To illustrate a piece on youth unemployment in Wales they use this picture:
![\"\"](\"https://www.timworstall.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Youth-unemployment-Wales-Carwyn-Jones-jobs-for-young-people-plan.jpg\" "\\"Youth-unemployment-Wales-Carwyn-Jones-jobs-for-young-people-plan\\"")
Hmm.
According to the 2001 census, 96% of the population was White British, and 2.1% non-white (mainly of British Asian origin).[205] Most non-white groups were concentrated in the southern port cities of Cardiff, Newport and Swansea. Welsh Asian and African communities developed mainly through immigration since the Second World War.[206] In the early 21st century, parts of Wales saw an increased number of immigrants settle from recent EU accession countries such as Poland;[207] though a 2007 study showed a relatively low number of employed immigrant workers from the former Eastern bloc countries in Wales compared to other regions of the United Kingdom.
I guess devolution hasn\’t reached the stock photo agencies yet?
Well, it’s the rules. Positive imagery must always show a happy diverse population, negative imagery should always show white urban peasants.
It’s more interesting when you click thru to the PDF Welsh Labour have produced.
To show public transport they managed to find one of the few women in Cardiff who wears a chador. And to show public health they show a health centre sign with 6 languages on it, including English and Welsh. I’m surprised that the Welsh Asians manage to travel around the rest of Wales when the only languages on road signs are English and Welsh.
I suppose those young people fled to Wales from the hazardous environs of Ontario:
http://www.oasar.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=homepage&CFID=2730313&CFTOKEN=46884112 . Albeit two of them seem not to have made it.
I just scrolled through the PDF, and the thing that struck me is that, other than the ugly politicians, everyone’s face is hidden, as if they’re ashamed to be associated with it. Heads cut off, backs of heads, hair in the way, chador, one woman has her hand over her face in despair. What can this mean?
They’ve got nothing though on the improbably diverse Northern Scottish fishing village of Balamory.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2003/10_october/22/cin_balamory.shtml
Elves at Risk?
20 years ago there would have been one ethnic minority in that photo. 10 years ago, 2.
In five years it will be a criminal offence to show any non-ethnic minority in photographs meant to represent the population.
Don’t worry Rob, there’ll still be lots of jobs for white models, to represent muggers, paedophiles, drug addicts, wife beaters…
Poking a bit of fun at clumsy and OTT political correctness is one thing… but let’s not stray into ‘but won’t somebody think of the poor oppressed white menz’ territory.. for down that path lies only the bad places.
“Bad places” being what? Observing that the State actively discriminates against white menz?
I was on a bus a few days ago. Posters, from the local police/council/what have you partnership, warning us about “controlling” partners. Does your partner try to tell you waht to do? When you can go out? Etc?
All about men. Because women don’t never act like that, oh noes.
Look, propaganda has moved on a bit from the “Jews Are Like Lice” stage. It’s a bit more subtil these days; by constantly representing, say, men and only men as aggressors, despite this not being true. Or only portraying white people as criminals or drunks or the like. It’s a real issue. And a very important one.
Agree. And none of that is made OK by the general advantages that white men, as a group, are granted as a birthright (whether we invite them or not).
But dealing with that means coherently drawing attention to it, and trying to make the point that there’s nowt so racist and sexist as refusing to acknolwedge that black people and women can do bad things too. I’m all for that.
But Daily Mail style ‘won’t somebody think of us white men’ comments won’t cut it. In my most humble of white-man opinions, that is.
And none of that is made OK by the general advantages that white men, as a group, are granted as a birthright
Oh good grief. How much Kool Aid have you drunk so far today?
“none of that is made OK… But…”
Ah, hello, old friend.
“Oh good grief. How much Kool Aid have you drunk so far today?”
Ha. Well this is a whole big mighty can of worms. Maybe we dominate the wealth and the power and the top jobs because we’re, like, just totally the best at stuff. Or maybe the way of the world helps us out. I have my view, you (it seems) have yours. I can see that it’s changing a bit (white women, for example, are well on track).
But, well, around these parts we’re fond of looking at what actually happens, rather than what people hope will happen. And, still, what actually happens is that white men rise to the top. I don’t have a guilt complex about it, I don’t think it’s all down to an evil patriachal plot.. it’s just one of the more enduring remnants of a history in which, not all that long ago, the practices and attitudes which lead to white men having the power were overt, uncontroversial, and even enshrined in legislation.
I don’t believe that one has to be an angry beardy commie lesbian to have some basic awareness of what ‘privelage’ is, and what impact it has.
There’s nothing better than to observe racist libertarians.
So a promotional picture tries to cover the bases? Discrimination against the white working male?
Dear oh dear Worstall, this is a barrel-scraper, but your fans love it!
“Hi! I’m foreign! You may know me from taking such things as Your Job, Your Wife and Your Pride!”
TTG-
Maybe we dominate the wealth and the power and the top jobs because we’re, like, just totally the best at stuff.
Okay, what you’re doing is making an aggregation error. Or, a Bayesian error. Let’s define privilege as “having a top job”, okay?
“All priveleged persons are white males”
is not the same as
“All white males are privileged persons”.
To use a hopefully clear example-
“All Frenchmen are humans” does not imply that “all humans are Frenchmen”.
So, if we assume, “all privilege goes to white males” it does not make it correct to say “all white males are privileged”. The idea that all white males have a “birthright” of privilege is such total bollocks as to defy belief; and is part of the classic error of incorrect class analysis that drives most of the Left’s generally incorrect analysis.
The Old Left at least had an understanding that things are tough for everyone- white, black, male, female- at the bottom. The New Left is an entirely bourgeois construction. They cannot even see the bottom; their gaze is focusesed on the small number of people at the top.
There isn’t any “white privilege”. There are privileged classes who are predominantly white, because, hey, Englishmen were until a few decades ago, overwhelmingly white. There is also a far, far numerically larger white working class and underclass, to whom the idea of “privilege” is a sick joke.
Hey, I’d like to earn 200K a year too. Where’s my fucking birthright? Did it get lost in the post?
Ian B
the right way to think about this is behind the veil of ignorance. So you don’t know what class you will be born into, all you know is your ethnicity and gender.
From that point of view, do you expect to have a easier or tougher ride is life if you are white male, female or non-white, male, female?
I think it’s fucking obvious that being born white and male in this country gives you the most chances, the lowest probability of suffering a disadvantage because of you gender or colour, and so forth. The easiest ride by some distance, If you think otherwise, well I think you are the right-wing arsehole that offsets the existence of Richard Murphy.
Tim adds: I think you’re misunderstanding Ian’s point. That most of those who are privileged are white, sure. This is not the same statement as most of the white are privileged. Further, it’s not particularly because someone is white: it’s that they happen to be the offspring of someone able to pass on privilege and most of those who can do this are currently white.
For example, I wouldn’t call any of the Mittal offspring underprivileged because they are non-white….
of course if you don’t think that, they I don’t think that of you.
to be clearer, I agree with you that advantages/disadvantages of class are probably larger than advantages/disadvantages of ethnicity or gender nowadays, the argument comes down to conditional on class there is still a white advantage … hmm now I think about it, I’m not sure whether how much easier white working class has it over non-white working class. Get stopped and searched less often. Not sure about employment probabilities, difficulty is you could say non-white working class may have a better work ethic, be more upwardly mobile. Maybe I’d better apologize for and retract the right-wing arsehole bit, just incase.
