One Black Man Might Be President: One Million Black Men Are in Prison

[Albert Mond]

Originally Posted by Saya

Ignoring biology is fine when it doesn't come into play, seeing as there is no aggression gene.

No aggression genes?

[Saya]

No gene or genes XD Well, should mention that there are a few disorders that have aggressive symptoms, but you should be more worried about someone in your family having it than your race, and thats the thing, if you want to take that angle you have to show that it runs in families regardless of socio-economic factors.

And before anyone posts it that aggression gene found in mice affected serotonin levels, of which there is no significant difference between black americans and white americans.

[PinstripesAndPithHelmets]

Originally Posted by AshtrayKitten

Who the heck are all these people trying to derail our race discussion????


Why not an entire race?

Aggression isn't a disorder, but something affected by hormonal levels in addition to upbringing and environment. So can hormonal levels differ along the lines of the classical concept of race?

Let me give some better examples than that study, to better present the circumstances. (I'll make sure to point out what is my opinion and speculation so Pinstripes can keep up in case he reads this.)


1) Babies

Black babies mature more quickly than White babies, while Oriental babies mature more slowly. African babies in a sitting position are more able to keep their heads up and backs straight from the start. White babies often need six to eight weeks to do these things.

Black babies spend the least time in the womb. In America, 51% of Black children have been born by week 39 of pregnancy compared with 33% of White children.


2) Hormones

One study of college students showed testosterone levels were 10 to 20% higher in Blacks than in Whites. An older sample of U.S. military veterans saw Blacks having levels 3% higher than Whites. In another study, of university students, Black Americans had 10 to 15% higher levels than White Americans.

Testosterone affects things like self-concept, aggression, altruism, crime, and sexuality, in men and women. Testosterone also controls things like muscle mass and the deepening of the voice in the teenage years. It appears in different levels from race to race.

The list goes on and on, describing common attributes of people in the general grouping of black, white, east asian etc. If you prefer the phrase "regional distribution of differing traits" to "race," so be it. They both describe the same thing.

If there is more doubt I'll provide examples until the cows come home.




--OPINION!*(!_Pp!p!)-!!$#!--

Are blacks more aggressive? As a race, it seems they are biologically more predisposed to it.

Does this mean every black person is 10% more criminal than every white person? No. It can mean there exists a higher occurrence of delinquency among blacks than whites, with the rest of blacks being law abiding as any other ethnicity. It can mean any number of things.

It's unlikely that biology is not a factor, and ignoring it entirely when examining the issue will always, always, always lead to an imperfect conclusion.

Does it alone explain the disparities when comparing a white family, neighborhood, and country with a black one? Probably not.

--OPINION END--

What studies are these? Who conducted them, and who funded them?

[AshtrayKitten]

Originally Posted by Saya

Its not the same thing because you're lumping one group of people, blacks, altogether when it has already been established there are more genetic differences within a race than there is outside a race.

The two statements have nothing to do with each other. Genes are building blocks of which race, and many other things, are emergent qualities.

White people are more likely to be jailed for embezzlement, forgery and fraud than black people. Does that mean that white people are genetically prepositioned to be more greedy than black people? More white people live in rich neighbours than black people. Are white people genetically prepositioned to be rich?

Blacks actually make up a large share of white collar crimes, about 25 to 33% depending on the specific offense.

Haven't I already said more than once that environment should be taken into account, the same as biology?

Does [biology] alone explain the disparities when comparing a white family, neighborhood, and country with a black one? Probably not.

In America, amongst black people they are more likely to live in poor neighbourhoods, have higher rates of unemployment and single parenthood. While a lot of black people have come a long way, there is still a glaring fissure between the very rich and the very poor, and no matter what the race of its occupants, ghettos tend to be very high risk areas for crime. Its a hell of a lot more logical to look at the background of the criminal rather than the race; what type of neighbourhood and family did they come from? What was their financial standing? Its a far more logical stance than saying there's some sort of gene that makes them more aggresive.

Once again...

Washington, D.C. enjoys the highest average annual salaries and is second only to Alaska in personal income per capita. It leads the nation in about every category of crime including murder, robbery, aggravated assault, and vehicle theft. D.C. also has the country's strictest gun control, highest police costs per capita, highest ration of police and correctional officers per citizen, and highest rate of incarceration. Its permanent population is over 80% Black. West Virginia, which has the nation's lowest crime rate, suffers from chronic poverty and has the highest unemployment in the U.S. It also has the fewest police per capita. West Virginia is over 96% White.

Why is it 'more logical' to assume background is responsible? One can just as easily say its due to that same nature that blacks finds themselves coming from those backgrounds in the first place.

From The Color of Crime:

"Some may argue that blacks commit violence against whites because whites are more likely to have money and are therefore more promising robbery targets. However, of the 1,140,670 black-on-white acts of violence reported in 1994, only 173,374 were robberies. The remaining 84.8 percent were aggravated assaults, rapes, and simple assaults, which presumably were not motivated by profit. ****, in particular, has nothing to do with the presumed wealth of the victim."

