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But there is some actual logical basis to 'It's clearly obvious that blacks are better at running than whites, just as whites are better at weightlifting than blacks - if there are differences in physical capacity there are presumably differences in mental capacity. We can draw conclusions from IQ, criminality, Nobels, education scores, income, Fields Medals and national development just like we can draw conclusions from Olympics and sport and conclude that blacks are significantly weaker at the abstract mental skills needed for advanced civilization'. There's nothing complicated about this idea, it's perfectly straightforward.
Meanwhile the blankslatists have to conjure up all these epicycles 'Oh the shape of Africa prevented horizontal proliferation of technology, oh whites and Arabs inexplicably became racist and suppressed blacks to permanently lower their performance, the many majority-black nations were sabotaged by communism or lacked institutions, even when they took over South Africa and Zimbabwe white racism somehow turned the functional institutions broken, white racism somehow wrecked many American cities when blacks showed up, all the affirmative action wasn't enough, there are these mysterious cultural factors acting in all different countries preventing black excellence...'
Other peoples and races have dealt with communism, colonialism and unpleasant history. Few have received such extraordinary amounts of foreign aid and affirmative action. Russia went through more communism than anyone, suffered the brunt of the biggest wars and still made all kinds of advances and contributions. We derive the word Slave from Slav and yet they're not civilizationally impaired.
A billion blacks, many of them rich and not a single STEM Nobel or Fields Medal? Not one major global manufacturer like Samsung or Volkswagen? The simplest explanation is that on a populational basis they're stupid and incompetent. This has obvious normative results for a huge range of expensive policies that are implemented right now. It has obvious significance for those of us who are interested in meritocracy, development, safety and civilization. It is the normative beliefs of the blank-slaters that are extremely costly.
I don’t disagree with your point that descriptions of the zanj weren’t glowing either, and in fact no one who has encountered them except for recent progressives had been very impressed with blacks; they’re simply not, on average, very good at IQ and conscientiousness requiring tasks. But there’s a lot of things in your post that are simply wrong.
White racism is a convenient thing for black liberation movements to blame, but the ruling parties in those countries are just really that corrupt and incompetent, and the institutions they took over were more fragile than commonly believed to begin with. And the corruption and incompetence has more to do with communism- remember, these guys are actual ideological maoists even if they’re less committed than Mao was- and structural features of their society(the national party wasn’t a bastion of transparency either) than with HBD; neighboring Botswana has similarly crappy HBD and it’s doing much better. As it turns out maintaining first world institutions in third world countries is a hard problem, and guerrilla fighters hastily taught some principles for doing so by communist advisors are unsurprisingly not up to the task. And we shouldn’t forget that; Rhodesia and apartheid-SA whites built nice, technologically modern neighborhoods… for themselves, the vast majority of the country was still mud huts and subsistence farming.
Yes, they are. Russia produces some geniuses, but it’s a poor, corrupt shithole with extreme problems. Yes, it would be the richest country in Africa if it were in Africa, but it sits on an ocean of oil in Europe. Meaningfully different circumstance. Ukraine is even shittier, and was before the war, and their average IQ is like a standard deviation higher than the smartest country in Africa. Russia, Ukraine, North Korea, etc are pretty good arguments against HBD as the end-all-be-all; all of them are high-average-IQ countries in bad shape due to their own damn fault. Institutions and culture matter.
Maoism is a terrible ideology but Maoist China was still a very strong adversary. They beat the UN out of North Korea, despite lacking every kind of materiel. Few have ever beaten Western forces in a conventional war!
Furthermore, Maoist China was able to reform itself, turn itself into Dengist China. They managed economic liberalization and rapid growth without Soviet-style chaos and disaster. That's an impressive feat, something South Africa's consistently failed to do. That's the key difference. Ideology matters but HBD matters more, it alters baseline performance and opens up more possibilities.
Maoist influence in the US was pretty limited but you see the same kinds of dysfunction in Detroit, parts of Chicago. Mass looting in South Africa, mass looting in black America. Extremely high rates of STDs in South Africa, extremely high rates of STDs in black America, educational dysfunction and educational dysfunction... In the US it's mitigated by white institutions and resources but the same force is there. If the US was 90% black, it wouldn't matter whether Mao or Marx was a thing, it'd turn into South Africa or Haiti.
If Russia is a shithole, what are we? They're apparently producing more munitions than the entire West. NATO is feeling threat from them, they're trying to train more divisions, increase munitions production, reintroduce conscription. We were reliant on Russia to reach the ISS for 10 years, we didn't have the rockets!
Ukraine, North Korea and Russia are all tough, powerful nations. Ukraine's fought hard. North Korea alone has ICBMs and hydrogen bombs, they're more powerful than all African countries put together. Russia could wipe us off the map. I don't deny that Russia has weaknesses (shit semiconductors for one) but it's of a qualitatively different nature to sub-Saharan Africa. They are a great power, they belong in the category with us and China, not Nigeria and South Africa. They export jet fighters and nuclear power plants, they made their own COVID vaccine, there's Yandex and so on. They project power in Ukraine, in Syria, even in sub-Saharan Africa with Wagner.
African countries don't produce their own jet fighters (white South Africa excepted) or long-range missiles, they don't project power into other continents and they can't threaten Western countries on the battlefield. They are in way worse shape than Russia, Ukraine and North Korea.
Botswana just rides on its minerals and mildly competent government. You might say 'oh well so does Russia' and they sort of do. But Russia does so many other things, it's not a bigger version of Saudi Arabia. Russia's been dealing with all kinds of challenges, Botswana sits in the corner and does its own thing (with the world's 3rd highest HIV rate).
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What do you mean by that?
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