Evolution of the Proto-Asians

A commenter, lakanino, a Filipino, comments on the Are Southeast Asians Australoids? post:

Australoid seem to be pretty spread all over Asia (even the whole world) and this may be even true before the Mongoloid showed up. Do you think its possible that before there were any Mongoloid, that a group of these Australoid, say somewhere near the Tonkin Gulf or maybe a little north of it, may have evolved much faster than the other Australoid settlements and evolved to which are the, lets say, proto-Mongoloids?

Now, this evolution, whatever caused it (natural selection, artificial selection, or diet, etc) gave this improved Australoid a higher cognitive ability.

They made better tools and improved gathering of food, less famine, and with these advancement, the population exploded (relatively). And this population growth led to faster movement of people going to the North and mixing with less evolved Australoid settlements like the Ainus, & South mixing with settlements in Island Southeast Asia.

I’ve been reading a lot of papers lately and I can’t help but noticed this trend. Although this idea maybe far fetch, especially, with genetic studies showing coalescence of certain genetic mutations that may go against this idea.

What are your thoughts?

I believe that all Asians evolved from Australoids in the Tonkin Gulf region. That line goes back 53,000 years at least. The northern lines - one to NE Asians and another to Japanese - appear shortly afterward.

So the NE Asians - Japanese /Koreans - SE Asian split goes back a good 50,000 years or so. It is very deep.

I'm not sure about your theory. It looks instead the Ainu are remnants of this early Asian Australoid type that went to proto-Mongoloid. 9,000 years ago, in NE Asia, Ainu types transition to classic modern NE Asians. Of course, some older Ainu types remain on the scene and these are the present day Ainu.

About population replacement, I am not sure. However, from 9,000 YBP a more modern type radiates out of NE Asia and replaces most of the archaic Australoid types, with only the Ainu being unreplaced.

In the South, a modern SE Asian type evolves and rapidly spreads out across the region, replacing Negrito types in Southern China, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam and the Philippines and possibly semi-replacing Melanesian Australoid types in Indonesia. It stands to reason that they were more advanced than the Negritos they replaced, as the replacement process is well-documented in SE Asia.

Therefore, lakanino's theory may be correct, but the replacement occurred much later, on the order of 5,000-9,000 years ago instead of 53,000 years ago.

There was some southward movement of NE Asian types down into Southern China and this trend has continued to this day. The modern high IQ NE Asian type (including Vietnamese and S. Chinese) has an intellectual profile that is not dated. We do not know when they became so smart. For all we know, it may have occurred only in the past 200 years or so.

Replacement was gradual. Ainu types went to modern NE Asians in the north 9000 years ago and Negrito types went to modern SE Asians in the South 5000 years ago or so. There are movements of highly intelligent S. Chinese types down into SE Asia, especially Vietnam, but also into Indonesia and Philippines.

We lack knowledge of the IQ's of ancient Asian types. IQ testing of the Senoi and Semang in Malaysia, the Negritos of the Philippines and Andaman Islands and the Ainu of Japan would be helpful to shed some light on this subject.

I would like to say one more thing about the SE Asian = Australoid thing. This theory is based on observation of the facial features of modern-day SE Asians. Such observation reveals a resemblance to Australoid types. Modern SE Asians, otherwise, do not resemble Australoids in skulls or in genes.

Negritos and the Senoi of Malaysia are exceptions to the rule, since their skulls look Australoid. No modern SE Asians cluster genetically with Australoids. Senoi genes look Malay and Negrito genes resemble whatever modern types they live near.

The Head Size/Race/IQ Trainwreck

The latest death toll figures from Hurricane Katrina can be seen on this website here. The famous Russian neo-Nazi video is on this blog here.

Updated September 3:

Average cranial capacities of indigenous populations, sex-combined means. Black: 1450 cc. and over; checkerboard: 1400-1449; crosshatching: 1350-1399; horizontal striping: 1300-1349; diagonal striping: 1250-1299; dots: 1200-1249. From Beals et al., 1984.

Click to enlarge.

White racists like to make a big deal about the supposed correlation between head size and intelligence and race. A nice little chart showing the basically dishonest portrayal they attempt based on cherry-picking data is below. I've already dealt with this before, but it's time to add some new evidence to the theory.

As you can see, in the Americas, there is no good evidence whatsoever for head size and IQ. I am not aware that Amerindian IQ varies in the Americas. The average is apparently 87 across the continent. If anyone can show me that it varies by latitude, please do.

The biggest heads of all are in Northern Chinese (Manchurians), Eskimos, Alaskan natives, Siberians and Mongolians. The Northern Chinese IQ is 105, the Mongolian IQ is 100, the Eskimo IQ is 91, the Alaska native IQ is 87 and the Siberian native IQ is not known.

