Perhaps this is a little off-topic…

It often seems conservatives dislike the U.S as much as leftists, yet they are never accused of being “Anti-American”

Conservatives that ‘abhor’ multiculturalism are a good example of this; despite their obvious dislike of American culture and politics they’re still reguarded as patriots.

Off topic:

Razib, what happen with your previous posts??

N: the British-style old conservatives are proudly anti-American.

Razib: yeah! where’s the rest of you?

To think a little about your thought experiment, why would the random choice from the higher g group necessarily be the better strategy? Only if other traits are held constant would it make more sense. But suppose the high-g group were more short, ugly, introverted and prone to mental illness? This would make the random choice option more interesting because now you’re essentially optimizing a far more complex problem.

Before, choosing a leader at random was simple – choose from the higher-g group. But in reality, we want as a leader a person encompassing many traits, of which g is only one of them. Hoover, Nixon and Carter were all considered exceptionally bright, but none were very successful presidents, while Truman and Reagan were relative dunces, but reasonably good presidents.

So leadership as a quality is a far more complex equation. Something like L=f(q1,q2,…qn); where the q’s are various “qualities”, whatever they are. Now, no one in his right mind (and some of us who are decidedly not of right mind) should attempt to actually define a function for leadership. This is probably why leadership is seen as a quality in and of itself – the equation is too damn complex for our brains to actually solve.

I think humans have tendency to reduce complex phenomenon to simple problems so that our brains can grind out a rough solution. That’s why people have a tendency to vote along party lines without putting much thought into who they actually vote for. Personally, I never vote for anyone with an Irish name.

“But suppose the high-g group were more short, ugly, introverted and prone to mental illness?”

Steve, you’ve been crashing my family reunions, haven’t you?

Razib,
Do you have a passcode for the NY Times? They seem to have erased mine.

Razib,
Do you have a passcode for the NY Times? They seem to have erased mine.

Hey – who’s calling Truman a dunce? Sure, he never went to college, but I’d consider him to be one of our more (self-)educated presidents. Of course, estimating IQ’s of historical figures is a fool’s game, but based on what I know of his bio, I’d say that Truman was a realatively high-IQ individual who was not given the opportunities early in life to persue an education, but who found his niche later in life.

I’ll give you Reagan, though…

In my experience, natural blondes quite shrewd. They understand the dumb, tittering, shallow
personalities that high school boys like and play them to the hilt.

Perhaps the black elite is turning into a Brahman-style caste that is genetically distinct from the
underclass it rules. But I’m sure that elite black African men exploit low-class women sexually, so they
might change their tune on that.

Perhaps the black elite is turning into a Brahman-style caste that is genetically distinct from the
underclass it rules. But I’m sure that elite black African men exploit low-class women sexually, so they
might change their tune on that.

I’m not convinced Hoover, Nixon, OR Carter were particularly bad leaders. Regardless, it seems to me that social skills matter more for attaining power than g does, but g is probably more important once you are in the office. On the other hand, very high g is almost definitely linked to a number of undesirable traits, especially hubris. Someone who recognizes his own ignorance is essential regardless of what their g may be. Frankly, presidents who stay within their constitutional powers simply aren’t that powerful.

One little nit, Razib, blondeism isn’t the actual “superiority of blondes” but the perceived greater
attractiveness of blonde hair in women, which means that the bar is set higher for brunettes. (Think Zeta-Jones v. Zellweger.)

It’s a nit, but to me, an important nit.

Curiously, this doesn’t work with men, which fits in with the whole neoteny bit. Tall, dark & handsome is
the ideal. (Think Viggo Mortensen…)

Well, duende, do you see Haiti??? this country have a division in caste, where the mulatto elite governs on
the poor black people (cimarrones)…

1) No prob. 🙂

2) Erm….I think I was talking about a preference for paedomorphic qualities in chix, and neoteny wasn’t
the issue here….gotta get my HBD terms straight.

In the Carribean, the lightest mullattoes would run the nation, but in African countries? Sure, mixed-race
people might be overrepresented in top positions, but ALL of them?

A couple of things. One, I recently learned that 10% of all Caucasians have a gene that gives them
immunity to developing AIDs. This is the same gene that gives immunity to the plague. Two, for any
soccer fans out there, World Cup 2010 is expected to be held in South Africa. I bet it’s not going to
happen.