” it’s not particularly because someone is white: it’s that they happen to be the offspring of someone able to pass on privilege and most of those who can do this are currently white.”
let’s take a middle class household, of identical income, education etc. so the “passing on the privilege” bit is the same in all aspects other the colour. I reckon the white middle offspring still face an easier ride than the non-right.
If behind your veil of ignorance you set the probability of being born working class, middle class whatever the same regardless of colour, and then ask whether you’d rather be white or not, you are getting round the fact that you are more likely to be born into a privileged position if white (i.e. the probabilities of being born born working class, middle class whatever are NOT the same regardless of colour) which is why I said that’s the right way to think about this question. Only if you can answer that you wouldn’t mind which colour you were can you say there is no white privilege.
what’s given me pause for thought is the shitty state of the white working classes – well perhaps I should say white non-working classes. That’s tricky territory because you have distinguish external discrimination from “the system” from other factors that make explain differing outcomes by ethnicity, within the category non-working class.
ugh typos all over the shop
Ian
There are lots of way one can be privileged.. and, of course, many of them are contradictory. I mainly hear it talked about by feminists.. many of whom are white, middle class, and British… they recognise that they, themselves, are well up in the privilage chart, but that doesn’t mean that their male equivalents don’t have further advantages.
And there are disadvantages too. I’m privelaged in that I have s good job and nobody will ever suggest I got it by dropping my trousers, so I win. But if I quit it to look after my children, people would suggest I’m ‘under the thumb’ or, somehow, a lesser man. So I lose.
Most rational people do recognise the issue you allude to with white working-class men who, indeed, are often getting a shit deal. It’s not a competition to find out who is most/least privileged.
I made a comment in reaction to what I read as very superficial Mail-esque ‘reasoning’, and the perception that the politically-correct elite are turning white men into an oppressed group. They are not. Where members of that group are worse off it’s not usually because they are in that group, it’s in spite of it.
All white males have the privilege that being a white male brings. But in some respects they may find that the privelage of being middle class (say) trumps it. So, say, if the educational system expects very little of a white lad born to a working class family, but expects plenty from an asian girl born to a middle-class family.. then the trend of outcomes will follow that.
This stuff is, as I see it, pretty self-evident. And it’s not a left/right thing (albeit that there are contrasting ideas about what, if anything, you do to correct it). Asking where your £200k job is is, well, pretty crass and all a bit ‘straw man’.
Tim, thanks.
Luis-
As to what ease of ride I expect, I repeat, it depends who I’m born to. Most whites are lower class, so you can’t slip in that “middle class white” thing and get away with it. You want my anecdotes about how poor we were when I was a kid, and all my friends (white, black and asian) generally were? No, probably not. But we were pretty much all in the same boat. There were some middle class kids at Tumbledown Comprehensive, they even had shoes. They had an easier ride no doubt than the rest of us, but I don’t remember Toby Pinkerton Smythe saying, “hey, my white brother, let me haul you along with me, homey!”.
The point I’m addressing is this myth that privilege applies to racial classes. Or other particular classes. Though, on the general gender question, I’d expect an “easier ride” as a female. But it depends what sort of ride you want, of course. I know that as a female I’d be more likely to be able to go through life without having to earn a living, that the courts would treat me more kindly if I got into trouble, that people in general would treat me more kindly, and that if there was a war I’d be safe at home while my menfolk went off to get blown to bits.
Tricky stuff really, this “privilege” thing.
Ian,
we know that at some points in time privilege certainly has applied to racial classes – think apartheid South Africa or 1930s South USA. So you cannot rule out the idea. The question is how far contemporary societies differ from those examples. A lot, but maybe not to the extent of having 100% erased racial privileges.
So did your equally-poor-as-you black and asian friends face no additional difficulties on account of their colour, when you were growing up? I would be surprised if so.
[I don’t know what you mean by slipping in a middle class example and getting away with it – if you’re going to think about how race compares with class, you need to think about different classes, there are tens of millions of middle class people in the UK, it’s hardly irrelevant]
“I know that as a female I’d be more likely to be able to go through life without having to earn a living,”
Which might suit you, but doesn’t suit those women who, actually, would rather like to earn as good a living as possible and would rather not have anyone think that, somehow, that shouldn’t be the case.
“that the courts would treat me more kindly if I got into trouble,”
But if you got into the sort of trouble that makes the newspapers, you’d be treated far more harshly by them. And, indeed, society as a whole (I don’t know who is leading who on that one).
“that people in general would treat me more kindly, ”
And sometimes that would be because showing common decency to women really does seem to be seen as more important than showing it to men. But sometimes it’ll be because they are accustomed to being extra nice to women beacuse that’s, apparently, how you get laid. Oh, and sometimes they’ll just be being massively patronizing.
“and that if there was a war I’d be safe at home while my menfolk went off to get blown to bits.”
Quite, you probably won’t even be allowed to go to war and get blown to bits. Choose for yourself who’s got the privilege here but, if it helps at all, I think women drew the trump card there.
This kind of question is hard to quantify. Like, did they get stopped by the police more than the average white? Probably, but then so did I as a younger chap because of my long-hair-rocker bet-he’s-got-some-dope-on-him-stop-that-one image. People have different life experiences, and it’s simply dangerous to slap entire classes with aggregated statistics, as tends to happen.
So, becasue of this thread, I just googled some classmate names and, in particular, some black kids I was at school with in my initial private-education phase of childhood before we got totally skinted. One turned up, out of the four blacks I was at primary prep school with (early 70s remember, so you’d expect a low ratio). He went to public school, university, banking, commodity trading, then technology companies of various types and now appears to be earning about a zillion pounds a year with various positions on boards of things and advisory thises and thats.
Mind you, he’s half-caste, so maybe he got half a white privilege in the post.
@IanB, I thought it was only women who said things like “you can’t go out”. Or rather, demanded a full itinerary including who you met if returning more than 2 minutes and 30 seconds later than expected.
To be fair, there are a small number of people in the photo, and they have to show a minimum of two ethnics to avoid the accusation of tokenism. As we now all know there is more than one type of ethnic, they have to show two of the normal ethnic, and one other. Which means in any photo of five people, yer common-or-garden gwilo becomes lesser-spotted.
I’m going to register my offence as an individual of mixed race who feels dramatically under-represented in that image. Compensation for hurt feelings please.
[email protected]: rapturous applause. Luis, the UK is the last place on the planet where the skin colour you are born with is going to directly influence your life chances. That your skin colour might be correlated with your parents’ household wealth does not count as “direct influence.” Unless of course you decide your skin colour is going to influence your life chances – and in playing that game it is non-whites who have the greatest latitude of choice – in both directions.
I think the idea that men are privileged above women in the UK is risible. Your list of benefits and handicaps is so imprecise and unquantifiable that it becomes pointless. You may as well argue that people born in flat parts of the country are disadvantaged by a lack of cardiovascular exercise.
Women and men are different and behave differently and are treated differently. Trying to assign a score to this bizarre.
“Which might suit you, but doesn’t suit those women who, actually, would rather like to earn as good a living as possible and would rather not have anyone think that, somehow, that shouldn’t be the case.”
I’m sorry, have I just stepped into the 1950s? I’m pretty damn sure if women in the UK were being prevented from earning themselves a living, I would have heard about it in the Guardian by now.
