I have spoken of the connection between secular scientific polygenism and racialist theories in the past to caution those who believe that "progress" and "secularism" are always on the side of the right (in hindsight). But, I didn’t know that some mainstream Creationists also espouse some racialist thinking (Mormon racism is a well known historical fact that is played up by evangelical Christians of of the Trinitarian and Apostolic tradition)[1]. This all goes to show you that the arrow of causation does not flow in the direction that propogandists assert-I doubt that Christian and secular racists were racists because of Christianity or secularism, rather, they simply incorporated pre-existing racism into their paradigms. This suggests that we should be skeptical of attempts to smear any ideology with racism unless it is explicitly racialist as a point of principle. The American Left attempts to do this to the Right (based on the known historical record) and conversely the Right attempts to tarnish the Left in a like manner (often based on connections less well known, though just as contemporaneously tenditioius). In the end, it has debased and devalued the term racist, one of the many words rendered dull & useless by overuse, joining the long list along with heretic, fascist, communist and bigot. These words have become generously utilitized tactical weapons in every private battle, rather than sparingly deployed strategic armourments in public wars.

fn1. Note that I do not object to the assertion that various "races" might have different average phenotypes (physical and behavioral) rather, I object to the moralistic assertion that the God had decreed that the descendents of Ham-"all of the earth’s ‘colored’ races,–yellow, red, brown, and black–essentially the Afro-Asian group of peoples" serve the descendents of Shem and Japeth. This descendent of Ham (by the above definition) does not serve God or man by anyone’s decree.

Speech communication professor: Darwin fish symbols on cars are an act of ‘ritual aggression’.

“In several respects, displaying the Darwin fish is the symbolic equivalent of capturing and desecrating an enemy’s flag, an act of ritual aggression,” says Tom Lessl, an associate professor of speech communication at UGA who studies the rhetoric of science. “The Darwin symbol’s obvious emulation of a religious symbol gives it unique power to express ridicule in a vivid and symbolically pointed fashion.”

No Dr. Lessl, this is desecration:

Su-jin Kim, a Christian, breaks into Wonmyong Sonwon (Zen Center) in Cheju Island, decapitates 750 granite Buddha statues and destroys a gilt bronze Buddha triad, gold-plated jade Buddha and many other Buddhist items. He is caught by people at the temple while breaking windows of the living quarters. Kim confesses at the police that he destroyed Buddha statues in order to convert the temple to a church.

This is desecration:

Bamiyan Buddha (remnants)

This is desecration:

Via Chris Mooney.

Discussion between Jared Diamond & Victor Davis Hanson about why the West beat the Rest (you need Real Player to listen to the audio file). From Plato to Nato by David Gress is a great book about the West that I recommend to all who find the above interview interesting.

Related reading: Guns, Germs and Steel (Jared Diamond), Carnage and Culture (Victor Davis Hanson), The Wealth and Poverty of Nations (David Landes) and Thomas Sowell’s trilogy, Race and Culture, Migrations and Cultures and Conquests and Cultures.

Black guy discovers he’s not black, via genetic testing. Like the German guy who finds out he’s part Asian, I think part of the problem is that people look at this sort of science as deterministic (A -> B) instead of statistical (90% of the time A -> B , 10% A->C). See godless’ elaboration in the post about the “German Asian” man.

via Dienekes.

Posted by razib at 01:47 PM

Genetics as history:

…Professor Petersen’s Y chromosome showed a very rare result – it seems his paternal ancestors came from North Africa about 5000 years ago and worked their way up into Norway. They were then part of the Viking incursions into Britain.

Posted by razib at 05:42 PM

This article relates to the discussion in my last post on Africa:

To glimpse the depth of magical thinking, of spiritual vision, that lies beneath the cannibalism, I arranged for a display of spiritual power. In khaki slacks, a neatly pressed white dress shirt and a gaucho-style hat made of ”witch material,” Vita Kitambala, a Mayi-Mayi military general and traditional priest, demonstrated his capacity to deflect bullets. The strength he claimed was not due to cannibalism, as far as I know. He would not reveal the rituals or substances that allowed him, according to his troops (who ranged in age from 8 to adulthood), to make his soldiers fly or to make himself invisible. He would agree only to give evidence of his ability. So, one morning, he directed one of his soldiers to set a green flip-flop on the patchy grass of his Mayi-Mayi garrison. Amid the rectangular huts, another gunman shook a black jerrycan. With AK-47’s and grenade launchers, a great crowd of troops had gathered in the sun, amused but not terribly excited. Water from the jerrycan was splashed onto the flip-flop — the same sanctified water, blessed secretly by the general, that the soldiers had often splashed on themselves.

What would the warriors and druids of Queen Boudicca have done with access to cellphones and modern weapons? This article kind of reminded me of the counter-factual novel Island in the Sea of Time by S.M. Stirling, which involved the transport of the island of Nantucket to the world of 1200 BCE. In India, people might be refactoring your old code-base, but there is still an odd human sacrifice or two. Recently Deutschland has been gripped by the account of occult cannibalism (with similarities to the Congolese kind), and of course, the local wiccans here in Imbler also practice magick, though the white kind (so they say).

First, I am paraphrasing Norman Podhoretz’s famous essay My Negro Problem-And Ours, though this post will bear only a flimsy resemblance to that. I titled it for the attention, I admit it….

