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Restricting Racist Speech: An Argument Against Free Speech
2250 words
Introduction
Speech should have limits. Growing up in America, this of course sounds like crazy talk. But the fact that we agree that actions that cause harm to others should be restricted then leads to a contradiction—and it’s due to this contradiction that we should—and in some cases do—not let anyone say whatever is on their minds without consequence. Think of defamation laws, harassment and violence-incitement. Social media amplifies hate speech—especially now where, although it’s not fully a “free speech platform”, Twitter has turned into a cesspool of hate speech (see here for examples). So if we agree that certain actions that cause harm to others should be restricted, then there is a logical contradiction—mainly that allowing speech that causes harm contradicts the principle that we should avoid harm causing actions. There is a moral imperative to restrict racist speech acts.
(1) We agree that certain actions that cause harm to others should be restricted.
Knowing this:
(2) Assume that we shouldn’t restrict any forms of speech.
(3) This implies that speech that causes harm shouldn’t be restricted.
(4) But we know that certain kinds of speech acts cause harm, leading to negative mental and physiological health outcomes and violence.
(5) But allowing speech that causes harm contradicts the principle that actions which cause harm should be restricted.
(6) So the assumption that speech should have no restrictions—including speech that causes harm—leads to a contradiction with (1), since actions that cause harm to others should be restricted.
(8) Therefore, some forms of speech—particularly speech that causes harm—should be restricted to prevent negative consequences.
Put simply: (1) Actions causing harm should be restricted. (2) Since some speech acts cause tangible harm, then unfettered speech acts contradict the principle that actions which cause harm should be restricted. (C) So speech restrictions are justified.
Or:
(1) If speech causes tangible harm, then it should be restricted to prevent that harm. (2) Some forms of speech—including incitement to violence, defamation, and true threats—cause tangible harm. Therefore, (C) these forms of speech should be restricted.
The argument I have constructed against free speech I have constructed is valid, and I will argue for it’s soundness. I will then discuss how we can identify racist speech (though I think it is pretty obvious), then I will argue that such speech causes tangible harm. I will show that then racist then is caught in a contradiction that he cannot see himself out of—namely that they presumably think that crime is bad based on talking about all types of racial crime differences but then contradict that by engaging in action which lead to crime.
Defending the argument
The argument assumes Mill’s harm principle (HP)—where Mills stated that “the only purpose for which power can be rightly exercised over any member if a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.” Even in America, where we have the First Amendment, certain speech acts are restricted—like defamation, incitement to violence and true threats. So while free expression is meaningful, it’s clearly not absolute, and I argue that we should extend that to hate speech, since hate speech causes tangible harm.
The HP also lines up with the ethical view that one’s actions should not infringe upon the well-being and rights of others. Therefore, speech should be judged on the impact it has towards others. We can then extend this to not only individual harm but broader, societal harm. Speech acts that promote systemic discrimination—like hate speech—can and should be restricted since they contribute to an environment in which certain groups are systematically disadvantaged or harmed which then gels well with the notion that harm would include social and psychological impacts.
We can then extend the HP to include psychological and emotional harm. Speech that systematically targets individuals or groups can cause significant emotional distress and could lead to significant mental health issues should be considered under the HP. Certain speech acts can contribute to systemic harm by perpetuating or reinforcing structures of oppression, like racist, sexist, or anti-same-sex speech.
Thus, the HP should be extended to include preventative measures against potential harm. So in cases where speech is likely to incite violence or discrimination, preventative restrictions should be in place, especially where there are historical or contemporary tensions.
For instance, look at the RFK’s idiotic view that vaccines cause autism. This is a view that should not be amplified, since it could lead to lower rates of vaccination and along with it, physical (and mental) harm. What RFK is saying is outright misinformation, since we have large trials which definitively show that vaccines do not cause autism (and the study that RFK is presumably referring to is even retracted; (Allen and Ivers, 2010; Eggertson, 2010, see Wakefield et al, 1998).
Identifying racist speech
To identify racist speech, we can just look at the language used. Racist speech denies the humanity, dignity or worth of individuals based on their race. It makes sweeping generalizations or assumptions about a group based on preconceived notions or biases. It demonizes a group, portraying them as evil, dangerous, or threatening. It excludes or ignores experiences or concerns of a group. It uses derogatory language like slurs and epithets which are intended to degrade and offend. It advocates for discrimination or violence against a group. And it perpetuates systemic racism by justifying discriminatory policies practices or institutions which exacerbate inequalities. So:
A speech act is a racist speech act, iff
(1) it dehumanizes, stereotypes, demonizes, marginalizes, or uses derogatory language against individuals or groups based on their race, ethnicity or national origin; or (2) it promotes hate, discrimination or harm against individuals based on their race, ethnicity, or national origin; or (3) it perpetuates systemic racism by reinforcing or justifying discriminatory practices, policies, or institutions that perpetuate racial inequalities.
Racist speech acts are those that dehumanize, demean, or discriminate aya7shr individuals or groups based on race. Language has both explicit and implicit meanings, and its racial B can be identified through the explicit use of racial slurs or derogatory terms which are historically and universally recognized as demeaning to specific racial groups. So the context in which words are used significantly influences their racist nature where one stereotypes and makes generalizations about racial groups including individualw to a set of prejudiced assumptions. The intent should also be considered, but the impact often outweighs good intentions.
Speech from those in positions of power or privilege which targets marginalized groups amplifies the racist impact due to the existing power balance in society. But even if the speech in question is intended to not be racist, if it reinforces racial hierarchies, promotes discrimination, or causes harm, then it could be considered racist in its effects (this is why I think the “HBD”-hereditarian movement is racist). So historical and cultural references also inform the racist nature of certain speech acts.
Thus, to identify racist speech acts, one must analyze not just the words one uses but the context in which they’re said, intent, impact, power dynamics, and the historical and cultural weight they carry. This goes beyond what is on the surface of the words that one speaks or writes and allows us to recognize when a speech act is a racist one.
The moral contradiction of the racist
Now we come to the issue of racist hate speech. We know that racism and stereotypes which lead to self-fulfilling prophecies cause the black-white crime gap (based on considerations of the theory of African American offending). We also know that racism causes “weathering” in black women (Geronimus et al 2006, 2011; Sullivan, 2015) So since we know that racism leads to crime in the black American population, and we know that it leads to differences in physical and mental health, we know that racism is morally wrong. So the HP should be extended to include racist speech acts, since they have tangible effects. Racist speech acts promote harmful stereotypes, and contribute to crime through marginalization which then cause physiological and psychological harm. In the argument that I made here, I showed that since crime is bad and racism causes crime then racism is bad—this is a simple, yet powerful argument. So since racist speech acts can lead to tangible harms, both directly (through incitement or psychological stress) and indirectly (contributing to systemic issues like crime rates in African Americans), such views should be restricted. I assume that racists think that crime is bad, but since we know that racism and stereotypes which lead to self-fulfilling prophecies cause crime for African Americans, it seems that their racist speech acts lead to a real-world contradiction.
The argument as I have constructed it is:
(1) Crime is bad. (2) Racism causes crime. (C) Thus, racism is morally wrong. (1) is self-evident based on people not wanting to be harmed. (2) is known upon empirical examination, like the TAAO and it’s successful novel predictions. (C) then logically follows.
…
B stands for “crime is bad”, C stands for “racism causes crime”, D stands for racism is objectively incorrect, so from B and C we derive D (if C causes B and B is bad, then D is morally wrong). So the argument is “(B ^ C) -> D”. B and C lead to D, proving validity.
So: (1) If actions causing harm should be restricted ((B ^ C) –> D), and racist speech acts cause harm both directly and indirectly, then racist speech acts should be restricted. (2) Actions causing harm should be restricted (B is true based on ethical principles) and racist speech acts cause harm (C is true based on empirical evidence). Therefore, (C) racist speech acts should be restricted (D is true).
This is the moral conundrum of the racist. Racists agree that crime is bad (which can be seen by there hyper-focus on black-on-white, black-on-black, and black-on-Asian crime). But their speech acts contribute to the very actions they condemn. This is a contradiction. If racists believe that crime is bad, and if we accept the evidence that racism and stereotypes contribute to crime for African Americans (and we should since the TAAO makes successful novel predictions), then by promoting racism through their speech acts, racists are inadvertently contributing to what they claim to despise! If one holds to the claim that crime is bad, then one should therefore have a moral responsibility to not contribute to its causes. So by promoting racism, racists are directly contributing to crime. Racists, then, have an inconsistency between their beliefs and actions.
Conclusion
Most agree that we shouldn’t have ultimate free speech, which I take to be saying whatever you want whenever you want to whomever you want. Of course, in private, two people could express views to each other that would be seen as negative to society at large, but they would not be harm-causing speech acts since they are only expressing such views to themselves and not going on social media and airing their racism for millions to see. Using and extending Mills’ harm principle then allows us to restrict certain speech that causes harm. So since we know that racist speech acts lead to psychological and physiological harm and since we know (based on TAAO studies) that racism and stereotypes which lead to self-fulfilling prophecies lead to crime in black Americans, such racist hate speech must be regulated.
I showed when a speech act is a racist speech act, by stating some conditions. Racists today distribute racism in the form of memes and “jokes” on social media. It is pretty obvious when speech is meant to convey a racist tone and be applied toward a group, and the conditions I have paid out pave the way for that.
I showed that racist hate speech leads to increased rates of ctime in black Americans. The TAAO not only shows how racism is linked to crime, it also shows how racist speech acts perpetuate harmful stereotypes which then lead to self-fulfilling prophecies which then cause crime among African Americans. So this suggests that since racism leads to crime (which is universally seen as bad) among African Americans, then racist speech (as a form of action) should then be seen as morally reprehensible and therefore potentially restrictable under the HP. And since we know that racist speech acts lead to weathering and increased allostatic load, this is yet another reason to restrict such speech. Such speech acts contribute to these health disparities by creating environments of chronic stress and marginalization. Thus, by recognizing these health outcomes as tangible harms, we can further justify applying the HP to racist speech.
The ethical flaw of the racist was discussed. They claim to oppose crime (as seen by their continual discussions of inter-racial and intra-racial crime), yet their speech promotes conditions which increase crime rates among the very groups they discriminate against. So the racist in fact contributes to crime, which then undermines their own moral stance against crime!
This is why we should not have a kind of free-reign free speech—because it’s quite cleat that racism leads to crime in the black American population and that racism leads to negative psychological and physiological health outcomes. Therefore, knowing this, “free speech” shouldn’t be a thing. We should restrict it not only for the societal health of the country but for the psychological and psychological health and well-being of groups and individuals.
Culture Is a Product of Mind, Not Genes
1500 words
Introduction
For years HBDers like JayMan and hbdchick have insinuated that differences in culture are due to differences in genes. They basically reduce culture to genes (like the “good reductionists” they are). But if certain things are true about human culture and therefore thought and action, then that would throw a wrench into their insinuation here.
I will show that their ultimate claim—differences in culture are due to differences in genes—is unfounded and I will then show where culture DOES come from based on what we know about human culture, thought, and action. All in all, this will refute the reductionist HBD claim about culture and genes.
The argument
P1: All human expression is thought and action.
P2: Culture is human expression.
C: Therefore culture is thought and action.
P3: Thoughts are immaterial.
P4: Actions are products of thoughts.
C2: So human culture cannot be reduced to genes.
P1 claims that human expression can be broken down into cognitive processes (thought) and physical manifestations (the actions that lead to physical changes in the world based on the intention of the human’s thought). Every form of human expression begins with a thought and an action. P2 claims that culture encompasses beliefs, behaviors, values and symbols, which then define a cultural (ethnic) group. So since these elements are expressed by humans, then culture is inherently a form of human expression. C then logically follows.
P3 is then the dualist premise, which states that thoughts aren’t physical—they’re immaterial. Just refer to the Ross-Feser immaterial aspects of thought argument. Thoughts precede and cause actions – actions have purpose and intent derived from thought. If one acts, then they thought about it first (since actions are intentional) so P4 is true. So from 3 and 4, we understand that thoughts are immaterial and actions come from thoughts. So if culture is thought and action, and these elements are not material like genes, then it follows that culture cannot be reduced to genes.
But where DOES culture come from?
In a 2013 comment, JayMan (in his typical reductionist fashion) wrote:
First of all, let’s stop right here. Where does “culture” come from?
The answer: All human behavioral traits are heritable.
[And even on 12/27/24 writing on Twitter]
Culture *is* genetic. Where does culture come from? You know that all human behavioral traits are heritable, right?
Typical JayMan nonsense (see here for a refutation of the “laws of behavioral genetics“). Culture is an emergent property based on minds, socialization, and the immediate ecology that the group finds itself it. Of course the adaptability and diffusion of cultural change occurring so quickly, nowhere near the timeframe for genetic change, shows that culture isn’t merely (nor at all) due to the expression of genes, but is a dynamic, irreducible human construct. Since I have established that culture is thought and action due to it being an outcome of human expression, this sets the stage for the refutation of the claim that cultural differences are due to genetic differences. So culture is more about human agency, social interactions, and the physical ecology the human group finds themselves in.
The question “Where does culture come from?” is a loaded one, since the HBDers oversimplify culture as being due to genes and they also imply that since ethnies have genetic differences and also cultural differences that this can therefore be reduced to genetic differences between these groups.
The claim that culture is genetic could imply that genes would predispose groups of people to engage in certain kinds of culture. But this betrays an important point, namely that culture is highly dynamic, and influenced by numerous factors such as education, environment, historical context, and social interactions. So if we understand culture we being what is SOCIALLY TRANSMITTED across generations, then the JayMan/hbdchick question quickly crumbles. Culture is “human-created environment, artifacts, and practices” (Vasileva and Balyasnikova, 2019).
Under a Vygotskian conception, cultural practices and knowledge are passed down and developed through social—not genetic—means. Being that culture is transmitted through language, symbols, signs, and artifacts, they then mediate human cognitive processes and influence how people think and act. Thus, culture is constructed through the use of these specific tools, and is NOT an expression of a group’s genes. Since people internalize cultural patterns through social learning, what start as external and social activities then become internalized (think of the concept of private speech). Thus, this undermines the idea that culture is genetic, since it shows culture as something they’d learned, adapted, and integrated into one’s cognitive framework through social interactions (more specifically, social interactions with more knowledgeable others). Since human development is historically situated, this means that the cultural context that one grows and develops in shapes one’s cognitive and behavioral development. This shows how culture changes over time, too quickly for the genetic explanation to work.
