We have explored the possible impacts of both demography and selection on X-linked genetic variation. With regards to the former, we were particularly interested in investigating the possibility of male versus female demographic differences as these can be detected by comparing autosomal and X-linked data. Previous studies have found evidence for skewed gender ratios. Indeed, here we showed that evidence for asymmetries in both directions (male Ne/ female Ne less than or greater than one) can be found within a single dataset. Our results suggest that the picture of male versus female demography is complex and that each study addressing this question should be viewed as providing insight on a particular geographical scale and period in history rather than an absolute answer.
X chromosomes and human demographic history
Amanda M Casto et al. Characterization of X-Linked SNP genotypic variation in globally-distributed human populations. Genome Biology 2010, 11:R10doi:10.1186/gb-2010-11-1-r10
Upcoming talk on Etruscan origins
Scheduled for 24th Sep 2010 at the Sanger Institute:
Origins and evolution of the Etruscans’ DNA
Speaker: Dr Guido Barbujani
Affiliation: University di Ferrara, Italy
Date: 24th Sep 2010 Time: 00:00:00
Venue: M2-03
Host: Chris Tyler-Smith
Abstract:
The Etruscan culture is documented in Etruria, Central Italy from the 7th to the 1st century BC. For more than 2,000 years there has been disagreement on the Etruscans’ biological origins, whether local or in Anatolia. Genetic affinities with modern Tuscan and Anatolian populations have been reported, but so far all attempts to fit the Etruscans’ and modern mitochondrial DNAs (mtDNAs) in the same genealogy have failed. In this study we considered that most populations are internally structured, and we analysed both Tuscany and Anatolia in finer geographical detail, comparing ancient and modern mtDNA data with the results of millions of computer simulations under various genealogical and demographic models. Using methods of Approximate Bayesian Computation, we show that people of coastal Anatolia, the area where ancient historians placed the Etruscans’ putative roots, are descended from ancestors who were genetically very similar to the Etruscans. In turn, the Etruscans can be considered ancestral, with a high degree of confidence, to the inhabitants of one Tuscan valley, Casentino, but not to other communities dwelling in the former Etruscan homeland. Our results demonstrate that the Etruscans’ DNA sequences are still present, but only in very specific sections of the Tuscan territory. They also support the existence of genetic links between Etruria and the Eastern Mediterranean shores, but place the relevant contact >10,000 years ago, strongly suggesting that the Etruscan culture developed locally without significant recent contribution of immigrants from Anatolia.
Origins and evolution of the Etruscans’ DNA
Speaker: Dr Guido Barbujani
Affiliation: University di Ferrara, Italy
Date: 24th Sep 2010 Time: 00:00:00
Venue: M2-03
Host: Chris Tyler-Smith
Abstract:
The Etruscan culture is documented in Etruria, Central Italy from the 7th to the 1st century BC. For more than 2,000 years there has been disagreement on the Etruscans’ biological origins, whether local or in Anatolia. Genetic affinities with modern Tuscan and Anatolian populations have been reported, but so far all attempts to fit the Etruscans’ and modern mitochondrial DNAs (mtDNAs) in the same genealogy have failed. In this study we considered that most populations are internally structured, and we analysed both Tuscany and Anatolia in finer geographical detail, comparing ancient and modern mtDNA data with the results of millions of computer simulations under various genealogical and demographic models. Using methods of Approximate Bayesian Computation, we show that people of coastal Anatolia, the area where ancient historians placed the Etruscans’ putative roots, are descended from ancestors who were genetically very similar to the Etruscans. In turn, the Etruscans can be considered ancestral, with a high degree of confidence, to the inhabitants of one Tuscan valley, Casentino, but not to other communities dwelling in the former Etruscan homeland. Our results demonstrate that the Etruscans’ DNA sequences are still present, but only in very specific sections of the Tuscan territory. They also support the existence of genetic links between Etruria and the Eastern Mediterranean shores, but place the relevant contact >10,000 years ago, strongly suggesting that the Etruscan culture developed locally without significant recent contribution of immigrants from Anatolia.
Did George Washington predict a "United States of Europe"?
No.
This spurious quotation attributed to George Washington has been promoted recently by a poster at Majority Rights: “I am a citizen of the greatest Republic of Mankind. I see the human race united like a huge family by brotherly ties. We have made a sowing of liberty which will, little by little, spring up across the whole world. One day, on the model of the United States of America, a United States of Europe will come into being. The United States will legislate for all its nationalities.” Variations have also been repeated by Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt, the half-Japanese founder of the Pan-European Union Coudenhove-Kalergi, Eric Voegelin, and others.
