Re: Yeah, I Didn't Want To Read It Either

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The Nazis were very effective at alot of things. Doesn't mean we should copy them. I know there has been a big debate about use of their data, esp. concerning hypothermia considering how the data was gathered.


Posted by: Tassled Loafered Leech | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 2:53 PM
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Sullivan agrees with you, TLL.


Posted by: Tarrou | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 3:00 PM
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"Bible researchers" are apparently Jevohah's Witnesses, btw.


Posted by: Katherine | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 3:05 PM
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Hypothermia as an interrogation technique should be distinguished from what TLL seems to be referring to, normally translated as "Freezing Experiments on Human Beings" conducted at Dachau during the war. Exposure was a real issue to a nation fighting above, on and beneath Northern Seas, but a direct experiment seeing how long it takes for a subject to freeze to death has been judged appalling by just about everyone.


Posted by: I don't pay | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 3:08 PM
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obeying Godwin's Law

I'm waiting to see if this is enough to summon the wrath of Gary Farber.


Posted by: mrh | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 3:22 PM
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I thought about it. But I didn't misuse Godwin's law, the xkcd guy (who I worship like unto a god) did. And so does everyone else who ever mentions it (so long as Gary doesn't notice them).


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 3:23 PM
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He's busy at OW beating up a guy whose initial comments seemed a sensible response to the original post to me, but I never get the hang of that place.


Posted by: I don't pay | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 3:24 PM
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Huh. Gary Farber's Godwin's Law Dos and Donts is in a section of the archives I seem to have missed.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 3:25 PM
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4: Otoh, there is a fine line between that and the Tuskegee experements, for example, so there are handy examples that don't risk Godwins violations. Or at least there would be, if more people were aware of them.


Posted by: soubzriquet | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 3:28 PM
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Gary Farber's Godwin's Law Dos and Donts

It's more like Gary Farber's "I Was On Usenet When You Were A Gamete."


Posted by: mrh | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 3:29 PM
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Short version: The original observation by a guy named Godwin on Usenet back in the day was that as a discussion went on for long enough, the probability of someone making a Hitler analogy approached one. That drifted to "by the time someone brings up Hitler, everything productive has already been said" and then to "first person to bring up Hitler loses." But the original form is just a claim that eventually someone will bring up Hitler, and referring to another form of the law as 'Godwin's law' is in Gary's herd of peeves.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 3:29 PM
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It is, of course, true that Tuskegee is pretty apt and awful. And also that U.S. eugenics laws helped inspire the Nazis. California sterilized more than a thousand people in 1933 alone. You don't actually need the Nazis as a go-to point of reference for everything.


Posted by: slolernr | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 3:33 PM
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But everyone agrees that the Nazis were bad, whereas things we might have thought were bad, like McCarthyism and Japanese internment, turn out to have been awesome.


Posted by: ogged | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 3:34 PM
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I've yet to see anyone defend eugenics laws, but I suppose it's only for lack of looking. Labs will know.


Posted by: slolernr | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 3:35 PM
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11: In other news, a similar thing happened to Murphy's law; unless that's apocraphyl. Language & usage changes. Godwin might have a reason to be peeved about it, but Gary doesn't really. The original statement was empirically sensible, mildly interesting, and pretty much useless. People invented more useful but less accureate usage.


Posted by: soubzriquet | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 3:36 PM
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A citation.


Posted by: slolernr | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 3:37 PM
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Perhaps a place to start


Posted by: ogged | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 3:37 PM
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A perusal suggests those sites are not actually saying that.


Posted by: slolernr | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 3:38 PM
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11: okay. I can sort of see that point, although, having also been around for the evolution from the original law, to references to the original law, to reference of the presumed shaming effect of the original law, it had never occured to me that people didn't know the history of it.

That is, I always figured people read it as "hey, you know what Godwin said? You're totally living that cliche right now, which is not usually productive to intelligent debate." Certainly I'm pretty sure Godwin didn't originally mean it as a compliment to the Hitler-referencers.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 3:38 PM
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12: Even stronger than that --- it's often a bad idea to use as a go-to point, because discussion gets conflated with lots of other things.

Unless your point is to make a direct comparison with a genocidal fascist state, in which case the Nazi's are a pretty good example.


Posted by: soubzriquet | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 3:38 PM
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Is there any sight more stirring than that of a majestic herd of peeves thundering across the Serengeti?


Posted by: redfoxtailshrub | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 3:39 PM
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18: I'm on record as being in favor.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 3:40 PM
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A perusal suggests those sites are not actually saying that.

What???


Posted by: ogged | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 3:40 PM
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As far as I'm concerned, the only argument against sterilizing those who are severely retarded or mentally ill is the slippery-slope argument. But that slope is pretty terrifying, so I must reluctantly oppose institutionalizing such policies.


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 3:41 PM
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21: the indivudual pet ones are unlovely, but en masse a sight to behold.


Posted by: soubzriquet | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 3:43 PM
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That's "majestic herd of beeves", reddfoxx.


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 3:43 PM
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What about basic human rights -- the idea that there are bright lines beyond which you don't go?


Posted by: slolernr | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 3:44 PM
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Eugenics makes an awful lot of late nineteenth/early twentieth century fiction ineradicably creepy to read. I'm actually very fond of Jack London, but he goes off on these 'scientific' discussions about how 'the blond' is a 'higher type' that are just grotesque in light of later history. Fitzgerald does it too -- at least once in This Side of Paradise, I think, and you run into it all over the place.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 3:44 PM
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What???

At least the first and the third aren't. Or maybe I get a different search page than you.


Posted by: slolernr | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 3:45 PM
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Ned, I really, really hope you're joking. But if you're not, I strongly recommend the relevant chapter in The Mismeasure of Man.

I'm sure there are many more recent, and probably more passionate and self-interested, arguments by people with disabilities themselves. But that's not a bad place to start.


Posted by: Witt | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 3:45 PM
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15. Don't ask Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, famous pro-choice group.


Posted by: Tassled Loafered Leech | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 3:45 PM
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18: I'm on record as being in favor.

What happened to your Fish?


Posted by: slolernr | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 3:46 PM
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discussions about how 'the blond' is a 'higher type' that are just grotesque

We may not be a higher type, but we do have more fun.

Kidding! Kidding!


Posted by: slolernr | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 3:48 PM
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Slol, you're killing me here.


