Originally posted by Dutty_Rag
I think this is a plain and simple question of the selective breeding proposed earlier - something I have always believed.

Slaves from Africa were selected for a reason - they were big, strong and not particularly intelligent. Likewise, african women were often selected as they were attractive - for obvious reasons - primarily that being that the slave traders were men - often native african men as they were the people who captured the slaves.

I don't think it is about black men having more testosterone as a race - but perhaps this is true in the microcosm of the USA. The African American population is very different in characteristics to the populations of African nations. It was selectively bred for certain characteristics and has existed in isolation from africa for at least 200 years.

An example is if you look at the population of any country where you see the black population descending directly from enslaved peoples - the US, the Caribbean, black populations in places like Brazil - the black populations here are have a dramatically higher occurrence of large, physically strong males and attractive females when compared to native african populations in continental africa which generally has a populations with much more varied characteristics.

Look at the coloured immigrant populations in the UK. Here the black segment of society does not come from slavery and there is a roughly equal distribution of africans and west indians. Both display HUGELY different physical characteristics with the west indians being physically bigger, stronger and if violent crime rates are anything to go by, much more aggressive.

I think this kind of evidence is irrefutable - the question is - if these traits are bred into a population - how do you deal with them. If one concludes that african americans are prone to heightened aggression and violent episodes when compared to other ethnic groups making up the population, it stands to reason that this will be reflected in the population of the penal system.

I agree that there has in the past been a lot of prejudice in this system, but I think even stripping that away looking at the number of complaints and charges pressed by plaintive and not law enforcement (remembering that now and in history most violent crime is intra-race not inter-race thus removing racial prejudice from the equation) - one still sees a heightened incidence of violence with the blacks.

How do we deal with this issue. No one should be thinking along the lines of different laws for different races - what is the answer. I think someone is almost justified in for instance - not employing someone with such traits in a job where they could be a risk (for instance - a police or prison officer (or president) where they could loose their rag) - but this would be highly racist and clearly unacceptable.

Whether you agree with this analysis or not - and that is upto you - the hypothetical question of how to deal with an issue where a negative characteristic unique to one racial group becomes apparent and must be dealt with for the sake of the common good - is an interesting one.

What are you sources for these statements? Reading your statements it's almost as if we've jumped in a time machine to the 18 century because clearly the attitudes and mentalities regarding blacks have not changed for many people.


No race is more violent then another just based on their race alone. Depending on environment, upbringing, circumstances, that's what leads to violent behavior. I can cite various incidences throughout history that demonstrate that ALL RACES have exhibited extremely violent behavior. My personal belief is that anyone can be capable of almost anything given the right situation (or rather wrong situation).

Originally posted by ProfessorGoldstein
The simple and scientific answer is all races are not equal. It might not be politically correct, you might say it's "racist" to talk about the truth, but it's the scientific truth after all. For instance black's brains are 30% smaller on average than white's brains. It's just flat out physically impossible for their brains to be larger because the cranial sutures end much more abuptly on their skulls than white's, which does not allow the brain as much room to expand over our years of evolution.

WHAT?!?! Thirty percent? Source? The research that I have seen has consistently found differences of less than 10%, with the most common figure being in the 2% range. Honestly, a 30% difference in brain size doesn't even pass the laugh test.

Smaller brain (to size of organism) = less intelligent. Nothing racist about it at all, it's simple elementary-level science that you learn about animals in the classroom.

The correlation between brain size and IQ is r=.40, meaning that r^2=.16. This means that brain size accounts for 16% of the variance in IQ scores. That's a moderate correlation that leaves a lot of room for other factors to come into play. There are also methodological issues with this study, but I won't get into that.

You also seem to overlook the fact that there could be a third variable (environmental in nature, perhaps), which leads to differences in both brain size and IQ.

Some of us have moved beyond elementary-level science.

And simple logic dictactes that less intelligent will = less civilized, and less civilized will = higher "crime".

Logicians (you know, the people who study logic) actually call that "conjecture."

Here's a simple diagram that a scientist made comparing the brain size of a black male to a white male.

The one on top is the white male's brain, the one on the bottom is the black male's brain.

You're kidding, right? Robert Bean's 1906 drawing? You know that Bean failed to find a significant difference in brain size between races, right? His hypothesis was that this was because the brains were from lower-class whites and upper-class blacks. He couldn't verify this, of course, and was just grasping at straws to explain the lack of difference. Be honest, you're screwing with the other ATSers with this crap, right?

Intelligence, brain size, and race is the correct answer and no scientist or professional in this field will disagree with me, though they will not openly talk about it either (don't want to lose our jobs).

You just cited Bean. You made the outlandish claim that there is a 30% difference in brain size between races. Furthermore, no human population has ever maintained itself in reproductive isolation for more than a few centuries, so the relative homogeneity of humans makes the entire premise highly questionable.

Unless you're still living in 1909, nobody would agree with you.

And don't dare cry racism, it get's old.

So does sloppy psuedo-science, Professor.

It's not like I'm lying to you here, go to the morgue and have them split open the skull of a deceased white or asian male and then a deceased black male and then compare brain sizes. The former are much, much larger that you would actually be quite surprised at the difference. ~30% is a large amount.

You don't think that there might be an issue with sample size?

