Why racist belief systems persist

Posted by Fred Scrooby on July 23, 2006, 11:23 AM | #

Excellent log entry.

I saw Prof. Niall Ferguson on C-SPAN and on another interview program and let’s just say he didn’t strike me as one of your top-flight intellects.  He’s a bit on the dull side but comes across as an “upwardly-mobile hopeful in the circles in which he moves,” so keen always to say the right things and not slip up and risk getting anyone mad at him.

Let’s just say this individual does not have one of your top minds, no.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on July 23, 2006, 11:28 AM | #

Would I ever read one of his books?  Having seen him in a couple of long TV interviews, and knowing what else I know about him, the answer is no, I would never read any of his books.  Life is too short to waste time with people who don’t know fundamentally what’s going on or do but lie about it.

Posted by Svyatoslav Igorevich on July 23, 2006, 03:06 PM | #

I think that “racist belief systems” persist for the same reasons that hunger, thirst, lust, exhaustion, etc., persist: they’re written into us.  They’re all extensions of the life-urge.

Posted by Guessedworker on July 23, 2006, 04:39 PM | #

Possibly, Ferguson employs the phrase “racist belief system” simply because he is writing in the Guardian.  But I suspect that he is simply unaware of “ethnic genetic interest”, which is the proper term and which makes a nonsense of his entire platform.  “We must ask ourselves why ethnic genetic interest exists”.  Erm, no ... how about, “We must ask ourselves why at every opportunity the liberal-left promotes alien EGI above our own.”

Posted by On Holliday on July 23, 2006, 06:05 PM | #

I certainly cannot object to this JJR post; however, I’d like to make a small clarification.  It is not that the percentage of shared genes is unimportant, rather one must concentrate on the differences between gene sharing.  So, for example, humans and chimps share 99% of their genes, but humans share with each other 99.9% of genes - so what’s important is the greater percentage of shared genes within, than between, the species.  Likewise, if humans in general share 99.9% of their genes, but members of the same race share, say, 99.92% of their genes, then that difference is important as well.

Evolutionary processes, such as selection and drift, “work” by changing gene frequencies from one generation to the next.  This logically necessitates that there be genetic variation to begin with; without such variation, there is nothing to be changed in frequency.  A population of exact clones will be “impervious” to evolutionary change until such a time that mutation introduces genetic differences.  Therefore, evolution, fitness, and genetic interests are relevant only insofar as genetic differences exist – it are these differences and their extent that are important, not the mass of shared genes, whose frequencies remain the same regardless of the outcome.  If humans and chimps were in dire competition for limited resources, and one of the two groups was replaced by the other, there would be no change in the frequencies of those genes shared between the groups; the change would be limited to those genes that differ. That the latter is a small fraction of the former is irrelevant.  As Harpending points out, humans share many genes with onions, but that is not a particularly relevant frame of reference when contemplating fitness and interests.

The reason why such obvious concepts pass over the heads of ostensibly intelligent liberal commentators is that they willfully let the concepts pass over their heads. For to acknowledge these concepts leads eventually to the concept that different population groups, and members of these groups, are genetically more or less similar than other groups and their members, and that these differences have evolutionary significance and hence, represent what Salter calls “genetic interests” for the groups.

This most non-PC idea must be avoided at all costs, even at the cost of the truth and of common sense and logic.

Posted by On Holliday on July 23, 2006, 06:11 PM | #

“...ostensibly intelligent liberal commentators”

Note: I am talking about, and criticizing, Ferguson here, not JJR.  As I said, the post is sound, except for a terminological point.

Posted by ben tillman on July 23, 2006, 11:38 PM | #

Because whites share lots of genes with blacks (or with chimpanzees, for that matter), he leaps into the complete non-sequitur that genetic differences between races are unimportant.

His reasoning would lead us to conclude, as well, that differences between “individual” humans are even less important than differences between races.  If races are fungible, the members of those races—who differ from one another less than the standard races differ from one another—are more fungible.

Why deposit one’s paycheck into one’s own bank account?  Why worry about your wife’s fidelity?  Why have laws against robbery and murder?

Posted by ben tillman on July 23, 2006, 11:41 PM | #

Why, then, have men repeatedly thought and acted as if a few superficial differences were evidence of biologically distinct races?

And why have men repeatedly thought and acted as if a few superficial differences were evidence of biologically distinct persons?

Posted by allotmentkeeper on July 24, 2006, 01:12 AM | #

I was chatting away at a friend’s house, the TV was on in the background and showing an episode of Ferguson’s documentary “War of the World”. I was quite uninterested in the TV background noise ‘til I heard the phrase “Willing Executioners”.

Naturally my ears pricked up and I listened closely to the next few moments. He was talking about mass murder in the Soviet Union, and he actually namechecked various minorities as acting with an ethnic motive for their actions in killing millions of etnic Russians.

But - he did not namecheck Jews.

Practically all other minorities in Russia, but not Jews.

I laughed out loud.

Does anyone here have the book, or a transcript of the TV show?

http://vdare.org/misc/051105_macdonald_stalin.htm

Posted by Al Ross on July 24, 2006, 01:53 AM | #

Niall Ferguson wouldnt mention Jews in any unfavourable context for the simple reason that he is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard and the eponymous donor of that chair was a Jew.

Posted by Alex Zeka on July 24, 2006, 01:40 PM | #

One thought occures: men and women differ from each other by a single gene, or share 99.999999999% of their genes. Would the good professor thus claim that men and women are infact identical, and that the continued preponderance of heterosexual norms is only due to “sexist belief systmes persisting”?

If not, why is a several gene difference irrelevant, but a one gene difference relevant? Answers on the back of a postcard to Jerusalem, oops I meant Harvard, N. Ferguson.

Posted by Calvin on July 25, 2006, 04:50 AM | #

“One thought occures: men and women differ from each other by a single gene, or share 99.999999999% of their genes. Would the good professor thus claim that men and women are infact identical, and that the continued preponderance of heterosexual norms is only due to “sexist belief systmes persisting”?

That’s brilliant Alex. That’s the kind of language we have to translate the racial counter-argument into. The egalitarians have captured the public imagination by couching their catechism in plain English. One easily deployed point like this is worth a dozen jargon filled expositions.

I also like the point that humans share many genes with onions. It’s not quite as relevant but it makes egalitarians seem stupid.

Does anyone else have any useful three sentence deconstructions?

Posted by Alex Zeka on July 25, 2006, 05:33 AM | #

Thanks, Calvin. I am now tempted to start an Onion Civil Rights Movement or Liberation Front!

For how much longer will we allow animatist mammals to degrade us to satisfy their never-ending hunger?!!! We must teach the world to live in a more wholesome, onionist way!!!! We must lie around in fields, unlike the capitalist, movist mammals, and their cooked lackeys!!!!!