Posted by: ogged | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 3:48 PM
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24: nobody has a 100% chance of passing on their disability, and who knows how else you're fucking with human genetic diversity while you're trying to eliminate whatever it is. Then there's the free will and human agency element.

I was amused to see the eugenicist line about the future of the species deployed as the central plot device in Idiocracy. If I thought it was anything other than cheerful misanthropy I probably would have been bothered.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 3:48 PM
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31 to 14, surely?

And are you misusing eugenics, or was she actually a eugenics supporter as well as pro-choice?


Posted by: soubzriquet | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 3:48 PM
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12: Even stronger than that --- it's often a bad idea to use as a go-to point, because discussion gets conflated with lots of other things.

I'm not sure about that. One of the reasons that everyone reaches for the Nazis--and more specifically, the Holocaust--is because there is a genuine consensus that it was Completely Evil. Even your BTKWB'ers agree. It may be that the consensus is wrong for sophisticated reasons, or that the analogy is inappropriately used, but the consensus means that it's a nice boundary condition. Tuskegee--not so much.


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 3:49 PM
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was she actually a eugenics supporter as well as pro-choice?

She glommed onto eugenics as a useful point of reference, as it was popular among the cognoscenti. So she would talk about the "menace of the feebleminded" as glibly as any of 'em, seeing birth control as part of a more general strategy for "the principle of discrimination and responsibility in parenthood." (From Kennedy, Birth Control in America, p. 116)


Posted by: slolernr | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 3:54 PM
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35, I was thinking more in terms of people who would be unable to care for a child, or to give adult consent to sex. Nothing to do with physical disability.

I've read "The Mismeasure of Man" already.


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 3:54 PM
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37: Oh, but that's my point. It's often a bad idea, because the comparison leads to either ridiculous hyperbole what undermines your position, or stupid inferences that some behaviour is a product of, and only of, a `completely evil' regime or whatever.

Unless you actually are talking about Nazis, you usually really aren' t talking about Nazis.


Posted by: soubzriquet | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 3:54 PM
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Quit oppressing me, you Nazi.


Posted by: slolernr | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 3:55 PM
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38: yikes.


Posted by: soubzriquet | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 3:55 PM
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Tuskegee--not so much.

Tim, are you always wrong about everything?


Posted by: slolernr | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 3:57 PM
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36. Yes, 31 to 14. And yes- big Eugenics supporter, not as a pro- choice bybroduct. In fact, in many cases scratch a Progressive, reveal a eugenicist. Part and parcel with knowing better than the hoi- poloi.


Posted by: Tassled Loafered Leech | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 4:02 PM
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39: but, I mean, do you want to do this with the intention of eliminating genetic disorders from the gene pool? Or do you just... yeah, actually, I don't understand what you mean at all. Why do you want to sterilize these people, again?


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 4:02 PM
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Tim, are you always wrong about everything?

He's like the Nazi of wrongness.


Posted by: ogged | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 4:02 PM
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The thing is, at the turn of the century, it wasn't yet clear that eugenics was scientific bullshit and kind of evil. Decent people could still think "What a pity it is that reality is constructed such that there are better people, who should be encouraged to breed, and lesser people, who must be restrained. But given that those are the facts, we have no choice but to advocate, e.g., sterilization of the feeble minded." By now that window of simply not knowing better is closed. (Sorry, Charles Murray.)

Jack London, for example, was, I think, a decent person, who would have been happy to find out that all of the Blond Race bullshit was bullshit -- from the rest of his writing, including plenty of empathetically drawn non-white characters, it looks pretty clear that his racism was intellectual rather than emotional. And I'm guessing that Sanger fell into that category when she advocated eugenics.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 4:05 PM
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Tell me about, I was talking to this guy about Nazis, and I asked him what we were talking about, and he sent me a link to this . Talk about crossed wires.


Posted by: OPINIONATED GRANDMA | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 4:07 PM
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48 TO 40


Posted by: OPINIONATED GRANDMA | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 4:08 PM
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47: yeah, it was very much a product of the same instincts that led to social programs for poor people. I seem to remember Jane Addams was committed eugenicist. Uninformed pragmatism ain't such a good thing, really.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 4:09 PM
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some behaviour is a product of, and only of, a `completely evil' regime or whatever.

I think we're coming at this from opposite directions. An awful lot of post-war intellectual capital was spent, it seems to me, trying to figure out what were sufficient conditions such that we wouldn't end up Nazis.

Tim, are you always wrong about everything?

Well, not everything, so you're going to have to be more specific.


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 4:09 PM
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Oop, 50 pwned by 44.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 4:11 PM
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in many cases scratch a Progressive, reveal a eugenicist. Part and parcel with knowing better than the hoi- poloi.

First clause true enough, second clause problematic. Not all Progressives thought of Progressivism as knowing more than the hoi-polloi; many, e.g. Jane Addams and even Theodore Roosevelt, thought of Progressivism as learning from the hoi-polloi, and believed that the essence of Progressive politics was assuming nothing was a settled position, that things were only proven-until rather than proven.


Posted by: slolernr | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 4:11 PM
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What struck me about Sullivan's first quote was that the head of the Gestapo was trying to put strict limits on the use of extraordinary interrogation. Turned my head a little bit.


Posted by: I don't pay | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 4:13 PM
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He's always wrong about something, and he's usually wrong about everything, but he's not always wrong about everything.


Posted by: Abraham Lincoln | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 4:13 PM
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Uninformed pragmatism ain't such a good thing, really.

I'm not happy with this formulation. It's the essence of pragmatism to assume that you're always underinformed about the capital-T Truth, if any exists. And if you're a pragmatist, you probably think none does.

I guess what I'm getting at here is, if you were really a pragmatist and a progressive, pre-1914 style, you should have been more than willing to abandon your eugenic inclinations once you got to 1933 or so. The philosophical position of radical uncertainty means you're not wedded to the idea that you know best. Which wasn't, pace TLL, the essence of the Progressive position.


Posted by: slolernr | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 4:14 PM
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54: Even within the Gestapo there was conflict between those who wanted to brutalize and terrify random people and those who wanted to get accurate information.


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 4:14 PM
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"Jane Addams and even Theodore Roosevelt"

Two eugenicists.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 4:15 PM
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53. Just finished Morris' Theodore Rex. No wonder T.R. is on Rushmore.


