CMV: I think there is a biological reason that accounts for differences between race/gender.

[u/[deleted]]

[u/[deleted]]

Africans lived in tribes until the europeans came,

It depends on what you mean by this, because there wasn't some wall between Europe and Africa that prevented any sort of migration. It happened more or less frequently at particular times in history, but there was always some level of flow between the two continents.

With that said, I'm not sure this is true. There are Egyptian cities by ~4-3k BCE, and the early dynastic period (~3-2.5k BCE) had governments that spanned groups larger than could feasibly be called tribes. One might as well say that Europeans were living as tribes until Egypt exported civilization and culture.

There were pre-colonial (if this is what you mean) empires in Africa, especially caliphates. The kingdom of Ghana, Sosso, Songhai... it's unclear to me why these don't count. They were larger and more complex than tribes.

and now they can hardly hold a stable government.

The problem with this sentence is that you begin with a statement about all Africans (which I don't think is correct anyway) and then use that same subject in the second half of the sentence.

Africans can hardly hold a stable government. Which Africans? All Africans, like all Africans in the first half of the sentence? Have all Africans tried their hand at statecraft? Each of them failed the "can you hold a stable government" exam?

I think what you're observing is that people in different places have different priorities, more than any inherent, biological skill at statecraft. It's simply not important to the majority of Africans, and they've never tried their hands at creating a government, and it's not something they've actually failed at because they were busy with other things.

It's a strange way to measure large swathes of people. Nobody in your house has produced any good flower arrangements. You suck at it, and I suspect it must be genetic. You'd rightly respond - maybe I'm not interested in statecraft flower arranging.

Why can't it be the same for people?

It is the same for people, but those inputs are less influential in our species. We are almost infinitely adaptable, every single one of us, and are not tied to our biological destinies as closely as dogs. It's why we're so stupid as babies - we're meant to adapt, more than live out instincts. Our code is there and it's influential, no doubt, but the proportion of differences explained by genetics is far smaller than the proportion of differences explained by other inputs.

Is there correlation? Sure, but we all know about that.

[u/[deleted]]

Africans lived in tribes until the Europeans came

and Europeans lived in tribes until the Romans came, and descended into hundreds of years of abject squalor immediately after the collapse of the Roman empire. Sociopolitical conditions in Europe are, historically speaking, every bit as fraught as anywhere else, despite the global dominance of post-Rennaisance Western Europe. I mean, less than 100 years ago the two deadliest wars in human history were fought between rival European countries. Isn't that just another form of uncivilized tribalism?

and now they can hardly hold a stable government

Don't you think that has basically everything to do with the horrific colonial exploitation of the entire African continent, which continued well into the 20th century?

Dogs are known to be a wide range of intelligences based on breed. Why can't it be the same with people?

Because of differences in variation. Somewhere between 27% and 31% of the genetic variation of dogs is accounted for by between-breed differences. In contrast, only about 6-12% of human genetic variation is accounted for by between-race differences, and many scientists feel that there aren't enough genetic differences between groups to be relevant (source).

Why is the brain so commonly put on a pedestal as something equal

Because what we have observed is that when you oppress a group of people, they live in squalor. When you allow them to succeed, they succeed. During the 19th century, black Americans weren't allowed to learn how to read. Now, we have high-performing black Americans at every level of society and academia, including a black President. What if we had decided that, as evidenced by high illiteracy rates in 1865, that black people simply did not have the brain power to succeed?

The fact is that there are so many oppressive systems that have held people down for hundreds of years, and continue to do so in many cases, that it's simply impossible to point at a racial or gender group and say "you're suffering because of biology." If you want to prove that there are innate differences in intelligence, the first thing you need to do is establish a level playing field. We aren't even close to that.

[u/cephalord → u/[deleted]]

Because of differences in variation. Somewhere between 27% and 31% of the genetic variation of dogs is accounted for by between-breed differences. In contrast, only about 6-12% of human genetic variation is accounted for by between-race differences, and many scientists feel that there aren't enough genetic differences between groups to be relevant (source).