“There’s nothing better than to observe racist libertarians.” – Arnald.
What a sad little life you must live.
And couldn’t you take it a step further:
If you enjoy libertarians being “racist” ( solely by laughing at PC crap) I bet you could get a real kick out of the state…
Various states, including our own, routinely slaughter Johnny Foreigner on the flimsiest of pretexts.
Do a bit of searching online and you’ll soon find plenty of material that’ll let you get your jollies.
To return to the actual subject, I assume it is just aspirational.
If LFF are illustrating yoof unemployment in Wales with a disproportionately high number of ethnics does that make them racist?
I think we can all agree that nowadays in the UK privilege is much more a matter of one’s parents’ wealth and their attitudes to learning than one’s ethnic origins.
However, I think much of that privilege is related not to expensive schools or (except at the highest levels) knowing the right people, but to expectations, one’s parents’ and one’s own. And that those expectations are built in part on the achievements of people who seem to be like oneself. If that’s right, it does make it genuinely important to build expectations by promoting and celebrating the success of black people (by which I mean people with black African ancestry), because it’s good for us all not to let talent go to waste.
I don’t understand why you (Ian B) are so angry about this. The picture Tim reproduced is clumsy, but in a way that’s comical not damaging.
Incidentally, the 200k jobs I know about go to the people best suited to them. Because when you’re paying that much you’re paying to get those people. It’s not at the hiring stage that the discrimination happens, whoever might be the victims of it.
The Thought Gang – “Which might suit you, but doesn’t suit those women who, actually, would rather like to earn as good a living as possible and would rather not have anyone think that, somehow, that shouldn’t be the case.”
Who thinks this should not be the case? What is more, who cares? How does the fact that I think women ought to be bare-foot and pregnant in the kitchen possibly affect the job prospects or careers of Britain’s women?
What is more, notice any number of women who do well in their careers because either they are pretty or because of some form of affirmative action. I am not sure if there is a woman’s privileged, but it would explain the careers of Polly Toynbee or Jasmine Abihai-Brown and so on. Hard to explain their on-going employment any other way.
“But if you got into the sort of trouble that makes the newspapers, you’d be treated far more harshly by them. And, indeed, society as a whole (I don’t know who is leading who on that one).”
I don’t think that is true at all. There are a very small number of circumstances in which the papers will criticise a woman. In the majority they will make excuses for her. The papers, like the Courts, usually bend over backwards not to criticise a woman no matter what she has done.
“And sometimes that would be because showing common decency to women really does seem to be seen as more important than showing it to men.”
Blatant sexism!
“I’m sorry, have I just stepped into the 1950s? I’m pretty damn sure if women in the UK were being prevented from earning themselves a living, I would have heard about it in the Guardian by now.”
Actually, we hear about it in the Guardian quite a lot. It, quite rightly, gets well debunked around here.. because the truth is that whilst some old stuff still needs retire it’s way out of the statistics, if we look at ‘pre-childbirth’ earnings then there is parity or, perhaps, even a gap in favour of women.
So everything is OK then? It’s all fair, but then women have children.. take time out.. maybe leave decent careers altogether.. and so a gap, quite rightly, emerges?
Well, maybe. But, also, maybe not. Why is it expected that women will be the ones who swap earnings for childcare? Is it because there is a strong biological urge that way? Or is it because that’s what is expected, and both men and women live their whole lives having it constantly reinforced that men and women will take these different roles? It’s a double-edged thing… if a man and woman swap roles (woman drops the sprog but then returns to work leaving daddy to bear the bulk of the childcare burden) then it’s seen as unusual.. worthy of comment that would never be made if the traditional course was taken. That the comment is made at all is all the evidence you need that remnants of the old ways are still prevelant.
The privilege operates, often, at a sub-conscious level. It’s not something that we might knowingly take advantage of, or abuse.. it’s just *there*. Although, on this particular issue, we do still have maternity rules which point everyone along a particular path.
So it’s not about anyone being actively prevented from earning a living, or about an old-boys network giving the good jobs to, er, old boys. It’s about a menagerie of little things that push people in various directions, or influence them in some way or another. It’s about self-fulfilling prophesies.
It’s assuming that women will make better childcarers, it’s about expecting black kids to be good at sport, it’s about assuming that someone from a council estate in Bromsgrove won’t get into Cambridge, or that a guy who wants to work as cabin crew is gay. Women bosses are bitchy, public school kids shouldn’t want to be electricians, lapdancers are all on the game, Irish people like a drink, footballers are thick.. blah blah fucking blah.
Don’t feel bad about it, don’t see it as somehow trying to diminish what you have achieved, don’t assume anyone is damanding that you fix it. Just acknolwedge it and, in your own small way, you’ll help to diminish it.
OK, the end. Sorry for intruding. Please return to your flawless meritocracies.
PaulB – “However, I think much of that privilege is related not to expensive schools or (except at the highest levels) knowing the right people, but to expectations, one’s parents’ and one’s own. And that those expectations are built in part on the achievements of people who seem to be like oneself. If that’s right, it does make it genuinely important to build expectations by promoting and celebrating the success of black people (by which I mean people with black African ancestry), because it’s good for us all not to let talent go to waste.”
First of all you would have to show that there is any talent going to waste. This is literally question begging as you are assuming there is without proving it. Thus you start out by claiming Black people are being unfairly held back when you should be trying to show that it is the case.
Second, expectations are not simply the expectation of earning £200k. They are things like being polite to the teacher. Doing your homework. Brushing your teeth every night. Things that in Jamaica might mean you are a God-fearing Christian but in the UK will mean career success. Middle class people are not middle class because they are surrounded by middle class people, but because they teach a type of Puritanical deferring-of-gratification that grew out of Methodism or the like. If this type of parent insists that their children do their homework, don’t drink or gamble, don’t go out at night, don’t take drugs, don’t get some slag pregnant and so on, they will be middle class.
You can see why this distinction matters as young Black yoof see people with lots of money all the time. Drug dealers for instance. That does not make said drug dealers middle class. They clearly aspire to such a lifestyle in rather depressingly large numbers. But it won’t make them middle class either. Going to Church will.
“Incidentally, the 200k jobs I know about go to the people best suited to them. Because when you’re paying that much you’re paying to get those people.”
Polly Toynbee? Really? The market is not always rational. If not for government spending on job ads for social workers, I think that particular market failure would have corrected some time ago, but it will, no doubt, get there.
The Thought Gang – “Why is it expected that women will be the ones who swap earnings for childcare? Is it because there is a strong biological urge that way? Or is it because that’s what is expected, and both men and women live their whole lives having it constantly reinforced that men and women will take these different roles?”
So your explanation for why women usually take time off work to look after sprogs is because they want to or because they want to? One of their desires being biological, the other being cultural. Well God forbid women should choose. Much better we force them to make decisions in their own best interests even if they don’t want to, right?
It does not matter if it is biological or cultural conditioning. It is their free choice. And it is none of your business why they make that choice.
“That the comment is made at all is all the evidence you need that remnants of the old ways are still prevelant.”
No, that your comment is made at all is all the evidence you need that the problem is with people who can’t stand the fact that other people make their own decisions. You have no case here. If women choose to stay home and look after their children, they are not oppressed. They are making a free choice in their own best interests. Whether you like it or not. It is not your job to try to force society into a more ideologically sympathetic mold. Or at least it shouldn’t be.
