No I haven’t.
I’m not saying that they do or they don’t. But I see no reason not to focus the context.
I’d like to see your answer, first.
Let me offer up a definition of racism:
Racism: a belief that one race differs from another in ways that are not and cannot be supported by objective evidence.
Good?
Then why didn’t you just answer the question?
How does the context alter your answer?
I wouldn’t consider it racist, no. Note, however, the difference between saying “blacks lack the particular genes…” and “blacks are morely to lack the particular genes…”. The former phrase suggests that race confers genetics and is more problematic than the latter phrase, which treats race as something that is associated with genes, but not dictated by them. In other words, the former is saying that race confers something.
I wouldn’t call that statement racist off the bat, no. But I would question why someone would make that statement. And I would question their intelligence if they said such a thing without expressing an appreciation for the role of confounding or environmental pressures. And after listening to them talk, I wouldn’t be surprised if I believed them to be racist. That’s usually how those conversations go. It starts out on a scientific-like premise and then eventually something is said that reveals that a certain kind of distinctly non-scientific thought process is really at the wheel.
But no, I wouldn’t automatically say that statement is racist.
I do not assume that he is an expert or complex gene expression. I do not assume that his claims are correct. I do think he, through his many years as a respected scientist, has earned the benefit of the doubt as far as his thinking process. I doubt he would he or any other accomplished scientist would have been able to accomplish so much if they didn’t have a descipplined mind to evaluate data and form conclusions or new hypotheses based on that data.
On the other hand, his one stastement regarding black employees is difficult to excuse in any way as not being racist. Still, that is beside the point, as it is not the only or primary proof he offers. He claims that his position is supported by inteligence tests. It seems that it either is or it isn’t. These tests either exist or they don’t. They either show balcks scoring lower or they don’t.
Another possibility is that he is correct about his basic claim and can support it, which would not paint him as a racist, AND he is a racist. But the mere claim of measurable differences between races does not make anyone a racist.
If I someone were to claim that blacks, due to their darker skin, can withstand UV trauma better than whites, they are not racist, are they?
I have accurately identified why the word race does not genuinely identify any legitimate subset of humanity. (Had the word race originally been employed for the purpose of distinguishing what are now identified as populations, then that would not be an issue, but the word was originally applied to very large subsets of humanity that cannot support the various claims made about them and to use the word race at this time confuses rather than clarifies.)
My posts to that point have been in response to other posts on the topic in this thread. If you do not want me to post, tell the other posters to whom I have responded to stop posting misinformation.
As to whether I should post in this thread: I have directly responded to your OP on a couple of occasions, noting that Watson has no expertise in the areas of “racial” identification and no experience in the area of psychometric analysis, as well as pointing out the apparent source of his odd claims regarding race in the parallel structure of his statements to those of Rushton. I have also addressed the issue of criticism of Watson by other scientists by noting that he has a long tradition of inviting criticism, first by denigrating the work of a person on whom much of his analysis depended. (He later savaged her, personally, in his autobiography after he had already received his Nobel prize and she had died of cancer, including enough errors in his autobiography to get his first publisher to reject the book.)
So I am not sure why you are trying to chase me out of your thread with complaints that I actually know what I am talking about regarding racial categories when I have actually spoken to your OP, which was not about racial classification.
Rather than hijacking your own thread about Watson to discuss outdated and superseded science, why don’t you open a new thread if you want to defend some disproven belief regarding “race”?
Because I would prefer to narrow the context before I even try.
Why do you insist on a general answer?
I don’t know if it will or it won’t.
But since you are so intent on getting a general answer, why don’t you offer a general answer first?
It depends how they worded their claim. There are people classified as Caucasian and Mongoloid who have darker skin than people classified as Negro. More melanin provides more protection. An effort to make a claim about any of the alleged “races” that assumes that melanin is explicitly higher or lower in an individual as identified by his or her “race” is simply stupid because it is demonstrably false.
Probably because he has picked up on the fact that you spend an inordinmate amount of time in every thread in which you participate throwing out one-line questions followed by demands to know where you have said one thing or another that people are forced to infer because you have coyly avoided providing an actual position.
I am sure you are having fun scoring points in your mind for this game, but it does not really move the discussion forward and if you insist on participating in these discussions, it would be more appropriate for you to actually engage the discussion with your own ideas rather than simply trying to “win” the discussion through the death of a thousand cuts game that you seem to prefer playing.
Who are “blacks”?
Yes, most dark-skinned people can withstand UV trauma better than most light-skinned people.
No, as tomndebb said, there is not a reliable correlation between similarity of skin color and closeness of genetic relationship. As was pointed out upthread, there are some dark-skinned populations in, say, South India who are more closely related to certain light-skinned populations than they are to other dark-skinned populations in Africa.
