Barack Obama: African Warlord

"The alternative explanation would, of course, be that Sailer's race hang-ups are leading him to see things that nobody else sees because they're not really there."

And those hang-ups are just so goddamn surreal.

It certainly is odd to read an unembarrassed racist in real time. Usually, you can only find them in historical writings. Most racists these days have a sense of public shame that Sailer lacks.

Ignoring whether such a grievance is justified, and understandably "nursed", if there's one black man in the world who isn't "nursing a pervasive sense of grievance and animosity" against white people, it's Obama.

I worked with Barack at the Harvard Law Review and got to know him a little bit.

Anyone who thinks Barack hates white people or otherwise has bizarre or hateful racial obsessions lurking behind his "dapper" (actually, "charismatic" would be a better word) exterior, clearly has racial issues of their own or, more likely, a political agenda. You can see the slime machine's Al Gore-ification of Obama starting right here -- questions raised about his character, "troubling" incidents from his past, and on and on. George W. Bush used to make fun of convicts he put to death, but that didn't trouble anybody.

"Race hang-ups!?!" Does David Duke have "race hang-ups"? Those guys at VDare? They hate other races; hardly a hang-up.

The essence of Steve Sailor, of course, is to be a racist ass. What a pathetic joke the man is. It's just said that so many people give him and the other V-DARE racists a second's thought. It's sad that Sullivan doesn't see through it the way he would if this were about homosexuality.

Can the internet, like the real world, please stop taking Steve Sailer seriously? It's long overdue.

It's tough to believe that Sullivan would find it as stimulating if an author engaged in this kind of bigotry against gays. But before with the Bell Curve flap, and his appreciation of this kind of trash, And shows that he just doesn't get that his own sense of victimization should make him more aware of how he victimizes others. What a sorry, sorry man.

I highly recommend Dreams From My Father. It's a wonderful book, regardless of how you feel about Obama as a Presidential candidate.

Sailer's is what I'd call a redical interpretation of the text. Or, you know, complete bullshit. More than anything, Obama comes across as a man who spent a lot of time being introspective and working out issues of race on his own terms at a fairly young age. As a result of reading the book, I roll my eyes every time some new "expert" on race questions his racial identity. Barack Obama came to terms with those questions long ago. And wrote a damn fine book about it.

Obama *does* seem to be yet another example of a trend I find somewhat disturbing, namely that of racially mixed people who identify solely with their nonwhite ancestry. Examples are legion: Halle Berry, Jason Kidd, Bill Richardson, George P. Bush, Lenny Kravitz, Harry Belafonte, and many many others. It's almost as if the white ancestry is swept under the carpet and forgotten. Tiger Woods is an exception, but that may be attributable to the fact that he's multi- rather than bi-racial.

"Unless they can bribe their way into a prestigious office job, most of Obama’s male relatives work as little as possible, relying on their womenfolk for food and shelter."

Degenerate racism; astonishing, frightening, horrid.

Peter, you've got the causation the wrong way round. Mixed-race people are automatically classed as black by society. Or do you think that (say) Halle Berry would have been classed as "white" if she hadn't said anything about it?

Peter: That may be because our current culture only sees the non-white color of those people. When 80% of us are lily-white, even the bi-racial people are known more for standing out.

Sullivan's take is hardly surprising. He was the editor when the New Republic ran its symposium on the "Bell Curve." Years after the book's methodology and conclusions have been discredited, he still stands by the decision even though, with a few exceptions like Glenn Loury, few, if any, of the participants knew enough about the subject to offer a substantive critique.

For a gay man who is quick to decry discrimination and scream "Christianist," Sullivan is oddly comfortable, or at least sanguine, around folks like Mr. Sailer and John Derbyshire.

Stimulating. Well, yes. So is cayenne pepper in your jockstrap, but that doesn't make it a good thing.

Is this the same person who posts comments here under the nym "Steve Sailer"? I didn't put much store in those comments just based on their content, but if so I would think even less of them after reading this essay.

Cranky

Sailer:
Despite Obama’s relentless efforts to mold himself into an African-American, his overwhelmingly white upbringing is apparent in his coolly analytical depiction of his mother, a portrait that most black men would find disrespectful.

Because, you see, Steve Sailer understands "the black man."

Peter.

Why is that disturbing? I am Italian and I associate strongly with my heritage. Why do you have a problem when a person of color does the same?

Tell me Peter what is "white ancestry?" Is the fact that I associate with those dirty WOPS (my peeps) a failure to acknowledge my white ancestry?

And yes, your entire argument is a strawman. Prove to me that Obama identifies SOLELY with his "non-white" ancestry. Its bullshit.

If Al Smith is elected in '28, the Pope will pack his bags and move to Washington, D.C., to give orders to President Smith on how to run the country.

Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose....

Can the internet, like the real world, please stop taking Steve Sailer seriously? It's long overdue

The problem is that Sailer's a bit like Derb: you'd like to simply declare him odious, but the method of analysis by which he reaches his (often really weird) conclusions is much closer to ours than the Pantload or any number of other right wing opinion folks, who seem to use the "rub two snakes together" method of analysis. Sailer's deeply wrong about a lot of things, but I generally feel like (a) he could conceivably be convinced by some method I would understand, and (b) he has deep racial prejudices but no (or none I've seen) racial animus.

Whatever. I very much disagree with him about most things race related, but he doesn't hide his views, and those views don't seem to garner much support generally. He scares me a lot less than the Krauthammer, Brooks, the Pantload, and most of the other Cornerites.

Obama *does* seem to be yet another example of a trend I find somewhat disturbing, namely that of racially mixed people who identify solely with their nonwhite ancestry.

Everybody in the US identifies with white culture--it's pervasive. You'd have to be extraordinarily militant not to acknowledge that you take a lot from "white culture"; I think what might be confusing you is that normally we just say, "I'm an American," and leave it at that.

A racial group is a large extended family, writes Sailer.

And in every family, there's that creepy, distant cousin that no one really wants to claim as a family member. Which is probably what most people in Sailer's "large extended family" think of him.

I hate to be the contrarian here, but I actually enjoy Steve Sailor's contributions, although more often than not I disagree with him. Often times, as Matt is correct to point out he veers into the deeply distasteful. He does, however, offer interesting insights, and the distastefulness is not, to me, any more so than even the most vanilla Republican.

Anne,

I know this is dangerous territory, and Sailer is obviously a racist who bathes himself in the racist tropes of African imperialism. However, the sentence that you quote is a fairly accurate (though obviously generalized) take on family dynamics in LDCs. (I have no idea whether it has any relevance to Obama's relatives and don't know where, if anywhere, Sailer gets the idea that it does.) That dynamic is why any economic analysis that fails to problematize the family is assuming away a crucial variable, the touchstone of feminist development economics.

There are fairly standard examples of male heads-of-households making decisions that do not weigh the well-being of subordinate members, even when those subordinate members are actually the source of the family's income. Famously in rural Indian villages, men would choose the cooking fuel without taking air quality into account because it was the women who crouched over the stove and whose earning power was decimated by respiratory illness. (ie, they died)

Peter, you've got the causation the wrong way round. Mixed-race people are automatically classed as black by society. Or do you think that (say) Halle Berry would have been classed as "white" if she hadn't said anything about it?

Mixed-race people can identify as mixed if they so choose. Tiger Woods has done so. Most such people, however, and Halle Berry's a prime example, simply go along society's classification and consider themselves just black. Example: Halle Berry with her "African American" acceptance speech at the Oscars.

"he has deep racial prejudices but no (or none I've seen) racial animus."

Yeah, Sailer is a racist who doesn't hate black people, which is interesting. He is also willing to bring to the surface the duality in American racism toward blacks -- namely that they are inferior and superior at the same time. Actually, a lot of forms of racism have that double element to them.

Another thing about Sailer is he is willing to be genuinely sociological in how he looks at the world -- he sees communities / tribes and not individuals as the major actors in the world. Which is actually good and important and leads him to some excellent insights missed by other commentators, but he often layers this stupid biological essentialism on top of that. And when dealing with a genuinely complex individual like Obama, means he reads him in a reductionist way.

For a really good and interesting take on Obama's two books, look at Andrew Ferguson's review in the Standard last month:

http://www.theweeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/013/237rhfjc.asp?pg=1

Short take: really thoughtful writer, a shame he became a political hack.

"Obama *does* seem to be yet another example of a trend I find somewhat disturbing, namely that of racially mixed people who identify solely with their nonwhite ancestry."

I bet Irish-German people identify more with their Irish ancestry than the German.

As to black vs. mixed, nobody gets pulled over for Driving While Mixed.

"really thoughtful writer, a shame he became a political hack."

And if there's anything the Standard knows, it's political hacks.

Sailer's already proved that he's genetically superior to Obama, so who are we to doubt him?

Note to Steve: just because everybody hates you it doesn't mean you're unfairly maligned. You're earning it.

"Mixed-race people can identify as mixed if they so choose."

I'm reminmded of the story of one of the Rothschilds and the hunchback. The very much assimilated Lord R. said "I used to be a Jew." The hunchback replied: "I used to be a hunchback."

Peter -
"Obama *does* seem to be yet another example of a trend I find somewhat disturbing, namely that of racially mixed people who identify solely with their nonwhite ancestry."

Homer Plessy, the plaintiff in Plessy v Ferguson, the 1896 case in which the Supreme Court upheld the doctrine of separate but equal, was 1/8 black, but by law was black. Now there's a "trend" with legs.

Is it possible, Pete, that you've got things a little backwards here, that maybe the people you list aren't seeking this identity but largely have it imposed upon them? I suspect it's even possible that this doesn't really bother you at all but that you had some spare straw lying around the house this morning.

Mixed-race people can identify as mixed if they so choose.

As far as that goes, single-race people can identify as mixed if they so choose, African-Americans can identify as white, Chinese as Jews, etc. I'm not sure why that's supposed to be good or bad, rather than indifferent and mildly weird, but there it is.

I first noticed Sailer's comments on this blog in the last couple weeks, and I have to say, the guy is interesting and knowledgeable. So, I'll second some of the commenters above on that score.

I haven't had time to read the 2nd half of his essay on Obama, but the excerpted passages sure do sound strange. Perhaps a person can take too much pride in their intellectual courage in the face of PC attitudes about race, to the point where they start losing it?

Rumor has it there was discord at the magazine over running this piece, even leading to resignations.

Mixed-race people can identify as mixed if they so choose.

As far as that goes, single-race people can identify as mixed if they so choose, African-Americans can identify as white, Chinese as Jews, etc. I'm not sure why that's supposed to be good or bad, rather than indifferent and mildly weird, but there it is.

Those examples may be correct, but they're hardly reasonable choices. What I do not understand is why people whose physical appearance makes it obvious that they are of mixed racial ancestry nonetheless identify solely as black. In so doing they ignore the obvious. Obama is actually not a good example, as his white ancestry is less apparent than with many mixed-race people. Halle Berry and Jason Kidd are much better examples, as one look makes it clear that both are mixed.

Okay, how many of people here have acutally read "Dreams From My Father?" I do not have the book with me, and I read it about 2-3 years ago, but I recall that Obama gave glowing praise to his mother (who is white), and both of his grandparents (on his mother's side, who are also white).

In so doing they ignore the obvious.

Inasmuch as--as you note--most mixed race people seem to identify according to the same rule, it seems much more likely that you're the one ignoring the obvious. If the vast majority of people are doing it, there's probably a pretty good reason for that. All of this is hardly a new occurrence. I seem to recall that the then Cassius Clay was black right up until he won the Olympic gold medal, at which point some in Louisville started noting that he had some white blood in him (I think it was a grandfather or great-grandfather). People like Kidd and Berry are, at best, conditionally white as determined by white people--they're white right up until they turn out to be too fucked up to be white. "Black" is the robust answer.

"Sailer's deeply wrong about a lot of things, but I generally feel like (a) he could conceivably be convinced by some method I would understand, and (b) he has deep racial prejudices but no (or none I've seen) racial animus."

"Yeah, Sailer is a racist who doesn't hate black people, which is interesting."

I once spent most of a morning reading Sailer's columns over at V-DARE. I would suggest these commenters do the same. I think Sailer hates black people as much as any human being alive. It's just that he is more analytical in his self-justification, and this can fool people if they read him in small doses.

MY writes:

"Sailer's explanation for his idiosyncratic reading of the book is that few have "grasped the book’s essence" because "so few of the many who have purchased it following his famous keynote address at the 2004 Democratic convention appear to have read much of it." The alternative explanation would, of course, be that Sailer's race hang-ups are leading him to see things that nobody else sees because they're not really there."

That's one interpretation. Another is that 98%+ of American political writers are constrained by the self-censorship of political correctness, and aren't willing to tolerate the kind of personal attacks we've seen in this comment thread in order to speak their mind.

The psychology of those who run for president is fascinating, and usually disturbing in some way -- see Bill Clinton's poverty and desire to please and protect his abused mother, or George W. Bush's intellectual insecurity, alcoholism, and desire to outdo his father. No one would find those topics out of bounds, and everyone would find them important -- nice to know what makes the most powerful person in the world tick, isn't it?

But suddenly it's a mixed-race person, and such explorations are immediately out of bounds, even if most of Sailer's observations *come right from Obama's book*. If you've ever read a memoir of a mixed-race person, you know that racial identity is the core psychological issue of their existence, something they generally struggle with every day of their lives. Obama is no different than most other mixed-race people in this respect.

And Sailer deserves credit for talking about it. As usual with Sailer detractors, people on this thread are calling him racist, but nobody's calling him wrong. And everyone -- Yglesias, Sullivan, and many more to come -- who will triangulate off Sailer just to discuss him finds him interesting.

Levi wrote:

"I once spent most of a morning reading Sailer's columns over at V-DARE. I would suggest these commenters do the same. I think Sailer hates black people as much as any human being alive."

Levi, please cite a single Sailer paragraph from VDare or anywhere else that backs up your statement "...Sailer hates black people as much as any human being alive." There is nothing in Sailer's writings that will support this claim.

Nice commentary in the comments. I can't stand Saliers, and quite frankly it's because he says things that seem so absurd, yet I can't quite figure out how to respond. Like his never-ending discussion of IQ, race and achievement.

