Cultural Feedback
Facts are not culturally bound, but the importance of knowing them is. If you asked members of a hunter-gatherer society what six times eight is, they might not know the answer. They might not even understand the question. But you would be wrong to conclude from this that they are stupid. Multiplication simply isn't important to their culture.
The same effect occurs within our culture, but it's much more subtle.
After controlling for every socioeconomic factor they can think of, scientists are left with this controversial graph of different races' performance on IQ tests. (Missing from this graph: Jews, who score above everyone else.) But the controversy stems from a lack of understanding - even among many scientists - of what an IQ test actually represents.
An IQ test does not measure the universal scale or scope of a person's knowledge. Nor does it measure their ability to learn, or any other theoretical definition of "intelligence". An IQ test is a measure of the scale and scope of a person's knowledge within the subset of universal knowledge that is deemed important by the culture that wrote the test.
So... who writes the tests?
The subculture of academics who write IQ tests is not a racial monoculture. But relative to our culture as a whole, some races are overrepresented, and others are underrepresented. (This shouldn't be news to anyone; I'm just setting up my argument.) Races that are overrepresented in academia have more influence over the content of IQ tests. Naturally, then, members of those races will have an advantage on the tests. This results in positive feedback, because an individual's performance on IQ tests (and other standardized tests) influences their opportunity to enter academia. Conversely, members of races that are underrepresented in academia suffer negative feedback.
There are many other feedback loops in our culture, and it's no coincidence that races turn up in the same order in most of them. Influence in one subculture is often locked in a cycle with influence in another. A graph of wealth and income, for example, looks exactly like the graph of IQ test scores, and the relationship between the two doesn't require much explanation. But other cycles are more convoluted.
Consider the beauty of the human form. This beauty is culturally defined; it's heavily influenced by repeated exposure to images that are presented as beautiful. So, who has the most influence over the content of those images? The complete cycle goes like this: IQ scores affect access to education, access to education affects wealth, wealth affects social exposure, social exposure affects perceptions of beauty, perceptions of beauty influence perceptions of intelligence, perceptions of intelligence affect who gets to write the IQ tests, and who writes the IQ tests affects how people score on them. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Sometimes this cycle takes a shortcut. In the media, perceptions of beauty are locked in a very tight cycle with wealth. Beauty sells. This explains Satoshi Kanazawa's wildly controversial but scientifically sound observation that black women are widely perceived as unattractive. Black women are significantly underrepresented in the media; black women who don't look and speak like white women, even more so. (Compare black men, who have a distinct presence in the media, however unrealistic.) And at the other end of the spectrum, again, are Jews, who make up 2% of the US population, but are dramatically overrepresented among Hollywood's top actors and producers. Jews aren't the richest, smartest, and sexiest people on the planet because of anything innate; it's all just cultural feedback.
Falling smack in the middle on every measure of cultural feedback, whites are in a unique position to arbitrate this cultural discourse and lead the search for a fair way to break the cycles. Collectively, we stand neither to gain nor lose except as society gains or loses as a whole. In particular, whites should not feel threatened by affirmative action; indeed, we should champion it. If not for the fact that Jews are demographically conflated with whites, a carefully-tuned affirmative action program would be a perfectly fair and effective solution to cultural feedback.
We should also fight back against the myth of white privilege. Among racial minorities, there's a pervasive idea that we live in a white-dominated society. It's true that whites collectively dominate our culture, simply by numerical majority. And whites do enjoy certain dubious privileges for being the numerical majority, like being advertised to the most. But Asians and Jews enjoy greater individual opportunity and influence. And it's individual opportunity and influence that drive cultural feedback.
Equally important, we need to aggressively police our own against statistics becoming an excuse for racism. Pink liberals are in the habit of preemptively dismissing science that could be used to justify bigotry, so it would only take a few examples of anti-Semitism arising from the fact of Jewish cultural dominance to sabotage our effort to draw attention to cultural feedback. We must keep the focus on the fact that wealth, not race, is the defining class in our society, and strive to unite the impoverished majority of every race against the privileged minority.
