Skin color and violence, Down syndrome and “cheerfulness”
Every now and then there’s a side discussion in the comments section where I respond to someone at such great length, and with so much research involved, that I figure it makes sense to turn my comment into a post. So here we go.
This particular post is based on a discussion I had with commenter “Frog,” in which he’d asked the following question:
Is it racist to suppose, just for a moment, that the skin-color gene is linked to a trait for violence, just like trisomy 21 is linked to a trait for smiling cheeriness? Or is that merely coincidental?
No, it’s not racist to ask a question about such a possible linkage. However, it is racist to assume such a linkage unless and until there is proof of it.
What’s more, even the commonly-observed linkage between the trait of “cheerfulness” and Down syndrome (trisomy 21) is not necessarily quite as clear and/or clearly biologically (genetically) based as one might think. Take a look at this article, for example. Here’s an excerpt:
Many areas of the Down syndrome behavioral phenotype have been well researched…
For decades, researchers and practitioners have attempted to describe commonalities in personality style among individuals with Down syndrome, with some arguing for a stereotype involving a pleasant, affectionate, and passive personality style (Gibbs & Thorpe, 1983; Rodgers, 1987). This stereotype has been supported by studies of parent perception of children with Down syndrome, where in one study, over 50% of 11 year old children with Down syndrome were described as “affectionate”, “lovable,” “nice,” and “getting on well with other people,”…
However, a more nuanced exploration of personality-motivation in Down syndrome reveals great complexity in personality development and motivational style over time. In addition to these positive perceptions of personality in individuals with Down syndrome, other research reports have described individuals with Down syndrome as showing a specific motivational orientation involving lower levels of task persistence and higher levels of off-task social behaviors (Kasari & Freeman, 2001; Landry & Chapieski, 1990; Pitcairn & Wishart, 1994; Ruskin, Kasari, Mundy & Sigman, 1994; Vlachou & Farrell, 2000). This lowered persistence is sometimes complemented by a stubborn or strong willed personality streak, also described in studies of temperament in Down syndrome (Carr, 1995; Gibson, 1978).
Though they have not received the same amount of attention from researchers as more positive personality dimensions…
…[I]n those instances when children with Down syndrome are not able to generate new [cognitive] strategies that can serve as a means to an end, it may be that what comes most naturally to them is to recruit their strengths in social skills. As a result, they may develop a style that involves responding to challenging situations with charming or socially engaging behaviors that, ultimately, take them (and their social partner) off task. Or, they may rely on another social strategy, such as recruiting help from a social partner in order to help them complete a task, which has also been demonstrated in several laboratory studies (Fidler, Hepburn, Mankin & Rogers, 2005; Kasari & Freeman, 2001). In either case, the coupling of poor strategic thinking and strengths in social relatedness is hypothesised to lead to the less persistent and overly social personality-motivational orientation observed in this population.
I could go on quoting, but the point is that we really lack a good understanding of what the “cheerfulness” of Down syndrome children is about, and what causes it. Is it some sort of linkage with having trisomy 21? Or is this “cheerfulness” the reaction of many Down syndrome children to the combination of cognitive and developmental deficits they experience, combined with their relative lack of social deficits? Does that combination encourage them to focus on and use their social strengths more and more to distract from and to deal with (in the social sense) their cognitive deficits?
Researchers don’t seem to know.
Trisomy 21 is a very discrete and clear either/or thing—a person either has it or he/she doesn’t have it, although there is still variation in how Down syndrome people function and at what level. Race—and skin color—is a very very very different thing.
For example, there is no “skin-color gene.” Skin color inheritance is far more complex than that:
Both the amount and type of melanin produced is controlled by a number of genes that operate under incomplete dominance. One copy of each of the various genes is inherited from each parent. Each gene can come in several alleles, resulting in the great variety of human skin tones.
We still don’t know for certain the number of genes involved in skin color inheritance, but research indicates there are at least three, plus alleles, and it is possible that there are more (and this article says that half a dozen have been identified).
Also:
It is important to remember here that in polygenic inheritance, alleles do not display dominance over others, rather, each contributing allele gives an additive effect rather than a masking effect, and so the way that the alleles interact is different to those in Mendelian genetics. The additive effect means that each contributing allele produces one unit of color.
