http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_p..._less.html

Quote:Subjects viewed a graphical depiction of “The Ascent of Man,” in which various silhouettes along a scale reflect popular perceptions of the evolution of humans from ape to fully upright man. The graph begins on the left end of the scale with a crouching ancestor reminiscent of an ape, moves in the middle of the scale to a Cro-Magnon type holding a spear, and concludes on the right end of the scale with a fully upright modern human. Next, subjects were asked how evolved they believe blacks and whites to be on this 0-100 scale.

In this nationally representative sample, a full 38 percent of white subjects rated blacks as less evolved than they rated whites.

Because this finding was so surprising, we conducted a separate survey on Mechanical Turk in which we asked the identical “Ascent of Man” question to our subjects and then, immediately afterward, asked them what they had been thinking about when deciding how to respond to this question. White respondents routinely described black people in dehumanizing ways. Some examples: “I consider blacks to be closer to the animal kingdom,” one respondent said, because blacks “lack the intelligence and morals” of other races. Another said that black people “carry and conduct themselves” in ways that are “almost animalistic.” A third responded claimed that black people have “the highest rate of murders” and cited this as evidence for the assertion that blacks are “people who act like animals.”

These results are not limited to groups of whites that are often stereotyped as racially prejudiced. For instance, 33 percent of white Democrats and 34 percent of high-income whites rated black people as less evolved than white people, compared with 39 percent of white Republicans and 41 percent of low-income whites. Dehumanizing views are pervasive across white social groups.

Welcome to the other side of increasing acceptance Godless evolution as the sole source of life as we know it today...godless evolution does not care about equality or fairness and populations of people isolated for many thousands of years inevitably acquire real genetic distances between each other, especially with some groups needing to survive in environments the naked human body isn't suited for.

As an Africa American. I am not surprised by this.

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Liberals are quick to roll out the "conservatives hate science" when it comes to global warming.

But at the same time, they go apoplectic when evolutionary psychology is mentioned. Also many refuse to accept the science around genetically modified foods. And for the longest time, the vaccine /autism link was liberal orthodoxy. And Portland(OR) still prohibits water fluoridation.

So science is good, except when it isn't.

I can offer a counterpoint to the idea that belief in "godless evolution" promotes racism. Europeans thought that Africans were the descendents of Ham, that Ham's progeny were cursed to be the servants of Shem and Japeth, and because of this curse it was right that the descendents of Ham were to be slaves to the others. Therefore, OK to engage in the slave trade because they were cursed to be servants forever. Another theory was that black people were black because that was the "mark of Cain". Blacks were related to Cain and therefore OK to enslave.

The SBC endorsed slavery in the 1800s based on the bible, many members of the religious right are members of SBC churches or non-denomenational churches that can trace their history to once being in communion with the SBC and that this belief in blacks being "less evolved" is a cultural guess vs one based on rational thought utilizing scientific inquiry. Since Trump is endorsed by the religious right, then it makes sense if the whites supporting Trump who are evangelicals are more susceptible to this issue given the history of baptist style churches.

Someone who is very familiar with evolution - especially with the most current scientific discoveries of today - will know the truth about human evolution. Do I believe the above scenario I laid out? I never thought about it and no doubt the issue is significantly more complicated than that. But I would stack my "hypothesis" against the musings in the OP that "evolution is bad" any day of the week.

The numbers are much higher in the Spin Room, right usmbacker?

(11-07-2016 08:37 PM)pcm0103 Wrote:  As an Africa American. I am not surprised by this.

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I call fabrics on this number. It is much higher. Many just would not admit this..even on a survey.

(11-08-2016 06:48 AM)Fo Shizzle Wrote:  

(11-07-2016 08:37 PM)pcm0103 Wrote:  As an Africa American. I am not surprised by this.

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I call fabrics on this number. It is much higher. Many just would not admit this..even on a survey.

So true!

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Not clicking on slate. lots of black people like to call white people neanderthal cave dwellers. Lots of sub saharan educated black people think much worse of the tribal village dwellers in their own country.

(11-08-2016 07:47 AM)SuperFlyBCat Wrote:  lots of black people like to call white people neanderthal cave dwellers.

(11-08-2016 07:47 AM)SuperFlyBCat Wrote:  Not clicking on slate. lots of black people like to call white people neanderthal cave dwellers. Lots of sub saharan educated black people think much worse of the tribal village dwellers in their own country.