Razib,

Check this out:

Key findings of Nelson Mandela/HSRC Study on HIV/AIDS

href=”http://www.hsrc.ac.za/research/npa/SAHA/news/20021205Keynote.html”>http://www.hsrc.ac.za/re
search/npa/SAHA/news/20021205Keynote.html

“The infection rate among whites was 6.2%. This is considerably higher than countries with
predominantly white populations such as the US, Australia and France, where prevalence amongst whites
is less than 1%. Prevalence among Coloured people was 6.1% and among Indians, prevalence was 1.6%.”

(Coloured means mixed race)

“It is clear that in much of the world women serve as a restraint on male sexual recklessness (as best as they can), but in southern Africa (and other regions as well), the traditional expectation of multiple simultaneous sexual partners for men undermines this..”

Hm. I wonder why. I never thought of this before, but I had always thought that the hardwired contract between men and women would serve as the “restraining order” on male recklessness. It’s not so. I wonder why. I can’t come up with anything. Razib?

According to the stats given here: http://members.shaw.ca/delajara/oldSATIQ.html there’s about a 1 SD difference in IQ between a score of 1200 and 1300 on the SAT.

In my observations, men from very white countries like dark women. I could be wrong, but there are many cases of German men who come here as tourists and get married to darker-than-average Brazilian women.

Maybe men value the rare, the novelty. I myself think that I’m more attracted to blondes when I am Brazil than in America, as though I adapted to the new proportions. Strange, eh?

I find the show, at least the hype and trailers, a sad commentary about entertainment these days. It is this kind of stuff that makes me watch cable only channels more & more.

And the Mayor “blames the outlying suburbs for not building low-cost housing.” Apparently as mayor of Milwaukee he’s unable to improve the city enough so that whites want to live there. Instead of blaming crime-prone, blame the suburbs!

I winced in sympathy pain when I saw that commericial. But a part of me just says “That’s what you get for being on a reality show.” They’ll be the Darva Congers of 2003

I don’t have the exact citation, but I remember a few years ago some sociologists did a simple study, which combined two factors. First, with some simple models they showed that small personal preferences could result in self-segregation. (Basically, if whites and blacks each have a small preference for living with their own race, then you get self-organization with the two colors seperating, without any real discrimination.)

Then they interviewd a bunch of people and found that actual preferences were far over the levels needed to produce segregation. I forget the exact numbers, but it was something like “Blacks didn’t feel comfortable moving into a neighborhood that wasn’t at least 50% Black, while whites didn’t like moving into a neighborhood that was more than 30% black.” Don’t quote me on the numbers, but the basic point is that indiciduals basic preferences combine to naturally result in racial segregation in housing, without any explicit racism involved.

Well, if you assume that blondes are, on a purely physical basis, considered more attractive than brunettes, it follows that blondes will also, on average, be dumber (assuming that brains actually give a woman a selective advantage in finding a mate.)

A slightly dumber blond will have a same chance of winning a mate as a slightly smarter brunette
(assuming that the blonde hair gives her an advantage.) Thus, selective pressure will produce a lower mean intelligence for blonde women than for brunette women.

Obviously, this is grossly simplified, and you’d have to add in maternal affects and 2nd or third order
inheritence issues (smarter women have smarter kids, which will in turn produce more grandchildren),
but I’d say a simple minded sexual selection argument easily explains the dumb blonde stereotype.

Of course, this sort of easy just-so Ev. Psych. argument is immediately and rightly suspect, but I thought I’d at least throw it out there.

John Derbyshire has an old article outlining the two races in America: blacks and nonblacks.

ww.olimu.com/WebJournalism/Texts/Commentary/RaceInAmerica.htm

Hmm, is the infection rate for Indians in S. Africa higher than for Indians in India? I guess the
underlying theory is that a large black population is a bad influence. Are these whites and Indians getting
HIV from blacks?

A minor point: If the pigment-deficient are more likely to be left-handed, it may be because we are less
likely to punish a child for using its left hand.

Whites will move into a black neighborhood as long as the neighborhood is gentrifying. For example, the historic Uptown area of Dallas (just north of the Federal Reserve) used to be all black until the early ’80s. Then the family that founded the 7-11 Corporation bought a lot of land to the north of Uptown. This began a process of gentrification which continues until today. Hardly any blacks now live in the old neighborhood.