The emphasis of social and cultural learning shows us that cultural traits cannot possible be “genetically encoded” (whatever that means). So if culture is learned through social interactions and mediated by cultural tools, then the diversity and change in cultures are better explained by social dynamics rather than genetic (pre-)dispositions. So variation in cultural practices across or within societies can be seen as the result of different social environments, educational systems and historical events rather than going the genetic reductionist/deterministic route. Using Vygotsky’s theory here allows us to focus on how people engage with their cultural environment. The theory also shows the role of human agency in cultural creation and change, which suggests that humans are active participants in cultural evolution.
With this, I am reminded of Gould’s argument in Full House (1996) where he argues that cultural phenomena should be considered on their own and not be considered mere extensions of biological processes and systems.
But human cultural change is an entirely distinct process operating under radically different principals that do allow for the strong possibility of a driven trend for what we may legitamately call “progress” (at least in a technological sense, whether or not the changes ultimately do us any good in a practical or moral way). In this sense, I deeply regret that common usage refers to the history of our artifacts and social orginizations as “cultural evolution.” Using the same term—evolution—for both natural and cultural history obfuscates far more than it enlightens. Of course, some aspects of the two phenomena must be similar, for all processes of genealogically constrained historical change must share some features in common. But the differences far outweigh the similarities in this case. Unfortunately, when we speak of “cultural evolution,” we unwittingly imply that this process shares essential similarity with the phenomenon most widely described by the same name—natural, or Darwinian, change. The common designation of “evolution” then leads to one of the most frequent and portentious errors in our analysis of human life and history—the overly reductionist assumption that the Darwinian natural paradigm will fully encompass our social and technological history as well. I do wish that the term “cultural evolution” would drop from use. Why not speak of something more neutral and descriptive—“cultural change,” for example?
Culture is directed and intentional, and thus cannot be due to genes. So the HBD question “Where does culture come from?” doesn’t lead to the answer they want—it leads to differences in environment, and human agency and social interactions between people.
Conclusion
From the premises that all human expression is thought and action, and that culture is human expression, I have established that culture is not merely due to genes (at all), but is a dynamically-shaped social process, driven by cognitive processes and the choices that people make in their groups and the environments they live in. The argument shows that the wishful thinking of HBDers like JayMan and hbdchick don’t have a basis in reality. So by showing that thoughts are immaterial and actions stem from thoughts, I’ve shown that cultural practices cannot be genetically inherited/caused, but are learned, adapted, and transmitted through social means.
We know that cultural development is a social process and transmitted and transformed through social interactions, language, and education which are external to genetics. Cultural learning also takes place in a zone of proximal development, where individuals internalize social interactions and cultural patterns and processes, which also shows that the JayMan/hbdchick claim is ridiculous. Adding in Gould’s critique, cultural change operates under different principles from biological evolution. Gould’s critique shows that while biological and cultural change do share certain features (historical change), the mechanisms behind cultural shifts are unique, which supports the view that human culture is due to human agency, social dynamics and technological progress rather than being due to genes.
Like with all aspects mind, genes (physical) are NECESSARY for these things to happen, but they are not SUFFICIENT for them. Genetic reductionism is outright false. The claim that “Culture is genetic” is therefore refuted.
The “Great Replacement Theory”
2550 words
Introduction
The “Great Replacement Theory” (GRT hereafter) is a white nationalist conspiracy theory (conceptualized by French philosopher Renaud Camus) where there is an intentional effort by some shadowy group (i.e., Jews and global elites) to bring mass amounts of immigrants with high TFRs to countries with whites where whites have low TFRs in order to displace and replace whites in those countries (Beirich, 2021). Vague statements have been made about their “IQs” in that they would be easier to “control” and that they would then intermix with whites to further decrease the IQ of the nation and then be more controllable, all the while the main goal of the GRT—the destruction of the white race—would come to fruition. Here, I will go through the logic of what I think the two premises of the GRT are, and then I will show how the two premises (which I hold to obviously be true) don’t guarantee the conclusion that the GRT is true and that there is an intentional demographic replacement. I will discuss precursors of this that are or almost are 100 years old. I will then discuss what “theory” and “conspiracy theory” means and how, by definition, the GRT is both a theory (an attempted explanation of observed facts) and a conspiracy theory (suggesting a secret plan for the destruction and replacement of the white race).
The genesis of the GRT
The idea of the GRT is older than what spurred it’s discussion in the new millennium, but it can be traced in its modern usage to French political commentator Renaud Camus in his book Le Grand Remplacement.
But one of the earliest iterations of the GRT is the so-called “Kalergi plan.” Kalergi was also one of the founders of the pan-European union (Wiedemer, 1993). Kalergi, in his 1925 book Practical Idealism, wrote that “The man of the future will be of mixed race. Today’s races and classes will gradually disappear owing to the vanishing of space, time, and prejudice. The Eurasian-Negroid race of the future will replace the diversity of peoples with a diversity of individuals.” Which is similar to what Grant (1922: 110) wrote in The Passing of the Great Race:
All historians are familiar with the phenomenon of a rise and decline in civilization such as has oc- curred time and again in the history of the world but we have here in the disappearance of the Cro-Magnon race the earliest example of the replacement of a very superior race by an inferior one. There is great danger of a similar replacement of a higher by a lower type here in America unless the native American uses his superior intelligence to protect himself and his children from competition with intrusive peoples drained from the lowest races of eastern Europe and western Asia.
The idea of a great replacement is obviously much older than what spurred it on today. Movement was much tougher back then as the technology for mass migrations was just beginning to become more mainstream (think of the mass migrations from the 1860s up until the 1930s in America from European groups). Even the migration of other whites from Europe was used as a kind of “replacement” of protestant Anglo-Saxon ways of life. Nonetheless, these ideas of a great replacement are not new, and these two men (one of which—Kalergi—wasn’t using the quote in a nefarious way, contra the white nationalists who use this quote as evidence of the GRT and the plan for it in the modern day) are used as evidence that it is occurring.
Kalergi envisioned a positive blending of the races, whereas Grant expressed concerns of replacement by so-called “inferior” groups replacing so-called “superior” groups. Grant—in trying to argue that Cro-Magnon man was the superior race, replaced by the inferior one—expressed worry of intentional demographic replacement, which is the basis of the GRT today and what the GRT essentially reduces to. The combination of these opposing perspectives of the mixing of races (the positive one from Kalergi and the negative one from Grant) show that the idea of a great replacement is much older than Camus’ worry in his book. (And, as I will argue, the fact that the 2 below premises are true doesn’t guarantee the conclusion of the GRT.)
The concept of the GRT
The GRT has two premises:
(1) Whites have fewer children below TFR
(2) Immigrants have more children above TFR
Which then should get us to:
(C) Therefore, the GRT is true.
But how does (C) follow from (1) and (2)? The GRT suggests not only a demographic shift in which the majority (whites) are replaced and displaced by minorities (in this case mostly “Hispanics” in America), but that this is intentional—that is, it is one man or group’s intention for this to occur. The two premises above refer to factual, verifiable instances: Whites have fewer children; immigrants coming into America have more children. BUT just because those two premises are true, this does NOT mean that the conclusion—GRT is true—follows from the two premises. The two premises focus on the fertility rates of two groups (American whites and immigrants to America), but acceptance of both of those premises does not mean that there is an act of intentional displacement occurring. We can allow the truth of both premises, but that doesn’t lead to the truth of the GRT. Because that change is intentionally driven by some super secret, shadowy and sinister group (the Jews or some other kind of amalgamation of elites who want easy “slave labor”).
The GRT was even endorsed by the Buffalo shooter who heniously shot and killed people in a Tops supermarket. He was driven by claims of the GRT. (The US Congress condemned the GRT as a “White supremacist conspiracy theory“, and I will show how it is a theory and even a conspiracy theory below.) The shooter even plagiarized the “rationale section” of his manifesto (Peterka-Benton and Benton, 2023). This shows that such conspiracy theories like the GRT can indeed lead to radicalization of people.
Even ex-presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy made reference to the GRT, stating that “great replacement theory is not some grand right-wing conspiracy theory, but a basic statement of the Democratic Party’s platform.” Even former Fox News political commentator Tucker Carlson has espoused these beliefs on his former show on Fox News. The belief in such conspiratorial thinking can quite obviously—as seen with the Buffalo shooter—have devestating negative consequences (Adam-Troian et al, 2023). Thus, these views have hit the mainstream as something that’s “plausible” on the minds of many Americans.
Such thinking obviously can be used for both Europe and America—where the Islamization/Africanization of Europe and the browning of America with “Hispanics” and other groups—where there is a nefarious plot to replace the white population of both locations, and these mostly derive on places like 4chan where they try to “meme” what they want into reality (Aguilar, 2023).
On theories and conspiracy theories
Some may say that the GRT isn’t a theory nor is it even a conspiracy theory—it’s a mere observation. I’ve already allowed that both premises of the argument—whites have fewer children below TFR while immigrants have more children above TFR—is true. But that doesn’t mean that the conclusion follows that the GRT is true. Because, as argued above, it is intentional demographic replacement. Intentional by whom? Well the Jews and other global elites who want a “dumb” slave population that just listens, produces and has more children so as to continue the so-called enslavement of the lower populations.
But, by definition, the GRT is a theory and even a conspiracy theory. The GRT is a theory in virtue of it being an explanation for observed demographic changes and the 2 premises I stated above. It is a conspiracy theory because it suggests a deliberate, intentional plan by the so-called global elite to replace whites with immigrants. Of course labeling something as a conspiracy theory doesn’t imply that it’s inaccurate nor invalid, but I would say that the acceptance of both premises DO NOT guarantee the conclusion that those who push the GRT want it to.
The acceptance of both premises doesn’t mean that the GRT is true. The differential fertility of two groups, where one group (the high fertility group) is migrating into the country of another group (the low fertility group) doesn’t mean that there is some nefarious plot by some group to spur race mixing and the destruction and replacement of one group over another.
As shown above, people may interpret and respond to the GRT in different ways. Some may use it in a way to interpret and understand demographic changes while not committing henious actions, while others—like the Buffalo shooter—may use the information in a negative way and take many innocent lives on the basis of belief in the theory. Extreme interpretations of the GRT can lead to the shaping of beliefs which then contribute to negative actions based on the belief that their group is being replaced (Obaidi et al, 2021). Conspiracy theories also rely on the intent to certain events, of which the proponents of the GRT do.
Some white nationalists who hold to the GRT state that the Jews are behind this for a few reasons—one of which I stated above (that they want dumber people to come in who have higher TFRs to replace the native white population in the country)—and another reason which has even less support (if that’s even possible) which is that the Jews are orchestrating the great migration of non-whites into European countries as revenge and retaliation for Europeans expelling Jews from European countries during the middle ages (109 countries). This is the so-called “white genocide” conspiracy theory. This is the kind of hate that Trump ran with in his presidential run and in his time in office as president of the United States (Wilson, 2018). This can also be seen with the phrase “Jews/You will not replace us!” during the Charlottesville protests of 2017 (Wilson, 2021). “You” in the phrase “You will not replace us!” could refer to Jews, or it could refer to the people that the Jews are having migrate into white countries to replace the white population. Beliefs in such baseless conspiracy theories gave led to mass murder in America, Australia, and Norway (Davis, 2024).
One of the main actors in shaping the view that Jews are planning to replace (that is, genocide) Whites is white nationalist and evolutionary psychologist Kevin MacDonald, more specifically in his book series on the origin of Jewish evolutionary group strategies, with A People that Shall Dwell Alone (1994), Separation and it’s Discontents (1998a), and The Culture of Critique (1998b). It is a main argument in this book series that the Jews have an evolved evolutionary group strategy that has them try to undermine and destroy white societies (see Blutinger, 2021 and also Nathan Cofnas’ responses to MacDonald ‘s theory). MacDonald’s theory of a group evolutionary strategy is nothing more than a just-so story. Such baseless views have been the “rationale” of many mass killings in the 2010s (eg Fekete, 2011; Nilsson, 2022). Basically it’s “white genocide is happening and the Jews are behind it so we need to kill those who the Jews are using to enact their plan and we need to kill Jews.” (Note that this isn’t a call for any kind of violence it’s just a simplified version of what many of these mass killers imply in their writings and motivations for carrying out their henious attacks.) One thing driving these beliefs and that jd the GRT is that of anti-Semitism (Allington, Buarque, and Flores, 2020). Overall, such claims of a GRT or “white genocide” flourish online (Keulennar and Reuters, 2023). In this instance, it is claimed that Jews are using their ethnic genetic interests and nepotism to spur these events.
Conclusion
I have discussed the GRT argument and with it so-called “white genocide” (since the two are linked). The 2 premises of the GRT are tru—that American whites have low TFR and those who are emigrating have high TFR—but but that the premises are true doesn’t guarantee the conclusion that there is some great replacement occurring, since it reduces to a kind of intentional demographic replacement by some group (say, the Jews and other elites in society who want cheap, dumb, easily controllable labor who have more children). The GRT is happening, it is claimed, since the Jews want revenge on whites for kicking them out of so many countries. That is, the GRT is an intentional demographic replacement. Those who push the GRT take the two true premises and then incorrectly conclude that there is some kind of plan to eradicate whites through both the mixing of races and bringing in groups of people who have more children than whites do.
I have scrutinized what I take to be the main argument of GRT proponents and have shown that the conclusion they want doesn’t logically follow. Inherent in this is a hasty generalization fallacy and fallacy of composition (in the argument as I have formalized it). This shows the disconnect between both premises and the desired conclusion. Further, the classification of the GRT as a conspiracy theory comes from the attribution of intention to eliminate and eradicate white through the mass migration of non-white immigrant groups who have more children than whites along with racial mixing.
The Buffalo shooting in a Tops supermarket in 2022 shows the impact of these beliefs on people who want there to be some kind of plan or theory for the GRT. Even mainstream pundits and a political candidate have pushed the GRT to a wider audience. And as can be seen, belief in such a false theory can, does, and has led to the harm and murder of innocent people.