Marshall, I understand. There are however 48 countries and more than 700 million people in southern Africa. There are more than 70 language groups in Nigeria alone. The idea that stereotypes are enough to count for 700 million people from Mauritania to South Africa is wrong, the way this writer uses stereotypes and the reason is vehemently racist, shockingly and dreadfully so, beyond redemption.

"Unless they can bribe their way into a prestigious office job, most of Obama’s male relatives work as little as possible, relying on their womenfolk for food and shelter."

Constructing a more degenerate racist passage would be darn near impossible. Absolutely vicious, beyond redemption.

but nobody's calling him wrong

Actually, early on, several posters called him wrong. (As in the Al Smith reference.) After that, his wrongness just became accepted.

Look too the degenerate article only to understand what racism at its most vicious is.

The psychology of those who run for president is fascinating, and usually disturbing in some way

Jeebus. It's sad to think that you are really connecting "nice to know what makes the most powerful person in the world tick" to" Bill Clinton's poverty and desire to please and protect his abused mother, or George W. Bush's intellectual insecurity, alcoholism, and desire to outdo his father," as if the latter goes any distance toward answering questions about the former. You're not America's Worst Columnist, are you?

Oh, racism is wrong as such and more horridly racist and wrong could not be. Truly degenerate.

People like Kidd and Berry are, at best, conditionally white as determined by white people--they're white right up until they turn out to be too fucked up to be white. "Black" is the robust answer.

Race is not an either/or deal. Kidd and Berry et al. do not - should not - have to be (conditionally) white or (robustly) black. They should identify as racially mixed and take pride in that fact. We've moved past the point where racial mixing was so shameful that its "products" had to disguise themselves.

Race is not an either/or deal. Kidd and Berry et al. do not - should not - have to be (conditionally) white or (robustly) black. They should identify as racially mixed and take pride in that fact. We've moved past the point where racial mixing was so shameful that its "products" had to disguise themselves.

________________

Who the fuck are you to say that somebody "SHOULD" identify one way or another? What an a$. Neither Obama or Haley Berry identify "SOLELY" with their black heritage, and your contention to the contrary is completely unsupported. Moreover, as has been stated repeatedly (and ignored by you), in America, people of mixed race that "look black" are treated accordingly. That treatment also impacts how one "identifies" themselves. Your attitude toward them is exhibit one.

Jason Voorhees writes:

"I can't stand Saliers, and quite frankly it's because he says things that seem so absurd, yet I can't quite figure out how to respond. Like his never-ending discussion of IQ, race and achievement."

Exactly. The two reasons people find Sailer so disturbing are: 1) he makes points on racial issues that are disturbing to us 2) these points are driven by data and rational observation, and are therefore usually true. Ergo, people who wish to argue with him are reduced to simple name-calling, like we've seen on this thread, or they pull out the "racism!" talisman, which they think makes all those inconvenient truths go away.

If Sailer wrote things that people found upsetting *and weren't true*, no one would pay attention to him. But Sailer writes things people find upsetting *but that are also true*. This is why he's linked so often to by Kevin Drum, John Derbyshire, Mickey Kaus, John Tierney, Andrew Sullivan, Matt Yglesias, and increasing numbers of smart people. What the man says is generally true, and a certain kind of brain is drawn irresistibly to truth.

The most telling comment so far, besides the ten-cent accusations of racism, is X Trapnel's above, which reads in full:

"Can the internet, like the real world, please stop taking Steve Sailer seriously? It's long overdue."

No argumentation, just wishful thinking that reality conform to desire.

Neither Obama or Haley Berry identify "SOLELY" with their black heritage, and your contention to the contrary is completely unsupported. Moreover, as has been stated repeatedly (and ignored by you), in America, people of mixed race that "look black" are treated accordingly.

Halle Berry referred to herself as an "African-American actress" in her Oscar speech. That sure sounds like identifying solely with one's black heritage.

And since when do people like Berry and Jason Kidd "look black?" One look at either and it is absolutely obvious they are mixed. Obama, as I noted earlier, is a somewhat more questionable case.

Peter,

Why is it a "disturbing" phenomenon? I think you are making it more of a personal choice than it really is (as other comments have emphasized). Let's imagine a mixed kidd like Halle Berry who grows up in a white/affluent neighborhood where kids parrot black culture. Do you think those kids will respect her mixed heritage ? Probably not. Also, Kidd is a terrible example. yes he grew up in somewhat affluent. But he also played ball in Oakland city parks against people like Gary Payton. I don't think it's unreasonable that he identified more with his black than white side.

And ultimately, who are you to tell people they're wrong for identifying with a culture that have some genetic connection to? People migrate towards different things for a variety of reasons.

"Halle Berry referred to herself as an "African-American actress" in her Oscar speech. That sure sounds like identifying solely with one's black heritage."

And lots of people refer to themselves as "Irish-American" despite having only an Irish grandparent.

Your point?

and there's plenty of nonmixed people who are just as conflicted. you're like those asshole asian kids I grew up with made fun of asian kids who listened to punk for being too white and not true to their asian identity (defined as exclusively hanging out with other asians and parroting black culture).

either way, you're a douche.

"I bet Irish-German people identify more with their Irish ancestry than the German."

Irishness is a dominant gene.

Palooza writes:

"Who the fuck are you to say that somebody "SHOULD" identify one way or another? What an a$. Neither Obama or Haley Berry identify "SOLELY" with their black heritage, and your contention to the contrary is completely unsupported."

Maybe not "solely," but closer to 100% than 50-50. When Halle Berry won her Oscar, the biggest moment of her life with the entire world as an audience, which of her two races did she talk about?

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/halleberryoscarspeech.htm

When Obama wrote his autobiography, what side of his family did he discuss? Hint: look at the title.

Anne: "Look too the degenerate article only to understand what racism at its most vicious is."

Nah. Regrettably, you'd have to go quite a ways further down to start getting into the most-vicious range. See, e.g., two still-not-most-vicious but nonetheless quite-vicious examples (chosen partly to make that point, partly to respond to the anticipated "but this is racism at its most poisonously dangerous, taking on a socially-respected face" point, and partly to make a high proportion of the readership here squirm): http://www.econlib.org/LIBRARY/Columns/LevyPeartdismal.html (check out that first illustration!) and http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/history_of_political_economy/v035/35.4leonard.pdf .

"When Halle Berry won her Oscar, the biggest moment of her life with the entire world as an audience, which of her two races did she talk about?"

What the hell is noteworthy about a white chick winning an Oscar?

And can you identify any *mixed* actresses who've won? Nope.

And can you identify any *mixed* actresses who've won [an Oscar]? Nope.

I can. Halle Berry.

I give credit to Steve Sailer for the role he's played in acknowledging things like the fact that Black people are generally faster & better athletes than White people and the silliness of pretending such disparities don't really exist, and I appreciate that when his sociological mindset mixed with some of his better writing, it occasionally provides for an interesting perspective of the world. I'm afraid that's where my admiration ends.

Sailer does raise an interesting issue: which of the candidates is the most psychologically healthy? Obama wins by a mile. He's by far the least narcissistic of the lot. He's by the far the most comfortable with who he is. His memoir proves that.

Compare him to GWB, a man who's a giant heap of insecurity. Every statement from him can be reduced to, "I'm the big man! Take me seriously! I'm in charge! I'll show you, Dad!" All that pettiness and defiance. What a colossal baby.

"I can. Halle Berry"

Yeah, so, basically Hollywood has historically seen mixed==black, and not drawn any fine distinctions.

Anti-racism is truly the religion of the left.

Right-wing Christians roll in church aisles and babble in tongues, believing that the world began a few thousand years ago while never having read any Darwin.

Left-wing anti-racists write things like anne does here:

"Oh, racism is wrong as such and more horridly racist and wrong could not be. Truly degenerate...Look too the degenerate article only to understand what racism at its most vicious is...Constructing a more degenerate racist passage would be darn near impossible. Absolutely vicious, beyond redemption...the way this writer uses stereotypes and the reason is vehemently racist, shockingly and dreadfully so, beyond redemption."

While others deal with the heretic thusly:

"either way, you're a douche."

"You're not America's Worst Columnist, are you?"

"It certainly is odd to read an unembarrassed racist in real time."

"And in every family, there's that creepy, distant cousin that no one really wants to claim as a family member. Which is probably what most people in Sailer's "large extended family" think of him."

"The essence of Steve Sailor, of course, is to be a racist ass. What a pathetic joke the man is."

And like the Christians who won't read Darwin, none of you here have read any Cavalli-Sforza, and have no idea how incorrect you are on racial issues, and how correct Sailer is.
But you're happy to roll in the church aisles and chant what you've been told to chant.

(as the crowd rushes off to wikipedia "Cavalli-Sforza". Two L's, remember, wikipedia is unforgiving of misspellings)

"Irishness is a dominant gene."

Also, while there is a market for "Kiss me I'm Irish" buttons, there is a much smaller market for "I'm German: Ve Haf Vays Of Making You Kiss Me" buttons.

Yeah, so, basically Hollywood has historically seen mixed==black, and not drawn any fine distinctions.

People like Halle Berry have the power to change that. She could have emphasized her mixed-race heritage during the Oscar speech. Or she could have left race out of the speech entirely, which in some respects would have been the most mature choice. Instead, she delivered the speech whose text is in a prior comment; there's nothing for me to add, as the thing basically speaks for itself. She voluntarily elected to perpetuate ridiculous old stereotypes.

I will point out that as America's racially mixed population continues to grow, this issue of racial identity is going to become increasingly significant.

Peter, I have no clue why you find this perceived trend "disturbing". Do you think mixed-race people are not the object of racism in the US? Do they thus not share the same experiences as many colored people? Don't many colored people have a "non-colored" ancestor somewhere in their heritage? Do they have to prove purity in their lineage to be able to identify themselves as colored?

In a country where everybody and their dog is infinitely proud of their Irish, Italian, Jewish or whatever great-great-uncle once removed, is it really disturbing for Obama and Berry to identify with something that is actually rooted in real-life experience?

Zagnut: thanks for giving me such credit! Let me elaborate a bit--but only a bit, because as I said, Sailer really isn't worth more of my or anyone's time.

Yes, Sailer can write effectively and has mastered the rhetoric of the Disinterested Scientist Speaking Truth to Power. That doesn't make him one, though. The basic problem is that Sailer's worldview comes down to a series of just-so stories in which racially linked, heritable characteristics determine everything. While some commenters have lauded his 'sociological perspective,' this for Sailer means never translates into examining the ways that multiple social and cultural institutions and practices and reinforce problematic outcomes, for the purposes of intervening and hopefully ameliorating these outcomes. Sailer's 'sociology' translates rather into blanket denunciations of (certain) cultures, explicitly or implicitly linking these cultures to genetic endowments. The reason no one should take him seriously is that he shows precisely no willingness to shoulder the burden of proof facing biological determinists in the face of all we know about the variability and mutability of culture. His writings are political acts, and it doesn't take much effort to realize what their aim is.

Peter might as well be demanding that Obama identify as a woman because, after all, half of his parentage is female, despite the fact that society identifies him as male due to him being physically, obviously, male.

oh, and Sailer is a racist, the type of pseudo-scientific garbage he spouts is actually very typical of racists who really mean it, the Nazis when to great length to prove this and that about "other races"

X Trapnel wrote:

"The reason no one should take him seriously is that he shows precisely no willingness to shoulder the burden of proof facing *biological determinists* in the face of all we know about the variability and mutability of culture." (emphasis Zagnut's)

Wrong, Sailer counts both nature *and* nurture as being important in determining who we are and what we do, in roughly 50-50 proportions if I had to quantify his worldview (naturally it varies from issue to issue and person to person).

But that 50% nature is a lot, and Sailer writes about it, which the holy rollers here can't accept. And why you incorrectly label him a "biological determinist," implying he is 100% nature, which nobody is. Again, to attack Sailer successfully, his arguments must be misrepresented. But being 100% nurture is totally cool, right?

Looking for common ground, X: would you agree that who we are and what we do are grounded in nature at least part of the time, say even 25%? If so, that's worth discussing, isn't it?

Levi, please cite a single Sailer paragraph from VDare or anywhere else that backs up your statement "...Sailer hates black people as much as any human being alive." There is nothing in Sailer's writings that will support this claim.

Seeing a kind of sublimated hate (or maybe disgust or maybe fear) in the relentless promulgation of stereotypes, however much that promulgation conforms to the protocols of scholarly thought, seems as reasonable to me, actually more reasonable, than any of the claims made by SS about the psychology of presidential ambition and/or blackness:

"Kenyan trip symbolizes the inner duality beneath his dapper exterior. He possesses one of the finest minds of any politician, but his personal passions routinely war against his acknowledging unwelcome truths, even to himself."

You could take a hundred psychologists give them five years and 5 million dollars to hang around Obama 24-7, study his history, and monitor his brain waives and you'd come up with a variety of theories as to his "desires" and "passions" and "dualities" and none of them would be more convincing than any of the others. Yet SS reads one book and decides HE knows what's going on in Obama's head. HE understands the mechanisms of human motivation and ambition such that he can cast them through the lens of black or mixed or african experience and arrive at an understanding of Barack Obama that, oh, what a surprise, fits the most rudimentary racial stereotypes like a glove.

I mean, I hate this kind of psychological interpretion wherever I see it. However much evidence it uses to draw its conclusions its tropes are built on assumptions about human nature that are unproven and unstable. It's a forgivable pattern, of course. We all do it. And to the extent that we do, it is PERFECTLY REASONABLE to assume that, given the object of his attention, there might be something going on in SS's mind besides a desire to make the most parsimonious possible representation of the data which he receives from the objective universe with, of course, buddha-like openness.

Timothy writes:

"Yet [Steve Sailer] reads one book and decides HE knows what's going on in Obama's head."

Well, it was his autobiography. Reading hundreds of pages of a person writing about his own life in his own words is not a bad way to get inside someone's head.

Who knows if Sailer's pop-psychology interpretations of Obama's motivations are correct? But the man wants to be president, so they're worth discussing.

Do you have any problem with journalists discussing George W. Bush's psychology, the one that sent us to a stupid war in Iraq? I don't. I think it's important.

And if people engage in "stereotypes" (=things that are true about a large enough # of members of a group to be clustered as a characteristic, even if they don't apply to *every* member of that group) about how West Texans or hicks or rednecks think, is that wrong? No, and it can go a long way to explaining our current president's decisions and patterns of thought.