The fundamental issue is people’s personal preferences driving all this segregation. This problem simply cannot be solved by govt intervention as long as we live in a republic. This article simply re-hashed what was already known.

Diana: “One little nit, Razib, blondeism isn’t the actual “superiority of blondes” but the perceived greater attractiveness of blonde hair in women, which means that the bar is set higher for brunettes. (Think Zeta-Jones v. Zellweger.)”

This is so true.

Look at this aarticle:
http://www.msnbc.com/news/850495.asp?0dm=N16TS

Aparently, there is a requirement in the NFL that an owner has to officially consider a minority candidate when hiring a coach. Dennis Green was later reported to be concerneed that he was just interviewed to satisfy the requirement. I guess this is a no win situation if you are an owner in the NFL. Legislating preferences is so tedious.

The problem is that black areas are automatically considered “no go” whereas Asian or Italian neighborhoods are perceived as colorful and welcoming to tourists, or in the case of Jewish neighborhoods, a good place to raise kids (“the schools are good”). If anyone can give me an example where “Africa-town” is considered a tourist attraction, or a welcome place to send your kids to school, let me know.

We are beginning to develop African (as opposed to African-American) ‘hoods in NYC; maybe they will become tourist meccas. That remains to be seen.

Yawn. More racist mumbings with no basis in fact. To declare rape as the major sexual behavior of Southern African men is shameless for even someone as lacking in moral probity as Steve Sailer.

As for Diana, why in the world does she think Razib (who says inane things like 85 is the norm for black people’s IQs) has a clue about sexual practices in Southern Africa or anything else?

Racism seems to attract very stupid people.

Who might the ‘crime prone’ be, pray tell? Let me guess.

Most of the posts on this thread are merely rationalizations for residential segregation under the rubric ‘everyone likes it that way.’ The everyone being racists like themselves. People who are actually interested in an integrated society look at income as the main criterion of whether a housing market is nondiscriminatory. If nonwhites of the same income levels as whites are not buying homes in the same areas then there probably is institutional or subjective discrimination going on. I say nonwhites because the data on Hispanics and Asians is being misrepresented here. (It often is because Razib hates the people he most resembles — African-Americans — and will say anything, no matter how false, to demean them.) The article says Hispanics and Asians are ‘beginning’ to move into white areas, which means most still live in segregated areas. In reality, there has been an enormous culture clash between the Hmong and the mainstream there.

As for Dodo Diana’s claim that ‘Africa-towns’ have never attracted whites as tourists, utter B.S. How does she think Harlem got its reputation for heaven’s sakes? Nor was it an anomaly. Black communities in most cities long drew whites for entertainment, especially music.

One wishes some people would spend their time reading the excellent mainstream literature of America’s true mixed culture instead of the moldy, discredited treatises of scientific racists.

Don’t hold your breath, Razib, as much as you wish it would happen, black people in Southern Africa are
not going to disappear from the face of the Earth. On the other hand, considering the current mayhem
and poverty in Bangladesh, that group of black people just might perish.

The NYT banned a nasty little pesk of a racist? Bravo! Anyone who would blame proximity to black
South Africans for white South Africans’ high AIDS rates does not deserve a membership. This fool is
almost as good an example of racism as a mental illness as Razib.

Seems to me that Razib’s lengthy rationalizations always lead to the same conclusions. He believes some people (whites, who he virtually worships) are better than others. He assigns Africans and African-Americans the lowest positions in his hierarchy, claiming they are less intelligent than whites and Asians. However, there is no scientifically accepted support for his claims. So, what we have is an individual (Razib) latching on to long discredited ‘scientific’ racism to try to justify his personal hatred of dark-skinned people (likely including himself). Razib’s views tell us a lot about Razib’s sad mental state, but nothing else.

What did Sailer say about rape? Please quote, or admit your statement is a lie

First of all Steve Sailer is a quite a decent chap, and what could you possibly derive from his above statement that would make you think otherwise? You clearly don’t think much of this forum or anyone here. When you say that Razib’s wrong when he states that the average black IQ is 85, where is your contradictory data?

