Race versus culture

[Londoner]

If you want to put it in a frank way, what is the relationship between IQ and blond hair, and what is the relationship between IQ and nappy hair. Is that what you wanted?

There is no relationship. Brains are brains and hair is hair; the genes that code for hair do not code for intelligence. What you need to grasp is that correlation is not causation.

No, the Negritos of the Andaman Islands are related to the Africans, obviously not to the neighboring Burmese.

Everyone is related to the Africans, including you and me.

The 200 islands of the Andaman archipelago lie in an arc between Burma and Indonesia in the Bay of Bengal. Their inhabitants possess an extremely distinctive phenotype, typified by a small average height, gracile build, dark pigmentation, and unusual hair morphology. Victorian anthropologists noted phenotypic similarities to the pygmoid peoples of Africa and suggested a recent African origin (e.g., Dobson 1875). However, to differing extents, these physical characteristics are present in populations scattered throughout Asia and Near Oceania. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC378623/

But you are forgetting that what you think of as 'races' is not just a description of genetics, but also appearance, intelligence, religion, culture, 'spirit', culture, language, geographical location etc, etc.. It is no good just pointing out that you can group people according to any one of these things; of course you can, you would have to show that all the other things also coincide. But they don't! Group people by genetics and you find they have different coloured skins, group them by skin colour and they have divergent geographical locations, pick a particular geographical location and you find a variation in language...

The reason we have so many different indicators for 'race' is in order that we can make 'races' fit the preconceived ideas of the racist. If one criteria doesn't give them the 'races' they want, they use another. For example, Jews have been identified as anything from fellow white Europeans to sub-humans, depending on the prejudice of the individual racist. So how the racist chooses to group human beings into 'races' tells us nothing useful about human beings...but tells us plenty about the racist.

[Belinda]

Seleucus wrote:

I wonder if each breed has its own language and culture and religion?

I regret that I don't know very much social anthropology. I reckon that where there is a lot of patrilineality and patrilocality there will be culture transferred from generation to generation along the male lineage. Patrilocality may be especially interesting with regard to cultural practices which must of necessity follow the demands of the climate and terrain.

One particularly interesting theory about the metaphysical God is that this idea could arise only where there is already a culture in which the king is the head of the regime.

Earlier, you mentioned that you liked sufism. I gather that with sufism (and I may be quite mistaken) God is not metaphysical essence but is expression of feelings of awe and aesthetic elevation and so on. Also, aren't sufis distrusted by authoritarian religionists such as sunnis? If so, this would tie in with the theory about kingship and authority.

Seleucus wrote:

As far as inferiority goes, there seem to be inferior cultures, Gypsy is one, and African American is another. Cultures can get bogged down with bad habits.

If you mean societies with inferiority complexes there are such. Gypsies and African Americans were referred to. Like with the Stockholm syndrome peoples who have been enslaved might, in self defence,identify with the slavers, becoming accustomed to low status among better-off groups. America is bedevilled by slave consciousness.

Do you think that perhaps some Muslims, whose homelands have been exploited by Europeans, are as a result thin-skinned and determined not to give in to former exploiters ?

[davidm]

How genetics undermines "scientific" arguments for racism.

[davidm]

Are Indians filthy because they have not been taught to feel disgust at the sight of rot and rubbish, or is the psychological propensity, or lack there of, genetically controlled?

Indians are filthy? Do you mean Native Americans? Residents of the nation of India? In either case you are wrong on both counts. Where do you get your "ideas" from? From alt-right (i.e., Nazi) websites.

Funny thing, when the residents of Tenochtitlan met the Spanish they were amazed at how filthy the Spanish were and how badly they stank. The Spanish were in turn amazed by the city that they beheld, judging it far superior to anything in Europe.

[vegetariantaxidermy]

Are Indians filthy because they have not been taught to feel disgust at the sight of rot and rubbish, or is the psychological propensity, or lack there of, genetically controlled?

Indians are filthy? Do you mean Native Americans? Residents of the nation of India? In either case you are wrong on both counts. Where do you get your "ideas" from? From alt-right (i.e., Nazi) websites.

Funny thing, when the residents of Tenochtitlan met the Spanish they were amazed at how filthy the Spanish were and how badly they stank. The Spanish were in turn amazed by the city that they beheld, judging it far superior to anything in Europe.

And people like to think of Africans as always having been 'primitive villagers' when in fact they had many great cities and sophisticated civilisations all over the continent.