But when it's a black guy, the rolling in the aisles begins, along with the chants about racism.

And Timothy, still waiting on a citation from Levi or anyone else to back up his claim that:

"...Sailer hates black people as much as any human being alive." Your pop-psychology of Sailer (hypocritical, since you deny Sailer the right to get inside Obama's head) that he possesses "sublimated hate" against black people won't cut it, I want a quotation. Sailer has written millions of words, and this is what you quote, in full, to back up Levi's claim that "Sailer hates black people as much as any human being alive":

"Kenyan trip symbolizes the inner duality beneath his dapper exterior. He possesses one of the finest minds of any politician, but his personal passions routinely war against his acknowledging unwelcome truths, even to himself."

That's the best you can do? From millions of words.

Levi, cite a source or retract your smear against Sailer.

Realish wrote:

"Rumor has it there was discord at the magazine over running this piece, even leading to resignations."

Rumors you made up just now? Citation, please: name one person who resigned at The American Conservative due to this piece.

DO YOU WANT TO KNOW THE TRUTH ABOUT BARACK OBAMA?

WHY ARE EUROPEANS CALLING HIM "BARACK CRACKHEAD OBAMA"?

http://howardwasright.com/index.php/site/more/570/

LEARN THE TRUTH.

The best quote on Sailer is from Evan Macelvary -- "Sailer can be really interesting when he isn't throwing rocks at the darkies".

It not his only drawback -- there's a reasons Sailer is a failed pundit -- financially insecure and eaking out a living at an age when most men would be in the prime of their careers. He just isn't that good. Sometimes he's fascinating, but other times (like the long post on how his forehead sweats when he thinks really hard, and how that relates to intelligence differences between races) he's trivial, inane or peurile. He's found a good niche talking about issues too offensive or controversial for mainsteam pundits becase if he competed directly against mainstream pundits, he'd be an even bigger failure.

I'd also hold off on claims that Sailer has no racial animus. Read his post on how Malcolm Gladwell grew his hair to look tough and get chicks -- an ugly undertone, very racial.

(Of course, Sailer's obsession with Gladwell could just be professional jealousy. Or some sort of personal thing, given that Sailer has his own identity issues as an adopted child.)

Bottom line: Sailer can be an interesting guy. But he's not a good guy, or even a very smart guy.

If Sailer wrote things that people found upsetting *and weren't true*, no one would pay attention to him. But Sailer writes things people find upsetting *but that are also true*. This is why he's linked so often to by Kevin Drum, John Derbyshire, Mickey Kaus, John Tierney, Andrew Sullivan, Matt Yglesias, and increasing numbers of smart people. What the man says is generally true, and a certain kind of brain is drawn irresistibly to truth.

This is nuts.

Now, you may be tempted to call that yet more content-free bashing of someone bravely speaking truth to power in this anti-racism church or whatever, so fine, let's actually look at what Sailer is saying. Here's one choice paragraph:

(1)After graduation, he moved to Chicago in 1983, finally finding a home where at least some whites reciprocated his antagonism. (2)He worked as an ethnic activist, helping the impoverished black community wring more money and services from the government. (3)That government money was wrecking the morals of the housing-project residents seems obvious from his book, but Obama never comes out and says it. (4)Numerous white moderates assume that a man of Obama’s superlative intelligence must be kidding when he espouses his cast-iron liberalism on race-related policies, but they don’t understand the emotional imperative of racial loyalty to him.

(1) Obama hates white people, so he was relieved to move to Chicago, where they hated him right back.
(2) Blacks are lazy and love living on welfare.
(3) Obama suffers from low intelligence not to realize how government money is bad for people.
(4) Well, he just seems to be dumb. More likely, he knows it but pretends otherwise to pull one over on all the guilt-ridden white liberals.

There may, I concede, be something to Sailer's pontifications about the conflicted psyche of a mixed-race person in modern America. That is, it's no more frivolous than a lot of what's written about A-list politicians. But the remaining 80 percent of the editorial oozes condescension, props up negative racial stereotypes with apocryphal anecdotes, and features no evidence of racial animosity stronger than Obama being rebellious as a teenager. Now that's some hard-hitting research. Sure, Sailer doesn't come right out and say my simplified versions of statements (1)-(4) — he relies on the passive-aggressive "just raising the question" dodge to insinuate them and more. Wow, big difference.

I post this not to reach you, because if you actually read Sailer's editorial and haven't noticed this part of what he said yet, or if you agree with it, you're probably unreachable. I post this on the off-chance that someone might take you seriously.

Howard,

Obama admitting using cocaine in his book. Bush 43 probably used cocaine, too, and at a later stage in life than Obama. So why aren't you loudly proclaiming here that "BUSH IS A CRACKHEAD!!"?

You have some good points in your piece you link to, but you come off looking like a tool by labeling Obama a "crackhead" and using ALL CAPS.

Zagnut: my point is not to deny the importance of nature. Obviously, if we had the genes of zebras, many policy implications would follow. My point is that: 1, it is *very difficult* to successfully untangle genetic v. social factors; 2, overestimating genetic factors has clear political implications that have historically been quite tempting to dominant groups; 3, Sailer's work displays a pronounced tendency to give in to these temptations. He is simply not the person to go to for learning about these things, though there are such people out there.

I think there's hugely important work to be done in figuring out, e.g., how we evolved to be the social and cultural creatures we are. But we are far, far away from the sort of detailed knowledge of the 'hardware-software interface' that would be needed to establish the kind of "African genes determine african-american family structure" arguments Sailer wants to run with. I would like to think that everyone would ignore me if, for example, I made the obviously fallacious claim that the persistence of polygamy among some LDS-breakaway sects around Utah, more than a hundred years after the official denouncement of the practice, demonstrates the genetic basis of family structures. And yet a lot of the heritability-of-culture arguments are made at exactly that level.

Anon,

How is Sailer a "failed" pundit? He doesn't earn a lot of money, but that's because he didn't become a journalist until later in life, something like age 38 or 40. But his ideas and blog are *very* widely read, often sub rosa, among the D.C. intelligentsia -- especially, interestingly, among the *young* D.C. intelligentsia, left, right, and (especially)libertarian.

He's definitely a little bitter that people like Malcolm Gladwell outearn him, but Sailer's view is that people like Gladwell go around writing things that aren't true but that people want to hear and are paid well for it, while he himself writes things that are true that people don't want to hear -- and that doesn't pay very well.

I think a little bitterness is understandable there, though Sailer does leaven this with a little humor (he labels his fundraising drives "panhandling").

Guys I have to work now (sadly! I would much prefer to debate here this afternoon, seriously), but real quick:

X Trapnel --

"Sailer's work displays a pronounced tendency to give in to these temptations. He is simply not the person to go to for learning about these things, though there are such people out there."

OK then, who?

Cyrus --

"There may, I concede, be something to Sailer's pontifications about the conflicted psyche of a mixed-race person in modern America. That is, it's no more frivolous than a lot of what's written about A-list politicians. But the remaining 80 percent of the editorial oozes condescension, props up negative racial stereotypes with apocryphal anecdotes, and features no evidence of racial animosity stronger than Obama being rebellious as a teenager. Now that's some hard-hitting research. Sure, Sailer doesn't come right out and say my simplified versions of statements (1)-(4) — he relies on the passive-aggressive "just raising the question" dodge to insinuate them and more. Wow, big difference."

If you're still around after 5 pm or so, I'd like to take a better pass at your post. Briefly, I agree with you that the piece is often condescending and that Sailer doesn't like Obama much. Sailer used to live in Chicago, and saw a lot of politicians make compromises in that city's corrupt pol machine, this may the source of some of the animus. But more later, thanks for your discussion time, got to work now :(

As a full blooded Irishman married to a German, well half German, our kids are definitely Irish. We're into the one drop rule. Especially around March 17th, though in NY bars on March 17th the no drop rule seems to apply.

One mixed race guy no one ever seems to bring up is Derek Jeter, though he never seems to bring it up, so no one ever actually notices he is mixed race.

i keep waiting for sailer to show up in this thread, like he does so often here and elsewhere, with his generic (cut and pasted often) comment that always ends with: "For more on X, see" with a link to his own site.

too bad. it seems zagnut is here in his place

Man, the quality of John Rawls's thinking sure has declined since he died.

My point is not that Obama's motivations can't be discussed. It's that Sailer's can be discussed as well. What you object to is people jumping to the conclusion that Sailer is motivated by racism without proving/arguing/making reference to evidence that his racist conclusions are motivated by hate.

I'm saying that if you evaluate Sailer's psychology by the same means that he evaluate's Obama's, ie making representations about motivation that have their basis in narrative-style thinking, you can't be reasonably faulted for concluding the dude is a racist.

With respect to W., as I said in my original post, I find this sort of armchair psychologizing forgivable. I'm certainly guilty of it. Of course I think most of the stuff people say about Bush wanting to go to Iraq to "outdo" his father is bullshit and certainly it's unverifiable and a waste of time.

Given the degree to which the media mediates the personality of a given politician, and the degree to which said politicians understand the constraints the media places on their expression of their personalities, it's extremely difficult to know a presidential candidate to the degree you'd need to in order to make a call on how they'd behave in office. (This why I find complaint's about a given candidate's lack of authenticity so tiresom. It may not be correct, but it's perfectly reasonable to assume that keeping messaging clean and simple and a little vague is the most effective way to position yourself to effect meaningful political progress. I don't have a good sense of how she would govern, but Hilary Clinton is doing a good job of this. John McCain is doing a bad job of it. The fact that Barack Obama wrote a pretty candid book expressing much more about himself than is available about most politicians has proven a source of fodder for the right to spin him is an indication that the Hillary approach has some efficacy.)

Also, I'd just like to say that I live in San Francisco and I find the casual denigration of people who come from red states as hicks and morons pretty saddening. I mean, if Texas is 60% red and 40% blue, that's a whole bunch of "right thinking democrats" you're inaccurately tarring as West Texas hick/moron/right winger.

I mean, I feel human affinity with people regardless of their politics, so reducing someone who's been raised in a conservative/racist environment and adopted conservative/racist tropes because they haven't got out, or someone who has fallen into a derided category for ANY NUMBER OF REASONS, to the status of irredeemable monster is counterproductive.

Obviously, there are monsters out there--the radio coordinator in Borat, for instance--but assuming that everyone who's from Texas and votes republican is just such a monster is foolish and wrong. It may be a harmless heuristic for my coworkers and I when we're having a beer after work and complaining about the moral crimes George W. Bush has committed against the political traditions of the United States or the Iraqi people, but if those "West Texan Hicks" were a minority population in this country and the "San Francisco Liberals" were in power and designing policies that affected the lives of those hicks, the liberals should damn well start thinking of those hicks as real people with real needs and a real right to fair treatment. Without applying a serious anti-stereotypical rigor to their thinking about such populations, they couldn't fail to be influenced by the subtle preconception floating out in the back of their minds that the thought crimes committed by those red staters made them less than true citizens.

Sailer is actually brilliant. For example, his articles on racial tendencies in voting patterns are brilliant; the GOP lost the last election not because of the Mexican vote, but because of the white vote; etc. He is also right on the negative effects of diversity, and how political correctness is destroying the GOP.

But he certainly is no Sam Francis, who was probably the greatest writer on racial matters of the last 100 years. Sam Francis was a genius - plain and simple.

Thanks for the link (http://howardwasright.com/index.php/site/more/570/). This is probably one of the best articles I've read on Crackhead Obama.

OK, I propose a game. Which commenter in this thread is actually Steve Sailer masquerading as someone else?

"The basic problem is that Sailer's worldview comes down to a series of just-so stories in which racially linked, heritable characteristics determine everything. While some commenters have lauded his 'sociological perspective,' this for Sailer means never translates into examining the ways that multiple social and cultural institutions and practices and reinforce problematic outcomes, for the purposes of intervening and hopefully ameliorating these outcomes."

It's true that the closer Sailer gets to areas where he is racist and a biological determinist -- most notably, American blacks -- the more knee-jerk and the less interesting his hypothesizing tends to get. But in areas where there is a little more distance, for example in his writings on the Afghanistan war and the relationship between cousin marriage and social structure in the middle east, he can have genuinely interesting insights.

His conceptualizing of race as extended family is also quite useful, and just as amenable to sociological thinking as biological.

Matt writes:

"Now, I'll concede that I haven't read Dreams from My Father ..."

That's obvious!

Please, everybody, READ THE BOOK.

As it's subtitle say, it's "A Story of Race and Inheritance." That's not metaphorical.

Andrew,

You're talking about me. How about we bet my $10,000 against your $1,000 that I'm not Steve Sailer, and then we'll do a similar side bet that I've never met Steve Sailer?

Andrew? Andrew? Are you there?

I haven't read all these comments, so apologies if I'm repeating anything, but: Dude. WTF.

Basically Steve has been reduced to posting annoymously to shout down criticism, employing his patented "quantity over quality" strategy of posting so much inane drivel on a comment thread that people stop reading the comments and therefore stop talking about how much of a racist he is.

It, unfortunately, nearly always works.

"Please, everybody, READ THE BOOK.

As it's subtitle say, it's "A Story of Race and Inheritance." That's not metaphorical."

I heartily second this recommendation by Steve Salier--because actually reading DREAMS FROM MY FATHER is the best possible refutation of Salier's terrible interpretation of the book.

What amuses me most about his review is the completely unsubstantiated assertion that "so few of the many who have purchased [the book]... appear to have read much of it." Yglesias has a good takedown here. Salier plainly thinks that his anamolous interpretation is somehow obvious or mainstream, and so the fact that basically no other person who has read the book agrees with him must mean the book hasn't been widely read or commented on! This is piss-poor reasoning, even for Salier.

Senator Obama and I, unlike 98% of the punditariat, are on very much the same wavelength about the overlooked importantance of "race and inheritance," to quote the subtitle of his first book.

He devoted a 442 page book to race and inheritance for intensely felt personal reasons. I write about it all the time for market niche reasons -- I noted many years ago that the quality of public discourse on these interrelated subjects was much poorer than on any other topic of comparable importance, so it was possible for me to develop a competitive advantage in quality over other journalists in this area.

Beware Obama's Black Essence!

Yes his head is good... but what about his heart?

"Barack, it is your destiny!" So says Darth Free-loading Black Male Relative.