Those college students and soldiers who have higher testosterone levels? Were they more likely to commit crimes? Chances are not if they have a stable career in the military or are able to go to university or college. And enviromental factors certainly take a place on one's testosterone levels, excercise and sexual activity can be a factor for example. So can threat levels, if a male feels threatened his testosterone levels raise. It can be said that as black men perhaps they get laid more, get more excercise or are more likely to feel threatened. The social and psychological aspect of race play a bigger role than 19th biology.

"It can be said." I'll assume you meant to say 19th century biology. The subject matter is hardly outdated, to the angst of strident PC groups. I was providing an offhand example as to how its entirely possible for genes to influence race to influence behavior, since they influence so much already.

Feel free to provide similarly fanciful explanations for these:

Originally Posted by Minority organ donors needed

Medical officials say there is a great need for kidney, heart, lung, liver,
pancreas and small bowel donations from minorities. Tissue from minority
donors has the best chance of being accepted by a minority recipient's body.

"Minority patients need minority donors," said Deborah Rodriguez, public
education coordinator for Life Quest Organ Recovery Services and herself a
Hispanic kidney recipient.

With some organs like kidneys, matching the ethnicity of donor and recipient
is particularly important, said Patti McHale, procurement coordinator for
Mayo Transplant Services.

Clearly, the organs do not understand that there is no difference between blacks and whites.

Originally Posted by Racial groupings match genetic profiles, Stanford study finds

Without knowing how the participants had identified themselves, Risch and his team ran the results through a computer program that grouped individuals according to patterns of the 326 signposts. This analysis could have resulted in any number of different clusters, but only four clear groups turned up. And in each case the individuals within those clusters all fell within the same self-identified racial group.

"This shows that people's self-identified race/ethnicity is a nearly perfect indicator of their genetic background," Risch said.

A racist computer virus, altering the findings of such studies, is on the loose.

Originally Posted by Toward a Unified Theory of Black America

Glaeser and Fryer, along with David M. Cutler, another Harvard economist, are the authors of a paper that traffics in one form of genetic theorizing. It addresses the six-year disparity in life expectancy for blacks versus whites, arguing that much of the gap is due to a single factor: a higher rate of salt sensitivity among African-Americans, which leads to higher rates of cardiovascular disease, stroke and kidney disease.

It can be said that because salt is white, whenever an African-American ingests any, he gets very tense and stresses out his internal organs.

Originally Posted by Japanese Scientists Identify Ear Wax Gene

Earwax may not play a prominent part in human history but at least a small role for it has now been found by a team of Japanese researchers.

Earwax comes in two types, wet and dry. The wet form predominates in Africa and Europe, where 97 percent or more of the people have it, and the dry form among East Asians, while populations of Southern and Central Asia are roughly half and half. By comparing the DNA of Japanese with each type, the researchers were able to identify the gene that controls which type a person has, they report in the Monday issue of Nature Genetics...

...They write that earwax type and armpit odor are correlated, since populations with dry earwax, such as those of East Asia, tend to sweat less and have little or no body odor, whereas the wet earwax populations of Africa and Europe sweat more and so may have greater body odor. Several Asian features, such as small nostrils and the fold of fat above the eyelid, are conjectured to be adaptations to the cold. Less sweating, the Japanese authors suggest, may be another adaptation to the cold climate in which the ancestors of East Asian peoples are thought to have lived.

And so on.

Ignoring biology is fine when it doesn't come into play, seeing as there is no aggression gene.

It doesn't come from the Aggression Fairy.

[AshtrayKitten]

Originally Posted by PinstripesAndPithHelmets

What studies are these? Who conducted them, and who funded them?

Why, they are the studies of The JustUs Group, supervised by Professor and Grand Wizard Gerald Sturmacher and funded by the We're Not Racists... Foundation, of course.

Kidding aside, I think my examples in bold satisfy your request for legitimate sources? I'll post links when I can if you like.

[PinstripesAndPithHelmets]

Originally Posted by AshtrayKitten

Kidding aside, I think my examples in bold satisfy your request for legitimate sources? I'll post links when I can if you like.

I would like that very much.

I can see how your argument functions, and it only works if you stop immediately short of classical 19th C. racism. Even then, you're on shaky ground. Admittedly I carried your argument out a step, but that really doesn't mean I'm wrong in my assertion. Proving your motive is rather difficult, and you'll always be able to hide under the cloak of scientific realism.

You've, so far, made a rather predictable case. I'm interested to see where you'll take it from here, to see if you can inject some life into the rotting corpse of Victorian racialist discourse. Your entire conclusion hinges on where you pulled your information from, and I highly doubt the source to be reputable. Hence why I'd like to see the links.

