Jewamongyou

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I just finished reading “Race” by John R. Baker and wanted to give a brief review of it while it is still fresh in my mind.
It is a monumental work and of great value.  The depth, range of insights and objectivity, demonstrated by Baker, are awe-inspiring.  As a matter of fact, it would be no exaggeration to say that most aspects of race science that have been elaborated upon over the last couple of decades are dealt with here.  Not only that, but Baker’s words are often even prophetic.  I’ve already written about the flawed logic of “Guns, Germs and Steel”.  This is what Baker, over twenty years prior to Diamond’s folly, had to say about it (pg. 527, 528):

Explanations are frequently suggested for the failure of certain peoples to make this advance.  Thus Professor A. Sommerfelt excuses the fact that the Arunta had no numerals (in the proper sense of the word) on the ground that “The Arunta who lives far from all influence of whites has no need of a system of numerals comparable to ours.  He possesses nothing that he must necessarily count, no domestic animals, no merchandise, no money.”  One is left to assume that if they had had something to count, the Arunta would have invented numerals.  But why had they nothing to count?  Why were they content with this situation?  One is forcibly reminded of John Stuart Mill’s remark that it is “better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.”  Members of all ethnic taxa of man must have experienced stages in their histories at which they possessed no domestic animals, no merchandise, and no money, but in many of these taxa there were people who were not satisfied.
The failure of Negroes and members of certain other taxa, living in civilized countries, to reach the same average scores in cognition and attainment tests as Mongolids and Europids has often been attributed to environmental causes.  In just the same way, it has repeatedly been suggested that those ethnic taxa that have never attained to civilization by their own endeavours in their native lands have been held back by the unfavourable nature of their habitats.  Some authors are dogmatic on this subject.  Sommerfelt, for instance, says that the differences between “peoples and tribes” are due to “natural surroundings and history, not to innate characteristics of these peoples.”  This, however, is not by any means always the experience of those who have actually travelled among primitive peoples in their natural environments.  Livingstone, for instance, was struck by the mental differences between members of different races living in the Kalahari Desert.  The Bakalahari, a Kafrid tribe, had been forced into this environment in the remote past.
“Living ever since on the same plains with the Bushmen, subjected to the same influences of climate, enduring the same thirst, and subsisting on the same food for centuries, they seem to supply a standing proof that locality is not always sufficient of itself to account for differences in races.”
And how, on the environmental hypothesis, can one explain the fact that the Negrids inhabiting the tropical rain-forest of central Africa made not even a start in mathematics, while the Maya of the Guatemalan tropical rain-forest, equally cut off from all contacts with civilized people, made astounding progress in this subject, and at one time were actually ahead of the whole of the rest of the world in one important branch of it?
It would be wrong to suppose that civilization developed wherever the environment was genial, and failed to do so where it was not.  Indeed, it might be nearer the mark to claim the opposite…

Baker’s exhaustive study of pre-contact African culture is an impressive work in its own right.  Chapters 18-21 (pages 325- 417) comprise some of the most entertaining (if sometimes graphic) reading in the entire book.  He had obviously carefully read every account of African travels available to him.  From these, he selected seven as his primary sources.  Accepting nothing uncritically, he compared each account to the others and was keen to point out errors, exaggerations and biases wherever he found them.  Far from being biased himself, Baker was quick to give credit where credit was due – even when writing of the most savage cannibalistic tribes.
From a layman’s point of view, the book has two flaws: a) it often delves into tedious detail while using technical words that few would understand and b) its excessive use of German and French.  Apparently, Baker assumed that anybody educated enough to read his book must also be familiar with these two other languages and would not benefit from translation.  As for me, I relied on context to figure out what he was saying.  I probably missed some of the finer points because of this.
Although Baker made some effort to come across as a neutral observer of humanity, his “Europid” roots lead him to spill much more ink on the differences between European sub-races than on any other sub-races.  Many pages are spent describing the differences between Alpinids and Nordids and I believe this is Baker’s old-school anthropology background (19th century, if you will) showing itself.  36 years have elapsed since the publication of his book and I believe that those intervening decades have made it clear that whites will either stand or fall together; the fate of Nordids is the same as the fate of Alpinids and Mediterranids.
The first few chapters of “Race” do not deal directly with humans at all.  Instead, they deal with various other species.  I think this is important because, when it comes to the animal kingdom, we find little or no bias.  Baker took advantage of this fact to explain the rules of morphology, evolution and genetics in ways that few could object to.  He explained, at length, what is meant by “typical”, “species”, “race”, “taxa” etc.  Nothing is taken for granted and Baker’s thoroughness insures that anybody who reads the book, from beginning to end, will arrive at the same conclusions he does – as long as the reader understands what he is reading.
The fact that this book, which was published so long ago, already explains almost everything we need to know about race (with the notable exceptions of crime rates and miscegenation)  leaves me with an unsettling question: this being the case, what have we been doing for the last thirty years?

