Is Australia racist? (1 Viewer)

[SylviaB]

The figure can be as high as 80% but 50-70% is probably a more realistic figure for e.g.

The papers you link to fail to account for the reliability of IQ tests, which is around 87%, meaning 13% of the variance is down to error (resulting form people getting slightly different IQ each time it is measured).

While it is true that we can identify different backgrounds by DNA, the question is to whether the same genetic factors determine racial/skin tone differences and IQ differences,

They don't have to be the same genetic factors, nobody thinks that the exact same genes explain skin tone and intelligence variation. But people of different backgrounds have different clusters of genes, and so it's perfectly reasonable to expect that different populations would have difffernt genetic potentials for intelligence.

And now even molecular genetic research is showing that this is in fact the case:

Global Ancestry and Cognitive Ability

Using data from the Philadelphia Neurodevelopmental Cohort, we examined whether European ancestry predicted cognitive ability over and above both parental socioeconomic status (SES) and measures of eye, hair, and skin color. First, using multi-group confirmatory factor analysis, we verified that...

www.mdpi.com

Linear and partially linear models of behavioural trait variation using admixture regression

Admixture regression methodology exploits the natural experiment of random mating between individuals with different ancestral backgrounds to infer the environmental and genetic components to trait variation across culturally-defined racial and ethnic groups. This paper provides a new...

www.biorxiv.org

and considering there are environmental factors it could also be a compounding effect regardless. I'm yet to do my research into this so don't quote me on this just yet aha

Environmental factors can explain variation in intelligence. It doesn't mean they necessarily do in a certain place and time. Experiencing severe caloric deficiency as a child impacts your adult IQ, but it doesn't mean that childhood caloric deficiency explains all or even most intelligence variation between populations (and it usually explains none of it except for the poorest of countries).

But interestingly though a lot of hereditarian research is generally not widely accepted amongst the broader scientific community - so that does present its challenges in thinking through this topic...
(J.P. Jackson & Winston, 2020)

The broader scientific community is kind of irrelevant. Most of the broader scientific community likely could not give a satisfactory definition for the general intelligence factor.

Most intelligence researchers believe that IQ measures intelligence and that the heritability of IQ is high.

Observation of biological reality is what results in species classification - so I wouldn't define that as a social construct imho. That's like saying any classification in science is a social construct.

It literally is a social construct. These categories do not exist in nature. I can just say "race is the result of observing biological reality" too.

Irrespective of whether apartheid was an improvement or not, I don't think the ends justify the means. Both matter.

The means were really not as bad as people claim. And the average black south african was better off during apartheid rule than they are today, and most black south africans during apartheid chose to move to apartheid south africa (or their parents did). It wasn't something forced on an indigenous population.

But again, look at rage at apartheid compared to the apathy towards genocidal zulus. Some people even celebrate shaka zulu ffs.[/QUOTE]

 

[Freewheelin]

Sorry, didn't have the time to reply and forgot about this thread for a while lol.

There wasn't even a power vacuum! The apartheid government didn't just disappear and then different groups fought for control. It was ruled by Mandela and the ANC from day dot!

If it's not obvious, then don't say "no shit". And it's not apartheid failing that we're talking about, it's post-apartheid south africa declining that we're talking about.

Yes, you're right here. I think at the time I wrote this, I confused 'power vacuum' for the surge in violence during 1985-90s due to the struggle for power before the fall of apartheid. The ANC rose to power only after brutal black on black violence between the IFP, ANC, and Apartheid regime and the later ensuing Border Wars. There was a fit of violence before elections — not a 'power vacuum' I admit.

Again, there was no power vacuum.

The apartheid government existed until the first universal elections took place in 1994, in which the ANC won a majority of the vote and a majority of seats in parliament (members of the national assembly). There was no point at which there was a lack of government or inability to maintain law and order. This was as smooth a transition as one could possibly expect.

You are correct in that there wasn't a lack of governent, again, that came from my incorrect assumption of the 'power vacuum'. But it wasn't really smooth transition at all. Violence in South Africa peaked during the 85-90s precisely because of the growing tensions between black factions and a falling Apartheid regime, it was a near Civil War.

Things went bad for South Africa because of chronic government mismanagement and the enactment of bad policy.

Okay, why can Germany recover so easily, when Africans can't? They got the absolute messiah of afro-centric leaders elected, Mandela, they should have thrived post-apartheid.

South Africa is a disappointment, I can see that. The Africans should have thrived under Mandela, but they didn't. Was it due to decades of oppression including education policies that restricted the blacks from developing as a nation intellectually and the continued violence following apartheid, probably.

I don't support apartheid and I don't know what being "justified" means in this context. My point is that it's extrememly selective or elextremely ignorant to make a big deal about the apartheid government being "oppressive", as if this is an aberration from the previous state of affairs. It was an improvement.

