Freddie’s post touched on the myth that dominates that American political discourse: the idea that soft-headed liberals refuse to acknowledge the inferiority of black people. There are two great conservative storylines — strapping young bucks buying T-bones with their welfare checks and liberals needing to be “mugged by reality” — and this is where the lines meet.
It doesn’t matter that speculation about this or that race being genetically deficient is almost always completely unscientific, it’s still bold, gutsy, the kind of tough-minded look at reality that liberals refuse to take, just as it doesn’t matter that Paul Ryan’s budget numbers are garbage, the budget is still bold, gutsy, etc.
That’s just how things work. Eventually, they will change, but probably not in my lifetime. James B. Stewart and William Saletan and the rest may die before I do, but their kids will likely be the next wave of Villagers. And the NRO crowd will keep fucking that chicken until the big meteor hits, maybe longer.
Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t fight this, but don’t expect it to end anytime soon.
Peregrinus
Dave Weigel, for all the oversights in his piece, pointed out something central to Derbyshire’s racial-IQ crap. Since liberals support things like evolution, anthropogenic global warming, and other reality-based phenomena and reality-based solutions, this translates into the meme of ‘liberals love science.’
Thus, when ‘race science’ gets rightly and deservedly rejected, white supremacists get to self-victimize again, saying that it’s just liberals being hypocritical by not accepting ‘science’ that doesn’t support their conclusions.
A Farmer
Actually, we’ll probably roast to death from unproven climate change before the big meteor gets here.
Egg Berry
Hell, Wyldpirate and samara morgan are doing the lifting for them two threads down.
beltane
@Peregrinus: Whenever the day comes that these white supremacists get around to developing written language I will read what they have to say on the matter. Until that day comes, I will rightly dismiss them as the arriviste johnny-come-latelys on the cultural scene that they are.
I enjoy lurking on various genetics forums and I have to say that the butt-hurt experienced by the Nordicists when Otzi the Ice Man’s genome was released was delicious to say the least. For some reason, these people have a deep seated need for blue-eyed lactose tolerant men to be dominant in all places and at all times. What are they so afraid of?
Clime Acts
RACIST!
WayneL
I’ve come to understand that the two brains are totally different. They simply think differently. It’s impossible for a liberal to understand a conservative and vice versa. That’s why neither can communicate, and the Owners of the US understand this to the point where they exploit it totally. We’ve now got a divide in the country which cannot be bridged under any circumstances, and the Owners are completely in control. It’s been an amazing transformation from 1980 until now. It will not change. How sad is that?
DougJ, Head of Infidelity
@Clime Acts:
I didn’t want someone to come along and say “what about Jewish people getting Tay-Sachs and black people getting sickle cell”, my greatest fear is these discussions is that it will devolve into people saying stupid things like that. Hence, the qualifier.
Egg Berry
@DougJ, Head of Infidelity:
What about white people getting conservative evangelical idiot disease, hmmm?
beltane
@DougJ, Head of Infidelity: Here’s my answer to that: What about white people getting Cystic Fibrosis?
c u n d gulag
The Chris Wallace, Luke Russert, “My Daddies reputation and connections done got me my job” school of media aristocracy, will be followed from now on.
If Chuckles Todd has young kids, I’m sure he’s teaching them how to read via a telepromptor.
DougJ, Head of Infidelity
@Egg Berry:
Or what about Scandinavians getting MS? All that stuff, obviously there’s validity to it, but it’s nothing like this IQ nonsense. That’s my point.
General Stuck
Nothing puts the lie to the right wing eugenics evil, like a black man sitting in the Oval Office. And it is driving them crazy, so they write ever more unvarnished articles, either directly racist, or smarmy ones with the black guy gangsta presnit theme, disrespecting and talking smack at his white massers.
I’m looking at you David Brooks.
eemom
ANOTHER suckerific old song.
Do you do this JUST to taunt me?
