Post by Ahem A Rivet's ShotThe trouble with that is that right and wrong are moving targets.
For most of history holding slaves was normal and therefore considered
right by most people - including many of the slaves by all accounts! Up
until some time in the early twentieth century eugenics was considered by
many (famous and widely respected among them) people to be sound and correct
science and the only real hope for the future of mankind. Putting capitals
on them and holding them up as fixed points is false to fact and often seen
as an attempt to impose a particular flavour of morality on people who
disagree with some aspects of it.
You raise an important point.
However, I think it is possible to distinguish between what we know about
right and wrong, and current fashions.
Even when slavery was tolerated in the United States - as a pragmatic
compromise so that the country could include the South, and thus be
large enough to fight Britain - people knew the Truth, as it was written in
the Declaration of Independence: "All men are created equal".
Post by Ahem A Rivet's ShotThe current preoccupation with political correctness raised to the
level of moral imperative does sometimes make it difficult to discuss real
differences of racial origin because somewhere there's this deep seated
idea that if two things are not the same one must be better than the other.
That is cultural and starts in early education with "What's your favourite
colour" and less formally with "Who do you support".
I think that it's difficult to discuss "real differences of racial origin" for
other reasons.
It's true that of two skin colors that are not the same, one _is_ better for
avoiding sunburn. But the other is better for getting vitamin D naturally
from being out in the sun.
But that isn't where the problem lies.
If there _were_ a real difference in IQ due to race, _that_ would be a big
problem, not because being smarter is _assumed_ to be better - it _is_
better - but because the reason horses aren't allowed to vote is because
horses aren't as smart as people.
The fact that humans have higher intelligence than other species of animals
is the *reason why* humans, and only humans, are recognized as persons
with rights. So if blacks had less of that, it would be an easy jump to thinking
of them as _less human_.
The _good_ news is that there _isn't_ a "real difference" of _this sort_ between
the races.
Not because there shouldn't be, according to liberal political dogma. But
because of observed fact.
- Observed fact 1: The pervasiveness of inequality faced by black people in
the U.S. is _easily_ enough to account for the measured 15 points difference
in I.Q. between blacks and whites found by one study.
- Observed fact 2: To examine the hypothesis that intelligence differences
exist between the races, one should look for a case where it will be the easiest
to measure. Of the various human races, the smallest brain weight is found in
the Bushmen/Hottentots/Pygmies of Africa, and the Australian Aborigine. But
it's a general law that intelligence is also determined by brain size relative to
body size, and the Pygmies are short.
So if there were any intellectually inferior humans about, the Australian Aborigine
would be the most obvious case.
And I recall reading of how an explorer who lived among the Aborigines for a
while was impressed at their incredible feats of the intellect in remembering and
recognizing an immense catalogue of varieties of the local fauna and flora, thus
enabling them to survive in their harsh environment.
So they're geniuses, not dummies.
- Observed fact 3: All humans everywhere have spoken language. Indigenous
languages show as much grammatical sophistication as any other languages.
- Observed fact 4: In the case of the racial groups that appear to be *superior*
to the baseline of white Europeans, cultural reasons appear to exist that are
sufficient to account for their superiority from environmental causes: the
_bar mitzvah_ in the case of Jews, and the Imperial Civil Service Examinations
in the case of East Asians.
I'll grant you that this is a very limited amount of evidence, but it's what I've
managed to find out _for myself_, given that usually the books and essays
that argue for racial equality *don't* take seriously the concept that the
(intellectual, rather than moral) equality of all races is something that
actually needs to be tested and proved, because possibly it could be the
other way.
Stephen Jay Gould at least _mentioned_ the existence of this issue.
So what I'd _like_ to see is someone show that all the races are equal in
intelligence in a book packed with meticulous examination of vast amounts
of evidence gathered from all over the world, like _The Origin of Species_.
I'm not holding my breath, but based on the evidence above, I think that
racial equality is extremely likely. There may be slight differences, but the
overlap between the bell curves for each race would make them invisible.
But there are "real differences" between ethnic groups deriving from genetics.
But they have to do with _details_, not the essence of what makes us human.
However, details on their own can be troublesome.
So, it might indeed be the case, once we finally eradicate the vast amounts
of economic and social inequality between the races that now exist, that
people of some minority groups are still under-represented in some fields.
Particularly in the STEM fields, which are likely to be the ones so highly
valued for this to be a concern.
Black people may be over-represented in music for cultural reasons, since
for so long it was the only field in which they were _allowed_ to be
successful.
Some indigenous peoples may be more likely to be dyslexic, since dyslexia
wouldn't be selected against for people *without a written language*.
I can, therefore, see how real differences between the races could
come into conflict with our ideals of racial equality - but I think that's
a problem we will have to face in the far future, not today.
John Savard