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Garbanzo bean day
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"Promising signs"
Carla Randall, of The Oregonian, tells us that there are “promising signs of progress for our high schools”. In line with the leftist elite’s fixation on “people of color”, Randall tells us:
Too many students are bored, and too many feel like nobody cares.
Too many of the students who feel this way are students of color. They are voting with their feet, dropping out of Portland’s high schools at dramatically higher rates than their white peers. (Latino students graduate at half the rate of white students. African-Americans fare only slightly better.)
The good news is that we are taking steps to improve graduation rates and close this achievement gap. The better news is that the changes we are pursuing across all PPS high schools this year have already delivered promising results in schools where they have been tested.
Well it’s about time! It’s about time somebody actually did something about that pesky gap! Except that back in early 2010, they were also trying to “achieve diversity” and “close the gap”:
At the meeting, board members also raised concerns and questions about how to achieve socioeconomic diversity, boundary changes and the transfer policy. Most of those issues won’t be explicitly addressed until the next stage of the process.
Parents who attended tonight’s meeting encouraged the school board to more clearly connect the high school redesign goals to increasing academic achievement and narrowing the achievement gap.
Oh wait, what’s this? Even in 2009 they were “doing something” to close the gap:
The stubborn gap in academic achievement in Oregon between Hispanic students and their white classmates used to be somewhat of a mystery. Not any more.
The main causes of this gap are well-diagnosed. So are at least some of the solutions, plus the areas desperately needing further research.
Hispanic students learn at the same pace as their white peers, according to a new studyconducted by EcoNorthwest for the Chalkboard Project, an Oregon-based education nonprofit. The trouble is, Hispanic students start out behind in the early grades and typically don’t catch up.
The reasons? Hispanic students are more than twice as likely to come from low-income homes.
What a novel idea! The gap is due to – POVERTY. It’s amazing what a few million dollars and years of research can come up with.
But even in 2008, there was success in “closing the gap“:
When the Portland Schools Foundation hired Connie Van Brunt as Executive Director, it was with the understanding that she was a highly skilled educational reform advocate and practitioner with a proven track record of closing the achievement gap. We continue to believe that today.
Well, waddaya know! There was progress in 2007 as well, as Portland struggled to meet the “No Child Left Behind” requirements (applicable also to pre-high schools students). We read:
The 44 schools, which get federal funds because they have a significant number of low-income students, had been ordered to give their students free tutoring or transfers to higher-performing schools due to repeat poor performance.
But, based on their 2007 reading and math scores, 10 of them, including Harold Oliver Intermediate School in the Centennial district of Southeast Portland, met every performance target for a second straight year and were freed from the federal troubled schools list.
In 2006 Oregon as a whole had also made “significant progress” in closing the gap:
SALEM — State Schools Superintendent Susan Castillo today named the Oregon public schools that have made significant progress in closing the achievement gap. The announcement was made today at a press conference at Aloha Park Elementary School in the Beaverton School District.
Each school named for the award has demonstrated progress in student achievement in math and reading and showed improvement in student achievement for minority and/or low income students. The schools will be recognized at a banquet on April 28th. This is the second year that Castillo has recognized schools for the Celebrating School Success Awards, and each recipient will receive a $2000 grant.
“These schools prove that it can be done — students can overcome poverty, cultural differences, and other challenges and succeed,” Castillo said. “My goal has been to highlight examples of what is being accomplished in our public schools and send a very important message to all of Oregon about helping all children achieve.”
“I wanted to find a school in each area of the state that could serve as an example for how we can close the achievement gap and ensure that every student has success in school,” Castillo said.
In 2005, under the heading “Closing the Achievement Gap – 2005”, we find:
Stretching from one end of Oregon to the other, the 2005 recipients of the Celebrating Student Success awards all face enormous challenges. And each has a unique formula for success.
Yet despite their differences, these remarkable schools share an unshakable conviction that, given a thoughtful and rigorous plan of action and a dedicated staff of educators to carry it out, all children, regardless of their color or ethnicity or their family incomes, can excel.
They don’t just believe that it’s true – they prove it, day in and day out.
Back in 2002, there were already programs underway to “close the gap“:
In 2002, Shannon joined Stand for Children as the Portland Director in Portland, Oregon. Under her leadership the chapter grew to over 1,000 members, still the largest Stand Chapter in the country, and led a number of successful campaigns including electing 4 reform-minded school board members to the Portland Public School Board, passing the Portland Children’s Investment Fund, a 5 year levy that generates $25 million for early childhood education programs, mentoring, child abuse prevention and laid the groundwork for teaching effectiveness reforms that will help close the achievement gap in Portland Public Schools.
The same was true in 2001:
Portland Public Schools received a National Science Foundation Urban Systemic Program grant in 2001. The goals of the grant were to raise achievement for all students in mathematics and science and close achievement gaps.
If even half of past claims were true, then the gap would have been gone by now. Obviously, it is not. It has been said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. This is exactly what the proponents of “diversity” have been doing. Aside from coming to terms with genetic differences between the races, those people would do well to change their attitude completely in order to affect whatever improvements can be made within the environmental realm.
Randall tells us:
… Franklin has eliminated the achievement gap in graduation rates. Last year, students of color graduated at the same rate as white students, a rare feat among U.S. high schools. These results are not the product of favorable socioeconomic factors. Franklin’s student population is similar to the school-district average in income. Its student population is similarly diverse.
Franklin has pioneered efforts to link struggling students to mentors at school, building relationships that help students feel connected. At the same time, Principal Shay James and her teachers have not sacrificed academic excellence. Teachers set the bar high. They encourage students — especially students of color — to take advanced placement courses (bold mine)…
Clearly, teachers have been focusing on “students of color” at the expense of white students in order to achieve equal results. You can bet your bottom dollar that no studies were done in order to ascertain whether white students have suffered, academically, due to such policies.
Ominously, and with a smiling face, Randall tells us:
We are also focused on what happens in the classroom. This fall, PPS teachers will receive better feedback under a new evaluation process developed with the Portland Association of Teachers. Better feedback means more effective and responsive teaching. That means improved learning for students.
The Roosevelt High School campus pioneered this new way of evaluating teachers last year. Roosevelt saw double-digit gains in math and reading, and higher graduation rates.
In other words, teachers are forced to neglect white students in order to advance “students of color”. It is fairly obvious what this “new way of evaluating teachers” entails.
The way to optimize the education of NAMS is not to coddle them or stress the importance of their own special cultures and heritage. On the contrary, it is to coddle white students, encourage white culture (according to whatever positive meaning this may have in each locale) and put truly successful students (of whatever race – and most of them will be white or Asian) on a pedestal. Along with strict discipline (which will, of course, disproportionately effect NAMS), we would achieve the desired result: Black and Hispanic children will want to be more like white and Asian children. They will give up their saggy pants, rap music and gutter language. They will try to be “white” and this will allow them to reach their fullest potential.
