Race Realism Takes a Step Forward

The nightmare moment that the West’s self-styled anti-racists and egalitarians have dreaded has now arrived. Last month, Chicago University geneticists published data in the prestige journal Science in which variations in two genes, on chromosomes 1 and 8, previously linked to brain size, were shown to vary across continents in a way indicating rapid and recent selection, possibly underpinning the evolution of language and reasoning. In particular, these genetic variations (in alleles) -- arguably responsible for greater cognitive ability (the modern peecee euphemism for intelligence) -- were found relatively commonly in Europe and Asia but at markedly lower frequencies in sub-Saharan Africa. Previously, the same researchers had shown these variations to be much more common in man than in other mammals -- though chimpanzees (man’s closest primate relatives) showed some signs of evolution in the human direction. The findings came hard on the heels of work in Brisbane by Professor Nick Martin and his group finding that sizeable IQ differences within families are associated with variations in the DNA on chromosomes 2 and 6; and at the same time as New York Magazine is giving eight pages to the theory that the Ashkenazi Jews of Europe are prone to disastrous sphingolipid genetic diseases because, when having only one gene for them rather than two, brain development is enhanced and a substantial IQ advantage conferred.

Details of the excellent new Chicago work were conveniently reported in the New York Times (Nick Wade, 8 September), Bloomberg (9 September) and scores of other publications. Essentially, a young East Asian scientist, Dr Bruce Lahn, and his team had studied the prevalence of variants of two genes known to be disabled or damaged in human cases of severe microcephaly (in which the brain develops to only 30% of its normal size). The researchers examined the DNA of 1,184 people around the world – though not in the racially mixed areas of North America, Russia and Australia. They estimated that one genetic variation (‘microcephalin haplogroup D’ – O.K., let’s call it V1) had spread since its appearance in humans of 40,000BC to some 70% of humans; and it was more common in Europe, Asia, South America and Latin America than in Black Africa. It was especially infrequent (3%) in Congo pygmies, whom Black Africans commonly regard as markedly intellectually inferior to themselves. A second variant (‘abnormal, spindle-like microcephaly-associated haplogroup D’ – V2) arriving more recently, around 6,000BC, had spread to 30% of humans, and was more common in Europe and the Middle East, somewhat less common in Asia, and distinctly rare in Black Africa. Lahn and colleagues noted that the evolutionary arrival of V1 coincided roughly with the first signs of human habitation and agriculture; by contrast, the later-arriving V2 appeared along with the first signs of human development of cities and written language.

Faced with this awesome challenge to modern sensitivities about race and genes – especially when simultaneously linked to brain size and civilization! – the Chicago scientists, eagerly abetted by journalists at their press conference, went into pseudo-apologetic overdrive. Fully matching the media efforts to spin the horrors of 70% Black and 80% Black-run New Orleans as attributable to Whitey and President George ‘Dubya’ Bush in particular, they tried to douse the results in cold water so they could cause no conflagration. Such ‘responsibility’ is a requisite of further research grants under the PeeCee religiosity of the ‘post-modern’ West.

Of course, more research is needed – another sentiment unfailingly endorsed in all circumstances by every grant-seeking scientist. Yet what was the authors’ plan, and why exactly could such research not be done in the handy USA? Was it possible that no research that expressly sought to link race and brain size could ever attract funding in North America?

Of course, the authors insisted there was “not necessarily” a connection between the Vs and brain size. Sure! Science is not about ‘necessary’ truth, i.e. logical truth, but about truth that is synthetic, empirical and probabilistic. But the finding that sub-Saharan Africa was the most distinct racial group (of all those studied) was entirely in line with Black Africans also having the most distinct profiles of small-brainedness and low-IQ. What else might those Vs be doing? Making Eurasians worse at running and jumping?! Well, no one has yet linked African athleticism to small-brainedness. It is more likely that the Chicago result is simply right up the street of Professor Phil Rushton (University of Western Ontario) and the rest of the London School of psychology (current leader Emeritus Professor Arthur Jensen) – but Rushton’s name and work establishing a correlation perhaps as high as .40 between brain size, IQ and cultural level could not be mentioned by the Chicago researchers for fear of frightening the horses. Rather, the Chicago researchers colluded with the media to play down the full significance of their work – perhaps, some say, because they do indeed have data in the pipeline linking their Vs directly to IQ and they want a press conference for that paper that will be better attended than those recently in Washington when Rushton and the U.K.’s Emeritus Professor Richard Lynn announced their latest breakthroughs attesting the hereditarian position of the London School of psychology to pitifully small audiences of newsies.

