Jayman writes March 18, 2016: I will argue that the hatred directed towards Trump has little to do with Trump himself or his campaign. Rather, I suspect that this is more about what a Trump presidency represents: the end of our politically correct society.
Why do people like me have to write anonymous blogs and columns on the internet when talking about the obvious reality of human biological differences (especially biological group differences)? Why do researchers face the risk of falling into The Bermuda Triangle of Science, as behavioral geneticist Brian Boutwell recently put it?
The academy, in general, is a wonderful place to work, but not everyone plays nice. Veer too far from carefully charted courses and someone may slip quietly up behind you and slide a cold piece of steel in between the ribs of your budding research career.
They’ll do this believing that they are serving public interest by snuffing out dangerous research agendas, but that won’t make any difference to you. It’ll be your reputation that will suffer grievous injury. What in the world might elicit such harsh rebuke from a community of otherwise broadminded, free speech spouting scholars? What is so verboten that it constitutes academia’s Bermuda Triangle, a place where careers disappear more often than ships in the actual Bermuda Triangle? In one word, it’s race.
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[R]ace represents academia’s true Bermuda Triangle. Perhaps never has the topic of genetic ancestry been so important, yet despite its relevance, bright scholars continue to stay away from it in droves … It will not matter how noble you think your motives are, if you factor in race as a variable, your actions are subject to impeachment, and your reputation may be sacrificed as a burnt offering to our new religion.
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Linda Gottfredson is a brilliant, productive, and innovative scholar. Dr. Gottfredson, however, found herself in the Bermuda Triangle some years back
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crossing the boundaries of the Triangle (even if only to defend a colleague) can be frightening. Angry invectives hurled in your direction will come so fast, and so fierce, it will likely leave your head spinning, as Gottfredson illustrates (p.276):
News coverage was often lurid. The UD African-American Coalition argued that my work was not just offensive, but dangerous. My ‘‘so-called research” and the social policies I ‘‘was likely to propose” were ‘‘liable to threaten the very survival of African-Americans” (Tarver, 1990, p. 6A).
Within the Bermuda Triangle, you see, it is a free for all when it comes to accusations and motive indictment. There is no suitable defense, trying to mount in fact one will only fan the flames.
Such facts are effectively embargoed in our society, and anyone who breaks this taboo can face serious social consequences.
As John McWhorter put it in his piece Antiracism, Our Flawed New Religion:
One hearkens to one’s preacher to keep telling the truth—and also to make sure we hear it often, since many of its tenets are easy to drift away from, which leads us to the next evidence that Antiracism is now a religion. It is inherent to a religion that one is to accept certain suspensions of disbelief. Certain questions are not to be asked, or if asked, only politely—and the answer one gets, despite being somewhat half-cocked, is to be accepted as doing the job.
“Why is the Bible so self-contradictory?” Well, God works in mysterious ways—what’s key is that you believe. “Why does God allows such terrible things to happen?” Well, because we have free will … and it’s complicated but really, just have faith.
It stops there: beyond this first round, one is to classify the issues as uniquely “complicated.” They are “deep,” one says, looking off into the air for a sec in a reflective mode, implying that thinking about this stuff just always leads to more questions, in an infinitely questing Talmudic exploration one cannot expect to yield an actual conclusion.
Antiracism requires much of the same standpoint. For example, one is not to ask “Why are black people so upset about one white cop killing a black man when black men are at much more danger of being killed by one another?” Or, one might ask this, very politely—upon which the answers are flabby but further questions are unwelcome. A common answer is that black communities do protest black-on-black violence —but anyone knows that the outrage against white cops is much, much vaster.
Why? Is the answer “deep,” perhaps? Charles Blow, at least deigning to take the issue by the horns, answers that the black men are killing one another within a racist “structure.” That doesn’t explain why black activists consider the white cop a more appalling threat to a black man than various black men in his own neighborhood. But to push the point means you just don’t “get” it (you haven’t opened your heart to Jesus, perhaps?)
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The Antiracism religion, then, has clergy, creed, and also even a conception of Original Sin. Note the current idea that the enlightened white person is to, I assume regularly (ritually?), “acknowledge” that they possess White Privilege.
