Someone emailed me to point out that I was misusing the terms “Proximate and Ultimate cause.” (As in: the proximate cause of disparities are differences in GMA; the ultimate cause is…) I’m not. I’m obviously using the terms in the philosophical, not psychological, sense.
[edit: we could call Gottfredson's analysis a smart ratio analysis, which is an alternative to a smart fraction analysis a la Rindermann et al. (2009); they have different implications.]
[edit: note Gottfredson's comment in the 3rd to last slide:
Sample predictions, if reliable brain‐boosters become available
"Opportunistic reversals in political rhetoric – To “racial gaps in IQ are genetic” because “social justice requires eradicating effects of genetic disadvantage"]
Some have voiced concern about the De-whitening of the West. This concern can and should be clarified, quantified, and critically examined; in general, when possible, qualitative concerns should be translated in quantitative analyses so to move discussions of HBD and society beyond mere speculative musings. As an example of quantification, below is a figure from Gottfredson (2009). No assumptions about genotype are made. I will leave it to others to expand on this topic. (A simple graph projecting the change in the ratio of innovators to dependents in the US due to the demographic shift over time would be a nice start.(1))
Gottfredson, 2009. 4 decisions in promoting cognitive enhancement. Slide 33. (Also here.)
(1). You can use the 2008 WAIS Standardization for the Adult Full Scale IQs (FSIQ), which is the relevant one. “Asian,” obviously includes non-Orientals; hence the relatively low scores. The N’s are small but according to Flynn, the WAIS standardizations are reliable measures. Alternatively, the 2010 SAT scores can be used.
Black conservative Elizabeth Wright, who has written both for Alternative Right and Vdare, is retiring from blogging. Unlike many Black conservatives (or libertarians), she is a women with a healthy, rooted sense. I would suggest perusing through her writings, if you haven’t already. Doing so can be an antidote for some of the sentiments that develop in these parts of the Blogosphere.
Dasein has a post worth reading for those interested in the science wars. I mentioned the issue, myself, in passing. Liberal creationists were able to shift the burden of proof onto realists. Simultaneously, they shifted the burden of justification to prevent research on the topic and now use the dearth of research to argue that the matter is closed and both should not and need not be investigated. (One reason for the fierce opposition to bio-medical research on race (e.g. Root, 2010) is the fear that it will provide grounds for people like me to argue that the Race-IQ debate is not, in fact, closed. (Which it does. But why is this a problem if it’s true that all differences are environmental?)
Boas was very critical of claims made by hereditarians, applying what to the modern reader in many parts will seem like proper scientific scepticism. Trained as a physicist, Boas originally intended to perform doctoral work on the normal distribution of errors, before settling on studying the optical properties of water. His interest in statistics were influential in the development of his views on race, and, despite his egalitarian agenda, his analysis was more sophisticated than the ‘vulgar Mendelism’ that was rampant after the rediscovery of Mendel’s work, and which was not uncommon in hereditarian and racialist circles at that time. In future posts, I will deal with Boas’ work on cranial plasticity, including its reanalysis in recent years, and his views on race and racial differences.
In this post, I will present excerpts from a paper that dicusses how Boas, through skillful rhetoric, was able to shift the burden of proof to those who posited innate differences in racial intelligence
Anyways, when arguing a HBD position, or especially an anti-antiracist position, it’s important to shift the burden of proof (and justification) back.
Lewontin’s Fallacy — which primarily concerns the amount and importance of genetic difference between regional populations — has caused so much mischief that it can’t be debunked enough.
Here is Long (2010) on it:
Earlier in this decade, Rick Kittles and I took an unusually critical look at FST (Long and Kittles 2003). We analyzed a unique data set composed of short tandem repeat (STR) allele frequencies for eight loci genotyped in both humans and chimpanzees (Deka et al. 1995). These data made it possible to see how FST played out when no one could dispute taxonomic and genetic significance. The answer surprised us. FST was pretty close to the canonical 0.15 shown so many times for human populations. In our analysis, FST was 0.12 for humans, but for humans and chimpanzees together, FST rose only to 0.18. Indeed, we found one locus, D13S122, where the size range of human and chimpanzee alleles hardly overlapped, yet FST equaled 0.15 (Figure 1)….