For the search engines, I'm reposting my reply from Majority Rights showing the source of this bogus Washington quotation below (continue reading):
This spurious quotation attributed to George Washington has been promoted recently by a poster at Majority Rights: “I am a citizen of the greatest Republic of Mankind. I see the human race united like a huge family by brotherly ties. We have made a sowing of liberty which will, little by little, spring up across the whole world. One day, on the model of the United States of America, a United States of Europe will come into being. The United States will legislate for all its nationalities.” Variations have also been repeated by Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt, the half-Japanese founder of the Pan-European Union Coudenhove-Kalergi, Eric Voegelin, and others.
For the search engines, I'm reposting my reply from Majority Rights showing the source of this bogus Washington quotation below (continue reading):
"Oversized" Penile Length In The Black People; Myth Or Reality
Guy White "logic": reporting on an incident of bestiality which he asserts "does carry several stereotypes", one of the first three things that comes to guywhite's mind is: "This Black guy must be enormous down under to be able to do it with a horse." Reality:
“Oversized” Penile Length In The Black People; Myth Or Reality
JC Orakwe, GU Ebuh
Abstract
Objective: Amongst the Caucasians and some non-Black races, there is the popular belief that the black people generally have longer penile sizes. Even the Blacks themselves tend to believe so. This study was carried out to test the veracity of this ascription of “oversized” penile length to people of the Black (Negro) race.
Design: A prospective and comparative study
Setting: The Nnamdi Azikiwe University Teaching Hospital, Nnewi, Nigeria.
Subjects and Method: Full-stretch flaccid penile lengths, and flaccid penile lengths, were measured in 115 adult men of the Black race in Nigeria. The results were compared with reported similar main studies on people of other races, which were accessible to the authors. These studies were done in Italy, Greece, Korea, Britain, and the United States of America.
Result: The mean full-stretch penile length of the Nigerian Blacks was 13.37cm and the mean flaccid length was 9.36cm. Similar studies reported full-stretch penile lengths of 12.50cm in Italians, 12.18cm in Greeks, 9.6cm in Koreans, 13cm in British Caucasians [note: the number reported for the British sample is actually the median, and is identical to the median for this Nigerian sample], and 12.45cm in the American Caucasians [note: this sample actually includes Asians, blacks, and whites]. The penile length for Nigerian Blacks was longer than those of the other races, but the differences were only statistically different in comparison with the Koreans.
Conclusion: There is the possibility of racial differences in penile sizes, but there is no convincing scientific background to support the ascription of bigger penile dimensions to people of the Black race
Keywords: Penile Length, Black Race, Penile Size
Tropical Journal of Medical Research Vol. 11 (1) 2007: pp. 16-18
[. . .] The observed longer flaccid penile length particularly may be partly responsible for the apparent impression that the Blacks have bigger penile dimensions. It is know that the flaccid penis is deformable extensible and elastic, and influenced by variations in ambient temperatures, and also by fear and anxiety. This influence may be due to the effect of these factors on the Dartos muscles, which contract in low temperature and in state of fear and anxiety, and relax in high temperatures. Native black environments have high ambient temperatures. Photographs taken in these environments may depict an apparently longer penile length in the flaccid state and this may erroneously be extrapolated to the erect state. We believe that most impressions of the "oversized" penile lengths in the blacks are derived from such pornographic photographs. This however may not be all the reason. Edward in the result of his survey of definitive penile size published on-line, observed that the average flaccid penile length of the black Americans was shorter compared to that of the American Caucasians, but that the average erect length of the American Caucasians was surprisingly longer. Since the comparison was done in the same environment, other factors may be contributory to the observed longer flaccid penile length in the blacks.
Related posts [updated 5/2015]:
Forthcoming genealogy-themed shows on American TV
Skip Gates' Faces of the Universe America, featuring Yo-Yo Ma (Paris-born Chinese), Queen Noor (half-Syrian resident of Jordan), Malcolm Gladwell (British-born Jamaican mulatto Canadian), Eva Longoria Parker (Mexican), Mike Nichols (Jewish), Mehmet Oz (Turkish), Stephen Colbert (Irish), Louise Erdrich (Amerindian), Kristi Yamaguchi (Japanese), Elizabeth Alexander (black), Mario Batali (Italian/English/French Canadian), and Meryl Streep (American), airs this February on PBS.
