Originally posted by Dowding:
Miko2d - I admit that you never used that phrase, but OTOH I never said you did; I think you are either too careful to avoid such obvious bigotry or you sincerely believe in 'science' behind your theories.
But that 'theory' of yours is ammunition for racists that DO believe in the 'Great White Race'.
I'll rephrase, taking your points into account:
You share Miko2d's belief that black people are intellectually inferior to the White race
Is that accurate?
Yes, thank you.
As a minor note, the theory is not mine and I never climed it as such - I am an engineer, not a sociologist or psychometrist.
I am not sure whose theory it is but I guess you may call it "Herrnstein and Murray theory" or "Bell Curve theory". While those people are not original creators of the idea, they are the ones that brought it to the attention of the general public with their book.
As an engineer, I believe numbers untill a flaw in calculations is exposed. If you care to consider it bigotry, it is your prerogative. Many times in history simple scientific theories were considered bigotry, plasphemy, immoralities and other bad things. Some of them eventually got disproved and sometimes replaced by even more outrageous theories but many of them is a common knowlege now.
As for that theory providing ammunition to racists, there are two points. First, theory is a theory. It does not care about rights or wrongs, good or evil. It's a knowlege and it has no moral loading. You may wish to withhold knowlege for some reason but presuming knowlege evil is illogical.
Second, and it was clearly stated in the same book, this theory provides ammo not to the racists but against them.
It clearly states that many social problems more prevalent among blacks are easily explained by the objective difference in IQ distributions rather then by some kind of inherent "evillness" or "sub-humanness". It clearly follows from the theory that every person of any race should be given equal consideration and judged by his personal score on his/her test - since statistics is irrelevant in individual cases and there is no other difference between individual people then those shown in their test scores.
Of course people dealing with large populations do have to consider averages and distributions.
You may probably want to place more cardiological hospitals in the areas with black populations because avarage black is about six times more likely to have hypertension.
You would probably justify building more genetic labs in Great Neck, NY, because considerable part of the population there is jewish and more likely to have carry certain genetic defects. While only women after 35 or those with special indications undergo amniosintesis, all jewish couples are supposed to do that. At the same time you would probably not want to waste money on placing police precincts there as densely as in some inner-city.
Also, trying to fix imaginary wrongs by discriminating against an individual with better score is still a discrimination. If a white person is regected in favor of a black one because an institution feels pressured by government policies or pressure groups actions, how is that better? We cannot right slavery that was performed 200 years ago, but we can stop ignoring individual discrimination right now. I will bet that once no individuals are discriminated against personally, there will be no racial discrimination as well.
What I am stating here I consider a law of nature. Laws of nature can be ignored for a while but cannot be violated.
When a new one is discovered or the old one is proven incorrect, many people feel threatened. So what? May be I am wrong and the truth will come out. I will be relieved in that case unless the new theory explaining why black/white scores discrepancy is even more unplesant to hear.
I agree with you that some knowlege may be dangerous in some people heads, especially if it is just a misquoted bit taken out of context.
That is why I am not posting my views on the white supremacy sites.
P.S. Women's intelligence allegedly has the same mean as men's but narrower distribution.
Would you care to speculate what concequences we would see in the society if that was true?
miko
