The Truth about Race in America Today and Why it Matters
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Re: The Truth about Race in America Today and Why it Matters
The field we;re discussing is vague at best and th history of applying psychological theories has historically proved to be deeply misguided. Yet, we do the best we can and some risks are taken.
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Re: The Truth about Race in America Today and Why it Matters
Insecurity infuses his posts. He feels we don't have the strength to lift all boats and instead we should leave poor nations and people to rot. A bit of a bummer if you happen to be one of the poor, I should think.
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Re: The Truth about Race in America Today and Why it Matters
My anthropologist mate calls it status slippage anxiety.Greta wrote: ↑November 30th, 2018, 4:14 am I think responses to the OP make clear the views of others on the forum about Dachshund's "truth".
Insecurity infuses his posts. He feels we don't have the strength to lift all boats and instead we should leave poor nations and people to rot. A bit of a bummer if you happen to be one of the poor, I should think.
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Re: The Truth about Race in America Today and Why it Matters
"Has evolution caused certain races to become smarter, more athletic, or cannier than others? We have to be especially careful here, because unsubstantiated claims in this area can give racism a scientific cachet. So what do the scientific data say? Almost nothing. Although different populations may have different behaviors, different IQs, and different abilities, it’s hard to rule out the possibility that these differences are a nongenetic product of environmental or cultural differences. If we want to determine whether certain differences between races are based on genes, we must rule out these influences. Such studies require controlled experiments: removing infants of different ethnicity from their parents and bringing them up in identical (or randomized) environments. What behavioral differences remain would be genetic. Because these experiments are unethical, they haven’t been done systematically, but cross-cultural adoptions anecdotally show that cultural influences on behavior are strong. As the psychologist Steven Pinker noted, “If you adopt children from a technologically undeveloped part of the world, they will fit in to modern society just fine.” That suggests, at least, that races don’t show big innate differences in behavior.Dachshund wrote: ↑November 26th, 2018, 2:15 pmLet me now touch briefly on the vexed question of racial differences in intelligence. The genes that account for individual differences in intelligence are now in the process of being found and the chances that they are going to be found to be distributed equally among all populations all around the world are ZERO - repeat, ZERO. The scientists involves in line of research are all in quiet agreement, the chances are zero and we must begin to accustomise ourselves to this fact. Some groups of people are on average simply more intelligent than others. As it turns out the Ashkenazi Jews got dealt the best genetic hand. On average they are smarter than anyone else on Earth. After the Ashkenazi Jews, come the North Asians ( the Chinese, Japanese and Koreans), and after them come caucasian Whites; while Arabs, Hispanics, Blacks and Africans have the lowest average IQ scores.
I accept that this is a difficult and unpleasant subject for many.
My guess—and this is just informed speculation—is that human races are too young to have evolved important differences in intellect and behavior. Nor is there any reason to think that natural or sexual selection has favored this sort of difference. In the next chapter we’ll learn about the many “universal” behaviors seen in all human societies—behaviors like symbolic language, childhood fear of strangers, envy, gossip, and gift-giving. If these universals have any genetic basis, their presence in every society adds additional weight to the view that evolution hasn’t produced substantial psychological divergence among human groups.
Although certain traits like skin color and hair type have diverged among populations, then, these appear to be special cases, driven by environmental differences between localities or by sexual selection for external appearance. The DNA data shows that, overall, genetic differences among human populations are minor. It’s more than a soothing platitude to say that we’re all brothers and sisters under the skin. And that’s just what we’d expect given the brief evolutionary span since our most recent origin in Africa."
(Coyne, Jerry A. Why Evolution is True. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. pp. 235-6)
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Re: The Truth about Race in America Today and Why it Matters
Contemporary philosophers are discussing this subject: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/race/
What exactly are the common interests of white people?Dachshund wrote: ↑November 26th, 2018, 2:15 pmI would like to begin by defining what I mean by the term “White Identity”. White identity is simply a recognition by Whites that they have interests in common which must be defended. All other racial groups take this for granted, i.e; that it is necessary to band together along racial lines, to work together for common interests.
Well, you've mentioned not going extinct and not becoming a minority.
The reason is that many equate Whites with The Oppressors or The Perpetrators and Non-Whites with The Oppressed or The Victims. Of course, the dark side of the history of Whites is an undeniable historical fact; but it's also true that we don't have ahistorically valid equations here, in the sense that it is part of the essence of white people to oppress and victimize non-white people.
Would you prefer the company of a bad white person to the company of a good non-white person?Dachshund wrote: ↑November 26th, 2018, 2:15 pmTo continue. Let me make a confession. I have a White identity, I am, like the American Founding Fathers , a White man of direct English (Anglo-Saxon, Protestant) descent. I have no hesitation in confirming that I naturally prefer the company of other White Europeans.
Would you prefer the company of a white Russian man to the company of a black American man, even though the latter is culturally much more similar to you than the former?
Don't have Black Americans the same right to say: the USA are our own country?Dachshund wrote: ↑November 26th, 2018, 2:15 pmSo, is it a shocking idea that Whites in America should want to remain a majority in their own country? Does this sound outrageous? Well, it does, but only when White American folks say it. Every other nation in the world - every non-White nation, simply takes it for granted that they will stay the majority in their own house.
