Posted on 10/17/2007 1:36:52 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
'Black people are less intelligent than whites', claims DNA pioneer
One of the world's most eminent scientists is at the centre of a row after claiming black people are less intelligent than whites.
James Watson, who won the Nobel Prize for his part in discovering the structure of DNA, has drawn condemnation for comments made ahead of his arrival in Britain tomorrow for a speaking tour.
Dr Watson, who now runs one of America's leading scientific research institutions, made the controversial remarks in an interview in The Sunday Times.
The 79-year-old geneticist said he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really".
He said he hoped that everyone was equal, but countered that "people who have to deal with black employees find this not true".
He claimed genes responsible for creating differences in human intelligence could be found within a decade.
He includes his views in a new book, published this week, in which he writes that "there is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically".
"Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so," he says.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission is now studying Dr Watson's remarks "in full".
Dr Watson arrives in Britain to promote his latest book, Avoid Boring People: Lessons from a Life in Science.
Keith Vaz, the Labour chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee, told the Independent: "It is sad to see a scientist of such achievement making such baseless, unscientific and extremely offensive comments.
"I am sure the scientific community will roundly reject what appear to be Dr Watson's personal prejudices. These comments serve as a reminder of the attitudes which can still exist at the highest professional levels."
Dr Watson was hailed as achieving one of the greatest single scientific breakthroughs of the 20th century when he worked at the University of Cambridge in the 1950s and 1960s, forming part of the team which discovered the structure of DNA.
He shared the 1962 Nobel Prize for medicine with his British colleague Francis Crick and New Zealand-born Maurice Wilkins.
He has served for 50 years as a director of the Cold Spring Harbour Laboratory on Long Island, considered a world leader in research into cancer and genetics.
He has courted controversy in the past, reportedly saying that a woman should have the right to abort her unborn child if tests could determine it would be homosexual.
He has suggested a link between skin colour and sex drive, proposing a theory that black people have higher libidos.
He also claimed that beauty could be genetically manufactured, saying: "People say it would be terrible if we made all girls pretty. I think it would be great."
Steven Rose, a professor of biological sciences at the Open University, told the Independent: "This is Watson at his most scandalous. He has said similar things about women before but I have never heard him get into this racist terrain.
"If he knew the literature in the subject he would know he was out of his depth scientifically, quite apart from socially and politically."
In post 429, you said:
“Watson’s point is, we can’t help peoples if we refuse to admit scientific evidence, no matter how unpleasant it may be.”
LOL WUT
If Asians are really smarter on average, then why can’t China build anything that isn’t a rip, a piece of garbage, or toxic, even though we gladly sell them the blueprints? :p
Way not to address most of what was said. *Sigh*
Some important researchers in this field are Murray, Herrnstein, and Shockley (already mentioned here), also Arthur Jensen. Professor Michael Levin in NYC has written a great philosophical deconstruction of Jared Diamond’s literal environmentalist book.
And you refute this how?
With "LOL WUT"?
What did I not address? You mean the stuff about how Africans were only conquered by the Europeans because they (the Africans) didn’t know how to defend against modern weaponry? That’s just the begging the question stuff discussed in earlier posts.
Now, you may note that the Europeans also developed guns and cannons before the Japanese did. But no one is suggesting that every civilization must invent everything at the same time, or that a culture is inferior if it invents or adopts a particular item later than someone else did.
But the differences between Japan and Africa are obvious. Japan had a high level civilization with a complex writing system, grand architecture, and so forth. We may have outpaced them in some areas, but it wasn’t like the difference between night and day. Japan became a prosperous nation through trade with the West. It didn’t become a basket case dependent on Western aid, and going into a downward spiral whenever we ignored them for a while due to other obligations. They became powerful enough to conquer Korea, China, and much of the rest of East Asia, and to kick our butt all over the Pacific after their successful attack on Pearl Harbor.
We had to flatten them with massive fire bombing and two nuclear devices to defeat them, and even then they were a world power again within two decades.
Is any African nation capable of that?
You see, there are other factors that contribute to the success or failure of nations than IQ. Isolation will stifle development. Japan was isolated for centuries due to their religion and cultural attitudes, though they weren’t literally backward. But once that isolation was broken, things took off. Did things take off in Cameroon once the isolation was broken?
Communism will obviously hold any nation back. China suffered from it for years, and they still suffer from it, though not as much because they’re not as purely communist as they were under Mao.
Just as no one is saying that all blacks are less intelligent than all whites, no one is saying that race is the only factor in determining the progress of a nation. However, if you look around the world, you’ll find places which were backward for centuries because of isolation, stifling cultural attributes, or an undynamic economic system. But once those things are changed, those countries rise to prominence very quickly.