The article then goes on to give a hypothetical in which three genes (plus alleles) for skin color could generate, from 2 parents, 64 different color possibilities. It is very complex, and some simple linkage with “violence” (also a very complex trait) is certainly something a person is free to speculate about, but it is sheer imaginative speculation at this point, and I see no reason to believe it accurately describes reality.
In addition, skin color is not race. It is one of very many traits connected with race, race being a set of convenient categories each of which represents a collection of many traits that vary over geography. “Skin color” ranges in all races, with some Southern Indian people (for example; there are other examples) exhibiting very dark skin color.
We all bring a lot of assumptions to the table. But I think it’s important to examine those assumptions in the light of what we know (not all that much) and what we don’t know (a lot), and be very careful in what we conclude.
neo: You are correct there is no “skin-color gene.” I was surprised Frog got that wrong.
Not only that, he was generalizing about “blacks” and “browns” — referring to Africans, Latin Americans, and West Asians at the same time even though, to the extent we talk about race, those are of three different races.
It was hard not to catch a whiff of old-fashioned white supremacy there.
(Though not the new-fangled white supremacy, where if you disagree about “Black Lives Matter” you must be a white supremacist supporting a white supremacist state.)
There are many levels to the discussion. Wiki tells us that:
Modern scholarship regards race as a social construct, that is, a symbolic identity created to establish some cultural meaning. While partially based on physical similarities within groups, race is not an inherent physical or biological quality.
A genetics researcher, Craig Venter, declared on the occasion of the first draft of the genome, his company was working “to help illustrate that the concept of race has no genetic or scientific basis.”
Which seems to fly in the face of commonsense, when one notices, for instance, that 95% of sprinting records are held by runners of West African descent.
Of course discussion of race is vastly complicated by the horrible history of racism. I can understand, to a point, the impulse to ashcan the whole concept as dangerous and refuse to speak of it further.
I’m less sympathetic to the dogmatic approach of declaring race, like gender, to be a social construct and suppressing anyone saying otherwise.
Huxley:
Race is actually one of the few areas where I think the phrase “social construct” is appropriate. And I came to that conclusion over 50 years ago, when I studied physical anthropology in some depth, and before I’d ever even heard the phrase.
It’s too long a subject to go into in this comment; maybe another post some day.
Race is actually one of the few areas where I think the phrase “social construct” is appropriate.
neo: While race has fuzzy edges and much baggage, I disagree — unless one over-defines “race” and under-defines “social construct.”
There’s been interesting computer work on the differential frequencies of alleles. Without telling the computer program about “race,” it sorts the genetic data for large numbers of people into, alley-oop, groups which we would recognize immediately as white, black, red, yellow and Australian aboriginal.
Nicolas Wade, a science journalist for the NY Times, wrote a book about it: “A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race, And Human History.” Wade got the Charles Murray treatment for his effort.
It is a long discussion.
Its not the color of the skin, its the cultural values that a culture embraces, neglects or rejects. Logic and reasoned consideration is not the determinative factor in that calculus. Geography appears to be one factor. In northern climates, delayed gratification and a strong work ethic are cultural requirements for survival in civilizations dependent upon agriculture with a short growing season. Having enough food stored to get through the winter is critical. The expression “making hay, while the sun shines” succienctly describes their reality. Those cultural attitudes continue even after industralization.
Neo writes: “Race is actually one of the few areas where I think the phrase “social construct” is appropriate. And I came to that conclusion over 50 years ago, when I studied physical anthropology in some depth, and before I’d ever even heard the phrase.”
Your knowledge is dated. Small events like the mapping of the human genome have happened since you were in school [/s]
Nicholas Wade’s book A Troublesome Inheritance provides references that show that race is indeed a very real physical characteristic that can be determined with high accuracy from your genome. No single gene determines race. Instead it is a statistical concept determined by the distribution of alleles of a large number of genes. But just because it is statistical does not mean it is not accurate. Classifications based solely on genetic data have a high overlap with subjective classifications based on appearance.
Another way to say this is that you can cluster people based on their genome into groups that match common racial groups. It is not perfect. There are some individuals who do not clearly fall into any single group. But the theory that race is a social construct only is contradicted by physical evidence.
BTW, Nicholas Wade is no right wing crazy. This is his bio:
Nicholas Wade received a BA in natural sciences from King’s College, Cambridge. He was the deputy editor of Nature magazine in London and then became that journal’s Washington correspondent. He joined Science magazine in Washington as a reporter and later moved to The New York Times, where he has been an editorial writer, concentrating on issues of defense, space, science, medicine, technology, genetics, molecular biology, the environment, and public policy, a science reporter, and a science editor.
