patrick.net

I read the first article mentioned in the Politico piece, https://quillette.com/2016/06/23/on-the-reality-of-race-and-the-abhorrence-of-racism/ and it was pretty good.

Although the argument that racial categories are fictitious and useless is ostensibly a scientific one, it has been promulgated by progressives to combat racial bigotry. After all, if race is an illusion, then racism is as unreasonable as the fear of ghosts. This would allow researchers and intellectuals not only to denounce racism, but also to mock racists for their basic misunderstanding of biology. But what if meaningful race differences do exist? Should intellectuals continue to promote a false narrative because it serves laudable social ends? This dilemma can be avoided entirely if intellectuals promote a narrative of tolerance that is not attached to an empirical claim. Racism is wrong because it violates the dignity of individual humans. This dignity is not predicated on the biological uniformity of the human species, but rather on the unique worth, esteem, and integrity of all individuals.

Furthermore, high-minded narratives about the similarity of humans and the unreality of race are unlikely to convince the average person. Abstruse analyses of fine-grained genetic differences among populations of Africans, for example, will likely not prevent most people from clumping Africans into one group and Caucasians into another. And, in fact, such folk classifications do correspond to shared ancestry and discernible genetic variation. People see race because race exists, not because they are dupes of an oppressive mythology.

Africans are more genetically diverse than the rest of humanity taken together. Hence, lumping all of them together is absolutely idiotic.

But what about the genetic diversity of American blacks in particular? It's probably quite a bit less than general African diversity.

Wow, the second article on that list was also excellent, about how academic censors are now actually erasing scientific articles from journals if they are found to lead to politically incorrect conclusions.

https://quillette.com/2018/09/07/academic-activists-send-a-published-paper-down-the-memory-hole/

In the highly controversial area of human intelligence, the ‘Greater Male Variability Hypothesis’ (GMVH) asserts that there are more idiots and more geniuses among men than among women. Darwin’s research on evolution in the nineteenth century found that, although there are many exceptions for specific traits and species, there is generally more variability in males than in females of the same species throughout the animal kingdom.

Evidence for this hypothesis is fairly robust and has been reported in species ranging from adders and sockeye salmon to wasps and orangutans, as well as humans. ...

I came up with a simple intuitive mathematical argument based on biological and evolutionary principles and enlisted Sergei Tabachnikov, a Professor of Mathematics at Pennsylvania State University, to help me flesh out the model. When I posted a preprint on the open-access mathematics archives in May of last year, a variability researcher at Durham University in the UK got in touch by email. He described our joint paper as “an excellent summary of the research to date in this field,” ...

Professor Senechal suggested that we might enliven our paper by mentioning Harvard President Larry Summers, who was swiftly defenestrated in 2005 for saying that the GMVH might be a contributing factor to the dearth of women in physics and mathematics departments at top universities. ... The same anti-variability argument used to justify the sacking of President Summers resurfaced when Google engineer James Damore suggested that several innate biological factors, including gender differences in variability, might help explain gender disparities in Silicon Valley hi-tech jobs. For sending out an internal memo to that effect, he too was summarily fired. ...

National Science Foundation wrote to Sergei requesting that acknowledgment of NSF funding be removed from our paper with immediate effect. I was astonished. I had never before heard of the NSF requesting removal of acknowledgement of funding for any reason. ... a Freedom of Information request subsequently revealed that Penn State WIM administrator Diane Henderson (“Professor and Chair of the Climate and Diversity Committee”) and Nate Brown (“Professor and Associate Head for Diversity and Equity”) had secretly co-signed a letter to the NSF that same morning.

that same day, the Mathematical Intelligencer’s editor-in-chief Marjorie Senechal notified us that, with “deep regret,” she was rescinding her previous acceptance of our paper. “Several colleagues,” she wrote, had warned her that publication would provoke “extremely strong reactions” ...

In my 40 years of publishing research papers I had never heard of the rejection of an already-accepted paper. And so I emailed Professor Senechal. She replied that she had received no criticisms on scientific grounds and that her decision to rescind was entirely about the reaction she feared our paper would elicit. ...

Three days later, however, the paper had vanished. And a few days after that, a completely different paper by different authors appeared at exactly the same page of the same volume (NYJM Volume 23, p 1641+) where mine had once been. As it turned out, Amie Wilkinson is married to Benson Farb, a member of the NYJM editorial board. Upon discovering that the journal had published my paper, Professor Farb had written a furious email to Steinberger demanding that it be deleted at once.

Well there you have it. Science itself is being actively corrupted by SJWs. God help us all.

The SJWs have made a laughing stock of academians by aping them in a lowbrow, politically charged way. I know now when I think of college professor, it with an "Oh, brother" rather than any symptom of respect. SJWs are given credence and salaries for what is essentially bullshit.

One would think that some academians concerned with reputation would attempt to re-gain credibility somewhere along the line.

'Ethnic Studies' started in the early 70's at UC Berkeley, mainly as a kind of safety valve for protests, but were regarded as a joke that the University was willing to pay for to keep peace.

This stuff is no longer a joke and makes universities look ridiculous.

Patrick says

It's probably quite a bit less than general African diversity.

prob true as they were brought over from a small part of W. Africa but I do not know for sure

Patrick says

But what about the genetic diversity of American blacks in particular? It's probably quite a bit less than general African diversity.

Possibly more diverse. Remember, American Blacks have mixed with White, Native Indian, and the various immigrants as well.