrew league will return to glory in the NBA.
Pacific Islanders will run sub-9 second 100-meter dashes in the Olympics.
Mbutis will set new high jump records.
And we’ll find out this whole gene thing was simply a racist canard.
I doubt very much it’s a secret… throughout American history, the reasons why black people were behind economically and educationally were pretty clear – I suspect most of the same factors (minus chattel slavery) are at work to varying and mostly lesser but still significant degrees today.
From 1975-1980, black America was finally free of official state-sponsored racism. The de facto segregation, poverty, and mass incarceration of black men that followed, and all the ensuing consequences, is all or at least principally a product of genes and bad choices. It certainly has nothing to do with the three hundred years of preceding history.
Hmm, that doesn’t quite ring true. How about this: the end of slavery marked the end of obstacles to black success in America. Jim Crow only affected a few isolated neighborhoods.
Hmm, nah. How about this: redlining is fake like the moon landing.
This is your reason why wealthy blacks and blacks with highly educated parents academically underscore poverty stricken whites and asians with uneducated parents?
?
Their ancestors were oppressed? And that just applies for previously oppressed blacks, versus say, previously oppressed ashkenazis or asians?
Anyway, bottom line: Shaun King gets to label himself black, and get in on that ancestry excuse should those stellar academic scores of his turn out to be not all that great.
<walks away muttering that these cultural notions are still basically secrets>
Did you not read my post? It’s about society and culture today, not what happened to their ancestors. It’s about how black people in America, even wealthy kids, are treated today.
We’ve had this discussion before. Every time, I say it’s about what’s going on today, and how people are treated today, and every time you ask me why their ancestors’ mistreatment would hold them back. Please try to remember this time: it’s not about their ancestors, it’s about society and culture and how people are treated today.
But just blacks, right?
Not, for example, a dark-skinned south asian? His scholastic performance is unaffected by prejudice and mistreatment, right?
That’s why it feels like the specific cultural reason for black academic underperformance is still a secret. Mom and Dad can be wealthy; Mom and Dad can be highly educated. But mistreated Junior still underperforms poverty-stricken white and asian peers from families with uneducated parents. A puzzlement, I’d say.
I don’t know if it’s unaffected, but considering American history, black people have been and are being uniquely mistreated by society and culture.
Not really. Teacher expectations, media depictions, and day-to-day racism and discrimination, are just some of the significant differences experienced by black people.
You always ask the same questions, and I always give the same answers. There’s nothing new here.
Ya think?
So, it’s blank slate thing? We can look at the specific day-to-day discrimination against black people today, and historically speaking, when we see that level of discrimination, we will reliably see equal socioeconomic performance, crime rates, etc.?
Heck, we can even do this historically, and look at records of the slavery and discrimination of the Slavic peoples, and how that affected their relative position as a racial group.
Is this really that hard, people? Race and culture are co-heritable; if you have a stable grouping, people find mates and partners within that group, and so both genes and cultural values get passed on. When you have a racial group which mostly shares a culture that disdains education? You don’t get a lot of education. When you find a group that prizes education, rewards those who get it with more opportunities, and shames those who don’t achieve it? Quite a lot of education. When you have a group that disdains violence as a solution to resolving intra-group conflicts and can’t use it in inter-group conflicts, you get nonviolent groups focusing on other types of solutions. When you get a group which doesn’t disdain violence, and can make it work for them, you get violent groups.
Now, a lot of behavior, intelligence, and so forth are heritable as well, but a quick look through history and the world shows that who’s the dumb brutes and who are the clever educated ones varies really, really wildly, based on the needs and conditions of the culture of the racial group, not the properties of the group itself.
A few months late and from the wrong source, but here’s Gould making the claim:
That’s a totally different claim than the one you said he made.
It sure is. Gould was saying that there had been very little evolution among Homo Sapiens since Stone Age times. Which is a totally different discussion than one that addresses variation within a specie.
Homo Sapiens had genetic and cultural differences 50,000 years ago. Or 100,000. Or today. That says nothing about whether the species as a whole has stayed the same or has evolved over any given time frame.
It’s not hard. In fact the topic of the article is in the first sentence of the article: [INDENT]For decades the consensus view—among the public as well as the world’s preeminent biologists—has been that human evolution is over. [/INDENT]
http://discovermagazine.com/2009/mar/09-they-dont-make-homo-sapiens-like-they-used-to
Speaking generally I would recommend that all posters, including Construct, read the first paragraph of articles that they quote. That can give a good idea about what the article is addressing. We are here to fight ignorance, not promote it.