Comments
What???
Mister, I don’t know what you are talking about. Why can’t you say it straight? Are you left-handed, or something?
I am wary of people like this, because they seem to be snake-oil salesmen, by the very way they talk.
Posted by Garvin Alfred Schmaltz at 7:06 PM on May 6
This is very bungled and incoherent, kinda reminds me of listening to Bill Clinton speak
Posted by at 7:26 PM on May 6
Metcalf’s position that it’s a “conflict between science and science,” is specious.
In fact, it’s a conflict between science and wishful dogma.
Posted by john at 7:40 PM on May 6
William Saletan’s complicated and contrived analysis is the Rube Goldberg Device for explaining racial differences in IQ. Note the twists and turns, and subtle and blatant mis-truths. Here is the bottom line: Pigs can’t fly and Blacks can’t think. IQ is largely genetically determined, and Africans (in general) simply do not have the requisite genes for high IQ. It is a simple as that. Saletan can write a 500 page monograph on the subject, and it still will not change that cold, hard fact. Furthermore, this problem will reoccur with every new generation of Blacks. No amount of social engineering or transfer of money from Whites to Blacks will remedy this genetic problem, which lies at the base of most Black social pathologies.
Posted by at 7:43 PM on May 6
“It’s a conflict between science and science.”
Hardly. It’s a conflict between fact and fiction.
The only thing stopping us from facing reality is the fact that too many people are desperate to hold on to fiction.
“In the age of genetics, egalitarianism doesn’t mean you have to deny differences in racial averages. It means you have to beware the injustice this kind of grouping and averaging does to individuals. That warning goes for the left as well as the right.”
I agree. Which is why we should be aware of racial differences. How much emotional pain, suffering, and humiliation have blacks had to endure by people who were desperate to believe blacks could do everything the same as whites.
When we all learn to recognize our inate talents and abilities, everyone will be happier in that they can find the career suited to their abilities instead of being forced into careers they’re unfit for.
Posted by sbuffalonative at 8:01 PM on May 6
There is one logical conclusion from the facts that we know now.
The infamous “disparate impact” legal argument often used by the courts, including the Supreme Court of the U.S., in “proving” that certain laws or actions are “racist” is an invalid argument. As a results, all legal conclusions that have been derived from that invalid argument must be retracted and either proved using other valid arguments or discarted althogether.
For if the groups of genetically kin individuals do have different inheritable traits then virtually every regulation, standard, or requirement (e.g., academic standards, job requirements, creditworthiness, immigration eligibility criteria) will have statistically different impact on different racial groups and this very fact doesn’t make these rules and standards “racist”.
So, let’s put the utopian claim “all people are equal” to where it belongs: museum of debunked ideas. And for those willing to quote the Declaration of Independence, the “were created equal” phrase never (except in Liberal fantasy) meant “phisically equal” but merely “equal before the law”.
Posted by A Reason at 8:02 PM on May 6
Boring! Very boring! And self-absorbed…
Posted by Thunderhawk at 8:36 PM on May 6
Saletan is obviously not qualified to present any opinion regarding the topic of race as he seems too emotionally unstable to accept scientific facts that indeed races are different and have not evolved along parallel lines. Egalitarianism is dead!
I suggest that he drown his guilt-ladened liberalism in a bottle of Chardonnay.
Posted by at 8:58 PM on May 6
“…The question I set out to explore last fall was how to be an egalitarian in an age of genetic differences. That’s still an important project…”
No it isn’t.
Specious, forced egalitarianism has been implemented for 40+ years now and miserably FAILED. Busing was a colossal failure that wasted an obscene amount of educational dollars and led to further segregation, as in White flight.
