Letters to the Editor
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I'm thinking that scientist should have been
the Australopithecine...
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So true that it's not funny......
Which is the problem that Bolling constantly faces.
Perhaps he needs a cute animal character with sarcastic wit.
Nah.
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I'm On Your Side, BUT...
This cartoon seems to grant that American blacks really ARE stupider than American whites. I say no. It's the test.
I do not know how to think about this issue. I'm a white guy who never has had any slaves. I will take responsibility for my own family, as far back as I have known them (my grandparents), and as far forward as I know them (nephews, nieces, plus one grand-niece so far). We never did any of this stuff to blacks.
There is a Salon poster named Thrasher. He and I go around and around about these sorts of issues all the time. I believe that Thrasher himself is way stupider than I am, even though I am no genius. (Read his posts, and mine, if you are interested.)
BUT! Thrasher is black. I am white. Thrasher seems to blame me for his own dopiness and kookiness, just because I am white.
There must be a better, more interesting explanation.
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Bravo
Why is it that good ideas (like universal health care) die, but bad ideas, like the conclusively debunked nonsense in "The Bell Curve" live forever?
Nice to see some bright (and funny) light shone on that whole claque of bad ideas, because sadly they're creeping back from the margins.
Witness the incredible surge of current interest in crackpot IQ-based ideas in Asia -- based off yet another batch of cooked statistics -- making it seem like 1971 (and '94) all over again.
There _is_ good work done on "intelligence"-- but as Christopher F. Chabris wrote in 1998:
...unfortunately, [...] whenever intelligence is said, "race" is heard; whenever race is said, "genetics" is heard; and whenever genetics is said, "inferiority" is heard, even though these issues are not necessarily connected in any way.
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ha!
Funny. But one thing bugs me about this...it's those quotation marks around the word, scientific.
Ruben, are you trying to equate "scientific" with "racist"? Or "silly"? Or...what, exactly?
"Scientific" theories can be wrong, you know. And if they are truly scientific they can be proven wrong by gathering evidence that runs counter to their conclusions...which anyone is free to do, even in a comic.
But maybe I'm reading too much into one "humorous" strip.
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A Noble Experiment...
In one of my first internet chat room debates, a guy told me that all "income redistribution" (progressive taxation and social programs) was pointless because the richer people got that way by being smarter. In fact, he added, if you redistributed all the income equally among everyone, the rich people would soon have it all again.
Well, I replied, there's only one way to prove that.
He didn't answer that.
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The Flynn Effect
The New Yorker recently published a book review of "What is Intelligence?" by James Flynn (http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2007/12/17/071217crbo_books_gladwell ) that illuminates and disproves the foundational assumption behind all IQ-based theories of racial inferiority, namely that the IQ test actually measures innate intelligence, instead of being primarily a cultural metric.
In the 80's, Flynn did an analysis of IQ test scores over time and found that across virtually every demographic in every area of the world, from the inception of the test through today, IQ scores have been steadily and dramatically rising, to the tune of about three points per decade. This phenomenon is called the Flynn Effect.
The absurdity of any conclusions about the intellectual superiority/inferiority of one group compared to another is shown when you look at the Flynn Effect in reverse. If you accept the idea that the IQ test reliably measures actual intelligence, then naturally, someone scoring higher must be more intelligent than someone scoring lower. But the upward creep in IQ score is so strong that by today's standards, the average US schoolchild of the year 1900 would have an IQ of 70--which would qualify him today for a diagnosis of mental retardation. Which is completely ludicrous, unless you believe that the average US schoolchild in 1900 really was mentally retarded.
But even if you do accept that as true, it still disproves any claims of inherent racial inferiority, since the descendants of that nation of imbeciles are much smarter today than their great-grandparents were. Which shows that a group defined by shockingly low IQ scores are not inherently limited from greatly increasing those scores in future generations.
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You would have to be able to prove
...that every group pre & post civil war was subject to quantitatively & qualitatively less discrimination every step of the way, since up through now. Otherwise the fact that other groups may perform better on said tests shoots holes in that approach. For instance, Mexicans and Asians in California 1865-2007, Irish 1840-2007, Jews 1880-2007. You have to be able to point to specific instances where in each of the places they lived they were subject to materially and substantially less discrimination than any other group who today does not perform as well. Not that have a vague sense this is true but that you can point to information that it is or is not true.
I believe you would have a hard time with that. For instance in several states it was illegal for Jews to vote, own real estate or hold public office decades after the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments were ratified in every state.
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My observations
I taught High School for eleven years. I observed that a larger percentage of the blacks refused to participate in their education than whites. The same was true for hispanics, they tended to refuse to participate. Why is this the case, that is a good question. Maybe the lack the ability, maybe the desire. Regardless, the number of stellar blacks and hispanic students was tiny in comparison to their numbers in my classes.
A second point I'll make is that here in California it is against the law to administer intelligence tests to blacks. Would anyone like to address why this is so?
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Yes, they are.
This is just another pathetic sample of white liberal guilt. As another poster noted, other minorities experienced discrimination in the old days, and yet most have prospered.
White liberals just can't get it through their think heads that not all people are the same. By nature liberals are idealistic so they refuse to accept the truth.