The concept of race: has it entered into a political battle with little hope of resolve?

The American Psychological Association published in its January, 2005 issue of the journal American Psychologist a special issue entitled “Genes, Race, and Psychology in the Genome Era.” I have read books and articles on both sides of the issue of race—and it seems that even the APA is unable to get passed the simplistic denunciations by the race deniers, while the race realists just keep turning out more research. I will sum up what I found in the above journal—which wasn’t much.

The first thing I did when I got my copy of the “Special Issue” was to look at the contributors, and I only recognized a couple: Robert J. Sternberg and David C. Rowe. Sternberg has had a long career of trying to undermine Jensenism, and is the last psychometrician that is still invited to the debate on general intelligence when the giants in the field convene (see my review of the 2003 book, The Scientific Study of General Intelligence: Tribute to Arthur R. Jensen, edited by Helmuth Nyborg). Rowe’s article was an empirically argued call to test racial differences in intelligence, and to allocate those differences to genes or environmental causation by looking at viable alternative hypotheses. That is, let’s use science to settle the issue.

Aside from Rowe and the introduction, there was one contribution from the National Institute of Health that discussed “The Complexity of the Constructs,” that was rather neutral on the issue of the reality of race. Most of the 28 contributors fell back on the old reliable “straw man” arguments that first define race based on some absurd notions, and then accuse anyone who believes that race exists of being a “racialized scientist.”

For example: “Racialized science seeks to explain human population differences in health, intelligence, education, and wealth as the consequence of immutable, biologically based differences between ‘racial’ groups. Recent advances in the sequencing of the human genome and in an understanding of biological correlates of behavior have fueled racialized science, despite evidence that racial groups are not genetically discrete, reliably measured, or scientifically meaningful.”

Notice first the use of the phrase “immutable biologically based differences.” I saw immutable scattered throughout the articles, and yet I have never heard anyone ever state that intelligence or human behavioral traits are “immutable.” In fact, what is stated is that the heritability of intelligence and behavioral traits changes as the environment changes. That is, there is a gene-environment interaction that takes place: as the equality of the environment rises then heritability rises for the differences that remain. So-called “racialized scientists” then do not believe that traits are “immutable” but rather very plastic. Genes work along with the environment to produce viable organisms.

The charge that racial groups are not reliably measured is a very confused concept, and one that could be used against almost any observation. Is global warming “reliably measured?” How about the impact of air pollution on different age groups in an urban environment; is that correlation “reliably measured?” How about the efficacy of different medical treatments or the impact on minorities from “institutionalize racism?” The list could go on and on, because scientific observations when it comes to human differences are rarely reliably measured by a single study; but reliability rises when there are many studies and many competing hypotheses. That is how science works, through competing hypotheses that stand the test of time, like the racial differences in average intelligence.

As to the charge of not being scientifically meaningful I will just provide one example, though it is on face value a very sophomoric charge. When it comes to education, understanding racial differences in academic achievement is very important because we spend billions of dollars on education. We are also obsessed with the fact that one race may do better in terms of economic success over another race, or that one race has better health than another.

Finally, the most egregious “straw man” of the race deniers is the charge that races are not “genetically discrete.” True, no one has stated that they are. Racial groups are like population groups and the terms can be interchanged. Like breeds of dogs, racial categories can be lumped or split as needed to understand human evolution. Race is nothing more than a label for any population group that has an identifiable lineage or ancestry or even self-selected segregation into a breeding group. The Moonies religious’ cult, after several generations of interbreeding, could become a racial category if they started to show some genetic similarities. Perhaps they would be a race of White/Asians, of average intelligence, but with low openness and high religious convictions. That is, those who joined the cult may not be a random sampling of behavioral traits, but would attract certain types of people.

A good analogy that has been put forth before is the visible light spectrum. It also is not discrete, though people everywhere tend to divide it up into primary colors like red, blue and green, and they keep dividing it up as needed—especially interior designers. So when we put a label on a particular color, what is involved? Does it mean that in reality there are no real colors and we should stop talking about the color of paint because it is not “discrete” and therefore has no meaning?

I use CorelDRAW and CorelPAINT software to dabble in some relaxing art work. Anyone who has dealt with a similar package quickly realizes how complex color becomes: it consist of hue, contrast, tone, balance, saturation, lightness, channels, diffusion, etc. And that is before mixing the actual colors. CorelDRAW has what are called standardized palettes of colors to work with and one is called “fleshtones” for human flesh. There are about 400 colors of fleshtones. By the way, I did not see a “White” sample in the lot, so apparently we are all “people of color” except for albinos.