Would you object to a majority of white Russians or white Muslims in the USA? It seems it isn't only race that matters to you but also ethnicity, nationality and culture (particularly religion). For the so-called "white race" comprises many different nations with many different cultures. So it seems you don't just prefer the company of white people but of white Christian Americans (of European descent).
There is no such thing as the culture of the white race. As I said, it is in itself multicultural and multinational. But I guess you refer only to that part of it which are the Christian American Whites (plus the Christian European Whites perhaps). Correct me if I'm wrong!
For example, what about all those white people, including me, who love black music (blues, jazz, soul)? As far as I can tell, listening to it hasn't had any negative effects on my health.Dachshund wrote: ↑November 26th, 2018, 2:15 pm In conclusion, let me summarise the notion of White Identity. A correct understanding of White Identity really boils down to an understanding of three basic notions:
(1) The fact that it is perfectly natural, normal and healthy for Whites to prefer the society and culture of of people like themselves, just as all groups prefer the the culture and society of groups of people like themselves.
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Re: The Truth about Race in America Today and Why it Matters
There are prenatal environmental factors that should also be taken into consideration such as the health of the mother and what the fetus is exposed to via toxins, stress hormones, drugs, etc. One argument that Dachshund makes is that black children who are adopted do not perform as well as their white siblings.Such studies require controlled experiments: removing infants of different ethnicity from their parents and bringing them up in identical (or randomized) environments.
The question that Dachshund and others who misrepresent the research ignore is why. The reason they don't is obvious, the answers to do conform to their bias.
Dachshund refers “a paper” without a title or link by “Godfordsen” and “Godfordson”. Her name is Gottfredson. Out of curiosity I did a search on Gottfredson.
From an interview:
I know you don’t want to but did you hear that Dachshund? Despite your belief in your own superiority you could well be the dumbest person in a room full of black people.But one thing I'd like to say is that what the tests show is that-- and I think this flies in the face of what racists would want to hear -- is that blacks and whites are fundamentally alike in that they all, as well as other racial/ethnic groups, span the full range of intelligence. The difference is in the clustering of people. https://www.pbs.org/thinktank/transcript130.html
From an article contributed by Gottfredson to "THE IQ CONUNDRUM":
IQ tests measure only phenotypic (developed) differences in general intelligence (g), not what causes them. Ability differences among groups can be real without necessarily being genetic, either in whole or part.
… the “why” question—are these differences partly genetic?—remains a matter of much scientific debate … My view is that the current weight of evidence favors a 50-80 percent rather than a zero percent genetic component. https://www.cato-unbound.org/2007/11/26 ... ning-moves
50-80 percent is a pretty wide margin and reflects the fact that the scientific evidence explaining the difference in general intelligence scores
is lacking. I doubt that any of this will keep Dachshund from hiding behind the science while he ignores the science.
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Re: The Truth about Race in America Today and Why it Matters
Good term, it describes the situation well.Gertie wrote: ↑November 30th, 2018, 6:46 amMy anthropologist mate calls it status slippage anxiety.Greta wrote: ↑November 30th, 2018, 4:14 am I think responses to the OP make clear the views of others on the forum about Dachshund's "truth".
Insecurity infuses his posts. He feels we don't have the strength to lift all boats and instead we should leave poor nations and people to rot. A bit of a bummer if you happen to be one of the poor, I should think.
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Re: The Truth about Race in America Today and Why it Matters
Given the fact you repeatedly scold me for failing to respond to criticisms and objections that you have made regarding the content of my posts, I will now reply to some of the reprovals you issued for certain views/remarks I expressed in my OP. I intend to respond to all of them, though I cannot realistically do that in one post. I will therefore complete the task using a series of posts, each of which will address 3 or 4 of your objections/criticisms.
So, here is the first post in the series; in it, I have responded to 3 (three) of your objections.
Actually, before I start, I must briefly deal with a query that both you and LuckyR have recently put to me, namely, am I an American ? The answer is a qualified "Yes, I am." I say "qualified" because, while I was, in fact, literally "Born in the USA", I don't think Bruce Springsteen would class me as a bone fide "Yankee Doodle". This is because at the age of 6 my father was transferred to Australia and, as it turned out, I grew up in the land "Down Under." When I was in my late 20s, I emigrated from Oz to England to marry my English fiance, and to date, I have resided in England with my wife and our son for well over 20 years. My ancestry, which I have traced back over five centuries is English - I come from White Anglo-Saxon Protestant stock, so that is how I describe my racial/ethnic Identity. Although I was born in the US, and have Australian citizenship, I regard myself as an English national; my primary allegiance is to England and the British Crown. This notwithstanding, I have always admired America, and the spirit of the American people. I have been following the changing events in US politics political events in the US very closely since the 2016 election because I think, in short that non-White ( Hispanic/Latino, Black) immigration, if it is not dramatically curbed ( or shut down) right now has the potential to destroy America in relatively short order ( historically speaking), hence my OP and some other recent posts I have sent dealing with American political issues.
(1): OK, so let's begin with the issue of residential segregation along racial lines in the US today. Here are two observations from my OP and your responses...