Note that Amerindians in Canada, Alaska, Mexico (!) and Tierra Del Fuego have larger heads (1400-1449 cc.) than any Europeans, yet Europeans have higher IQ's than any of these Amerindians, who have IQ's of 87. In addition, Uralics and Northeast Asians also have very large heads. Northeast Asians have median IQ's of 105, Uralics have IQ's of 96 and Amerindians have IQ's of 87.

Amerindians in most of the US and in most of Latin America, Egyptians, Ugandans and Oceanians (Polynesians, Melanesians and Micronesians) have the same sized heads (1350-1399 cc.) as Northern and Central Europeans.

Northern and Central Europeans have median IQ's of 98, Amerindians are at 87, Oceanians have median IQ's of 84.5, and Ugandans have IQ's of 73.

Some Amerindians, North Africans and Sahelians, Central Indians and Arabs, SE Asian Islanders (Indonesians, Bruneians, Malays and Filipinos), South Africans, New Guineans, and Middle Easterners have the same head sizes (1300-1349 cc.) as Southern Europeans.

Southern Europeans have a median IQ of 93. Amerindians again have IQ's of 87. SE Asian Islanders have median IQ's of 89.5, Arabs, North Africans and Middle Easterners have median IQ's of 83.5. Central Indians and Central Asians have median IQ's of 82. South Africans have median IQ's of 70.5. Sahelians and West Africans have median IQ's of 67.5.

It is true that most Africans have small heads, at 1250-1299 cc. However, southern Indians and some Amerindians have the same sized heads. These Africans have median IQ's of 68.5, the Indians have IQ's of 81.5 and the Amerindians have IQ's of 87.

The smallest heads in the world (1200-1249 cc.) are actually not found in Africa. They are found in SE Asia and South India and Sri Lanka (we will also include the Seychelles and the Comoros). South Indians have a median IQ of 81 and SE Asians have median IQ's of 90.

Does any of this make much sense? Not really.

Race realists, for the most part Northern European racists, often use a subset of these figures to demonstrate a link between IQ and head size. The subset looks something like this.

Misleading Racist Head Size/IQ Chart

Head Size
Asians       Europeans     Africans
Largest      Intermediate  Smallest
1400-1449cc. 1350-1399 cc. 1250-1299 cc.

IQ
Asians   Europeans    Africans
106      100          67

This is misleading. Let's do it the right way.

Proper Head Size/IQ Chart

Largest heads 1450 cc.+
Variable        IQ

North Chinese*  105
Mongolians      99.5
Eskimos         91
Amerindians**   87
Siberians***    unknown

Median          95.5

*Manchuria
**Alaskans
***Aboriginals

Large heads 1400-1449 cc.
Variable       IQ

NE Asians*     105
Russians**     96
Amerindians**  87

Median         96

*incl. S. Chinese
**Uralics
**Canada, Alaska, Mexico, Fuegians

Medium-large heads 1350-1399 cc.
Variable             IQ

Nor./Cent. Europeans 98
Amerindians*         87
Oceanians**          84.5
Ugandans             73

Median               86

*Most Amerindians
**Polynesia, Micronesia, Melanesia

Medium-small heads 1300-1349 cc. 
Variable               IQ

S. Europeans           93
SE Asian Islanders*    89.5
Amerindians**          87
Middle Easterners***   83.5
Central Asians****     82
South Africans         70.5
Sahelians/W. Africans  67.5
Papuans                65

Median                 82.5 

*Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines
**Equatorial
***Arabs, North Africans and SW Asians
****Incl. Central Indians

Small heads 1250-1299 cc.                                             
Variable      IQ

Amerindians*  87
South Indians 81.5
Africans**    68.5

Median        81.5

*Caribbean
**Most

Smallest heads 1200-1249 cc.
Variable           IQ

SE Asians          90
Far South Indians* 81

Median             85.5

*Incl. Sri Lanka, Seychelles, Comoros

This looks like a complete wreck to me. There's just not much there, once you sit down and really do the map.

People with large heads have very high (Several European countries = 101) and very low IQ's (Ugandans = 73). Some people with the smallest heads have very high IQ's (Vietnamese = 99.5). There's sort of a general trend, but the data is all over the place, like a drunk throwing darts at a dartboard.

I wish people would quit talking about this race = head size = IQ thing already.

References

Beals, K.L., Smith, C.L. & Dodd, S.M. 1984. Brain Size, Cranial Morphology, Climate, and Time Machines. Current Anthropology, 25:301-330.

Lynn, R. and Vanhanen, T. 2006. IQ and Global Inequality. Augusta, GA: Washington Summit Publishers.

Meisenberg, Gerhard. Winter 2003. IQ Population Genetics: It’s Not as Simple as You Think. Washington, DC: Mankind Quarterly, Volume XLIV, Number 2, pp.185-210.

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Are SE Asians Australoids?

The latest death toll figures from Hurricane Katrina can be seen on this website here. The famous Russian neo-Nazi video is on this blog here.

Updated July 12. I am republishing this post, published earlier, because I added some new photos and text to it.

We have already dealt with this issue previously on this blog, but there is need to continuously revisit old issues that do not seem to be sinking in very well after we do our revisionist and rectification work here.