"Justified" in the sense that one oppression doesn't necessarily trump the other. Apartheid is still extremely oppressive, even in violence, one difference between now and then is that black crimes are actually reported. It is a continuation of oppression in the same way that a criminal that has turned from murder to theft is a continuation of crime. There is no net positive, it has still produced a negative outcome.

- Bantus were genocidal imperialists.

I think you've confused 'Bantustan' for bantu as an ethnicity. Bantustan homelands were a method of social and economic oppression. Under the Promotion of bantu self-government act 1959, Blacks were stripped of south african citizenship and were subjected to labor exploitation when seeking work in urban white communities. Further, the whites expected 80% of South Africa's population to reside in 14% of South African land. This is also heavily promoted towards the 80s as a means of oppressing resistance movements.

- Low wages? They were higher than anywhere else on the continent. It was a developing country.

Low respective of what other races were getting in South Africa. 10% of a white man compared to colored and asians receiving around 20% of a white man. Note that blacks made up majority of the work force. No black benefited from apartheid's so called economic success. You don't give a worker scraps if they're the ones providing the bulk of the work force. It has been very clear from the beginning that apartheid sought to make "south Africa a white man's land".

-Restricting education? These schools didn't exist anywhere else on the continent except for some other colonies. The only reason they existed in South Africa is because of Europeans. And still, South Africans had a higher literacy rate than most of the world at the time. Not learning written language, not learning maths, not learning science, this was the norm for the world, not some unusual restriction imposed on black south africans

Irrelevant false equivalency. This was not the norm for white South Africans. If a country is prospering, so should its inhabitants. Why didn't blacks benefit? If it were possible to provide the necessary infrastructure and facilities, why else introduce policies such as the Bantu education act of 1953 to suppress black education and prepare blacks for only laborious tasks. Decades of this can inevitably affect the ability of blacks as a population to govern a nation.

My point was simply that apartheid south africa was vastly less oppressive than what came before it, and yet nobody seems to know or care about this.

Nobody seems to care because a transition from oppression to oppression is still, interestingly, oppression.

Like I said, that's because there's a heavily skewed income/wealth distribution. But IQ isn't like this, it's normally distributed. And using these distributions allows us to make very accurate predictions about the world, unlike using average wealth etc.

Firstly, that's not what "conflate" means.

Secondly, yes yes, those things can influence IQ, but it doesn't mean that in practice they explain the observed variation. Heritability studies are used to estimate the contribution of genetic variance to the observed variance in IQ, and the answer is around 80%.

For example, being familiar with IQ tests can make you do better on them, but in reality so few people are familiar with them that the contribution to the variance is literally negligible.

My point is that IQ is very good at predicting the outcomes of a society. Having a high IQ population is not sufficient for having a successful society, but it seems like it is definitely a necessary condition.

IQ is an entirely different debate. However, IQ does, like you say, have 20% variance. There are many factors that affect it such as education and nutrition as a child. Again with education, if we have a population that doesn't learn logic based subjects like maths, we'll have a population that fails logic-based metrics like IQ tests.

Look, I don't support colonialism. I'm just saying people make out like apartheid was some grave crime against humanity. It wasn't. It's what was needed to regulate the behavior of black south africans to maintain a function society. Now these regulations are gone, crime and anti-social behavior is out of control in south africa. And these policies were so "oppressive" that millions of black africans from across the continent moved to south africa after the establishment of apartheid rule because of how much better the country was compared to everywhere else.

Apartheid oppressed generations of black South Africans, we can go over various policies and statistics of violence that prove this. The fact that multitudes of resistance groups from the ANC to PAC to SASO and the IFP rose is precisely due to these oppressions. Apartheid amassed violence and propagated disparity. As an aside, I can't really find your statistic and I'm not sure of the context of it either.

If we want to talk statistics however, it'd be interesting to know that crime in South Africa is exactly the same as crime in apartheid during the 60s. It if anything, it has decreased rapidly since 1994 (htt ps:// theconve rsation.com/facts-sho w-south-africa-has-not-b ecome-mor e-violent-since-democ acy-624 44). It's be also interesting to know that South Africa's GDP has skyrocketed since apartheid. GDP per capita has also increased only declining around 2016 and during COVID (ht tps://tra dingeconomic s.com/south-africa/gdp). With statistics on economics however, we see the same problem we have with apartheid. Wealth does not trickle down.

If we want to talk about reforms in general, we see that blacks have access to urban land, south african land, education, property, interracial marriage, interriacial sex, voting of black representatives in South african government, removal of pass laws, shared amenities, abolition of policies of permanent detainment etc. On paper, South Africa is better for the black man, it's just that violence and economic disparity has remained continuous and the failures of the ANC hasn't made that better. Was apartheid better, no. Maybe you could make a point that it managed to contain black on black violence before the 60s, but otherwise no, blacks were not given that rights they have today.