Lastly, I showed how the GRT is a theory (since it is an attempt at an explanation for an observed trend) and a conspiracy theory (since the GRT holds that there is a secret plan, with people behind the scenes in the shadows orchestrating the events of the GRT). Such a shift in demographics need not be the result of some conspiracy theory with the intention to wipe out one race of people. Of course some may use the GRT to try to understand how and why the demographics are changing in the West, but it is mostly used as a way to pin blame on why whites aren’t having more children and why mass immigration is occurring.
All in all, my goal here was to show that the GRT has true premises but the conclusion doesn’t follow, and that it is indeed a theory and a conspiracy theory. I have also shown how such beliefs can and have led to despicable actions. Clearly the impact of beliefs on society can have negative effects. But by rationally thinking about and analyzing such claims, we can show that not only are they baseless, but that it’s not merely an observation of observed trends. Evidence and logic should be valued here, while we reject unwanted, centuries-old stereotypes of the purported plan of racial domination of certain groups.
Mind, Culture, and Test Scores: Dualistic Experiential Constructivism’s Insights into Social Disparities
2450 words
Introduction
Last week I articulated a framework I call Dualistic Experiential Constructivism (DEC). DEC is a theoretical framework which draws on mind-body dualism, experiential learning, and constructivism to explain human development, knowledge acquisition, and the formation of psychological traits and mind. In the DEC framework, knowledge construction and acquisition are seen as due to a dynamic interplay between individual experiences and the socio-cultural contexts that they occur in. It has a strong emphasis on the significance of personal experiences, interacting with others, shaping cognitive processes, social understanding and the social construction of knowledge by drawing on Vygotsky’s socio-historical theory of learning and development, which emphasizes the importance of cultural tools and the social nature of learning. It recognizes that genes are not sufficient for psychological traits, but necessary for them. It emphasizes that the manifestation of psychological traits and mind are shaped by experiences, interactions between the socio-cultural-environmental context.
My framework is similar to some other frameworks, like constructivism, experiential learning theory (Kolb) (Wijnen-Meyer et al, 2022), social constructivism, socio-cultural theory (Vygotsky), relational developmental systems theory (Lerner and Lerner, 2019) and ecological systems theory (Bronfenbrenner, 1994).
DEC shares a key point with constructivism—that of rejecting passive learning and highlight the importance of the learner’s active engagement in the construction of knowledge. Kolb’s experiential learning theory proposes that people learn best through direct experiences and reflecting on those experiences, while DEC emphasizes the fact significance of experiential learning in shaping one’s cognitive processes and understanding of knowledge. DEC also relies heavily on Vygotsky’s socio-historical theory of learning and development, where both the DEC and Vygotsky’s theory emphasize the role of socio-cultural factors in shaping human development along with the construction of knowledge. Vygotsky’s theory also highlights the importance of social interaction, cultural and psychological tools and historical contexts, which DEC draws from. Cognitive development and knowledge arise from dynamic interactions between individuals and their environment while also acknowledging the reciprocal influences between the individual and their social context. (This is how DEC can also be said to be a social constructivist position.) DEC is also similar to Uri Bronfenbrenner’ecological systems theory, which emphasizes the influence of multiple environmental systems on human development. With DEC’s focus on how individuals interact with their cultural contexts, it is therefore similar to ecological systems theory. Finally, DST shares similarities with Learner’s relational developmental systems theory focusing on interactions, genes as necessary but not sufficient causes for the developing system, rejecting reductionism and acknowledging environmental and cultural contexts in shaping human development. They are different in the treatment of mind-body dualism and the emphasis on cultural tools in shaping cognitive development and knowledge acquisition.
Ultimately, DEC posits that individuals actively construct knowledge through their engagement with the world, while drawing upon their prior experiences, interactions with others and cultural resources. So the socio-cultural context in which the individual finds themselves in plays a vital role in shaping the nature of learning experiences along with the construction of meaning and knowledge. Knowing this, how would race, gender, and class be integrated into the DEC and how would this then explain test score disparities between different classes, men and women, and races?
Social identities and test score differences: The impact of DEC on gender, race and class discrepancies
Race, class, and gender can be said to be social identities. Since they are social identities, they aren’t inherent or fixed characteristics in individuals, they are social categories which influence an individual’s experiences, opportunities, and interaction within society. These social identities are shaped by cultural, historical, and societal factors which intersect in complex ways, leading to different experiences.
When it comes to gender, it has been known that boys and girls have different interests and so they have different knowledge basis. This has been evidenced since Terman specifically constructed his test to eliminate differences between men and women in his Stanford-Binet, and also evidenced by the ETS changing the SAT to reflect these differences between men and women (Rosser, 1989; Mensh and Mensh, 1991). So when it comes to the construction of knowledge and the engagement with the world, an individual’s gender influences the way they perceive the world, and interpret social dynamics and act in social situations. There is also gendered test content, as Rosser (1989) shows for the SAT. Thus, the concept of gender in society influences test scores since men and women are exposed to different kinds of knowledge; the fact that there are “gendered test items” (items that reflect or perpetuate gender biases, stereotypes or assumptions in its presentation).
But men and women have negligible differences in full-scale IQ, so how can DEC work here? It’s simple: men are better spatially and women are better verbally. Thus, by choosing which items they want on the test, test constructors can build the conclusions they want into the test. DEC emphasizes socio-cultural influences on knowledge exposure, stating that unique socio-cultural and historical experiences and contexts influences one’s knowledge acquisition. Cultural/social norms and gendered socialization can also shape one’s interests and experiences, which would then influence knowledge production. Further, test content could have gender bias (as Rosser, 1989 pointed out), and subjects that either sex are more likely to have interest in could have skewed answer outcomes (as Rosser showed). Stereotype threat is also another thing that could influence this, with one study conceptualizing stereotype threat gender as being responsible for gender differences in advanced math (Spencer, Steele, and Quinn, 1999). Although stereotype threat affects different groups in different ways, one analysis showed empirical support “for mediators such as anxiety, negative thinking, and mind-wandering, which are suggested to co-opt working memory resources under stereotype threat” (Pennington et al, 2016). Lastly, intersectionality is inherent in DEC. Of course the experiences of a woman from a marginalized group would be different from the experiences of a woman from a privileged group. So these differences could influence how gender intersects with other identities when it comes to knowledge production.
When it comes to racial differences in test scores, DEC would emphasis the significance of understanding test score variations as reflecting multifaceted variables resulting from the interaction of cultural influences, experiential learning, societal contexts and historical influences. DEC rejects the biological essentialism and reductionism of hereditarianism and their claims of innate, genetic differences in IQ—it contextualizes test score differences. It views test scores as dynamic outcomes, which are influenced by social contexts, cultural influences and experiential learning. It also highlights cultural tools as mediators of knowledge production which would then influence test scores. Language, communication styles, educational values and other cultural resources influence how people engage with test content and respond to test items. Of course, social interactions play a large part in the acquisition of knowledge in different racial groups. Cultural tools are shared and transmitted through social interactions within racial communities. Historical legacies and social structures could impact access to cultural tools along with educational opportunities that would be useful to score well on the test, which then would affect test performance. Blacks and whites are different cultural groups, so they’re exposed to different kinds of knowledge which then influences their test scores.
Lastly, we come to social class. People from families in higher social strata benefit from greater access to educational resources—along with enriching experiences—like attending quality pre-schools and having access to educational materials, materials that are likely to be in the test items on the test. The early learning experiences then set the foundation for performing well on standardized tests. Lower class people could have limited access to these kinds of opportunities, which would impact their readiness and therefore performance on standardized tests. Cultural tools and language also play a pivotal role in shaping class differences in test scores. Parents of higher social class could is language and communication patterns that could potentially contribute to higher test scores. Conversely, lower social classes could have lack of exposure to the specific language conventions used in test items which would then influence their performance. Social interactions also influence knowledge production. Higher social classes foster discussions and educational discourses which support academic achievement, and also the peer groups in would also provide additional academic support and encouragement which would lend itself to higher test scores. On the other hand, lower class groups have limited academic support along with fewer opportunities for social interactions which are conducive to learning the types of items and structure of the test. It has also been shown that there are SES disparities in language acquisition due to the home learning environment, and this contributes to the achievement gap and also school readiness (Brito, 2017). Thus, class dictates if one is or is not ready for school due to their exposure to language in their home learning environment. Therefore, in effect, IQ tests are middle-class knowledge tests (Richardson, 2001, 2022). So one who is not exposed to the specific, cultural knowledge on the test wouldn’t score as well as someone who is. Richardson (1999; cf, Richardson, 2002) puts this well:
So relative acquisition of relevant background knowledge (which will be closely associated with social class) is one source of the elusive common factor in psychometric tests. But there are other, non-cognitive, sources. Jensen seems to have little appreciation of the stressful effects of negative social evaluation and systematic prejudice which many children experience every day (in which even superficial factors like language dialect, facial appearance, and self-presentation all play a major part). These have powerful effects on self concepts and self-evaluations. Bandura et al (1996) have shown how poor cognitive self-efficacy beliefs acquired by parents become (socially) inherited by their children, resulting in significant depressions of self-expectations in most intellectual tasks. Here, g is not a general ability variable, but one of ‘self-belief’.
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Reduced exposure to middle-class cultural tools and poor cognitive self-efficacy beliefs will inevitably result in reduced self-confidence and anxiety in testing situations.
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In sum, the ‘common factor’ which emerges in test performances stems from a combination of (a) the (hidden) cultural content of tests; (b) cognitive self-efficacy beliefs; and (c) the self-confidence/freedom-from-anxiety associated with such beliefs. In other words, g is just an mystificational numerical surrogate for social class membership. This is what is being distilled when g is statistically ‘extracted’ from performances. Perhaps the best evidence for this is the ‘Flynn effect,’ (Fkynn 1999) which simply corresponds with the swelling of the middle classes and greater exposure to middle-class cultural tools. It is also supported by the fact that the Flynn effect is more prominent with non-verbal than with verbal test items – i.e. with the (covertly) more enculturated forms.
I can also make this argument:
(1) If children of different class levels have experiences of different kinds with different material, and (2) if IQ tests draw a disproportionate amount of test items from the higher classes, then (3) higher class children should have higher scores than lower-class children.
The point that ties together this analysis is that different groups are exposed to different knowledge bases, which are shaped by their unique cultural tools, experiential learning activities, and social interactions. Ultimately, these divergent knowledge bases are influenced by social class, race, and gender, and they play a significant role in how people approach educational tests which therefore impacts their test scores and academic performance.
Conclusion
DEC offers a framework in which we can delve into to explain how and why groups score differently on academic tests. It recognizes the intricate interplay between experiential learning, societal contexts, socio-historical contexts and cultural tools in shaping human cognition and knowledge production. The part that the irreducibility of the mental plays is pivotal in refuting hereditarian dogma. Since the mental is irreducible, then genes nor brain structure/physiology can explain test scores and differences in mental abilities. In my framework, the irreducibility of the mental is used to emphazies the importance of considering subjective experiences, emotions, conscious awareness and the unique perspectives of individuals in understanding human learning.
Using DEC, we can better understand how and why races, social classes and men and women score differently from each other. It allows us to understand experiential learning and how groups have access to different cultural and psychological tools in shaping cognitive development which would then provide a more nuanced perspective on test score differences between different social groups. DEC moves beyond the rigid gene-environment false dichotomy and allows us to understand how groups score differently, while rejecting hereditarianism and explaining how and why groups score differently using a constructivist lens, since all human cognizing takes place in cultural contexts, it follows that groups not exposed to certain cultural contexts that are emphasized in standardized testing may perform differently due to variations in experiential learning and cultural tools.
In rejecting the claim that genes cause or influence mental abilities/psychological traits and differences in them, I am free to reason that social groups score differently not due to inherent genetic differences, but as a result of varying exposure to knowledge and cultural tools. With my DEC framework, I can explore how diverse cultural contexts and learning experiences shape psychological tools. This allows a deeper understanding of the dynamic interactions between the individual and their environment, emphasizing the role of experiential learning and socio-cultural factors in knowledge production. Gene-environment interactions and the irreducibility of the mental allow me to steer clear of genetic determinist explanations of test score differences and correctly identity such differences as due to what one is exposed to in their lives. In recognizing G-E interactions, DEC acknowledges that genetic factors are necessary pre-conditions for the mind, but genes alone are not able to explain how mind arises due to the irreducibility principle. So by considering the interplay between genes and experiential learning in different social contexts, DEC offers a more comprehensive understanding of how individuals construct knowledge and how psychological traits and mind emerge, steering away from genetically reductionistic approaches to human behavior, action, and psychological traits.
I also have argued how mind-body dualism and developmental systems theory refute hereditarianism, thus framework I’ve created is a further exposition which challenges traditional assumptions in psychology, providing a more holistic and nuanced understanding of human cognition and development. By incorporating mind-body dualism, it rejects the hereditarian perspective of reducing psychology and mind to genes and biology. Thus, hereditarianism is discredited since it has a narrow focus on genetic determinism/reductionism. It also integrates developmental systems theory, where development is a dynamic process influenced by multiple irreducible interactions between the parts that make up the system along with how the human interacts with their environment to acquire knowledge. Thus, by addressing the limitations (and impossibility) of hereditarian genetic reductionism, my DEC framework provides a richer framework for explaining how mind arises and how people acquire different psychological and cultural tools which then influence their outcomes and performance on standardized tests.
Vygotsky’s Socio-Historical Theory of Learning and Development, Knowledge Social Class, and IQ
4050 words
Three of the main concepts that Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky is known for is cultural and psychological tools, private speech, and the zone of proximal development (ZPD). The ZPD is the distance between what a learner can do with and without help—the gap between actual and potential development. Vygotsky’s socio-historical theory of learning and development states that human development and learning take place in certain social and cultural contexts. When one thinks about how knowledge acquisition occurs, quite obviously, one can surmise that knowledge acquisition (learning) and human development take place in specific cultural and social contexts and so knowledge is culture-dependent (Richardson, 2002).
In this article, I will discuss the intersection of culture and Vygotsky’s concepts of private speech, cultural and psychological tools, and the zone of proximal development along with how these relate to IQ. Basically, the argument will be that what one is exposed to in childhood and during development will dictate how one performs on a test, and that the ZPD predicts school performance better than “IQ.”
What is culture and where does it come from?