“The privilege operates, often, at a sub-conscious level.”
Your examples so far are not holding up. A woman who has a choice of whether to stay at home or not is not being denied some privilege. She is opting for something else. I would suggest that you should not ignore her different measure of success.
Black sheep?
“Actually, we hear about it in the Guardian quite a lot. It, quite rightly, gets well debunked around here.. because the truth is that whilst some old stuff still needs retire it’s way out of the statistics, if we look at ‘pre-childbirth’ earnings then there is parity or, perhaps, even a gap in favour of women.”
So now you’re arguing that women aren’t being oppressed? Wow, it’s not often I see someone come around to my point of view so fast, but much respect for publicly changing your view.
It’s not often I regret starting an argument…
The point regarding my ex-schoolmate was to try to make the point, which I believe to be valid, that a “black” person who follows the same kind of choices as a “white” person, from approximately the same starting point, will have the same chances of success or failure. The same is true of male/female. As such, it is hard to argue that there is class discrimination operating to any degree. The financial sector wants good commodity traders, not white ones or male ones. They’re driven by profit, remember, evil selfish capitalist bastards.
This is one reason I’m a libertarian. Markets see irrational discrimination as damage, and route around it.
As to PaulB’s question of why the kind of thing which is in Tim’s original post gets me annoyed, the answer is this: I’m an individualist. I believe in culture coming from the bottom up, not the top down. I believe change should be driven by markets: economic markets, social markets, choices by individuals.
I am not a cultural exclusivist “conservative”. I don’t want to preserve the past in amber. But I don’t want it torn away from me by force either. Knowing that there is a powerful movement which effectively controls our governance structures, which is trying to make my cultural choices for me and will use whatever force it thinks necessary and which drowns our society in propaganda to achieve it’s aims…
Yeah, that angers me to buggery.
The world portrayed in pictures like this is deliberate, and it is a lie. If they wanted to portray something considered negative; fat people, drunken girls on the town, unemployed scroungers, the people would be a vista of snowy white. Something positive? Suddenly, out comes the rainbow coalition.
Now that is discrimination.
a “black” person who follows the same kind of choices as a “white” person, from approximately the same starting point, will have the same chances of success or failure.
That amounts to a denial that meaningful racism exists. I think that’s mistaken.
Do you think that if a black man shot a white man he believed to be acting suspiciously he’d walk away under the Florida self defence laws lie in the Trayvon Taylor case?
SMFS: I didn’t say it was unfair, I said it was wasteful.
I don’t know much about Polly Toynbee’s career. But I’d guess that she’s paid because she writes stuff people want to read. The technical merit of what she writes is largely irrelevant, just as for male writers.
Andrew #28
Come in #28! Your time is up!
Calm down there, fella. Drink your milk.
I find the idea of libertarians being -ist about anything amusing. It’s the intellectual contortions, especially about not liking non-white that’s especially funny. Trying to blackboard their inherently racists views so that it sounds like a scientific fact or a deep philosophical or social truism.
It’s bollocks. White people, in England, are less likely to be discriminated against. Be it the coppers saying “you’ll always be a nigger” to job applicants being denied interview if they have name not commonly associated with a preconceived “whiteness”.
There’s no debate about it. Less now than it did due to campaigns led by the types you people on here would spit ridicule at.
To then offer up state sanctioned atrocities as somehow the same thing but worst is typical, irrelevant bullshit.
It was only a handful of generations ago that it was popular to think of non-western people as subhuman, because their skulls proved it.
Anyway, it doesn’t mean I support the simplification of a remedy involving a reverse position so society feels better about itself.
But getting people to get riled about a photo that wants to appeal to everyone it can and spout off that it isn’t “accurate” is childish. Worstall is childish, he knows it, in itself it’s amusing; it’s the reaction to his bait that makes this blog so painfully unpleasant.
so
There’s a reason for Murphy’s comment policy. He’s doing what he sees as serious engagement with whoever is reading. If a decision to block addresses and delete comments is made, it is a clearly market driven necessity to promote the brand. It’s a political publication rather the shower of teenage wankdoriumery that this blog is.
Nothing with market forces, eh boys?
Tim is doing this blog for fun. His other work is readable and is treated as such.
anyway, i like my word wankdoriumery.
Polly Toynbee flunked education several times and yet her first job was a diarist for the Guardian. Its hard to imagine anyone more privileged. She is a truly revolting person whose authoritarian streak is never far form the surface .
Louis Enriqe likes to exaggerate race because the left having lost the Economic argument ( basically) some time around the 80s found itself with nothing but a bag off loose change around identity politics and has been obliged to witter on ever since
I am not convinced there is much white on black racism in this country( my family is mixed race and I am assured they do not experience anything of that sort) .There is considerable racism between Brown and black however and endless ethnic rivalry of all kinds
I love the pic we get the same thing around here on school murals that appear to have painted for a ghetto in New Jersey but actually exist in a small village in Sussex with no black people resident at all.
#40.
Do you think that if a black man shot a white man he believed to be acting suspiciously he’d walk away under the Florida self defence laws lie in the Trayvon Taylor case?
I’ve no idea. I do know that if a white boy is killed by ethnic minorities for racist reasons, nobody much cares, but if a black lad is killed by a white gang, it becomes a cause celebre and no stone is left unturned, even changing the law itself to retry the defendants. And I know that a white woman being a bit mouthy on a Croydon tram leads to a national witch hunt, and her incarceration for “her own protection”. And anyone who disagrees with that is called a “racist” by a man so stupid that calling him shit for brains would be an insult to sh… oh hi Arnald, didn’t notice you there.
I’m in Britain, not Florida, wherever that is. Somewhere in the former colonies? They’re a funny lot over there. Can’t answer for them.
The interesting question though is why their social tensions have to be acted out as a sort of pantomime by us. They were the ones with the slavery, the Jim Crow and the lynchings. Why are we supposed to join in with the guilt?
An interesting and very thought provoking discussion. And surprisingly (except for Arnald as usual) quite civilised.
One conclusion that I come to is that “Welcome to real life”. It sucks. It’s not fair. Sometimes you’re lucky and shoot for the moon other times you make a small mistake and totally destroy everything.
The left thinking and therefore the ones using the right side of their brain seem to want to blame someone else for the unfairness of life. The people who use the left side of the brain accept that it is up to themselves to make their way through life and not anyone else’s fault.
Arnald, as ever, gets Murphy badly wrong:
“Whoever is agreeing wholeheartedly with him in every aspect of what he says”. RM has no interest in any other form of reader.
Anyway, we ought to let Arnald return to his sub-intellectual masturbation fantasies.
Arnald #42:
“I find the idea of libertarians being -ist about anything amusing. It’s the intellectual contortions, especially about not liking non-white that’s especially funny. Trying to blackboard their inherently racists views so that it sounds like a scientific fact or a deep philosophical or social truism.”
Nobody likes everybody, it could be because of their skin colour/accent/where they’re from/age/sex/etc., or an annoying habit, or even (God forbid) their political views.
And there’s nothing about libertarianism that says you have to.
“To then offer up state sanctioned atrocities as somehow the same thing but worst is typical, irrelevant bullshit.”
