' Treat people as individuals, and stop keeping score by race.'
Agreed that this is the course to take on a daily basis and in personal dealings with others. I think the case for 'race realism' comes when considering policy alternatives, to address matters at an aggregate level. Without an accurate account of how groups differ, you are likely to reach erroneous conclusions when disparities exist. I believe this is the argument Charles Murray makes in Facing Reality, and I found it convincing.
As always, thank you for the sensible and stimulating discussion.
This is what I was going to comment if someone else hadn't, so I'm glad that someone thought to make this relatively obvious point. Thinking back to Cofnas, the argument is that race realism has the potential to supplant more sociological explanations as the primary mechanism by which racial disparities persist in America. Seeing as wokeness basically takes on faith that there is some sociological explanation for the disparities we've been trying to ameliorate, giving an alternative viable explanation could be valuable in turning people away from woke. And if race realism ends up being true, that tells us that applications of more intense social/disciplinary pressure may be necessary to rectify the issues that, up to now, have lacked for effective interventions because of racism accusations. On the bright side, this shows that race realism doesn't require defeatism and instead suggests that more "fatherly" approaches are better suited to this issue, as opposed to the more "motherly" ones proffered by the left.
I understand why any review of Sailers book would focus on his top hits (black/white, 2003 Iraq War).
Oddly missing is his insanely early prediction about transgenderism as the next hot thing immediately after gay marriage passed when nobody knew what it was. I feel like Sailers former marketing chops gives him a very good instinct for what the next Current Thing the NYTimes set is going to glom onto.
Still, for someone really familiar with this stuff, does the book have enough of the things outside of this mold. His voluminous information on Golf Courses for instance?
If I recall correctly, there are two decent sized essays on golf courses. One on Jewish versus Christian golf clubs. And then one more I feel though I can't quite recall.
If you are already familiar with Sailer, *Noticing* probably isn't the most efficient way to read more of him. You can find all of the essays online anyways. I bought it out of support more than anything else.
I bought several. If you think inflation is high for the prices of whatever you like to buy, take a look at what happened to international postage even for a book weighing fewer than two pounds. I hadn't mailed a package overseas in a while, but the rates have apparently doubled in just a few years.
You can get domestic shipping for free from Passage Press by entering the promo code STANCIL or WILSON.
However, international shipping is more expensive. Amazon can perhaps ship the paperback cheaper overseas, and Amazon Kindle is of course instantly download at no shipping expense.
I had to ship one myself because you autographed it, and thank you for doing so. Yes, I am familiar with the mail rates treaty and so understand the reasons. Still, it seems bizarre that I can order something of similar size and weight on Aliexpress that comes to my mailbox all the way from China for trivial postage, while it costs over twenty times as much for me to mail your book just over the border of a neighboring country. Oh well, #WorthIt.
"Oddly missing is his insanely early prediction about transgenderism as the next hot thing immediately after gay marriage passed when nobody knew what it was."
I was two years ahead of Sailer (2011 vs 2013). Every right-winger I knew thought this prediction was nuts.
“As far as I know, there is no ‘masculinity’ scale on which psychologists measure men.”
Patricia Sexton, an urban sociologist, did exactly this in the late-60s. Her book, the feminized male (https://www.amazon.com/Feminized-Male-Patricia-Cayo-SEXTON/dp/B000HTJVM2 ) is based on her study of about 1,000 9th grade boys in an urban school district and relationships between academic success and masculinity. Interestingly, she also complains about the development of good measures of masculinity. Her solution was to have coaches and counselors in the school evaluate random selections of boys based on perceptions of assertiveness, fearfulness, willingness to be pushed around by other boys, etc. She also says she found and used a masculinity scale from the California Psychological Inventory but I haven’t tried to find it. Here masculinity was measured based on the students response to various questions about their feelings toward aggression, propriety, vocation, and interests.
It was an interesting study. You’re right that it would be more difficult to do today.
For 30 years, I've found that the percentage of celebrity men in a field who died of AIDS during the 1980-1990s offers a pretty good acid test of the masculinity of the field.
For example, world famous dancers who died of AIDS include ballet artists Baryshnikov, Joffrey, Ailey, and Michael Bennett (creator of "A Chorus Line").
Fashion designers also tended to have high fatality rates due to AIDS (e.g., Perry Ellis).
Among male professional athletes, the highest AIDS toll was likely in figure skating, where both Olympic men's gold medalists in the 1970s died.
The number of celebrities recognizable to the male half of the general public in the major team sports are much higher than in these fields. Most big sports suffered one or two deaths from AIDS, a much lower percentage.
Interestingly, golf, which doesn't seem all that necessarily masculine at first glance, had no AIDS deaths. Upon further research, I discovered that gay men, in contrast to lesbian women, are remarkably uninterested in golf: in many years of keeping an eye out, the only gay celebrity I've noticed who was a dedicated golfer was singer Johnny Mathis.
The obvious retort to "treat people as individuals" is that many individuals want to be treated as groups and therefore have the advantage over scattered persons such as you (and me). Race realism doesn't preclude or undermine individualism any more than does sex-realism or any other so-called, empirically-based -ism. Ignoring the problem won't make it go away. This has massive policy implications; and, to paraphrase John Derbyshire, not having a policy is a policy.