Should Faces of America leave you wanting to be forcefed yet more amazing tales of diverse American ancestry, you're in luck. NBC has scheduled the premiere of the American version of Who Do You Think You Are? for March:
Should Faces of America leave you wanting to be forcefed yet more amazing tales of diverse American ancestry, you're in luck. NBC has scheduled the premiere of the American version of Who Do You Think You Are? for March:
Among the celebrities featured are Matthew Broderick [half-Jewish], Lisa Kudrow [Jewish and executive producer of the series], Spike Lee [black], Sarah Jessica Parker [half-Jewish], Susan Sarandon [Welsh/Irish/Italian], Brooke Shields [Irish/Italian] and Emmitt Smith [black]. Ancestry.com is NBC's official partner on the series.
Black musical ability
Jason Malloy, in his review of Richard Lynn's Race Differences in Intelligence: An Evolutionary Analysis, writes:
For the first time I've seen, Lynn also reviews tests of "MQ" or musical intelligence for black and white Americans. While blacks score lower on almost all the items, commensurate with the fact that IQ correlates with musical ability, they also do much better, on average, than whites on rhythm items - Lynn calculates a rhythm IQ for Af-Ams of 106, though no cross-cultural results are presented, this has been recognized in a number of societies through time. Since Sub-Saharan Africans have been musical innovators across a number of different countries, this topic should have more attention.I haven't read Race Differences in Intelligence, but while I agree that a preponderance of evidence indicates rhythm is a relative strength of blacks, I'm skeptical of the idea that blacks have greater rhythmic ability than whites in adulthood. Matt Nuenke summarizes the results presented by Lynn as follows:
African Americans perform less well than Europeans on tests of musical abilities of pitch discrimination, tone discrimination, and memory, but they perform about the same as Europeans on tests of rhythm.This conclusion falls more in line with the evidence I'm aware of (e.g. this study of high school students, which I see Lynn includes). Nuenke continues:
To show this pattern of musical abilities, the results of these studies have been aggregated to give a Musical Quotient (MQ) derived from tests of musical ability other than rhythm, and a Rhythm Quotient (RQ). The results of these studies are summarized in Table 4.8. Row 1 gives results for a large sample of African Americans in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia calculated from the Seashore Test and shows that they obtained an MQ (Musical Quotient) of 90 but a higher RQ (Rhythm Quotient) of 106. Row 2 gives results from a comparison of 272 European and 288 African American college students attending colleges in Tennessee, again showing that Europeans achieved higher scores on general musical ability (pitch, intensity, time, consonance, and total memory) but African Americans achieved a higher RQ (Rhythm Quotient) of 102. Row 3 gives results for a sample from a poor neighborhood in Washington, D.C. showing an MQ of 83 and an RQ of 96. Row 4 gives results for a sample of African-American 5-to-8-year-olds in Rochester in New York State with an MQ of 89 and an RQ of 104. Row 5 gives results for a sample of African-American 18-year-olds drawn from senior high school largely in Texas, with some from Illinois and Rochester in New York State, with an MQ of 86 based on tonal memory and pitch discrimination and an RQ of 100. The comparison group was 541 Europeans attending the same schools. All the studies show that African Americans have Rhythm IQs substantially greater than general Musical IQs by about 15 IQ points. There appears to be no change in the musical abilities of Africans over the period of approximately half a century from the 1920s to the late 1970s over which the studies have been conducted.Black children may score slightly better than white children on tests of rhythm, but this most likely simply reflects the faster maturation of blacks:
The reader has no doubt noticed that the Negro fifth grade has consistently shown a tendency to compare better with the white fifth grade than the Negro eighth grade and adults compare with the respective white groups. Thus once more we have a verification of the oft-stated idea that the Negro child matures more rapidly than the white child.
[Yale S. Nathanson. The Musical Ability of the Negro. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 140, The American Negro (Nov., 1928), pp. 186-190]
A window into the tortured soul of Mencius Moldbadger
Moldbug outed himself today in a post at Unqualified Convolutions, so I see no harm in drawing attention to one of his early (semi-autobiographical, I take it) literary efforts, "Hybrid Vigor" (published in 1993 under the imprint of the cDc):
"Love me for my genes," says Antonio, kneeling. "If you cannot love me for myself, you must love me for my genes! I have never told anyone this before, I have always kept it to myself. I have always let them think it but an accident of cruel nature that I have white hair on my cheekbones and a thoroughly disreputable-looking nose, but the fact is that I am part badger on my father's side."
