I’m mad as hell and I’m not taking it anymore

[rangerrebew]

I’m mad as hell and I’m not taking it anymore

By L. Todd Wood - - Tuesday, September 26, 2017

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

I know of no white person alive today in the United States who has ever legally owned a black slave, or any slave for that matter. Almost 700,000 mostly white men died 160 years ago to end slavery. Jim Crow ended generations ago. Yet black America, for the most part, is still locked in inner-city gang violence and economic hardship. Why?

Is it because America is racist?  Is it because of some overhanging white supremacy?  Is it because of the Illuminati?

No, unfortunately, it is because of black culture and the adoption of Democratic Party government dependency. 

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/sep/26/black-america-blames-white-america/

[DB]

I agree with this assessment.

[goatprairie]

This is one of the big issues yet to be addressed by Republican/conservative leaders.  Trump has been bold (or rash) on the NFL player protest issue. Will he be bold enough to tell black Americans they're responsible for the condition they find themselves in and not Evil Whitey?  Somehow I  think that's a bridge too far for even Trump.

[TomSea]

 

Yet black America, for the most part, is still locked in inner-city gang violence and economic hardship.

The inner -city really is the heart of this problem I think. Those there, often say to their young men, try to get out of here,  take off to where there is more open-space or to whatever other possible solutions there are. Places like Baltimore are rather troublesome; and at the same time, it be Baltimore, St. Louis, wherever, I'm sure a lot of those folks are still nice but it's a bad environment.

[DCPatriot]

I listened to a local jock shouting on talk-radio today, "... this isn't disrespecting the flag.   It ain't even about the flag.   It's a statement that we demand equal right for everybody of color!  It's the Bruthers' DU-tee to take advantage of the #1 venue where everybody's watching"


 

[TomSea]

I saw an article about Affirmative Action in sports, really, but it had a paywall; so I didn't post it but one could argue for that in sports across the board.

[TomSea]

I listened to a local jock shouting on talk-radio today, "... this isn't disrespecting the flag.   It ain't even about the flag.   It's a statement that we demand equal right for everybody of color!  It's the Bruthers' DU-tee to take advantage of the #1 venue where everybody's watching"


 

Shannon Sharpe took off on a tirade on Fox Sports 1.

FS1’s Sharpe: Racist U.S. Flag Is Just ‘A Piece of Cloth…Nobody Fights For’
http://rinf.com/alt-news/newswire/fs1s-sharpe-racist-u-s-flag-is-just-a-piece-of-clothnobody-fights-for/

And stop trying to sweep it under the rug. But, see, as long as you paint that narrative, oh, it’s the Anthem, I can’t — no — anybody that does something to the Anthem — well, we know what the anthem was originally written for and who it was written by, okay? The flag, okay? We understand what the flag? What does it represent? When did this narrative come to be that the military and the police own the flag and only them? I can go buy a flag and I can hang it up in my backyard. We need to stop this, Skip. We need to — the flag is a piece of cloth and nobody fights for a piece of cloth.

[Fishrrman]

L. Todd Wood asks:
"Yet black America, for the most part, is still locked in inner-city gang violence and economic hardship. Why?"

(Sigh)
Once again:

{Mod note:  You'll have to Google Murray's graph here}

There are simply some things we cannot change.
This is one of them.

[Mod1]

The real Bell Curve from Murray's study:

[Smokin Joe]

Assuming that those figures are correct (source, please), to what might one attribute those variances? Nature or nurture rears its ugly head yet again.

Is the apparent difference an artifact of test format, language, the questions asked (as in what is considered relevant), cultural inertia against a 'too white' education, a matter of effort (for whatever reason), a matter of raw ability, or some inherent genetic factor, or a combination of things?
The assertion that gang violence is caused by lower IQ is one of those chicken/egg questions: it is pretty difficult to develop intellectually in a difficult or violent environment, especially if there is no emphasis on intellectual development.

I ask this because I recall a time when there was an emphasis on that development somewhat equally across the board, but, needless to say, there have been some societal changes in the time since then.
   
Most people who score high on IQ and standardized tests do so because they are from environments which are intellectually stimulating along the same lines as the tests and because such high scores are culturally valued. Admittedly, the latter might influence genetic pairing when people are seeking a partner. The presence or absence of that partner in parenting roles might be another factor, but if that is the case the spread should be slipping toward coincidence as the breakdown in the family unit  continues to transcend cultural boundaries as a commonplace event.
Certainly, there are some who are geniuses, and us mere intellectual mortals, but there is little substitute, regardless of innate ability, for hard work.
What do you think? The  issue of nature vs nurture has been a topic of discussion for centuries, and I'm curious what your take is on it. 

[truth_seeker]

DNA science is still in infancy but is nevertheless very solid science.

--Criminal law, to convict and to exonerate suspects

--Paternity

--Genealogy

--Origins, location and ethnicity

--Medical science, identification of illness risks, etc.

Genes determine most of our physical characteristics; eye, hair, skin color. Height, weight, physique, etc.

Small parents beget small children; large parents beget large children, on balance.

Science will "discover" proof about IQ and genetics, but it will be deemed to be fake science, and "racist."

[Smokin Joe]

DNA science is still in infancy but is nevertheless very solid science.

--Criminal law, to convict and to exonerate suspects

--Paternity

--Genealogy

--Origins, location and ethnicity

--Medical science, identification of illness risks, etc.

Genes determine most of our physical characteristics; eye, hair, skin color. Height, weight, physique, etc.

Small parents beget small children; large parents beget large children, on balance.

Science will "discover" proof about IQ and genetics, but it will be deemed to be fake science, and "racist."

Read Puddinhead Wilson by Mark Twain, if you haven't. My English teacher would not discuss it in High School in the midst of the race riots, for some reason...

[goatprairie]

DNA science is still in infancy but is nevertheless very solid science.

--Criminal law, to convict and to exonerate suspects

--Paternity

--Genealogy

--Origins, location and ethnicity

--Medical science, identification of illness risks, etc.

Genes determine most of our physical characteristics; eye, hair, skin color. Height, weight, physique, etc.

Small parents beget small children; large parents beget large children, on balance.

Science will "discover" proof about IQ and genetics, but it will be deemed to be fake science, and "racist."

When I was young, around 12, when I first started watching basketball on tv I remember watching the final game of the state basketball tournament. One team was from the northern part of the state and all the players were white. The other team was from the state's biggest city and all-black.
One thing I noticed was the black players all ran faster, moved quicker, and jumped higher than the white players. I wondered why that was.
Over the years as I watched more sports I observed that black players in the major sports other than hockey tended to move faster than white players.  All the great NL baseball players were black, including my personal idol Hank Aaron.
These anomalies were explained to me by various "experts" as simply black athletes working/practicing harder than white players and wanting it more. All human groups had the same/equal natural, athletic ability.
But I became more confused as I observed that all the U.S. track stars in the sprints were always black.  You don't have to develop much of a skill to run the sprints...you're either fast, or you're not.
Finally, in my early twenties I realized that the "experts" had lied to us.  The chances of that many black athletes dominating major sports considering their numbers in the population compared to white and other non-black athletes could not be something random.
For the past fifty years every U.S. sprinter in the Olympics, male and female, has been black. The chances of that being a random event are incredibly humongous.
So then I thought if the "experts" lied to us about physical abilities, did they lie about mental abilities? For sure they did.
The question is: why did they lie?
I would guess, from reading their own literature, that many of them wished to avoid racial conflict. Many, I'm sure, really believe there is no difference, mentally or physically, between the different racial groups of the world.
My question is:  that over the hundreds of thousands of years of human existence, what would be the harm in admitting that the different races or groups of people around the world differ in natural physical and mental abilities?
I didn't collapse in a heap when I realized my younger sister was smarter in math than I was nor when I realized two of my  brothers were better natural athletes than I was.
What would be the harm in admitting the truth: some groups of people at certain points in the history of mankind are superior in some physical or mental aspects than some other groups?
For the record, I don't believe in any particular ethnic group being superior in the sense that they've always been superior to other groups. Over time positions may change due to unpredictable circumstances.

[truth_seeker]

I just ran across the so-called "Warrior Gene," a few days ago. Had never heard of same.

Apparently it has been studied as it might pertain to violent (aggressive) behavior, depression, alcoholism, ADHD, etc.

The various DNA testing companies, have different priorities.

--Ancestry, genealogy, finding relatives.

--23 and Me, medical science, correlating genetics and with ancestors' disease histories, gene mutations

--FamilyTreeDNA, origins by region, by ethnic group

Several others come from paternity, criminal science, etc.

So MY BIG QUESTION: Which one if any, wants to be identified with study of low intelligence humans?

That would be the one which will need 24/7 armed security since some groups might react as they have often done, and try to burn the buildings down.

So humankind continues to keep their collective heads in the sand, and study daffodil colors, instead. 

[Smokin Joe]

Ultimately, it's the old nature vs nurture argument, and the former (an offshoot of Darwinian philosophy) is commonly used to support racist beliefs.

Personally, I think the answer is far more complex than just one or the other (and have since before I read Puddinhead Wilson).

Intelligent people tend to be attracted to and make babies with intelligent people. Although that is not always the case, such people tend to be more successful, and reinforce those goals within their social circles. Lather, rinse, repeat, and in the absence of social constraints and other cultural inhibitions, you would have a pool of people who over time had all the genetic and cultural forces for intelligence (as measured by their own tests) working in their favor.

In a situation where those attributes are not prized, but where the challenges involved more concrete and less abstract problems, the direction taken by those successful in that population and situation might take a different direction.

Though nature has a way of being the Force Majeure, either group, in sufficient numbers, can affect their environment to the degree that their group's attributes are those which are dominant, define the parameters necessary for success (i.e. brute strength vs higher mathematics), and define "intelligence" as possession of those attributes most adapted to success (if not mere survival) within their social construct.

Let an Amazon Native Elder 'write' an "IQ test", and bring in a group from MIT to take it. Reverse the roles. Either group would, within their set of parameters, likely declare the others morons or savages because of their abysmally low scores. The Native would not know how to drive, the MIT student likely would not know which tree frog to leave alone. Either could have lethal results.

It isn't a lack of intelligence, but an adaptation to a different set of environmental challenges, some set by nature, others cultural, and that is why nature and nurture are both involved.

As for two relatively distinct genetic groups showing different traits, that is no surprise. That traits would have been reinforced over generations of cultural and natural pressure is no surprise, either, nor that those traits would be different from another group who had different priorities for, and measures of, 'success'. While that adaptation may be marketable under some circumstances, a cultural shift toward other parameters would reinforce different traits as an adaptation to a different set of environmental demands. The only other course of action toward success is to alter the environment to align it more with the traits already present--a cultural shift unlikely to be attained by any minority.

[Oceander]

DNA science is still in infancy but is nevertheless very solid science.

--Criminal law, to convict and to exonerate suspects

--Paternity

--Genealogy

--Origins, location and ethnicity

--Medical science, identification of illness risks, etc.

Genes determine most of our physical characteristics; eye, hair, skin color. Height, weight, physique, etc.

Small parents beget small children; large parents beget large children, on balance.

Science will "discover" proof about IQ and genetics, but it will be deemed to be fake science, and "racist."

Yes, and they'll prove blacks are inferior to whites, right after they prove that phrenology really was valid and criminality can be determined from the bumps on a person's head.