The same analogy could be used for all kinds of classification systems, which are used to produce results. Racial classifications are similar. They have nothing to do with color itself, or the shape of a nose, or any other outward characteristic though these are often very telling of one’s ancestry. Racial classifications are probabilistic. As a member of a race, or even and admixture of several races, you will carry statistically higher or lower numbers of certain types of genetic alleles or variations in comparison to other races. Nothing very discrete here at all, no single marker, no definitive test, etc. But just like color, most people looking at grass would agree that it is green, or brown, or a mixture of the two.

Another common canard put forth by the race deniers follows as such: “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.”

Michael Shermer notes in The Science of Good and Evil: Why People Cheat, Gossip, Care, Share, and Follow the Golden Rule, 2004: “In 1959 professional astronomers were polled for their opinions on the then-undecided debate between two competing cosmological theories: ‘Did the universe begin with a Big Bang several thousand million years ago?’ One-third answered yes. ‘Is matter continuously created in space?’ Nearly half answered yes. Most telling, to the question ‘Is a Gallup poll of this kind helpful to scientific progress?’ one hundred percent answered no.”

Any so-called consensus among scientists is worthless, especially when it is the consensus of only a narrow discipline or two. This argument showed up several times, and every time “anthropologists” were include as a group (I wonder if they consider themselves a discrete group?). There are two groups who will invariably come down on the side of the race deniers: social scientists and cultural anthropologists. Both of these disciplines have been encamped securely in the tradition of Marxist dialectics and are hardly part of the hard sciences. They have been drifting to the Left for decades with little hope of returning to scientific rigor whenever race is involved.

Many of the race deniers like to show that racial groups were the result of cultural or folk phenomena, not based on science but on a need to oppress others. It is asserted that prior to Western oppression of indigenous peoples or the adoption of slavery, humans had no concept of race. This notion has been pointed out as absurd because as far back as recorded history, from the time of ancient Greece, humans were noted to have stable “essences.” Different groups were attributed with different attributes, though the word race came later. For most of our recorded history, different population groups were more often labeled by the nation they came from because the world was much smaller.

But the race deniers fall into another absurd contradiction by claiming that racial categories are part of a “folk” idea, because evolutionary psychology and developmental psychology have shown that humans are equipped genetically with three folk systems from birth: physics, biology, and psychology. That is, children quickly learn to give “essence” to organisms and easily learn to categorize animals and humans into natural groups. Is it any wonder then that the racial classifications used 100 years ago turn out to be the same groups we are now classifying by the use of genetics!

Humans have an innate ability to classify all kinds of biological differences because we have evolved a “folk biological” system to do so. It was evolutionarily important that we were able to recognize organisms by groups for protection and for food, as well as our neighbors and the degree of kinship that we shared because we were prone to genocide as resources declined from over population. Race and/or kin have been important to humans, as well as to chimpanzees, for millions of years. The word for the “degree of non-kinship” is more recent only because humans have only been exposed to people who are very different from themselves over the last few hundred years.

Race deniers also claim that “… In fact, because race lacks precise meaning, various psychologists have long challenged the scientific merit of studying or using race as an explanatory construct in psychological theory, research, and, by implication, practice. In fact, according to Yee, the Council of Representatives of the American Psychological Association passed a resolution more than two decades ago opposing the use of the concept of race to explain human behavior. This resolution was deemed necessary because of society’s continued reification of folk definitions of race in spite of considerable substantive advice to the contrary offered by non-psychological professional and scientific organizations.”

Note two important claims above, one scientific and the other purely political. First, race does not “lack scientific meaning.” For example, try to get a definitive explanation of depression, schizophrenia or social anxiety as “discrete” diseases in psychology? Very difficult to do because psychological conditions usually fall on a continuum, just like intelligence and behavioral traits. These are not the “one gene one disease” diseases that are located by a defective gene. Like nature itself, what is seen is made up of the whole life history of the organism. In nature, producing a “precise meaning” is more the exception than the rule.

But does the concept of race lack a precise meaning? Actually, it is one of the simplest of concepts to understand if you just understand two things: ancestry and genetic variation. Any group of people, or for that matter any individual except for identical twins, can be classified as a race based on the probability of having a set of differing genetic markers from other people based on one’s ancestors or line of descent. It is no different than breeds of dogs.

Based on this argument, we should also get rid of the notion of gender because there are not just two but many. According to Joan Roughgarden, author of Evolution’s Rainbow: Diversity, Gender, and Sexuality in Nature and People, 2004, humans are made up of all kinds of various sexualities, from male and female heterosexuals to various types of gays, lesbians, transsexuals and intersexual people. If we can’t define then what is a male, or a female, without ambiguity, should we stop all medical research that classifies the participants in studies as male or female? That would hardly be prudent. It is better to keep the large binary classification, while recognizing the fuzzy boundaries that exist between male and female for additional research. Science looks for difference; it does not become blind to it. Race is a useful classifier to look for answers.