For instance, I do not really care about whether or not SE Asians are part-Australoid, but among amateur anthropologists, the notion is much in vogue. Furthermore, it is regarded as given by Chinese, which unfortunately includes Southern Chinese, who by this definition, would also be part-Australoid.

This issue needs to be dealt with because it is such a widespread myth, particularly among some of our best young minds out there in popular culture. Among anthropologists, the only folks saying that SE Asians are part-Australoid are wonderful folks like Richard Lynn, who wants to "phase out" inferior races. So I'm not sure that NE Asian Supremacists should make alliance with these guys.

The truth is clear. All of Asia, as far as we can tell, was Australoid up until 9,000 years ago or so. Further, some Caucasians were part-Australoid, and there is some evidence that all of them may have been at one point.

Take a recent comment by an excellent mind in my comments section, who states that all SE Asians are Australoids based on their lineage.

First of all, lineage doesn't really mean crap. In the lineage of Caucasians is African, Asian and probably Australoid, going back 45,000 years or so, and maybe more so in between, since India seems to be continuously injecting itself into the Caucasian mix from 10,000-45,000 years ago, and India was Australoid until 8,000 years ago, when it finally transitioned to Caucasian.

In fact, Caucasians may have been made up one part African from Masai and Tutsi-type Central African stock, and two parts NE Asian, which at 45,000 years ago was probably an Australoid that looked something like an Ainu. So Caucasians themselves are probably two parts Australoid in their mix going way, way back.

There are different ways of doing race, in places where anti-racist nuts have not outlawed it or shamed it out altogether. We can look at facial structure, or we can look at genes. There are no other ways of doing it that make sense.

Facial structure is a favorite among White racists, but otherwise it's ok. White racists despise genes, because too many other "non-White" Caucasians end up being too close to their precious European White Glory.

Lots of people hate genes because they give funny results. The exalted Hong Kong Chinese make up a taut subrace with the unknown Taiwanese Ami and the downtrodden and abused Filipinos. We can't have that.

Let's do faces instead, or skin color, the craziest of them all. We do skin color and we miss tight genetic units like Algerians and Nubians, one White and one Black group that are so closely related they can easily be called a minor race and even a closely-knit genetic family.

Faces are interesting, but genes are sort of where it's at in a way. Negritos and Ainu go to the surrounding Asians on genes, but to Australoids on facial structure. So where do we toss em? Fuegian Amerindians go Australoid on facial structure but Amerindian on genes, so which bin? I'm inclined to toss Fuegians into Amerindians on mere sense grounds, since saying they are Australoids lost in America is just too weird.

A classic Ainu man. Note the uncanny resemblance to an Amerindian. Ainus look Australoid on facial structure and Asian on genes. They are not Caucasian as many have theorized. One theory about why we have some Caucasian looking types in Asia is that the breeding together of an Australoid type with an Asian type can produce as Caucasoid type. That's just a shot in the dark, but it sounds appealing to me.

Some Amerindians, such as the Fuegians of Patagonia and the Pericu of Baja California also look like Ainu, as did the Paleoindians of the Americas, who are thought to be the first to come the continent, even before the Asian Amerindians that we know today. The Amerindians we know today may have shown up only 6,000-9,000 years ago, but they must have bred in with earlier groups.

So, we look at faces of SE Asians for Australoid structure, and we don't get much. Negritos, Melanesians, and sometimes Polynesians have Australoid faces. So do the Senoi, and possibly the Vedda (though not close to Aborigines), and we get the Tamils.

But Polynesians are Oceanians genetically, Senoi are SE Asians, and Tamils are Caucasians. Oh, what a complicated web we weave.

We don't see Australoid facial structure in SE Asians. In some, maybe we do. There are people with woolly hair and dark skin among the Taiwan aborigines and among the Malay and the Filipinos at least. These people do have some Negrito in them.

In most SE Asians, we just find that they have faces that look, well, SE Asian. It's a particular look of a face, and it's not Australoid or any such thing. I'm not sure what it resembles. It just resembles what it is - SE Asians have developed their own specific facial type, and it is what it is and you like it or you don't, but it owns itself.

If we go looking for Australoid genes in SE Asians, we pretty much come up empty handed. We find Papuan genes in some Southern Chinese, some coastal Vietnamese and some Malays and we find some sort of Australoid-looking genes in Indonesians, mostly to east.

We don't seem to find any at all in Taiwanese, Lao, Khmer, the rest of the Vietnamese, Thai or western Indonesians. Anyway, we only find a tiny amount in those groups, indicating that it's nonsense to say that they are part Australoid. It's just a tiny ancient remnant - that's all.

When we go looking at Polynesians and Micronesians, things get way more complicated. For a long time, analyses were finding that these people have up to 50% of what look like Australoid genes from Melanesia or Papua, and about 50% some kind of Austronesian genes from Taiwan.

