Are Africans less smart?

[Web Rider]

I don’t think alcohol should ever be a excuse for a crime. Oh, I was drunk so I ran over that child is a real good defenses for vehicular manslaughter and drunk driving. If someone can’t hold their alcohol they should not drink. Sorry I used the word drunk, because this happens a lot without drinks or drugs being involved.

that's a very black and white POV. have you ever been drunk? I'm willing to bet most people on this forum(of age) have had a little too much at least once, I know I have.

 

No, how likely are they to kill their spouse again. The spouse is already dead. Hate crime laws are made to punishment more sever because of likelihood the perpetrator will commit the crime again.

and since when are people limited to one spouse? They could get remarried, the other cheats, happens again.

 

Do you consider sexual preference a race or religious belief a race? If so I would agree with you.

no, but that's also because I don't recognize the existance of "race" outside argumenative purposes. If somebody's motives were hateful, I don't care if it was white on white, or black on yellow. Hate was the motive, no different than money, sex, or what have you.

 

Good enough, but the reason if I shot a cop trying to arrest me while I am committing a crime is a capital crime is because if I’m crazy enough to shot a police officer then no one is safe. The same argument could be made for people that commit hate crimes.

I did say something about context right? *checks* yeah, so see, that's a different context. To be honest, cop killers are given higher sentences because cops are out there protecting people to killing people who protect is more taboo. In any case, in you're argument, you have already prooved yourself a danger through armed robbery. You shoot to defend a crime, which is a crime, and then kill somebody, which is also a crime. And you shooting at a cop does not mean "nobody is safe" it simply means that you, a criminal, felt like shooting at cops while committing a crime.

 

Jame Byrd Jr. Explain to me how you would tell Mr. Byrd's family this was not a hate crime.

 

While you at it expalin to me how you would tell Paul Broussard's mother that her son's death was not a hate crime.

 

I wish we could do away with hate-crime laws, but without ending racism, sexism and bigotry of all types we can’t (I know bigotry will never end, but it is a dream).

whaa whaa appeal to authority. Racially motivated and malicious crimes, yes. they warrant more punishment for the way in which they were done. But your generic murder of a black guy by a white guy does not warrant "hate crime" laws because race was a motivator. We, as Americans, have a right to be racist. Acting on it is the problem. Being a racist is within our rights and not grounds for more punishment.

 

While I respect your opinion, you will never convince me that hate-crime laws are not a necessary evil. So I find continuing this debate pointless. I assure you I will read your response, but I will not continue unless you write something that really strikes a nerve. Thank you.

 

YOU'RE A *STRING OF CURSE-WORDS!!!*, get your attention? Kidding..yeesh, seriously, I kid. Please don't pull BS like this. If you're not gonna debate, don't leave me with an argument and then say: "but I think you're wrong so I don't care what you think." If you're not gonna debate, don't argue at all and then say: "well, that's you're opinion, but I don't want to debate this anymore."

 

Well...have you tried slamming Africans in the same way he did with the Europeans?

The main element you seem to forget, is that he's white and slamming white people. Black people can slam black people. Asians can slam Asians. The list goes on. Generally accepted that you can't be a racist against...yourself.

Yes.

And no, racisim is an unfounded bigotry against a certain selection of people basted on an arbitrary factor. Such as skin color, eye shape, or nose size. I can still slam white people and be racist, heck it ain't even hard.

 

Then I wonder if the problem you have with this PC issue stems from a generalized state of things or from anecdotal events. Granted, the PC movement is strong in the US, but that's not the problem, it's how you can sue the crap out of people the second you get "insulted". IMO, the problem is deeper then a PC movement, it's how judges in the US seem to attribute sentences left and right, encouraging morons to sue for personal profit.

No, that's not it. I dislike it because it's gone beyond the point of gving everyone a little identity they can fit in with, to attempting to make everyone feel special. And when everybody is special, nobody is. The kind of detriment it does to society is HUGE. It sets everyone up to make the "me first" generation look altruistic and it divides society by doing exacty what it sought to undo, it's putting people in "generalized" cultures associated with an illusion of race based on their skin color. My issues with the PS movement could, and have filled term papers.

[mimartin]

Kidding..yeesh, seriously, I kid. Please don't pull BS like this. If you're not gonna debate, don't leave me with an argument and then say: "but I think you're wrong so I don't care what you think." If you're not gonna debate, don't argue at all and then say: "well, that's you're opinion, but I don't want to debate this anymore."

I never said you were wrong. I will debate a topic, but when it becomes point less, it is point less. Are you going to change your mind? I can see your point of view and I don’t agree with it. I stated mine and you don’t agree with it.

