I am not really even clear what “general aptitude” even means, it sounds perilously subjective to me. But the underlying point is, suppose you have “evidence” that black people are not as “intelligent” as non-black people, and suppose you strongly believe that it is valid: what would you do with this supposed knowledge? This is the kind of thing that defines racism. For example, suppose it has been demonstrated that your wife is a total moron (the evidence … well, nm), would that affect how you treat her? In what way?
I don’t have a lot of time, so I’ll just address a couple of points for now.
Actually, you are quite wrong. I think pretty much the opposite. I don’t think we’re likely to see any difference in intelligence among the races. None. I also think that if this turns out to be the case that it will be a very good thing.
At the same time, I don’t see why you view it as such an impossibility that there might be genetic differences that go to intelligence. We know that the races (populations) that moved part from each other developed different characteristics in great part to the strains placed on them by their respective environments. Nature has no bias. I don’t see why you think you can declare that genes related to intelligence wold be verboten for the forces of evolution.
I also think that even if there is a slight difference in the basic intelligence of various races, it doesn’t matter for any particular individual. I’m a White guy. Does it bother me that Asians might, on average, have an advantage in intelligence? Not a bit. Any slight advantage at the starting gate can be overcome by me. If I’m competing with a particular person for intelligence and it turns out he is smarter, I don’t attribute that to his being Asian, I attribute it to him being smarter. Period.
Now, I do appreciate that Blacks have a special experience, especially here in the U.S., and that I can afford to be rather cavalier about where the chips, writ large, may fall. But while I am concerned how some theoretical superior intelligence might be put to ill use by actual racists, I cannot jump from there to declaring all discussions about the subject off limits, lest they be categorized as racist, with the implication, as much as you claim to not want to do this, that the person making such a claim is necessarily racist.
Your logic simply fails. And your sense of fairness is the opposite of fair.
And any position that seeks to denigrate a scientific fact, a fact of nature, is one that has not been fully thought out. It does appear that your bias is steering your thinking, after dropping logic off at the corner, and speeding away gleefully.
Think of the word as a bomb. In evil hands it is an instrument of evil. In the right hands it can be a saving grace. The player matters. Intent matters.
The difference with my hypothetical is that the scientist doesn’t “believe” it to be the case, he “knows” it to be the case. It’s a fact. Those are two very different things.
This is really the crux of it. You want to use an all-condemning broad brush for fear of what an evil actor might do with the information. But by doing so you’re assuming a party (a non-racist Black scientist?) guilty—guilty for what someone else might do with the information he is looking at. Again, that’s the opposite of fair.
Your tactics are the tactics of bullying. Really. You want to use a cudgel and quash inquiry that you are uncomfortable with. Hell, I am uncomfortable with. Your road is the opposite of the high road. The high road would mandate that you insist that logic and fairness be at the heart of of your position and any tactics you take.
I find it extraordinary that a person who evidently is so bothered by the way Blacks have been treated in this country would adopt a position so detached from fairness and just-ness. Oh, but when you say “poor scientist”, that’s not revealing a bias against him for making the claim you don’t like. Please.
Fair enough.
I haven’t declared any of this. It’s very possible. There’s just no good reason to believe it is so right now. We have no genetic evidence, and right now the genetic hypothesis just does not fit the facts.
I haven’t declared anything off limits. Feel free to discuss, feel free to research, etc. But if you make a racist claim, than be prepared to have it called out. This is a simple matter of definitions- like a referee making calls on the field. That particular claim fits the definition of racist, so I see no problem in calling it a racist claim.
Obviously I think you’re 100% wrong on both counts.
I haven’t denigrated or sought to denigrate any scientific facts. It’s not my fault that the word “racist”, in dictionary definition and common usage, does not take into account the possibility that such claims are true. It’s true that I don’t think there’s a problem with this right now, but my position might change were there actually solid evidence for the racist claims. Right now, there is no such solid evidence- so I see no problem with calling racist claims racist.
Intent matters in many things. But not in this particular case. Making a racist claim doesn’t make one evil, or a terrible person- it’s very likely that I’ve made racist claims in my life. Hopefully not recently. And I very much hope that I’m not a racist. But if someone says “blacks are dumber”, even if they think that’s a reasonable and non-racist thing to say, they’re still wrong- it’s a racist thing to say, no matter why one says it.
Klanners “know” that black people are less intelligent and less moral. The Nazis “knew” that Jews and others were sub-humans. In the real world, “knowing” and “believing” often have little to do with truth and fact.
No, it’s the definition of fair- I’m judging the claim purely by the dictionary definition and common use of the language. I don’t judge based on who said it, or why they said it, or what evidence they have, or how certain they are- I’m judging the words of the claim, and that’s it. Show me the words on a paper (in full context) of what someone said, and we can tell if it’s a racist claim or not, just by looking at the words. I’m not judging the person.