"We have these crude classifications that have no scientific basis. But using your folk understanding of race, pick one of these classifications to describe yourself."
Racial groupings match genetic profiles, Stanford [School of Medicine] study finds
The study...consist[ed] of 3,636 people who all identified themselves as either white, African-American, East Asian or Hispanic. Of these, only five individuals had DNA that matched an ethnic group different than the box they checked at the beginning of the study...
For each person in the study, the researchers examined 326 DNA regions that tend to vary between people... Without knowing how the participants had identified themselves, Risch and his team ran the results through a computer program that grouped individuals according to patterns of the 326 signposts. This analysis could have resulted in any number of different clusters, but only four clear groups turned up. And in each case the individuals within those clusters all fell within the same self-identified racial group.
"This shows that people's self-identified race/ethnicity is a nearly perfect indicator of their genetic background," [UCSF professor Neil] Risch said.
I don't understand the conventional trope of dismissing the racial frameworks devised by Enlightenment science titans Linnaeus and Blumenbach as "folk" understandings. They seem more like formidable theories of high science at its most reductionist.
To frame this discussion in terms of Race Realism vs Race Blindness is to sidestep the most important aspect of it. Namely that both - Race Realism and Race Blindness - are up against a vast intelligentsia hegemony that affords no recognition to either. Race Fetishism is the dominant strain in modern Western political philosophy.
Arnold’s/Coleman’s preference for race blindness is what we should strive for politically. But currently, the Left is obsessed with race and concludes all disparities are due to bias and require reverse discrimination. I think it will be hard to get to race blind policy without some race realism.
When Arnold expresses a preference for this norm I usually respond that I share the preference but that for a norm that puts expression about certain empirical truths about the human condition into the set of taboos requires a general Omerta as a social peace treaty, and that if any significant faction breaches the peace by pressing the matter and spreading false claims and provocative accusations contradicting those truths at the heart of a power play against their political opponents, then there is no other way for those opponents to defend themselves against this defamatory aggression of epistemic prosecution than to also break the silence and pierce the veil of polite blindness regarding the underlying subject matter.
The trouble is that the progressives have a strategic advantage in this regard in the manner of heads I win, tails you lose. It's analogous to the way Hamas can initiate aggression against Israel. If Israel doesn't defend itself, it just takes the hit. If Israel defends itself, i.e. being "Hamas Realist", it is accused of being evil, and using self defense as a mere false cover story for genocidal intentions it has had all along. (Or something like that, Hamas and its leftist allies are not good at keeping the story straight, don't seem to be even trying to anymore, and who can blame them since it doesn't make any difference to who anybody supports.)
This and the perverse and morally obscene reaction from its international allies provides a strong incentive for Hamas to attack, and so it does. Expressing a preference for colorblind norms is like expressing a preference for peace over war. Of course peace is better than war. But, you know, if you aren't willing to go to war after being attacked, you are certainly going to keep getting attacked until you're toast.
An extended family can agree to not speak and especially never let the children know about a recently deceased mother's bad opioid addiction. But if one of her sisters starts accusing her widower husband of her murder and sues him for wrongful death in a civil proceeding, he is going to have to spill the beans in court, even if he thinks it would be best to remain silent and would have preferred to have done so.
“As far as I know, there is no ‘masculinity’ scale on which psychologists measure men.”
Testosterone levels are certainly one factor in getting towards that definition. For example, we know that elite athletes have testosterone levels that are 2x that of non elite athletes.
I would be wary of the differences being a large determinative factor though considering that culture can trump biology:
"If all this is accurate, it shows the way that our physiological reactions are conditioned by moral culture. Which shouldn’t be surprising — other visceral reactions, like what foods you find gross, are also shaped by culture. Still, I find it fascinating to think that Southerners really feel insults more than Northerners."
"Roid rage" is an expression for a reason - high male hormone levels of whatever origin cause people - especially men - to become a lot more aggressive, violent, and impulsive, with hair-trigger temper and short fuses. Men obviously commit a lot more violent crime than women, and high-T young men commit a lot more violent crime than other men. Economics Imperialism must pay its tribute to Biology.
I was also reminded of the book *T* by Carole Hooven.
***
As the length of day shortens toward the end of summer and fall approaches again, the stags’ testicles begin to emerge from their slumber. They grow in size and triple in weight, and ramp up T production to maximum levels...Testosterone levels heading into the rut are vastly higher than they need to be to support sperm production, which will continue as usual even when T levels are relatively low. So what’s all that “extra” T for? It’s not about sex, it’s about war. All that T helps to make the males more intimidating and better fighters.
…
To determine the role of T in aggressive behavior of the red deer, researchers castrated three Rum stags at different times of the year, in and out of the breeding season. Deprived of testosterone, their antlers were soon cast. New antlers began to grow, but they were malformed, lacked branching, and remained covered with velvet when it would have normally been shed. Their neck muscles remained in their smaller, summer condition, and the shaggy mane around it failed to grow in at the usual time prior to the rut. When the intact stags shed their velvet and came into “hard horn,” the castrated stags with their soft small horns couldn’t compete even if they had wanted to. Their aggression, and status, plummeted. But they did not seem to mind. The once sexually potent scents from estrous hinds failed to excite them, and the castrated stags didn’t even bother to roar or visit their usual rutting areas.
