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Postcolonial imperialism

Rereading Edward Said’s Orientalism I am struck by the fact that he’s a very good writer compared to his heirs in postcolonial studies. As someone who cites Foucault, it is natural that there is a fair amount of vapid but lexically textured passages in Orientalism (you can open up any page and stumble upon a polished but inscrutable passage). But the general thesis and the review of the literary works seems moderately coherent actually. Far less of a screed than the more recent distillations. Who says evolution ascends upward in complexity?

As someone who isn’t well versed in literature I can’t really comment on the validity of the interpretations, but, there is one thing that I noticed in Said’s argument which prefigures modern postcolonialism: it abstracts and generalizes from a particular instance in human history, European interactions with non-Europeans in the early modern and modern period, and projects them across all of history. Like tachyons going back in time the manipulations and predations of early modern Europeans echo back through time and forward into infinite.

Here is a representative sample of what I’m talking about. The first section is a quote from Aeschylus:

Now all Asia’s land
Moans in emptiness.
Xerxes led forth, oh oh!
Xerxes destroyed, woe woe!
Xerxes’ plans have all miscarried
In ships of the sea.
Why did Darius then
Bring no harm to his men
When he led them into battle,
That beloved leader of men from Susa?

What matters here is that Asia speaks through and by virtue of the European imagination, which is depicted as victorious over Asia, that hostile “other” world beyond the seas….

Said is quoting someone who lived in the 5th century BC. What Aeschylus meant by “Asia” had a much different connotation than what we think of today. In part, the idea of a decadent civilization and the decline from more vigorous ages is a common theme in the ancient world, and the Romans in their turn depicted the Greeks as the Greeks had depicted the Persians.

And, of course, the context here is that some people of Hellas were resisting the domination and expansion of the world’s greatest empire of the time, that of the Persians, which was based in Asia. Aeschylus was a bard of the subaltern in this context! The whole passage when exposed is actually an inversion of the larger thesis.

The author does not mask the historical context of the passage, but it strikes me that it’s totally silly to make any identity between Europe in the 5th century BC to Europe in the 18th to 20th centuries, and Asia in the 5th century BC to Asia in the 18th to 20th century.

In fact the concept of différance may be relevant here. Said cannot be so naive as to not understand the chasm between Europe in the Classical World, which was an almost clinical description of the geography, and Europe in the early modern period, which was freighted with the weight of history. The Thracians did not care if they were European, but the Russian nobility yearned to be so thought.

Now transfer this to a typical undergraduate. Are they intuitively aware of the chasm of history, the centuries, the transmutation of words and their implications? To be entirely frank, I think some of the teaching assistants guiding the students are probably too stupid and ignorant to actually understand these nuances themselves.

But the students learn about terms like postcolonialism and Orientalism, and as some of them move into the professions and the media these words became part of the common lexicon to show you are an educated person, just as dialectical materialism was for an earlier generation.

And that is how postcolonial theory mutated from being a system that decomposes very precise and delimited historical dynamics to becoming an heir to classical Marxism, a theory for all of history in the past and into the future.

Forgive them their ignorance, for they infer the path through the darkness by Theory alone.

40 thoughts on “Postcolonial imperialism

  1. I 100% agree with this post. I’m a liberal, and I think there is still a lot of inequality between white people and everyone else in the context of the US, but it makes no sense to me to turn this into some Manichean struggle going back to the beginning of time. The discrepancy between the West and everyone else goes back to the Great Divergence, with the West taking advantage of technological advances to subjugate much of the rest of the world.

    But it wasn’t always like that, and different alignments existed previously. Hyun Jin Kim, for example, posits in “The Huns, Rome, and the Birth of Europe” that in the Late Antiquity, there were 2 major cultural zones in Europe: a Mediterranean zone and a Eurasian zone which stretched from the Rhine River to Mongolia. He posits that what we think of as Europe actually had its birth in this era; and the attacks by the Huns severely weakening the Western Roman Empire, and the increased political organization they encouraged in the Germanic peoples, helped Western Europe break free of Mediterranean domination. It’s an interesting book. I recommend you read it.

    During the Middle Ages, too, the situation was a lot more complex than some Manichean struggle between the West and everybody else. For example, in the Ninth Crusade, Prince Edward of England succeeded in establishing some cooperation with the Ilkhanate, which was a Mongol state in the Middle East.