…Richard Lewontin’s dismissal of race may not have led to the wide popularity of FST in population biology, but it did galvanize anthropology. Lewontin confronted race by trying to show that classical racial groupings accounted for too little of the total diversity to be of any value. In retrospect, it is odd that Lewontin felt that 15% of variation among groups is small and even odder that others have concurred. Sewall Wright, the inventor of FST , believed the opposite. To Wright, FST = 0.05 or even less indicates considerable differences, and FST = 0.15 reflects moderately great differences (Wright 1951, 1978). Low values of FST reflect large gene frequency differences in replicate populations (Figure 2). In other words, these seemingly small values of FST permit allele frequencies to drift widely among populations. Unfortunately, Lewontin did not contest the larger issue, which is whether or not races are a good way to portray the pattern of gene frequency differences between populations.
Long goes onto argue that the classically defined races don’t represent subspecies. Whether they do or not, though, depends on the definition employed; and the issue is largely academic. The important point is that Lewontin’s widely adopted interpretation of Fst values that lent to the widespread belief in insignificant genetic differences between populations has been thoroughly debunked. This interpretation now has been shown to be fallacious on a number of accounts.
It may be that “human genetic equality is a contingent fact of history,” as Gould argued, stating:
Human groups do vary strikingly in a few highly visible characters (skin color, hair form) — and this may fool us into thinking that overall differences must be great. But we now know that our usual metaphor of superficiality — skin deep — is literally accurate. (Gould, 1984. Human equality is a contingent fact of history.)
But studies of within-between group variability do not provide evidence for this as Gould and others thought. The traits that to Gould’s mind defined human worth will have to be analyzed one by one to see if in fact human populations are equal, as so understood.
Long, 2010. Update to Long and Kittles’s “Human Genetic Diversity and the Nonexistence of Biological Races”(2003): Fixation on an Index
Ernst Mayr was and Jim Crow is no small figures in the field of population genetics. As it is, Mayr’s definition of race or subspecies (See: O’Brien and Mayr, 1991. Bureaucratic Mischief: Recognizing Endangered Species and Subspecies) has been widely adopted in conservation biology. To my mind, Mayr’s statement below answers the question of whether human populations can be considered subspecies: yes, at very least from the perspective of conservation biology.
Mayr, 2002. The biology of race and the concept of equality
Let me begin with race. There is a widespread feeling that the word “race” indicates something undesirable and that it should be left out of all discussions. This leads to such statements as “there are no human races.” Those who subscribe to this opinion are obviously ignorant of modern biology.
Crow, 2002. Unequal by nature: a geneticist’s perspective on human differences
Because of this mixing, many anthropologists argue, quite reasonably, that there is no scienti½c justification for applying the word “race” to populations of human beings. But the concept itself is unambiguous, and I believe that the word has a clear meaning to most people. The difficulty is not with the concept, but with the realization that major human races are not pure races. Unlike those anthropologists who deny the usefulness of the term, I believe that the word “race” can be meaningfully applied to groups that are partially mixed." Biologists think of races of animals as groups that started as one, but later split and became separated, usually by a geographical barrier. As the two groups evolve independently, they gradually diverge genetically. The divergences will occur more quickly if the separate environments differ, but they will occur in any case since different mutations will inevitably occur in the two populations, and some of them will persist. This is most apparent in island populations, where each island is separate and there is no migration between them. Each one has its own characteristic types. In much of the animal world, however, and also in the human species, complete isolation is very rare. The genetic uniformity of geographical groups is constantly being destroyed by migration between them. In particular, the major geographical groups–African, European, and Asian–are mixed, and this is especially true in the United States, which is some- thing of a melting pot.