Posted by: Tassled Loafered Leech | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 4:18 PM
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you should have been more than willing to abandon your eugenic inclinations once you got to 1933 or so

Why 1933?


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 4:19 PM
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Two eugenicists.

Not sure about Addams. Are you? Roosevelt, you got a better case: but even there, it depends what you mean by eugenics.


Posted by: slolernr | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 4:19 PM
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Why 1933?

Nazis?


Posted by: slolernr | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 4:20 PM
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re: 60

Yeah, I wondered that. '33 was when the Nazi's came to power, obviously, but other than that, it seems a somewhat arbitrary date.


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 4:21 PM
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Yes, I was being arbitrary. Shall we say, "the 1930s"?


Posted by: slolernr | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 4:23 PM
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37: You know what I hate? Godwin Nazis.


Posted by: Anderson | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 4:23 PM
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re: 65

Someone should make those guys wear some kind of symbol or something. Make them easier to spot.


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 4:28 PM
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"Not sure about Addams. Are you?"

No. Still looking.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 4:31 PM
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Someone should make those guys wear some kind of symbol or something. Make them easier to spot.

Hey! Somebody at Microsoft left the swastika off my "Symbols" menu! WTF???


Posted by: Anderson | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 4:32 PM
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64: My potted sense of history tells me that the Nazis were not uniformly and immediately recognized as evil on ascension, and that the moral revulsion we feel towards eugenics programs grows out of the Nazi/German experience, in the post-war period.


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 4:33 PM
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Hm. One would be better served to talk about fascist states rather than the Nazis. Anyway. Though.


Posted by: parsimon | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 4:36 PM
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Re: eugenics, a local restaurant used to decorate its shelves with old books, one of which was a high-school health textbook from the 1920s.

In addition to all the great stuff about cold showers, there was a chapter on the importance of selecting your mate carefully, i.e., eugenically.

Particularly wild was the sober citation of studies proving that ... brace yourselves ... criminals are more likely to have criminal parents than non-criminal parents ... *obviously* showing a genetic link.

Kept meaning to swipe the book, but didn't, & then it was gone one day. Some son of a criminal must've beat me to it.


Posted by: Anderson | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 4:36 PM
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I would say that while they weren't uniformly recognized as evil upon taking power, sensible people figured them out as unsavory pretty quickly. I'm making excuses for turn-of-the-century scientific racists and eugenicists, because they didn't know any better -- I'm not clear that those excuses are available for, say, people who supported the Nazis in 1935. But I may be wrong.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 4:36 PM
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"Not sure about Addams. Are you?"
No. Still looking.

Are you sure you're not thinking of Charlotte Perkins Gilman?


Posted by: slolernr | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 4:37 PM
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Everybody who brings up eugenics in the context of Margaret Sanger is engaging in a bit of a Nazi analogy themselves. They want to say "Margaret Sanger is like the Nazis because she believed in eugenics", leaving the first part unsaid.

We understand a lot more about sociology and psychology now, and it has given us different values. Hell, if the Nazis were around today, they would probably realize that genocide is counterproductive and would work instead to marginalize the inferior through strategic highway placement.


Posted by: neil | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 4:38 PM
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Okay, one more thing & then I'm outta here ... if you're interested in the Eugenics R Us thing, Mark Mazower's Dark Continent: Europe's Twentieth Century has a chapter, "Healthy Bodies, Sick Bodies," that goes into some of the general creepiness on that subject -- not saying it's the go-to source, but it's one that I've seen, & his citations are doubtless worth a look.

The epigraph for the chapter gives the "10 Commandments for Choosing a Spouse," from a pamphlet that the Nazis "routinely issued to every young couple." Item 8: "Marry only out of love." Obviously, love is fascist. You read it here first.


Posted by: Anderson | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 4:39 PM
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On the subject of Nazis, everyone should read Günter Grass's fascinating memoir of his time in the Waffen SS. I couldn't stand the novel of his I tried to read, but this story is like Jack London material.


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 4:43 PM
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To me, it seems that Margaret Sanger was an advocate for birth control in a time when none of the arguments for birth control we use today were permissible. "We want to give women more control over their sexuality".. yeah, everybody in the 1910s is going to think that's really good for society. You have to dress your political ideas up in something, and eugenics was the most popular argument at the time which plausibly lent itself to birth control being good for society.

Kind of like how the environmentalists really want everybody to sell their cars and stop buying wasteful mass-produced crap, but they know that argument would never be accepted, so instead they say you have to buy CFLs.


Posted by: neil | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 4:46 PM
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We should totally bring back fitter family contests.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 4:47 PM
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Margaret Sanger is like the Nazis because she believed

Well, honestly, we're doing a poor job of definining what it means, "to be like the Nazis." It's all a bunch of name-calling, isn't it? We're just saying, x is like the Nazis, therefore x is Bad. I say, maybe we should have a rule: first person to make a specious analogy to Nazi Germany has lost the argument.


Posted by: slolernr | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 4:47 PM
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Ogged is like the Nazis because he idolizes the Swedes.


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 4:48 PM
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74.2 is right on.


Posted by: parsimon | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 4:49 PM
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Probably a good rule, and one that if strategically quoted would allow one to win the argument. I know, we could call it Good-Win's Law!


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 4:49 PM
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From the link is 78: All contestants with a B+ or better received bronze medals bearing the inscription, "Yea, I have a goodly heritage."

These medals must be available on eBay. I want one.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 4:50 PM
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77.2 is right on as well! Neil, can you be my love child?

Really, though, there's no excuse for not reading in historical context.


Posted by: parsimon | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 4:53 PM
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74. Perhaps if slolernr had said nobody still defends eugenics laws in 14 I wouldn't have mentioned Sanger. But I was most emphatically not saying being pro-choice was being a Nazi. I will cop to stirring the pot with a little spice. I have to agree with LB, though, (Egads!) that bien pensant thinking can and does evolve. Which always makes me skeptical of the current political correctness of whichever stripe.


Posted by: Tassled Loafered Leech | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 4:55 PM
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Perhaps if slolernr had said nobody still defends eugenics laws in 14 I wouldn't have mentioned Sanger.

Sanger hasn't defended eugenics laws for decades, though.

Aren't there any utilitarians anymore? How has nobody brought up that guy, you know, his name is like Sanger but with a different vowel somewhere.


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 5:01 PM
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Peter Banger?


