May 12, 2012

The Urge to Purge: IQ and the Wealth of Nations

The Urge to Purge appears to be superseding the Urge to Ignore.

From Foreign Policy:
Dumb and Dumber 
Are development experts becoming racists? 
BY CHARLES KENNY | APRIL 30, 2012 
Columnist John Derbyshire's recent effluvia on the subject of things your white kid should know about black people was met with suitable disdain and a rapid expulsion from the web pages of the National Review. Genetic determinism with regard to racial intelligence -- alongside the very idea that intelligence can be meaningfully ranked on a single linear scale of intrinsic worth -- has been firmly debunked by Stephen Jay Gould, among others.

Off to a good start there! Invoking the supreme authority of the late Stephen Jay Gould is a surefire way to persuade anybody familiar with the field of psychometrics that you know what you are talking about.
Sadly, Derbyshire-like prattishness on the intellectual inferiority of dark-skinned races and its impact on social and economic outcomes in the United States has a historied international equivalent. In fact, if anything, the academic consensus on why some countries are rich and others are poor is tacking closer to the shoals of genetic determinism than it has been since the days of high empire. Derbyshire's deserved disgrace is a needed reminder to throw brickbats at his partners in malodor who work in global development. 
... Development economists over the past 50 years have eschewed genetic explanations for the wealth and poverty of nations, favoring factors from lack of investment to lack of health care and education to wrong policies to poor government institutions. But the mainstream is moving back in the direction of "deep causes" of development. These involve determinants such as the relative technological advance of regions some centuries (even millennia) ago or levels of ethnic diversity that have long historical roots. And Enrico Spolaore and Romain Wacziarg have gone even further back, arguing that "genetic distance" -- or the time since populations shared a common ancestor -- has a considerable role to play in the inequality of incomes worldwide. They estimate that variation in genetic distance may account for about 20 percent of the variation in income across countries. 
Spolaore and Wacziarg take pains to avoid suggesting that one line of genetic inheritance is superior to another, preferring instead an interpretation that argues genetic distance is related to cultural differences -- and thus a more complex diffusion of ideas: "the results are consistent with the view that the diffusion of technology, institutions and norms of behavior conducive to higher incomes, is affected by differences in vertically transmitted characteristics associated with genealogical relatedness.… these differences may stem in substantial part from cultural (rather than purely genetic) transmission of characteristics across generations," they write. 
But where Spolaore and Wacziarg are careful enough to step away from interpretations based on the superiority of certain allele types, more foolhardy scholars have been happy to jump in. Take the book by Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen titled IQ and the Wealth of Nations. It suggests that the average IQ in Africa is around 70 points, compared with much higher averages in East Asia and the West. Based on their data, the authors suggest that higher average IQ scores are the cause of progress in measures of development, including income, literacy, life expectancy, and democratization. Lynn and Vanhanen even argue that IQ was correlated with incomes as far back as 1820 -- a neat trick given that the IQ test wasn't invented until a century later. 
As that surprising finding might suggest, most of Lynn and Vanhanen's data is, in fact, made up. Of the 185 countries in their study, actual IQ estimates are available for only 81. The rest are "estimated" from neighboring countries.

Lynn and Vanhanen can do their analyses based either on "only" 81 countries or using estimates of neighboring countries. In either case, they get virtually identical correlation coefficients, suggesting the robustness of their approach.
But even where there is data, it would be a stretch to call it high quality. A test of only 50 children ages 13 to 16 in Colombia and another of only 48 children ages 10 to 14 in Equatorial Guinea, for example, make it into their "nationally representative" dataset.

The correlations look slightly stronger if you throw out Equatorial Guinea. Anyway, all this data has been updated by Rindermann.
Psychologist Jelte Wicherts at the University of Amsterdam and colleagues trawled through Lynn and Vanhanen's data on Africa. They found once again that few of the recorded tests even attempted to be nationally representative (looking at "Zulus in primary schools near Durban" for example), that the data set excluded a number of studies that pointed to higher average IQs, and that some studies included dated as far back as 1948 and involved as few as 17 people. 
Wicherts and his colleagues also point out that there is considerable evidence the tests Lynn and Vanhanen use to make their case "lack validity in test-takers without formal schooling." It is, surely, hard to take a multiple-choice test when you don't know how to read. Not surprisingly, IQ test results in Africa are weakly aligned to other measures of intelligence that don't require written test-taking.

Right. As I pointed out in my VDARE.com review in 2002, Lynn and Vanhanen's finding of an average IQ of 70 in black Africa is strong evidence in favor of the nurture position that a better environment can raise IQs, because African Americans, who appear to be about 4/5th black, score 15 points higher. (Lynn subsequently adopted the logic of my critique.) So, Wicherts' finding that if you only count the IQ tests that he likes, on which black Africans average around 80 or a little higher, then that strengthens the hereditarian view. (This is much too subtle for Kenny to grasp, of course.)