DougJ, Head of Infidelity
@eemom:
It’s a great song.
jacy
@DougJ, Head of Infidelity:
I’m coming to accept that you can’t get non-science people to understand science stuff. It’s like speaking a different language. And then they latch on to any psuedoscience that either a) fits their preconceived notions or b) is contrarian enough that it makes them feel smart. And heaven forfend if they can pull a sentence out of something vaguely scientific that they read once on the interwebs. Then they have PROOF!
It’s all rather depressing.
Craig
@jacy:
The petroleum geologists who deny climate change are particularly insidious. “See, even scientists say so!”
taylormattd
Not that Freddie has any business discussing the horrors of conservative rule, given he is going to do his part to help Mitt Romney get elected.
Ripley
@Egg Berry: True that. Add those two and get premature thread death.
They do kind of act as (presumable) empirical support for the argument against white supremacy, though. Blind and dumb but helpful.
Jennifer
@WayneL: Not entirely true.
Even fairly dumb people can be led to accurate conclusions via Socratic questioning. Example: the whole death panels nonsense, you can (and I did) say to several people who spouted this, “you mean to tell me that you really believe these representatives and senators are voting in favor of euthanizing their own parents, aunts & uncles, and subjecting themselves to the same when they reach that age? In your experience, how many people have you known who want to kill their elderly relatives?” and so forth.
You can get people to see the ridiculousness of some of their beliefs this way, but for the really stupid ones, they will revert back to believing whatever they want to believe, no matter how provably stupid it is.
jacy
@Craig:
It’s funny, I went to a school that has really great engineering programs (Petroleum/geological). Those of us in biological sciences (genetics/biochem/molecular biology)drank a lot and mocked the engineers. If you ever saw the movie Shakes the Clown, it was just like the clowns getting together to go roust the mimes at the park. We never thought of the engineers as “real” scientists. Since most of the engineers I know call themselves libertarians, maybe we weren’t so far off.
WereBear
@Jennifer: I would say it’s not even a “stupidity function” so much as it’s people whose present reality demands a new, fantastical, one.
Though you are utterly correct in that the stupider they are; they less likely they can cobble up the world of their fantasies.
In their fantasies, they live the miserable life they do because of Others; since they are secretly wonderful, brilliant, and have the ‘nads of steel required in Comic Book Land.
gogol's wife
Since you mention Saletan, there are some excellent letters blasting him in the New York Times Book Review today, about a stupid review he wrote about a stupid book that apparently proves how much more moral Republicans are than Democrats. This may not be a fair summation of the book, but that was the impression I got from reading Saletan’s review with one eye closed.
MikeJ
@DougJ, Head of Infidelity: It is an awesome song.
greennotGreen
One of many things that bothers me about this lower-average-IQ stuff is that this conclusion has no application in the real world. Unless you’re going to begin to treat people of African ancestry like we now treat people with Down’s – early intervention, enrichment activities, individualized curricula. Somehow I don’t think that’s what people who are making the IQ arguments have in mind.
Our educational goals should be to help each person achieve his or her potential, and that individual potential is not affected by membership in any group. Even if it were true that those of African ancestry had a lower average IQ than those of different ancestry, it still means some AA’s have higher IQ’s than some people of European or Asian ancestry. So what’s the point?
wasabi gasp
Not even close to fixt.
Svensker
@beltane:
What did Otzi’s genome say that so upset the Nordskis?
Nemo_N
Also included in such line of thought would be “women are stupid and lazy”.
Roger Moore
@jacy:
That’s one result of the right wing assault on education. They definitely want to destroy science education because science disagrees with them so often. Destroying science education prevents people from being able to understand how science eviscerates the conservative worldview while still letting the few people who learn it anyway develop nice technology to blow up brown people. It’s the best of both worlds!
demz taters
What really eats their lunch (and I’m glad it does!) is how black culture has always been an influential force in American culture. Tell them that Motown is as American as apple pie and watch them seethe.
Peregrinus
@Svensker:
If I remember correctly, he wasn’t Aryan enough for their liking.
OzoneR
Unpossible. I thought this could all end if one black man just used the bully pulpit.
scav
@Peregrinus: Brown eyed, lactose intolerant guy (possible heart condition and Lyme disease) with genetic ties to Sardinia is enough to set them off?