On the other hand, there are other places which do not rise no matter how many opportunities they’re given to do so. Japan was a reasonably deveoped civilization which took off like a rocket once its isolation and old fashioned feudal ideas were supplanted. Zaire was an uncivilized place that had civilization taught to them by the Belgians. They were pulled up a little while the Belgians were running the place. Then the Belgians left and the place fell back down.
Jews were oppressed and even victims of an attempted racial genocide, but they still do just fine in school and in the economic realm, and they don’t have a massive crime rate, or churn out one illegitimate baby after another, or become mired in welfare dependency. Why do so many blacks behave so differently?
What I said was that you would be foolish to allow a priori notions, i.e., prejudice, to influence your dealings with people in your daily life. I also said that it is at least as silly to attribute group disparities in certain characteristics, like pissing for distance, long jumping or Suduko to the effects of prejudice or others forms of bias.
It is undeniable that Blacks, whether in Africa or America, do not perform as well as others on intelligence tests. Many other levels of indication, such as wealth, education, and such support this. Based on all the data, blacks are on average not as smart as whites.
And natural selection nearly assures us that groups that have been geographically and culturally isolated will have changed from each other. To state that modern intelligence “evolved” the same in stone wielding sub-Suharan Africa as the bustling Italian cities of the Renaissance is absurd. Obviously there would be differences just because of the isolation, and Europe has had environments far longer that encourage the intelligent (mathematically, politically, scientifically, etc.) to do better in life.
Pretty simple. Of course, you can dispute the cause of it. Most blacks start out poorer, without the education, family environment, and opportunities that many whites have. That could be the cause, just as genetics could be the cause. This is something that can be studied and solved, although I personally wouldn’t like to see genetics be the cause of these discrepancies..
And of course, this is just an average. Many blacks are smarter than nearly all whites. As everyone else here has, I’ve seen blacks who are smarter than most anyone on this forum. But on AVERAGE, they are not.
Jared Diamond is that you? Still smearing our ancestors as only being lucky, envy is a sin you know.
I would like to preface this question with 2 statements. 1) I am not a racist. 2) I rarely post to FR, I feel I am not intelligent enough.
Anybody that says there are no differences between races is wearing PC colored glasses.
I guess my question would be, what happened?
In the 1400’s Europeans were circumnavigating the planet in hand built ocean going vessels. They had figured out navigation by using a sextant. There were great societies and booming industry in Europe. There were amazing advances in medicine, the arts and inventions of all kind. There were some pretty amazing cities in Europe that still stand to this day. This was in the 1400’s. I could go on and on, but I wont.
During this time Africa was barely out of the stone age.
Why? What happened? Or What didn’t?
Time warp to the present and look where we are today. Manned Flight, Space flight, Men on the moon, Internet and computers, GPS, Medicine, Communication, TV remotes, I could go on and on, but, once again, I wont.
During this time Africa is STILL barely out of the stone age. All or most of the infrastructure in Africa was provided by, you guessed it, Europeans. There is still, even to this day a lot of strife and misery in Africa. People are STILL living in the stone age.
Why?
I just wanted to post this question to all of you intelligent Freeper’s because I value your opinion.
Thanks,
Lurch
Puroresu wrote, “They became powerful enough to conquer Korea, China, and much of the rest of East Asia, and to kick our butt all over the Pacific after their successful attack on Pearl Harbor.
We had to flatten them with massive fire bombing and two nuclear devices to defeat them, and even then they were a world power again within two decades.”
Though I agree with much of what you have to say, your history with respect to the Pacific theater in WWII is terribly weak.
Basically, right after Pearl Harbor came the Battle of Midway, which inflicted such great losses on the Japanese that after that they were perpetually on the retreat. At Midway the Americans simply *out-thought* the Japanese. They broke the Japanese code. They tricked the Japanese into confirming the code name for Midway by sending out a false message that Midway’s water purification system had broken down. Japan kept fighting after Midway, but their losses were so horrendous that one cannot help pity them.
HD
Fair enough. Obviously we won the war, thankfully! :-)
I was just noting that Japan rose from a nation lodged in the doldrums due to isolation and an outmoded feudal-type society, to a formidable world power in a relatively short period of time. Less than a century after Perry opened Japan’s ports, they were capable of conquering much of Asia, and of carrying out an attack on Pearl Harbor. In fact, a few decades earlier they had defeated China and Russia in wars.
In the Pacific Theater, they had us reeling for a while. most obviously in the Philippines. At Midway, six months into the war (for us), we scored a decisive victory. But even then the Japanese didn’t surrender and kept fighting against all odds until we eventually had to lay waste to three of their major cities, two of them with the newly developed atomic bomb.