Essentialist thinking, people. If you are honest with yourself you'll realize that nothing is closer to the truth.

Steve, could you be more of an idiot and a mean creep at that?

I think Zzz is Barack Obama.

If you're still around after 5 pm or so, I'd like to take a better pass at your post. Briefly, I agree with you that the piece is often condescending and that Sailer doesn't like Obama much. Sailer used to live in Chicago, and saw a lot of politicians make compromises in that city's corrupt pol machine, this may the source of some of the animus. But more later, thanks for your discussion time, got to work now :(

Awww, shucks. You give me a brief but civil response, even though I was so confrontational. And unfortunately, I probably won't be around a computer much after 5 p.m. today, not until Sunday evening. Sorry.

But you asked for evidence that Sailer was racist, more than just the invective you've seen so far in this thread. My quoted paragraph seems to address that pretty well. It's not out of context. I don't think I was unfair in my summary of it. (If you do, speak up please.) It's not like the sentiments in it are unorthodox or so novel that we'd be remiss not to give them careful thought; if anything. He's not just talking about Obama, a politician with whom he has a history; he's talking about a race in general. If this article accurately represents Sailer's views on race, he's firmly in Limbaugh's crowd.

All his complaints about Obama could just as easily be aimed at any black more liberal than Alan Keyes. I don't care if Sailer came by his views after living in a city with a corrupt political machine, after too many summers spent in the company of a grandparent "from a different era," or because Obama's goons beat him up after writing an unfriendly story. Sailer believes that Blacks are lazy and love living on welfare, are inherently more tribalistic than everyone else, and are especially corrupted by government money, which political leaders like Obama deliberately enable for personal gain. How else are we supposed to interpret that?

Matt, it's simply not true "nobody else seems to have reached the same conclusion as Sailer." Here is from Newsweek.com:

By Andrew Romano
Newsweek
Updated: 9:39 a.m. PT Feb 12, 2007

"Feb. 9, 2007 - For all the hype, Barack Obama remains something of a mystery. To the chattering classes, the junior senator from Illinois is an empty vessel—or, as he himself has put it, “a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.” ...

"But it’s also a matter of, well, laziness—on our part. Obama has written two top-notch (and relatively revealing) books. Plenty of people are buying them. His 1995 memoir, “Dreams from My Father,” written long before his first run for office, currently ranks 72nd on Amazon.com, while last year’s “The Audacity of Hope,” a far more political (and politic) volume, is 14th. It’s just that far fewer might be reading them. A shame, really, because there’s a lot of Obama in those 832 pages, including dope, booze, guns, Malcolm X and an ape named Tata. In Lincoln’s era, voters relied on slow newspaper reports to make a candidate’s acquaintance. Today, publishers pay pols millions for sanitized, sedative prose. All of which means that (the comparatively candid) Obama is, in fact, a pretty knowable quantity as far as presidential contenders go. He could be our first memoirist in chief. ...

"According to pundits, whites have warmed to Obama—and not all blacks have—because, as the son of an African immigrant who can "act white,” he is a “good black” (a schema cited by Peter Beinart in The New Republic), or not “actually black” at all (as argued by Debra J. Dickerson in Salon). If only someone had told Obama himself—who makes it very clear in his books (especially in “Dreams”) that while he may not “sound or look too black,” as Beinart suggests, he’s hardly the cheery post-racial candidate many believe him to be. Joe Biden be damned.

"In fact, Obama spent much of his life angry and confused about race. When a seventh-grade classmate called him a “coon,” young Barack bloodied his nose in return. Years later, a high-school basketball coach explained that “there are black people, and there are n——-s.” Obama answered with scorn—“There are white folks and then there are ignorant motherf—-ers like you”—before storming off the court. Since then, he writes, he has endured the “usual … petty slights”: “security guards tailing me as I shop in department stores, white couples who toss me their keys as I stand outside a restaurant waiting for the valet, police cars pulling me over for no apparent reason.”

"As a young man, Obama embraced being black. During college, he disdained other “half-breeds” who gravitated toward whites, dismissing one black student in “argyle sweaters and pressed jeans” as an “Uncle Tom.” He chose his friends carefully. “When it came to hanging out many of us chose to function like a tribe, staying close together, traveling in packs,” he writes. “It remained necessary to prove which side you were on, to show your loyalty to the black masses.” To avoid being mistaken for a “sellout,” he befriended “the more politically active black students,” read Malcolm X and attended a Stokely Carmichael rally. He often felt “edgy and defensive” among “white people—some cruel, some ignorant, sometimes a single face, sometimes just a faceless image of a system claiming power over our lives.”

"Since then, Obama’s suspicions have softened. “I have witnessed a profound shift in race relations in my lifetime,” he writes in “Audacity.” “I insist that things have gotten better.” Accordingly, his racial politics are hardly radical. He wants to enforce nondiscrimination laws, strengthen affirmative action and fight for better schools, better jobs and better health care. But Obama’s books make it clear that, despite his mixed ancestry, he has lived his life as a black American, and, as a result, is more invested in issues of race than people like Beinart and Dickerson may realize."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17071772/site/newsweek/

Argh. Note to self: proofread.

"It's not like the sentiments in it are unorthodox or so novel that we'd be remiss not to give them careful thought; if anything, just the opposite."

Here's an article by another journalist who has actually read Obama's "Dreams from My Father."

‘Trapped between two worlds’

Bill Sammon, The Examiner
Jan 30, 2007 3:00 AM (45 days ago)

WASHINGTON - Sen. Barack Obama, the only major black candidate in the 2008 presidential race, has spent much of his life anguishing over his mixed-race heritage and self-described “racial obsessions.”

Descended from a white American mother and black Kenyan father, the Illinois Democrat once wrote: “He was black as pitch, my mother white as milk.”

In his first memoir, “Dreams from My Father,” Obama observed that when people discover his mixed-race heritage, they make assumptions about “the mixed blood, the divided soul, the ghostly image of the tragic mulatto trapped between two worlds.”

Indeed, Obama acknowledges feeling tormented for much of his life by “the constant, crippling fear that I didn't belong somehow, that unless I dodged and hid and pretended to be something I wasn't, I would forever remain an outsider, with the rest of the world, black and white, always standing in judgment.” ...

Although Obama was raised by his mother, he identified more closely with the race of his father, who left the family when Obama was 2.

“I ceased to advertise my mother's race at the age of 12 or 13, when I began to suspect that by doing so I was ingratiating myself to whites,” he wrote.

Yet, even through high school, he continued to vacillate between the twin strands of his racial identity.

“I learned to slip back and forth between my black and white worlds,” he wrote in “Dreams.” “One of those tricks I had learned: People were satisfied so long as you were courteous and smiled and made no sudden moves. They were more than satisfied; they were relieved — such a pleasant surprise to find a well-mannered young black man who didn't seem angry all the time.”

Although Obama spent various portions of his youth living with his white maternal grandfather and Indonesian stepfather, he vowed that he would “never emulate white men and brown men whose fates didn't speak to my own. It was into my father’s image, the black man, son of Africa, that I’d packed all the attributes I sought in myself, the attributes of Martin and Malcolm, DuBois and Mandela.” ...

During college, Obama disapproved of what he called other “half-breeds” who gravitated toward whites instead of blacks. And yet after college, he once fell in love with a white woman, only to push her away when he concluded he would have to assimilate into her world, not the other way around. He later married a black woman.

Such candid racial revelations abound in “Dreams,” which was first published in 1995, when Obama was 34 and not yet in politics. By the time he ran for his Senate seat in 2004, he observed of that first memoir: “Certain passages have proven to be inconvenient politically.”

Thus, in his second memoir, “The Audacity of Hope,” which was published last year, Obama adopted a more conciliatory, even upbeat tone when discussing race. Noting his multiracial family, he wrote in the new book: “I’ve never had the option of restricting my loyalties on the basis of race, or measuring my worth on the basis of tribe.”

This appears to contradict certain passages in his first memoir, including a description of black student life at Occidental College in Los Angeles.

“There were enough of us on campus to constitute a tribe, and when it came to hanging out many of us chose to function like a tribe, staying close together, traveling in packs,” he wrote. “It remained necessary to prove which side you were on, to show your loyalty to the black masses, to strike out and name names.”

He added: “To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists.”

Obama said he and other blacks were careful not to second-guess their own racial identity in front of whites.

“To admit our doubt and confusion to whites, to open up our psyches to general examination by those who had caused so much of the damage in the first place, seemed ludicrous, itself an expression of self-hatred,” he wrote.

After his sophomore year, Obama transferred to Columbia University. Later, looking back on his years in New York City, he recalled: “I had grown accustomed, everywhere, to suspicions between the races.”

His pessimism about race relations seemed to pervade his worldview.

“The emotion between the races could never be pure,” he laments in “Dreams.” “Even love was tarnished by the desire to find in the other some element that was missing in ourselves. Whether we sought out our demons or salvation, the other race would always remain just that: menacing, alien, and apart.”

After graduating from college, Obama eventually went to Chicago to interview for a job as a community organizer. His racial attitudes came into play as he sized up the man who would become his boss.

“There was something about him that made me wary,” Obama wrote. “A little too sure of himself, maybe. And white.”

http://www.examiner.com/printa-536474~%E2%80%98Trapped_between_two_worlds%E2%80%99.html

As Matt wrote, "The alternative explanation would, of course, be that Sailer's race hang-ups are leading him to see things that nobody else sees because they're not really there." So I am not at all suprised that Sullivan will find the rantings of Sailer's "stimulating." Sullivan in his entire public punditry career is someone who seem to exhibit a certain crypto racist tendencise that makes him very comfortable with these kinds of argument and, while he will never come out and advocate them himself, is perfecetly willing to cite approviingly those who traffic in that realm.

I would also recommend Ben Wallace-Well's illuminating article on Sen. Obama in Rolling Stone, and article I refer to several times in my essay:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/13390609/campaign_08_the_radical_roots_of_barack_obama

It does amaze me, the level of content-free vituperation one sees in lieu of argument whenever the left confronts Sailer. I honestly think some of y'all had better just not read anything he writes, because you're in danger of either blacking out or throwing up.

"Obama’s Identity Crisis" is not Sailer's best writing. Interesting in some ways, but unfocused; it's more a chance for Steve to interrogate some of his usual suspects. I don't feel like having read it I know much more about Obama than I did before.

If you want to read Sailer at his finest, check out the two piece thing he just did for Taki on "Palestine Peace Not Apartheid". He's got it linked at his site.

OK, the Steve Sailer study group will meet Fridays 5.30 in room 204. To qualify for a credit participants are expected to exhibit a thorough knowledge of his oeuvre and should expect an unannounced pop quiz ever so often. I am also delighted to announce that the author himself has agreed to pop in occasionally to rectify any misconceptions regarding his writings.

if i were you, i'd read Obama's book for myself and understand the context of his words.

the problem with mr. sailer and ultimately for all of those who haven't read the book is that he is like the scientist who uses 100 data points to prove an experiment whose range lies beyond teh 100 data points.

he makes sense to you because he confounds you with so much evidence. If you don't know the theory behind the science the data seem convincing, until you learn that the data required lies beyond the 100 data points.

Obama's book is so rich in PARTICULAR(Andrew Ferguson praises his sensitivity and insistence on the particular) that anyone could weave a narrative to suit their agenda.

So Mr. Sailer, I'm not confused like those who haven't read the book. The book is the real science; yours? At best propaganda, at worst delusion.

Novakant,

it's in room *304* and you know it, jackwipe. I'm so sick of the lies of the left.

Room 204 is "Feminist Theory and Male Breast Size: Correlations and Contradictions."

Sailer writes: "Matt, it's simply not true "nobody else seems to have reached the same conclusion as Sailer.""

Um, did anyone else go unhinged talking about Obama as if he's going to revert to some tribal state ?

May I also suggest that, as well as reading Obama's book, you read _my_ article on Obama before denouncing it? If Obama's book is too long for you, then please read the three articles I linked to above.

May I also suggest that, as well as reading Obama's book, you read _my_ article on Obama before denouncing it? If Obama's book is too long for you, then please read the three articles I linked to above.

I did all three. Your reading of the book is, essentially, that Barack Obama hates white people (or "racial antagonism" if you prefer). This interpretation is not supported by the three articles you linked to nor is it supported by the book itself, which contains a quite detailed and nuanced discussion of this very specific issue.

There's also a lot of latent racism in your article, which isn't hateful so much as bizzare (i.e. "In his head, Obama surely knows that his becoming the world’s biggest man would be bad for the work ethic of Kenyans.") These things along with your reputation explains the universally adverse reaction by commentators here, except for your usual one or two lackeys of course.

What an evil rotter.

"In his head, Obama surely knows that his becoming the world’s biggest man would be bad for the work ethic of Kenyans."

Not latent racism, but crazed disgusting evil racism. What a wretched racist.

The bottom line is, whatever Obama represents, the fact that he's an articulate (ie, white-sounding) black man makes him much more politically significant than otherwise. Whites are projecting onto to him, and the fact that he embraced the one-half of his gene pool that least invested in him after insemination is illuminating about his character, and also the nation's. If you can choose to be called white or black, most people choose "black", because you are then dangerous/victim/cool/authentic. The parts Sailer describes about disapproving of his white grandparents being afraid of black panhandlers is poignant.

In all, hooray for Sailer, because regular journalists don't have the guts to write this kind of political incorrectness. It's not racist (he says Obama got his intelligence from his African dad).

It's quite disingenuous to criticize an Obama post for bring race into the discussion. If he were white, would anyone care about this guy?

X Trapnel:

"My point is that: 1, it is *very difficult* to successfully untangle genetic v. social factors; 2, overestimating genetic factors has clear political implications that have historically been quite tempting to dominant group..."

This isn't quite true. Regarding your first point, there have been studies comparing identical twins raised separately that clearly show a hefty genetic component in certain outcomes. Regarding your second point, objective, scientific study of genetic and other human differences has often been ignored by dominant groups. For example, the Nazis banned IQ tests when they saw Jews outperformed non-Jewish Germans; similarly, I doubt Malaysians, for example, are terribly interested in objectively comparing themselves to their ethnic Chinese minority.

One point Sailer made in an essay was that historically, it is often the higher-achieving minority that is the target of discrimination.

["Unless they can bribe their way into a prestigious office job, most of Obama’s male relatives work as little as possible, relying on their womenfolk for food and shelter."