From the Hoover Institute on the travesty of busing:
“…Busing has not only failed to integrate Boston schools, it has also failed to improve education opportunities for the city’s black children. When Boston introduced Stanford 9 testing to the public schools in 1996, 94 percent of seventh-graders at Woodrow Wilson Elementary School scored ‘poor’ or ‘failing’…At Dorchester’s William E. Endicott School, 95 percent of the fifth-graders scored ‘poor’ or ‘failing’ in reading and 100 percent scored “poor” or ‘failing’ in math…”
http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/3563642.html
“…It means you have to beware the injustice this kind of grouping and averaging does to individuals…”
Yes, I’d say the injustice in this day and age is being done to White and Asian kids through educational mainstreaming which means sitting kids with IQs of 70 next to kids with IQs of 130 (in the name of equality) and claiming they are all able to learn equally well and should have ‘equal outcomes.’ It is the very definition of insanity. Which kids do you think lose in this type of situation?
Steve Sailer writes:
“….That’s why the education industry is so anti-rational, so swept by manias, by the search for magic solutions that will square the circle: because all thinking is devoted to making the sun go around the earth…”
http://vdare.com/sailer/080504_alchemists.htm
Affirmative Action by its very nature proves that blacks cannot compete with Whites and costs an ‘estimated 350 billion per year.’
I’d like to see Saletan’s plan for how to be an ‘egalitarian in an age of genetic differences’ when:
“…Despite massive funding over 30+ years, no environmental program has yet been devised that has been shown to have a permanent effect in reducing the IQ/achievement difference. Recent studies show that, for example, the Head Start program actually works to accentuate the long-term achievement differences between the races. It seems unlikely at this stage that a magical X factor will be discovered that will change our understanding of the situation…”
http://www.lrainc.com/swtaboo/library/lra_synopsis.html
I’d also like him to point out examples where government (or rather judicial fiat) has been successful in erasing racial differences, especially differences in IQ.
“…It’s easy to group people by race and compare averages. But it’s pernicious….”
It’s not pernicious because it works, and all the empirical evidence (growing every day) proves that it works.
What is pernicious is forced social engineering that decreases opportunities for Whites and imposes a destructive, massive financial and harmful burden on them. Just ask any White who’s had Section 8 housing or ‘vouchers’ forced into his neighborhood.
Bon
Posted by BonBon at 9:18 PM on May 6
I’ve thought about this a lot as well. “Should we look past race and simply look at IQ, and argue for a ‘high IQ’ society that would accept members of all races?”
“Is race really important if they’re still pretty, nice, honest and smart?”
And so on down the line. It’s true that race isn’t the only way to categorize people, and that other categories like ‘high IQ’ can capture many of the same benefits as racial separatism. I understand this man completely, because I think all of us have to make this journey and decide what really matters to them.
I decided I love my race because they’re related to me. I’m proud of white science, art, ethics, etc, but that’s another question entirely. To focus on race is to focus on family, to focus on intelligence, wealth, democracy, low-crime, or whatever else is a different matter entirely. If you group people by race, you’re grouping them by family and love of family, simply because you are a part of them, and they of you. If you group them by some other factor, they could be machines or aliens for all you care, so long as they possess whatever quality you’re looking for. I decided that was lifeless, unappealing, and that I simply didn’t care when I viewed it that way. If there’s a planet far away of aliens who possess every single quality whites have, only are ten times better in every way—-I could still care less if said planet exploded. I care about my race more than anything else combined though. See the difference?
When I’m with whites, I feel like ‘we’re all in this together.’ When they’re beautiful, or brave, or brilliant, I’m fired with pride and the wish to protect or praise them. When I see the same trait elsewhere, I don’t really care. It’s more of a ‘good for them, has nothing to do with me.’ When it comes to Chinese and the like it’s even threatening. How will they use this power towards whites? Is all I can think when I see Chinese reaching the moon or getting nukes or growing their economy. It doesn’t make me happy except in the loosest, least passionate sense of ‘good for them.’