A paper has recently come out showing that Polynesians and Micronesians are almost all Austronesian from Taiwan, and the Papuan - Melanesian connection is minor or even nonexistent. Even this paper showed that Melanesians had a heavy Papuan element, with a small Austronesian element mostly limited to eastern Indonesia. Download a paper looking at the matter on my site here.

Whatever the meaning of these studies, a close look at genetic charts tends to show Oceanians such as Micronesians, Melanesians and Polynesians lining up right alongside Papuans and Aborigines, who are themselves vastly far apart.

Clearly there is an Australoid Race. Clearly Aborigines and Papuans are too extremely distantly related aspects of that race, or maybe even separate major races on their own.

Including Melanesians is difficult. While some treatments now are finding an Oceanian Race separate from Australoids, others are finding a fairly close link between Melanesians and Australoids such as Papuans. It is probably best to say that Melanesians are Oceanians with a fairly close, but still distant, relationship to Papuans. Whatever relationship Micronesians and Polynesians have to Papuans, it is much more distant.

When we line up Aborigines to SE Asians such as Khmer, Malay, Filipinos, Thai, and Southern Chinese, we do not get a thing. The relationship is very, very distant. In many charts, the closest relative will be Polynesians (the connection above again) and then we will find Japanese, Koreans and even NE Chinese.

This is probably due to an Ainu-Gilyak Australoid element that was generalized all through NE Asia at this time.

In my opinion, the Ainu and the Gilyak are the remains of the proto-NE Asians. They probably go back to Lake Baikal around 35,000 years ago. At some point they may have gone to Thailand, then over to Japan, and at 20,000 years ago, they must have gone to Australia. At around 16,000 years ago, Ainu types left the Altai Mountains and traveled to the Americas, possibly via a coastal route on boats. Their ancestors today, other than Fuegians and the Pericu.

Look at those really long fingers on that woman. That looks so strange.

I have seen photos of modern day Gilyaks on Sakhalin Island and they look pretty Japanese. There are projects underway to record and possibly revive their very strange language, which is somehow still alive. These were very much a fishing people, living on the coast and heavily involved in salmon fishing, drying and consumption. They also eat a lot of seaweed. The Japanese diet resembles this in some ways.

Keep in mind at proto-NE Asians (Ainu types) colonized Australia 20,000 years ago and created one of the major inputs into the Aborigines.

A classic Aborigine, possibly from Coon in the early 20th Century. Coon made a number of good studies on Aborigines at that time. An Ainu type called Murrayians is thought to have colonized Australia 20,000 years ago. Around that time, Ainu types were in Thailand and Japan. They seem to have gone from Thailand to Japan around this time as the Jomonese, probably on boats. Surely they must have used these same boats to go to Australia.

On the way down to Australia, they seem have made up the proto-Australoids, a strange and little-known group from the Philippines that is thought to be the second arrivals after the Negritos. The description of the proto-Australoids sounds like an Ainu type, and their ancient arrival on the islands fits in well with a very early arrival in Australia.

It is true that SE Asians were probably still transitioning from Australoid to SE Asian maybe as late as 5,000 years ago, but NE Asians were making that transition only 9,000 years ago.

According the commenter, SE Asians are Australoids because that is sort of what they were 5,000 years ago. But why should we not include NE Asians, since they were Australoids only 9,000 years ago? Why not include East Indians, since they were Australoids until only 8,000 years ago?

Hell with lineage. Humans were ape-men not too long ago. Maybe even 200,000 years ago, we were still pretty apelike. Hell, Amerindians were still pretty Australoid up until 9,000 ago, and in Colombia even up until 3,000 years ago.

In the Fuegians and in the Pericu of southern Baja California, there were physically Australoid types until contact and even afterwards, even though the Pericu went extinct.

Truth is, lineage doesn't really matter. We look at things as they are today. Some things came from other things a long time, but the existing things of today are not the things that they transitioned from long ago, nor are they part of what they used to be.

Instead, they are whole new things, moving from one existence and creation to a new creation all of their own. I am not my ancestors, nor am I even part of my ancestors. But they are part of the creation story that is me and my kin, and that is a wonderful trail of a tale all on its own.

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Why Are Filipinos So Dark?

If they hardly have any Negrito genes, that is. If so, what explains their dark skin?

From a question in the comments.

I've been over this on the blog before, but since hardly anyone knows about this stuff, we may as well go over it again. The commenter asks, if Filipinos only have .02-.11% Negrito genes (and only in certain tribes that have been tested), why are Filipinos so dark?

The suggestion here is the common popular anthropological notion that Filipinos are part Negrito. The truth is that Filipinos have few Negrito genes, but Negritos have lots of Filipino genes. That is because the Filipinos simply swamped the Negritos genetically.

Various Filipino tribes have been surveyed and the Negrito percentage is given at .02-.11%. I am not sure if that means that the average Filipino or tribal has that much Negrito genes, or if that many Filipinos have Negrito genes. It is often difficult to tell with these studies. Filipinos are no darker than Lao, Thai, Khmer, many Southern Chinese groups and types, and Indonesians.