 

I fail to see how repeating each of our perspectives will change that. I actually agree with you and Totenkopf in that hate-crimes are misused and not appropriate in a majority of the cases they are used. However, in the two examples I pointed out you will never convince me that hate crime laws are not necessary. Much like Houston crime lab, I wouldn’t throw out the law just those that abuse it.

 

that's a very black and white POV. have you ever been drunk? I'm willing to bet most people on this forum(of age) have had a little too much at least once, I know I have.

Yes, I drink. Yes, I get drunk and yes, I’ve driven drunk. Still do all of them, but the last as I will never drive after drinking. I also have never murdered anyone even while drunk.

 

Have someone you loved murdered by a drunk driver and let see if you don’t have the same narrow point of view. I was never able to say I was sorry, never able to marry her. So no, I do not have much respect for people that cannot hold their alcohol. (See you touched that nerve)

[SilentScope001]

Uh, sorry to interrupt your discussion over hate speech, but...

 

The controversial DNA pioneer at the centre of a race row has apologised for appearing to suggest that Africans were less intelligent than whites.

 

Happy?

[Ctrl Alt Del]

Uh, sorry to interrupt your discussion over hate speech, but...

 

The controversial DNA pioneer at the centre of a race row has apologised for appearing to suggest that Africans were less intelligent than whites.

 

Happy?

 

They won't be.

 

Seems it's funnier to discuss his thories back when he said that, than why he apologized.

[Totenkopf]

Well......why did he apologize? He does have a history of being a wild-card. There are the stated reasons and then possibly the real reasons (not saying that the two are never the same, btw).

[John Galt]

If he believed what he was saying he should not have apologized unless he really has come to believe otherwise.

[Dagobahn Eagle]

I haven't checked how much veracity there is to this claim, but I want to make a post on how I dislike the knee-jerk reactions I hear from people on this.

 

Whether Watson is off his rocker or not, should he be allowed, in western society at least, to make these claims w/o fear of being brought up on some kind of charges?

Should I be allowed to say that Nigerians are better protected against the sun than Spaniards due to their darker skin colour... without facing charges? Or that Iranians have stronger teeth than Norsemen? What about South Asians being shorter than Europeans on average? Or that they are more likely to get diabetes?

 

Of course I should.

 

As was said:

There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so.

Face it, humans have evolved separated from one another. We have different bone structures, different skin colours, different eye shapes, different this, different that, and some of the differences are really interesting. The sherpas, for example, rather than decrease the flow of blood to their feet when they start freezing, increase it. This prevents them from feeling cold, as this feeling usually starts at the feet, and comes at the cost of the body growing cold slightly faster. I actually wish I could do that.

 

And yet... all of a sudden when it comes to intelligence we're supposedly perfectly equal? Gimme a break. The question is not whether or not there's a difference in intelligence. Of course there is. The question is whether or not the difference is big enough to matter. And before you jump at me and call me a racist idiot, no, I don't think it is. And even if it did, is that really the end of the world? Left-handed people are more creative than right-handed people, but does that turn the world upside down for anyone? Nope, it's a given fact of life.

 

The mature thing to do here is not to deny the truth. If (I stress the 'if') Africans are slightly less smart on average than us due to genes, the mature thing to do is to accept it and move on. If something needs to be done, fine. Otherwise, let it go. It's that simple. People many hundred years ago didn't want to face that the Earth was round, guess what, they just had to bite the bullet and accept it. And they did. And that was a far bigger thing than this.

 

To round off: Politically correct stance≠Fact.

[Totenkopf]

......I dislike the knee-jerk reactions I hear from people on this.

 

Anything in particular? I think most of us seem to agree that he should be allowed to spout off like he did. We are, afterall, free to react to him in whatever manner we like (from rejection to acceptance of his "claim").

[John Galt]

@Dagobahn=> I agree. Asserting universal equality of capabilities requires denying the effect of the ongoing evolutionary process.

 

However, IF Africans(or any other group for that matter) are somewhat less intelligent on average, what does that mean?

 

I don't think I've ever met a person of truly average intelligence. I think dealing with people in such huge and haphazardly-defined groups(what defines "African?") is inherently racist. Also, correlation doesn't necessarily mean causation, and especially with Africa there are many other factors involved that could horribly skew the results for any such study.

[Corinthian]

Isn't everything racist nowadays?

[Darth InSidious]

Isn't he speaking with Clinton Dawkins at some aren't-we-clever-speech-making-mcthing soon? As I recall, Dawkins was asked on a TV programme a while back about this and dodged the question of Watson's comments.