Maria gasps. "Oh! Antonio! And we jeered you so! Oh, Antonio, you poor creature, if we had only known!"
Antonio stands and they embrace. He chokes out sobs. "Oh! Maria! You must stand always by my side! You must be my badger-woman, you must bear my badger-children! Tonight, Maria, tonight we must unite in the writhing wanton lust of badger-flesh in ecstasy!"
Maria is crying. "Oh! Antonio! I will do always as you tell me! I will be your badger-woman, I will bear your badger-children, I will refrain from taunting your diminutive badger-penis! Oh, Antonio, be with me!"
Intra-European variation in musical ability
Some discussion at Mangan's prompted me to look for studies comparing Europeans of various nationalities on tests of musical aptitude. I found a summary of several such studies in a 1955 book:
For comparison, here is Mangan's breakdown of Charles Murray's list of "significant" composers by national origin:
In a Chicago Jewish orphanage and a Chicago public school, children numbering 550 were given both the Sea shore and the Kwalwasser-Dykema Music Tests. The national and racial groups reported by Sanderson 146 are Jewish, German, Negro, Italian, and Polish. In order of standing, the Jewish group rated highest, followed by German, Italian, Negro, and last, Polish, who showed marked inferiority. In this study the Negroes earned the highest score in rhythm. The total mean scores of the Sanderson study follow: Jews 185.5; Germans 183.2; Negroes 180.6; Italians 178.4 and Polish 173.7.
The Witherson 188 study, a survey of all the children in the grade schools of Duquesne, Pennsylvania, numbering approximately 2,000 children, employed the Kwalwasser-Dykema Music Tests. More than a dozen different national and racial classifications were represented, and although the Sanderson and Witherson studies were conducted in communities separated by considerable distance the resemblances are striking. In descending order of achievement, the groups rate as follows: Jewish, native American, American foreign-born, Scotch-Irish, Welsh, German, English, mixed foreign, Serbian-Croatian, Russian, Polish, Hungarian, Lithuanian, Slovak, Italian, and Negro. The averages (means) of the Witherson study are presented for comparison with the Sanderson study: Jewish 185.9; German 183.5; Polish 180.5; Italian 178.2; and Negro 177.0. The Eneboe study of 740 Chicago high school students yielded similar results with the same music test. Scandinavian, English, and German children ranked high; the Slavic group was about 20 points lower, and the Italian and Negro children were very low.
Finally, the author wishes to present Dykema's 29 study of ten European groups, numbering approximately 6,000 children of secondary school age, measured abroad. While on sabbatical leave from Teachers College, Columbia University, in 1930-31, he gave the tests in ten different countries under conditions that were maintained fairly constant from place to place. The countries represented in his investigation were : Germany, England, Scotland, Czecho-Slovakia, Russia, Italy, Hungary, Austria, Ireland, and France. It would be foolhardy to accept his results without qualification, for an average sampling of only 600 children in each country can hardly be considered adequate. Yet the study is unique and, as test populations go, rather authoritative. The total mean scores earned by the ten groups are:
Country Mean
Germany 193.58
England 193.42
Scotland 193.42
Czechoslovakia 193.03
Russia 192.40
Italy 192.29
Hungary 189.25
Austria 188.98
Ireland 185.33
France 183.14
All countries 191.21
When we compare the scores of children abroad with those of our own country, we find that the average European child earns roughly ten points more. This difference is based upon the measurement of 4,250 American school children tested with the Kwalwasser-Dykema Music Tests about the same time that Professor Dykema was testing abroad. Statistically the difference is large enough to be considered significant. In addition, we note that foreign children show greater variation in their scores; European scores are more heterogeneous and ours more homogene ous. The standard deviation for all European children is 18.70; for American children 16.49. One-third of the children above the average and one-third below the aver age earn between 191. plus 18.7 and 191.2 minus 18.7. American children with their average of 180.9 show a variation of 16.5 above and below the mean. These scores showing less variation support the claims of anthropologists that hybridization is moving at a rapid rate in our country. Sharp national lines of cleavage are being eradicated to a great extent by the forty million immigrants who have settled here in a single century from 1830 to 1930.
[Jacob Kwalwasser. Exploring the Musical Mind.]
For comparison, here is Mangan's breakdown of Charles Murray's list of "significant" composers by national origin:
24 GermanApart from Germany appearing near the top of both lists, within Europe there seems to be little relationship between the number of great composers produced by a country and the average raw musical talent of (modern representatives of) its people.
