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Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 22, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Yes, he (why did I think Chisala Chanda was a woman?) does. @popocatepetl elaborates further in a sibling comment.

To tldr Chanda's hypothesis: non-African people (especially Europeans and Asians) have a more restricted (canalized) phenotype, as do women. American Blacks are stupider than African Blacks because they have genetic admixture from low-class Whites. The genes that make Seamus a bit stupid and aggressive make Tyrone very stupid and very aggressive, while Shaneequa won't be affected as much, but her sons will.

There are some studies I can think of that should be able to support or weaken this claim, like:

  • middle-class children of ADOS fathers and White mothers should be smarter and less aggressive than middle-class children of White fathers and ADOS mothers

middle-class children of ADOS fathers and White mothers should be smarter and less aggressive than middle-class children of White fathers and ADOS mothers

I don't see how that follows. Shouldn't our prima facie assumption be that the genetic information that contributes to [aggression and stupidity] is passed on patrilineally as well as matrilineally?

Since females are more canalized and we assume that ADOS genomes are saddled with Borderer alleles, an ADOS male of with a substantial IQ is more likely to have fewer of these alleles than an ADOS female with a similar IQ, since her phenotype is more restricted.

Since we are not restricting the selection to specific low-class groups, a White male and a White female with an equally substantial IQ are much less likely to bear a significant load of the alleles we're trying to avoid, so they should be coming from the ADOS parent if they appear in their offspring.

than an ADOS female with a similar IQ

Why are we comparing similar IQs? If the axiom you mention were true, we would expect to see lower IQ in ADOS men on the left tail of the distribution than in ADOS women on the left tail of the distribution, beyond what would be expected from the Greater Male Variability hypothesis. Is this the case?

Because I'm using different sexes having the same IQ as a proxy for having different genetic load: IQ 100 ADOS men probably have "cleaner" genes than IQ 100 ADOS women. If the children of ADOS women slip further left on the tail, then it's probably true. If the children inherit the same IQ, then it's probably false.

Ah, gotcha. Thanks.

It seems like the obvious issue with that is that African Americans mostly have white admixture that comes from the upper classes(mostly the sons of plantation owners), not the lower classes.

The plantation owners in question were presumably violent rapists, which is how much of the admixture happened in the first place.

Having a mistress literally owned by a close relative looks distinctly non consensual today, but that doesn’t mean that’s how it would have been understood as taboo in societies which accepted owning slaves, at least not in a way which was legibly close to rape.

My understanding is that there was a lot of straight-up rape, i.e., the man physically forcing himself on the woman, who of course couldn't resist because of her status. But admittedly I have no idea how much of the admixture is due to violent rape, how much was "borderline" as you described, and how much was consensual.

The best documented example of miscegenation in the antebellum south was plaçage, which featured very little violent rape but lots of elite males, but 1) slavery in French Louisiana was different and 2) that’s just the best documented example, presumably slave owners who raped their slaves didn’t write it down. So it’s up in the air how much white admixture was due to outright coercion and how much of it was the predictable result of high status males and low status females.

It’s also complicated by the fact that very few writers about slavery in the antebellum south were neutral on the practice- they were either abolitionists who generally picked the worst examples to write about, or apologists who were almost certainly lying.

(why did I think Chisala Chanda was a woman?)

Probably because the suffix -a marks something as feminine in romance languages, and, stop me if I'm wrong, russian.