My race equals my ancestors, my descendants, and my cousins— sentient computers that can compute at blazing speed or aliens doing their own thing on planet Zebweebubwub are nothing and no one. Perhaps race isn’t primarily a scientific matter—but when has love ever been? Perhaps the deepest science is realizing what traits are evolutionarily advantageous—ethnic genetic interests shows that those who Don’t think in terms of race, will soon die out to those who Do. And so like it or not, race is the only thing that matters, because tribalism is the most powerful human strategy. We aren’t deciding whether humanity will be racist or not—it will always be, because racists will always proliferate while altruists will always wither and shrink—no, we’re simply deciding if We are going to be racists. Whether we intend to live or die, win or lose, have children or not, exist or not exist. The middle path is still a path to destruction, sorry Slate.
Posted by at 9:22 PM on May 6
“It’s a conflict between science and science.”
That’s the funniest thing ever. Too funny. Funny for days… and I don’t even believe the race-realists.
Posted by LHathaway at 9:23 PM on May 6
He could have said. “I told a truth nobody should tell. Sorry about that it won’t happen again.”
Posted by Mike T. at 9:26 PM on May 6
Its nice knowing reality smashes his multicult rainbow thinking on a daily basis, its nice knowing its constantly nipping at him, reality is tearing his dream world apart, and he cant take it.
Jared predicted this “Rush To The Lifeboats” oh so well, the liberals are finally feeling the sting of the real world and facts. Its becoming harder and harder to march on through life living the lie of diversity and equality. their fantasies of usurping the “white man” and fighting perceived “racial injustice“‘s in all facets of life are becoming stagnant to the truth of the matter.
Oh this will be quite the show to see, i can’t wait to see them scramble, backtrack and make incoherent conclusions; desperately trying to convince themselves and others there is still reason to believe in the Diversity lie.
Posted by Stuck in No Mans Land at 9:54 PM on May 6
“…The question I set out to explore last fall was how to be an egalitarian in an age of genetic differences. That’s still an important project…”
Proving that racial egalitarianism is a religion.
Posted by Question Diversity at 9:57 PM on May 6
William Saletan should quit slate, join the circus, and perform as contortionist.
There are any number of Amren posters who can do his job better than he does.
Posted by at 10:00 PM on May 6
This guy again? I remember the original stories and the pathetic backtracking away from the controversy from a few months ago.
I suppose his superiors in MSM-land decided he didn’t grovel enough the first time around.
Posted by ZKR at 10:12 PM on May 6
I think a lot of you posters are being to harsh on him; after all, he’s way ahead of 99.9% of liberals in that he, at least, can see the obvious genetic differences between the races. At this point, he’s struggling with himself. Surely many of us have done the same at one point or another about such contentious issues. Don’t be surprised if, one day, he joins our ranks.
That being said, the following statement makes no sense at all:
“We can’t just be “race realists,” as believers in biological distinctions among races like to call themselves. We have to be realists about racism.”
The DEFINITION of “race realist” is being realistic about racism. At least half the articles cited at Amren are about racism. Unlike the masses, we are aware of the pervasiveness of anti-white racism. We are also aware of the pervasiveness of fake racism - the type that really is not racism at all but the natural phenomenon of chips falling where they may based on our genetic endowments (or lack thereof). Since the races are not all genetically equal, the chips don’t fall equally, and leftists perceive this as racism. We see it as nature taking its course. THAT is being realists about racism.
Posted by at 10:49 PM on May 6
I recall another article, posted on this site I think, about the truth of racial differences and how to break it to the masses. The liberal author recognized that the science behind racial realism was growing and that it would not be concealed for much longer. His stated concern was that Blacks would have their feelings hurt, and that the White masses would support a return to open discrimination. If I remember correctly, he didn’t write anything about the White masses supporting retribution against those who have ruined their nation, but I’ve no doubt that he was worried about that too. Shortly after, when Mr Saletan wrote his notorious article, I thought, “This is a trial balloon”. Well, no doubt many White liberals have got a good look at Blackness since then, thanks to Reverend Wright, and Mr Saletan is sending up another trial balloon. He did a lot of backtracking last time, but he’s really not changing his thesis. This is, as other posters have said, the beginnings of a rush to the lifeboats.