All of the Austronesians are dark. The Austronesians are the Filipinos, the Indonesians, the coastal New Guineans, the Polynesians and the Micronesians. Also Malays appear to have some unknown Austronesian element. There is also some Austronesian in the Vietnamese and the Khmer. All of these are in whole or in part Austronesians.

One of the biggest lies around is that all of these SE Asian groups are part Australoid. In particular, Chinese are very fond of this notion. It is true that many Indonesians are partly Australoid of unknown origin, probably Papuan. The Indonesians closer to the Philippines and Malaysia are much more Austronesian. Getting towards New Guinea, we see a lot more Melanesian introgression.

In the case of the Filipinos, the big lie is that Filipinos are very heavily inbred with Negritos. This is not true, and there is no evidence of it. However, some Filipinos are part Negrito. You can recognize them because they are noticeably darker and they tend to have woolly or frizzy hair like Negritos. It was common knowledge 100 years ago that Filipinos had little Negrito in them, and most Filipinos know this to this day.

In between, somehow the notion among amateur anthropologists got started that Filipinos are heavily Negrito. The Filipino group is very closely related to the Ami aboriginals of Taiwan (download the paper that proves that on this site here) and the Guangdong Southern Chinese from around Hong Kong. In fact, this group is so taut that I lumped it into a race called the South China Sea Race, with those three groups included.

Filipinos are, for all intents and purposes, a Chinese people, even though they live outside of China. Some commenters have hollered about this, saying that Filipinos look nothing like Southern Chinese. Well, that may be so, but looks deceive. In genes, they are remarkably close, and nowadays we prove relation by genes.

The vast majority of Filipinos came from an outward ocean voyage by the Taiwanese Ami aborigines about 2,200 years ago that ended up in the Philippines. This was part of the Lapita culture. About 900 years ago, a large infusion of Southern Chinese came to the Philippines, but only 20% of Filipinos have significant Chinese genes.

Much fewer have significant amounts of Spanish genes. The Filipino mestizo is largely a myth, though Filipino politics and especially the entertainment industry is heavily populated by mestizos. Even in the Philippines, Whiter is apparently better.

Why are Filipinos so dark? The Philippines lies from 0 to 20 degrees in latitude. Let us look at the nations in at that latitude and who the indigenous people are.

In that latitude range, we find northern Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, southern Burma, South India, Sri Lanka, Oman, Yemen, far southern Arabia, Somalia, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, Sudan, Chad, Central African Republic, Cameroon, Niger, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Benin, Ghana, Cote d' Ivorie, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Mali, Mauritania, Senegal, Gambia, the Guyanas, all of the Caribbean except Cuba, Venezuela, Colombia, all of Central America except Mexico, Hawaii and the Mariana Islands.

If you notice, almost all of these countries are populated by indigenous people with pretty dark skin. Dark skin is selected for in hot climates because otherwise UV rays will destroy folic acid stores in the woman's body, which will cause a lot of birth defects. There may also be a protective effect for sunburn and melanoma, but this is uncertain.

UV radiation chart along with zones of skin color. Zone 1 has the darkest skin of all. Note that the Philippines is in Zone 1. Zone 2, which includes Italians and Spaniards, has skin that tans easily. Zone 3 contains light skin that enables residents to absorb as much Vitamin D as possible from the sun due to lack of sunlight at higher latitudes.

So it's not just latitude, but it's also intensity of UV radiation. UV radiation is extremely intense in Africa, so Africans have some of the darkest skin of all. Pale, light or white skin is nothing special or superior. It is simply an evolutionary adaptation to low levels of sunlight. Melanin went off the skin in order to pick up as much Vitamin D as possible. Otherwise, people had Vitamin D deficiencies.

Almost all native peoples at latitudes like that have pretty dark skin. The only exception is the Vietnamese, and they have only been there for 2,200 years or so, being products of a massive movement of Southern Chinese into the area around that time. Anyway, a lot of Vietnamese are relatively dark.

So the dark skin of Filipinos is to be expected, and there is no need to postulate Negrito genetic ingression. Filipinos aren't really that dark anyway. A lot of native peoples at that latitude are a lot darker than Filipinos.

Some Australoid genes related to Papuans have been found in Malays, Southern Chinese and coastal Vietnamese, but the numbers are very small. So really Southern Chinese need to be quiet about SE Asians being heavily Australoid. It's not true, and they have a few of those genes anyway.

Keep in mind that the question of Negrito genes in any SE Asians is somewhat academic. After all, all of SE Asia was populated mostly by Negrito Australoid types until about 5,000 years ago or so, at which point they fully transitioned into the types that we see today.

NE Asians were also Ainu aborigine Australoid types until 9,000 years ago, when they fully completed progression into the Mongoloid types that we know today.