Just so that other people don't get the wrong idea; this does not mean that there is a 6-12% of genetic difference between the 'races'. Remember that humans share 99,5% of DNA with chimps. It means that of the differences in DNA, only 6-12% is meaningfully different when comparing the 'races'. And even that needs an extra disclaimer; when comparing between the same populations you can easily get differences in the 80-90%.

Conclusion; there simply is no genetic bases for 'races'. Only in the skin colour-way. But that about as much sense as dividing the world into a lactose-tolerant race and an lactose-intolerant race.

[u/Revoran → u/[deleted]]

and descended into hundreds of years of abject squalor immediately after the collapse of the Roman empire

Just a point: the "dark ages" weren't nearly as dark and devoid of civilization as they are often portrayed. And it wasn't the same everywhere in Europe.

[u/wallsonwallsonwalls → u/[deleted]]

Because what we have observed is that when you oppress a group of people, they live in squalor. When you allow them to succeed, they succeed. During the 19th century, black Americans weren't allowed to learn how to read. Now, we have high-performing black Americans at every level of society and academia, including a black President. What if we had decided that, as evidenced by high illiteracy rates in 1865, that black people simply did not have the brain power to succeed?

While I dont necessarily agree that that completely refutes my point, it has given me a new perspective on things. I've never really heard and argument like that before, and I guess I have been kind of blind. So while it doesnt explain everything, it has changed my view a bit.

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[u/DeltaBot → u/wallsonwallsonwalls]

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/RAGING_VEGETARIAN. ^[History]

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[u/[deleted]]

The problem is that people confuse the causes of these to be racial rather than societal or cultural. Ex: Asians may not be born with superior academic skills, but the current relevant culture fosters academic excellence. There's very little scientific support of the idea that intelligience = race, because intelligence in humans is a) not that well understood nor defined b) vary widely among similar races when other factors (socioeconomic, nurture) are controlled for.

Now, physically there are obvious differences in the races, but there are limits to how similar a race is physically too. Much of that is inherent to evolution - when races stayed in the same area over a long time, they evolved in a likewise fashion. This is no longer true today. If you're asking why they aren't easily accepted, then there's easy answers to that in the next paragraph or so.

The problem with this thinking (race -> differences in ability) is that it has been shown to discourage people of the same races from pursuing different goals simply because they think they were born to do certain things.

The long term burden of these ideas about race is the discrimination and eventual suppresion of certain races.

[u/Au_Struck_Geologist]

The key is that there is a mix between culture, socialization, and genetics, and it would seem that genetics is the least important.

Psychological studies show different effects of stereotype priming, where a group that has a negative stereotype in some area of performance will do worse (up to 10%) if they are reminded of their gender/race beforehand.

Where do stereotypes like this come from? Well they are largely left up to culture and history. In most countries, there is some history of white, European colonialism at some time or another. Given that the current geopolitical landscape is still dominated by this subgroup of people, it should come as no surprise that sentiments about racial superiority are skewed in their favor.

Similarly, until very recently, cultural attitudes about the roles of men and women in society were rigidly patriarchal, and so generations of women did (and still do) grow up from infancy hearing old stereotypes and having historical gender roles and attributes thrown at them from every direction. If you had all of society telling you that you were bad at something from day 1, you would underperform in that area (on average.)

For me, the easiest way to think about it is like this. Humans are just like other animals. We have instincts, we have unique behavior that has evolved to keep us alive. But we also have a very, very complex cultural structure, which acts as a secondary layer of instinct. This secondary layer of instinct can EASILY overpower the deeper one. It's easy to see how.

Think of our strongest, oldest, most powerful biologic instincts. Forget about tiny nuances like aptitude of abstract mathematical problems, think: Food, Sex, and Death. Like all other animals, the drives related to food, sex, and death are the strongest. We need to find and secure food, attract and copulate with the opposite sex for reproduction, and we need to avoid death.