Posted by Schoolteacher at 11:01 PM on May 6
Blah, blah, blah, what the heck is he trying to back peddle for again? Face reality and stop trying to pander to the stupid liberals. This is the problem where whites are panting with their tongues out to elect a black president while ignoring any sensible precaution against the criminal black population. Wake up before it is too late for you, your family, and your society!!
Posted by realist at 12:09 AM on May 7
Some times the truth hurts. There you are, I beleive even I have said it better than you, mr. Saletan.
Posted by at 12:53 AM on May 7
“policy prescriptions based on race are social malpractice.”
Right you are! It’s high time the government abolishes all racial-preference-laws-and-policies and let the chips fall where they may. Anything less would be hypocritical and racist.
Posted by at 5:46 AM on May 7
When science contradicts deeply held beliefs it’s time to check out the beliefs. Reluctance to such things is natural - and from a number of angles - but eventually the reluctance will be forgotten and the new paradigm takes hold. Is there a single case where that’s not been the case?
Cheers,
Stephen
Posted by stephen at 6:19 AM on May 7
In the age of genetics, egalitarianism doesn’t mean you have to deny differences in racial averages. It means you have to beware the injustice this kind of grouping and averaging does to individuals. That warning goes for the left as well as the right.
Ah, the tortured leftist intellectual caught between what he is supposed to believe and what he knows. Basically he is forced to accept: the reality of race and the fact that there are genetic racial differences of major importance. Qualifying this statement by saying the obvious, viz. that group characteristics may not apply to every member of the group is simply to accept the bell curve distribution. I am happy to admit all of these things. That does not change the fact that the African American mean in IQ is 85 or that they tend to be more violent and to have difficulties with postponement of immediate gratification.
It must be difficult if not impossible to be a leftist egalitarian biologist these days.
Posted by at 7:36 AM on May 7
Now, I’m not the brightest bulb around but I ain’t the mayor of dumbsville either. I read this twice and still wasn’t sure what it meant. Somebody enlighten me, please. Is it satire? Or is this guy under incredible pressure from above to recant?
Posted by Lonely Jew at 10:15 AM on May 7
For the life of me I cannot understand why posters here use that meaningless word “racism?” Finishing the sentences of adle minded liberals like Saletan is a waste of time. Here are the questions, “Does genetics matter?” “How do phenotypes cluster?” “And what are the opinions of non-whites on genetics and race since white liberals take it upon themselves to speak for them?”
Posted by Simmons at 11:13 AM on May 7
“Now, I’m not the brightest bulb around but I ain’t the mayor of dumbsville either. I read this twice and still wasn’t sure what it meant. Somebody enlighten me, please. Is it satire? Or is this guy under incredible pressure from above to recant?
Posted by Lonely Jew at 10:15 AM on May 7”
Dear Lonely Jew: The confusion you feel is entirely understandable. If you are confused, it’s only because the author is confused. Terribly, terribly confused.
In a classic case of “Don’t ask the question if you’re not prepared for the answer,” Saletan took on a hot topic and it blew up in his face. Now he’s desperately trying to explain away his own findings. He KNOWS what the truth is: that races ARE different, and in ways that are signficant and probably irreconcilable. But since that truth contradicts what Saletan (and everybody else at Slate) likes to believe, it creates tremendous cognitive dissonance for the poor chap. It gives him a race-based headache for which no aspirin has been invented.
Saletan simply CAN’T accept that he might be “A Bad Person” — you know, like us bigots and xenophobes at AmRen — so he must twist his arguments into painful pretzel-like contortions to cling to (whatever’s left of) his self-image as an egalitarian. That is why he’s reduced to making surrealistic statements like “It’s a conflict between science and science” — a sentence that is not merely confusing, but LITERALLY MEANINGLESS.
Posted by The Incredible Shrinking White Man at 1:23 PM on May 7
“…The flaw in my approach wasn’t truth…Even if hereditary inequality among racial averages is a truth, it’s less true, more unjust, and more pernicious than framing the same difference in nonracial terms.”