Negrito types were generalized throughout Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia until 2,000-3,000 years ago, when they were rapidly displaced by movements from South China. They were also generalized through Thailand and Malaysia until about 5,000 years ago, when they were largely replaced by movements from Taiwan and South China.

They have only survived in large numbers in the Philippines, but that is merely accidental.

So, in the background of all SE Asians is a Negrito, and in the background of all NE Asians is an aborigine Ainu type.

References

Jablonski, N. and Chaplin, G. (2000) The Evolution of Human Skin Coloration. Journal of Human Evolution.

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Immigration - A Question of Quality

It is quite common in the US for the debate on immigration to be split into polar opposites. On the pro-immigrant side is an utterly insane Open Borders group that seems to more or less argue for unfettered immigration into the US. The overwhelming majority of the US business class supports this for the sole reason of cheap and easily intimidated labor.

On the liberal side of the spectrum, many liberals simply feel it is cruel to keep anyone out of the US who wants to come here. Many others have swallowed the pro-diversity propaganda whole. There is a whole industry out there that is promoting diversity and multiculturalism.

These things are human norms, and human societies have been diverse and multicultural since the beginning of time, so it is insane to argue that these things are unnatural, which is a typical White nationalist argument.

The problem is that diversity, while normal, is not necessarily such a great thing per se. For one thing, various immigrant groups can be poor quality and create many problems for a society. Hispanic immigrants and their offspring are vastly more criminal and problematic that other immigrant groups, or than, say, White Americans.

Long-term resident Hispanics often cause few problems, but the recent immigrants and their children have been a total nightmare. New evidence shows that diversity reduces trust at the neighborhood level. It is common sense that high-diversity societies are often more unstable that monocultural societies.

I am not saying any of this to be a xenophobe. I am just pointing out that it makes little sense to shill for diversity as if it were automatically a good thing in and of itself.

We also have minority groups, in particular Hispanics, who are now pro-immigrant simply out of ethnocentrism and for no other reason. On this, the Left is utterly bonkers. Black and Hispanic ethnocentrism is cheered on wildly, while Whites are forbidden to be ethnocentric themselves.

This Identity Politics has been the curse of the Left since the 1960's. It is now backfiring as a new White nationalist movement comes into being. This movement is nothing but the logical result of Whites creating their own Identity Politics movement after the Left fertilized society with this nonsense cult.

Also, now that the Open Borders crowd has, in the past 15 years, cleverly conned society into thinking that anti-immigrant sentiment (even anti-illegal immigrant sentiment!) is de facto racist, you have many guilt-ridden folks, especially liberals and Centrists, who support even illegal immigration out of fear of being called a racist.

Nearly the entire US environmental movement has gone over to Open Borders, including Earth First and the Center for Biological Diversity. Sierra Club lost its anti-immigrant battle long ago. Since CBD is focussed on endangered species, their position seems particularly insane.

Habitat loss by overpopulation is obviously one of the major causes of environmental damage and the extinction crisis. Anyone who cannot see this is blind. The environmental movement has come out for Open Borders simply out of terror of being labeled racist and for no other reason.

On the opposite side, we have a lot of sensible folks, especially those who want to limit illegal immigration. Even 14 years ago, the debate was much more sensible. In 1994, 40% of California Hispanics voted for Proposition 187 to limit social services to illegals. Now, things have gotten so polarized that I think many of those Hispanics are probably Open Borders folks.

We also have lots of nasty racists, especially White nationalists, on the anti-immigrant side. These people simply do not want any non-White immigration whatsoever, though they are not opposed to the immigration of European Whites (However arbitrarily they may define that group!).

Most of these folks actively dislike everyone who is not White; there are others who do not, but just want to "preserve the declining White race" as if it were an animal subspecies on the Endangered Species List.

There are also the xenophobes. Vdare is a good example of these folks. They just don't like any furriners period. Most people here are not White nationalists at all - they just oppose non-Americans coming to our land.

In general, most of the hardcore anti-immigrant crowd is on the political Right. The Left has granted this entire field to the Right, even on illegal immigration, which, incredibly, almost the entire liberal wing of the Democratic Party seems to support.

There may be less ulterior motives for this. Democrats need Hispanics votes to win, and the only way to get those these days is to support amnesty for 12 million illegals. More cynically, Democrats are supporting illegals as a way to get 12 million new Democratic voters into the US, since 80% of Mesoamerican immigrants are voting Democratic.

Hence it is nice to see someone step out of the box on immigration, like this progressive, Randall Burns, on Vdare actually coming out against illegal immigrants, but focusing his anger on the businesses who hire them. He also makes an argument similar to the one I have made - that mass illegal immigration has been a major factor in both the screwing of the US worker and in the wild inequality gap of the past 35 years .

We need some sense on the immigration debate. In particular, we on the Left and in the environmental movement need to open up some space for the progressives and environmentalists to take sane positions on immigration without fear of being called racists.

First of all, not all immigrants are bad news. It is hard to make a case that legal immigration has been a terrible problem for this country, though we need to drop the numbers way down. The "limit" is now something like 1.1 million legal immigrants.

