There’s a science story that I’ve been following with rapt attention that I wanted to comment on. Back in 2008 a team of Russian archaeologists working in Western Siberia in an area adjoining Kazakhstan found some remains in Denisova Cave there. Based on mitochondrial DNA studies performed by German and Swedish scientists announced in March of this year these remains have proven to be neither Neandertal nor modern human but of something different which are being called the “Denisovan hominins” or, simply, Denisovans.
It is believed that the Denisovans are more closely related to the Neandertals than they are to us. Here’s where the story gets interesting:
An international team of scientists has identified a previously shadowy human group known as the Denisovans as cousins to Neanderthals who lived in Asia from roughly 400,000 to 50,000 years ago and interbred with the ancestors of today’s inhabitants of New Guinea.
All the Denisovans have left behind are a broken finger bone and a wisdom tooth in a Siberian cave. But the scientists have succeeded in extracting the entire genome of the Denisovans from these scant remains. An analysis of this ancient DNA, published on Wednesday in Nature, reveals that the genomes of people from New Guinea contain 4.8 percent Denisovan DNA.
Obviously, such scanty remains aren’t going to tell us much about morphology.
The way they’re envisioning things now is that the ancestors of the Neandertals and Denisovans left Africa about a half million years ago, the Neandertals moving west and the Denisovans east. The chronology goes something like this: modern humans separated from the common ancestor of the Neandertals and Denisovans something between 800,000 and 1 million years ago; Neandertals differentiated from Denisovans about 650,000 years ago; “modern humans” and Denisovans interbred no less than 40,000 years ago.
It’s astonishing to me how different scientific thinking about the development of human beings has become in just the last thirty or forty years. Back when I was in college it was blithely asserted that modern humans absolutely, positively preserved no Neandertal DNA. Now the thinking is that modern humans do preserve Denisovan DNA. Is it credible that they don’t preserve Neandertal DNA as well?
My immediate reaction to these findings were two. First, I strongly suspect that we’re going to see a rush by museums, universities, and other collections to reexamine the remains in their collections identified as Homo Neanderthalensis. Second, I’m afraid we’ll see a resurgence of the old, sad arguments about race.
I continue to see the emerging picture of human origins as being far too limited by the old tree model that’s been the standard for so many years and that I suspect that the future will support a more complex network model.
First, I assume TangoMan will be along shortly to begin making the “Old, sad arguments about race.”
Second, we’ll go where the science takes us. No choice about that.
Third, the business of folks beginning to claim particular virtue for this or that group based on DNA will prove unsustainable I suspect. This sword has several edges, and analyzing the DNA of specific individuals will likely prove the antidote to sweeping generalizations. Individual DNA analysis will shuffle the deck, moving people from their preferred category into some other category, or into undefined territory. The deck will likely then be reshuffled with each new scientific advance in the field.
Just wait until children at birth start getting a read-out that says they are likely to suffer from early Alzheimers, or may lack impulse control, or may be genetically programmed for addiction. See how much they or anyone else cares about skin color then.
One of the ideas that occurred to me was that I wondered if the qualities that Jared Diamond found so appealing in the New Guineans he’d met might have had something to do with their Denisovan heritage.
BTW, Michael, I think I’d phrase what you’re saying in your third paragraph a little differently. I think that the genetic differences within populations will persistently be seen as more important than the genetic differences between populations.
Well, sure, if you wanted to be elegantly succinct.
But actually I have a feeling the definitions of “populations” will change. We still define those populations by gross, easily-observable characteristics: eye shape, hair, skin color, height and so on. I think as we drill down we’ll begin to see populations defined by different characteristics. A decade from now we may be referring to populations A, B and C as basic types where none of those corresponds to black, white or asian.
I guess we’ll see. It’s very cool science, and we’re just getting to the good stuff.
“Is it credible that they don’t preserve Neandertal DNA as well?”
I thought it’d already been established — Signs of Neanderthals Mating With Humans.
I heard an anthropologist once give his reasons for thinking we all got together way back when. “See,” he said, “our ancestors wouldn’t have been able to really distinguish, in any sense that matters, between early modern humans and Neanderthals. I mean, ‘Look, I’m dirty, and I’m hairy, and I smell bad, too. So, whaddya say, Let’s get it on.’ “
Still my favorite pick-up line.
Now the thinking is that modern humans do preserve Denisovan DNA. Is it credible that they don’t preserve Neandertal DNA as well?
Sam already hit this point. All non-Africans have between 1% and 4% Neanderthal DNA comprising their DNA. The Melanesians have an additional 6% of their DNA arising from Denisovans.
Second, we’ll go where the science takes us. No choice about that.
You’re right about that but we can be guaranteed that fools like you will be screaming an demonizing the science every step of the way as you cling to your old, blinded ways.