It transpired that my left-leaning brother, sensing my race-realism, thought he could cure it by having me read the book “Guns, Germs and Steel” by Jared Diamond.  He was under the impression that this book would lay to rest any doubts I might have that all the races of Humanity are equal in every way that matters.   I don’t know who told him that “Guns, Germs and Steel” is a refutation of race-realism.  It turned out he had not even read it himself.  Perhaps another individual, who had not read it, had told him this.

After having read the book from cover to cover, I reported back to him that a) it hardly speaks of race at all b) when it does speak of race, it’s to claim that the natives of New Guinea are intellectually superior to other peoples due to natural selection and c) Diamond’s claims can be understood to go hand in hand with race-realism.  He had nothing to say about “a” or “c”.  Regarding “b”, he claimed that Professor Diamond must surely have been joking.  I explained that the claim was made twice and he clearly was not joking.

Although Diamond’s theories don’t contradict race-realism, it seems to me that at least some of them are false – perhaps even lies.  “Guns, Germs and Steel” was published in 1997 and one of its claims is that there were few animals suitable for domestication in black Africa.  Since black Africans had little opportunity to utilize such animals, civilization wasn’t in the cards for them.  Diamond goes to great lengths in order to illustrate exactly why various indigenous African animals and plants could not be domesticated.  To the uncritical reader, it might appear that Diamond is being truthful.

Professor Diamond is clearly a member of the leftist orthodoxy.  Therefore, it’s likely that he had never read “Race” by John Baker.  Baker lists several indigenous African species that are not only suitable for domestication but actually have been domesticated by other races.  Among them are the bush-pig, the hunting dog (possibly domesticated in the Kalahari), the guinea-fowl, the eland, and the African elephant (such as those used by Hannibal).  While it’s true that more such species existed in Eurasia than in Africa, the fact that Africans never took advantage of the ones they had leads us to ask: What use would the additional species have been to them anyway?  “Race” was published in 1974.

The main theory of “Guns, Germs and Steel” is that the alignment of the continents had much to do with the development of mankind in various areas.  Diamond claims that since Eurasia is aligned East to West, along the same climate zone, peoples, plants and animals could more easily travel over wide areas to bring cultural enrichment.  Africa, on the other hand, is aligned North to South.  Therefore East-West commerce was much more limited while the Sahara desert served as a barrier to the North.  As people migrated North/South, they were also forced to adapt to new ecosystems.  While there might be some truth in this, the fact is that Africa is home to far more biodiversity than most of Eurasia.  In fact, generally speaking, the higher the biodiversity in an area, the less advanced the people living there are likely to be (HDI = human development index).

When theorizing about any link between the exchange of species/cultures, it seems to me that the presence of many species and cultures in a smaller area would be a greater advantage than a similar number of species/cultures in a larger area.  From a cultural perspective, there was tremendous diversity in sub-Saharan Africa.  Nothing was stopping them from exchanging ideas and enriching each other.  The advantage was there – but Africans were not capable of taking advantage of it, at least not to the extent that they could create advanced civilizations on their own.

The advantage that people enjoy from an abundance of life in their area also works to their disadvantage.  Because food and water is so abundant, and because the weather is so balmy, there is less need for innovation.  There is less need for advanced forms of transportation, clothing or sophisticated tools.  In short, there is less need for intelligence.  When we recognize this, the above map makes a lot of sense.

Even if we accept, at face value, all the theories set forth in “Guns, Germs and Steel”, this does not diminish the reality of racial differences one iota.  It appears that many people simplistically believe that no more than one explanation of a phenomenon (such as racial inequality) can coexist.  I will take this one step further: Let us say, for argument’s sake, that Diamond is correct.  I would argue, as others have, that once civilization took root, it was the major catalyst for mental development among the peoples that sustained it.  Peoples that lived in areas less conducive to civilization (because of continent alignment or any other reason) would have been deprived of this catalyst.  Diamond can theorize until he’s blue in the face about why things started out the way they did – but the end result is no less real.