 

[dan964]

The papers you link to fail to account for the reliability of IQ tests, which is around 87%, meaning 13% of the variance is down to error (resulting form people getting slightly different IQ each time it is measured).

All the figures quoted were around 58% being the largest, so with 13% variance still gives a range of approximately 50-70%, so what's the point you are trying to make?

They don't have to be the same genetic factors, nobody thinks that the exact same genes explain skin tone and intelligence variation. But people of different backgrounds have different clusters of genes, and so it's perfectly reasonable to expect that different populations would have difffernt genetic potentials for intelligence.

And now even molecular genetic research is showing that this is in fact the case:

Global Ancestry and Cognitive Ability

Using data from the Philadelphia Neurodevelopmental Cohort, we examined whether European ancestry predicted cognitive ability over and above both parental socioeconomic status (SES) and measures of eye, hair, and skin color. First, using multi-group confirmatory factor analysis, we verified that...

www.mdpi.com

Linear and partially linear models of behavioural trait variation using admixture regression

Admixture regression methodology exploits the natural experiment of random mating between individuals with different ancestral backgrounds to infer the environmental and genetic components to trait variation across culturally-defined racial and ethnic groups. This paper provides a new...

www.biorxiv.org

Environmental factors can explain variation in intelligence. It doesn't mean they necessarily do in a certain place and time. Experiencing severe caloric deficiency as a child impacts your adult IQ, but it doesn't mean that childhood caloric deficiency explains all or even most intelligence variation between populations (and it usually explains none of it except for the poorest of countries).

The logical argument can be made both ways, genetic factors do not necessarily explain variation in intelligence either - it all comes down to which side you hold on this.

It literally is a social construct. These categories do not exist in nature. I can just say "race is the result of observing biological reality" too.

The physiology distinctions that form the primary basis for these categories exist in nature.
" A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can produce fertile offspring" or "classification comprising related organisms that share common characteristics and are capable of interbreeding"
A horse and an elephant are not the same. The categories themselves are not the social construct in the strictest sense of being rooted in human social interactions.

(For race, depends on how you define it. If it is defined in such a way to include human social or culture interactions, which I'm assuming then yes it is a social construct).

The broader scientific community is kind of irrelevant. Most of the broader scientific community likely could not give a satisfactory definition for the general intelligence factor.

I think the acceptance of research is important but I was referring specifically to the acceptance of " hereditarian research on race differences in intelligence" not intelligence research broadly or on definitions of general intelligence - meaning the very argument you are trying to make doesn't have well acceptance generally speaking. (The anti-hereditarian perspective is the primary view, whether rightly or not)

To quote the same study I referred to before
"Hereditarians offer two argumentative tactics to show that their work enjoys widespread acceptance in the scientific community, neither of which is convincing. First, they use the ambiguous nature of their support by claiming there is widespread acceptance of their position. Second, they claim a consensus of experts by severely narrowing who counts as an “expert” to include only their small group of researchers."

...the heritability of IQ is high.

I'm curious as to where are you getting this from?

The means were really not as bad as people claim. And the average black south african was better off during apartheid rule than they are today, and most black south africans during apartheid chose to move to apartheid south africa (or their parents did). It wasn't something forced on an indigenous population.

But again, look at rage at apartheid compared to the apathy towards genocidal zulus. Some people even celebrate shaka zulu ffs.

Probably because more people have heard of apartheid than genocidal zulus. It is probably also because the former is more recent and hence a lived memory.

It is an interesting thing to look into but irrespective of that, the principle itself of 'apartheid' was faulty irrespective of the outcome (and I defer to those who have done more reading on the subject), that is the "means" I was referring to. Its a wrong outlook on humanity.

I think you are right to a degree to point out that yes there is inconsistency driven by political bias, where realistically history is mixed when it comes to "colonization" and I think socio-political factors play into it heavily rather just race.

 

[SylviaB]

The logical argument can be made both ways, genetic factors do not necessarily explain variation in intelligence either - it all comes down to which side you hold on this.

I wasn't making a logical argument. I was making an empirical one. Genes associated with intelligence are distributed differently between racial populations.

The physiology distinctions that form the primary basis for these categories exist in nature.
" A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can produce fertile offspring" or "classification comprising related organisms that share common characteristics and are capable of interbreeding"
A horse and an elephant are not the same. The categories themselves are not the social construct in the strictest sense of being rooted in human social interactions.

`. Okay, great. Physiological differences between races exist in nature. Races vary on average in every part of the body.

2. NO, being able to produce fertile offspring is NOT the definition of species. Fertile hybrids exist such as Ligers. And in any case, this being the line to draw between species is ENTIRELY social. Humans chose this. There's nothing in nature saying this is where one species ends and the other begins. We could have said anything with different colored fur or feathers is a different species. This would be no more or no less a social construct.

(For race, depends on how you define it. If it is defined in such a way to include human social or culture interactions, which I'm assuming then yes it is a social construct).