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 5:15 PM
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Peter O'Anger


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 5:17 PM
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I could embarrass Ben quite easily right now, but pedantry is for losers.


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 5:20 PM
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apocraphyl is a beautiful misspelling.


Posted by: Clownaesthesiologist | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 5:22 PM
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47

This is just wrong, there have been no scientific discoveries since 1900 which refute eugenics in general, it has just fallen out of fashion.


Posted by: James B. Shearer | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 5:24 PM
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I do so know what a vowel is.


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 5:24 PM
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72: The Nazis gave people plenty of reasons to oppose them, and I'm not sure that all or most of the people rejecting the Nazis in 1935 did so on anti-eugenics grounds. The site in #78 indicates that American history books taught eugenics as legitimate science through 1948, and that people were sterilized for feeble-mindedness through the 1970s. I remain unsure whether the 1930s are the period the broad majority of Progressives, or the broad majority of Westerners, rejected eugenics programs.

79: There's a difference between saying, "Hitler was a vegetarian, so vegetarians are Nazis," and arguing that a specific set of rules, regulations, and norms are insufficient to keep us from falling into the great obvious errors of Nazi Germany.


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 5:29 PM
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Damn, a thread about turn-of-the-last-century eugenics and I almost missed it. Of all the subjects in all the world, this is the one I'm best qualified to speak to.

LB:

Jack London, for example, was, I think, a decent person...

He had his moments, but put him on a scale, and the bad far outweighs the good.

As for Addams, Gilman, &c. until the eugenicist movement proper started, it's hard to tell what people believed. I mean, there's the soft hereditary of "The Jukes": A Study in Crime, Pauperism, Disease, and Heredity, Cesar Lombroso's notion of the "born criminal," &c.

But if you want really creepy eugenic stuff, you need to leave the Progressive Era and hop into the Roaring Twenties, with its "Fitter Families" and "Better Babies" contests. The criteria are, shall we say, disturbing.


Posted by: SEK | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 5:40 PM
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Better Babies and Fitter Families


Posted by: Clownaesthesiologist | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 5:45 PM
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people were sterilized for feeble-mindedness through the 1970s

When I worked in a residential hospital for the mentally handicapped in the late 1980s (temporary job) it was still common practice to keep all the female patients on oral contraceptives.

re: 91

I think 'fallen out of fashion' rather underplays the cultural and ethical shift.


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 5:56 PM
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96: But preventing pregnancy because someone isn't capable of raising a child is different from preventing pregnancy in the belief that the child is likely to inherit undesirable traits, no?


Posted by: DaveL | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 6:03 PM
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re: 97

Yeah, definitely. I'm sure the reasoning was largely about that.

Nevertheless, people were intervening in the reproductive behaviour of others for what they saw as the greater good. Of course that's not always wrong -- unless you believe that no 'paternalistic' medical intervention is ever justified -- but it's not a million miles away from some of the actions that have been taken in the past in the name of 'eugenics'.


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 6:07 PM
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Agreed. But I'm not one of those who opposes all paternalistic (for lack of a better term) medical interventions--my commitment to personal freedom stops somewhere short of defending the freedom of the severely retarded or severely mentally ill to die in the streets--so this doesn't trouble me a whole lot. There are certainly slippery slopes there, but sometimes there's no better option than picking your way across the slippery slope as best you can.


Posted by: DaveL | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 6:20 PM
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short of defending the freedom of the severely retarded or severely mentally ill to die in the streets

What if they're also Nazis?


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 6:24 PM
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Let's not bring Cheney into it.


Posted by: DaveL | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 6:30 PM
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97: On the other hand, what we "know" about who is and isn't capable of raising children is also highly debatable.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 7:12 PM
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102: If we're talking about someone who's mentally handicapped enough to require full-time care herself, I'm not seeing a whole lot of room for debate.


Posted by: DaveL | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 7:32 PM
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"Slol, you're killing me here."

Another victory for eugenics !!


Posted by: politicalfootball | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 7:35 PM
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Fair enough. I'm kinda with you on the picking one's way through the issues argument, but I kinda figure I'd rather err on the no-interference side where sterilization is concerned. For at least the next hundred years or so, until we've sorted out this whole women's rights issue.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 7:36 PM
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90: I thought so. I usually type fast enough that my typoes an misspellings have to race to mess up words. Works for me .


Posted by: soubzriquet | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 7:44 PM
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"He's like the Nazi of wrongness."

Comparing people with Nazis is just the sort of thing Hitler would do.


Posted by: politicalfootball | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 7:48 PM
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Everybody who hasn't read "Mismeasure of Man" must go do so right now. It was published (I'm guessing) about 10 years before "Bell Curve," and not only completely rebutted Murray, but essentially predicted Murray by showing how his arguments have periodically come into fashion over and over again.


Posted by: politicalfootball | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 7:52 PM
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91: There have been no scientific discoveries that have rebutted the eugenicists because eugenics was largely scientific bullshit from the start. Because its existence was dependent on the cultural fashion of its time, once that fashion diminished, so did eugenics.


Posted by: politicalfootball | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 7:55 PM
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Engaging Shearer is a mistake.


Posted by: gswift | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 7:57 PM
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You know, I don't think anybody has engaged LB's original point - and I'm not sure anybody can, because her expression of it was almost perfectly succinct and complete. (And the Sullivan link did all the necessary didactic elaboration.)

But really, how can we talk any longer about this administration without invoking the Nazis? One of the key problems in discussing with Bush (especially in the media) is the idea that we must be polite - that we should obey norms of reasonable debate. Those norms utterly fail us in the present circumstance.


Posted by: politicalfootball | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 8:11 PM
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Everybody who hasn't read "Mismeasure of Man" must go do so right now. It was published (I'm guessing) about 10 years before "Bell Curve," and not only completely rebutted Murray, but essentially predicted Murray by showing how his arguments have periodically come into fashion over and over again.

This is the second time I've had to say this in a week, but 1) as much as I admire Gould, he's a bit of a polemicist and 2) he didn't really read The Bell Curve all that well. (Too fixated on the glasses, I suppose.) What I mean is, Murray's argument about the size of the African-American gene pool does, in fact, mean that there'll be more incredibly stupid African-Americans ... but it also means that there'll be more incredibly intelligent African-Americans as well.