There is not a lot of evidence that even this level of legal immigration has harmed wages, created crime waves, or done much of anything other than harmed the environment. It is dubious whether legal immigrants take jobs for less wages than US citizens. Most legal immigrants come here and want to work for US wages.

H-1B and the gamut of other "temporary worker" visas are often simply outrageous. Businesses do indeed bring in foreign workers for just about every position imaginable generally for the sole reason of cheap labor. These visas are "non-immigrant temporary worker" visas and last for up to six years!

The whole temporary worker visa BS game needs to be pretty much scrapped. There is little evidence of any labor shortage in any field anywhere in this nation. Most stories about such shortages are simply lies.

Illegal immigration is a catastrophe because the immigrants are unscreened.

With legal immigration, we have a very strict process that winnows out a large number of prospective candidates. The process is so long and drawn out that only those determined to assimilate make it through the program. Once in, they need to be on very good behavior and can be deported for the slightest thing. Legal immigrants in general are not a serious problem in our nation.

With illegal immigration, you are simply importing entire slices of foreign countries wholesale. It's madness. We have no idea who these folks are, and many of them are criminals and bad folks indeed. Their whole time they are in the US they are breaking the law every day in myriad ways. Their employer is breaking the law. They are using fake ID.

When you import an illegal, you've just imported a criminal.

Refugees are another problematic group of immigrants, also because they are unscreened.

I do love SE Asians, but we have had quite a few problems here in California with Vietnamese, Lao, Khmu, Khmer and Hmong gangs. These groups also have huge rates of welfare use, even many years on. It's clear that they are hardly paying for themselves. I think most of these folks will eventually work out.

Yet even where SE Asian gangs are a problem, SE Asians have a low crime rate. Fresno is near here, and the city's crime statistics are interesting.

In Fresno, Blacks have a wildly elevated crime rate, the Hispanic rate is about 3 X the White rate, and the "Asian" rate is much lower than the White rate. But most Asians in Fresno are SE Asians. This implies that even with their gangs, SE Asians have a much lower crime rate than Whites.

Nevertheless, there are reports of Liberian and Somali refugees in the US committing a lot of crime and using a lot of welfare. In Australia, Sudanese refugees have been a nightmare.

In one town where many were settled, their crime rate is eight times the normal rate. At a meeting called by a bunch of liberal do-gooders to whitewash the problem of the Sudanese, a Sudanese refugee stole the briefcase of one of the top liberal presenters!

It seems to me that African refugees can be adequately resettled in other African lands. I do not think that many of these people are going to fit in well with our modern society.

It is interesting that other than some Caribbean and Mesoamerican immigrants, Hispanic immigrants have caused few problems.

We have sizable numbers of Brazilians, Venezuelans, Nicaraguans, Panamanians, Costa Ricans, Hondurans, Colombians, Ecuadorians, Peruvians, Chileans, Argentines, Uruguayans and Bolivians in the US. Other than some Colombian drug dealers, most of these groups are causing few to no problems.

The reason is that they are not flooding in here as refugees or illegals. They are coming in as legal immigrants, and we are probably doing a good job of screening them.

On the other hand, Mexicans, Salvadorans and Guatemalans have been a nightmare. Vast numbers of all of these groups came here illegally, in the case of the Central Americans, as war refugees. So vast numbers of this group were simply unscreened immigrants. Unscreened means low quality, de facto.

Cubans are a problem in that this is an example of an ingrate immigrant. Since we outrageously automatically let them in as soon as they set foot on land since they are fleeing evil Communism, they have little motivation to assimilate.

Hence they have recreated 1958 Havana in Miami, complete with outrageous corruption, and insane gap between the rich and poor, a corrupt government serves only the rich and spits on everyone else, and a city where English is not necessary. One can go into nice stores and hotels in Miami and you will not find anyone who speaks English. The English language has for all intents and purposes disappeared from this vast city.

One gets the impression that almost no other country on Earth would put up with this sort of insane bullshit.

Unfortunately, Puerto Ricans and Samoans have been problem ethnic groups. This is because they are unscreened! Puerto Rico and American Samoa are colonies of the United States in a world that has decolonized. Because they are US colonies, just about any Puerto Rican and American Samoan gets to come to the US as easily as I can move to New York.

Both groups have a high crime rate and have fallen into Underclass gang culture. The solution is to completely decolonize the US. American Samoa and Puerto Rico need to be set free and cut off the welfare gravy train and Puerto Ricans and American Samoans need to get into the normal immigration line like everyone else.

After 1965, huge numbers of Dominicans from the Dominican Republic flooded into the US as legal immigrants. Now, I like Dominicans just fine and have known a couple of them, but the available information indicates that they have caused a lot of crime, ghettoization and an Underclass in Upper Manhattan - Washington Heights and Inwood - and in much of the Bronx, though legal immigrants.