You can identify a person's ancestry based on PURELY physical factors such a bone and especially skull morphology, DNA, blood etc.

I think the acceptance of research is important but I was referring specifically to the acceptance of " hereditarian research on race differences in intelligence" not intelligence research broadly or on definitions of general intelligence - meaning the very argument you are trying to make doesn't have well acceptance generally speaking. (The anti-hereditarian perspective is the primary view, whether rightly or not)

Again, amongst people who do not know the first thing about intelligence research, not intelligence researchers themselves.

To quote the same study I referred to before
"Hereditarians offer two argumentative tactics to show that their work enjoys widespread acceptance in the scientific community, neither of which is convincing. First, they use the ambiguous nature of their support by claiming there is widespread acceptance of their position. Second, they claim a consensus of experts by severely narrowing who counts as an “expert” to include only their small group of researchers."

This is meaningless without data. It's just rhetoric.

I'm curious as to where are you getting this from?

Almost every single heritability study on intelligence.

Probably because more people have heard of apartheid than genocidal zulus. It is probably also because the former is more recent and hence a lived memory.

Okay, WHY has almost nobody heard about them? Because black people can do no wrong and these facts don't get promoted by the powerful.

It is an interesting thing to look into but irrespective of that, the principle itself of 'apartheid' was faulty irrespective of the outcome (and I defer to those who have done more reading on the subject), that is the "means" I was referring to. Its a wrong outlook on humanity.

Says who?

The history of Africa has been violence and poverty. The rapid growth of South Africa under European rule from almost nothing and the behavior of south african blacks post-apartheid shows that no, it was exactly the right outlook on humanity.

I think you are right to a degree to point out that yes there is inconsistency driven by political bias, where realistically history is mixed when it comes to "colonization" and I think socio-political factors play into it heavily rather just race.

It's weird how Germany can experience the worst humanity has to offer and within decades is one of the most prosperous countries in the world again with no large scale unrest or political violence, even the ones occupied by rapacious, oppressive foreigners for decades on end.

There's simply no way to make sense of history that isn't an endless series of just so stories without using race.

 

[SylviaB]

You are correct in that there wasn't a lack of governent, again, that came from my incorrect assumption of the 'power vacuum'. But it wasn't really smooth transition at all. Violence in South Africa peaked during the 85-90s precisely because of the growing tensions between black factions and a falling Apartheid regime, it was a near Civil War.

This has absolutely nothing to do with a "power vacuum" and your explanation therefore completely fails.

South Africa is a disappointment, I can see that. The Africans should have thrived under Mandela, but they didn't. Was it due to decades of oppression including education policies that restricted the blacks from developing as a nation intellectually

You realise that nowhere in sub-saharan africa had anything like this before european rule, right? You realise that at its peak of power, apartheid south africa had a higher literacy rate amongst blacks than most countries around the world had, right? You realise that black south africans had as a result of european rule more access to education than the overwhelming majority of blacks in africa who ever existed, right?

and the continued violence following apartheid, probably.

The continued violence was entirely the doing of these black people. It can't be both cause and effect.

"Justified" in the sense that one oppression doesn't necessarily trump the other.

Of course it does. Having separate water fountains is much less bad than genocide.

Apartheid is still extremely oppressive, even in violence, one difference between now and then is that black crimes are actually reported.

It's not remotely as "oppressive" as genocide, especially since this genocide was perpetrated against an indigenous population, whereas apartheid affected these invaders and other africans who immigrated after european rule began.

It is a continuation of oppression in the same way that a criminal that has turned from murder to theft is a continuation of crime. There is no net positive, it has still produced a negative outcome.

That makes no sense.

I think you've confused 'Bantustan' for bantu as an ethnicity. Bantustan homelands were a method of social and economic oppression. Under the Promotion of bantu self-government act 1959, Blacks were stripped of south african citizenship and were subjected to labor exploitation when seeking work in urban white communities. Further, the whites expected 80% of South Africa's population to reside in 14% of South African land. This is also heavily promoted towards the 80s as a means of oppressing resistance movements.

No dumb dumb. The zulus are bantu people. That's what I'm referring to.

No black benefited from apartheid's so called economic success. You don't give a worker scraps if they're the ones providing the bulk of the work force. It has been very clear from the beginning that apartheid sought to make "south Africa a white man's land".

OF COURSE they benefitted. That's why 90% of South Africa's black population have no pre-apartheid ancestry. Blacks from across the continent moved there because they had better economic opportunity there than where they otherwise were. They made more than anyone else in sub-saharan africa. Not much compared to whites, but that's not relevant. The question is whether they were economically better off due to apartheid, and the answer is an unequivocal yes.

And South Africa was rich because of white people. Africa has always had black people but never a society like South Africa.

Irrelevant false equivalency. This was not the norm for white South Africans.

If a country is prospering, so should its inhabitants.