What if we substituted the term, subspecies, for race?
@skeptic
In the reviews I read, it is claimed that this clustering is the result of geographical distance. Wade wants to say it isn’t. Trouble is, how can he disprove this alternative?
The review claims that he relied on samples taken from geographically distant groups. For example, taking samples New Brunswick and taking samples in Sichuan. The review claims that if you took more samples, the clustering would disappear. In other words, I take samples in New Brunswick, Ontario, Manitoba, B.C., the Russian Far East, Heilongjiang, Beijing, Inner Mongolia, Gansu, Qinghai and then Sichuan.
If I do that, they claim there would be no clustering. So they’re not just saying Wade is wrong. They’re making a falsifiable claim.
To your knowledge, has anyone attempted to conduct such a study?
dexiansheng: I notice in the first graf you spoke of plural “reviews” but in the second graf “reviews” became singular. Perhaps you could provide link(s) to the review or reviews you are referencing.
I read five or six reviews of Wade’s book and didn’t run into that criticism. The critics were mostly complaining that in the later sections Wade was speculating beyond the data — a concern I shared — and being worried Wade would reawaken 20th century racism.
How about taking the position that “race” as a collection of quantifiable physical characteristics does exist (without sharp boundaries); but “race” as a collection of behavioral characteristics is a social construct (that is, some behaviors attributed to the “social construct race” are not applicable to all members of the “physical race”).
Using the same word for both factors is problematic.
I have some (legally immigrated) friends from Liberia and Ivory Coast who display none of the behavioral pathologies attributed to “black peoples” by (real) white supremacists. So, which “race” are they?
Sure. I read a few reviews. The one I’m relying on for the geographical distance stuff is below. It seemed the most clear cut. I’m also trying to chase down a set of five reviews published in Human Biology — just in an attempt to get a handle on the geographical distance stuff.
I happily confess to being completely ignorant on the particulars. Not my field whatsoever. But I do think it is an important question, particularly as these sort of debates are becoming more common.
https://www.americanscientist.org/article/a-troubling-tome
AesopFan: There are genetic blacks with IQs over 130. However, very few compared with whites. Those blacks don’t become white or yellow or Ashkenazi Jews because of their IQs. They are still black.
Nonetheless, the aggregate truth remains that blacks are 15 points behind whites on IQ tests and further behind Asians and Ashkenazi Jews.
There are rebuttals that blacks in some studies are picking up a few IQ points and maybe some day they will catch up.
I’d like to believe that — it would make things simpler and happier — but I don’t. My bet is that in aggregate blacks are not going to catch up on IQ any more than whites, Asians and Jews are going to catch up with blacks in the NBA.
So what do *you* do with that?
if Africa is the home of all humans where every race originated from, you could also make the assumption that those who stayed behind must be the less advantageous ones lacking the intelligence and courage needed to leave the comfort of home and embark on a risky journey to venture out to new territories, or they were simply physically the strongest who were able to drive out everyone else to claim the land as their own.
huxley; skeptic:
I’m aware of the newer research as well, but nothing so far has changed my mind.
Of course race is something, a set of characteristics that cluster, with the clusters originally corresponding to certain geographic areas. But the lines are not absolute and the characteristics that most people think constitute a “race”—such as, for example, skin color—do not constitute a race.
That’s what makes race a convenient social construction—because it conforms to our perceptions but does not strictly conform to scientific boundaries.
And the term “subspecies” has no meaning to me in terms of human races. It means, basically, “groups that are different but don’t rise to the level of separate species.” Races don’t even come close to doing that. They are categories we use, but they are not scientifically discrete, and the boundaries are arbitrarily drawn. People don’t even agree on how many races there are. The fewer there are, of course, the more discrete the categories become. No one would mistake a white Scandinavian for a person from Kenya, for example.
huxley:
On subspecies:
A rather useless word, and particularly useless in terms of humans.
Twin studies.
Raise one in one environment, the Hamptons,
Raise one in Shoot em up Detroit.
Rinse and repeat.
Do it enough times, with enough twins and you can say something definitive
Huxley: gene or genes, singular or plural? It is all DNA, and that was the hub of my query.
