Many of us have assumed that the relative media silence over the ongoing genocide of pygmies in Africa is due to a desire to avoid, whenever possible, depicting black Africans in a negative light. While there is definitely some truth to this, there might be another, more sinister, motivation behind this neglect.
The leftist establishment assumes, as a matter of faith, that race is not a meaningful biological concept. That racial differences are superficial. Mathilda writes (in a comment):
And other world renowned geneticists and physical anthropoligists are behind race as a valid descriptive term. It’s about a 50-50 split. Look up Niell Risch.
http://216.239.59.104/search?q=cache:8YUaBabaYWIJ:genomebiology.com/2002/3/7/comment/2007+neil+risch+race+skin+deep&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=uk
The pro-race ones aren’t as noisy though, as people like you automatically have a hissy if someone observes one of the many racial non-cosmetic differences between human poopulations. Such as…
Pregnancy duration.
http://www.newscientist.com/blog/shortsharpscience/2007/03/black-and-asian-babies-at-increased.html
Age of menopause
Height
Lung capacity
Life span
Muscle and bone density
To name but a few. If you don’t believe me, have a root through this blog. Pygmies hit the menopause at 24, I’d hardly call that ‘no difference’. They are geriatric in their fifties. They seem to age nearly twice as fast as average humans.
http://www.physorg.com/news117456722.html
We are 99% the same as each other (revised by Venter recently). Not the 99.9% the same you see touted about so often.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2007-09-03-dna-differences_N.htm
This is a fair amount of differences, as we are 98.4% the same as a chimp, so a small amount of DNA can make a lot of difference. Contrary to what is commonly reported in thn Media, we are not ‘unusually closely related’ to each other compared to other mammals. We are fairly average.
BTW, the 4% variation in human only DNA that defines us as races… in other species the same amount can easily define a new species, let alone a sub species. Read up on Chichlid fishes.
National Geographic also has an article about the unusually early onset of menopause among the pygmies. There has been some debate as to whether this is due to genetics or environment. The fact that other African groups suffer equally from malnutrition and disease, but maintain more or less normal stature and menopause, argues in favor of a genetic explanation.
If the early onset of menopause among the pygmies is genetic, then this presents a serious problem for the “race is a social construct” crowd. When we consider past conduct of the racial-egalitarian left, it is not hard to imagine them condoning the slaughter of the pygmies – since they represent an inconvenience to its dogma. I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out that leftist elites were actually paying black Africans to liquidate pygmy populations within their borders. Josef Stalin would have been proud, and called it “a statistic” rather than “a tragedy”.
On a positive note, there is an organization dedicated to the survival of the pygmy: The Pygmy Survival Alliance (based in Seattle, Washington). One wonders how rare a given race must become before such an organization arises to help ensure its survival. It is also worth bearing in mind that if whites ever reach the risk of extinction of the pygmies, neither Africans nor Asians will form organizations to assure its survival.
Interesting stuff. I gather that pygmies aren’t particularly related to bushmen, the latter being a branch of the Khoisan, while many pygmies speak Bantu languages. Linguistically, this puts them in completely different families.
Racially, the bushmen and Hottentots are certainly Capoid, but I don’t know if any pygmies fit into that group. They may be more properly classified as Congoid, or as hybrids. I don’t really know; would be interesting to find out.
In any case, it seems to highlight important group genetic differences at a lower level than that of the great race (of which there are three to five?), lower even than that of the little race (of which there are ten to fifteen?).
“…there might be another, more sinister, motivation behind this neglect.”
Could be. Good luck actually finding a leftist who’s amenable to discussing the matter, though. It would be comical if it weren’t so serious, but most rank and file leftists seem to panic when the topic or race is broached. They use the term “racism” often in their rhetoric, but they almost never to go into detail about what racists really think. In other words, they avoid any substantive talk of race itself.
On that note, I always found calls for a racial dialogue in America to be ridiculous. How can you have a dialogue about a forbidden topic? As you can imagine, if such a discussion did take place, we would only be allowed to say the things that liberals and minority activists say every day, anyway. Kind of pointless, if you ask me.
in seattle, white people won’t form those groups either
Ha! You nailed it. I would love to know where this suicidal impulse comes from.
” I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out that leftist elites were actually paying black Africans to liquidate pygmy populations within their borders. ”
Eh, what?! Seriously?
Not really. More of a hyperbole. But I wouldn’t put it past them – given their complete lack of morals or honor of any kind.
I’ve been concerned about the pygmies and bushmen for a while. In the Congo the pygmies are heavily enslaved, raped and even eaten. The Negros don’t consider it cannibalism because they don’t consider pygmies to be human. The Bushmen don’t have it quite so bad but they are still persecuted especially in Botswana. It should be noted that Pygmoids, Capoids and Negroids are NOT the same race. And that the Bushmen are the original inhabitants of S Africa. Negros are the invaders and have been slowly exterminating the bushmen for several thousand years. It looks like it will finally happen this century since there are only 200K Bushmen left.
http://www.survivalinternational.org/tribes/bushmen
Here it’s said that pygmies reach menopause at age 37:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2010/05/05/short-lives-short-size-%E2%80%93-why-are-pygmies-small/
It would be interesting to get to the truth in this matter. 37 sounds a lot more plausible. Perhaps Mathilda should have written “as early as 24.”
Possibly related: A biology textbook I own (published in 2009) features a factoid about a particular Native American tribe and their tendency to be obese. The textbook cites research that suggests their high prevalence of obesity is genetic, specific to their tribe (ethnic group), and arose several thousand years ago through a bottleneck event that eliminated those who couldn’t store their calories efficiently. It struck me as admitting genetic group differences, which of course deeply challenges modern egalitarianism.
I will try to find the page and more details and post it here.
Yes, that would be great! Maybe you can post it as a separate topic.
I located the page from the book on Google Books and captured the excerpt in this image:
http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/6192/noniqhbdinmainstreamtex.png
Here is another mainstream reference on the genetic basis for Pima Indian obesity: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071016074958.htm
This is just one of many cases. I recently spotted this article in the New Yorker (very mainstream): http://images.nymag.com/images/2/promotional/11/11/week2/cover111114_250.jpg
http://nymag.com/news/features/ashkenazi-jews-2011-11/
This all puts a hole in the long-standing egalitarian argument that “there are no genetic differences between races beyond skin color and outward physical features.”
If you use the Venter study to claim 99%, then you can’t claim that chimps are 98.4%, because using the same techniques, it pushes them down to 95%. From the article you link:
“Instead of 99.9% identical, maybe we’re only 99% (alike),” said J. Craig Venter, an author of the study — and the person whose DNA was analyzed for it. . . . The new paper suggests estimates of 99.5% to just 99%, Venter said. . . . The 99% figure is close to what scientists have often estimated for the similarity between humans and chimps. But the human-chimp similarity drops to more like 95% when the more recently discovered kinds of DNA variation are considered, Venter said.
Yes, actually that occurred to me. Nevertheless, the common citing of our “99% (or 99.9%) genetic similarity” amounts to little more than propaganda, since even tiny genetic differences can have huge impacts.