The "Jewish" custom of kapparoth
For those of you not familiar with the tradition of “kapparoth“, it is a ritual where a Jew swings a chicken (or sometimes coins) over his head three times while asking that his sins be transferred to the chicken (or coins). This ritual is done the day before Yom Kippur during the wee hours of the morning. After the chicken is thus utilized, it is ritually slaughtered and given to the poor. This tradition has been the target of criticism both by anti-Semites and animal rights activists. PETA has come out strongly against it, claiming that it is both cruel to the chickens and can lead to health hazards. Thinking back to the one or two times that I participated in the ritual (a very long time ago), both these concerns can be easily addressed – though they are not always addressed. When I handled the chicken, I was careful to avoid causing it any unnecessary suffering; picking up a chicken and swinging it (slowly) over one’s head need not cause it trauma. I spent part of my childhood with chickens so I know that there are definitely ways to pick them up and move them without being cruel about it. Unfortunately, not all observant Jews are sensitive in this way – as the above PETA video clearly shows (I would imagine they edited out the more tame examples).
But I am no fan of kapparoth. Aside from the real danger that the chicken will poop on your head, there are other issues. The first edition of the Code of Jewish Law (1565) had harsh words concerning the ritual of kapparoth, essentially calling it a pagan ritual that had no place in Judaism. Later editions of this codex were censured to simply state that one should not practice it. The author of the Code of Jewish Law, R. Yosef Karo, represented (more or less) the views of the Sephardic community. His codex, while respected in the Ashkenazi world, were only partially accepted as authoritative. Later editions of his work included glosses by the Ashkenazi rabbi Moses Isserles. Isserles disagreed with Karo’s assessment of kapparoth and pointed out that it is common practice among the Ashkenazim. Over time, even the Sephardim came to adopt the custom of kapparoth. In modern times, the only Jewish community that has refrained from practicing it has been the Yemenite community. These days, even many Yemenite Jews practice it.
It has always been my position that there is no inherent value in the ritual of kapparoth. In fact, it is contrary to the true spirit of Judaism – which does not believe that one can rid oneself of one’s sins through hokus-pokus rituals, but rather only through genuine penitence and resolve for the future. Generally speaking, any ritual that must be done three times, or any string of words that must be uttered three times, smacks of kabbalistic voodoo magic. Thus, it is not surprising that some of the greatest supporters of kapparoth were the kabbalists. The kabbalists believe that actions such as kapparoth, or words, can have an impact upon the higher realms of reality (the so-called sephiroth). Thus, by performing this ritual upon a hapless chicken, one is not only (supposedly/hopefully) reminding oneself to do penance, but also fixing things in those other realities. In other words, the ritual can have value in its own right – even if the practitioner takes no moral lesson from it.
The ritual of kapparoth is just one of many dubious practices that turn observant Jews into primitive and superstitious people who follow bizarre rituals they do not understand – because their explanation is “too deep” for a layman to understand. “Too deep to understand” is often a euphemism for “makes no sense at all”.
The teachings of the Kabbalah have been a corrupting force on the Jewish people. The Kabbalah is based on the belief that there are seven realms of reality, ours being the lowest (the realm of “action”). Above them all dwells the “limitless one” (en sof – lit. “no end”). The perversions of the Kabbalah take their toll on both the spiritual plane and the physical one. On the spiritual plane, Kabbalah teaches that God (en sof) is completely detached from our realm of reality. Therefore, our prayers cannot be directly to Him; rather, they must be via the higher realms. This is a form of idolatry. What this means is that our prayers and rituals, instead of being directed toward helping ourselves and our communities, are directed toward effecting change in mysterious, unfathomable realms. If we stop to ponder the ramifications of this primitive way of looking at things, we will understand that it ends up placing a lot of emphasis upon the saying of words (which are supposed to have power in their own right) instead of actual prayer, and the mechanical fulfillment of ritual (while paying attention to countless minutiae) instead of focusing on the worldly benefit that most rituals were intended to fulfill.
Since Mideastern, and Southern European, populations tend to be more prone to superstition and witchcraft than Northern Europeans, the Kabbalah has always been much stronger among Sephardic Jews than among Ashkenazi Jews. The ritual of kapparoth is an exception in that Ashkenazim more readily adopted this mystical/voodoo type ritual than the Sephardim. There can be little doubt that strong beliefs in the supernatural have retarded the advancement of technology in Mediterranean regions. Why go through the trouble of getting to the root of a problem when a magical spell will work just as well? Why take the time and effort in building fire-resistant, or earthquake resistant, structures when a protective charm will serve the same purpose?
Ashkenazim have succeeded in the modern world, and largely shaped the modern world, despite the fact that our culture was crippled with the burden of the Kabbalah. It pains me to see adult Jews waving chickens over their heads while mumbling incantations – looking like primitive witch doctors. It’s an embarrassment.
Sadly, this emphasis on form rather than substance has become commonplace even outside the Jewish world. No generation has possessed as much knowledge as our own – and yet never have so many people embraced ignorance as a way of life. Call me harsh, but when a person chooses to regularly spend hours of his free time watching television rather than seeking meaningful knowledge – this is “embracing ignorance”. To then claim that he has “opinions”, about the self-same things he refuses to learn about, is to enshrine that ignorance.
Where there is ignorance, there is mystery. Where there is mystery, there is ritual. Ritual comes to appease unknown forces. This can be forgiven when there is no means of banishing the darkness – such as with primitive witch doctors. Otherwise it is the crime of willful ignorance.
Those who enforce the cult of racial-egalitarianism and other irrational policies are actually just swinging chickens over their heads.
"who are these whites,that's claming to be the jews"
One of the nice features of WordPress is that bloggers are able to see a list of the various search engine terms used in order to reach their blogs. One such term leaped out at me recently:
who are these whites,that’s claming to be the jews
Which one of these two is most likely to be the real Jew?


I’d go with the clam.
Posted in Jewish stuff and Israel
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Blacks and animal rights
A recent discussion over at Robert Lindsay’s blog* revolved around the relative cruelty different races display toward animals. I was taken to task for writing that blacks seem to display more cruelty toward animals than whites (but some Asian groups seem to be the worst in this regard). It seems to me that there is a somewhat larger minority of blacks, that has no compassion toward animals, than exists among whites. It is well-known that the great majority of animal advocacy groups were founded by whites, and are almost entirely composed of whites.