That's the thing about diverse gene pools creating extremities: more very, very short people, but also more very, very tall people. More very, very dumb people, but also more very, very intelligent people. (All of this is due to the fact that "black" means "from Africa," which was a large continent with many isolated gene pools, &c. &c. &c.)


Posted by: SEK | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 8:12 PM
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Godwin before Godwin

To wit: Complaining that comparisons to Nazis are odious is just the sort of thing that allows Nazis to become Nazis.


Posted by: minneapolitan | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 8:21 PM
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112: Well, no, black doesn't mean "from Africa" as any Australian aborigine (for example) will tell you - although, of course, white Americans almost certainly have a closer genetic relationship with Africans than Australian aborigines and other "black" people do.

As for the rest, if Murray's point was that the preponderance of geniuses in this country and world have recent African origins, then I missed that. I have to admit, I haven't read more than excerpts and critiques of "Bell Curve." Is Murray really saying that Africans have an unusual tendency toward genius, and no variation from whites on average? Or are you merely inventing a rationalization to defend an overt racist?


Posted by: politicalfootball | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 8:27 PM
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Or are you merely inventing a rationalization to defend an overt racist?

This is uncalled for.


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 8:32 PM
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In America, black most certainly does mean "from Africa."


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 8:37 PM
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113: The problem with comparisons to Nazis isn't that they are odious, it's that empirically most of the comparisons are pretty stupid.


Posted by: soubzriquet | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 8:38 PM
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108

I have read "The Mismeasure of Man" and I don't think it did any such thing. Gould's main point was that scientists (unless they are very careful) are biased towards producing the results they expect and/or desire. One reason for this is that you are less likely to check for errors when you are getting the results you want. This is well known and not really controversial. So it is not particularly notable that Gould was able to find mistakes favoring the existence of racial differences in the works of scientists who were predisposed to believe in such differences. Similarly one would expect to find errors in the other direction by scientists predisposed to believe in the nonexistence of racial differences. Indeed Gould noted in a rueful footnote that he had made just such an error while preparing the book.

This says nothing about whether such differences actually exist, it just says that you have to be careful judging the evidence when you have a strong desire or expectation that reality be a certain way.


Posted by: James B. Shearer | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 8:45 PM
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Murray was arguing that in today's society success is determined mostly by IQ, which in turn happens to be determined mostly by genetics, but liberals want to pretend that IQ and genetics don't matter.

His argumentation was terrible, however. At one point he is trying to "prove" that most of today's business executives have high IQs. There is nearly one full page of "argument," full of calculations and back of the envelope estimates... none of which actually logically works. The actual argument he advances is that business executives have high IQs because you probably have to be pretty smart to be part of the managerial class... plausible enough, but the numbers work purely as a smokescreen, to suggest the appearance of rigor and evidence. It's amazing.

Not to mention graph after graph of *fitted* regression curves, with no mention of goodness of fit. Or looking at graphs that suggests that genius single mothers are just as likely to be in poverty as mentally retarded married mothers -- and concluding that this is further evidence that IQ is the primary determinant of poverty.


Posted by: Barbar | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 8:49 PM
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"This is uncalled for."

115: You appear to be invoking a diluted version of Godwin's law here. Godwin suggests it's inappropriate to compare someone to Hitler. You say it's uncalled for that I suggest that SEK might be rationalizing the behavior of a racist.

Murray is an overt racist by any reasonable description. Hint: If you contend that black people are genetically intellectually inferior, you are by definition a racist.

SEK in 112, for reasons that strike me as obvious, appears to me to be rationalizing Murray's overt racism. As I said, I may be misunderstanding Murray (or SEK). I'm willing to be educated on this.


Posted by: politicalfootball | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 8:50 PM
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120: Murray's primary goal isn't to defend racism, it's to bolster conservatism and attack liberalism (in particular government interventions to support the poor). You may argue that this is the same thing (and I would say there is a lot of truth to that), but there's something about what you say that seems to invite someone like Shearer to whine that you are being politically correct and intolerant of certain ideas. Not that this should dictate what you say.


Posted by: Barbar | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 8:59 PM
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But really, how can we talk any longer about this administration without invoking the Nazis? One of the key problems in discussing with Bush (especially in the media) is the idea that we must be polite - that we should obey norms of reasonable debate. Those norms utterly fail us in the present circumstance.

That's something that strikes me every day. I have read hundreds of books about fascist movements (I'm not an intellectual, just a former history grad student turned lawyer) and I really don't have a problem with drawing analogies between the current Republican Party and fascism. It's the only relevant referent, actually. Bush supporters use Godwin's Law to prevent people from making those obvious and important analogies.


Posted by: jhs | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 9:13 PM
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One other point: I was under the impression that Murray doesn't talk about the size of the African-American gene pool at all. *Gould* talks about the size of the *African* gene pool, and points out that there is this is where most of the human diversity is. All that stuff about pygmies and giants is in Gould's writing, not Murray's.


Posted by: Barbar | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 9:18 PM
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Well, no, black doesn't mean "from Africa" as any Australian aborigine (for example) will tell you - although, of course, white Americans almost certainly have a closer genetic relationship with Africans than Australian aborigines and other "black" people do.

B. pwned me on this front, but in the US, "black" and/or "African-American" certainly means "from Africa." Need I remind you of the legacy of slavery? Wait, no, that's the moral high ground you're trying to take. I'm acknowledging the effect of that legacy on the gene pool of "blacks" in America ... you're trying to score cheap political points.

Murray is an overt racist by any reasonable description. Hint: If you contend that black people are genetically intellectually inferior, you are by definition a racist.

That's not what Murray contended. He pointed out that because the African-American population was comprised of (stolen) people whose forbears had evolved in isolated groups, the African-American gene pool is much, much larger than the European. The consequences of this is that there will be more members of the African-American population on the extremes: more very tall people, more very short; more very brilliant, more very dumb. Now, you can extrapolate what you will, spin it however you'd like, but there's a basic genetic fact at work here: namely, that a more diverse gene pool creates more genetic diversity.

So yes, I am claiming that more "black" people are genetically inferior ... but I'm also claiming that more "black" people are genetically superior. Two sides, same coin. Deal. (Or hyperventilate some more. I hear it's cathartic.) I suppose this makes me a racist, instead of, you know, a realist. Obviously, Murray had an agenda. I grant that. That doesn't mean that some of his conclusions aren't valid.