…
Red deer are a compelling example of T’s effects in male animals partly because they are seasonal breeders. In concert with seasonal fluctuations in the social and physical environment, T’s highs and lows induce clearly observable and dramatic changes, transitioning stags from spermless, weaponless, relatively peaceful animals to highly sexed, aggressive, and dangerous ones. But red deer share many of the sexual asymmetries that are common across mammals—most relevantly, the males are able to produce offspring at a faster rate than females.
Isn't it still the case that we're not allowed to study male prisoners to see if there's a link between being XYY ("supermales") and being imprisoned for violent crimes?
"In “It’s all relative,” published in 2002, he defines race this way:
"'A racial group is an extended family that is inbred to some degree.
"All right. That is the definition of something, and you could probably make it scientific.
"My problem is that I do not know how to connect the dots between that definition and the statistics about race in America. Those are based on the government’s definition, which is pretty much “We have these crude classifications that have no scientific basis. But using your folk understanding of race, pick one of these classifications to describe yourself.”"
I shared this assumption back around 2000, when I set out to write a series of articles proving that the federal government's racial/ethnic categories were scientifically ridiculous and led to useless data. But as I studied the question in depth, I came to the opposite conclusion that ... eh ... in the big picture of things, they are good enough for government work.
After all, the logical implication of the popular argument that self-identification is a very sloppy way to collect racial statistics is that if we had a more scientific way, such as analyzing ancestry by DNA, then the racial effects we see even in the hazy federal data would be even more clear-cut in the scientific data.
And indeed, two decades later, we now have several massive databases, such as the 10,000 strong Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development sample, for which we know the genetic ancestry of each participant, plus how their parent self-identified them. My chapter in "Noticing" from 2021 entitled "A Matter of Tone" recounts that a new study of the ABCD database shows that racial admixture does indeed correlate with IQ (not super strongly, please note, but enough to matter): a finding that scientists had been arguing about, pro and con, for a century without previously having data precise enough to accurately measure racial admixture.
For example, anthropologist Margaret Mead published a powerful critique in 1926 of early attempts to measure whether IQ correlated with degree of black ancestry just from researchers guesstimating how black a subject really was by looking at him. Mead scoffed and looked forward to scientists someday being able to do this study the right way by having an accurate measure of racial genealogy, which finally became feasible 95 years later.
I don't see any possibility of making communities as cohesive as families, unless they are kept smaller than the Dunbar number. You could force conformity but that would be tyranny, because it couldn't ever be heartfelt.
There is plenty of history against this claim, it's one of the "neat tricks" that permitted civilization to scale. Large communities can become extremely cohesive, especially when in prolonged conflict with other large communities. And families can have plenty of internal tension, and some cultures tend to have attitudes and practices that keep familial bonds weak. Indeed, my impression is that in Northwest European and derived countries at the peak of the Nationalistic era, the cohesion of the large community exceeded the cohesion inside the average family, and that you can see lots of people for who this is certainly the case today for various different ways of identifying with a larger group.
Arnold argues for ignoring race differences in favor of treating everyone individually, which is fine. However, as Charles Murray has pointed out, there are average group differences in personality traits, abilities, and social behaviors, and these have a substantial genetic component. Thus there are implications for policy decisions where treating everyone individually is by definition not possible.
Don't understand why the existence of group differences means that a policy of treating everyone individually is not possible.
If you disagree with the position of Kendi & friends that all racial disparities are the result of systemic racism your only real alternative is some form of race realism.
I think of it as a prisoner's dilemma. The cooperation strategy is to agree to treat each other in a race-blind fashion and judge other people based on their individual merits. The defection strategy is to argue for special treatment for one group vs another based on whatever justification is available.
Defection only works if you can convince the other side not to play defect as well, and you need some kind of ideology (white fragility, etc) to dupe them into not fighting back.
Well, it seems to be working pretty well for them these days, from what I can tell. I think it's not that people are being duped, exactly (some are, sure) but rather I think a lot of people simply fail to recognize that they are facing something like a prisoners dilemma in the first place.
Clearly, there are average racial differences in, say, the 100 meter dash. But the Olympics are conducted on a largely colorblind basis, and the world hasn't come crashing to a halt due to men with at least one sub-Saharan parent having been 79 of the last 80 finalists going back to 1984.
It’s great that Arnold noticed Steve’s book, Noticing. Where Sailer seems more truth based and honest than Kling about the problem.
Low IQ folk do poorly in an America full of freedom, which expects folk to live like those with avg+ IQs choose to live. Low IQ folk make more mistakes, including very costly lifestyle actions. The Forrest Gump fairy tale doesn’t show him doing much dumb stuff, tho the avg IQ folk in my own family have made dumb choices and that’s the reality for most <avg IQ folk.
The IQ data is very clear that a much higher % of Blacks score less than 90, 85, 80, whatever IQ score you accept as the border between avg & below. Luxury beliefs are often norms that are ok for high IQ folk, like cocaine use, which are terrible for low IQ folk who are dumb about the need for moderation.