Whether or not you, Fool, as an individual, claim to have lived in "several" integrated neighbourhood is utterly beside the point, Fool. What I said about residential segregation was a reference to the general state of affairs across the nation. Here, numerous demographic studies have confirmed that today, 50 years after Lyndon B Johnson's "Fair Housing Act" of 1968 became a civil rights landmark, housing in the US is nearly as segregated as it was when LBJ enacted the law designed to eliminate it. Earlier this year in a "US News and World Report" article entitled Segregation's Legacy", editor Joseph Williams noted...Fooloso4 wrote: ↑November 26th, 2018, 11:35 pm White Americans say they're all in favour of integration and yet there is a profoundly important act of integration that they could undertake but that they never actually do. A white person could buy a house in a black neighborhood; nowadays, there are plenty of middle - class Black neighborhoods in the US where a White person would be perfectly safe.
Another claim without any credible evidence. There are plenty of integrated neighborhoods in the US. I have lived in several of them.
But the fact is, not even the most Liberal whites will take that basic integrationist step.
Fact? Where is the evidence?
* "Study after study shows African-Americans still lag far behind whites in home ownership, a key asset in building middle-class wealth".
*"At the same time, the institutional problems the Fair Housing Act was designed to solve – inequality in mortgage lending and homeownership, as well
as real-estate agents steering black home buyers to certain neighborhoods and landlords who avoid renting to minorities – haven't gone away. Limited
access to housing in stable, middle-class neighbourhoods, analysts say, has had a negative impact on everything from the quality of education black
children receive to the health and longevity of their parents".
* "We still have a very, very segregated society, in terms of housing and [by extension] schools," says John R. Logan, a Brown University sociology
professor who specializes in housing discrimination. While there's been "pockets" of improvement, mostly in progressive urban areas, "there's also
been some considerable backsliding" in enforcement at the federal and local level.
* "Many African-Americans are still consigned to live in decaying urban neighborhoods, their children forced to attend underfunded, crumbling schools
and get locked out of well-paying jobs. Richardson, the Redfin analyst, says "there are actual physical barriers" between suburban whites, urban
neighborhoods "and where the job centers are."
* "You'll see a railroad track, a highway, a river – something that literally cuts the [black] community off," she says. "In Cincinnati, the city put a
highway that literally cut off this neighborhood in the center of town. And now they're talking about putting a [transit] stop to create another
barrier."
* "Old problems still linger. African-Americans are far more likely than whites to receive high-interest mortgages from banks, real estate agents still
"steer" minority buyers away from white communities, and some neighborhood associations still include race-based restrictions on who can move in.
* "As a result, in today's America, approximately half of all Black persons and 40 percent of all Latinos live in neighborhoods without a White presence,"
according to the National Fair Housing Alliance report. "The average White person lives in a neighborhood that is nearly 80 percent White."
(2): I pointed out that until the 1960s ( and the passing of the "Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965") the US had always effectively adopted a "White (European) America" policy, and I said...
It seems to me that this was a very wise and and also a very MORAL policy, for the fundamental reason that any healthy nation always wishes to preserve its it character and not abolish it.(Dachshund)
You replied...
The United States has always been a nation of immigrants. The only MORAL policy is to treat human beings with respect and dignity without regard to race or culture.
(Foolosoph4)
"We are a Nation of Immigrants." It amazes me how many American Liberals trott out the slogan as if it were a serious justification for immigration policy, as if it actually meant something ! You are not an immigrant , Dr Fool, neither is LuckyR, nor Barack Obama ( who used the jingle to kick off an immigration speech he gave in 2014), likewise many of the American forum guests who are reading this post; so I guess that just means none of you lot are actually a part of the nation?
It seems to me that American folks who like to say: "We are a Nation of Immigrants", are saying that since we have let in immigrants in the past, we should keep letting them in. This is actually a well-known logical fallacy that is referred to as "the argument from tradition"; it's like saying we've always done it this way, so we shouldn't stop. Of course, most of the people who use this argument despise tradition and would never use it to justify any other policy. How about basing policy on a slogan that unlike this nonsense about immigrants is actually true. Like say, "We are a Nation of Male Presidents" or "We are a Majority White Nation". The people who say "We are a Nation of Immigrants" would think it was absurd to base policy on those true statements. But, when it comes to immigration - and only immigration - they are perfectly happy to let the past dictate the future; they are, however, dead wrong about the past.
To be an immigrant, there has to be a country to go to. If you settled Antarctica would you be an immigrant ? No, you'd be a pioneer. Were the Jamestown colonists immigrants ? Unlike Antarctica there were some stone age people living there, but they didn't welcome the newcomers with food stamps and bi-lingual education did they ? About 10 days after the English chose their campsite, hundreds of Indians attacked them and tried to exterminate them. That's worse than trying to settle Antarctica; so, no, the colonists were not immigrants.
Now once there was a nation, yes, there was immigration. From 1790 to 1820 the US population grew from 3.9 million to 10 million, that's 250% growth. Lots of immigration, right ? Wrong. That population increase of 6 million was almost entirely due to natives having children; at the end of that period only 1% of the population was foreign born. America was not a nation of immigrants, and if the Founders wanted immigrants they wanted White (European) immigrants. The very first Congress of the United States met in 1790, the Constitution had just been ratified, it was a brand new country, and Congress had to decide what kind of country it was going to be. That year they passed the very first naturalization law that restricted citizenship to "free White person (s)". The Founders wanted a White country.
