An Open Letter to the White Right by Tim Wise

[David Floyd]

Yeah, but I'd far rather live in South Africa in 1975 than the Soviet Union in 1975.

[giblets]

Yeah, but I'd far rather live in South Africa in 1975 than the Soviet Union in 1975.

As a black person?

[David Floyd]

But I'm not black. That's my point, though - look what happened when the South African blacks took over. They had no ****ing clue how to run a country. Hell, Nelson Mandela had ties to ****ing communism. And look at the results. Rising unemployment, decreasing per capita income relative to the West, rising AIDS infection rates, and denial of medical science.

[David Floyd]

And let's not lie, either - the Soviet Union wasn't exactly minority friendly either. They were racist as **** against the Central Asians, for example.

[Al B. Sure!]

Anyway, while Dave Floyd wants to be his usual racist self...

Heraclitus, to give you a real answer, there's a couple things.

One, VDARE is an anti-immigration, far right website with a logo of a white doe, referring to Virginia Dare, the first English person born in the New World. The implications in American racial politics should be obvious. It would also not be surprising that such an organization would have lengthy discussions on race and serve as a forum for those positing significant racial differences... that is, if it was a more intellectual version of Stormfront. I said Steven Sailer reminds me of Madison Grant. I think the comparison is very apt. It's a soft racism supported with the guise of science.

Furthermore, Steve Sailer is wrong. He basically responds to the idea of "race is just a social construct" by saying but look, the best runners are African.

There's several problems with this. One, it says nothing about the abilities of Africans vs. Europeans, beyond that the very fastest Africans have been so slightly marginally faster on the very extreme end of high level Olympic running than the very fastest people of European extraction. If we selected 1000 people from Hamburg, Germany and 1000 people from Lagos, Nigeria and had them run races, even if we could somehow account for differences in lifestyle, nutrition, etc., is there any more reason to think the Nigerians would be faster than the Germans? I don't imagine so. Could we expect that the very fastest Nigerian would be faster than the fastest German? I would be more inclined to think that would be possible but it may not necessarily be so.

Why? I suspect the differences are only being manifested at the very elite level because the differences are so miniscule... they're barely even worth giving a thought to.

This is Christophe Lemaitre:



Lemaitre has a 9.97 second 100m

Usain Bolt's world record time was 9.58 seconds.

0.39 seconds is the difference between the fastest Caucasian and the fastest man period. 0.39 seconds. That's a little less than the time of a blink of the human eye. And in a completely arbitrary distance of 100m.

Does such a difference mean anything? It gets noticed at the Olympic level because this is the highest of the high end where a few milliseconds can mean the difference between an Olympic world record holder and being nothing more than a good collegiate sprinter who isn't good enough to even make your country's Olympic team.

In any other context, the difference is so slight, it's not even worth mentioning.

And nevermind the fact that, as I said, just because the very fastest African is slightly by the blink of an eye faster than the very fastest European, doesn't mean that any given African is faster than any given European.


Furthermore, racial classifications are social constructs because human populations exist on a spectrum. There are populations that one could argue are intermediaries and this is actually represented in elite track, on the endurance events.

We all know the very best marathoners are overwhelmingly East African. But venture just across the Sahara where some of the second best distance runners have emerged:

This is Khalid Khannouchi, a Moroccan:



In 1999 and again in 2002, he set the world record for the marathon at 2:05:38. His record has since been beaten by Paul Tergat and Gebrselassie but for a few years, a Moroccan held the world marathon record.

(Nevermind that English woman, Paula Radcliffe, is the top female marathoner)


This is Noureddine Morceli, an Algerian:



Morceli was the world record-holder for the 1 mile until he was bested by...

Moroccan Hicham El Guerrouj:




So let's see, the very very best sprinters are Black West Africans. The very very best marathoners are Black East Africans. While the almost-as-good-as-the-East-African marathoners and the very very best middle-distance runners are Arab/Berber North Africans.



It's almost like evidence that running ability (and I suppose by extension, race) is on a spectrum, aint it?