I don’t think it can be the old, sad argument about race because you essentially are seeing three groups at this time:
1. Pure Homo-Sapiens in Africa
2. Homo-Sapien / Neandrethal Mix in Europe and Asia
3. Homo-Sapien / Denisovan Mix in Austral-asia
That breakdown does not fit into the traditional North versus South, light skin versus dark skin models, nor a model idealizing purity.
Tango:
Sorry, but I suspect it’ll be you and your VDare pals who are swallowed up by the science.
Humans are programmed to differentiate based on gross criteria: color, shape, size, gender. It’s a necessary survival instinct. We need to know whether that’s a lion or a kitty, whether that dude is from our tribe or not.
Knowledge invariably blurs those facile categories. We see fish. An amateur fisherman sees perch and bass and trout. A more experienced fisherman sees dozens of more categories of fish. An ichthyologist sees millions of species.
You, Tango, are still in the primitive reactive stage. You see black, white, asian. It’s a color chart for you. Like a pre-schooler’s view.
Now, why would a bright guy insist on that kind of obviously meaningless categorization? Because the motive isn’t knowledge or even self-preservation, but power. The last thing you can tolerate is a system of classification that breaks homo sapiens up into hundreds or thousands of categories having nothing to do with the easily-observable things like skin color.
If mankind is not three or four categories but thousands, and if those categories are disconnected from superficial phenomena like skin color then how to go about identifying oneself as part of a superior group?
It’s interesting because of course the individual DNA should be enough for any aspiring egomaniac to use as a basis for a claim of superiority. But that’s not what you want. You want and need to be part of a group, because only in a group can you hold power over others.
Something for people who deal with you to consider: never overlook motive. Motive doesn’t refute data, but it shows you the way inside a manipulator of data. When you know why a man would lie, you can more easily discover the lie.
It’s how I caught Tango lying here: http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/poll-show-border-residents-feel-safe/
Race was always a coarse phenotype. It was, in the computer science metaphor, a bucket sort. “He looks more X than Y, put him in bucket X.”
As I read this, having a few genes from X or Y does more to undermine race than support it.
I say that as a Dane who may or may not have a little Inuit.
“I say that as a Dane who may or may not have a little Inuit.”
I knew it.
1. Pure Homo-Sapiens in Africa
2. Homo-Sapien / Neandrethal Mix in Europe and Asia
3. Homo-Sapien / Denisovan Mix in Austral-asia
Point #3 is actually a Homo-Sapien /Neanderthal/Denisovan Mix in Austral-asia
Reynolds, that’s the biggest steamiest pile of strawman I’ve ever seen. Are you so dense that you can’t see that you’re engaged in strawman argumentation?
I think that the genetic differences within populations will persistently be seen as more important than the genetic differences between populations.
More important to whom? To people within each population group? Quite likely. To society as a whole? Unlikely.
The entire notion brings to mind all sorts of interesting questions. For example, how much do the peoples of South India participate in this Denisovan heritage? Affinities in language and phenotype between them and the peoples of Indonesia and Australia have been pointed out for more than a century.
I also wonder whether the Nostratic, Dene-Caucasian, and Austric superfamilies fit into this somehow.
Tango:
It must be my denseness. Maybe you can explain exactly what you mean. Use small words.
I believe a man caught lying to further a particular racist agenda — quite overtly by the way — has a certain obligation to explain himself. And explain why anyone should ever take him seriously again.
I would also expect this to intensify the nature vs nurture arguments again.
Steve
Reynolds,
In small words. The conclusion that you reached is illogical and unfounded. I’m not guilty of racism. Your pea-brain simply equates appreciating human bio-diversity and using it as the null hypothesis when examining societal factors which intersect race with being the equivalent of racism. Genetics matters in life. Population genetics matters in life. We do not live in a Blank Slate world. Nothing I wrote is in conflict with what Mayr wrote.
Tango:
Really? That’s what you’ve got?
“Population genetics matter.” Right. It’s the mattering and all. That’s why roughly 95% of comments you write are on the subject of race.
That’s why you come back again and again and again to attacks on immigration, and attacks on any suggestion that education may be useful in redressing economic and achievement balances in African-Americans. That’s why you’re single-mindedly obsessed with the topic of race and write about nothing else.
Because of it mattering just so gosh-darn much.
It’s interesting because see, all the rest of us here, and in the various other fora where you have not yet been banned, write about all kinds of things. You? No. Just race.
“Appreciating human bio-diversity.”
That’s so sweet. What you’re appreciating is that you are running out of space. VDare is shutting down for lack of funds. You’ve been ejected from the blog you continue to claim as your home base. You’re no longer welcome at OTB. You’ve been caught lying and you still have no defense. I suggest anyone who doubt it follow the link I posted above.