I assume that “a nasty little pesk of a racist” is me. You don’t seem to have been here long enough to have
gotten a feel for the philosophy of this forum, but none of the bloggers or the consistent followers (such as
me, Steve Sailer, Diana, etc.) hate anyone or want to curtail anyone’s civil rights. We reserve our true
contempt for white media figures who refuse to admit the truth, not for blacks. We would raise black IQs
if we could. We would create a Flinstone vitamin to get rid of AIDS if we could. But we don’t think that
lies help, and if only on this forum if not in our daily lives, we want to be able to discuss these things
freely. If this upsets you so, you are free to leave.

If you’d bothered to read the archive, Razib has mentioned that he thinks color is an inadequate way to describe race. I don’t want to speak for Razib, but I don’t believe that he hates anyone.

Think of the fodder for urban legends! Barbara Mikkelson will have a blast.

I view the African HIV/AIDS statistics with some trepidation. As I understand it many of these countries aren’t wealthy enough to afford the testing facilities that we take for granted in the west and use a symptom diagnosis for AIDS. As you know AIDS is not a disease but a syndrome of 25 or so previously existing diseases/conditions. So the quandry is this, if I have pnuemonia in Africa, is it AIDS or just plain ol’ pnuemonia?

There is also a profit motive at play there. If an African doctor reports that he’s going to have 500 hundred cases of malaria this year absolutely nothing happens. But if he says I’m going to have 500 cases of AIDS he has a good chance of hitting the UN/US jackpot in grants and aid.

I’d also recommend you all check out the work of Dr. Peter Duesberg, an HIV/AIDS dissident.

http://www.duesberg.com/

T Te: I asked for a current example. Harlem was a tourist mecca in the 20s (and to a lesser extent in the 30s) when it was a mixed neighborhood.

By the post-war era, Harlem was solidly black, and avoided by whites who didn’t work there.

I grew up in Milwaukee.

The whites don’t like the blacks, and the blacks don’t like whites. So they don’t live near each other.

I went to a majority white high school near the South Side. We went to a track meet on the North Side. The black kids in the ‘hood threw rocks at our bus.

I remember winning a chess tournament–I beat a black kid to do it. The black guy said that I won just because I’m a white boy (I looked white enough to him). Like that made any difference. I beat him because I was better.

this is the crap blacks and whites deal with in Milwaukee. Both sides know it. The real news is that the black guy’s comments made it into the article (he stays where he feels comfortable). That’s how everyone does it. If you’re a white guy in that ‘hood, you’re mugged, carjacked or worse. If you’re a black guy in the white side of town, you’re harassed and shunned.

David

Duesberg’s conclusions, like Creationism, have been rejected by, what amounts to, the entire scientific community:

http://www.aegis.com/pubs/atn/2000/ATN34603.html

The evidence against him is voluminous and powerful.

Just an observation:

People who can’t tell you how or why HIV causes AIDS probably shouldn’t be delivering any authoritative proclamations about HIV or AIDS.

Just to be cynical:

I wonder how many of the 5000 signees of the Durban Declaration have never made a penny off the current HIV/AIDS paradigm.

Nobel Prize Winners, eh?

“If there is evidence that HIV causes AIDS, there should be scientific documents which either singly or collectively demonstrate that fact, at least with a high probability. There is no such document.”

Dr. Kary Mullis, Biochemist, 1993 Nobel Prize for Chemistry.

Read more here:

http://www.virusmyth.net/aids/data/cfberlin.htm

Truth Teller should check out Prince George’s County, Maryland. It’s widely cited by “experts” as being a black utopia. Some have even called it a “golden ghetto” because of the large number of blacks in the middle class.

They are wrong. The public schools in the county suck, and violent crime is on the rise countywide. And, of course, most of the violent crime is perpetrated by blacks against blacks, as well as Third World immigrants.

I can’t quantify an Irish preference for dark hair among women but a common poetic name for Ireland is
“An Róisín Dubh” – The Black Rose – a beatiful black haired woman. The “Cáilín Dubh” – black haired
girl – is prominent in Irish literature as an object of desire. Yet, the Irish “Buachaillín Bán” – fair-haired
boy implies a favorite son.

Determined to force your bigotries into being fact, but it can’t be done.

Harlem and other inner city entertainment districts thrived well into the ’70s. They went into decline during the movement of middle-class people of all ‘races’ to the suburbs. However, they have been reviving with the return of the middle-class to downtowns and exurbs. Some regions, especially the West and Pacific Northwest, are more residentially integrated than ever, with nonwhites moving to the suburbs and whites moving into the city. That’s the reality the U.S. Census reveals, not the racism motivated nonsense you people post.