    I think that this Manichean framing resembles, as I know you’ve discussed before, the kinds of framing white supremacists put out in the early 20th century. And it’s a stupidly oversimplistic view of history that would stifle any creativity in actually helping the situation.

  2. I think there is still a lot of inequality between white people and everyone else in the context of the US

    I agree. There seems to be a persistent gap in household income and educational attainment between (some) Asians and whites. Will spending 300 billion dollars in the next ten years allow the latter to catch up with the former?

    I will ponder deeply about this the next time I’m at my second house in WV surrounded by these deeply disadvantaged whites.

  3. Twinkie,

    Very true. That is why I think putting everyone’s struggles under the single banner of people of color, however useful a term that may be in some contexts, can erase people’s specific situations.

    This is why I find research like that of Hyun Jin Kim, as well as that of Razib Khan here, so fascinating. It provides a completely fresh way of looking at things. I’m sick and tired of the present model where everyone is just put into boxes of whites, blacks, Hispanics, and Asians. I like to look for more nuance in the relationships between different peoples, and to look at all the interactions and what makes us similar as well as different. (I also find elite dominance driven language shifts to be absolutely fascinating, especially that of Turkey as it seemed to cross what Americans would think of as a “racial divide”. It makes it seem almost transgressive.)

  4. By contrast, Jürgen Osterhammel’s “Unfabling the East” (updated a bit in its new English translation that came out in June) is the response that Orientalism deserved. It’s also quite relevant for the various “Is the Enlightenment responsible for racism?” debate that roiled people recently. Osterhammel comes solidly down on the side of distinguishing the universal and not racist Enlightenment of the 18th century from the colonial, Eurocentrist, and racist 19th century. The debate really should be about whether “the innovation that the Enlightenment developed may have helped usher in the sense of superiority that marked the 19th c.”

    Said weirdly projects back 19th and 20th century attitudes to times when they simply did not apply.

  5. “I think some of the teaching assistants guiding the students are probably too stupid and ignorant to actually understand these nuances themselves.”

    Do you think the current generations of full time professors are any better.

    I don’t.

    None of them had broad historical or humanistic learning. Their graduate training was indoctrination into coterie material that no rational outsider can make heads or tails of.

    They are ignorant. So ignorant that they have no clue of how much they are ignorant of. And so pleased with themselves and so convinced of their own virtue that they will not attempt to widen their horizons.

    The situation is hopeless. There will be no revival of humanistic education in our lifetimes, or in those of our children and grandchildren.

  6. everyone’s struggles

    More struggle sessions! This is a most Maoist lingo.

    I’m sick and tired of the present model where everyone is just put into boxes of whites, blacks, Hispanics, and Asians.

    I don’t have a problem with compiling data (and drawing conclusions) about various ethnic groups in a multi-racial and – ethnic society. I find that much more scientifically and socially useful than slogan-like generalizations such as “I think there is still a lot of inequality between white people and everyone else in the context of the US…”

    “Inequality”? In what? In outcomes? Certainly not in the legal context since people who are “nonwhites” or “people of color” are legally and explicitly privileged in many ways (for that matter some mostly or partly white people also fall under this banner, but we will set this aside for now).

    Although I am a “person of color,” I find this – very simply put – unjust and unfair. People who blather about white privilege should go visit some towns on the other side of the mountains (that is, on the western side, away from prosperous metro-DC/northern Virginia area) in West Virginia.

  7. >More struggle sessions! This is a most Maoist lingo.

    I don’t know anything about that. When I said that, I had in mind things like people being forced to crowdfund insulin, and a seriously injured woman begging bystanders not to call an ambulance because of the bill she would receive. In America, our devotion to capitalism is far too extreme, just like the devotion to socialism in the USSR was far too extreme.

    >“Inequality”? In what? In outcomes? Certainly not in the legal context since people who are “nonwhites” or “people of color” are legally and explicitly privileged in many ways (for that matter some mostly or partly white people also fall under this banner, but we will set this aside for now).