PETA has a site called “African-Americans for Animal Rights” but it turns out that almost the entire page relates to the vegan diet rather than animal rights per se’. Following a link, on that site, called “blackvegetarians.org” takes us to a page that appears to promote a single book by a solitary woman. There does not seem to be an actual organization behind the site at all, though the woman does appear to be serious about promoting a worthy cause – and I wish her plenty of success. All three of the other links, that purport to lead to black vegetarian/nutrition sites, yield “404 not found” errors. The impression I got was that PETA used a misleading headline and then tried to switch topics on the sly – except that even the replacement topic proved to be a dud. Personally I think a real, bonafide black vegetarian movement would be a very positive development for blacks – and for everybody. Not because a vegetarian diet is necessarily more healthy, but because it would promote more awareness of what people eat, and it would promote empathy toward other creatures.
Blacks are noticeably underrepresented within animal rights organizations. Even though some have argued that this is because of racial discrimination, and “lack of outreach” by those organizations, their claims have little merit. On the one hand, they deny the possibility that black attitudes toward animals might differ from those of whites. But on the other hand, they use that self-same claim in order to promote the “need” for diversity. Here are two quotes from Sue-Ellen Brown’s “The Under-representation of African American Employees in Animal Welfare Organizations in the United States“:
Some researchers have suggested that Whites and African Americans have differing values toward animals… However, none of the speculations have been validated by well controlled research (pg. 55).
Greater diversity is needed in animal welfare for moral, political, and sociological reasons… If African Americans have a perspective different from a vocal majority of Whites and if they remain invisible, they will be vulnerable to the effects of changing laws for which they had no input (pg. 59).
You can’t have it both ways. The most coherent explanation I have seen so far comes from Melissa Harris-Perry, of The Nation, who writes (regarding the different reactions, among whites and blacks, to the Michael Vick dog-fighting scandal):
Given this history we might think that African Americans would be particulalry (sic) strident animal rights activists, seeing their interests as profoundly linked. But the relationship between race, rights, and animals is more complicated. Dogs, for example, were used by enslavers to catch, trap and return those who were trying to escape to freedom. Dogs were used to terrorize Civil Rights demonstrators. In short, animals have been weapons used against black bodies and black interests in ways that have deep historical resonace.
Not only have animals been used as weapons against black people, but many African Americans feel that the suffering of animals evokes more empathy and concern among whites than does the suffering of black people. For example, in the days immediately following Hurricane Katrina dozens of people sent me a link to an image of pets being evacuated on an air conditioned bus. This image was a sickening juxtaposition to the conditions faced by tens of thousands of black residents trapped by the storm and it provoked great anger and pain for those who sent it to me.
Perhaps, but I wonder how many of today’s blacks actually experienced the abuses Harris-Perry describes. True, it is possible that such experiences molded black American culture so that blacks tend to view animals differently than other groups. On the other hand, do African blacks view animals much differently?
Obviously, there are some Africans who appreciate the importance of their native wildlife to both their economy and well-being. The Africa Network for Animal Welfare (ANAW) is active in Kenya – but the results of a google search for “animal rights in Africa” imply that the vast majority of such movements are centered in South Africa and thus were probably founded by whites.
I don’t have all the answers, but I will throw a crazy theory out there – feel free to chew it up and spit it out if you wish: In Equatorial Africa animals of all kinds were abundant. Many of them were dangerous to humans. It is only natural that the people of such a clime would view animals differently than would people in Europe, where the fauna is much less abundant and where there were fewer predators (the “big bad wolf” notwithstanding). This would, of course, shape their culture. Is it possible that there might be a genetic component as well? Perhaps. We would then find that all tropical peoples share a similar attitude (with the obvious exception of totems and other religious considerations) toward animals.
* A commentator at Lindsay’s blog suggested that “Animal rights is simply social egalitarianism extended to animals”. I would agree, and I have said so myself. But there can be more than one contributing cause to a phenomenon.
Our latest mivtzoyim adventure
Yesterday, Portland Realist and I distributed flyers door to door. While there were no hostile confrontations, we did meet an interesting couple. I’ll let Portland Realist describe them in his comment. One man told us “Keep up the good work” – but we don’t think he had even noticed what was on the flyer at that point.
What was on the flyer? It was a hybrid flyer, incorporating my own text along with one of the flyers from Unamusement Park:
Why is white identity important?
1) Because in a world where every other race/ethnic group has an identity, those who do not will be at a disadvantage.
When a black person experiences discrimination, he has black organizations that will fight for him.
When a Hispanic person experiences discrimination, he has Hispanic organizations that will fight for him.
When an Asian person experiences discrimination, he has Asian organizations that will fight for him.
When a white person experiences discrimination (which is required by law and custom), nobody will fight for him.
2) Because a “tribal identity” is important for self-esteem. Studies have shown that black children consistently have higher self-esteem than white children. While a “black identity” is strongly encouraged by the Establishment, “white identity” is condemned. For the health of our children, this must change!
3) Because crime and violence against whites has reached epidemic proportions. Though you will not read about it in the newspapers, or see it on T.V., anti-white mob attacks have been occurring in various U.S. cities. These flash mobs are only the latest manifestation of the ongoing anti-white violence that has become the norm in America (though it is usually called “random violence” by the media). The only way white people will be able to protect themselves in the future is by nurturing a sense of solidarity – not hatred toward other groups, but a positive white identity that will motivate whites to come to the aid of other whites when they are under attack.
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"The Emperor's New Clothes" book review/critique
One of the tactics race-denialists love to use is the “thick-book” tactic, whereby they point to a thick book and proclaim that it refutes all the claims of racists. They know full well that very few people will actually take the time to read it and, even if they do, few will read it critically. Thus we find Tim Wise writing:
Needless to say, I far and away believe that the four premises of the anti-hereditarian, anti-racialist position are much closer to the truth than those of the so-called racial realists. Biologists like Joseph Graves, for instance, have utterly eviscerated the work of hereditarian racialists (who have no biology or genetics training whatsoever) like J. Phillippe Rushton, with scientific evidence and reasoning that the latter has never seen fit to rebut. Others like Richard Nisbett have presented further evidence indicating the malleability of intelligence and its tenuous link to racial heritage. Although the hereditarians have replied to Nisbett (in ways they have ignored Graves), they have done so selectively at best.
Joseph Graves has written two books that supposedly destroy what we call racial science (HBD) and they call “scientific racism”. I was under the impression that “The Emperor’s New Clothes” was written in order to correct the wrong-headed thinking of people like me, so I went ahead and ordered it; it wasn’t very expensive and I figured the price was worth finding out what powerful arrows the Left has in its quiver that Rushton has been avoiding.
In the introduction, we are told that the book comes to cure us of “racism”:
I have written this book because I believe that our society cannot progress toward true justice and equality until we exorcise racism from our collective consciousness (pg. 1).
It could be that if an ignorant, unlettered, “street-racist” were to read the book, and he lacked the knowledge and skills to seriously question it, he might turn into a race-denier. But the fact of the matter is that it is so full of lies, half-truths, distortions and obfuscations, that were I to enumerate them all, this critique would be almost as long as the book itself. I find myself forced to highlight but a few of them for the sake of brevity.