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The call for people to soberly “acknowledge” their White Privilege as a self-standing, totemic act is based on the same justification as acknowledging one’s fundamental sinfulness is as a Christian. One is born marked by original sin; to be white is to be born with the stain of unearned privilege.
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Antiracism parallels religion also in a proselytizing impulse. Key to being an Antiracist is a sense that there is always a flock of unconverted heathen “out there,” as it is often put about the whites who were so widely feared as possibly keeping Barack Obama from being elected (twice). One is blessed with, as it were, the Good News in being someone who “gets it,” complete with the Acknowledging.
Finally, Antiracism is all about a Judgment Day, in a sense equally mesmerizing and mythical. Antiracist scripture includes a ritual reference to, as it were, the Great Day when America “owns up to” or “comes to terms with” structural racism—note that “acknowledge” is a term just as appropriate—and finally, well, fixes it somehow.
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Yet Antiracism as religion has its downsides. It encourages an idea that racism in its various guises must be behind anything bad for black people, which is massively oversimplified in 2015.
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The fact is that Antiracism, as a religion, pollutes our race dialogue as much as any lack of understanding by white people of their Privilege. For example, the good Antiracist supports black claims that standardized tests are “racist” in that black people don’t do as well on them as other students. But Antiracism also encourages us to ask why, oh why black people are suspected of being less intelligent than others—despite this take on the tests, and aspiring firefighters and even teachers making news with similar claims that tough tests are “racist.” Now, to say that if black people can’t be expected to take tests then they must not be as smart is, under Antiracism, blasphemous—one is not to ask too many questions.
Here’s a video of McWhorter discussing this for those who prefer:
Of course, I’ll go a step further than McWhorter and say NW European-derived society isn’t today just antiracist; it’s anti-sexist/anti-misogynist, anti-homophboic, and anti-transphobic as well. In the blanket terms, today’s Western society is politically correct. Sinners against these doctrines face serious consequences, as James Watson, Larry Summers, Satoshi Kanazawa, Jason Richwine, and many others exemplify.
As I said, the fundamental thread is to deny biological group differences, particularly those that are inherited (the key exceptions being the doctrine that homosexuality is 100% genetic and inborn, despite the fact that it is neither of those things – and the Althouse rule for sex differences). There is a wall against biology in Northwestern European societies (that is also fervently embraced by many Ashkenazi Jews).
Is this true? Noticed what may be a true observation: many social scientists use "deterministic" & "reductionist" to mean "biological".
— Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) February 4, 2015
Hence, we see the hatred and derision directed towards Donald Trump. In the modern Western religion of antiracism/political correctness, Trump and his potential ascent to the White House represents the possible end of our politically correct society. Indeed, Trump isn’t just a divisive presidential candidate; to adherents of antiracism/political correctness, Trump is the Antichrist.
To merely speak openly about the possibility of any inherited biological group difference, no matter how limited, or small, can lead to discussion of other, possibly larger differences. This opens the door to a Pandora’s box of inherited biological group differences. Perhaps it will turn out that there are “winner” and “loser” groups in today’s modern world. Perhaps the reason the world looks like it does today…
… is because of those differences.
Worse still, this would mean admitting failure in the great hope – the hope that one day humanity can be perfected and poverty, war, prejudice, etc. can be eliminated. Acknowledging inherited biological group differences – that is, human biodiversity, means that the idyllic world of the Star Trek franchise will never come to pass no matter how much social “progress” occurs.
Even among those who aren’t necessarily so Pollyanna about the reality of human group differences, many still wish to suppress knowledge of their existence for another reason: because they believe it is what is holding our multiracial society together. I have mentioned something similar before (see hbd fallout | hbd chick):
“Back when groups differences weren’t so taboo in Western society, and one could talk about them openly, society was *also* more racist (this was pre-Civil Rights here in America). It is possible that in order for society to be aware of the reality of HBD, it must be actually be *racist*.