    Racial inequality in the US is pretty well documented. Some basic research should help you here:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_inequality_in_the_United_States

    >Although I am a “person of color,” I find this – very simply put – unjust and unfair. People who blather about white privilege should go visit some towns on the other side of the mountains (that is, on the western side, away from prosperous metro-DC/northern Virginia area) in West Virginia.

    This is knocking down a strawman. No one denies there are white people who have it tough. It still doesn’t change the existence of racial inequality.

  8. Racial inequality in the US is pretty well documented.

    Define inequality for me. Do whites get two votes per person? Is a white baby issued a magic decoder ring for “white privilege” upon birth?

    Different outcomes is not a prima facie evidence of legal inequality or discrimination. You clearly did not get my sarcasm earlier. Contrary to your white vs. nonwhite gap talk, there are some nonwhite groups that do BETTER than whites do in a wide range of measurable outcomes, including actual lifespan – they literally live longer than whites do.

    No one denies there are white people who have it tough.

    No one? Aren’t you confident.

  9. Twinkie,

    >Different outcomes is not a prima facie evidence of legal inequality or discrimination. You clearly did not get my sarcasm earlier. Contrary to your white vs. nonwhite gap talk, there are some nonwhite groups that do BETTER than whites do in a wide range of measurable outcomes, including actual lifespan – they literally live longer than whites do.

    Can you show me where I’ve denied that part about some nonwhite groups doing better than whites? I’ve actually agreed with you on that already. Just look further up this thread.

    And there are many causes, both historical and modern, of inequality.

    >No one? Aren’t you confident.

    I mean, I guess if you search the Internet hard enough, you’ll probably find some people who will deny it. So, there, have yourself a little victory dance and laugh at my expense.

  10. And there are many causes, both historical and modern, of inequality.

    You keep using the word without defining it. What do you mean by inequality?

    I use it to mean that the American government legally privileges certain classes of citizens over another… in which cases whites (and males) are often negatively discriminated by it in favor of others, e.g. blacks, women, etc.

    I mean, I guess if you search the Internet hard enough

    You should ask those who bandy about the term “white privilege.” I understand such people can be found in real life, not just the internet.

  11. Erika Butler and Twinkie, In the words of the wisest man I ever knew, you seem to be “violently agreeing.”

    If two people run a race, on the same track from the same starting point to the same ending point, that’s equal. If they finish with different times, that’s unequal. Twinkie seems to be using equal in the first sense, Erika in the second. I think the problem is that so many people, especially university-influenced people, believe that the second–an unequal outcome–implies the first–an unequal start. If American society were just, all ethnic groups would have the same income, school grades, arrest rates, etc. Or at least, much closer than today.

    To the second “violent agreement”, it is rare to find someone who “denies there are white people who have it tough.” But any SJW will tell you that ALL white people are privileged compared to non-white people in regards to their whiteness. Other aspects of their personality or environment may work against that privilege–cause them to “have it tough”–but the privilege is always there in our racist society. And since whites are historically oppressors, it’s not really worth spending sympathy on them.

  12. Twinkie and Roger Sweeney,

    Yes, the word “white privilege” does not imply that all white people live like kings. I personally think “privilege” is a bad term to use, because it implies the advantages white people have are something nobody should have, when instead we should be working on making sure everybody both in law and in practice has equal rights. But I do want to make clear that just because somebody uses “white privilege” that doesn’t mean they don’t think there are white people who have it tough.

    You guys claim that equality of opportunity already exists, but I strongly dispute that statement. It’s a complicated subject involving many issues, so let me discuss just one: Schools in the US are massively unequal in funding:

    https://www.npr.org/2016/04/18/474256366/why-americas-schools-have-a-money-problem

    This is because school funding is to a large extent based on local property taxes. This means that in poorer areas schools are massively underfunded. As NPR discusses, in some of the worst cases, like Livingston Junior High School in Alabama, the facilities are falling apart and the whole place smells of mold. The school’s student body is overwhelmingly black:

    https://www.npr.org/2016/04/24/469973099/why-cant-our-kids-go-to-school-together-asks-board-member-in-alabama

    As black and Hispanic people are poorer and we still have de facto segregation in a lot of cases, that means that more black and Hispanic people go to these poorer funded schools, which hurts their ability to succeed in life. Until we are willing to fix these and other problems, we will not have equality of opportunity in this country. But as it stands, a lot of white people still seem to have an attitude of, “I don’t want my money going to pay for those people’s schools,” even if they’re not willing to say it in so many words.

