Are Blacks dumber than the rest of us?

balder:

you can't judge a particular race's abilities based on the extent of its scientific/technological achievements. its nearly impossible to do so logically. thats where you get into this whole mess with factoring in sociological indicators, the implications of european imperialism, economic disparities, etc. there's no way to separate the myriad of unquantifiable variables there.

what you must do is consider physical characteristics...

elbaz:

i think youre heading in the right direction by examining physical differences between the races. but your conclusions dont seem logical at all. on one hand, you accede that blacks have an elongated muscle or whatever that makes them better athletes. you even go so far as to assert (without any real evidence) that black kids are naturally leaner and more sculpted than other children.

but when it comes to intelligence, its "wait a minute. this is the ONE place where the races are all equal. here is where nurture overcomes nature 100% and nothing is rooted in biology." thats absolutely ridiculous. anyone with half-a-brain knows that intelligence is in large part determined by genetic factors. even if he were adopted and reared by twenty harvard professors, a child begotten by two retarded people could never become the next stephen hawking.

why the fuck is it so difficult for people to consider the idea that maybe there are physical differences in the brain? i think its highly probably, especially given that we apparently have already proven that blacks are naturally the superior race in athletic terms. and moreover, the notion that certain physical characteristics or susceptibilities are invariably tied to race is not a new one. white and asian women are more prone to breast cancer. there are many diseases and disorders that occur at abnormally high rates in the jewish population. blacks get less skin cancer.

are you seriously going to sit there and tell me that the same genetic system that dictates what type of skin color, facial structure, and physical susceptibilities the descendents from a particular region of the world will have is going to say, "whoa, hands off here when it comes to cerebral structure/neural pathways/brain chemistry, boys?"

there are three reasons people lie to themselves in order to avoid the issue of genetic inequality in the races:

1) people are scared to admit that maybe, just maybe, the idea of the unlimited individual, the person who can "be all that he can be with diligence and hard work," is going down the tubes. because if its true that genetics can determine in large part our capabilities, then the notion of the egalitarian, horatio algers equal playing-ground that western society has taken so far is in dire straits.

2) another falsity thats crippling people's belief is that people tend to assign a hierarchy to human qualities. the western dichotomy of mind v. body is as old as descartes, and thats a really fucking generous estimate. of course, the west went through the enlightenment, the age of reason, and in doing so assigned greater value to the mind than to the body. the fact that intellectuals have ruled the west for the past several hundred years needs no justification. so now, if it is seen that you are lacking in mental abilities you are instantly at a hopeless disadvantage in our western, capitalist, materialistic and value-conditioned society.

3) the third method and most potent avenue of self-deceit is that people incorrectly equate Equality with equality in terms of ability. fortunately, thomas jefferson did not make this mistake. back then, he and his contemporaries believed in a natural aristocracy wherein the most able would rise to the top, despite the fact that in the end, the intrinsic value of every human being was equal and unquestionable. true, maybe it was just a way of smoothing over an unswallowable contradiction, but its better than the lie people today tell. what invariably happens in peoples heads is they think, "oh well black people are stupider than we are so they're unequal. wait, but, 2 + 2 can't equal 5. i was taught that we're all created equal. so that conclusion i just came to must be false. yeah, black people arent stupider. they're just like me!!! yay!!" in the end, the only racists are those who eschew the harsh realities of the real world with those of their fantastical, idealistic imaginations. they cast an unreal light on certain races to make those races "fit" their current paradigms of the world. thats fucking sick.

i know some people out there are prolly like, "oh, well, this guy must be racist." no, im just facing reality. you're telling me that the 300-year institution of slavery had absolutely no effect whatsoever on the black population in america? wtf? think about it: there's a group of black people in africa. comparatively, they're just like the rest of the world, perhaps. there's smart ones, dumb ones, athletic ones, non-athletic ones, whatever. suddenly, they're captured in a war by an opposing tribe and sold into slavery on portuguese ship. yeah, 1/3 of them die on the way to america. who are those dead ones going to be? the people with fragile bodies, the people who have mustered their life energies for the pursuit of academic knowledge, the people who for one reason or another have neglected to take as much care of their physiques as their athletic kin.

yeah, the process keeps going on and on and on for hundreds of years. eventually, you have a disproportionate number of black people in america whose abilities lie in the physical because those are the survivors, those are the people who can stand being crammed like sardines on a ship for three weeks with rotting corpses and fecal matter building up all around them, those are the people who can tend the fields for 18 hours a day for years upon years without contracting life threatening diseases, etc.

i know this is true bc a nerd like me could never last long enough to propagate his genes. where do you think people like me went?

i believe the blacks in america are a more homogenous, concentrated group of individuals than their african kin. that's it. and books that study only the american black population like The Bell Curve prove this belief. im sure that if you consider the african population on the whole it is comparative to the white, asian, hispanic populations worldwide in terms of physical and mental capabilities.

all the people out there who think that im being racist are ascribing to one of those three fallacies i listed above. they cant believe that blacks are particularly disadvantaged in certain areas bc to do so challenges their own paradigms, values, and sobering beliefs about what man is. i assign no values to my conclusion; i accept it bc inductively it makes more sense than the utopian alternative.

