This article, by evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa, was published this weekend on Psychology Today. It defies the idea—which many people seem to hold— that racism no longer exists.
Saying awful, inflammatory things is kind of Kanazawa’s schtick. For example, in 2008 he claimed that Ann Coulter would have made a better post-9-11 president than George Bush because she would have used nukes to wipe out the middle east entirely, and in 2006 he published a controversial paper suggesting that poor health of people in some nations is the result, not of poverty, but rather lower IQ. He’s that kind of guy.
Normally, to avoid being part of the machine that spreads this kind of garbage, I wouldn’t share an article in which a controversial blogger with a psychology degree uses bad science to put down an entire race of women. But this story is significant because Kanazawa, hosted by the nice people at Psychology Today, inadvertently prove that racism in America, and the world at large, is still alive and well.
For his post (which has now been taken down), Kanazawa uses data from the Add Health project (a study which tracked survey responses from adolescence to adulthood on a wide variety of subjects) to conclude that black women are “objectively less physically attractive than white women.”
To come to his conclusion, Kanazawa overlooks the subjective nature of sexual attraction, and ignores the social factors that might lead men living in a caucasian-dominated society to rate African-American women as less attractive. He doesn’t ask why the men interviewed in Add Health gave the answers they did, but takes them as scientific evidence.
In fact, he concludes: “The only thing I can think of that might explain the lower average physical attractiveness among black women is testosterone. Africans on average have higher levels of testosterone than other races…”
Testosterone—the only thing he can think of— has nothing to do with the Ad Health Project’s findings, which themselves are seeped in terrible science.
Those who believe racism is little more than a dark stain on our nation’s history point to wildly successful African-Americans like Beyonce, Oprah, and President Obama while ignoring the vast majority of blacks in the U.S. who are struggling with double the unemployment rate of whites, inferior public schools, and a prison system tailored to keep minorities disenfranchised and weak.
They use the Oprah argument to explain why affirmative action is racist against whites (rather than flawed because it pits underprivileged people from all races against each other) and to stand up for the behavior of Birthers like Marilyn “This Obama Chimp Family Photo Is Not Racist” Davenport.
Racism doesn’t just evaporate in fifty years, following four hundred years of slavery and oppressive segregation laws. It lives on in outright white supremacy organizations, the Birtherism fiasco, and “scientific” blog posts like Kanasawa’s.
And for white people to deny that is just plain rude.
For Kanazawa’s full story, including commentary and poor statistical methods, go here to BuzzFeed.
May 17, 2011 at 3:51 pm, Al Moonlight said:
Of course, Kanazawa also argues that liberals are smarter and more evolved than conservatives. So he must be right, eh?
May 18, 2011 at 12:43 am, Anonymous said:
LOL. Probably not right, but definitely on to something!
May 17, 2011 at 5:10 pm, john charles webb jr said:
Kanazawa’s theories on race and intelligence are controversial. Kanazawa has argued that Asian cultural traditions and/or character inhibit Asian scientific creativity[12] and that “political correctness” is a bigger threat to American evolutionary psychology than religious fundamentalism.[13] He has been accused of promoting “racist stereotypes”.[14] In 2006 Kanazawa published a controversial paper suggesting that poor health of people in some nations is the result, not of poverty, but rather lower IQ.[15] In the British Journal of Health Psychology George Ellison wrote that the theory is based on flawed assumptions, questionable data, inappropriate analysis and biased interpretations. Ellison wrote that Kanazawa mistook statistical associations for evidence of causality and falsely concluded that populations in sub-Saharan Africa are less healthy because they are unintelligent and not because they are poor.[16] Kevin Denny wrote similar criticisms regarding the IQ data and stated that African Americans should have similar IQs when compared to the sub-Saharan African population and that Kanazawa should have measured the distance between areas in a topographical fashion.[17] P.Z. Myers, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Minnesota, has called Kanazawa “the great idiot of social science.”[18]A May 2011 Psychology Today blog post written by Kanazawa asserted that Black women were less attractive and intelligent than women from other racial groups. [19] The article was subsequently removed by Psychology Today and condemned by various figures including fellow Psychology Today author Mikhail Lyubansky and UMM professor Paul Myers as being pseudoscientific and harmful to marginalized groups.
from : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satoshi_Kanazawa Kanazawa’s theories on race and intelligence are controversial. Kanazawa has argued that Asian cultural traditions and/or character inhibit Asian scientific creativity[12] and that “political correctness” is a bigger threat to American evolutionary psychology than religious fundamentalism.[13] He has been accused of promoting “racist stereotypes”.[14] In 2006 Kanazawa published a controversial paper suggesting that poor health of people in some nations is the result, not of poverty, but rather lower IQ.[15] In the British Journal of Health Psychology George Ellison wrote that the theory is based on flawed assumptions, questionable data, inappropriate analysis and biased interpretations. Ellison wrote that Kanazawa mistook statistical associations for evidence of causality and falsely concluded that populations in sub-Saharan Africa are less healthy because they are unintelligent and not because they are poor.[16] Kevin Denny wrote similar criticisms regarding the IQ data and stated that African Americans should have similar IQs when compared to the sub-Saharan African population and that Kanazawa should have measured the distance between areas in a topographical fashion.[17] P.Z. Myers, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Minnesota, has called Kanazawa “the great idiot of social science.”[18]A May 2011 Psychology Today blog post written by Kanazawa asserted that Black women were less attractive and intelligent than women from other racial groups. [19] The article was subsequently removed by Psychology Today and condemned by various figures including fellow Psychology Today author Mikhail Lyubansky and UMM professor Paul Myers as being pseudoscientific and harmful to marginalized groups.from : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satoshi_Kanazawa
May 17, 2011 at 5:11 pm, john charles webb jr said:
Kanazawa’s peers are kicking his ass.
May 17, 2011 at 5:21 pm, john charles webb jr said:
i vaguely recall reading a 1970′s study (U.S.) regarding black children who selected (statistically higher) ‘white doll babies’ (toys) as being more attractive and valuable than the black doll babies . . . . . . .
because of a culturalization myth/nightmare .
May 17, 2011 at 5:15 pm, Harvey Mundane said:
You are right that ”Racism doesn’t just evaporate in fifty years”, because it is part of human nature, it comes from the unconscious which most of us aren’t aware of. A great novel, My Beautiful Racist, really reveals what most of us would like to ignore. Highly recommended: https://mybeautifulracist.wordpress.com/https://mybeautifulracist.wordpress.com/
May 18, 2011 at 12:39 am, Anonymous said:
I disagree. Racism, or the idea of race, is not part of human nature or an individual’s unconsciousness. Race is a social construct used to maintain the privilege of one group over another. Physical features are just an easy way to do this. A racist person LEARNS ideas about race from their own culture and the social institutions (i.e. science, education, religion, family, etc.) that propagate such nonsense. The more people start to believe it, then the more it feels “natural” or “normal” to make such distinctions.
The degree to which a group’s physical characteristics (skin color, hair, facial features) matter is determined by the society they reside in and nothing more. Trash science like Kanasawa’s only attempts to reinforce a dieing belief once firmly held by our society.
Here is a great short essay on how the idea of race came to be: http://www.pbs.org/race/000_About/002_04-background-02-01.htm
May 18, 2011 at 12:38 am, Anonymous said:
I disagree. Racism, or the idea of race, is not part of human nature or an individual’s unconsciousness. Race is a social construct used to maintain the privilege of one group over another. Physical features are just an easy way to do this.
A racist person LEARNS ideas about race from their own culture and the social institutions (i.e. science, education, religion, family, etc.) that propagate such nonsense. The more people start to believe it, then the more it feels “natural” or “normal” to make such distinctions.
The degree to which a group’s physical characteristics (skin color, hair, facial features) matter is determined by the society they reside in and nothing more. Trash science like Kanasawa’s only attempts to reinforce a dieing belief once firmly held by our society.
Here is a great short essay on how the idea of race came to be: http://www.pbs.org/race/000_About/002_04-background-02-01.htm