''We begin with Benin City. At the end of the 13th century, a European traveler encountered the great metropolis in West Africa (present Nigeria, Edo State), writing:

“The town seems to be very great. When you enter into it, you go into a great broad street, not paved, which seems to be seven or eight times broader than the Warmoes street in Amsterdam…The Kings palace is a collection of buildings which occupy as much space as the town of Harlem, and which is enclosed with walls. There are numerous apartments for the Prince`s ministers and fine galleries, most of which are as big as those on the Exchange at Amsterdam. They are supported by wooden pillars encased with copper, where their victories are depicted, and which are carefully kept very clean. The town is composed of thirty main streets, very straight and 120 feet wide, apart from an infinity of small intersecting streets. The houses are close to one another, arranged in good order. These people are in no way inferior to the Dutch as regards cleanliness; they wash and scrub their houses so well that they are polished and shining like a looking glass.” (Source: Walter Rodney, ‘How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, pg. 69)

The mediaeval Nigerian city of Benin was built to “a scale comparable with the Great Wall of China”. There was a vast system of defensive walling totalling 10,000 miles in all. Even before the full extent of the city walling had become apparent the Guinness Book of Records carried an entry in the 1974 edition that described the city as: “The largest earthworks in the world carried out prior to the mechanical era.” – Excerpt from “The Invisible Empire”, PD Lawton, Source-YouTube, uploader-dogons2k12 `African Historical Ruins`

“Benin art of the Middle Ages was of the highest quality. An official of the Berlin Museum für Völkerkunde once stated that: “These works from Benin are equal to the very finest examples of European casting technique. Benvenuto Cellini could not have cast them better, nor could anyone else before or after him . . . Technically, these bronzes represent the very highest possible achievement.”

Sadly, in 1897, Benin City was destroyed by British forces under Admiral Harry Rawson. The city was looted, blown up and burnt to the ground. A collection of the famous Benin Bronzes are now in the British Museum in London. Part of the 700 stolen bronzes by the British troops were sold back to Nigeria in 1972.''

[Seleucus]

Cherry picking. My intent was irony. 'En masse'. Why would you expect an indigenous people to instantly adapt to, and understand, a completely alien culture? That hardly makes them inferior. What would you do?

We've discussed this more than once so I assume you know my view is that culture is probably sufficient to explain such effects, no need to appeal to genetics. As far as inferiority goes, there seem to be inferior cultures, Gypsy is one, and African American is another. Cultures can get bogged down with bad habits.

What's your superior culture then? Perhaps people don't want you in their countries.

Yes, I've noticed that. The rise of nationalism has been happening since at least 2000 in India, it spread across the 3rd World, and only last arrived in the First World. Globally it is getting much much harder to get working visas and residency permits everywhere.

[Seleucus]

The 248,000 people who immigrated into the UK in 2016 were brought by conquest and slavery? Or do you mean Aristotle moved to the Macedonian court because he was conquered and enslaved? What, no he wasn't? It was "brain drain".

And the slaves?

Plenty do doubt. I hear as many as half of the people in Rome were slaves at one time. More than half the people in Mesopotamia during the Abbasid caliphate were African slaves leading into the Zanj Rebellion. I understand that you hate your own culture and your people and always want to denigrate it, but what is your point?

Oh? Remind me, what is the life expectancy of men in the UK, and remind me of the life expectancy of men in Indonesia? Remind me of the rate of typhoid? Remind me of the amount of rubbish in the streets and on the beaches...? Remind me of the perceived corruption index...? Remind me of the average traffic speed at rush hour in the capital...? Remind me of the state of the mass transport system in the capital city -- or if there is one at all...?

How about just reminding you what England was like a few generations back.

So? The industrial revolution happened, the Middle Ages happened. I understand that you hate your own culture and your people and always want to denigrate it, but what is your point?

Since race and culture are still pretty tight in 2017 it makes only a slight difference between the one and the other position.

Given the total of all non-white immigrants make up not even 14% of the UK I'm not exactly worried.

It could go either way. If current rates of immigration continue White countries like Canada and the United States will become authoritarian, low IQ, non-environmentalist, non-artistic, non-sporting, etc. High status culture tends to have a powerful pull, everyone ends up following the cultural nucleus, the Anglo Saxons being a prime example -- but there must be some point where immigrant masses drown the ethnic center.

This is a great question that would unfortunately involve too much personal information to answer. An interesting one because it touches a few topics that intersect with this discussion. To some degree we have a choice of what race and culture we desire to identify with. If my grandparents come from 4 different countries, which one do I consider my ethnic and racial identity and why? And secondly, the question of (deleuzoguattarian) territorialization, how do we come to call some place home? Even a place where we have never in our lives been too? Even a place where we would probably be considered utter foreigners? How does that happen? I think it's by coming to know the names of the birds and the plants, by coming to know the myths of the land and the people. Touch the earth and the soil and have it under our nails, drink the water, eat the produce of the land...

So bugger all to do with race then.