Graves writes:
Although professional scientists generally agree on the fallacy of race, this idea has yet to find its way into the public discourse (pg. 2).
The diversity of the modern research community makes it possible for one to take a contentious position without immediately destroying one’s career (pg. 124).
The fact that no races exist in our species has not been adequately communicated to the lay public (pg. 156).
Granted, the book was published way back in 2001, but the race-denialist bombardment had begun way before then. To claim that the “non-reality of race” had not yet made it into public discourse is ridiculous. It is also untrue that a majority of professional scientists deny the reality of race. Considering that Graves is a professor at a university, it is difficult to see how he could not be familiar with the above political reality. The ignorance of the middle statement is especially breathtaking and even if it were true that most scientists publicly deny the reality of race, this is because they have little choice in the matter, as Neven Sesardic puts it:
One of the leading physical anthropologists warned about the tendency of some scientists to misrepresent the true view of their scientific community. He said that the idea widely propagated by many scientists that race is only skin deep ‘‘is simply not true, as any experienced forensic anthropologist will affirm’’ (Gill 2000). He went further and stated that the bias of the race-denial faction ‘‘seems to stem largely from socio-political motivation and not science at all’’ (ibid.). And finally: ‘‘At the beginning of the twenty-first century, even as a majority of biological anthropologists favor the reality of the race perspective, not one introductory textbook of physical anthropology even presents that perspective as a possibility. In a case as flagrant as this, we are not dealing with science but rather with blatant, politically motivated censorship (pg 157).’’
Graves seems to be confused concerning the definitions of “race” and “species”, for he writes:
In fact, early hominids might have been classifiable into valid racial categories, in which, for example, pairs of individuals from different races either had reduced capacity, or no capacity, to produce viable offspring (pg. 2).
As a matter of fact, there are several known cases of separate species being able to produce viable offspring. Some great cats, ducks and owls come to mind. When environmentalists strive to protect such varieties from extinction, we never hear them describe them as “races”; instead, they are invariably described as “species”. The Spotted Owl, vis-a-vis the Barred Owl, is not a “race” but a “species” – even though the two interbreed.
Graves can’t quite make up his mind in the matter of brain size. He repeatedly references (pg. 3, 46 and 86) Stephen Jay Gould’s research, which supposedly exposed Samuel Morton’s research (which showed negro skulls to be, on average, of lower capacity than Caucasian and Asian ones). He writes:
Many assertions and assumptions about race and racial relations that were taken for granted during the Enlightenment have subsequently been proven false (such as the incorrect assertion that Negroes’ brains are smaller than those of white Europeans) (pg. 3).
But he also writes:
However, when unbiased measurements of human brains were made, there was no evidence for differences in brain size. In 1838, Friedrich Tiedemann… measured the brains from fifty cadavars (both Negro and European) and found no weight differences… The twentieth-century anthropologist Ashley Montagu concluded that the average cranial capacity difference between blacks and whites was about 50 cubic centimeters (pg. 87 and bold mine).
Surely that last study, by Montagu, warrants further study – but Graves does not seem interested in such a study. Does he believe that 50 cubic centimeters is not meaningful – even when taken together with other evidence? How many neurons can fit into 50 cubic centimeters? In any event, how unfortunate for Graves that it was Gould’s study that proved to be fraudulent, not Morton’s. From Science Fair of June, 2011:
The late scientific icon, Stephen Jay Gould, botched and perhaps faked his critique of a racist 19th-Century scientist’s skull collection, suggests a second look at his efforts. In a 1978 Science paper, Gould (1941 – 2002) , reported that the Samuel George Morton (1799-1851), “a prominent Philadelphia physician,” had mis-measured the cranial capacities of his 1,000-skull “American Golgotha” collection gathered from around the world, to suit his racist beliefs. The finding led to one of Gould’s best-known books, The Mismeasure of Man, a critique of scientific racism. Overall, they find, Morton did make mistakes in measuring skull capacity (he first stuffed them with seeds, and later lead shot to measure their brain size). But the mistakes were random. The random mistakes didn’t favor any racial theory of larger brain sizes for white people over others…
Morton neither manipulated his skull samples, unfairly selected which data to report, skewed results by gender, or ignored his mistakes to favor racist interpretations of his skulls, the PLoS Biology study authors conclude — all charges made by Gould against the long-dead physician.
What’s more, the researchers found Gould made some mistakes in his re-analysis of Morton. “Our analysis of Gould’s claims reveals that most of Gould’s criticisms are poorly supported or falsified,” they conclude:Samuel George Morton, in the hands of Stephen Jay Gould, has served for 30 years as a textbook example of scientific misconduct. The Morton case was used by Gould as the main support for his contention that ”unconscious or dimly perceived finagling is probably endemic in science, since scientists are human beings rooted in cultural contexts, not automatons directed toward external truth”. This view has since achieved substantial popularity in ”science studies”. But our results falsify Gould’s hypothesis that Morton manipulated his data to conform with his a priori views. The data on cranial capacity gathered by Morton are generally reliable, and he reported them fully. Overall, we find that Morton’s initial reputation as the objectivist of his era was well-deserved.
We are told that…
Before Darwin, and thus for the vast majority of human history, no scientifically correct understanding of human diversity could have existed (pg. 13).
But it would seem that this rule can not be used in defense of people like Phillippe Rushton, for we read:
For example, the architectural historian Vitruvius (active around 46-30 B.C.) attributed the keen intelligence of Romans to the rarity of the atmosphere and the warm climate (consistent with the earlier, Greek worldview). He also thought that the French, Germans, and Britons were mentally slow. He reasoned that the humidity and cold produced in them “a sluggish intelligence [italics in original](pg. 18).”
Of course, modern racial theorists (for example, Rushton) now argue that it was precisely this “chill” that was responsible for the evolution of superior European and Asiatic intelligence. These modern theorists thus have difficulty explaining the Roman claim of low intelligence for northern Europeans (pg. 19)…
I, for one, do not see any difficulty; the ancient Romans lacked the tools needed to gauge intelligence – and the ancient northerners had not yet developed the tools needed to express it. In other words, “no scientifically correct understanding of human diversity could have existed.”
Furthermore, in his discussion of ancient history, Graves would like his readers to assume that “African” and “black African” are synonymous. He writes:
Julian thought that Africans were civilized, intelligent, and mild-mannered, whereas he saw Aryans and Anglo-Saxons as warlike, barbaric, and cruel. Precisely the opposite view emerged during the Age of Discovery (pg. 20).
It is extremely unlikely that an Ancient Roman would have referred to blacks as “Africans”. “Africa”, back then, meant the Roman provinces (or former Roman provinces) of North Africa – which were inhabited by Caucasians. Black Africans would probably have been referred to as “Ethiopians”. For Graves to assume that “African” means “black”, and then pass this assumption on to his readers, is irresponsible.