Why? They chose to move to South Africa, and it was white south africans who made south africa prosperous. Don't you think these same black workers never made anything for thousands of years without white people, whereas white people make functioning societies wherever they go?

And guess what, the average black south african in real terms is worse off since apartheid ended, which conclusively shows its better to get a small piece of a big pie than a bigger piece of a small pie.

Durban used to be a great city, now its in shambles because of black rule.

Why didn't blacks benefit? If it were possible to provide the necessary infrastructure and facilities, why else introduce policies such as the Bantu education act of 1953 to suppress black education and prepare blacks for only laborious tasks. Decades of this can inevitably affect the ability of blacks as a population to govern a nation.

Sure, and that's why ethiopia is so much richer than South Africa, right? Right?

And nothing was "supressed". They weren't given the opportunities....which would never have existed without white rule in the first place.

If whites never showed up, would they be more educated? No, less.

Nobody seems to care because a transition from oppression to oppression is still, interestingly, oppression.

Calling apartheid oppression next to genocide is stupid. Apartheid is what you need to control people prone to large scale violence.

There are many factors that affect it such as education and nutrition as a child. Again with education, if we have a population that doesn't learn logic based subjects like maths, we'll have a population that fails logic-based metrics like IQ tests.

How did Europeans ever get education? Did god come done from heaven and give it to them? Why did they have education, but not pre-colonial africans?

Apartheid oppressed generations of black South Africans, we can go over various policies and statistics of violence that prove this. The fact that multitudes of resistance groups from the ANC to PAC to SASO and the IFP rose is precisely due to these oppressions.

No, they arose because they believed that whites were oppressing them. They believed that they were poor because of whites. This was false.

Apartheid amassed violence and propagated disparity. As an aside, I can't really find your statistic and I'm not sure of the context of it either.

The disparity already existed. They were wealthier under apartheid than they were before europeans showed up (and subject to much less violence).

If we want to talk statistics however, it'd be interesting to know that crime in South Africa is exactly the same as crime in apartheid during the 60s. It if anything, it has decreased rapidly since 1994 (htt ps:// theconve rsation.com/facts-sho w-south-africa-has-not-b ecome-mor e-violent-since-democ acy-624 44).

Yes, this is what happens when your government is incompetent and does not maintain proper crime statistics and cannot enforce the law. South African prisons are perpetually full so the government literally just stops arresting people for crimes.

My good friend is a white south african. They had to leave because of how unsafe it became. His mother was carjacked at knifepoint. It's why white south africans live in compounds with walls and barbed wire. They're sick of being attacked and robbed by violent blacks which the government refuses to do anything about.

It's be also interesting to know that South Africa's GDP has skyrocketed since apartheid. GDP per capita has also increased only declining around 2016 and during COVID (ht tps://tra dingeconomic s.com/south-africa/gdp).

Much of the world experienced this same growth due to technology etc. Also, this is nominal GDP. South Africa's currency has been incredibly debased since ANC rule started.

With statistics on economics however, we see the same problem we have with apartheid. Wealth does not trickle down.

Guess what, South Africa has become MORE economically unequal since apartheid ended, not less.

If we want to talk about reforms in general, we see that blacks have access to urban land, south african land, education, property, interracial marriage, interriacial sex, voting of black representatives in South african government, removal of pass laws, shared amenities, abolition of policies of permanent detainment etc. On paper, South Africa is better for the black man, it's just that violence and economic disparity has remained continuous and the failures of the ANC hasn't made that better. Was apartheid better, no. Maybe you could make a point that it managed to contain black on black violence before the 60s, but otherwise no, blacks were not given that rights they have today.

Apartheid is the only reason South Africa has anything resembling an industrial economy in the first place. The place is vastly less functional and will continue to decline.

 

[dan964]

I wasn't making a logical argument. I was making an empirical one. Genes associated with intelligence are distributed differently between racial populations.

And your data to back this? You cannot make an empirical argument with no data.

2. NO, being able to produce fertile offspring is NOT the definition of species. Fertile hybrids exist such as Ligers. And in any case, this being the line to draw between species is ENTIRELY social. Humans chose this. There's nothing in nature saying this is where one species ends and the other begins. We could have said anything with different colored fur or feathers is a different species. This would be no more or no less a social construct.

We'd have to agree to disagree on your first bit, because historically yes that IS that definition used and a lot of English dictionaries, encyclopedias and is the common understanding at the moment.

Now whether this is still an accurate or good definition is a separate discussion, but I digress, as a starting point it is still something rooted in biology meaning its a combination of convention (social constructs, yes) rooted in biological and empirical study - my contention was only on your use of the word ENTIRELY, its intersectional between the two; but other than that I think we are on the same page in terms of species and to be honest I'm forgotten why I raised it in the first place.