16 French
12 Italian
6 Russian
2 Czech
2 English
2 Hungarian
1 Dutch
1 Flemish
1 Norwegian
1 Polish
1 Swedish
Interesting reunion
Heartwarming:
Vanuatu villagers whose ancestors killed and ate a Scottish missionary in the 19th century have apologised to the man's descendants at a ceremony on the anniversary of his death. 170 years after people on Erromango killed Presbyterian missionary the Reverend John Williams and his companion, James Harris, some of Mr Williams descendants travelled to the island to take part in a reconciliation ceremony last month.
Some local people felt Erromango had been cursed because of the killings.
New genetic study of Argentines
Nothing surprising here:
Argentineans carried a large fraction of European genetic heritage in their Y-chromosomal (94.1%) and autosomal (78.5%) DNA, but their mitochondrial gene pool is mostly of Native American ancestry (53.7%); instead, African heritage was small in all three genetic systems (less than 4%).I'm a bit bored with the topic, but those interested are welcome to continue the previous discussion.
Upcoming study of Neolithic DNA from Germany
Polako writes:
About 250 Funnelbeaker (Trichterbecherkultur) and Wartberg Culture skeletons are being tested for Y-DNA, mtDNA and autosomal SNP and STR markers at a lab in Kiel. They come from 3400-3000BC burial sites at Panker, eastern Schleswig-Holstein, Großenrode and Odagsen, southern Lower Saxony, and Calden, North Hessen. All of those places are in North-Central Germany. The scientists not only hope to determine the ancestry of the samples, but also their pigmentation traits, by looking at SNPs associated with hair, skin and eye color.The project's website.
Racial differences in steroid use
Not a comprehensive review, just a summary of the first few studies I found.
A study of adolescents in Minnesota finds finds 2.1% of white males and 7.6% black males report having "used anabolic steroids to gain muscle in the past 12 months" [1]. Other numbers from this study: Hispanic 6.1%; Hmong 14.8%; other Asian 7.9%.
A study of high school football players in Indiana finds "minorities are twice as likely to use AAS" compared to whites [2].
An NCAA survey finds black college athletes are less likely to report using steroids than white athletes (unfortunately, results by sex and sport further broken down by race are not shown) [3]. Blacks also report less use of every other drug in this study. Considering that other evidence indicates blacks tend to underreport and whites tend to overreport drug use in surveys [4], I don't find these results terribly convincing.
[1] Irving et al. Steroid Use Among Adolescents: Findings From Project EAT. Journal of Adolescent Health 2002;30:243–252
[2] Stilger, GS and CE Yesalis. Anabolic-Androgenic Steroid Use Among High School Football Players. Journal of Community Health, Vol. 24, No. 2, April 1999
[3] NCAA Research Staff. NCAA Study of Substance Use and Abuse Habits of College Student-Athletes. September 1997.
[4] Bauman KE, Ennett SE. Tobacco use by black and white adolescents: the validity of self-reports. Am J Public Health. 1994 Mar;84(3):394-8.
A study of adolescents in Minnesota finds finds 2.1% of white males and 7.6% black males report having "used anabolic steroids to gain muscle in the past 12 months" [1]. Other numbers from this study: Hispanic 6.1%; Hmong 14.8%; other Asian 7.9%.
A study of high school football players in Indiana finds "minorities are twice as likely to use AAS" compared to whites [2].
An NCAA survey finds black college athletes are less likely to report using steroids than white athletes (unfortunately, results by sex and sport further broken down by race are not shown) [3]. Blacks also report less use of every other drug in this study. Considering that other evidence indicates blacks tend to underreport and whites tend to overreport drug use in surveys [4], I don't find these results terribly convincing.
[1] Irving et al. Steroid Use Among Adolescents: Findings From Project EAT. Journal of Adolescent Health 2002;30:243–252
[2] Stilger, GS and CE Yesalis. Anabolic-Androgenic Steroid Use Among High School Football Players. Journal of Community Health, Vol. 24, No. 2, April 1999
[3] NCAA Research Staff. NCAA Study of Substance Use and Abuse Habits of College Student-Athletes. September 1997.
[4] Bauman KE, Ennett SE. Tobacco use by black and white adolescents: the validity of self-reports. Am J Public Health. 1994 Mar;84(3):394-8.