So what we have here is a racist squirming on the end of a hook suddenly — for the very first time — denying he’s “guilty” of racism, and actually coming up with the amazing phrase, “Appreciating human bio-diversity.”
Once again, what was the graf you chose to drop when you quoted Mayr? here it is:
Did you mention that you had dropped that paragraph? No. Little dotted lines, maybe? No. You dropped the one part of the speech that directly refuted your core beliefs.
But you know what, I have a simple solution to all this. Why beat around the bush. How about answering some simple questions:
1) I, TangoMan, believe whites should if they choose intermarry with other races. True or False?
2) I, TangoMan, believe that blacks, whites and asians are all essentially equal in terms of intelligence. True or False.
3) I, TangoMan, believe that whites are better off living among other whites. True or False.
4) I, TangoMan, categorically reject VDare and its white supremacist ideology. True or False.
5) I, TangoMan, categorically reject the idea that white people are superior to other races. True or False?
“Population genetics matters in life.”
I’m going to say no, they don’t. Individual genetics might matter, and those genetics are more scattered and diverse as mobility increases.
(Though certainly the Melanesians demonstrated more than a little mobility, early on.) (Like the Danes! Let’s hear it for open boats and big oceans.)
Reynolds,
You really should seek professional help for your stalkerish behaviors. The majority of your comments are focused on race and on attacking the strawman version of me that inhabits your rotted mind. Yours was the first comment in this thread and you attacked me and you invoked race. You should check into electroshock therapy.
“Population genetics matter.†Right. It’s the mattering and all. That’s why roughly 95% of comments you write are on the subject of race.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with focusing on genetics, race, ethnicity, and social policies which intersect race & ethnicity. You have guys like Joyner, who majored in political science doing the same with political topics. Anthropologists and population geneticists like to focus on genetics and race and ethnicity. Big deal. These topics have a lot of salience in society. If liberals had made these topics immaterial in society, then there’d be little to talk about in terms of the race/ethnicity/gender/class intersection with society.
That’s why you come back again and again and again to attacks on immigration, and attacks on any suggestion that education may be useful in redressing economic and achievement balances in African-Americans.
You fucking retard. Do you even bother to read what I write? I’m very pro education as a means of addressing social inequities which intersect with race and ethnicity. For you to suggest otherwise paints you as a fool who is blinded by mental illness. My overarching approach to this issue is to first identify the problem accurately and then to devise methods to reduce the effects of the problem as much as we possibly can. This is why I’m very positive about KIPP schools and how effectively they close the content mastery gap. The question I put to critics is to ask which they find more important – the intellectual unity of all mankind or the ability to help each individual achieve to the fullest of their potential. I favor the latter approach. I’m very much a proponent of equal opportunity and I’m quite opposed to schemes designed to create equal outcomes when equal opportunity isn’t delivering the desired results.
Illegal immigration is a bad deal, economically and culturally for the nation. There is nothing untoward about pointing out the negatives of having anyone who wants to come to America coming to America whether we like it or not and violating our prerogative of choosing the immigrants that we want to admit.
To your loaded questions, formulated in a manner which nicely highlights the ravages that mental illness has taken on your personality and which, as is usually the case when you comment, have nothing to do with Dave’s topic:
Question #1: Considering that I’m in an interracial marriage, I have no problem at all with such marriages.
On question #2, why are you qualifying by using the word essentially? How is essentially defined? That’s too ambiguous. State the question more precisely or accept this question and my answer to it – “Blacks, whites and Asians, as groups rather than individuals, are all equal in terms of intelligence.” False.
Question #3: Race has little to do with the issue. The underlying factor is homogeneity. Heterogeneity erodes social capital. If a bunch of Italians want to congregate together, more power to them. If a bunch of racially diverse football players want to congregate together into one neighborhood, more power to them. If a bunch of racially diverse scientists want to congregate together into one neighborhood, more power to them.
As a whole, the US is better served by reducing racial and ethnic heterogeneity because that preserves our social capital stock instead of eroding it and leading to more and more pockets of segregation, you know like California liberals purposely choosing not to send their children to public schools with enrollment demographics which match the state’s population demographics. Ever greater clusters of segregated communities doesn’t really provide a strong fabric with which to weave and hold together a nation.
#4 – Considering that VDare writers have criticized my blog, yeah, no problem in disavowing the core of their message. They’re still quite accurate in their writing on the perils of illegal immigration and the loss of cultural unity though. They like to attack cognitive elitism, which I find appealing, and they like to focus on white cultural dominance, which, in isolation, does nothing for me.
#5 – What ever gave you the notion that I accepted your twisted and warped framing on this issue? Of course I reject the notion of superiority and inferiority. Only drooling idiots like you see the world in this way and concoct strawman built on these notions to argue against.
