A recent seemingly trivial news item has demonstrated how many people misunderstand racism and how explosive the topic is in our politically correct world. For the first portion of the 13th edition of CBS’ hit series “Survivor,” the contestants competing for the $1 million prize while stranded on the Cook Islands in the South Pacific will be divided into four teams: Blacks, Asians, Hispanics and Whites. A group of New York City officials have criticized the new format, saying it promotes divisiveness (they do think we all are the same!). They have asked CBS to reconsider its plans. The bizarre news that people are protesting because a competitive television show is going to organize teams according to racial lines, while certainly ridiculous, has lead me to point out a few things about racism.

Racism is the belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that these racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race. Race is a part of the overall picture of human development. Those people who believe that there are many more universal aspects of human behavior than there are racial differences, would have no problem with this definition. Further, the most important part of the definition is the second half, which suggests that the differences between races could lead to the conclusion that some race or races is or are superior to others. Certainly that is what Hitler concluded: the Aryan race was superior to all others.

Probably the two most noticeable racial discriminations in the past century were those against blacks, in various parts of the world, particularly in the United States, and discrimination against Jews, particularly in Germany but also in many Arabian/Muslim countries. More recently there seems to be growing discrimination against Muslims and more generally against people from the Arabian region, although this is based on religious and political ideas more than racial differences. There are, as Publius Pundit has pointed out, also serious racial conflicts in Russia.

Presumably in the more developed countries views about races have changed to an extent that now it is presumed that all races are equal and that no race is superior to others (nor one gender superior to the other). This is the politically correct position. The genes responsible for the hereditary differences between the traditional races are extremely few when compared with the vast number of genes common to all human beings regardless of the race to which they belong. Still, there are differences. Physical characteristics clearly define what have been called races and many specialists believe there are biological races. The multicultural crowd has attempted to suggest that all races are fundamentally the same, and have even gone so far as to suggest that race is a ???????social creation.??????? And many people believe that. For example, a survey taken in 1985 (Lieberman et al. 1992¹), asked 1,200 scientists how many disagree with the following proposition: “There are biological races in the species Homo sapiens.” The responses were:

??????? biologists 16%
??????? developmental psychologists 36%
??????? physical anthropologists 41%
??????? cultural anthropologists 53%

The anthropologists are more closely associated with multiculturalism and related ideas while the biologists are examples of real scientists.

Further, scientists studying the DNA of 52 human groups from around the world concluded that people belong to five principal groups corresponding to the major geographical regions of the world: Africa, Europe, Asia, Melanesia and the Americas².

But multiculturalism and political correctness have lead to a situation where it is presumed that one should not talk about the fact that there are many differences between races (or gender, as Harvard????????s Lawrence Summers found out). Truth is again the victim, as is open discourse, the free development of hypotheses and free engagement in research. Civilization shrinks with these constraints.

Still it seems clear that some racial differences exist and examining them does not automatically make one a ???????racist.??????? Let us start by looking at a few sports. One of the under-celebrated sagas of human biodiversity in the last quarter of the twentieth century is the emergence of the black athlete. His primacy is so conspicuous in some sports, that at the highest levels of competition other racial groups are all but invisible. Black superiority is dramatically illustrated in sprinting. No white has ever run a 100m in less than 10 seconds. At least 30 blacks have. The simplest explanation (usually the best) for black dominance in these sports is innate talent. Measurable anatomical and physiological differences support this conclusion. In an intriguing statistical exercise, one specialist has calculated that the average black is athletically superior to the average white, in NBA scoring by almost an entire standard deviation (0.87) and about the same in sprinting (0.82). For those of you who do not understand ???????standard deviations??????? they are not something you do in the bedroom, but are measures of differences between people and other things in terms of a given variable. The measure of 0.87 is about like saying that blacks are 30% better than whites in NBA scoring and 28% in sprinting. Those are major differences!

The values of the differences for basketball and sprinting are quite close. Both sports rely heavily on basic physical attributes. Jumping ability, prized in the NBA, is not in the sprinter’s bag of tricks. But the same powerful legs and fast-twitch muscles that drive a man forward can also propel him upward. In the NFL blacks dominate the ranks of wide receivers and corner backs, where both speed and leaping talent are valued. The suggestion is that athletic capabilities for basketball and sprinting come from a common set of physical attributes present more in larger quantities in blacks³. We could easily suggest that their superior performance might come from inherently racial factors. Would that make us ???????racists???????? Some whites might think so, but we know they can????????t jump.

Let us shift to intelligence as a variable of interest. Ashkenazic Jews have earned 27% of the Nobel Prizes awarded to Americans, 25% of ACM Turing Awards (highly prestigious prize to individuals for contributions of a technical nature made to the field of computing), and 26% of the Fields Medals (awards for outstanding contributions given by the International Mathematical Union). They account for more than half the world chess champions. Ashkenazic Jews, who are only two percent of the US population, make up 30% of elite-college faculty, 30% of Supreme Court law clerks, and 27% of Ivy Leaguers. One specialist suggests that the mean Ashkenazic IQ is 116 and infers an Ashkenazic “math IQ” of 111⁴. That is about 35% above average in verbal skills and 25% above average in math). There are several other studies that come to quite similar conclusions: Jews tend to be much more intelligent than average people. I think that could be called superior. Would that be racist?

