The 9 Most Influential Works of Scientific Racism, Ranked

[Potoooooooo]

http://io9.com/the-9-most-influential-works-of-scientific-racism-rank-1575543279
Former New York Times science writer Nicholas Wade has just published a book about race and genetics that has stirred up debates over scientific racism that go back over 250 years. Where did his ideas come from? Here are nine major works of scientific racism that are still influencing thinkers today.

 

[AdamWho]

As skeptics we should be VERY wary of the political left throwing around the term racism. Too often it is used to silence unpopular opinions.

Example: In 1975 E.O. Wilson published 'Sociobiology' which talked about how selection effected behaviors in animals. His last chapter talked about how this might be true with humans too. The "culturalist" went nuts and scream about racism and Nazi eugenics, most without read the book.

Today we see the direct fall-out from this in the atheist/skeptic movement between Dawkins and Gould (Now PZ Meyers et.al).

The lesson should always be: show me the evidence. And always be willing to question your beliefs.

 

[Togo]

Today we see the direct fall-out from this in the atheist/skeptic movement between Dawkins and Gould (Now PZ Meyers et.al).

I'm not familiar with this, can you expand?

And if calling one racial group biologically inferior to another racial group isn't racism, then what is?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Only three of those are modern--and two of those three are mistaking cultural differences for genetic differences. I don't know about the third. Hint: You do not see noticeable evolution in a few generations without MAJOR selection pressure going on. (Say, the spread of a gene that turns out to protects against some new pandemic killer, whether biological or social.)

 

[AdamWho]

Today we see the direct fall-out from this in the atheist/skeptic movement between Dawkins and Gould (Now PZ Meyers et.al).

I'm not familiar with this, can you expand?

And if calling one racial group biologically inferior to another racial group isn't racism, then what is?

Something I wrote previously on this topic
****

Why people believe (not what) is one of my favorite topics and it never amazes me how people get stuck in tribalism across the political, religious and every other spectrum.

Lately I was digging into the the divide between Social Constructivists (SJW types) vs Evolutionary Psychology in the 1970s; basically a nature v nurture debate. This is important because it is also the division between the atheism+ people and the more science oriented skeptic/atheist/secular movement.

What I discovered is that much of this split can be traced back to 1975 with the publication of Sociobiology by E.O. Wilson. In this book Wilson made some very mild claims about genetics influencing behavior in animals but at the time the world of academia, deep in the radicalism of the 60s and civil rights movement, saw any attempt to consider genetic influences on behavior as little more than a Nazi eugenics program.

Into the fray step two atheist icons: Steven J Gould and Richard Dawkins.

Gould sides up with the FAR political left and uses his influence to discredit anybody who dares suggest that genetics plays a role in behavior. Dawkins is on the other side with his recent publication of the Selfish Gene (1976). Consider at the time our public discourse had everything from the SLA, the Weathermen, Black Panthers to Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand all wrapped up in the fear nuclear war and Armageddon.

The social justice warriors of this time imagined they were fighting against a post-apocalyptic world of eugenics and totalitarian ideologies.

Dawkins and Gould would battle over these issues for decades until Gould died and Dawkins became an icon of the atheist movement.

Now you find the same split:

The generation of atheists who were influenced by this battle in the 60s and 70s (PZ Meyers for example) hold a position of influence and seem to be reigniting the old fight with Dawkins, Pinker and generally anybody who doesn't hold a social constructivist (that we are born blank slates and all behaviors are socially constructed) view.

Atheism plus is really just an extension of this battle. It was HIGHLY likely that the founder had a college professor (gender of ethnic studies) that was highly influenced by this battle in the 70s over SocioBiology and this inspired the creation of atheism plus. And like before, Dawkins is a target. And we are rehashing the same issues that were started 40 years ago.

Book reference: Missing the revolution, Darwinism for Social scientists

http://www.amazon.com/Missing-Revolution-Darwinism-Social-Scientists/dp/0195130022[1]

PDF: http://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp-cont...Missing_the_Revolution_DarwiniBookos.org_.pdf[2]

Sociobiology, E.O. Wilson 1975

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociobiology:_The_New_Synthesis[3]

 

[doubtingt]

And if calling one racial group biologically inferior to another racial group isn't racism, then what is?

Some racial groups are biologically inferior at protecting their skin and eyes from sun damage and to their dna from UV ray caused mutations. They are also inferior at preventing photodegradation of many vitamins and thus biologically inferior in relation to the many health issues related to deficiencies in these vitamins. These same groups are biologically inferior in terms of antioxidant related health problems, including hearing loss with age.

