If any reliable measures of group IQ-differences are ever to be made, they will be based on direct genetic information (after we know "the genes for intelligence"). . . Until then, the discussion about this is mere speculation.

No, this just isn't true. There are hierarchies of certainty, not this dichotomy of total God-like understanding and armchair guessing.

Unless behavioral genetics is just "speculation".

My argument was not specifically against the concept of race, but your explanation of everything by race and lack of knowledge or curiosity about the other factors.

I'm not sure what information exactly we have omitted, but I think I have always tried to evaluate the case (especially re: black-white differences) using all the most reliable data available. I read sociological lit, and left-leaning stuff. I read things that explain differences from socio-historical and economic perspectives. I've read Oliver and Shapiro's Black Wealth, White Wealth, which theorized wealth differences underlie b-w social differences, and I read John Hoberman's (unconvincing) socio-cultural response to Entine, Darwin's Athletes. I read Ogbu (one of the few people who thinks to actually test [instead of assert] theories of caste). I read the left-oriented work of Harvard sociologist Christopher Jencks. (Such as his book on the test-gap, and this wonderful synopsis of it published in The American Prospect. And on and on.

The point is, is that I am familiar (as far as I know) with much of the data pool, and with alternative ways of looking at this data pool. I want to be familiar with it, because I'm trying to understand the problem. I say this with intellectual humility, if there are books you think we should read, or data you think we are ignorant of, you can recommend where to find it, and I will probably seek it out. But genetic theories have a lot going for them, in the way of parsimony (why certain differences hold relatively constant through cultural, geographic, and historical space), that alternative explanations for the same phenomenon (Diamond, Landes, Sowell) seem to lack. This is without even touching upon the psychometric and behavioral genetic evidence, which pretty much seals the deal in my mind.

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but your explanation of everything by race and lack of knowledge or curiosity about the other factors

I dunno, this just doesn't seem defensible, zizka. I mean how many people do you know who consider this question, with as diverse a range of sources as we consider? Do they even leave room for genetic possibilities? Do they leave room for, much less read Jensen, or do they just know all that psychometric stuff is "psuedo-science", just like Gould promised? Many liberals (a lot of them friends) who I discuss this with take an almost mystical approach to this topic (much in the same way some Jewish religious fundamentalists reject any attempt to understand the causes of the Holocaust in any way, as a way of excusing it ["There is no 'why' here"]. Also similar to the way some hyper-patriots condemned any consideration of root-causes for 9-11 as an apology for terrorism). All cultural considerations are considered reactionary and racist. Thomas Sowell is dismissed as a right-wing apolog
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Speaking of Dahlia Lithwick, she unfavorably responded to Easterbrook a few days ago at Slate. This whole debate about what the women ought to say to stop the sex seems to miss what, to me, is the much greater problem: How does anyone prove what was said, anyhow??

I mean whatever the legal 'codeword' is, both parties have the ability to lie about it being said or not.

One time an ex-roommate of mine forged my name on a stolen check for a rather large amount of money. It was then, dealing with the local police and detectives, that I realized how ridiculously imprecise the law was. After months of dealing with moronic authorities, my ex-roommate finally caved and gave me the money back, begging me not to press charges. Frankly, if I were him, it almost would have made sense not to worry at all.

Yesterday, my new roommate came back from her new boyfriend's house with bruises and bite-marks all over (visible) body, and a big smile on her face.

Experiences like the above make me cynical. How are we supposed to know real rape? Psychiatric evaluations? Is there an actual science to our laws, or are people suffering huge consequences over what amounts to some kind of game of hunches, and whether social attitudes happen to deam it more fashionable to take more stock in the word of men or take more stock in the word of women?

Duende, the black illegitimacy and crime rates were both lower than the current white ones in the 60's. The religious rate was the same. So your rationilization that religion just has 'nothing to work with' with black 'DNA' wasn't very good.

As for this religious morality kick you and Godless are on lately, until you stop philosophizing and start drawing up some data that would support these Machivellian "elitist" schemes of yours (and start successfully addressing counter-arguments that have already been made), then I see little point in continuing with it.

well I think fundamentally it's social pressures and good parenting that make people moral . . .

Social pressures very much so, parenting not so much. Differences in misbehavior are (on average) just about as great within a family as they are in the population at random (if you hold for genes).

I suspect a healthy self-esteem . . . is correlated with moral behaviour

I'll look for a ref, but I think this turns out to be the opposite. People with low self-esteem are more easily socilaized. Psychopaths + sociopaths seem to have quite high self-esteems.

(just jumping in on some particulars . . . agree overall :))

What the hell is up with these networks hiring characters like Savage and Limbaugh and than acting shocked and outraged when they say savage-y and limbaugh-y things??

I mean what the fuck is next? Are they going to hire Ann Coulter to co-host with Regis, and then fire her after she calls him a commy?

"Well, how were we supposed to know??"

Eric, I wasn't commenting on the content of Limbaugh's statement. I was commenting on the absurdity of hiring an established personality and then having the nerve to get outraged when they act like themselves.

