Category Archives: HBD

HBD and Democracy

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The other day, the HBD blogger Jayman posed a question on Twitter. Can you have democracy and a universal acceptance of Human BioDiversity?

For those unfamiliar with the concept, Human BioDiversity is a catch-all term for the observed biological differences between groups of humans that are most likely tied to genetics. I say most likely because while modern biology assumes more than 90% of what we are is genetic, figuring out what is cultural from what is genetic is not always easy. Some biologists think the number is 99%, so there’s plenty of debate in the field.

The basic assumption of HBD is that like every other living thing on planet earth, humans evolved in response to the particular challenges they faced as a species. These challenges were environmental and cultural. It’s easy to forget that culture is part of our “environment” just like climate and topography. It’s also easy to forget it is still happening.

Humans living in the mountains adapted to mountain life. Their culture adapted as well and may have exaggerated certain traits that are well suited for mountain life. Even though we are just one people, arm in arm on this big blue marble we call earth, those differences remain baked into our genome.

At first blush, this may seem obvious. After all, the humans in sub-Saharan Africa are black, while the humans in Siberia are not black. The humans in the heart of Europe look nothing like the humans in Central America. There are plenty of red heads in Ireland, but you don’t see them naturally occurring in Indonesia.

It’s not just appearance. Something like 97 of the fastest 100 meter dash times are held by West Africans, while the long distance records are held by East Africans. There are no great black downhill skiers. Turn on an NBA game and it is obvious that a sport played best by men that are tall and jump high is dominated by Africans.

These differences are so plainly obvious, we are no longer allowed to talk about them in public, but they are undeniable. HBD simply observes that genetic traits are heritable. Tall parents have tall kids. Since cognitive traits are also genetic, they must be heritable as well. That means they will show up in human groups, just like physical traits.

If you want something more than a short summary, Jayman has this great primer on his site. HBD Chick has a post explaining the basics of the topic.

That’s enough background. The question is, can a society embrace democracy when it also accepts that there are great variations in cognitive traits between population groups? The assumption I’m going to make is that Jayman means “democracy” in the modern sense of the word. That’s representative democracy or indirect democracy. Similarly, his idea of society is the modern, multi-ethnic, multi-racial variety we have in the West.

To answer the question, it’s important to know that humans evolved in small non-diverse groups. The sort of diversity we see today is an extreme outlier in human history. Up until the last century, when different human groups came into contact with one another, they tried like hell to exterminate each other.

That means there is a better than average chance that we are hard wired, in general, to resist diversity, as currently understood. Reproductive advantage goes to those who are most like the group and have traits most favored by the group. The result is we naturally are suspicious of strangers.

Put another way, it means humans are, to some degree, biologically inclined to distrust those outside their group. We know Africans, for example, evolved into small, isolated villages as a survival strategy. Communicable diseases, which Africa has in spades, no pun intended, don’t spread easily across populations that are isolated. Distance and a high level of distrust of outsiders are a natural firebreak to disease.

The other side of this coin is democracy, which is not a universal form of human organization. The Arab world not only lacks it, but actively rejects it. We killed a million Arabs trying to impose democracy on Iraq and it lasted about week after we ended the occupation.

Asia had democracy imposed on it in places, but even in very modern countries like Japan, it is a very Japanese type of democracy, not western democracy. Even in Europe, participatory self-government is a novelty. It’s why they are sliding into a kakistocracy called the EU. The truth is what we think of as western democracy is really Anglo-Saxon democracy.

The point here is western style democracy as we understand it is a very European-ish thing that evolved among peoples with a high degree of social trust within their ethnic groups. Even so, it was only within the last 100 years that universal suffrage became the norm. Countries like Spain and Portugal finally figured it out a few decades ago.

Where does that leave us?

If you accept that the observable differences between population groups are real and those differences are reflected in the organizational strategies, that means democracy will not work for all people. Arabs and Africans, for example, will never get the hang of it or even want to get the hang of it. This would explain why all attempts to impose it on them have failed.

If you take a bunch of Arabs, a bunch of Pakistanis, some Africans and settle them into England, the result is a sizable minority that is hostile to democracy, maybe even working to subvert it. If the rest of the population, even the Welsh, notice this and come to accept the HBD view of humanity, then democracy can’t last. No one would want it.

The blank slate crowd would argue that these differences are purely cultural and temporary. Since technocratic democracy and materialism are the future, these other groups will, in a couple of generations, get on the democracy bandwagon. This is the argument we hear in America with regards to importing the population of Mexico.

