Coulter Surprised Me

[Neil Parille]

I'm about 2/3 of the way through the book. I'm glad this is the first book by Coulter I've read. I don't think I could read another. The entire book reads like one long newspaper column. (Which isn't to say that what she's saying is wrong, it's just over the top in writing style.)

Basically, Coulter argues like a racial realist, but doesn't admit she's one. Her not so subtle claim is that Western Civilization is the result of high IQ white Europeans and that other people for the most part lack the ability to maintain it. When she says that Americans (as in USA-Americans) have earned over 300 Nobel Prizes in the sciences and that people South of the border all of 5 (notwithstanding a combined population over 50% larger) it's not hard to understand where she's coming from.

There is a fascinating the discussion of immigration and crime. The news media and the government are doing all they can to conceal the oversized percentage of crime committed by immigrants and their children.

-NP

[Selene]

Basically, Coulter argues like a racial realist, but doesn't admit she's one.

-NP

Do you define that phrase differently than this guy?

John D. Skrentny—co-director of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies and professor of sociology at the University of California, San Diego—is author of After Civil Rights: Racial Realism in the New American Workplace (Princeton University Press).

This is as close as I can see to a definition in this article in Time magazine.

Twenty-first-century employers have come to value racial differences in ways that were unheard of in 1964, and do not fit with traditional conceptions of affirmative action. Organizations of all kinds today hire and place workers using a practice I have called “racial realism”: seeing color as a real and significant part of workers’ identities, a qualification that is good for business.

http://time.com/3211845/equal-opportunity-racial-realism/

Frankly, that is a new term to me.

A...

[Neil Parille]

I use "racial realism" (or "race realism") to describe the belief that there are differences among the races in terms of intelligence and behavior and that these differences should guide social policy (including immigration). In my understanding, it is roughly coterminous with the "human biodiversity movement."

www.Amren.com and www.vdare.com are the two leading racial realist sites, from what I can tell.

Here is a defense of the idea:

https://jewamongyou.wordpress.com/2013/12/22/why-i-believe-in-race-realism/

Whether this is true or not, I leave for others to decide.

-NP

[william.scherk]

Adam, search on 'race realism' or 'scientific racism.'

Short form: science says there are races. Races are better or worse. Hint hint. Etc. There is quite a literature. Ie, "I am not a racist. I am a racial realist."

Ann Coulter's book has hit its ready market: could it be that 'bad' races/cultures will 'invade' America, and cause it to become a mongrel nation or a degraded pool of stinking foreigners (Mexicans)?

The good stuff. The kind of stuff Ayn Rand had a word for ...

[william.scherk]

I use "racial realism" (or "race realism") to describe the belief that there are differences among the races in terms of intelligence and behavior and that these differences should guide social policy (including immigration). [..]

Whether this is true or not, I leave for others to decide.

What do you think? Are you a fan of Vdare.com -- or do you cite it only as an example? Would you argue against a further 'pollution' of the USA by suboptimal races?

(I doubt very much you would argue this, but it's Coulter's argument, whipping in the word 'culture' to replace race.

I thought she hit her lowest with Godless ...)

[Selene]

Jean Philippe Rushton stated in 2002:

Today most scientists and historians engaged in the serious study of race do so from either the race-realist or the hermeneutical perspective. On one side, those I have termed race-realists view race as a natural phenomenon to be observed, studied, and explained. They believe human race is a valid biological concept, similar to sub-species or breeds or strains. On the other side, those I term the hermeneusticists view "race" as an epiphenomenon, (like gender as opposed to "sex") a mere social construction, with political and economic forces as the real causal agents. Rather than actually research race, hermeneuticists research those who study race. Alternative and intermediate positions certainly exist, but the most heated debate currently takes place between advocates of those polar positions.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I heard an interview where Coulter was asked point-blank if her problem with illegal immigrants was genetic, i.e., racial. She said not at all. Her problem was cultural. She doesn't want to see cultures she deems inferior to supplant the one that made America great.

I do think her book will appeal to racists and bigots (but not just them). If her book reflects her interviews, however, it is inaccurate to call her some sort of racist.

She wrote Mugged: Racial Demagoguery from the Seventies to Obama not too long ago. She blames much of the problems of current black communities on the left and progressives, not at all on the race.

I've got both books, but I haven't read them yet. So my comments are based on how she presents herself on TV and in the press.

Michael

[Neil Parille]

Michael,

But what if Coulter does believe that there is a genetic component to racial/ethnic differences? Would that make her a racist?