America needs more explicit help for low IQ folk. None of whom go to college except thru sports scholarships, as Gump did. Low IQ dominates any Big 5 personality trait for predicting life outcomes, but we can’t get much more truth about it because…
Too many Blacks are low IQ.
Yes we need to treat all real people as individuals. Religious norms and most laws help the low IQ folk to know where their adult freedom to act needs to be limited. This is the unspoken reason all successful civilizations have religion—to get low IQ folk to avoid most life harming mistakes.
The US should have an internal Community Peace Corps that hires anybody who needs a job and provides them with supervised work so as to allow them to help the community. On the US Army top 1 - 4 scale, these might include lots of 5s and a few 6s. All physically able humans can do work that helps make America better.
Besides the large group, and small group, the nuclear family remains important and different than the individual, as well as different from other small groups a person might be in. So 4 instead of 3 levels.
Notice that by simply expanding the shorthand, "erotic to homosexuals" tends to take all the sting out of 'homoerotic'. The word game is played by shifting the quality from observer to observed. Practically by definition, any very masculine activity the conduct of which tends to allow bystanders to observe the exercise of very masculine physiques will be erotic to those who find masculine bodies to be sexually arousing.
With wrestling, two young men hug and squeeze each other for long bouts while wearing anatomically accentuating uniforms. In contrast, most other sports do not (even cage fighters seem less "erotic to homosexuals" while performing their gayjitsu or swimmers concealed beneath liquid distortion). Which ironically is why the contrast between ballet and wrestling isn't so very great after all.
"Treat people as individuals, and stop keeping score by race."
The French have adopted this policy. They don't collect any data on race or ethnicity. Yet they are arguably even more divided by race than Americans. This is because no matter how colorblind you make the data, people will notice that the upper classes are predominantly of one race and that the lower classes are predominantly of another.
This will naturally lead to envy and resentment and demands for DEI policies. This tension may dominate domestic politics in multiracial democracies for decades to come.
Is what Dr. Kling calls "race realism" the way to go?* No, it does not have the ability to be a way to go. It is a way to understand the world, from which many ways to go offer themselves. We have every reason to believe that the Hughes/Kling vision of what to DO in light of this understanding is one that Sailer signs up for as well. Call it the Hughes/Kling/Sailer vision.
"In fact, I would be willing to argue that Sailer and other race realists have better ideas than progressives for making our social arrangements less unfavorable to people with low IQ."
Boy howdy. Noticing has a chapter entitled "How to Help the Left Half of the Bell Curve", originally written in 2000, that has much to recommend it. To those who right-code Steve, I would point out his third suggestion: National Health Insurance.
And before that there was Herrnstein and Murray's 1994 "The Bell Curve", in which the final chapter, "A Place for Everyone" takes up the same burden with honesty and heart.
Ken
* I don't think that Sailer uses the term, as it is associated with Jared Taylor, who would live in a racially segregated version of the US if given a chance.
>Frankly, blacks and whites seem to do better together in the South. At least in the non-hill-and-holler parts of the South (who really knows about the latter?).
This is not something the Yankee-derived chattering class could ever admit or examine though.
Mutual realism with some degree of mutual affection and belief in reciprocity, would hardly satisfy the hatred requirements of the academy.<
To a surprising extent local racial relations in the deep south are influenced by religion to the extent where oftentimes whites view local blacks as their poor and a bit peculiar, once removed second cousins on their mother's side.
I believe there is much merit in the idea - which I only ever heard someone talk about once on the radio, and I don't know who that was - that people should be in each other's orbits. This is distinct from the idea of segregation - or desegregation. What seems to me to matter is that people should live in close enough proximity that they regularly encounter one another. Who lives in which houses or on which side of the tracks is much less important than that people should share a place overall, tracks or no. There should be a shared political entity so that all boats are in it together, rich and poor, and decisions made at this local level that confer a certain responsibility on the better-off among them.
I remember once asking how my grandmother had met the woman who became her housekeeper (and yes, friend) for decades. They met because they shopped in the same grocery store. I thought of that in connection with the ostensible end to legalized segregation (lawyers sometimes fix the things they cause ...) and the self-congratulation that goes along with feeling that past people got everything wrong. Was living ten blocks from someone in a more segregated time (though in fact the neighborhood was just then being tested which led to "flight" for many, albeit unwillingly, largely for financial considerations) really so much worse than in a modern scenario living many miles from that person, with no hope on that person's part that they would ever get any closer *should they wish to* though with the caveat that anyone *may* live anywhere?
' Treat people as individuals, and stop keeping score by race.'
Agreed that this is the course to take on a daily basis and in personal dealings with others. I think the case for 'race realism' comes when considering policy alternatives, to address matters at an aggregate level. Without an accurate account of how groups differ, you are likely to reach erroneous conclusions when disparities exist. I believe this is the argument Charles Murray makes in Facing Reality, and I found it convincing.
As always, thank you for the sensible and stimulating discussion.