Fundamental to participatory democracy is the assumption that voters will vote their individual interests. The businessman will vote for pro-business candidates, even if his kin think otherwise. The working man will vote for the pro-labor candidate for the same reasons. Once a large number of people start voting on tribal grounds, everyone else has to follow suit.

To quote Lee Kuan Yew, “In multiracial societies, you don’t vote in accordance with your economic interests and social interests, you vote in accordance with race and religion.” Once that becomes apparent to the dominant group, they have no choice but to limit popular government and take measures to limit the numbers of the other groups.

The bottom line here is that HBD is not necessarily hostile to democracy, but it is hostile to immigration, open borders and the whole universalist religion, of which democracy is a small part. The answer to Jayman’s query is that acceptance of HBD can preserve western liberalism, but only at the expense if egalitarianism, multiculturalism and anti-racism. It’s HBD or diversity, but not both.

IQ Is Not Real!!!

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One of the more entertaining aspects of the genetic age is going to be how the Left reconciles their claim to love of science with the fact that science contradicts most of what they believe. Even funnier is how the soft sciences are finding their authority laughed out of the room by genetics. Here’s a good example.

Genes which make people intelligent have been discovered and scientists believe they could be manipulated to boost brain power.

Researchers have believed for some time that intellect is inherited with studies suggesting that up to 75 per cent of IQ is genetic, and the rest down to environmental factors such as schooling and friendship groups.

But until now, nobody has been able to pin-point exactly which genes are responsible for better memory, attention, processing speed or reasoning skills.

Now Imperial College London has found that two networks of genes determine whether people are intelligent or not-so-bright.

They liken the gene network to a football team. When all the players are in the right positions, the brain appears to function optimally, leading to clarity of thought and what we think of as quickness or cleverness.

However when the genes are mutated or in the wrong order, it can lead to dullness of thinking, or even serious cognitive impairments.

Scientists believe that there must be a ‘master switch’ regulating the networks and if they could find it, they could ‘switch on’ intelligence for everyone.

I doubt you can find anyone in science claiming that only 75% of intelligence is inherited. The general consensus is 90% and there are many who argue it is closer to 98%. But, you have to leave room for the one true faith so we’ll pretend education and parenting have some significant role.

Of course, even if we accept the lower number it means that 90% of education theory is just nonsense. If little Johnny has a native IQ of 85, he’s never going to be college material. The configuration of the school and the efforts of the teacher will not change that enough to make the effort worthwhile.

It also means that all sorts of other cognitive traits are heritable, which is considered heresy by the Cult. Then we have the R word and , well, only Hitler talks about that so science better be careful about how they handle that one. You don’t want to be branded a scientific racist, do you?

All joking aside, much of what we are forced to believe about humanity is under assault by genetics. On the other hand, much of what we used to know is being proved by genetics. People are not blank slates. They are the product of many generations. At some point, it is going to be impossible to be both a Progressive and a scientist.

Even more amusing is that at some point, Progressives will be forced to oppose abortion. After all, if IQ is genetic, so is sex and color and sexual preference. Once parents can test for homosexuality and abort the gay fetus, how long before the Cult moves to stop it? Maybe we will live to see Progressive hipsters picketing Planned Unparenthood.

 

Ramblings on Race, Racism and Race Realism

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If you live around a lot of diversity, you learn how to recognize others who live around a lot of diversity. It’s like the difference between the world traveler and the provincial who never left home. The change in perspective results in a change in demeanor. I’m comfortable in alien places because I’ve been around a lot of people not like me on a daily basis for a long time. I just don’t think it is strange to be the guy who sticks out like a sore thumb.

One of the things you learn when you spend a lot of time around non-whites is that not all white people are the same. That sounds odd, but it works like this. You get to know a lot of “Hispanics” for example and you quickly see that they are not a singular race and they often don’t speak the same language. Guatemalans are a different breed of cat from Cubans or Dominicans or Mexicans from El Norte. Lumping all these people into the bucket called “Hispanic” is mostly worthless.

That revelation leads to rethinking what it means to be white, black or Asian. Italians and Spaniards are called white, but they are not Germans or Swedes. Travel around America and you see that a place like Indiana is part Yankee New England and part Appalachian hick. The term “Hoosier”, by the way, was an insult for Virginia hillbillies. Head a few clicks north and you are into a different population of honkies altogether.