Diana, you are either a dunce or one hell of a liar. What will you do for an encore — belittle a lovely little African-American ballerina for not having straight hair?

Roger, I will believe what you say when you offer some objective data supporting it. Until then, considering this is a racist site, I suspect you are as tainted as the other people on this thread.

David sounds like another wannabe white person who hates black people. Why am I not surprised?

Razib, lemme guess Litt- I mean Truth Teller’s response to anything you (or anyone else he disagrees with) have to say:
“The article is racist. The writer of the article is racist. Anyone who believes in facts that are contrary to my opinions is obviously racist.”

I have a question for Truth Teller, is it THEORETICALLY possible for someone to honestly believe in HBD things like genetic differences in IQ among races and not be racist?

What kind of idiot doesn’t know ‘dry sex’ means rape?

However, there is a good sentence to paraphase on this thread:

“‘Race realists’ conclusions, like Creationism, have been rejected by, what amounts to the entire scientific community.”

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

Duncie, if you want to raise someone’s I.Q., start at home. Nothing you have posted reveals even average
intelligence. You are just another loser trying to raise himself above others by latching on to racism.

Of course not, fool. The fact someone would rush to claim racial superiority is in itself evidence of racism since there is no support for that belief. Your belief in white supremacy is no different than the Raelians belief in extraterrestial seeding. There is no evidence of either, but the adherents believe because they want to.

Some in the mental health field believe racism is often a system of mental illness because it relies on obsession, paranoia, projection and an exaggerated sense of self-importance. They may be on to something.

‘Genetic realism’ is basically a call for, at the very least, ‘benign neglect’ of people of color on the grounds they are inferior, at the most, genocide against them. (Which Razib recently expressed a desire for in Southern Africa.) Razib lies so much that he may confuse a not at all bright person like you, Duncie. However, anyone who has observed and seen through his obfuscations knows he hates people of color, including himself.

“‘Race realists’ conclusions, like Creationism, have been rejected by, what amounts to the entire scientific community.”

But is this true?:

http://gnxp.blogspot.com/2002_08_01_gnxp_archive.html#85401698

Smith College professor Stanley Rothman and Harvard researcher Mark Snyderman surveyed a sample of mostly scientific experts in the field of educational psychology in the late 1980s and found that 53 percent believed IQ differences between whites and African Americans were at least partly genetic in origin, while only 17 percent attributed the IQ differences to environmental factors alone (the remainder either believed the data was currently insufficient to decide the issue or refused to answer the question).

Of course, if you want to dismiss the very concept of race, Litt (which you obviously do, evidenced by your frequent use of “scare quotes”), you couldn’t have picked a worse time:

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/24/science/24RACE.html

(That would be from the science section, not the opinion one.)

But I guess the journals Science, and American Psychologist and the NYT are just racist and can be ignored as racist b/c they said something that was racist. Only people that are full of hatred (esp. towards blacks) would ever say that there might be some degree of genetic differences between human populations:

http://www.black-collegian.com/extracurricular/health/overweight800.shtml

Also you ignored the more important part of my statement:

The evidence against him is voluminous and powerful.

In the end, it’s the facts, and nothing else, that
are important.

“What kind of idiot doesn’t know ‘dry sex’ means rape?”

I know exactly what kind of idiot:

http://www.salon.com/health/sex/urge/world/1999/12/10/drysex/

At any point would you like to stop being a hysterical, snarky troll, and start engaging us like a dignified human being?

I once watched a program on the Out of Africa theory that stated the reason foe shorter men in Europe (as opposed to Africa) was largely climactic. But African pygmies are MUCH shorter, due I think to the low hollows and thickets they scamper through. Also, Swedes are taller than Spaniards, even though Sweden is colder. By the above theory, Spanish men should be taller.

Some populations might have suffered a bottleneck effect, especially if certain short men carried a resistance to certain plagues. Perhaps in wars the bigger men were killed while the ones deemed too small or sickly to fight survived. In America, black men are on average tallest and on average have the lowest IQs. Oriental men are on average shortest and have the highest IQs. Do you know of any data that correlates high IQ with short stature? They’d have to look at IQ differences within races for an accurate measurement, but it could be done. For example, the smartest black man I know, a research psychologist at Howard, is 5’4. And yes, his wife is white. Granted, he’s lighter skinned than some Cantonese, but I still wonder if devoting so little energy to growing tall might channel into a developing brain. For the record, I’m 5’1 😉

If they want something that “speaks to them”, why not just rent “Four Weddings and a Funeral”?