Degenerate racism; astonishing, frightening, horrid.]

Yes, Miss Manners, how dare he suggest that Kenya displays unusual levels of corruption and social dysfunction?!?!?! I, for one, am absolutely sickened at such a thought.

Everyone knows that Africa is paradise, and that Western societies would be well advised to structure themselves after the African example. Yea, the African is like a god; no wonder the continent is doing so well!

One mixed race guy no one ever seems to bring up is Derek Jeter, though he never seems to bring it up, so no one ever actually notices he is mixed race.

Excellent point. Jeter does not make a big deal of his mixed ancestry, and therefore neither does anyone else. He stands in total contrast to Halle Berry.
Jeter's sport might help. Baseball is full of Latin American players who are all over the color spectrum. Jeter's of course not Latin, but he may benefit from the matter-of-fact treatment that we give to mixed-race Latins.

I do wonder how much sinister intent we can really read into Obama's calling Kenyans his "brothers and sisters." If Giuliani went to Italy or Richardson to Mexico and Nicaragua, wouldn't they say warm and affectionate things about their ancestral homelands? Maybe not "my brothers and sisters," which is a little over the top, but they would talk about their pride in their heritages. JFK's trip to Ireland in 1963 was a memorable event.

This thread really should have been called something like "Steve Sailer, Southern Californian Road Warrior" or something like that. Only a fraction of the posts have been about Barack Obama.

One thing that Obama's mixed ancestry is highlighting is just how strange the American racial classification system is, because of the Southern segreationists one drop laws, and the decision of the US Census Bureau to remove the mixed race category in the 1920s. In every other country of the world, with the stranger exception of New Zealand, people's racial ancestry either doesn't matter that much, and/ or there is a large mixed race/ mulatto/ meszito category. When confronted with someone who looks Black, and who has an African-American wife, but has white ancestors and no slave ancestors, Americans' heads explode.

Of course this just illustrates how much race is really a social construct. I think Sailer has problems thinking of the subject this way, but then so do most Americans, including most liberals.

One thing that Obama's mixed ancestry is highlighting is just how strange the American racial classification system is, because of the Southern segreationists one drop laws, and the decision of the US Census Bureau to remove the mixed race category in the 1920s. In every other country of the world, with the stranger exception of New Zealand, people's racial ancestry either doesn't matter that much, and/ or there is a large mixed race/ mulatto/ meszito category.

White segregationist were the one-drop rule's original proponents. They viewed it as a means of preserving racial purity, or something to that effect. In recent decades, however, most of the support for the rule comes from blacks. When the Census Bureau proposed reinstating the mixed racial category for the 2000 Census, there was tremendous opposition from blacks and little if any from whites.

IINM, the one-drop rule in New Zealand is not quite the same; having a trace of Maori ancestry entitles one to vote for certain electoral lists but otherwise confers few benefits.

The one exception to the one-drop-of-blood rule in America is Hawaii, where Obama was a prep. Like Obama, many Hawaiian residents are the products of mixed marriages: in 1956-57, interracial marriage rates ranged from 22.0 percent for professionals to 43.5 percent for farm workers. There’s not much of a one-drop-of-blood rule for defining racial membership in Hawaii that mandated that Obama call himself black and only black.

"Of course this just illustrates how much race is really a social construct."

No it's not, it's biological reality. Click below, scroll down, look at the graphic on the right labeled "An autosomal DNA plot of genetic distances derived from 120 allele frequencies in Cavalli-Sforza's The History and Geography of Human Genes," notice what those clusters circled in yellow correspond with suspicious precision to, and you'll never again be muddled with the lie that "race is a social construct with no basis in biology."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavalli-Sforza

"One thing that Obama's mixed ancestry is highlighting is just how strange the American racial classification system is, because of the Southern segreationists one drop laws, and the decision of the US Census Bureau to remove the mixed race category in the 1920s."

The one drop rule is kept alive by black organizations who want to make their ethnic groups as large as possible. As soon as it became politically advantageous for black groups, the odiousness of the one drop rule disappeared overnight. morality is flexible, eh?

"In every other country of the world, with the stranger exception of New Zealand, people's racial ancestry either doesn't matter that much, and/ or there is a large mixed race/ mulatto/ meszito category."

Right, in Norway, Japan, Finland, Poland, Iceland, Austria, South Korea, Taiwan, and Denmark your race doesn't matter very much and there is a large mixed-race category. You're joking.

"In all, hooray for Sailer, because regular journalists don't have the guts to write this kind of political incorrectness."

I can't believe that someone on the thread accused Steven Sailer of sock-puppeting.

This wasn't written by Sailer. It was clearly written by Lee Siegel.

I find the fact that someone is writing an entry ripping Sailer's take on the book without having read the book hilarious.

Also as far as Kenyan men not working if they don't have to. Watch the Discovery channel. There are a lot of cultures where the women do the majority of the work, and men are by culture what we would consider to be deadbeats.

OK, I propose a game. Which commenter in this thread is actually Steve Sailer masquerading as someone else?

Sailer wouldn't bother with a sock-puppet. It's not as if the guy has a lot of shame.

I have to admit that I find a lot of Sailer's writing interesting, well argued, and--contrary to a lot of people pontificating about social policy--backed-up with data. I don't like a lot of his conclusions, but they are at least subject to argument.

I do get the feeling that he's probably racist, if only because he applies his intellect almost exclusively to looking for ways in which blacks, gays and women are "different" than straight, white men. As one commenter stated earlier, I don't get the feeling that he has real animus to these groups, but just doesn't think much of black, gays or women.

Sailor is a modern day phrenologist and as such, devotes his career to furthering the "science" that influenced the Nazis to begin their euthinasia programs. Like the Nazis, he seeks to brand certain races, and any half of an individual of that race, as biologically inferior and his opinions should not be read, must less debated. To the extent that he has any influence at all, it is the very definition of evil. Anyone who follows his links or engages his arguments is simply lending credence to his claims. I agree with the posters who feel that he should be ignored.

Ultimately, though, it doesn't really matter what a person's motivations are, as long as they make arguments logically, and report on supporting and opposing data with integrity. I haven't read too much of Sailer's stuff, but so far I haven't seen a problem in this regard.

I don't agree with what Just Karl is saying. Whether or not, for example, there are racial differences in IQ due to genetics is an empirical question, not a moral one. I don't think its a particularly interesting question, except insofar as it speaks to the rate of genetic changes in mental capabilities over the last 60K years or so.

Jim W:

"Whether or not, for example, there are racial differences in IQ due to genetics is an empirical question, not a moral one. I don't think its a particularly interesting question, except insofar as it speaks to the rate of genetic changes in mental capabilities over the last 60K years or so."

You might have considered it an interesting question if, for example, your wife had been one of Dr. Patrick Chavis's patients. Politically correct dogma, which maintains there are no differences in average capabilities between races, implies that if African Americans are 12% of the population, than a similar percentage of physicians should be African American. That dogma underpins Affirmative Action.

Affirmative Action made Patrick Chavis a physician when he would not have been qualified otherwise. The result was brutal, incompetent medical care for women unfortunate enough to be treated by him.

Sailer always generates lots of comments. He hits a nerve. That he is merely a web presence, in spite of the interest in his comments, highlights the cost of being so un-PC. Everyone lionizing the iconoclasts of the past, but in practice, people treat them no differently than ever.

Bottom line: Obama's blackness is extremely relevant to his popularity. Sailer's notice of this is refreshing because it is so palpable yet unspoken.

And I'm not a sock puppet.

Regarding your first point, there have been studies comparing identical twins raised separately that clearly show a hefty genetic component in certain outcomes.

Yeah, because adopting parents tend to be upper or middle class. Clearly, genetics has something to do with IQ. It is not clear that race does--the smart genes could be scattered among all the races.

The motivations matter, though. We aren't having this argument because we're intellectually curious (or at least the racists aren't), we're having this argument because some people want to deny that income disparity is evidence of prejudice or other injustice.

But this is a situation in which a type II error is way worse than a type I error--anti-discrimination and affirmative action in the presence of innate racial IQ differences would have far fewer drawbacks (if any) than mistakenly believing that racial differences are innate when they're actually products of discrimination. I'd rather waste a few dollars fixing the problem that (you think) isn't there than ignore a problem that (I think) is there. Wasted dollars is nothing compared to wasted lives. Pascal's Wager is favor of affirmative action: racial injustice is infinitely worse than misallocated affirmative action spending.

I just got back from the gym, where I was treated to Anderson Cooper introducing a CNN piece on the President of Gambia. Apparently the President of Gambia claims that he can cure HIV, by laying on of hands and with special herbs, but only on certain days of the week.

Now there are about fifty Presidents of subsaharan African countries, of various stages of competency or foolishness. I don't think any of them is that ridiculous. Most countries on the continent generally pretty f----- up by international standards, but there are some success stories, as illustrated by the recent "New York Review of Books" article about Rwanda. There is also a genuine crisis going on in Zimbabwe, where the local dictator is a tyrant but no fool. Its hard to think of a less important country than Gambia, which as CNN noted is amazingly poor and about the size of Delaware. How many other stories do you think we will see on African presidents on CNN?

This is an example of racism, or at least of really blantant sterotyping. Noting that women do most of the work in rural Kenya (which as others pointed out is true of many developing countries) isn't.

To get back to Obama's background, it might help bridge the racial divide in the US. For African-Americans there is the fact that he identifies with them, and married an African-American woman. For Whites, there is the fact that he was raised by a White family, well outside the ghetto (or in a "clean" environment, as one Democratic politician put it). All this may allay each groups' worst fears about the other group.

I find it interesting that Sailer presents himself as some paragon of research and empirical rigor in punditry and gets simple facts wrong (also interesting that articles in The American Conservative aren't fact-checked or edited).

"When Obama briefly surfaced in the media in 1990 as the first African-American editor of the Harvard Law Review"

This is just factually incorrect, as Wikipedia can tell you. Look forward to both the correction and Sailer's explanation for why he can't be bothered to spend five seconds getting a fact right when he expects people to take seriously his much more ambitious leaps of 'data-driven' analysis.

And as a pseudo-scientific writer constantly extolling the importance of biology, I wonder if Sailer could pass (right now) the final from an introductory biology course at a major university. I'd bet my life against a dollar he couldn't. It's one thing to be scientifically ignorant at that level (ie, Sailer reads some popular books and articles that rely on cute metaphors and narratives but he has no actual scientific grounding), but I wonder then why he presumes to write about biology and why people are supposed to care what he says about it. Is it because he e-mails Steven Pinker a couple of times a year?

{"When Obama briefly surfaced in the media in 1990 as the first African-American editor of the Harvard Law Review"

This is just factually incorrect, as Wikipedia can tell you.}

Nope, Sailer got it right:

From Wikipedia:

"Obama entered Harvard Law School in 1988. In February 1990, The New York Times reported his election as the Harvard Law Review's "first black president in its 104-year history."

"I wonder if Sailer could pass (right now) the final from an introductory biology course at a major university. I'd bet my life against a dollar he couldn't."

Then you'd die. Dude, he's been basically a science writer for about 10 years.

"Clearly, genetics has something to do with IQ. It is not clear that race does--the smart genes could be scattered among all the races."

The smart genes may be scattered among all the races, but all the empirical evidence (literally millions of IQ test scores) shows that Northeast Asians, on average, outperform whites, and whites, on average, out perform blacks. The gap between whites and blacks in America is significant: 15 points, or one standard deviation. You can choose to ignore the evidence and believe otherwise, but then you have no more claim to reason and objectivity than a creationist does.

"But this is a situation in which a type II error is way worse than a type I error--anti-discrimination and affirmative action in the presence of innate racial IQ differences would have far fewer drawbacks (if any) than mistakenly believing that racial differences are innate when they're actually products of discrimination. I'd rather waste a few dollars fixing the problem that (you think) isn't there than ignore a problem that (I think) is there. Wasted dollars is nothing compared to wasted lives."

Wasted lives? Lives are at stake when an unqualified individual gets a professional degree due to affirmative action. The sad truth is, it's often minorities who suffer the most. See, for example, Patrick Chavis, M.D.. This African American man did not qualify to get into medical school on the merits; he got in through affirmative action, and became a poster boy for liberals when he went to work in inner-city Los Angeles as an OB-GYN. Then he branched out into liposuction and botched a few operations, killing one woman. Would you consider her life wasted by affirmative action? What color do you venture she was?

First black President. Not editor. There is a significant difference. But thanks for playing (and excluding yourself from the group of commenters on this blog who know how to...uhh, read).

And yes, Sailer has been a 'science writer' -- which is my point. He has not demonstrated that he has the scientific knowledge of a decent undergrad. What he has demonstrated is a commitment to glib sophistry he likes to pretend is science.

Great point, Idioteque. Clearly you've devastated Sailer's credibility.

This is another salient feature of Salier's detractors: desire to change the subject.

For those of you in a hurry, let me quickly summarize this intellectually powerful discussion: Steve Sailer is a bad man. Repeat 100 times.

"desire to change the subject."

To recap, you're using this non-sequitur to change the subject about how painfully wrong you were in your last post (non-apology accepted).

I, on the other hand, have not 'changed the subject' at any point in thread (until now).

Anyway, Sailer makes assertions that he can't back up and unilaterally declares victory when there is nothing to refute.

"Despite Obama’s relentless efforts to mold himself into an African-American, his overwhelmingly white upbringing is apparent in his coolly analytical depiction of his mother, a portrait that most black men would find disrespectful."

This is classic Sailer -- throw out a claim you don't intend to demonstrate and when called on this assert it as an example of courage in the face of political correctness. See, we just 'know' stereotypes (whether popular or Sailer-contrived) contain some intrinsic truth, and it's somehow intellectually dishonest to question bold factual assertions made by the Orwell of the nutjob blogosphere.

What Sailer doesn't realize is that this petulant smugness only hurts him. He probably could have debated Gladwell and emerged with a convincing victory (I know that in his own corner of reality he thinks he did) as Gladwell is indeed a rather comical figure whose arguments are often inane (Blink was simply a travesty). Unfortunately, Sailer simply reverted to his usual tactics of assertion, rather than doing the hard work of comprehensive argument with supporting evidence.