From an anthropological perspective, the old categories of race are falling apart. If you read Nick Wade’s book A Troublesome Inheritance, it becomes rather clear that race classifications based on skin tone don’t hold up. It’s better to think of people as belonging to large extended families. There’s lots of cross pollination between these large extended families, but at the edges where they interface. Swedes share a lot with Germans, but very little with Bantus.

The fact is, skin, eye and hair color are just one part of it. There are character differences that are just as rooted in biology as skin color. Those character and personality traits impact culture, which in turn has impacted biology. This article by Peter Frost is a great explanation of how biology, culture and environment work on one another simultaneously. Swedes are built for a culture built for the environment of Sweden, which is different from the Bantus, who were built for a culture built for flourishing in Africa.

The trouble with discussing any of this is that there’s a another part of the puzzle. Humans are built to distrust those who are not their kind. While it is as natural as left handedness, our culture eschews anything that even hints at racism. This is not illogical as we in the West live in multi-ethnic societies. Keeping the peace means suppressing the instinct to not like the “other” or the foreign. The argument from race realists is that you can take this too far and when you do the results are worse than naked racism.

I have no way of knowing if that is true, but I think it is probably time for people calling themselves “race realists” to simply drop the term in favor of something more biologically correct and less provocative. I’ll refer to myself as a biological realist, for example, because I think you cannot overcome biology with wishful thinking. This has the added benefit of handling the feminist lunacies.

“Fixing the schools” is a waste of time because 80% of education is the IQ and character of the student. Another 10% is family life and the rest is the community in which the school exists. Maybe the school has 2% of an impact and I may be generous here. Put the ghetto boys into a nice prep school, but somehow maintain the ghetto home and community life, and you get the same result as you get from the local public school. Maybe one or two end up better than otherwise.

Similarly, the people who left the Borderlands of England for the New World ended up in Appalachia. They recreated their culture from home, without the interference of the Crown. When those people migrated into the Midwest, they recreated their mountain culture in the new lands. Southern Illinois is not like West Virginia by accident. There’s a strong Scandinavian flavor to the upper Midwest for a reason.

It’s why America can never be a land dominated by a central government imposing a universal culture on the whole nation. The differences are simply too big between the people of Vermont and the people of Texas. No amount of hooting and bellowing from Progressive loons will change biology and culture. It’s another area where biological realism could gain some traction. You can shame the Yankee busy-body out of trying to impose his values on the world. Mention race and he loses the ability to feel shame.

That’s why HBD and race realist people need to free themselves from the plain old racists. The people attracted to your movement for the racism are mostly idiots who will cause you nothing but trouble. That and white nationalism is about the dumbest thing going, given the ethnic and cultural diversity among people who call Europe their ancestral home. The crackers from the hills have as much in common with the German low-landers as they do with Arabs.

That said, it’s probably easier said than done. Saying you don’t like black culture is fine, but most people will call you a racist, even if you are married to a black person or are actually black. Racism used to be an action. Then it became words, then thoughts and is quickly becoming a lack of enthusiasm. If you are not enthusiastic enough in your praise for non-whites, you’re called a bigot.

Thinking about it, the image that comes to mind is of a train slamming into a mountain. Whatever distance and uniqueness there is between the cars, the collision eliminates it, leaving a pile of twisted metal. That’s what has happened with public discussion of anything that relates to ethnicity. It’s slammed into the wall of Cultural Marxism and you can no longer tell the racist crackpots from the Progressive loons.

The White Man’s Lead Burden

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One of the more ridiculous claims floating around the Cult of Modern Liberalism is the claim that lead makes black people stupid and violent. Kevin Drum has been peddling the idea on lunatic websites for years. The claim is that lead poisoning makes people stupid and violent, particularly when exposed as children. Poor people are most likely to live where lead content is high, thus explaining why they have higher crime rates and lower IQ’s, if IQ was a real thing, which it is not.

The theory resonates with the Cult because it has an almost mystical quality to it, much in the same way climate change has an unsaid supernatural element. Gaia is vexed about your lawnmower so she is causing floods in Texas. It can’t be proved, but it can’t be disproved either. In the case of lead, it also solves the problem as to why black crime rates are off the charts. Racist whites have packed blacks into lead saturated ghettos.