Let us turn to aggressiveness, another variable present in humans. There are clear racial differences in this variable. Using data from the National Crime Victimization Survey of the Department of Justice and applying a statistical technique call the method of thresholds we can conclude that a mean difference for aggressiveness between blacks and whites of 0.37 standard deviation (SD), or about 13%. The mean difference between whites and Asians from these data is 0.24 SD, or about 8%. Of the three groups, Asians are the least aggressive, blacks the most. The ‘distance’ between blacks and whites is about 50 percent greater than between whites and Asians. Aggressiveness probabilities are small, but compared to whites and Asians, blacks are much more likely to be extremely aggressive⁵.

In earlier periods, say fifty thousand years ago, this aggressiveness, for example in defense against predators, combined with the high ability to sprint may have been very important in the survival and evolution of the species. That would be a reasonable hypothesis. But in our more stable society the aggression is much less of an advantage as we see when looking at figures of incarceration.

Data comparing the number of imprisoned blacks versus whites in the U.K. and the United States shows a black-white mean criminality difference of 0.694 SD, or about 23.5% in the U.K. compared with the black-white difference of 0.736 SD, or about 25% for American blacks. The results suggest the inherent character of criminality. Though U.S. incarceration rates for each group are significantly greater than those in the U.K., the black/white criminality differences are within 0.04 SD of each other⁶.

Now let us look at family structure, which is a major factor in ethnic success. Asians have the lowest crime, best health, and best academics, lowest rate of placement in foster care, and much of it stems from a high rate of two parent families. The opposite is true of African Americans who have the lowest rate of two parent families, and worst social outcomes. Asians have problems, but fewer of them. Significantly, although black problems are widely publicized, the strength of Asian families and outcomes seems to be deliberately hidden from discussion as part of the general suppression of the “model minority”⁷. While it is unclear if the behavior is inherited or culturally developed, is it not possible that this impressive family success could be considered superior?

Another variable where there are clear differences between racial groups is sex drive. The following values have been derived.⁸

Non-Hispanic Blacks 1.19 SD????????s or 37% above whites
Hispanics 0.282 SD????????s or 9.6% above whites
American Indians 0.278 SD????????s pr 9.5% above whites
Non-Hispanic whites 0 (the base line)⁹
Asian/Pacific Islanders -0.124 SD????????s or 4% lower than whites.

(Note that sex drive data are almost always derived from other, related data, called proxy data, and therefore are not as reliable as more direct data.)

From a reproductive viewpoint, and possibly from a recreational one, it would be possible to suggest superiority, again in favor of blacks.

Also, this suggests that when Governor Schwarzenegger commented about Republican Assemblywoman Bonnie Garcia and said, “I mean Cuban, Puerto Rican, they are all very hot. They have the, you know, part of the black blood in them and part of the Latino blood in them that together makes it,¹⁰” he was right. Was he racist? He and Ms. Garcia both say no. Then the twit went on to apologize!¹⁰

Let me repeat: you are not a racist if you simply point out racial differences. Presumably, you are a racist if you state that a specific race is superior to another. But are you a racist if you say that black sprinters are clearly superior to white sprinters? Are you a racist if you say that Ashkenazic Jews are clearly more intelligent that most of the rest of the people in the world? Are you a racist if you say that Asian family structure and life style keeps them out of harm????????s way and allows them to contribute more to themselves and their society? Are you racist if you say that data suggest that blacks are more aggressive than whites?

So let us go back to the new ???????Survivor??????? show. Will one group have advantages over another group for presumed racial differences? If a lot of sprinting is required, the blacks will have an advantage. If much intelligence is required, the whites and Asians will have an edge. If cooperation and unity are required (which I understand is not the case on this program), then the Asians will have an advantage. If the CBS people want to make the competition ???????fair,??????? they should have a mix of skill requirements. But they probably are most interested in ratings. I will not know what happens on the program (I won????????t watch it) so I will let you evaluate what happens and the potential ???????racism,??????? and divisiveness.

*****
1. Lieberman, Hampton, Littlefield, and Hallead 1992 “Race in Biology and Anthropology: A Study of College Texts and Professors” in Journal of Research in Science Teaching 29:301-321.
2. Nicholas Wade. ???????Gene Study Identifies 5 Main Human Populations, Linking Them to Geography??????? New York Times, December 2, 2002.
3. This information is from ???????Black Athletes: Can Whites Measure Up???????? www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/blackathlete.htm
4. ???????Assessing the Ashkenazic IQ.??????? http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/ashkenaz.htm
5. This information is from ???????Aggressiveness, Criminality and Sex Drive By Race, Gender and Ethnicity.??????? http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/fuzzy.htm
6. Op. Cit.
7. ???????Family: Arthur Hu’s Index of Diversity.??????? http://www.arthurhu.com/index/family.htm
8. ???????Aggressiveness, Criminality and Sex Drive By Race, Gender and Ethnicity.??????? http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/fuzzy.htm
9. The standard sex drive of non-Hispanic whites is arbitrarily set to zero. Values for other groups are given relative to this zero. The mean difference between any two groups is the difference in their standard sex drives. The difference is independent of the choice of zero.
10. Fox News, Sept. 8, 2006. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,212948,00.html
11. http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006/9/8/134809.shtml?s=al&promo_code=2552-1