Logic and fairness are absolutely at the heart of my position. I am judging the words only. It is racist to say “blacks are dumber”, or any variation on that claim, period. It doesn’t make you a bad person or a racist to say it, necessarily, but it is a racist thing to say.
You still don’t get it- you’re the one who thinks “poor scientist”, not me (for the purposes of my snarky “poor scientist” post)- I think the scientist is a grown up adult who can take real criticism. I don’t think he’s “poor”- I’m mocking the position that it’s mean/unfair/etc to tell the hypothetical scientist that his claim is racist. No, it’s very fair, and very just, and I think it’s doing the scientist a favor. If I say something racist, I want someone to call me out. Make me a better and more decent person. And if someone else says something racist, I will call them out- I want to help them become a better and more decent person.
Here’s a different hypothetical which I think might get at the point Magellan is trying to make in a somewhat more clear fashion…
So there’s a scientist who comes up with a clever new way to crunch data and study things which he thinks might provide a really compelling and definitive answer to the question of whether different races have different genetic potential for intelligence. He goes to a bunch of his colleagues and discusses his proposed method. They all say “wow, that’s clever, and yeah, if you did that study on a really large scale I think you could get a very definitive answer out of it”. He double and triple checks all his math and calculations, and talks to enough people that he’s now very convinced that his method is sound.
So he gets some funding, spends several years gathering data from all over the place, has all of his work and methodology double and triple checked by a bunch of other people to make sure he’s really doing everything right, feeds all his data into his computer, presses “go”, wait a few hours, and a piece of paper comes out of his printer. Trembling, he opens up the piece of paper. It says that blacks are slightly but measurably less intelligent than whites.
He has devoted years of his life to this study, has exhaustively considered every possible variable he could think of, has consulted and triple checked with all the experts in the related fields, etc. So he’s pretty convinced that this data is as close to accurate as he could possibly make it. So let’s say that he provisionally accepts it as true. Is that a racist belief?
What I think Magellan is getting at is that you seem to be saying that it is a racist belief, regardless of anything else about this scientist. Note that until now I didn’t at all mention his motives. He might be a liberal guy who was absolutely convinced that his test would finally prove that there was NO difference in intelligence between races, and that’s what he was honestly hoping for and expecting. He could be a clear avowed racist who wanted to prove that his racist beliefs were correct, and ended up surprised that there wasn’t MORE of a difference. Or he could have been totally agnostic on the issue, interested in this study purely because he figured it would get him on lots of talk shows and he could write a book. It seems weird that you use the same label, one that has so much weight and implication and baggage, to describe something like “reading and tentatively accepting the outcome of an exhaustive study”, which is, in and of itself, so completely value-and-ethics-neutral.
(oops, posted this twice)
I use the same label for two reasons: because it fits the definition of the word “racist” (which, in definition and common use, does not take into account the reasons and motives for the belief- the nice old grandpa might not be a vile bigot, but if he claims that black people tend to be lazier, he’s making a racist claim, even if he’s harmless), and because there’s no way to tell what kind of person this is- no way to know their motives, their honesty, their ethics, etc. Every high-ranking Klansman and neo-Nazi honestly believes that they have science and facts behind them- they really think that they are a “truth-teller”. The only thing I can honestly and reasonably evaluate is the words. We might evaluate the science and data too- but that’s a separate issue. So it isn’t fair for me to make judgments that I can’t possibly know- judgments based on motives and their true beliefs about race.
It’s not weird - it’s the point.
He has already stated that he does not care “what evidence they have”, he is going to label anything that puts forth this hypothesis as “racist”. Period. Because that will shut down the debate (it is hoped). It’s much easier.
Regards,
Shodan
I don’t judge the person, but I judge the claim.
Further- this hypothetical really is tiresome. I think I’ve made enough of an effort of addressing it. For some reason it’s OK to posit that scientists might find data that supports “blacks are dumber”, but no one ever presents a scenario in which Jews are proven to be more dishonest (and dishonesty may well have something to do with genetics), or that hispanics are more violent, etc. Most people understand that it really is dehumanizing to claim that Jews can’t be trusted, or that hispanics should be feared… why is the intelligence of black people different? This is a big reason why I demand real, solid evidence- genetic evidence (e.g. the genes for intelligence)- for claims about the genetics of groups, especially when discussing such fundamentally human traits as intelligence. The case really must be rock solid- and it’s not. In this world, now, these claims are racist. In the future, this may change (though I think this is unlikely), but right now, these claims are absolutely racist, regardless of who makes them, and why they make them.
Wrong again. Making a hypothesis is not racist. Saying “blacks are dumber”, or a variation (even with nice, flowery language), is a racist thing to say. Saying “it is possible that the test-score gap is at least partially explained by genetics” is not racist. Saying “the test-score gap persists because black people, on average, have inferior genes for intelligence” is racist. It’s also not supported by the data, but that doesn’t have anything to do with whether or not it’s racist, using the present definition and common use of the word.