Normally I wouldn’t bother engaging you in your moments of psychotic break but I find it amusing to behold how your mind twists reality. That’s some chutzpah you have, setting yourself up as judge of me and requesting that I answer to you. The reason I played along is because all of my answers are already public knowledge in that I’ve discussed them publicly on the internet, so I’m not revealing anything specifically to you. If I was inclined to play tit for tat, I’d conjure up some equally delusionally-framed questions to put to you but I really don’t give enough of a damn to even bother.
I’m going to say no, they don’t. Individual genetics might matter, and those genetics are more scattered and diverse as mobility increases.
Really? Why then do Hispanic-Americans, who are near African Americans in terms of socioeconomic status, have lower rates of infant mortality and longer expected lifespans than Caucasian-Americans, who have a higher mean socioeconomic status and all that entails in terms of access, attitudes, and personal behavior, with respect to healthcare?
If population genetics doesn’t matter, then we’re either looking at purely environmental causes for this outcome or we’re defining infant mortality and expected lifespans as issues that don’t really matter to people.
Aren’t causes of death on file?
Here’s where your “population” view is kind of skewed. If a city has a high rate of infant mortality for reason of disease, or poor diet, or poor pre- or post-natal care, it can be addressed.
For the city.
Would a normal person say “no, don’t look at the city, look at the race?”
Why do children born to Hispanic mothers have a lower infant mortality rate than children born to Caucasian mothers when the mean socioeconomic status of Hispanics is less than that of Caucasians and much closer to African Americans?
If socioeconomic status, and corresponding access to the health system, is thought to be the primary determinant of infant mortality outcomes, then why aren’t the infant mortality rates of Hispanics and Blacks nearly identical and how are Hispanics leapfrogging Caucasian infant mortality rates?
Would a normal person say “no, don’t look at the city, look at the race?â€
Why would I care what a “normal” person would say if my perspective is the most parsimonious and has the greater predictive ability?
That just doesn’t sound like it’s about the kids.
Again, I asked you if causes of mortality were on file.
Two separate issues.
1.) Infant mortality.
2.) Expected lifespan.
For #2, the reality is as follows:
A Hispanic male born today can expect to live to 77.9 years of age.
A Hispanic female born today can expect to live to 83.1 years of age.
A non-Hispanic white male born today can expect to live to 75.6 years of age.
A non-Hispanic white female born today can expect to live to 80.4 years of age.
Do you really need me to spell out the differences in socioeconomic status between the two groups and regurgitate the presumed causal model between socioeconomic status and healthcare?
You are really losing me Tango. Are you claiming that racial self-identity is the most useful discriminator in public health?
Rather than, say, a look directly at causes of mortality?
“Doctor, what’s my triglyceride level?”
“Don’t worry Son, we have your race.”
I think I can answer the question about infant mortality: behavior rather than genetics. Substance abuse by Hispanic women during pregnancy is substantially lower than among black or white women (drug use by Hispanic women is about the same as white women but alcohol abuse is much lower).
Thank you Dave. There we go then, in fact a reminder that drink during pregnancy is not a good idea.
Substance abuse by Hispanic women during pregnancy is substantially lower than among black or white women (drug use by Hispanic women is about the same as white women but alcohol abuse is much lower).
So, your model posits that there is causality flowing from drug use towards infant mortality such that the disparity can be accounted for. Pregnant white women have higher self-reported rates (4%) of illicit drug use than pregnant black women (3.7%) and pregnant hispanic women (3.3%) yet we see black women have an infant mortality rate of 13.5 deaths per 1,000 live births compared to the white infant mortality rate of 5.7 deaths and the Hispanic infant mortality rate of 5.5 deaths.
We know that blacks and hispanics are not that different in terms of mean socioeconomic status and their rate of substance abuse during pregnancy isn’t that dissimilar, and yet the infant mortality rate puts them on opposite sides of this comparison.
I’m not really seeing how your model functions.
Going beyond the issue of drug-related deaths in infants, what should we make of the infant deaths due to racial variance in the incidence of multiple births and low birth weight babies?
Older women are more likely to give birth to twins. So are obese women.
Substance abuse is implicated in low birth weight babies.
“Why do foreign-born blacks have lower infant mortality than native born blacks? New directions in African american infant mortality research. [pdf link]”
“Conclusions: Maternal nutrition and stress are possible causes of excess black infant mortality. They should be topics for research and program development. “
BTW, if that study is correct, it really says that “population genetics” was barking up the wrong tree, and wasting both time and resources.
Time and resources better spent talking to families who suffered losses, and determining actual causes.
Older women are more likely to give birth to twins. So are obese women.
So let’s see if I’m understanding your model. Women in Asia tend to have children younger in life so they have a lower incidence of dizygotic multiple births. Women in Western Nigeria are prone to having children much later in life and they’re historically quite obese because they either live in a land of plenty or they’re wealthy enough as a nation, that food scarcity has never been a problem in Nigeria.
