Updated August 23:
In the comments section, Alan Lewis, a very smart guy, comments on this post: Some Choice: Nazi or PC Nutjob. My text is in quotes:
1. "It is irrelevant whether these differences are due to genetics or culture, since both intertwine anyway."To which I respond:
Obviously it makes a great deal of difference, whether or not they "intertwine". Human genes cannot (at least absent new technology) be altered; culture can be.
2. "...insane, decades- to centuries-long, never-to-be won wars against racism, sexism, homophobia and whatnot. These things will probably always be with us. The insanity of the Left is the folly that they dream they can eradicate these aspects of human nature."
Pardon me?! The Left's largely SUCCESSFUL war against racism and whatnot, including the abolition of slavery and numerous other notable victories along the way, is "insane and unwinnable"? And since when is racism an "aspect of human nature"?
What IS "human nature", anyway? And what basis is there for saying that either racism is an aspect of it? (Is there more basis for saying that than for saying that anti-racism is an "aspect of human nature"?)
The facts are that there are differences in intelligence and other variables among the races. I wish to avoid the whole discussion of whether this is due to culture or genes, because it never ends.
Also, the racists have taken over the genes debates as far as I can tell. 99% of significant authors proposing that there are hard genetic differences between the races that are not amenable to culture are racists. Almost all of them are White, and not only that, most of them are Northern Europeans.
Why continue on and on with this stupid debate? What's the point?
Blacks do have a 15 point or so differential with Whites on intelligence. Surely, that difference is not due to racism. They also have a crime rate that is fully 8 times higher than Whites, and Hispanics have a crime rate that is 3.3 times higher than Whites. Surely these differences are not due to racism. That's just madness.
The problem with the Left and its lunatic anti-racism is that any and all differentials between races have to be chalked up to racism! What crap!
In truth, that 15 point differential in IQ between Blacks and Whites alone could explain all sorts of differentials between those two races.
For instance, in Why Black People Can't Be Racist, Dr. Andrew Austin argues that Blacks have worse and lower paying jobs, worse educational outcomes, higher rates of unemployment, shorter lives, more diseases and illnesses, higher rates of infant mortality, higher rates of poverty, higher rates of incarceration, less home ownership, worse homes and so forth, and all of these discrepancies are empirically rooted in institution discrimination by Whites against Blacks.
The key word here is empirically. I do not think that it has been empirically proven that all of these differentials are rooted solely and exclusively in institutional discrimination.
If these cannot be explained by IQ, they can possibly be explained by other cultural variables or other biological variables. Other cultural variables may include things like Blacks creating a culture of failure in the Black Underclass or in general that leads to negative outcomes. It is also possible that some of these differences may be partly or wholly explained by racism and discrimination.
There are quite a few average significant biological differences between the races. You can see some of them in this perfectly horrible online book. Fuerle's book is not horrible because it's wrong; it's horrible because it's unpleasant and most decent people don't wish to discuss such things.
Even Jared Taylor has noted that his Southern ancestors would have been offended by a discussion of such difference and would have described such a discussion as rude and poor manners, and he says that the debate has been forced on White nationalists by anti-racists continuously invoking White racism as the reason for these differences.
As Alan notes, there have been some notable successes in the war against racism in the US. Ending slavery was one of them. It's true that the movement has been fairly successful. My point is that it is insane of the Left to wage war to end racism, sexism and homophobia.
The idiot feminists extend this to a war to end rape violence against women. Rape and violence against women will never end. Racism will surely never end. I will not see the end of sexism and homophobia in my lifetime.
Alan says that I am implying that these things are in our genome. Perhaps they are. As I noted above, I'm sitting out the whole genes versus culture debate as a rhetorical dead end and waste of time.
What has this debate accomplished one way or the other since its inception? On the one hand, you have liberal and leftwing idiots arguing that nothing is genetic and everything is cultural. On the other hand, you have a group of mostly Northern Europeans, with a few high-caste South Asians, overseas Chinese and other such elites tossed in, arguing that everything is genetic and nothing is cultural.
Both sides usually preface their discussion by making a meaningless bow to the God of fairness. The environmentalists say that of course some stuff is genetic, then go on to argue that nothing is. The hereditarians argue that it's a mix of environment and genes, and then proceed to attack all environmental explanations.
The point here is mostly preaching to the respective choirs and a lot of people who like to get involved in insoluble and interminable nasty dust-ups. Saying that these things will be with us as long as I am alive is not the same as saying that racism is genetic, though I suspect it may have such elements.
Anti-racism and affiliation with outside groups may also be genetic. You can postulate all sorts of genetic theories for both. Kevin MacDonald suggests that males may naturally pursue outgroup females in order to improve group fitness by adding new genes to the group. I would add that it also weakens outgroups by stealing their women.
At the same time, he argues that that males naturally try to keep outgroups away from their own women. Allowing outgroups access to your women could lead to the usurpation of all of the ingroup's females and the extinction of the outgroup. Further, males would be blocked from perpetuating their lines within their ingroup.
We can see through human history that humans have great tendencies towards altruism within group and extreme cruelty to outgroups. Ingroups and outgroups can also get along quite well for varying periods of time. Periods of relative hostility are sprinkled with outliers who cooperate with the opposing group. Periods of relative peace are dotted with incidents of group competition and even hostility.
There seems to be a lot of evidence that the racists are wrong in that all humans are naturally and normally racist as a condition of their genetics. The millions or hundreds of millions of people embracing relative anti-racism in the West and other parts of the world would argue against that. If we were naturally racist, anti-racist individuals would be rare and anti-racist campaigns would be ludicrously ineffective.
On the other hand, the continuing existence of racism all around the world despite a major decades-long project to wipe it out implies that unfortunately, like murder, rape and wife-beating, it may be something that we are stuck with to one degree or another.
No one wages wars to end crime, homicide, suicide, domestic violence, etc. It's widely acknowledged that such unpleasantness is an aspect of the human condition. These conditions can be either ameliorated or exacerbated. They cannot be eradicated.
The folly of the Left is that it wages wars of eradication, not wars of amelioration, on things that are permanent aspects of our existence. The folly and cynicism of the Right is that negative aspects of our condition cannot be ameliorated through cultural change, and that some are permanent, and even laudatory aspects of our existence.
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