When Arthur Jensen died a couple years ago, both Tom Sowell and James Flynn praised his work, even though disagreeing with his conclsions. (Later in life, Jensen concluded that 80% of IQ differences between the races were genetic.) I don't have a dog in this hunt, but what the science says, the science says.

If you take the extremes in IQ -- Ashkenazi Jews (115) and Australian Aborigines (uncertain, but maybe high 60s) -- it's hard to argue that there is no genetic component. Are we supposed to believe that the small Roma (Gypsie) population that arrived in Europe 1000 years ago hasn't suffered as a result of endogamy (they marry other Roma) and favoring cousin marriage? Their low IQs would indicate it has.

As I understand it, Jews earn 1/3 of the Nobel Prizes in the hard sciences. That's pretty astonishing for a group that is less than 1/3 of a percent of the world's population. And, I gather that the winners are all almost Ashkenazi Jews (European descent) and the Sephardic Jews have IQs of around 100. And in Israel, when the groups go to the same schools, the gap persists.

There is a 2006 debate between Charles Murray (of The Bell Curve fame) and James Flynn (a socialist) about the black/white IQ gap in the USA, which is quite good. You can find it on youtube.

-NP

[Brant Gaede]

Eugenics gained a real bad name primarily because of the Nazis. It's therefore the cultural-intellectual norm to completely marginalize the idea. Another reason is dog breeding which is nothing but eugenics albeit not for superiority but diversity. Dogs as a species have tremendous variety, no other species comes close. Species commonly understood is the creation of reproducible offspring. A mule, for instance, is not a species of anything. I don't know why--nobody really knows why--Jews of European stock tend to be so smart--think of all the brain power that must have been lost in the Holocaust--a genetic twitch or marrying smart over centuries. These Jews were confined to brainy occupations. Survival meant ability to use your brains. Jews want their children to be professionals and insist they be educated. Doctors and lawyers and what have you. One tier down in the brain department from doctor is dentist. I don't think percentage wise there are nearly as many Jews as dentists as doctors. I'd speculate a young Jew doesn't inspire to be a dentist. Less prestige, less money and too much parental disapprobation: "You want to be a dentist? Who's going to marry you? You've got the brains to be a doctor!" I've no doubt if I had had Jewish parents I'd be a doctor or lawyer today and done much better in school. Not a scientist. Lots of Jews are and have been scientists, of course--think Einstein--but it's only in science that goys compete numerically. Think Middle Ages. Little use for or demand for working scientists. Money lenders don't use numbers the way scientists do. That said, relative to overall populations, we can say that Jews are likely over-represented in science. Greatly.

Anyway, there are two reasons, amongst others I'm sure, that non hoi polloi don't talk about eugenics. Dogs and Nazis. We aren't--nobody is--going to start human breeding programs to raise intelligence or change anything else. So to talk about this subject we end up talking about racial superiority. Individually brains tend to marry brains and beget brains. Even then there tends to be "reversion to the mean" so my IQ, for instance, is four standard deviations less than my father's. (I think one deviation is 15 IQ points.) Where did Dad's stupendously high IQ come from? He was completely German stock. His two brothers were very smart too, but not that smart. Durk Pearson's IQ is even higher, so high MIT couldn't measure it. What this tells me is there is some kind of brain gene floating around that sometimes gets switched on and that the human skull doesn't need to be bigger to hold it. It's the large size of the human head that makes human birth so hard and dangerous compared to other mammalian species. Human beings are about to self-evolve into generally much higher intelligence through bio-science. The skull size will remain the same unless natural birth is given up, but people a thousand years from now will generally have Durk Pearson brain power--or even more. (Dad did have a large head, bigger than mine, and mine isn't small. He also did much, much better in the hair department.)

--Brant

if I could go forward in time to see this, I'd probably be put in a zoo, and observed in my "natural habitat" (old, bald, stupid homo-something: hard to believe we evolved from this, uh, "Missing Link")

[anthony]

The Left, in their pronounced collectivism, must take most of the blame for racism, while energetically displaying the opposite, and while carrying "the soft bigotry of lowered expectations" and racial adoration in making the distinction.

The objective way is the only consistently morally correct one, as I understand it. IQ may indeed or does vary 'statistically' (i.e., by collective average) across ethnic differences, but - so what? Innate intelligence alone, says little or nothing definitive about an individual. Look at many (if not most) presumably high-intellect university professors today for evidence. What a person makes of what he has is supreme.

