Different groups of human beings have different genetic structures. These cause specific body shapes and skin pigmentation. This has nothing to do with physical or mental capabilities.
These groups of human beings have been labeled races each group having specific physical indicators. None of the physical indicators have anything to do with mental capabilities yet at various times throughout history one group has conquered another then labeled the conquered as mentally unequal, or dumb or stupid.
This is demonstrative of human arrogance and pridefullness .
The application has been labeled racism. That is,based on genetics, one group hates another.

Because God.


Well, at least in the BoM.


Oh, and also the BoA.


And also many sermons from various prophets.

I don't know that we teach that. Sin causes dark skin color just as righteousness causes skin to lighten. Michael Jackson's skin lightening was proof that he became righteous. It's the same with modern day lamanites. When they stop spending time in the sun, they are less tempted to commit sin so their skin lightens. Just like magic.

The thing is, "genetics" does have to do with physical and mental capabilities. Except that the genes that have to do with physical and mental capabilities are almost entirely different from the ones that have to do with skin color, nose shape, eye shape, etc. -- the externally visible things that have been used to justify "races," when in fact we're all one human race.

There's more variation *in* a particular "race" when it comes to the genes dealing with physical and mental capability than there is variation *between* "races." Something "racists" either ignore or are completely ignorant of, and which shows how ridiculous their "race" classifications are.

One. Human. Race.

Full of all kinds of interesting variations.
But one human race.

Period.

Yup. One race. Human.

Dear Hie you may well have a point that there is only "human race" and variations thereof. I never thought of it that way. My main point is still--Skin color and body shape should not be mandatory indicators of a human being's worth either physically nor intellectually. `I hope that I have not overstated as I am prone to do.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/25/2017 07:19PM by desertman.

I don't think that can be overstated :)
And you're absolutely right.

Unless you voted for Trump... then you label yourself racist.

Imagine if Trump was a Mormon... oh what fun we could have!

Quote from Stephen J Gould

"My visceral perception of brotherhood harmonizes with our best modern biological knowledge. […] Many people think (or fear) that equality of human races represents a hope of liberal sentimentality probably squashed by the hard realities of history. They are wrong. This essay can be summarized in a single phrase, a motto if you will: Human equality is a contingent fact of history.

Equality is not true by definition; it is neither an ethical principle (though equal treatment may be) nor a statement about norms of social action. It just worked out that way. A hundred different and plausible scenarios for human history would have yielded other results (and moral dilemmas of enormous magnitude). They didn't happen."

The reason humans have different physical characteristics is due to adaptation to climatic conditions. As people migrated out of Africa their bodies adapted slowly over thousands of years. Offspring that had the ability to survive in new climates lived and reproduced. Those that didn't didn't.

If your heritage is from northern Europe think about that the next time you get a sunburn.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/26/2017 05:48PM by anybody.

we are all the same, and yet so different...

Not a useful ideology.

I'm sure you know (or it's probably in the back of your head) that there is "race" and "ethnicity". As examples, someone from Puerto Rico may be Black and speaks Spanish and is considered--ethnically--Latino. There may also be someone who is blue-eyed and blonde from the island that is also Latino, but racially is White.

(I met a woman from Paraguay who, racially, is Asian, as her family emigrated from Korea...but identifies as Latina (speaks Spanish and grew up in Paraguay.)

I agree with your thoughts. It's a shame and stupid. Especially when there are bigots who see the skin color, yet don't realize anything else about the person beyond that.

I am Hispanic and speak Spanish but look as white as any Anglo. I was at the mechanic today and was sitting next to an older gentleman...who struck up a conversation. He saw the tow truck driver dropping off one of my vehicles and started musing about how he doesn't trust "Mexicans" and a lot of other stuff.

I just laughed it off, but it's not really funny. Ironic that he had a hat on that said, "Native" and some feathers and other stuff. Guess he's OK with first nations but not their mestizo brothers and sisters. If I told him that I am Mexican, etc. I'm sure it wouldn't even register.