Due to time constraints, I won’t be able to blog much in the near future (measured in a few weeks). I thought that I’d post something that was controversial (in the best tradition of this blog) as a temporary kiss-off to readers. But first, I’d like to point you all to Google News Alerts. Since I don’t have time to do much web browsing these days, this service has come in really handy (I actually only have a “genetics” search, since I assume CNN can give me an OK headline list).

It seems this blogger (3 children) might be homeless soon. Do what you can if inclined….

Posted by razib at 02:42 PM

A few years ago 60 Minutes profiled the Kingdom of Bhutan’s policy of keeping a high wall between it and the rest of the world. In keeping with this Bhutan regulates tourism and extracts a high price from those who wish to visit. Take a look at health conditions in this “authentic” Buddhist nation. Because of its “go slow” approach to modern amenities the Land of the Thunder Dragon can still be termed a “living eden”.

But all is not well in paradise. Attached is an article on the plight of refugees expelled from Bhutan. My general point-the destruction wrought by modernity on organically developed indigenous cultures is quite often a good thing.

In limbo
Oct 23rd 2003
From The Economist print edition
Is there a solution in sight for the Bhutanese refugees?
AP

Just another forgotten cause

MANGALA SHARMA is among the lucky ones, considering. Although her family had been living in the small kingdom of Bhutan for generations, she fled her native country in 1992, fearing for her life, and spent the next eight years in a refugee camp in Nepal. She has now found political asylum in the United States. But her grandmother, who had never left her village before being walked into exile, died in the camp still dreaming of going back. Most of her family is still stranded in Nepal, together with another 100,000 refugees, largely forgotten by the rest of the world for the past 13 years. And this week’s agreement between the Nepalese and Bhutanese governments—following a decade of bilateral negotiations—is unlikely to reassure them.

The refugees are of ethnic Nepali origin, some of whom have been in southern Bhutan for generations. Others migrated in the 1960s, attracted by the prospect of a better life (Bhutan has sound economic policies and one of South Asia’s highest GDPs per head). In the late 1980s, the government, worried by what it considered a dilution of Bhutanese traditions, tightened citizenship rules and launched a cultural offensive. Southerners had to produce obscure documentation—such as land-tax receipts from 1958—to retain their nationality and were forced to wear traditional northern Bhutanese dress. Those who protested against the brutal census were jailed. Expulsion orders were issued to some, while others were harassed out of Bhutan.

Today, an estimated one in seven Bhutanese is a refugee. More than 100,000 people are languishing in camps in Nepal, while another 20,000 are thought to be in India. Two years ago, the Nepalese and Bhutanese authorities agreed on a joint screening system to determine who would eventually be allowed to go back. So far, only 12,000 refugees or so have been processed, and fewer than 3% of them are considered bona fide Bhutanese who were forced to leave. Those deemed to have left of their own accord will have to re-apply for Bhutanese citizenship or, if they choose to stay, may become Nepalese. Refugees categorised as “criminals”—reportedly including some children—will go through Bhutanese courts, while those considered non-Bhutanese will not be allowed to return. The first returnees are supposed to go by February. Refugee and human-rights groups are incensed by what they consider a thoroughly flawed verification process.

Refugees insist they want to go back to Bhutan. But they want to go back to their own land and houses, and with some assurance of safety. They would like the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), together with that of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, to be involved. “We’re not asking for the sky,” says Ratan Gazmere of the Association of Human Rights Activists, based in Nepal.

These conditions are unlikely to be met, however. A study conducted by the Habitat International Coalition in 2001 found that the Bhutanese government had been resettling northerners on the refugees’ property. According to the study, some of the land has been given to army and police officers or their relatives. The UN refugee agency has been left out of the bilateral talks and the verification process. It is running the refugee camps in Nepal, but is not allowed in Bhutan.

Shock therapy

At the end of September, a frustrated Ruud Lubbers, the head of UNHCR, announced that since the agency cannot monitor the return of refugees, it would not promote repatriation but help refugees settle in Nepal or in other countries, while gradually phasing out its direct involvement in the camps. This announcement shocked the refugees, and the policy change has been criticised by humanitarian and human rights organisations. A UNHCR spokesman says it was meant as a wake-up call. Repatriation, he adds, is the preferred option, but not if refugees cannot be guaranteed to return in dignity and safety.

Refugees have been repeatedly calling for the outside world to do more. Earlier this month, several refugee and human-rights organisations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, urged donors to put pressure on Bhutan. But the key probably lies with India, whose attitude they describe as “unhelpful”. Besides overseeing Bhutan’s foreign policy and supporting its army, India is the kingdom’s largest financial benefactor.

SAT biased against blacks?

Godless comments:

This article has some pretty sloppy passages, including:

For the high school class of 2002 the average score for a non-Hispanic white student on the 1600-point test was 1060. The average score for a black student was 857, or 203 points lower. (For Asians the average was 1070, and for Hispanics it was slightly over 900.) The gap between blacks and whites on the test is sixteen points greater today than it was in 1992. If minority students are at a disadvantage in taking the SAT, their choice of colleges will be significantly limited…

Asians are minorities too, and they have higher mean scores than whites. Rather than referring to “minorities”, a more precise term would be blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans. Here’s another careless bit:

He cited research showing minority students doing better than non-Hispanic whites on harder math items, which he attributed to the fact that those items used more textbook-like language and “more abstract concepts learned strictly in the classroom.” Minority students scored worse on the easier math items, just as they did on easier verbal items, because commoner words were used in those questions.