[AshtrayKitten]

Originally Posted by PinstripesAndPithHelmets

I would like that very much.

I can see how your argument functions, and it only works if you stop immediately short of classical 19th C. racism. Even then, you're on shaky ground. Admittedly I carried your argument out a step, but that really doesn't mean I'm wrong in my assertion. Proving your motive is rather difficult, and you'll always be able to hide under the cloak of scientific realism.

You've, so far, made a rather predictable case. I'm interested to see where you'll take it from here, to see if you can inject some life into the rotting corpse of Victorian racialist discourse. Your entire conclusion hinges on where you pulled your information from, and I highly doubt the source to be reputable. Hence why I'd like to see the links.

Fair enough and all well said.

Taking into consideration how similar logic was used by not-so-open-minded racists of days past (sans the arbitrary, relative conclusions of superiority or inferiority), your assumptions weren't so outrageous.

I had links demonstrating the broader anatomical differences I mentioned (it's basic forensic stuff,) but they've been lost and are not easy to locate. That isn't to say they consist of obscure racist lore, but rather, because the issue is so delicate, you'll have as hard a time finding information denying those factoids as those affirming them. Here's one googled:

A height chart for men of "White" race/ethnicity*, showing average height changes with age.
...
For male Height charts of other race/ethnic groups, choose: White, Black, Hispanic, or Other.
...
The data source for this chart is the NHANES III survey, conducted in America during 1988 to 1994.


*The Race-Ethnicity categories used in the NHANES III survey were: Non-Hispanic White, Non-Hispanic Black, Mexican-American, and Other. The "Other" category includes all Hispanics, regardless of race, who were not Mexican-American and also includes all non-Hispanics from racial groups other than white or black, including Aleut, Eskimo, American Indian, Asian and Pacific Islander.


www.
halls.
md
/chart/men-height-w.htm

Here are the links for the medical examples I so crassly provided in the previous post:

Minority organ donors needed

jacksonville.
com
/tu-online/stories/080501/met_6870358.html

Racial groupings match genetic profiles, Stanford study finds

med.
stanford.
edu
/news_releases/2005/january/racial-data.htm

Toward a Unified Theory of Black America

www.
nytimes.
com
/2005/03/20/magazine/20HARVARD.html?_r=1

Japanese Scientists Identify Ear Wax Gene

www.
nytimes.
com
/2006/01/29/science/29cnd-ear.html

With that out of the way...

Your entire conclusion hinges on where you pulled your information from, and I highly doubt the source to be reputable.

This is where the discussion gets disorganized.

It is fact that differences exist in people along classical lines of 'race'.

The reason there is so much focus on how there are more genetic differences within a race then between them (something which has nothing to do with what the genes emergently produce), is because there is nothing to dispute about things like morphology or hormone levels. They are simply not mentioned.

Looking at this fact, it's my belief that genetics may play a role in explaining, at least partially, larger trends amongst people sharing certain makeups. It has yet to be proven that the differing traits have no effect, and there is no logical reason in studying this to acknowledge the differences and then to dismiss them out of hand.

Now the degree to which they influence people is an entirely different matter. One theory might say they are responsible for everything. Another might say it holds influence, but at an indeterminable or minuscule level. The theory that says it can have no bearing is just as intellectually reckless as the first one.

[Eclipsing the Son]

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=40e_1223807278

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=498_1214694407

[PinstripesAndPithHelmets]

Originally Posted by AshtrayKitten

It is fact that differences exist in people along classical lines of 'race'.

The reason there is so much focus on how there are more genetic differences within a race then between them (something which has nothing to do with what the genes emergently produce), is because there is nothing to dispute about things like morphology or hormone levels. They are simply not mentioned.

Looking at this fact, it's my belief that genetics may play a role in explaining, at least partially, larger trends amongst people sharing certain makeups. It has yet to be proven that the differing traits have no effect, and there is no logical reason in studying this to acknowledge the differences and then to dismiss them out of hand.

Now the degree to which they influence people is an entirely different matter. One theory might say they are responsible for everything. Another might say it holds influence, but at an indeterminable or minuscule level. The theory that says it can have no bearing is just as intellectually reckless as the first one.

Fair enough. On the surface, it looked to me as though you were preparing a springboard to launch into a racist polemic, but you do bring up some good points. I'll grant that just because something is unpopular or politically incorrect (ie, studying differences in racial characteristics) doesn't mean it shouldn't be done. I made the, perhaps hasty, assumption that you were going to attempt a connection between modern scientific study and some sort of Victorian, pseudo-Darwinian argument for racial superiority. I'm still wary of your motives, but I do see the subtle, but present, differences between what you've actually said thus far, and what I fear you'll bring the argument to. Perhaps next time I'll take my head out of the age of empire and wait for you to finish before opening a broadside.

[AshtrayKitten]

No problem. I have no interest in giving any conclusions for the sake of arguing.