I have these encounters all the time. People confide their biases because they think I'm "one of them." Once I was getting a massage from a Chinese woman and she said that she and her husband thought about moving to San Diego, but "there are too many Mexicans. You know how they stay up late and make a lot of noise. We didn't want to deal with that." Really?

It's terrible that people don't see beyond skin color. Not everyone, but _some_ people.

Once I wanted to walk looking Swedish Irish just like jack Mormon Mom. She had green eyes that danced in the California sun. As skin cancer surgeries could no longer contain her disease and it spread into her nasal cavities sinus and face when they could no longer save her jaw it went system wide her heart couldn't beat the treatments it attacked ..a I brought her a living pot of green ferns she wanted it in the light and later that night closed her beautiful rare green eyes the last time and she died.

How many times did I curse my tawny toned olive skin brown hazels marbles eyes for not looking like my green eyed tall willowy swede a Irish who'd adopted me! And how many times, how many times did she running her hair through my coarse thick wild hair say oh you tan. I'm so glad you can, and told me tales of the day it hurt to be to live in her skin, how she worshipped the sun. Holding my face in her hands, saying oh you can, ---- you can tan.

Racism is just one form of bigotry. For some reason, it is considered wrong to generalize about race, but okay to generalize about other groups of people.

For example, you can generalize and say bad things about men and it is considered okay.

We also generalize about Mormons here all the time.

So we are pretty much all bigots, but we just don't like the bigotry of others. Your group, or society, determines which bigotry is acceptable.

Generalizing is also needed for survival. There are nice grizzlies out there, but in general, I prefer to avoid them. And I've known blacks who are more afraid of other blacks in certain areas, based on their experience. I also am afraid of whites in certain areas, even though there are some nice people there.

And the fact is, there are differences between races. Unless you want to accuse the NFL and NBA of discriminating against whites.

Likewise, there are differences in certain forms of intelligence. WE are talking averages here, so there are always exceptions. As mentioned above, certain traits were necessary for survival in certain areas.

And there is correlation between physical attributes and mental attributes. At least I look different than my cow, and I think I'm smarter.

I'm saying we should treat each other with respect despite our differences. I just get tired of hearing that we are all the same. Women are told they can do everything a man can do, etc. Just saw a show my wife watches in which a 100 lb woman knocks a 250 pound man through a wall to his death. Yeah, right. I guess all girls should aspire to that, right?

I hire women and men, and generally find they're good at different things. Women good at detail work, and guys better at moving stuff and equipment and all. Instead of preaching we're all the same and can do everything, I like to embrace differences and use them.

In my "Victim Awareness" class, physical characteristics didn't matter. The chair mattered.

I taught the class for many years in an elongated room with an elongated table and chairs all around the perimeter.

I noticed something.

The most flippant offender invariably picked the back wall, center chair, opposite the doors, where he had the best view of anyone coming in or out of the room. A new batch of minors was ordered to complete my class each week. Without fail, the kid with no visible remorse chose that very same chair. I called it "The No-Remorse Chair."

Generally, that participant blamed the victim and rocked back in that chair. If anyone needed to leave the class for maliciousness toward others, that's the chair he left from.

What was fun, though, was seeing who sat in the "No-Remorse Chair" during staff meetings.

desertman Wrote:
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> This is demonstrative of human arrogance and pridefullness. The application has been labeled racism. That is, based on genetics, one group hates another.

Not sure I agree with this assessment. We are biologically programmed to seek out those who are like us and stay away from those who are not. It's a survival mechanism for herd animals.

Not saying this to justify racism or discrimination, but it helps to realize that this is a biological urge that is suppressed by social conditioning. Any number of things can go wrong in the process. Fighting hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution is hard.

It's probably not a popular thing to say in this post-modernist world, but grouping people is actually a useful tool in deciding how to deal with stangers. At the same time, it is a very crude tool that doesn't do the individual members of those groups justice.

The question is how much risk you are willing to take to try and find out if you're dealing with a friendly biker or a Hell's Angel. This is where outward signs come in.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/29/2017 02:05PM by rt.