Are these statements racist? If not, why not? If so, then does your definition of racist imply that the statement is unwarranted, immoral, unethical, or undesirable and should be something to avoid?
Women are much more prone to breast cancer. Am I a sexist for stating this? After all, cancer is a negative thing to have, so even though I don't mean it as an insult, just a fact, the effect is that I said that women have a biologically based negative quality.

Answering these questions will answer your own question and address why most of the questions and claims posed by some of those works, such as Wade and The Bell Curve, are not in themselves racist, except in the very amoral technical sense that the statements I made are racist in which "inferior" is highly specific to referring to have more or less of a particular trait. Note that in many cases it is actually the reader that is imposing a more value-laden notion of inferior via their own positive and negative valuing of that trait.

Sure, people in history have said thing about differences on generally valued traits out of racist motives. They start with the racist idea that X people are just overall "better" than Y people, then invent and make up differences on traits that are widely considered positive and good things to have. But pointing out differences for which there is some evidence is not racist itself, even if the traits in question happen to be generally valued. IF it is, then it is just as racist to say "Whites have less melanin", and if that is scientific racism then the term is so vacuous, meaningless and without any ethical implications that it serves no rational purpose to use it or pay any attention when it is used.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

And if calling one racial group biologically inferior to another racial group isn't racism, then what is?

Some racial groups are biologically inferior at protecting their skin and eyes from sun damage and to their dna from UV ray caused mutations. They are also inferior at preventing photodegradation of many vitamins and thus biologically inferior in relation to the many health issues related to deficiencies in these vitamins. These same groups are biologically inferior in terms of antioxidant related health problems, including hearing loss with age.

And others are biologically inferior at vitamin D production. It's a tradeoff between UV protection and vitamin D production, people's base skin tone is tied to the climate they evolved for. All are a liability in climates far from that.

As you say, nothing racist about it.

 

[Togo]

Which is why I specifically referred to calling one racial group inferior to another as racism, rather than talking about comparison of individual traits. Doubtingt makes the same distinction in talking about features of racial groups, rather than X people are overall "better" than Y people.

The split goes further back than Wilson's sociology though. What about humanist psychology, the fights between Skinner and Chomsky, eugenics, and various other populist battlegrounds on the origin of behaviour?

 

[doubtingt]

Which is why I specifically referred to calling one racial group inferior to another as racism, rather than talking about comparison of individual traits. Doubtingt makes the same distinction in talking about features of racial groups, rather than X people are overall "better" than Y people.

And yet much of what is labeled "scientific racism", especially the works on that list less than a century old, do not assert that one racial group is "overall inferior" but rather discuss particular traits (I don't know about "Battle Hymn of a Tiger Mother" because that is a parenting book written by a lawyer for shock value and comedy more than any serious effort to advance a scientific idea about race (and most parenting books are not "scientific" anything).

 

[fromderinside]

And if calling one racial group biologically inferior to another racial group isn't racism, then what is?

If one racial group is demonstrably biologically inferior, dying out because it can't successfully compete, then saying it is biologically inferior is not racist. It is a demonstrable fact. Saying such would be a naive realist's statement. OTOH if saying one is inferior is clearly a statement arising out of racial hatred then it is a racist statement.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

Good points by all of you above. This is something that has bothered me for years, the tendency of people to strongly and fiercely believe and advocate something, while refusing to look at actual evidence, as if doing so is an abomination.

Are white people smarter than black people? Are men more rational and less emotional in their thinking than women? Are homosexuals more reckless lovers, spreading disease? Did the holocaust happen? Is it exaggerated? Are blondes dumber than brunettes? Do men not make passes at girls who wear glasses?

These questions and others like them evoke strong emotional responses, and are often motivated by bigotry, but the questions themselves are empirical, and can be answered. Are they too dangerous to be considered? Should we try to prevent anybody from thinking about them and trying to figure them out, for fear that we may find something disturbing?

I say we should be especially skeptical of the studies that confirm our own biases, and properly debunk those that we disagree with.