That model doesn’t comport too well with the social and historical patterns that I know.
LOLZ
“Yams, a type of sweet potato, have also been linked with multiple births. A tribe in Africa whose diet consists mostly of yams was recently found to have exceptionally high rates of twins and multiple births. Yams are thought to contain chemicals that stimulate hyperovulation, increasing your chances of conceiving twins.”
BTW, if that study is correct, it really says that “population genetics†was barking up the wrong tree, and wasting both time and resources.
How do you figure that? Right from the intro of the study:
In the methods section they detail the variables that they’re going to control for in the study:
Later in the paper they specify the demographic details of the foreign born women:
The women don’t identify as black Hispanic but there is no control for admixture. The Hispanics from Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Caribbean Basin have, in fact, lower infant mortality rates than Hispanics from Central America. That, to me, is an interesting geographic and demographic coincidence.
An interesting factor that they could have controlled for, but didn’t, was the infant mortality rate of Hispanics who immigrated from the same region as the Black immigrants. Whatever cultural traits and attitudes that they speculate might be in play in the Caribbean Black immigrant community would likely have overlap with the Caribbean Hispanic immigrant community.
They control for drug use, they control for insurance coverage, they control for mean household income, they control for mother’s age, they control for sex of the child, they control for gestational period and they control for length of time before prenatal care began. Those are all pretty big independent factors that can influence birth outcomes. Do they explain the outcomes? Nope. What lesson do you take from this study? Population genetics, which wasn’t controlled for, is a factor that is “barking up the wrong tree.” OK then, if not population variance, then what other factor is responsible for the disparity we’re witnessing. The biggies, the obvious ones are controlled already. So what are they missing?
Yams. OK. I’ll play along. I’ll ignore the correlation doesn’t equal causation critic because I doubt that it would register for you.
How about we try to find a test of this hypothesis. If we find a population of black women who don’t have a diet which consists primarily of yams and their dizygotic twinning rate falls to a level on par with white women then that would indicate that yams are the culprit responsible for increased twinning.
From the same link as the international data we find the following:
Well, how about that. The diet of African American is not one which is heavily reliant on yams and yet they have a far higher natural rate of dizygotic twinning than White American and Asian American women. I wonder if yams are a popular diet staple for Caucasians-Americans than for Asia-Americans?
. . . Getting away from the weird argument you two are having, Dave is right.
That’s pretty much already the case – just look at the clump of hominids under the blanket term “archaic Homo Sapiens”. It’s amazing how many hominid variants there were running around, with differing degrees of inter-breeding.
Weird argument? I just let Tango demonstrate his need to frame everything as a self-justifying racial argument. Why is a racial analysis of infant mortality interesting? Apparently because it can be used to justify a racial analysis.
(Yams are funny, but if one environmental factor can be that strong, surely there are others. If you cared you’d look for them, directly, and not as an offshoot of “population genetics.”)
Tango:
1) My bad. I should have clarified that I meant black-white. I realize Steve Sailer and the rest of you “scientific racists” have carved out a very Teddy Roosevelt exemption for certain Asian populations.
2)
Because I didn’t want you hiding behind an exacting mathematical definition of “equal.” But that’s okay, your answer will do fine for my purposes.
3) Bingo. We have racist. Sort of the classic definition of the Sailerite scientific racist movement. “We’re not racists, we just think life would be better if there were no negroes or Mexicans around. That’s not racist.”
4) Evasive, but interesting. Your first acknowledgment that you know and have a strong affinity for VDare.
By the way, you no longer have a blog if you’re referring to GNXP. You haven’t written for them for years. It would be like me claiming to still be part of The Mighty Middle. Even when you were at GNXP you wrote the fluff pieces.
5)
Interesting. It’s a lie, obviously, but that’s almost beside the point. No one reading the rest of your screed has any doubt you’re a racist. You settled that in #2 and #3 above.
No, what’s kind of fascinating is the ways you Sailerites try to slide around the issue by playing little word games. “Hey, we never said we were superior, we just said blacks are uneducable, genetically predisposed to irresponsibility, stupid, and would be better off living in black communities well away from white people.”
And of course you still haven’t explained the deliberately bowdlerized quote I caught you in. You haven’t explained why you erased the one paragraph that flew in the face of racist interpretations. I mean, what with you not being “guilty of racism” (love that, by the way) it’s kind of odd that you would edit a speech so as to remove the repudiation of racism.
In conclusion: You have now admitted to believing that blacks are intellectually inferior. That the presence of large numbers of non-whites and Mexicans is detrimental to society. And of course we know you’ll lie to support a point.
The next really cool thing you could do, TangoMan? Explain your solutions to the problem of too many non-whites — excuse me, too much heterogeneity. Should I be investing in barbed wire companies?