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“Think of all the simmering resentment in Whites that are the victims of these crimes (as a Black man, I wouldn’t talk to this soldier’s family about now). And on top of that, imagine all the Whites that are not necessarily so politically correct about race. How would they react? (Here’s an example: Far-right extremists in eastern Germany quietly building a town for neo-Nazis.)
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Can you have a multiracial society in one that is honest about group differences? … Will people *really* run with the understanding that differences *on average* don’t apply to every last individual, or will group solidarity rule the day? How will intelligent and completely inoffensive Blacks, for example, be treated by Whites then? The example of Chechens challenges the notion of treating people as individuals, because arguably they are so tribal and violent on average that even a modest number of them can cause problems (there are only 200 in America). But if they pose a problem in that way, what about other groups?
I still don’t know the answer to these questions. I fully admit that a society that openly acknowledges group differences may in fact also be a racist one. The reason I think this is not so much because of the way I think most people will behave. I think most Westerners can take this knowledge in stride. However, there are elements that won’t. Many of Trump’s supporters are indeed bona fide racists. There is no social policy or prescription that necessarily follows from knowledge of inherited group differences. But it is the very nature of people determines how they will react. Some groups want to deride/persecute/destroy other groups they feel are tainted or inferior. Nazism didn’t come out of a vacuum, and it too is a result of the nature of the people who embraced it. (Indeed persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany was most intense in areas that had a long history of killing Jews – see Persecution Perpetuated: The Medieval Origins of Anti-Semitic Violence in Nazi Germany, Voigtländer & Voth 2010.) The key thing here is that it was not facts about racial differences themselves that led to the behavior of the Nazis or Cavalier-descended White American Southerners. It was their own traits, particularly their attitudes towards other groups. In fact, if you spend enough time reading the stuff put out by White Nationalists (as I unfortunately can’t avoid all that much in my line of work) you will find that many of their beliefs about race and biology are factually inaccurate, and their beliefs are twisted from the reality to suit their agendas (see The Problem with HBD, the Dark Enlightenment, Neoreaction, Alt-Rightism, and All That Jazz and “Ethnic Genetic Interests” Do Not Exist (Neither Does Group Selection)). The reality however is that these people don’t need much justification to pursue their aims – they want to act against other groups anyway. It is their nature.
Quite likely racists, neo-Nazis and the like will be more vocal in the event of a Trump victory (or even a Trump defeat). There is nothing saying that they will rule the day, however. That is not a given, and I suspect, broadly, that it’s not likely. Nonetheless, the Antiracist/P.C. crowd view acknowledging inherited biological differences as opening a floodgate that could usher in practices such as coercive eugenics (i.e., forced sterilizations – see also Razib Khan: Eugenics: the problem is coercion) or Jim Crow policies, or worse. That is a big part of why reasonable policies such as limiting immigration or restricting entry from certain groups (like Muslims) are off the table. To the Antiracist crowd, the matter of group differences is binary: we either are acknowledging them at all or we’re not.
Restricting certain groups (or any immigration) moves us from being a universalist society – where all people (and peoples) are treated equally, to a particularist one, where people are treated differently according to their inherent qualities. That’s a line they don’t want us to cross, for the aforementioned reasons.
Yet I will argue that this rebuke of biology, despite whatever semi-rational basis it might have, is in reality just another group attribute. Just like the Nazis embraced biology and extreme particularism, certain NW Europeans and Ashkenazi Jews have an inherent discomfort with biology – supremely ironically, because of their biology.
Easy examples of this:
Nature interventions vs nurture interventions pic.twitter.com/4j9GIr9MR8
— Diana S. Fleischman (@sentientist) March 9, 2016
Richard Dawkins on genetic determinism (from The Extended Phenotype) https://t.co/mpJxvARe3S @RichardDawkins pic.twitter.com/MtehTWj9WT
— SteveStewartWilliams (@SteveStuWill) March 8, 2016
These individuals regard biological bases to behavior as being wrong, or if not wrong, then dangerous or evil and they hate and/or fear them. But they are perfectly happy with “environmental” sources to human differences, and changes brought about with such.