Oh that's right, what I mean is "social construct" is a loaded term, I now get what you mean and your position a bit better, by that I digress and we're singing from the same song book (especially now that I see the comment you responded to which I don't agree with either).
For reference you seem to be arguing that everything is rooted in genetics and they seem to take the position (which I'm sure you'll agree has no substantiation in academia) that everything is rooted in environmental (aka everything is a social construct).

You can identify a person's ancestry based on PURELY physical factors such a bone and especially skull morphology, DNA, blood etc.

Sure, but that's not the point - we weren't discussing ancestry in general, just intelligence and those more complex traits, because to bring it back to the topic of this thread, your argument is summary as understood by some is that blacks by genetics, have less intelligence and therefore that is why South Africa is in the situation it is.

Your argument as understood by most in this thread:
1. Black people genetically are less intelligent than white people based on genetics.
2. Higher intelligence means better outcomes in society (focusing on particularly stability and non-violence etc)
3. South Africa is worse off being run by predominantly black people than white people.

Again, amongst people who do not know the first thing about intelligence research, not intelligence researchers themselves.
This is meaningless without data. It's just rhetoric.

Almost every single heritability study on intelligence.

"Almost every single heritability study on intelligence" - Ambiguous and actually not true.

"Again, amongst people who do not know the first thing about intelligence research, not intelligence researchers themselves." - that is also rhetoric. Its like redefining experts to exclude anyone who disagrees with you.

I was quoting a study on this that was simply making an observation and critical analysis on the taboo around hereditarian research.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1089268020953622

"We critically examine claims that (self-described) hereditarians currently and exclusively experience major misrepresentation in the media, regular physical threats, denouncements, and academic job loss. We document substantial exaggeration and distortion in such claims. The repeated assertions that the negative reception of research asserting average Black inferiority is due to total ideological control over the academy by “environmentalists,” leftists, Marxists, or “thugs” are unwarranted character assassinations on those engaged in legitimate and valuable scholarly criticism."

Quoting from the same study verbatim
"The consensus among psychologists is that variations in behavioral traits are the product of both genes and environment. What is disputed is how we might answer such a question for such knotty human traits such as intelligence (Devlin et al., 2002; Nisbett et al., 2012; Richardson, 2017), whether the folk categories such as “White” and “Black” race are actual biological categories (Brace 2005; DeSalle & Tattersall, 2018; Jackson & Depew, 2017; Marks, 2017; Yudell, 2014), whether or not partitioning trait differences into “genes” and “environment” makes any sense, given the continuous interaction of the two (Goldhaber, 2012; Keller, 2010; Tabery, 2014; Taylor, 2014), and, how certain we need to be of such knowledge as a basis for social policy (Frank, 2012; Gillborn & Youdell, 2009; Hilliard, 2012)"

This is probably the easiest way to explain my position.

Okay, WHY has almost nobody heard about them? Because black people can do no wrong and these facts don't get promoted by the powerful.

To be honest beyond the reasons already mentioned idk, so yeah maybe, preaching to the choir on this one. I don't think that its a case of where one group is always in the right and vice versa, the reality is history is mixed.

Says who?

Says you a couple of pages ago when you said "I don't support apartheid" because I'm assuming you see yourself as a logical rational person so you had your reasons for not supporting it when you said that.

The history of Africa has been violence and poverty. The rapid growth of South Africa under European rule from almost nothing and the behavior of south african blacks post-apartheid shows that no, it was exactly the right outlook on humanity.

So you do support apartheid? Your position on this seems inconsistent? Please clarify...

I would have to strongly disagree its the right outlook on humanity, see previous responses, just because there were as you assert there was a positive consequence to apartheid - it doesn't mean the principle behind it is justifiable (mainly because I don't think apartheid vs no apartheid; aka the presence of racial segregation is necessary the sole explanatory factor for why South Africa is the way it is - in some respects you could argue that there was an overreaction / over correction to apartheid)

But for the same reason I don't believe in having token Aboriginal / minority representation in Aus politics , I think those elected to power should be based on merit rather than on race; but the whole principle of apartheid is based on race (rooted in "skin colour"/appearance not the social construct mind you), not on actual qualities like experience or aptitude. That is morally repugnant. (Although to clarify, European rule and apartheid are not synonymous).


Again I'll leave the others to argue the specifics of violence during apartheid period because I'm not well read on that side of things. I

It's weird how Germany can experience the worst humanity has to offer and within decades is one of the most prosperous countries in the world again with no large scale unrest or political violence, even the ones occupied by rapacious, oppressive foreigners for decades on end.

There's simply no way to make sense of history that isn't an endless series of just so stories without using race.

So really what you are telling us is that you, SylviaB, cannot be racist for saying that white people are superior intelligent beings and black people are dumber therefore they have worse because of genetics - that is the whole argument that everyone is contending at least
(Yes, I know its an oversimplification / and overlooks some good points you are making)

Its probably an intersection of a number of factors including yes, race, (depending what we mean by it) although culture (is probably the better concept to capture what we mean), religion (e.g. we can see the influence of Christianity vs Islam vs Buddhism on society, the former impacting US/Europe), politics, family, personalities, social constructs.

