"Race? It is a feeling, not a reality. Ninety-five per cent, at least. Nothing will ever make me believe that biologically pure races can be shown to exist today.... National pride has no need of the delirium of race." — Benito Mussolini

Tarsius · 2021-04-19T21:12:36+00:00

The out of africa model is extremely likely as far as I know. Several hints, that Homo sapiens emerged in Africa: Most genetic diversity is in Africa, Human genetic trees almost always show some African tribes (I think the san) as the outgroup to all other human beings, neanderthal DNA is found in all non-African populations but not in all African populations.

Some concept of race making biological sense could be possible, but if you want to have phylogenetically sound races, you would likely have to have several African races and not so many outside Africa (eg Europeans and people from the Near East are genetically quite similar and have historically had a lot of intermixing.

Tarsius · 2020-08-08T09:27:56+00:00

I agree with where all of the global/historical empirical evidence points [...]

if you’re stuck on “poverty” being the cause, then here are some things to think about.

Why aren’t the Amish raping, murdering, robbing and assaulting like animals? Same question for whites during the Great Depression when they were dirt poor. Or the Japanese who came Straight out of internment camps dirt poor.

What about 'a mixture of reasons' do you not understand? Either way could you show me some of those empirical evidence? Here are some evidence for poverty being connected to crime:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7234816/

https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=5137

https://www.london.gov.uk/press-releases/mayoral/full-links-between-poverty-and-violent-crime

Also, during the time of the great depression crime rates soared

https://www.history.com/topics/great-depression/crime-in-the-great-depression

The Amish are obviously nonviolent because they have a nonviolent culture, are very communally oriented and look out for eachother.

They are violent for the same reason they were building dung huts at the same time the Romans were building coliseums. They’re different. And that difference isn’t compatible with western living.

We Germans were building mud huts while the Romans were building colliseums. We seem to have improved a lot since then, why shouldn't black people be able to do the same?

It’s interesting how unseriously you approach the problem solving part of it. For unclear reasons you’ve decided that the solution to the black violence must be very violent.

Keep in mind that I think you misdiagnosed the cause for the problem. I don't think black people are inherently violent and I don't need to tolerate anyone getting murdered for my worldview to be consistent.

I put the question how you intend to solve this problem nonviolently, I didn't decide that it must be that way, but it is very hard for me to imagine how that would ever work. How do you want to enact policies that keep 40 million people hell away from everyone else in the US without resorting to violence? Logically deporting millions of people will very likely lead to extreme violence.

Also keep in mind that most black people aren't violent. Are you also trying to hold all men accountable for our comparatively high homicide rates? Men do after all commit 89.5% of the murders in the US

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_crime#In_the_United_States

Tarsius · 2020-08-07T09:21:55+00:00

I know that black people are on average more violent than white people in the US. I guess you want to tell me that the reason for that is, that black people are somehow naturally more violent (at least that's what I have seen several other posters here claim)? My question then would be: How are you supposed to 'solve' this problem without being extremely violent yourself (and therefore defeating your original point entirely).

I think there is a mixture of reasons responsible for racial violence patterns and none of them are genetic. One of them seems to be a glorification of violence in parts of black culture in the US (eg Hip Hop) another one is probably that black people are on average less wealthy and poor people tend to have to take more desperate measures to sustain themselves and a third one is probably that black people have less trust in the state and the police because of a history of systemic oppression by the US state, which brings me back to my main point in this discussion which you continuously ignore:

My focus was on police violence because the police are representatives of the state and its justice system. Because of this, the police has more responsibility than the average person to avoid unjust violence. If police officers are unjustly violent, people will lose trust in the police as an insititution, which will keep them from calling the police when crime occurs and make them seek justice via personal vendetta or other means, which will in turn beget more violence.

I agree that the problem of black crime should be solved. It would be a good idea to try to alleviate poverty in general, so that at least everyone has a preferable option to turning to crime, there should probably be some sort of educational initiatives to change violent cultures and the police should be reformed or replaced (but I haven't seen any convincing suggestions on how such a replacement should look like tbh). The police should be an institution which can generally be trusted to help people instead of harming them and which doesn't need to be feared if you aren't a violent criminal.

Putting the focus on race is not helpful (and I am well aware that BLM is doing that too and they are just as wrong to do that, as you are) because this will not solve any issues and only agitate people to hate eachother based on arbitrary categories.

Tarsius · 2020-08-05T21:10:20+00:00

How do you explain that the police are also killing a lot of white people in the US?