DougJ, Head of Infidelity
@demz taters:
Damn straight it is. Hell, it’s more American than apple pie.
Scott de B.
Having been around in 1980, I can say that not only have things changed, things have gotten better. For example, Very Serious People in 1980 debated whether we would have our first black President in 100 years, or whether we would never have a black President.
WyldPirate
@Egg Berry:
You have a serious problem with reading comprehension.
samara morgan
/yawn
freddie saws sawdust and Dougj links it.
FYI, NRO already stopped fucking that chicken.
But you and freddie are too busy navel gazing into your Bell Curve belly button lint to notice it.
;)
samara morgan
@DougJ, Head of Infidelity:
hey, I’m not the stupid one here.
One out of 25 Ashkenazi jews is a carrier for tay sachs. That is pretty strong evidence of genetic inheritance in a population deme.
;)
or maybe in the dougj universe tay sachs is lamarkian?
lol.
Mnemosyne
@scav:
Well, it shows that he was one of them Eye-talians instead of a genetically superior
AryanGermanic person.Not to mention that Sardinia is geographically close to North Africa and has had trade ties with that continent for several thousand years at least. So, y’know, some of those genes probably climbed on board for Otzi’s genetic mix.
Mnemosyne
@samara morgan:
Since the vast majority of African-Americans have at least 25% European ancestry, how exactly does comparing them with a small, somewhat inbred group prove anything at all?
I would advise you and WP to watch Finding Your Roots so you can see how stupid your crackpot racial theories are, but I realize that you’re impervious to facts.
samara morgan
@Svensker: probably that he had 3x the testosterone that they do today.
;)
Woodrowfan
So his death was the earliest recorded mob hit and not from an invasion of France??
samara morgan
@Mnemosyne: sickle cell anemia is also a genetically determined trait with much higher incidence in black populations.
what are you and dougj arguing exactly? that SCA and Tay-sachs ARENT heritable?
samara morgan
@Mnemosyne: are you trying out for Hall Monitor now?
Mnemosyne
@samara morgan:
We’re saying that pointing to genetic diseases as “proof” that something as nebulous and culturally determined as “intelligence” is exactly as inheritable as an autosomal recessive genetic blood disorder is the height of idiocy. But we also realize that you’re never going to understand why since you don’t understand genetics nearly as well as you seem to think you do.
samara morgan
@Mnemosyne:
i have never said the same mechanism applies. In current theory the genetic component of intelligence is determined by a complex of some 11 or 12 loci. i understand genetics very well thank you.
But IQ is not infinitely plastic and has a genetic component.
we can talk about Ashkenazi IQ if you prefer.
Ashkenazi jews have 2 stds over population mean.
im not saying IQ is a single gene autosomal recessive. Neither is race.
but Tay sachs and SCA are genetic markers correlated with racial identity.
thats my point.
Shared Humanity
What about black men having bigger penises? (Never mind that I am hung like a horse.)
Why can’t white men jump? (Never mind that many of the best high jumpers are white.)
White racists are driven by their fears. They are certain that people of color are out to steal their women.
KeithOK
@General Stuck: Actually, they think it supports their view, once they declare it was all due to affirmative action and low IQ voters.
RickD
@WayneL: There are more than two types of brains and/or ways of thinking.
Baron Jrod of Keeblershire
@samara morgan: What are you suggesting, then? Perhaps a “final solution to the low IQ problem”?
And why the hell are you crowing that Rich Lowry is distancing himself from Derbyshire’s sickening column? Don’t you agree with what Derb is saying? Don’t you think he’s correct about blacks being mentally inferior to your own race? (Just a coincidence that you happen to be among the good genes, of course. You’re just following the facts and are obviously immune to being self-serving like that and you clearly have no deep-seated need to see yourself as inherently smarter and cannier than all the cudlipz out there. Nope, it’s just PURE SCIENCE that motivates you, and not the crippling fear that you’re actually pretty mediocre.)