 

[Freewheelin]

This has absolutely nothing to do with a "power vacuum" and your explanation therefore completely fails.

It doesn't I already clarified 'power vacuum' in the comment if you read it... and the context before this...

You realise that nowhere in sub-saharan africa had anything like this before european rule, right? You realise that at its peak of power, apartheid south africa had a higher literacy rate amongst blacks than most countries around the world had, right? You realise that black south africans had as a result of european rule more access to education than the overwhelming majority of blacks in africa who ever existed, right?

I'm not sure where you got that statistic from (plus the lack of a number), but for the sake of your argument, let's just humor you. You know that in 1975, 644 rands yearly was spent per white child while only 42 were reserved for blacks. You realise that in In 1961, only 10 per cent of black teachers held a matriculation certificate (htt ps://ww w.sahistory.org.za/article/bantu-education-and-racist-compartmentalizing-education). How about that the Bantu Education Act restricted the type of education blacks were able to receive. How about that of the black schools, 30% of had no electricity, 25% had no running water and more than half had no plumbing (http s://paba llovusi.weebly.com/uploads/3/8/6/1/38618689/bantu_education_act.pdf). Yes blacks were being educated, but were they given a standard of education equal to their white counterparts? Or were they given an education that covered fundamental subjects that develop into higher skilled careers like maths. Unless of course, you agree with Verwoerd, "What is the use of teaching the Bantu child mathematics when it cannot use it in practice?".

Now do you realise how narrow-minded this interpretation is? Regardless of what you said was correct or not, blacks were simply not given the education that was required to succeed during apartheid, that is my point. If you are arguing that whites brought education to blacks, then I'd posit why whites did not provide a somewhat equal education. If you are arguing that south african blacks were better educated than their neighbours, then I'd argue that it's because of colonialism and wars of independence. But then again, what is the point of defending against your straw man, internally, South African education should be held at the standard of south africa holistically, this internal disparity screams oppression within itself.

The continued violence was entirely the doing of these black people. It can't be both cause and effect.

Don't remember attributing any 'cause' and 'effect' to whites...

Of course it does. Having separate water fountains is much less bad than genocide.

Your gross oversimplification is gross.

It's not remotely as "oppressive" as genocide, especially since this genocide was perpetrated against an indigenous population, whereas apartheid affected these invaders and other africans who immigrated after european rule began.

You seem to be looking at things through black and white here. Dead vs alive is not how you make moral decisions (i.e oppression). Less deaths occurring doesn't change an event from being oppressive. Apartheid was oppressive, there is no reason to argue otherwise, it was oppressive and it ended.

That makes no sense.

The logic in that sentence flows fine. Oppression is still oppression. P.S: not liking these one liners.

 

[Freewheelin]

No dumb dumb. The zulus are bantu people. That's what I'm referring to.

Your argument and quote attachment "makes no sense". I didn't bring that topic up at all in the comment you replied to. Thinking logically, I figured you were replying to my every phrase (since you did that in your line following your explanation on zulus). There was no need for your condescension in this comment or your rudimentary explanation on your previous (i addressed your point in zulu in both this and my last comment).

OF COURSE they benefitted. That's why 90% of South Africa's black population have no pre-apartheid ancestry. Blacks from across the continent moved there because they had better economic opportunity there than where they otherwise were. They made more than anyone else in sub-saharan africa. Not much compared to whites, but that's not relevant. The question is whether they were economically better off due to apartheid, and the answer is an unequivocal yes.

I've never heard of that statistic before, would like to read more about it.

Not much compared to whites, but that's not relevant. The question is whether they were economically better off due to apartheid, and the answer is an unequivocal yes. And South Africa was rich because of white people. Africa has always had black people but never a society like South Africa.

I get that you're taking a 'separate development' approach in how you see whites vs blacks, but that doesn't change the fact that blacks are subjected to the policies of the white government, the white government dictates black society.

How much they make in comparison to whites and how they compare to whites is imperative to our discussion on oppression. You are once again taking a 'narrow-minded' approach in evaluating black oppression under apartheid, blacks were relatively better than they were previous, they are better relatively to their warring neighbours, but they are not better than their counterparts in south africa. This is beginning to turn into an argument on colonialism with how closely you are comparing precolonial and apartheid south africa. The question is not are they better than they were pre colonialism, the question is are the blacks benefiting from the whites. We know blacks are oppressed, so the answer is yes, oppression of any form is wrong. Better technologies and facilities do not mean oppression can just be forgotten. Again, nearly every historian, every textbook, every journalist will tell you that apartheid constituted some form of oppression.

Why? They chose to move to South Africa, and it was white south africans who made south africa prosperous. Don't you think these same black workers never made anything for thousands of years without white people, whereas white people make functioning societies wherever they go?