Tango:
By the way, care to source this?
Because as a non-numbers guy I’m struck by: 3 per 1000. Very precise. Then 7-10 per 1000. Rather less precise. Finally 10-40 per 1000.
10 to 40. A factor of four. So even using this un-sourced data it looks as if it’s entirely possible that both whites and blacks have twins at a rate of 10 per 1000.
So, since I know your deep devotion to truth and accuracy, why don’ you let us know where that number came from, and how we are to explain the fact that the black number looks a lot less like data and a a lot more like a guess.
Reynolds,
1.) I, Michael Reynold, believe that blacks, whites and asians are all equal in terms of intelligence and I have the evidence to support my belief. True or False.
2.) I, Michael Reynold, believing that diversity is strength, live in a neighborhood that is reflective of the demographics of Los Angeles, where 30% of my neighbors are white, 50% are Hispanic, 10% are Asian and 10% are Black. True or False.
3.) I, Michael Reynold, believing that diversity is strength, send my children to a school that is reflective of the demographics of Los Angeles, where 30% of their classmates are white, 50% are Hispanic, 10% are Asian and 10% are Black. True or False.
4) I, Michael Reynolds, have developed such an intimate knowledge of what VDare publishes because I read it regularly. True or False.
5.) I, Michael Reynolds, believe that evolution is a fact of nature but that humans have been immune for the last 50,000 years and that it is impossible for there to be any population stratification in the human genome. True or False.
The thing you probably cannot comprehend Tango, is that you need a “racial worldview” to think those are sensible questions.
You can believe in ongoing evolution without doing those “race buckets”
You wonder why some think you are a racist? Look at the organizing principle behind those questions.
John,
All you need to think that those are sensible questions is to have w worldview which attempts to reconcile actions against statements. You try to see whether people like Reynolds talk one way and live another way. The default position we should expect is that people live in a manner that matches what they say they believe. When you suspect that this is not the case, then you pose questions to seek better understanding.
How do some reconcile the belief that diversity is good for society while they simultaneously flee diversity in their own associations? Praising ethnic restaurants is not synonymous with extolling the virtues of diversity. I’m sure that many liberals belief that diversity is good so long as other people have to live with it. Reynolds will come up with some excuse to justify his hypocrisy and why he purposely doesn’t seek out the most diverse schools and neighborhoods so that he and his family can reap the joyous benefits of diversity that others reject. He’ll blowhard about how he rejects the pedagogy of public schools or some other similar claptrap but that avoids the issue of how he’s depriving his children of the glorious benefits that he says flow from diversity as though they were manna from heaven. Someone who walked the walk would seek to insure that nearly half of his children’s friends were Central American immigrants. He’d immerse them in the various cultures present in his locality to the point where his children were adopted the attitudes present in those communities and which were not practiced in their home. He’d make sure that they embraced the values and practices of these different cultures because multiculturalism is strength. He’d reject class stratification in choosing where he lives. Look at how Reynolds rails about income inequality. I seriously doubt that he’s living his life in a neighborhood or in such a way as to maximize his daily exposure to the benefits of multiculturalism.
You’re wrong on your diagnosis. The parsimonious explanation is that some people are hypocrites and others are not.
The organizing principle at work is that reality is being addressed as it exists rather than pretending reality is something it’s not.
Here’s my problem. A parent could look at southern California school results, and choose a good district. Someone with a racist view could say “look, you chose a school which is 70% Asian, you racist.”
No. The racist went for the “racial profile” when it wasn’t necessary.
Good schools are good schools.
(FWIW, I go to Michael’s city for good Asian restaurants and Middle Eastern markets.)
Here’s my problem. A parent could look at southern California school results, and choose a good district.
Here’s my problem. Doing that negates the importance of diversity. Remember, diversity is our strength. You’re valuing student competence higher than you’re valuing diversity. Shame on you. Your own children deserve fine schooling. Let someone else’s children experience the glories of diversity.
Secondly, we’re, more or less, measuring two sides of the same coin. A school’s student achievement metric is inversely proportional to Hispanic and Black representation in the school, even with socioeconomic status controlled. It’s not, as you seem to believe, some freakish coincidence at play. You’re simply posturing with your position.
Good schools are good schools.
What makes for good schools?
I told you above “you probably cannot comprehend” and there you go, using the racial perspective to justify the racial perspective.
You are actually telling me that someone who chooses a school with good scores is making a racial decision.
That’s sick, man. But for what it’s worth, leftists do it too. Someone told me a story once. The LA Philharmonic used to do auditions in a room where musicians entered from a door behind a screen, and played for judges which could not see them. After some time, they decided this system must be racist, because too few blacks were chosen.
No, it wasn’t. Changing the system was racist. Judging musicians by the way they sound, or schools by their scores, is not.
You are actually telling me that someone who chooses a school with good scores is making a racial decision.