I'll give you an example. Sailer argued that "black men enjoy being seen as big spenders" [and so car salesmen quote higher prices to them]. Gladwell essentially responded by calling bullshit. Sailer saw this as an inability to refute his elegantly presented, devastating criticism. The thing is, Sailer in no way demonstrated to a neutral observer that black men enjoy being seen as big spenders and thus car salesmen should quote higher prices to them. It's not that this argument is wrong on its face, the problem is that Sailer assumes the premise of his argument is proven when clearly it is not. Gladwell really doesn't have to refute anything, because Sailer hasn't met any standard of compelling argument. And it's not like this is a case where Sailer's premise can be logically inferred from previous argument (that salesmen are rationally discriminating -- which also shouldn't be accepted on its face just because some people enjoy talking about the free market, but I digress). Even if it is the case that discrimination is rational, it's not like blacks being seen as big spenders is the only possible explanation. But Sailer can't be bothered to document his claims; he is too busy making 'provocative' and 'challenging' arguments to be burdended with the dull task of rigor. Of course, in discourse we can't be expected to outline every single premise. Clearly, though, it is not unreasonable to ask somemone to convince us of the rather major claims (eg, the argument just discussed) Sailer typically throws out as the merest truisms.

In the end, Sailer is a mildly intelligent man who vastly overrates both his brilliance and his knowledge. There is indeed a market for challenging the politically correct assumptions of mainstream scholarship and punditry, but Sailer's personality doesn't allow for the humility necessary to meticulously work out more modest but ironclad arguments that can't be easily dismissed as the unsupported ramblings of a fringe conservative. Sailer's response to being dismissed is to become defensive and prickly. This is his downfall. Until he recognizes that he needs to build more boring, substantive cases from the fringe rather than embarrassing himself by getting in very personal spats when confornted by a darling of the mainstream like Gladwell, he will not make the impact he hopes to.

Note to Sailer: it doesn't matter if you're "politically incorrect" stereotypes are true. You can either be a martyr for your version of truth, which is relatively easy for anyone to do, or you can do the hard work of actually persuading people that you're right about the ruth rather than just denigrating them as liars and fools. Time to grow up.

Idioteque,

Sailer argued that "black men enjoy being seen as big spenders" [and so car salesmen quote higher prices to them]. Gladwell essentially responded by calling bullshit. Sailer saw this as an inability to refute his elegantly presented, devastating criticism. The thing is, Sailer in no way demonstrated to a neutral observer that black men enjoy being seen as big spenders and thus car salesmen should quote higher prices to them."

Why do you think car salesmen tend to quote higher prices to blacks (and women)? Are they all racists and sexists?

And as far as Sailer's statement that "black men enjoy being seen as big spenders": might a neutral observer note some obvious examples that would lend weight to this? For example: the conspicuous consumption flaunted in videos of popular rappers; the tendency of even low-income blacks to purchase expensive sneakers and replica jerseys; their tendency to buy gratuitous, expensive effects for their cars (e.g., spinning hubcaps), etc. Steve Sailer isn't the only person to mention this: Bill Cosby and Chris Rock have too. Astute car salesmen have taken advantage of this for years.

yeah, well, whatever, but who cares?

Jennifer - what is the point of your existence exactly?

Anne:

"Degenerate racism; astonishing, frightening, horrid."

That is what we have, a purveyor of "degenerate racism" and his minions.

For the record, OJ is black once again. We will trade Powell and Rice back to our African brothers for Obama if he wins the presidency. Will throw in either Oprah, Jason Williams or Timberlake. I will call Halle Berry anything she wants. And the Wu Tang Clan are Chinese.

The point, moron, is to point to the evil of racism, as others have done. Racism is a sickness, and the writer of the essay would spread the sickness. Are you really the lurking writer, or just too moronic and worse to understand?

"Degenerate racism; astonishing, frightening, horrid."

"That is what we have, a purveyor of "degenerate racism" and his minions."

"Racism is a sickness, and the writer of the essay would spread the sickness."

Ah, the smell of reasoned discussion in the spring air!

This is all a lot of intellectual posing by liberals who gain status points by how loudly they decry racism. And yet, you are all racists.

None of you would send her children to a majority black public high school; none of you would buy a house in a majority black neighborhood.

There are plenty of white, Hispanic, asian people who like to be seen as big spenders.

Of course liberals are, to varying degress, racist. No one is free from mindless superstition in their day-to-day lives. But the pursuing non-racist politics is still better than the alternative.

Are we really arguing about whether Sailer is racist, when he and his minions have repeatedly made the argument here and elsewhere that whites are inherently superior to other races? That's the very definition of racism.

There's another definition -- hatred of people of other races -- and to give Sailer credit, I don't think he meets that one.

So, he's definitely a racialist -- to him, everything is about race. It seems like all he thinks about. Even without the racism, I find this a pretty despicable character trait.

He's racist in one sense -- he thinks his race is objectively superior. He's not racist in the more malignant sense, of thinking that other races should therefore be wiped out or something. It's the sort of racism that was perfectly acceptable up until, say, the mid-20th century.

Also, you can't argue with him about race. Ever try to debate a well-educated creationist? You'd probably lose, because they know a whole lot of facts, and yet they still get the big picture wrong. That's Sailer on race.

He's not racist in the more malignant sense, of thinking that other races should therefore be wiped out or something. It's the sort of racism that was perfectly acceptable up until, say, the mid-20th century.

But what happened in the mid-20th? A group of people used the type of race pseudoscience that Sailor espouses as an excuse to exterminate the "inferior" races. It's called eugenics and it's immoral. At best, it's purpose is institutionalized discrimination, at worst, it's purpose is to justify genocide. Just because Sailor doesn't make outrageous claims to this effect, doesn't mean that he's not motivated by hatred.

Too Many Steves is completely right, though from this single post alone the despicable writer despises people of other races as well. Also, the despicable writer could never and should never be debated though he is ignorant as a twig.

TMS, your spelling of despicable is better than mine.

Actually, early on, several posters called him wrong. (As in the Al Smith reference.) After that, his wrongness just became accepted.

Very true, due to these calm, measured voices:

- "Degenerate racism; astonishing, frightening, horrid."
- "That is what we have, a purveyor of "degenerate racism" and his minions."
- "Racism is a sickness, and the writer of the essay would spread the sickness."

You know, liberals are modern version of the inquisition, the new witch-burners. Data? Science? None needed. All we must do is scream and attack.

I haven't seen a single intelligent and intellectually honest rebuttal to Sailer yet. And that includes Yglasias.

" I haven't seen a single intelligent and intellectually honest rebuttal to Sailer yet. And that includes Yglasias."

Furthermore, Lee Siegel is a brave, brilliant writer who is only attacked by mediocrities because he makes them feel inferior. And I'm *not* Lee Siegel! My name is Sprezzatura!

Man, I wish I had as many friends as Sailer does, who all show up to defend him when his ugly side is clearly revealed. What a lot of supportive friends he has. What a lot of different names they all have. What a loser.

Too Many Steves:

"Are we really arguing about whether Sailer is racist, when he and his minions have repeatedly made the argument here and elsewhere that whites are inherently superior to other races? That's the very definition of racism."

I challenge you to find and link to any Steve Sailer essay where he argues that "whites are inherently superior to other races". He never argues that. He points out that different races have different average capabilities -- some tend to excel in one area and others in another. In some areas whites, on average, have lower capabilities than other races. For example, Northeast Asians have higher IQs on average than whites.

"But what happened in the mid-20th? A group of people used the type of race pseudoscience that Sailor espouses as an excuse to exterminate the "inferior" races. It's called eugenics and it's immoral."

It's worth remembering that the eugenics movement actually started here in the United States, and that some of its chief proponents were on the Left (e.g., Margaret Sanger). As far as bringing up the Nazis, consider this excerpt from How to Help the Left Half of the Bell Curve"

"Far more subtle, although the Great and the Good ceaselessly sermonize us that racial conflicts are caused by the majority feeling superior to the minority, a quick global survey suggests the opposite. The doltish masses have frequently risen up against astute "middle-man minorities" that control trade.

Southeast Asians have repeatedly launched murderous pogroms against the Overseas Chinese who dominate their economies, such as in Indonesia in 1998. African-Americans burned down hundreds of Korean stores in South Central L.A. in 1992. Fijians, Ugandans, and Trinidadians have all tried to oppress the more clever Asian Indians in their midst. The Turks killed huge numbers of Armenians in 1915. And from 1933 to 1945 the Germans eliminated most European Jews, at a time when German Jews were the best-educated ethnic group in the world. (The Nazis banned IQ tests specifically because Jews outperformed gentile Germans.)"

To whose who keep whining that they haven't seen "a single intelligent and intellectually honest rebuttal to Sailer yet", what would convince you?

I think the above proofs of sloppiness in research, lack of establishing data, quotes from Sailer which are, to put it mildly, broad over-statements and stereotypes--that's pretty good enough to start with.

"Of course liberals are, to varying degress, racist. No one is free from mindless superstition in their day-to-day lives. But the pursuing non-racist politics is still better than the alternative."

The reason for liberal racism, in the sense that liberal whites avoid black areas, etc. is not "mindless superstition". It is a rational, and data-founded expectation that black schools will be worse, and black areas more crime-ridden. Liberals, like most people, want the best for their children and act accordingly.

"I think the above proofs of sloppiness in research, lack of establishing data, quotes from Sailer which are, to put it mildly, broad over-statements and stereotypes--that's pretty good enough to start with. "

Does this "sloppiness of research" refer to his forwarding of the WaPo:s mixup of "editor" and "president" with regards to the Harvard Law Review? If so, color me unimpressed.

As for the accusations of "lack of establishing data", "broad over-statements and stereotypes", well, he might be guilty if held to the standards of science. But he's not a scientist - he's a journalist. (A very interesting one, I should add.)

Final piece of spam for this session:

"But what happened in the mid-20th? A group of people used the type of race pseudoscience that Sailor espouses as an excuse to exterminate the "inferior" races. It's called eugenics and it's immoral."

Here is a different lesson learned from more recent history: Wild extrapolation from World War II is perhaps not always the best way of arriving at the truth?

As far as bringing up the Nazis, consider this excerpt from How to Help the Left Half of the Bell Curve"

Sailors "solutions" are simply a re-casting of the historically repugnant ideas of eugenics. He is not original. For example, he wants to halt unskilled immigration to prevent the unfit inferior elements from race mixing in the US. He promotes public health as a means to advance racial hygiene. He suggests that African-Americans should know their place and work harder at becoming tap dancers and jazz musicians instead of unfairly taking up space at prestigious universities. Sailor wants to portray these ideas as "helpful" but they are the very same ideas that were used to justify segregation over 100 years ago. He is no scientist bucking PC convention, he's a sad and bitter man desperately trying to revive historically discredited ideas.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics

Clearly, I was wrong when I said there were only one or two Steve Salier lackeys in this thread. Looks like the entire gang has come out in full force.

"I haven't seen a single intelligent and intellectually honest rebuttal to Salier yet. And that includes Yglesias."

Nice. You know what? I haven't seen a single intelligent and intellectually honest rebuttal to Yglesias yet. And that includes Salier. So easy to reverse two words!

"Sailors "solutions" are simply a re-casting of the historically repugnant ideas of eugenics."

This is a neat example of how the doctrine of "World War II as the fount of all wisdom and morality" can distort thinking and policy.

Much as the neocons were convinced that they had to invade Iraq in order not to be Munich-style "appeasers", empirics be damned, that the enemy are "Islamofascists", etc. immigration must go on, no matter what the empirical social stats say, because to do otherwise would be to think kinda, sorta, a little bit like Hitler. Which is unthinkable.

"He suggests that African-Americans should know their place and work harder at becoming tap dancers and jazz musicians instead of unfairly taking up space at prestigious universities."

This is horrible caricature. Black academic failure wasn't invented or caused by Steve Sailer - it's a problem that white liberal academics have been banging their heads against for, what, 40 years, with very limited success. But that certainly hasn't done anything to reduce their moral smugness.

"he's a sad and bitter man"

Yea, yea, whatever.

"Steve Salier lackeys"

He'll be pleasantly surprised to find out he has "lackeys", no doubt.

Just Karl:

"Sailors "solutions" are simply a re-casting of the historically repugnant ideas of eugenics. He is not original. For example, he wants to halt unskilled immigration to prevent the unfit inferior elements from race mixing in the US."

Sailer has never advocated eugenics, and he doesn't want to halt unskilled immigration because of fears of "race mixing"; he wants to halt unskilled immigration because it depresses the wages of low-skilled Americans. If Sailer is a racist for pointing this out, so is Harvard's George Borjas.

Well, here we have a gathering of Sailer and the let's show that we are as racist as Sailer fan club. Give racists an excuse to be racists and there they are.

Petey:

"It certainly is odd to read an unembarrassed racist in real time. Usually, you can only find them in historical writings. Most racists these days have a sense of public shame that Sailer lacks."

Also, Andrew Sullivan should be mentioned as being just as crazily vicious as Sailer but there's no suprise there.

I'm a liberal, and I haven't been bothered by anything I've read that Sailer has written (admittedly not much). I did think the quote Matt excerpted was a little strange, and sounded like it might be reading too much into Obama's book, but then again, I haven't read it.

I just want to touch on one topic: why should liberals be upset if it turns out that there are average differences between races, in things like IQ? The distributions have high variance, so there is still lots of overlap. For example, I have blue eyes. If it was scientifically proven that brown eyed people are on average 10 IQ points higher than blue eyed people, what difference would that make to me? Would it make me less smart? No.

I don't think the question is settled one way or another about racial differences and IQ (although I'm no expert). Its an empirical question, and not a terribly interesting one because we do know that races diverged very recently in evolutionary history, so there probably can't be too much difference (and the psychological data also indicates that whatever average differences exist are small).

How many times can the commenters on this post use the word “racist” and “racism”? I heard someone say once that when Congress votes 99-1 on some issue, you know we are in trouble.

Too Many Steves:

“He's racist in one sense -- he thinks his race is objectively superior.”

I have never seen where Steve Sailer claims that whites are superior. He points out, as many others have, that Asians have the highest measured IQs, whites next, Hispanics next, and blacks next. You can speculate on why this is (the mix of nature vs. nurture), but you can’t deny the data. This IQ gap then leads to many problems for blacks in America - such as difficulties in gaining economic equality - just like it does for whites with lower IQs.