Some of the traits are probably people in a certain area for generations. I have deep set eyes, Slavic nose, olive skin.
I have a lot of Eastern European in my genes, which would make sense. I also have some middle eastern, which might explain my skin tone

It's always "my race/religion is better than your race/religion".

My comment got deleted. The mods here are anti-science and anti-free speech. Noted.

Your racism is not based on science. The purported racial differences on IQ tests do not control for a lot of factors, including socioeconomic ones.

The idea that there is a black race is unscientific. Sub-Saharan Africa is teeming with human genetic diversity, and race is a social construct, not based on science. If you believe otherwise, I invite you to try to create a scientifically valid definition of "race".

The mods here are very pro-science, but we are anti-racism and anti-ignorance. Please educate yourself instead of repeating rumors that happen to fit with your personal prejudices.

CZ (admin)



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/29/2017 10:40PM by Concrete Zipper.

What do we know? Studies of identical twins raised apart reveal that intelligence has a mostly genetic basis. Environmental interventions to raise IQ (such as raising a black child in a white family) have had very limited success. Billions of dollars have been spent on the program Head Start to help socioeconomically disadvantaged children in school but we haven't seen much in the way of results. Charles Murray wrote about average differences in intelligence between races in his book The Bell Curve. I think we'll see more confirmation of his views in the coming years as we come to know more about the human genome. Evolution did not stop 60,000 years ago when certain groups left Africa.

C Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> What do we know? Studies of identical twins raised
> apart reveal that intelligence has a mostly
> genetic basis.

Identical twins share the identical environment inside the womb, which includes the nutrition of the mother, the presence or absence of toxic substances of all kinds, and the emotional life of the mother. All of these are important factors in biological brain development, and all of these are aside of genetics.


> Environmental interventions to
> raise IQ (such as raising a black child in a white
> family) have had very limited success.

This is (so far as I am aware) a generalization based on [???] I am not aware of. There are plenty of extremely intelligent black Americans...and plenty of intellectually-poor white homes. I don't see any reason to accept your assertion as fact.

> Billions of
> dollars have been spent on the program Head Start
> to help socioeconomically disadvantaged children
> in school but we haven't seen much in the way of
> results. Charles Murray wrote about average
> differences in intelligence between races in his
> book The Bell Curve.

THE BELL CURVE, as you know, is a highly-disputed book (with book-sized analyses of its content). I own a copy of this book, and although the content is presented in a compelling way, according to people who know a whole lot more about this subject than I do, this was a project which began as a political project (evidently the people involved were trying to promote their political views through this subject), and included a great deal of mispresentation and misleading of figures. I have not reached a clear view on this book, but the various analyses of what Murray did are also compelling.

> I think we'll see more
> confirmation of his views in the coming years as
> we come to know more about the human genome.

I, personally, do not think that the genome is the ultimate, or most important, indicator of IQ. There are too many places on this planet (Africa as a whole...Papua New Guinea...Afghanistan, Yemen, the "stans," India, the "inner cities," Appalachia, at least some Native American reservations), etc. where kids who might have the right genomes at birth are plunked into circumstances and environments where the relevant parts of their brains are NOT nourished, are NOT hydrated properly, and are definitely NOT stimulated by anything more than basic survival needs (from dietary, to intellectual, to basic safety).

> Evolution did not stop 60,000 years ago when
> certain groups left Africa.

I totally agree with this statement. Evolution (of our species, and of all species on this planet) continues on---sometimes fast enough so that "we" (the scientists among us, anyway) can actually observe it occurring in real time.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/29/2017 11:44PM by Tevai.

Most humans are not "white." White Europeans only make up 1/4 of the Earth's population and have adapted to live in a very narrow range of climate. Read "Guns, Germs,and Steel" by Jared Diamond.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/30/2017 12:27PM by anybody.

C Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> What do we know? Studies of identical twins raised
> apart reveal that intelligence has a mostly
> genetic basis.

There does appear to be a large genetic component to intelligence, yes. You need the right mix of genes to have a higher IQ but, as Tevai pointed out, even with those genes, environmental factors can screw it all up. Intrauterine conditions can be extremely influential on how children turn out.