  13. @Roger Sweeney

    If two people run a race, on the same track from the same starting point to the same ending point, that’s equal.

    What about golf and bowling and other activities where handicaps are used to “make” the game equal?”

    If American society were just, all ethnic groups would have the same
    This is true only if each group has the same capabilities, and there are serious indications that this is not true.

  14. @Erika Butler

    Funding for schools is only one metric. Some urban, mostly black school systems have some of the highest per pupil funding.

  15. If two people run a race, on the same track from the same starting point to the same ending point, that’s equal. If they finish with different times, that’s unequal. Twinkie seems to be using equal in the first sense

    No. I use equality in a specific, legal sense. There is no such thing as an equality of outcomes. It’s a self-serving leftist utopian fantasy that, in real life, leads to hell on earth.

    In real life, personal circumstances and outcomes will vary – as they should. The only thing the government should ensure is that laws are enforced fairly and that any legal privileging ought to have limited, clear, consistent, just, and efficacious goals.

  16. Twinkie,

    According to the map in the NPR article, which I will link again below, New York State (not the city, but the state) almost entirely as a whole spends greater than 33% more on their schools than the national average. No part of the state is reported as spending below average, and spending NYC is entirely greater than 33% more than the national average. Even if a single high school spends a bit less than others in NYC, it’s likely still spending significantly more than the average.

    https://www.npr.org/2016/04/18/474256366/why-americas-schools-have-a-money-problem

    So your point that you don’t really need all that much funding for your schools, and it’s OK to shortchange some children, doesn’t hold water here.

  17. @Erika

    If the “problem” was simply funding, it would have been solved by now.

    By Terence P. Jeffrey | May 14, 2014 | 4:25 AM EDT

    The public schools in Washington, D.C., spent $29,349 per pupil in the 2010-2011 school year, according to the latest data from National Center for Education Statistics, but in 2013 fully 83 percent of the eighth graders in these schools were not “proficient” in reading and 81 percent were not “proficient” in math.

    https://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/terence-p-jeffrey/dc-schools-29349-pupil-83-not-proficient-reading

  18. Erika Butler,

    You guys claim that equality of opportunity already exists

    If by “equality of opportunity” you mean every baby born has an equal probability of succeeding, I certainly don’t believe we have equality of opportunity.

    I’m afraid you’ve been snookered by the “money equals educational results” argument. It seems like it should be so true, but it isn’t, not even close. However, you’re in good company. The Supreme Court believes it, as do many state courts. In fact, many states now are required to have relatively equal educational spending because of court decisions and related legislative actions. The results have been underwhelming.

    Utah (mostly white) doesn’t spend much on schools (per pupil) but has good results. The District of Columbia (mostly black) spends more than any of the fifty states per pupil and has terrible results. A number of years ago, the federal court required Kansas City to spend a lot more on its school system. They even required a tax increase. There was new building and new programs and lots and lots of optimism. And the results were slightly above negligible.

    I am sure there are some districts in Alabama and other states where spending more would make a significant difference. But they are exceptions.

  19. Roger Sweeney,

    Yes, school funding is not the only factor. Other factors include the summer learning gap, the school-to-prison pipeline, and the discipline gap. As an example of the last one, black students are punished more harshly for the same infractions than are white students:

    https://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/33548997/monroe-libre.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAIWOWYYGZ2Y53UL3A&Expires=1538611216&Signature=I3JhSM2wa%2FpNavg%2F1VRi%2Bg4PsrI%3D&response-content-disposition=inline%3B%20filename%3DUnderstanding_the_discipline_gap_through.pdf

    Unfortunately, the present medium we are discussing this in is perhaps not the best for a complete and thorough discussion of this topic. So, yes, you can argue that one factor doesn’t explain everything, but it would take a much more in-depth discussion than this to get a good look at all the factors. What I’d like to make clear is that you can’t just blame the kids, or use it to push a racist trope (like iffen has been attempting to): Society shares much of the blame for these discrepancies.