It's time to split this country up!

(11-08-2016 12:11 AM)miko33 Wrote:  I can offer a counterpoint to the idea that belief in "godless evolution" promotes racism. Europeans thought that Africans were the descendents of Ham, that Ham's progeny were cursed to be the servants of Shem and Japeth, and because of this curse it was right that the descendents of Ham were to be slaves to the others. Therefore, OK to engage in the slave trade because they were cursed to be servants forever. Another theory was that black people were black because that was the "mark of Cain". Blacks were related to Cain and therefore OK to enslave.

The SBC endorsed slavery in the 1800s based on the bible, many members of the religious right are members of SBC churches or non-denomenational churches that can trace their history to once being in communion with the SBC and that this belief in blacks being "less evolved" is a cultural guess vs one based on rational thought utilizing scientific inquiry. Since Trump is endorsed by the religious right, then it makes sense if the whites supporting Trump who are evangelicals are more susceptible to this issue given the history of baptist style churches.

Someone who is very familiar with evolution - especially with the most current scientific discoveries of today - will know the truth about human evolution. Do I believe the above scenario I laid out? I never thought about it and no doubt the issue is significantly more complicated than that. But I would stack my "hypothesis" against the musings in the OP that "evolution is bad" any day of the week.

Where did I say that "evolution is bad"? I guess what you meant to say was "learning evolution is bad", which I also did not say or mean. The idea of schools not teaching evolution or teaching creationism to stop racism isn't really palatable to me.

Regarding the slavery issue...if we're going to go with the narrative (which I don't necessarily disagree with) of secular founding fathers that hated fundamentalism and theocracy, then why did they not abolish slavery in the original constitution and own slaves themselves? I do not believe for one second that some level of secular racism wasn't around when the original constitution was drafted.

BTW, here's the thing about race: the idea that individual races are not meaningful genetic strata is becoming less tenable every year since the human genome project was completed. Even prominent scientists like Steven Pinker and Richard Dawkins have repudiated it. You do not need to be completely ill-informed on genetics and evolution to believe that different ethnicities don't have equally-distributed abilities (e.g. ethnic West Africans dominating sprinting events and making up pretty much all of the cornerbacks in the NFL because of the types of muscle fibers they have from their genetics and not culture). I'm both a dualist and creationist so I have trap doors that others don't have, but to me it's really hard to reconcile godless evolution with the idea that any two given racial groups are basically going to be equivalents. If that's racism than pretty much any clinical study or clinical trial is racist because race is a factor that just cannot be ignored.

My basic contention is that what we should oppose is prejudice, which literally means "pre-judge". You don't make judgements on individuals because of what traits might be more common in that person's group. That should be common sense, but ____ism can now simply mean putting forth the idea that Group A and Group B aren't exactly biologically equivalent. That's a dangerous idea.

But I'm digressing. The basic point of the OP is that there are side effects to the acceptance of evolution, which some seem to think absolutely vital to America's future and scientific literacy. Not to say "evolution shouldn't be taught because it's racist".

(11-08-2016 10:46 AM)EigenEagle Wrote:  

(11-08-2016 12:11 AM)miko33 Wrote:  I can offer a counterpoint to the idea that belief in "godless evolution" promotes racism. Europeans thought that Africans were the descendents of Ham, that Ham's progeny were cursed to be the servants of Shem and Japeth, and because of this curse it was right that the descendents of Ham were to be slaves to the others. Therefore, OK to engage in the slave trade because they were cursed to be servants forever. Another theory was that black people were black because that was the "mark of Cain". Blacks were related to Cain and therefore OK to enslave.

The SBC endorsed slavery in the 1800s based on the bible, many members of the religious right are members of SBC churches or non-denomenational churches that can trace their history to once being in communion with the SBC and that this belief in blacks being "less evolved" is a cultural guess vs one based on rational thought utilizing scientific inquiry. Since Trump is endorsed by the religious right, then it makes sense if the whites supporting Trump who are evangelicals are more susceptible to this issue given the history of baptist style churches.

Someone who is very familiar with evolution - especially with the most current scientific discoveries of today - will know the truth about human evolution. Do I believe the above scenario I laid out? I never thought about it and no doubt the issue is significantly more complicated than that. But I would stack my "hypothesis" against the musings in the OP that "evolution is bad" any day of the week.

