Asymmetrical Information

I question those statistics.

I seriously doubt that "yellow skinned" immigrants earn (on average) less than "white skinned" immigrants. Yellow is ever so slightly darker than white.

It is not the color of one's skin that determines income in the United States. It is your willingness to work hard, keep your nose clean, and work in industries that pay more money. I'm of the opinion that ours is the most color-blind nation on the Earth with regards to income disparity.

I'm confused by the fact that this study was "controlling for race" - as such, it seems that standard "racism" discrimination claims don't fly quite as easily.

Alternatively, I'm misconstruing the "controlling" claim and am full of it.

I think this started with a random historical event: the people who first domesticated the horse were lightskinned, and often blonde and blue-eyed. They also had a social structure that let a chief call together men from over a considerable area to do battle, which of course was greatly expedited by acquiring even a few ponies for messenger boys. They conquered and ruled everyone else, for long enough that most cultures came to think it normal to be led by men who were noticeably lighter colored than the average.

The second factor: Most humans can tan darker than their genetic endowment prescribes. Over 90% of every culture were farmers or herders, and spent half their time out in the sun. Warrior-kings got out in the sun too, but not as much as the peasants, and their women often got little sun. This not only reinforced the "rulers are lighter-skinned" principle, but it also meant that the ruling class began deliberately trying to reduce their solar exposure.

3) Since princesses are by definition beautiful (that is, only fools tell a king that his daughter isn't), light skin came to also be defined as beautiful. The powerful and wealthy sought light-skinned mates, and blondes if that gene existed in the population. Thus, these genes remain concentrated in the upper class - or even (as is seen in some South American countries), a process of genetic reassortment between classes may even re-create lightskinned, blue-eyed blondes out of a population where a tiny percentage of lightskinned and blonde genes had been virtually submerged in all the brown skin and black hair genes.

Of course, this all works only if people don't move from one class to another too often. In the USA, class is too impermanent for genetic lock-in, and the effect has been rather different: wealth shows in a moderate tan (the kind you get at the beach or a salon, not from 12 hours a day of work in the sun), dyed hair, and (at least for women), a skinny bod. The wealthy aren't interested in visually differentiating themselves from peasants (because there are so few farmers and outdoor laborers that were born into a fully American family), but only from pasty, underexercised office workers.

And our entertainment industry has somehow managed to convince themselves that anorexic women are beautiful, and even more so with the color bleached out of their hair and the sun-damage to their skin hidden under cosmetics...

Did they control for IQ?

If they didn't, the conclusion that discrimination is at fault is worthless.

If you look at a globe, you'll see a similar positive correlation between the absolute value of latitude and per capita national income.

Paul: "Yellow" is indeed usually darker than "white"[1], but when social scientists average things together, the small numbers of Asians get lost in the huge numbers of successful whites and less successful brown and "black" people. And they probably didn't even measure the color difference between a pasty-faced $30,000/year clerk and a well-tanned Hollywood goddess who gets far more than $30,000 for a ten-second cameo...

In our society, the main effect here is cultural - some of our subcultures work hard and stay focused on the path to success, some work quite hard at menial jobs but tend to shy away from the education needed for better jobs, and some seem to be OK with just collecting welfare. White people are *not* making anyone stay in the latter two groups - but their own families and neighbors may be making it difficult for members of these groups to move upwares, and these cultural traits may well reflect past discrimination, when Blacks and Mexicans didn't dare appear "uppity". (Not that giving people opportunities they didn't earn - and that's the main effect of "affirmative action" - will improve that situation any.)

[1] Just as an observation, many Asians are actually fairly light-skinned, and many Caucasians are pretty swarthy. My skin is naturally dead-white but I get a farmer's tan just mowing the lawn. When I went on a business trip to Singapore and Malaysia a few years ago, I noticed that my light tan actually made my exposed skin darker than the Chinese and Malay office workers I was dealing with. And there are lots of Caucasians that are far darker, with or without tanning.

Steve: There's also a correlation between latitude and hot temperatures that make it much more difficult to work hard or fast. Since most prosperity is now generated by indoor work, air conditioning can equalize the heat factor, but many people in the low latitudes are sort of caught in a trap - they can't afford air conditioning or qualify for the good-paying indoors jobs unless first they work and study hard in the heat.

Probably there are several factors. Some peoples of Europe struggled with the darker peoples of Africa for many centuries. Maybe an association was formed.

Europe also was invaded by Mongols, etc. but those episodes were comparative brief by historical measure.

The movies reinforced the concept that the world was run by whites. This certainly was not true of all movies. And today it has pretty much gone. But mostly it was white is right until about 1980.

I have rather poor eyesight. That led me to consider what the blind would think about discrimination based upon skin color. It would be separated from race in their experiences.

Science probably caused a lot of racial mischief. Why? I'll leave that for any who wish to guess.

The possible factors are so many and so subtle that I stand unprepared to defend any assertion.

Right. So, presumably, culture and/or genes evolve to adjust to the level of excess heat in the local environment. Thus, in Southeast Asia, for example, Overseas Chinese, who come from the subtropics, tend to outwork the locals, whose nurtures and/or natures are adjusted to tropical climates.

This helps explain why all over the world, there are positive correlations among these four dimensions:

1. Latitude (absolute value)
2. Skin fairness
3. Per capita income
4. IQ

Sure, there are lots of exceptions, but that's what correlation analysis is for.

Occam's Razor suggests that we ought to look for as few explanatory factors as possible. I'd suggest latitude looks good, because it contributes in two ways:

1. At higher latitudes, excess heat within the body caused by hard work is less of a problem physiologically (and don't forget that mental effort can generate uncomfortable levels of heat in the head).

2. At higher latitudes, winter poses a greater danger of starvation and freezing, so it encourages foresight, prudence, and other economically valuable attributes.

Whether these adjustments are made at the cultural or genetic levels is a difficult question.

The problem with those "recognizably black names" studies is that the names are weird. They aren't so much "recognizably black" as "recognizably the product of stupid parents".

Most black people have the same kinds of names as white people. But the studies always compare, say, "Susan" with "Shaliqua". A more valid study would compare the weird-ass black names with weird-ass "white" names -- "Rainbow" versus "Rashanda", "Moxie" vesus "Moisha", etc.

Besides, is discriminating against a "Rashanda" really about racism, or about the average intellectual quality of people you've encountered with names like that? They aren't common among *educated* black people, after all. I suspect that a name affiliated with intelligence or productivity -- like Condoleeza or Oprah, say -- wouldn't have the negative connotations.

It seems like to me that wealthy nations occuring disproportionately at high latitudes and poor nations occuring disproportionately at low latitudes were results of extreme northern and southern climates being conducive to hard work and foresight, then you would expect that phenomenon to emerge more recently than the last 400 or 500 years.

At virtually any date preceding the late medieval period, the pattern was precisely reversed, with great civilizations occuring in the Mediterranean, North Africa, The Middle East, India, and Central America. There certainly were people living in Northern Europe during this period, but it was Sumeria and Greece that became the cradle of western civilization, not Denmark. I'm not trying to be combative, I find the latitude hypothesis fascinating and I am open to being convinced if the evidence is there, but I don't see it.

It seems like a better explanation to say that the industrial revolution happened in Europe, for reasons that are rather more complex than the influence of climate alone, and in which climate is probably very minor as a causal factor. When Europeans colonized new places and brought their wealth and their excellent institutions and social capital with them, they settled in other high latitude areas like North America and Australia. The more culturally and geographically isolated other populations were from Europe (like the tropics), the harder it was to import and adapt the lessons of Europe's industrialization and thereby become wealthy.

...and that was full of typos. The first paragraph should read "less recently" not "more recently". There should also be an "if" in there somewhere. Oh well.

Paul said:

"It is not the color of one's skin that determines income in the United States. It is your willingness to work hard, keep your nose clean, and work in industries that pay more money. I'm of the opinion that ours is the most color-blind nation on the Earth with regards to income disparity."

A little thought experiment for you. You are a baby about to be born in the US and have the ability to choose your race. What race do you pick?

The evidence of workplace discrimination is that resumes with recognizeably black names are less likely to be picked out of the pile

Affirmative action is at play here.

If you hear that a black person went to Harvard or any other top tier school, deep down, you think to yourself, well, that's because he or she is black. If a black person formerly had a prestigious job, you probably think the same thing.

Affirmative action makes whites question whether blacks could have made it without affirmative action, and this includes the ones that could have without the affirmative action in place.

Affirmative action therefore makes us question the merits of black people. They didn't have to work as hard to qualify for things as other people did.

Jane,

I'm sure you're aware of this, but Freakonomics actually addressed the "black name" issue. The pretty clear conclusion, if I recall correctly (if not, please don't hesitate to slap me down here) is that empirically, it's not so much "black" names that get discriminated against, or even the "weird" names, but generally "poor" names. Hence names like Deke, or Billy-Ray don't get too many draws from the pile either.

Where do the Eskimo fit into the high latitude/high IQ question? I don't know if there's been any systematic study of their IQ's. They've accomplished little, but that might be a consequence of their extremely harsh environment. A bigger concern is that they've done rather poorly in adapting to modern society, especially in Arctic Canada.

Addressing a different part of Jane's post, this happens in far corners of the world as well, or at least this far corner (China). White skin is admired, dark skin is not.

I get complimented on my pretty white skin with embarrasing frequency. They'd go nuts for Meagan - tall and white is very popular.

I'm pretty sure that here, it has to do with who does labor in the sun, and who sits around indoors. Rich men are lighter skinned, and rich men get the pretty girls - who then stay indoors as wives and mistresses. That's my theory at least. Same reason long fingernails and, before it fell out of fasion, bound feet, were attractive - you can't very well do hard labor with two-inch-plus fingernails, or hobbled feet.

Will:

If you look at empires, they tend to track agricultural productivity. Most early empires devastated their environments, exhausting their productivity (North Africa used to be VERY productive, not so much anymore). The other issue is that Northern European agriculture supported independent farmers on small holdings, while farming in the middle east depended on centralised irrigation works. Thus people had more natural independence in the north.

Once you hit a certain point in development, the productivity of the centralised irrigation systems is overcome by that of the small holders, and the independence of the peoples creates more competition and innovation, creating a positive feedback cycle.

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I'm guessing by Hey's use of the buzzword "positive feedback cycle" that he's drawing on Jared Diamond's work. I agree with Hey in terms of the importance of agricultural productivity. Another factor is that great civilizations grew up in places where large animals could be domesticated to plow fields. Continents with wide ranges of latitude facilitated this, because an animal domesticated in China could be bred in Europe and vice versa. So you have people working on domestication and sharing results over a much wider range of territory.

The most productive early civilizations are in the south. While there are a few domesticatable animals in the North, there aren't as many, fewer early civilizations overwintered there, and those that did presumably had a smaller population. But once you've domesticated animals, you can learn to bale hay so that your large warmth-loving animals can overwinter in cold climates. The result is horses in many cold climates instead of Musk Oxen or Bison.

Inuit managed to hunt to extinction some or all of their megafauna including the Musk Ox

Just my 2c.

That's it! Light-skinned people get hired because they have easier access to ringtones!

*slaps forehead*

Ryan -
I assume by the "South" you mean the equator. I'm not aware of much civilization forming below the equator.

for the generalization of this- it's a secondary sexual characteristic ie woman have lighter skin than otherwise similar men-so women are more attractive with lighter skin similar effect though probablly smaller than say breasts

Much has been said about this topic. I don't think US is the most color blind nation in the world and i don't think there is rampant racisim everywhere in the US either. It prolly falls somehwere in between. With respect to new immigrants, these are the reasons I think light-skinned people might get better paid jobs.
1. Soft skills. People hiring would automaticcaly assume that being light-skinned has somehow(white ancesteray?) given one some exposure to a culture similar to hirer's making it easier to work with employee. This makes sense because according to the study, the discrimination was found more in salaried jobs(where soft skills are important) that hourly jobs.
2. Association of certain cultures/races with IQ. Atleast with people coming from India (the ethnic group I belong to) I really see no discrimination atleast in the IT and medical professions. This is part that most Indian immigrants tend to be upper-crust Indians(ever met a dumb Indian in the US?) who are very well educated and their US salaries reflect that. With the IT boom, most people have formed an association of Indian=smart (which is far from true) and an Indian would probably get a better paying job, than say a mexican (comparable skin tones)because of that association.
3. I think most people are parochial. Indians tend to hire Indians, Chinese tend to hire Chinese and Mexicans will tend to hire Mexicans. Whites will tend to hire whites and blacks will tend to hire blacks. It would be interesting to know the races and skin tones of the respondent's employers.

sorry about the typos in the above post. will remember to use preview next time!

Steve and Will have convinced me that my last post was a little off. I got a better explanation by putting these two passages together::

"2. At higher latitudes, winter poses a greater danger of starvation and freezing, so it encourages foresight, prudence, and other economically valuable attributes."

"At virtually any date preceding the late medieval period, the pattern was precisely reversed, with great civilizations occuring in the Mediterranean, North Africa, The Middle East, India, and Central America. There certainly were people living in Northern Europe during this period, but it was Sumeria and Greece that became the cradle of western civilization, not Denmark...

It seems like a better explanation to say that the industrial revolution happened in Europe, for reasons that are rather more complex than the influence of climate alone, and in which climate is probably very minor as a causal factor..."

In the early civilations Will cites, the average man (who was an agricultural worker) did not need much foresight. From Sumeria and ancient Egypt up through feudal France, the peasants had neither the capability nor the need to store food up against famines or winter. E.g., the Pharoahs and their men collected and stored excess crops from all of Egypt, issuing the food out when needed. (There's a story about that in the Old Testament.) Medieval lords stored food in their castles, and the serf villages huddled near for access to those stores in winter as well as for protection. In summary, these societies appointed a few people to be foresightful for the rest.

However, across northern Europe there was a different pattern: extended families farmed their own land, and stored the food and fuel needed to survive the winters snowed-in in their own houses. If a family was lazy, wasteful, or spendthrift, or if they merely mis-estimated their requirements and, say, laid in a ton of fuel and only half enough food, then when it became possible to travel about again their more foresightful neighbors would be burying their starved and frozen bodies and taking over their land.

No wonder that planning for the future and working hard and intelligently became deeply imbedded in the cultures of the pigmentation-challenged northerners. Isolated farms also encouraged both independence and voluntary cooperation with your neighbors; you could help yourself, your neighbors might help you if they figured you'd reciprocate someday, but once the snow was deep a king 50 miles away might as well have been on another continent. These cultural characteristics enabled the Industrial Revolution to proceed once there was sufficient knowledge and a small excess of material possessions above the necessities for seed capital.

I don't think I need to explain to any of Jane's readers how cheap factory-made trinkets and guns enabled Europeans to dominate people that traded hand-made goods and fought with spears.

If they're controlling for race properly (at least broadly), there should be no problems with mixing whites and blacks and Chinese and Indians [though they're almost certainly not correcting for mixed race]. Anecdotally, light skinned Asians do better in their home countries than the darker skinned. Sowell has noted for a long time how much of the US black elite is light skinned. So within a given racial category, the lighter skinned do better -- or at least I hope they've done the corrections properly.

"Whether these adjustments are made at the cultural or genetic levels is a difficult question."

Steve, it's pretty unlikely that genetic differences could have become significant in the few millenia that these differences in living patterns existed. But cultural distinctions can be pretty powerful. I know from my own experience that if a person is convinced he's stupid in one area, he *will* be stupid in that area regardless of how smart he is otherwise, and there's plenty to suggest that a more stimulating early home environment actually increases IQ.

Brazil is another example of societies where lighter skin tone is a distinct advantage, regardless of "race".

Anecdotally, light skinned Asians do better in their home countries than the darker skinned.

Dark skinned Asians are also discriminated against by their lighter-skinned neighbors. There is a reason many Asians buy special creams to make their skin lighter.

Steve, it's pretty unlikely that genetic differences could have become significant in the few millenia that these differences in living patterns existed.

I've read that European Jews do have a markedly higher IQ than people in their host countries. This is most likely because of different selective pressures on them during the past 2000 years. So I do believe it is *possible* for genetic differences to arise. That said, I think historical reasons (colonialism, slavery) are more convincing as to why countries in low lattiduates aren't doing well now.

"in many countries, like India, those darker-skinned immigrants would have been discriminated against pretty openly in their homeland"

I don't know where this and other comments are coming from, but while there is a social prejudice against dark-skinned people in India, there is hardly any discrimination when it comes to the work-place. Especially in the hi-tech job sector, if any discrimination exists, it is in favor of where you got your academic degrees, your intelligence, and to some extent, your command over English. None of these factors have a correlation with skin-color AFAIK.

Most prejudice is in case of marriage and is largely true for women.

I think the answer is pretty simple. It's IQ that is the truest explanation of why the people in the study performed as they did, and IQ has some correlation with skin tone in that the average African IQ is 70, while the average European IQ is 100, with American blacks (who have an average of 25% white ancestry) coming in at 85. So in a study involving whites and blacks with varying degrees of white ancestry, it might appear that skin tone (and thus discrimination) was the cause of the difference when it was actually IQ (and thus diffference in native ability).

Here is one source for the numbers I quote above.

Mark is a White Supremacist. Amazing how they crawl out of the woodwork. His blog is "Dedicated to discussion by white Westerners of strategies for the survival of our peoples."

Wow. Perhaps basic grammar is a strategy you might want to discuss. Here's a choice quote from his blog,

We cannot share a country with non-whites if they number more than a very small percentage of our population.

When they are a very small percentage of the population, the social costs they impose on us are on a scale small enough to tolerate, as we did for centuries.

But as their numbers increase beyond a small minority, they make their areas of our cities and countries dangerous and unlivable for us.

If they gain majority status and are allowed to exercise political power over us, they will almost certainly use it to exploit and oppress us, as they do now in Zimbabwe and South Africa.

And because non-whites have higher birthrates than we do, and likely always will, then it is a mathematical certainty that as long as they are allowed to live in our countries, sooner or later their numbers will rise to the level where first they endanger us and then oppress or even exterminate us.

FYI - the quote is rest of the post. For some reason I messed up the blockquote.

I agree with jatayu. There is no discrimination where skin color is concerned in India. Purchase of "whitening creams" is not to get a good job, but a good husband!

I assume by the "South" you mean the equator.

Yes, sorry. I meant 'closer to the equator' or 'in warmer lattitudes.' Though the Incans were south of the equator on the west coast of the South American bulge. They seemed to be one of the few people in the Americas who domesticated large animals. The S. American bulge is one of the few places south of the equator that has a wide lattitude of land and isn't also dominated by desert like Australia. But it's still much smaller than the Europe-to-Asia expanse of lattitude.

"This is most likely because of different selective pressures on them during the past 2000 years. So I do believe it is *possible* for genetic differences to arise."

Selective pressure yes, effect on genetics no. 2000 years is not at all long enough for evolution of biology, but plenty of time for cultural change. Jews are simply raised better, better work habit, better edu-ma-cated than the rest of us, that sort of thing.

"8 to 15 percent". Big. Hairy. Deal.

What's the margin of error in this study?

What's the percentage income spread between tall men and short men? Isn't there a study around somewhere saying it's quite large. Boo hoo for me, I'm not tall.

What was the 'darkness disparity' 50 years ago? Probably "800 to 1500 percent".

This study is cause for celebration.

those trying to justify some sort of northern european preeminence (based on what it takes to deal with the cold, etc.), just stop, cause it's silly. we live in an anomalous time when northern europeans/whites have dominated for a couple centuries. if you look at the broad sweep of history, it's all about asia (china/india). rome was cute and all, but not really much of an empire compared to some asian ones and not really white, either. through the 1700s, the economic output of china and india dwarfed that of the "west." and now asia's making it's comeback.

as for why most/all cultures seem to discriminate against darker skin, no idea, though it seems plausible that it's tied to poor people being out in the fields, thus dark skin being linked to peasantry. (there are also the studies that indicate attractiveness may be linked to average, easier to comprehend features (theory being less dissonance for perceiver). are lighter skins tones somehow easier to comprehend, or do they make features easier to comprehend, or are lighter skins somehow more average?)

btw, for the guy trying to tie this to IQ, you're aware that in almost all studies, asians have higher IQs than "whites"? so if we were discrminating based on IQ, you wouldn't just pick whitest/lightest skin (to the extent that's a meaningful description).

buddingeconomist,

Jews are simply raised better, better work habit, better edu-ma-cated than the rest of us, that sort of thing.

Thats entirely possible but I would imagine they "controled" for those factors, for what it's worth.

Also as a general note I want to point out that IQ is not entirely dependent on genetics. Prenatal development, nutrition, activities in childhood are all significant factors. So it isnt a surprise that wealthier countries are "smarter" than poorer ones. I agree that in 200 years or so globalization will mostly smooth out these differences.

markm said:

"Steve, it's pretty unlikely that genetic differences could have become significant in the few millenia that these differences in living patterns existed. ..."

If a few millenia is enough time for genetic changes in skin color then it is enough time for other genetic changes.

MS,
I doubt that this was all completely controlled for. The culture - even if your own parents are not highly educated for example - can make a huge difference in expectations, and this would be difficult to control for. Good point about nutrition and so forth, this is probably a primary reason for discrepancies generally.

James,
The evolution of skin color is not well proven, but is probably not a very significant "evolutionary change" - given the very physical necessity of melanin and the minor genetic dominance required. Can you make a convincing argument that other genetic changes would have occurred? what pressures, what genes?

I've always wondered about these kind of surveys. How can they possibly adjust for all the variables? The one variable I've always wanted to see addressed in studies in the US is accent. Strongly accented English, particularly if the accent isn't local, almost has to be considered a negative when hiring and promoting. I'd be less concerned with skin tone than with comprehensibility. A mild accent is quirky and exotic, a strong accent sounds alien and uneducated. If someone really knew the language, they'd have learned to speak it correctly, right?

In nearly every field, the ability to communicate verbally affects performance. It doesn't matter if the person is saying something brilliant badly or something stupid with clear pronunciation, information is not being passed in a useful way. Certain accents are more likely to be discriminated against than others, if they are recognized and associated with a particular group. It's a lot easier to find someone who perceives an urban black or rural southern accent as a negative than someone who cares at all about a cajun. But a person who can't be understood at all is viewed badly by absolutely everyone.

buddingeconomist,

Here's recent (probably within 5 to 10 thousand years) genetic change: lactose intolerance

Also, regarding recent genetic changes to the brain, see http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/309/5741/1720

You can argue its not a meaningful genetic change, but it is still a change.

buddingeconomist said:

"The evolution of skin color is not well proven, but is probably not a very significant "evolutionary change" - given the very physical necessity of melanin and the minor genetic dominance required. Can you make a convincing argument that other genetic changes would have occurred? what pressures, what genes?"

I don't know what you mean about evolution of skin color not being well proven. Do you think people nearer the poles have lighter skin colors by chance and not because it conveys a selective advantage?

Suppose melanin has a slight poisoning effect on the brain (there is no evidence for this as far as I know). Then higher IQ's for populations near the poles could just be a side effect of selection for less melanin. Note an genetic IQ increase of say one standard deviation would be easy to achieve by selective breeding as 15% of the population would already have the desired trait.

The current genetic portion of the average IQ of a population represents an equilibrium between the beneficial effects of a higher IQ and the biological costs of providing it. It appears unlikely that this equilibrium point would lie at exactly the same level for all of the earth's local environments.

"3. I think most people are parochial. Indians tend to hire Indians, Chinese tend to hire Chinese and Mexicans will tend to hire Mexicans. Whites will tend to hire whites and blacks will tend to hire blacks. It would be interesting to know the races and skin tones of the respondent's employers."

I find the above true and also untrue in one specific instance. Having worked in an office, I've often observed a sort of "mentoring effect". One member of an ethnic group will come on board and soon other members of that group will be hired, often by that first member. Often there will be "waves" of various groups moving in and out offices. What I find odd, is that no one bats an eye at, for example, Indians hiring other Indians, or Chinese hiring other Chinese, Latinos hiring other Latinos, and of course European Americans hiring others. Sometimes to the point where it seems each group is only hiring "their own". The exception is African Americans. I've never seen a situation where one African American is "allowed" to hire an office full of other African Americans. Why does that raise eyebrows

I'm amused by Brian Despain's breathless revelation that I'm a "white supremacist". Um, Brian, my racialism is not exactly a secret. That's why I included a link to my homepage. But hey, thanks for quoting me extensively - hopefully that will bring some more visitors to my page.

For the record, I'm not a "supremacist". I don't think whites are the "supreme" race, better than anyone else. I do think my people, white Americans, are worth preserving as a distinct people - as do many other whites, apparently, since 77% of them said white culture was unique and deserves to be preserved, according to a recent study.

And yes, "dj superflat", I know that Asians have higher average IQ scores. I never claimed otherwise. Interesting, though, that by pointing this out you implicitly agree that there are racial IQ differences.

One thing that I came across while reading up on Africa is that even in sub-Saharan Africa, there is a tendency for lighter skin (even if it is still quite black) to be considered better than darker skin. The prejudice does indeed seem to be nearly universal, though I can't explain it any more than anyone else.

To address a few other points brought up in the comments:

the Inuit are apparently pretty intelligent. Among "primitive" groups, the Inuit are known for possessing the most complex technology, and they managed to survive in an incredibly harsh environment, which must have done quite a bit to hold them back, while at the same time selecting against too much stupidity. In any case, there is something of a mythos about the Inuit, that when white people came to Inuit villages with modern technology, such as aircraft and automobiles, the Inuit only had to look at the machines, and immediately understood how they worked, becoming excellent mechanics without any training. I don't know how true such stories are, but they do suggest some pretty serious intelligence. However, besides isolation, a harsh environment, and cultural practices that may have held the Inuit back, there is also the simple fact that there are not, and never have been, very many of them.

As for the question of how fast major evolutionary change can occur, I will just point out that the "punctuated equilibrium" theory has recently gained some credence. It basically means that major change occurs rapidly but infrequently, when a species is under stress - rather than gradually and slowly. Also consider how different dogs are from wolves, and how much variation occurs within that one species - and dogs were domesticated thousands, not millions, of years ago.

I always have troubles to find out the ground in why a management job earns much higher than a labor job. Taken the software industy for example, a system analysis earns much more than an entry-level programmer. However, the intelligence input from an entry-level programmer is no less than a system analyst from some perspective.

Moreover, an entry job in the software industry is a programmer but not a system analyst. In fact, back to any dept of computer science, a course in data structure algorithm is no less difficult than a course in system analysis.

Political and social structures in many Latin America countries favor "white skin." Certainly, Mexico has had problems with the racial divides between Europeans, Mestizos, and Natives, the latter two being less represented in politics, benefitting less from government spending, and generally being on the lower end of the pay scale. The only outlet that they have for social mobility--the only realistic one and the only one allowed them--is immigration. And the Europeans are more than happy to let them leave.

Steven Donnegal:

The more interesting question is what you'd trade off. All else being equal, you clearly have a better life in the US being born white than black. But how much money in your trust fund would make it worthwhile to be black, instead? I'm pretty sure I'd rather be born as the child of a black millionare industrialist than the child of one of the white guys who cleans the floors in his factories.

Would you rather be a white kid with an IQ of 100, or a black kid with an IQ of 115? I suspect that the higher IQ would compensate you for a lot of the crap you'd get for being black, but I don't know that for sure. (That's what you'd take away from the data presented in _The Bell Curve_, I think.)

The Europe-to-Asia span isn't latitude (north-to-south), it's longitude.

Linda,

Not sure who you're referring to , but the Europe-to-Asia span represents a swath of land in the same latitude.

@sally

Managerial positions typically pay more because managers have increased responsibilty, not because they require more or less "intelligence".

A senior systems analyst would probably be responsible for the overall system design on several systems, whereas a junior programmer would be responsible for executing only a small section of one application at a time.

The problem with those "recognizably black names" studies is that the names are weird. They aren't so much "recognizably black" as "recognizably the product of stupid parents".

the weird-ass black names

You're either inadvertently proving the point of the study or relying on some assumptions that have yet to be proven... that Afrocentric names are signs of stupidity or a negative deviation from the norm. Why should that be? And if those perceptions correlate with race and historic patterns of discrimination, shouldn't you be concerned about that?

I don't know where this and other comments are coming from, but while there is a social prejudice against dark-skinned people in India, there is hardly any discrimination when it comes to the work-place. Especially in the hi-tech job sector,

Would that have been the case if the high-tech sector hadn't developed in southern India, and the economy were still directed by bureaucrats in New Delhi?

I grew up in a town with a large South Asian population and the negative attitudes lighter-skinned kids with family roots in Bengal and Gujarat had toward the few southern Indian people were remarkable. It may be similar to what I've heard of discrimination against Sephardim in Israel.

Clearly Mark my "revelations" as you call them weren't "breathless." You are clearly a racist and I pointed it out. I also pointed your blog's subtitle strung together 6 prepositional phrases, one right after another.

"I do think my people, white Americans, are worth preserving as a distinct people - as do many other whites"

Which whites? The Irish? The Germans? The Swedes? The Scots? Your construction "white Americans" is wholly an artificial one that only has sprung up in the last 80 years or so. Which peoples are you "preserving"? More importantly where did you get the idea that "White Americans" are under attack?

There's nothing at all wrong with the grammar of Mark's subtitle. Only the content is vile.

You are correct Paul. You can string that many prepositional phrases together. It's just poor writing from someone trying to appear more erudite than he is.

Brian DeSpain: So, you're saying that the black/white distinction wasn't important, say, 150 years ago? That a white Southerner wouldn't have seen a difference between an Irishman, an Italian, and a black guy if, for example, one of those three was walking down the street of Atlanta holding a Southern white woman's hand?

Albatross I just assume you are a socket puppet for our posting racist but let's take a look at what you are talking about.

"So, you're saying that the black/white distinction wasn't important, say, 150 years ago?"

No I didn't say that. Please point out where I did. Nice straw man you got there.

albatross:

I'm afraid I don't have a reference, but I recall reading about a late 1800's era miscegenation conviction being overturned on appeal because a Sicilian wasn't "white".

Actually, the Irish weren't considered "white" when they first arrived. Nor were the southern and eastern Europeans. Or the Jewish immigrants. "White" is basically the name of a priviledged club in America that has gradually expanded to include non-WASPs. A Brazilian friend of mine once commented, "All my life I thought I was white, but then I came to America and discovered I was a Latina!" Poor dear had gotten kicked out of the club!

Oh, and here's an interesting article on (what we'd consider) "white" slaves: http://multiracial.com/site/content/view/460/27/

How dare Mark care about "white" people.

Clearly he is a thought criminal and must be punished.

Brittain33,

Again, I could be wrong, but I don't think you're right about the naming issue. The choice of afro-centric names only really took off in the 1960s. Moreover, it's been much more fashionable among lower class black people. Obviously this is a huge generalization, but trend analysis always is. If I'm not mistaken, the empirical evidence is that discrimination with these names isn't terribly more common than it is for "white" names that are associated with poor people (i.e. "redneck" names).

the empirical evidence is that discrimination with these names isn't terribly more common than it is for "white" names that are associated with poor people (i.e. "redneck" names)

Or what about men with the middle name of "Wayne"?

Brian: Which whites? The Irish? The Germans? The Swedes? The Scots? Your construction "white Americans" is wholly an artificial one that only has sprung up in the last 80 years or so. Which peoples are you "preserving"? More importantly where did you get the idea that "White Americans" are under attack?

I consider white Americans to be a distinct ethnic group. We are a mix of our ancestral European, Caucasian ethnic groups. Every ethnic group that exists is a mix of other groups at some point back in time. And then when they have had enough time and isolation, they homogenize into a single, new, distinct group. For a long time there were battles between the American Irish, the Italians, the Germans, etc. They saw themselves as separate groups and there was plenty of strife. But they were all of the same race and religion and over the course of hundreds of years have melded into a more or less homogenous and distinct new ethnic group, white Americans. It wasn't easy, but now few white Americans think of themselves as primarily part of a historic European ethnic group. We're just "white", and we're Americans. But I don't think you're really confused by what "white" means. Pretty much everyone knows who is white and who isn't. And I think we can leave it up to each person to decide whether they are white or not.

You're just looking for some way to ridicule the idea that white people should be allowed to identify with their ethnic group and feel that they have an identity as a people and a legitimate right to preserve that identity just like every other people on earth. You wouldn't deny that to blacks, Latinos, or any other ethnic group on earth, but whites are automatically "racists" and therefore presumptively evil if they think in those terms. Well I'm done being cowed by people like you. Call me "racist" all you want. There's nothing wrong with me liking and valuing my people and our history, accomplishments, culture, values, heroes, holidays, looks, characteristic personality traits, and everything else that makes us, us. If those things have no meaning to you, I'm sorry for you.

Then you start looking for bad grammar or awkward sentence construction as some sort of evidence that I am an unworthy or unintelligent person, and thus my ideas can be dismissed out of hand. Folks like you don't seem to grasp the concept that an idea stands or falls on its own, independent of the person expressing it. Just applying the label "racist" to me does exactly zero to disprove what I say. That's why it amused me that you got all worked up because you followed the link to my blog that I purposefully left and found out that - heavens! - I think my people have a right to preserve ourselves. People like you are so used to living in a liberal bubble where to label someone a "racist" is a conversation-ender and some kind of slam-dunk argumentative win.

As to your second question, if you haven't noticed whites under attack it's because you don't live near an area that has become a no-go zone for whites. I'm old enough to remember what it was like when I was a child and my city and my school was 95% white. How peaceful that was, how little strife and anger and irritation and threat there was compared to now. But the real attacks haven't started yet. Those begin when whites become a minority and the non-whites get political control and begin enacting policies designed to exact revenge on whites, as is happening now in South Africa and Zimbabwe.

I'm not going to wait until then to speak up on the subject. Planning ahead, a future orientation, after all, is a characteristic white trait and part of the reason for our amazing success as a people.

Mark,

And I think we can leave it up to each person to decide whether they are white or not.

So, if Ice Cube decides he's white, is he in the club?

I guess that's good news for all those dusky low-IQ people, Bill: they can get smarter by an act of will!

Paul Zrimsek,

Yeah, but can everyone do it. I mean if I decide I'm double-secret probation white, does that add a few points to my IQ?

Bill:

Well, the good news is, your IQ and income go up. The bad news is....

Brian Despain:

You said:

'Your construction "white Americans" is wholly an artificial one that only has sprung up in the last 80 years or so. Which peoples are you "preserving"?'

I don't think that's an accurate statement.

For what it's worth, I don't think making race into an important moral category makes any sense at all, and I'm not remotely a supporter of Mark's position.

Mark:

Note that East Asians seem to be following the path into "white" in the US, in the sense that you're discussing. At some level, you have to decide whether you are more interested in a racial group or a culture. Race is about when and where most of your ancestors migrated. Culture is about what conscious and unconscious choices you make. Middle class blacks avoid the same schools and neighborhoods you do, for the same reasons.

"Actually, the Irish weren't considered "white" when they first arrived."

Indeed, as we all recall from that famous scene in "Gone With the Wind" where Scarlett O'Hara's last name is revealed and she is immediately sold into slaver.

Mark,

But the real attacks haven't started yet. Those begin when whites become a minority and the non-whites get political control and begin enacting policies designed to exact revenge on whites, as is happening now in South Africa and Zimbabwe.

Be careful that what you say doesnt become a self-fulfilling prophecy. You are right that when people identify themselves first as members of a particular ethnic group rather than just people (homo sapiens) who happen to respect and tolerate each others' differences, and when those ethnic groups live in close proximity to one another, bad things might happen (especially for the less powerful group). So the question is, are you trying to create a world where race, culture and religion are highly visible fault lines in society, ready to erupt or one where people look past these differences? Do you have to be in a liberal bubble the latter version is possible?

Mark,

I personally feel that a person's morals and values, intelligence and willingness to work hard are more significant than their race. Therefore if I discriminate, I do so based on those things. Would you really find it intolerable to live next to a family of black professionals in a committed marriage with two children? Is it really race that you're worried about? There really isn't such a huge difference between professionals of various races, which is why most upperclass folk will probably take your views as nutty or evil. Familes, religion and democray are not inherantly 'white' institutions anymore than gunpowder is inherantly 'Chinese.'

The place where racist attitudes spring up is among the poor who have potentially dangerous neighibors and only spotty protection via the rule of law, and little to lose from reckless behavior.
Under those circumstaces, more tribal mindsets seem to predominate.

Of course, the fact that your site tends to gloss over how African Americans came to America in the first place and why and how they were treated once there does tend to undermine your credibility just a little.

From your site We coexisted for this long with non-whites because they were a manageably small fraction of our population.

Americans brough African slaves to the US because southerners had a terrible time of farming the south without them. The South is closer in climate to Africa than to Europe. Technological advances have eliminated the necessity for slavery (funny how it ended just as the industrial revolution began.) What you describe isn't nearly as much a matter of tolerance as using a certain group of people as slaves and then wishing them gone once their time as chattel was done.

A mild accent is quirky and exotic, a strong accent sounds alien and uneducated. If someone really knew the language, they'd have learned to speak it correctly, right?

Actually, this touches on a related interesting point: Not only do the native-born children of immigrants lose the accent, they are also more likely to intermarry with the native population, diluting whatever their original skintone was.

As for the question of how fast major evolutionary change can occur, I will just point out that the "punctuated equilibrium" theory has recently gained some credence. It basically means that major change occurs rapidly but infrequently, when a species is under stress - rather than gradually and slowly.

The reasoning is circular. "Punctuated equilibrium" was coined to try and explain why the fossil record shows plentfiul evidence of stasis, but a paucity of transition. It is accepted by some as plausible because it is a way of explaining the known evidence within the framework of the modern synthetic theory of evolution; but it is essentially unprovable in the conventional sense because it pleads to the existence of singular historical events that had no direct observers. To carry it full circle around the well of knowledge and then try to fill a different bucket with it, stretches the hypothesis considerably.

From Wikipedia:

Both Lynn and Rushton have suggested that high IQ is associated with colder climates. To test this hypothesis, Templer and Arikawa 2006 compare the national IQ data from Lynn and Vanhanen with data sets that describe national average skin color and average winter and summer temperatures (see also discussion [3]). They find that the strongest correlations to national IQ were −0.92 for skin color and −0.76 for average high winter temperature. They interpret this finding as strong support for IQ-climate association.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_and_the_Wealth_of_Nations

Regarding puncutated equilibrium;

It's interesting in some cases for moving species from one fitness peak to another, but it shouldn't be seen as the sole push for diversification of species. For an animal to enlarge one part of its body or its whole body is a common, well documented, gradual shift. Predator/prey relationships probably factor into this. I'm not sure how much evidence, precisely, that this hypothesis has behind it but it seems reasonable. Smarter prey forces a predator to adapt. Prey intelligence functions as a kind of leading indicator of predator intelligence. Or, with plants, if a plant produces a new insecticide or fungicide it proliferates until some predator learns to metabolize the new chemical. The predator spreads and the plant's proliferation is brought back under control.

It's a widespread myth among those who have never thought hard about human evolution that there hasn't been enough time for behaviorally significant average differences to evolve on different continents. In truth, advantageous genes can spread quite rapidly. For example, lactose tolerance prevalence differs radically around the world with large scale economic and cultural consequences, and that has all evolved since the begin of herding after the last Ice Age.

Nicholas Wade, the ace genetics reporter for the New York Times, has a new book out call "Before the Dawn" that dispels this myth of no time for racial differences to evolve in no uncertain terms.

double-secret probation white

The phrase you're looking for is "Aryan pure". After all, there are whites and there are whites. Just ask Sailer what he thinks about Hispanics.

On second thought-- don't for the love of Christ ask Sailer what he thinks of Hispanics.

But the real attacks haven't started yet. Those begin when whites become a minority and the non-whites get political control and begin enacting policies designed to exact revenge on whites, as is happening now in South Africa and Zimbabwe.

Neither example is quite on point. Many South African whites have been victimized in the huge crime wave that's swept the nation in the past decade, but so for that matter have (many more) blacks. The situation is closer to anarchy that race-specific violence. There are some fears that the government has given tacit approval to a targeted anti-white pogrom, to go into effect following Nelson Mandela's death, but these seem unfounded, more in the category of lurid rumor than anything else.
Zimbabwe seized land from white farmers but did not, for the most part, engage in actual racial violence. Most of the farmers have relocated to neighboring (and black-ruled) Mozambique, which has welcomed them.

On second thought-- don't for the love of Christ ask Sailer what he thinks of Hispanics.

Shouldn't that be -- don't for the love of Jesus ask Sailer what he thinks of Hispanics?

Anony-mouse:

There's a dilution of culture as immigrants intermarry with natives, too. But the cool thing is that people absorb pieces of a culture based on what works for them and makes sense to them. Japan, India, and China are all very distinct cultures from Europe, despite having imported a lot of the best parts of European culture. (And that culture owes a lot to Indian, Chinese, and Middle Eastern culture, from which it got stuff like gunpowder and a workable number system.) I think this happens inside a country, as well. One of the apparent results of a big inflow of Mexicans is that even random restaurants in the midwest have now heard of peppers, hot sauce, and other spices outside of salt, black pepper, and ketchup. This is a part of Mexican culture that's pretty nice, and it gets absorbed. That happens all the time.

Hispanics and "whiteness"... This is one case where the ethnic lobby has essentially created a group that is completely unknown anywhere else and pulled in people who don't consider themselves to be part of a group against their will and without their knowledge. Now there is a fairly good reason for this, where our past experience with racialist specificity got exceptionally nasty and leads us away from any sort of useful categorisations. So now we have Hispanic/Latino(a) to describe anyone south of the Rio Grande or with a Spanish/Portugese last name. In the real world, outside of government bureaucracy, Mestisos and the self-identified are classed as Hispanic, and others are viewed as either white or "Indian" accordingly.

As to my buzzword usage... taking electrical engineering burns in those kinds of technical descriptions irrespective of one's knowledge or acceptance of GGS. I'd also note that the domesticable animal and wide expanses of common latitudes form the kley thesis of GGS and are rather more distinctively identified with the work than "positive feedback cycle".

Sailer has some useful ideas, and is willing to investigate and say that which is taboo. Unfortunately, as is almost universal when dealing with these kinds of taboos, he is rather too fond of the taboo idea, and has embraced it as an all encompassing thesis, rather than as a small quanta that helps to explain events without explaining any worth of the group or individiual.

For the people who want to claim that 2000 years is too short a time to see any sort of genetic drift, I only have to say that you are engaged in far too much wishful thinking. As evidenced by the rapid directed evolution of plants and animals for human use and pleasure, all you need for evolutionary change is several generations and pressure. A restricted population also helps a great deal. The Ashkenazi population is a great example of a group that has undergone substantial genetic change in a very short period of time. There are several genetic diseases that are concentrated in the population that are almost unheard of outside of the group. These involve complex processes and are not purely cosmetic, which is somehow not a substantial change according to our denialists. To what extent populations have diverged along anyone given dimension is debatable, especially without any good data on the characteristics under question or the actual contributing factors for those traits. An open mind and an experimental approach to these kinds of questions is the most useful approach, as well as the one that will be the least embarrassing in the future. Of course no one will do this and we will all run to our own barricades, just like with Larry Summers musings on possible differences in the shape of certain attribute bell curves between the sexes.

I nominate this discussion as the dumbest discussion of the past century. That it could draw 86 responses speaks volumes for the incredible dumbness of our intelligensia.

No subject has been beaten to death more thoroughly than this hair shirt obsession with race. Just for good measure, the participants in such discussions usually like to note that America is remarkably loathe to discuss race. This, despite the fact that BS discussions about race have occupied about (by my estimate) 35% of all available human verbage over the past 50 years.

I'd suggest a 20 year moratorium on all noble, soul wrenching discussions about race. Steve Sailer, noted several times in the discussion above, really has put his finger on why this discussion won't stop. For educated whites, feigned concern about blacks is a game of one-upmanship. It's a status game.

Please cease and desist.

Well, some of us would also like to figure out how the country's racial problems are going to get better. Blacks in the US aren't doing so well, by all kinds of measures like dropout rate, IQ scores, health outcomes, unemployment, crime, and illegitimacy. It's kind of a pressing problem to work out what's going on there, and how it might get better.

Essentially none of the "civil rights" legislation people talk about seems to help with any of this. For a variety of reasons, both politicans and most media outlets are incapable of having an honest discussion of these issues. Neither party much cares, to be honest, though Democrats are good at Gerrymandering districts for black Democrats, and at affirmative action programs that broadly amount to patronage for wealthy, middle-class, and well-connected blacks. Republicans mostly don't even bother with that, though now that they're trying for the black vote, they'll probably soon decide on some ways to hand out their own racially-earmarked patronage.

What is the US going to look like in another 50 years? Will blacks still be way overrepresented in prisons and among dropouts and welfare recipients? Will our schools and neighborhoods continue to resegregate, as has been happening since the 70s? This stuff is going to matter to my kids and eventual grandkids.

So, if Ice Cube decides he's white, is he in the club?

What I meant was that if we were allowed to self-segregate by race, we would not need some committee to decide who was white enough to live in a white area. Because what non-white person would want to live in an area populated by white people who are racially aware enough to choose to live in a white area? If "Ice Cube" wanted to pretend he was white, and move to such an area, I think he'd find himself ostracized and after a short while the joke would get old and he'd move to an area where people like him - however he defined that - lived.

At some level, you have to decide whether you are more interested in a racial group or a culture. Race is about when and where most of your ancestors migrated. Culture is about what conscious and unconscious choices you make. Middle class blacks avoid the same schools and neighborhoods you do, for the same reasons.

Yes, but because of reversion to the mean, the children or grandchildren of the middle-class blacks will likely revert to the black mean in terms of intelligence, propensity to crime, etc. Just because you can find a portion of blacks who can manage middle-class lives now, in a remarkably prosperous country, where there are plenty of government jobs (in which I believe blacks are over-represented) doesn't mean you can ignore race and focus on culture alone. First of all, people divide themselves by race. Whites are probably the most reluctant of any racial group about this. Blacks certainly are not. I see no evidence to suggest blacks (or hispanics, or East Asians, etc) are going to stop being race-oriented as they grow in demographic importance. In fact, race will become more and more important as the historic white majority shrinks. Idealistic and generally well-behaving whites provided the framework that makes a mixture of races workable. But that only works when whites are such a large majority that they mostly hold the reins of power and make the decisions. In addition, my contention is that the relatively low IQ, poor ability to delay gratification, and other personality traits that are generally characteristic of some non-white groups makes them poor candidates for ever behaving in the cultural fashion you hope for. Look at the last 40 years of blacks behavior and culture - does that really look like a trend line that gives you much hope for the future?

So the question is, are you trying to create a world where race, culture and religion are highly visible fault lines in society, ready to erupt or one where people look past these differences?

The world already IS a place where race, culture, and religion are highly visible fault lines, ready to erupt. And it's becoming worse. And will, I believe continue to become even worse, as whites - who were once 30% of the world's population and now are just 10% - continue to shrink in demographic power. It was white idealists who even conceived that such a thing as worldwide racial harmony could exist or succeed. It sure wasn't the Asians, blacks, arabs, or hispanics pushing that idea. I prefer to deal with the world as it is than to advocate civilizational self-disarmament in the pursuit of a goal that is in all likelihood impossible to achieve. The best we can hope for is nation-states for each distinct people, with borders respected by their neighbors. That might be a realistic path to as much peace as will ever be possible in a world unavoidably based on survival of the fittest and competition for scarce resources.

Of course, the fact that your site tends to gloss over how African Americans came to America in the first place and why and how they were treated once there does tend to undermine your credibility just a little.

I don't understand how that undermines my credibility. My concern is not primarily with blacks. It is with my people. I don't wish blacks ill - I want them to be happy, prosperous, safe, and fulfilled. But my concern is for my people first, just as it is with my family first, or with humanity in general over non-human life. Slavery was wrong, and beyond being wrong, was clearly incredibly short-sighted and counter-productive. Think of the billions of man-hours squandered in this country on the subject of race that could have been avoided had blacks never been brought here. Of course, you haven't exactly seen a mass exodus of blacks from the West, have you? They've been free to leave for over a hundred years and almost none have. So I guess I'm not going to be losing any sleep over how blacks got here, since they themselves don't seem to have any great objection to being here.

Many South African whites have been victimized in the huge crime wave that's swept the nation in the past decade, but so for that matter have (many more) blacks. The situation is closer to anarchy that race-specific violence. There are some fears that the government has given tacit approval to a targeted anti-white pogrom, to go into effect following Nelson Mandela's death, but these seem unfounded, more in the category of lurid rumor than anything else.

Please, please read this article by a white South African about what is going on there. It is the early stages of a pogrom or genocide. Do not pretend that whites are just incidental victims of what is going on there. There is every reason to believe that this is a preview of what will happen here as well if whites become a minority. Blacks here hold just as many grudges, as do hispanics.

http://www.amren.com/0405issue/0405issue.html

Slavery was wrong, and beyond being wrong, was clearly incredibly short-sighted and counter-productive.

This reminds me of comic Godfrey Cambridge's joking assertion that he was supporting Barry Goldwater in 1964: "I love Barry! He has come flat-out against slavery...in principle!"

My only comment is that the discussion here frequently confuses what are in reality two distinct concepts: race and culture. Race is rather easily identified, but culture is not--there are so many aspects of culture that any conversation is meaningless until and unless the terms are defined. In many instances, when we say "majority culture" what we mean is "middle-class majority culture", at which level there are no discernable differences between races holding to middle class values. This is not true, however, for the lower class. Yes, lower class rural whites have a culture that is different than lower class urban blacks, but neither of them provide easy opportunity to advance to middle class culture. In point of fact, lower class rural whites and lower class rural blacks share many cultural values. One of the interesting things about traveling about the country is to observe the ethnic makeup of poor rural folk. In the south, at least in the flatlands, the poor rural folk tend to be black, whereas in upstate New York, the poor rural folk tend to be white. In the Southwest, poor rural folk tend to be Mexican. In terms of many aspects of culture, they are all very similar, although in terms of ethnicity, they are not. But my point is that the term "culture" is too broad for reader and writer to mean the same thing when trying to communicate.

@Brittain33

"I grew up in a town with a large South Asian population and the negative attitudes lighter-skinned kids with family roots in Bengal and Gujarat had toward the few southern Indian people were remarkable. It may be similar to what I've heard of discrimination against Sephardim in Israel. "

Why is it so hard for the Average American to understand(I am assuming you are one) that all discrimination is not based solely on skin tone? And by the way, Sephardics(mediterranian) are a differnt race than Askenzais(whites). Unlike the Israelis, all Indian belong to the same race. That being said, discrimination in India is not so much skin-color based. It is more clan based, caste based, language based or culture based. Bengalis are known to be parochial and Gujrathis are very clannish. There is an explanation as to why, but I am going to stop here.