Saletan wrestles with himself because undeniable facts directly conflict with his arbitrary emotional committment to social egalitarianism - i.e., he yearns for the satisfaction of seeing equal happy endings among human beings who simply aren’t equal.
People like Saletan are most kindly referred to as sentimentalists. They are good at writing fiction, but are not to be taken seriously when they stray waywardly into the fields of science or philosophy.
Posted by Gary at 2:03 PM on May 7
The old saying call a spade a spade…..facts are facts hate to point it out….tell it like it is….their genes are different…their actions are beyond belief….I could go on and on….this fellow is afraid to speak his mind…the truth …..so there ya go don’t be confused anymore….you can take them out of the jungle but you can’t take the jungle out of them…is that simple enough????
Posted by lydia at 3:30 PM on May 7
Dear Incredible Shrinking White Man
Thank you for your entirely lucid and perfectly clear explanation. It was actually pretty funny too. I agree 100 percent.
Posted by Lonely Jew at 7:26 PM on May 7
“In the age of genetics, egalitarianism doesn’t mean you have to deny differences in racial averages. It means you have to beware the injustice this kind of grouping and averaging does to individuals. That warning goes for the left as well as the right.”
He’s just saying that INDIVIDUALS should not automatically be herded into particular groupings — low IQ, high IQ, right-brained learners, etc. — simply because of their race. Just because some Asian groups have a higher average IQ doesn’t mean EACH and every Asian kid has a high IQ. Same with a lower average IQ. He’s saying it’s not ok to just assign people into classes or courses of study (for example) by race alone.
A lot of people are against affirmative action for just this reason. Those AA policies mandate that all members of certain groups need a leg up, regardless of individual needs/abilities/financial status.
(The quote by Jeremiah Wright that followed this section of the article explains what the author meant by “the left as well as the right.”)
Posted by at 8:27 PM on May 7
This article is really incoherent. Does anybody understand what the hades this guy is trying to say?
Posted by B-mar at 9:21 PM on May 7
You can’t just take snippets of an article like this an expect it to make sense.
No if ands or buts about it
Scientific reasoning:
Race is not biological
IQ is not inheritable and not a measure of anything overarching
If you think that these are true than you don’t understand science, are biased (which makes your reasoning unscientific in the first place), and are spouting old ideas not new ones.
This is knowledge not racist fodder and being liberal has nothing to do with the cold hard facts.
Cultural understanding is not the same as scientific!
Any studies based on the idea Race and IQ are flawed from the begginning.
You all can say whatever you want but that isn’t going to change the fact you are wrong.
Posted by at 10:12 AM on May 8
Hey, let’s try to give this guy somewhat of a break. He does start with this-
“That evidence, which involved the proposed role of heredity in trait differences by race, is by no means complete or conclusive. But it’s not dismissible, either.”
For those of us born and indoctrinated into the brainwashing, do you remember how hard it was to break that? I know the process of waking up was a long and painful one for me.
However, once it’s gone, it’s gone for good.
Posted by Boudreaux at 5:06 PM on May 8
“IQ is not inheritable and not a measure of anything overarching”
Would you care to point out why the American Psychological Association is wrong? They don’t agree with you here.
http://web.archive.org/web/19970102210846/http://www.apa.org/releases/intell.html
If you can refute the APA we’ll move on to your equally foolish assertions about race.
Posted by Cassiodorus at 5:50 PM on May 8
The poster calling it “a conflict between fact and fiction” hit it right on the mark.
We’d like to pretend all races are equal. That neither White Superiority nor the incredibly high proportion of Black failures and Black underachievers, WORLDWIDE genetic… but the evidence is right there in front of us. In other words, if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, THERE MUST BE A GENETIC FACTOR causing the achievement gulf between Whites and Blacks… an incredibly vast disparity reaching all the way back to when Blacks and Whites diverged as different races from our ultra-primitive forebears.
Whites developed, achieved, learned, discovered invented and built. Blacks existed. What they built on their own… show me anything, please. Even those Zimbabwean stone building ruins claimed to have been the work of Blacks… no incontrovertible proof of that has ever surfaced that I’m aware of.