For a recent example, I find it highly relevant (and sickening), that someone can Tweet a few nasty remarks about a black footballer and be sent to jail. While our glorious leader can decide to bomb a few Libyans and nothing happens to him.
The state, and especially the left, use the racism card to silence dissent, that’s all. Other than that they couldn’t give a shit about it.
“There’s a reason for Murphy’s comment policy.”
?? Don’t know where this came from. I’m not interested in his blog or his comments policy (but, of course, I fully support him doing whatever he wants for whatever reason he wants with it).
Luis Enrique – “a “black” person who follows the same kind of choices as a “white” person, from approximately the same starting point, will have the same chances of success or failure.”
I am not sure that is entirely true, but I suspect it is largely true. Except Black people don’t usually make the same kind of choices for both good reasons and bad. The good include things like affirmative action – some nice people at Duke University pointed out that many African American student switched in college to less demanding majors. And this has flow on effects. The conclusion being, presumably, that they were admitted without the background to do any sort of STEM subject. If White people were admitted with the same weak background they would make the same ultimately bad decisions.
“That amounts to a denial that meaningful racism exists. I think that’s mistaken.”
I am sure there is a residue of racism in the UK. I doubt it amounts to much.
“Do you think that if a black man shot a white man he believed to be acting suspiciously he’d walk away under the Florida self defence laws lie in the Trayvon Taylor case?”
If a 190 pound 6 foot White guy was pounding a smaller Black guy’s head into the pavement, and the Black guy had a legally-carried gun, I think he would. At the same time several Black yoof were setting a 13-year old White boy on fire after dousing him with petrol and it is noticable the media does not give a f**k. Discrimination comes in all shapes and sizes.
41PaulB – “I didn’t say it was unfair, I said it was wasteful.”
And yet you are still assuming what you need to prove – that there is talent being wasted. I agree there probably is, but you cannot simply assume your conclusion. It may be that the education system is perfectly fair.
“I don’t know much about Polly Toynbee’s career. But I’d guess that she’s paid because she writes stuff people want to read. The technical merit of what she writes is largely irrelevant, just as for male writers.”
Best suited is an interesting concept when applied to La Toynbee. We must have a large number of bat-shit insane women with chips the size of Ben Nevis in the UK in their shoulders. Which thinking about some of my aunts may be true. However I don’t think there aren’t dozens of people who could witter insane ramblings at least as well.
Arnald – “Trying to blackboard their inherently racists views so that it sounds like a scientific fact or a deep philosophical or social truism.”
All the scientific evidence says that people of African origin are less intelligent than people of European origin. Who in turn are less intelligent than people of East Asian origin. There is no contortion here. This is the science. The consensus even.
“White people, in England, are less likely to be discriminated against.”
That depends on what you mean. If you mean that in the routine of every day life, White people are less likely to be discriminated against you would probably still be wrong – British people mainly hate other British people based on things like class and region. Race is still in there, but it is probably not as common. You may have a point about serious racism though. However when it comes to government action, it is poor Whites who are most discriminated against. It is easy for Upper Middle Class to generously offer Affirmative Action to non-Whites given they will not suffer it. Poor Whites will. And do.
“job applicants being denied interview if they have name not commonly associated with a preconceived “whiteness”.”
Sorry but what names are not commonly associated with a preconceived notion of whiteness?
“It was only a handful of generations ago that it was popular to think of non-western people as subhuman, because their skulls proved it.”
And your point is? We do not live a couple of generations ago. Nor is there any evidence of any lasting damage from such views.
“There’s a reason for Murphy’s comment policy. He’s doing what he sees as serious engagement with whoever is reading.”
So you can read Ritchie’s mind can you? And no he is not. He is blocking anyone who can make him look like the cock-end he is. The last thing he wants is serious engagement.
“anyway, i like my word wankdoriumery.”
Good for you.
Isn’t it good that all this political stuff is working so well.
SMFS
” It is not your job to try to force society into a more ideologically sympathetic mold. Or at least it shouldn’t be.”
And if you actually read *anything* I wrote, and spent a moment trying to understand it instead of trotting out the traditional responses to someone who is making the traditional argument that you think they are making.. then you’d have a point.
I am happy for people to make free choices. And I am happy if women freely choose to quit their jobs and raise children.. especially if the respective fathers have freely chosen to play breadwinner. That’s all good and healthy.
What I am saying is that you cannot look at that decision is isolation.. it’s one made after a long period of life and all the influences, ideas, and prejudices that life throws up.. and if a certain thing is set up as the norm throughout our lives, then it’s quite obvious that this will influence decisions. The fact that people entirely unqualified to talk on the ‘biological urges’ of women feel that it is perfectly normal for the woman to want to be the carer means, by definition, they are implying that it is abnormal if women do not. So a woman makes that decision after spending her life in a society which has made it very very clear, intentionally or otherwise, which decision is she’s ‘supposed’ to make.
I have, at no point, suggested anyone intervene to try and persuade women to make different decisions. I have merely sought to get people to acknowledge that there are these ideas and prejudices ingrained in society which cannot fail to influence attitudes and decisions.
Can we make them go away so that our choices are truly free and rational with interference and ‘guidance’ from greater minds (the solution of the left) of course we can’t. But pretending that they don’t exist and that we all make choices in a vacuum isn’t a great deal better. What we can do is be aware of them and, where the opportunity presents it, maybe challenge or question them. But, seriously, mere awareness is plenty.
I find this concept to be entirely uncontroversial.. and I’m genuinely surprised that people seem so closed to it. You’re reacting like some lefty feminist has just turned up and tried to tell you that everything is unfair because men are bastards. Like people here so often say to the left… put your opinions to one side, and look at the outcomes.
What Ian B said. with bells on
Jesus wept, Too Shit For Parody
I sincerely hope you’re joking
SMFS, you’re wroung abou the science of intelligence. What it shows is that the IQ tests applied to the different groups was biased towards Europeans. Different groups of people have differnet types of intelligence. That study was found to be discredited anyway.
Arnald,
No, sorry, he’s correct. Now, that then sparks many follow on questions. Which remain unanswered.
1. We are, of course, not measuring ‘intelligence’ per se. We are measuring a proxy for intelligence. Is that biased (as it is strongly hypothesised it is, to male-linked ability. Either that or the distribution curves for male and female intelligence are inexplicably different.) for race? More explicitly, are there actually genetically linked racial differences in intellectual specialisations – of equal or variable value – and we’re just concentrating on measuring the ones that males of White Northern Europeans descent happen to be good at (but not as good as males of East Asian descent.)
2. As the proxy is, to an extent, achievement based, are there confounding cultural factors? Probably (my view.) Especially given differing attitudes to education amongst the racial groups in the national populations who tend to get measured (it would be interesting to so this taking your black source group from the Caribbean or one of the successful African nations where education is still seen as vital by the children’s sub-culture.) Unfortunately, the reflex cry of “racist!” to the current results means that this hasn’t been properly explored. I.e. lots of sociological and “race studies” papers decrying the essential racism of science but no well thought out control experiments.
3. Is there any link to the known different exoduses from Africa? Given the limited evolutionary time, you would expect that any difference in ability (of specialisation, level or both) would reflect in the source African populations.
4. Has your brain exploded in paroxies of outrage yet? You’ve got to stop looking at the world as you would like it to be and look at it as it actually is. Then you can spot the differences and work on changing them.
I’ve probably missed something out in this.