This question is asked a lot by “HBDers” and I think it is a loaded question. It is a loaded question because they are fishing for a specific kind of answer—they want you to answer that culture derives from a people’s genetic constitution. This, though, fails. It fails because of how culture is conceptualized. Culture is simply what is socially transmitted by groups of people. It is physically visible (public) though the meaning of each cultural thing is invisible—it is private to the people who espouse the certain culture.
The basic source culture is values, beliefs, and norms. Cultures lay down strict norms of what is OK and what isn’t, like for example the foods they eat and along with it beliefs and attitudes shared by the social group. So a basic definition of culture would be: beliefs and ways of life that a social group shares—it is a human activity which is socially transmitted. Knowing this, we can see how learning and in some ways development, can be culturally-loaded. Since a culture dictates not only what is learned, but also how to think in a certain culture, we can then begin to see how different cultures lead people to think in different ways and along with it how different cultures lead to differences in not only knowledge but the acquisition of that knowledge.
UNESCO defines culture as “the set of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features of society or a social group, that encompasses, not only art and literature but lifestyles, ways of living together, value systems, traditions and beliefs” (UNESCO, 2001). (What is Culture?)
the term “culture” can refer to the set of norms, practices and values that characterize minority and majority groups (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Culture)
Material culture consists of tangible objects that people create: tools, toys, buildings, furniture, images, and even print and digital media—a seemingly endless list of items. … Non-material culture includes such things as: beliefs, values, norms, customs, traditions, and rituals (Culture as Thought and Action)
Since society consists of individuals who then become a group living in a certain region, then it stands to reason that learning and human development are due to these kinds of cultural and social interactions between individuals which make up a certain society and therefore culture. The types of things that allow me to survive, learn, and grow in one culture won’t allow me to survive, learn, and grow to the same degree in another culture.
Now that I’ve touched on what culture is, where does it come from? Why are there different cultures? Quite simply, cultures are different because people are different and although different cultures are comprised of individuals, these individuals themselves comprise a group. These groups of people live in different environments/ecologies (physical environment), and so considerations of these ecologies lead not only to a group to begin to construct a society that is necessarily in-tune with the environment, it also leads to “mental environments” between the people that comprise the group in question. So then we can say that culture comes from the way that groups of people live their lives.
If we think about culture as thought and action, then we can begin to get at what culture really is. Values and beliefs influence our thought, attitudes, and behavior. “Culture influences action…by...shaping a repertoire or “toolkit” of habits, skills, and styles from which people construct “strategies of action“” (Swidler, 1986). Action is distinct from behavior, in that action is future- or goal-directed whereas behavior is due to antecedent conditions. That is, actions are done for reasons, to actualize a goal of the agent that is performing the action. Crudely, culture can be then said to be what a group of people does. Culture is “human-created environment, artifacts, and practices” (Vasileva and Balyasnikova, 2019).
How culture, then, comes into play in Vygotsky’s socio-historical theory of learning and development is now clear—the ways that people interact with others in a specific culture then dictates the knowledge that they acquire which then shapes their mental abilities. This theory is a purely developmental theory. The socio-historical theory makes three claims: Social interaction plays a role in learning, knowledge acquisition, and development; language is an essential cultural/psychological tool in learning, and learning occurs within the zone of proximal development (ZPD). How that I have shown how I will be using the term “culture”, it is clear that what it means for Vygotsky’s theory of human learning and development is relevant. Now I will discuss cultural and psychological tools and then turn to those three aforementioned tenets that make up the theory.
Psychological and cultural tools
Psychological tools are symbols, signs, text and language, to name a few. They are internally oriented, but in their external appearance take their form in the aforementioned ways. Language and mathematics are two kind of psychological tools, but we can also rightly say they they are cultural tools as well (in the case of language).
Cultural tools are tools specific to a culture which allows an individual to navigate that culture. Cultural tools don’t determine thinking but they do constrain it, since the “information about the expected or appropriate actions in relation to a particular performance in a community. This is indirectly social in that it is not interpersonal, though it nevertheless stems from the social context” (Gauvain, 2001:129). Language can be seen as both a cultural and psychological tool; humans are born into culturally- and linguistically-mediated environments, and so they are immediately immersed in culture from the day they are born (Vasileva and Balyasnikova, 2019).
Cultural tools include historically evolved patterns of co-action; the informal and institutionalized rules and procedures governing them; the shared conceptual representations underlying them; styles of speech and other forms of communication; administrative, management and accounting tools; specific hardware and technological tools; as well as ideologies, belief systems, social values, and so on (Vygotsky, 1988).(Richardson, 2002: 288)
Robbins (2005: 146) writes:
Another important concept within sociocultural theory, which we can highlight through Rogoff’s (1995, 1998) contextual or community focus of analysis, is the use of cultural tools (both material and psychological) in the development of understanding. As Lemke (2001) points out, we grow and live within a range of different contexts, and our lives within these communities and institutions give us tools for making sense of, and to, those around us. Vygotsky described psychological tools as those that can be used to direct the mind and behaviour, while technical tools are used to bring about changes in other objects (Daniels, 2001). Commonly cited examples of cultural tools include language, different kinds of numbering and counting, writing schemes, mnemonic technical aids, algebraic symbol systems, art works, diagrams, maps, drawings, and all sorts of signs (John-Steiner & Mahn, 1996; Stetsenko, 1999).
So cultural tools, then, become “internalized in individuals as the dominant ‘psychological tools’” (Richardson, 2002: 288).
Social interaction plays a role in learning
This seems quite intuitive. As a human develops, they begin to take cues from their overall environment and those that are rearing them. They are immersed in a specific culture immediately from birth. They then begin to internalize certain aspects of the environment around them, and then begin to internalize the specific cultural and psychological tools inherent to that specific culture.
Tomasello (2019: 13) states that his theory is that “uniquely human forms of cognition and sociality emerge in human ontogeny through, and only through, species-unique forms of sociocultural activity” and so it is not only Vygotskian, but neo-Vygotskian. So children are in effect scaffolded by the culture they are immersed in, which is how “more knowledgeable others” (MKO) affect the learning trajectory of the child. A MKO is an individual who has a better understanding of, or a higher ability than, the learner. So MKOs aren’t merely for teaching children, they are strewn throughout the world teaching less knowledgeable others. These MKOs guide individuals in their ZPD, since the MKO would have greater access to certain knowledge that the LKO wouldn’t, they would then be able to guide the LKO in their learning, able to provide instruction to the LKO so they could then perform a certain task. Learning to play baseball, right a bike, lift weights, are but a few ways that MKOs guide the development and task-acquisition of children—these are perfect examples of the concept of “scaffolding.”
Although Vygotsky never used the term “scaffolding”, it’s a direct implication of his socio-historical theory of learning and development. The concept of scaffolding has been argued to be related to the ZPD, but see Shabani, Khatib, and Ebadi (2010) and Xi and Lantolf (2021) for criticism of this relationship. However, it has been experimentally shown that the concept of scaffolding along with the ZPD can be used to extend a student’s ZPD for critical thinking (Wass, Harland, and Mercer, 2011). That is, the students can better reach their potential and therefore become independent learners.
What this means is that culture is significant in learning, language is necessary for culture, and people learn from others in their communities. Interacting with other people while developing, and even after, are how humans develop. Since we are a social species, it stands to reason that these concepts like MKOs and the significance of the cultural context in the acquisition of certain skills and learning play a significant role in the development of all children and even adults. Thus, each stage of the development of a child builds upon a previous stage, and so, play could also be seen as a form of learning—a form of sociocultural learning. Imaginative play, then, allows the self-regulation of children and also challenges them just enough in their ZPD.
Private speech
“Private speech” is when a child talks to themselves while they are performing a task (Alderson-Day and Fernyhough, 2015). It is one’s “inner speech”, their own “voice” in their heads. It is the act of talking to one’s self as they perform a task, and this is ubiquitous around the world, implying that it is a hallmark of human cognizing (Vissers, Tomas, and Law, 2020). This is basically the “voice” you head in your head as you live your daily life. It is, of course, a natural consequence of thinking and talking. Speech acts are a natural process of think acts, as Vygotsky argued, which is similar to Davidson’s (1982) argument against the possibility of animal mentality since for organisms to be thinking and rational they must be able to express numerous thoughts and interpret the speech of others. This kind of speech, furthermore, has been shown to been related to working memory and cognitive reflexivity (Skipper, 2022).
The zone of proximal development
The ZPD is what a learner can and cannot do without help. Vygotsky originally developed it to oppose the concept of “IQ” (Neugeurela, Garcia, and Buescher, 2015; Kazemi, Bagheri, and Rassei, 2020; Offori-Attah, 2021). This concept is perhaps the most-used and discussed concept that Vygotsky forwarded. Central to this concept, which is a part of Vygotsky’s overall theory of child development, is imitation. Imitation is a goal-directed activity, and so it is an action. There is intention behind the imitation because the imitator is copying what the MKO is doing. But Vygotsky was using “imitation” in a way that is not normally used. To be able to imitate, one has to be able to be able to do carry out the imitation of what they are seeing from the MKO. So Vygotsky’s concept of the ZPD is that a child can learn something that he doesn’t know how to do by imitating an MKO, having the MKO guide them through to complete the task. It has been argued that ZPD can improve a learner’s thinking ability, along with making learning more relevant and efficient to the learner since it gives the learner the ability to learn from instruction and having a MKO guide them to compete a task, which then becomes internalized (Abdurrahman, Abdullah, and Osman (2019).
So the ZPD indicates what a child can do independently, and then they are given harder, guided problems which they then imitate and further internalize. MKOs are able to recognize where a child is in their development and can help them then complete harder tasks. The ZPD is related to learning not only in school but also in play (Hakkarainen and Bredikyte, 2008). For instance, the Strong Museum of Play states that “Learners develop concepts and skills through meaningful play. Play supports physical, emotional, cognitive, and social development.” Children definitely learn from play, and this interactive kind of learning also has them better understand their body, since play is in part a physical activity (a guided, goal-directed, intention). Play is” developmentally beneficial (Eberle, 2014; UNICEF, 2018), and it is beneficial and related to the ZPD since a child can learn to do something either from a peer or coach that knows how to do the action they want to learn and then internalize. An individual that is playing is an active participant in their own learning. Play, in effect, creates the ZPD (Hakkarainen and Bredikyte, 2014). Though Vygotsky’s conception of “play” is different than used in common parlance. Play
is limited to the dramatic or make-believe play of preschoolers. Vygotsky’s play theory therefore differs from other play theories, which also include object-oriented exploration, constructional play, and games with rules. Real play activities, according to Vygotsky, include the following components: (a) creating an imaginary situation, (b) taking on and acting out roles, and (c) following a set of rules determined by specific roles (Bodrova & Leong, 2007). (Scharer, 2017: 63)
Further, “symbolic play may scaffold development because it facilitates infants’ communicative success by promoting them to ‘co-constructors of meaning’” (Creaghe and Kidd, 2022). “Play creates a zone of proximal development of the child. In play a child always behaves beyond his average age, above his daily behavior; in play it is as though he were a head taller than himself” (Vygotsky, 1978, 102 quoted in Gray and Feldman, 2004: 113).
The scaffolding occurs due to the relationship between play, the ZPD and what an individual then internalizes and then becomes embedded in their muscle memory. This is where MKOs come into play. When one is first learning to work out, they may seek out a personal knowledgeable in the mechanics of the human body to learn how to lift weights. Through instruction, they then begin to learn and then internalize the movements in their heads, and then they can just perform the lift well after successive attempts of doing a certain motion. Or take baseball. Baseball coaches would be the MKOs, and they then teach children to play baseball and they learn how to hit pitches, catch balls, throw and how to be a part of a team. Through the action of play, then, one can reach their ZPD and even extend it.
ZPD and IQ
Further, Vygotsky showed that the whether or not one has a large or small ZPD better “predicts” performance than does “IQ” and he also noted that those who scored higher on IQ tests “did so at the cost of their zone of proximal development“, since they exhaust their ZPD earlier leaving a smaller ZPD.
Vygotsky reported that not only did the size of the children’s ZPD turn out to correlate well with their success in school (large ZPD children were more successful than small ZPD children) but that ZPD size was actually a better predictor of school performance than IQ. (Poehner, 2008: 35; cf Smirni and Smirni, 2022)
It has even been experimentally demonstrated that children with high IQs have a smaller ZPD, children with low IQs have a larger ZPD (Kusmaryono and Kusmaningsih, 2021). It has also been shown that those who received ZPD scaffolding instruction improved more and even outperformed the other group on subsequent IQ tests after a first test was administered (Stanford-Binet and Mensa) (Ghelot, 2021). The responsiveness to remediation, and not “IQ” was a better predictor of school performance (Amini, Hassaskhah, and Sibet, 2017) and the degree of responsiveness wasn’t related to high or low IQ, since some learners had a high responsiveness and low score while others had a high score but low responsiveness (Poehner, 2017: 156). Those who took a test in one year and did not get better in subsequent years, Vygotsky argued, merely meant that they were not pushed outside of what they already know. So children with large ZPD were more likely to be successful irrespective of IQ while children with small ZPD were less likely to be successful, irrespective of IQ. Though the concepts of ZPD and IQ are seen as not contradictory, but related (Modarresi and Jeddy, 2021), quite clearly since “IQ” isn’t a measure of learning ability it merely shows what one has learned and so has been exposed to while the ZPD shows how one would do into the future due to how large their ZPD is. It shows not only where someone has reached, but also shows where they can reach. Thus, instead of the (undeserved) emphasis of IQ, we should therefore put the ZPD in its place, since it is a dynamic (relational) assessment and not a standardized test (Din, 2017).
What’s class got to do with it?
Since children acquire knowledge and beliefs based on their class background (what they are exposed to in their daily lives as they grow), then it follows that children will be differentially prepared for taking certain kinds of tests. So if the content on the tests is biased toward a group, then it is biased against a group. It is biased against a group since they are not exposed to the relevant material and kinds of thinking needed to be able to perform the test in a sufficient manner. Knowing what we now know about the acquisition of cultural and psychological tools, we can state that “high IQ may simply be an accident of immersion in middle-class cultural tools (aspects of literacy, numeracy, cultural knowledge, and so on) … the environment is made up of socially structured devices and cultural tools, and in which development consists of the acquisition of such cultural tools” (Richardson: 1998: 163-164). It is due to these considerations that culture-fair IQ tests are an impossibility, since people are encompassed in different cultures (what amount to learning environments where they acquire knowledge and cultural and psychological tools) are therefore an impossibility since abilities are cultural devices—culture-free tests are therefore an illusion (Cole, 2002; Richardson, 2002).