On the other hand, there are reasons of predictive validity for including test scores where black Africans simply failed to grasp the point of using abstract logic to solve puzzles (typically, culture-free nonverbal ones, not "regatta" questions as Kenny implies). Long ago, Thomas Sowell recounted an anecdote where two 17-year-old African youths were asked a standard IQ test question. They wittily ridiculed the impracticality and absurdity of this highly abstract question, displaying quickness of mind in social cognition. On the other hand, as Sowell noted, if by the age of 17, your culture hasn't introduced you to abstract thought yet, you probably aren't going to pick it up very well as an adult, and you are probably not going to be highly productive in economic roles that demand that kind of nerdier thinking. Thus, the high correlation between low IQ scores in Africa and low per capita GDPs in Africa, even if some of low scores are due to lack of acculturation in modern thinking.

My guess is that the spread of cheap smartphones in Africa will stimulate the kind of black box logical thinking that IQ tests measure and which the modern economy rewards. As I pointed out in my review of James Flynn's 2007 book, the fascinating question is why IQ tests still possess so much predictive power more than a century after being invented.

Moreover, there are still some low-hanging fruits where 3rd World countries would benefit from public health programs that succeeded in the U.S. in the first half of the 20th Century in boosting IQ directly or or in boosting mental energy. Fortifying salt with iodine eliminated the medical syndrome cretinism. while fortifying wheat with iron also eliminated an IQ-sapping medical condition. The Rockefeller Foundation's war on hookwarm greatly benefited the physical and economic energy of Southerners by ridding them of a parasite.

Kiwanis International is the leading charity in salt iodization in poor countries. As you can see, these are not fashionable causes, but Bjorn Lomborg has long identified them as high bang for the buck development projects, as I pointed out in a 2004 VDARE.com essay.

I've been writing about the need for more micronutrient fortification to boost Third World IQ scores for over eight years, but practically nobody else will touch the subject because the topic of low average IQ scores in much of the Third World is off-limits.
Wicherts also points out international evidence that average IQs can rise dramatically over time -- by as much as 20 points in the Netherlands between 1952 and 1982, for example. In fact, Africa's current estimated "average IQ" is about the same as Britain's in 1948. The phenomenon of rising average IQ scores over time is known as the "Flynn effect," named after political scientist Jim Flynn, who popularized the result. It suggests that factors such as improved nutrition, health care, and schooling may all improve IQ test performance. Of course, Africa is currently behind richer regions on such factors, though it is rapidly catching up. Indeed, the Flynn effect may have added as much as 26 points to estimates of Kenyan IQ over a recent 14-year period. That's more than the gap between reported IQs in Africa and the United States estimated by Wicherts and colleagues based on samples from 1948 to 2006. In short, all of the evidence suggests lower levels of development cause lower test scores -- not the other way around.

But lower test scores also lead to lower development. For example, Singapore and Lagos are at the same latitude and altitude, but the high-IQ Chinese of Singapore have rid themselves of many IQ and energy sapping tropical maladies through well-conceived and well-executed public health programs. No doubt, the people of Lagos would benefit cognitively from better health, too, but it's hard to get the cycle started.

From Heiner Rindermann's new paper on whether IQ causes wealth or vice-versa:
Rindermann, H. (2012). 
Intellectual classes, technological progress and economic development: The rise of cognitive capitalism. 
Personality and Individual Differences, 53(2), 108-113. 
Abstract: 
Cognitive ability theory claims that peoples’ competences are decisive for economic wealth. For a large number of countries Lynn and Vanhanen (2002) have published data on mean intelligence levels and compared them to wealth and productivity indicators. The correlation between intelligence and wealth was supported by studies done by different authors using different countries and controls. Based on their pioneering research two research questions were developed: Does intelligence lead to wealth or does wealth lead to intelligence or are other determinants involved? If a nation’s intelligence increases wealth, how does intelligence achieve this? To answer them we need longitudinal studies and theoretical attempts, investigating cognitive ability effects at the levels of individuals, institutions and societies and examining factors which lie between intelligence and growth. Two studies, using a cross-lagged panel design or latent variables and measuring economic liberty, shares of intellectual classes and indicators of scientific-technological accomplishment, show that cognitive ability leads to higher wealth and that for this process the achievement of high ability groups is important, stimulating growth through scientific-technological progress and by influencing the quality of economic institutions. In modernity, wealth depends on cognitive resources enabling the evolution of cognitive capitalism.

Yes, it seems logical, as Kenny argues, that countries with high average IQs would suffer more from diminishing marginal returns. Yet, despite all the handwaving about the Flynn Effect, nobody has yet come up with much large-scale evidence for convergence.

One possibility is that the value of a strong back on the global market is in decline faster than the value of a high IQ.

Convergence is what everybody assumes will happen, but what actually seems to be happening is that East Asians have begun to pull away from the rest of the world. When I plotted Lynn's IQ data for the whole 20th Century in 2004, the main trend visible was rising East Asian scores relative to everybody else. The unreleased 2009 PISA scores from Chinese and Indian regions appear to show even poor, rural Chinese districts scoring in the same ballpark as European countries, while Indian states are scoring very badly, barely above SubSaharan levels. On the American SAT test, Asians (including, this time, South Asians) have been pulling away from everybody else over the last decade.