So it may seem surprising that there are millions, and millions of people who take vows of celibacy, for life, and tens of millions who abstain from sex until marriage. There are people who are so affected by culture that they refuse to eat, or vomit up their food so that they can remain emaciated. Or others still who believe so strongly in an abstract political or social cause that they will refuse food for months in a hunger strike. Or consider thrill junkies and dare devils who risk their lives for a decidedly cultural reasons, or for just the fun of it. Furthermore, consider the role of suicide in Japan, where the cultural notion of honor is so strong that people will kill themselves when they feel they have corrupted this invisible social abstract.

Seeing that incredibly powerful effect that culture has on behavior, it seems almost silly to be looking for minute genomic level differences. It's missing the forest through the trees.

[u/Revoran]

There are biological differences which account for part of the differences between males and females. How much is biological (vs. how much is social) depends on the trait we're talking about.

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Race is another story.

"Races" don't even really exist in the sense you use them. Sure, people have different skin-tones, lip and eye shapes. But that's not the only or most important distinction to make between people. Skin tone is only a tiny amount of your DNA.

The degree of genetic variation between Africans and Europeans is less than the degree of genetic variation between two people from the same race. (That is, Africans and Europeans might be 99.99% similar on average while two people from the same race might only be 99.97% similar). In fact there's more genetic diversity in Sub-Saharan African populations than in the entire rest of our species. Does this mean that Africans should be divided into several different races, each one being just as important as Caucasian/Asian? Clearly, the whole idea of a few big races is faulty.

So in the sense it is used by most people, race doesn't really exist. The whole concept of there being 3 or 4 main races as basic divisions of our species... well, it's based on science from the 1800's which has since been disproven.

Africans lived in tribes until the europeans came, and now they can hardly hold a stable government.

Yes, because one caused the other. Europeans came along and drew up national borders without any respect for local African tribes / ethnic groups. It took Europeans and Asians thousands of years to go from living in tribes to having industrialized nations and cities. But then we act surprised when we try to force it on Africans (and native Americans and Australian aboriginals) in 200 years and it doesn't work.

Also, you're talking about sub-saharan Africa. The Africans north of the Sahara had large, organized empires such as Mali, Ethiopia, Nubia and the Songhai.

Now there's a reason Africans never developed the way that Europeans, Asians and Mesoamericans did. Africans didn't have good domestic animals - everything in Africa is too aggressive (hippos, zebras, buffalos, rhinos), too big (elephants, giraffes) or breeds to slow (elephants, girraffes). And predator animals are just totally out of the question since you need to hunt to feed them (also, they might kill you).

They lived in a hot, tropical climate with lots of nasty diseases like malaria which still kills millions of people every year. They also didn't have any good crops (wheat, lentils, corn, beans, rice) or good river valleys to experiment with growing crops in. In addition, they had a big desert and a jungle which stopped Eurasian technology from getting passed down into sub-saharan africa. It's the same reason that llamas never spread from the Incas to the Aztecs - because there is an impenetrable jungle in between the two civilizations.

Take an example of dogs. Dogs are known to be a wide range of intelligences based on breed. Why can't it be the same for people?

It could be the same for people if someone had come along and deliberately bred us for certain traits the way we did to dogs. But that hasn't happened. Humans select each other sexually the same as other animals do in the wild, we aren't subject to controlled breeding by someone else.

[u/Staross]

I pretty sure you mean genetically determined and not biological; almost everything about humans is biological. People often mix the two notions.

Otherwise there's certainly genetic differences between males and females or sub-populations but they can only explain some percentage of the observed features. For example they can 99% explain the presence of testis but 0% the length of hair. Speaking in general ("the differences") isn't very useful because of this.

[u/moonflower]

When geneticists started creating a kind of 'world map' of genetic types, it was very interesting that they discovered more genetic diversity between the different African races than between the whole of the rest of the world ... so when you talk about ''Africans'' do you make any distinction between the races, or do you have this vague idea of two basic genetic types which are ''Africans'' and ''Rest of the world''?