So if there are different cultural groups, then they by definition have different cultures. If they have different cultures, then they have different experiences (of course), and so, they acquire different kinds of knowledge and along with it cultural and psychological tools. It is then we can then rightly state that therefore different cultural groups would then be differentially prepared for doing certain tasks. And so, if one’s culture is more dominant and if one culture’s way of thinking is more prevalent, then it follows that people will be prepared for a certain test at different stages of being able to perform the tasks or answer the questions. Social status, also, isn’t merely just related to material things, it also influences how we think and act (Richardson and Jones, 2019) and so emotional and motivational—affective—factors would therefore play a role in one’s test score, since they are constructed from a narrow range of test items, constructed to get the results that were a priori to the test constructors. So since one’s class is related to affective factors, since IQ tests reflect mere class-specific items, it follows that the “affective state is one of the most important aspects of learning” (Shelton-Strong and Maynard, 2018). It is then, by using the concepts of cultural and psychological tools (which occur in social relations) that we can then rightly state that IQ tests are best looked at as mere class surrogates.
Conclusion
Basically, “in order to understand the individual, one must first understand the social relations in which the individual exists” (Wertsch, 1985: 63). Vygotsky’s theory is one in which the mind is formed and constructed through social and cultural interactions with those who are already immersed in the culture that the individual’s mind is developing in. And so, by using the concepts of cultural and psychological tools, we can then see how and why different classes are differentially prepared for taking tests, which is then reflected in the score outcomes. Since growing individuals learn what they are exposed to and they learn from those who are already immersed in the culture at large, then it follows that individuals learn culturally-specific forms of learning and thusly acquire different “tool sets” in which they then navigate the social world they are in. The concepts of private speech, cultural and psychological tools, MKO, scaffolding and the ZPD all coalesce to a theory of learning and development in which the learner is an active participant in their development, and so, these things also combine to show how and why groups score differently on IQ tests.
Knowledge is the content of thought, and the ability to speak is how we convey thoughts to others and how we actualize the thoughts we have into action. Thus all higher human cognitive functioning is social in nature (van der Veer, 2009). Though it is wrongly claimed that IQ is shown to be a measure of learning potential, it is rightly said that the ZPD is social in nature (Khalid, 2015). IQ doesn’t show one’s learning potential, it merely shows what one was or was not exposed to in regard to the relevant test items (Lavin and Nakano, 2017). Culture is a fluid and dynamic experience (Rublik, 2017) in which one is engrossed in the culture they are born into, and so, by understanding this, we can then understand why different groups of people score differently on IQ tests, without the need for genes or biological processes.
Though there have been good criticisms of Vygotsky’s socio-historical theory of learning and development. Though much of Vygotsky’s theorizing has led to predictions and do have some empirical support (Morin, 2012). One argument against the ZPD is that it doesn’t explain development or how it really occurs. If you think about development from a Vygotskian perspective, we see that it is as much of a cultural and social activity than is mere individual learning. By learning from people more knowledgeable than themselves, they are then able to learn how to do something, and through repetition, able to do it on their own without the MKO.
The fact of the matter is, IQ tests aren’t as good as either teacher assessment (Kaufman, 2019) or the ZPD in predicting where a learner will end up. It is for these reasons (and more) we should stop using IQ tests and we should us the relational ZPD. (One can also look at the ZPD as related to considerations from relational developmental systems theory as well; Lerner, 2011, 2013; Lerner, Johnson, and Buckingham, 2015; Ettekal et al, 2017; Bell, 2019). It is for these reasons that standardized tests should not be used anymore, and we should use tests of dynamic assessment. The empirical research on the issue bears out this claim.
The Case for Reparations for Black Americans
2050 words
Introduction
“Reparations” refers to the act or process of righting a historical wrong. Should we give reparations to black Americans, being that they are the descendants of slaves and thusly the reparations that would have been owed to them would be owed to their descendants? Also note that the slaves worked for free for hundreds of years, so untold amounts of money were stolen from them, so should we pay reparations to their descendants? Note that in most cases “should” claims and questions are moral claims and questions. Thus, this issue is one of morality. There is also the issue of Jim Crow laws and segregation. In this article I will argue that since the US government has given reparations to other groups it has wronged in the past, so too should black Americans receive reparations from the US government. Though I will not state exactly what or how much they should receive, I will cite some literature that speaks about it. I will merely argue that they should receive reparations. I will discuss one pro-argument and one anti-argument for reparations, and then give my own.
Reparations given to other groups in the past
Throughout the history of the United States, many heinous acts have been performed. Over the last 500+ years since colonialism, these people have been massacred and have had their identities almost erased systematically. In 1946, a commission was formed to hear grievances from Native Americans. The US government set aside 1.3 billion dollars for 173 tribes in 1946, but of course has been dodgy on payments. There is even a more recent push for reparations for Native Americans in California.
In WW2, about 127,000 Japanese were placed in internment camps, since it was worried that they would have been spying on America for Japan. (Most of these camps were near the west coast.) This was part of the anti-Asian sentiment of the time. In 1944 in Korematsu v. United States, SCOTUS upheld keeping Japanese Americans in these camps (a 6-3 decision). In 1988, the Regan administration gave $20,000 to each surviving internment camp prisoner, which is about $51,000 today. But the National Archives state:
The Japanese American Evacuation Claims Act of July 2, 1948, provided compensation to Japanese American citizens removed from the West Coast during World War II (WWII) for losses of real and personal property. Approximately 26,550 claims totaling $142,000 were filed. The program was administered by the Justice Department, which set a $100,000,000 limit on the total claims. Over $36,974,240 was awarded.
In the 1900s, America was under the spell of eugenic ideas. (Eugenic ideas go back centuries, to ancient Greece.) Eugenics wasn’t a theoretical or even mathematical idea, it was purely a social/political idea in that only the fit should breed (positive eugenics) and the unfit should not (negative eugenics). This then led to the forced sterilization, with “IQ” tests used as a vehicle for forced sterilization. The most famous case perhaps being that of Carry Buck, where a physician stated that her sterilization would be for the “good of society” since she scored low on an IQ test (the Binet)—Carrie had a mental age of 9 years while her mother Emma had a mental age of 7 years and 11 months, although Carrie’s daughter was actually quite a normal girl (Gould, 1984). Carrie was the first sterilization carried out in 1927 under a new law which states that epileptics and those who are feebleminded were to be sterilized. All in all, about 64,000 people were sterilized between 1907 and 1963, and the American Eugenics Society had sought to sterilize 1/10th of the US population (Farber, 2008). Some were even sterilized without their knowledge during the present day, showing gross misconduct on women’s bodily autonomy. Starting in 2022, the state of California paid out reparations to people who were sterilized during the eugenics movement and more recently people who were sterilized in their prison systems.
When it comes to reparations for black Americans, 77 percent of blacks agreed that descendants of enslaved people should receive reparations, while only 18 percent of whites agreed. About 3 in 10 US adults think that some form of reparations should be given to descendants of slavery, while about 68 percent believe that slavery descendants should not be paid, per Pew. It is estimated that it would take $10-12 trillion or $800,000 per black household to eliminate the black-white wealth gap. It has also been estimated that since the start of slavery, racism has cost blacks something along the lines of $70 trillion. Craemer et al (2020) argue that reparations should be something along the lines of $12-13 trillion. (Craemer estimates $20.3 trillion.) It has even been noted that wealth gaps between whites and blacks are associated with longevity differences between them, so reparations would close the gap some (Himmelstein et al, 2022). (Systemic racism also has a say in longevity differences, along with conscious or unconscious bias by physicians.) Nevertheless many white Americans reject the case for reparations due to, among other reasons, denying that there are lasting effects of slavery. , I won’t argue about how much reparations black Americans should receive, I will argue only if black Americans should receive reparations—and since other groups that were historically harmed in the US have received reparations, then it follows that black Americans should receive reparations.
As we can see from the above, the US government has given reparations to groups it has wronged in the past. But there is a good amount of philosophy on the morality of reparations and whether or not black Americans should receive reparations (which then becomes a moral argument). I will look at two of them—Bernard Boxill’s (2003) A Lockean Argument for Black Reparations (a pro-reparations argument) and Stephen Kershnar’s (2003) The inheritance-based claim for reparations (an anti-reparations argument). After I describe both arguments, I will then provide my own argument which I don’t think has been made in the literature that argues in favor of reparations for black Americans (though I won’t make any claims as to how much; I merely cited what some scholars have argued above.)
A pro-argument
Boxill developed two arguments in his paper—an inheritance argument and a counterfactual argument. Boxill (2003: 73) writes:
This reparation was never paid. Instead each white generation passed on its entire assets to the next white generation. I am not speaking of those few who inherited specific parcels of land or property from the supporters of slavery. I am speaking of whole generations. The whole of each generation of whites passed on its assets to the whole of the next white generation because each generation of whites specified that only whites of the succeeding generation were permitted to own or compete for the assets it was leaving behind. But as I have already shown, the slaves had titles to reparation against these assets. And we can assume that the present generation of African Americans are the slaves’ heirs. Hence the present generation of African Americans have inherited titles to a portion of the assets held by the present white population, with the qualification that they cannot insist on these titles if doing so would put the present white population in danger of perishing.
So this is how Boxill gets around a possible objection to the argument—many white Americans have inherited things from slave owners or who were complicit in slavery. This argument can be put in form like this:
(1) Slavery owners passed on assets to successive generations, with each generation passing on assets gained from slavery.
(2) Present-day black Americans are heirs to those who were enslaved.
(C) Therefore, the present white population owes reparations to the present black population in America since present white Americans are the heirs to assets that were gained through slavery of the descendants of present black Americans.
Danielson (2004) states the same, writing:
Some legal scholars suggest that the government should directly address the issue of reparations for slaves because America profited from slave labor for over two centuries, so America should compensate slaves for their labor. Slaves were deprived of fair wages for almost three hundred years and their descendents were therefore deprived of economic inheritance. The slave masters, ergo their descendents through inheritance, benefited from the withheld wages that rightfully belonged to their slaves.
So if a group of people that benefitted long ago from an action(s) still benefit today from said action(s), and the result of those actions was an untold amount of free and therefore stolen wages, it then follows that the group that benefitted from the action needs to pay reparations to the descendants of the group that was historically wronged.
An anti-argument
While Kershnar (1999) seems to provide a pro-argument for reparations based on inheritance, it seems that Kershnar (2002) has walked back on the claim and argues that inheritance-based claims for reparations fail. Kershnar (2002) argues that since slavery brought about the existence of black Americans, then without slavery there would be no black Americans and hence there would be no conversation about reparations. I don’t see how this matters—because the historical injustice DID happen, and so due to the moneys lost from free labor for hundreds of years, therefore, the case can be made that blacks are owed reparations.
He also argued that the US did not cause slavery, but it did permit it. This is true. However, it took a war to end slavery when the South attempted to secede from the US in order to continue the practice of slavery. It took the North winning the Civil War to abolish slavery. Though, the US government was implicit in slavery since its inception by allowing it to occur.
I will now provide and defense an argument that since other groups in the US were wronged in the past and have received reparations from the US government, so too should black Americans.
The case for reparations for black Americans argument
Here is my argument:
(P1) The US government has a history of giving reparations to people who have suffered injustices (like the Japanese and Natives).
(P2) Black Americans have suffered injustices (slavery, Jim Crow, segregation).
(C) So black Americans deserve reparations from the US government.
This argument uses modus ponens, so it is valid. P1 was argued for in the first section. P2 is common knowledge. So C would then follow—black Americans deserve reparations from the US government due to their ancestors being enslaved and the recent injustices they received in the 1900s during and after Reconstruction, leading up to the Civil Rights Movement of 1964. I don’t see how anyone could reject a premise and falsify the argument.
Conclusion
The legacy of slavery still continues today (most Americans today believe that the legacy of slavery still affects blacks today), and it’s partly reflected in low birth weights of black Americans (Jasienska, 2009). The untold negative effects of slavery have combined to further depress black Americans.
There is even a new bill in the works discussing what reparations for black Americans would look like, which will create a task force to study reparations for black Americans. One time has even argued that giving black Americans reparations would decrease COVID-19 transmission in black Americans (Richardson et al, 2021). One city—Evanston, Illinois—even enacted a plan to give reparations to black Americans and California has also stated that the legacy of slavery requires reparations too; they are now considering the next steps for reparations. Further, there is also a public health case for reparations. Seeing as the US Congress apologized for the enslavement of black Americans and segregation only in 2008, there is a better way to right these wrongs—not mere lip service—and that is to pay reparations to black Americans.
Slavery was a moral wrongdoing, and along with how blacks were treated after they were emancipated from the racist South (Jim Crow laws, segregation), this combines to create a powerful argument for the moral case for reparations for black Americans, since other groups in the country that were wronged received reparations, like victims of sterilization in the 1900s and new millennium, Japanese Americans during WW2, and Native Americans. Thus, it follows that black Americans, too, should receive reparations.
Black-White Differences in Anatomy and Physiology: Black Athletic Superiority
3000 words
Due to evolving in different climates, the different races of Man have differing anatomy and physiology. This, then, leads to differences in sports performance—certain races do better than others in certain bouts of athletic prowess, and this is due to, in large part, heritable biological/physical differences between blacks and whites. Some of these differences are differences in somatotype, which bring a considerable advantage for, say, runners (an ecto-meso, for instance, would do very well in sprinting or distance running depending on fiber typing). This article will discuss differences in racial anatomy and physiology (again) and how it leads to disparities in certain sports performance.
Kerr (2010) argues that racial superiority in sport is a myth. (Read my rebuttal here.) In his article, Kerr (2010) attempts to rebut Entine’s (2000) book Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We’re Afraid to Talk About It. In a nutshell, Kerr (2010) argues that race is not a valid category; that other, nongenetic factors play a role other than genetics (I don’t know if anyone has ever argued if it was just genetics). Race is a legitimate biological category, contrary to Kerr’s assertions. Kerr, in my view, strawman’s Entine (2002) by saying he’s a “genetic determinist”, but while he does discuss biological/genetic factors more than environmental ones, Entine is in no way a genetic determinist (at least that’s what I get from my reading of his book, other opinions may differ). Average physical differences between races are enough to delineate racial categories and then it’s only logical to infer that these average physical/physiological differences between the races (that will be reviewed below) would infer an advantage in certain sports over others, while the ultimate cause was the environment that said race’s ancestors evolved in (causing differences in somatotype and physiology).