As to the “more nuanced” studies of Down personalities, the piece Neo quoted is shot full with mays, as in “it may (or may not) be due to……” Not solid stuff, IMO, regardless of the number of “studies” done. I have seen many Down Syndrome kids, more than most people, and it remains my strong impression that the fairly large majority are pleasant, cheerful, and indeed eager to please. Down kids also have a signif. higher rate of congenital heart disease. It is the genome.
Alleles are part of the genome.
I was throwing out a thought about violence and its geographic (brown and black) distribution (see Neo’s piece on dangerous cities!) in my original comment, wondering if there might be a DNA link, as there seems to be in Trisomy 21 behavior and, certainly, its lower median IQ. Sure skin color is genetically complicated, but at its heart it remains DNA-based. I look for and wonder about biological root causes, just as social “scientists” wonder about different root causes.
You appear convinced that blacks have lower IQs. That would be genetic, principally.
It is speculation, wonder, that’s all. Why have parliamentary democracies never been successful beyond whitey lands, except, as I said, in India, where a great deal of Southern European DNA was sown by Alexander the Great’s troops about 400BC?
One cannot, should not generalize from a very small data set, as AesopFan appears to do from his handful of West Africans.
Anyone who’s curious why I believe race is primarily a social construct rather than a purely scientific one should read this for a discussion of the differing points of view on the subject.
Frog:
Many people have observed that Down syndrome children (and adults) tend to have “cheerfulness” as a characteristic more often than people without Down syndrome. Although some of the research quoted in that article has not found that to be so, when studied, some research has indeed found it to be so.
The article—and the points it was making—does not rely on the idea that Down syndrome people don’t exhibit the trait of “cheerfulness.” The question is whether is it genetically determined, and rather than recap the social/cultural/psychological argument for the preponderance of the trait in people with Down syndrome, I suggest you reread it. The point is, the “cheerfulness” may be there for interpersonal reasons rather than genetic ones.
The fact that heart defects, and early Alzheimer’s, and other strictly physical characteristics are more common in people with Down syndrome as well does not tell us anything about whether the particular trait “cheerfulness” is an inherited genetic one or whether it is culturally/socially/psychologically determined as a result of other characteristics of people with Down syndrome.
It’s a pretty simple principle. The idea is that just because some characteristics are more common in a group with a certain genetic marker and are genetically determined, that does not mean that all characteristics that are more common in that group are genetically determined.
Your personal and professional observation that people with Down syndrome exhibit the trait of cheerfulness has absolutely no bearing on the question of why this might be so.
huxley and everyone else:
By the way, on the subject of IQ differences and race, please see excerpts from this article by Thomas Sowell, one of the smartest people (of any race) in the world.
I read the Bell Curve when it was new, and followed some of the fuss thereafter.
While the statistical and other arguments may be convincing, there is a strong undercurrent of “THIS CAN’T BE TRUE! CAN IT?”
Murray once remarked that we should drop any reference to race and let people go where their abilities and energies take them. Implicitly, we should stop bean counting. The problem with that is a difference in results in, say, SES representation can’t be defined as a result of genetic propensity, or of discrimination.
I may have mentioned this before. Look up “spatial orientation” “australian aborigine”. The aborigine–traditional peoples in Oz speak–score far, far better than non-traditional peoples–whites. The effort by some of the researchers to make this cultural–the traditional peoples score much better even if they live a non-traditional (urban) lifestyle and so there must be some way of passing it on. Because if it’s heritable, we have some concerns about the differences on standard IQ tests. So we presume that trad dad on Saturday mornings lays out a bunch of items on the dining room table, gives the kids thirty seconds to look at it and has them draw the layout as if they were standing on the other side of the table. Yup. Got to be.
Some of the same speculation is made regarding the Inuit skill in the same areas of visual memory and spatial orientation.
It is probably useful to read Sowell, “Conquests and Cultures” to see the differences cultures make and how long such differences last after people move–Poland to the US, Germany to Russia, etc.
add aspergers and brutal honesty!!!
yes, autisms quirk is honesty and validity over social and being liked… – we dont like to lie… but we get accused of it and so on because others do, and we really dont like people that play head games
Asperger’s / autism and the conundrums of honesty, bluntness, diplomacy, & lying
https://thesilentwaveblog.wordpress.com/2017/03/02/aspergers-autism-and-the-conundrums-of-honesty-bluntness-diplomacy-lying/
A great place to look for this kind of thing is in Double X and Double Y..
note… that agressiveness and color may develope in parallell given the more free for all nature of sunny places vs cold places… everything near the equator in paradise is trying to kill you or get you from top to bottom… while colder spaces, the threat is less in terms of agressive creatures in the environment to an agressive enviornment
ie. aggressiveness will work against critters, but not against weather..