  20. you can’t just blame the kids, or use it to push a racist trope (like iffen has been attempting to)

    iffen ain’t no racist, sweetheart. I was through Livingston only a couple of weeks ago and I have pretty good grasp of the facts. If you really want to challenge yourself, let it go and think about what we can do if, in fact, group differences exist.

  21. Edward Said’s criticism of Western scholarship of the Middle East is still to this fairly spot on. You will find “scholars” of Middle Eastern history who cannot carry on a conversation in Arabic attempting to discuss something as arcane as Alghazali’s disagreement with Ibn Sina on causality. The West’s otherization of Islam is REALLY weird from a world history pov. Separating the study of Muslim majority countries like Algeria or Morrocco from the study of Christian majority Spain makes no sense to someone versed in world history. Muslim societies in the Mediterranean basin were inextricably linked with Europe. Orientalism opened up the path for scholars like Richard Bulliet to argue that we should be talking about an Islamo-Christian Civilization in the Near East and Europe, in much the same way we talk of Mesoamerican Civilization and Sinic Civilization. Orientalism as an enterprise was blocking this kind of deep understanding and we should be grateful to Edward Said for his work. He was Brilliant.

  22. What you say here doesn’t hold water when you examine the map in the NPR article, which I will link again here

    Read the Richwine article: https://www.heritage.org/education/report/the-myth-racial-disparities-public-school-funding

    “Nationwide, raw per-pupil spending is similar across racial and ethnic groups. The small differences that do exist favor non-white students. After breaking down the data by region, the non-white funding advantage becomes more pronounced. In the Northeast, for example, blacks receive over $2,000 more than whites in per-pupil funding per year. The region with the smallest differences is the South, where spending on black and Hispanic students is only slightly higher than on whites.

    Adjusted for cost of living, the differences narrow. Asian and Hispanic students receive slightly less money than whites overall, while blacks receive slightly more. Regional differences persist after the adjustment, especially in the Northeast.”

  23. Yes, school funding is not the only factor. Other factors include the summer learning gap, the school-to-prison pipeline, and the discipline gap.

    You left out the most important factor in any endeavor that involves people – the human quality, particularly that of the students in this case.

    I guess you don’t recognize the IQ gap, the effort gap, and the parenting gap (though the latter is not nearly as correlated to outcome as the first two factors).

  24. iffen,

    Oh? What were you saying here, then? You said:

    >This is true only if each group has the same capabilities, and there are serious indications that this is not true.

    You said this in response to the following statement, “If American society were just, all ethnic groups would have the same”

    You seemed to be suggesting that members of some ethnic groups may not be as capable of being successful in school. Did I misread what you said?

  25. Erika Butler,

    I clicked on the link and it took me to an error page.

    Black and white students, of course, have the same time for the summer learning gap to take place.

    The school to prison pipeline affects all students who get into the criminal justice system.

    But you come near to an important problem. The black crime rate is substantially greater than the white, way too much to be because of differential arrests. It shows up e.g., for murder which is hard to fake. A neighborhood with a high crime rate is going to make it harder for the schools.

  26. You seemed to be suggesting that members of some ethnic groups may not be as capable of being successful in school. Did I misread what you said?

    There is an overlap with the members of each group. If you just look at the groups, Jews and E. Asians will shake out at the top, whites in the middle and blacks below whites. You can posit explanations other than group differences which is what you are doing, but most of the evidence is against you. I didn’t like it when I came to understand it, but that’s the way it is. Very few people think about what is best after this point.

  27. Roger Sweeney,

    My apologies. Here is the citation: Monroe, Carla R. (2005). “Understanding the discipline gap through a cultural lens: implications for the education of African American students”. Intercultural Education. 16 (4): 317–330. doi:10.1080/14675980500303795.

    If you search Google Scholar for the title you can get a PDF of the article from academia.edu.

  28. Erika: do you think there is any way to talk about race differences in IQ (which is at the bottom of everything being discussed here) without being racist? There’s no point in continuing the discussion if you don’t state your beliefs on this matter, because you, Twinkie, and iffen will simply continue to circle around each other.

    Do you believe

    1) race difference in IQ exist, but do not matter for outcomes?

    2) they exist and do matter for outcomes, but it is impolite to discuss them?

    3) they do not exist at all?

    4) something else?