Posted by: SEK | Link to this comment | 05-29-07 11:57 PM
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So yes, I am claiming that more "black" people are genetically inferior

A real problem with Murray's argument is that it rests on a couple of premises that have little to no scientific merit.

1. Intelligence is something we can accurately measure and assign a number value.

2. Intelligence strongly correlates to genetics.


Posted by: gswift | Link to this comment | 05-30-07 12:08 AM
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Huh? Murray contends that African-Americans on average have significantly lower IQs than whites. I understand this "Africa is diverse" idea to have come from Gould, to argue that diversity within "racial" groups is significantly greater than diversity between "racial" groups. Am I wrong?


Posted by: Barbar | Link to this comment | 05-30-07 12:11 AM
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Forced sterilization is so last century. Why go de jure when de facto will do? Genetic testing promises to nip tomorrow's problem child in the bud.


Posted by: Zane | Link to this comment | 05-30-07 12:21 AM
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Murray contends that African-Americans on average have significantly lower IQs than whites.

Apparently we brought a bunch over from the dumb part of the continent.


Posted by: gswift | Link to this comment | 05-30-07 12:21 AM
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Hey, don't shoot me, I'm just trying to make accurate statements here about what various people have argued.

SEK seems to have confused Murray's argument with Gould's, which is rather odd since he's explicitly criticizing Gould for misunderstanding Murray. The upshot seems to be something about being able to deal with race realistically without hyperventilating.

Murray doesn't argue that blacks are both smarter and stupider than whites... they're just stupider. On the other hand, he argues that Asians are smarter than whites. You know, two sides, same coin, deal!


Posted by: Barbar | Link to this comment | 05-30-07 12:44 AM
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I know it's not you saying it. I'm just needling you.


Posted by: gswift | Link to this comment | 05-30-07 12:52 AM
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Obviously, Murray had an agenda. I grant that. That doesn't mean that some of his conclusions aren't valid.

Seriously though, although it's been a long time since I've read much of Murray, your description doesn't jive with my memory of his arguments at all.


Posted by: gswift | Link to this comment | 05-30-07 12:56 AM
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And contrary to Shearer, Gould does explicitly address Murray in Mismeasure of Man. Not in the original version, too early. He added it in later editions, I think in '96 or '98.


Posted by: gswift | Link to this comment | 05-30-07 1:00 AM
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124

This is not my memory of "The Bell Curve". If you are looking at IQ I believe the black American variance is less than the white American variance.

The male variance in IQ (and other traits) is often said to be greater than the female variance leading to more very smart men and more very dumb men than women. I believe Summers (the ex President of Harvard) argued along these lines. Perhaps that is what you are thinking of.

My memory of "The Bell Curve" is that it argued at (sometimes tedious) length that IQ is important and that genetics accounts for much of the observed differences in IQ in individuals and races.


Posted by: James B. Shearer | Link to this comment | 05-30-07 2:18 AM
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132

I was referring to (as was the comment, 108, I was responding to) early editions of "The Mismeasure of Man" predating "The Bell Curve".


Posted by: James B. Shearer | Link to this comment | 05-30-07 2:26 AM
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"A real problem with Murray's argument is that it rests on a couple of premises that have little to no scientific merit.
1. Intelligence is something we can accurately measure and assign a number value.
2. Intelligence strongly correlates to genetics."

On the other hand, we could create a statistical fiction, "g," and with no more knowledge of functional neurobiology than was extant twelve hundred years ago, we'll be able to determine how exactly a given person will respond to the cognitive challenges of their life. Because, see, statistics. Environment? Education? The actual workings of the human brain? Well. We have statistics.

Good fucking point.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 05-30-07 3:13 AM
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Is there anything more tiresome than someone who quotes the dictionary? Sorry, but here's racism defined by Merriam Webster online:

"a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race"

This is Murray. And this is Murray whether my reading of his work is correct, or yours. Here's your reading:

"He pointed out that because the African-American population was comprised of (stolen) people whose forbears had evolved in isolated groups, the African-American gene pool is much, much larger than the European."

Your version (if I am reading correctly) has Murray contending that some African groups are racially superior to others. It's a racist view. Again, by definition. Non-scientifically, I've heard this is expressed as "well, there are black people and there are niggers."

"I suppose this makes me a racist, instead of, you know, a realist."

Well there you go. The question is "Is racism realism." Not "Is racism racism." As Gould himself pointed out, racism might *be* realism. Human equality, Gould wrote, is a contingent fact of history.

Perhaps the word "racism" has picked up such perjorative connotations that its use is inherently inflammatory and inappropriate. Maybe Godwin really does apply here. But I don't think so. I think that the movement against racism is not merely politically appropriate, but scientifically sound as well.


Posted by: politicalfootball | Link to this comment | 05-30-07 5:45 AM
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114: Well, no, black doesn't mean "from Africa" as any Australian aborigine (for example) will tell you

I would like to nominate this comment for the 2007 Academy of Internet Artz and Sciencez Award (the "Gary") for Best Performance in a Nitpicking Role.

Yes! And black sheep aren't from Africa either! Didn't think about that, didja? Racist!


Posted by: ajay | Link to this comment | 05-30-07 7:38 AM
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The stupidity of the "blacks are from Africa" comment is that genetically speaking everyone is from Africa, and it's hardly clear why African-Americans should have magically more genetic diversity than non-African-Americans just because they're black. Oh yeah, and there's the whole issue of rebutting Gould by claiming that Murray actually said what Gould himself said.


Posted by: Barbar | Link to this comment | 05-30-07 7:49 AM
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How are there separate black and white American gene pools? Interbreeding has been going on for tens of generations now, and much less extensively for hundreds before that.


Posted by: Clownaesthesiologist | Link to this comment | 05-30-07 8:07 AM
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I introduced the African/Australian blackness issue. The way I presented it, it's probably reasonable to read it as B and SEK did - as a red herring.

My intended point was that people like Murray don't actually care about genetics, they care about skin color. SEK makes this point better than I did, though, in discussing the diversity of "black" peoples' genetics:

"That's the thing about diverse gene pools creating extremities: more very, very short people, but also more very, very tall people. More very, very dumb people, but also more very, very intelligent people."

So you see, these people are extremely genetically diverse, but they all are properly thought of as belonging in the same genetic grouping because ... well, I'll let SEK finish that sentence, if he cares to.