Because of this mixing, many anthropologists argue, quite reasonably, that there is no scientific justification for applying the word “race” to populations of human beings. But the concept itself is unambiguous, and I believe that the word has a clear meaning to most people. The difficulty is not with the concept, but with the realization that major human races are not pure races. Unlike those anthropologists who deny the usefulness of the term, I believe that the word “race” can be meaningfully applied
to groups that are partially mixed.
See also: …But not the same size
It’s informative to double check the citations given by papers dealing with race and genetics. For example here’s a passage from Pfeffer et al. (2006):
Given the essentialist and entitative nature of genetic lay theories, this suggests the likelihood of a similar association between genetic lay theories and prejudice. One of the clearest illustrations of this link is the use of genetic factors to account for differences between ethnic groups, a practice with a long, sordid history (Black, 2003). Beginning with Galton (1892/1972), in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, there have been numerous attempts to document genetic causes underlying the low social standing of some races (Gould, 1981). During the eugenics era, these views were enacted in social policies and racist practices (Kitcher, 1997). Despite studies discrediting the biological basis for race (see Anderson & Nickerson, 2005), and many questioning the scientific meaning of race (e.g. Smedley & Smedley, 2005), genetic lay theories for perceived race differences continue to surface (e.g. Entine, 2000; Rushton & Jensen, 2005), particularly with regard to differences between Whites and Blacks.
[Latter on, though they state: “The results suggest that a sizable percentage of Americans endorse what we define as a genetic lay theory to explain perceived race differences and differences in sexual orientation. This is striking in light of the fact that the scientific community, itself, does not universally embrace genetic theories for social group differences (e.g. Anderson & Nickerson, 2005).”]
Pfeffer et al. embrace the sociologist norm of conceptualizing all genetic views as “essentialistic” and “deterministic” and then dismissing them for their implausible folksy essentialism and determinism. Anyways, who do they cite:
Here is Smedely and Smedely, 2005:
Less prominent in this debate has been a discussion of what is meant by racial groups and whether such groups are, in fact, discrete, measurable, and scientifically meaningful. The consensus among most scholars in fields such as evolutionary biology, anthropology, and other disciplines is that racial distinctions fail on all three counts— that is, they are not genetically discrete, are not reliably measured, and are not scientifically meaningful.
Given that racialized science is based on an imprecise and distorted understanding of human differences, should the term race be abandoned as a matter of social policy? Stated differently, if race is not a biological or anthropological reality, should race play a role in policy discussions? From a policy perspective, although the term race is not useful as a biological construct, policymakers cannot avoid the fact that social race remains a significant predictor of which groups have greater access to societal goods and resources and which groups face barriers—both historically and in the contemporary context—to full inclusion…(genetically discrete, are not reliably measured, and are not scientifically meaningful.
Smedely and Smedely (2005), in turn, cite:
American Anthropological Association (1998) , the American Association of Physical Anthropologists (1996), Brace, 2003; Cartmill, 1998; Cavalli-Sforza, 1995; Graves, 2001, 2004; Harrison, 1995; Lewontin, 1995; Littlefield et al., 1982; Marks, 1995; Shanklin, 1994; A. Smedley, 1999b, 2002b; and Templeton, 2002.
The only cited paper that empirically tackled a question on race and consensus is Cartmill (1998). Here were Cartmill’s findings:
In summary, the role played by racial taxonomy in the study of modern human variation has apparently changed little or not at all over the course of the past 30 years. In the 1990s, as in the 1960s, most researchers studying human variation do not make use of the concept of race in gathering and analyzing their data; however, a consistently large minority continue to do so. These figures suggest that neither the proponents nor the opponents of racial classification have any grounds for thinking that history is on their side
Like Lieberman et al., (2003), Cartmill found no consensus on the taxonomic status of race (for review of the studies on this see: Štrkalj, 2007). Worse for Smedely and Smedely’s case, Cartmill (1998) went onto argue that there probably were intelligence differences between racial populations:
However we choose to define or subdivide “intelligence,” it is an unpleasant fact that some genetic variants make their possessors stupider than other people: that is, they result in impaired mental abilities in all currently attainable human environments. Some of these genes are known to be significantly more common in some human populations and ethnic groups than in others. These two facts suggest (but do not prove) that human populations and ethnic groups may well differ congenitally in average mental potential at birth. This conclusion sounds shocking. However, even if it is true, it turns out to be far more innocuous and less interesting than either racists or egalitarians assume.
