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Notes -
Richard Hanania writes we need to shut up about HBD.
https://www.richardhanania.com/p/shut-up-about-race-and-iq
He defines HBD as believing:
Populations have genetic differences in things like personality and intelligence. (group differences)
Groups are often in zero-sum competition with one another, and this is a useful way to understand the world. (zero sum)
People to a very strong degree naturally prefer their own ingroup over others. (descriptive tribalism)
Individuals should favor their own ingroup, whether that is their race or their co-nationals. (normative tribalism)
And he goes on to criticize 2-4. I tend to agree with those criticisms, but I think it’s fairly common in these kinds of circles to believe a version of 2 focused on ideological competition, not between racial groups, where the social justice left and its preferred policies to rectify group differences can only be defeated by using the facts to explain group differences that won’t be rectified through policy.
While I accept Hanania’s point that the facts frequently don’t matter in which political ideas rise to the top, I still feel like Cofnas has a point (whom Hanania is responding to).
I’m quite philosemetic, for example. The best argument against antisemitism based on observing Jewish overperformance and concluding it’s due to some kind of plot is explaining that intelligence matters and the Ashkenazim underwent a particular history and we now observe them having very high average test scores.
Hanania himself wrote not so long ago about how Jewish personality traits might be needed to fully explain their political interest and influence, beyond just intelligence.
Using biology to explain overperformance but not underperformance seems like a strange compromise.
In much of today’s polite society, if one points out the achievement gap among groups, you’re a racist.
But if one doesn’t acknowledge the achievement gap between groups to justify affirmative action, you’re a racist.
And that’s without even mentioning biology! Watching lefties like Kathryn Paige Harden and Freddie deBoer try to (admirably) describe these kinds of issues while trying to remain in the good graces of polite society is enlightening.
Now, if you could guarantee me a return to a more race-blind culture and legal system if we shut up about genetics then I would take that. But we are on a path towards learning the murky details of (and being able to influence) genetics of both groups and individuals. I don’t think the elephant in the room will stay quiet.
It’s a bit remarkable to read Hanania write:
I think he means, “talk about something publicly” as opposed to at all, but actually I’ll easily bite those bullets and say we ought to understand the disadvantages short men face due to female preferences and that we ought to know just how much we expend society’s resources on the severely handicapped.
Social desirability bias is incredibly powerful and one should choose one’s battles. Polite society in the West went from being quite racist, in ways that didn’t always align with the facts, to correcting hard (thanks, Hitler) to race is only skin deep, which also doesn’t align. And then we got the influence of Kendiism.
Even ignoring immigration (where he doesn’t cover the Garret Jones stance), a lot of US politics comes down to this issue, and HBD was mostly in a quietist tradition the last few decades with little influence for being outside the Overton Window.
I know Trace doesn’t like HBD much, but wow is that like the whole story of his FAA traffic controller storyline. If you listen to the Blocked and Reported episode, he and Jesse aren’t shy about pointing out it was an insane policy to completely jettison meritocracy, but they dance around the general point that if you set a fairly high intellectual bar for a job, it’s going to look like the racists are right. If you allow self-selection, you also very well might make it look like the sexists are right.
The elephant in the room is only growing larger for anyone following the facts. Conceding the present Overton Window is unassailable is I think conceding defeat to the social justice left.
How do you think the Hausa or Fulani are likely to respond if an Igbo comes up to them and says that, actually, on account of his people’s average IQ being at least one standard deviation above the Nigerian average, they ought to be in charge of the country and occupy the majority of the top jobs in Lagos and Abuja and so on? How do antisemitic white nationalists respond if you tell them that actually it’s a good thing that Jews are disproportionately in positions of power because we are, in fact, significantly smarter than them on average and that effect is exacerbated in the long tail at IQ 160+ (so we deserve it really)? Sorry incels, you’re just ugly, Chad deserves his roster and you deserve to die a virgin because he won the genetic lottery and you lost it.
All these positions exist. I’ve heard every one of them in real life myself. I agree, largely, with all of them, because I was born a rich and OK-looking Jewess and I have worked with a number of very competent Igbos. The logic that I deserve what I have suits me.