But this fear reveals a deep logical inconsistency. While it’s true that belief in a biological basis to human differences has been involved in many societal evils, such as Jim Crow, forced sterilizations, and Nazism, the belief that there are is no biological basis to human behavior – the belief that we are blank slates – has led to great many more atrocities. While the off chance that an HBD-aware society might lead to discrimination and Nazism may exist, runaway blank slatism isn’t much better. You don’t hear much discussion of this guy:
Runaway blank slatism has arguably killed many times more people that the Nazis ever did.
But those who rail against biology barely acknowledge this. Part of the reason is that many in the Western Left are sympathetic to communism and its ideals. Some even believe that communism can still work if “properly implemented”.
Even the softer authoritarianism sweeping the West (e.g, in Sweden, Germany, and Britain) is too uncomfortable for my taste. It’s never good when society goes too far towards either extreme.
At the end to the day however, there is a reality regardless of what elites want us to think. Suppressing science only works so well because truths about the world will keep getting rediscovered. Modern technology is pushing ahead, and the facts continue to pour in. There is however a backlash in the West. The ascent of Donald Trump is the American manifestation of this, as is the rise of many nationalist candidates and parties in NW European countries. This could potentially be a good thing, because one of the most pressing problems facing Northwestern European-derived societies is unrelenting migration into them.
Trump is the only candidate who is taking a position against continued mass immigration, which must be halted soon for the good of both Western societies and ultimately the migrants themselves.
COMMENTS:
* People hate Trump because the political class and the corporate media tell them to. The political class and the corporate media tell the people to hate Trump because their owners, the donor class, tells them too. The donor class does not hate Trump. They just find him unacceptable because they don’t own him.
Similarly, the SJW’s hold the stupid political beliefs they hold because the donor class owns academia. HBD is just collateral damage.
* Our theocracy doesn’t have a god, but it has saints (MLK, FDR & Lincoln) and it has its Satan: Hitler and his National Socialists. Cultists inevitably wheel out their Satan whenever it’s time to hold a witch-hunt.
The cult (this theocracy is a cult from every angle) treats thoughtcrime as blasphemy; anyone who holds racist views should be fired from his job and presumably hounded out of polite society, no?
You seem to say that in the name of academic honesty and truth, issues of race should be able to be discussed, right? Where do you then draw the line? It’s okay to discuss them but if anyone draws a probability-based conclusion (e.g., being a little more nervous when there’s a group of black males behind you on a dark city street than if the group was a few Chinese males), is that racist? Should someone be fired for uttering such thoughtcrime?
I suggest to you that the line is where political power directed at harming people begins. Given that we currently live in a polity where political power tilts radically in favor of Non Asian Minorities, at the expense of everyone not in that group, a whole lot of people would scream and riot and burn if the scales were simply balanced more evenly.
That, today, is blasphemy. It is also why the level of conflict is going to rise dramatically, especially when this 50 year diversion into monetary, economic and financial Fairy Tales finally comes to an end.
I don’t wish to destroy anyone. I do, however, wish to stop being harnessed to a cart in which others choose to ride. As things stand, those who want to ride are making it clear that the only way to stop them from harnessing me is to eliminate them. For now, my choice is to simply stop pulling. I can and have radically reduced my taxable activities, but my guess is that the next phase in this farce is cannibal democracy, where income AND property are taxed heavily. When that comes around, do you really think those harnessed to the cart will sit still?
Should they?
* The framework with which one views these things, indeed, is crucial. The data say that something is so, or probably so. As a Christian (Eastern Orthodox), I do not hate any “people group” as such, because to do that is to hate God. Nor can I challenge His apportioning different talents to different people, whether in between the groups, or individual variances within groups. For an atheist, “anything is possible!” as Dostoyevsky wrote. Since atheism and agnosticism is the framework of most Western intellectuals, Left and Right, I can understand their concern for the consequences of the truth being known. But the truth remains the truth, whether people want to admit it or not.