Can you point to the specific definition of “racist” you are using?
Broadly, I think the Wikipedia article does a good job in both the definition and the common usage. See the discussion on “scientific racism”.
Actually, I was looking for the dictionary definition that you mentioned repeatedly. The one “in common use”.
When I say “common use” I mean how it is commonly used by people who speak english, especially in the US.
Great, that was going to be my next question. But it would be helpful if you could point me to the dictionary definition you’ve been referring to repeatedly.
Yes, it’s a racist belief, and the reason is that races are completely arbitrary divisions of humanity that you *choose *to use as the delineators in your study. There is *no *“value-and-ethics-neutral” starting point for such a study, you’ve *already *made the ethical choice when you use Black and White as descriptors of humanity, since they’re descriptors that have exactly fuck and all to do with actual human taxonomy and cladistics.
Let’s get this clear - “Races” are artificial constructs, and choosing to use them is a racist choice to begin with.
I understand where you’re coming from, but I don’t think it’s quite that simple. The word “racist” loses its relevance if it is applied both to, for instance, someone who thinks that dark-skinned people are inferior and sub-human, and also someone who is doing medical research on sickle-cell anemia and is using commonly-understood-but-scientifically-imprecise groupings as a first pass for analysis.
The last time this came up, I gave this example: suppose there’s an outbreak of a new disease which is poorly understood, and various people are studying it in various ways, and someone researcher has some data which seems to indicate that there’s a larger incidence of this disease among Asians than other “races”. It would be silly to say “well, clearly we have now definitely proven that there’s some Oriental Gene that makes those Asian Race People vulnerable to this disease, hey, I’m white, I don’t have to worry about it”. At the same time, it would be silly to say “well, race doesn’t mean anything, ‘Asian’ is a meaningless term, so let’s just ignore that as it’s clearly an unscientific and irrelevant red herring”. Instead it’s a possibly meaningful clue that could be followed up on, and it might or might not mean something, but even if further data bears out that observation, it might turn out that any link is to something cultural (eating particular foods) rather than something genetic. But that’s a situation in which the idea of race shouldn’t just be tossed aside.
We’re way past the point in our scientific development where using such arbitrary, socially-defined, groupings should be considered anything other than lazy science, if not outright bad science
In your hypothetical, How exactly is “Asian” defined, that it emerges as a distinct group? Because you’d be better off focusing on those traits themselves, rather than an arbitrary group that by varying definitions could include way, way genetically-disparate groupings. I mean, are we including Tamil Indians? Native Americans? Micronesians? I’d say yes, ‘Asian’ very much is a red herring and a meaningless term. In the hypothetical, it clearly is a signifier for some set of traits the researcher has in mind already. Well, drop the group and use the traits.
And no, the idea shouldn’t be tossed aside. It should, to use Parker’s expression, be thrown with great force.
As I was imagining my hypothetical, there was a situation where there was some pre-existing census or survey data… not that the scientists thought “ooh, let’s go out and do some research and use ‘Asian’ as a precise grouping about which we’ll do research”. Rather, because “Asian” is a widely used, if imprecise, term, then there might well be some other set of data that pre-existed which yielded this clue. After which, I agree, it would clearly be expected that responsible scientists would then do further surveying or what have you to get far more precise than just “Asian”.
However, if this were a fast moving and volatile situation, and the disease was very dangerous, and we had some convincing data that, for whatever reason, the disease was spreading much faster among the “Asian” population than the rest of the population, it might be responsible to release that information and warn Asian people to take extra precautions, even if we fully expected that after further research we might discover that in fact the real connection was only to certain more clearly and distinctly defined subpopulations, or was in fact not related to anything genetic or biological at all.
It’s one thing to say that terms like “Asian” are scientifically imprecise and in fact often misleading. It’s another thing to be so angry at them that we refuse to entertain the possibility of using them even in (admittedly VERY contrived) situations when they might be useful.
But by the claim you made a few posts ago, even considering doing so would be “Racist”. Which, as I’ve said, I think twists that word beyond all meaning.
Aah, I see - but then, as far as I’m concerned, what’s happening in your hypothetical is more of a social issue rather than a science one, in which case, sure, use “Asian” as a signifier. But ditch it when you start doing the actual science of studying the disease or creating a cure.
What I’m saying is - it’s using a social grouping (census data) as a starting point. That’s fine. But that’s not going to actually help you when the test tube hits the centrifuge - too much fuzziness in what you mean by “Asian”, then.
To summarize; It’s not necessarily racist to use socially-defined races in a social context, if you must.
OK, in addition to the common usage of the word, from the Collins English Dictionary’s definition:
1. the belief that races have distinctive cultural characteristics determined by hereditary factors and that this endows some races with an intrinsic superiority over others