Updated and moved that HH stuff to Stuff Liberal People Hate.

Journal of Hate Studies

Here’s the introduction to White Nationalism Revisited: Demographic Dystopia and White Identity Politics (2010) . In: The Journal of Hate Studies.

Two stimuli, both dating to 2002, drove me to write this paper. The first (and by far the more visceral) was my attendance at the biannual conference of American Renaissance (AR)—the flagship publication of the sector of the American far right considered herein. The conference was held in the Washington, D.C. suburb of Herndon, Virginia, and it reflected this demographic. It was attended by some 250 mostly well-dressed, mostly middle-aged white men—along with a smattering of women—a number of whom held advanced degrees of one flavor or another. There is nothing too surprising in this: the ignorant redneck stereotype of the racist right has always been more hopeful polemic than reality. Unfortunately, doctrinaire racists come in all income and education brackets. If bigots with Ph.D.s are nothing new, I still walked away from the conference convinced that I had seen an important new trend in what I will call American white nationalism.

While being ethically partisan is surely racist and bigoted (read: morally bad) from the perspective of Liberal universalism, that is, totalitarian pan humanism — and perhaps from the perspective of self-serving non-European particularism, in what common sense is it bigoted and racist (read: morally bad)? As so many have pointed out, the pan-humanists managed a clever trick. They sold the idea of racism (that is, being hostile to and anti-X,Y,or Z race-ism) and turn it into racism (that is, having a sense of race, specifically W-race).

Asians and Motor Vehicle Theft

Over at Celebrate Diversity, Sagat posted about American’s most dangerous cities. In his surreptitious manner, he implied that there might be a link between ethnic composition and crime. I decided to investigate. Indeed, it seems that % Asians significantly correlates with Motor Vehicle Theft.

Bartelsa, Ryana, Urbana, and Glass, 2010. Correlations between estimates of state IQ and FBI crime statistics

Sociobiology, National Culture, and the Technological Sophistication of Nations

I found this passage interesting:

It is also clear that national culture is a predictor of technological achievement, adding incrementally to the variance in patenting activity explained by national IQ. First, nations whose social structure is hierarchical generate less technical knowledge than egalitarian nations. Hofstede (2001, p101) cites supporting evidence: between 1901 and 1960 high power distance (i.e. hierarchical) countries produced fewer Nobel Prizes in science per capita than low power distance countries. Secondly, nations that value independence of thought (intellectual autonomy) have elevated levels of technological achievement. However the effect of intellectual autonomy on achievement depends on national IQ. In low-IQ nations, differences in autonomy have a negligible effect on patenting, implying that establishing a culture that encourages intellectual independence is likely to lead to higher achievement only in high-IQ nations. Intellectual autonomy seems to function as an enabling factor, which cannot compensate for a low national IQ, but which can raise levels of technological achievement in high-IQ nations.

In theory it might be possible to improve the technological capabilities of a nation by increasing egalitarianism and encouraging independent thinking. But given national cultures are deeply-rooted and stable phenomena, with historical roots going back over centuries (Hofstede, 2001, p.11) would this be realistic in practice? There is considerable disagreement over the mechanisms by which cultural values are transmitted, and in particular over the relationship between culture and genetics. Laland, Odling-Smee, and Feldman (2000) discuss various evolutionary models. The sociobiological perspective proposes that culture is an extension of the phenotype, and like other aspects of the phenotype it is an expression of naturally-selected genes. It has been demonstrated that national populations have reliably different personality profiles (e.g., [Allik and McCrae, 2004] and [Schmitt et al., 2007]), which has led to the suggestion that national cultural values are a reflection of genetically determined personality traits. For example, McCrea (in Hofstede & McCrea, 2004) has argued that the hierarchical nature of present-day Latin societies is not merely a legacy from the Roman empire, but stems from a genetically based personality syndrome of high neuroticism and disagreeableness which necessitates a cultural emphasis on law and order. This kind of model, although it does not involve a gene for hierarchy, would if strictly applied preclude change in fundamental cultural values. Gene–culture co evolutionary theory on the other hand supposes that shared cognitive phenomena like beliefs and values are learned and socially transmitted as a cultural inheritance. In an extended version of this model, Laland et al. propose that populations can and do modify their ecological environment, a process they call ‘niche construction’, which bestows an ecological inheritance on successive generations in addition to their genetic and cultural inheritances. New selective pressures arising from the niche ecologies can then modify the gene pool. In these more flexible models, cultural values interact with the genome, and are amenable to change.

Gelade, 2008. IQ, cultural values, and the technological achievement of nations. (Here).

Updated Race-SAT-SES graph

[Note: refer to SES and the gap: It’s worse than that for new and better looking graphs.]

[Note: the number found in the JBHE don't add up, but the trend across SES is correct; I'll try to find better data when I get a chance]

In The Likelihood of Genetic Group Differences in IQ: The Black White Gap in IQ, Liberal Biorealist posted the classic 1995 group SAT differences across SES graph. Richard Spencer recently used that rather dated graph in his Costs of Diversity presentation. I decided to make a more up to date version. By eyeballing the original, you can see that the difference across SES is approximatly the same as it was in 95′ (1).

Data Source: Why Family Income Differences Don’t Explain the Racial Gap in SAT Scores. In: The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education; Winter 2008/2009; 62; Ethnic NewsWatch (ENW), pg. 10. According to College Board, the 2008 pooled SD = ~100.

What’s interesting is the % of College bound students. Constant from 1998, African Americans make up 12% of the college bound population, while the white (European + Middle Eastern + Jewish + North African) population made of 60%, down from 67%. This suggests an across the board discrimination against European Americans as a result of discrimination for African Americans (and Hispanics), similar to what Espenshade and Radford found for private colleges. This just shows that if you’re not going to fight for your piece of the your pie, someone else will take it.

Notes.

(1) As noted in the JBHE:

In 1976 The College Board published an analysis of the racial differences in scores on what was then called the Scholastic Aptitude Test. At that time the average black score was about 240 points, or 20 percent, below the average white score. By the early 1980s, the gap had shrunk to 200 points. Black scores were then 17 percent lower than the scores of whites. By 1988 the black-white SAT test scoring gap was down to 189 points [I am calculating 198 (.87 SD)-- not sure why]. The trend was distinctly encouraging. Many specialists in the educational community predicted that in time the racial scoring gap between blacks and whites would disappear altogether.

But after 1988, progress in closing the SAT gap stopped abruptly and later it began to open up. In both 2006 and 2007 the racial gap in SAT scores actually declined by a slight, almost insignificant margin. But this year the news is very discouraging. The 189-point racial scoring gap that prevailed in 1988 has now grown to 209 points. This is the largest racial scoring gap in 20 years. On a percentage basis the scoring gap has grown from 15.7 percent to 17.4 percent. These are the most unfortunate and persisting statistics that best tell the story of how deep the academic achievement gulf is between African Americans and the rest of the American population. Source: The Racial Scoring Gap on the SAT College Admission Test Is Now Wider Than It Has Been in 20 Years Anonymous. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. New York: Autumn 2008. , Iss. 61; pg. 74.