More problematic is that Smedely and Smedely conflate two distinct issues: a) are there taxonomic human races and b) are there relevant genetic differences between socially defined racial populations (e.g. African Americans versus European-Americans). (To appreciate the importance of this distinction imagine if the ancestors of Africans Americans were predominately Mbuti pygmies and the underlying question was the origin of average height differences and ensuing disparities.) Smedely and Smedely are concerned with the latter yet they cite references that address the former (e.g. Cavalli-Sforza, 1995; Templeton, 2002).
When it comes to genetics and race as socially defined in country X, the relevant question is: “How could genetic differences between socially defined races have come about.” One, but not the only, answer is that races are defined, in part, by regional ancestral origin and that peoples from different historic regions differ in gene frequencies for relevant traits (e.g. pigmentation, cerebral brain volume, zinc metabolism, or hair texture). To make their case, Smedely and Smedely would have to show that there were no practically significant genetic variation between historic regional populations or that ‘races’ as socially defined in the US have zero correlation with regional ancestry (e.g. on average “East Asians Americans” are no less European than “European-Americans”). Of course, they do neither.
Moving onto the next citation, we have Anderson & Nickerson (2005) . Anderson and Nickerson present an introduction to a special issue of the American Psychologists (Volume 60) on race, psychology, and genetics. This is what they say about race and generics:
In addition, although many scholars believe that race is not a valid biological construct and that racial and ethnic groups are not discrete biological groups, psychological studies frequently rely on research designs and statistical analyses that essentially use race (or analyze race) as if it were a categorical variable….
[Of course, “not a valid biological construct” and “not discrete biological groups” is quite different from having no biologically basis]
One of the most controversial issues in research on race and genetics is that of intelligence. Three articles in the special issue address this topic. The most comprehensive of these is by Sternberg, Grigorenko, and Kidd (2005, this issue), who provide a sweeping overview and critique of the concept of intelligence and the relationship of intelligence to race, geography, and population genetics. The article by Rowe (2005, this issue) argues that in studies on genetic and environmental factors in research on racial differences in intelligence and other characteristics, greater attention should be devoted to genetic factors than has been the case. This article and the rebuttal to it by Cooper (2005, this issue) were originally scheduled to be published in an earlier issue of American Psychologist, but given the topics they address, we decided to include them in this special issue.
Anderson and Nickerson’s decisions to include Rowe (2005) in the special issue suggests that they don’t think the “biological basis of race” is discredited. The only passage from their article that could possible be interpreted as support for this contention is the following:
The topic of genetically based racial or ethnic group differences has a long and troublesome history (Guthrie, 1998; Richards, 1997; Tobach & Rosoff, 1994; Winston, 2004; Yee, Fairchild, Weizmann, & Wyatt, 1993). In the United States, there are few topics more controversial than that of genetics and race, owing largely to the systematic and sometimes government-funded efforts to scientifically “document” the inherent inferiority of many groups as a justification for discriminatory treatment (e.g., American Eugenics Society, 1928 –1931; Davenport, 1923). Although such efforts have largely been discredited (e.g., Gould, 1981/1996; Selden, 1999), interest in the genetic underpinnings of racial differences has not disappeared.
While the statement is ambiguous, their point seems to be that “efforts to scientifically “document“ the inherent inferiority of many groups … have largely been discredited“ and not that the biological basis of race has been discredited. Whatever the case, their reference to Gould’s “Mismeasure of Man” and Selden’s “Inheriting Shame” don’t support the claim that the biological basis of race, specifically in the context under discussion, was discredited, unless a sort of ad hominem directed at research is a valid line of argument.