Where did I say that "evolution is bad"? I guess what you meant to say was "learning evolution is bad", which I also did not say or mean. The idea of schools not teaching evolution or teaching creationism to stop racism isn't really palatable to me.

Regarding the slavery issue...if we're going to go with the narrative (which I don't necessarily disagree with) of secular founding fathers that hated fundamentalism and theocracy, then why did they not abolish slavery in the original constitution and own slaves themselves? I do not believe for one second that some level of secular racism wasn't around when the original constitution was drafted.

BTW, here's the thing about race: the idea that individual races are not meaningful genetic strata is becoming less tenable every year since the human genome project was completed. Even prominent scientists like Steven Pinker and Richard Dawkins have repudiated it. You do not need to be completely ill-informed on genetics and evolution to believe that different ethnicities don't have equally-distributed abilities (e.g. ethnic West Africans dominating sprinting events and making up pretty much all of the cornerbacks in the NFL because of the types of muscle fibers they have from their genetics and not culture). I'm both a dualist and creationist so I have trap doors that others don't have, but to me it's really hard to reconcile godless evolution with the idea that any two given racial groups are basically going to be equivalents. If that's racism than pretty much any clinical study or clinical trial is racist because race is a factor that just cannot be ignored.

My basic contention is that what we should oppose is prejudice, which literally means "pre-judge". You don't make judgements on individuals because of what traits might be more common in that person's group. That should be common sense, but ____ism can now simply mean putting forth the idea that Group A and Group B aren't exactly biologically equivalent. That's a dangerous idea.

But I'm digressing. The basic point of the OP is that there are side effects to the acceptance of evolution, which some seem to think absolutely vital to America's future and scientific literacy. Not to say "evolution shouldn't be taught because it's racist".

Actually the differences become more and more meaningless because we know how mixed all of us are. And Africans have more genetic diversity than all the rest combined. Europeans and Chinese are closer to being one race than considering all Africans one race.

The founding fathers weren't living in a vacuum. They were still a product of their times. While many if not most of our founding fathers were deists, they still lived in a world dominated by Christianity. They did not transcend what they learned from the cultures of Europe, i.e. that semitic people, Africans and Asians were inferior to Europeans. In particular, the Jews were considered a subclass because Christian Europe thought that the Jews were solely responsible for the death of Jesus. Romans were given a free pass. That's why even today Jews are big in the banking world - because Christian Europe in the middle ages wanted no part of banking. They thought banking led to usury, which was prohibited by the bible. So the views the SBC had about slavery circa the early 1800s were views that they inherited from the old world.

Regarding genetic differences between the races, agree. You'd have to be ignorant to not understand that there are genetic differences between the races. That does not mean that one race is less evolved than the other. Darwin's finches are a good example of "races" within the finch species that he observed with a variety of different traits dependent upon their environment.

(11-08-2016 11:04 AM)bullet Wrote:  

(11-08-2016 10:46 AM)EigenEagle Wrote:  

(11-08-2016 12:11 AM)miko33 Wrote:  I can offer a counterpoint to the idea that belief in "godless evolution" promotes racism. Europeans thought that Africans were the descendents of Ham, that Ham's progeny were cursed to be the servants of Shem and Japeth, and because of this curse it was right that the descendents of Ham were to be slaves to the others. Therefore, OK to engage in the slave trade because they were cursed to be servants forever. Another theory was that black people were black because that was the "mark of Cain". Blacks were related to Cain and therefore OK to enslave.

The SBC endorsed slavery in the 1800s based on the bible, many members of the religious right are members of SBC churches or non-denomenational churches that can trace their history to once being in communion with the SBC and that this belief in blacks being "less evolved" is a cultural guess vs one based on rational thought utilizing scientific inquiry. Since Trump is endorsed by the religious right, then it makes sense if the whites supporting Trump who are evangelicals are more susceptible to this issue given the history of baptist style churches.

Someone who is very familiar with evolution - especially with the most current scientific discoveries of today - will know the truth about human evolution. Do I believe the above scenario I laid out? I never thought about it and no doubt the issue is significantly more complicated than that. But I would stack my "hypothesis" against the musings in the OP that "evolution is bad" any day of the week.

Where did I say that "evolution is bad"? I guess what you meant to say was "learning evolution is bad", which I also did not say or mean. The idea of schools not teaching evolution or teaching creationism to stop racism isn't really palatable to me.