One of the most outlandish ideas, presented in this dubious tome, is that the backwardness of black Africa can be attributed to the slave trade that was conducted by Europeans and Arabs:
Modern IQ theorists routinely compare Africans to African Americans to try to prove a generalized deficit in African intellect. In the scheme of these theorists, the degraded conditions of blacks in the United States match the lack of social progress of blacks in Africa.
However, if we properly understand that the African slave trade affected both those who were enslaved and those who remained, we can see that this comparison is not relevant. The reduction of African population due to slavery opened the way for the colonization of Africa. Consider how many lives were lost in the slave trade (pg. 28)…
Quite a stretch, especially when we consider that slavery was practiced pretty much all over the world. Can Graves point to even one non-African region that has remained backward for centuries due to it having been a major source of slaves? Furthermore, only a small segment of the African population was ever taken as slaves – at least according to Graves. These are his words, as he describes the concept of genetic drift:
The random sampling of gene frequencies from western Africa due to the Atlantic slave trade may serve as an illustration of genetic drift’s effect on human racial composition. Only a small percentage of Africans were sold into slavery (pg. 114)…
Even obvious facts are questioned by Graves. He cites research by Petrus Camper (1722-1789) documenting Negro prognathism and considering it evidence of primitiveness. While one can easily dispute Camper’s conclusions, it is rather silly to dispute the fact that Negroes are, indeed, more prognathous than most other races. Yet Graves writes:
It is not at all clear how many skulls Camper examined to calculate these values. His description of his work suggests that these values were certainly not representative of the groups analyzed (he may have used only one sample). In addition, it is not clear how the values of the facial angle can be said to support the idea that Negroes were closer to apes (pg. 41).
It is also not clear what, exactly, Graves is objecting to. Is it the degree of prognathism claimed by Camper, or the fact that it exists at all? If the former, then we might ask, what amount of prognathism is acceptable to Graves? The illustration on page 41 shows what appears to be a typical Negro skull. If Graves does not consider Negro prognathism to be a negative trait, then why does he try to deny its existence?
For a person who denies the biological reality of race, it is interesting that the author cannot see past his own race. Clearly, he has a bone to pick with whites. Graves relates how he suffered from racism as a child:
As a young child, I was tracked into a curriculum designed for those expected to have less intellectual ability. In third grade, when I began to read books about the history of the Crusades, my teachers felt that I was compensating for my inability to read (the other children were still reading picture books with large print). Finally, after one teacher decided to determine just how much I understood in this book, the teachers realized that they were dealing with a child of exceptional rather than limited ability. The school system had assumed that because I was “c0lored” and my parents were poor, my learning potential was limited (pg. 198).
Oh the horror! But let us put this example of “racism” in perspective and compare it with my own. Thousands of other white children have suffered as I had. Some lost their lives. Is Graves concerned with this sort of racism? Though he writes:
We do, however, need to recognize that there are infrastructural requirements for learning, such as adequate instruction, decent nutrition, safety from intimidation and violence, and an environment that fosters the development of self-esteem (pg. 198).
One gets the impression that Graves is not speaking of white children here – for there is not one mention, in the entire book, about the ongoing rampant abuse of white children in predominantly black schools.
As a black man, Graves worries about race-motivated crime against blacks and other non-whites. He tells his readers (pg. 199) all about Buford O. Furrow Jr., who shot up the Jewish day care facility and killed a Filipino man in 1999. He Calls the Columbine shooting a “racist hate crime… that targeted racial minorities” (pg. 193), though there is little evidence that race was a factor and most of the victims were white. There is no mention of the Zebra Murders, where blacks targeted whites, or the ongoing grossly disproportionate rape, by black men, of white women. Apparently, these things are not important to Professor Graves. Furthermore, Graves blames – you guessed it – whites for black crime:
The end of racial discrimination would also promote respect for law enforcement and for the peaceful settlement of disputes… Ask yourself, What might be the impact on African, Hispanic, Asian, or Native Americans if a member of one of these groups were elected president (pg. 199).
Well… we’ve had an African president for a few years now and, so far, not much has changed – at least not for the better.
Throughout the book, Graves assumes that whites are never the victims of racism, but always the perpetrators. In fact, his attitude is simplistic and infantile. For example, he writes:
Blacks and American Indians are not the only people who have been subject to racism in this country. Few consider the origin of expressions like “not a Chinaman’s chance” or recognize the sacrifice that Chinese Americans made to extend the railroads in the American West. Many never questioned the dubious logic of herding Japanese Americans into concentration camps during World War II while allowing German Americans to go free (pg. 4).
He completely ignores the blatant, and ongoing, discrimination against whites in America, under the guise of “Affirmative Action”, that has been going on for at least 50 years. All Graves has to say about that is (pg. 197):
The difficult question is, How can we design programs that progressively eliminate the detriments caused by the history of racist injustice and yet simultaneously defend the rights of all individuals (pg. 197)?
Not once is Graves critical of blacks in any way, but he has no problem making negative generalities about whites. For example:
However, as it does for many Euro-Americans, the subject of race tended to create a blind spot that objective scientific reasoning could not penetrate (pg. 123).
… Conversely, African Americans, in the main, rejected fascism and racism from the beginning (pg. 140).
The social bias was revealed in the way that whites refused to see their role in creating the economic and social conditions that fostered the extraordinary rates of infection in Clarendon County, Alabama (pg. 191).
Over and over again, the author refers to opinions he disagrees with as “racist”. The definition of “racist” he most readily accepts is that of Websters, which defines it as (pg. 8) a doctrine without scientific support, that claims to find racial differences in character, intelligence, etc., that asserts the superiority of one race over others and that seeks to maintain the supposed purity of a race. On page 53, the he hints that his real objection to racial science is not that it is scientifically wrong, but that it is heretical. He even uses religious terminology to express this:
Thus, the race concept was immediately caught up in the Darwinian revolution sweeping through biology. We shall see that there was no shortage of individuals willing to rush in where angels fear to tread.
An honest person should ask, “What is there to fear? Should we not seek the truth, wherever it leads?” According to Graves, the answer is “No.”
“The Emperor’s New Clothes” reads like a who’s who of outdated and discredited racial-egalitarian tactics. He spills much ink on the past excesses, and crimes, of racialism and eugenics. While it is important to be aware of those crimes, they do not disprove modern racial science any more than the inaccurate maps of yore discredit the discipline of geography. Lewontin’s fallacy rears its ugly head at least twice in the book (pg. 87 and 155), though he does not refer to it by that name:
Scientists soon realized that the largest amount of genetic variation in our species resides at the level of the individual rather than the group (pg. 155).
Here is a brief explanation of Lewontin’s Fallacy by Robert Lindsay:
According to… (Lewontin’s) fallacy, most genetic variation is within groups and not between groups. 85% is within any given group, and only 15% is between the average of any one group with any other.