The political call to stop using racial classifications in research is based on an assumption that science must also recognize egalitarian goals. That is, if research conflicts with goals for universal equality in rights and life history outcomes, then denying race will help in the redistribution of resources from the haves to the have-nots. Is science obliged to ignore certain research methodologies because they conflict with some people’s social goals? Of course not, and these authors do not like to attack science itself so they must attack the scientists. For example, “More criterion validity or test bias studies, as they have been conducted historically, will not provide answers to the question because such studies seek causation in the racial properties of dependent measures (e.g., tests) rather than in the attributes of researchers or research participants that result from the phenomena of racial categories. Unless more psychologists join racial categories theorists in conceptualizing and measuring or manipulating theory-based independent variables, derived from individuals’ experiences of racial categories, rather than continuing to infer traits and behaviors from racial category ascriptions, the consequences to psychology as an objective science could be dire.”

Much of the race deniers arguments are phrased in the above obfuscational style. A simpler reading of the above declaration asks that we look at racism for the cause of Black low intelligence, because the research produced as carried on by overt racists, cannot be right, or even if right it would have terrible consequences. It is as if they admit that if the facts were known, racial victimization as an excuse would collapse, and Blacks would be forced to compete in a true meritocracy. So be it! It is not the mission of science to correct nature or god’s inequality.

Finally, because the race deniers have not been able to show environmental causes for the standard deviation gap between Whites and African Americans’ average intelligence (100 versus 85), much less an environmental cause for the two standard deviations between Ashkenazi Jews and African Americans (115 versus 85), their only alternative is to attack those who are engaged in behavior genetic studies and the methods they use. Race deniers have far more economic resources from the government and from research grants to find out why Blacks do so poorly, but they have not been able to produce any definitive causal connection for Black low intelligence. Instead, they have fallen back on anecdotal stories and attacking those who are looking at gene-environment interactions. They are being overtaken by the genomic revolution—and they are panicking. It is highly probable that within the next decade or two, using new mathematical tools and genetic samples from homogenous populations from nations like Iceland, that the actual genes for intelligence will be located and measured. When that happens, the door will slam shut on any presumption or hope of racial equality.

Posted by Matt Nuenke on Saturday, April 2, 2005 at 10:59 AM in Race realism
Comments (25) | Tell a friend

Comments:

Posted by seelow heights on April 02, 2005, 02:58 PM | #

Someone with the requisite background should start a free-speech alternative to gnxp.com. This ostensibly “libertarian” site owners allow unhindered posting by white-hating leftist fantasizers and neocon “national greatness” advocates but anyone who is suspected of having a twinge of concern for the interests of whites(or who makes anything other than banal PC comments on Jews) is invited to go elsewhere.BTW, whatever happened to Arcane’s critique of Kevin Macdonald?

Posted by Guessedworker on April 02, 2005, 04:05 PM | #

Seelow,

We have Matt and, now, JWH - both of them formidable - and we are a free speech blog. So that’s something. I would certainly like to extend our science reach - not least because, as Matt says here, science is advancing into the political argument in a manner that is both decisive and agreeable to people like us.

Never lose sight of the fact, though, that ultimately it is power, not knowledge, that is required to aid Western Man. Politics, in which GNXP is of zero value unless one is an immigrant or a liberal, is what really counts.

Posted by Effra on April 02, 2005, 05:20 PM | #

I suspect medicine will be the thin end of the long wedge of race realism. If more or less traditional racial classifications work in diagnosis and treatment (e.g. blood type, strength of dose, selective screening for diseases), as Neil Risch et al. have found, then people will ‘get used to it’—however much the marxoid ivory tower denizens squeal.

Then there’ll be insurance companies stratifying risk by race and tailoring premiums, just as they do for sex, smokers and non-smokers, no-claims drivers, etc. Governments may try to enforce race-blindness, and the resultant outcry will ventilate the subject more.

I’m told that British casualty wards already perform triage based on race, but so as not to offend delicate ears they call out alpha-numero codes instead of obscene words such as ‘Caucasian’.

In fairness to GNXP, it is becoming increasingly difficult to stay on the internet radar in this age of ‘hate speech’ filtering and nannying, unless you tiptoe round certain subjects and mind your language. Pressure groups are everywhere, trawling for supposedly objectionable material. People such as Razib of GNXP who are trying to build a career are ‘outed’ and denounced. They have to go carefully. I daresay Steve Sailer’s recent outbreak of piety about MR was due to the same wariness: he has a PayPal account and a family to support, so the occasional splutter of synthetic indignation keeps him on the side of the good guys.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on April 02, 2005, 05:57 PM | #