Studies consistently show that Black adolescents are less likely than White adolescents to use drugs. [. . .] Only one study has empirically addressed the possibility that Black adolescents might underreport their drug use more than White adolescents. Mensch and Kandel11 found that among youths who had reported in 1980 that they had used drugs, more Blacks than Whites reported in 1984 that they had never used drugs. The one study of young adults that compared Blacks and Whites concluded that Blacks underreported smoking more than Whites. [. . .] Future studies of Black-White differences in drug use that rely on self-reports should account for invalid measurement before proceeding to examine variables of more theoretical and practical interest, or they should give more credence to the possibility that the differences they attempt to explain may be due in large part to differential validity.
Racial differences in muscle mass
Blue Anonymous asked about this. The evidence I've seen suggests that in the US, black men average similar or very slightly greater muscle mass than white men.
Multiple-regression analysis in the present study demonstrated no significant differences in the SM/ATFM [skeletal muscle / adipose tissue-free body mass] ratio among Asian, Caucasian, and Hispanic healthy groups. In contrast, African-Americans had a significantly larger SM/ATFM ratio than the other groups, although the difference was very small. According to Equation 4, for example, the mean SM/ATFM ratio is 0.524 for a 30-year-old African-American man weighing 70 kg, while the mean ratio is 0.522 for Asian, Caucasian, and Hispanic men of the same age and body weight.Blacks probably carry a greater proportion of their muscle in their arms and legs (which is unsurprising considering they have relatively longer limbs), but total skeletal muscle mass is similar.
[Wang et al. Muscularity in adult humans: proportion of adipose tissue-free body mass as skeletal muscle. Am J Hum Biol. 2001 Sep-Oct;13(5):612-9.]
Overall, the matched Black and White men had similar fat, FFM, TBW, and TBK. Thus there were no major absolute differences in body composition between the two ethnic groups beyond that of skeletal mass.The evidence I've seen also suggests whites tend to have greater strength per unit of muscular cross-section than blacks. (Despite the fact that black males more frequently report lifting weights.)
In agreement with our findings, Schutte et al. (1984) found that Black and White males of equivalent height and weight had a similar absolute TBW. Slaughter et al. (1990) also found no significant ethnic differences in TBW adjusted for height among adolescent Black and White boys.
[. . .] Total body potassium is an indirect marker of skeletal muscle mass and results are therefore difficult to interpret. One possible explanation for the varied findings is that Black men may have more appendicular muscle and less trunk muscle than White men. According to this hypothesis, Black and White men would have different amounts of skeletal muscle in specific anatomic regions but similar amounts of total skeletal muscle.
[Gerace et al. Skeletal differences between black and white males and their relevance to body composition estimates. Am J Hum Biol 1994;6:255–62.]
White culture, Jewish culture, and the origins of psychotherapy
This author will have multiculturalists know that psychotherapy is not a White thing.
Multicultural literature often states that psychotherapy is a product of White culture. This article differentiates between White culture and Jewish culture and demonstrates the extent of the influence of Jewish culture on the origin and development of psychotherapy. The first section compares White culture to Jewish culture in terms of compatibility with the values and orientation of psychotherapy. The second section first demonstrates that psychoanalysis not only developed within Jewish culture, but also that it shares many features with Jewish mysticism. Then psychoanalysis and Gestalt psychology are compared to American behavioral psychology to demonstrate the differences in their orientations. The third section documents the contributions of Jews to psychological theory and psychotherapy.More excerpts within:
[Langman, P.F. (1997). White culture, Jewish culture, and the origins of psychotherapy. Psychotherapy, 34, 2, 207-218.]
New Asian, African Genome Assemblies Reveal Novel Human Sequence
A news story about a recently released paper:
The team used short-read assembly approaches to put together new Asian and African genomes, which they then compared with the current human reference sequence. The result: about five million bases of sequence not found in the reference. [. . .]
They also began applying the data to answer questions about human population and migration patterns, honing in on 164 newly detected sequences that did not overlap between the Asian and African genomes. [. . .]
While the overall pattern in these sequences was consistent with an out of Africa migration, their analyses also uncovered new patterns that couldn't be detected from mitochondrial and Y chromosome DNA studies.
For instance, they found that a sequence frequently found in the San population in southern Africa is less and less frequent in northern Africa. The frequency of this sequence apparently dwindles even more in populations outside of Africa, disappearing in European, Oceanic, and Native American populations.
In contrast, the team noted, they found a sequence that is more prominent with geographic distance from Africa. Still other sequences had less straightforward patterns, decreasing in East Asian and Oceanic populations compared with African populations but turning up again in European populations.