Fast-forward to 2008. We have over 40 years since those comprehensive civil rights laws were enacted. Blacks still are under educated, mired in poverty, under-employed. No, it is NOT racism. I mean how in hell can you pay a Black a hefty salary and give him a job entailing a high degree of responsibility if he doesn’t even have a reasonable 8th grade level of education?
Train the average Black drop-out to learn surveying, operating complex machinery, like a tower crane for example, where an error can cost lives and/or millions of dollars? What hiring manager would be that dumb?
Can we REALLY believe that tired line of baloney: 200 years of slavery and another century of discrimination causes so much violence and sociopathic acts by American Blacks? Is ANYONE really flaky enough to believe that absurdity? That the propensity of Blacks to automatically graviate to crime, to alcohol and/or substance abuse is caused by something that happened a century or more before they were born?
Fast forward to ‘modern’ Africa. Of course it’s White racism that keeps these ‘nations’ from amounting to anything more than a heap of garbage. White racism causes tinpot dictators to rise to power. White racism corrupts these dictators to spend the national treasury on fleets of overpriced cars for themselves, their henchmen. Right?
But a GENETIC factor causing the incredible difference between Blacks and Whites? Surely more racist theories, right?
Posted by Fed Up at 5:53 PM on May 8
“The poster calling it “a conflict between fact and fiction” hit it right on the mark.”
Well, Immanuel Kant wrote a slightly influential book on this matter- The Critique of Pure Reason (1776). He asserted two worlds- the phenomenal (regular reality) and the noumenal (beyond the senses). Ethics and morality pertain to the latter.
This HIGHLY influential book claimed that it is OK to take a hike from the junk you see with your eyes- THAT NON-SENSE IS JUST FINE. The 1781 edition has an intro of 150 pages. This book had been called the biggest mind rape of all time.
There are just three major philosophers in the West- Plato, Aristotle, and Kant.
Posted by no more nonsense please at 10:23 PM on May 8
Well, it’s fun to watch liberals twist themselves into tight little knots when confronted with the reality of racial differences. To be an egalitarian in an age of genetic differences is very much like being a flat earther in an age of satellite photographs.
It is the liberals who insist on collecting statistical data broken down by that crude, supposedly fictional social construct called race. It is they who point out the various ways that blacks fall behind other races — lower incomes, higher incarceration rates, lower home ownership, higher rates of illegitimacy, lower levels of education, higher unemployment rates, etc. ad naseum. They then blame whites for all of these things. A race realist is simply a white person tired of being blamed for things he never did and who considers the other obvious explanation for the data unearthed by those tiresome liberals.
Posted by WR the elder at 12:50 AM on May 9
“Race is not biological.”
Posted by at 10:12 AM on May 8
Anybody who can make such a statement, then declare that those opposed to it are not in agreement with science, is someone who’s so far out he couldn’t recognize a fact if it were right in front of his nose.
Of course your premises have to do with leftist dogma. Your problem is that you’ve been conditioned about as thoroughly as Pavlov’s dogs and can do no more than salivate politically correct dogma every time the politically correct bell is rung.
You’re so gullible it’s impossible for you to understand those who aren’t. You’re a propagandist’s dream.
“You all can say whatever you want but that isn’t going to change the fact you are wrong.”
It isn’t “we” you have to convince, since science and experience prove what you claim is absurd. And I’m not talking about your contrived, junk science designed for social engineering purposes in order to keep the tumultuous masses from tearing at each other’s throats, which incidentally, isn’t going to work, because things are getting worse, not better.
The advances are coming in fast and furious proving exactly what we contend. Ever hear of Dr. Watson? Your so-called “scientists” know this and are in the process of jumping ship right this minute. When they retract their “findings,” I have a hunch people like you won’t believe them, preferring to hold on to your sacred myths. But isn’t that characteristic of those among the flat earth society?
Posted by w.r. at 2:59 AM on May 9