But these arguments make their interlocutors very angry. They certainly don’t serve to reduce the social tensions that exist between groups even when some inequality between them is inevitable. “Yeah, akshually we should be in charge because SCIENCE proves we’re naturally better than you, sorry, sucks to be you I guess” is not a viable mode of long-term social relations without a radical and unlikely reversal of the entire post-1789/1776 project.
That’s the point Hanania’s making.
I don’t think you’re engaging with the issues I raised.
I don’t disagree that a lot of HBD types are dumb and selected for disagreeability and/or liking racism, not better traits. But that’s what you get when social desirability bias really punishes witches or anything close to it.
“We deserve it really”
I mean yeah, inasmuch as anyone deserves the fruits of their labor and natural abilities. Believing foul play is involved instead seems well-proven to lead to bad outcome for the Jews. Open competition, markets, and meritocracy are going to let talent rise and we plainly see group imbalances all over, like in sports.
Ultimately, in the West at least, individualism and equality under the law seem like the best option, but denying reality seems unlikely to help.
(Also, it is socially acceptable to punch down at incels so maybe the status quo there isn’t great.)
I don’t really disagree with you at all. I think the answers to these positions are nuanced, though, and I think that the message that pushing HBD sends to members of lower performing groups is detrimental to social cohesion and to a well-functioning economy because it inevitably leads to backlash.
And it is relevant that when you ask HBD proponents what policy implications they draw from it there are usually a substantial number of them, even though HBD by itself doesn’t prescribe any particular policy, it’s just an explanation. And in a rare moment of agreement with Darwin / @guesswho, I think we should be honest that this is actually in large part about black and white people in America and their relations. And so if we listen to a lot of HBD proponents like Murray and ‘accept’ it and dismantle those programs that largely benefit those communities, and abolish / criminalize affirmative action and so on, do we really think that the social problems we see in black communities are going to improve? That issues with eg violence are going to improve? It just seems very unlikely to me.
I’m not saying the current system is good because it isn’t. But I often think HBD activists are very naive about the reasons why stuff like affirmative action was implemented (often by politicians who were pretty racist). It wasn’t because of Robin Di Angelo logic, it was often because they didn’t want to see the country burn.
Problem is that the anti-HBDers are not standing in place: recent anti-policing pushes have made black communities worse off.
It's not simply "keep what works even if you have to lie about it". The other theory has motivated policy that is now not only hurting black people but affecting others, with no sign of stopping.
The latter is a much less attractive status quo.
A black guy gets shot by police at the wrong time and the country may burn anyway.
Yes and it's no coincidence that those Anti-policing pushes have been spearheaded by the same class of people who are spearheading HBD awareness, namely secular progressive Democrats. The party of Woodrow Wilson and the KKK never changed sides, just their branding.
No, they are not, unless you’re referring to second order effects. The Twitter Nazis are mostly secular republicans with fratboyish views on sex and libertarian-ish economics. This is indeed not exactly tradcon, but it’s also a poor fit for what progressives believe. Blue tribe I will believe, but that’s not synonymous with progressive.
I think you're wrong.
It's a simple fact of US politics that if you support race-based discrimination, you vote Democrat, or maybe Libertarian if you are an edgy /pol/ rDrama type. The GOP are a distant 4th or 5th choice after the Greens and CPUSA, and have been since Bush I elevated Thomas to the USSC back in '91.
It’s true that actually existing racism as government policy is mostly a democrat thing. But it’s also true that the Twitter Nazis are libertarian frat boys who don’t like blacks much. That’s nearly the opposite of progressive; their non race based beliefs aren’t progressive either.
Yes, they have in common a belief that racial discrimination is sometimes good. That’s a single shared belief between people who don’t have anything else in common, fight endlessly over that belief, and got to it by completely different routes.
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If secular progressive Democrats were spearheading HBD awareness, it would already be taught as gospel in elementary schools. This claim is simply nonsense.
I think his point is that yelling "DON'T THINK ABOUT ELEPHANTS" at the top of your voice on every street corner is going to make people start looking around for elephants.
I think that assuming this to be intentional is in violation of Hanlon's Razor, though.
To think progressives are deliberately promoting HBD because they're old-South style racists playing 11-d chess is actually impressively deranged.
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