This is a case where mass immigration of a national group, in this case Dominicans, has not worked out well. The only solution is to get a lot stricter about which Dominicans we allow to immigrate to the US.

It's also true that mass legal immigration of Mexicans to the US has not worked out well. The available data show that even in the 4th and 5th generation, Chicanos have very high rates of high school dropout and gang involvement. They have very low rates of college graduation. We obviously are not doing a very good job of selecting legal Mexican immigrants to the US and we need to be a lot more selective.

For Mexicans and Dominicans, studies should be undertaken to determine which ones are likely to work out well and which are likely to join the Underclass. Perhaps even IQ tests could be used to screen. This is a difficult area and I do not have all the answers.

Immigrants to your country are like visitors to your house. If an immigrant group is causing problems, it's time to evaluate our criteria for letting them in, the same way you deal with troublemakers in your home. By definition, legal immigrants should be a benefit to our nation. Groups are likely to create more problems than benefits are not good for America and need to be subject to a more selective immigration process.

There are some Jamaican gangs, but in general, we do not have a Jamaican Underclass seething in our cities. I do not know much about Haitian immigrants. I am not aware that a teeming Haitian Underclass is a threat to the republic.

White nationalist racists like to say that the problem with some immigrant groups is that they are a genetically low quality group. There is nothing to this. Perhaps if we let whole populations flood in unscreened, we could have this discussion.

East Indians, Filipinos and Black Africans are three groups that do not have extremely high IQ's. All of these places are steaming Third World wrecks. Yet Filipino, Black African and East Indian immigrants have been some of the most wildly successful immigrants of them all. The reason is simple - screening.

No ethnic group is "low quality" per se. Certainly, properly screened, one can find immigrant gold in any race or ethnic group. This ought to be a principle of a sane immigration policy.

On the other hand, letting Black Africans and East Indians flood in here unscreened would probably be a nightmare. They would simply tend to recreate Calcutta or Lagos in the US.

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R-K Scale or Introversion-Extroverion Scale?

There are clearly some differences between the races, at least between Northeast Asians, European Caucasians and Blacks. Those differences are obvious to me and to many others, and show up in many statistics on a variety of societal variables.

Whether or not there are global personality differences between the races is very controversial, but it seems obvious to many folks just looking around at the world, and as a former US schoolteacher who taught classes full of Anglo-Americans, Japanese Americans and Afro-Americans for years all over Los Angeles, after a while you have to really lie to yourself to believe that such a thing does not exist.

At Gardena High School, there were many Blacks and many Japanese-Americans, and the contrast simply belts you in the face with a knockout punch. Even those experts who agree that there are differences go on and on about whether they are genetic or cultural, when it's clear that they are both.

Some recent studies have come out (by Jewish psychologists, of course) claiming that there are no significant personality differences between Blacks and Whites. I don't even care to read such a study, as it flies in the face of common sense observation.

Philippe Rushton is a racist who dislikes Blacks and his books are very controversial. He has suggested r-strategy versus k-strategy for the differences between Blacks, Whites and Asians. R-k selection theory is a theory in biology relating different modes of adaptation that animals use to survive in the environment.

I'm going to stay agnostic on the r/k thing and I don't wish to align myself with the oily Mr. Rushton, who, by the way, wishes to do away with all civil rights and anti-discrimination laws, but one thing I think Rushton makes clear is that there is an extroversion-introversion scale that closely mirrors that r/k scale.

As introverts have a vastly lower crime rate and extroverts tend to make up the vast majority of criminals (even among Whites) that makes good sense to me.

Also, extroverts are much more likely to be bored with school, tend to use and manipulate others more, have a "strong prey on the weak and that's ok" mindset, are vastly less moral and mannered, less inclined to repay debts, have much more regard for self than others, are more promiscuous, gamble, drink and take drugs more, take worse care of their health, are less cautious, have more accidents, take way more risks, are much more aggressive, impulsive prone to wild and excessive mood swings (wild emotionality) and are financially irresponsible and have a lowered life expectancy.

It's clear to me that all of these are true even within a race, say, with Whites (that's the race I'm most familiar with).

It's obvious to me that Blacks are the most extroverted race, NE Asians the least, and Whites in between.

Honestly, I have no idea what to do with most of the other races. SE Asians psychologically resemble NE Asians, though I think they are somewhat more extroverted. I haven't the faintest idea what to do with Amerindians, Hispanics, Polynesians, Micronesians and Papuans. I suspect that Papuans and Aborigines may be more like Blacks in extroversion.

Polynesians are very odd. They're obviously part-Asian and can be pretty quiet and introverted, yet at the same time, they are collectivist, love parties and are surrounded by people all the time. Filipinos are much the same. East Indians, Arabs, North Africans and South Asians are pretty much like Whites, cultural baggage aside.

Culture seems to intervene a lot here, as with everything else, and it gets real hard to disentangle everything. Sure, there are introverted Blacks (I've known a few of them!) and there are extroverted NE Asians, but we are looking at these groups globally here.