[i work in genetics… programmers can go anywhere ]
Fragile X syndrome
i could go on and on about tons of things that i can even tell you WHERE in the genome to look to read it..
several companies have started that developed programs to read DNA and tell you what the person looked like
each time they do, they get put out of business.. so far i have counted three of them ten years apart.
why?
because your a blank slate and ALL These things reverse progressive ideas of molding natures not accvepting them
of course, the idea is to make us all equal leggo blocks where you can move people aroujnd withotu care of their personalities, llikes dislikes, foible.s..
guess what they think is the failure of communism? lack of leggo type people which makes the planners job impossib.e.. so if thye can just…
anyway..
XX male syndrome
but they tell you NOTHING about their personalities..
why? because want to guess what would be a natural lesbian
Klinefelter syndrome
next one is fun…
Oppositional defiant disorder
is defined by the DSM-5 as “a pattern of angry/irritable mood, argumentative/defiant behavior, or vindictiveness”.[2] Unlike children with conduct disorder (CD), children with oppositional defiant disorder are not aggressive towards people or animals, do not destroy property, and do not show a pattern of theft or deceit.
bad mood generally or DISORDER?
now deseases are whatever doesnt toe a tight line that gets less and less variable as those doing the work, tighten the line to themselves as norm… (or what would htey do? make themselves disorderd)
The genetic epidemiology of personality disorders
all ten personality disorders (PDs) classified on the DSM-IV axis II are modestly to moderately heritable. Shared environmental and nonadditive genetic factors are of minor or no importance. No sex differences have been identified. Multivariate studies suggest that the extensive comorbidity between the PDs can be explained by three common genetic and environmental risk factors.
The genetic factors do not reflect the DSM-IV cluster structure, but rather: i) broad vulnerability to PD pathology or negative emotionality; ii) high impulsivity/low agreeableness; and iii) introversion. Common genetic and environmental liability factors contribute to comorbidity between pairs or clusters of axis I and axis II disorders. Molecular genetic studies of PDs, mostly candidate gene association studies, indicate that genes linked to neurotransmitter pathways, especially in the serotonergic and dopaminergic systems, are involved. Future studies, using newer methods like genome-wide association, might take advantage of the use of endophenotypes.
Genetics of aggression
The genetic basis of aggression, however, remains poorly understood. Aggression is a multi-dimensional concept, but it can be generally defined as behavior that inflicts pain or harm on another.
Genetic-developmental theory states that individual differences in a continuous phenotype result from the action of a large number of genes, each exerting an effect that works with environmental factors to produce the trait
[most of the things ahveing to do with intelligence and such are lots of things coming together in a additive subtractive way that makes us unique – when the thing is farther out of some band of ok, thats when normal behaivioe becomes abnormal]
kinsey was mor damaging..
buy who cares?
since there is a lot, there is one interesting case that hits the book that is quite famous.. if you read this crap… [for someone who isnt a doctor and doesnt get on jeopardy, what would you call it?]
[i have rain mans memory sort of… everything i read i remember]
A Violence in the Blood
[note feminism has no idea of sorting out the men with mental conditions from normal men.. what men above do, are waht all men do!!!!!!!!!!!!!]
http://discovermagazine.com/1993/oct/aviolenceinthebl293
the only way FROG will get his answer is if he does some legwork himself
researchers now avoid anything that will give information, while being trutful, will bring the women down and destroy them… so they shut up on father absence causing early menses as they look for plastics, they shut up totally on how early fertility issues happen and degradation of genomes (much higher since we are now laer, that alone would increase violence and other things as its frequency went up, so would such things as in a partly decimated tribe), and tons of other things i watch… yes i watch them do this and know that if i point out hte missing papers, i would be out a job, not thanked.. they are here to prove feminism right, not do medicine… (i am NOT kidding)
The research raises the possibility that babies could be screened for genetic mutations that increase the risk of excessive aggression later in life. Scientists may also develop drugs to reduce the risks of violent offending in adolescents and young adults.
a dangerous proposition at best
we were still forcibly sterilzing people into the 1980s..
yes. much of what happens in the body is inversive… this avoids a null signal and a non signal being the same… so have too little testosterone? you get MORE violent not less like the fmeinists say..