Later on, immigration did pick up and it was immigration from Europe. By 1850 foreign - born immigrants were 9.7% of the population, the highest that percentage ever got was 14.8% in 1890. 15% of the US population is aged 11 or under, does that mean America is a nation of children? From 1910 until 1970 the percentage of immigrants dropped steadily to under 5%, the US was again becoming a nation exclusively of natives. Moreover until 1965, America had an immigration policy designed specifically to keep the nation White. The rapid and dramatic rise in the percentage of immigrants after 1970 was a repudiation of 200 years of deliberately favouring Europeans, it was only then that America started getting in lots of Mexicans, Chinese, Haitians, Guatemalans, Asians, Somalis, you name it, who are transforming the US and reducing Whites to a minority. So, that is the real meaning of the motto "We are a Nation of Immigrants", it is a profoundly anti-White slogan for people who don't like the US and want to turn it into something else. It's the slogan of immigrants themselves, who naturally want the country to look more like them, and of sick White people who think it is virtuous to phase out their own kith and kin.
There's another slogan that people associate with immigration, the Great Seal of the United States contains the latin phrase E Pluribus Unum which means "Out of Many, One". It's on the back of the dollar bill. The slogan was first proposed in 1776 to celebrate the 13 independent colonies coming together to form one country. Many people think the slogan means "immigration" of immigrants coming from all around the world to become one people. Even BaracK Obama thinks this. On July 1st, 2010, he gave a speech on immigration in which he said the usual goofey stuff: that letting people in is (quote) "one of the most basic American values"; and then he said this : " E Pluribus Unum, that is what has drawn the persecuted and impoverished to our shores", as if ever since 1776, E Pluribus Unum, was an invitation to the world's poor people. There is also a pro-immigration, non-profit , The Migration Policy Institute that gives out E Pluribus Unum prises for initiatives in immigrant integration. That would be like awarding a Tom Cruise prize for economic research; there's just no connection. Moreover, it goes without saying that those E Pluribus Unum prizes are not going to people who help Europeans integrate. Europeans wouldn't need any help would they. Recently a book was published with the following title printed on its front cover: "E Pluribus Unum - Contemporary and Historical Perspectives on Immigrant Political Incorporation"These people have hijacked the motto on the Great Seal, just like Obama, they act as though what it really meant was "We are a Nation of Immigrants". But don't fall for the balony, E Pluribus Unum celebrates the 13 sovereign colonies joined to form a federal Union. It's got nothing - absolutely nothing - to do with immigration.
America is not, and never has been a nation of immigrants, and to say that we have to do something just because we've been doing it since 1970 makes no sense. The people who talk that way would never accept: "Just Keep Doing It" as a justification for any other policy.
The Founding Fathers of America were White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. The core values and principles of the Declaration of Independence, the American Constitution (and Bill of Rights) that they forged were deeply rooted in England, in that famous English document that is the "Magna Carta" ( the "Great Charter" of rights) granted by King John in 1215 at Runnymede near Windsor. The "Magna Carta" played an absolutely crucial role in the birth of the United States. It was the main source of inspiration for the Founding Fathers as they contemplated what legal, political and civil precepts they should use to organise and regulate the governing of their brand new nation.This is one of the chief reason that even after independence, America's founders retained a deep reverence for their English (European) heritage, and a determination that the United States should always remain a White European ethnostate.
What I wonder would those first Americans think were they able to what has now become of the nation they founded. They would be horrified, of course, to know that White Americans now face the prospect of becoming a minority group in the US by 2050; horrified to known that the distinctive cultural values, institutions, mores, civilized manners, principles of Christian morality, etc; all of which were exported from England, were threatened with annihilation by the influx of millions of Black and Hispanic Third world immigrants.
(3): Next let's deal with the issue of racial "diversity". I said...
The timeless truth is that"diversity" of this kind is always a source of tension, civil unrest and conflict. (Dachshund)
You countered...
It is not a timeless truth. Like it or not, it is a problem and challenge that we will have to deal with.
(Fool)
If you look around the world at places where populations that are diverse along these lines have tried to share the same territory, you will find it is always the case that there has been conflict and not uncommonly large-scale killing. (Dachshund)
If you look at the United States that is not the case. That is not to say there are not problems, but anyone who is able to see past their racial biases and does not believe we can reverse the course of history knows that we must figure out how to get along.
(Fool)
Firstly, I stand by my claim that it is, - for all intents and purposes -, a "timeless truth" that wherever you find two or more different racial groups are brought into in contact within in the environs of a particular area ( such as a housing project, a shopping mall, an amusement park, a prison, etc) before long there will be friction, tension, and manifest ill-feeling between the groups, and it is not uncommon for this animosity to escalate into serious physical violence. Moreover, I do think we should react to this issue with a leaden fatalism, that views the problem of increasing incidents of inter-racial conflict as something we were destined to have to deal in an evolving society. Nor do I accept that we can take view this particular problem is something we will be able to eliminate when we eventually "figure out how to get along."
Let me now explain my position in a little more detail...
"Our diversity is one of our greatest strengths."