 

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At first glance? I'm talking genetically. How someone looks at first glance is irrelevant. And thousands of years isn't enough time for peopel to evolve into stupidity.

It seems to me that people have brought up a lot of hard evidence but if you're not convinced read that book.

 

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shit. i will be sooooooo pissed if the hard-core idealists from a few pages back dont show up to read my post.

 

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It'll probably get about as much consideration as mine did a while ago, which said similar things in a less eloquent fashion.

Most don't like to consider anything beyond their own comfort zone. As I noted before, the brain is one area which has always remained off limits for serious study in equality, simply because I believe most don't want to know that they may be wrong about the whole "born equal" thing. You've expanded the idea into directions I hadn't considered.

 

Nice post, ubermich. Exactly what I was thinking, but couldn't really put down in words.

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True, very difficult to argue, I just find their lack of a written language and technological achievement conspicious, especially since they are the oldest race in the world.

 

While I can appreciate your sentiment (trying to avoid all cultural and whatever other type of bias) ubermich, I do think your reasoning is flawed at the point below, which kind of messes up your case.

That's an exageration. I believe there was a post way back that illustrated the difference between the how the brain and other systems evolve. The brain took much much longer to evolve that the differences between skin colors - which is as I previously stated, an evolutionary reaction to longitude forced from the regulation of the production of vitamin D in the skin. I don't remember for sure, but I thought that race was very difficult to determine from DNA.. .and IF they did exist, there is no way to know that they influence the development of the brain, or that if they DID, that influence would be negative.

This is a non-sequiter. Nature/Nuture has nothing to do with your claim or that which any others are saying. If you pursue that argument wouldn't you be making claims regarding culture rather than nature? We're the nature aspect in this thread right?

Yeah, but NOBODY knows in exactly what manner, thereby leaving it impossible to establish anything about the relationship between one's DNA and their brain development (except for a few diseases I'm sure, maybe lots of them).

I do not know for SURE, but I'm almost positive that your statement here is completely ass backwards. If "little-people" can have normal kids, I would imagine that any combo can result in about any result regarding intellect. Hehe, you should meet my family! (easy on the wise cracks :bugeye: )

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I agree with what most of you have said in that someone's race won't make them dumber. But just because all humans are members of the same species doesn't mean we all necasarilly have the same mental capabilities. Remember, all dogs are of the same species and there is no doubt that some breeds are less intelligent than others. The aboriginals of australia actually have extra thick skulls and slightly lighter brains than caucasians, they also never even invented a form of shelter. Does this make them dumber? I don't know, I don't care. If you ask me, what we think of as intelligence (utilizing resources, controlling "our" environment etc) is the height of stupidity and homo-sapiens are far behind cetaceans when it comes to the true meaning of intelligence.
The average lifespan of a species is 50 million years, we've been around for 200 000 tops, do you really think we are going to last 50 million? I doubt it. Cetaceans brains are proportionately the same size as ours and they have been around for about 35 million years, they can make four and a half more sounds per unit of time than we can, that means in the time it takes us to tell someone something they could have told "someone" four and a half times more. Think about how much smarter the western civilisation alone has gotten in the past 200 years(I was tempted to say "think how much smarter we are than cavemen" but thats highly debatable) these creatures have been passing on information to eachother for so long that it is ignorant to ignore the possibility that they might know more than we do. One argument I here often is if they are smarter than us how come we can kill them. Well I don't remember when they declared war on us. War is a foreign concept to them and we emerged so quickly that they weren't ready, thats all. Its like if I put you in a snake pit naked and expected you to have a biting contest with a venomous snake. You would undoubtedly be killed but does this mean you're dumber?
Sure we might know more about guns and beer but clearly that means nothing in the big scheme of things.
We work TO eat, they play AND eat, think about that.
(sorry for getting off-topic but I just learned some of these facts myself and I was eager to educate)

 

There are some differences between races. Not all are significant, but some are and those should be used.

However the idea that one race is superior/inferior to another is just silly. It's like saying that dogs are superior to
wolves because they have learned to live with humans and get food from them.

Of course CATS are the master species !!

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My answer for the Topic to this thread:

It's a bit of a "DUMB" topic to be posting, so what does that mean?

 

How does one determine what race a person is? I have never heard an explaination of how this could be done.

 

how to tell?? ..it's all in the genes.


and...i wish this thread would just die...

 

Stupidity is in the brain of the beholder

What kind of DUMB question to start a thread is this?

Are you BLACK or something?

 

couldn't have said it better myself, Vortexx

 

All racisist should be stomped into the ground.

It's you racisists that kick all the sh*t off in the world, if it was up to me I would irradicate the lot of you.