Of course, the authors write only of ‘geographical’ and not of racial differences. But no-one need be fooled by this terminological piety when the data especially distinguish sub-Saharan Africans from all other racial groups – just as Blacks are a group unto themselves in the main findings of psychology, economics, criminology and venereology.

Of course, the Vs could have had some other evolutionary function than making for domestication, art, civilization and language. But, again, Rushton’s work adds plausibility to the authors’ main speculation.

Of course, some critics (like Duke University’s David Goldstein) were quick to claim that Lahn et al.’s genetic differences might have no function and might just have resulted from accidental genetic drift. In particular it has long been common for doubters of the link between brain size and intelligence to point out that Neanderthals actually had cranial capacities some 12% larger than those of modern man. However, Lahn et al. have estimated that the evolutionary changes in their V frequencies occurred far too quickly to be due to drift; and modern paleoanthropologists reject former stories of Neanderthals’ dim-wittedness – they were after all the first hominids to manage to live in subarctic conditions and they had laryngeal anatomy compatible with speech.

Of course, the press conference for the Chicago group agreed that the V work did not mean Black Africans had a low IQ or any other disadvantage…. Dr Lahn himself volunteered that Africans’ could well turn out to have still other Vs that might be shown one day to give them their own positive advantages. It just so happened that the Eurasian genetic advantage had come to light first…. Fine, but such thinking is unfalsifiable unless we are told how long we are supposed to wait before concluding there is no such general African advantage; and also what work the Chicago team proposes in the meantime. Anyhow, microcephalin (controlled by V1) has been declared “a major player in regulating human brain development” by experts in molecular genetics at the Chinese Academy of Science.

No, the West’s media and the scientists themselves can hedge and fudge as much as they like. But their favoured ‘post-modern’ gloss that ‘there is no such thing as race’ just came to look one whole lot sillier. Nor will fudging spare the prancing post-modern arts-persons who deny the reality of civilization, IQ and genetics – or spare the reputations of such scientific eminences as that of the late Stephen Jay Gould. As race and civilization turn out to have a clear genetic basis as well as having clear links to both brain size and IQ, the peecee religiosity of the New York Times looks as doomed as that of the piety of the early-16th-century Roman Church faced with mounting empirical evidence from Galileo and the telescope. Why, the hyper-miseducated NYTwits of New York may even one day publish a review of Richard Lynn’s IQ and the Wealth of Nations – in which, once again, Black Africa has such a unique position, furnishing virtually all of the countries of the world whose economies have actually got worse in the past generation (during which they had been independent)! The West’s anti-racists, having moved heaven and earth to suppress all reference to the g (general intelligence) factor and related material from the London School, now face the final arrival of high-powered tanks on their 1945-style Normandy beaches. The new tank commanders may be a rather more diplomatic and research-grant-savvy lot than is normally expected in nature vs nurture debates; but the fact that Dr Lahn was blooded politically as a student rebel in his home city of Peking during the time of Tianenmen Square should give confidence that his dislike of Communism’s tyrannical and useless environmentalism suggests he holds principles that will soon see him linked to his natural allies in the London School.

For a wider consideration of Bruce Lahn’s work programme and attitudes – e.g. urging that China needs elite science rather than risky revolution – see here.

FOREIGN CRIMINALS TO BE BOOTED OUT OF HOLLAND

The 'Iron Lady' of Dutch politics brought to Cabinet a measure which would allow expulsion of foreigners in Holland who clocked up substantial criminal records. In the previous month, the Dutch Government had adopted language and 'Dutchness' testing for all newly arriving immigrants, welfare recipients, foreign clerics and immigrants raising children (Daily Telegraph, 1 x 2005).