If you don't want off-color remarks don't hire Howard Stern to host your show. If you don't want political divisive remarks, don't hire Limbaugh.

The calculus involves such basic common sense, that I'm not sure how people with such huge money investments could keep missing it.

Ok now to comment on the comment:

Its weird that this is being cast as a racist offense, or a comment against blacks, when what was (obviously) being criticized was Rush's usual enemy, the "liberal media". That makes this so goddam silly. I hope they hire Krugman next for this position and fire him when he *gasp* makes some anti-bush comment.

On a related note I for one never thought Eminem was all that interesting compared to clearly superior and underrated acts like Jurrasic 5. Maybe I'm wrong but I suppose the whole "white rapper" thing was being sold as a profit-making novelty. Race is sometimes sold to us as a product by "right-wing" corporations.

There, I basically just made the same comment as Limbaugh with an ideological inversion of the generalizations.

"Apparently he didn't think about the difference."

Katy this is bullshit. ESPN hired Rush-fucking-Limbaugh.

If Limbaugh's a tad bit confused after all this, I don't blame him.

Not only does Allen Barra agree with Limbaugh over on Slate, he's just as frustrated as I am trying to parse this situation:

"I mean, if they didn't hire Rush Limbaugh to say things like this, what they did they hire him for? To talk about the prevent defense?"

I don't follow sports too closely or enthusiastically, but I remember reading an article in Sports Illustrated a couple of years ago or so talking about what a big issue this "black quarterback" thing is*. (If I remember correctly, it strongly implied that it was an issue b/c it had implications for the IQ debate)

Is that issue all resolved now or something?

*it might have been by Entine.

There's certainly no need for a flame war. Hardbitten, I can see your point about collecting world IQ scores, it's very preliminary and doesn't need to be swallowed whole. But other things such as similar scores for different studies makes the data more interesting. You aren't supposed to read things such as this as dogma, and if you read Sailer's review or his comments on it here (where he gives a 'grain of salt' warning), or Godless' recent FPP, you'll see that most of think that way (in fact both of them seem to address issues that concern you. e.g. nutrition).

Sometimes it's hard to know where to start with people who object, b/c they start out with different degrees of shared premises. From people on the hard ends of the left and the right who reject everything on principle, to people in the center who end up having intelligent problems with a few key premises. I might be able to talk with you better, or defend charges of "pseudo-science" better if I knew how many premises we shared. Do you think that the study of human intelligence is a valid science? That the g factor is the best measure we have of such a thing? That g correlates with many important life outcomes? That at least some of the individual differences in g are the result of genetic variation? Do you believe we have reliable, unbiased instruments for measuring g? Do you think 'race' exists? Do you think genetic differences between geographically distant people are possible? And finally do you think there are easy answers for explaining the achievement gap between American blacks and whites?

For everyone of these, I have come to a certain conclusion, based on my readings of two opposing sides. Depending on how many of these premises we share, the more productive our conversation can be.

I think homosexuality, in the sense we're trying to explain it, is a modern, mostly Western/European, cultural identity that appeals to people who have certain patterns of life-experiences (e.g. older brothers) as well as certain genetic predispositions (e.g. "girly")* that make that cultural niche (special to Western societies) easier to fall into.

If we're merely trying to explain why some men have a desire to have sex with other men, then the "problem" of hypothetical homosexuality genes getting selected away is no longer a problem because most men through history and today that have sex with other men had sex with women as well (think the Taliban, prison, Alexander the Great, New Guinea). Consider how "homosexuality" is done far more often in the black community - self-defined as heterosexual. This, I think, is the more historical version of homosexuality.

The pair-bonding, mutual affection, and "men-only" part of Western homosexuality (not to mention the campiness, the artiness, the sassiness, the lisp, etc.) seem to be cultural additions to me. Just something that some white people came up with.

*whatever quality this predisposition may take, it is real. Behavioral geneticists show that those who share genes are more likely to share sexuality as well.

"Being a cultural thing, it's fairly easy for homosexual men to get get bored with it and turn heterosexual"

Same goes for religion, political values, aesthetic preferences, the substantial non-genetic portion of personality formation/intelligence, (imprinted) sexual revulsion towards siblings, etc., etc. Seriously though, the idea that genes (or germs ;)) = fixed, environment = fluid is wrongheaded and simplistic. Also check this out:

"Although Western medievalist, John Boswell, who legitimated lesbian and gay history as a field of study in his book Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality (1980) famously advanced the theory that "Gay people" have always and everywhere existed, this has not been widely accepted by scholars. Since 1980 a very specific theory the history of sexuality as it applies to homosexuals, has come to be accepted by the majority of historians working in the field. The model now is this:

• Homosexual behaviors exist in most societies, and in most, including European society until about 1700, homosexuality falls into two main patterns (at least for men.) One pattern is based on age-dissonant sexual dominance; an older man (not always very much older by the way) will take a conventionally "male" role in a sexual relationship with a younger male, but will not, in doing so, be regarded as any different from other "male" men in general society. The second common pattern is based on gender-dissonant sexual dominance; this means that in a number of societies there were "biological" males who lived as "non-males" throughout their lives, and these people can also be the sexual partners of "male" men without the "men" loosing any status. The Native American berdache is perhaps the most famous example of a widespread phenomenon.
• Around 1700, in Western Europe a change took place. A subculture of effeminate men arose in major cities, men who identified themselves as different. The word "molly" was used in London and other words elsewhere. Although they were prepared to have sex with "male" men these "mollies" were also prepared to have sex with each other. This is not, it seems, common across various societies. Some historians have called this the emergence of a "third gender".
• Since "a third gender" is not the model of modern homosexuality in the West, there has been a question of when the "modern homosexual" emerged. Many writers have argued that that the medicalization of homosexuality in the late nineteenth century resulted in the creation of a new creature - the "modern homosexual" (and the "modern heterosexual"!) What distinguishes "homo-" and "heterosexuals" from earlier models of sexuality is that they are in strict opposi
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you're crazy. Naturally, I could go on and on at great length about how and why, but why would I want to argue with a crazy person?

Lol. Well, it's probably best for me. Even if you are wrong, you no doubt have much more ammunition than I do for my perspective even if I happen to be right (always painful to admit). I certainly don't claim infallibility, but that's the direction my collective experience on the subject points me in. Perhaps, my mind will change when I get around to reading some Bailey.

Speaking of Bailey, the densely packed, calculated innuendo in this Chronicle of Higher Education profile of him is hilarious. And let this be a warning to any of you who want to propose controversial theories to politically sensitive topics. :D

What would you call these kids, Jiggers?

Kokujo.

Duende, I think this post is pretty interesting and all, but I sense a missing context. You haven't really fleshed out why you're even in Japan. Don't we deserve a fuller treatment of what you're doing? Give us a full-blown Vinod approach to your travels already. :)

the man has picked out items-art and science- most valued by and specialized in by the West-and found the West was the best at producing these items. Surprising indeed.

This is rather Po-Mo. What criteria would you pick?

Why be cynical? 97%. That's fucking amazing.

PS - I can't wait to see the media reviews for this book considering the thesis (which could easily be construed as implicitly racial) and Murray's *cough* Post-Curve reputation

You can't just say it's absurd and expect that to make it so. That's lazy.

Please explain how Hamlet's worth can be objectively demonstrated. Can the depth and profundity of a metaphor be quantified?

Why would anyone accept such an absurd conception of artistic greatness?

Good cases have been made. I just read a pretty good one on 'Alas, A Blog' not too long ago. Ctrl + F for the 1st entry by PinkDreamPoppies.

Recently someone on the message boards has been disputing the notion that there is a general preference in this country-amongst both blacks & whites- for light-skinned more "European" looking women to represent "African American" beauty.

Though my kudos go out to "Too Sexy for My Skintone" for being a courteous guy, I think he is going to have a hard time supporting his perspective with evidence that goes beyond the anecdotal.

First of all, let me say this, I do not believe that "black=ugly". I've tried to hit it with the dark chocolate many-a time before, and failed miserably. Must be the "culture" difference. Fair enough. I tend to agree with Vincent, the half-Japanese guy who linked to duende's article on feminism, when he paid tribute to the African form of the Williams sisters on MetaFilter the other day (and garnered the illustrious "comment of the day" award):

And Jesus...have you seen Serena's junk? I'd like to bite her in the ass, develop lockjaw, and be dragged to my death.

But aside from a minority of weird Japanese and white guys the general preference among all races for more European looking black women in America is well-documented. Here's a quick and pretty good summary of the data:

Skin tone bias may be expressed as a general affect-driven preference or dislike for African-Americans with specific skin tones or as stereotypes about individuals possessing light or dark skin. Specific preferences and dislikes have been found in black children (Seeman 1946, Porter 1991), adolescents (Goering 1971, Robinson & Ward 1995), and adults (Bond & Cash 1992, Hall 1992). The general trend is a preference for light African-Americans and dislike for dark individuals...

The strange thing about "Too Sexy", is that African-Americans are usually pretty quick to reference America's "color caste system" as an indictment of the pervasiveness of American racism. Almost all of the sources I can find on the Internet supporting our perception come from black sources:

Skin Games: Color and Skin Tone in the Black Community Colorism* Race and Media*

Finally, the most highly recommended book on the subject seems to be The Color Complex: The Politics of Skin Color Among African Americans. The chapter on the media is unfortunately not online, but the one on slavery is.

Whether or not this system of preference is due to racism, ideas entrenched from times of greater racism, or something non-racism related is open to dispute, but its existence, I'm afraid, is not.

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Update 10/13/03 - I've noticed that since the last time I've seen this thread, all my links have disappeared into thin air. This bothers me b/c I like to support my arguments when I say things. I've replaced all the ones I remember/ could find. I have marked the ones I couldn't with a '*'.

- Jason M.

Hi D,

We just installed a feature that allows us to see when people who come in off of Google and such comment on long dead threads. Could you be more specific about what was said in this thread that you found offensive?

Before you answer, check out our discussion with Gwen, another African-American woman who took offence to this thread. I try and answer some of the confusion I think she had about our conversations on the subject.