* [Friend: “If the empirical world is all there is, as the elites in the west now believe or pretend to believe, then it’s not clear what distinguishes the leftists and liberals from Nazis, except a bunch of very dubious beliefs about the equal distribution of talents and abilities. They’d say the difference is that they believe in ‘equal moral status’ of all humans, or something like that, but that belief is pretty fragile if ‘moral status’ is supposed to have no basis in the actual characteristics of those who have or, instead, ‘moral status’ is supposed to be based on characteristics that are equally distributed. So they have to suppress obvious truths about race and sex and other things because _they’d_ be drawn to racism and sexism and other things if they allowed themselves to think about it too much.”]
* While some Trump supporters probably are genuine far-righters, it’s probably better for minorities that the US has a populist/nationalist revolt now, rather than later. The Anglosphere last had a big populist revolt in the period from about 1880-1920 which resulted in a shift away from mass immigration and poor financial regulation and the birth of a basic social welfare system. This outbreak of democratic nationalism allowed the Anglosphere to avoid the totalitarian extremes of fascism and communism later down the track. Many European countries weren’t so lucky, and Germany provides a stark example of how a right liberal country can lurch into extreme totalitarianism when it ignores rising economic inequality and ethnic resentment (I classify the US as right-liberal country with left-liberal progressives controlling certain fields such as education and media discourse on social issues).
* Expect sanity by insane and/or stupid people is the true insanity that rational people commit all the time. Do yourself [a favor] and do not expect that by miracle those telletubies on the left will change their doctrination, it’s a train without control.
Hbd and white nationalists (or other outsider groups) STILL expect sanity and wisdom by politics.
* One thing that I’ve found with white nationalists is that they only like to talk about HBD as it applies to blacks or Arabs or whatever. It is when you apply HBD to white people themselves, to explain for example that the reason why the white working and lower middle class is faring so poorly in the new, globalized economy is not just due to f-ed up trade policies, but also and largely because of the relatively low (i.e. sub-110) IQs of these whites who have lost out, that they become unmitigated blank-slatists, and then proceed to blame everything on the Jews. You try to tell them that it isn’t the fault of the Jews that some Indian peasant took their job, but that the real fault lies with them, who were making a living doing such a low-skill job that any low-IQ Indian peasant can do just as well and at a much lower cost, and they end the discussion by calling you an ‘anti-white”.
It is my experience talking with white nationalists that makes me think that the overall effects of HBD knowledge on society won’t be so bad, and won’t result in a recrudescence of a virulent and violent racism. People are vain, but HBD makes everyone look bad, though admittedly some more than others, so they, like the white nationalists I mentioned above, will refuse to accept it. And the people that HBD would seem to make the look the best (i.e. high-IQ people with elite educations and jobs), by and large, are a disproportionately Jewish but still fairly multi-racial set, and they have other priorities besides trying to stoke racism. The elimination of PC will likely lead to increased academic freedom and, possibly, smarter policy-making, but that’s pretty much it. A certain casual racism may make a come back too–for example, white people will probably feel more comfortable using the word ‘nigger’ again–but even this isn’t guaranteed in my opinion.
* Anatoly Karlin: …acceptance of biological and evopsych amongst Anglo-Saxon researchers is the highest in the world (though it is not very high in general).
I think an important element here is that since to the “Cathedral” and SJWs there is nothing separating race realism from racism – in fact, if anything, race realists are the more despicable and cowardly for disingenuously trying to conceal their racism (according to the Narrative) – there are very few social costs to transitioning from race realism to bona fide racism. Since you’ll be hated anyway, while at least if you openly join the fascists you’ll have your own “tribe” at your back.
I have noticed even in my own circle of acquaintances that many of them who have been accepting or at least open towards HBD realities – including Jews, liberals, and economic leftists – have been growing more overt in their sympathy for the Alt Right, chanculture, “verboten” concepts that poke fun at the power structure like White Student Unions, etc.
* Actually, the problem in the discourse isn’t even about biology or genetics. It’s about acknowledging group differences in intelligence and other personality traits, period.
It doesn’t really matter how much of those group differences is genetic (unless it were 100%, which no one’s claiming). What matters is that the differences exist, that they’re a major cause of social inequalities that people care about, and that, so far, the differences are intractable. And that you can’t say that without getting ostracized.
