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DAY_FOR_THE_RACES


                                       August 4, 2007


  Racism = Bad, right?

  But I suspect that many a person out there
  looks at the perennial problems of black
  people in the United States along with
  the difficulties of the nations of South
  Africa, and deep in their hearts -- and
  sometimes not so deep -- they believe
  that black people are struggling under
  the weight of some genetically inherited
  handicap.
                                                                (Dec 10 2007)

  Let's think about                                    Alternately, you could
  how you would make                                   just look at this one:
  the case againt this.
                                                       [ref]

     (1) The difficulties of Africans and
         African-Americans are different,
         related only through history.

         (a) Sub-sahara Africa
             has major physical                        There's a left-wing
             disadvantages:                            argument that it's
                                                       still reeling under
             o  few good harbors and poor river        the cultural damage
                transport -- it's                      of the colonial
                rough and mountainous terrain          period.
                that drops off rapidly near the
                coasts: impassible rapids and          There's a right-wing
                waterfalls are common (they have       claim: "Africa did
                no Nile or Mississippi).               better under colonial
                                                       rule than without."
             o  the warm and wet equatorial
                climate is ideal for growing           I don't know what
                parasites, notably the malaria-        evidence there might
                carrying mosquitos                     be for either.

                                                           At present I'd
                                                           tend to side with
                    Note: need to compare                  the lefties...
                    to India, South China,
                    Indonesia, etc.                        But then, maybe
                                                           I shouldn't
                                                           assume that
                                                           *every* right-wing
                                                           argument is
                                                           wrong just
                                                           because of
                                                           the record of
                                                           Cheney-Bush.

        (b) The problems of African-
            Americans are certainly not
            difficult to explain as
            cultural phenomena:

            o  racist treatment

            o  a sense of hopelessness
               because the racist
               treatment is well-known      I sometimes wonder
                                            if there might
            o  continuing shock from        even be a private
               traumatic historical         fear even among
               events -- slavery, the       black people that
               "civil rights" battles,      the "racial
               the 80s crack epidemic       inferiority"
               (CIA-assisted?)              theory has some     That fear
                                            truth to it.        could only
                                                                reinforce the
                                                                "hopelessness"
                                                                trap.


                                      "It's a fact, some of our people
                                      don't know how to act ...  Can't
                                      do anything without some fool
                                      actin' up / You start to believe
                                      that black folks are savages but /
                                      before you do, allow me to say /
                                      that in the old days we didn't
                                      act that way ... "

                                              Paris, "Days of Old"


   (2) The biology behind the
       "racial inferiority" theory
       is very shakey.

         (a) There isn't really
         much genetic difference
         between American blacks      Expecting skin color
         and whites, i.e.             to correlate with
         "race is a social            intelligence is like
         construct".                  expecting hair color
                                      to correlate...
            Note: Howard Cosell's
            suggestion that
            American blacks are
            the result of a
            selective breeding
            program is only         An incorrect counter-argument
            superficially           I've heard (NY times
            plausible.              editorial): evolution takes
                                    too long to expect the
                                    slavery period to have any
                                    impact on genetic make-up.

                                    But selective breeding programs
                                    work faster than evolution:
                                    that's the whole point.

                                         (Are horticulturalists
                                          confused about their
                                          effect on plant lines?)

                                    I think the real difficulty
                                    is that "animal husbandry"
                                    experiments usually take
                                    place without the
                                    experimenters contaminating
                                    the subjects with their own
                                    genetic material.

                                       (One might as easily argue
                                        that southern slave masters
                                        made poor breeding stock...)


   (January 30, 2011)

   Jonathan Marks, an anthropologist at
   University of South Carolina, makes the
   point that in Japan, where Korean's are
   a discriminated-against minority, they
   score ~15 points below the Japanese,       This suggests that
   but in the United States, Japanese         the low scores of
   and Koreans score roughly the same.        Black Americans are
                                              the result of their
                                              minority status, not
                                              because of it.



        (b) my guess: the biology
            behind all of the
            "biology" theories is     These days
            fairly shakey.            we're in love
                                      with biological
                                      explanations      This is one
                                      for human         reason I suspect
                                      behavior.         there may be
                                                        a fair amount
                                                        of concealed
                                                        racism out there.
                                  NATURE_OF_THE_WALLS


     (3) Question: what is the
         economic mobility like     My guess: it's been
         of lower class white       stalled out for
         people?                    several decades.

                                       If so, the impression
                                       that whites are better
                                       at "improving their lot"
                                       may be mistaken,
                                       a hold-over from an
                                       earlier era when social
                                       mobility wasn't a myth.










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