But just like IQ differences do not impute inferiority or superiority on an individual, the same is true of groups. Was Mao Tse-Tung superior to the gentle family man that picks up your garbage each week because he had a higher IQ? Likewise, are blacks as a race inferior to whites because IQ tests say their mental computing processes differ from whites?

Oddly, it is the Left that often reaches the conclusion that “Lower IQs = Racial Inferiority”. I have read many places where a writer criticizes someone for pointing out the IQ gap and then goes on to say that this would mean that there is racial inferiority going on. This explains the horror to many of even bringing up the topic of IQ differences.

"I'm a liberal, and I haven't been bothered by anything I've read that Sailer has written (admittedly not much)."

Then, you are either a liar or an idiot.

"How many times can the commenters on this post use the word 'racist' and 'racism'?"

As many times as it takes to show just what is racism, like your idiot comment.

"Unless they can bribe their way into a prestigious office job, most of Obama’s male relatives work as little as possible, relying on their womenfolk for food and shelter."

Racism at its most crazed.

"In his head, Obama surely knows that his becoming the world’s biggest man would be bad for the work ethic of Kenyans, some of whom would assume America would support them. But in his heart, none of that matters."

Racism, just as crazed.

What is interesting, also, is that racism goes so well with vicious idiots of the radical-right.

Ari:

"I just want to touch on one topic: why should liberals be upset if it turns out that there are average differences between races, in things like IQ?"

Liberals might be upset because, if there are average differences between races, this weakens the case for Affirmative Action. As long as liberals believe that blacks are under-represented in certain professions because of institutional racism, they can use that to demonstrate the need for affirmative action. But what if blacks have, on average, IQ scores 15 points lower than whites? That would explain better than claims of institutional racism why they are under-represented in high-IQ professions.

It would also suggest that affirmative action goals aimed at getting a percentage of blacks in a high-IQ profession equal to blacks' percentage of the American population are unrealistic. If only one out of six blacks has an IQ higher than the white average of 100, how can one expect a similar percentage of blacks and whites to qualify as M.D.s, J.D.s, P.E.s, etc.?

Jim W:

"I just want to touch on one topic: why should liberals be upset if it turns out that there are average differences between races, in things like IQ?"

Can you read, Dave? Obviously you can't think straight, but try learning to read straight. Happy with your racist thinking, Dave?

Ari, take your ritalin.

The state of the science is certainly pointing in the direction of there being IQ differences between races, and they are differences we have no idea how to change. We pretty much know this now, but we'll know it for sure in three or four years, tops.

The (valid) concern of many on this thread is: what will our country and world look like once this is widely understood? The policy implications are enormous, and it's a trip that can end badly (Holocaust, e.g.). That's why so many people (Ari and anne are classic examples) flail about with content-free vituperation when faced with Sailer: the state of the science backs Sailer up, so all they have is the word "racism" to keep us from going there (for now).

But Ari and anne's fears are valid, so we need to come up with a humane, fair intellectual structure of what the world will be like when Human Biodiversity hits the academy. It won't be long, folks.

This is why Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker recently ended his speech on this topic at YIVO with the admonition that "our current intellectual life is poorly equipped to handle these coming realities." (I'm paraphrasing but the speech is here if you want to see it:)

http://www.cjh.org/programs/programarchives.php

One other thing: note that even though admitting Human Biodiversity (HBD) can end badly, as I pointed out in my previous post, so too can what we have now, the Blank Slate (opposite of HBD).

HBDs worst-case scenario is a Holocaust-like racial genocide, while the Blank Slate's worst case scenario is the just as undesirable totalitarian/communism of Stalin and Mao.

So while you can argue against HBD on the grounds that it can lead to Hitlerism, you must also acknowledge that Blank Slatism can lead to Stalinism. So it's a Scylla/Charybdis catch-22 (patting self on back for awesome literary reference)

Perhaps it is because Sailor refuses to connect the dots of his ideas that many of you are refusing to see the big racist picture. Let's connect the dots and see what kind of picture he is painting.

Sailor maintains that Asians have significantly higher IQs than Africans, and that Africans are significantly more gifted athletically than Asians. Without getting into a discussion about whether there is such a thing as intellegence, let alone whether it is measured by IQ tests, let's assume that Sailor is right and that these traits (athleticism and intellegence) are hereditary. The reason he gives for the difference between races is evolution. Now it is known there is no single intellegence or athletic gene. These traits come from a complex of multiple genes which have evolved together in these populations and which provide an advantage to those individuals which carry them.

There is a genetic term called "outbreeding depression". Outbreeding depression results when divergent populations with different gene complexes produce offspring. It is highly unlikely that any of the offspring will possess the entire gene complex of the mother or the father. Instead the gene complexes that have evolved to be so advantageous will become split apart. Such offspring are said to have "reduced fitness".

In other words, if an African male and an Asian female mate, their children will be neither as intellegent nor as athletic as either of their parents (ie dumber than even their father and less athletic than even their mother). In addition, many other traits such as disease resistence may be similarly affected.

So, by emphasizing the importance of genetic differences between racial populations, Sailor is attempting to use evolutionary biology to demonstrate that racial mixing produces a society of less fit individuals. He is, in effect, defending and justifying laws against miscegenation.

But, of course, because he never says "interracial marriage is wrong," those of you who are too stupid to follow his reasoning fail to see him as a racist. Ask yourself to what good purpose can Sailors studies of racial differences be put.

I was going to attempt to defend Sailer, but why bother with people who can't distinguish an ad hominem insult ("He's a racist"), from an argument ("he's wrong because of...") ?

On second thought, I'll address a comment made by a somewhat fair-minded critic of Sailer: It's unfair to complain that Sailer's potential over-emphasis on genetic factors invalidates his arguments (let alone his reputation). First, Sailer's emphasis on the subject is justified on the basis of his being nearly the only pundit writing about it. Second, if he explored every possible non-genetic factor, the Internet would collapse under the burden of trying to encapsulate this infinite subject(s).

Oh, another observation:

I find it really ironic that liberal commentators on this site would stand up for the downtrodden by mocking eeeevil Steve Sailer, and do so by mocking him for being poor.

JustKarl, you're ignorant. Steve Sailer has never defended miscengnation laws. Cite one example to the contrary, if you can manage it. To Sailer's mind, people marrying out of love is a good thing, which he has repeatedly stated. Unlike yourself, he understands the basics of genetics and, perhaps more importantly, statistics. He writes under the assumption that his readers have grasped these subjects, too. Obviously he has overestimated you.

Sailor [sic] maintains that Asians have significantly higher IQs than Africans, and that Africans are significantly more gifted athletically than Asians.

For the benefit of those as thick as yourself, Sailer in fact asserts (using academic studies, not personal prejudice) that the AVERAGE Asian has a higher IQ than the AVERAGE African. C

Contrary to those who claim he's obsessed with genetics, Sailer has theorized that poor diet play a large role in depressed African IQ.

Just Karl claims I'm a dangerous person because, he says, "In other words, if an African male and an Asian female mate, their children will be neither as intellegent nor as athletic as either of their parents"

So that explains why Tiger Woods is such a bad golfer?

Much better established in the science literature is the deleterious effect of "in-breeding depression."

Steve, just imagine how well Earl Woods might have done had your kind not discouraged his kind from playing on the Tour.

It's obvious to me that you advocate eugenic ideas, but I'd be interested to hear you deny it. Why not address my concerns instead of changing the subject to the genetic problems experienced by your defenders.

Much better established in the science literature is the deleterious effect of "in-breeding depression."

And, of course, is totally unrelated to what you actually wrote about, Mr. Sailer. In your Obama expose, you ventured far from the "science literature" into the arcane mysteries of social psychology.

Unless you're planning to make the argument that the bell curve holds the key to Obama's adolescent journey...?

People like Sailer are simply conservative America's answer to communist historians who had to bend the world around to determine how class conflict was the driving force that explained, for instance, why Freud liked coke and dreams about penises.

You know, one thing I wonder: you don't think any of the tens of alleles affecting IQ differ at all in frequency between human populations? It's not just races, either.

I think the point is that Sailer's representations are more vastly more potent than his theories. I don't think anyone would contend that its impossible for there to be genetic differences between races.

But even if you grant for the sake of argument that Sailer's representation of family dynamics in Africa are correct, he chooses to end his article with a passage that attempts to define Obama as an individual and in terms of his presidential character with reference not to the culture in which Obama lives now, but to a representation of african culture soaked in Sailor's moral dissaproval and which could also serve as a sound-bite explanation for one of the most traditional cultural and racist tropes about black behavior. His suggestion is that as president Obama could (why predict anything with certainty when all you have to do is create the picture and hope it becomes the accepted wisdom) play out the destiny he's inherited from his family in Africa which is to seek Big Man status in order to enable the lazy habits of his relatives. (Because, you know, there's no other reason that an extremely charismatic, intelligent, handsome, and graceful speaker and already succesful politician would want to be president.)

Again, granting arguendo the big man patronage stuff, this rhetorical strategy does the very thing which liberals rail against stereotypes for doing: colors our understanding of proximate reality, the individual case, with an imprecise and injust brush.

And then look at the events that Sailer relies on to make the case that Obama would not be able to resist the pull of the patterns (hardly established in any meaningful way, I remind you) of his heritage. Obama takes the extraordinary step for a politician of telling a crowd ofjubilant supporters that he will not come back to see them when pandering to them would cost him nothing, and then, as they cheer anyway, as they shower him with expressed love and support, he makes a reciprocal gesture of good will and refers to them as his brothers and sisters. Would this interpretation of the speech to the crowd in Africa come to mind if you weren't looking for it? I find this implausible. At its most insincere, it strikes me more as a gesture of formal courtesy.

Perhaps a more plausible explanation is that (you know, I'm just throwing this out there as a possibiltiy) Sailer is playing out the role he assigns in his piece to Obama, an intelligent man blind to his own psychological failings, unable to acknowledge his own resentment-based obsession with race and driven to simultaneously obscure and perpetuate it in the guise of an interest in truth and progress.

Dear Timothysul:

Rather than rely on Matthew Yglesias' obtuse misinterpretation of my article, you should read it for yourself. The point of my essay is:

"Numerous white moderates assume that a man of Obama’s superlative intelligence must be kidding when he espouses his cast-iron liberalism on race-related policies, but they don’t understand the emotional imperative of racial loyalty to him."

His recent trip to Kenya, as recorded by Ben Wallace-Wells in Rolling Stone, illustrates the war between Obama's head (which understands how much blacks have been hurt by reliance on government handouts) and heart (which doesn't care).

Understanding perfectly well from his first trip to Kenya the corrupting dangers to Kenyans of reliance on a well-connected Big Man for financial support (a point illustrated by numerous details in his first book's long account of his late 1980s visit to Kenya), Obama started out by lecturing disappointed Kenyans not to expect anything from him now that he is a U.S. Senator.

Eventually, however, at a later speech in Nairobi's slum, he was overcome by the adulation of the crowd and tossed aside the admirable prudence of his earlier speeches to indulge in pure emotional identity politics. Wallace-Wells implies (although does not prove) that that moment was when he decided to run for President.

Now, Obama is a very smart man, so he knows that the hope of Kenyans that they would benefit from his being powerful in Washington is ridiculous -- as he originally told the crowd in his ancestor's home village, he is an American Senator, not a Kenyan one.

And he knows that Kenyans' naive expectations that he would perform the traditional Big Man's duty of supporting his elastically, endlessly vast extended family out of funds looted from the government is absolutely the wrong message for them to hear. The message _implied_ in his first book's account of his male Kenyan relatives is that they need to stop drinking, stop relying on their womenfolk for support, stop trying to marry more than one woman, stop trying to become either a Big Man or sponge off one, and finish their educations and start little businesses and the like.

But, because the great desire of Obama's life, at least from age 10 to age 33 (as endlessly recounted in his "Story of Race and Inheritance"), is to be a beloved member of the black race, all that went out the window at his big speech in Nairobi's slum.

Now, Wallace-Wells likes the Obama who follows his heart more than the Obama who follows his head. I'm the opposite. But the important thing is that Obama has done us all the favor of telling us more about what's in his heart that any Presidential candidate in living memory. Yet, most of us continue to make up fantasies about what we hope Obama is like, rather than to read and to think hard about what the man has written.

"Now, Obama is a very smart man"

I'm befuddled now, Steve. How could Obama be smart considering that he's black?

wow, the longer this thread goes on, the more transparent the sock-puppets become.
Zagnut was obvious from the start. "Hooray for Sailer" George gave it away with the cheer-leading. And now Eeee3 know all about what Steve Sailer thinks and asserts, and what "to his mind" the conclusions really are.

I'm afraid Sailer is unraveling before our very eyes.

Sorry that people teased you about being poor, though. That's uncalled for. It's your lousy arguments they should focus on.

Count Cant,

Actually don't think they were sock puppets. Sailer put up a link to his site and his readers came over to stick up for him.

I enjoyed Sailer's article. It certainly was an unique take on Obama, I get the sense that Steve actually likes the guy, and I don't believe he has an racial animus (or superiority) issues with the guy-- I don't think Sailer would deny Obama probably has the highest IQ of any candidate running this cycle, and that, for a politician or anyone else-- Obama seems to be in excellent emotional health (I'd say the same about Edwards).

I am bemused at the reaction he's getting on this thread, you can disagree with Steve's conclusions, but he's not pulling evidence out of thin air. One of the hallmarks of an developed (vs. developing) nation is loyalty to the state trumps loyalty to the clan or tribe. What Steve wrote about Kenya and the Big Man theory of politics jibes with what I've read of other accounts of developing nation sociology. To give a vivid example from Theodore Dalrymple's account of his time as a white British doctor working in 1970s Rhodesia:

"Salaries in Rhodesia were equal for blacks and whites doing the same job, so that a black junior doctor received the same salary as mine. But there remained a vast gulf in our standards of living, the significance of which at first escaped me; but it was crucial in explaining the disasters that befell the newly independent countries that enjoyed what Byron called, and eagerly anticipated as, the first dance of freedom.

The young black doctors who earned the same salary as we whites could not achieve the same standard of living for a very simple reason: they had an immense number of social obligations to fulfill. They were expected to provide for an ever expanding circle of family members (some of whom may have invested in their education) and people from their village, tribe, and province. An income that allowed a white to live like a lord because of a lack of such obligations scarcely raised a black above the level of his family...."
http://www.city-journal.org/html/13_2_oh_to_be.html

I think Timothysul provides an example of a rational, nuanced critique of what Sailer has written. I find it pretty convincing. Its a nice alternative to the hysteria of many of the other commenters.