This is what I was going to comment if someone else hadn't, so I'm glad that someone thought to make this relatively obvious point. Thinking back to Cofnas, the argument is that race realism has the potential to supplant more sociological explanations as the primary mechanism by which racial disparities persist in America. Seeing as wokeness basically takes on faith that there is some sociological explanation for the disparities we've been trying to ameliorate, giving an alternative viable explanation could be valuable in turning people away from woke. And if race realism ends up being true, that tells us that applications of more intense social/disciplinary pressure may be necessary to rectify the issues that, up to now, have lacked for effective interventions because of racism accusations. On the bright side, this shows that race realism doesn't require defeatism and instead suggests that more "fatherly" approaches are better suited to this issue, as opposed to the more "motherly" ones proffered by the left.
I understand why any review of Sailers book would focus on his top hits (black/white, 2003 Iraq War).
Oddly missing is his insanely early prediction about transgenderism as the next hot thing immediately after gay marriage passed when nobody knew what it was. I feel like Sailers former marketing chops gives him a very good instinct for what the next Current Thing the NYTimes set is going to glom onto.
Still, for someone really familiar with this stuff, does the book have enough of the things outside of this mold. His voluminous information on Golf Courses for instance?
only one chapter has "golf course" in the title
If I recall correctly, there are two decent sized essays on golf courses. One on Jewish versus Christian golf clubs. And then one more I feel though I can't quite recall.
If you are already familiar with Sailer, *Noticing* probably isn't the most efficient way to read more of him. You can find all of the essays online anyways. I bought it out of support more than anything else.
The other included golf course article is on the appeal of golf courses from an evolutionary psychology perspective.
I bought several. If you think inflation is high for the prices of whatever you like to buy, take a look at what happened to international postage even for a book weighing fewer than two pounds. I hadn't mailed a package overseas in a while, but the rates have apparently doubled in just a few years.
You can get domestic shipping for free from Passage Press by entering the promo code STANCIL or WILSON.
However, international shipping is more expensive. Amazon can perhaps ship the paperback cheaper overseas, and Amazon Kindle is of course instantly download at no shipping expense.
I had to ship one myself because you autographed it, and thank you for doing so. Yes, I am familiar with the mail rates treaty and so understand the reasons. Still, it seems bizarre that I can order something of similar size and weight on Aliexpress that comes to my mailbox all the way from China for trivial postage, while it costs over twenty times as much for me to mail your book just over the border of a neighboring country. Oh well, #WorthIt.
"Oddly missing is his insanely early prediction about transgenderism as the next hot thing immediately after gay marriage passed when nobody knew what it was."
I was two years ahead of Sailer (2011 vs 2013). Every right-winger I knew thought this prediction was nuts.
“As far as I know, there is no ‘masculinity’ scale on which psychologists measure men.”
Patricia Sexton, an urban sociologist, did exactly this in the late-60s. Her book, the feminized male (https://www.amazon.com/Feminized-Male-Patricia-Cayo-SEXTON/dp/B000HTJVM2 ) is based on her study of about 1,000 9th grade boys in an urban school district and relationships between academic success and masculinity. Interestingly, she also complains about the development of good measures of masculinity. Her solution was to have coaches and counselors in the school evaluate random selections of boys based on perceptions of assertiveness, fearfulness, willingness to be pushed around by other boys, etc. She also says she found and used a masculinity scale from the California Psychological Inventory but I haven’t tried to find it. Here masculinity was measured based on the students response to various questions about their feelings toward aggression, propriety, vocation, and interests.
It was an interesting study. You’re right that it would be more difficult to do today.
For 30 years, I've found that the percentage of celebrity men in a field who died of AIDS during the 1980-1990s offers a pretty good acid test of the masculinity of the field.
For example, world famous dancers who died of AIDS include ballet artists Baryshnikov, Joffrey, Ailey, and Michael Bennett (creator of "A Chorus Line").
Fashion designers also tended to have high fatality rates due to AIDS (e.g., Perry Ellis).
Among male professional athletes, the highest AIDS toll was likely in figure skating, where both Olympic men's gold medalists in the 1970s died.
The number of celebrities recognizable to the male half of the general public in the major team sports are much higher than in these fields. Most big sports suffered one or two deaths from AIDS, a much lower percentage.
Interestingly, golf, which doesn't seem all that necessarily masculine at first glance, had no AIDS deaths. Upon further research, I discovered that gay men, in contrast to lesbian women, are remarkably uninterested in golf: in many years of keeping an eye out, the only gay celebrity I've noticed who was a dedicated golfer was singer Johnny Mathis.
Perhaps there are 2 Baryshnikovs, otherwise someone needs to edit his Wikipedia page to reflect his death.
ETA: I’m thinking you meant Nureyev.
Thanks!
Baryshnikov, of course, has fathered four children, one with Jessica Lange.
The obvious retort to "treat people as individuals" is that many individuals want to be treated as groups and therefore have the advantage over scattered persons such as you (and me). Race realism doesn't preclude or undermine individualism any more than does sex-realism or any other so-called, empirically-based -ism. Ignoring the problem won't make it go away. This has massive policy implications; and, to paraphrase John Derbyshire, not having a policy is a policy.
"We have these crude classifications that have no scientific basis. But using your folk understanding of race, pick one of these classifications to describe yourself."
