Nope. My point is that I have no culpability, nor any sense at all that I should have.
Should someone else assign me culpability (see Honesty’s post to which I was responding), then it is a legitimate response to reply that there is science which suggests that the current “overall lack of success” of blacks is not the white man’s fault and not ascribable (only) to what happened in the past. Of course, one may take issue with the “science” and that is not the point I am making; it has already been debated endlessly here and elsewhere. The point I am making is that when a given population blames a different group for their lack of success, that is going to drive efforts on the part of the group being blamed to defend themselves against an unfair accusation. The impetus to undertake the scientific study is not a “sense of culpability” but a defense against misplaced blame.
Ethiopia corresponds pretty closely to the Balkans in historical interference. Foreigners have actively interfered with (or occupied) Ethiopia frequently beginning in 1868, despite which, Ethiopia was a very prosperous country during several of those periods–notably, the 1920s and 1950s when they were not under direct foreign intervention. Around 1960, the spillover from the Cold War caught up with Ethiopia and it spent nearly forty years in arms-dealer supported (sometimes foreign government supported) civil war, exacerbated by periodic droughts and a dalliance with Socialism.
But what about prior to any white involvement…was African societies in general at/about the same level as Europeans, South Asia before the 200 year disruption of what might have been comparative stages of development? (sub-saharan Africa minus Sudan)
At different times, different African societies reached the beginning stages of comparable technology or organization as various European or Asian societies, although throughout Africa, there were fewer such societies. Ghana, at its peak, was probably more advanced than its contemporary Scandinavia or Russia and Poland. On the cusp of the European exploration explosion, Mali was sufficiently advanced that Portugal sent students to study at its university. Despite a series of internecine civil wars, Ethiopia was the cultural equal of most of Europe until the European Renaissance period.
When comparing such “advanced” societies, of course, it is important to remember that many societies were lifted up by invasions from more technologically advanced societies. Think of Rome creating the roads and cities of Northwest Europe or the earlier colonization of the Mediterranean by the Phoenicians and the Greeks. Many societies have had their technology or organization “jumped” by hundreds of years by the simple expedient of suffering invasion, so the apparent lag in African development is not really that different than the position of the Celtic or Germanic tribes in Europe. (And on the human timescale, a gap of a couple oof hundred years is pretty much a blip on the timeline. Greece actually went backwards following the fall of Mycenae as did Northwest Europe following the fall of Rome.)
As Jared Diamond pointed out in the oft-quoted Guns, Germs, and Steel, Africa, lying on a North/South axis, capped by the nearly impassabel Sahara, presented truly daunting barriers of climate and disease to cultural exchange or even invasion until the development of steam transportation. Even when Arabs and Europeans were changing the nature of African slavery from one of local tribes taking small groups of prisoners in battle to an organized trade intended to collect huge numbers of people, no serious invasion of the continent began for around 200 years following that trade, although the institurtion of that trade disrupted the further development of Mali, Kanem-Bornu, and Songhay, as well as Ghana.
Is it unreasonable to ask for a society where race is simply not defined at all, and every perceived injustice is treated on an individual basis? Would not such a society make the same strides toward equitable treatment for all, and would there not be a greater good served by eliminating the “Look at our group’s unfair deal/Yeah but there are measurable differences between our groups” debate by just eliminating the grouping?
The sociocultural grouping of race exists, both as a self-identity and as an externally imposed identity. It brings with it a lot of historical baggage. We can have (and have had) reasonable discussions about what this historic and cultural baggage is for the various parties involved and what is and is not the result of racism at either an individual or an systems level, whether by intent or by effect with no racist intent. We can greatly differ as to what sort of responsibility who should have to do what about it, if anything at all.
It is reasonable to desire a world in which every individual has an equal opportunity to succeed based on their inherent strengths, interests, and effort without any effect of that sociocultural identity. It is unrealistic to believe that such a world exists or is likely to exist in any near term future.
The sociocultural grouping of race exists, both as a self-identity and as an externally imposed identity. It brings with it a lot of historical baggage. We can have (and have had) reasonable discussions about what this historic and cultural baggage is for the various parties involved and what is and is not the result of racism at either an individual or an systems level, whether by intent or by effect with no racist intent. We can greatly differ as to what sort of responsibility we believe who should have to do what about it, if anything at all.
It is reasonable to desire a world in which every individual has an equal opportunity to succeed based on their inherent strengths, interests, and effort without any effect of that sociocultural identity. It is unrealistic to believe that such a world exists or is likely to exist in any near term future.
To some extent my question was rhetorical. I have commented elsewhere that clannish behaviour underpins fixation on race, and it is my personal belief that such behaviour (me first; then my family; then my clan; then my population) is atavistic enough to be considered part of who we are, and probably in some way hardwired into our genes. As such it is unrealistic to eliminate it, I suppose.