This is not to say that convergence won't happen at some point, but that there is remarkably little evidence for it so far.
There is a simple explanation for why the IQs of the offspring of colonists appear higher than those of the first descendants of the colonized. It's because the colonizers acted much as Thomas Carlyle's writing suggested they would -- as overlords with little or no interest in providing public services like a decent education or health care to a native population viewed with disdain. This left local populations malnourished, in poor health, and ill-educated -- if they were lucky enough to be in school at all. 
The good news is that decolonization began a process of leveling the playing field, with rapidly climbing and converging indicators of health and education worldwide. Thanks to the Flynn effect, IQs are doubtless on a path of convergence as well, and the poisonous idiocy of genetic explanations for wealth and poverty will soon lose what little empirical support they might appear to have today.

So that's why such longtime running dog lackeys of imperialism as Hong Kong, Singapore, and Shanghai have always had such abysmal test scores relative to uncolonized places such as Addis Ababa, Afghanistan, and the New Guinea highlands, where local intellects have been free to let their genius shine forth. The boot of colonialism lay heavily across the cognitive windpipe of urban East Asia!

As a closing thought, I just wanted to point out the air of thuggishness that is growing among mainstream pundits (highly noticeable in Kenny's choice of language), as they move from feeling they can safely ignore inconvenient facts to their growing fear and rage at the bearers of unwanted truths.

247 comments:

«Oldest   ‹Older   201 – 247 of 247
Galtonian said...

Lots of comments on Scandinavians and IQ. We usually think of young Scandinavian men as highly SWPL-fied.

There is a really nice pro-HBD video series produced by a couple of Norwegians, Harald Eia and Ole Martin Ihle, which you can access at this Wikipedia page

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

It seems that Harald Eia was a sociology grad student in the early 90s before he saw the light and began to believe in herediarianism. In this new video series Harald Eia interviews various Scandinavian social scientists and when confronted with the truth (HBD evidence) the social scientists who all espouse purely environmentalist views look sort of like the true ignoramuses that they are.

http://eusja.wordpress.com/2010/04/26/norway-brainwashed-science-on-tv-creates-storm/

medvedev said...

Maya:
When referring to Ibrahim (or Abram, if you insist) Gannibal

Maya, just FYI: his son was Ivan Abramovich, not Ivan Ibrahimovich. Do you understand what it means?

Anonymous said...

"it's called empathy and does not require genetic input.
I suppose the black genes you posit also helped in his creation of Venetian Jewish merchants (he must have been Jewish)"

You must be nuts to think Shakespeare's portrayal of Shylock showed his empathy for Jews!

On the other hand the hero of his play Othello is a noble and valiant black General who is cruelly deceived and destroyed by his evil white underling Iago...

There is also the question of Shakespeare's identity being kept a secret. That is another good reason to suspect that like Pushkin he too was of part-African heritage. The English were more chauvinist about race than mainland Europeans.

Maya said...

medvedev:

"Maya, just FYI: his son was Ivan Abramovich, not Ivan Ibrahimovich. Do you understand what it means?"

Hopefully, you realize that these are variations of the same name. The boy was born a Muslim, and when he was presented to Peter The Great, his name was Ibrahim. Of course, upon induction into the Eastern Orthodox Church, he was christened Abram. Throughout his life, Gannibal went by both, but Ibrahim was the unofficial default. My Eastern European textbook listed him as Ibrahim. Since he was named Abram in the official church documents, obviously, his children would use Abram as their middle name root particle.

Why are we discussing something so asinine? Immigrants often go by 2 versions of the same name. My cousin goes between Mike and Misha. Another relative goes between Alex and Sasha, depending on the situation. The little one who was born here is registered as Helen, though she responds to Yelena. This isn't a hard concept.

Maya said...

The sculpture of Pushkin's head that someone posted in previous comments bears no resemblance to any other image of Pushkin available.

Pushkin's death mask can be seen here:

http://eldisblog.com/post40841992/

Here's his portrait:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pushkin_140-190_for_collage.jpg

Of course, in America race actually is a social construct and absolutely anyone can be black

Mr. Incredible said...

Pushkin and Dumas did have verifiable African ancestry, for sure. But I can't believe people are still pushing this fairy tale about Beethoven, because his ancestors are known going back several generations. All typical Germans and Flemings, nothing "exotic." See here:

http://www.lvbeethoven.com/Famille/FamilyTreeBeethoven.html

Joel Rogers, who first cooked up this idea, also claimed black ancestry for Disraeli, Goethe, Haydn and 5 US presidents (among others). This should give you an idea of his scholarly standards. (I don't know who came up with the nonsense about Eisenhower, Babe Ruth, Shakespeare, Einstein and God knows who else.)

Anonymous said...

"Pushkin and Dumas did have verifiable African ancestry, for sure. But I can't believe people are still pushing this fairy tale about Beethoven, because his ancestors are known going back several generations. All typical Germans and Flemings, nothing "exotic.""

What? Typical Germans and Flemings look like mulattoes?

Did you read the descriptions of Beethoven's appearance I posted? Don't let glamorized and white-washed portraits fool you. As a Beethoven scholar pointed out, the genius composer himself would have been astonished by how he has been portrayed by artists and sculptors.