You are actually telling me that someone who chooses to buy a diesel car is making a decision to buy a foreign car.
You are actually telling me that someone who chooses to buy a TV is making a decision to buy an imported good.
So people would be wrong to point out to your that you bought a foreign car or that you bought an imported TV.
1) I, Michael Reynolds, believe that blacks, whites and asians are all equal in terms of intelligence and I have the evidence to support my belief. True or False.
I believe it’s an irrelevant question. Black, white and asian are meaningless differentiations predicated on a primitive world view. It’s like asking me whether I think The Hulk can beat Superman. There’s no Hulk, there’s no Superman, so have all the fun you like, but don’t expect me to treat the questions as a matter of life or death.
2.) I, Michael Reynolds, believing that diversity is strength, live in a neighborhood that is reflective of the demographics of Los Angeles, where 30% of my neighbors are white, 50% are Hispanic, 10% are Asian and 10% are Black. True or False.
I don’t live in Los Angeles, so I’m not quite sure what LA demos have to with me. I live in Orange County. To be more specific I live in Irvine which in 2000 was about 1/3 Asian and now, I suspect is closer to 40%. There are not a lot of black faces here, nor are there many Hispanics. However, my daughter attends a private school in another city, where her classmates are reasonably diverse — though I have to confess I didn’t conduct a census.
Among the other places I’ve lived are Washington, DC, PG County, Annapolis, Ocean City, Evanston, IL, Austin, TX, Orlando and Sarasota, FL, Portland, ME, Newport News and Richmond, VA, and in California, Long Beach, San Francisco and Crockett. (Partial list) If you can work that into a picture of white flight, go for it.
Incidentally, my own family is 1/4 Asian and if I’m not mistaken everyone on my block is as well. I also live about 500 yards from a Mosque and a major Asian shopping center. (JP probably knows the one.)
But generally I live as well as I can afford. I don’t care or pay any attention to the other people in the area — I’m not a friend collector — but look at cost, parking, traffic, schools, shopping. Irvine is a nice if unexciting solution for now.
3.) I, Michael Reynolds, believing that diversity is strength, send my children to a school that is reflective of the demographics of Los Angeles, where 30% of their classmates are white, 50% are Hispanic, 10% are Asian and 10% are Black. True or False.
Sorry, but my son is home schooled. It’s (surprise!) not about race or even morals or curriculum. It’s about an IQ of 149 and a conclusion that he’s an auto-didact. That said, we are preparing to move to San Fran, where he has decided to attend a public HS. (Kind of think that’s about his discovery that there are actually two genders.) So, again, not quite sure what the LA thing is about with you, but in 6 months you can re-phrase with SF.
4) I, Michael Reynolds, have developed such an intimate knowledge of what VDare publishes because I read it regularly. True or False.
“Intimate” would be an overstatement. But basically, True. The essential difference between us being that I find no points of sympathy between me and them. Because I’m not a racist goon.
5.) I, Michael Reynolds, believe that evolution is a fact of nature but that humans have been immune for the last 50,000 years and that it is impossible for there to be any population stratification in the human genome. True or False.
You’ve phrased the question in such a way that T or F won’t work. I believe in evolution. I believe that there are significant differences between individuals.
I believe the concept of race is a construct devoid of any utility. Mostly what you see as race is an illusion. We have a “black” president who is half white. When we say that he is half “black” do we mean that he is Xhosa? Bantu? Tutsi? Do we mean to imply that those different tribes never intermarried? Do we know that those tribes never intermarried with Arabs? Or other types of white people? Do we assume that the antecedents of whichever tribe did not intermarry with the antecedents of a migratory group later classified as white?
And when we say that he is half white do we mean that he is Italian? Do we mean he’s Russian? Do we assume Russians and Italians are the same? Because I have to tell you, history shows Italians playing around a bit in Africa, and Russians dallying in asia.
As JP points out, your world-view is so skewed toward the centrality of race that you can’t conduct a rational discussion. It’s like talking to someone who is so into, say, World of Warcraft that he begins to distort reality to fit that fictional paradigm. And then gets angry when people point out that he’s obsessing over a game and losing his capacity to look at the world rationally.
I believe it’s an irrelevant question.
Clumsy evasion.
I live in Orange County. To be more specific I live in Irvine which in 2000 was about 1/3 Asian and now, I suspect is closer to 40%. There are not a lot of black faces here, nor are there many Hispanics.
I read something earlier today. Let’s see if I can find it again. Oh yeah, here it is “. . . you “scientific racists†have carved out a very Teddy Roosevelt exemption for certain Asian populations. ”
So here we have Reynolds, the champion of diversity being good for society living in a locale which is predominantly white and Asian. You know, your words sure don’t match your deeds, you racist.
That said, we are preparing to move to San Fran, where he has decided to attend a public HS.