    Also, what would be your response to my belief that whites, East Asians, and Hispanics with IQs of 85 behave similarly to the average American black, who has an IQ of 85? Does this not acknowledge our common humanity?

  29. Yudi,

    I think extrapolating from current results to a belief that there are biologically discrete racial groups and that current IQ measures are innate to each of these racial groups, is overstating the case by a long shot. It appears there are a lot of factors that go into intelligence, many of which are unknown, and studies of heritability of IQ can’t be used for what you’re wanting to use them for “because these studies are done within, but not between, populations”:

    https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/04/stop-talking-about-race-and-iq-take-it-from-someone-who-did.html

    I think we need to take steps to address inequality in society, and stop trying to just put all the blame on the individuals involved without looking at how they were raised or their situations. We need to start showing actual concern for our fellow person and realize we’re all in this together, whether we want to be or not.

  30. I think we need to take steps to address inequality in society, and stop trying to just put all the blame on the individuals involved without looking at how they were raised or their situations. We need to start showing actual concern for our fellow person and realize we’re all in this together, whether we want to be or not.

    you can do this an be open to the possibility of group differences. that’s probably going to be one of the positions of the ‘hereditarian left’, though i think that’s a dumb name for it.

    last i talked to will saletan via email that was kind of his position.

  31. Razib Khan,

    >you can do this an be open to the possibility of group differences. that’s probably going to be one of the positions of the ‘hereditarian left’, though i think that’s a dumb name for it.

    I agree, but there will need to be a high level of evidence for it. If not, then while it may make for fruitful discussion among scientists, it will tend to poison public discourse in a multiethnic society.

    I’m of the view that there very well may be differences on average in cognition based on geographical origin, but it could still work in ways we don’t even imagine.

    For example, I was surprised about the population differences in the number of people who are “warriors” and the number who are “worriers”. This is in rs4680, which you discussed in one post back in 2009. I came back as warrior/warrior, which is the same as about 30% of white people according to snpedia/promethease. Apparently, these variants have some cognitive and psychological effects, as discussed here:

    https://www.selfhacked.com/blog/worrier-warrior-explaining-rs4680comt-v158m-gene/

    What is interesting is that whites have the lowest percentage of people who are warrior/warrior at 30%, but it occurs in 58% of African-Americans (again, according to snpedia/promethease). So this could be a case where the frequencies of alleles with cognitive and psychological effects vary based on geographical origin, but in a way that seems to have not been predicted.

    So yes, I am open to the possibility of group differences, but I think we must hold such research to a very high standard.

  32. re: single marker analyses. be very skeptical of these. a lot has changed since 2009 and i’ve become much more skeptical.

    the “real action” is going to be in quantitative traits.

  33. Hi Razib,

    Point well taken. I appreciate this discussion. It was interesting and illuminating. This discussion had me do my own research on this subject, whereas previously I didn’t know much about it.

    I see you just made a post on the steppe, ooh, and on Turkic peoples!

  34. @Erika Butler

    We need to start showing actual concern for our fellow person and realize we’re all in this together, whether we want to be or not.

    I don’t know of any way to keep “Social Darwinists” and those that lean in that direction from using group differences as a political rallying point.

    I very much agree with you that we need more resources from the collective directed to help each individual realize his/her potential. I think that perhaps the disagreement between your view and mine is that I would emphasize and direct resources to individuals rather than to groups.

  35. Erika Butler,

    I think extrapolating from current results to a belief that there are biologically discrete racial groups and that current IQ measures are innate to each of these racial groups, is overstating the case by a long shot.

    I don’t think anyone (well, anyone here) is saying there is some essence of whiteness or essence of blackness, something (a gene or whatever) that all white people have and no black people do. The three big “races” are just big extended families. If you are “white” and could trace your ancestry back for 20,000 years, you would find that most of your ancestors were from west Eurasia. If you’re black and do the same thing, you’ll find that most of your ancestors are from sub-saharan Africa. That makes sense. During that time period, there wasn’t a lot of contact between the two areas, or between them and east Asia.

    There are obvious “skin deep” differences between the groups. People find it easy to put pictures of people into three “racial” boxes, and agree with other people’s division well over 90% of the time. Which is why you don’t have to have your genes sequenced to qualify for an affirmative action program.