That the race-deniers know exactly how to attack us in our race, in ways ranging from affirmative action (in the States), to massive incompatible immigration all over the West, to never ever letting up their droning chant of “white racism keeping the black, brown, red, and yellow man down,” to producing Hollywood movies and TV sitcoms and commercials which falsely depict the U.S. as 80% Negro when in fact it’s 13% Negro—all this strategy of the race-deniers which unerringly targets white-Euros for attack with pinpoint accuracy quite simply gives the lie to their claim not to know perfectly well exactly what the white race is and who white people are or exactly what the non-white races are and who the various non-white people are. They just don’t want to admit what they’re doing, which is: trying to commit genocide against the white-Euro race.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on April 02, 2005, 06:12 PM | #

“In fairness to GNXP, [...p]eople such as Razib [etc.]” (—Effra)

It’s not Razib who’s insisted that GnXp be a site for anti-white non-whites. It’s the anti-white non-white individual who calls himself “Godless Capitalist” who maintains the site that way. Razib (who is not especially interested in the national question one way or the other, by the way) is disposed by temperament to show fairness toward everyone, including whites. The other individual isn’t so disposed, but treats whites like dirt.

Posted by Andrew L on April 02, 2005, 07:44 PM | #

I have tryed , to fit in, I have painted myself with dark shoe pollish, but by physiology determins that I produce an nanolathe many free radical neurons, and I become Intellectually incompatable, I cant help being White, I think it might have been a desease. I tried Imigrating to Mid East and African countries, but I could not reach the standard of acceptable IQ, I guess I just have to live with the fact in my western world I will never be accepted elswhere because of my skin colour.What hope have I got. Hmmmmmm.

Posted by J. Richards on April 03, 2005, 01:15 AM | #

Comment on razib of GNXP:

It is true that Godless Capitalist (GC)—rather than razib—of GNXP is the one who usually pitches the genetic aspects of low African IQ, but razib is far from a reasonable individual himself. razib is extremely arrogant, which is readily obvious from his writings. His writings are replete with misspellings, grammatical mistakes, and faulty sentence structures, yet usually contain a high amount of flamboyant words, which are often used incorrectly. He presents some biological data in a complex manner, even though a simpler presentation is possible. In other words, it appears that razib is a show-off.

Both GC and razib are South Asians and do not appear to have problems with denigrating Hispanics and Blacks, but do not take lightly to the notion that South Asians are not an asset to Whites and it is in the best interests of Whites to also restrict South Asian immigration to the West. These individuals do not like the notion that the IQ of upper caste South Asians is still inferior to that of Whites, and razib—in particular—is outraged if he hears that East Asians produce fewer geniuses per capita than Whites.

GNXP is also a blog that often praises the virtues of race-mixing—with Whites in particular. Try posting a comment on GNXP that Whites have nothing to gain and a lot to lose from an IQ, aesthetics, and respect-for-individual-rights standpoint by absorbing non-whites, and your post will be deleted with an angry comment by razib. razib considers it racist to mention the common observation that Blacks have ape-like facial features and to absorb them into one’s gene pool is to make one’s descendents look more like apes. A while ago, I posted some comments on the genetic problems and weak physical constitution (ref: the world-renowned athletic prowess of Asian Indians) of South Asians, that should make Whites wary of absorbing them into their gene pool—in reference to a favorable post on race-mixing, and razib quickly deleted several of my posts, blasting me for calling Blacks ape-like in facial features and for implying that N.E. Asians do not produce a large number of geniuses, but not mentioning the citations about South Asians; he even deleted posts that did not contain anything offensive that he identified. razib does not tolerate well any significant critique of his writings, sometimes resorts to name-calling, and aggressively deletes unfavorable comments.

I strongly agree with seelow heights that a free-speech alternative to GNXP is required, but such a blog needs to mostly focus on the biological literature, i.e., majorityrights is not the right blog for it. If some science-literate individuals who are proficient in English wish to work on such a blog, I’d be interested in hearing about it and possibly making contributions to it. We could surely get some academics to post under pseudonyms, and Chris Brand (infamous author of “The g factor”) would likely help us.

Posted by Effra on April 03, 2005, 09:28 AM | #

Matt Nuenke himself seems an obvious choice for the genius tutelary of such a site. Could Philippe Rushton and the Pioneer Fund be involved?

Posted by Kubilai on April 03, 2005, 11:20 AM | #

I wholeheartedly agree on the comments made above about GNXP, Razib, and “godless capitalist”. They are very typical of intelligent South Asians. Full of arrogance. I have run across their kind more times than I can count. What is rare is a “humble” South Asian. Both of these individuals are typical racists with no qualms of belittling Blacks, Hispanics, AND Whites, all the while promoting in direct and subtle ways, South Asians. I could write volumes on this from personal experiences over the years, however, even this amount of space dedicated to those two at GNXP is really undeserving.

Posted by Svigor on April 03, 2005, 03:25 PM | #

Mmm, agreed, but knowledge is power in this context. If every white person on Earth knew about HBD, the JQ, and the lies of Leftism, the west could right herself with a shrug of her shoulders.