I do wonder if there wasn't that big Sahara desert separating the Black Africans with the Arabs if the shades in that spectrum between Black and White wouldn't be better known.... you know, because few people have ever seen Tuaregs.

[Al B. Sure!]

In summary, if "all the best sprinters [by 4/10ths of a second at an arbitrary distance of 100m] are Black" is seriously his argument against race being a social construct... I seriously question his intelligence and assume that the scourge of racism has blocked some of his neural synapses.

[Felch]

Let's tie Philly politics and North Africa with quick video.

[SpencerH]

0.39 sec in a 100m sprint is 4m (4%). Relatively, thats a huge difference. If there was a photo finish for Bolt, LeMaitre wouldnt be in the picture.

[Aeson]

That's racist to suggest that whites are genetically slow! Blacks are only faster because they have so much practice running from cops...

(I would like to apologize for the preceding statement)

[ZEE]

.

[MrFun]

Blacks are social conservative on many social issues, but they can't be expected to vote for the party that is opposed to civil rights, equal employment protection, affirmative action, and fair voting laws.

I fixed this post of yours.

[Hauldren Collider]

But I'm not black. That's my point, though - look what happened when the South African blacks took over. They had no ****ing clue how to run a country. Hell, Nelson Mandela had ties to ****ing communism. And look at the results. Rising unemployment, decreasing per capita income relative to the West, rising AIDS infection rates, and denial of medical science.

Are you sure you don't mean Rhodesia? I mean Zimbabwe? I mean Mugabeland?

And yeah South Africa sucks but I don't think black people there are actually worse off now that they are free.

[Felch]

I fixed this post of yours.

You realize that fair voting laws mandate gerrymandering so that blacks can be herded into ghettoized legislative districts, where they become tools of corrupt and ineffectual race-baiters, right?

If you think these are so important, explain to me one thing. What good have all these laws done blacks in America? Why are Hispanics, many of whom don't speak English or have valid documentation, the main economic competitors for blacks?

[Heraclitus]

@Alby:

Overall I like the tone of your first post, but I'm not quite sure what you are taking this approach. You kind of miss the point.

When have I or anyone else claimed that human populations don't exist on a spectrum? Of course they are! If they weren't these wouldn't be races, or groups or populations whatever one likes to call them but most likley separate species.

And race being a social construct... well of course it is! Yet I can dig up a skeleton and tell you if it was Caucasian, East Asian or African. I can take two sets of 100 disembodied brains taken from random cadavers of each population and tell you with certainty which set is from East Asians and which from Africans. I can test someone's DNA and tell you what his self-reported ethnicity is with very high probability.

You can socially construct reality any way you like. You can carve up humanity into fifty, eighteen, six, four, three, two or one race, this will not change genetic reality one bit. The clusters on genetic PCA and other variance graphs and links between them will stay the same. The phenotype variation and its geographical distribution won't change either.


Dog breeds are a social construct. The colour red is a social construct. And yes like race both, shock, exist on a continuum! Actually definitions of species are also a social constructs if you want to get technical. There are populations of Brown bears that are genetically closer to Polar bears than other Brown bears for example.

Lemaitre has a 9.97 second 100m

Usain Bolt's world record time was 9.58 seconds.

0.39 seconds is the difference between the fastest Caucasian and the fastest man period. 0.39 seconds. That's a little less than the time of a blink of the human eye. And in a completely arbitrary distance of 100m.

To add to SpencerH's point a more vivid example:

Best male time 9.58
Best female time 10.49

A gap of 0.91.

In other words the gap between the fastest man of European descent and the man period is 43% of the gap between the fastest man and the fastest woman.


There is a reason Sailer brings sex into the talk.


Guess how large the gap between East Asians and West Africans is?

[SpencerH]

As I was reading the first 5 or 6 pathetic lines of drivel in the OP. I was thinking this ****nut has gotta be a typical lily-white pencil neck geek and I didnt bother to read much further. Today I spotted the video on the second page and what do you know, I was right. So my comments to Tim Wise. Be careful what you wish for. If a race war was to start, I can assure you that any rioters would look at you and me and then pick you as their target. Personally, I'd pay to see it.

Now, I've got to mow the front lawn.