Thing is, if assholes like you and Derb are supposed to be examples of the fantastic intellectual potential of those super-duper European genes, I gotta say that the evidence doesn’t support the hypothesis.
I sure wish we could study intelligence in this world without every scrap of research being twisted into some excuse for genocide or apartheid, but we can’t. Racists ruin everything. And you are a good little footsoldier for the pro-genocide wing of racial fascists by bullshitting up their pseudo-scientific “reasoning” for them. Yet you still feel entitled to come here and tell us what bad liberals we are. It’s almost like you’re a goddam idiot or something.
RickD
@samara morgan:
Well of course there’s a genetic component to intelligence. After all, humans share 99% of our genes with chimpanzees, and chimpanzees are not writing physics’ texts or doing math or even using higher language functions.
The question is not whether there are genetic links to intelligence, but rather how and why we should not expect the relevant genes to be evenly distributed throughout our population. And certainly there’s no shortage of overt racism that suggests exactly the opposite: that there are vast IQ divides that correlate fairly neatly with racial identification.
As for the Ashkenazi Jews, the question has to arise how much inherited culture is affecting scores on IQ tests as opposed to simple genetics. If one sub-culture is stimulating the growth of intelligence in a way that another isn’t, then this is the kind of effect that won’t be measured by genetics.
We know that average IQ scores have been increasing over time. But really, our genetic composition hasn’t been changing in any meaningful way over the same stretches of time. This fact alone should suggest that there are cultural components to IQ testing that are neglected by genetic analysis.
Some Guy
Maybe I am a little ignorant, but it occurs to me that Samara (am I becoming an apologist?) is not saying that race = IQ. Just a small hunch.
Baron Jrod of Keeblershire
@Some Guy: She’ll never say it, but she never fails to defend those who do say it. To Matoko, the people saying that genetics cause intelligence are right. End of story. See the many, many times she’s defended The Fucking Bell Curve as being sound science. Not that she really remembers much about it, and she’s disgusted that you lozerz are so obsessed with some old book that was only a big deal because of all the great facts contained within it like {insert half-understood sci-fi reference here}.
Some Guy
@Baron Jrod of Keeblershire:
That was what see was saying? I was having a hard time reading her comments. Her grammar is terrible, and it cause my eyes to glaze over a bit when I try to read her comments.
This certainly cast her a new light for me. Before, I just thought of her as an obsessive, single-issue commenter who was not very bright but could have a good conversation once in a blue moon. Now, it just seems she is an obsessive, single-issue idiot.
Baron Jrod of Keeblershire
@Some Guy: Or she pretends to be so to troll us. If so, I’m not too proud to admit that she got me. It was the months she spent arguing that Iran is justified in executing Christian priests, and that Islam’s power comes from its willingness to murder proselytizers that convinced me she really is just an awful person. But I just can’t shake the feeling that she’s nothing more than a years-long prank.
In any case, she’s not a single-issue idiot by any means. She’s an idiot on pretty much any issue in front of her, whether it’s global religion, human intelligence, American politics, or anime.
Honus Wagner
Isn’t there some research indicating that conservatives have lower IQs than liberals? I’m pretty sure there is. Therefore, it stands to reason that Derbyshire is genetically and cognitively inferior, and his work is evidence thereof.
J Edgar
@gogol’s wife:
a stupid review he [Saletan} wrote about a stupid book
The reviewer thought some of the book was stupid, and some it was great and fit in with the elaborate ideas of the reviewer…
That’s when I got suspicious and looked at the byline. The reviewer was Saletan, again writing about ideas that are great, because they match his views. What else is there ever to talk about?
Note to NYTimes, stupid reviewers write stupid reviews.
Some Guy
@Baron Jrod of Keeblershire:
By single-issue idiot I meant she gets a obsession and makes everything about that obsession. Current obsession, the fucking book ‘The Republican Mind’. She makes it seem like you are fucking insulting her if you aren’t reading that damned book.
samara morgan
@Baron Jrod of Keeblershire: wtf are you talking about?
how are cognitive genomics related to the “final solution”?