Why this is a fallacy can be easily shown. For instance, within Whites, IQ’s in a group of 1000 Whites have IQ’s ranging from 148 to 68 or so. There are 80 points variation within the group.
Now let us look at the average of 1000 Whites versus the average of 1000 Blacks. The 1000 Whites have an average IQ of 103. The 1000 Blacks have an average IQ of 89.8. There are 13.2 points variation between the averages of each group.
According to Lewontin’s Fallacy, the 13.2 point differences between Blacks and Whites is inconsequential to meaningless, since the difference within Whites ranges from geniuses to idiots! Yet that difference has real meaningful consequences at many levels, particularly societal and sociological but also political.
“The Emperor’s New Clothes” is rife with grotesque errors of logic. Errors that might be forgiven had they been made by a fourth grader. Here are some examples:
Owing to intense selection and small population stocks, domestic animals, like dogs, also suffer from inbreeding effects. Inbreeding tends to make the genome of a stock homozygous at many loci, which has the overall effect of lowering the fitness of a given line, even if that line is fixed for some desirable trait. Inbred stocks will differ from one another in terms of the specific fitness defects. The only reliable or interpretable results from the differences shown in personality or intellectual characteristics of domestic breeds is that genetic variation for these traits does not exist in the species in question. Human populations have occasionally undergone population bottlenecks that have produced some inbreeding, but not at the level experienced in artificial selection. Therefore, the idea that human races are differentiated in genes associated with intelligence because of regional differences in natural selection is theoretically and empirically ill-founded (pg. 96).
It appears that what Graves is trying to say is that since man-made selection is more directed, and effective, than natural selection, therefore natural selection cannot bring about differing abilities in different populations. Perhaps it is just me – but I fail to see the logic here.
Thus when one examines gene frequencies, one must ask, Where does one race end and another begin? The existence of pure races is intimately tied to an unambiguous statistical means to delineate such races. We now know that collections of human genetic data reveal no such means to clearly delineate races (pg. 147).
This is a straw-man argument. Though there are some people who believe in “pure races”, many race-realists do not. The acknowledgment of the biological reality of race does not require a belief in pure races, nor is it necessary to have clear boundaries between one race and another. There is no such clear boundary between the genders. Does this mean Graves denies the biological validity of the concepts “male” and “female”?
Less than twenty-five years after Auschwitz, the scientific racist infrastructure was firmly reestablished. Although the UNESCO statements of 1950 and 1951 had declared that race was not a useful concept in human biology, and that anthropologists generally should not utilize intelligence in racial classification schemes, race and intelligence would dominate American thought concerning integration (pg. 154).
The author seems to believe that UNESCO has the authority to determine what is, and what is not, a “useful concept” in biology. Going back to a point I brought up earlier, Graves seems to believe that political pressure plays no role in influencing public statements by scientists. He even has the nerve to come out and say so explicitly.
Here is another outlandish statement:
The first flaw is the difficulty of reconstructing the actual conditions under which natural selection could have operated during slavery. Our ignorance about these conditions stems from our lack of strong historical interest in, or concern for, the actual nature of slavery and the rest of the African American experience (pg. 33).
Graves must have been living in a cave for the past 40 years.
Regarding the Flynn effect, he writes:
Herrnstein and Murray dismiss this fact by arguing that the increase is more likely a result of better testing than of a real change in mean I.Q. Either way, this change indicates an environmental effect, since no significant genetic change could have occurred in this period. This magnitude of environmental effect demolishes the case for the use of raw IQ data as a source of genetic information (pg. 165).
Another straw-man. I am not aware of anybody who believes that IQ is entirely determined by genetics. By this reasoning, since environment impacts virtually every human ability, there is no way to gauge the genetic element in any of them! I have already cited clear evidence of I.Q.’s heritability here.
… if genes do influence intelligence, then we should expect that all races will have families that run the range of the genetic variability for intelligence. Thus, given the large genetic overlap of human populations, our expectation should be that there is no significant racial difference in intelligence or other behavioral traits (pg. 167).
Let me get this straight. Because each family will have members who are very smart, or very stupid, there cannot be average I.Q. differences between races. Isn’t this a lot like saying that since there are both very tall, and very short, members of both Chinese and Nigerian families, there can be no difference in average height between the two groups?
Much ink is spilled trying to discredit eugenics. We are told horror story after horror story. And yet Graves agrees with the basic premise of eugenics, for he writes:
If individuals who would normally die without intervention reproduce, and their condition is heritable, the frequency of the genetic malady in the human species will increase (pg. 76).
His objections to eugenics seem to be threefold: That there have been great abuses in the past (agreed), that eugenics has historically used social/economic class as a proxy for genetic fitness (pg. 113), and that any intervention on our part would take tens of thousands of years to make a dent in our genetic footprint (pg. 114). But what Graves is doing is throwing out the baby with the bath water. Eugenics is successfully practiced by Ashkenazi Jews in order to reduce the risk of Tay-Sachs disease. Many women choose to abort their mongoloid babies rather than give birth to them. Graves appears to define eugenics as “any crime that has been committed to improve the genetic fitness of the human race”. If so, who can argue with him? let us, instead, define eugenics as any policies taken to reduce the burden/suffering caused by genetic defects upon human society. I have personally seen three generations of retards living at a group home – at tremendous cost to society. Those retards are not borderline retarded, who might be considered “dull”. No, they are bonafide, drooling, pinheads who absolutely cannot function on their own. Who, in his right mind, would be in favor of perpetuating such a family? Graves avoids the hard questions, instead resorting to equating eugenicists with Nazis (pg. 127). We even find him saying:
The tragedy of Nazi Germany stands as the clearest example of what can happen if eugenics, racial hierarchy, and social Darwinism are taken to their logical conclusions (pg. 128).
It is difficult to understand how the extermination of Jews, who were among the brightest and most successful in Germany, is a “logical conclusion” of eugenics.
In asserting that black Africa is capable of producing advanced civilizations, Graves is rather vague – with one exception: “The Great Zimbabwe”, which he emphasizes (pg. 89) as an example of the advanced state of the Shona civilization circa 1400 A.D. It is not clear exactly who built the Great Zimbabwe but, for an old-world stone structure, it is not very old (it is slightly older than the new-world Machu Picchu) nor is it exceptionally impressive.
One of the basic tenets of science is that a theory must be falsifiable. Graves’ theory is that race does not exist, and that there is no correlation between “so-called races” (his typical term for “race”) and intelligence. Yet he writes:
Performances on standardized tests during the Plessy v. Ferguson era in the American South would not have been capable of revealing genetic differences in intelligence between the so-called races, even if such differences had existed. This is simply because standardized tests do not take environmental factors into consideration. “Blacks” and “whites” lived in different environments, one manifestly superior to the other in physical and biological infrastructure. Thus, the core error of all social-Darwinian thinking results from the inability to separate genetic from environmental sources of variation in the phenotype (pg. 81).
