Eugenics and the Myth of Racial Superiority

Internet commentary has certainly demolished some myths. One of them is that we're in a post-racial society, or anything like one. You can cite the millions of openly bigoted comments, especially those made after Barrack Obama's election in 2008. Besides the ARWP's, there's a whole host of commentators and trolls that don't even try to hedge or redefine their racism anymore.

This does have the pretense of being scientific, but there's no credibility to it. First of all, six cubic inches is huge. Asians would need a second head for that. Even if the poster used the wrong units, the average brain volume (according to Wikipedia, for a quick answer) is 1260 cubic centimeters. Six cubic  centimeters would be within the margin of error of that figure. In other words, insignificant.

Second, everything one talks about with genetics--with all of science really-- is a matter of probabilities. At best, discrimination judges someone not where their abilities fall, but where they're guessed likely fall.

Third, intelligence is not a well-defined term.

However, eugenics itself is flawed to its very core. It's not actually "Survival of the fittest." Evolution doesn't select for the best traits. It selects for ones that are best for survival and reproduction in the organism's environment. This seldom matches what a human being would consider an improvement. Such as, when human beings learned to cook, we began to get crooked teeth, because the genetics for well-meshed teeth were no longer needed, and the resource expenditure to make teeth straight and keep jaws strong was unnecessary. This is not something that eugenicists would consider superior. 

Therefore, a eugenic dictator is likely to choose "superior" traits that suck in the environment that his subjects actually have to live in--since life is inherently unpredictable. So, eugenics would reduce survival and reproductive success. 

I'm not sure if anybody else has this reaction, but whenever I hear of the eugenicists of the late 19th and and early 20th century (and during that time, almost every well-educated Caucasian who came of age then was a eugenicist) I'm struck by how naive they were. The whole reason the ideology was evil was that it would cause a lot of suffering, and for nothing, because it wouldn't work. Anybody who understands Darwinism now knows that. It's better to let the environment tell our genes what it wants. That's what genes exist for.

So, any claim of racial status based on so-called science is fraudulent. At best, it's a biology dropout who would make the claim. 

Protesters Unemployed?

On snide remarks that many of the Ferguson protesters are unemployed, most of the critiques are unaware of the irony conveyed: that only the unemployed can afford a conscience.

To sneer at the Ferguson protesters requires a callous of racist cynicism.

The Supreme Court Lays An(other) Egg

The Supreme Court has allowed Texas to keep 600,000 people from voting. Most are minorities. Most are, presumably, voting Democratic. This is not just a bad ruling, it's a crooked one. Like Bush vs. Gore. Like voter ID laws themselves, this just reeks of political opportunism trumping the strict constructionism all of the conservative justices preached.  

These five awful justices, Roberts, Scalia, Aleto, Kennedy and Thomas, really do believe that Jim Crow and the Gilded Age were both the good ol' days and exactly what Founders had in mind (short of Plan A: slavery). I really believe the only thing they'd correct about that utopia is to make it more religious (Christian that is).

 We're getting the worst Supreme Court in history at a time we could least afford it: i.e. right after the wort presidency in history. This court is gift from Bush and his dad (for those who thought he was any good). At the same time, we have the worst Congress in history. The country won't survive too much more of this onslaught of corruption supported by demented stupidity. And if you look at the growing secessionism in the polls, that's probably a contingency plan.

The joke will be on conservative voters: they'll depart from a nation they ruined to be governed by state governments that are worse.

Like Criminals Respect their Communities' Wishes?

A New Orlean's protest against Black on Black violence, January 11, 2007. There have at least nine other major protests in that city since 2006, and hundreds in most major US cities.

I'm picking this up from my last entry, where I defined the term ARWP, short for Ambiguously Racist White People. I'll alternately call them sometimes ARs for Ambiguous Racists, or ARRs for Ambiguously Racist Reactionaries. 

An Acronym for Posts to Follow

Ferguson protest in Clayton (the seat of St. Louis county).

(Disclaimer: I'm White and male. I'm committed to ending both racism and sexism and exposing the myths and pretensions that keep the two socially potent.)

I needed a term for discriminating white people who maintain that their moderate racism isn't racist. The sort who are proud that their use of the n*gg*r to describe a low-life white person shows such racial enlightenment. They cite the lack of white hoods in their closets as conclusive proof that their refusal to think about hiring a Black person has nothing to do with race. The ones who won't let the color of a person's skin bother them, but clothes, language and names are all fair game; and the ones of Black people disgust them the most of all, merely by coincidence. The sort who always make damn sure they always have one or two Black friends so when they're accused of racism, they can always cite him, and (don't forget!) his family as some of his best friends.

For now I'll settle for Ambiguously Racist White People, or ARWP's. Or perhaps just ARs. I've been having run-ins with a lot of them recently on social media. The Riverfront Times Facebook Page. I needed to develop a term before I dove into it. I don't want to paint White people with too broad a brush, do I?
 

A Day that should Live in Infamy

Christopher Columbus: mug shot

 My thoughts on C-Day: Columbus was both immoral and lame. He was wrong, utterly wrong about his discovery. He mis-named the people he discovered, thus causing centuries of confusion. What he found out, he did by accident. His voyage was not difficult. He blundered into the fastest way to the Americas and the fastest way back from sheer luck. (For a heroic voyage that tested human fortitude, see Magellan, who discovered something more remarkable than the Americas, the Pacific Ocean.) 

He was agent of a couple of fanatical, theocratic tyrants, who were otherwise busy committing genocide and religious cleansing on Jews and Muslims. When he arrived, he immediately allowed his men to rape and plunder from the natives, thus setting European-American relations for the likes of Cortez and Pizarro. When couldn't find gold he made his discovery profitable by abducting the Native Americans into slavery. Yes, slavery in the New World started with Columbus. There is really nothing good about the guy.

If there's anyone who should be remembered from the early colonial period, it should be Tisquantum, known to the English as Squanto. After being abducted into slavery, then escaping and coming to find his whole village wiped out from an epidemics accidentally brought by European, he still saved the Puritan's lives.

That shows a superhuman capacity to forgive, that's worthy of being remembered for centuries. He should be the best known person from the whole Euro-America colonial disaster. That's who the European-Americans should commemorate, at least in North America. And it should be a holiday where we ask for forgiveness. 

Instead, he's almost forgotten and buried in an unmarked grave.

Moreover, there are various myths that most everyone believes about American Colonization. To have them corrected, you have to go to a comedy website.

Racism in St Louis

Michael Brown, The outrage (Click on Picture for full article)