@Baron Jrod of Keeblershire: al-Islam is a Maynard-Smith uninvadable strategy. retaining reps has nothing to with “power”, but everything to do with with evolutionary fitness.
samara morgan
@Some Guy: i don’t care if you don’t read the book.
many are called but few are chosen.
some people just don’t have the substrate.
samara morgan
@RickD: @Some Guy: actually I’m very interested in cognitive genomics right now, and the ongoing BGI project.
im a volunteer. you can be too.
;)
Baron Jrod of Keeblershire
@samara morgan: Stalin’s Russia was also an “uninvadable strategy”. Killing everyone who might interfere with prescribed cultural norms is not a new idea. It’s not noteworthy, and it’s nothing to be proud of. Yet, you are proud of it. You’re proud that your religion executes unbelievers. You like hearing about Christians being executed for their faith in Iran.
That is why you’re a terrible human being. Dress it up with as many fancypants words you don’t fully understand as you like. The only person who doesn’t see your rotten nature is you.
samara morgan
@Baron Jrod of Keeblershire: I’m a sufi. we don’t kill anyone. Sufis believe it is immoral to kill other humans.
we don’t care if you proselytize….all paths are the one path. proselytizing is meaningless.
thats my religion.
I’m trying to get it through your thick skull that where shariah is the rule of law and the church IS the state, christians will be punished by the rule of law for proselytizing.
their country their laws.
samara morgan
@Baron Jrod of Keeblershire:
no.
if you actually want to discuss evolutionary games theory you are gonna hafta read the book and get back to me.
Baron Jrod of Keeblershire
@samara morgan: Why are you trying to get a fact that I obviously acknowledge through my thick skull? Clearly I understand that people who break laws get punished. Get it through your thick skull that I’m saying that the law is unjust and barbaric and unfit for any nation that calls itself civilized.
What now, jackass? Gonna pretend that I called for your death again?
And yes, Stalin clearly had an uninvadable strategy, because he retained power for his entire life. His strategy, of course, was to brutally murder anyone who could possibly challenge his power. Wow, what a genius strategy! Obviously Stalin was a genius game theorist, and not simply a murderous sociopath.
samara morgan
@Baron Jrod of Keeblershire: again, i EXPLICITLY said a Maynard Smith uninvadable strategy. look it up.
you can’t just define your own terms.
i think invading other countries under a pretext and trying to force secular democracy on them is unjust and barbaric.
not to mention the killing of a million muslim moms and dads.
i guess we will just have to agree to disagree.
;)
Henk
I’m going to have to steal that “Fucking that chicken” line. It fits so well with so much of what the right is up to these days.
BethanyAnne
@Henk: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ss8LDBNcsWc
Baron Jrod of Keeblershire
@samara morgan:
What exactly are we disagreeing on here? I’ve been saying that the Iraq War was unjust, stupid, and barbaric since day one.
See, you pretend to be this above-it-all scientific mind, just looking at the facts, but you’re nothing more than a tribalist. You assume that if I oppose Iran’s murder of Christians that I must support the US’s murder of Muslims. It just never occurs to you that someone might oppose both.
And that’s why you’ll never, ever unequivocally state that you think Iran is wrong to brutally murder people for preaching. Muslims are your tribe, and therefore anything they do must be right.
You’re on the exact same level as the dumb conservatives you claim to despise. You both find a self-serving conclusion then go looking for arguments to justify it. You’re not a scientist. You’re a dumb bigot.
samara morgan
@Baron Jrod of Keeblershire: i think it is immoral to murder anyone. i oppose the death penalty.
happy naow?
;)
samara morgan
so is Some Guy = some guy = someguy? are they nested sock puppets?
Phoenix Woman
James B. Stewart? James B. Stewart?
Why is James B. Stewart allowed space in the NYT after his magnum opus attacking the Clintons, Blood Sport, was shown by Conason and Lyons to be based on what is either a truly boneheaded grade-school mistake or a cynically and evilly intentional misrepresentation — namely, the false statement that Hillary Clinton deliberately left incomplete a loan document? As Joe Conason and Gene Lyons explained in their book The Hunting of the President: