The Unwelcome Revival of ‘Race Science’

[Snack12367]

The Unwelcome Revival of 'Race Science'
​

The Guardian just released an article titled The Unwelcome Revival of 'Race Science'. It's a really good read into why debunked pseudoscience like this have revived in recent years. It's worth a read (thought it is quite long), but if you haven't the time, I've quoted parts of it below.

One of the strangest ironies of our time is that a body of thoroughly debunked "science" is being revived by people who claim to be defending truth against a rising tide of ignorance. The idea that certain races are inherently more intelligent than others is being trumpeted by a small group of anthropologists, IQ researchers, psychologists and pundits who portray themselves as noble dissidents, standing up for inconvenient facts. Through a surprising mix of fringe and mainstream media sources, these ideas are reaching a new audience, which regards them as proof of the superiority of certain races.

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Although race science has been repeatedly debunked by scholarly research, in recent years it has made a comeback. Many of the keenest promoters of race science today are stars of the "alt-right", who like to use pseudoscience to lend intellectual justification to ethno-nationalist politics.

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One of the people behind the revival of race science was, not long ago, a mainstream figure. In 2014, Nicholas Wade, a former New York Times science correspondent, wrote what must rank as the most toxic book on race science to appear in the last 20 years. In A Troublesome Inheritance, he repeated three race-science shibboleths: that the notion of "race" corresponds to profound biological differences among groups of humans; that human brains evolved differently from race to race; and that this is supported by different racial averages in IQ scores.

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Another of Molyneux's recent guests was the political scientist Charles Murray, who co-authored The Bell Curve. The book argued that poor people, and particularly poor black people, were inherently less intelligent than white or Asian people. When it was first published in 1994, it became a New York Times bestseller, but over the next few years it was picked to pieces by academic critics.

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One of the reasons scientific racism hasn't gone away is that the public hears more about the racism than it does about the science. This has left an opening for people such as Murray and Wade, in conjunction with their media boosters, to hold themselves up as humble defenders of rational enquiry. With so much focus on their apparent bias, we've done too little to discuss the science. Which raises the question: why, exactly, are the race scientists wrong?

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I think the revival of this is largely down to the current popular opinions regarding intellectual truth. The idea that your truth is just as valid or more so than a scientists, because your opinion has reached more people. If you tweet a lie and it gets liked by enough people, does that makes it more valid than the truth? If enough people like my version of the truth more than another, does my truth become the better one?

It's a scary time for the world. We are arguably in a post truth world and if it allows for stuff like this to make a comback, well then brothers and sisters...

Spoiler: Click me.

Edit:

Some great sources on debunking race realism.





Race and intelligence: A sorry tale of shoddy science

Debunking Phrenology

 

[Volimar]

Don't worry about it. My phrenologist said it's just a fad.


Seriously though, this is an unwelcome revival.

 

[Deleted member 15326]

Saw a lot of people jumping on this when the ex-Google fool's manifesto came out.

Phrase your bigotry politely and misuse data and you can fool a lot of people.

 

[Deleted member 198]

YouTube: hold my beer while we let failed academic rapists tell the truths about "race realism" on our platform.

 

[Surface of Me]

It's super annoying talking to people who otherwise seem intelligent but believe that race isn't a social construct. Like a basic understanding of anthropology completely debunks the concept of race.

 

[Slackbladder]

Yeah, I read that. It's a serious issue and those that are behind it are just bigots/racists trying to manipulate science (though they rarely use actual science) to defend and further their rotten beliefs. Anyone who follows any of these race science fuckers can go fuck themselves.
And unfortunately the internet is the system that has allowed these fuckers to thrive. It took a few years but now they're everywhere.

 

[Einchy]

I've seen this shit pop up thousands of times in the past year or so on YouTube.

 

[Messofanego]

Remember the racist user here, econ, who was spouting this kind of pseudoscience bull a few days ago:

Misleading, because not all majors pay the same. And Affirmative Action can make African American students become lazier.

If you got into a major with a 6/10, how are you going to compete against an Asian American that to get into the same degree had to score a 9/10?

Blacks have a lower IQ, and Resetera can't dispute that fact, only ban the dissenters because of IQ envy:

Argue about it with Stephen Hsu: http://infoproc.blogspot.com/

Africans have a lower IQ than whites and Asians. It's not about poverty or malnutrition (see China or Vietnam).

Deal with the facts instead of crying.

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[Volimar]

Remember the racist user here, econ, who was spouting this kind of pseudoscience bull a few days ago:

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Holy shit that is blatant.

 

[hotcyder]

Anti-intellectualism; same as Gamergate, same as the return of Nazis. The uninformed think they're a marginalised group, and do what they can do echo chamber their sentiments. With the internet as a platform, you can now influence the masses with misinformation.

 

[Nepenthe]

In an era where globalization has reduced the significance of the white experience, is this shit surprising?

 

[Wamb0wneD]

Remember the racist user here, econ, who was spouting this kind of pseudoscience bull a few days ago:

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Nice "stats" he had there.
Resetting everything sure brought some sort of... people with it huh...

 

[just a slowpoke]

Saw a lot of people jumping on this when the ex-Google fool's manifesto came out.

Phrase your bigotry politely and misuse data and you can fool a lot of people.

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he almost exclusively used a highly criticized personality trait model from the 1960s that's since filtered into the realm of pop-psych to justify the claim that biologically differences in the sexes explain why there are less women then men in computer science

he used a highly criticized personality trait model derived from factor analysis on self-report data, which is inherently unreliable and offers no way to discern the differing impact of underlying biological and sociological factors

meaning that his manifesto on alleged biological differences doesn't actually cite or involve biology in any discernible way

james damore understands psychology and biology on the exact same level that the characters in this ncis scene understand computer science - he just throws out phrases he recognizes from the field with no understanding of what they actually mean beyond some blurry abstraction he learned in psych 101:

 

[Ac30]

My favourite thing is when racist redditors post IQ charts showing central Africa apparently demonstrating a comparatively low average IQ, without taking into account nutritional intake, school quality, parental education and the many other important things that influence a child's intellectual development. But no, it's because they're genetically inferior.

Give me a break.

 

[just a slowpoke]

My favourite thing is when racist redditors post IQ charts showing central Africa apparently demonstrating a comparatively low average IQ, without taking into account nutritional intake, school quality, parental education and the many other important things that influence a child's intellectual development. But no, it's because they're genetically inferior.

Give me a break.

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"the flynn effect is fake news!" - self-proclaimed "rational" "skeptics"

 

[Whizper]

Real science shouldn't be unwelcome. If scientists can prove once and for all that race doesn't matter, we can finally get over the discussion, because it will come up again and again for all eternity if we don't. If scientists find race does matter, at least we know. Still better than living in denial.

I personally heavily doubt "race" could have anything to do with intelligence, but genetics certainly affect brain development, so I would expect regional differences.

 

[UltraMagnus]

Even if it were to matter, at some point genetic engineering will allow parents to have designer babies with stats all maxxed out to whatever they please ... and then what? The whole safety blanket of racial supremacy that some people cling down goes right down the toilet.

 

[ishan]

dont give a shit about this. Never have. Anyone who thinks white ppl have some sort of dominance on intelligence havent read real history . Africans were on top then asians then persians then asians then europeans yada yada ... its a non issue. Only an issue to ppl who need some sort of validation for their own insecurities. We literally have a resurgence of asians currently. In time it will be africans blah blah blah ... its just socio economic things. it wont matter in 100 years anyway

 

[Dingens]

The way the word "race" is used on era or in English media in general is already irritating enough, but this... speechless

 

[gfxtwin]

As someone collaborating with actual scientists, if anyone we know even entertains the idea of IQ, genetic differences due to race, the bell curve, etc being legitimate concepts we immediately know to disregard anything they say. That's not useful data, it has been qualitatively and quantitatively debunked. I guess some people still need this explained to them. *shrug*

 

[just a slowpoke]

Real science shouldn't be unwelcome. If scientists can prove once and for all that race doesn't matter, we can finally get over the discussion, because it will come up again and again for all eternity if we don't. If scientists find race does matter, at least we know. Still better than living in denial.

I personally heavily doubt "race" could have anything to do with intelligence, but genetics certainly affect brain development, so I would expect regional differences.

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so, what you're saying is that if scientists come to a wide consensus that race as a concept is merely a social artifact debunked by empirical evidence, we can finally get over the discussion?

good thing they already did that, then

 

[ishan]

Real science shouldn't be unwelcome. If scientists can prove once and for all that race doesn't matter, we can finally get over the discussion, because it will come up again and again for all eternity if we don't. If scientists find race does matter, at least we know. Still better than living in denial.

I personally heavily doubt "race" could have anything to do with intelligence, but genetics certainly affect brain development, so I would expect regional differences.

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technically then upper caste indians should be genetically highly evolved academic and highly physical specimens. our caste system has for roughly 2500 years (more than most countries have existed) promoted the top 2 castes of "Warriors" and "academics" blah blah ... its all rubbish . There is some genetics to it there is some social conditioning to it but it just doesnt work that way. Smart just is smart has been seen in all cultures and races.

EDIT: dont get me wrong im from an upper caste and im smart so this all works in my favour.... i just think its bs.

 

[Palette Swap]

Real science shouldn't be unwelcome. If scientists can prove once and for all that race doesn't matter, we can finally get over the discussion, because it will come up again and again for all eternity if we don't. If scientists find race does matter, at least we know. Still better than living in denial.

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Dude, that's the whole point of the article: this has been debunked to hell and back, there's a scientific consensus but somehow, in 2018, we're having nineteenth century discussions. If now is not "once and for all", you'll never have a "once and for all".

(This works for pretty much any scientific consensus)

 

[Zoc]

One key tell that these guys are racists is the step they take after asserting that black peoples have lower IQs. They take it for granted that it couldn't ever change, and imply that black people deserve what they get.

If (and this is purely an if) science ever found that this stuff was true, the only logical next step would be "how did it get like this, and how can we fix it".

 

[Whizper]

so, what you're saying is that if scientists come to a wide consensus that race as a concept is merely a social artifact debunked by empirical evidence, we can finally get over the discussion?

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Race is a social artefact, but that isn't really the point here. The question is: Do genes responsible for physical appearance, specifically for the parts of it generally considered "racial", also affect brain development? That's what those race scientists' claims essentially boil down to. And I think that's worth looking into, if only to lay the idea to rest once and for all.

 

[Snack12367]

"the flynn effect is fake news!" - self-proclaimed "rational" "skeptics"

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This was a response I got for posting the Flynn Effect in the Debate the Alt Right reddit.

No, but if two groups differ genetically by X magnitude in some trait, it does not preclude the possibility of variation in the environment causing differences in the relevant trait of an even greater magnitude.

Let's say you have a hypothetical garden in which two crops of corn, crop 1 and crop 2, were planted in poor soil. Let's suppose that corn stocks from crop 1 were, on average, 5 inches taller than corn stocks from crop 2. Now, imagine that the bad soil of the garden was replaced with good soil and, as a result, the height of both crops increased by an average of 6 inches. Because both crop's height increased by the same amount, the 5-inch gap between crop 1 and crop 2 remains.

What does this "Flynn Effect" in height tell us about the causes of the crop height gap? Nothing. It would still be fully consistent with the explanation that the gap is entirely due to genes, the environment or a combination of the two.

Or do you mean, that you think, the Flynn Effect is "powerful" enough that it will make blacks score at or above 100 IQ points in some years? Because, so far the gap isn't really narrowing at all.

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[i hate cheaters]

it's such a pointless field of study

even if there are some trends based on race (not this "intelligence" measurement crap. i mean something actually concrete), it should have nothing to do with policy

it's more useful in medicine when you can use it to personalize instead of starting from a completely blank slate, although that would more specifically be about genetics

 

[Deleted member 6230]

Real science shouldn't be unwelcome. If scientists can prove once and for all that race doesn't matter, we can finally get over the discussion, because it will come up again and again for all eternity if we don't. If scientists find race does matter, at least we know. Still better than living in denial.

I personally heavily doubt "race" could have anything to do with intelligence, but genetics certainly affect brain development, so I would expect regional differences.

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Read the article.

 

[hotcyder]

"Let's say you have a hypothetical garden in which two crops of corn".

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Why do skeptics use the dumbest analogies

 

[Ac30]

This was a response I got for posting the Flynn Effect in the Debate the Alt Right reddit.

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? Of course there's blacks that score above 100. The fuck.

"the flynn effect is fake news!" - self-proclaimed "rational" "skeptics"

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I hate those people.

Race is a social artefact, but that isn't really the point here. The question is: Do genes responsible for physical appearance, specifically for the parts of it generally considered "racial", also affect brain development? That's what those race scientists' claims essentially boil down to. And I think that's worth looking into, if only to lay the idea to rest once and for all.

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But it's much easier to prove something does exist than something not existing. Scientifically speaking, I mean - so you'll always have the "just asking questions" idiots who go on live TV saying we haven't disproved race directly affects IQ.

 

[Heromanz]

Race is a social artefact, but that isn't really the point here. The question is: Do genes responsible for physical appearance, specifically for the parts of it generally considered "racial", also affect brain development? That's what those race scientists' claims essentially boil down to. And I think that's worth looking into, if only to lay the idea to rest once and for all.

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You already know it won't. There is no need for.

 

[Papias]

The article is incredibly ironic in that it seems painfully unaware of the fact that this is still a live debate amongst academics--it's not a view that has been 'debunked' as the article misleadingly portrays the literature on race and intelligence.

For example, if Charles Murray is such a pseudoscientific hack, how is it possible for him to be good friends with James Flynn (the man behind the 'Flynn Effect') and an academic colleague who's respected by Flynn, as this recorded moderated debate/discussion between both of them make eminently clear?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVXxR8VKLy8

While I'm not a race realist and I don't think that race is correlated with intelligence, this debate isn't akin to the debate in the scientific community between the scientific community and young earth creationists or flat earthers. It's disingenuous to paint the debate that way, there are arguments worthy of consideration on both sides and formidable proponents on both sides.

The APA actually had a task force that went to fact-check a lot of what Murray and Herrnstein argued, and while they didn't endorse the book, it should be incredibly striking that they didn't dismiss it as pseudoscientific nonsense. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence:_Knowns_and_Unknowns

You don't have to agree with the conclusions of a research program in order to say that it should be worth responding to, and that's what the APA did. Pseudoscience is something like astrology, not just certain scholarly conclusions that happen to be wrong. I don't agree with all conclusions made in the academic community (in fact, I vehemently disagree with several views represented by certain academics), but just because I don't agree with them doesn't mean they're pseudo-scholarship.

This issue is especially important to me, an Afro-Latino who's very interested in having this debate resolved once and for all, and it's very unhelpful to see misinformation spread about the nature of the research and to see it dismissed out of hand just because people find it offensive.

"the flynn effect is fake news!" - self-proclaimed "rational" "skeptics"

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The Flynn Effect was first called 'The Flynn Effect' in the Bell Curve.

Come on, dude. Alt-right and race realist people are gonna have a field day with you if you don't know basic facts about this debate. They discuss it in length in their book, and being unaware of their responses is gonna work against you if you want to engage in the debate. Watch the debate between Flynn and Murray that I linked to above.

By the way (addressed to people in this thread), certain articles like the one in the OP and the ones on Vox and other news outlets tend to misrepresent the debate. It's better to actually read what the scholars themselves argue. James Flynn is a fantastic place to start.

 

[ishan]

Race is a social artefact, but that isn't really the point here. The question is: Do genes responsible for physical appearance, specifically for the parts of it generally considered "racial", also affect brain development? That's what those race scientists' claims essentially boil down to. And I think that's worth looking into, if only to lay the idea to rest once and for all.

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you litearlly have to look at places like india and brazil with high "racial" mixing to notice the problem in this And as I mentioned the long documented history of various races being in charge of the planet over the ages. What is western dominance like 1000 years old max ? That is a nothing burger in human history.

 

[Snack12367]

The article is incredibly ironic in that it seems painfully unaware of the fact that this is still a live debate amongst academics--it's not a view that has been 'debunked' as the article misleadingly portrays the literature on race and intelligence.

For example, if Charles Murray is such a pseudoscientific hack, how is it possible for him to be good friends with James Flynn (the man behind the 'Flynn Effect') and an academic colleague who's respected by Flynn, as this recorded moderated debate/discussion between both of them make eminently clear?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVXxR8VKLy8

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The fact they are friends proves nothing. There are random cuts throughout the debate videos. Is there anyway to listen to the whole thing? I'm onto the second part and it's just Murray talking about his findings, not how he proved it or validated it.

While I'm not a race realist and I don't think that race is correlated with intelligence, this debate isn't akin to the debate in the scientific community between the scientific community and young earth creationists or flat earthers. It's disingenuous to paint the debate that way, there are arguments worthy of consideration on both sides and formidable proponents on both sides.

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Race is a social construct used for categorising people. The issue with any discussion of race realism, is that there is no such thing. There are groups and discussions about the genetic difference between groups. Correction saying that different groups of people have different genes implies that the groups differ by thousands of base pairs of DNA for each different gene. Whereas much of the variation between alleles is on the matter of just a few base pairs.

The APA actually had a task force that went to fact-check a lot of what Murray and Herrnstein argued, and while they didn't endorse the book, it should be incredibly striking that they didn't dismiss it as pseudoscientific nonsense. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence:_Knowns_and_Unknowns

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence:_Knowns_and_Unknowns

The lack of something doesn't prove the support of something. The Bell Curve has been criticized over the data targeting, the analysis of the outcome of that data and the assumptions made on the output. An example was the assumption made that IQ remains the same throughout life, or that all human cognitive ability can be measured.

You don't have to agree with the conclusions of a research program in order to say that it should be worth responding to, and that's what the APA did. Pseudoscience is something like astrology, not just certain scholarly conclusions that happen to be wrong. I don't agree with all conclusions made in the academic community (in fact, I vehemently disagree with several views represented by certain academics), but just because I don't agree with them doesn't mean they're pseudo-scholarship.

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I agree with this in principle. Pseudo-science should be responded to, but this has absolutely been debunked. There is no such thing as race.

 

[gdt]

This thread is really bringing them out lmao

Edit:. I like the "I don't really believe race is connected to intelligence, but here are 17 paragraphs showing why it might be!"

 

[Big Baybee]

This thread is really bringing them out lmao

Edit:. I like the "I don't really believe race is connected to intelligence, but here are 17 paragraphs showing why it might be!"

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Been happening a lot lately. I'll be checking in to see how long the bans on those racist ass posts will be.

 

[EdibleKnife]

This thread is really bringing them out lmao

Edit:. I like the "I don't really believe race is connected to intelligence, but here are 17 paragraphs showing why it might be!"

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Right? Doors open, everyone! Let's draw out the "curious thinkers"

 

[platocplx]

People like that who cling to IQ really aren't that smart.

IQ doesn't correlate to how well someone does in life.

Some guy did a huge study on it and failed to find any correlation.

All this race science is trash as hell. It's sad some people really believe that just to make themselves feel better about their failures.

 

[Deleted member 15240]

This article is really one of the best critiques of Charles Murray I've ever read. It nails down everything wrong with race science.

 

[entremet]

Wasn't lead a big culprit in IQ score trending lower in inner cities? I clearly remember reading stuff about that. I haven't read much of Murray, but his stuff seems to have been taken down by many many studies. Isn't that what science is about? You make a hypothesis, test it, and then it's peer reviewed for legitimacy.

 

[Yerffej]

Remember the racist user here, econ, who was spouting this kind of pseudoscience bull a few days ago:

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Um, holy shit.

 

[JonnyDBrit]

I feel like a particularly important aspect, which the article sort of touches on with its third point, is that the idea of an inherent, intellectual superiority - without necessarily being tied to ethnicity or race - hasn't been properly challenged or debunked, at least within pop culture. One of the most popular films used to describe the current political era, Idiocracy, relies on this sort of premise: There are people who are inherently idiots, and those who are inherently smart. Idiots breed more idiots. And while that is a comedy film, I feel there are those who, whether prior to or in the wake of that movie, have embraced the ideas it proposes with regards to... well, what's basically intellectual eugenics entirely. And for decades, that sort of idea was generally accepted because of being technically divorced from a racial component - idiots are idiots regardless of where in the world they come from, supposedly.

But it sure is easy to attach a racial component afterwards when you want to explain and rationalise other trends without acknowledging more probable issues, or to explain your own supposed 'intelligence' when lacking other reasonable causes. To go from 'there are some people are more intelligent than others' to 'and those people just all happen to be white'. To just be asking questions...

 

[hotcyder]

One of the most popular films used to describe the current political era, Idiocracy, relies on this sort of premise: There are people who are inherently idiots, and those who are inherently smart.

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It's one of the reasons that Idiocracy is a trash heap of a film. There are plenty of intelligent people who have come out of impoverished upbringing, same as there's plenty of dummies who have gone to harvard law.

 

[appaws]

The irony of banning a POC from discussion on racial issues because he steps a millimeter out of line on a divinely mandated orthodoxy set by pathetic, sniveling, guilt-ridden whites.....

If Papias and Whizper were banned for the posts above....what a joke this place is. Why even start threads "discussing" controversial issues if "discussion" is limited to "I agree with the agreement upon which we were agreeing?"

They didn't insult, slur, or malign anyone. They didn't imply in any way that one group was better than another. They only discussed the state of the science, without taking a stand on it either way. They committed the heresy of questioning the hivemind. Not even disagreeing with it, just questioning it.

I bet this is pretty "problematic" as well...!