Big surprise that a racist such as yourself would move to a White-Asian metropolis which has seen the African-American population declining by more than half, to only 6.5% of the population and where the proportion of Hispanics is less than half the state-wide level. Your actions betray your words.
I believe that there are significant differences between individuals.
Tell me oh wise one, what happens when these significant differences get passed on through generations? Tell me what mechanism insures that the “significant differences” which begin with individuals never affects the distribution of these differences within the groups that these individuals belong to? Tell me swami, what mechanism insures that all groups around the world have a uniform distribution of people with significant differences?
Mostly what you see as race is an illusion.
I should accept your argument based on ignorance because?
I believe the concept of race is a construct devoid of any utility.
Before I accept you at your word, because you have a demonstrated history of being a delusional, lying sack of shit, you need to demonstrate that this is a true statement of your beliefs and one such method of demonstration would be to advocate that all public policy be stripped of reference to race. Political district gerrymandering. Affirmative action. EEOC investigations. Census questions. Disparate impact rulings. Incarceration rates by race. Police arrests by race. Police stops by race. Home ownership by race. Unemployment by race.
If race, as a concept, has no utility, then why are liberals so damn keen on injecting race into every nook and cranny of society?
I know what you’re saying though, objections to the liberal penchant for using race are, in your mind, devoid of utility.
I really think in future Tango, if you want to make the “I am not a racist” thing work … post a lot less.
John, was that last response supposed to be no-calorie or do you think that you’ve actually made a point of some kind? You and I were discussing schools achievement/race& ethnicity overlap.
Try responding to the last comment I directed at you.
Tango:
It’s fun watching you fly off the rails. Do you think your race has anything to do with your inability to control your emotions? Maybe it’s a goyishe thing.
If race, as a concept, has no utility, then why are liberals so damn keen on injecting race into every nook and cranny of society?
I know what you’re saying though, objections to the liberal penchant for using race are, in your mind, devoid of utility.
There you go: setting aside your spittle-flecked hyperbole, we sort of agree.
I’ve always believed in a color-blind society. I believed it when the Klan was threatening my family for having black people at our house, and I believe it today.
I have always opposed affirmative action, and racial set-asides, because although I realize that people like you, and your predecessors in Jim Crow days and slave times before that hurt black people terribly, and wish to continue doing so, there is a larger principle involved, and a longer game to be played.
But liberals didn’t start this. People like you did. People like you are a disease on the one race: the human one. And please: don’t insult conservatives by trying to make common cause with them. People like you are as nauseating to most conservatives as you are to me.
It’s because I believe in a color-blind society that I think all decent Americans have a moral obligation to call people like you out. Because we can only be color-blind going forward if we keep our boots on the necks of racist scumbags — however much they may dress their seething hatred up with pseudo-scientific claptrap.
There are a lot more of us than there are of you.
Reynolds,
Let me help you out with some advice on the high schools you should consider for you son when you move to San Francisco.
Considering the values that you espouse I think that you should stay away from high schools which are too homogeneous in terms of student body or in terms of attitudes towards scholarship. You keep telling us all how important diversity is to you, so live it brother, live it. You should strive to place your son into a vibrant school where he can experience the joys of diversity. I’d recommend Thurgood Marshall Academic High School, but even better would be Mission High School. Even better than that though would be the June Jordan School for Equity because they really highlight the values that you keep harping on, they’re really not that keen on testing, just like you, and they are very generously funded. Your son would not be denied resources due to funding shortfalls.
Definitely stay away from the School of the Arts , and be certain to run away from Lowell Alternative High School. These two schools are too damn homogeneous in student body, in student attitudes towards education and they’re quite keen on testing. Remember, Diversity Is Your Strength. Live it, Don’t Just Shout It.
I’ve always believed in a color-blind society
It’s not enough for you to silently believe this to be a better alternative, you need to work to make it so.
The problem is that if this alternative is ever implemented and maintained for a sufficiently long period, it will put enormous strains on society as stratification sets in and market dominant minorities legitimately reap disproportionate gains.
It’s entirely manageable for 7/8ths of society to carry the burden of giving a helping hand to 1/8th of society. This certainly violates the ideal of a color blind society but it’s a small cost to pay for societal stability. The problem though is that what is doable in the 7/8 –>1/8 universe is not so easily achievable in the 1/3rd —-> 2/3rd universe, which is what we’re going to get as we keep doubling down on our multicultural gamble.
So we’re kind of between a rock and a hard place as things are going now. You may aspire to a color-blind society but you’re not doing anything to bring that about. Those with vested interests in maintaining a racially-charged public sphere are going to fight your efforts, if you ever man-up and say a peep about what you believe, to implement a color-blind society. If that is ever pulled off, then that’s just lighting a fuse for social disruption in the future.