(Bernie Sanders "Democratic Convention, 2016)
Almost every American is familiar with the slogan: "diversity is one of our great strengths". Many even say that "diversity is our greatest strength." When people talk about diversity they may be thinking about religion, language and culture, but the usually the main thing they have in mind is race. This is because if you imagine a university where the students were from all the different countries in Europe most people would say that the campus wasn't really diverse because all of the students would be White. So when people talk about diversity being a great strength for America , they mean that the United States is a wonderful country because it has people of different races living in it. But is racial diversity really a source of strength ? Actually it's not; diversity, not just of race, but of religion, language, culture and so on, is , in fact, a major source of tension and conflict.
Consider the history of race in America, there were battles with the Indians, slavery, a terrible Civil War that was fought because of slavery, Jim Crow laws, the Japanese relocation camps during World War II, race riots in the 1960s. Far from being a strength, race has been a very serious problem for the United States. At what point did diversity stop being a problem and become America's "greatest strength"? The truth is has never stopped being a problem. If diversity were a great strength you would expect people would practice it on their own, in their own lives, but they don't. Almost all people prefer to live, work and socialise with people like themselves. This is fact of human nature. If you consider your own life, if you're a church - goer, think about your church, the chances are it's not diverse at all. Think about where you live; segregated housing patterns in the US have not changed at all in 50 years ( a fact you can confirm for yourself on-line by consulting the appropriate census statistics), because people prefer to live next door to people like themselves. What about you, Dr Fool, a well-educated, mild mannered, White, middle-class, American man; are you going to tell me that you live in a majority Black or Hispanic neighbourhood, one where there are many dilapidated houses/apartments; that your neighbours are welfare recipients or low-skill labourers, that none of the folks who live in your vicinity can speak fluent English, that there is a regular police presence in your street, etc. ? If that were the case, I would be mightily surprised !
If you look at the lunch room of any public school, you will note Whites sit with Whites and Blacks sit with Blacks, Hispanics with Hispanics and so on. If diversity is so wonderful why do so few people want it? The reason is that diversity creates conflict. Many schools with large Black and Hispanic student bodies suffer from constant racial tension that can even erupt into full-scale race riots. For example in the Los Angeles area over just the last few years riot police have had to break up riots between Blacks and Hispanics and completely lock down the following high schools: Norte Vista; Jefferson; Freemont; Locke and Silverado, and these were serious riots that required SWAT teams, helicopters hovering overhead, pepper spray and other non-lethal means of crowd control. There are similar problems wherever there are racially mixed schools. Friction between Blacks and Asians, American Indians and Hispanics, Whites and Blacks, etc. Mara Sapon - Shevin is a Professor of Education at Syracuse University, she says (quote): "The truth is that every school has a racism problem, and the only differentiation is between schools that are doing something about it and schools that aren't" Many schools no longer even celebrate "Black History Month" or "Cinco de Maya" because when they did it evoked racial friction and even violence. This kind of diversity doesn't sound much like a strength to me.
The same racial tensions exist in prisons, these are the only places, by the way, where people are forced to live in the kind of intense integration that some people ( on the political left, for example) claim to want for the the whole nation. And what's the result ? A man who spent 4 years in California prisons wrote in the Los Angeles Times that mixing persons together by race is (quote): "very dangerous". He offered what he called "Rule Number One" for survival in prison (quote): "The various races and ethnic groups stick together." He added that there are no other rules. This forcible mixing - you could call it "obligatory diversity" - means prisons have the worst race relations in the whole of the United States. Every year there are major prison riots in which men end up in a hospital, sometimes even killed. Every year prison inmates beg the authorities to separate them by race for their own safety. But their pleas fall on deaf ears; it seems their lives and safety don't matter. Prisoners have to put up with integration of an intrusive, intimate kind most Americans will never experience, because, because their society claims to believe in integration. Although people on the outside are free to separate and, of course, most of the time that is exactly what they do. America's hypocrisy about diversity is literally killing prisoners.
There are some neighbourhood in the United States that are almost as bad as prisons. In June of 2008 Sheriff Lee Baca wrote an article in the Los Angeles Times called: "In LA Race Kills". He wrote that people try to deny it but (quote): " Let me be very clear about this. We have a serious inter-racial violence problem in this County involving Blacks and Latinos." He went on to say (quote): "...some of LA's so-called gangs are really no more than loosely-knit bands of Blacks or Latinos roaming the streets looking for people of the other color to shoot." In mAy of 2009 Federal Officials charged 147 members of the "Varrio Hawaiian Gardens" gang ( a latino gang) with trying the ethnically cleanse Blacks from their part of Los Angeles. This represents a shocking failure of multiracialism, certainly not an example of the strength of diversity. (Most Americans never heard about this incident as it was hardly local news, let alone national news).
Most Americans are familiar with the way American companies like to brag about a diverse work force is so wonderful and productive. But the fact is that these claims are all just wishful thinking because there is no research evidence whatsoever that indicates that a racially mixed workforce is good for production, profits, or employee morale. Thomas A. Koclan a Professor at MIT, has probably researched corporate diversity more thoroughly than any other academic in America. After one 5 - year study he said (quote): "The diversity industry in built on sand." adding (quote): "People simply want to believe diversity works." Anyone who seriously looks at companies finds that people, as always, prefer to work with people like themselves. The more diverse the workforce, the more absenteeism, the more job turnover, less employee satisfaction and so forth.