I once sat in a lecture where the lecturer held up The Bell Curve as an example of fragrant racism in society today. In a lecture hall of about 40 students, I was the only one that had the gall to ask for evidence. Why should we conclude the writer is racist and why should we conclude he is wrong? I didn't want the book's core claim to be true, but I wasn't ready to completely dismiss it simply because I wanted to. And I wasn't ready to label the writer a racist just because I disagreed with him. So I asked the question. Do we have a good debunking of it? The lecturer was shocked and outraged, as were my fellow students. I eventually did find a good debunking, but not from this lecturer or anybody in the class.

 

[doubtingt]

I once sat in a lecture where the lecturer held up The Bell Curve as an example of fragrant racism in society today. In a lecture hall of about 40 students, I was the only one that had the gall to ask for evidence. Why should we conclude the writer is racist and why should we conclude he is wrong? I didn't want the book's core claim to be true, but I wasn't ready to completely dismiss it simply because I wanted to. And I wasn't ready to label the writer a racist just because I disagreed with him. So I asked the question. Do we have a good debunking of it? The lecturer was shocked and outraged, as were my fellow students. I eventually did find a good debunking, but not from this lecturer or anybody in the class.

Yeah, when you google "The Bell Curve", the supposed academic critiques of it tend to be filled with far more blatant bias, ideology, emotion, and poor science, than can be reasonably leveled at the Bell Curve itself, despite its objective flaws.
Included among the pseudo-science bullshit used to dismiss "The Bell Curve" are assertions that general intelligence is a meaningless construct or that the tests are all just cultural biased. These objections are ideological and are not compatible with modern cognitive science in which notions of general intellectual abilities that are highly applicable to countless basic mental processes in everyday life if more alive and well, and supported by evidence than ever.
Shortly after the "The Bell Curve", a group of 52 of the leading scientists with expertise in the area and who all publish in the most mainstream journals published a paper detailing the current state of the science, because they were so dismayed at the false claims coming from the people trying dismiss "The Bell Curve". The paper does not claim to agree with the notion that racial differences in IQ are biological and in fact most of the paper's signatories have argued directly against this and other aspects of the Bell Curve, but the author's all saw a need to make it clear that the science shows that general intelligence is a meaningful and highly predictive construct, and that racial differences cannot be accounted for by cultural bias, and that many efforts have been made to account for the differences with environmental/experiential factors and they have only been able to account for a small % of the differences. IOW, racial differences in IQ are real, meaningful, likely impactful, and not yet explained despite assertions by both those claiming its biology or those claiming its all environment.
Sadly, that paper made little impact on the pop-psych discourse and the same unscientific dismissal of intelligence research continues and is oft repeated on these boards.

 

[fromderinside]

I once sat in a lecture where the lecturer held up The Bell Curve as an example of fragrant racism in society today. In a lecture hall of about 40 students, I was the only one that had the gall to ask for evidence. Why should we conclude the writer is racist and why should we conclude he is wrong? I didn't want the book's core claim to be true, but I wasn't ready to completely dismiss it simply because I wanted to. And I wasn't ready to label the writer a racist just because I disagreed with him. So I asked the question. Do we have a good debunking of it? The lecturer was shocked and outraged, as were my fellow students. I eventually did find a good debunking, but not from this lecturer or anybody in the class.

Yeah, when you google "The Bell Curve", the supposed academic critiques of it tend to be filled with far more blatant bias, ideology, emotion, and poor science, than can be reasonably leveled at the Bell Curve itself, despite its objective flaws.
Included among the pseudo-science bullshit used to dismiss "The Bell Curve" are assertions that general intelligence is a meaningless construct or that the tests are all just cultural biased. These objections are ideological and are not compatible with modern cognitive science in which notions of general intellectual abilities that are highly applicable to countless basic mental processes in everyday life if more alive and well, and supported by evidence than ever.
Shortly after the "The Bell Curve", a group of 52 of the leading scientists with expertise in the area and who all publish in the most mainstream journals published a paper detailing the current state of the science, because they were so dismayed at the false claims coming from the people trying dismiss "The Bell Curve". The paper does not claim to agree with the notion that racial differences in IQ are biological and in fact most of the paper's signatories have argued directly against this and other aspects of the Bell Curve, but the author's all saw a need to make it clear that the science shows that general intelligence is a meaningful and highly predictive construct, and that racial differences cannot be accounted for by cultural bias, and that many efforts have been made to account for the differences with environmental/experiential factors and they have only been able to account for a small % of the differences. IOW, racial differences in IQ are real, meaningful, likely impactful, and not yet explained despite assertions by both those claiming its biology or those claiming its all environment.
Sadly, that paper made little impact on the pop-psych discourse and the same unscientific dismissal of intelligence research continues and is oft repeated on these boards.