Why? because whites dictate black policies and black society during apartheid. White south africans made SA prosperous for whites not blacks, how is P.W Botha campaigning for 14% of the land for 80% of the population (blacks) prosperous? And the 14% of the land was infertile, rural, lacked the facilities to sustain blacks until the mid 70s and 80s, and lacked connections to railway networks, tarred roads, airports, and harbors.

But I see where this is going. You believe that blacks (or at least native blacks) never amounted to anything because of the societies they create? This is a very western way of thinking about things. If you are insinuating what i think you are in "white people make functioning societies wherever they go" vs "[blacks] never made anything for thousands of years" then I can see you are taking a very imperialistic mindset here (or at least one that drove imperialism) despite you saying "I don't support colonialism".

And guess what, the average black south african in real terms is worse off since apartheid ended, which conclusively shows its better to get a small piece of a big pie than a bigger piece of a small pie.

Durban used to be a great city, now its in shambles because of black rule.

I don't see how this addresses my original point. My previous comment would explain.

Sure, and that's why ethiopia is so much richer than South Africa, right? Right?

And nothing was "supressed". They weren't given the opportunities....which would never have existed without white rule in the first place.

If whites never showed up, would they be more educated? No, less.

Are you even trying at this point? You're arguing semantics here. Suppressing people is not giving people the opportunities they should receive... which should exist as blacks are dictated by a white goverment. Again you're taking turning this into a conversation on colonialism. You're talking in terms of relativity. I could easily mimic you and say, at least before whites showed up no one was educated and so everyone was given equal education, but now that whites are here, we have an educational disparity.

Calling apartheid oppression next to genocide is stupid. Apartheid is what you need to control people prone to large scale violence.

Calling stealing next to torture is stupid too? Oppression is oppression, why do we need to argue simple facts. Is a totalitarian dictatorship what society needs to control consumerism? Is communism what society needs to control class disparity? These ways of thinking are flawed because suffering is still created, disparity is still created, and the human nature is subverted.

How did Europeans ever get education? Did god come done from heaven and give it to them? Why did they have education, but not pre-colonial africans?

You aren't even addressing my reply at this point lol. What on earth are you trying to argue and who one earth are you talking about this to.

No, they arose because they believed that whites were oppressing them. They believed that they were poor because of whites. This was false.

Well, I guess the United Nations were wrong too. I guess Australia and international community were wrong too. I guess the communist were wrong. I guess the the international response to apartheid was misguided too. You did not even try to address my argument again. These type of responses are pretty disappointing, one liners without any substance.

The disparity already existed. They were wealthier under apartheid than they were before europeans showed up (and subject to much less violence).

Again I've addressed this point a couple times already. You seem to saying the same things but in different ways.

Yes, this is what happens when your government is incompetent and does not maintain proper crime statistics and cannot enforce the law. South African prisons are perpetually full so the government literally just stops arresting people for crimes.

My good friend is a white south african. They had to leave because of how unsafe it became. His mother was carjacked at knifepoint. It's why white south africans live in compounds with walls and barbed wire. They're sick of being attacked and robbed by violent blacks which the government refuses to do anything about.

I mean, i gave you a statistic on crimes decreasing after apartheid, but I won't pretend that criminal activity is at healthy levels. I won't deny that sadly, education most importantly has not improved either.

Much of the world experienced this same growth due to technology etc. Also, this is nominal GDP. South Africa's currency has been incredibly debased since ANC rule started.

You're right, didn't realise. But had a look and found an article on South Africa's economic growth. According to the article, TFP and real GDP has increased (http s://www.eli brary.imf.org/downloadpdf/book/9781589064706/ch002.pdf). I still firmly believe that economies built on the exploitation is not morally correct. This is especially true when military spending has to increase by 42 times from 1961-81 to combat not only the growing resistance but to fund the SADF in border wars to protect apartheid ideologies at an international level.

Guess what, South Africa has become MORE economically unequal since apartheid ended, not less.

I don't see how that addresses my response. I don't remember saying otherwise anyway.

Apartheid is the only reason South Africa has anything resembling an industrial economy in the first place. The place is vastly less functional and will continue to decline.

Right, so this has become quite the pro-colonial response, still apartheid was oppressive and I think that's really the point. Functionality is a non-factor when oppression is involved and oppression is never really sustainable anyways. I think my previous comment was sufficient in explaining my point and that anything I've added here was sufficient in not only expanding on my points but responding to you. I can understand why your perspective hasn't changed much in 10 years now.

 

[Average Boreduser]

How tf did this forum get so controversial... Ya'll need a chill and forget about this.

 

[Life'sHard]

How tf did this forum get so controversial... Ya'll need a chill and forget about this.

Read the title of this thread lol.

 

[Average Boreduser]

Read the title of this thread lol.

I get that, but now everyone is using insults instead of actual facts to prove or pesuade against the statement. Just made fights and ones now very personal to people.