race
gregladen | January 30, 2017A brief update: This morning, Senate Republicans set aside the rules that say that both parties must be present, with at least one member, for a committee vote to advance a Presidential nominee for a cabinet appointment.
In other words, as outlined below, our system is based not only on enforceable laws but also on rules that only work if everyone involves agrees to not be the bully on the playground who ignores the rules. The Republicans are the bully on the playground.
The system requires honest actor playing by agreed on rules. So, without the honest actor, you get this. This fits…
gregladen | November 22, 2016Question: How do we wipe out racism by making racists not be so racist?
Answer: We don't.
We do something else that actually works.
The expanding Trump-fueled conversation about racism
It has been absolutely fascinating to observe myriad conversations reacting to the Trump electoral win. All the usual suspects are engaged, but also, many others who had previously been little involved, or not at all involved, in the national political conversation, are saying things.
And along with this has come a certain amount of method or concern questioning. I won't call it trolling because only some…
lborkowski | January 7, 2016by Jonathan Heller
Most public health practitioners, and those who work on health impact assessment specifically, want to improve the health of vulnerable populations. Most efforts to do so are well-intentioned, yet they often don’t lead to significant change. What do we need to do differently? Below is an analysis we at Human Impact Partners put forward.
What Do We Mean By Inequity and What Are Its Causes?
First, we are intentional in our choice of the word equity. Health inequities, as Margaret Whitehead said, are differences in health status and mortality rates across population groups…
oracknows | June 4, 2015I've been paying attention to the antivaccine movement a long time. Indeed, it's been just under a decade since I made what was my first big splash in the blogosphere, namely my particularly "Insolent" takedown of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s conspiracy-laden, pseudoscience-spewing super-concentrated antivaccine nonsense known as Deadly Immunity. So here it is, almost ten years later, and RFK, Jr. is still around, spewing the same nonsense that he did ten years ago, except that this time he's using Holocaust analogies to describe the vaccination program. Unfortunately, some things never seem to…
gregladen | January 17, 2015I will assume you are paying some attention to the discussion of racism vis-a-vis Charlie Hebdo, Muslim bashing, obnoxious religious (in this case Islamic) rules of behavior, freedom of speech and expression, etc. If you were thinking that this situation is simple you better check your thought process, or your privilege, or something. Get an oil change. Take a class on race and racism. Something. Because it is not simple.
The following thought experiment is still an oversimplification but perhaps worthy of consideration, as a means of parsing out the very first level of complexity and…
gregladen | August 11, 2014A list of reviews of Nicholas Wade’s book “A Troublesome Inheritance,” mainly by anthropologists and others who have investigated issues surrounding the concept of “race” in humans.
Bethune, Brian: Inheritance battles
Daniels, Anthony: Genetic disorder
Dobbs, David: The Fault in Our DNA
Fuentes, Augustín: The Troublesome Ignorance of Nicholas Wade
Geneticists, Lotsofthem: An Open Letter
Goodman, Alan: A Troublesome Racial Smog
Johnson, Eric Michael: On the Origin of White Power
Laden, Greg: A Troubling Tome
Marks, Jonathan: The Genes Made Us Do It
Marks, Jonathan: Review of A Troublesome…
gregladen | June 17, 2014I first heard about Wade's book when a colleague started talking about bits and pieces of it. He was reading it pursuant to a writing a review. I asked the publisher for a review copy, which they kindly supplied, and started tracking the pre-publication reactions. After reading the first couple of chapters, I realized that I needed to write a review of this book, but I wanted to do something a bit more than a blog post. So, I contacted American Scientist. I had reviewed two books for them earlier. American Scientist is actually my very favorite science magazine (among magazines that are…
gregladen | May 30, 2013Elizabeth Chin has written an excellent scholarly takedown, in the form of a "letter from your thesis reader," of Jason Richwine's 2009 Harvard PhD dissertation, " IQ and Immigration."
I've not read Richwine's thesis, though I probably will at some point. And you probably haven't either. But, you'll still find Chin's post informative and compelling.
It is here: What Jason Richwine Should Have Heard from his PhD Committee
While you are on the subject have a look at this: Harvard Students Demand Investigation Into Jason Richwine's Thesis On Hispanic IQ
Hat tip: Jennifer Raff.
kbonham | May 21, 2013Two weeks ago, the Heritage Foundation (a conservative think-tank) released a position paper based largely on the academic research of one Jason Richwine. The conclusion (roughly paraphrased): Hispanic people have lower IQ's than white people, so an overly permissive immigration policy will drag down the US economy.
Ethically, this conclusion is a deep affront to my liberal* sensibilities. The idea of basing our public policy on racism and bigotry is abhorrent.
Politically, this is dangerous territory. This is especially true after the 2012 election, when republican politicians were making…
gregladen | November 27, 2012The phrase "Correlation does not imply causation" has developed in to a Falsehood, as I discuss here. This is in part because people often use the phrase to argue that a particular correlation has no meaning, which is a false argument. It is, of course, true that a correlation does not in and of itself prove a causal link between two things. And, as pointed out in a few places, but I'll refer you to this Mother Jones piece for background, the relationship between single mothers and homicide and other crime is ... well ... interesting.