Regarding the slavery issue...if we're going to go with the narrative (which I don't necessarily disagree with) of secular founding fathers that hated fundamentalism and theocracy, then why did they not abolish slavery in the original constitution and own slaves themselves? I do not believe for one second that some level of secular racism wasn't around when the original constitution was drafted.

BTW, here's the thing about race: the idea that individual races are not meaningful genetic strata is becoming less tenable every year since the human genome project was completed. Even prominent scientists like Steven Pinker and Richard Dawkins have repudiated it. You do not need to be completely ill-informed on genetics and evolution to believe that different ethnicities don't have equally-distributed abilities (e.g. ethnic West Africans dominating sprinting events and making up pretty much all of the cornerbacks in the NFL because of the types of muscle fibers they have from their genetics and not culture). I'm both a dualist and creationist so I have trap doors that others don't have, but to me it's really hard to reconcile godless evolution with the idea that any two given racial groups are basically going to be equivalents. If that's racism than pretty much any clinical study or clinical trial is racist because race is a factor that just cannot be ignored.

My basic contention is that what we should oppose is prejudice, which literally means "pre-judge". You don't make judgements on individuals because of what traits might be more common in that person's group. That should be common sense, but ____ism can now simply mean putting forth the idea that Group A and Group B aren't exactly biologically equivalent. That's a dangerous idea.

But I'm digressing. The basic point of the OP is that there are side effects to the acceptance of evolution, which some seem to think absolutely vital to America's future and scientific literacy. Not to say "evolution shouldn't be taught because it's racist".

Actually the differences become more and more meaningless because we know how mixed all of us are. And Africans have more genetic diversity than all the rest combined. Europeans and Chinese are closer to being one race than considering all Africans one race.

True because of migrations of small populations (compared to the remnant in Africa) into those areas as well as earlier migrations of humans that put neanderthals and denisovans that intermingled with early homo sapiens. Africa was where most of the action was wrt human diversity because the majority of modern humans remained there 20 - 50K years ago.

Anybody here educated enough to catch the "ascent of man" play on words?

Charles Darwin wrote

"The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex"
-1871

Nah, no one? Didn't think so.


Also dabbling in armchair genetics about race is going to leave many of you unhappy. I don't advise tugging this thread without sources.

The founding fathers and the plantation class understood evolution. The brought over the African slave because they first attempted chattel slavery with the aboriginal tribes in the Americas and poor Europeans but they could not withstand the physicality of the work.

Unless I'm missing something, isn't it entirely possible that if mankind began in/near Africa/the equator (which I understand is a common conclusion) that 'light skin' is a more recent evolutionary adaptation?

Especially since according to the article, similar portions of both Republicans and Democrats are saying the same thing.

So if we want to argue that this article is correct, then we need to dismiss the idea that racism is only/predominantly from the right... or that African Americans are 'correct' to put 90% of their eggs in the 'democrat' boxes

(11-08-2016 11:18 AM)shere khan Wrote:  Anybody here educated enough to catch the "ascent of man" play on words?

Charles Darwin wrote

"The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex"
-1871

Nah, no one? Didn't think so.


Also dabbling in armchair genetics about race is going to leave many of you unhappy. I don't advise tugging this thread without sources.

You didn't expect Darwin to get it all correct in the first pass did you? Humans are very good at exploiting ideas for their own personal advantage.

(11-08-2016 11:39 AM)Hambone10 Wrote:  Unless I'm missing something, isn't it entirely possible that if mankind began in/near Africa/the equator (which I understand is a common conclusion) that 'light skin' is a more recent evolutionary adaptation?

Especially since according to the article, similar portions of both Republicans and Democrats are saying the same thing.

I would say that most definitely the original humans were dark skinned. The loss of pigment was an adaptation for the northern climates after humans migrated out of Africa in one of a few waves of migration.

(11-08-2016 11:42 AM)miko33 Wrote:  

(11-08-2016 11:39 AM)Hambone10 Wrote:  Unless I'm missing something, isn't it entirely possible that if mankind began in/near Africa/the equator (which I understand is a common conclusion) that 'light skin' is a more recent evolutionary adaptation?

Especially since according to the article, similar portions of both Republicans and Democrats are saying the same thing.

I would say that most definitely the original humans were dark skinned. The loss of pigment was an adaptation for the northern climates after humans migrated out of Africa in one of a few waves of migration.

So we have ultimately boiled this down to the baggage that the terms used to draw these conclusions come with.

That sounds about par for the course in this country today.