[const_cast]

Ham-fisting statistics to support some model of eugenics and racially perfect societies is an old tale.

We need to be very careful with statistics, because rarely does one or even a dozen cover the whole picture. For example, in the US we can see that black individuals are more likely to commit crime. We could easily run with that and draw some unfavorable conclusions.

But, they're also much more likely to be impoverished, more likely to live in communities with low infrastructure funding, more likely to live in communities with drugs, more likely to have much poorer access to education, and more likely to face barriers to employment.

[ty6853]

OK but blacks in Seychelles (adjusting for purchasing parity, about the richest black nation in existence to the point they're not far from the black american GDP per capita) have a gini coefficient far better than the US (in fact almost same as Sweden) but still have a pretty similar infant mortality to blacks in the US. So I don't know about the thesis they just need to be made more equal to the rest of USA or something.

Definitely not interested in accepting eugenics either, just maybe we should acknowledge and be OK with the fact some demographics are just different and we shouldn't be forcing them to be like the nordics.

[const_cast]

I don't think it's a matter of demographics being different, I think it's a matter of us wanting to believe some demographics are inferior because that makes us feel better. I mean, we're not describing positive, but different, traits, now are we?

In regards to Seychelles - are we looking at levels of education? Are we looking at income inequality? Are we looking at corruption? Are we even considered how developed the nation is? How long have they been developing? Have we taken a gander at any population pyramids?

Again, it feels like we're hamfisting these things to draw conclusions that we want to draw. I don't think just having white people fixes things, we need to look at what those white people are doing that actually works. Even money doesn't necessarily fix things, if you're already underdeveloped or you have high corruption.

[ty6853]

I have a thesis that could be wrong. I have some very weak data. What you have is that would be an inconvenient hypothesis.

It is quite an inconvenient hypothesis. Unfortunately I have some weak data that leads the question to persist and no strong evidence against it. I see no reason why it can be dismissed.

[const_cast]

It's not just that it's an inconvenient hypothesis, it's that it's an hypothesis we've already been trying for several hundreds of years. It's how we justified slavery, the holocaust, colonialization. These people weren't dumb, they genuinely believe black people were inferior, so they would therefore have the best quality of life by being slaves. You see, we're really helping them by taking them from their backwater countries of tribal war and giving them opportunities to do structured labor that their feeble minds could handle.

Time and time again, we prove those hypothesis wrong. As countries develop and equality is prioritized, we see more and more differences disappear.

Ultimately, I have no reason to believe we have achieved the apex of development or equality. Systemic racism is real, because racism doesn't just disappear. We implemented integration just a few decades ago in a lot of communities, and that disconnect and resentment that built doesn't just - poof! - disappear. It continues on and manifests in less opportunities for education, more drugs in communities, and a lot of second order effects that transcend generations.

We even still see black populations today distributed as we saw them during slavery. And that was 150 years ago. These things don't get solved, they just get better, a little bit at a time over very long periods of time.

I dismiss the hypothesis because we have already dismissed the hypothesis more times than we can count. And, I have no reason to believe this time it's different.

[ty6853]

I feel like we're on the same page then -- my hypothesis isn't intended to drive policy which is what you appear to object to. I don't want to 'enslave' black people into a systemically racist society that tries to force them into different infant metrics.

If even sovereign, nord-level equal in income, relatively well off black nations have US-black level infant mortality then it's not really my place to tell them to be more like the white man and do something that drops it but has god knows what other unintended consequences. Maybe they benefit in some other way. I have no idea.

[const_cast]

Fair enough, the world is really complex and frankly the west has done more than enough meddling in Africa.

[mensetmanusman]

The nordics like Denmark already practice eugenics.

It’s baked into the law and has resulted in the essential elimination of people with downs for example.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/12/the-las...