Tarsius · 2020-08-05T16:37:37+00:00

Idk here in Germany police killed 17 (14 shot and 3 through other means) people in 2019 while they seem to have killed 1099 (Edit: I think 604 shot and 495 other means, I had seemingly slightly conflicting data here) in the US. Something seems to be very wrong there. I don't know what it is, maybe your police doesn't try to de-escalate or americans are generally more dangerous or something in between but either way I can kind of understand people getting really upset about that, especially since very few police officers seem to ever go to jail because they killed someone.

Tarsius · 2020-08-04T09:39:17+00:00

Why is that any better? Why is it ok that the police kill so many people at all, regardless of skin color? As I see it, the deal we (the people) are having with the state is, that we give it the monopoly on violence in exchange for getting justice without the need for personal revenge. This seems to generally make society a lot less violent, but in the US you have the state pretty much breaking this deal, by being unjustly violent itself. Riots are only the logical conclusion to this and I am wondering why 'all lives matter' isn't on the side of the rioters. Police defunding looks like a bad idea from my perspective, because as I mentioned above, mending the deal would likely make society far less violent, than breaking it completely. Nevertheless it is only logical that people want to do that because they have lost their trust in the police.

Tarsius · 2020-08-04T21:38:30+00:00

You seem pretty obsessed with making this about race while I am talking about police violence in general which is comparatively really high in the US regardless of the victims skin color.

Tarsius · 2020-08-04T18:16:17+00:00

My explanation for these positions was in the second part of the comment, which you ignored. I also pretty much said that the police is important to keep violence in check.

Tarsius · 2020-08-03T21:37:45+00:00

I really don't get this. Wasn't Sanders always revered for being consistent? Now he is supporting a candidate that seems barely less right-wing than trump to me and mostly just more civil.

Tarsius · 2020-08-03T10:44:55+00:00

Makes sense, you need a broad movement to get systemic change and it's easier to convince people to fight for what is right, if that fight would also have a positive effect on them personally.

Tarsius · 2020-07-31T14:12:30+00:00

I tend to agree. It obviously usually depends on the circumstances and some groups may never get heard if they don't have their own spaces within the movement, where they can engage with groupspecific problems.

I don't want to pretend to be very knowledgable about the US concerning their organisational structure. I am generally quite worried that the left seems to be losing blue collar workers and rural areas to the right and even far right all over the west and it is my impression that this is even worse in the US than in Germany (where I live). I think that part of the reason for that is, that we actively push those people away with a heavy focus on identity politics and often don't even try to help them even though their conditions are increasingly destitute.

Tarsius · 2020-07-31T09:41:22+00:00

Yes! I would like to add that people tend to naturally identify with groups and tend to prefer their perceived group member over others. If we put the emphasis on a certain kind of group eg 'race' we push people to identify with this group. We should build bridges not walls among the working class.

Tarsius · 2020-07-31T09:15:47+00:00

I personally feel like intersectionality is becoming actively harmful to socialist movements. As we can see in the US, large chunks of the working class (specifically white workers) seem to be actively alienated from socialist ideas because of identity politics.

Tarsius · 2020-07-02T05:14:27+00:00

As you said, this seems so disingenuous. I will add a few of my thoughts. He doesn't actually disprove many of the problems with climate change (ocean acidification, rising sea levels, desertification etc.).

Humans are causing a sixth mass extinctions but the reasons are mostly not climate change (yet) but habitat loss, pollution and the industrial agriculture he seems to hold in high regard.

The Amazon is not the lung of the world (probably algae have more impact) but it is very diverse and stores a lot of CO2, cutting it down will greatly increase habitat loss and extinctions.

Preventing future pandemics requires more not less “industrial” agriculture

Industrial meat production does reduce the risk of diseases spreading from wild to farm animals and from there to us, but it is a breeding ground for antibiotic resistant bacteria, which is poised to become a big problem.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3234384/

Most of the arguments aren't even related to climate change. For example that environmentalism was done wrong in the past sometimes doesn't disprove anything about environmental problems.

Tarsius · 2020-07-01T10:44:15+00:00

It seems likely to me that two pedophiles who aren't interested in adults would pretend to be gay to be able to adopt children. That doesn't necessarily mean actual gay people are dangerous to kids. For Lesbians it seems like it is debated whether they really experience more violence from other lesbians. According to one study Lesbians seem to generally have experienced more domestic violence in their lifetime but one third of that is received from male partners (they often live in heterosexual relationships before coming out) which means they experience slightly less violence with female partners than heterosexual women with male partners. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_violence_in_same-sex_relationships

Tarsius