… shortly thereafter, he writes:
Thus, for Spencer, evolutionary worth could be determined only by post hoc methods. If one was poor, then that was the proof that one did not have the ability to succeed. As tautologies, such statements cannot be falsified (pg. 82).
Can Graves’ earlier statement be falsified? If blacks live among themselves, they are “segregated” and have inferior living conditions compared to whites. If they live among whites, they are subject to “white racism”. Either way, there can never be a situation where we can fairly (according to Graves) compare the abilities of one group to the other. Therefore Graves’ assertion, that there is no innate I.Q. difference between whites and blacks, can never be falsified.
Along these lines, Graves holds race-realists to absurdly high standards. His background involves working with fruit flies in laboratory conditions, where every variable can be meticulously controlled. He expects race-realists to adhere to the same standards of evidence that his field demands of fruit fly studies:
This equation illustrates that one cannot infer that a phenotypic difference between two groups automatically indicates a genetic difference. Under laboratory conditions we can control the environment such that we can eliminate the third and fourth terms of the equation. For example, if we measure the longevity of fruit flies from two different populations and hold all environmental conditions the same for both groups, then we can safely assume that the third and fourth terms are close to zero… before we can make these measurements we must rear the flies under identical conditions for at least two generations because complex phenotypes are strongly influenced by maternal environmental effects. The environmental conditions experienced during development can influence the expression of genes in the adult. It should be clear that none of the rigorous controls that are required to identify genetic effects in the laboratory exist under the conditions in which attempts to measure human IQ have been made (pg. 166-167).
Here, Graves’ bias stands out in stark relief. He assumes that the burden of proof is upon race-realists, that the default position is his, and that he requires no evidence to support his own claims – while, at the same time, he demands that the rest of us provide what is impossible to provide!
He shows us yet another example of his double standards when he writes:
Some pharmaceutical companies are now advertising the significance of race in the action of their products. SmithKline Beechan included the following message concerning the benefit of calcium supplements on bottles of TUMS E-EX released in 1999: “… Research shows that certain ethnic, age, and other groups are at higher risk for developing osteoporosis, including Caucasian and Asian teen and young adult women…”
… The second problem is that all humans have some risk for osteoporosis, and the recommendations made concerning a balanced diet and exercise are useful for everyone. Thus, there was no need to make the statement that certain ethnic groups are at higher risk, when all groups have some risk (pg. 173-174).
But then he writes:
It is well known that environmental toxins do similar damage. I have established in this book that these negative environmental parameters are disproportionately visited upon minority populations… (pg. 198)
To this we can respond: “There was no need to make the statement that certain ethnic groups are at higher risk, when all groups have some risk”. The Left loves to stress the importance of “disproportionate this” and “disproportionate that” when it suits their purposes – but when it comes to facts that are do not fit their agenda, they ignore them completely.
I found it most startling that Graves, after denying the biological existence of race, does admit to the existence of race when it suits him:
If we wish to explain biological factors important to sports performance, we should look to body forms, not to race. For example, the Watusi people would be more likely to excel at basketball than the Pygmy, Yamamoto, or Aleut people because the former are very tall and the latter are short and stout. Body forms do not map racial categories in any consistent way (pg. 36).
Might the Watusi People, or pygmies, be “races”?
Furthermore, although these populations differ in mean physical characters, no single individual may be uniquely identified by the group average in characters. Negroes and Nordics might be relatively easy to separate. However, many errors would ensue from attempting to assign Nordics, Alpines, and Mediterraneans (pg. 145).
In other words, some races are more distinct than others.
For example, differences in lung cancer rates between whites and blacks might be explained by allele frequencies for the enzyme NAT2… The frequency of this slower form differs for African Americans and Euro-American populations… Other polymorphisms have been reputedly associated with racial variation in general cancer incidence… (pg. 182).
In the final analysis, it would appear that even Graves doesn’t believe his own propaganda; like so many other black men, he has chosen to improve his own stock by rejecting black women and opting for a non-black wife, in this case an Asian one (implied in the Acknowledgments, where he thanks his wife, Suekyung).
Graves does make some accurate statements, among them:
One of the greatest enemies of research is the preconceived biases that scientists unconsciously bring to their work. These biases can come from discipline-specific ways of thinking or from social pressures or from both (pg 190-191).
Apparently, he does not realize how much his statement applies to himself.
After having read “The Emperor’s New Clothes”, I mourn for the trees that were chopped down to print it, for the time that was wasted to read it, and for the feeble minds that may have been swayed by its existence. I bought the book (used of course) and read it. Rest assured, the above critique is far from exhaustive. I could have gone on and on. Let my sacrifice serve as a warning for the rest of y’all. For those whose minds have already been contaminated by Graves’ drivel, the cure would be the outstanding essay “Race: a social destruction of a biological concept” by Neven Sesardic.
As for Tim Wise, I have no idea if he actually read the book – but he does hint to the possibility that he might have been wrong about the biological reality of race. He may, at some level, understand that the scientific winds are changing:
Indeed, I would suggest that resting the claim for racial equity and just treatment upon the contemporary understanding of race and intelligence produced by scientists is a dangerous and ultimately unethical thing to do, simply because morality and ethics cannot be determined solely on the basis of science. Would it be ethical, after all, to mistreat individuals simply because they belonged to groups that we discovered were fundamentally different and in some regards less “capable,” on average, than other groups? Of course not. The moral claim to be treated ethically and justly, as an individual, rests on certain principles that transcend the genome and whatever we may know about it. This is why it has always been dangerous to rest the claim for LGBT equality on the argument that homosexuality is genetic or biological. It may well be, but what if it were proven not to be so? Would that now mean that it would be ethical to discriminate against LGBT folks, simply because it wasn’t something encoded in their biology, and perhaps was something over which they had more “control?”
On one point, I agree with Wise; we should treat individuals justly and with respect – until they give us reason to treat them otherwise. I doubt that many readers of this blog would disagree. Most of us are mature enough to acknowledge the biological reality of race and to treat each individual, regardless of his race, with decency.
"Immigration reduces crime rates"
According to a study cited in Livescience (hat tip to human stupidity), immigration reduces crime rates:
Contrary to popular stereotypes, areas undergoing immigration are associated with lower violence, not spiraling crime, according to a new study.
Harvard University sociologist Robert Sampson examined crime and immigration in Chicago and around the United Statesto find the truth behind the popular perception that increasing immigration leads to crime.
Sampson’s study results, detailed in the winter issue of the American Sociological Association’s Contexts magazine, summarizes patterns from seven years’ worth of violent acts in Chicago committed by whites, blacks and Hispanics from 180 neighborhoods of varying levels of integration. He also analyzed recent data from police records and the U.S. Census for all communities in Chicago.
