Originally Posted by Mikeuk

If you write in such hysterical terms, how can you expect to be taken seriously? Such emotive over-reaction is a mirror-image of the manic racism associated with the BNP and similar groups.

Originally Posted by The Bear

I suppose it's because racism is a thing that I so absolutely loath.

That, and Islam, close bedfellows when you get down to it, really do get my goat.

I especially detest people who try to justify their foul bigotry by extrapolating at best questionable data (and worse yet when they mostly don’t understand it in the first place) as an excuse to come out with the venom that they do.

Being taken seriously?

I’m long past expecting anyone to do that!

Just so long as I can expose that which in my opinion really needs exposing, or can throw in the occasional comment or observation that may not have been otherwise considered, then I’m content.

Originally Posted by The Bear

I suppose it's because racism is a thing that I so absolutely loath.

That, and Islam, close bedfellows when you get down to it, really do get my goat.

Originally Posted by Mikeuk

May we take it that you have no friends or close relatives who are 'racists'?

Originally Posted by Mikeuk

This anti-racist + anti-Islam stance is curious. You'll probably find that most other foam-flecked Islamophobes are racists of the Alf Garnett variety.

Originally Posted by The Bear

No close relatives but a couple of quite close friends. I take the view that ideology shouldn’t affect friendship.

Originally Posted by Mikeuk

Shades of Hume. And do you recall what Hume had to say about the 'Negro'?

None of these scientific theories or indeed facts negate the proposition that ranges of intellect are likely to differ widely between ethnic groups, as much genetically 'programmed' as the shape of a skull or the colour of skin.

In the absence of proof to the contrary it would appear to be the 'default' position.

As I am a thoroughgoing Darwinian who accepts that my ancestors included monkeys I am hardly likely to be knocked backwards by the notion that my later forebears may have been 'Black Africans'

The point is that whoever and whatever those ancestors may have been all ethnic groups have been busy mutating away from them ever since and it seems an obvious proposition that in some groups the development of intellect will be more pronounced than others.

Are you seriously suggesting that ranges of intellect have developed in equal step across all ethnic groups and sub-groups?

Originally Posted by British-Conservatism

Researchers who believe that there are significant genetic contributions to race differences in intelligence include McGurk (1953), Garrett (1961), Shuey (1966), Shockley (1968), Eysenck (1971), Baker (1974), Loehlin et al. (1975), Vernon (1979), Lynn (1991a), Waldman et al. (1994), Scarr (1995), Levin (1997), Jensen (1998b), Rushton (2000), and Gottfredson (2005b).[88] Coming advances in genetics and genomics are expected to soon provide the ability to test hypotheses about group differences more rigorously than has as yet been possible.

Studies of US comparisons of both parents to children and siblings to each other finding regression to differing means for different races (85 for Blacks and 100 for Whites) across the entire range of IQs, despite the fact that siblings are matched for shared environment and genetic heritage, with regression unaffected by family socioeconomic status and generation examined.

Originally Posted by Olympic Flame

Im suggesting that there is no consensus on how to scientifically divide human beings into groups as the previous notion of discrete races of the 19th century theory has been proven to be obsolete.

With this assumption, any further attempt to support racial biological determinism under the facade of science tend to build themselves on shaky ground and need to put under detailed scrutiny.

If you think there are more successful ethnic groups as a socio-historical force with more contribution to humanity I have no problem with that.

Originally Posted by Mikeuk

In that case we don't seem to disagree on the practicalities.

Originally Posted by Mikeuk

More successful ethnic groups as a socio-historical force with more contribution to humanity' is very elegantly put. I'll have to remember that one.

However, if you were a politician or a leading scientist I don't think it would keep you out of hot water.

Originally Posted by Olympic Flame

The ancient Greeks had a wonderful civilisation while the Germanic tribes are still behaving like barbarians, from the perspective of the Greeks at that time.
I see no historian getting themselves into "hot water" for agreeing with that.