As for Petey's comment above, give me a break. Open up a statistics book and read about the concepts of means and variances.

And as for Ragout's prediction that there will be huge social and policy implications if it is scientifically proven that there are differences in average IQ between races that are due to genetics: I don't think so. Most people will simply choose not to believe it, and the scientifically literate people will remember that there are huge overlaps between the distributions, so it doesn't really matter when you are dealing with individuals.

I'm a huge fan of Obama, and after reading all this back and forth, I guess I'll have to go and buy the book. Maybe even both books.

The way the miserable wretch works is to write a racist diatribe and then with supporting minions repeat the racist diatribe over and over in hopes it will take.

Correction: I meant Zagnut instead of Ragout.

Petey,

You're either an idiot or disingenuous. Which is it?

The smart genes may be scattered among all the races, but all the empirical evidence (literally millions of IQ test scores) shows that Northeast Asians, on average, outperform whites, and whites, on average, out perform blacks. The gap between whites and blacks in America is significant: 15 points, or one standard deviation. You can choose to ignore the evidence and believe otherwise, but then you have no more claim to reason and objectivity than a creationist does.

Haha. For all you racists talk about science, you've got not one ounce of logic. If IQ is *at all* about nurture, then your IQ tests prove nothing at all like what you're talking about--because race obviously correlates with nurture.

You use rhetoric and statistics to defend your position, but that's completely different from using reason and objectivity to arrive at a position.

Would you consider her life wasted by affirmative action? What color do you venture she was?

I only know one thing about the case. It's a sample size of one. No, it's not even a sample. It's just you holding an anecdote in your memory because you're a racist. As though no white doctor ever was a bad doctor.

I am amused by the tone of the comments re Steve Sailer:endless variations on the theme,"Steve is a mean,mean man!" What a bunch of babies! As if personal attacks are a statement of anything! One comment re the "Obamas male relatives work as little as possible...relying on women..." This is "frightening,horrid" racism? Anyone who has sought to work among the Africans will agree that the pattern is one of women doing the work,and the men sitting around doing nothing but looking for sex! Hmm..sounds familiar,like our inner cities! Recall a white woman up for confirmation for a top federal job soon after obama was elected;it was discovered she once made a remark about black males having no work ethic. Obama went after her for that,and of course she crawled. But it must have been interesting,given his past Africa visit, what was going thru Barry's mind as he tongue-lashed this poor white gal!

"I don't believe he has an racial animus (or superiority) issues with the guy"

That's certainly possible.

I'm just extrapolating out from the fact that Sailer has racial animus and superiority issues to every other dark skinned human in existence to thinking that he also has racial animus and superiority issues to Obama which animate the tone of his piece.

But extrapolation isn't always correct, of course.

"Anyone who has sought to work among the Africans will agree that the pattern is one of women doing the work,and the men sitting around doing nothing but looking for sex! Hmm..sounds familiar,like our inner cities!"

I'm curious if beowulf thinks this quote from joshrandall just upthread also exhibits no racial animus or superiority issues...

Petey:

"Anyone who has sought to work among the Africans will agree that the pattern is one of women doing the work,and the men sitting around doing nothing but looking for sex! Hmm..sounds familiar,like our inner cities!" [joshrandall]

"I'm curious if beowulf thinks this quote from joshrandall just upthread also exhibits no racial animus or superiority issues..."[Petey]

Barack Obama himself noticed a connection between the gender roles he observed in Africa and those in inner-city Chicago -- is he a racist too? One point Sailer has made is that most sociological studies of African Americans ignore their African heritage.

Perhaps it is just a coincidence that some of the same trends researchers find in sub-Saharan families -- low paternal investment, children raised almost exclusively by women -- are also ubiquitous among inner-city African Americans. Is it racist to question whether there is a connection?

"Is it racist to question whether there is a connection?"

Questions aren't racist. But some questioners are.

"Unless they can bribe their way into a prestigious office job, most of Obama’s male relatives work as little as possible, relying on their womenfolk for food and shelter."

From beginning to end, the writer of this article is racist beyond racist; completely malicious, completely ill. No respectable publication in America would have allowed such a hatefilled false racist article. Shameful by a writer who knows no shame. Racist, malicious and ill.

Ari,

Can't you do better than make unfounded ad hominem accusations? I know you're preaching to the choir with Yglesias readers but it could be good practice for you if you ever meet someone who expects you to support your claims with evidence.

What have we learned on this thread? That anyone who agrees with a blogger you disagree with must be said blogger's "lackey" or "minion", or quite possibly his "sock puppet". Meanwhile, debates about the substance of the offending blogger's claims are put aside in favor of coercive name-calling.

During slavery, observers in the South noted how African-American males respected their women more and were more equitable with child-rearing and such than their white counterparts. This is a big reason why the wives of slave owners were so bitter towards female slaves. This trend has changed with a century of ghetto life. So when were African-American males following their genetic pre-disposition, in the ghetto or under slavery? Genetic arguments, like Marxist dialectic materialism and game theory, are just ways lazy commentators can act like they can explain the world without knowing history. Studying the history of Kenya - its racial politics, the legacy of British imperialism, the Mau Mau legacy, the land reform legacy, etc. - is harding than glibly chalking up everything to genetics.

Reality Man,

Yours is a straw man argument. Who says everything is determined by genetics? That's as rational as saying nothing is determined by genetics.

The connection between African behaviors and African American behaviors could just as well be cultural. Aren't there said to be links between black vernacular English (ebonics) and word patterns in African languages? So too, other aspects of sub-Saharan culture may have been passed along.

"Yours is a straw man argument. Who says everything is determined by genetics?"

Except that is the underlying message of Sailer's work. He writes in a narrative of genetic determinism. He also ignores the fact that on the genetic level, the inhabitants of the average African village have greater diversity than a village of comparable village in Europe. When you get right down to it, trying to put anything down to African genes is like trying to grab smoke. His grasp of science is subpar and his grasp of history is nonexistent. To take another example, there is little to distinguish South Koreans as a whole with North Koreans on the genetic level, yet they live very different lives. These lives have been shaped by history. When you get right down to it, trying to find the determinst role of genetics between races is a waste of time that ignores history, cross-cultural contact and the writer's own prejiduces. So, to get back to my original example, what does genetic determinism tell us which black male-female dynamic was "truer" on the genetic level, the one during slavery or the one in the ghetto?

Ari uses this quote from Sailer's review,

"Unless they can bribe their way into a prestigious office job, most of Obama’s male relatives work as little as possible, relying on their womenfolk for food and shelter."

to illustrate the reviewer's racism. But, it appears that the reviewer was just summarizing what was presented in Obama's autobiography. How can that possibly be racist?

----------------------------

As for the similarity of certain sociological phenomena in Chicago and Kenya, isn't it more likely that these arose independently in response to local conditions, rather than them both being manifestations of the same underlying African culture a couple hundred years after the two populations diverged?

Also, as someone who has family throughout Africa, I can tell you that there is a huge gulf culturally between Africa-Americans and Africans. The cultural context for how history unfolded for various groups of African descent in the US and throughout Africa is just very different. When African slaves were brought over to the US, they were robbed of their names. Their children were often sold off young to other plantations, meaning that those children were robbed of the chance to learn about their families' cultural heritage. Culture gets passed down to a large extent through institutions like families and schools, neither of which were fully open to black slaves. West Africa is home to numerous cultural traditions, so black slaves were descended from a variety of such groups and lived among those of different groups. African-American culture was crafted in the US from a few fragments of various, mostly forgotten cultural traditions, along with infusions of white American cultures and Native American cultures. African-American culture is also diverse, seen in the differences between those who trace their families back to plantations in Louisiana, as opposed to other parts of the US and the cultural differences between African-Americans of different sections of the US. Learning about and mastering this history is hard, but it is necessary to answer my question or to realize the question itself is based on false pretenses. Being glib about genetics without having the necessary historical and scientific understanding of the material is easy. Sailer, for all his pretenses, is just lazy.

Re: "So, to get back to my original example, what does genetic determinism tell us which black male-female dynamic was "truer" on the genetic level, the one during slavery or the one in the ghetto?"

I don't think anyone is proposing that these cultural phenomena have a genetic explanation that is particular to people of African descent. I think what Sailer is getting at is that they are examples of cultural memes of African descent. At least, that is the only sensible way to tie them together in my opinion. As I said above, though, this seems dubious to me. It seems more likely that the absent father phenomenon arose independently in different places in response to the conditions there.

Also, its true that there is greater genetic variation within African populations than within European populations (due, I assume, to the fact that people mostly evolved in Africa). However, it does not follow that genetic variability between the different populations is insignificant. For obvious examples, just look at skin color and hair.

"As for the similarity of certain sociological phenomena in Chicago and Kenya, isn't it more likely that these arose independently in response to local conditions, rather than them both being manifestations of the same underlying African culture a couple hundred years after the two populations diverged?
Posted by: Jim W on March 19, 2007 03:46 PM"

Bingo. Besides, most African-Americans are descended from slaves taken from West Africa. Kenya is in East Africa. If you don't think there's a difference, go tell that to West Africans and East Africans and wait to either be laughed at or punched in the face. It's like using observations in Ireland to explain behavior among the Polish immigrant community in Chicago. When you see Africa as one big, homogenous grouping of black people, genetic determinism is easy. Learning about a diverse continent is hard. It also doesn't help that the whole idea of all black people in Africa as Africans and as the same people is partly a European construct that had no relevance nor salience for how people throughout Africa lived before imperialism.

"I don't think anyone is proposing that these cultural phenomena have a genetic explanation that is particular to people of African descent. I think what Sailer is getting at is that they are examples of cultural memes of African descent. At least, that is the only sensible way to tie them together in my opinion."

Except that Sailer has built his career out of using genetic determinism to explain behavior. That's how he convinces people his work is actually scientific. You're probably just giving him too much credit in trying to actually make his contradictory work actually make sense.

"However, it does not follow that genetic variability between the different populations is insignificant. For obvious examples, just look at skin color and hair."

True, but we aren't talking about hair. We are talking about what influences behavior. For Sailer, it comes down to race in its most primordial form. It is about genes.

Reality Man/Jim: Good points. That's an effective rebuttal of the claim.

I'm wondering how the Male/Female ratio plays into this topic. I was just reading Nicholas Lemann's pretty interesting "The Promised Land", which covers the migration of southern blacks to northern cities (an imperfect if occasionally highly educational book) and the behavior of the African-American men is something to behold. So my next question is: how do African-American men get away with this? The obvious answer to me is that they do so because there are so many early deaths among African-American men that they have scarcity value and can pretty much behave as they wish. But that's subject to confirmation, of course.

I haven't seen this much puerility since grade school.

One can scarcely find a comment that isn't consumed almost entirely in ad hominem vitriol.

Dreams obviously raises questions about the post-racial Obama we've incessantly been hearing about, from none other than the Senator himself in his more recent book.

Matthew, unfortunately, hasn't read Dreams or even all of the Sailer piece he's discussing, so can offer little, other than to point to those in the media who've tirelessly boosted Obama's personae following the DNC speech in '04 and who have not speculated as Sailer has. That, of course, is as logically falacious as having smeared the minority of Americans who were opposed to the Iraq war in early '03, pointing out that most did not come to the same conclusions that these naysayers had. Epicycles didn't beat Galileo, irrespective of who bought into them.

I wonder if he's read some of the reporting on Dreams as well. On his website, Steve excerpts from reports by Newsweek, CBS, and the Washington Examiner that all deal with how Obama's past contradicts markedly with what he says about his past today.

Where do commenters specifically disagree with Sailer? Have they even read his essay? Is it not interesting that Obama is primarily thought of as a black man in spite of the fact that he was raised and nourished almost exclusively by his white relatives, or that he is as biologically black as he is white?

How many are aware that Obama was captivated by a fervent black nationalist? Despite Sailer's repudiation of white nationalism, the commenters here pillory him for his supposed involvement in it, while seemingly denying Obama's self-described infatuation with black nationalism. Inane.

Just as many putative Darwinists are blithely unaware of the title of Darwin's most infamous work (and similarly ignorant of his 'follow-up', Descent of Man), so are many clueless didactics unaware of the full title of Dreams. Sailer didn't pin racial differentiation on Obama. Obama brought it up a decade ago.

It is, of course, Obama who unequivocally speaks of the humiliation he feels (or felt) in being white. Just as the ubiquitous but elusive 'ignorant southern tough' laments the black man stealing his white women, so Obama laments white women being attracted to black men. He's even apparently disgusted by his mother's doing this, despite the resulting procreation that brought Obama into the world.

Who before Sailer has has brought all these things to light? Why remain so purposefully ignorant of what has transpired, especially when it involves a potential future President of the US?

Obama very well may have morphed into a character much different than the self-portrait he paints in Dreams. In the words of Keynes, "When my information changes, I change my opinion." An epigone, I ask these commenters here who've not yet read either Sailer's essay or Dreams itself: What, sirs, do you do with new information?

Parenthetically, Karl, do us a favor and look up the etymology of the word "eugenics". You may see that you, too, "advocate eugenic ideas" in some of the ways that Galton first considered them. We embrace such ideas with regards to a host of plants an animals. But in terms of the contemporary understanding of the word, do you also condemn a woman who chooses to abort a fetus with Down Syndrome? Or the vast majority of Chinese scientists who support eugenic practices for nationalistic reasons?

"Epicycles didn't beat Galileo, irrespective of who bought into them."

Don't you mean Copernicus?

I get the feeling that Sailer likes Obama, too.
Sailer seems a little pro-Black to me, but very anti-Mexican.
I do think people have been wrongly projecting onto Obama that race isn't important to him. It very clearly is, just from the subtitle of his book.
People usually have something that defines them that they are passionate about:
Hillary = Democrat
Obama = Black Man
Kucinich = Dove
Edwards = Workers' Champion

Of course, they view the world very, very similarly, but they do see themselves in Important Roles.

And on and on.

Perhaps you should read the book before you shoot off your mouth. Like the typical hypocritical white liberal, you're talking about stuff based on your own feeling of moral superiority, not the facts. YOu're supposed to be a conservative? Go stuff your self.

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