Black athletic superiority has been discussed for decades. The reasons are numerous and of course, this has even been noticed by the general public. In 1991, half of the respondents of a poll on black vs. whites in sports “agreed with the idea that “blacks have more natural physical ability,“” (Hoberman, 1997: 207). Hoberman (1997) of course denies that there is any evidence that blacks have an advantage over whites in certain sports that come down to heritable biological factors (which he spends the whole book arguing). However, many blacks and whites do, in fact, believe in black athletic superiority and that physiologic and anatomic differences between the races do indeed cause racial differences in sporting performance (Wiggins, 1989). Though Wiggins (1989: 184) writes:
The anthropometric differences found between racial groups are usually nothing more than central tendencies and, in addition, do not take into account wide variations within these groups or the overlap among members of different races. This fact not only negates any reliable physiological comparisons of athletes along racial lines, but makes the whole notion of racially distinctive physiological abilities a moot point.
This is horribly wrong, as will be seen throughout this article.
The different races have, on average, differing somatotypes which means that they have different anatomic proportions (Malina, 1969):
| Data from Malina, (1969: 438) | n | Mesomorph | Ectomorph | Endomorph |
| Blacks | 65 | 5.14 | 2.99 | 2.92 |
| Whites | 199 | 4.29 | 2.89 | 3.86 |
| Data from Malina (1969: 438) | Blacks | Whites |
| Thin-build body type | 8.93 | 5.90 |
| Submedium fatty development | 48.31 | 29.39 |
| Medium fleshiness | 33.69 | 43.63 |
| Fat and very fat categories | 9.09 | 21.06 |
This was in blacks and whites aged 6 to 11. Even at these young ages, it is clear that there are considerable anatomic differences between blacks and whites which then lead to differences in sports performance, contra Wiggins (1989). A basic understanding of anatomy and how the human body works is needed in order to understand how and why blacks dominate certain sports over whites (and vice versa). Somatotype is, of course, predicated on lean mass, fat mass, bone density, stature, etc, which are heritable biological traits, thus, contrary to popular belief that somatotyping holds no explanatory power in sports today (see Hilliard, 2012).
One variable that makes up somatotype is fat-free body mass. There are, of course, racial differences in fat mass, too (Vickery, Cureton, and Collins, 1988; Wagner and Heyward, 2000). Lower fat mass would, of course, impede black excellence in swimming, and this is what we see (Rushton, 1997; Entine, 2000). Wagner and Heyward (2000) write:
Our review unequivocally shows that the FFB of blacks and whites differs significantly. It has been shown from cadaver and in vivo analyses that blacks have a greater BMC and BMD than do whites. These racial differences could substantially affect measures of body density and %BF. According to Lohman (63), a 2% change in the BMC of the body at a given body density could, theoretically, result in an 8% error in the estimation of %BF. Thus, the BMC and BMD of blacks must be considered when %BF is estimated.
While Vickery, Cureton, and Collins (1988) found that blacks had thinner skin folds than whites, however, in this sample, somatotype did not explain racial differences in bone density, like other studies (Malina, 1969), Vickery, Cureton, and Collins (1988) found that blacks were also more likely to be mesomorphic (which would then express itself in racial differences in sports).
Hallinan (1994) surveyed 32 sports science, exercise physiology, biomechanics, motor development, motor learning, and measurement evaluation textbooks to see what they said racial differences in sporting performance and how they explained them. Out of these 32 textbooks, according to Wikipedia, these “textbooks found that seven [textbooks] suggested that there are biophysical differences due to race that might explain differences in sports performance, one [textbook] expressed caution with the idea, and the other 24 [textbooks] did not mention the issue.” Furthermore, Strklaj and Solyali (2010), in their paper “Human Biological Variation in Anatomy Textbooks: The Role of Ancestry” write that their “results suggest that this type of human variation is either not accounted for or approached only superficially and in an outdated manner.”
It’s patently ridiculous that most textbooks on the anatomy and physiology of the human body do not talk about the anatomic and physiologic differences between racial and ethnic groups. Hoberman (1997) also argues the same, that there is no evidence to confirm the existence of black athletic superiority. Of course, many hypotheses have been proposed to explain how and why blacks are at an inherent advantage in sport. Hoberman (1997: 269) discusses one, writing (quoting world record Olympian in the 400-meter dash, Lee Evans):
“We were bred for it [athletic dominance] … Certainly the black people who survived in the slave ships must have contained the highest proportion of the strongest. Then, on the plantations, a strong black man was mated with a strong black woman. We were simply bred for physical qualities.”
While Hoberman (1997: 270-1) also notes:
Finally, by arguing for a cultural rather than a biological interpretation of “race,” Edwards proposed that black athletic superiority results from “a complex of societal conditions” that channels a disproporitionate number of talented blacks into athletic careers.
The fact that blacks were “bred for” athletic dominance is something that gets brought up often but has little (if any) empirical support (aside from just-so stories about white slavemasters breeding their best, biggest and strongest black slaves). The notion that “a complex of societal conditions” (Edwards, 1971: 39) explains black dominance in sports, while it has some explanatory power in regard to how well blacks do in sporting competition, it, of course, does not tell the whole story. Edwards (1978: 39) argues that these complex societal conditions “instill a heightened motivation among black male youths to achieve success in sports; thus, they channel a proportionately greater number of talented black people than whites into sports participation.” While this may, in fact, be true, this does nothing to rebut the point that differences in anatomic and physiologic factors are a driving force in racial differences in sporting performance. However, while these types of environmental/sociological arguments do show us why blacks are over-represented in some sports (because of course motivation to do well in the sport of choice does matter), they do not even discuss differences in anatomy or physiology which would also be affecting the relationship.
For example, one can have all of the athletic gifts in the world, one can be endowed with the best body type and physiology to do well in any type of sport you can imagine. However, if he does not have a strong mind, he will not succeed in the sport. Lippi, Favaloro, and Guidi (2008) write:
An advantageous physical genotype is not enough to build a top-class athlete, a champion capable of breaking Olympic records, if endurance elite performances (maximal rate of oxygen uptake, economy of movement, lactate/ventilatory threshold and, potentially, oxygen uptake kinetics) (Williams & Folland, 2008) are not supported by a strong mental background.
Any athlete—no matter their race—needs a strong mental background, for if they don’t, they can have all of the physical gifts in the world, they will not become top-tier athletes in the sport of their choice; advantageous physical factors are imperative for success in differing sports, though myriad variables work in concert to produce the desired effect so you cannot have one without the other. On the other side, one can have a strong mental background and not have the requisite anatomy or physiology needed to succeed in the sport in question, but if he has a stronger mind than the individual with the requisite morphology, then he probably will win in a head-to-head competition. Either way, a strong mind is needed for strong performance in anything we do in life, and sport is no different.
Echoing what Hoberman (1997) writes, that “racist” thoughts of black superiority in part cause their success in sport, Sheldon, Jayaratne, and Petty (2007) predicted that white Americans’ beliefs in black athletic superiority would coincide with prejudice and negative stereotyping of black’s “intelligence” and work ethic. They studied 600 white men and women to ascertain their beliefs on black athletic superiority and the causes for it. Sheldon, Jayaratne, and Petty (2007: 45) discuss how it was believed by many, that there is a “ perceived inverse relationship between athleticism and intelligence (and hard work).” (JP Rushton was a big proponent of this hypothesis; see Rushton, 1997. It should also be noted that both Rushton, 1997 and Entine, 2000 believe that blacks’ higher rate of testosterone—3 to 15 percent— [Ross et al, 1986; Ellis and Nyborg, 1992; see rebuttal of both papers] causes their superior athletic performance, I have convincingly shown that they do not have higher levels of testosterone than other races, and if they do the difference is negligible.) However, in his book The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance, Epstein (2014) writes:
With that stigma in mind [that there is an inverse relationship between “intelligence” and athletic performance], perhaps the most important writing Cooper did in Black Superman was his methodological evisceration of any supposed inverse link between physical and mental prowess. “The concept that physical superiority could somehow be a symptom of intellectual superiority became associated with African Americans … That association did not begin until about 1936.”
What Cooper (2004) implied is that there was no “inverse relationship” with intelligence and athletic ability until Jesse Owens blew away the competition at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, Germany. In fact, the relationship between “intelligence” and athletic ability is positive (Heppe et al, 2016). Cooper is also a co-author of a paper Some Bio-Medical Mechanisms in Athletic Prowess with Morrison (Morrison and Cooper, 2006) where they argue—convincingly—that the “mutation appears to have triggered a series of physiological adjustments, which have had favourable athletic consequences.”
Thus, the hypothesis claims that differences in glucose conversion rates between West African blacks and her descendants began, but did not end with the sickling of the hemoglobin molecule, where valine is substituted for glutamic acid, which is the sixth amino acid of the beta chain of the hemoglobin molecule. Marlin et al (2007: 624) showed that male athletes who were inflicted with the sickle cell trait (SCT) “are able to perform sprints and brief exercises at the highest levels.” This is more evidence for Morrison and Cooper’s (2006) hypothesis on the evolution of muscle fiber typing in West African blacks.
Bejan, Jones, and Charles (2010) explain that the phenomenon of whites being faster swimmers in comparison to blacks being faster runners can be accounted for by physics. Since locomotion is a “falling-forward cycle“, body mass falls forward and then rises again, so mass that falls from a higher altitude falls faster and forward. The altitude is set by the position of center of mass above the ground for running, while for swimming it is set by the body rising out of the water. Blacks have a center of gravity that is about 3 percent higher than whites, which implies that blacks have a 1.5 percent speed advantage in running whereas whites have a 1.5 percent speed advantage in swimming. In the case of Asians, when all races were matched for height, Asians fared even better, than whites in swimming, but they do not set world records because they are not as tall as whites (Bejan, Jones, and Charles, 2010).
It has been proposed that stereotype threat is part of the reasons for East African running success (Baker and Horton, 2003). They state that many theories have been proposed to explain black African running success—from genetic theories to environmental determinism (the notion that physiologic adaptations to climate, too, drive differences in sporting competition). Baker and Horton (2003) note that “that young athletes have internalised these stereotypes and are choosing sport participation accordingly. He speculates that this is the reason why white running times in certain events have actually decreased over the past few years; whites are opting out of some sports based on perceived genetic inferiority.” While this may be true, this wouldn’t matter, as people gravitate toward what they are naturally good at—and what dictates that is their mind, anatomy, and physiology. They pretty much argue that stereotype threat is a cause of East African running performance on the basis of two assertions: (1) that East African runners are so good that it’s pointless to attempt to win if you are not East African and (2) since East Africans are so good, fewer people will try out and will continue the illusion that East Africans would dominate in middle- and long-distance running. However, while this view is plausible, there is little data to back the arguments.
To explain African running success, we must do it through a systems view—not one of reductionism (i.e., gene-finding). We need to see how the systems in question interact with every part. So while Jamaicans, Kenyans, and Ethiopians (and American blacks) do dominate in running competitions, attempting to “find genes” that account for success n these sports seems like a moot point—since the whole system is what matters, not what we can reduce the system in question to.
However, there are some competitions that blacks do not do so well in, and it is hardly discussed—if at all—by any author that I have read on this matter. Blacks are highly under-represented in strength sports and strongman competitions. Why? My explanation is simple: the causes for their superiority in sprinting and distance running (along with what makes them successful at baseball, football, and basketball) impedes them from doing well in strength and strongman competitions. It’s worth noting that no black man has ever won the World’s Strongest Man competition (indeed the only African country to even place—Rhodesia—was won by a white man) and the causes for these disparities come down to racial differences in anatomy and physiology.
I discussed racial differences in the big four lifts and how racial differences in anatomy and physiology would contribute to how well said race performed on the lift in question. I concluded that Europeans and Asians had more of an advantage over blacks in these lifts, and the reasons were due to inherent differences in anatomy and physiology. One major cause is also the differing muscle fiber typing distribution between the races (Alma et al, 1986; Tanner et al, 2002; Caesar and Henry, 2015 while blacks’ fiber typing helps them in short-distance sprinting (Zierath and Hawley, 2003). Muscle fiber typing is a huge cause of black athletic dominance (and non-dominance). Blacks are not stronger than whites, contrary to popular belief.
I also argued that Neanderthals were stronger than Homo sapiens, which then had implications for racial differences in strength (and sports). Neanderthals had a wider pelvis than our species since they evolved in colder climes (at the time) (Gruss and Schmidt, 2016). With a wider pelvis and shorter body than Homo sapiens, they were able to generate more power. I then implied that the current differences in strength and running we see between blacks and whites can be used for Neanderthals and Homo sapiens, thusly, evolution in differing climates lead to differences in somatotype, which eventually then lead to differences in sporting competition (what Baker and Horton, 2003 term “environmental determinism” which I will discuss in the context of racial differences in sports in the future).
Finally, blacks dominate the sport of bodybuilding, with Phil Heath dominating the competition for the past 7 years. Blacks dominate bodybuilding because, as noted above, blacks have thinner skin folds than whites, so their striations in their muscles would be more prevalent, on average, at the same exact %BF. Bodybuilders and weightlifters were similar in mesomorphy, but the bodybuilders showed more musculature than the bodybuilders whereas the weightlifters showed higher levels of body fat with a significant difference observed between bodybuilders and weightlifters in regard to endomorphy and ectomorphy (weightlifters skewing endo, bodybuilders skewing ecto, as I have argued in the past; Imran et al, 2011).
To conclude, blacks do dominate American sporting competition, and while much ink has been spilled arguing that cultural and social—not genetic or biologic—factors can explain black athletic superiority, they clearly work in concert with a strong mind to produce the athletic phenotype, no one factor has prominence over the other; though, above all, if one does not have the right mindset for the sport in question, they will not succeed. A complex array of factors is the cause of black athletic dominance, including muscle fibers, the type of mindset, anatomy, overall physiology and fat mass (among other variables) explain the hows and whys of black athletic superiority. Cultural and social explanations—on their own—do not tell the whole story, just as genetic/biologic explanations on their own would not either. Every aspect—including the historical—needs to be looked at when discussing the dominance (or lack thereof) in certain sports along with genetic and nongenetic factors to see how and why certain races and ethnies excel in certain sports.