What people like on the job they like at home too. Robert Putnam, a political scientist at Harvard studied 41 different American communities that ranged from all White, rural South Dakota, to the very mixed populations of Los Angeles. What he found was quite devastating , and that was that the more diversity there was in a community the less trust there was among it occupants. He found that, (for example), In diverse areas, people don't car pool, they don't do volunteer work, they give less to charity, they have less confidence in local government, they have fewer close friends, etc What they did do more of was stay at home and watch television - that's what diversity does to people. Professor Putnam was so unhappy about his results ( he was hoping to prove that diversity was a great thing) that he spent years trying to to find some alternative explanation for his findings, but ultimately he had to admit the truth; diversity destroys community trust.
I think Putnam's research is particularly noteworthy because the subjects in his study were ordinary, normal adult Americans. There were no obvious factors apart from racial diversity that could possibly have been responsible for the destruction of trust in that Putnam identified in communities that were racially heterogeneous. This is important, because a critic might , for instance, dismiss the relationship between racial diversity and conflict/violence in prisons I highlighted above, by arguing that prisoners are all low-rent, maladjusted thugs; so it's not surprising that there are high levels of friction/ conflict among them and frequent outbreaks of violence/rioting. This would happen even if they were locked up in prisons that were not racially diverse at all. After all, these are precisely the kinds of behaviour that criminals ( who are uncivilized, misfits, etc) typically tend to display. Similarly, when I argued that racial diversity in high schools generates tension and conflict between students that can even erupt in violent brawls/ riots. A critic could say to me: "Well high school students are teenagers, and even perfectly normal teengers are well-known to display a range "difficult" behaviours ( such as impulsivity, moodiness, defiance, aggression etc) on a regular basis. Also teens are still relatively immature, irresponsible and lacking in self-control. Given all of this, it is perfectly understandable that there might often be a substantial levels of tension and conflict within the student population and, on occasion, violent clashes or possibly a riot - even if the school was not ethnically diverse in the slightest." (I do not, by the way, believe that these two hypothetical criticisms- which were ,in fact, dreamed up by myself (!) - do anything at all to diminish the credibility of my arguments (above) that racial diversity causes serious problems in high schools and prisons.) I used them to underscore the point that in Putnam's research we have evidence of the trouble that diversity makes for plain, ordinary people People just like you, people just like me, ; and this is true all over the world.
The next time you hear of large-scale tension or violence anywhere in the world, if you dig a little under the surface the chances are you will find that diversity is the problem. That the problem is a result of people who are different in race, language, culture, ethnicity trying to share the same territory.
Professor Tatu VanHanen of Finland has compared ethnic diversity and level of conflict in 148 different countries and he found a very strong correlation between diversity and violence. Homogeneous nations like Japan and Iceland are peaceful. Highly diverse countries like Lebanon and Sudan are wracked with strife.
So why does America insist on something that is untrue ? Why are Americans exhorted to celebrate diversity when diversity causes problems not just in the United States, but around the entire world ?
I believe I know the answer, but this is an matter that I would need to dealt with in a separate post (!)
Regards
Dachshund
- Burning ghost
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Re: The Truth about Race in America Today and Why it Matters
This is true enough. The thing is this doesn’t happen because of the colour of their skin. This happens due to cultural similarities they share and a common upbringing (and/or cultural attitude.) Goths sit together too, but we don’t talk about being a goth as belonging to some “race.” The issue is highlighting that “race” essentially means “cultural/group identity.”If you look at the lunch room of any public school, you will note Whites sit with Whites and Blacks sit with Blacks, Hispanics with Hispanics and so on. If diversity is so wonderful why do so few people want it?
I do think “Black Live Matter” is an insulting title. I don’t find it helpful to continually use terms based on physiological appearences to define an entire swathe of people as this or that. Note that in Africa there is a quite strong dislike of so called “African Americans” because they’ve experienced people going back to their self-proclaimed “homeland” as being so disconnected from reality that they basically end up puching them back out to their real “homeland” (the US). Of course some US citizens do integrate well into African culture.
The US has a strange history regarding the issue and use of the term “race.” I think it is silly to talk about “white” and “black” as if they’re distinct physiological/psychological differences. They is more variation within groups than between them ona genetic scale. The cultural differences almost completely ignore genetics - I say almost completely because in some more isolated cultures attitudes vary; as they vary attitudes toward religion, sexual preferences, gender roles, and the heirarchy of values in societies according to innumerable different factors.
All this said on a social level none of the facts matter if people willfully ignore them and fall prey to this or that social narrative. We’re all susceptible to cognitive dissidence and setting out easy and distinct labels on items (be they “people,” “subjects,” and/or “objects”) helps us navigate through the world without being overwhelmed.
So the main “protest” is in your speech like this:
For starters most of the “blacks” in the US are not immigrants. Non-white is nonsense too because it is down to the ease of integration of people into the US. There are plenty of different skin tones across Europe who are European not Chinese, Nigerian or South American. If we look at a part of the world I am quite familiar with I can tell you right now that placing all Asian nations under one umbrella is utterly ridiculous. There is a broad cultural distinction between given nations due to geology and historical context. Many of the similarities of culture they possess are due to western influences - MTV generations and now the expanding and available use of the internet.I have been following the changing events in US politics political events in the US very closely since the 2016 election because I think, in short that non-White ( Hispanic/Latino, Black) immigration, if it is not dramatically curbed ( or shut down) right now has the potential to destroy America in relatively short order ( historically speaking), hence my OP and some other recent posts I have sent dealing with American political issues.