Anonymous said...

"If Blacks in America are, as you point out, on average 20% European, then can't we claim that the greatness of Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, and John Coltrane and all the Blues and soul greats is due to their White ancestry?"

No, because we are looking at race from an American perspective; this is an American blog after all. Actually it is not the one drop rule that applies here. If it did there would be tens of millions more African-Americans. For example James Watson the Nobel Laureate looks white and so passes as white, but genetically he is around 15% African. There are numerous other such famous and accomplished "whites" in America.

Pushkin, Dumas, Beethoven et al on the other hand looked visibly mixed race so would not have passed as whites in America.




There are plenty more geniuses who

TH said...

No, because we are looking at race from an American perspective; this is an American blog after all.

Pushkin, Dumas etc. were not Americans.

Actually it is not the one drop rule that applies here. If it did there would be tens of millions more African-Americans. For example James Watson the Nobel Laureate looks white and so passes as white, but genetically he is around 15% African. There are numerous other such famous and accomplished "whites" in America.

Wrong. James Watson does not have black ancestry. The notion that he has is a canard based on faulty DNA data and methods. The same data suggest that he is a woman and a non-human, because there are so many misread bases in his published genome. The company that did the analysis later "found enough errors in the public genome to have doubts about whether the 16 percent figure will hold up." Their analysis also suggested that Watson has substantial Asian ancestry, which is unlikely. They should re-sequence his genome using up-to-date methods. As Steve has pointed out, it's unlikely that Watson has any recent non-European ancestors.

There are unlikely to be many prominent white Americans with substantial black ancestry. This is because the vast majority of white Americans have no discernible black ancestry according to DNA studies. The few who do generally have no more than a couple of percent of it. This is precisely because of the one-drop rule.

Again, I stress that you do not understand the actual range of physical types that exists in Europe. There are millions of guys who look like Beethoven in Europe, and they are genetically as European as it gets. His looks weren't even in any way extreme within the European variation.

Steve Sailer said...

Beethoven looked like Gary Oldman, who is famous for not being famous, despite his acting talent, because he's so average looking.

Mr. Incredible said...

"There are millions of guys who look like Beethoven in Europe,"

Contemporary German singer Thomas Quasthoff looks a lot like those descriptions of Beethoven:

http://www.cramermarderartists.com/quasthoff_images/Quasthoff1_Thumb.jpg

As far as I know, nobody has ever claimed he's black.

Anonymous said...

"As far as I know, nobody has ever claimed he's black. "

Maybe if he were in the USA, he would self-proclaim himself as black.

Anonymous said...

James Watson the Nobel Laureate looks white and so passes as white, but genetically he is around 15% African.



There are some real crackpots (or more likely, a single real crackpot) plaguing this blog all of a sudden. James Watson was not "around 15% African". He was Scottish on his fathers side and Irish on his mothers side.


Pushkin, Dumas, Beethoven et al on the other hand looked visibly mixed race


They did not.


so would not have passed as whites in America.


And yet they passed as whites in Europe. If you had two functioning brain cells that fact would set you to thinking.

Anonymous said...

Did you read the descriptions of Beethoven's appearance I posted?


You did not post any descriptions of Beethoven's appearance. You stated that: "Beethoven was described by his contemporaries as brown skinned, broad nosed and crinkly haired. His appearance was compared to that of mulattoes".

When you were asked to back up that assertion with quotes from primary historical sources, you ignored the question.

Or perhaps you did not want to admit that your "source" was J.A. Rodgers.

Anonymous said...

>As a Beethoven scholar pointed out, the genius composer himself would have been astonished by how he has been portrayed by artists and sculptors.<

Beethoven sat for many of the paintings of him.

Maynard Solomon in his biography Beethoven reports the high opinion Beethoven's friends had of one of these "from life" paintings in particular: this by Willibrord Joseph Mähler, painted in 1804, when the composer was turning 34. Up to that time, it was considered the most life-like rendition of his features.

Here and here for Beethoven's life mask, taken in 1812 when the composer was about 42.

Beethoven was considered a bit of a white mutt in that era - he had a Flemish grandfather. He was not blond and blue-eyed. He had dark hair with a bit of a wave. He had pockmarks on his face. He had a temper. The kids, porcelain darlings, called him "Moor." This is perfectly in keeping with his being a German of one of the swarthier, muttier types. If the Flemish grandfather had been negroid, it is unlikely that he would have been Kappellmeister at the court of the Elector of Cologne in the 1750s.

A contemporaneous document, Franklin's Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind (1751) calls all Germans "swarthy" except Saxons (section 24). Things have changed. What was considered swarthy in 1750 obviously isn't considered swarthy now. Romney with a tan would probably look like a Spaniard in the eyes of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. (And let's not get started on what Brazlians consider white.)

Anonymous said...

As a Beethoven scholar pointed out, the genius composer himself would have been astonished by how he has been portrayed by artists and sculptors.

Jesus too would be surprised by the way he has been portrayed through the ages by different ethnic groups (including some very vibrant and diverse ones.)

Svigor said...