Duende – I was under the impression that most, if not all of the studies looking into the matter indicate that IQ is positively correlated with taller people. A study came out last year that found that CEO’s and corporate presidents were taller than the average white european male.

There was a study within the past year or two( someone on this blog may know who it was done by), that indicated that northern europeans, particularly Swedes(if I can remember correctly), were decreasing in height for the past 10 000 years until very recently when they started to have an increase in height from better nutrition.

Truth Teller is more than welcome to read the Washington Post online, and then come to his own conclusions.

Better yet, he can do his own due diligence. Go to the following link, and choose Prince George’s County from the School Survey map. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/education/. The county’s public schools are atrocious. They are so bad that the county now has more than 100 private and parochial schools.

Face it, Truth Teller, IQ is important, it can be measured, and blacks, ON AVERAGE, have lower IQs than other races.

So why are you arguing with us?

“Social Democracy” is not much different from an oriental despotism? Oh hear the groans of the Europeans!

Harlem and other inner city entertainment districts

Harlem was never an “inner city entertainment district.” It was a mixed neighborhood until WWII, when it became predominantly black. The entertainment district of NYC is the theatre district, in the West 40s. There were a few entertainment emporiums in Harlem–very popular with people of all races–but whites abandoned them by the late 30s. Calling Harlem an “entertainment district” makes as much sense as calling Chinatown an “entertainment district” because it has Chinese operas and cinemas.

Of course, people of all races visit Chinatown. Not too many blacks, though. It’s always struck me as a curious fact: why, when you visit Chinatown, do you see comparatively few black faces. Has anyone else noticed this, and if so, supply a reason?

thrived well into the ’70s.

Nope. You are 20 years out of date. When I went to high school in the 70s, there was one boy who trucked to Queens from Harlem. He was a Yugoslavian immigrant and his parents lived in Harlem. Whenever he told the other students that, they were dumbstruck. The reaction was esp. true of black students (my HS was at least 25% black.)

They went into decline during the movement of middle-class people of all ‘races’ to the suburbs.

Here, T Te directly associates “poor” with “crime” or perhaps “depraved.” Historically this is not necessarily true.

However, they have been reviving with the return of the middle-class to downtowns and exurbs.

Yes, Harlem is now “reviving” because a lot of black yuppies, and whites, are moving back in. I think also that Asian entrepreneurship is playing an unsung part here.

As for my encore, I didn’t create the fact that ballet is a white, patriarchal, European art form that oppresses both women (fragile, pale, skinny women dancing supernatural creatures on painfully distended toes) and righteous persons of color. What it is, man. It’s a strange and formalized art form with its own traditions.

The African-American girl playing Clara in the Nutcracker (a Christmas, and therefore anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish, tale) is a true African-American, being Ethiopian-born. She already has fairly loose hair. But an African or African-American with tightly curly or frizzy hair who wants to be a ballerina will have to undergo radical chemical processing of the hair in order to be part of the sisterhood. I’ve heard and read that it’s terribly painful. OK, that’s her choice, but isn’t that what black militants for at least 30 years have decried as “oreoization”?

Fine with me, if a black girl wants to become an oreo to become some 19th century white man’s ideal of beauty, but not with all the theorists of black pride that I have read. Modern ballets have moved somewhat outside the 19th century limits of what a ballerina is but–they still do that hair tossing business an awful lot. Deal with it.

Happy New Year, everyone.

I tried to set off T Te’s comments in the above post with itals but it didn’t work.

speaking of gold diggers.. i wonder if there is a difference between gold diggers across societies. are some cultures more prone to produce gold diggers?

While average height decreased with the advent of agriculture, there are plenty of non-agricultural societies with shorter statures–Eskimos, Lapps, Pygmies etc.

How about correlation between dairy consumption and height–Masai and Swedes both are consumers of dairy through adulthood.

Truth teller, what kind of response is that? I’m a wannabe white person? Whatever. I’m mostly white, everybody who’s been reading the site for awhile knows that. If I hated black people, I’d hate my grandmother, her brothers, and their kids (my cousins).