Along with population patterns, the genomes also provided hints about how genome sequence varies from one individual to the next. For example, while the Asian and African individuals' genomes differed by about four million bases (not including SNPs), the researchers found about a 1.8 million base difference between the Chinese genome and a preliminary Korean genome sequence assembly.
More on race, crime, and intelligence
Nathaniel Weyl, writing in 1973:
The hypothesis which I should like to explore in these pages is that the criminality of races and subraces tends to vary inversely with their intelligence.Besides containing additional data showing the relationship between criminality and intelligence, this article also touches on some other issues raised in the comments of the previous post:
This thesis would seem a priori plausible on two grounds. The first is that a variety of studies have shown that the average l.Q.s of criminals and prison inmates are significantly lower than those of the populations from which they are drawn. The second is that most crimes seem to be committed by people who are deficient in such positive psychic qualities as foresight and selfcontrol.
The hypothesis would not, however, apply to all types of crime. Such offenses as embezzlement, forgery, fraud, and even operating numbers games, are differentially attractive to people of above-average intelligence. These mentally exacting felonies yield a small proportion of total arrests, convictions, and sentences. Those who engage in them are not typical criminals.
Professor Bonger presents statistics on criminal convictions of Jews, as compared with non-Jews, per 100,000 inhabitants over 14 years oki for Germany (1882-1891, 1892-1901. 1909- 1910, 1915 and 1916), Austria (1885-1900). Hungary (1904. 1906- 1909). Poland (1924-1925) and the Netherlands (1901-1909. 1910-1915, 1919 and 1931-1933). The German data for 1909-1910 are probably as representative as any for the pre-First World War period. They show that Jews committed proportionately two and a half times as many frauds and forgeries as Gentiles. Their conviction rate for "insult" was about 40 per cent higher and they participated about equally with non-Jews in proportion to population in embezzlement and receiving stolen goods. The Jewish rate for theft. however, was 71.1 per 100.000 as against 178.3 for all other components of the population. Their conviction rate was about 40 per cent of the Gentile rate for felonious assault, about half that rate for rape, less than a third for murder and about a fifth for malicious mischief.More excerpts within:
Immigration to the United States, 1789–1930
While the collection stretches from the signing of the Constitution to the start of the Great Depression, the greatest focus is on the nineteenth century. The collection includes 1,800 books and pamphlets, 9,000 photographs, 200 maps, and 13,000 pages from manuscript and archival collections. [. . .] Themes include the Chinese Exclusionary Act, Scandinavian Immigration, and the Settlement House Movement. Both sides of immigration are illustrated with organizations such as the Children’s Aid Society, North Bennet Street School, and the Immigration Restriction League. [. . .] One of the books available online, for example, is America’s Race Heritage: An Account of the Diffusion of Ancestral Stocks in the United States During Three Centuries of National Expansion, and a Discussion of its Significance by Clinton Stoddard Burr, published in 1922. In discussing later immigration, Burr states:Many of the books in the collection have probably also been digitized by (and might be more conveniently viewed at) Google Books or archive.org (as the Clinton Stoddard Burr book mentioned above has), but I would guess much of the material is not available elsewhere (e.g., the records of the Immigration Restriction League).
“But from the year 1845 the crest of the immigration flood shows waves and troughs directly corresponding to economic or other variations in foreign countries, or to industrial conditions in the United States. The first great influx occurred in the decade from 1845 to 1854, when the potato famine in Ireland and the revolution in Germany brought many thousands to this country. The gold rush to California also attracted thousands, from England and other countries of Europe. Then followed a depression during the War of the Rebellion, recovery following only after the signing of the peace.” (p. 91)
Stoddard also imparts the view of many nativists of the time when he states:
“If we could recall the years, how many of us would wish the South to be populated in part with Negroes? Yet an even more rampant danger, from so-called white people of lowest quality, now threatens our native white stock; for we may segregate the Negro because of his remote racial type, but the qualities of low class Europeans will gradually and inevitably demoralize our body politic through introduction of a new heredity character and temperament among us.” (p. 168)
Stoddard was clearly a bigot, prejudiced against individuals of many ethnic backgrounds. However, an understanding of this point of view will allow you to greater understand your immigrant ancestors' experience in their new home.