[william.scherk]

So-called race realism is a fully-functioning academic sub-discipline, as Adam's unsourced short quote from Philippe Rushton indicates (It's from a book review: "The Bell Curve Wars: Race, Intelligence, and the Future of America," 1997). The academic action has its own special-interest journals, conferences, and professional networks.

Contrary to the notion that discussions about race are taboo, I'd say reality shows extensive and protracted discussion. Such discussion occurs in Coulter's new book. Whoever has a copy can turn to 'the literature' cited by the author in her apparently voluminous references. I'd also say that Coulter does a sloppy bait-and-switch if she pretends her focus is only on degraded cultures swamping and killing America.

Here is a funny moment from a protracted public debate between Rushton and David Suzuki. This debate occurred in 1989, and was broadcast live in Canada. The loooooong video is cued for the cute stuff.

If I found myself trapped in a forum, only able to discuss this thread, my first task would be to get some kind of basic agreement on terms. I would ask discussants: what is a 'race'? How do you define it? How many races are there? Where are the boundaries between the races so defined? Are the boundaries sharp, diffuse? Do the racial boundaries in a folk-classification system coincide with genetic typologies of variation (ie, does the 'black race' contain more or less genetic variablity than does the 'white race' ...?

Subsidiary would be ... quote some Coulter passages wherein she mentions 'culture,' national origin, and attempts to make general conclusions about the 'worth' or 'rank' of her imagined collective lump of humanity. I'd query her: what does Third World mean to her? Is Mexico Third World? Is Brazil Third World?

Tony, not to be unkind, but your posts could sometimes benefit from a revision, tightening up your prose and sorting out the subjects and objects.

You seem to be suggesting in your first paragraph that a vague grouping of leftist/collectivists is the agent responsible for racism (somewhere not specified, perhaps the world over). Is this lumping or splitting? Can you expand it, giving examples or fleshing out your argument? Remember that by OL reckoning, I am a thorough-going leftist ... so you are addressing The Collective when you address me ...

Your second point is well taken, and taken direct from the Randian corpus: it is most rational to assess/approach human beings as individuals, not mere representatives of a presumed clan or clot or undifferentiated mass.

Some of the first questions I had as puzzlers were from many many years ago. It went something like this: Are Pygmies a race? Are the Masai a race? Are the Bantu a race? Are the NIlotic peoples a race? Is North African a race? Are all the 'dark' Africans a race? Are Arabs a race?

Is there an actual thing that is well-defined by the designator 'Caucasian'?

As a Canadian, I would suggest to Americans that they simplify and reform their immigration model to one more similar to Canada's post-1967. In essence, immigrants have long been selected from applicants based on 'points' (ie, official language ability, professional qualifications, education, etc). and each immigrant is subject to thorough criminal background check. If you lie, you can be deported. If you commit a crime, you will be deported. If you arrive as an asylum seeker or refugee, you enter a refugee-determination system that in the end will integrate you into a new citizenship. (like the USA, Canada also prioritizes family reunification, where a citizen can 'sponsor' a prospective immigrant, taking responsibility for their upkeep).

In too-simple summary, we assist immigrants to become fully Canadian in rights and responsibilities. We are colour-blind in selection, but not blind in assessing individual worth by objective metrics.

-- finally, it is the immigration issue that is the over-arching theme here, whether or not Coulter is a 'race realist,' What comprise her solutions to the hellish nightmare ahead as America becomes hispanicized? Are her solutions rational, proportional, comprehensive, realistic?

Guess which 'Caucasion' I am ...

Edited June 9, 2015 by william.scherk

[anthony]

Ah William. I notice you understand me very well, notwithstanding the English lesson.

Right, you align yourself with the Left. Then you'll know to answer this:

Is not the political left, morally collectivist?

From whom does one mostly hear and see identification by group (usually to pin on victim or victimizer labels) but largely from Lefties?

Do you disagree that whenever an individual (victim/victimizer) is involved - who will first invoke his "group" or race, but those very same lefties?

No, I doubt I have to supply instances since the phenomenon is in every day headlines.

A foray into anthropology isn't useful, except to the empirical-minded. Racism as principle is under discussion, not truck loads of facts about the origins of tribes.

[Selene]

Basically, Coulter argues like a racial realist, but doesn't admit she's one.

Neil are you arguing that she is a racist?

A...

