Over at Richard Bennett’s Blog, Gene Expression has been charged with being racist.. oh well!
Honest debate about HBD and the consequences to social policy is not racism, but then I doubt that Richard bothers to read past the headlines and blog-bytes gnenerated on GNXP.
Razib adds: Racist? God-that-I-don’t-believe-in I’m tired of this crap. I’ve addressed these issues before. I believe in equality before the law. But, I believe different groups probably have different aptitudes (not moral inferiority or superiority)-and the axiom of equality-that all groups have the exact same tendencies as our common evolutionary heritage, could cause serious problems when applied to public policy.
One more thing: I’ve said this before, but this needs repeating (from The New White Nationalism by black sociologist Carol Swain):
At least one important survey suggests that a belief in the biological inferiority [notice the loaded terminology here] of some races in regard to intelligence is more common than generally supposed. Smith College professor Stanley Rothman and Harvard researcher Mark Snyderman surveyed a sample of mostly scientific experts in the field of educational psychology in the late 1980s and found that 53 percent believed IQ differences between whites and African Americans were at least partly genetic in origin, while only 17 percent attributed the IQ differences to environmental factors alone (the remainder either believed the data was currently insufficient to decide the issue or refused to answer the question).
The footnote pinpoints the study as the Survey of Expert Opinion on Intelligence and Aptitude Testing, in American Psychologist 42 (1987): 127-44.
In 1994, when I was disgusted by The Bell Curve like any decent human being-and politically liberal high school senior, I read an article in Newsweek that reported the findings. I just tucked them away in a distant corner of my brain, not wanting to believe any of it.
More good points: My friend and guest blogger Jason Soon has some very level headed things to say on the message board (check out some of the comments-I used to joke with godless that we were “Darwin’s Wolves,” but my readers are a veritable pack!):
This is a matter of True Vs False – end of story – and taking a position on this one way or the other doesn’t make anyone a cross burner. Anyone who implies otherwise is no different from the sorts of relativists who can’t separate the political from the Truth. As for interest – some people are interested in this human biodiversity stuff because it’s intrinsically interesting. Not because it supports an agenda, not because they wear white hoods in their spare time but because they find it interesting. I find it interesting and fascinating. Perhaps people like Richard don’t believe people are capable of finding this interesting for its own sake because he’s a political hack and like all political hacks everything is about Politics (that sounds a bit like the relativists too). The Positive and the Normative are 2 different things, Richard, get it?….
Couldn’t say it better myself.
From the message board:
ATTENTION EVERYBODY:
I think this conversation has been too important to keep in this archived little comment box, so I created a thread with all the text copied over to Razib’s newly created message boards. I think it would be cool if people could register in, and the conversation could continue over there instead.
Here’s a link to the boards:
http://www.gnxp.com/gnxp_board/index.php
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