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5 Feet of Fury

Kathy Shaidle's blog. Est. 2000

The Unfortunately Innate Nature of Intelligence

February 19, 2014 By Kathy Shaidle

Fred Reed writes:

In Group Mode, everything changes according to the group being discussed. If I said that Jews were smart, and adduced all manner of achievements over the centuries, no one would deny it. Similarly for the Chinese.

If I said, however, that Australian aborigines were inferior in IQ, I would be told as follows: Intelligence does not exist; it is a social construct; it is culturally determined; it can’t be measured; it has no genetic basis; the tests are biased; lack of achievement is caused by discrimination, or institutional racism running through Australian society, or geographic considerations.

Whereas if I said that Italians were of low intelligence, the response would be to produce counter evidence; in the case of the aborigines it would be to give all manner of reasons why there was no counter evidence.

Each of the clear disparities can be explained away, yes. E.g., for many centuries Germans were primitive while Italians and Greeks flourished intellectually, and Brazil only recently started designing airliners. Yet the aborigines never did anything. This is not probative, but highly suspicious.

***
For a blessedly brief moment last month, some bitchy Canadian Indian was trying to popularize a t-shirt that read GOT LAND? THANK AN INDIAN.

Kate’s response was superb.

And you’ll notice the GOT LAND? thing disappeared soon after.

Also? I don’t argue against “culture” entirely. For instance, the difference in the poverty rate of married blacks and married whites in the U.S. is a mere three percentage points, marriage being the common denominator.

 

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