[moralist]

The Left, in their pronounced collectivism, must take most of the blame for racism, while energetically displaying the opposite, and while carrying "the soft bigotry of lowered expectations" and racial adoration in making the distinction.

The objective way is the only consistently morally correct one, as I understand it. IQ may indeed or does vary 'statistically' (i.e., by collective average) across ethnic differences, but - so what? Innate intelligence alone, says little or nothing definitive about an individual. Look at many (if not most) presumably high-intellect university professors today for evidence. What a person makes of what he has is supreme.

The collectivist race gender class obsessed left panders to angry blacks by reinforcing their fake identity as "victims of racism"... because they believe that blacks are stupid enough to believe it.

Greg

[Neil Parille]

Selene,

I don't think she's a racist, but rather a racial realist. She probably believes, like most people who have looked into it, that there is likely some genetic component to the differences in IQ between the races.

-NP

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I don't think she's a racist, but rather a racial realist. She probably believes, like most people who have looked into it, that there is likely some genetic component to the differences in IQ between the races.

Neil,

Do you have any reason to believe this other than a hunch? Has Ann Coulter said anything to indicate she believes in racial realism, other than obvious extreme examples like skin pigmentation and skeletal structures?

I ask because I have never come across a quote indicating this. In fact, I would be very surprised if this turns out to be true.

I have a longer post I want to write to tease out some nuances and even deeper principles, but I don't have time to write it right now.

Leave it to say for the present that, for as obnoxiously on the nose as Coulter is about her druthers, and for as socially and politically conservative as she is, I don't find her to be a simpleton who would boil down entire cultures she deems inferior to a single cause like genetics.

I hold she is sophisticated enough to have learned about things like neuroplasticity. And, even further, I believe the concept of racial intelligence caps would be against her religious beliefs.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Here is a typical Coulter interview:

 

 

Notice she talks openly about race and culture political blocks in manners that shock PC speech nazis, but she is talking about voting blocks, not genetics. What especially offends the PC people is that she says for Republicans to ignore the minorities and appeal just to white voters to win the presidential election.

 

Even talking math, and even being right about the numbers, one is not supposed to say that that way.

 

 

Michael

[moralist]

Selene,

I don't think she's a racist, but rather a racial realist. She probably believes, like most people who have looked into it, that there is likely some genetic component to the differences in IQ between the races.

-NP

Neil, before a larger more relevant point gets lost in the fixation on IQ...

The true measure of the worth of a human being is the values they live by... not their IQ.

Greg

[anthony]

The Left, in their pronounced collectivism, must take most of the blame for racism, while energetically displaying the opposite, and while carrying "the soft bigotry of lowered expectations" and racial adoration in making the distinction.

The objective way is the only consistently morally correct one, as I understand it. IQ may indeed or does vary 'statistically' (i.e., by collective average) across ethnic differences, but - so what? Innate intelligence alone, says little or nothing definitive about an individual. Look at many (if not most) presumably high-intellect university professors today for evidence. What a person makes of what he has is supreme.

The collectivist race gender class obsessed left panders to angry blacks by reinforcing their fake identity as "victims of racism"... because they believe that blacks are stupid enough to believe it.

Greg

In this country, pandering white liberals are disrespected by the "formerly disadvantaged" blacks much more than they do the conservative religious white. The latter, whose forefathers were supporters of apartheid, at least did not hypocritically patronize them (the Christians have in recent years become personally very non-racialistic by way of their Faith and common sense). A left Liberal wants "equality" above all, in all contexts: inarguably and morally, of course in context of the Law and the State, and for that I was vaguely liberal-left for a while. But once that's achieved, the lefties can't or won't stop. It fits their sentimental mindset and sacrificial, collectivist notionality that all men should be equal - in every way. But it is impossible to 're-distribute' rationality, desire, energy, ability - or intelligence, and this fact drives them up the wall.

In practice, 'equalization' means bringing down rather than raising up (and can only be achieved that way) and so to the Left, it's what must be done.

The differences from any random individual to individual, at different times of his life, is stunning and inexplicable if one is attentive enough to see it. A few IQ points difference or many, it looks to me as so inconsequential in the grand scheme of a person's life, as to count little to zero. I heard of one or two fellow schoolboys who'd been academically well behind me, making their first millions and raising families by thirty when I was still wandering around with my head up my arse. Focus and action beats all the rest.