Explaining African Running Success Through a Systems View
2100 words
Last year I bought The Genius in All of Us: New Insights Into Genetics, Talent, and IQ (Shenk, 2010) and while the book is interesting and I agree with a few things he says, he gets it horribly wrong on athleticism and ethnicity. Some of it I may be able to forgive since the book was written in 2010, but he does make some glaring errors. Chapter 6—pages 100-111—is titled Can White Men Jump? Ethnicity, Genes, Culture, and Success.
In the beginning of the chapter, Shenk writes that after the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, many articles were written about the Jamaican women who took the top three spots in the 100 and 200m races, with the emergence of Usain Bolt and his record-setting performance. Shenk (2010: 101) writes:
The powerful protein [alpha-actinin-3] is produced by a special gene variant called ACTN3, at least one copy of which is found in 98 percent of Jamaicans—far higher than in many other ethnic populations.
An impressive fact, but no one stopped to do the math. Eighty percent of Americans also had at least one copy of ACTN3—that amounts to 240 million people. Eighty-two percent of Europeans have it as well—that tacks on another 597 million potential sprinters. “There’s simply no clear relationship between the frequency of this variant in a population and its capacity to produce sprinting superstars,” concluded geneticist Daniel MacArthur.
I have written about MacArthur’s thoughts on the ACTN3 variant—that he helped discover, no less—in an article on Jamaicans, Kenyans, and Ethiopians and the explanatory factors in regard to their success in running competitions. Though, the article from MacArthur was written in 2008 and Shenk’s book was written in 2010, considerable advances have been made in this field. It was found that “combined effects of morphological and contractile properties of individual fast muscle fibers attribute to the enhanced performance observed in RR genotypes during explosive contractions” (Broos et al, 2016). Of course when talking about sprinting and morphology, you must think of the somatype. The somatype that is conducive to running success is a tall, lanky body with long limbs, as longer limbs can cover more distance. So European runners don’t have the right somatype, nor are the XX genotype for the ACTN3 variant high in Jamaicans (this genotype is present in ~2 percent of the Jamaican population; Scott et al, 2010). This—among other reasons I have laid out in the past—are why Jamaicans excel in sprinting competitions compared to other ethnic groups.
Shenk (2014: 10) further writes that sports success seem to come in ‘geographic clusters’, and the field of sports geography has been developed to understand it. “What they’ve discovered is that there’s never a single cause for a single cluster,” Shenk writes. “Rather, the success comes from many contributions of climate, media, demographics, politics, training, spirituality, education, economics and folklore. In short, athletic clusters are not genetic, but systemic.” Shenk then discusses the fact that these explanations are not good enough and that some ‘sports geographers’ have transformed themselves into ‘sports geneticists’ and then cites Jon Entine’s 2002 book Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We’re Afraid to Talk About It where Shenk quotes Entine who quotes geneticist and physiologist Claude Bouchard who says that “these biological characteristics are not unique to West or East African blacks. These populations are seen in all populations, including whites” (Shenk, 2010: 102). Of course they’re not unique to one population and I don’t think that anyone has ever claimed that. Though the frequencies of these biological, morphological and physiological characteristics are not distributed evenly amongst populations and this explains how and why certain populations excel in certain sports when compared to others.
Shenk (2010: 102) also quotes Entine (2002), writing: “Entine also acknowledges that we haven’t actually found the actual genes he’s alluding to. “These genes will likely be identified early in the [twenty-first century],” he predicts.” We have ‘found some genes’ that aid in athletic performance, the ACTN3 genotype combined with type II fibers and the right morphology, as mentioned above for one. (Though a systems view—one of holism—makes much more sense here than a reducionist view. You must look at the whole system, not reduce things down, but that’s for another day.) That, in my opnion, is a large driver for ethnic differences in sports like this, because you need certain traits if you want to excel in these types of competitions.
He then discusses the success of the Kenyans in distance running—stating that 90 percent of Kenyan runners come from a small subset of Kenyans called the Kalenjin. He cites a few stories of some Kalenjin who talk about their experiences with no running water in their homes and that they had to “run to the river, to take your shower, run home, change, [run] to school . . . Everything is running” (Keino, a Kalenjin boy, quoted from Shenk, 2010: 104). Of course this is attributed to a multitude of factors, all of which have to work in concert to get the desired effect. For instance, sports psychologists have found that strong cultural achievement and the ability to work hard, compete, outdo others and seek new challenges drives their running dominance.
Shenk (2010: 106-107) then writes:
1.DESPITE APPEARANCES TO THE CONTRARY, RACIAL AND ETHNIC GROUPS ARE NOT GENETICALLY DISCRETE.
Skin color is a great deceiver; actual genetic differences between ethnic and geographic groups are very, very limited. All human beings are descended from the same African ancestors … [blah blah blah] … By no stretch of the imagination, then, does any ethnicity or region have an exclusive lock on a particular body type or secret high-performance gene. Body shapes, muscle fiber types, etc., are actually quite varied and scattered, and true athletic potential is widespread and plentiful.
Of course, I don’t think I have ever read anyone who denies this. However, as I’ve noted too many times to count, certain body types and muscle fiber distributions are more likely to be found in certain populations due to where their ancestors evolved recently, and so the fact that ‘actual genetic differences between ethnic and geographic groups are very, very, limited’ does not mean much when talking about dominance by a few populations in elite sporting competition. It just so happens to be the case that the somatypes and muscle fiber distributions that are conducive to running success are more likely to be found in populations of West and East African descent. This is an undeniable fact. (Also note how these ‘appearances to the contrary’ show how race is real.)
2.GENES DON’T DIRECTLY CAUSE TRAITS; THEY ONLY INFLUENCE THE SYSTEM.
Consistent with other lessons of GxE [Genes x Environment], the surprising finding of the $3 billion Human Genome Project is that only in rare instances do specific gene variants directly cause specific traits or diseases. …
As the search for athletic genes continues, therefore, the overwhelming evidence suggests that researchers will instead locate genes prone to certain types of interactions: gene variant A in combination with gene variant B, provoked into expression by X amount of training + Y altitude + Z will to win + a hundred other life variables (coaching, injuries, etc.), will produce some specific result R. What this means, of course, What this means, of course, is that we need to dispense rhetorically with thick firewall between biology (nature) and training (nurture). The reality of GxE assures that each persons genes interacts with his climate, altitude, culture, meals, language, customs and spirituality—everything—to produce unique lifestyle trajectories. Genes play a critical role, but as dynamic instruments, not a fixed blueprint. A seven- or fourteen- or twenty-eight-year-old is not that way merely because of genetic instruction. (Shenk, 2010: 107)
Nothing really wrong here. He is correct, which is why you need to look at the whole biological system, which also includes the culture, climate, environment and so on that the biological, developmental system finds itself in. However, Shenk then gets it wrong again writing that Jamaicans are a ‘quite heterogenous genetic group’ due to being a transport between North and South America. He states—correctly—that Jamaicans ancestry is about equal to that of African-Americans, but the individual variation in ancestry varies by “46.8 to 97.0 percent” (Shenk, 2010: 108).
Shenk gets a lot wrong here. For example. African-American and Jamaicans—despite both being descended from slave populations—have differing maternal ancestry which somehow influences athletic success. Deason (2017) found that 1) modern Jamaicans are descended from slaves and, who had considerable selective pressure on the population; 2) maternal ancestry could either influence sports success or be a false positive; 3) maternal lineages were different in Jamaicans and African-Americans, implying that the same maternal lineage is not distributed evenly between both sprinting populations; 4) some evidence exists that the genetic histories of Jamaicans and African-Americans are different based on their maternal haplotypes; 5) low SES and low access to healthcare—classic indicators of high African ancestry—were not directly linked to elite athletic success; 6) comparisons of the genomes of African-Americans and Jamaicans did not significantly differ since the estimated number of generations since admixture occurred, which implies that controls were not more likely to have more recent European ancestry than athletes; and 7) the regions of the genome that influence sprinting performance may be different in both populations. This is the best evidence to date against Shenk’s simplistic notions of the genetics between Jamaicans and African-Americans.
Differences in fast twitch fibers between Europeans and West Africans explain a large amount of the variance between Europeans and West African descendants in regard to sprinting success, while those with more symmetrical knees and ankles tend to run faster in the 100m dash (Trivers et al, 2014). This would also imply that Jamaicans have more symmetry in their knees and ankles than Europeans, though I am not aware of data that makes this comparison.
Shenk finally discusses the psycho-social-cultural aspects behind the phenomenon, stating that Roger Bannister, the first person to break the four minute mile, stated that while “biology sets limits to performance, it is the mind that plainly determines how close individuals come to those absolute limits” (Shenk, 2010: 110-111). Numerous psychological factors do, indeed, need to combine in order for the individual in question to excel in sports—along with the requisite anatomical/physiological/morphological traits too. Sasaki and Sekiya note that “changes in physiological arousal and movement velocuty induced by mild psychological pressure played a significant role in the sprint performance.” (See also Bali, 2015.)
Lippi, Favaloro, and Guidi, (2008) note how “An advantageous physical genotype is not enough to build a top-class athlete, a champion capable of breaking Olympic records, if endurance elite performances (maximal rate of oxygen uptake, economy of movement, lactate/ventilatory threshold and, potentially, oxygen uptake kinetics) (Williams & Folland, 2008) are not supported by a strong mental background.” I have argued this for months, even if the beneficial somatype is there in the athlete in question, if he/she does not have the will to win they will not succeed in their goals. Psychosocial factors, of course, matter just as much as the physical but all of these factors work in concert to get the outcomes that occur in these sports.
Attempting to pinpoint one or a few traits—while it may help us to understand better physilogic and anatomic processes—tells us nothing about the entire system. This is why, for instance, the whole athletes system needs to be looked at—call it the ‘systems view of the athlete’, where all of these aforementioned variables work in concert to express elite athletic performance, with no one variable being higher than another as an explanatory factor in sports success. Though Shenk gets a few things right (like his point on genes not causing traits on their own, they just influence the system, and I’d take it a step further to note that genes are passive in their relationship to the physiological system as a whole and are only activated by the system as needed, not being ’causes’ on their own; Noble, 2008), he’s largely misguided on how certain aspects of Jamaican ancestry and morphology help propel them to running success in comparison to other ethnies.
When explaining elite athletic performance in certain areas of sports, you must take a view of the whole system, with each known variable influencing the next in the chain, if you want to explain why certain ethnies or racial groups do better in a given sport than other groups. A systems view is the only view to take when comparing populations in different athletic competitions. So the influence of culture, psychology, social effects, morphology, ancestry, anatomy, physiology, muscle fibers, etc all work in concert to produce elite athletic phenotypes that then excel in these sports, and reducing this down to certain variables—while it may help us understand some of the inner mechanics—it does nothing to help advance the hows and whys of elite success in sports competition when comparing different populations.
Blood Pressure, Stress, and the Social Environment: On Black-White Differences in Blood Pressure
1800 words
Blood pressure (BP) is a physiological variable. Therefore since it is a physiological variable then it can be affected by environmental and social changes. How do racial differences come into play here, for instance? Since blacks face more (perceived) discrimination, then they should, on average, have higher BP levels than whites. This is what we find—but the effect is mostly seen in low-income blacks. How do psychosocial factors come into play here in the black-white BP gap?
BP is regulated by cardiac output, vascular resistance of blood flow, blood volume, arterial stiffness, and, of course, the individual’s emotional state which can decrease or increase BP. Neural mechanisms also exist which regulate BP (Chopra, Baby, and Jacob, 2011). Knowing how and why BP increases or decreases will have us better understand the social contexts of increased BP in low SES blacks.
BP is a complex physiological trait. It can go up and down due to what occurs in the immediate environment. Values of 120/80 mmHg are cited as ‘average’ values, but we have no idea what an ‘average’ BP is. Nevertheless—like most/all physiological variables—there is a wide range of what is considered ‘normal’. Due to the variance in human physiological systems, what is ‘normal’ for one individual is not ‘normal’ for another. Variation in BP (like, say, 120 SBP (systolic blood pressure) to 140 SBP) is ‘normal’. I believe even around 110 for SBP is within that range. For DPB (diastolic blood pressure) between 75 and 90 is within normal diurnal fluctuations due to activity/eating/etc (Taylor, Wilt, and Welch, 2011). BP, like testosterone, is one of those tricky variables to measure and so must be measured upon waking to see if there are any problems. So even for a trait like BP, there seems to be a ‘normal range’.
About 33 percent of blacks have hypertension (HTN) (Peters, Arojan, and Flack, 2006). Urban blacks are more likely to have higher BP levels than whites, but “At present, there is no complete explanation for these differences and further research is required” (Lindhorst et al, 2007). Low SES is correlated with higher levels of BP in black Americans—especially those with darker skin—but not Africans in Africa (Fuchs, 2011), suggesting that this is an American phenomenon that needs to be addressed. One good explanation, in my view, is the social environment. Physiological traits are extremely malleable due to the need to be able to ‘change gears’ in an instant, for instance to either fight or flight. Though, in our modernized world, these responses—mostly—have no need and so (due to our supposed civilized behavior), one’s BP rises due to social stress and other environmental factors and it is due to the urban environment.
What is the cause of high BP in blacks?
One explanation that has been given to explain higher rates of BP in blacks when compared to whites is discrimination. However, studies show mixed evidence on whether or not so-called discrimination raises BP (Couto, Goto, and Bastos, 2012). The same American effect (American blacks having higher BP than American whites) is seen even in the UK London area (Agyemang and Bhopal, 2003). This, yet again, is more evidence that the social environment drives these differences—again, regardless of whether or not any of the discrimination is real or imagined. Say most of it were imagined: it’d be irrelevant because the imagined discrimination leads to very real physiological outcomes in BP.