 

[Karnova]

I feel like a particularly important aspect, which the article sort of touches on with its third point, is that the idea of an inherent, intellectual superiority - without necessarily being tied to ethnicity or race - hasn't been properly challenged or debunked, at least within pop culture. One of the most popular films used to describe the current political era, Idiocracy, relies on this sort of premise: There are people who are inherently idiots, and those who are inherently smart. Idiots breed more idiots. And while that is a comedy film, I feel there are those who, whether prior to or in the wake of that movie, have embraced the ideas it proposes with regards to... well, what's basically intellectual eugenics entirely. And for decades, that sort of idea was generally accepted because of being technically divorced from a racial component - idiots are idiots regardless of where in the world they come from, supposedly.

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I don't think Idiocracy is saying stupid people birth stupid people. More that stupid people RAISE stupid people.

And I mean we can just look at history for that. There's no biological difference between the aristocracy of generations past versus the respective peasants, but the aristocracy had the economic means to educate their children, leading to smarter descendants.

Now that's not to mean there can't be kids who are born in abject poverty and rise up. Hate his politics all you want but Ben Carson grew up poor raised by a single mother and ended being a surgeon. And there's many more examples beyond him. At the same time we have to be realistic the odds are less likely for poor children to get PHDs.

Idiocracy is more inline with Brave New World than any nasty argument for eugenics.

 

[signal]

I thought the Sam Harris podcast episode with Charles Murray was interesting. He raised the question to Murray about what the intent behind the IQ research was, Murray gave a pretty odd answer, and thankfully Harris didn't seem very convinced.

 

[Htown]

The irony of banning a POC from discussion on racial issues because he steps a millimeter out of line on a divinely mandated orthodoxy set by pathetic, sniveling, guilt-ridden whites.....

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Just go ahead and throw a "cuck" or "soy boy" or whatever else in there, you know you want to.

If Papias and Whizper were banned for the posts above....what a joke this place is. Why even start threads "discussing" controversial issues if "discussion" is limited to "I agree with the agreement upon which we were agreeing?"

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There's plenty to talk about regarding why this racist bullshit is starting up again and what could be done about it, without going "yeah but what is this idiotic racist bullshit actually has a point tho." It's idiotic racist bullshit pseudoscience. We don't need to waste time with debate on this bullshit as if the dinner scene in Django Unchained was legitimate scientific instruction.

They didn't insult, slur, or malign anyone. They didn't imply in any way that one group was better than another. They only discussed the state of the science, without taking a stand on it either way. They committed the heresy of questioning the hivemind. Not even disagreeing with it, just questioning it.

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He said it! He said the thing! Yaaay!

You're ridiculous.

I bet this is pretty "problematic" as well...!

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I was going to say "idiotic and transparent" but I guess problematic works too.

 

[JonnyDBrit]

I don't think Idiocracy is saying stupid people birth stupid people. More that stupid people RAISE stupid people.

And I mean we can just look at history for that. There's no biological difference between the aristocracy of generations past versus the respective peasants, but the aristocracy had the economic means to educate their children, leading to smarter descendants.

Now that's not to mean there can't be kids who are born in abject poverty and rise up. Hate his politics all you want but Ben Carson grew up poor raised by a single mother and ended being a surgeon. And there's many more examples beyond him. At the same time we have to be realistic the odds are less likely for poor children to get PHDs.

Idiocracy is more inline with Brave New World than any nasty argument for eugenics.

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Perhaps, but when the opening of the film frames itself primarily in terms of the differing rates at which the respective groups 'breed', I don't think it's hard to see how people can take what it suggests in a less nuanced fashion than how you have. And well, we are discussing this concept in the context of people who aren't particularly big on nuance, as it appeals to their desire to find some way in which to feel superior to their fellow man.

 

[Deleted member 1248]

The irony of banning a POC from discussion on racial issues because he steps a millimeter out of line on a divinely mandated orthodoxy set by pathetic, sniveling, guilt-ridden whites.....

If Papias and Whizper were banned for the posts above....what a joke this place is. Why even start threads "discussing" controversial issues if "discussion" is limited to "I agree with the agreement upon which we were agreeing?"

They didn't insult, slur, or malign anyone. They didn't imply in any way that one group was better than another. They only discussed the state of the science, without taking a stand on it either way. They committed the heresy of questioning the hivemind. Not even disagreeing with it, just questioning it.

I bet this is pretty "problematic" as well...!

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Does this mean you're leaving?

 

[Gordon Shumway]

Remember the racist user here, econ, who was spouting this kind of pseudoscience bull a few days ago:

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LMAO