What is racist (or, at best, stubbornly ignorant) is the refusal to recognize that biological “race” simply doesn’t exist as a reliable indicator of genetic relationship.
If you say “blacks [i.e., dark-skinned people] have better resistance to UV trauma because of the melanin in their skin”, you’re not being racist. But if you say “blacks are less intelligent than whites”, implying that you believe that all dark-skinned populations are more closely related to one another than they are to light-skinned populations and therefore can be lumped together into a single biological category called “blacks”, then you are being racist, or at best stubbornly ignorant.
I thought that you said your answer wouldn’t be different for a scientist versus a non-scientist. Why does the context make a difference?
I don’t insist on a general answer. I just want to know how you define the word, “racist.” I haven’t imposed any limitations or conditions on how you reply.
How can you not know this?
Why is you giving an answer in anyway predicated on me giving an answer?
I was not trying to chase you away. And I was going to repsond to your eariest posts, but then saw the one I did repsond to. It just seems that any discussion after you make the point that you don’t think that “race” exists in a any meaningful way, is a waste of time. It’s akin to discussing the claims about the true nature of God with an atheist.
I tried to be clear that I meant no snark. And I was not trying to chase you away. But anyone who doesn’t grant race exists can not argue this fairly. And by “fairly” I mean that they cannot be persuaded about the lower level discussion when they take a counter position on the higher level discussion, i.e., whether or not “race” exists as a meaningful category in today’s world.
I will apologize if you took it personally.
Well snonce Tom has fielded my questions in my absence (Thanks 
) I’lll return the favour and beat my head against the wall.
The point is that we can not attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by incompetence. IOW Smith can only be racist is his statements are made with that intention. If he is merely so stupid that he has made the statements without comprehension of their meaning and import then he is a fool, not a racist.
Well if a 100 million Indian causacasians have darker skin than 10 million Ethipian Negroes what conclusion does that lead us to make about the resistance of Negroes and Caucasians to sunburn.
We can only agree wiht you if we deliberately elminate hundreds of millions of individuals from each race.
Now this is where we’ll get into our usual dance. But I hope not. I know that you know that in order to make the claim that Group A is more X than another Group B, it does NOT have to be the case that every member of Group A demonstrates characteristic X more than every member in Group B. Just that, on average, members in Group A will tend to exhibit more X. Why you attempt to turn this very simple logic on its head is baffling. Just because Kenyans are better marathon runners does not mean that every Kenyan is a better marathoner than every non-Kenyan, nor that a Kenyan will always win a particular marathon.
For the purpose of this discussion we are talking about those of the negroe race.
See my response to Tom.
:rolleyes: So you say. Tell me, define “reliable correlation”. And how strong does that correlation need to be for you to classify it as significant or meaningful enough to make the statement true?
If you’d like me to entertain such confusion, please at least make the statements you want to compare equivalent first. And your making such claims makes you a dumb fuck or close-minded. You choose. You’ll see that I did you the same favor of leaving out the option of merely being mistaken.
That analogy’s no good at all. God is (believed to be, by those who believe in Him) a supernatural entity, whose existence or nonexistence is ultimately not determinable by scientific means. Race as a biological category, on the other hand, is a scientific concept, whose validity is determined by scientific evidence.
And since there is no convincing scientific evidence for race as a biological category, there is nothing dogmatic or closed-minded about saying that race as a biological category doesn’t exist in any meaningful way.
Just a minute. Nobody is saying that “race” doesn’t exist as a social construct or as a loose descriptor for a bunch of genetically different but superficially similar populations. Sure, there are interpretations of the term “race” that are meaningful.
But what tomndebb, and AFAIK pretty much every population biologist on the planet as well, is saying is that there is no scientific evidence supporting the concept of “race” as a biologically meaningful category indicating closeness of genetic relationship.
Either find some valid evidence that convincingly refutes that statement, or stop complaining that better-informed people aren’t being sufficiently open to the concept of race as a biological category. You’re like a creationist arguing that paleontologists are being too dogmatic about denying that dinosaurs and human beings ever co-existed. It isn’t dogmatism: it’s simply awareness of the current state of the science.
The point is that genetically speaking, this “Group A” and “Group B” that you’re talking about do not exist. Yes, most dark-skinned people share certain physical traits, such as dark eyes and high melanin levels. But if you actually look at their genetic descent, different dark-skinned populations are NOT more closely related to one another than they are to light-skinned populations. Genetically speaking, there is no “Group A” or “Group B”, no matter how logical and natural it seems to you that dark-skinned people as a whole should be more closely genetically related to other dark-skinned people than to light-skinned people.