I’m the one “telling the truth.” Milwaukee is, and always has been, a heavily segregated city where the races don’t mix readily. And the reason isn’t solely white people hating blacks–blacks do plenty of whitey-hating themselves.

How do I know this? I lived there for 15 years, including all of grade school and high school.

Have you ever been to Milwaukee? Lived there for any amount of time? Until then, you can kiss my rather pale posterior.

Good question, Wes. Obviously, wanting a husband with high status is universal in human cultures (though not in all people). I’d guess that in patrilineal cultures with strong marriage bonds sex-for-money becomes a less obvious part of marriage when the primary focus is on raising children. In cultures where marriage bonds are weaker and more based on romance and entertainment there’s more gold-digging.

Prime Example: You know those rap videos where a drug dealer is sitting on a leather couch surrounded by dozens of beautiful women? According to my sources, these videos are based on mating habits common in the ghetto. A dealer will make a lot of money on a major deal, and when word gets around the projects all the welfare moms go over to have sex with him. The little boys see this and think it’s the most fabulous life possible. And we wonder why these little boys become crack dealers.

A male friend of mine from China tells me he doesn’t like blondes and is somewhat perplexed by their
poularity in America.

Actually that would be “Four be-Head-ings and a Camel”, right ?

The brain demands a lot of energy – about 25% of the calories you eat goes to feed a few pounds of nerve cells. It wouldn’t be surprising to see correlations between IQ and height or other growth indicators, but the correlation could go either way depending on the circumstances. On the one hand, Masai genes might truly favor allocating nutrition to increased height (for better cooling), strength, and quick reflexes (for going after lions with spears), while Chinese genes may restrict bodily development to feed the brain sufficiently for the abstract thinking that is needed by merchants and mandarins. On the other hand, in most of Europe up to the early 1900’s, the height of much of the population was limited by chronic childhood nutritional deficiencies, not by genetics – so it’s quite likely that the brain was often somewhat stunted too. (If you want to research this further, look up studies in the Netherlands where WWII led to a few years of famine in a normally well-fed population; I don’t recall all the details, but there are clearly early childhood windows where adequate nutrition is needed to properly develop certain organs. However, it’s not clear how extreme cases such as this apply to the effects of lesser degrees of malnutrition, if at all.)

In the last two centuries, every 1st world country saw a steady increase in height following on nutritional improvements from increased wealth, better ways of preserving food for the winter, and the agricultural revolution. (It wasn’t just peasants that suffered malnutrition, either. Henry VIII was over six-foot and would have been welcome on any college football team, but his lesser nobles were often stunted, judging by the armor suits they left behind. Getting your pick of the harvest isn’t that much help when most everything but dried grains has spoiled by March.) So clearly the common human geneotype includes the capability of restricting height in response to a restricted diet. Probably there is also a maximum height and a target body form set by genetics, and this can vary to adapt populations to extreme conditions. Tall skinny Masai and short round Inuit are adaptations to weather extremes. Pigmys adapted to chronic food shortages plus energy draining tropical diseases. Polynesians grow extra subcutaneous fat as insulation against cold sea water. Other cases are less clear – the Germans far overmatched the Romans in both height and girth, but this may have simply meant that their heavy use of dairy cattle kept their children better fed.

As for women preferring taller men – until quite recently, height was an indicator of good childhood nutrition and the socio-economic status that goes with it, plus freedom from disease. Taller men were better providers. To some extent, they still are – they get noticed more and promoted faster than short men with the same skills.

As for Anglo-Saxons in England having institutional contraints in their system of government on the exercise of monarchical power see web references to the “witenagemot” as at: http://www.slider.com/enc/57000/witenagemot.htm

While we are into Anglo-Saxon history, do have a look at what are rated as Britain’s Top Ten national treasures on the British Museum website at:

http://www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk/compass/ixbin/hixclient.exe?_IXDB_=compass&search-form=graphical/main.html&submit-button=search

The craftsmanship of the artefacts from the Sutton Hoo ship burial site from c. 620AD are worth a special look to see just how primitive the Anglo-Saxons really were. The intricacy of the handiwork on the jewellery of someone of high nobility is amazing by any standard. The jewels at least – mainly garnets – were almost certainly imported, it is thought probably from India. Remember we are talking about the 7th century AD.

Don’t hold your breath.

I’ve seen no racists here. I have seen at least one name-calling troll who is obviously out of his depth in a
roadside puddle.