The theory suffers from a number of problems. No one can explain why this effect is race specific, without dragging in a bunch of things that could be better explanations for the data than lead. Then there is the failure to replicate any of the studies purporting to show a link of any sort. Even taking Drum’s assertions at face value, lead is responsible for at most 20% of the increase in crime.

Think of it this way. If the ghetto in question has a murder rate of ten per month prior to the invention of crack by the CIA and a murder rate of 20 after crack, only two of those murders are due to lead. The other eight are, presumably, due to crack. But, that also means those two lead murders needed another element, in this case crack. In other words, lead alone is not a cause.

That does not stop the Cult from trotting out science! to make the case for environmental factors explaining away what everyone knows, but no one is allowed to say. America’s newspaper of record has a story on a new study that purports to prove that air pollution makes poor minority people stupid.

The city’s air is polluting children’s brains.

Big Apple kids exposed to high levels of airborne filth and economic hardship have lower IQs that will haunt them into adulthood, according to an exhaustive, first-of-its-kind study by Columbia University.

Or maybe their parents being low-IQ people end up living in crappy areas that have high levels of airborne filth and economic hardship.The one thing no one ever mentions is that the poor are clean freaks. The reason is they tend to be dirty.

“The findings are a concern because, as has been shown with lead [poisoning], even a modest decrease in IQ can impact lifetime earnings,” warns the report published in the medical journal Neurotoxicology and Teratology.

Researchers reached the alarming conclusion by tracking the development of 276 minority children from Harlem, Washington Heights and the South Bronx for seven years — starting while their moms were pregnant.

The kids who were exposed to the most pollutants and came from the poorest families scored 6.6 points lower on the overall IQ test than others in the group.

The average score on an IQ test is 100.

What does not appear to be in the study is the IQ of the parents. Tracking down the fathers would be impossible, but testing the IQ of the mothers would not be hard. But, that would lead to uncomfortable subjects so better to leave that alone.

In addition, the kids scored 8 points lower for “working memory,” which is what people use to plan and carry out behavior, and 5.7 points lower for “perceptual reasoning,” which allows people to visualize solutions to non-verbal problems.

Following their births, researchers examined blood from each baby’s umbilical cord for biological markers that reveal exposure to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), toxic chemicals created by the burning of gas, diesel, heating oil and other products.

This is why these results are never replicated. Within the underclass, the slightly brighter lights will perform better in life’s little tasks like not inhaling diesel fumes. You can control for that by making sure the cohort of mothers represents a representative range of IQ’s, but that could lead to trouble so lets not go down that road.

The moms also carried air monitors in backpacks during their third trimesters, and were later interviewed repeatedly about their ability to adequately feed, clothe and house their kids. The groundbreaking study stemmed from ongoing research that has shown how prenatal exposure to PAH is tied to a host of childhood ills, including developmental delays, reduced verbal skills and symptoms of anxiety and depression.

The latest study concluded that the effects of PAH were exacerbated by poverty, calling it the latest evidence of how “socioeconomic disadvantage can increase the adverse effects of toxic physical ‘stressors’ like air pollutants.”

“This report adds to the growing literature on the vulnerability of the developing fetus and young child to the toxic effects of environmental pollutants,” the study says.

One of the fascinating aspects of modern times is the two tracks on which social science is discussed. The one track, the dominant track, is all about environment. Any discussion of heritability is ruled out of bounds. Even the most slapdash study that “proves” the environmental model of human behavior is waved around by the press. Those minority kids are victims of the white man’s pollutants!

Then there is the other track where real science is conducted. The massive amount of genetic data coming out is reshaping anthropology, biology and history. Every day something new comes out changing our understanding of nature and human history. But, little of it reaches the mainstream. If you want to know about this stuff you have to read hate thinkers on obscure websites.

At some point, the fantasy version of human relations will have to be brought back into line with reality. Whether it happens by force or by choice is unknown to me. I suspect the way to bet is the former. The new religion is based on the belief that man is a blank slate and people tend not to give up their religious convictions without a fight.

Africa and Malthus

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In fifteen years, one out of every six people will be murdered. Of those who are left, 25% will be thrown into poverty. Millions more will commit suicide rather than face what will suddenly become a dreadful present. Marauding gangs lead by drug addled youths will harass what remains of civilization, as life descends into a Hobbesian war of man against man.

That sounds pretty awful, I bet. But, a world that suddenly has only enough food to nourish 70% of its people would quickly descend into violence and mayhem. How the mayhem would play-out would depend upon the people. When the French ran out of food, they perfected the use of the guillotine. In Africa, it has meant widespread famines where millions starved to death.