If you still refuse to accept this basic fact of population genetics, let’s see your cites rebutting it.
What is “the negroe [sic] race”?
If you only mean “dark-skinned people”, then you’re back in the fallacy of trying to equate superficial physical characteristics (such as dark skin) with genetic relationship.
But we can speak of “Kenyans” as a population, and speculate about the genetic influences in that population that may contribute to their performance as marathon runners, because we can observe scientifically that Kenyans on average are more closely related to one another than to non-Kenyans.
When we look at genetics, we find the average member of a Kenyan population group more closely related to his neighbors and countrymen than to most other people outside the Kenyan region.
But when we look at the genetics of dark-skinned people as a whole, we do NOT find that they are more closely related to one another than to light-skinned people.
That’s what is meant by saying that “race” is not meaningful as a biological construct.
Can I ask why you think that his work as a biochemist has earned him the benfit of the doubt when discussing sociology? Where do you draw the line here? Would a sociologist get similar leeway when discussing quantum physics? Would an architect get leeway when discussing history? Once again this seems like a total non sequitur and you need tomake some sort of attempt to link the two points.
Respected in one narrow field.
???
Benefit of the doubt in totally unrelated field.
Profit.
In one narrow filed certainly. But once again you seem to be implying that ability to evaluate data in economics makes a person capable of evaluating data architecture. Why should that be the case?
Well no, it’s not beside the point. If his long record as a scientist in an unrelated field gives him credit in socoology and biometrics then surely a recent as a bigot discredits him in the field of race relatioins. Right?
Once again you seem to want to give him a lot of leeway in judgement because of his past behaviour but consider damaging past behaviour as inadmissable.
That is perfectly correct, but as i said, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. he ha spresented no evidence and as such he fails the duck test.
He looks like a duck and he quacks like a duck. He probably isn’t a kangaroo.
That is because such a position is tautological. “Black” is defined as “having more of a UV resisatnt pigment in the skin”. As such all you’ve claimed is that black people are black. Of course that isn’t racist, it’s a tautology and all tautologies are true.
In contrast “Black” is never defined as “having less intelligence”. Now you’ve made a claim that Black people are dumb. That’s avery different kettle of fish, and is indeed racist.
See the difference is that your first statement is simply that skin composition defines skin composition. Your second statement is that skin composition defines intelligence. I hope that you can see how those two statemnts are qualitatively and quantitatively different. It’s not racist to say that x = x. That’s just the first tenet of formal logic. It is racist if you say that x = y when x is a race.
Or in even simpler terms, one statement explains why a defining racial characteristic even exists. That can’t be racist. The other attempts to link another trait to that racial characteristic. That is the very definition of racism.
And therein lies the problem. Negro refers to the indigenous inhabitants of sub-Saharan Africa and parts of North Africa. That means that it encompasses the Khoi people and Ethiopians who, as Tom pointed out, are considerably lighter skinned than many “White” people from India or Syria.
So now you tell us that you meant “on average”. The problem with that is that your position is ill defined and even changes over time. While it may be true today that “white people” are more prone to sunburn than “Negroes” that would not have been the case 10, 000 years ago, when most white people lived the middle east and the sub continent and as a result the average white person was much darker than today. It probably wasn’t even true 40 years ago when India held 25% of the world’s population and about 80% of the world’s white people. And it won’t be true in another 100 years time when the Caucasian population of Northern Europe and Africa will both have shrunk to a fraction of their current size.
So when you make an apparently simple statement like “white people are more pone to sunburn, by using averages you generate floating reference point that only has meaning right here and right now. So now we have to ask the question: what is the scientific utility of such a statement and what is the practical utility? If I claim that wolves are the same size as foxes it is perfectly true because of all the tiny domestic wolves. But is such a statement of any utility whatsoever to anyone?
Normally we say 95% in science. You can justify other levels, but necessarily it has to be statistically better than chance to be reliable in any sense of the word.
The trouble is that Watson said exactly the opposite. he said that every black person who has ever been employed has proven that black people are dumb. Bot some, not most, not average. He said that every single black person proves his point.
He also said that aid to African countires needs to be changed because there is nobody in those countries that can deal with things like a white man can. This is not saying that the average African can’t run a country as well as a white man. It’s saying that in an entire country fulll of black people you can’t get enough in power to be able to run a country as well as an average white man. That is exactly the same as saying that in the whole of Scotland you can’t find a single white man who can run a marathon as well as an average Kenyan.
You can’t downplay Watson’s comment by pretending he was talking averages of greatly intersecting distributions. He clearly was not.