If we then look at “Hispanic”/“Latino,” we find more diversity of cultures too. Obviously there is a common thread of language but other than that there are quite distinct differences. Then you can look at the UK and ask how different the Welsh, Northern Irish (and Irish), Scots, and English are, then even the cultural differences between cities and towns, the north south division, the local colloquialisms in which the British Isles there are MANY and in which accents can change completely over a couple of dozen kilometres (or less.)
The UK is also culturally different to mainland Europe in certain ways that are not so obivous unless you’ve managed to step away fro long enough to see the differences (this year I returned to Europe for the first time in 8 years ... I saw for the very first time what being English meant, and the beauty of Europe was quite startling to me because I never saw what was before my own eyes before - even my home town which I previously regarded as a **** hole.0
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Re: The Truth about Race in America Today and Why it Matters
One thing I never understood about eugenics is how they deal with the concept of inbreeding. If purity of blood were really the goal, it would logically follow that the purest blood you could get would be by staying within "Royal" bloodlines. The reality, however, is that with the exceptions of rare late-in-life effects like Huntington's Disease, autosomal dominant genetic alleles are generally more battle-tested by natural selection and less prone to causing the kind of problematic recessive phenotypes that inbred people can face -- a good example would be the prevalence of hemophilia in the royal bloodline of England following Henry VIII's legalization of cousin marriages.Burning ghost wrote: ↑November 30th, 2018, 2:38 am Eugenics is an interesting topic too. The major problem we have today is due to the events of last century where these things started out as genuine studies of interest often with the intent to better society. As with everything misuse causes problems and in this particular area people are quite offended when they believe they are being judged as a “part” of something rather than as a valued individual.
Even if the average statistical performance of one race in any category could be successfully used to prove anything of substance, against which Consul has cited a nice bit of thinking, this would ignore the fact that mixed race individuals will generally take the best of both worlds, expressing dominant traits and minimizing the expression of problematic recessive phenotypes.
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- ktz
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Re: The Truth about Race in America Today and Why it Matters
Is the OP capable of understanding that the problems with the status quo exist are lingering issues of past mistakes, not a sign that we ought to begin committing those mistakes again? For sane individuals I'd imagine pretty much a cursory investigation into intergroup contact theory would be enough to relegate the whole of these arguments into the nether realm, but perhaps the most productive pathway with this particular OP would begin with a consultation of the DSM 5...
It's almost trivial the refute this. Does the OP understand that no diversity means no Michael Jordan, no Colin Powell, no Neil DeGrasse Tyson -- or maybe more up his alley, no Ben Carson, no Harris Faulkner, and not to mention, no Soul food, no Jambolaya, no General Tso's Chicken, no Pad Thai...Dachsdund wrote: So why does America insist on something that is untrue ? Why are Americans exhorted to celebrate diversity when diversity causes problems not just in the United States, but around the entire world ?
In the very basic conclusions of evolutionary biology and natural selection, the wider the range of genetic diversity, the wider the range of potential situations a population can survive, due to the wider array of potential phenotypical adaptations. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10 ... 04.00710.x
For the sociological context most relevant here, e.g. Robert Putnam's answer to the question, found in the very first few sentences of his paper (??) : In the long run immigration and diversity are likely to have important cultural, economic, fiscal, and developmental benefits. (Full stop.) Data-driven arguments seem to carry some weight with the OP, despite his epistemic closure, so some basic papers for use with sci-hub:
Urban diversity and economic growth:
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.12.2.127
Ethnic diversity and creativity:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10 ... 6496272003
Ethnic diversity and improved learning:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10. ... 1.11777112
- Burning ghost
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Re: The Truth about Race in America Today and Why it Matters
“Eugenics” was a term coined for scientific purposes that was then politicized. One of the big names come up with it (sorry my memory for names is awful at best; likely William James or some one of that calibre.
The famous biologist (again the name escapes me) came up with the calculation that for the “best” balance between diversity and inbreeding we should all mate with our second or third cousins - or something like that. She won the nobel prize after being mocked for decades because of her work on corn I think? I trust her opinion because she appears to have been interested in science for the sake of science not to push any particular agenda or theory. I’m gonna have to google her out of respect ... Barbara McClintock!
- ktz
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Re: The Truth about Race in America Today and Why it Matters
Haven't heard of Barbara McClintock before... I'll have to look into at some point and whether the latest science still supports this conclusion.Burning ghost wrote: ↑December 1st, 2018, 9:37 am ktz -
“Eugenics” was a term coined for scientific purposes that was then politicized. One of the big names come up with it (sorry my memory for names is awful at best; likely William James or some one of that calibre.
The famous biologist (again the name escapes me) came up with the calculation that for the “best” balance between diversity and inbreeding we should all mate with our second or third cousins - or something like that. She won the nobel prize after being mocked for decades because of her work on corn I think? I trust her opinion because she appears to have been interested in science for the sake of science not to push any particular agenda or theory. I’m gonna have to google her out of respect ... Barbara McClintock!