The ordinary folk understanding of race turns out to be reliably accurate. Text below link is quoted from study summary: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/705824
Racial groupings match genetic profiles, Stanford [School of Medicine] study finds
The study...consist[ed] of 3,636 people who all identified themselves as either white, African-American, East Asian or Hispanic. Of these, only five individuals had DNA that matched an ethnic group different than the box they checked at the beginning of the study...
For each person in the study, the researchers examined 326 DNA regions that tend to vary between people... Without knowing how the participants had identified themselves, Risch and his team ran the results through a computer program that grouped individuals according to patterns of the 326 signposts. This analysis could have resulted in any number of different clusters, but only four clear groups turned up. And in each case the individuals within those clusters all fell within the same self-identified racial group.
"This shows that people's self-identified race/ethnicity is a nearly perfect indicator of their genetic background," [UCSF professor Neil] Risch said.
Right.
I don't understand the conventional trope of dismissing the racial frameworks devised by Enlightenment science titans Linnaeus and Blumenbach as "folk" understandings. They seem more like formidable theories of high science at its most reductionist.
To frame this discussion in terms of Race Realism vs Race Blindness is to sidestep the most important aspect of it. Namely that both - Race Realism and Race Blindness - are up against a vast intelligentsia hegemony that affords no recognition to either. Race Fetishism is the dominant strain in modern Western political philosophy.
Arnold’s/Coleman’s preference for race blindness is what we should strive for politically. But currently, the Left is obsessed with race and concludes all disparities are due to bias and require reverse discrimination. I think it will be hard to get to race blind policy without some race realism.
When Arnold expresses a preference for this norm I usually respond that I share the preference but that for a norm that puts expression about certain empirical truths about the human condition into the set of taboos requires a general Omerta as a social peace treaty, and that if any significant faction breaches the peace by pressing the matter and spreading false claims and provocative accusations contradicting those truths at the heart of a power play against their political opponents, then there is no other way for those opponents to defend themselves against this defamatory aggression of epistemic prosecution than to also break the silence and pierce the veil of polite blindness regarding the underlying subject matter.
The trouble is that the progressives have a strategic advantage in this regard in the manner of heads I win, tails you lose. It's analogous to the way Hamas can initiate aggression against Israel. If Israel doesn't defend itself, it just takes the hit. If Israel defends itself, i.e. being "Hamas Realist", it is accused of being evil, and using self defense as a mere false cover story for genocidal intentions it has had all along. (Or something like that, Hamas and its leftist allies are not good at keeping the story straight, don't seem to be even trying to anymore, and who can blame them since it doesn't make any difference to who anybody supports.)
This and the perverse and morally obscene reaction from its international allies provides a strong incentive for Hamas to attack, and so it does. Expressing a preference for colorblind norms is like expressing a preference for peace over war. Of course peace is better than war. But, you know, if you aren't willing to go to war after being attacked, you are certainly going to keep getting attacked until you're toast.
An extended family can agree to not speak and especially never let the children know about a recently deceased mother's bad opioid addiction. But if one of her sisters starts accusing her widower husband of her murder and sues him for wrongful death in a civil proceeding, he is going to have to spill the beans in court, even if he thinks it would be best to remain silent and would have preferred to have done so.
“As far as I know, there is no ‘masculinity’ scale on which psychologists measure men.”
Testosterone levels are certainly one factor in getting towards that definition. For example, we know that elite athletes have testosterone levels that are 2x that of non elite athletes.
Yes this is known: "ETHNICITY AND RACE SPECIFIC TOTAL TESTOSTERONE NORMS - TIME FOR CHANGE?"
https://www.auajournals.org/doi/10.1097/JU.0000000000003217.19#:~:text=CONCLUSIONS%3A,Asians%20have%20the%20lowest%20TT.
I would be wary of the differences being a large determinative factor though considering that culture can trump biology:
"If all this is accurate, it shows the way that our physiological reactions are conditioned by moral culture. Which shouldn’t be surprising — other visceral reactions, like what foods you find gross, are also shaped by culture. Still, I find it fascinating to think that Southerners really feel insults more than Northerners."
https://jasonmanning.substack.com/p/moral-cultures-the-honor-experiment
Perhaps trump is too strong and inform would be better and more accurate.
"Roid rage" is an expression for a reason - high male hormone levels of whatever origin cause people - especially men - to become a lot more aggressive, violent, and impulsive, with hair-trigger temper and short fuses. Men obviously commit a lot more violent crime than women, and high-T young men commit a lot more violent crime than other men. Economics Imperialism must pay its tribute to Biology.
I was also reminded of the book *T* by Carole Hooven.
***
As the length of day shortens toward the end of summer and fall approaches again, the stags’ testicles begin to emerge from their slumber. They grow in size and triple in weight, and ramp up T production to maximum levels...Testosterone levels heading into the rut are vastly higher than they need to be to support sperm production, which will continue as usual even when T levels are relatively low. So what’s all that “extra” T for? It’s not about sex, it’s about war. All that T helps to make the males more intimidating and better fighters.