As for what race I am... None of your damn business

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Oooh Sooky

My last reply was half-assed and really not as relevant as I would have liked it to be, so I hope this one will be better--longwinded, but better.

The original question raised was whether or not black people are dumber than the rest of "us"; well that is supremely biased from the start. Anyway, the results of this IQ test show that most of the black people that were tested rated far below the average white person and the rates of only the smallest percentage were in the mediocre level of whites. I can't argue with statistics, right? Well no, but I can argue the method.
The institution of the IQ test has been rather controversial, to say the least, and as it is becoming more and more investigated, people are finding out how inaccurate it is and how small the area of intelligence it measures. Take for example EQ; EQ is the measure of one’s emotional intelligence and depicts how intuitive one is in their dealings with others and adaptation to new environments. I have not done any studies, although, I do know from firsthand experience that black people are very quick to adapt to new situations. I am black (as stated before) and I grew up in Alabama with a majority of black people; these people were not always the best in school, but when it came to reacting to difficult situations, they--myself included--were excellent at getting turning the situation around in their favor. For example, in my elementary school, a black friend of mine was challenged to a fight by a racist white boy, I was ready to back my friend up if he was in any real danger; he told me that he could handle it and proceeded to talk his aggressor down and avoid a physical conflict while leaving the other child in tears. Referring back to EQ and IQ, while he was not the best student, he was very good with words and adapting to a given situation to produce optimal results.
IQ is the depiction of mostly reading and cognitive abilities in accordance to the given standards that society has come to expect. With that information, can one truly determine another's intelligence as a whole? I do no think so; thus, my next example is in reference to war and politics regarding Africa and Europe. Somewhere in this thread, someone said something to the effect of: I am wish I were black so there would be no war. Sorry, but that is really offensive on many levels. Prior to any interaction with Europe, Africa and it's some 800 tribes were in a state of constant conflict, warring with one another and enslaving their enemies. Africa up to the 1400-1500s had been content in being a nomadic, then advancing into a series of tribal communities; they did not attack each other for greed however, they fought for territorial dominance, much like most animals in the world. Based on what we have all been taught since childhood, it is bad to kill and be dumb, it is good to be smart and peaceful; that is nice, but it is not how things work. We look at animals as inferior because of a lack of the neo cortex and inferior knowledge; the early Europeans and whites today look at blacks in much the same way. Even though blacks do have a neo cortex and the same physical organs to be as smart as whites, it is assumed that they are not because they have not shown the desire to advance like whites. Now, looking back at the whole picture, it can be seen that certain species have survived based on survival instinct, and some on intelligence, the smarter one will not always win, but the one with more of a given ability. Where does any of this fit into the thread? Everywhere! As whites, it is my belief that the goal is aggrandizement and self improvement, thus creation of new devices and technology and war; the idea that progress is good, no matter how dangerous or superfluous. Asians tend to have a similar standpoint in history, but they are even more self-centered and need no one else to further themselves. Finally, blacks don't care about advancement at all, they just want to enjoy things as they are and be a part of their natural environment and not above it. All I am saying here is that if blacks were so inclined, they would be as smart and perhaps smarter than whites, however, the racial difference is a matter of preference due to topographical and environmental location.
It makes perfect sense to me, because I am really into history and seeing the mistakes of the past manifest themselves into today. The entire racist theme was started by whites and is continued by whites; the only reason that most whites do not understand blacks is because they have a completely different genetic mindset. In today's world, we are starting to look more into the perspectives of others, and I implore you all to not look at the color of a person's skin for answers, but the origin of that skin and the person and people within it. Not to sound so M.L.K., but if whites and blacks are so confused with each other to the point that they must make such egregious acts and use such insipid language, we should both take the time to look at what the other has to offer and step into the mindset of the other and their past to see just what it is that separates us. Only then will any good come from the combination of the two in a cooperative society.

Sorry for, such a long response, and for jumping around so many topics, but this subject is so vast and I don't think I got it all either. Anyway, the moral of the story is: look at and even through the person who you are questioning before you make too many assumptions.

 

qiothus

am i saying the same thing? y'know mindset and all that?

 

Um, sort of the same thing, but you in that analogy said that refer to blacks as a freak picking coconuts, and Europeans as asshole city boy. The analogy is congruent with my analysis, but the descriptions are a bit faulty.

But yes, it is mindset.

 

not mindset, but rather, stereotyping...wouldn't you say?:bugeye:

 

sorry, i get carried away sometimes! anyway the analogy was not race specific but more culture based. for instance the city boy could be a black intellectual, and the island could be the falklands (white folks-sheep herders?) or some channel island.

i have to commend you again on an excellent post!

"look more into the perspectives of others" (qiothus)

 

It is not stereotyping that makes a race act the way they do--that is mindset. Steretyping is what makes one race come up with questions like: "are blacks dumber than the rest of us? "

And Spookz,
Thanks. It is nice to know that someone thinks I have value in my words.