Testosterone and Aggressive Behavior in Man – NIH
everyone hates me for long posts.
but how hard is it to talk about these thigns without common language or so on?
hint… you look for the races and people who have some of these things in whcih the numbers of the genes matter and their living condition response maters… (they dont do father absence studies to avoid feminsits! seriously, i hear them talk about it! self censorhsip.. like what i am doing now to avoid being cut down)
bye
The heritability of aggression has been observed in many animal strains after noting that some strains of birds, dogs, fish, and mice seem to be more aggressive than other strains. Selective breeding has demonstrated that it is possible to select for genes that lead to more aggressive behavior in animals
[ergo my statement that aggressiveness is more useful in temperate areas where other creatures are the major danger, than in the north, where you cant beat up nature to solve the problem, so being agrressive is a less than amiable trait that gets you killed more]
Selective breeding examples also allow researchers to understand the importance of developmental timing for genetic influences on aggressive behavior. A study done in 1983 (Cairns) produced both highly aggressive male and female strains of mice dependent on certain developmental periods to have this more aggressive behavior expressed. These mice were not observed to be more aggressive during the early and later stages of their lives, but during certain periods of time (in their middle-age period) were more violent and aggressive in their attacks on other mice.
look up
5-HT pathway
and
A variant of the monoamine oxidase-A gene has been popularly referred to as the warrior gene. Several different versions of the gene are found in different individuals, although a functional gene is present in most humans (with the exception of a few individuals with Brunner syndrome). In the variant, the allele associated with behavioural traits is shorter (30 bases) and may produce less MAO-A enzyme
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
In a 2009 criminal trial in the United States, an argument based on a combination of “warrior gene” and history of child abuse was successfully used to avoid a conviction of first-degree murder and the death penalty; however, the convicted murderer was sentenced to 32 years in prison
The results showed the effects of the 4-repeat allele of MAOA promoter polymorphism on physical aggressive behavior for women. It seems that there is an interaction between the 3-repeat allele of MAOA promoter polymorphism and emotional abuse experiences on aggressive behavior for women.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
i coud fill up years of your time with this kind of thing as it took me years to memorize it.. (sleeping only 3-4 hours and being hyper lexic since early childhood with semi eidetic memory helps) – i can study subjects like people pour water into buckets..
i get more than 1460 hours a year extra that others dont have and have had since i was 5… times 40 (first thirteen years as primer).. 58,400 EXTRA hours to paint, draw, study math, subjects physics, biology, etc..
thats about six extra years of wake time spent studying everything i could get like a rat chewing on a wood block..
if you normalized it to average person and said the average person spends 1 hour a day studying… they would have to do that for 160 years just to read what i did… (and not remember it the way i do given autism)
🙂
next subject..
I hope this reply gets noticed past artfldgrs filibuster. Neo, this is a real problem. I do not think anyone has the time to read comments thousands of words long but they crowd out other discussion.
dexiansheng says:
“In the reviews I read, it is claimed that this clustering is the result of geographical distance. Wade wants to say it isn’t. Trouble is, how can he disprove this alternative?”
That is interesting because by my reading of Wade’s book he says that racial differences came about precisely because of geographical separation. The main point of the book is that evolution is occurring to this day not that it stopped 50,000 years ago as is claimed by some biologists. So any group of people who are separated from other groups will evolve characteristics that give an advantage in their environment. For example, the oft cited distribution of lactose intolerance.
The review you cited in American Scientist states:
“But sampling geographically distant parts of a continuum and ignoring the regions between the samples can provide apparent clustering that does not actually prove the existence of discrete groups.”
I have a PhD in electrical engineering with a specialty in statistical signal processing and this is baloney. If there were no racial differences then taking samples in different regions would not introduce statistically significant clusters. The author of the review is assuming his conclusion.
But as the review observes and as we see here the field is highly politicized. So you can choose negative reviews to suit your political inclination and I can choose positive reviews to suit mine. The best thing to do is look at the arguments and see whether they make sense. The review you cite does not.