Explaining Asian un-creativity in the personality fashion appeals to two types of people.

1) Asian apologists, obviously. This group of people hardly need to be taken seriously.

2) IQ supremacists. People so besotted with IQ that they have a strong disposition to find it complete and infallible. They ignore the numberless ways IQ is a leaky vessel and fails to explains so much about the world and are so charmed with the idea of being able to assign a number to human intelligence that they depart from the rules of good thinking.


That's pretty funny, considering I think it makes a lot of sense, and I routinely tilt at both 1 and 2, and fall into neither camp.

The historical record makes it very clear that East Asians are not as creative as Westerners. Creative people are people who create things, and Westerners have created far more things than East Asians.

Right. Which is why I try to square the facts with theory. But this is "yellow apologism" or "IQ supremacy," apparently.

You must be nuts to think Shakespeare's portrayal of Shylock showed his empathy for Jews!

Our society is nuts. Apparently, in modern productions of TMoV, Shylock is often played for sympathy. Just look at how "do we not bleed" is quoted out of context and without irony.

Oh, and btw, you should seek help.

Svigor said...

Explaining Asian un-creativity in the personality fashion appeals to two types of people.

1) Asian apologists, obviously. This group of people hardly need to be taken seriously.

2) IQ supremacists. People so besotted with IQ that they have a strong disposition to find it complete and infallible. They ignore the numberless ways IQ is a leaky vessel and fails to explains so much about the world and are so charmed with the idea of being able to assign a number to human intelligence that they depart from the rules of good thinking.


That's pretty funny, considering I think it makes a lot of sense, and I routinely tilt at both 1 and 2, and fall into neither camp.

Anonymous said...

"If Blacks in America are, as you point out, on average 20% European, then can't we claim that the greatness of Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, and John Coltrane and all the Blues and soul greats is due to their White ancestry?

I mean all these Blacks have probably more White ancestry on a percentage basis than Dumas, Pushkin and certainly Beethoven (who probably has none) have Black ancestry.

Think about it. If their musical greatness was due to their African ancestry, then Africa would be the home of all types of great musical traditions and innovations. But actually Africa has never produced any music even remotely of the quality of Duke Ellington.

Ergo, this alleged Black genius must be the result of White genes."

One might add that the same can be said of the alleged contribution of the African ancestry to the greatness of Pushkin and Dumas.

If their greatness was due to their African ancestry then shouldn't Africa be the source of great literary traditions?

But we know from early accounts of the exploration of south Saharan Africa by Whites, that there was scant evidence of the use of any written language or even mastery of rudimentary technology such as the wheel.

If these facts were more widely known, perhaps Whites wouldn't be surprised that significant numbers of Blacks (not all by any means) in America have difficulty mastering a written language or higher mathematics.

Anonymous said...

"There are millions of guys who look like Beethoven in Europe, and they are genetically as European as it gets. His looks weren't even in any way extreme within the European variation."

You, along with most everyone else, have been deceived by white-washed portraits of Beethoven.


"Paul Bekker, another very noted authority on Beethoven, says that "the most faithful picture of Beethoven's head" shows him with "wide, thick lipped mouth, short, thick nose, and proudly arched forehead." (Beethoven, p. 41, 1925. trans. Bozman). Thayer adds that Beethoven was an ugly little man, and no one would be more astonished than the great composer should he return and see how he has been idealized by sculptors and painters."


"Frau Fischer, an intimate acquaintance of Beethoven, describes him thus, "Short, stocky, broad shoulders, short neck, round nose, blackish-brown complexion." (From r. H. Schauffler, The Man Who Freed Music, Vol. I, p. 18, 1929)."


A face with a "blackish-brown complexion", thick lips and a thick nose is most certainly NOT typical of germans or flemings.

A few of the portraits of Beethoven, and his grandfather Louis, paint a picture that is closer to the truth than the ones that have fooled so many for so long:

His grandfather Louis van Beethoven, himself a genius of european classical music:

http://www.reprodart.com/kunst/german_school/louis_van_beethoven_1712_73_e_hi.jpg


Ludwig van Beethoven:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/04/Beethoven1788.JPG


http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/walesmusic/beethoven_01.jpg

Anonymous said...

"The kids, porcelain darlings, called him "Moor." This is perfectly in keeping with his being a German of one of the swarthier, muttier types"

That Beethoven was called "Mohr" or Moor by the germans should tell you something. Something most of you clearly don't want to hear. As I posted yesterday:

http://www.mdcbowen.org/p2/sf/faq068.htm

"Alexander W. Thayer, perhaps the foremost authority on Beethoven, says, "Beethoven had even more of the Moor in his features than his master, 'Haydn.'" (Beethoven, Vol. I, p. 146). By "Moor" was meant "Negro." Until recent times the German for "Negro" was "Mohr.""

Anonymous said...

Why must you continue with your racist shenanigans? Everyone knows that Beethoven, the greatest genius of European classical music (TGGOECM), was not black but Fijian.

There are diverse contemporary sources that affirm this.