This article is typical in that the headline, and initial paragraphs, are designed to lead us to believe that Hispanic immigration is good for the United States. But further down we find a clue as to what is really happening:
However, Sampson shows that concentrated immigration predicts lower rates of violence across communities in Chicago, with the relationship strongest in poor neighborhoods.
In other words, when Hispanics displace blacks, crime goes down. This should be no surprise. The article does not appear to link directly to the study (and it is riddled with advertising links) so I have not read the study itself, but it is possible that Sampson is confusing cause and effect here. It might be that, if the immigrants are poor, they move to black neighborhoods – where their presence reduces crime. If they’re well-off, they move to affluent neighborhoods – which tend to already be low-crime. It would be interesting to see if Sampson can document before/after cases where the introduction of immigrants actually reduced crime in specific (white) areas. Without racial data, it is hard to derive anything meaningful from this study.
As for the “Hispanic paradox”, it can be explained any number of way, but this “paradox” is only temporary. Each generation of Hispanics becomes more criminal, and dysfunctional. So it is hard to see how large-scale Hispanic immigration is good for the United States.
The article goes on:
Immigration is therefore not just a Hispanic issue; although little noticed, increasing foreign-born diversity among blacks (e.g., from the West Indies and Africa) is associated with lower crime even within segregated black communities.
Perhaps, if he replaced the word “even” with “especially”, the statement would be more accurate. Any sort of immigration into the ghetto is going to decrease crime (at least short term) simply because ghetto blacks are the most crime-prone segment of the population.
One paragraph, toward the end of the article, is particularly puzzling:
Sampson’s arguments are supported at the national level as well. Significant immigration growth — including by illegal aliens — occurred in the mid-1990s, peaking at the end of the decade. During this time, the national homicide rate plunged. Crime dropped even in immigration hot spots, such as Los Angeles (where it dropped 45 percent overall), San Jose, Dallas and Phoenix.
Is he trying to say that it was immigration that brought about the decrease in homicide rates? I wonder if there is any evidence for this claim. It seems to me that this is a roundabout way of saying “The United States should be more like Mexico – because Mexico is a low-crime utopia”. We are also left wondering if Sampson, himself, lives among Hispanic immigrants. Given his high opinion of them, surely he has chosen to live in the barrio. On second thought, I doubt it.
Posted in immigration/ Hispanics
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Diversity costs You-B.S. dearly
(Hat tip to Irish Savant) Struggling Swiss banking giant UBS is big on diversity. Here is their diversity statement (my bold):
In today’s global business environment, we believe that it is essential for us to have a workforce of individuals from widely different backgrounds, cultures and life experiences.
Diversity matters in our business. Diversity in gender, ethnicity, age and other factors supports first-hand understanding of regional markets and sensitivity to local customs. We believe that we also gain a competitive advantage from more subtle differences in background, experience and thought. These elements give our employees a unique perspective to anticipate the needs of our increasingly diverse client base and generate the most appropriate, innovative, solutions for them. We work to strengthen the diversity and inclusiveness of our workforce because, in the end, our long-term success depends on equal employment opportunity and having the best people in the right roles.
Our workforce is truly global – our employees are citizens of 147 countries. In 2010, the average age of our employees was 38 years, with the average length of employment at UBS at 8.6 years.
The scope of our diversity strategy and initiatives is both global and regional. Our global, top-down diversity strategy includes divisional diversity goals, and we are actively partnering with firm’s senior management to achieve them. Our regional diversity teams translate our global commitment into action by working with local business and HR leaders on business-aligned plans that are linked to regional talent strategies. We also have more than 20 employee networks. These networks help our employees build cross-business relationships and strengthen our inclusive culture. We have global network guidelines that enable our employees to set up or join employee networks or affinity groups in any of our operating regions.
The parts in bold is corporate jargon for “we force our managers to hire people based on race, gender, nationality and age. The way it usually works is that failure to hire “people of color”, females etc. results in poor reviews, withholding of raises and a lack of opportunities for advancement in the company.
Against this backdrop, we can understand how a person like Kweku Adoboli most likely got his job. Here he is being led away after having lost $2 billion dollars through unauthorized trading:

He doesn’t seem very upset about it; after all, it wasn’t his money that he lost and he’ll just get a slap on the wrist. Here’s the video. Will UBS ever question the (probable) role of diversity goals in this expensive fiasco? Don’t count on it.
Of course, there have been other rogue traders in the past who have lost millions or billions, and they were white. But as long as a company has policies in place that force the employment of inferior people*, then the rest of us will suspect that those policies were to blame whenever a beneficiary of those policies turns out to be the culprit.
An analogy would be a smoker who is diagnosed with lung cancer. His doctor will blame the smoking – but the cancer might have had nothing to do with smoking; it could have been bad genes or bad luck. If smoking is likely bad for your health, it would be smart to quit – even if a non smoking-related illness is bound to strike you down sooner or later. We reduce the risk-factors. Diversity goals are a risk factor.
*People who were hired in order to fill a quota, and were not necessarily the best for the job.
My first mivtzoyim* "incident"
Yesterday was a glorious, beautiful and sunny day; a rarity in these parts. So I thought to myself, “This is a perfect day for mivtzoyim*!” I rummaged through my files, and the various blogs, for a good flyer candidate, settling on this one (that I got from Unamusement Park):

While distributing them door to door, I couldn’t help but notice an overweight, middle-aged white man hollering at me, from a few houses back, “HEY! Why are you leaving this **** on my ******* door?!” I replied that I hadn’t seen any “No Soliciting” signs on his property and continued on my merry way.
Later on, after I’d finished the loop and was heading back, that guy was waiting for me, with his non-white friend, by the curb. I casually walked up to them and greeted them with a smile. “Why are you leaving this **** on people’s doors?” he said. I replied that I’m doing my part to encourage a positive white consciousness in the community, that it’s a message of love. “But you’re not white” he said. I could have asked him how he can be sure; there are “light-skinned blacks”, so why can there not be “dark-skinned whites”? But instead I told him it doesn’t matter one way or the other. He pointed at his non-white friend as if I had somehow harmed him with my flyers, and told me they are “offensive”. After a quick “debate” on the merits of white identity, he told me that the cops are coming after me. I shrugged and told him, “That’s alright; I’ve done nothing illegal”. He disputed that – but the cops never did show up. I continued to distribute my flyers, and enjoy the beautiful day, until they were all gone.
Encounters such as this are encouraging. They mean people actually read the flyers. They give us the opportunity to actually state our case – albeit in a concise manner. They also help educate the public as to our rights to freedom of speech; apparently, many people believe that it is illegal to distribute flyers that some may find “offensive”. Assuming the fat man is a hardcore, incorrigible leftist, then I get the satisfaction of having riled him up. I give myself extra credit for that.
*Mivtzoyim = street activism, such as talking to strangers, distributing flyers or putting up signs.
Posted in activism
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