As for GNXP, I regard it as a valuable resource for racial realists, but as dangerous for the uninitiated (those who take the authors’ tacit promise of intellectual fairness seriously, those who haven’t had a primer in racial realism, etc.,).

Posted by bb on April 03, 2005, 06:19 PM | #

Try posting a comment on GNXP that Whites have nothing to gain and a lot to lose from an IQ, aesthetics, and respect-for-individual-rights standpoint by absorbing non-whites, and your post will be deleted with an angry comment by razib.

IQ: I don’t see what Western countries have to lose here by admitting skilled/educated immigrants.

aesthetics: Again, if you take out the economic and quality-of-life issues that mass unskilled immigration brings, I don’t see what is lost here. Of course barrios are not aesthetically pleasing, but I don’t see where the problem is in simply having a higher nonwhite population.

respect-for-individual-rights: I think most of the problems here with regards to nonwhites are largely due to racialist political propaganda and/or low IQ and/or poverty. Stop mass unskilled immigration and defeat (or at least defang) the multi-culti lobby, and I think nonwhite immigrants could be as if not more friendly to individual rights than the average white American.

Posted by albion on April 03, 2005, 09:52 PM | #

You have to be pretty far gone if you think GNXP is not a net asset for realists. Where else can you find technically literate discussion of IQ and genetics on the web? Certainly not here! John Jay Ray is as bad as the neocons on Hispanic IQ and seems to post the majority of topics on this blog. Steve Sailer is also good but he’s more political and less technical.

GNXP and Sailer were the primary source for Armand Leroi’s recent article in the times. Had GNXP not posted the article debunking Richard Lewontin (the first hit on google) it would never have made the mass media. GNXP also has done yeoman like work debunking Jared Diamond, Stephen Jay Gould, and all their brethren ethnic operators.

Search for Jared Diamond or Lewontin or a related topic on Google sometime. GNXP is at the top of the list because they present quality information about those topics.

Wringing one’s hands in Spenglerian fashion about the Death of the West accomplishes nothing. The fantasies of race war on this website accomplish nothing. Injecting ideas into the debate accomplishes something. Remember: the people who currently control the media, academia, and much of politics did not make it to the top overnight. They made a long march through the judicious use of propaganda and information - some true, some twisted, some omitted. They did not use violence. They did not agitate openly for the violent destruction of white America.

GNXP may hit a few balls to left field. So does Sailer. But by and large they are cleanup hitters for the right. If you don’t understand that you are a fool or an infiltrator.

Posted by Kubilai on April 04, 2005, 12:57 AM | #

To Albion,

I used to think as you when I found the site and yes, GNXP has provided a whole lot of evidence for racial realism. However, there is zero tolerance towards free speech regarding White issues. Now there is the possibility that the reason for this is to fly under the PC radar and avoid a flood of racial realists of all colors swarming their site or they are your typical South Asian racialists that walk up to the proverbial door of racial issues and fail to open it fully. I would guess the truth is a combination of the two and more towards the latter.

Posted by J. Richards on April 04, 2005, 01:06 AM | #

Effra: Nuenke and Rushton are into the soft science of psychology. Those with a decent background in molecular biology and statistics would be necessary for a blog that would rival GNXP. My background is in molecular biology and physical anthropology, by the way.

bb: Whites do not need skilled/educated minorities to maintain/advance civilization; Whites can do it on their own. Besides, intelligent non-whites are not necessarily friends of Western civilization, though they appreciate the material comforts and quality of life in the West. Consider the case of razib again: he has a degree in biochemistry and is ostensibly well-read, i.e., his IQ is at least in the low 120s. However, consider an absurd passage from one of his recent posts below, the likes of which appear elsewhere in his writings, too:

“The rise of the West has been accomplished via genocide, brutality, patriarchy, the rape of Nature and Tradition. Let other spirits rise so that the demon may be thrown down from the vault of the heavens. Voltaire considered non-whites subhuman, so banish him and what he symbolizes, Jefferson owned slaves, so tear up the Declaration, the idolization of the individual is the end product of Western culture so delegate some volition to other entities.”

Since razib is a poor writer, it is unclear whether he is critiquing those who believe in the above statements or whether he himself believes in the passage, and if the latter, then he displays remarkable ignorance. “Genocide, brutality, patriarchy,” and “the rape of Nature and Tradition” have characterized non-whites, too, and often in a worse manner, yet their indigenous civilizational achievements do not come anywhere close to that of Whites.

Additionally, it is not all about economics and life quality, but also about other aspects of Western culture that are unlikely to be endorsed by minorities to the same extent that Whites do. Do you believe that minorities, on average, would be as enthusiastic about the classics of Western literature as Whites are? Do you believe that the same proportion of non-whites as Whites could come to appreciate Western classical music and plays?

