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| Home Front: Culture Wars |
| Denying Genetics Isn't Shutting Down Racism, It's Fueling It |
| 2018-04-01 |
| h/t Instapundit [NYMag] Last weekend, a rather seismic op-ed appeared in the New York Times, and it was for a while one of the most popular pieces in the newspaper. It’s by David Reich, a professor of genetics at Harvard, who carefully advanced the case that there are genetic variations between subpopulations of humans, that these are caused, as in every other species, by natural selection, and that some of these variations are not entirely superficial and do indeed overlap with our idea of race. This argument should not be so controversial ‐ every species is subject to these variations ‐ and yet it is. For many on the academic and journalistic left, genetics are deemed largely irrelevant when it comes to humans. Our large brains and the societies we have constructed with them, many argue, swamp almost all genetic influences. Humans, in this view, are the only species on Earth largely unaffected by recent (or ancient) evolution, the only species where, for example, the natural division of labor between male and female has no salience at all, the only species, in fact, where natural variations are almost entirely social constructions, subject to reinvention. We are, in this worldview, alone on the planet, born as blank slates, to be written on solely by culture. In short: The people who proclaim their allegiance to Science and Evolution the loudest, have less grasp of the scientific results in evolutionary research than an average Jewish/Christian/Muslim fundamentalist. All differences between men and women are a function of this social effect; as are all differences between the races. If, in the aggregate, any differences in outcome between groups emerge, it is entirely because of oppression, patriarchy, white supremacy, etc. And it is a matter of great urgency that we use whatever power we have to combat these inequalities. |
| Posted by:g(r)omgoru |
| #3 Beso, Glowball warming to be precise. Don't know if you would call them the same but it is logic that they are deficient in, not science. They cannot process "If A therefore B; We have A therefore ?????????" This makes it impossible to have a rational discussion with them. |
| Posted by: AlanC 2018-04-01 09:54 |
| #2 If, in the aggregate, any differences in outcome between groups emerge, it is entirely because of oppression, patriarchy, white supremacy, etc. And all this time I thought it was the weather. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2018-04-01 07:11 |
| #1 The people who proclaim their allegiance to Science and Evolution the loudest, have less grasp of the scientific results Inconvenient truths must always be denied. Always. |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2018-04-01 06:29 |