 

As for his beliefs, he's the brainless one. Racism can only be attributed to a defective brain, IMO. The only Africans who are by definition stupid are Afro-centrists, who may also be described as 'bonkers', 'completely out of their tree', 'wacko' etc etc.

[Ctrl Alt Del]

Face it, humans have evolved separated from one another. We have different bone structures, different skin colours, different eye shapes, different this, different that, and some of the differences are really interesting. The sherpas, for example, rather than decrease the flow of blood to their feet when they start freezing, increase it. This prevents them from feeling cold, as this feeling usually starts at the feet, and comes at the cost of the body growing cold slightly faster. I actually wish I could do that.

 

And yet... all of a sudden when it comes to intelligence we're supposedly perfectly equal? Gimme a break. The question is not whether or not there's a difference in intelligence. Of course there is. The question is whether or not the difference is big enough to matter. And before you jump at me and call me a racist idiot, no, I don't think it is. And even if it did, is that really the end of the world? Left-handed people are more creative than right-handed people, but does that turn the world upside down for anyone? Nope, it's a given fact of life.

 

Well, shouldn't intelligence have developed more on environments where it's more needed? I mean, living on the savannas or on the deep African jungles, is like survival of the fittest, and what humans everywhere have of special that makes us different from each other is the sentience. So, we got that living on those harsh environments is harder than, let's say, the Italian hills? The Spanish plains? The Swiss Alps?

[Dagobahn Eagle]

How about Norwegians, many of which for many, many years have lived in isolated little mountain villages? Out with social intelligence:D.

[mur'phon]

Out with social intelligence

 

So true, makes me feel stupid every time I travel abroad

[PoiuyWired]

Well, first off how do you define smart? I mean, the demographics of the mental ability to acomplish various graphs also varies quite a bit within each ethnic groups. Plus, are we talking pure biological diffances?

 

I can see that some culture maybe more advanced or "smart" than the others, but yeah genetically "smartness" is not a single thing, the brain development is complex and alot more than just physical brain size.

 

Plus, childhood development plays a big role in mental growth.

 

Oh, on top of that, is a dumb person any less human than a smart one?

[Uilleand]

Intelligence itself is a subjective concept. That's why IQ tests are culturally specific.

Came across this great piece on the subject of Watson's statement that pointed out that in 1869, Darwin's cousing Francis Galton wrote that he felt:

" '... as a savage would feel in England'; he felt scared and alone. His scientific instruments, however, imposed a rational order onto an unknown place. They comforted him and made him feel in control. His hosts might have felt differently. Many cultures more readily embrace mystery and would view Galton's feeble attempts to order nature as itself a senseless endeavour. Intelligence, like science, is local and cultural." (Cite: http://www.expressnews.ualberta.ca/article.cfm?id=8858)

 

How in the world can intelligence be classified racially, if it can't even be classified culturally? What a load of bantha droppings...

[adamqd]

Touché

[JediMaster12]

This is an interesting point, because if we're just interested in seeing who is roughly equal in problem-solving, we don't really have to quantify intelligence. Just give the same problem to people of equivalent backgrounds, and if the results are not equal then there'd be a clear difference in ability. Of course, intelligence is usually said to be a combination of mental activities, including problem solving, so we have to be careful to avoid conflating terms (i.e., intelligence does not only mean problem solving, but also means the totality of memory, perception, problem solving, etc). In order for Dr. Watson to prove his statement, he'd have to show that these faculties are in general less responsive in blacks than other racial groups - something that seems rather difficult, and most likely false.

Ah but then we have to take the external factors into account. Two people could be roughly of the same background but lets say that education was effected. One had the opportunities and one declared a washout but both are smart or intelligent in all sense of the word. Like I said intelligence cannot be accurately measured. Heck someone could be playing the part of the idiot but put up a facade, sort of like Queer theory which is the precendence that we do not identify with one particular group but multiple groups.

 

I think the problem with the method the Doctor uses is that he pretty much ignores the external factors that would skew the results. This is kind of strange for a scientist, who should be on guard for this sort of thing all the time, and makes me think he wanted his conclusion more than he wanted understanding.

 

I do agree with your other points, JM.

A priori assumptions such as that are why I brought up Broca and the craniometry problem. They thought that big brains were the key to intelligence and mor convulted but when it didn't turn out that way, Broca made his clauses that makes it seem like he was never wrong. A good scientist would realize that concerning things like intelligence and human nature for that matter, there are never going to be the perfect results that a natural science experiment would have. All the tehories are based on a broad generalization that repeat but admits that it doesn't apply to everyone. Again with my Queer theory bit.