The country of birth also has an effect on BP. In one study, it was noted that Africans had significantly higher BP when compared to Asians (which is identical/lower) and native French living in France (Bahous et al, 2015). Ethnic differences in BP increase due to similar sodium intake is lower than what is usually cited (Graudal and Jurgens, 2015). However, other authors have pointed out that basing conclusions off of observational studies have problems, like the estimation of sodium intake being inaccurate since it’s a one-time measure; (Gunn et al, 2013; Cobb et al, 2014)
There is also evidence—along with pathways—that show how certain social activities work to lower stress and BP, including participation at church (Livingstone, Devine, and Moore, 1991). Black Americans can make other lifestyle changes in order to decrease BP, such as exercise and other lifestyle interventions. Redman, Baer, and Hicks state that “gene-environment interactions, job-related stress, racism, and other psychosocial factors to racial/ethnic disparities” need to be explored as causes for higher rates of HTN in blacks compared to whites. And with the knowledge of how all physiological systems work in terms of stress and other factors, should be explored as causes for this disparity.
Grim et al (1990) state that factors that influence high BP in blacks compared to whites are inherited and that is the major source of variation between these populations. However, the other mounting social/physiological evidence deserves an explanation; that is not inherited, and what we know about how our physiology responds to stress and discrimination—whether real or imagined—are extremely important and lead to extremely real, and important, outcomes in these populations. It is also argued that since blacks en route to America during the slave trade died from salt-depletive diseases, that blacks with a higher genetic propensity to absorb salt survived and this is why blacks have a higher propensity to absorb salt and are more ‘salt-sensitive’, which also could explain higher rates of HTN in American blacks compared to their cousins in Africa (Wilson and Grim, 1991). However, Curtin (1992) disputes this because “There is no evidence that diet or the resulting patterns of disease and demography among slaves in the American South were significantly different from those of other poor southerners”.
However, in regards to the social environment, Williams (1992) drives one of the best arguments I have encountered in this literature so far, stating that while genetic factors play a small part in regards to the BP gap between blacks and whites, social factors are arguably more important than genetic ones (and with our homeodynamic physiology, this does make sense). Dressler (1990) for instance, argues that skin color is a proxy for both social class and discrimination and these factors explain a large amount of the variation. Psychosocial variables can also explain heightened BP (Marmot, 1985; Cuffee et al, 2014). Yan et al (2003) also note how “time urgency/impatience” and “hostility” “were associated with a dose-response increase in the long-term risk of hypertension.” Henry (1988) also argues that calcium, obesity and genetic factors cannot be the aetiology of HTN in blacks, while also proposing that high sodium intakes are due to psychosocial stress (Williams, 1992: 136).
Obesity also leads to hypertension (Re, 2009) while blacks are more likely to be obese than whites, however, black American men with more African ancestry are less likely to be obese (Klimentidis et al, 2016). This would imply that the greater amount of African ancestry in American blacks both protects against obesity and along with it HTN. Williams (1992) makes a convincing argument that environmental and social factors are the cause for the black-white BP gap. And while genetic factors are important, no doubt, environmental and social factors are arguably more important to this debate.
Kulkarni et al (1998) show that increased stress leads to subsequent BP elevations which, over time, will lead to HTN. In a 2009 meta-analysis, Gasparin et al show how “individuals who had stronger responses to stressor tasks were 21% more likely to develop blood pressure increase when compared to those with less strong responses.”
Further, in support for the ‘perceived stress’ hypothesis in regards to blacks ‘perceiving’ stress and discrimination, “stress denial in combination with abdominal obesity, alcohol consumption, and smoking may be proxy for a high stress level” (Suter et al, 1997). Carroll et al (2001) also show how there are is “modest support for the hypothesis that heightened blood pressure reactions to mental stress contribute to the development of high blood pressure.” Sparrenberger et al (2009) also did a systematic review of observational studies, finding that “Acute stress is probably not a risk factor for hypertension. Chronic stress and particularly the non-adaptive response to stress are more likely causes of sustained elevation of blood pressure.”
Lastly, Langford (1981) shows that when SES is controlled for, the black-white BP disparity vanishes, implying that social and environmental—not genetic—factors are the cause for elevated HTN levels in black Americans. Sweet et al (2007) showed that for lighter-skinned blacks, as SES rose BP decreased while for darker-skinned blacks BP increased as SES did while implicating factors like ‘racism’ as the ultimate causes. This is solid evidence that both skin color and SES are predictors of higher prevalence of BP in black populations, and since other studies show that this is not noticed in higher class blacks, nor is this noticed in blacks in Africa, then the main causes of this disparity are social and environmental in nature.
(Non, Gravlee, and Mulligan, 2012). Their study suggests that educating black Americans on the dangers and preventative measures of high BP will reduce BP disparities between the races. This is in-line with Williams (1992) in that the social environment is the cause for the higher rates of BP. One hypothesis explored to explain why this effect with education was greater in blacks than whites was that BP-related factors, such as stress, poverty and racial discrimination (remember, even if no racial discrimination occurs, any so-called discrimination is in the eye of the beholder so that will contribute to a rise in physiologic variables) and maybe social isolation may be causes for this phenomenon. Future studies also must show how higher education causes lower BP, or if it only serves as other markers for the social environment. Nevertheless, this is an important study in our understanding of how and why the races differ in BP and it will go far to increase our understanding of this malady. This is a very convincing argument that education and not genetic ancestry cause disparities in BP between blacks and whites.
WebMD states that, of course, both environmental and genetic factors are at play in regards to black’s increased propensity for acquiring HTN. Fuchs (2011) also states that “They [environmental and behavioral factors] could act directly or by triggering mechanisms of blood pressure increase that are dormant in blacks living in Africa” and explain why black Americans have higher rates of BP than Africans in Africa. Further, race and ethnicity are independent predictors of HTN (Holmes et al, 2013).
Conclusion
Blacks and whites do differ in BP, and its aetiology is both complex and hard to untangle Genetic factors probably don’t account for a lot of this variance since Africans in Africa have low levels of BP compared to their black American cousins. Numerous lines of evidence shows that social and environmental factors are the cause, and so to change this, all people—especially blacks—should be educated on how to change these problems in our society. Whether discrimination is real or imagined, the effects of it lead to real physiological outcomes that then lead to increased health disparities between these populations.
Sex Differences in Aggressive Behavior and Testosterone
1700 words
Many long-time readers may know of the numerous tirades of been on in regards to the “testosterone causes crime and aggression” myth. It’s a fun subject to talk about because the intelligent human physiological system is an amazing system. However, people who are not privy to the literature on testosterone in regards to race, aggression, crime, sex differences etc are only aware of whatever they read in pop science articles. So since they never read the actual papers themselves, they get a clouded view of a subject.
In my last article, I wrote about how there are no “testosterone genes”. In previous articles on the hormone, I have proven that there is no causal link between testosterone and aggression. But when comparing the sexes, how do the results look? Do they look the same with men being more violent while women—who have substantially less testosterone than men—do not have any higher levels of aggression or crime? The most recent study I’m aware of is by Assari, Caldwell, and Zimmerman (2014) titled: Sex Differences in the Association Between Testosterone and Violent Behaviors.
To make a long story short, there was no relationship between testosterone and aggression in men, but a significant relationship between testosterone and aggression in women. This data comes from the Flint Adolescent Study, a longitudinal study conducted between the years of 1994 to 2012. In regards to testosterone collection, saliva was used which has a perfect correlation with circulating testosterone. The eligibility to be included in the testosterone assay was “provided consent for the procedure, not being pregnant, not having anything to eat, drinking nothing except water, and not using tobacco, 1 hour prior to collection” (Assari, Caldwell, and Zimmerman, 2014).
The adolescent who contributed saliva gave a whole slew of demographic factors including SES, demographics, psychological factors, family relations, religion, social relations, behavior, and health. They were aged 14 to 17 years of age. They collected data during face-to-face interviews,
Age and SES were used as control variables in their multivariate analysis. For violent behaviors, the authors write:
Youths were asked how often they had engaged in the following behaviors; ‘had a fight in school’, ‘taken part in a rumble where a group of your friends were against another group’, injured someone badly enough to need bandages or a doctor’, ‘hit a teacher or supervisor at work (work supervisor)’, used a knife or gun or other object (like a club) to get something romantic a person’, ‘carried a knife or razor’, or ‘carried a gun’. All items used a Likert response, ranging from 1 (0 times) to 5 (4 or more times). Responses to each item were averages to calculate the behavior during the last year. Total score was calculated as the average of all items. Higher scores indicated more violent behaviors (a = 0.79). This measure has shown high reliability and validity and it has been used previously in several published reports.
This is a great questionnaire. The only thing I can think of that’s missing is fighting/arguing with parents.
In regards to testosterone assaying, they were assayed after 11 am to “control for changes due to diurnal rhythm” (Assari, Caldwell, and Zimmerman, 2014). I’m iffy on that since testosterone levels are highest at 8 am but whatever. This analysis is robust. Saliva was not taken if the subject had smoked or ingested something other than water or if a subject was pregnant. Assays should be taken as close to 8 am, as that’s when levels are highest. However one study does argue to extend the range to 8 am to 2 pm (Crawford et al, 2015) while other studies show that this only should be the case for older males (Long, Nguyen, and Stevermer, 2015). Even then assays were done at the higher end of the range as stated by Crawford et al (2015), so differences shouldn’t be too much.
86.4 percent of the sample was black whereas 13.4 percent were white. 41.2 percent of the subjects had some college education whereas 58.2 percent of the subjects lived with a partner or relative. 21.4 percent of the subjects were unemployed.
The mean age was 20.5 for both men and women, however, which will be a surprise to some, testosterone did not predict aggressive behavior in men but did in women. Testosterone and aggressive behavior were positively correlated, whereas there was a negative correlation between education and testosterone and aggressive behavior. Though education was associated with aggressive behavior in men but not women. So sex and education was associated with aggressive behavior (the sex link being women more privy to aggressive behavior while men are more privy to aggressive behavior due to lack of education). Females who had high levels of education had lower levels of aggressive behavior. Again: testosterone wasn’t associated with violent behavior in men, but it was in women. This is a very important point to note.
This was a community sample, so, of course, there were different results when compared to a laboratory setting, which is not surprising. Laboratory settings are obviously unnatural settings whereas the environment you live in every day obviously is more realistic.
This study does contradict others, in that it shows that there is no association between testosterone and aggression in men. However, still other research shows that testosterone is not linked to aggression or impulsivity, but to sensation-seeking, sexual experience or sociality (Daitzman and Zuckerman, 1980; Zuckerman, 1984). Clearly, testosterone is a beneficial hormone and due to the low correlation of testosterone with aggression (between .08 and .14; Book, Starzyk, and Quinsey, 2001; Archer, Graham-Kevan and Davies, 2005; Book and Quinsey, 2005). This paper, yet again, buttresses my arguments in regards to testosterone and aggressive behavior.
In regards to the contrast in the literature the authors describe, they write:
One of the many factors that may explain the inconsistency in these findings is the community versus clinical setting, which has been shown to be a determinant of these associations. Literature has previously shown that many of the findings that can be found in clinical samples may not be easily replicated in a community setting (36).
This is like the (in)famous, unreplicable stereotype threat (see Stroessner and Good). It can only be replicated in a lab, not in an actual educational setting. And it also seems that this is the case for testosterone and aggressive behavior.
Just because women have lower testosterone and are less likely to engage in aggressive behavior, that doesn’t mean that a relationship does not exist between females. “It is also plausible to attribute sex differences in the above studies to differential variations in the amount of testosterone among men and women” (Assari, Caldwell, and Zimmerman, 2014). This view supports the case that testosterone is linked to aggression in females, even though their range of testosterone is significantly lower than men’s, while it may also be easier to assay women for testosterone due to less diurnal variation in comparison to men (Book, Starzyk, and Quinsey, 2001).
Assari, Caldwell, and Zimmerman, (2014) also write (which, again, buttresses my arguments):
Age may explain some of the conflicting results across the studies. A meta-analysis of community and selected samples suggested that there might be only low to modest association between testosterone and aggression, with mean weighted correlations ranging from 0.08 to 0.14, in males. Overall, these meta-analyses suggest that the testosterone-aggression association is equally strong in 12 to 21-year-olds, as it is in 22 to 35-year-olds, but that it may be less strong in age groups younger than 12, than in those who are older.
So, testosterone may be associated with aggressive behavior and violence in women but not in men. In men, the significant moderator was education. It’s interesting to note that Mazur (2016) noted that young black males with little education had higher levels of testosterone than age-matched samples of other blacks. This, along with the evidence provided here, may be a clue that if the social environment changes, then so will higher levels of testosterone (as I have argued here).
They, perhaps taking too large of a leap here, argue that “aggressive behaviors may be more social and less biologically based among men” (Assari, Caldwell, and Zimmerman, 2014). Obviously social factors are easier to change than biological ones (in theory), so, they argue, preventative measures may be easier for men than women. More studies need to be done on the complex interactions between sex, testosterone, aggression, biology and the social environment which then shapes the aggressive behaviors of those who live there.
Testosterone and aggression studies are interesting. However, you must know a good amount of the literature to be able to ascertain good studies from the bad, what researchers should and should not have controlled for, time of assay, etc because these variables (some not in the author’s hands, however) can and do lead to false readings if certain variables are not controlled for. All in all, the literature is clearly points to, though other studies contest this at times, the fact that testosterone does not cause aggressive behavior in men. The myth needs to die; the data is piling up for this point of view and those who believe that testosterone causes aggressive behavior and crime (which I have shown it does not, at least for men) will soon be left in the dust as we get a better understanding of this pivotal hormone.
(In case anyone was going to use this as evidence that black women have higher levels of testosterone than white women, don’t do it because it’s not true. You’ll only embarrass yourself like this guy did. Read the comments and see him say that you don’t need scientific measurements, you only need to ‘observe it’ and through ‘observation’ we can deduce that black women have higher levels of testosterone than white women. This is not true. Quoting Mazur, 2016:
The pattern [high testosterone] is not seen among teenage boys or among females.
…
There is no indication of inordinately high T among young black women with low education.
Whoever still pushes that myth is an idealogue; I have retracted my article ‘Black Women and Testosterone‘, but idealogues just gloss over it and read what they think will bolster their views when I have provided the evidence to the contrary. It pisses me off that people selectively read things then cite my article because they think it will confirm their pre-conceived notions. Well too bad, things don’t work like that.)
NotPoliticallyCorrect 