Posted by: politicalfootball | Link to this comment | 05-30-07 8:09 AM
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138: Just a note on this and I am reading this out of context as I don't have time to read the thread, but I can add some insight on this one little point.

There is more genetic diversity in Africa precisely because everyone is from there if you go far enough back. People basically "leaked" into the rest of the world from the edges of Africa. If you think about the path people took from Africa through Asia and then across Alaska to the Americas and finally to Terra del Fuego there is going to be a strong selection towards the populations on the edges of the colonized area.

This is not unique to people, it is a feature of all invasive species that are expanding their territory. So actually, the greater genetic diversity in Africa is a strong point in favor of the out of Africa hypothesis.


Posted by: ukko | Link to this comment | 05-30-07 8:26 AM
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The stupidity of the "blacks are from Africa" comment is that genetically speaking everyone is from Africa, and it's hardly clear why African-Americans should have magically more genetic diversity than non-African-Americans just because they're black.

(A) This claim isn't from the Bell Curve, or anything else Murray wrote, IIRC. (B) I don't believe anyone's connected it to any empirical data about increased variance in IQs among people of historically recent African origin. (C) If you ignore historically recent issues of large scale population transfer from one region to another, and resulting ethnic intermarriage -- say, thinking about the world in AD 1400 -- I think it is respectable and well supported. As I understand the argument, it's as follows. The human race evolved in Africa about 250,000 years ago, and has been acquiring genetic diversity since then through random mutation, genetic drift, and so forth -- the amount of genetic diversity is a good measurement of how long it has been since a species originated in a small founding population, so Homo Sapiens in Africa has what can be thought of as 250,000 years worth of genetic diversity. About 80,000 years ago, a small population of Homo Sapiens left Africa, and modern humans not living in Africa are all decended from that small founding population, which did not represent the whole spectrum of African genetic diversity. Consequently, non-African humans (which includes Asians, Australians, Native Americans, Europeans, everyone except Africans) have only 80,000 years worth of genetic diversity, marking the time since they originated in the small population that left Africa.

I've pulled the dates in that off Wikipedia, and I'm not absolutely clear how much of it is uniformly accepted, but I'm pretty sure that it is at the least a scientifically respectable theory, and that greater genetic diversity among people of recent African origin is empirically measurable. Despite the phenotypic differences, a Norwegian and an Australian Aborigine will be genetically different on fewer genes than two guys from Kenya will be from each other.

Again, I don't know that anyone's pinned down phenotypically measurable or important consequences from this increased genetic diversity in Africa, and I'm pretty sure that no one has pinned down such consequences in the area of measured intelligence, but that doesn't make the genetic diversity fact false or perniciously racist.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 05-30-07 8:30 AM
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Ukko pwned.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 05-30-07 8:30 AM
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How are there separate black and white American gene pools?

There's been intermarriage, but not to the extent that you seen equal rates of genetic diseases like cystic fibrosis and sickle cell.


Posted by: gswift | Link to this comment | 05-30-07 8:35 AM
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141, 142: Yup, I understand the argument for African genetic diversity; I just didn't see the connection to African-American genetic diversity (were the slaves in the Americas a random selection of African people?), which as LB suggests is a point SEK seems to have conjured by mixing up Gould and Murray.


Posted by: Barbar | Link to this comment | 05-30-07 8:42 AM
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141, 142:

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=20895

Here, for example: genetic diversity within a population declines depending on the distance between that population and Ethiopia. So East Africa = hella diverse; West Africa = also quite diverse; Europe = not very diverse; Japan = even less; (native) America = very samey.


Posted by: | Link to this comment | 05-30-07 8:46 AM
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Yeah, on that point I don't know how small a founding population has to be to lose genetic diversity -- are Americans of recent African origin descended from a large enough population of kidnapped slaves that they reflect the complete spectrum of African genetic diversity; how does intermarriage play into it; there are all sorts of empirical questions that I have no answers for about whether the population of 'African-Americans' resembles the population of Africans in terms of genetic diversity. I just wanted to defend the basic idea as something that I believe to be respectable science.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 05-30-07 8:48 AM
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were the slaves in the Americas a random selection of African people?

No, they were a random selection of people captured for the slave trade in the general vicinity of the Niger River. Steve Sailer would be sure to tell you that these are the Africans who can run short distances rather than the Africans who can run long distances.

Wikipedia's sources look interesting, particularly the Gwendolyn Midlo Hall book.


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 05-30-07 8:50 AM
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145: I would imagine that African-Americans' African ancestors were mostly slaves from a fairly small area of west Africa - the Slave Coast and its hinterland. But, of course, almost all African Americans also have significant numbers of European-American ancestors. (See Jagger et al., "Brown Sugar", St. Fing., 1971).


Posted by: ajay | Link to this comment | 05-30-07 8:51 AM
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Plus, the human species, as a whole, is really not very diverse. Much less diverse than chimps, for example. There's more variation in a single chimp population than in the whole of the human species.

There are various hypotheses for why this lack of diversity should be the case. A moderately extreme population bottleneck at some fairly recent point in human history, for example.

Some people claim the entire human species is descended from at most 10,000 individuals.


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 05-30-07 8:54 AM
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Adam and Eve.


Posted by: Barbar | Link to this comment | 05-30-07 8:59 AM
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"but that doesn't make the genetic diversity fact false or perniciously racist."

Like Barbar (and in contrast to SEK's claim) I've never seen the African diversity argument deployed by Murray or other, um, racially controversial folks.

The racial diversity argument is, in fact, one of Gould's arguments against Murray. That is, African genetic diversity renders Murray's genetic classification of American "blacks" as a genetically unitary group absurd. (Between Barbar and myself, we have already said all of this, I think, but it seems to bear repeating.)


Posted by: politicalfootball | Link to this comment | 05-30-07 9:08 AM
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Side topic, but I view Murray as primarily a conservative, not a racist (whatever you may think of the difference). The main point of the Bell Curve was to argue that government social programs are useless (because of IQ/genetics). Race works as a great attention-grabbing wedge issue but it's a bit of a distraction.


Posted by: Barbar | Link to this comment | 05-30-07 9:36 AM
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The main point of the Bell Curve was to argue that government social programs are useless (because of IQ/genetics). Race works as a great attention-grabbing wedge issue but it's a bit of a distraction.