The same effect occurs within our culture, but it's much more subtle.
After controlling for every socioeconomic factor they can think of, scientists are left with this controversial graph of different races' performance on IQ tests. (Missing from this graph: Jews, who score above everyone else.) But the controversy stems from a lack of understanding - even among many scientists - of what an IQ test actually represents.
An IQ test does not measure the universal scale or scope of a person's knowledge. Nor does it measure their ability to learn, or any other theoretical definition of "intelligence". An IQ test is a measure of the scale and scope of a person's knowledge within the subset of universal knowledge that is deemed important by the culture that wrote the test.
So... who writes the tests?
The subculture of academics who write IQ tests is not a racial monoculture. But relative to our culture as a whole, some races are overrepresented, and others are underrepresented. (This shouldn't be news to anyone; I'm just setting up my argument.) Races that are overrepresented in academia have more influence over the content of IQ tests. Naturally, then, members of those races will have an advantage on the tests. This results in positive feedback, because an individual's performance on IQ tests (and other standardized tests) influences their opportunity to enter academia. Conversely, members of races that are underrepresented in academia suffer negative feedback.
There are many other feedback loops in our culture, and it's no coincidence that races turn up in the same order in most of them. Influence in one subculture is often locked in a cycle with influence in another. A graph of wealth and income, for example, looks exactly like the graph of IQ test scores, and the relationship between the two doesn't require much explanation. But other cycles are more convoluted.
Consider the beauty of the human form. This beauty is culturally defined; it's heavily influenced by repeated exposure to images that are presented as beautiful. So, who has the most influence over the content of those images? The complete cycle goes like this: IQ scores affect access to education, access to education affects wealth, wealth affects social exposure, social exposure affects perceptions of beauty, perceptions of beauty influence perceptions of intelligence, perceptions of intelligence affect who gets to write the IQ tests, and who writes the IQ tests affects how people score on them. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Sometimes this cycle takes a shortcut. In the media, perceptions of beauty are locked in a very tight cycle with wealth. Beauty sells. This explains Satoshi Kanazawa's wildly controversial but scientifically sound observation that black women are widely perceived as unattractive. Black women are significantly underrepresented in the media; black women who don't look and speak like white women, even more so. (Compare black men, who have a distinct presence in the media, however unrealistic.) And at the other end of the spectrum, again, are Jews, who make up 2% of the US population, but are dramatically overrepresented among Hollywood's top actors and producers. Jews aren't the richest, smartest, and sexiest people on the planet because of anything innate; it's all just cultural feedback.
Falling smack in the middle on every measure of cultural feedback, whites are in a unique position to arbitrate this cultural discourse and lead the search for a fair way to break the cycles. Collectively, we stand neither to gain nor lose except as society gains or loses as a whole. In particular, whites should not feel threatened by affirmative action; indeed, we should champion it. If not for the fact that Jews are demographically conflated with whites, a carefully-tuned affirmative action program would be a perfectly fair and effective solution to cultural feedback.
We should also fight back against the myth of white privilege. Among racial minorities, there's a pervasive idea that we live in a white-dominated society. It's true that whites collectively dominate our culture, simply by numerical majority. And whites do enjoy certain dubious privileges for being the numerical majority, like being advertised to the most. But Asians and Jews enjoy greater individual opportunity and influence. And it's individual opportunity and influence that drive cultural feedback.
Equally important, we need to aggressively police our own against statistics becoming an excuse for racism. Pink liberals are in the habit of preemptively dismissing science that could be used to justify bigotry, so it would only take a few examples of anti-Semitism arising from the fact of Jewish cultural dominance to sabotage our effort to draw attention to cultural feedback. We must keep the focus on the fact that wealth, not race, is the defining class in our society, and strive to unite the impoverished majority of every race against the privileged minority.