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As a black person...I really really really don't want HBD to be true
This doesn't mean I think it's wrong. It's just that I think that the conclusions you'd have to draw from it being correct are just so awful for me.
I view it as nothing short of tragic that a people who suffered so much due to being viewed as inferior, who struggled for so long to be viewed as equals and treated with dignity, who endured all kinds of injustices in the hope that we would overcome...only for science to prove that it was fruitless all along. It's so dispiriting the possibility that all the problems in our community: crime, poverty, ignorance, are intransient. How are you supposed to deal with that without becoming utterly nihilistic?
I'll probably have a longer more essay-type post for next week's thread but I just want to get my raw emotions about it out here before then.
It's just so unfair. It fills me with anger and sadness and rage and I can't stop thinking about it. I don't want it to be true...I don't want it to be true. It's so unfair
There were many hundreds of African societies pre-Colonization with their own codes of conduct and methods for enforcing it. Genetic descendants from these societies may have a harder time conforming to English Common Law, but that doesn't mean that crime and poverty follow necessarily from a lower average IQ score.
I don't view it as a racial thing. Take race out of it and we can have more productive conversations with people outside the Very Online Right. Everyone knows that some people are smarter than others (even if someone believes everyone is smart in their own way, they have to admit that the child with Down Syndrome has less than most.)
How do we as a society accommodate this? How do we provide everyone with a role that challenges and interests them, while providing for their needs? How do we include everyone in the social contract, so that breaking the law becomes offensive to everyone? How do we ensure that top talent goes into the positions that need it, and these positions are rewarded enough to encourage the smartest people to do their best? How do we do this without screwing everyone else?
I'm not talking about changing laws, but first societal attitudes. We first have to agree that these are good things. Right now, the conversation shys away from acknowledging differences and puts everyone into the same grind together.
You don't need to tell me this. Pre-colonial Africa has been my main focus of study as an aspiring historian. I admit that even as a HBD-convert that one of the fallacies that the majority of that crowd seems to subscribe to is the idea that literally all of Black Africa was in the Stone Age pre-European contact which I know for a fact is wrong.
I’m as deep into that “crowd” as anybody here, and I can say confidently that I have heard nearly nobody make anything close to such a claim. The existence of large-scale agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa is well-known, as is the Bantu Expansion and the fact that the Bantu were able to achieve the level of dominance they did partly because of their mastery of metalworking. So no, your characterization of the “HBD crowd” is uncharitable and misinformed.
What is usually claimed is that nowhere in Sub-Saharan Africa do we find any evidence of written language, of the invention of the wheel, or of two-story buildings. Do you dispute these claims?
If your claim is that these things were not widespread in Sub-Saharan Africa or were more "primitive" than they were in another places then no I don't dispute that.
But to claim that those things were non-existent in Black Africa is just inaccurate. See Ajami, Nsibidi, Adinkra, etc.
/images/171234563718316.webp
So, how archaeologically well-attested are these? I’m not saying I don’t believe you, but I’ve also encountered a number of hotep-adjacent spaces where tendentious claims are presented as “facts that YT doesn’t want you to know* and then it turns out to be a massive exaggeration or an outright fabrication. (Or to be claiming for black Sub-Saharan the accomplishments of non-black peoples like the Egyptians, etc.)
I appreciate you engaging. My views on race and my generally unfavorable attitude toward blacks are well-attested and easily searchable in this community, but I’d be quite happy to have some intelligent and open-minded black individuals to engage fruitfully with here. I’m cognizant of the effect that spending as much time in the dissident-right echo chamber as I do can have, and if you can provide valuable correctives to any shortcomings in my knowledge, I would appreciate it.
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Ethiopia did have a pre-colonial writing system, but Europe didn't independently invent writing either so this isn't really a win for whites. Even Amerindians have Europeans beat on the "invent written language" score. Europeans did probably invent the wheel, though it was invented only one time (not counting its invention in the Americas; score another for the Maya), and spread from there. I don't know where the idea that it's some super basic, easy "bare minimum" invention came from, to the point that "they didn't even have the wheel!" is a ubiquitous dunk on blacks from your crowd.
Not sure about two story houses.
EDIT: Here's a meme I've seen thrown around pretty regularly which implies that pre-colonialism, blacks didn't have roads, farms, or houses so it seems like somebody on your side thinks SSA was stone age prior to European contact.
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