If one has a large non-white population in one’s midst, the possibility of Whites slowly absorbing the non-whites into their gene pool must be considered, and such absorption would surely diminish the attractiveness of Whites over several generations. Even in the present, ugly non-white females are often able to outcompete attractive White females in so-called beauty contests because PC dictates that the flat-faced Asians and ape-like Blacks are no less attractive than Whites, i.e., several attractive White females are being marginalized.

Furthermore, whereas one can find some non-whites among the foremost champions of individual rights, it is unlikely that non-white masses, on average, would come to respect individual rights to the same extent that Northern Europeans do. Family reunification laws will ensure that even if one initially lets in intelligent minorities, they will eventually bring their lower IQ family members to the West, and the increasing non-white masses would start culturally leaning toward their places of origin, which surely won’t be conducive to maintaining individual rights to the extent that you would see in a purely Nordic nation.

albion: Nobody here believes that GNXP does not have its utilities; it does. However, many of us wish for a free-speech version of GNXP, minus the arrogance of razib et al. and minus the obfuscation of some of razib’s writings, which is either deliberate since he is a show-off or reflects his poor comprehension of the issues involved.

Posted by Arcane on April 04, 2005, 03:29 AM | #

Razib and GC are “racist?” Are you nuts? When was the last time you looked in the mirror?

J. Richards,
You’re absolutely exceptional at selectively quoting people… if you had of read that post in its entirety, you would see that it glorifies Western Civ and attacks multiculturalists and moral relativists. If you had of finished out that quote that you said, you’d have this:

No! No! There are many who are happy with the faith of their fathers, the toil of their mothers and the rank poverty of their childhood. But this need not be the case for all. Just as all humans have basic motivations, basic mental capacities, so there is variation, variation which cuts across cultures. There are those of gross ego and self-love who brook no restrictions of custom and tradition, who take little interest in the wisdom of their fathers but pursue their own abstract and obscure preoccupations. Such brutal rebellion from the weight of the past has been accepted, tolerated, even encouraged, in the modern West. Its consequences have not all been positive. It may lead to the ruin of civilization yet. And yet is it not beautiful? Have we not split the atom? Have we not landed on the moon? Have we not constructed a beautiful theory that explains the diversity of life? Have we not given power to the people but retained respect for basic rights? Have we not put limits on nature and given women equality before the laws of man? Have we not banished starvation as an endemic condition?

I think Razib is an excellent writer, and his IQ is far-higher than you think it is.

Even worse from you is this statement:
Even in the present, ugly non-white females are often able to outcompete attractive White females in so-called beauty contests because PC dictates that the flat-faced Asians and ape-like Blacks are no less attractive than Whites, i.e., several attractive White females are being marginalized.

I know many absolutely gorgeous Asian and African women. I guess I’m a race-traitor because I know a babe when I see one.

Then there’s this:
Family reunification laws will ensure that even if one initially lets in intelligent minorities, they will eventually bring their lower IQ family members to the West

I guess you don’t believe intelligence is inherited in any way?

Posted by J. Richards on April 04, 2005, 06:02 AM | #

Arcane: The passage by razib that I quoted does not appear to be related to the passage above or below it, and I provided the link anyway; so, you need not have posted the passage below it because any reader can readily check the context of the passage. Any reader can tell that razib’s essay is not very coherent, and you cannot accuse me of selective quoting. Besides, I have mentioned the absurdity of the specified passage rather than the article. I am well-aware of the fact that razib is far from the greatest fan of multiculturalists and moral relativists; however, he does not appear to be receptive to the idea that the maintenance of Western civilization (not just economic/industrial aspects) is strongly tied to the maintenance of a White majority. Consider a major issue that is strongly associated with the West: free speech. Do you believe that razib is an ally of the West when it comes to free speech? With his aggressive deleting of even well-referenced comments that critique his posts, is he a champion of free speech? This is not to say that he does not appreciate free speech at all, but he is more oriented toward the camp which says free speech for me, but not for thee.

I said that razib’s IQ is at least in the low 120s. Since I did not mention an upper limit, how do you know what exactly my estimate of his IQ is? Besides, if you believe that razib is an excellent writer, you are likely used to reading garbage, which makes razib’s writings appear brilliant in comparison.

I did not call all non-white females ugly; I specifically made a reference to the non-white females that are ugly. Surely, there are some attractive Asian and Black females, but they are usually more Caucasoid-looking than the norm among their respective populations, and they cannot hold a candle to the most attractive White females.