…
To determine the role of T in aggressive behavior of the red deer, researchers castrated three Rum stags at different times of the year, in and out of the breeding season. Deprived of testosterone, their antlers were soon cast. New antlers began to grow, but they were malformed, lacked branching, and remained covered with velvet when it would have normally been shed. Their neck muscles remained in their smaller, summer condition, and the shaggy mane around it failed to grow in at the usual time prior to the rut. When the intact stags shed their velvet and came into “hard horn,” the castrated stags with their soft small horns couldn’t compete even if they had wanted to. Their aggression, and status, plummeted. But they did not seem to mind. The once sexually potent scents from estrous hinds failed to excite them, and the castrated stags didn’t even bother to roar or visit their usual rutting areas.
…
Red deer are a compelling example of T’s effects in male animals partly because they are seasonal breeders. In concert with seasonal fluctuations in the social and physical environment, T’s highs and lows induce clearly observable and dramatic changes, transitioning stags from spermless, weaponless, relatively peaceful animals to highly sexed, aggressive, and dangerous ones. But red deer share many of the sexual asymmetries that are common across mammals—most relevantly, the males are able to produce offspring at a faster rate than females.
Isn't it still the case that we're not allowed to study male prisoners to see if there's a link between being XYY ("supermales") and being imprisoned for violent crimes?
Arnold writes:
"In “It’s all relative,” published in 2002, he defines race this way:
"'A racial group is an extended family that is inbred to some degree.
"All right. That is the definition of something, and you could probably make it scientific.
"My problem is that I do not know how to connect the dots between that definition and the statistics about race in America. Those are based on the government’s definition, which is pretty much “We have these crude classifications that have no scientific basis. But using your folk understanding of race, pick one of these classifications to describe yourself.”"
I shared this assumption back around 2000, when I set out to write a series of articles proving that the federal government's racial/ethnic categories were scientifically ridiculous and led to useless data. But as I studied the question in depth, I came to the opposite conclusion that ... eh ... in the big picture of things, they are good enough for government work.
After all, the logical implication of the popular argument that self-identification is a very sloppy way to collect racial statistics is that if we had a more scientific way, such as analyzing ancestry by DNA, then the racial effects we see even in the hazy federal data would be even more clear-cut in the scientific data.
And indeed, two decades later, we now have several massive databases, such as the 10,000 strong Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development sample, for which we know the genetic ancestry of each participant, plus how their parent self-identified them. My chapter in "Noticing" from 2021 entitled "A Matter of Tone" recounts that a new study of the ABCD database shows that racial admixture does indeed correlate with IQ (not super strongly, please note, but enough to matter): a finding that scientists had been arguing about, pro and con, for a century without previously having data precise enough to accurately measure racial admixture.
For example, anthropologist Margaret Mead published a powerful critique in 1926 of early attempts to measure whether IQ correlated with degree of black ancestry just from researchers guesstimating how black a subject really was by looking at him. Mead scoffed and looked forward to scientists someday being able to do this study the right way by having an accurate measure of racial genealogy, which finally became feasible 95 years later.
I don't see any possibility of making communities as cohesive as families, unless they are kept smaller than the Dunbar number. You could force conformity but that would be tyranny, because it couldn't ever be heartfelt.
There is plenty of history against this claim, it's one of the "neat tricks" that permitted civilization to scale. Large communities can become extremely cohesive, especially when in prolonged conflict with other large communities. And families can have plenty of internal tension, and some cultures tend to have attitudes and practices that keep familial bonds weak. Indeed, my impression is that in Northwest European and derived countries at the peak of the Nationalistic era, the cohesion of the large community exceeded the cohesion inside the average family, and that you can see lots of people for who this is certainly the case today for various different ways of identifying with a larger group.
Arnold argues for ignoring race differences in favor of treating everyone individually, which is fine. However, as Charles Murray has pointed out, there are average group differences in personality traits, abilities, and social behaviors, and these have a substantial genetic component. Thus there are implications for policy decisions where treating everyone individually is by definition not possible.
Don't understand why the existence of group differences means that a policy of treating everyone individually is not possible.
If you disagree with the position of Kendi & friends that all racial disparities are the result of systemic racism your only real alternative is some form of race realism.
I think of it as a prisoner's dilemma. The cooperation strategy is to agree to treat each other in a race-blind fashion and judge other people based on their individual merits. The defection strategy is to argue for special treatment for one group vs another based on whatever justification is available.
Defection only works if you can convince the other side not to play defect as well, and you need some kind of ideology (white fragility, etc) to dupe them into not fighting back.
Well, it seems to be working pretty well for them these days, from what I can tell. I think it's not that people are being duped, exactly (some are, sure) but rather I think a lot of people simply fail to recognize that they are facing something like a prisoners dilemma in the first place.
Clearly, there are average racial differences in, say, the 100 meter dash. But the Olympics are conducted on a largely colorblind basis, and the world hasn't come crashing to a halt due to men with at least one sub-Saharan parent having been 79 of the last 80 finalists going back to 1984.
It’s great that Arnold noticed Steve’s book, Noticing. Where Sailer seems more truth based and honest than Kling about the problem.
Low IQ folk do poorly in an America full of freedom, which expects folk to live like those with avg+ IQs choose to live. Low IQ folk make more mistakes, including very costly lifestyle actions. The Forrest Gump fairy tale doesn’t show him doing much dumb stuff, tho the avg IQ folk in my own family have made dumb choices and that’s the reality for most <avg IQ folk.