So, as we see, Pfeffer et al. (2006) citations do not back their assertion. Were this propensity for miscitation an isolated case, it would be of little interest, but when it comes to the subject of race and genes it hardly is. There is a virtual pyramid scheme of cites and miscites. For example, along a different line, in regards to human polytypicality, Lao and Kayser (2009) state:
So far, studies performed at various loci have shown that the proportion of genetic variation obtained when individuals were clustered according to their geographic continent of origin is quite small (ranging from only 5% up to 15%) compared to that seen when all humans were considered as a single group (approximately 80%) (Romualdi et al., 2002). For comparison: a biological criterion (despite subjective) to define the presence of subspecies is finding estimations of genetic dierentiation greater than approximately 25%( Kittles and Weiss, 2003).
They cite Kittles and Weiss (2003) who cite Templeton (1998) and Wright (1979). Templeton (1998), in turn, cities Smith et al. (1997) who don’t even discuss Fst value but rather the 75% rule under which humans populations clearly qualify as subspecies. They state:
The non-discrete nature of subspecies is evident from their definition as geographic segments of any given gonochoristic (bisexually reproducing) species differing from each other to a reasonably practical degree (e.g., at least 70-75%), but to less than totality.
And Wright (1978) writes:
There is also no question, however, that populations that have long inhabited separated parts of the world should, in general, be considered to be of different subspecies by the usual criterion that most individuals of such populations can be allocated correctly by inspection. It does not require a trained anthropologist to classify an array of Englishmen, West Africans, and Chinese with 100% accuracy by features, skin color, and type of hair in spite of so much variability within each of these groups that every individual can easily be distinguished from every other.
It is, however, customary to use the term race rather than subspecies for the major subdivisions of the human species as well as for minor ones. The occurrence of a few conspicuous differences, probably due to selection for adaptation to widely different environmental conditions, does not necessarily imply much difference in general. Nei and Roychoudhury (1974) have shown that the differences among negroids, caucasoids, and mongoloids in the protein and blood group loci are slight compared with those between individuals within any one of them.
Apparently, Kittles and Weiss (2003) never actually read Wright (1978). Misciting him seems to be a common practice, though. For example Graves (2010) comments:
In 1978, Sewall Wright published a four volume treatise entitled: The evolution and genetics of populations. Volume four is devoted to variability within and among populations…. Chapters 9 & 10 of this volume focus on variability within human populations and what he describes as racial differentiation in mankind. …However, on careful examination we see that Wright based on this own criteria for the existence of race, contradicted himself. The mean Fst did not exceed, nor did it come close to his pre-established value for the existence of subspecies, which he equated with geographical race, Fst>0.25
As we saw with Smedely and Smedely (who cited as evidence Templeton 2002, who cites Tempelton 1998), the misinformation compounds.
Cites.
Anderson and Nickerson, 2005. Genes, Race, and Psychology in the Genome Era: An introduction
Cartmill, 1998. The status of the race concept in physical anthropology. American Anthropologist, 100, 651– 660.
Graves, 2010. Social Definitions of Race: Implications for Modern Biomedical Research
Kittles and Weiss, 2003. Race, ancestry, and genes: implications for defining disease risk
Lieberman et al., 2003. The race concept in six regions: variation without consensus;
Lao and Kayser, 2009. Human Relationships Inferred from Genetic Variation
Pfeffer et al., 2006. Their Relationship with Prejudice toward Blacks, and Gay Men and Lesbians
White Americans’ Genetic Lay Theories of Race Differences and Sexual Orientation:
Smedley and Smedley, 2005. Race as Biology Is Fiction, Racism as a Social Problem Is Real Anthropological and Historical Perspectives on the Social Construction of Race
Štrkalj, 2007. The status of the race concept in contemporary biological anthropology: A review.