(Broadly, it may be that the higher density and very-varied peoples of old Europe, over millenia of strife, upheaval and closer co-existence, genetically encouraged higher levels of intelligence. Fact remains that for most of that time our 'European' ancestors were primitives. )

[Neil Parille]

Michael,

It's just a hunch. The only evidence I can give (which isn't very good, I concede) is that she publishes on Vdare. ON the other hand, she's skeptical of Darwinism.

So I may well be wrong.

EDIT: John Derbyshire thinks Coulter is a blank-slater on race: http://www.vdare.com/articles/john-derbyshire-on-ann-coulter-vs-jorge-ramos

NP

[Neil Parille]

Whynot,

But as I first learned in The Bell Curve, there is a correlation between IQ and certain anti-social behaviors. Low IQ people have higher rates of crime, drug use, unemployment, etc.

Of course there are plenty of good people with low IQs.

-NP

[Neil Parille]

WSS,

In 2005 Rushton and Jensen published a paper 30 Years of Research on Race and Intelligence

http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/30years/Rushton-Jensen30years.pdf

Richard Nisbett did a response:

http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/30years/Nisbett-commentary-on-30years.pdf

Jensen and Rushton responded:

http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/30years/Rushton-Jensen-reply-to-commentaries-on-30years.pdf

In 2010, Nisbett wrote a book, Intelligence: How to get it, which had an appendis on race.

Jensen and Nisbett did a response

http://psychology.uwo.ca/faculty/rushtonpdfs/2010%20Review%20of%20Nisbett.pdf

-NP

[Neil Parille]

Here are two articles that make the case for race realism:

https://jewamongyou.wordpress.com/2013/12/22/why-i-believe-in-race-realism/

http://takimag.com/article/the_unfortunately_innate_nature_of_intelligence_fred_reed/print#axzz3cfKoR1Th

There views may be wrong, but I can't find good essays/posts on the web making a case for the opposite.

EDIT: Actually, Ron Unz has written a good piece showing that national IQ scores can change dramatically:

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/race-iq-and-wealth/

Richard Lynn did a response:

http://www.vdare.com/articles/iq-and-the-wealth-of-nations-richard-lynn-replies-to-ron-unz

-Neil

[Derek McGowan]

A few points on the IQ thing (not on the book because I haven't read it)

I agree with Whynots's post #35 where he shows that IQ doesn't correlate directly with a person's success, moral position, or input into the community. In fact many people with really high IQs aren't doing much at all (according to American scales of success) with their lives such as Christopher Langdan or Daniel Tammet (who can learn a language in a week and calculate pi to 20,000 digits)

but....

Its important to frame success from the same vantage as evolution. There is no eternal best or worse. There are only attributes in the current environment. Paraphrasing- if you judge a fish by how well it climbs a tree you will find them to be very dull indeed. The IQ scale itself is based on attributes that its creators deemed important in our current environment. And I've known quite a few lawyers who are very good at their jobs but outside of that don't seem to have much smarts (my judgement) at all.

The same with the western view of success. Being known and making money is what earns you the title of success in our current world but even as I say that, readers are saying to themselves "that's not what I consider to be success" Unfortunately, while I agree with you, you are outvoted by the current environment (which is not just the physical place we find ourselves but also the culture and mental state of those who surround us)

Lastly, IQ score aside, I can't help but think that how smart someone is (as in how easily they remember and process the information that our current environment gives us) is tied to the educational system. Not a standard complaint about how schools are worse in poorer neighborhoods but taking a more directed issue with the one size fits all nature of today's education. I believe in learning styles and that different people need information presented to them in different ways for their innate mechanisms to better understand.

Such as the divide between math-people and non-math-people. I think that we can all learn math just as equally but the presentation has to be different. You can't expect the same "this class made perfect sense to me" teacher to have like impact on the full array of human brains that pass through their doors. And its not because the teacher is bad or that those students are dumb. Or even that some students have a passion for the thing and others don't. Anyone can learn to draw. They may not be as motivated as one with the passion but if you present the information in a way that corresponds to their learning style they will get it same as others.

[Mark]

... she publishes on Vdare. ON the other hand, she's skeptical of Darwinism.

To be exact, she's a syndicated columnist -- Universal Press Syndicate -- and VDare pays to reprint her column.

She has a way with words. Here she is quoted in "Immigration Enthusiasts":

"... Democrats haven't won the hearts and minds of the American people. They changed the people. If you pour vinegar into a bottle of wine, the wine didn't turn, you poured vinegar into it. Similarly, liberals changed no minds. They added millions of new liberal voters through immigration."

Mark

ARIwatch.com