[ExI] Protected Elites

[Lee Corbin]

Mirco writes

 >> [Damien wrote sarcastically]
 >>
>>> The explanation leaps out at you: poor people are genetically lazy,
>>> and poor black people at least doubly so.

A comparison of American northern culture with
American southern culture casts a lot of doubt
on what "laziness" means. (This is explored most
convincingly in Thomas Sowell's "White Liberals
and Black Rednecks", in which he traces many
features of modern urban black so-called 'lazy'
culture to redneck southern cultural features
going back centuries.)

Moreover almost all allegedly lazy people are in
reality only highly uninterested in mundane activities
such as boring and repetitive work. This is the classic
difference between the Celts and the more modern
cultural groups (such as the Ancient Romans and the
Anglo Saxons) that pushed them out of western Europe.
Time and again the Celtic ("southern") traits of
high honor, bravery in battle, drunkenness, "laziness",
extended kin groups, and on and on, while serving
them well in individual battles, was not so good for
group selection.

(What would happen over and over again, whether it was
against Caesar's legions or the English kings' armies,
was that the Celtic cultural patterns provided too
few "warriors" that were satisfied with "mere"
logistical or provisioning duties. They all wanted
to be in the front lines heroically dealing death
and destruction to the enemy. They would lose ever
war, just as the South lost against the North---and
for exactly the same reasons.)

> How many black have you in the US?
> 20% of the population?

It would be about 20% except for the great infusion
of Hispanics which now outnumber blacks. Black people
at present constitute about 14% of the population.
In colonial times, the figure was 1:4 (black to white),
and it decreased to merely 1:8 because of the huge
white immigration from Europe in the 19th century.
Ordinary black reproduction rates everywhere in the
world (e.g. here, South Africa, or whereever) are
the world's highest, and the black population in the
U.S. would be converging on the colonial ratio were
it not for immigration either in the 19th or thw 20th
centuries.

> How is their mean IQ?
> Here a graphics of the distribution of IQ in whites and blacks.
> http://www.americancivilrightsreview.com/africanfailure.html
> It is so surprising that they obtain so different levels of success and
> wealth?
> What job is able to pay big sums and don't need an high IQ?
> Mike Tyson got one, but we know how his money was used.

It is highly unfortunate that there are not black people
here on this list bringing up these facts, because in
general it isn't in good taste for members of a "superior"
group to trumpet findings like these. Consider in what bad
taste it would be for an Ashkenazi very jewish Jew to parade
the whole standard deviation difference between his people
and whites. No, it is up to whites (e.g. you and me) to speak
of the realities concerning differences between Asians and
Whites, or Jews and gentiles.

>> http://www.news-medical.net/news/2005/04/26/9530.aspx
>> Racial Admixture Studies. Black children with lighter skin, for
>> example, average higher IQ scores. In South Africa, the IQ of the
>> mixed-race "Colored" population averages 85, intermediate to the
>> African 70 and White 100.

It does need to be constantly stressed in these forums
that statistical stereotypes, whether valid or not,
pertain only, of course, to statistical averages, and
have no implications whatsoever for individuals.

Speaking of individuals, allow me to mention quite
an interesting case. Where I am employed, one of my
co-workers must necessarily deal with any number of
engineers from the Dialogic corporation in regard
to their speech recognition software.

My friend *finally* found an entirely knowledgeable
Dialogic engineer working out of Belgium who could
solve our problems. This guy was incredible, but
our problems were incredible too, and so it was
arranged for him to be able to visit us about a
year ago. From his voice, my friend (who is himself
a rather dogmatic person from Romanian who will call
a spade a spade upon the slightest provocation, and
frankly is quite racist) was amazed that this Belgian
engineer had to be black.

(My coworker simply cannot say enough good things
about B.D.)

I'll not mention his name, but he dutifully arrived
last June, and I got to talk to him at length. He
was one of the most cooperative individuals I've
ever interviewed. (My extensive notes, again omitting
his name, are available to anyone who emails me
privately.) He told rather marvelous stories about
the small village in the Cameroons he grew up in.
He didn't come from any elite; his parents were farmers,
but evidently of superior intelligence since they both
became school teachers (that's how they met, and he was
the issue).

His IQ almost surely is 130 or above. He combined that
"sufficient intelligence" (Jensen) with a strong work
ethic, an ability to concentrate steadily, and probably
a capacity for learning fairly quickly. Such traits
are what have made him the engineer he is, besides
overall having a good disposition.

Anyway, when young, he got a scholarship to universities
in both France and in Belgium, and he chose Belgium for a
reason I asked him about but which I don't recall.
He then graduated with a degree in engineering, worked
shortly in one or two places, and settled for the last
five years or so with Dialogic.

Now wait! The studies report that the sub-saharan
IQs of black people is two standard deviations below
that of white people (although the experts estimate
that five to ten points of that deficit is probably
due to a combination of various environmental effects
including poor nutrition). But what are the odds that
such an individual would come to my attention? Something
seemed seriously wrong.

So far as I know, it's mainly coincidence. Let's suppose
that indeed 10 or more points can be attributed to
environment in this case. Then we still have the unlikely
case of someone picked apparently at random (who parents
were certainly not a part of any kind of elite) who is
three to four standard deviations above average for his
group! Remarkable, but not impossible. There are people,
I think, on this list who are also so relatively smart
in comparison with their own ethnic group.

Well, whatever the correct explanation of this particular
case is, (and we do remember to merely use examples to
illustrate---and never to make---theses), there is something
quite tragic going on in countries like the Cameroons.

I highly recommend the book "The Bottom Billion" by Paul
Collier, who has done a massive amount of work over the
past 30 years trying to get to the bottom of why in the
present world, some countries are so much richer than
others. Please see the Amazon reviews for his main
documented accounts, such as the pervasive corruption,
"natural resource curse", and so on afflicting so many
countries.

He mentions in particular the nations of Africa, who
seem to have missed their best chance to escape all the
"traps" in the 1980s. The fact that now east Asian
countries are providing very cheap labor to the whole
world through the ongoing globalizations, gives them
a head start that Africa almost surely will not be
able to close.

But another salient fact: African countries are losing
more and more of their talented people, who manage to
escape and make it to the corruption-free west. And
this process, of course, merely makes the situation
in Africa itself all the more dire and more hopeless.
Our friend from the Cameroons, who'll surely never
emigrate back, illustrates this perfectly.

Lee