However I do think that in modern culture a fixation on race is counterproductive, and that such a fixation is perpetuated as much by groups (in the US, at least) defining themselves as black as it is by say, whites labeling someone as black. It is disingenous to request special categorization when it is beneficial (race-based affirmative action, e.g.) in one instance, and in the next instance (an ordinary social gathering, e.g) be critical of someone for noticing skin color.
The step toward eliminating attitudes based on race is to eliminate racial categorization, but such a step will cut both ways. To Pizzabrat’s point in the OP, race-based tests of black IQ averages will not stop being paraded out until the notion that the only possible cause of black “overall lack of success” is racism on the part of other groups (whites in particular).
Rather than have that argument at all, I’d rather work on fairness, period.
Now I’m really lost (not spiritually, of course…).
Can you rephrase this:
(by pizzabrat) “I don’t think it is - what do you think I’m complaining about in the first place? Why are you quoting me as if I’m all for that?”
so I know what it is you are referring to when you ask me why I am quoting you?
I try to be very careful to quote exactly when I do quote. I cannot figure out where you think I quoted you.
my God that grows to really big problem… but what is this all proving… that blacks are stupider than white or that intelligence is genetically based and if so than blacks can be helped by finding an solution… I’m los in all this… What bits me is- so manny are blamming whites for anslaving the blacks and by doing so slowering the proces of their lerning… wel . but since people JUST are greedy- for knowlege and other goodis- whatever they can get- mostly, and especially when they’re in need, then why was it white to conquer black and make them slaves in the first place and not other way around? Whites had’d a way and did it, but also they did find this way to do so. And I maybe very stupid myself but it seams to me it was white who did all this shit at World War 1 and then two not blacks. so maybe blacks are being seen as big dump and dangerous but I thing white did all to prove how human beings can really be cruel and dangerous. God. I feel like a kid now.
We can argue that any viewpoint we disagree with is the product of tainted motives. You do it for the Prof, I can do it for you, someone else can do it for me, and it’s turtles all the way down. Unfortunately the argument isn’t much advanced in the process. A link or two further down from the one I gave, C S Lewis remarks that he may discover that he has a large balance in his bank account. Someone else may argue as to what flaw in Lewis’s makeup led him to believe this, and there may follow a good old merry-go-round in which everyone picks the flaws in everyone else’s makeup. Unfortunately the only way to discover whether Lewis actually does have a large balance in his account is to go over his bank statements and cheque-book stubs - tedious, but there you have it.
Whether blacks do in fact have lower average IQs than whites is something I have surprisingly few preconceptions about, and it doesn’t profit me much either way. But to dismiss Watson by saying
does zip to establish whether he is right or wrong.
I hope this helps. I suspect that your “rooting” may have actually been something more along the lines of “Come out into the open, you racist pig, and give me enough rope to hang you with”, but I’ll have to disappoint you there.
Maybe it would be less inflammatory if we spoke of something like the recessive gene for sickle cell anemia instead of intelligence.
Would it be best for everyone if we agreed that there was no reason to believe that any group is any more at risk for sickle cell, because race is a social construct, etc.? So no research into sickle cell anemia. Anyone calling for research is racist, right?
Sure. But in the absence of evidence to support Watson’s viewpoint, I have no reason to agree with his ideas. If he was coming out with some facts, then I could argue against his argument. In the absence of such, it’s reasonable to point out that there is a historical precedence for baseless opinions like his. It follows a pattern that would be too foolish to dismiss as coincidental.
But please note that I’ve never even said I disagree with him. I don’t waste time disagreeing with unproven hypotheses. It would be like wasting time arguing that there is no Big Foot. Yeah, there could be such thing as sasquatch, but we don’t have evidence of it, and any yahoo insisting that there is such an animal will get pelted with tomatoes if all they have to bring to the table is handwaving about Big Foot employees.
Rest assured that whatever opinions I have about your racism or lack thereof (and other things in the mental arena) were solidified some time ago, so I really wasn’t interested in doing any of the above. But thanks for complying with my request.
There is certainly no racial component to sickle cell anemia. It should be the "poster child disease’ for arguments in which a false belief in race is confused with genetics.
It is endemic in much of Africa and in portions of Europe adjacent to the Mediterranean where malaria is prevalent. A similar mutation that provides the same anti-malarial benefits with the corresponding problems for people born to two carriers extends from the neighborhood of Jordan adjacent to the sickle-cell region of Lebanon, across the ancient Fertile Cerescent and into India.
Many Africans have absolutely no susceptibility to sickle-cell, (specifically those in regions where malaria is not prevalent).
It is simply an accident of history that far more blacks were imported to the U.S. from Equatorial Africa (where sickle-cell is prevalent) than whites immigrated from Malta, Greece, and coastal Asia Minor, so in the U.S. it has the reputation as a “black” disease even though race, per se, has no association with it.