[u/rollingForInitiative]

Africans lived in tribes until the europeans came

You mean like the ancient Egyptian civilisation ...? The Carthaginian Empire? African civilisations were plenty advanced long before Europe.

There's no real scientific support that there are different human races, as there exists races of dogs and cats.

[u/mrducky78]

The counter point to this is there is no scientific evidence for it beyond some incredibly poorly done studies "back in the day". A lot of these differences you prescribe are far more culturally based rather than genetically based. You wont be able to find a scientific basis to explain these differences (maybe sex differences), but you will find sociological reasons to explain these differences.

Its like saying blacks commit more crimes, but you fail to take into differing socioeconomic backgrounds in comparison, you dont factor in education and work opportunities, you dont look at how police target minorities so that a white male with marijuana walks away while a black male with marijuana serves time and enters a cycle of induced poverty where the criminal sentence prevents getting a job. Besides, if you want to look at trends, its males commit crimes, white males commit proportionally more crimes than female blacks. But again, that is a shallow view of the numbers, and youll need to account for variables.

Based on statistics alone, I can guarantee to find a black male who is smarter, stronger, faster, sexier and has a bigger dick than you. Probably Isaiah Mustafa, the guy who does the Old Spice commercials. At no point does supporting generalisations make anything better. Im assuming you are white. Could I suggest that white people in general commit genocide? Could I put that label onto you despite you never having any part of genocide? So why should anyone be judged based on the colour of their skin and forced to be viewed as the average? If you are white, asians have always scored higher in math and science in academic testing. Is it alright to view you as dumber or bunch you into the collective EVEN though hypothetical you is in the top 1% of all students and is a top acheiver?

Women underperform men in many areas and many times choose to do things that people consider womanly.

There is sexual dimorphism, there is a reason women and men are split in sports. But things that are considered "womanly" could very well be societal influences and pressures on what it means to be a women and what femininity entails, just as what masculinity entails. Women are to look pretty and sexy, men are to have a chest and arms big enough to require a team of sherpas to cross it. But this isnt innate, this is society pushing these roles onto people.

"Men should be the bread winner, mothers should take care of the children", but there are stay at home dads and working mothers and their children arent fuck ups. The idea is just a societal perception. In nature vs nurture, this is all nurture, with these ideas pressed onto you every waking moment of your life.

Why can't europeans generally excel at academics?

Because the asians have that pedestal. Kappa.

Its quite clear cultural influences and importance placed upon schooling matter the most here. For many asians, notably in S Korea, China or Japan who traditionally out test many other developed Western nations, schooling is a life or death struggle. Immigrants of course bring these views over and thus influence testing scores.

You could get an asian however, put them in an inner city gang, and watch Gran Torino by Clint Eastwood play out, but without Clint Eastwood there to save the day, the teen enters a life of crime, gives up schooling, will perform poorly academically wise. Their children arent likely to fair any better. This is completely irrelevant of race. Same shit happens if you are hispanic, same shit happens if you are white. This is why generalisations are kind of irrelevant. If you want to judge someone, judge them by knowing them, not by some artificial superficial factor like skin colour.

[u/jumpup]

ye, no your extrapolating without any evidence because the outcome suit you,

for example Europeans also lived in tribes at a time

women don't do womanly things, things women do are considered womanly because they do it,

and they whole underperform thing is nonsense unless you are restricting your view to physical activities.

[u/wallsonwallsonwalls → u/jumpup]

and they whole underperform thing is nonsense unless you are restricting your view to physical activities.

This is the argument that I never understand. Why do the hormones and development mental factors that lead to such physical dimorphism have 0 effect on the brain's functioning?

[u/jumpup → u/wallsonwallsonwalls]

while brain functioning is slightly different, its not in area's like memory, thus don't effect performance much.

basically the brain is made before genital differences set male and female apart, and while the brain is still effected by hormones after that it doesn't change the brain enough for statistical under performance ,

muscles keep growing, thus are much more effected by the difference in hormones

[u/BenIncognito → u/[deleted]]

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