The thing is, no one would fall for it without the racial argument. You tell a working class white guy that he's having trouble making it because he's genetically inferior, and that his kids are doomed to the same fate, so there's no point doing anything for them beyond finding them menial jobs that they have some hope of doing well, and he's going to either pop you one if you're in range or refuse to vote for you if you're out of range. Make it a sciency claim about inferior brown people, and you'll get reactions ranging from "Well, duh, of course they're inferior" to " What a shame it is that science demonstrates that African Americans are statistically more likely to be too stupid to succeed."

If you debunk the racial claims, there's nothing left that anyone's likely to fall for. (Is Murray, personally, a racist, or is he just serving his conservative policy goals by appealing to other people's racism? Don't know, and I'm not all that interested.)


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 05-30-07 11:03 AM
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gswift:

Seriously though, although it's been a long time since I've read much of Murray, your description doesn't jive with my memory of his arguments at all.

We're only talking about the last two chapters, here, so that's not surprising. And I'm remembering the debates around The Bell Curve probably as much as the book itself. I'm also not defending Murray here. In fact, I'd contend that environment is much more predictive of IQ, but that genes are still a factor, such that:

1. Poverty is a determinative factor in low IQs.

2. More African-Americans are impoverished in the US today.

3. The current African-American population has a lower aggregate IQ because of the policies Murray advocated (destruction of social safety net, &c.)

4. But because of the genetic diversity of the African-American community, were they the economic equals of the Caucasian, you would find more people of very high IQ emerging from it.

Which from my perspective, is a spur to social justice, if not some form of socialism proper; because what this means is that economic inequality is having an extremely pernicious effect on the African-American community.

Your version (if I am reading correctly) has Murray contending that some African groups are racially superior to others. It's a racist view. Again, by definition. Non-scientifically, I've heard this is expressed as "well, there are black people and there are niggers."

Superior? No. Different? Yes. Outliers increase based on the variety of genetic material in a given gene pool. "Superior" and "inferior" differ by cultural definition. (Think "long necks," "large feet," &c.)

So you see, these people are extremely genetically diverse, but they all are properly thought of as belonging in the same genetic grouping because ...

Race is an operative social fiction. Emphasis on "operative," there, as the African-American community is, in fact, a community (frequently ghettoized, discriminated against, &c.) It does make sense to say that -- despite the fact that "blackness" subsumes the cultural/genetic diversity of the entirety of Africa -- there is an African-American gene pool today, and that because "blackness" subsumes the cultural/genetic diversity of the entirety of Africa, it is more diverse. I know the logic's circular.


Posted by: SEK | Link to this comment | 05-30-07 11:11 AM
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154

"If you debunk the racial claims, there's nothing left that anyone's likely to fall for. ..."

Upper class people might find such claims appealing. Such theories will always be less attractive to the disfavored groups and more attractive to the favored groups, I don't see anything unique about race.


Posted by: James B. Shearer | Link to this comment | 05-30-07 12:26 PM
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Upper class people are a numerically small enough group that their political opinions are not so much important in themselves, as in how they can shape the opinions of the less affluent. A theory has to be something capable of being sold broadly to be politically important.

("Nothing left that anyone's likely to fall for" was, admittedly, hyperbole.)


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 05-30-07 12:37 PM
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154: Good point about racism being critical for the message to get through. I was just trying to emphasize that Murray's endgame isn't about racism, not to "defend" him as a non-racist.

155: You still don't seem to understand that there's nothing supporting your point about the great diversity in the African-American gene pool (not to mention that Charles Murray never made such an argument).


Posted by: Barbar | Link to this comment | 05-30-07 1:40 PM
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You still don't seem to understand that there's nothing supporting your point about the great diversity in the African-American gene pool.

Don't have time at the moment to pull too much together, but yes, there is. There's more genetic diversity on the African continent than there is in the rest of the world, because of the bottleneck, right? (After all, the bottleneck didn't limit the gene pool of those who stayed on the continent.) Slaves were taken from all over the African continent, right? (By white slave traders or through African trade.) These groups were labeled "black" once they got to America, and began to intermarry. What you have, then, is a situation in which the greater genetic diversity of the African continent has been augmented by the commingling of people who never would have reproduced on the continent itself.

As for whether Murray said this -- you seem to enjoy hammering home my wrongness -- I already admitted that I was thinking not just about the book, but the debates about it. Murray (and his defenders) made the point about statistical outliers; Gould was focused on the non-predictive value of genetic material (and glasses).


Posted by: SEK | Link to this comment | 05-30-07 2:13 PM
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Hardly my area of expertise, but I'd thought almost all the slaves who were sent to America were from (coastalish?) West Africa.


Posted by: redfoxtailshrub | Link to this comment | 05-30-07 2:16 PM
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They were, but that's a long, long coast, inclusive of a number of different (previously isolated) populations; also, just because they were sent from the coast doesn't mean they were from the coast. Intra-African slave trade was common, so oftentimes the slaves sent from the coast were enslaved from central communities (as prisoners of war, &c.).


Posted by: SEK | Link to this comment | 05-30-07 2:30 PM
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Check out my wikipedia link in 148, it lists what is thought to be the 10 African ethnic groups thought to be most represented among the slaves brought to America.


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 05-30-07 2:34 PM
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Murray (and his defenders) made the point about statistical outliers; Gould was focused on the non-predictive value of genetic material (and glasses).

Sorry to belabor this, but how is this correct? Murray argued that African-American blacks are on average much stupider than whites. Why would he and his defenders find the outlier argument useful? Did 128 have it exactly right?


Posted by: Barbar | Link to this comment | 05-30-07 2:50 PM
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Oh never mind, 133 has it right: you're confusing the defenders of Charles Murray with the defenders of Larry Summers (men are overrepresented in both mathematics and prison). Which is fine, except for the authoritative lecturing tone (occupational hazard I guess).


Posted by: Barbar | Link to this comment | 05-30-07 11:46 PM
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157

"Upper class people are a numerically small enough group that their political opinions are not so much important in themselves, as in how they can shape the opinions of the less affluent. A theory has to be something capable of being sold broadly to be politically important."

I don't think this is true. Upper class people are responsible for much of the money needed to run campaigns. Once the money is raised the candidate can run on other issues.

Anyway I was thinking more like the top 50% rather than the top 1%. White collar vrs blue collar. Even numerically a significant group especially given the tendency people have to identify themselves with the elite.


Posted by: James B. Shearer | Link to this comment | 05-31-07 1:34 PM
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