BTW, “the author Greg Laden is a biological anthropologist who has worked in the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Africa.” The stark difference in the evaluation of the book between anthropologists and hard scientists is even cited in the review. The review is evidence of it.
huxley Says:
March 14th, 2018 at 9:53 pm
AesopFan:
My bet is that in aggregate blacks are not going to catch up on IQ any more than whites, Asians and Jews are going to catch up with blacks in the NBA.
So what do *you* do with that?
* * *
Keep treating people as individuals, and not assume they have any particular physical skills or behavioral characteristics until they demonstrate them.
I would be interested in exploring Dave’s hypothesis on the “left behind” genetic selection process.
I’ve seen it suggested that US boys are more ADHD (if they actually are) because of the “pioneer genes” from their ancestors who migrated (voluntarily) to the New World.
arfldgrs — people who don’t like your comments can skip them; I always learn something from them that I didn’t know before.
PS: This has been a good example of discussion (as so many Neo posts are) that I wish I could find in other blogs.
Neo writes:
“Of course race is something, a set of characteristics that cluster, with the clusters originally corresponding to certain geographic areas. But the lines are not absolute and the characteristics that most people think constitute a “race”–such as, for example, skin color–do not constitute a race. ”
Wades point is that the clusters from genetic information correspond to the commonly observed traits of race. Your claim that skin color does not constitute a race is a straw man. No one is claiming it does.
I’m curious about how the sampling data accounts for some variables. If you’re sampling a population in a mid-Africa, you’re also sampling a geographic area, people who grew up in a warm climate, people who ate certain foods and not others, people who had different cultural practices whether it’s focus on education or farming. People who may have been exposed to more anti-oxidents, or perhaps lead and mercury. One or more things could be missed, unimportant or very important. How long you’ve lived under a certain form of government. I’d hate to see how the average North Korean would do on world history quiz, certainly bring down their overall score.
On the subjects of race and IQ, race and skin color, race and just about anything else, I’ve reached the conclusion that Neo has a blind spot. (That means we disagree, and I think most of the evidence supports my arguments.)
More seriously, I think that this is a complicated and delicate topic that increasingly requires a knowledge of modern genetics. Doing the topic justice can’t be done in a comment. Even a long blog post isn’t usually enough. There are a few specialized blogs that get at the problem by greatly narrowing the scope of each post, and by assuming an audience with academic training in genetics. I’d rather see the subject left to them. Surely there are other interesting things for Neo to talk about.
skeptic:
There is a popular and commmon perception that skin color is by far the most important determinant of race. So, plenty of people claim it. It is no accident that the comment sparking this post involved skin color.
Scientiists do not believe it any more. But it is still fairly common among non-scientists. In fact, it also used to be a perception among scientists, with the early racial classifications reflecting that perception. Look up “color terminology for race” and you can see the history of this strain of thought in science and in popular parlance,, which persists in popular thought today.
Scientists backpeddle over new pet theories every year. Nothing new to me. I’m sure the popular masses thought the science of 1950s was the penultimate truth as well.
Notably, the number 1 evidence as race being a social construct is when Demoncrats constructed the concept of a “white race” to include a confederation of Irish Scots and other ethnic groups that were often at war with each other in Europe. This White Alliance was based upon pre KKK supremacist beliefs and designed against abolitionist social causes and black slave revolts.
So when Leftists talk about race being a social construct, that’s because they would know given their ancestors.
Computer models inaccurately trace DNA based upon family lines, because society and families follow the same pattern throughout one’s ancestors. Same migration patterns and haplogroups. Which is why red indians didn’t arrive from Alaskan land bridge btw.
Which seems to fly in the face of commonsense, when one notices, for instance, that 95% of sprinting records are held by runners of West African descent.
An easier and more accurate way to summarize the recent advances in research is that “race” is an obsolete classification for ancestral genetic memories and inheritances.
Humans were never born equal. One is only equal if the same leader/power is over us all and treats us all as equals to each other.
Popular science and front men like Bill Nye the “science guy” with a bachelors in engineering have created a perception amongst the common masses. Specialists and researchers will find it will take time to deprogram the average person from the popular conception of DNA.
Geoffrey Britain Says:
March 14th, 2018 at 6:52 pm
Its not the color of the skin, its the cultural values that a culture embraces, neglects or rejects. … Geography appears to be one factor. In northern climates, delayed gratification and a strong work ethic are cultural requirements for survival in civilizations dependent upon agriculture with a short growing season.