I expect race, religion, language and culture are each separable, I'm anti-Whorfian. There are some fuzzy zone and some outliers. But they tend to be cybernetic symbiotic entities.

[Seleucus]

The Andamanese look somewhat like African pygmies

You're right, they're not related to the pygmies; they're related to the Nigerians.

[Seleucus]

But you are forgetting that what you think of as 'races' is not just a description of genetics, but also appearance, intelligence, religion, culture, 'spirit', culture, language, geographical location etc, etc..

I'm not forgetting. I agree.

You can make your non-essentialist arguments for a lot of things, and sure it is true at a certain level, yet, we generally can speak of men and women, we can generally speak of able-bodied people, and straight people and children and adults. And it's okay to say, hey, "I'm an adult". "I'm a straight White male". That's morally okay to say that and to take an interest in the culture and identity that goes along with it.

It is no good just pointing out that you can group people according to any one of these things; of course you can, you would have to show that all the other things also coincide. But they don't! Group people by genetics and you find they have different coloured skins, group them by skin colour and they have divergent geographical locations, pick a particular geographical location and you find a variation in language...

No. No one is going to confuse Orientals with Whites. But, there is some overlap, like the Sami who live in Scandinavia but have slanty eyes and round faces.

[Seleucus]

Seleucus wrote:

I wonder if each breed has its own language and culture and religion?

I regret that I don't know very much social anthropology. I reckon that where there is a lot of patrilineality and patrilocality there will be culture transferred from generation to generation along the male lineage. Patrilocality may be especially interesting with regard to cultural practices which must of necessity follow the demands of the climate and terrain.

One particularly interesting theory about the metaphysical God is that this idea could arise only where there is already a culture in which the king is the head of the regime.

Are you talking about horses or humans here? Maybe both?

Earlier, you mentioned that you liked sufism. I gather that with sufism (and I may be quite mistaken) God is not metaphysical essence but is expression of feelings of awe and aesthetic elevation and so on.

Sure, it has something in common with Zen or with centering meditation in Christian traditions.

Also, aren't sufis distrusted by authoritarian religionists such as sunnis? If so, this would tie in with the theory about kingship and authority.

Looks that way, yes.

Seleucus wrote:

As far as inferiority goes, there seem to be inferior cultures, Gypsy is one, and African American is another. Cultures can get bogged down with bad habits.

If you mean societies with inferiority complexes there are such. Gypsies and African Americans were referred to. Like with the Stockholm syndrome peoples who have been enslaved might, in self defence,identify with the slavers, becoming accustomed to low status among better-off groups. America is bedevilled by slave consciousness.

Mostly what I'm thinking of is life expectancy, intelligence, health care, creativity, affluence, infant mortality, diet, drug abuse rates and so on. I agree there is a non-essentialist way of looking at cultures or languages and saying they are all equal, meanwhile, life as an African American is pretty rough for a lot of people with all the ignorance, and crime and drugs. It's inferior in a way that almost anyone would agree as far as human development goes.

Do you think that perhaps some Muslims, whose homelands have been exploited by Europeans, are as a result thin-skinned and determined not to give in to former exploiters ?

I think the notion of the exploited Muslim country is an invention of anti-Orientalists like Said back in the '70s and has been pretty much blown away in works like of Robert Irwin's Dangerous knowledge: Orientalism and its discontents or Zarnette's Defending the West; I notice Karsh's Islamic imperialism: A history gives pretty much the same take down of Said too.

[vegetariantaxidermy]

We've discussed this more than once so I assume you know my view is that culture is probably sufficient to explain such effects, no need to appeal to genetics. As far as inferiority goes, there seem to be inferior cultures, Gypsy is one, and African American is another. Cultures can get bogged down with bad habits.

What's your superior culture then? Perhaps people don't want you in their countries.

Yes, I've noticed that. The rise of nationalism has been happening since at least 2000 in India, it spread across the 3rd World, and only last arrived in the First World. Globally it is getting much much harder to get working visas and residency permits everywhere.

Really? And it has nothing to do with 'Nationalism'.

[Seleucus]

How genetics undermines "scientific" arguments for racism.

Salon? Shall I send you some links to the Daily Stormer and expect you'll take that as a source.

I read the article. I'm like that, I like to look at both sides of things. But, what's the point? I already agree there is a fuzziness about race. I also agree that you can tell Koreans and Japanese apart most of the time as the article says. And I agree there isn't a necessary relationship between race and culture, but there tends to be one, you don't find many Greek speaking, Orthodox Christian, pointy nosed, Japanese.

[Seleucus]

Are Indians filthy because they have not been taught to feel disgust at the sight of rot and rubbish, or is the psychological propensity, or lack there of, genetically controlled?