    It is a little ironic. People who put Americans into racial boxes for affirmative action programs are considered good while those who do it to conduct research on intelligence or conscientiousness are considered bad.

    P.S. Thanks for a cite that works.

  36. Erika Butler,

    I think extrapolating from current results to a belief that there are biologically discrete racial groups and that current IQ measures are innate to each of these racial groups, is overstating the case by a long shot.

    I don’t think anyone (well, anyone here) is saying there is some essence of whiteness or essence of blackness, something (a gene or whatever) that all white people have and no black people do. The three big “races” are just big extended families. If you are “white” and could trace your ancestry back for 20,000 years, you would find that most of your ancestors were from west Eurasia. If you’re black and do the same thing, you’ll find that most of your ancestors are from sub-saharan Africa. That makes sense. During that time period, there wasn’t a lot of contact between the two areas, or between them and east Asia.

    There are obvious “skin deep” differences between the groups. People find it easy to put pictures of people into three “racial” boxes, and agree with other people’s division well over 90% of the time. Which is why you don’t have to have your genes sequenced to qualify for an affirmative action program.

    It is a little ironic. People who put Americans into racial boxes for affirmative action programs (or to conduct research on school discipline) are considered good while those who do it to conduct research on intelligence or conscientiousness are considered bad.

    P.S. Thanks for a cite that works.

  37. “I think extrapolating from current results to a belief that there are biologically discrete racial groups and that current IQ measures are innate to each of these racial groups, is overstating the case by a long shot.”

    You need to look closer. I intentionally avoided writing what I believe the cause of group differences in IQ to be, since no one knows that. I focused solely on the EFFECTS of the differences. And you didn’t answer anything that I asked.

  38. So was socializing of a recent evening with a pair of fine fellows.
    What conversation led up to the following contention, I can’t quit recall.

    I mentioned the glee with which Native Americans oftentimes dispatched their enemies, with fabulous imaginative sadisms, relishing their victim’s dying screams, toying with them for hours, often laughing as they slowly succumbed, etc.

    I thought that these sorts of barbarisms were well understood to have occurred, as a matter of historic fact. I didn’t in the same breath mention Europeans’ similar historic gleeful proclivites for such things. I was operating on the assumption that educated people take it for granted that all people(s), given free rein, with or without super-dominant centralized authority, will often-usually act savagely in acts of war, raids, etc.

    But no! My compadres bristled, expressing strident opposition to the notion that pre-Columbian Native Americans commonly practiced such savageries. Instead they contended that it was the Europeans who introduced Total War, routinized tortures, scalping, etc., and of course consciously infected the tribes with smallpox in not just one instance, but very many coordinated instances. (“I wrote an [presumably undergraduate] paper on that!” one 50 year-old fellow asserted.) Eventually they conceded that Southwestern tribes had always given to MesoAmerican brutalisms, but then they fell back to speaking reverentially about the peaceableness of the NW “potlach” tribes, and the Iroquois Confederacy, etc.

    I ended the topic by saying, “Well, up-to-the-moment prehistoric genetic analyses and archeology are currently discovering many cultural/demographic patterns which are revealing of past slaughters/demic replacements, etc, and will soon yield a more full picture of the pre-Columbian North American homicidal/warring behaviors..”

    Later, in my den, thought I would prepare to make informed rejoinder, armed with Fact, concerning non-Southwest preColumbian warring behaviors. Turns out that, aside from Wikipedia backing-and-forthing, there’s not quite an authoritative unitary source of info on the question other than, search ended up with a book whose graphics I recognized from Razib’s repeated toutings.

    “War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage”.

    My question for you, Razib, is: I see you mention that you re-read that book in 2013. But that book was written in 1997. And, as is happening now with genetic info coupled with new-generation archeology, the book may be significantly outdated.

    Which prompted the larger question: You tout many books which seem great, but I tend to be wary in thinking to actually purchase anything published earlier than, say, 2014, simply because so much is being revealed and synthesized in these matters all the time. That’s the reason I follow your output, is because change/new info *is* so constant. So, question is, how do you personally parse the contemporaneous output question?

    I know it’s largely a question of whether to play the old game of waiting for the very latest iteration of iPhone/cultural historical theorizing…

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