No bias here, no racism. It's simple science that can be measured and tested.

Ooookay then.



[edit on 26-2-2009 by theWCH]

No racism involved at all just a simple fact . Black America has a crime problem that they will not face. My zip code 49022 check those stats out.

mikell

The problem is poverty. Black people, in America, are disproportionately poor. Poor people usually have more incentive to commit crime. But, sometimes this is not true, as some of you have observed, by properly noting that crime was lower during the Great Depression. The reason for this actually obvious, if you look at it through the prism of Routine Activity Theory.

The routine activities approach argues that in order for crime to occur:

1. There must be motivated offenders
2. Motivated offenders must converge with suitable targets.
3. Motivated offenders must converge with suitable targets in the absence of capable guardians.

Poor people, having a greater incentive to resort to crime, are more likely to become motivated to commit crime. Now keep in mind, black people are disproportionately poor. That's the first part.

Once the motivation is there, these motivated offenders must converge with suitable targets. This tells us a few important things: crime is more likely to emerge in the case of inner-city poverty than it is in rural poverty; and if the poverty level gets too extreme, then crime will not emerge because there are no suitable targets. The first point accounts for the fact that crime rates are higher in inner-cities than in rural areas, even when the poverty rate is the same: your odds of finding a suitable target are a lot better if there are 30 times as many people in an area 1/3 as large. The second point tells us why crime was down during the Depression: there were dramatically fewer suitable targets -- nobody had anything to steal. This is also being seen in Detroit RIGHT NOW. Crime is dropping because the poverty level is getting so severe that there are no suitable targets and the would-be criminals are literally joining the ranks of the "discouraged workers."

Finally, if we have motivated offenders and suitable targets, then if we reduce the number of capable guardians we can increase the odds of crime taking place. You would expect that there would be more capable guardians in inner-cities, due to the increased population density, but this isn't actually the case. First of all, cops have an incentive to not crack-down on crime in these areas because doing so could get them shot (this isn't to say that even a majority of cops are acting like cowards, but even 1% could have a significant impact on crime rates). The larger problem is that when population density increases, bystanders actually become less likely to call 911, because they assume that somebody else has already called. I suspect that the rate of capable guardians is fairly homogeneous throughout the entire spectrum of communities.

So, to summarize my last two posts:

1. The different "races" have never been genetically isolated from eachother for a long enough period of time for biological differences to emerge; and ergo, race is purely a social construct, and differentiating between people based on skin color makes about as much sense as differentiating based on eye color. We are not differing sub-species of humans, and are very homogenous as a species.

2. Crime is (usually) the result of environmental factors, based on the degree to which there is incentive to commit crime.

This leads to the only logical conslusion: black Americans are disproportionately likely to commit crime because they are disproportionately living in environments in which crime is incentivized.

Deny Ignorance.



[edit on 1-3-2009 by theWCH]

Originally posted by wookiee

Originally posted by rizla
I think the root cause is poverty.

Show me 'poverty' in the US!

At least one car, two tv's, one of which is widescreen, at least one phone & cellphone.
Housing with air conditioning, so much money, they can buy food a convenience stores that charge 25%± more than grocery stores.

Poverty's not the problem.

Free handouts is the problem, if they were made to work, those numbers would be different.

COME on to my city... I'll take you to Hoover/ 45th, you can try to walk around for a couple of hours. You can try to foot the two mile walk to the nearest supermarket, give you some newspaper armor and a sharpened toothbrush. Or you can go to the SMOKIES, Blue ridge, The native nations....


You cons don't really care to understand, I should not be surprised.

Originally posted by ll__raine__ll

but you're also not black are you? neither you nor generations of your ancestors before you have been looked down on for the colour of your skin right?

go figure.

You do not have to be black to be the victim of racism. I'm white and I've never uttered a racial epitaph, nor have I ever treated anyone with anything except the utmost of civility unless they first treated me with disrespect. However, it seems that people accept young African Americans casting about racial epitaphs but blow a gasket if ever a non-minority racial group does so. I've been called honkey, cracker, etc by African American youths, and how often do you hear them utilizing the dreaded n-word to refer to one another? No one ever calls them on this blatant racism or divisive behavior. It's a blatant double standard.

Originally posted by Mozzy
what did i just say? prisons cannot hold a proportionate amount of each. therefore it's irrelevant to expect them to do so. if prisons fill up with blacks before they do with whites that only proves that blacks were caught first...[and]when prisons are full they are full, you cannot assume that they were full with whites or with blacks before the reached their capacity.

I didn't finish the thread yet because I couldn't get past the first page without making an observation.

I have to ask, what exactly are you going on about? The logic behind this is backwards. Prisons hold a disproportionate number of black and white people because a disproportionate number of black people are criminally prosecuted, not because the buildings are somehow structurally deficient. When somebody gets sentenced to prison time they go to prison, regardless of how many rooms are available in any given prison.

I for one agree with the poverty claims for the reasons for this. I think a more fair way to evaluate the proportionality of white and black people in prisons is to look at black and white inmates who make under say $20,000 a year. If you took that sample I'd imagine the numbers would be a lot less skewed.

To the poster above me I think you meant 'epithet' because an 'epitaph' is the inscription on your tombstone.

[edit on 1-3-2009 by Aero]