Back in the 1970s, leftist, egalitarian social scientists used to be able to say that blacks underperformed compared to whites because blacks were less intelligent than whites due to racism. (They usually didn’t use the word “intelligence” when talking about the difference, but they used euphemisms like “learning ability.”) Nowadays if you say, “Blacks are less intelligent than whites due to slavery/redlining/racism/whatever”—forget about biology—you’ll be tarred and feathered.
So the problem isn’t being forbidden to talk about biological differences. The problem is being forbidden to talk about group differences at all.
A corollary is that “race realists” should lay off the biology talk in the context of social “problems.” That includes both the “race is biologically real” red herring and the “group differences are genetically influenced” one. Not only because those propositions are logically irrelevant to social questions, but because it’s rhetorically extremely stupid to raise them: It focuses attention on a premise that your audience doesn’t accept, when that premise is irrelevant anyway.
* Restricting certain groups (or any immigration) moves us from being a universalist society – where all people (and peoples) are treated equally, to a particularist one, where people are treated differently according to their inherent qualities.
* We know how to increase the IQ of a population. We know how to decrease the violence that a population exhibits.
It’s called truncation selection applied over a relatively long period of time (large number of generations).
We execute those who exhibit violent tendencies before they can reproduce and sterilize those of low intelligence before they can reproduce.
Each population has a set of characteristics that can be modified, so lets not take cheap shots at those on the left size of the distribution among one population when it is the mean that is more interesting to discuss.
* What does the term racist even mean? Is it simply a cudgel to beat other people around the head
If a person says:
1. Black Africans, on average, have lower IQs than whites and tend to be more violent than whites.
2. African Americans have only, on average 18% white admixture and also have IQs on average one SD lower than whites and tend to be more violent, on average, than whites.
3. East Asians seem to have slightly higher IQs, on average, than whites (about 1/3SD) and are less violent, on average, than whites
is that person racist?
Are they only racist if they use words that blacks use that whites are not allowed to use?
* I think that the insane amount of PC/SJW nonsense that certain sectors of society (mostly gov’t, media, education, but others too) have pushed the pendulum so far one way that now there is all this built-up energy to swing the pendulum the other way. When it swings the other way, I hope that things like HBD understanding will help to make better policies that would better help all Americans. I’m just afraid that many people are sick of PC culture, but don’t have the knowledge basis to turn the reaction against it in a positive direction.
I don’t want to see any American hurt or have their rights taken away. I also don’t want to see the USA turn into a colder version of Brazil. It seems that getting control of immigration has to be the top priority. If things continue the way they have been going, I think that many of the rights that I care about will find themselves under even greater attack. Ultimately, what the Constitution actually says is ignored by as much as those in power can get away with it. The more mixed up the demographics within the USA become, the less people will really care about ‘rights’ and it just becomes about getting into power to give out ethnic sectarian favors. I think we are already seeing that to a degree.
I don’t like Trump’s views on the National Security State, and I disagree with him on a number of other things, but I think he *may* be the only one who is willing to do what it takes to get control of immigration. Once the wall built, with all the money spent on it, it will be hard for whomever follows Trump as President to justify taking it down. He also says he will protect the 2nd Amendment, so that is good, too. I don’t even own a gun, but I understand why it is important for the people to be able to arm themselves. I think I should get one before this summer, though. It seems things may be getting even crazier.
* A little perspective: There were some 4,000 lynchings in the US (some whites). Taking the Soviet death toll to be c. 30,000,000 over 70 years for the sake of argument, I figure them to have managed over that period a murder rate of 1,000 a day. (Greater if I were to use the period 1917-55.)
Thus, the Soviets blew through the entire death toll in the US in four days.
In the grand scheme of things, the fantastically low toll for America shows that our civilization did very well.
This anti-racism/PC religion now threatens to fatally undermine that civilization and replace it with, not blank-slatism, but virulent, ignorant chaos.
* Groupness exists. Humans are good at organizing into teams. The precise teams in question are fungible, but outwards signs of commonality (common customs, language, belief) facilitates that (not necessarily relatedness). If ethnic nepotism existed, we wouldn’t see the intraethnic conflict we do and people would be presumably closer to 2nd, 3rd, and 4th cousins than they actually are.
