Thinking about HBD posts

[feotakahari]

My objection to the HBD posts is later than the usual arguments. People go “some groups evolved to be more intelligent on average than other groups,” and I go “okay, whatever.” Then they go “therefore, some skin colors make you smarter than other skin colors,” and I go “wait, what?” Some ethnic groups evolved lactose tolerance, and other ethnic groups with the same skin color didn’t. Maybe some ethnic groups evolved better aptitude for certain mental tasks, but you can’t just assume everyone else with the same skin color did.

Comments

[random_thought_depository]

Yeah, this is another obvious argument against scientific racism more rigorous than "evolution stops at the neck." Even if different human populations have experienced different intensities of selection pressure for intelligence, races as defined by the conventional US concept of race are almost certainly way too big and coarse-grained to capture the relevant populations. Like, "black people" as conventionally defined in US racial discourse conflates everyone from Somalis to Zulus to Congolese to Senegalese, i.e. everyone from a huge environmentally and culturally heterogenous region (it gets even funnier if Australian aborigines and dark-skinned Oceanians and Andamanese are also counted as "black," as they sometimes are - that population probably diverged from Africans before Europeans did!).