Your question concerning whether I believe that intelligence is inherited in any way is curious. Let me elaborate on my comment about the family reunification laws. Intelligent minorities coming from developing nations are usually outliers among their family members (I am assuming that you are aware of the fact that the IQ of siblings can differ by as much as a standard deviation), and via family reunification laws, they succeed in bringing their lower IQ relatives to the West. If you extend this process over time, you will observe that the average IQ of the minority in the West will start regressing to what is the natural mean of the minority in its homeland. Consider immigrants from India as an example. A few decades ago, Indian immigrants were highly educated professionals, but as a result of family reunification laws, they started to bring in their less educated and undoubtedly lower IQ relatives. Today, American citizens of Indian origin are better known for running motels/convenience stores than being skilled professionals. Besides, the notable overrepresentation of Indians among motel/convenience store owners has almost nothing to do with business acumen, but the Indians, being used to lower living standards, cut their profits, thereby outcompeting Americans and taking over their businesses. With respect to the skilled professionals, Indians are best known among the software programmers, but these are usually non-residents rather than citizens, and their heavy overrepresentation reflects the economic concerns of their employers rather than a need for high-IQ programmers. The best indicator of programming acumen is one’s placement in international coding competitions, and here, Indians are typically absent among the top-ranked programmers. For instance, at TopCoder, all top-10 programmers are White males, and among the top 20 programmers, there are only two N.E. Asians, which is all the more remarkable given that there are easily twice as many South Asians as Whites and there are even more flat-faced Asians around. Poor as India is, most brilliant Indians have the opportunity to rise high if they have what it takes to be a decent computer programmer…it is just that the brilliant Brahmin computer programmers from South India are nowhere in the league of the top White computer programmers. Whites produce enough geniuses to not have to import intelligent non-whites. Family reunification laws will eventually make the non-whites living in the West regress to their naturally lower mean IQ or if these non-whites are absorbed into the White gene pool, then the White IQ would decrease, and the mixed-race population is unlikely to produce as many geniuses as Whites do.

Posted by Guessedworker on April 04, 2005, 06:23 AM | #

I am pleased that BB and Arcane have finally come to the defence of their blog. But let us be clear about what they are being challenged to defend: GNXP is under attack for hypocrisy towards the ethnic interests of majority European populations.

The issue which Fred starkly calls race replacement is the greatest of all dangers confronting European Man - short of Yellowstone blowing or one of Opik Lembit’s rocks swinging in from the asteroid belt. But politically, which is what concerns us here, race replacement is an end-product – probably an inevitable end-product - of advanced liberalism.

Razib, for example, is living in America and proposing elitism and cosmopolitanism, attacking white nationalism and the left and dreaming of blond babes only because the general political environment has (superficially but sufficiently) decayed the normal and proper defences of European Man. Short of a global conquest by Bangladeshis he would, in any other age, be teaching in a Dacca school and praying at the mosque every day.

Instead, he is, with his friends, at liberty to attack whosoever champions the Darwinian reality of European ethnic interest while advancing his own, equally ethnic interest, which is that of the migrant.

Let me expand a little on this issue of migrant interest. It always runs counter to the host interest. To survive it does not require a concentration of ethnic kin, though clearly it is more readily exposed to view thereby. It is capable of constructing a replacement (for example, high-IQ) “kin” as a vehicle for the prosecution of its interest. And even if no suitable replacement can be constructed, it will live on – not, to be sure, as a positive in its own right but in sullen response to the exclusionary nature of the host interest.

Ethnic interest is deeply, essentially human. It cannot be got out of us by the purchase of a one-way airline ticket.

So, the antipathy that razib and the departed godless express towards “Nazis” et alia is founded in precisely the interests that they deplore in said “Nazis”. I accept that they cannot be for our ethnic interest because that would militate against their own. I object because they weight their inevitable preferences with morality – like any leftist - and as Arcane says “cuss out” those like myself who disagree. It is all hypocrisy, in mitigation of which they could only claim a lack of self-knowledge.

Posted by Svigor on April 04, 2005, 08:55 AM | #

Arcane: GNXP is an environment where anti-ethnocentrism is encouraged and ethnocentrism (any of the white variety and the strongest of the non-white variety) is verboten. The open expression of ideas - within the norms of civil discourse - is not in its charter. These rules are unwritten. The upshot of all this is that it creates an atmosphere of deceit. In this (non-trivial) sense, GNXP is a propaganda organ.

It would be one thing if there was a written rule at GNXP that discussion of ethnocentrism, racial nationalism, et. al. was forbidden, but that’s not the case; instead, some posters are free to post the most outrageous nonsense on these subjects, and others are prohibited from responding.

Yes, GNXP has its good qualities, but intellectual honesty isn’t among them.

Posted by Svigor on April 04, 2005, 08:58 AM | #

Btw, I don’t recall being “shipped” here by anyone from GNXP, could you refresh my memory?

Posted by Arcane on April 04, 2005, 12:26 PM | #

Svigor,
GNXP is an environment where anti-ethnocentrism is encouraged and ethnocentrism (any of the white variety and the strongest of the non-white variety) is verboten.

Give an example of this.

Posted by Svigor on April 05, 2005, 11:53 AM | #

My entire posting history at GNXP is essentially one long example of this. Someone would make a silly strawman comment about WNs, I’d refute it and expound on the subject, my comment would be deleted, and the silly strawman comment would remain. I haven’t kept a log if that’s what you’re after.