The software industry boom occured in S.India because the southern states in India had better policies to attract foreign capital and were politically stable than N.Indian states. N.Indian states have always been under-developed and politically volatile (and they are light skinned ;-P )

And the study about colder climates and IQ just cracked me up :) Had that study been done 10,000 years ago, the results would have been reversed when most of the "colder clime" people were primitives who hunted and gathered and the near-equator people were doing complex astronomical calculations and writing philosphical texts.

'A little thought experiment for you. You are a baby about to be born in the US and have the ability to choose your race. What race do you pick?'

Wow - a Soc 101 question. Well first babies couldn't possibly make that choice and it they could they'd almost certainly pick their parents race. Wow, dude, what's in the caf today?

You're right, Bandit. It's a completely vacuous question. Why, there probably haven't been any important political philosophers in the last 50 years asking a question like that.

I don't understand how that undermines my credibility.

Because part of your site involves arguing for the moral superiority of whites and not just making a parochial defense (i.e. Your arguments go beyond saying "I want what's best for 'my people'"). And you do this using very selective wording, saying whites have tolerated blacks for centuries for instance.

They've been free to leave for over a hundred years and almost none have. So I guess I'm not going to be losing any sleep over how blacks got here, since they themselves don't seem to have any great objection to being here.

That's a rather odd justification. Should other people say "who cares how whites in S. Africa are treated. They're still there. They must like it." What about Indians under colonialism?

So because a person is abused in the land they were born in, it must not a problem unless they leave? That's a horribly lax standard of justice/injustice. Some people see a country as more than just a hunk of soil. Of course, there were some blacks who left for Liberia so I don't really buy the "It's always been so nice here that noone's ever left" line, anyways.

Actually, over a million of the 5 or 6 million whites in South Africa HAVE left in the years since the end of apartheid. They are going back to their ancestral lands or to majority-white lands. And that's just in the few years since apartheid. The exodus will likely accelerate as things continue to decline, until the only whites left are those who are too poor or unconnected to be able to leave, and they will likely suffer the fate of many whites in Zimbabwe: murder.

Indians (I assume you mean South Asian Indians, and not American Indians, though my response would the same in either case) were not taken from another country, their homeland, and brought to India. They had always been there. There was no place for them to go. American blacks, on the other hand, have had the option of leaving evil, racist old America any time they please since 1865 and going back to their African homeland. True, they were born here, raised here, they speak English and have adopted mostly Western cultural habits, so Africa would seem strange to them at first. But clearly the "oppression" they suffered here under white rule did not exceed that threshhold of inconvenience they would have had to put up with by moving to Africa. The Liberian experiment you referred to was a failure. Indeed there was a movement among some blacks like Marcus Garvey in the post-Civil War period to emigrate back to Africa. They tried and they failed to establish a viable society with a standard of living anything like what they enjoyed as second-class citizens in a white nation. And that, for the most part, was the end of talk about leaving America.

So, yes, it was wrong to enslave people and bring them here against their will. But I will stand by my statement that apparently they would rather be here now in a white-majority country complaining about oppression than living away from whites in a black-majority African country.

Yes. I meant to say asiatic Indians. Sorry for the confusion.

The Liberian experiment you referred to was a failure.

I agree. Liberia was worse than Ghana and other established African civilizations, even those African civilizations which underwent colonial rule. That would seem to argue against the notion that Liberia was really an alternative to racial problems in America, at least in the popular black conception. The American liberians didn't assimilate with the native population of liberia. It was analogous to those who were considered "Italian Americans" in the eyes of the American mainstream, but held onto their own classifications (Cicilian, Venetian, etc.) in their own hearts. Just because some whites saw all Africans as being a single group doesn't mean that all Africans or African Americans saw things the same way.

It's not clear that folks in the US even had a clear indication of what their options were. Malcom X, who went to Ghana in the middle of the 20th century, was astounded to find that people were manufacturing cars there. Which indicates to me that African Americans didn't have the full story on Africa at the time of their worst suffering.

they would rather be here now in a white-majority country complaining about oppression than living away from whites in a black-majority African country.

I agree that in the present, African Americans typically don't seem to find America so hostile that they want to leave (though I couldn't find any emmigration statistics.) I haven't said otherwise.

"Had that study been done 10,000 years ago, the results would have been reversed when most of the "colder clime" people were primitives who hunted and gathered and the near-equator people were doing complex astronomical calculations and writing philosphical texts."

No, most of the near-equator people were illiterate peasants and laborers who did their calculations (if any) on their fingers or toes. A few percent were nobles, priests, and warriors living in luxury derived by enslaving or extorting taxes from those peasants and laborers. A tiny fraction of that upper class were doing complex astronomical calculations and writing philosophical texts. All the peasants and laborers who made up over 90% of the population got in return for a substantial part of their production was a calendar that told them when to plant their crops, and "protection", which mostly worked in the Mafia sense.

The main difference in the north was that their social mechanisms were far less effective at extorting part of the little that the common man had and accumulating it into wealth for the few. So they sometimes[1] didn't have a privileged class that could, if they chose to, do astronomy and philosophy, but on the other hand, the common man had to learn more about the world around him because no one was going to do all the thinking for him.

[1] Stonehenge is evidence that some of the ancient northern societies did have astronomers, at least. They did indeed leave less writing. Desert climates are better for preserving written materials, but I doubt that's the whole explanation. I think mainly it's that hand-copied books and text engraved into stone monuments are expensive luxuries, and until the Industrial Revolution the rich weren't as rich or as numerous in the north.

(As far as I can tell, the Industrial Revolution actually started in Italy, with the application of water power to the purely muscular parts of iron smelting and working by about 1400 AD. So why did it move north?)

markm,
You probably need to brush up on the history of ancient civilizations. True, there were some oppressive kings and it was an agrarian society by and large, but dismissing the cultures as peasants who counted on hands and toes would be the modern counterpart of dimissing the Americans as fat slobs who can barely read in highschool and who also count with their fingers and toes, rather calculators (how many average americans can multiply 24*45 in their heads? but haven't some of the most important discoveries of the modern world come from this land?) The reasons ancient cultures flourished near the equator was because the climate was friendly, water was abundant, soil fertile. they flourished while the people in North struggled to just barely survive. The cultures in the south eventually became complacent and collapsed while the ones in north strated flourishing during the renaissance period. Like most things in the world, the rise and fall of civilizations is cyclical.

talking head,

Maybe before you start telling markm he needs to "brush up on the history of ancient civilizations" you should stop making incorrect statements about equatorial peoples writing philosophical texts 10,000 years ago.

Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems pretty easy to see that at 3000 BC, Northern Europe was not remotely as advanced as Egypt or Babylon. In fact, I think Europe wasn't in any kind of clear technological lead over China or the Middle East or India up until sometime around the Renaissance or after. So if you want to use latitude=destiny as an explanation, I think it has to deal with the big variations in relative positions over time.

Yes, but because of reversion to the mean, the children or grandchildren of the middle-class blacks will likely revert to the black mean in terms of intelligence, propensity to crime, etc.

*Sniff* What's that funky smell in here? I think it's DEAD HONKY.

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