Oh my. What is this. Jolly Penguin looking for truth then finding his truth elsewhere (a debunking). Followed by doubting's narrative completely without evidence or even providing a rationale about intelligence being biologically significant beyond it not being entirely environmentally determined. The problem with correlational studies - those upon which both the pro and anti-difference advocates use -,as we all know, is causality is not inferred but only suggested by the correlations. For example as contrast using the dumb correlational analyses argued above, interbreeding actually produces more correlational biological benefit than does mating within 'race' and much more than can be demonstrated between 'races'.

For there to be a causal biological significance one need to see one or another of those correlated trend toward extinction. Since all races have been found to have arisen in sequence with migration and conditions. Since all races continue to be extant. Since all races clearly interbreed and, with global intercourse, a browning trend is becoming apparent, the very notion that race based inheritance is any more than a temporal consequence of some isolation rather than an index of genetic successfulness.

Now if you want to get out of your social and 7-11 synapse removed from direct observation 'science' and really talk about evidence I suggest you begin with something one can actually manipulate. There is no evidence, biologically, for race development.

Anyone who thinks of genetics and environment to be separate one only need trudge through Trivers and Birt's "Genes in Conflict" to be disabused of that silly simplistic notion. If anyone who finds organisms that are capable of having gene function changed and transmitted to subsequent generations by a change in conditions and persists in arguing species is either driven by environmental or genetic factors has a fool for a decision maker.

This is not even a political question. It is a question of retaining hatred by inserting the worst of tribal beliefs into the discussion. One need not even consider the rankings because what is being considered is fiction. If you think there is biological racial difference based on evidence show me the extinctions.

 

[Togo]

.. not compatible with modern cognitive science in which notions of general intellectual abilities that are highly applicable to countless basic mental processes in everyday life if more alive and well, and supported by evidence than ever.

Eh.. not really. It's a correlational construct. It might exist, but there's not much evidence either way. It's just a circle drawn around patterns of results.

...the author's all saw a need to make it clear that the science shows that general intelligence is a meaningful and highly predictive construct, and that racial differences cannot be accounted for by cultural bias, and that many efforts have been made to account for the differences with environmental/experiential factors and they have only been able to account for a small % of the differences. IOW, racial differences in IQ are real, meaningful, likely impactful,

No, they're extremely small, and in practice are swamped by other individual differences. Throw into the pot the problem that 'race' isn't really a biologically meaningful grouping, and the whole ediface doesn't really have a leg to stand on.

Sadly, that paper made little impact on the pop-psych discourse and the same unscientific dismissal of intelligence research continues and is oft repeated on these boards.

Possibly because dismissing intelligence research based on claimed racial differences is quite popular amongst scientists.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

Oh my. What is this. Jolly Penguin looking for truth then finding his truth elsewhere (a debunking). Followed by doubting's narrative completely without evidence or even providing a rationale about intelligence being biologically significant beyond it not being entirely environmentally determined. The problem with correlational studies - those upon which both the pro and anti-difference advocates use -,as we all know, is causality is not inferred but only suggested by the correlations. For example as contrast using the dumb correlational analyses argued above, interbreeding actually produces more correlational biological benefit than does mating within 'race' and much more than can be demonstrated between 'races'.

For there to be a causal biological significance one need to see one or another of those correlated trend toward extinction. Since all races have been found to have arisen in sequence with migration and conditions. Since all races continue to be extant. Since all races clearly interbreed and, with global intercourse, a browning trend is becoming apparent, the very notion that race based inheritance is any more than a temporal consequence of some isolation rather than an index of genetic successfulness.

Now if you want to get out of your social and 7-11 synapse removed from direct observation 'science' and really talk about evidence I suggest you begin with something one can actually manipulate. There is no evidence, biologically, for race development.

Anyone who thinks of genetics and environment to be separate one only need trudge through Trivers and Birt's "Genes in Conflict" to be disabused of that silly simplistic notion. If anyone who finds organisms that are capable of having gene function changed and transmitted to subsequent generations by a change in conditions and persists in arguing species is either driven by environmental or genetic factors has a fool for a decision maker.

This is not even a political question. It is a question of retaining hatred by inserting the worst of tribal beliefs into the discussion. One need not even consider the rankings because what is being considered is fiction. If you think there is biological racial difference based on evidence show me the extinctions.

Who is this adressing and what exactly are you trying to say?