> Environmental interventions to
> raise IQ (such as raising a black child in a white
> family) have had very limited success.

There are no good, controlled studies of this, probably because such would be next to impossible to accomplish.

> Billions of
> dollars have been spent on the program Head Start
> to help socioeconomically disadvantaged children
> in school but we haven't seen much in the way of
> results.

Head Start programs have not shown lasting increases in IQ scores of the participants, but they were never designed for that. Whether the programs provide other benefits that outweigh their expense is a matter of debate that is unrelated to this conversation. The methods used by Head Start cover only a small portion of the possibly ways in which socioeconomic status could have an effect on IQ, so Head Start's inability to change IQ cannot be used to rule out the possibility that statistical variations in IQ scores have a socioeconomic (or other, non-genetic) basis.

> Charles Murray wrote about average
> differences in intelligence between races in his
> book The Bell Curve. I think we'll see more
> confirmation of his views in the coming years as
> we come to know more about the human genome.
> Evolution did not stop 60,000 years ago when
> certain groups left Africa.

I read The Bell Curve when it came out in 1994, along with Stephen Jay Gould's "The Mismeasure of Man" and Lewontin, Rose and Kamin's "Not in Our Genes". All three are problematic treatments and probably reflect more of the authors' prejudices than they should. Yes, genetics is a strong factor in IQ. No, it is not easy to measure IQ across cultural, language and socioeconomic barriers, even with straightforward tests like Raven's Progressive Matrices.

If you believe that statistical variations in IQ between racial groups are proof of genetic differences, then would you explain the Flynn Effect similarly? You can read about the Flynn effect in Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect
In a nutshell, the effect is that average IQs have been increasing by about 3 points per decade, worldwide. Are we evolving that fast? No. Other, non-genetic factors are at play, and may have to do with maternal and early childhood nutrition, among other things. The Flynn effect has shown as large a discrepancy between populations over time as other tests have shown between concurrent racial groups. So the Flynn effect can't be genetic but the racial effect has to be? That's a problematic position to take.

And let's look at the possible roots of genetic differences between those with African ancestry and those with other ancestry. Sub-Saharan Africa is where humans evolved and there is more human genetic diversity there alone than on the rest of the planet. Some 50 to 100 thousand years ago, various groups of anatomically modern humans left African and populated Europe, Asia and Melanesia. When did the supposed genetic division of intelligence happen? Did only the smart ones leave and only the dumb ones stay? Did the division happen after they left Africa? If so, why are all the non-African humans statistically smarter? Shouldn't only some of them be smarter and the rest the same as the massive and diverse population left in Africa? Do you think some evolutionary pressure forced the geographically dispersed non-African populations to be smarter while a contrary evolutionary pressure forced the genetically diverse African populations to be dumber? It's difficult to come up with an evolutionary scenario that fits the hypothesis that African genetics provides lower average IQs.

Look, we don't mind discussing difficult topics, but please argue scientific facts instead of repeating inflammatory rhetoric copied from cherry-picked web sites.

CZ

"Different groups of human beings have different genetic structures. These cause specific body shapes and skin pigmentation. This has nothing to do with physical or mental capabilities."

Why wouldn't it? It affects everything else.

Not to say these things can't be modified by various factors like culture and education, etc.

There are biases in every culture. Not always "bad" but sometimes based on basic observations. Other times based on ignorance and hatred.

I was at a furniture store today and the local Spanish-language radio station was there. I walked up to the representative and told her that I listen to her station every day. She looked at me like I was mistaken which channel she was from.

(Understand that my surname is Spanish, I speak it fluently, but I look completely gringo.)

I told her in Spanish that I really did listen to it....and we talked for a few minutes in Spanish. She completely changed her demeanor and was entirely friendly. LOL my experience with every Latino I meet...they initially see me as a curiosity but give me love and immediate kindness.

We often identify people with what we think they are or have experienced in the past. It's not always a bad thing, it's just a mechanism to deal with new people. The problem is when we persist with stereotypes or hate based on race--despite the person. Hell, despite the fact the person is a human being.