Seeing SBML’s response while I was typing – I don’t think the study was actually discredited – it was widely derided but the sensible objections to its conclusions, as I tried to outline above, were drowned out in the various Arnalds jumping up and down demanding that anybody who had actually bothered to read the study was immediately tarred, feathered and hounded out of gown and town.
Of course, the study may have been complete bollocks. It may even have been set up with a racist bias (overt or hidden) on one or more of its organisers. Or many other failures.
For a blog with a strong side-interest in discussion of racial & sexual variability in spot intellectual abilities, it is worth having a look at the IQ track on Prof Stephen Hsu’s (University of Oregon) blog Information Processing.
The rest of the blog is quite good too.
If you’re talking about a genetic difference, the evidence doesn’t say that. And it’s not the scientific consensus. I’m not going to have a debate about the science here, because this is not the place for a scientific debate. But the proposition is absurd on its face: the human population of sub-Saharan Africa is far more genetically diverse than any other.
Entirely correct but doesn’t get to the absolutely absurd extent to which this is true. Each of the three (iirc – Asia1&Polynesia, Europe&MiddleEast, Asia2&America – although there is the alternate L3 hypothesis) pre-historical out-of-Africa migrations must have either been tiny or, after migrating, had a massive population crash.
there appears to be a bunch of people on this thread arguing, in effect, that all this racism malarkey is a load of stuff and nonsense, and if those coloured chaps make the same choices as white people they’d fare equally well.
somebody somewhere is going to use this as a case study of the reactionary mentality.
SE, derided or discredited I can’t remember.
Re: genetics, the nature/nuture argument etc I can remember studying this as part of a night scchool back in the 80s. The general conclusion seemed to me that it was all a bit of both, though probably mostly nurture. It’s kinda odd: most people seem ok to believe that people can come from a “musical” family, but not from an “intelligent” one; sure, playing music is all about practice, nurture, but it does not explain things like tone-deafness nor lacking a sense of rhythm, surely these aren’t learned disabilities?
All the arguments around black people (and indeed, women and/or other ethnics) not being in high positions in politics/business/education and the Left’s automatic position that this is down to discrimination and I have to wonder… if you take a young black man and spend as much time telling him he lives in a racist society, that white men have privelege*, then is it any wonder that he should not bother trying to better himself in any way?
Anyway, I came across this a couple of weeks ago:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xp0tg8
[quote]”What Eia had done, was to first interview the Norwegian social scientists on issues like sexual orientation, gender roles, violence, education and race, which are heavily politicized in the Norwegian science community. Then he translated the interviews into English and took them to well-known British and American scientists like Robert Plomin, Steven Pinker, Anne Campbell, Simon Baron-Cohen, Richard Lippa, David Buss, and others, and got their comments. To say that the American and British scientists were surprised by what they heard, is an understatement.”[/quote]
Well worth watching. Particularly of interest was when he did the interviews with the Norwegian “nurturists” and showed them his interviews with Baron-Cohen etc. One of the women declared that the “naturists” were “frenetic” in their insistence of genetic predisposition, but this is quite clearly not the case, and, indeed, Baron-Cohen finds this charge wryly amusing. Seemed to me, the only “frenetic” behaviour was from the “nurtuists”; a classic case of projection, perhaps.
* I believe this is called Apex Fallacy, that the behaviour of those at the top represent the behaviour of the group as a whole. I should add that I read a piece some years ago now by some social scientist whov pointed out that to the young feminists on the campuses in the 1960s who looked up and saw men, white men, in politics and the judiciary and business etc and declared this privelege, that it was a pitty they didn’t look down from their own middle class priveleged position to see that men occupied the shittiest jobs, the most prison cells, and that more men than women have lower IQ levels and higher levels of mental illness….
“all this racism malarkey is a load of stuff and nonsense, and if those coloured chaps make the same choices as white people they’d fare equally well”
Luis, equalities of outcome, equalities of opportunity etc. We have no laws in this country which block people from positions based on their ethnicity or sex; as IanB pointed out above, we never had Jim Crows laws here, nor were there lynchings etc.
Of course racism exists, but this is an individual thing not societal. But hey, we live in a system which jails a young white male for saying bad things on the interweb, and don’t jail a man of ethnic minority status for physically assaulting a man for looking at his wife on account of he asked for calm during the riots. Um, Social Justice? Ah well, white men, privelege; we English, we are so intollerant (the BBC said so). Here’s a guy got the vote long before any of my ancestors:
http://www.wolverhamptonhistory.org.uk/people/migration/slavery
“The world portrayed in pictures like this is deliberate, and it is a lie. If they wanted to portray something considered negative; fat people, drunken girls on the town, unemployed scroungers, the people would be a vista of snowy white. Something positive? Suddenly, out comes the rainbow coalition.
Now that is discrimination.”
Spot on!
“Do you think that if a black man shot a white man he believed to be acting suspiciously he’d walk away under the Florida self defence laws lie in the Trayvon Taylor case?”
Probably, since just that very thing has already happened in New York state, as was pointed out in many a blog article discussing the Trayvon Martin storm in a teacup.
And since we’re on the subject of pictures telling a desired story, and not the reality, ask yourself why none of the images of Trayvon issued to the media were recent ones…
“storm in a teacup”???
who fucking knows JuliaM, maybe it’s because some media outlet asked the parents for a photo and they provided a nice one. Or maybe it’s a sinister conspiracy and if we’d seen what he really looks like – older, more gangsta looking – we’d be thinking oh well he probably deserved to be killed?
Ahh, the same conspiracy that ensures that any 14 or 15 year old girl who meets up (at a nightclub, over the internet, whatever) with an older bloke (say, 18) and has sex is always appears in the paper in her primary school photograph?
Re. Trayvon Martin: If you don’t see anything wrong in an armed man following an unarmed teenager and shooting him dead with impunity, you need to adjust your moral vision.
– Here‘s a video of Zimmerman arriving at the police station. He looks remarkably healthy and unbloodied for someone who’s just had his head pounded into the pavement as SMFS alleged. Incidentally, the police report estimates Martin’s weight as 160lb. I’d say Zimmerman is heavier than that. It’s almost as if SMFS makes stuff up to suit his prejudices.
– Here‘s a recent photo of Martin.
What is the actual assertion being made here? Is it that Zimmerman killed the youth for racist reasons, or that the justice system did not prosecute him for racist reasons, or some other point?
I love it when racists trot out their bollocks.
How To Be A Modern Racist 101.
Classic hijack, Tim.
Probably started by the SMFS nob with his usual shit, but seriously, you’ve got the hardcore mummy’s boys having an inappropriate moment on your site. A bit like a disease.
It quacks like a duck.
At least a couple of you won’t accept this nonsense. It needs stamping on.
Although Worstall’s language has always enabled bastards and their filth.
Disclaimer: i know what i know.
The Thought Gang – “And if you actually read *anything* I wrote, and spent a moment trying to understand it instead of trotting out the traditional responses to someone who is making the traditional argument that you think they are making.. then you’d have a point.”
Glad you admit I have a point. A good start.
“I am happy for people to make free choices.”
Except when they do you cite this as proof of underlying discrimination. You are assuming what you need to prove. Women may be doing this from entirely rational and fully informed reasons.