Which is precisely why the Assyrians and Greeks and Persians and Romans were trivial compared to the early Celts! What? They weren’t?
Northern European dominance is quite recent.
Why in the Americas were all the dominant civilisations in the warm bits, if your theory has any merit?
Why has southern China been better than the north at pretty much everything except killing people? The Mongol contribution to civilisation seems to have slipped me by.
Having enough food stored to get through the winter is critical.
Your knowledge of geography is somewhat bizarre.
Egypt and the Middle East is the prototypical society where food has to be stored seasonally through the dry spell. Many argue that is why centralised states first developed there. Europe has a much more even spread of crops.
Cultures like the Nabatean Arabs had to save water rather than food, and built some sophisticated systems to do so while the Britons were still riding chariots and covering themselves in woad. But apparently their culture, which lasted longer than the current western European one, doesn’t count.
Chester Draws Says:
March 16th, 2018 at 2:39 pm
Geoffrey Britain Says:
March 14th, 2018 at 6:52 pm
* *
Time for a Stature of Limitations on Cultural Affinities?
I don’t think anyone living today gets “points” for their geographical region’s culture any time before about 200 years ago.
The connections are too tenuous, benefits of good ideas too diffuse over large regions, and populations too movable.
PS that includes no reparations after 150 years or so for things that happened to your putative ancestors (and maybe didn’t happen to them anyway).
Violence is kind of tangential in this article, and skin color non-existent, but it does address some of the genetics vs. culture issues we have been debating.
It’s impossible to excerpt, because all of it is excellent.
https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2018/03/15/why-are-men-violent-science-society/
by SEBASTIAN JUNGER
– Mr. Junger is the author of Tribe and War, and a co-director of the award-winning combat documentary Restrepo.
Here’s a story with “race” front-and-center-right. Also hard to excerpt, and an excellent biographical piece with fewer than usual political digs from Politico, but this is the most appropriate quote here, because it makes an interesting distinction that resonates with the discussion:
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/03/16/senator-tim-scott-black-republican-trump-profile-217237
“When I list Trump’s history of race-based controversies–housing discrimination suits, the Central Park Five, lying about Obama’s birthplace, Mexican “rapists,” the Muslim ban–Scott bobs his head up and down: “I am not unaware of the president’s past,” he tells me. A long pause. “Do you think he’s a racist?” I ask. Scott shakes his head. “I don’t. I don’t,” he replies. “Is he racially insensitive? Yes. But is he a racist? No.” “
Why in the Americas were all the dominant civilisations in the warm bits, if your theory has any merit?
Before Islam or the Vikings came on the scene, trade was what created the prosperity of the ancients. That and technology, but few educates the masses on that.
The North had a huge Viking problem, which delayed issues in the Dark Age. Before the Dark Age, the Celts had quite advanced political and economic systems. They merely didn’t have a powerful enough Watcher or military to protect themselves.
The Celtic tribe survived all the way to Galatea, in Asia Minor, what is now known as Anatolia or Turkey. Meanwhile the Romans ran away from Briton with their legion tails tucked in between their legs.
Why has southern China been better than the north at pretty much everything except killing people? The Mongol contribution to civilisation seems to have slipped me by.
There’s something called water in the southeast of China. And with water one can use something called trade as well.
Mongolians came from the steppes, and as Russia knows, having a water frozen locked north harbor isn’t so great.
All this falderal that attempts to prove or demonstrate or claim that “race is a social construct” is absolute bullshit. RACISM is a social construct. Race is not.
Race = breed. Chihuahuas are not Great Danes. Both are dogs, and both display physical, mental AND temperament differences across the breeds. Pick any breed of dog, cat, horse, cattle, etc, and you will find that there are distinct differences across the species. It is the height of FAITH to claim that, of all higher mammals, humans are exempt from this biological reality. The fact that German Shepherds and Bulldogs can breed with one another does not change the fact that they are German Shepherds and Bulldogs, not Whippets and Dachsunds. Yes, still dogs, but not the same, and the differences are not “a social construct.”
RACISM makes the claim that these differences impart greater or lesser METAPHYSICAL value to the different breeds. One does not have to deny the biological differences in order to deny differences in metaphysical value. Anybody who tells you otherwise is full of it.