On 11 April, 1814, Napoleon, the greatest genius of modern tyranny, was given a private performance by Beethoven (TGGOECM). The Corsican could not contain his surprise at seeing the dark-skinned, tattooed, grass-skirt wearing Beethoven and exclaimed,

"What! the music is by this savage of the Pacific? Well, my fine savage, henceforward, thou art in my service!"

Beethoven (TGGOECM), being immensely proud of his Fijian roots, took unkindly to being called a savage. He immediately speared, dismembered, cooked, and devoured Napoleon, as Fijian custom dictates. The powers that be hid the general's death by fabricating that fable of exile to Elba.

Indeed, if one plays Beethoven's 9th backwards at 3am after sacrificing a virgin goat to Bal, one can hear the recipe that Beethoven (TGGOECM) followed whilst preparing Napoleon's corpse.

Another source is Friederich Schiller, the greatest genius of Germany 1890-1895, who himself was a victim of whitewashing, being in reality a highly intelligent parakeet (more of that anon). As Steven Greenblatt relates, on May 9, 1805, Schiller and Beethoven (TGGOECM) met during Beethoven's (TGGOECM) performance at the Weimar Aviary. Schiller was so taken by TGGOECM's genius that he was heard to remark,

"Squawk! The savage is a genius, is a genius! Squawk!"

Again Beethoven (TGGOECM) flared up at the word savage. He skewered Schiller the poor parakeet with a conductor's wand and fried him at a nearby inn.
The recipe was encoded in third movement of The Consecration of the House, but only one man so far has been able to decode it: a certain American named Colonel Sanders, the greatest genius of the poultry cooking game.

Anonymous said...

"Wrong. James Watson does not have black ancestry. The notion that he has is a canard based on faulty DNA data and methods.....Their analysis also suggested that Watson has substantial Asian ancestry, which is unlikely. They should re-sequence his genome using up-to-date methods. As Steve has pointed out, it's unlikely that Watson has any recent non-European ancestors."

Why is it unlikely that James Watson had 9% asian ancestry? Many "white" americans have significant native american ancestry, just as many whites have african ancestry. I recommend you read up on the tri-racial melungeons.

Secondly, how does not having "recent" non-european ancestors preclude having non-european ancestors?

Thirdly, and most tellingly, the picture of Watson's maternal grandmother posted by Steve himself shows a visibly mixed-race woman:

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_4yctHhP4f-8/R1_H5DUlkJI/AAAAAAAAACU/hVwmFLu3RJw/s1600/James_Watson_Grandmother.jpg

Anonymous said...

"You, along with most everyone else, have been deceived by white-washed portraits of Beethoven. "

preach it my colored oppressed-by-the-white-male-establisment brother

Anonymous said...

"Gannibal through Pushkin is not an ancestor of the British royal family....Pushkin's descendant married cousins of the royal family resideing in England but did not marry into the British royal family itself."

The Mountbattens are considered members of the British Royal Family and Pushkin is one of their recognized ancestors. Prince Phillip is a Mountbatten from his mother's side:

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


Then there is this speculation:

http://factionparadox.wikia.com/wiki/Queen_Charlotte


"Queen Charlotte, (née Duchess Sophia Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz; 19 May 1744 – 17 November 1818) was the queen consort of George III of the United Kingdom (1738–1820). She is the grandmother of Queen Victoria, and the great-great-great-great grandmother of the current Queen of the United Kingdom, Elizabeth II."

"A description of Charlotte by her physician, Baron Stockmar, that describes her as having "a true mulatto face", has inspired inquiry about her ancestry and investigation of her genealogy."

"Another explanation is that Charlotte's mother, Elizabeth Albertine, was the illegitimate daughter of Abram Petrovich Gannibal, and that Charlotte could therefore have been one-quarter Black.

It should be noted that the Royal Household itself, at the time of Queen Elizabeth II's coronation in 1952 referred to both her Asian and African bloodlines in an apologia it published defending her position as head of the Commonwealth."

Anonymous said...

By the way, here is the reason why Pushkin looked more african than the typical octoroon which is what he is usually passed off as:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/secret/famous/pushkingenealogy.html


"Nadja, his mother, was through her own mother, a descendant of the same Pushkin forbear from whom her husband Serge descended. This is genetically interesting since it explains why the poet, who is generally but mistakenly accepted as an octoroon, looks perceptibly blacker."

So via the inbreeding common among the european nobility Pushkin was at least a quarter ethiopian.

It is also worth noting that Gannibal's descendants weren't the only representatives of Africa among the Russian aristocracy. From the link above:

"Interestingly enough, the Gannibal was not the first black noble family of Russia. Because the name itself, "abach" means Abysissinian, the princely house of the Abachidze has long been known to be Ethiopian in origin. With the rise of Paata to political prominence in the early 17th century, they intermarried with and became lineal ancestors of the royal houses of Imerithia and Georgia of the Caucuses.

The Arapov also claim that they derived their name from the word, "arap" or arab, the Russian for Negro. Beginning in 1613, they have filled military posts as generals and such court positions as a governor and a member of the Ministry of Agriculture.

Another family that tradition and legend have traced back to Africa is that of the Axakov. They apparently came to Moscow in the entourage of Prince Danila Alexandrovitch of Souzdal,1251-1303.