Almost all (I’d say 95%) of my comments on WNism at GNXP were responses to what I viewed as flawed or erroneous posts. In practical terms I never initiated the discussion.

Posted by Martin Hutchinson on April 11, 2005, 10:26 AM | #

I disagree with most of the posters on this site in that I don’t believe race to be the real problem. The real problem of the planet in the 21st century is that they’re are far too many people around and on average they’re too stupid and getting stupider. Race (except to the extent that there is a significant correlation, at least partly related to cultural norms—Jewish people and Asians work hard—between race and IQ)is not the real problem.

There is PC on intelligence, too—the comment above that a genetically closed Moonie tribe would be of average intelligence is cuckoo. Very few people of high intelligence believe in crackpot religions (as distinct from mainstream religions) so the mean IQ of the Moonie cult must inevitably be well below 100.

Posted by Guessedworker on April 13, 2005, 02:57 AM | #

Martin,

The “problem” of race and the issue of IQ are indeed resolvable by the GNXP prescription of high IQ (ie, south and east Asian) immigration to the West.

Very well, let us put aside the covert racial particularism inherent in that prescription, given that it emanates from south Asians. Let us view it from the standpoint of Man as an Economic Unit, which you appear to be suggesting.

First, does economism satisfy the people’s needs and wishes? Is it enough? Will people go out onto the streets, for example, and defend economism as the source of their very being? Not much evidence of that, I’m afraid.

Are they not content, then, to be workers and consumers. Are there important cultural or genetic influences in Man’s life that are not served by the pursuit of prosperity? Is one of those love of kind, love of nation, love of one’s homeland?

Well, yes. Obviously. It follows, therefore, that kind really does matter - much more than prosperity, in fact, since there is an age-old history of defending one’s kin and land against aggression from without even if the cost is the loss of property and life itself.

So if race matters and has always mattered, the second question is: does all racial replacement function as an assault on this particularism or are some replacements - replacement by aliens of high IQ, for instance - less aggressive or more acceptable because the guys are hard-working and economically productive? The short answer is: no, because a replaced population is replaced full stop. It matters not by whom if the outcome is the same.

So to the third question: Is there racial replacement in progress in every land in which Western Man lives? Those who deny it for political or racial reasons I excuse. They are rascals. But those of our generation who can remember back to, for example, the London of their childhood have no excuses. They are witnessing a genuine and long historical trend of race replacement by Third World aliens. This is incredibly significant to Western Man, far outstripping in its portent the niggly uncertainties of how to become richer. It is also unwanted. It is a crime committed against us by our elites (who, no doubt, also think that race is not a problem in the 21st century).

Walking through London today shakes one out of one’s complacency. One wakes up and take sides. As a white person, either one is a universalist or one is a white particularist. In the crush of a battle Western Man is losing there is no middle way.

Posted by Martin Hutchinson on April 14, 2005, 10:54 AM | #

You’re not going to entice me with nostalgia about London; London was a sink-hole in Jane Austen’s day and it’s a sink-hole now, whatever the ethnic makeup of its unfortunate inhabitants. Unlike Continental societies, British society has always worked on the basis of the aristocracy being rural, not urban.

The replacement of Westerners by other races in the West results from a combination of two factors: high immigration and a huge differential in birth rates between the West and the Third World (as well as between the intelligent and the unintelligent.) Even eliminating immigration, if used alone, would not solve the problem, because Third World population pressure would eventually simply invade Western empty space.

The solution is a World Population Treaty, by which popualtion control is tied to aid, trade and any other Western goodies we can think of, with a view to reaching the peak in world population as soon as possible and then starting a steady and accelerating decline towards an equilibrium of about 1 billion, of whom 250 million might be Western. Only when that goal had been achieved will the world become a safe and attractive place to live in the long term.

Posted by Guessedworker on April 19, 2005, 06:50 AM | #

Martin,

The London of my 1950’s childhood was not a sink hole. I was brought up in the Croydon area, went to a new fangled Secondary Modern, got my first taste of employment as a gofer in a small engineering shop in the Elephant & Castle. London was safe and still ours.

Now, you and I both know that the great process of change afoot there today did not arise through the pressure of Third World birth rates. The gates were flung open post-war to the Third World, never closed in 1971 and flung absolutely wide open in 1997.

The first act in this tragedy was in the name of economism. This latest has, I think, been primarily ideological. It is the ineluctable fruit of liberalism, though it covers itself with economic clothing. In any case more liberalism and more economism will finish us. We must therefore - and though it sounds utterly preposterous today - finish them first. We have to re-Conservative the zeitgeist. And Third World birthrates be damned - if the Chinese One Child policy hasn’t prevented population explosion there, global agreements won’t do it.

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