“What I am saying is that you cannot look at that decision is isolation.. it’s one made after a long period of life and all the influences, ideas, and prejudices that life throws up.. and if a certain thing is set up as the norm throughout our lives, then it’s quite obvious that this will influence decisions.”
I have no objection to this. However it still does not show discrimination. As you have not shown that those influences play a negative role in what women choose. You are still coming from a position that says women are being forced to make the wrong choice. As if they had no agency.
“So a woman makes that decision after spending her life in a society which has made it very very clear, intentionally or otherwise, which decision is she’s ‘supposed’ to make.”
Sure but perhaps she is supposed to make it. Perhaps she does have a biological need men do not. Perhaps she is aware of the declining social pressure but wants to anyway. Perhaps we have more or less completely abolished that social pressure (and remember we used to have a lot of social pressure not to be, well, a slut. That has more or less disappeared so it can happen) and women make their own free choices, just as they want to, which happens to be staying at home with the children. These thing you would have to show play no role before you can claim that this is subtle discrimination.
“I have merely sought to get people to acknowledge that there are these ideas and prejudices ingrained in society which cannot fail to influence attitudes and decisions.”
I thought you were actively citing such ideas and prejudices (which you have not show still exist by the way) as examples of discrimination as proven by the fact that women still often choose to stay at home with their children. Maybe you are right and I should have read your work more closely.
“Can we make them go away so that our choices are truly free and rational with interference and ‘guidance’ from greater minds (the solution of the left) of course we can’t.”
Evidence?
53 Arnald – “Jesus wept, Too Shit For Parody”
And yet too correct to refute. Well done.
“I sincerely hope you’re joking”
No I am not. Which is why people who do not like the evidence deny it – such as claiming that it matters (which it probably doesn’t) or that we are not measuring intelligence, or that it is all down to some sort of bias in the tests etc etc.
54 SadButMadLad – “you’re wroung abou the science of intelligence. What it shows is that the IQ tests applied to the different groups was biased towards Europeans. Different groups of people have differnet types of intelligence. That study was found to be discredited anyway.”
A perfect example. There is no IQ test or any test even remotely like it that shows people of African origin doing better than Whites. Which in turn do worse than East Asians on all the tests we have. If you wrote a test in Ebonics and restricted it questions drawn from the life of Malcolm X I would still be prepared to bet that East Asians would do better than African Americans as long as it was used for admission to the Ivy League.
Different groups have different types of intelligence? Come on. What sort of claim is that? Are you trying to make the same sort of comment as Auberon Waugh at his interview for MI-6 where he said Africans were better at other things like climbing trees? Evidence?
What study? We have done study after study over nearly 100 years. On all of them White people do worse than East Asians but better than people of African origin. As it happens I don’t think that IQ tests directly measure intelligence, but the evidence is not so much strong as overwhelming. The New York Fire Department was sued for using tests. So they dumbed them down until just under 90% of Black applicants passed. Unfortunately about 95% of White applicants pass too. So some Black activists want to dump written tests for oral exams because Black people are better at oral skills or something. Great.
55 Surreptitious Evil – “1. We are, of course, not measuring ‘intelligence’ per se. We are measuring a proxy for intelligence. Is that biased (as it is strongly hypothesised it is, to male-linked ability. Either that or the distribution curves for male and female intelligence are inexplicably different.)”
Autism and genius also seem to be male-linked. So it shouldn’t be a surprise that IQ tests are.
“More explicitly, are there actually genetically linked racial differences in intellectual specialisations – of equal or variable value – and we’re just concentrating on measuring the ones that males of White Northern Europeans descent happen to be good at (but not as good as males of East Asian descent.)”
So the tests are based on assumptions that are not racist enough? A bold claim.
“2. As the proxy is, to an extent, achievement based, are there confounding cultural factors? Probably (my view.)”
Mine too. But what they are is a problem.
57 PaulB – “If you’re talking about a genetic difference, the evidence doesn’t say that. And it’s not the scientific consensus.”
I am not sure I would go so far as to claim a genetic difference although Ockam’s Razor would seem to lean that way.
“I’m not going to have a debate about the science here, because this is not the place for a scientific debate.”
So we will take your word for it then.
“But the proposition is absurd on its face: the human population of sub-Saharan Africa is far more genetically diverse than any other.”
How is that relevant? Suppose there was one single gene for intelligence. Stupid I know but go with me. That happens to occur originally as a spontaneous mutation – in a population group that was leaving Africa. Meaning all of the people descended from those that left have it while few in Africa have benefited from returning ancestors. Why is that impossible?
After all that massively diverse African gene pool does share some things. Black skin being more or less the obvious example.
Too Fucked For Sodomy
*sigh* it reverts to that.
Luis Enrique – “there appears to be a bunch of people on this thread arguing, in effect, that all this racism malarkey is a load of stuff and nonsense, and if those coloured chaps make the same choices as white people they’d fare equally well.”
There is another bunch of people on this thread who insist that there is a vast but entirely undocumented conspiracy to keep coloured chaps down which, despite having no obvious members or there being any proof that it exists, is all pervasive and powerful.
Which do you think is more likely?
67 PaulB – “Re. Trayvon Martin: If you don’t see anything wrong in an armed man following an unarmed teenager and shooting him dead with impunity, you need to adjust your moral vision.”
It depends on the circumstances. As they have been mostly not-reported so far, Zimmerman was going back to his truck to wait for the police when Martin jumped him and started pounding his head into the pavement, there was a short struggle for the gun, which went off somehow killing Martin. That seems not exactly murder to me.
“Here‘s a video of Zimmerman arriving at the police station. He looks remarkably healthy and unbloodied for someone who’s just had his head pounded into the pavement as SMFS alleged.”
Although it looks as if the media have deliberately tried to obscure the injuries. Zimmerman was cleaned up on the scene by the medics so you would not expect much blood, but actually you can see a wound and you can also see a policeman looking at the injury on the back of his head.
Not that I did allege that he had been so pounded. I do think it given what the eye witnesses said, but I did not say it.
“Incidentally, the police report estimates Martin’s weight as 160lb. I’d say Zimmerman is heavier than that. It’s almost as if SMFS makes stuff up to suit his prejudices.”
Or it is almost as if I was not making a claim about Martin at all but merely stating a general hypothetical. Who knows? Let’s just leap to judgement like everyone else in this case.
If I was talking about this specific case, I would point out that a 6′ 2″ footballer player with a long history of suspensions from school is said to have confronted and assaulted a fat middle aged Neighbourhood Watch volunteer. It is not obviously the case that Zimmerman was in the wrong.
“Ockam”? case closed. You are quite obviously a nigger.
Which isn’t very much, clearly. Is it?
Ah, yes, genius – something even harder to define, never mind measure, than intelligence. What I was saying, if you had read it with the rigour you demand people read your comments, is that “IQ” isn’t necessarily an ideal proxy for measuring ‘intelligence’.
Autism. Well, yes. Lacking 99% of a functioning chromosome does tend what I refer to as the “GTi”* sex of humanity to the odd problem or two.
I fail to see how you abstracted that comment from what I wrote. Would you mind explaining?
My meaning was intended to be along the lines of – IQ tests are good at distinguishing between abilities at a range of things that mark intelligence in Northern European ancestry males. They may not be as good at measuring equal ‘intelligence’** between humans of different ancestries or sexes. Of course, they may be excellent at it. We just aren’t allowed to find out. Because of Arnalds.