The IQ data is very clear that a much higher % of Blacks score less than 90, 85, 80, whatever IQ score you accept as the border between avg & below. Luxury beliefs are often norms that are ok for high IQ folk, like cocaine use, which are terrible for low IQ folk who are dumb about the need for moderation.
America needs more explicit help for low IQ folk. None of whom go to college except thru sports scholarships, as Gump did. Low IQ dominates any Big 5 personality trait for predicting life outcomes, but we can’t get much more truth about it because…
Too many Blacks are low IQ.
Yes we need to treat all real people as individuals. Religious norms and most laws help the low IQ folk to know where their adult freedom to act needs to be limited. This is the unspoken reason all successful civilizations have religion—to get low IQ folk to avoid most life harming mistakes.
The US should have an internal Community Peace Corps that hires anybody who needs a job and provides them with supervised work so as to allow them to help the community. On the US Army top 1 - 4 scale, these might include lots of 5s and a few 6s. All physically able humans can do work that helps make America better.
Besides the large group, and small group, the nuclear family remains important and different than the individual, as well as different from other small groups a person might be in. So 4 instead of 3 levels.
"Would you rather go to a wrestling match or to the ballet?"
Always take your wife to the ballet. It makes her happy as hell, and all you have to do is sit back and watch the pretty girls in tights.
Also, wrestling is homoerotic.
Notice that by simply expanding the shorthand, "erotic to homosexuals" tends to take all the sting out of 'homoerotic'. The word game is played by shifting the quality from observer to observed. Practically by definition, any very masculine activity the conduct of which tends to allow bystanders to observe the exercise of very masculine physiques will be erotic to those who find masculine bodies to be sexually arousing.
With wrestling, two young men hug and squeeze each other for long bouts while wearing anatomically accentuating uniforms. In contrast, most other sports do not (even cage fighters seem less "erotic to homosexuals" while performing their gayjitsu or swimmers concealed beneath liquid distortion). Which ironically is why the contrast between ballet and wrestling isn't so very great after all.
"Treat people as individuals, and stop keeping score by race."
The French have adopted this policy. They don't collect any data on race or ethnicity. Yet they are arguably even more divided by race than Americans. This is because no matter how colorblind you make the data, people will notice that the upper classes are predominantly of one race and that the lower classes are predominantly of another.
This will naturally lead to envy and resentment and demands for DEI policies. This tension may dominate domestic politics in multiracial democracies for decades to come.
Is what Dr. Kling calls "race realism" the way to go?* No, it does not have the ability to be a way to go. It is a way to understand the world, from which many ways to go offer themselves. We have every reason to believe that the Hughes/Kling vision of what to DO in light of this understanding is one that Sailer signs up for as well. Call it the Hughes/Kling/Sailer vision.
"In fact, I would be willing to argue that Sailer and other race realists have better ideas than progressives for making our social arrangements less unfavorable to people with low IQ."
Boy howdy. Noticing has a chapter entitled "How to Help the Left Half of the Bell Curve", originally written in 2000, that has much to recommend it. To those who right-code Steve, I would point out his third suggestion: National Health Insurance.
And before that there was Herrnstein and Murray's 1994 "The Bell Curve", in which the final chapter, "A Place for Everyone" takes up the same burden with honesty and heart.
Ken
* I don't think that Sailer uses the term, as it is associated with Jared Taylor, who would live in a racially segregated version of the US if given a chance.
Your point about societies having three levels of rules seems like an insightful one. You should consider writing more on that subject.
>Frankly, blacks and whites seem to do better together in the South. At least in the non-hill-and-holler parts of the South (who really knows about the latter?).
This is not something the Yankee-derived chattering class could ever admit or examine though.
Mutual realism with some degree of mutual affection and belief in reciprocity, would hardly satisfy the hatred requirements of the academy.<
To a surprising extent local racial relations in the deep south are influenced by religion to the extent where oftentimes whites view local blacks as their poor and a bit peculiar, once removed second cousins on their mother's side.
I believe there is much merit in the idea - which I only ever heard someone talk about once on the radio, and I don't know who that was - that people should be in each other's orbits. This is distinct from the idea of segregation - or desegregation. What seems to me to matter is that people should live in close enough proximity that they regularly encounter one another. Who lives in which houses or on which side of the tracks is much less important than that people should share a place overall, tracks or no. There should be a shared political entity so that all boats are in it together, rich and poor, and decisions made at this local level that confer a certain responsibility on the better-off among them.
I remember once asking how my grandmother had met the woman who became her housekeeper (and yes, friend) for decades. They met because they shopped in the same grocery store. I thought of that in connection with the ostensible end to legalized segregation (lawyers sometimes fix the things they cause ...) and the self-congratulation that goes along with feeling that past people got everything wrong. Was living ten blocks from someone in a more segregated time (though in fact the neighborhood was just then being tested which led to "flight" for many, albeit unwillingly, largely for financial considerations) really so much worse than in a modern scenario living many miles from that person, with no hope on that person's part that they would ever get any closer *should they wish to* though with the caveat that anyone *may* live anywhere?
It is hard to hate the people you care about.