An even earlier black immigrant was Chimon Afrkanovich who arrived in Russia at the beginning of the XI century and entered the service of the Grand Duke Iaroslav Vladimirovich of Kiev. A number of his descendants who carried the name, Isleniev, held high ranking positions in the army. Petr Alexeevitch, for example, was aide de camp to Catherine the Great."

Le Persan said...

The authority behind those ever-so-shocking PBS articles is no other than Mario de Valdes y Cocom, an (*chortle*) independent afrocentric "scholar," a J.A. Rogers for the new generation. His method, much like monsieur anonymous', is usually hypothesizing based on portraits. However, he is an equal-opportunity employer of all sophisms.

But if it's on TV, it must be true, dammit!

Anonymous said...

"The authority behind those ever-so-shocking PBS articles...."


Stick to Stormfront then...where you can read feel good articles which "prove" that the pyramids were built by blonds from Europe, the Aryans of India were blonds from Germany, the Great Wall of China was built by celtic blonds from Scotland etc etc

Unfortunately for your ilk such crackpot white lies no longer pass muster with a growing proportion of mankind.

Dan Kurt said...

re: "Guys,
on IQ and standard deviation, I asked Harpending about this (why no increased standard deviation in mixed populations) on his blog and he basically said there could be, but it just hasn't shown up, because standard deviation is tough to measure."

What! Even EXCEL has a SD function. Surely any data set where a Mean is calculated could have a SD done.

Dan Kurt

Le Persan said...

And what of your "ilk," who cannot analyze arguments logically, whose rebuttals consist nothing but ad hominem attacks, abstract nouns with no concrete referent, and flimsy strawmen?

I would encourage you to get an education, to exercise whatever smidgen of matter composes your cerebrum, to avoid the dubious screeds of paranoid websites and public television, to become someone who can criticize and defend his or her ideas rationally, yet I fear your becoming enlightened would prove a greater task than all the labors of Hercules.

You call me a crackpot; I ask you to put down the crackpipe. You say I tell white lies, while you propagate monstrous untruths of all colors.

The Chinese built the Great Wall to keep out undesirables. If only we could build a wall around this blog to keep out soft-headed people like you.

Maya said...

"Stick to Stormfront then...where you can read feel good articles which "prove" that the pyramids were built by blonds from Europe, the Aryans of India were blonds from Germany, the Great Wall of China was built by celtic blonds from Scotland etc etc"

Dear Anonymous,

I can't speak for anyone else, but the reason I kept arguing that Pushkin doesn't look the least bit black (which he doesn't) is that I am still amazed by the need to claim every person with a miniscule amount of black heritage as black by the African apologists. I know the American left loves the one drop rule while pretending to be somehow oppressed by it, but even they must understand that it doesn't reflect biological reality.

Foaming at the mouth, trying to prove that some white looking guy is actually black is insulting to the black community, in my humble opinion. It's as though black apologists of your kind are suggesting that a real, recognizably black achiever can't be found, so the most authentically African people of any importance are actually white! Do you need help locating bright minds who are, at least 50% African? People above already named some of America's greatest musicians who were definitely, recognizably black, and I already named some literary giants.

You see, when you name Ibrahim Gannibal's white great grandson as an example of black achievement instead of Ibrahim Gannibal himself (who was truly a great man of astounding talents), recognition of black contributions isn't what you're after. You want the great black achievers to be white. Can't you respect an intellect that comes dressed in dark skin? Your need to provide the black community with biologically related role models who are as white as possible is sad and unsettling. A good analogy would be a feminazi claiming that some great men of the past had high estrogen levels and trying to use it as proof of feminine contribution and importance.

Anonymous said...

One line of Mountbattens is now part of the royal family via Prince Philipa, but even that is a bit of a story. His paternal dynastic line is Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg, but his mother was a Battenberg (anglicized to Mountbatten during WWI). Having spend much of his youth in Britain and being close to his uncle, Lord Louis Mountbatten, Prince Philip chose to use the surname Mountbatten and to transmit it to non-reigning future descendants. Prince Philip is not descended from Pushkin via the Merenberg line. His non-royal cousins are Pushkin's descendants. Ergo, the reigning line of the British royal family is not descended from Pushkin. Moreover, the Mountbattens of that line do not form part of the core of the British royal family.

Mr. Incredible said...

"Maybe if [Quasthoff] were in the USA, he would self-proclaim himself as black"

He has recorded a jazz/blues album, so that might be a good career move :)

BTW even though Beethoven wasn't a mulatto, he did compose music for someone who was - the violinist Bridgetower:

http://www.blackpast.org/?q=gah/bridgetower-george-1780-1860

TH said...

Thirdly, and most tellingly, the picture of Watson's maternal grandmother posted by Steve himself shows a visibly mixed-race woman:

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_4yctHhP4f-8/R1_H5DUlkJI/AAAAAAAAACU/hVwmFLu3RJw/s1600/James_Watson_Grandmother.jpg


LOL. Now I know you're just trolling.

Svigor said...

Interesting thread. If I hadn't read it, I would still think all the great "Jews" of history were "Jews."