Well, but there isn’t and as humanity from the African non-diaspora is, to a reasonable first approximation***, as intelligent as diaspora humanity, it is an unnecessary diversion.
/facepalm
The non-melanistic polygenic trait of light skin is well established in the human base (African) population (including mutations such as vitiligo, albinism). It is just environmentally unfriendly until you get north to Spain. And once you reach Offa’s Dyke or Hadrian’s wall, it becomes beneficial. So is selected for over time.
* More expensive to insure, maintain and run. Goes faster than the more robust normal version but lasts less long. The analogy breaks down when it comes to looks, though – GTis tend to look nicer when young and crappier when elderly.
I’m waiting to see which insult Arnald’s thesaurus next manages to lever in to your nym. Perhaps he would concentrate just on posting those, which are amusing (in a juvenile sense) rather than indulging in his opinions, which ar just juvenile.
Yes, indeed, Arnald. Like insisting on shutting down discussion because it isn’t PC. Are the generations of European privilege weighing heavily on your French soul**** this Eostre-tide?
** Whatever that happens to be.
*** We are arguing about small differences in mean and distribution here. Not mass effects.
**** Hypothesis only. That the French have souls, I mean. Not that Arnald is French. Duchy of Normandy and all that.
SMFS: Martin has no history of violence. Zimmerman has. There are no reported eyewitnesses saying that Zimmerman’s head was bemg pounded into the pavement. Zimmerman is 28, not middle-aged. Judging by the video, he’s not fat, but he is more heavily built that Martin. It’s difficult to prove that Zimmerman is lying about what happened, but only a prejudiced person would not find his story highly questionable.
You suggest a genetic explanation of IQ differences, but you say the explanation is “Stupid I know”. I don’t think I need engage with that. Again, your prejudices are showing.
You might like to read John McWhorter’s “Losing the Race“, in which he looks at reasons for black underachievement. Unless you think his racial background makes his views too stupid to consider.
SMSF
“Except when they do you cite this as proof of underlying discrimination.”
and
“I have no objection to this. However it still does not show discrimination.”
and
“I thought you were actively citing such ideas and prejudices.. as examples of discrimination”
I’m pretty sure that I haven’t used the word ‘discrimination’ once. You’re arguing against what you think I’m saying, not what I am saying.
Privilege is not particularly about ‘discrimination’. It’s about advantage.
“You are still coming from a position that says women are being forced to make the wrong choice.”
No. I’m really really not. And whilst I’m willing to accept that I’m not explaining the underlying concept especially well, there’s no way you can pull this out of what I’ve said. I have not said that anyone is forced to do anything, and I have not said that any choice is right or wrong… indeed, I pointed out that, on this particular issue, one might just as easily argue that it is women who enjoy the privilege because chilcare is something that a lot more men might like to do.
So let’s leave this. I didn’t come here to have this discussion.. and I find it difficult to have it because, to me, the concept is so obvious.. and is not one that people who frequent a place like this should have any great problem with (at least, not until people start proposing ‘solutions’.. which I have not done). So either I am very wrong, or you’re too determined to have a argument about something else entirely.
Having got to this conversation rather late in the day, I can only add a small footnote to the very wide ranging discussion above. Tim seems to have proved his point. The use of these artificially diverse depictions of ‘ordinary folk’ have the opposite effect of making the viewer feel more comfortable with the ‘multi-cultural’ society. They do, in fact, promote discord.
It’s interesting to note how a discussion on a general matter of culture and governance has been successfully diverted by our Proggie contingent into an insoluble argument about the details of a particular “cause celebre” incident; and an American one, at that.
At which I reiterate my point that the “rest of the West” is basically enacting a kind of proxy pantomime of the American culture wars; modern Progressivism is fundamentally an American (1960s+) construction, which synthesised student marxism (borrowed partly from Europe) with Anglospheric evangelical/romantic ideologies.
This will probably continue until America ceases to be the world (cultural) superpower. But we ought to at least recognise it.
Tedious of me to quibble, I know, but if you look down the thread you’ll see that the Trayvon Martin case was mentioned briefly by Luis Enrique, as evidence that racism does exist, then by you, by SMFS, and by Julia M. I replied to give some facts, SMFS replied to that with some more falsehoods, I gave some more facts, and there the matter rested.
I don’t mind being called a progressive, but I suspect most of those commentators would. I didn’t want to talk about the case on this thread, but I don’t think that obliges me to leave lies about it unchallenged.
PaulB – “Martin has no history of violence. Zimmerman has.”
That is an interesting prejudicial reading of the record.
“There are no reported eyewitnesses saying that Zimmerman’s head was bemg pounded into the pavement.”
Well there are people doing a very good job of being witnesses who claim the same. Even if they did not exist, Zimmerman claims it is true and he is entitled to the benefit of the doubt.
“Zimmerman is 28, not middle-aged.”
I tend to think that is middle aged myself.
“Judging by the video, he’s not fat, but he is more heavily built that Martin.”
He looks fat to me. In fact I find it hard to see how anyone can claim otherwise. Although how far we can trust any video is an interesting question.
“It’s difficult to prove that Zimmerman is lying about what happened, but only a prejudiced person would not find his story highly questionable.”
On the contrary, the story is a little strange, but not exactly highly questionable. What is the alternative? That he pounded his own head on the pavement? He does have those injuries. He may have chased Martin. He may have provoked a conflict. We will have to see what the investigation turns up. But the idea that he tracked down and murdered someone is just as absurd.
“You suggest a genetic explanation of IQ differences, but you say the explanation is “Stupid I know”. I don’t think I need engage with that. Again, your prejudices are showing.”
Need, can, whatever. I do not suggest anything. I have actually said that I do not believe in a genetic explanation. I put forward a simplistic hypothetical.
81PaulB – “I replied to give some facts, SMFS replied to that with some more falsehoods, I gave some more facts, and there the matter rested.”
Amusing how you view your own claims. Which are not facts. Any more than mine are falsehoods.
“I don’t mind being called a progressive, but I suspect most of those commentators would.”
I don’t mind. I think it would be insane to call me a progressive but there you go.
“I didn’t want to talk about the case on this thread, but I don’t think that obliges me to leave lies about it unchallenged.”
You have yet to find a lie about this case. Nor have you challenged any lies. What you did is butt in uninvited after misunderstanding a comment of mine. I tend to agree we would all have been better off if you hadn’t.
According to you there are at least two publicly known witnesses who say they saw Martin pounding Zimmerman’s head on the pavement. I say that’s a lie. If they exist, it should be easy for you to prove it. Go ahead.
Well, he has implied multiple witnesses but I’m not sure where you get “publicly known” from. I’m not going to waste any real time on this, particularly because I agree with your general tenor, but the Fox News putative eye-witness “John” certainly substantiates Zimmerman’s claim, as does one of the police officers – an eye witness to Zimmerman’s injuries if not to the actual event.
But we’re picking nits here. Which is probably a racist statement.
Aw, diddums! You do realise we’re on the internet, don’t you?
Ah, cite attributes don’t work. Apols. First quote is from PaulB, second from SMFS.
I meant “publicly known” as in not a bloke someone at the internet claims to have met down the pub.
I listened to the interview with John. He doesn’t say anything about anyone’s head being pounded on the pavement.
I knew what you meant. But I didn’t see how you’d extracted that from what SMFS had said.