The Dark Side of High Self-Esteem
Interesting article, though probably wrong at least in some places (pdf):
Conventional wisdom has regarded low self-esteem as an important cause of violence, but the opposite view is theoretically viable. An interdisciplinary review of evidence about aggression, crime, and violence contradicted the view that low self-esteem is an important cause. Instead, violence appears to be most commonly a result of threatened egotism—that is, highly favorable views of self that are disputed by some person or circumstance. Inflated, unstable, or tentative beliefs in the self's superiority may be most prone to encountering threats and hence to causing violence. The mediating process may involve directing anger outward as a way of avoiding a downward revision of the self-concept. [. . .]
Comparing self-esteem across racial or ethnic groups is complicated by several factors, such as measurement issues and temporal changes, but the very possibility of temporal shifts presents an appealing chance to look for covariation in self-esteem and violence levels. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, American White men presumably were fairly securely convinced of their superior status. This confidence is generally assumed to have eroded in recent decades, and indeed research now indicates that Black people have self-esteem levels equal to or higher than those of White people (see Crocker & Major, 1989, for review). Concerted efforts to boost racial pride and dignity among Black Americans in the 1960s and 1970s may have contributed to this shift.
Meanwhile, violence levels also appear to have changed, and these changes directly contradict the view that low self-esteem promotes violence. During the period when White men had the highest self-esteem, they were also apparently the most violent group. Historians believe that rapes of White women by Black men were quite rare, whereas the reverse was relatively common (e.g., Brownmiller, 1975). Likewise, the majority of interracial murders involved White men killing Blacks, a pattern that is still reasonably well documented into the 1920s (e.g., Brearly, 1932; Hoffman, 1925; Von Hentig, 1948). These patterns have been reversed in recent decades as Black self-esteem has risen relative to White self-esteem. According to Scully (1990), Black men now rape White women approximately 10 times as often as White men rape Black women. The timing of this reversal appears to coincide with the concerted cultural efforts to boost self-esteem among Blacks: LaFree's (1976) review of multiple studies of interracial rape concluded that researchers found approximately equal numbers of Black-on-White and White-on-Black rape in the 1950s, but since 1960 all studies have found a preponderance of Black-on-White rape (see also Brownmiller, 1975). Similarly, recent murder statistics indicate that the strong majority (80%–90%) of interracial murders now consist of Blacks murdering Whites (Adler, 1994). Clearly, both races have committed far too many horrible crimes, and neither race can find much claim to any moral high ground in these statistics, but the shifting patterns on both sides repeatedly link higher or rising esteem with increasing criminal violence toward the other.
[Baumeister RF, Smart L, Boden JM. Relation of threatened egotism to violence and aggression: the dark side of high self-esteem. Psychol Rev. 1996 Jan;103(1):5-33.]
What explains racial differences in crime?
As we've seen, not testosterone. A much better candidate for explaining racial differences in criminality: racial differences in intelligence. Robert Gordon demonstrated decades ago that simply controlling for IQ eliminates almost the entire black-white gap in juvenile delinquency, and Murray and Herrnstein similarly find IQ explains most of the black-white difference in incarceration rates:
Sociologist Robert Gordon has analyzed black-white differences in crime and concluded that virtually all of the difference in the prevalence of black and white juvenile delinquents is explained by the IQ difference, independent of the effect of socioeconomic status. The only reliable indicator from the NLSY that lets us compare criminal behavior across ethnic groups is the percentage of young men who were ever interviewed while incarcerated.The figure below shows the standard comparison, before and after controlling for cognitive ability. Among white men, the proportion interviewed in a correctional facility after controlling for age was 2.4 percent; among black men, it was 13.1 percent. This large black-white difference was reduced by almost three-quarters when IQ was taken into account. The relationship of cognitive ability to criminal behavior among whites and blacks appears to be similar. 40 As in the case of other indicators, we are left with a nontrivial black-white difference even after controlling for IQ, but the magnitude of the difference shrinks dramatically.A more recent paper by Gordon (Everyday life as an intelligence test: Effects of intelligence and intelligence context. Intelligence, 24, 203-320.) confirms his results for juvenile delinquency and extends them to adult criminality.
[The Bell Curve, pp. 338-339; two papers by Robert Gordon are cited:
Gordon, R. A. 1987. SES versus IQ in the race-IQ-delinquency model. International J . of Sociology and Social Policy 7:30-96.
Gordon, R. A. 1976. Prevalence: The rare datum in delinquency measurement and its implications for the theory of delinquency. In The Juvenile Justice System. M. W. Klein (ed.). Beverly Hills, Cal.: Sage Publications, pp. 201-284.]
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)