AMERICA AHEAD IN FAST TRACKING

Describing his satisfaction with American university education, a correspondent to the Daily Telegraph (3 x) said Columbia University had allowed him to take 'advanced' courses basically intended for relatively senior students. {Needless to say, British universities make few such concessions to individual differences in ability and achievement - though Edinburgh University does have a startling elitist scheme which allows medical students (on average the best in the university) to top off their training by earning Honours in Psychology with just nine months of study (whereas other students have to take four years).}

PAEDOHYSTERIA AVOIDED

Following the death of a top British broadcaster, the widely loved John Peel, his widow revealed that, at his high-fee-paying school in Shrewsbury at age 13, he had been routinely expected to masturbate senior boys of 18 or so and was on one occasion raped by one of them (Sunday Telegraph, 9 x 2005). Schoolmasters, too, routinely sought out pupils for sex. Despite such experiences, and despite much unhappiness in his birth family, John went on to a kind if quirky personality, fame, riches, a loving wife and three dearly loved children - and all without a word of complaint about paedophilia.


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Some history.

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TRIUMPH OF The g Factor

A comprehensive school in Bridgemary, Gosport, Hampshire has gone ahead with its plan (announced in April – see Diary, above) to begin streaming by cognitive abilities and aptitudes instead of by chronological age (Scotsman, 27 ix) – thus becoming the first state secondary school in Britain to adopt the main educational proposal of The g Factor (1996, Chapter 4). The Times (4 ix) recorded:

Initially, the age gap between the youngest and the oldest pupils in the class is only up to two years, but it will widen as the new teaching system evolves. Cheryl Heron, the head teacher, said: “We certainly don’t want to deter people and the aim is always to be moving the children up through the classes rather than down.” The scheme represents a rejection of the original goal of comprehensive schools to break down social barriers by placing children from a wide range of abilities and backgrounds in the same class. Many education experts now agree that streaming according to ability is more effective because it is easier to motivate the children.

‘Progressive’ education guru Prof. Ted Wragg of Exeter University – despite signs of sweeter reason earlier in 2005 (see Diary, above) -- was apparently still holding out for egalitarianism and mixed ability teaching, saying (though without mentioning any evidence) that streaming by ability could be “humiliating”; but staff and pupils had told the BBC of their enthusiasm for the new arrangements (11 v 05), and headmistress Cheryl Heron had said of an earlier pilot project (Daily Telegraph, 10 iv 05): "We found there were no problems with having older and younger children together. In fact, we were surprised about how well they bonded and learnt together." Government Minister Ruth Kelly had backed streaming in July – see Diary, above. In August, a Glasgow school announced academic boosts for children of all ability levels in a 4-year programme of streaming.


BLAIR INVESTIGATED FOR ‘RACISM’

Police in Wales admitted they were following up a complaint that, in 1999, while watching election results from Wales that were going badly for the Labour Party, Prime Minister Blair had uttered epithets such as “Fucking Welsh!” and “Welsh bastards!” and thus infringed Britain’s notoriously loopy, vague and oppressive ‘race hate’ legislation (ic NorthWales, 28 ix). The accusation had been made in the draft memoirs of a Downing Street aide, Lance Price, who had subsequently fallen out with Mr Blair. A complaint about the alleged remarks had also been lodged with Parliament’s Standards Commissioner by ‘Plaid Cymru’ (the Welsh Nationalist Party).

The complaints against Britain’s massive winner of three consecutive general elections received international attention (and presumably ridicule), being reported e.g. in Adelaide’s Advertiser, South Africa’s News24, Italy’s Scoopt.org and Moscow’s Pravda. {This is just the kind of episode that could bring a final end to PeeCee as everyone collapses laughing.}

{In 2001, North Wales police spent £4,000 considering whether to prosecute broadcaster Ann Robinson for racism after she had joked ‘What are the Welsh for?’ and said the Welsh were always so self-satisfied, boring and irritating – the police spent 96 hours of their time before abandoning the probe.}

{Labour lost a number of high profile Welsh Valleys seats to Plaid Cymru in the 1999 Assembly election including Islwyn, Llanelli and the Rhondda. Core supporters had deserted the Welsh Labour Party for its sidelining of the popular Rhodri Morgan and appointment of the Blairite Mr Michael as candidate for Welsh First Secretary. In August 2005, a Labour Councillor was fined £750 and convicted of a racially aggravated breach of the peace for calling a Welsh constituent 'boyo'. – News Wales, 28 ix.} {At the same time, the Cheshire Racial Equality Council was hounding Tory MP Ann Winterton for saying, after the Islamofascist attack on London of 7/7, that the event showed ‘the price for the so-called benefits of multicultural society that we keep on hearing about’ and that she ‘thanked God for predominantly White, Christian society.’}