Amusing that someone calling themselves “Truth Teller” tells so many lies about Razib’s expressed philosophies. Razib has posted a large mass of writings here, none of which contain anything like what Truth Teller attempts to put in Razib’s mouth.

Ditto for the echo.

I’ve always assumed that light skin was preferred because in agricultural societies the peasants are
working in the sun and the aristocrats are lounging in the shade. Affluence was pale. Only in the modern era are the affluent lying in the sun getting tanned while the poor labor inside under fluorescent lights.

I enjoyed the juxtaposition of the Slate article with the accompanying ad for a Barney video. 😉

Selection pressures in Africa may involve not only sexual behavior but ability to create and maintain functioning institutions, in the form of public supplies of drinking water adequate to control helminthic (parasitic worm) infections. Until this infrastructure is in place, handing out symptom-treating drugs may well produce counterintuitive and unpleasant effects.

>2) my general point-all cultures go through phases, and unfortunately liberty seems to give way to autocracy as time progresses.

Evidently the very antithesis of the Whig interpretation of history but with the recent proliferation of laws curtailing civil rights and empowering governments to monitor all private communications, I can see what you mean.

I’ve always enjoyed Dave’s contributions to this website- welcome aboard, man. To those that haven’t been
paying attention, Dave is one-quarter black (his grandmother I believe).

To call Dave African-American might be a little one-droppish though. Obviously, all race labels are, by
necessity, approximations; and, unfortunately, in America, we use only a few broad racial categories to
approximate to. I have never seen Dave, or analyzed his DNA, but one-quarter would suggest he should be
called white (if we have but two terms to choose from). Unless some genes are more equal than others.
Of course I’m not trying to be an ass, there’s a conversation in this. Dave’s 1/4 blackness is very non-trivial
and gives him an invaluable perspective on hbd.

(If race was Platonic we wouldn’t have these issues. This is a semantic dispute.)

Doug, I think your analysis of the dumb blonde stereotype missing a crucial factor. If blonde women are
more preferred as mates in a culture, it is likely that the more successful men in that culture will be
successful in obtaining blonde wives. Seeing as more successful men are likely to be more intelligent and
both blondeness and intelligence are inherited, blondeness (or actually any other preferred trait) would be
a marker also for greater intelligence. Though, it can be a wash.

The fact that blondes may be more prone to learning disabilities does not mean that blondes without
learning disabilities would be any less intelligent. If anything, the blonder nations of Europe – Sweden,
The Netherlands, England, Germany, Austria, even Poland scored higher on IQ tests than the darker
nations of southern Europe, Italy being the exception.

I would also like to comment on whether a preference for blondes is just a sexual selection or if it
represents a natural selection. It strikes me that blondism is a marker for lighter skin which is better
adapted to the colder northern climates. I think sexual selection anticipates natural selection and
consequently serves as a form of breeding (hell, it could even be called intelligent design if ID has not
come to mean something else.) But since natural selection only works on what’s available, we have
blonde Swedes and Finns and short, darker Lapps and Inuits. All populations show adaptions to colder
climates, but each had different ‘stuff’ to work with and each culture would emphasize a different ideal
that would be marginally better adapted to the environmental conditions.

Welcome David! Trying to break the brown power structure at Gene Expression? Diversify, my man!

Well, fortunately the future paleontologist would no doubt find ample evidence of humans and human migration and would likely surmise that humans are the cause of the odd dispersal of animals.

Blog on, Dave. Now that I have retired from the profession, gnxp is my home away from home (blog
away from blog?)

Although I am not scientifically trained, I am fascinated by HBD. I recently skimmed a book that has
tremendous HBD implications:

“World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability” by
Amy Chua. (Thomas Sowell gives it a positive review although he steers clear of any gene talk:
http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=2293.)

I’d be interested to see what you two make of Prof. Chua’s book, which is not a simple-minded denigration
of globalization, but a sophisticated consideration of the ill-thought out enthusiasm for mindlessly
exporting ideas with explosive consequences.

Yeah, to call me black/African-American is a bit of a stretch. I look white, and never “checked the box”
at any time in my life.

But yes, my dear grandmama is quite black, as are her brothers and their children.

Hey, I’m a BMB major going for my MBA myself. What sort of more lucrative pursuits are you envolved
in? Was money the main thing driving the change? If not, what was?