Now I know they were black.

Anonymous said...

In old age, Beethoven's complexion lightened to sallow according to one of his biographers. This casts doubt on the reliability of the "blackish brown" description. A Wesley Snipes type of complexion is never going to turn sallow. Source: Beethoven The Music and The Life

Basically, in old age, illness confined him to the indoors and he lost his light brown tan as a result. He was clearly a Mediterranean type. Not unusual in Southern Germany, but maybe a little bit in the central and northern parts of the country.

As for him being the greatest, that is disputed. Mozart and Bach are often placed above him.

Anonymous said...

Dan Kurt:

What! Even EXCEL has a SD function.

I may have not emphasized that Harpending was referring to accurate calculation, rather than any calculation.

In the words of the man himself

http://westhunt.wordpress.com/2011/12/28/rischs-conjecture/#comment-354

"One route to an answer is that variances, and so SDs, have a large sampling error, so lots of the differences in SD that you see are just statistical flux and fleen.

Even so, how big is the effect you are interested in? Let us mix two populations with IQ SDs of 15, one with a mean IQ of 110 and one with a mean IQ of 100, equal numbers of each origin population, randomly chosen, yaddle yaddle.

The between group variance is 5^2 or 25 and the within group variance is 15^2 or 225, so the new total is 250 and the SD goes from 15 to 15.8, not much of a jump. You would need a very large sample to detect the difference."

Anonymous said...

The black supremacists are claiming Pushkin, etc because they are black supremacists. They think Europeans are incapable of creating great works of literature and music without those superior black genes. But where are all the great works of literature created by blacks who racially resemble Wesley Snipes? Let's look at the science Fiction genre. Any black author on par with say Frank Herbert - one of the creators of science fiction fantasy? How about an African fantasy writer on par with JJR Tolkien? Or an "important" writer like Scott Fitzgerald. Any important philosophers like Kant or Schopenhauer? All the writers I just mentioned were as white in phenotype and ancestry as you could possible get (all were of North/West European stock and blond even).

The black supremacists have just two European authors with which to hype their black supremacy (authors which they never even read). Two out of legions of great European authors. In fact virtually every literature genre was created by Europeans, from Epic Fantasy to Science Fiction. Some black supremacists just HATE that.

Bliss said...

Yes Beethoven did originally dedicate his renowned Kreutzer Sonata to the mulatto violinist and composer George Bridgewater and there is an interesting story behind why the temperamental Beethoven angrily changed the dedication :

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


More impressive than Bridgewater is the mulatto Chevalier de Saint-George, known as the "Black Mozart" who was not only renowned as a violinist and composer of classical music but also as the greatest swordsman in France, a champion swimmer, a colonel in the French Army and a great seducer of women. One of the great all-rounders of all time:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevalier_de_Saint-George

Steve Sailer said...

Samuel R. Delaney is in the sci-fi Hall of Fame. His father was an undertaker in Harlem.

Steve Barnes, who frequently co-authors books with Niven and Pournelle, is black.

Anonymous said...

Samuel Delaney is clearly mixed race. He looks less "black" than Obama. Note that I said "blacks who racially resemble Wesley Snipes". As for Barnes, are you joking? He's clearly not in the same league as an Author C. Clark or Jules Verne. His Hugo Nominee book was co-written with a European author.

Anonymous said...

BTW, I don't want to give off the impression that I believe that real blacks are incapable of creating great works of literature (as in, on par with the European greats like Kant and Dostoevsky). I'm sure that as conditions improve in Africa and for African Americans, you'll start seeing some. However, the black supremacist fantasy, "By the way, Pushkin and Dumas aren't anomalies. There seems to be a pattern of part-africans being the greatest writers in many varied cultures." needs to be shot down.

Dumas was not the greatest writer in the French language (not even close) and neither was Pushkin the greatest writer in the Russian language. Their skill as writers had nothing to do with their African ancestry (in one case, very distant). There exists no such pattern. One could just as well claim that Samuel R. Delany's skill was due to his European ancestry.

Anonymous said...

Other notable Scandinavians who made significant contributions to the sciences are Svante Arrhenius and Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff - two of the three founders of physical chemistry. Both won nobel prizes for their work. Ernest Orlando Lawrence, who was of Norwegian stock, is also notable for his construction of the first cyclotron (though he did his work in America).

Maya said...

James Baldwin and Richard Wright are in the same league as Fitzgerald.

Anonymous said...

"James Baldwin and Richard Wright are in the same league as Fitzgerald."

Neither of those authors made the top 100 readers list by "Modern Library". They appear to be minor authors whose black themes did well only with critics.

Maya said...

"Neither of those authors made the top 100 readers list by "Modern Library". They appear to be minor authors whose black themes did well only with critics."

That's interesting, even though I was sharing my own opinion about these authors' quality of writing and importance within literature. Did Toni Morrison make the cut?

ATBOTL said...

Ethiopians aren't exactly "black" in the sense that Americans use the term.

They are a mixture of Caucasians who migrated back into Africa(in several waves) and various African groups, including exotic Bushmen-like elements.

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