E. LUNI STUDENTS WERE ASSAULTED FOR RACE REALISM

Meeting a former student (and supporter) (her lissome figure and bright blue eyes excellently maintained despite 3 children by her lawyer husband since the heady days of 1996/7), I learned that students like herself who had crossed Socialist Workers’ picket lines to attend my lectures had had sticks and stones thrown at them by the shrieking idealists – a touch that had escaped the attentions of Edinburgh’s largely left-leaning paparazzi.


NEOCON vs FRASER

Macquarie LUni’s Drew Fraser was disparaged by neocon Keith Windschuttle (a distinguished critic of postmodernism, ex-University of New South Wales – see my article in American Renaissance, iii 05) for being a ‘left-wing racist’ (and why not? – hardly surprising, given Fraser’s Marxist background) (Windschuttle too was a man of the left for longer than was reasonable given that it took Orwell and Koestler a decade to get their heads around socialist nonsense) while admitting that “Fraser’s brand of racism should be recognised as one of the logical conclusions embedded within multiculturalism” and not even mentioning the problems of seriously low IQs among Australia’s immigrants from Africa (The Australian, 29 ix).


NULABOUR BUSTED

Previously known chiefly for spin-doctoring, mendacity and failure to deliver (notoriously on Blair’s 1996/7 streaming promise of “Education, Education, Education”), Britain’s NuLabour Party took a key step further into infamy as Party heavies (incl. one 17-stone Black gorilla, a notoriously short-fused Brighton nightclub bouncer called Joe Ifill) ejected from the annual Party Conference in Brighton a frail white-haired 82-year-old life-long Jewish supporter, Walter Wolfgang, who had had the temerity to say the single word “Nonsense!” as Gruppenfuehrer Foreign Minister and Blair toadie Jack Straw explained from the conference platform that British troops were suffering being set on fire and imprisoned by the ‘authorities’ in Iraq so as to encourage ‘democracy.’

This remarkable event was caught on TV cameras and followed up by numerous revelations of how Blairite bullies routinely banned traditional leftist sports – even confiscating conferencers’ apples and bags of sweets lest they be thrown at NuLabour’s platform dignitaries. The amazing episode elicited strings of aplogies from NuLabour dignitaries – but probably all in vain – and Walter received a standing ovation from the Conference when he finally re-appeared (having first been banned by police as a ‘terrorist’ because his conference card had been smartly cancelled).

{Of course, the left’s position about the Middle East had always been rather pathetic. Iraq was always an area waiting to fragment unless firm leadership were given (whether by the Brits in the 1920s or Madman Insane later). As spelled out in the McDougall NewsLetters around 1998, the West really needed to take Saudi Arabia – a place where the oil is conveniently located well away from the major centres of religious enthusiasm (Mecca, Medina) – not Iraq. But, instead of listening to McDNL, the West intervened in Iraq so feebly as to allow the country simply to break up into its natural different races/ethnicities. One has to wonder after Vietnam, ex-Yugoslavia and now Iraq whether American pretensions to ‘democracy’ are little but a sorry distraction from the more basic English concepts of property ownership and passable freedom of discussion (eroded though both principles have been by modern UK socialist governments and their tireless taxes on property and restrictions on ‘hate’ speech – i.e. any speech that lefties select for punishment).}

{Pete Willsman, a member of Labour's ruling National Executive Committee, said that he had asked for an official investigation to find out if the stewards who ejected Mr Wolfgang were members of the Labour Party or party staff. He had been unable to establish whether they were volunteers or professional security staff from an outside company, he said. Blair and his gang claimed the heavies were “volunteers” – unable to stop lying even when the spotlight was well and truly on them.}

(For pictures, see here and here and here and here and here, though the best, of the Black gorilla hurdling over seats to get at poor Walter were in the print version of the Daily Mail).

Note from John Ray: Chris has given a few links in the above posts which I have not had the time or energy to reproduce so if there is anything above that you want to follow up, it may be worth logging on here

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Comments? Email Chris Brand.
Some history.

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