- Burning ghost
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Re: The Truth about Race in America Today and Why it Matters
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Re: The Truth about Race in America Today and Why it Matters
Home ownership and attitudes about integration are two different things. The barriers to home ownership are largely economic.Study after study shows African-Americans still lag far behind whites in home ownership …
Like most of us, I am descended from immigrants.You are not an immigrant …
It has nothing to do with what we have done in the past but with why we let them in, and that reason has not changed.It seems to me that American folks who like to say: "We are a Nation of Immigrants", are saying that since we have let in immigrants in the past, we should keep letting them in. This is actually a well-known logical fallacy that is referred to as "the argument from tradition" …
By definition they were immigrants. Most of us are not descended from them.Were the Jamestown colonists immigrants ?
From Jefferson to Madison:The Founders wanted a White country.
You reject the argument from tradition when you think it helps your argument and then argue in favor of it when you think it helps your argument.The question Whether one generation of men has a right to bind another, seems never to have been started either on this or our side of the water. Yet it is a question of such consequences as not only to merit decision, but place also, among the fundamental principles of every government. The course of reflection in which we are immersed here on the elementary principles of society has presented this question to my mind; and that no such obligation can be transmitted I think very capable of proof. I set out on this ground which I suppose to be self evident, "that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living;" that the dead have neither powers nor rights over it.
http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/presidents/th ... jefl81.php
Since 1970? Once again you make claims without knowing the facts:America is not, and never has been a nation of immigrants, and to say that we have to do something just because we've been doing it since 1970 makes no sense.
http://www.emmigration.info/us-immigrat ... istics.htm1821 - 1830: 143,439 immigrants arrive in the US
1831 - 1840: 599,125 immigrants arrive in the US
1841 - 1850: 1,713,251 immigrants arrive in the US
1851 - 1860: 2,598,214 immigrants arrive in the US
1861 - 1870: 2,314,825 immigrants arrive in the US
1871 - 1880: 2,812,191 immigrants arrive in the US
1881 - 1890: 5,246,613 immigrants arrive in the US
1891 - 1900: 3,687,564 immigrants arrive in the US
1901 - 1910: 8,795,386 immigrants arrive in the US
1911 - 1920: 5,735,811 immigrants arrive in the US
1921 - 1930: 4,107,209 immigrants arrive in the US
1931 - 1940: 532,431 immigrants arrive in the US (Great Depression)
1941 - 1950: 1,035,039 immigrants arrive in the US
1951 - 1960: 2,515,479 immigrants arrive in the US
1961 - 1970: 3,321,677 immigrants arrive in the US
Such conflict does not divide along racial lines. White Europeans have a long history of conflict with white Europeans.… wherever you find two or more different racial groups are brought into in contact … before long there will be friction, tension, and manifest ill-feeling between the groups, and it is not uncommon for this animosity to escalate into serious physical violence …
It has been a problem because the white Europeans you identify so closely with lack the common human decency to treat others as human beings.Consider the history of race in America, there were battles with the Indians, slavery, a terrible Civil War that was fought because of slavery, Jim Crow laws, the Japanese relocation camps during World War II, race riots in the 1960s. Far from being a strength, race has been a very serious problem for the United States.
One again you fail to cite your sources. What 5 year study? This one?Thomas A. Koclan a Professor at MIT, has probably researched corporate diversity more thoroughly than any other academic in America. After one 5 - year study he said (quote): "The diversity industry in built on sand."
Note the word ‘nuanced’. In your black and white world there can be no such thing as a nuanced understanding.Taken together, says Thomas Kochan of MIT's Sloan School of Management, coordinator of the multiyear project, these results underline the importance of developing a more nuanced understanding of how different forms of diversity affect how people work.
https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/hum ... diversity/
A few more findings from the study:
I am not going to chase down the other names you drop, and always without references. The story is always the same, you misrepresent their work.In the first case study, which involved an information-processing company with more than 26,000 employees, professor Karen Jehn and lecturer Katerina Bezru-kova of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School found that racial diversity was associated with poor performance in business units that shared three traits: a competitive organizational culture, a growth-oriented business strategy and human resource practices that focused on honing job-related skills. However, this relationship disappeared when groups promoted collective achievement, emphasized stability or customer relationships rather than growth, and used training opportunities to impart diversity-related values to employees.
Similarly, an analysis of a large financial services firm, conducted by associate professor Robin Ely and professor David Thomas, both of the Harvard Business School, suggested that how groups approach diversity is at least as important as the degree of diversity they display. On the basis of employee surveys and sales and customer satisfaction data collected from 480 of the company's retail branches, Ely and Thomas concluded that racial diversity enhanced performance in units that treated diversity as a resource for innovation and learning. But diversity typically had a negative impact in groups that showed no evidence of what Ely and Thomas term the “integration-and-learning perspective.”
These effects were substantial. When Ely and Thomas focused on branch offices with equal numbers of white and nonwhite employees, they found that on average, groups that appeared to endorse the integration-and-learning approach outperformed units lacking this perspective by 37%. What's more, the same high scorers outperformed racially homogeneous branches by a margin of nearly 30%.
2023/2024 Philosophy Books of the Month
Mark Victor Hansen, Relentless: Wisdom Behind the Incomparable Chicken Soup for the Soul
by Mitzi Perdue
February 2023
Rediscovering the Wisdom of Human Nature: How Civilization Destroys Happiness
by Chet Shupe
March 2023