The idea is to blame single mothers for crime. They,…
gregladen | December 26, 2011The presumption being examined here is that humans are divisible into different groups (races would be one term for those groups) that are genetically distinct from one another in a way that causes those groups to have group level differences in average intelligence, as measured by IQ. More exactly, this post is about the sequence of arguments that are usually made when people try to make this assertion.
The argument usually starts out noting that there are dozens of papers that document group differences in IQ. I'll point out right now that most of those papers are published in journals with…
sastyk | July 27, 2011And in non-goat news....
According to the study, the inflation-adjusted median wealth among Hispanic households fell 66% from 2005 to 2009. Black households suffered a 53% drop in net worth over the same period. By contrast, whites saw a decline of 16% in household wealth.
In 2009, the typical black household had just $5,677 in wealth. Hispanic families had about $6,325 in wealth. The average white household had a net worth of $113,149.
The study also showed that a third of black and Hispanic households had zero wealth, meaning that their debts were larger than the value of all their assets…
drorzel | May 14, 2011SteelyKid is, as I have noted previously, half Korean, a quarter Polish, and an eighth each Irish and German. Her parents are irreligious, the extended family is Catholic (more so on my side than Kate's), and she goes to day care at the Jewish Community Center. In other words, a thoroughly American sort of upbringing. I can't wait to see what she finds to rebel against when she hits the teenage years.
For no obvious reason, three of the four kids she's most likely to play with on the playground when I pick her up in the evening (we play at the JCC for a while before going home, to give Kate…
drorzel | March 15, 2011It's NCAA tournament time, which is time for everybody to break out the moralizing stories about the pernicious aspects of college athletics that they've been sitting on since the football season ended. The Associated Press (via the New York Times) clocks in with a particularly discreditable entry, a story on a study of racial disparities in graduation rates in major college baskeball:
An annual report by the University of Central Florida's Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport found a 2 percent overall graduation rate increase to 66 percent for Division I players, but showed the rates…
gregladen | February 24, 2011The Science component of "The Nation's Report Card" was released today and clearly indicates that we have moved one step closer as a nation in two of our most important goals: Building a large and complacent poorly educated low-pay labor class, and increasing the size of our science-illiterate populace in order to allow the advance of medieval morality and Iron Age Christian values.
The "Nation's Report Card" is meant to report academic achievement of K-12 students, and is conducted by the US Department of Education as part of the National Assessment of Educational Progress. The current…
emjohnson | July 6, 2010Image: via PZ Myers
PZ Myers has a new post condemning Discovery Institute ideologue David Klinghoffer's recent post connecting Darwin to the eugenic policies of Hitler. He trots out some of the same points that have been refuted time and again.
Darwin elaborated a picture of how the world works, how creatures war with each other for survival thus selecting out the fittest specimens and advancing the species. In this portrait of animal life, man is no exception. Any animal that strives to preserve the weak, as man does, is committing racial suicide. "Thus the weak members of civilized…
elerner | April 14, 2010 Yesterday's edition of the journal Current Biology featured an interesting study on Williams Syndrome, a genetic condition marked by cognitive deficits but also a several common personality traits. People with Williams are excessively outgoing and friendly, are often musically talented, and, most importantly to this study, show no social fear. Researchers at the University of Heidelberg have shown that children with Williams do not show racial biases, a common trait even amongst young children without the condition. Over at Neurophilosophy, Mo Costandi gives a thorough analysis of the paper…
emjohnson | March 24, 2010Ann Coulter is a vicious and mean-spirited demagogue and I'm ashamed that I share more DNA with her than chimpanzees or bonobos. She represents the worst kind of reactionary partisanship and should be condemned by all quarters in the spirit of basic decency. That being said, however, I don't believe a government should have any role in prohibiting her speech, regardless of how offensive it is. And it's pretty offensive. Just after the Sept. 11 attacks Coulter wrote, "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity." This got her fired from the column…
emjohnson | March 23, 2010Harvard Medical School physician and researcher J. Wes Ulm has a fascinating paper in the new edition of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, the quarterly academic periodical put out by Johns Hopkins University. His paper "The Cachet of the Cutthroat" investigates the legacy of ideas that formed the basis of laissez-faire social Darwinism:
Ultimately, Social Darwinism fails in practice because it never succeeded as a theory. It's not even Darwinist-Herbert Spencer, after all, had sketched out its contours even before Darwin published his own work. And when the great naturalist outlined a…
emjohnson | March 20, 2010RaceWire is reporting that Thomas Hagan, one of three men convicted for the assassination of Malcolm X (and the only to plead guilty), was released after his 17th attempt at parole yesterday. Hagan, at the time of the murder, was known as Talmadge X and was a militant member of the Nation of Islam.
According to The New York Times:
Mr. Hagan said in a 1977 affidavit that he and several accomplices . . . decided to kill Malcolm X because he was a "hypocrite" who had "gone against the leader of the Nation of Islam," Elijah Muhammad. Mr. Hagan said that after one man shot Malcolm X in the chest…