I wasn’t trying to write a history of the war, just noting that it’s impossible to imagine an African nation pulling off anything comparable to what Japan pulled off. It’s possible for a country with enormous potential to somewhat stagnate and lose momentum if they become isolated or become bogged down in archaic systems of governance. That’s what happened to Japan, but once those environmental factors changed, they rose to the upper tier of world nations and haven’t looked back. It took a formidable effort to beat them in WWII, and even then they bounced back rapidly.
Nothing comparable has happened in African nations. We’re told that Africa languishes because of isolation, outmoded traditions, and the same type of problems that once plagued Japan. The problem is, the colonial powers ended that isolation and gave those countries every opportunity to become great nations, but once the colonialists pulled out, those places deteriorated and are largely surviving on the fumes left behind by the European powers, plus the presence of some westerners in the form of corporate investment, foreign aid, charity, and so forth.
The two most successful sub-Saharan African nations were South Africa and Rhodesia, where whites had a larger numerical presence and attempted to build western-style societies, but of course that’s all dying out now.
In other words, there are indeed social and environmental factors that can stifle a region’s development. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that eliminating those factors will enable that region to blossom. The place has to also have a population capable of taking advantage of the new situation. Japan did. So far, African nations have been unable to do so. One cannot imagine any of those countries becoming a world power militarily, economically, technologically, etc.
Fair enough. Obviously we won the war, thankfully! :-)
I was just noting that Japan rose from a nation lodged in the doldrums due to isolation and an outmoded feudal-type society, to a formidable world power in a relatively short period of time. Less than a century after Perry opened Japan’s ports, they were capable of conquering much of Asia, and of carrying out an attack on Pearl Harbor. In fact, a few decades earlier they had defeated China and Russia in wars.
In the Pacific Theater, they had us reeling for a while. most obviously in the Philippines. At Midway, six months into the war (for us), we scored a decisive victory. But even then the Japanese didn’t surrender and kept fighting against all odds until we eventually had to lay waste to three of their major cities, two of them with the newly developed atomic bomb.
I wasn’t trying to write a history of the war, just noting that it’s impossible to imagine an African nation pulling off anything comparable to what Japan pulled off. It’s possible for a country with enormous potential to somewhat stagnate and lose momentum if they become isolated or become bogged down in archaic systems of governance. That’s what happened to Japan, but once those environmental factors changed, they rose to the upper tier of world nations and haven’t looked back. It took a formidable effort to beat them in WWII, and even then they bounced back rapidly.
Nothing comparable has happened in African nations. We’re told that Africa languishes because of isolation, outmoded traditions, and the same type of problems that once plagued Japan. The problem is, the colonial powers ended that isolation and gave those countries every opportunity to become great nations, but once the colonialists pulled out, those places deteriorated and are largely surviving on the fumes left behind by the European powers, plus the presence of some westerners in the form of corporate investment, foreign aid, charity, and so forth.
The two most successful sub-Saharan African nations were South Africa and Rhodesia, where whites had a larger numerical presence and attempted to build western-style societies, but of course that’s all dying out now.
In other words, there are indeed social and environmental factors that can stifle a region’s development. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that eliminating those factors will enable that region to blossom. The place has to also have a population capable of taking advantage of the new situation. Japan did. So far, African nations have been unable to do so. One cannot imagine any of those countries becoming a world power militarily, economically, technologically, etc.
Well, I knew someone would find that.
The Bell Curve has it’s detractors, as did the study which produced that graph. But a difference of more than a full Standard Deviation is significant. It really is there.
Now, what makes people angry is that too many people interpret the fact “(American) blacks are less intelligent than (American) whites” as “Blacks are worth less than Whites” - which, of course, is true from a business perspective, that is, a businessman incurs more cost from having unintelligent workers, and a simple color bar can, unfortunately, be used to estimate cost.
Now, a business could get around the color bar completely by issuing an IQ test as a prerequisite for employment, and denying employment based on any result under 100.
Well, look at that... a completely irrelevant list.
No matter how many examples you have of effective, and ostensibly intelligent “black” people, it makes no difference to the mean intelligence quotient of “black” people.
You are confusing statistics with anecdotes, which, of course, is illogical.
“But can the same illiterate Aborigine be put into a modern university and learn calculus, French literature etc. in the same time span as an university student takes to learn to survive in the outback?”
The university student would probably die within a week so the aborigine would probably learn the modern stuff before the student learned to survive. Tough to learn when your body is decaying.
“we can’t help peoples”
A question for you sir, who are the peoples that need help?
Whoever. Doesn't matter.
What's the point of your question?
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