Templeton, 1998. Human races: a genetic and evolutionary perspective
Wright, 1978. Evolution and the Genetics of Populations, Vol. 4: Variability Within and Among Natural Population
The following were the articles published in the prestigious journal Nature Genetics‘s 2004 issue on race and genetic (Nature Genetics 36, 2004.) To summarize: It was generally agreed that there were socially (medically) important genetic differences between ancestral populations, there was disagreement as to the degree of correspondence between socially delineated racial populations and ancestral populations and so the validity of inferences, and it was generally agreed that the taxonomic concept of race poorly characterized human biogeographic variation.
Editorial. The unexamined population
(Purposely ambiguous.)
Patrinos, 2004. ‘Race’ and the human genome
Collins, 2004. What we do and don’t know about ‘race’, ‘ethnicity’, genetics and health at the dawn of the genome era
(The relation between “Race” and genetics is hazy but deserving of more research to clarify the connection.)
Parra, Kittles, Shriver, 2004. Implications of correlations between skin color and genetic ancestry for biomedical research
(Different populations differ in the correlation between skin color and ancestry. As such, caution is warranted when inferring ancestry from color. The research on skin color and ancestry provides strong evidence that admixture mapping for other traits is doable.)
Mountain and Risch, 2004. Assessing genetic contributions to phenotypic differences among ‘racial’ and ‘ethnic’ groups
(Social delineations of race fairly accurately reflect ancestral heritage and ancestral populations differ genetically in practically significant ways. As such, racial differences have practical importance.)
Rotimi, 2004. Are medical and nonmedical uses of large-scale genomic markers conflating genetics and’race’?
(Social delineations of race poorly reflect ancestral heritage and ancestral populations can not be clearly defined. As such, though ancestral populations differ genetically in some medically significant ways, ‘racial’ differences have no practical importance.)
Tate and Goldstein, 2004. Will tomorrow’s medicines work for everyone?
(There are medically significant genetic differences between “racial” and “ethnic” populations. For the sake of social justice, more members of underrepresented populations should be included in studies so to detect if various medications are genetically optimal for these populations.)
Tishkoff and Kidd, 2004. Implications of biogeography of human populations for ‘race’ and medicine
(Knowledge of regional ancestry has important medical significance but racial taxonomic categories poorly describe human genetic variation, given the clinal nature of differences.)
Jorde and Wooding, 2004. Genetic variation, classification and ‘race’
(Traditional concepts of race imperfectly describes human genetic variation; knowledge of ancestral differences is medically important given the current level of understanding.)
Cho and Sankar, 2004. Forensic genetics and ethical, legal and social implications beyond the clinic
(While research on ancestral genetic variation is medically valuable, the research needs to be integrated with ethnical analysis, given the potential for the abuse.)
Keita et al., 2004. Conceptualizing human variation
(Human genetic variation does not structure into subspecies but this doesn’t preclude substantial genetic variation between populations. Linguistic clarity is important.)
Royal and Dunston, 2004. Changing the paradigm from ‘race’ to human genome variation
(Knowledge from the Human Genome Project challenge the concept of race and the validity of genetic inferences made in context to race.)
Proposition 1. To the extent the genetic hypothesis is false, we don’t want to be associated with it, given the moral-political charged nature of it.
Proposition 2. To the extent it’s true, we want it established, given the implications of its veracity.
Proposition 3. Given 1 & 2 we want the hypothesis unequivocally tested.
Proposition 4. To get the academic community to test it, members need to be convinced of its plausibility. They are not; proponents of racial equalism have been quite successful in this respect. Take the following reply I recently received from Psychology Today’s Jason Plaks:
Of course there are genetic patterns that tend to cluster in different groups – that’s why there are mean differences in skin, hair, and eye color, etc. No one is disputing that. But are there racial differences in genetic patterns that have to do with personality traits, intelligence, aggression, etc.? This is what psychologists care about. Since the latter half of the 20th century, only a few people have made these claims (e.g., Burt, Jensen, Hernnstein & Murray) and these claims have been pretty resoundingly shot down for a variety of reasons – including outright fraud in the case of Cyril Burt.