Indians are filthy? Do you mean Native Americans? Residents of the nation of India? In either case you are wrong on both counts. Where do you get your "ideas" from? From alt-right (i.e., Nazi) websites.

I'm talking about the ones in the country of India. Filthy. Filthy and smelly. There is filth everywhere in India, I know because I've spent a good bit of time there, and there is the same filth every where in Little India in Singapore too, an otherwise spotless city. (I've also been to equally filthy Indian Reserves in North America, but I'm talking about the Indians of India right now.) Indians easily agree, the only people who take offense at talking about this problem are White politically correct ideologues. Here's a nice TedTalk by an Indian contemplating: "Why is India so filthy?"

https://youtu.be/tf1VA5jqmRo

Funny thing, when the residents of Tenochtitlan met the Spanish they were amazed at how filthy the Spanish were and how badly they stank. The Spanish were in turn amazed by the city that they beheld, judging it far superior to anything in Europe.

So? I understand that you hate your culture and your people and want to denigrate them at every opportunity, but what is the point? Muslims during the Crusades also considered "Franks" filthy. The people of the Dutch Indies considered the Dutch filthy because they rarely bathed whereas the Indonesians habitually bathe three times a day. Like I've said, most likely this is all explainable by culture, but the jury will remain forever out because we know psychological traits are genetic, and there is never going to be a control-group experiment on whole societies.

[Seleucus]

Are Indians filthy because they have not been taught to feel disgust at the sight of rot and rubbish, or is the psychological propensity, or lack there of, genetically controlled?

Indians are filthy? Do you mean Native Americans? Residents of the nation of India? In either case you are wrong on both counts. Where do you get your "ideas" from? From alt-right (i.e., Nazi) websites.

Funny thing, when the residents of Tenochtitlan met the Spanish they were amazed at how filthy the Spanish were and how badly they stank. The Spanish were in turn amazed by the city that they beheld, judging it far superior to anything in Europe.

And people like to think of Africans as always having been 'primitive villagers' when in fact they had many great cities and sophisticated civilisations all over the continent.

''We begin with Benin City. At the end of the 13th century, a European traveler encountered the great metropolis in West Africa (present Nigeria, Edo State), writing:

“The town seems to be very great. When you enter into it, you go into a great broad street, not paved, which seems to be seven or eight times broader than the Warmoes street in Amsterdam…The Kings palace is a collection of buildings which occupy as much space as the town of Harlem, and which is enclosed with walls. There are numerous apartments for the Prince`s ministers and fine galleries, most of which are as big as those on the Exchange at Amsterdam. They are supported by wooden pillars encased with copper, where their victories are depicted, and which are carefully kept very clean. The town is composed of thirty main streets, very straight and 120 feet wide, apart from an infinity of small intersecting streets. The houses are close to one another, arranged in good order. These people are in no way inferior to the Dutch as regards cleanliness; they wash and scrub their houses so well that they are polished and shining like a looking glass.” (Source: Walter Rodney, ‘How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, pg. 69)

The mediaeval Nigerian city of Benin was built to “a scale comparable with the Great Wall of China”. There was a vast system of defensive walling totalling 10,000 miles in all. Even before the full extent of the city walling had become apparent the Guinness Book of Records carried an entry in the 1974 edition that described the city as: “The largest earthworks in the world carried out prior to the mechanical era.” – Excerpt from “The Invisible Empire”, PD Lawton, Source-YouTube, uploader-dogons2k12 `African Historical Ruins`

“Benin art of the Middle Ages was of the highest quality. An official of the Berlin Museum für Völkerkunde once stated that: “These works from Benin are equal to the very finest examples of European casting technique. Benvenuto Cellini could not have cast them better, nor could anyone else before or after him . . . Technically, these bronzes represent the very highest possible achievement.”

Sadly, in 1897, Benin City was destroyed by British forces under Admiral Harry Rawson. The city was looted, blown up and burnt to the ground. A collection of the famous Benin Bronzes are now in the British Museum in London. Part of the 700 stolen bronzes by the British troops were sold back to Nigeria in 1972.''

I am quite familiar with these sorts of attempts at revisionist history, and while there were some minor civilizations in Africa, and they are in deed fascinating and amazing, it doesn't change the fact that the apex of human civilization was largely in the West. Africa was cut-off by the Sahara from the trade of ideas back-and-forth around Eurasia, just like the Americas and Australia were also cut-off, leaving these places by and large in the stone age.

[Seleucus]

What's your superior culture then? Perhaps people don't want you in their countries.

Yes, I've noticed that. The rise of nationalism has been happening since at least 2000 in India, it spread across the 3rd World, and only last arrived in the First World. Globally it is getting much much harder to get working visas and residency permits everywhere.

Really? And it has nothing to do with 'Nationalism'.

It has everything to do with nationalism.