Proposition 5. To convince members of its plausibility, all of the various fallacies trotted out need to be debunked.
….
I guess I have some more work to do. I’m going to have to make a full taxonomy.
Fallacy used:
1. False Consensus fallacy.
2. Variant of the “No subspecies fallacy.” (The question, in this instance, is: Do the average differences between this and that socially identified racial populations have a genetic basis. As long as populations, however defined, don’t represent sets of identical twin pairs, this is a valid question).
3. Variant of “No subspecies fallacy.” (There are two important questions: “Do average differences between this and that population have a genetic basis?” and “Why?” When it comes to populations defined by regional ancestry, “because of ancestral genetic differences” is one possible answer to the latter.
(Immigrant selection is another.)
4. Race is color fallacy.
5. Montagu‘s fallacy or a variant of the No subspecies fallacy (i.e. “too many subspecies fallacy”).
6. Lewontin’s Fallacy. Version 2
7. Montagu‘s fallacy.
8. Undefined
I ran across this critique of Kanazawa:
In fact, this is a contentious rather than a consensus claim. Some researchers within this paradigm have argued, using similar data, that apparent gains in scores on IQ tests in a wide range of nations over time are likely to have been influenced by educational and social developments (Flynn, 1987). Moreover, the extensive debates about ‘race’ and IQ and the relative influence of heredity and the environment are simply ignored here.
[Hereditarian thinkers, unlike environmental thinkers, are obliged to detail all possible alternative interpretations and present all possible contrary evidence because their hypotheses are dangerous.]
However, stepping outside the assumptions of the paradigm, such claims, in a scientific journal, can give succour to racists and those who are quite happy to blame the poor ‘for their lot’. As Steve Jones (Professor of Genetics at UCL) has observed ‘the genetical view is often taken as a chance to blame the victim; to excuse injustice because it is determined by nature’ (2000, p.114). It is worrying, therefore, that these claims are made in one of the Society’s own journals.
[Hereditarian hypotheses are dangerous because they can lead people to attribute the failings of others to nature and not to the racism and malfeasance of others.]
The reason we are writing to The Psychologist about this paper is that we were shocked that these deficiencies had not been picked up either by the British Journal of Health Psychology reviewers or the editorial team. As a result, the Society has lain its journals open to criticism. Some of us are old enough to remember the 1990 debacle when The Psychologist published a deeply offensive and methodologically and conceptually inadequate article about race by J. Philippe Rushton. At that time, The Psychologist overhauled its review process. In this case the Observer has already run a story in which Kanazawa’s article was accused of perpetuating racist stereotypes (‘Low IQs are Africa’s curse, says lecturer’, 5 November 2006).
[Hereditarian hypotheses are also dangerous because they attempt to explain patterns of behaviors, which can lead people to noticing these patterns and so lead to racism].
Variants of the above critique are astoundingly common. The circular logic:
1. Disparities are the result of racism
2. Stereotypes can bolster racism
3. Alternative theories of the cause of disparities can reinforce stereotypes and be used to justify racism
Ergo: Presenting alternative theories is dangerous if not inherently racist, especially given the ubiquity of racism in society as testified by the presence of disparities.
[Edit: KiwiGuy pointed me to a paradigmatic comment:
“I want to make one last comment in response to Yan Shen (#6) because they bring up a common misconception. Race isn’t a biologically meaningful category, but race and how we categorize people based on how they look and where they come from has profound social and cultural implications for people, including the kinds of systemic discrimination that can be addressed by affirmative action”]
Obviously, to the extent the alternatives theories are correct, disparities are not the result of racism and so the alternative theories will not lead to these disparities. But academic leftist can’t see this. The ideology of Ubiquitous Racism has too strong of a hold. They are unable to fathom that their first principle could be incorrect.
When discussing this issue, it’s necessary to point out this fallacy and make your contention clear: racism, discrimination, colonialism, and prejudice are not the causes (e.g of African economic underperformance).
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