Africa is a net importer of food and it has a stratospheric fertility rate. I don’t think you have to be Raj Chetty to figure out that this will lead to some problems far more serious than income mobility or the lack of self-actualizing jobs. Africa is a low-IQ world with high disease rates and massive public corruption. Add in a staggering murder rate and it is not had to think the description in the first paragraphs is the best case scenario for Africa. The exodus that is on tap will make the current flood look like a trickle.

That, of course, is the specter haunting Europe. There are roughly a million Africans trying to get across the Mediterranean at this very moment. They are not starving or fleeing war. They are, most probably, members of what passes for a middle class in their home countries. They have the means to pay smugglers to get them north. They also have relatives, who made the trip before them, so they can have a cushion in their new home in France.

People on the Dissident Right like to talk about how the Euroweenies have no idea what’s coming their way. The implication is that the coming great exodus from Africa will wipe out the European just as Homo Sap wiped out the Neanderthals. That, I think, is very wrong. The Europeans know exactly what’s brewing south of them.

The sheer numbers are staggering. Sub-Saharan Africa has about a billion people. The EU countries have about 500 million people. If 20% of Africa heads north the EU suddenly resembles Baltimore in many places.

Or worse. Most of these immigrants will head to urban areas so imagine dozens of Detroits dotting the map of Europe. Throw in an equal number of Arab Muslims and , well, you have the diversity paradise our betters have been dreaming of for so long.

That’s never going to happen and the evidence is right in front of us. The Europeans are finding ways to turn back the boat people. If that fails they will start repatriating them in mass. Additionally, they will pay the Berbers and Arabs in the Maghreb to hold the line and turn a blind eye to the tactics they use to do it. The politicians in Europe are not going to commit suicide over the plight of Africa.

It’s not that they would not like to sellout their own people. It’s that they have bigger problems. The Russians are creeping in from the east. America is disengaging from the Continent. Most member states are effectively bankrupt, held up with currency games. The EU is too unstable to do anything other than take a hardline on African immigrants.

If the Africans can’t head north and they can’t stop breeding, then the choice is follow the old route out of Africa and head into Turkey and the Near East. While that would be hilarious for a number of reasons, it is unlikely. That leaves famine and war as tribes fight over the limited food supplies.

Yemen is probably a good example to hold in mind. The Saudis and GCC have been subsidizing them for years as the population far outstripped the country’s capacity to feed its people. It was a loser bargain. The Saudis wanted to keep the Yemenis in Yemen so they sent them food. Free food set the Malthusian event horizon further and further out, allowing the population to mushroom.

What not one thought about is how a population explosion would impact the other social infrastructure. Yemen was a land with cultural and civil infrastructure for about 2 million people. Now they have 20 million and the whole thing has collapsed into anarchy. I’ll just note that everyone has turned a blind eye to Yemen, letting the Saudis do what must be done to keep the Yemenis in Yemen.

That’s the likely outcome of the African population boom. Eventually, the Finnish model will be adopted by the EU, not the Swedish model. The Finnish model is to send food and reject refugees, arguing that food aid does more good for more people than importing refugees. The Swedish model is the opposite. Sweden is trying to turn their country into Syria with snow drifts.

Europe has too many other problems to try and pass that by their voters so they will adopt the Finnish approach. Inevitably, the French will lecture the rest of us for not sending more food and medicine to Africa and the US will be there to ship tons of food to the needy Africans. That, of course, will literally feed the population boom.

There’s an assumption that the West will not let the Africans starve and the blockade will be lifted, letting tens of millions of Africans to enter the West. History says other wise. The two big East African famines carried on with little more than hand-wringing by the West. The Rwandan massacres were allowed to go on without any in the West even mentioning it. Bill Clinton simply shrugged and went back to raping interns.

It’s common in the West to read about how we are post-Malthus. We are now in a post-scarcity world in which there’s more than enough of the essentials. The poor are fat and lay around all day in comfortable homes watching television. Machines will soon be doing all our work, leaving us free to live like Eloi.

In the coming decades, Africa is going to demonstrate that the Malthusian limit is still there. As we saw with the Ebola breakout, modernity means Africa’s problems can quickly become our problem. The nightmare future of Africa will be no exception. Our world will be a vastly different place in 20 years as a billion Africans figure out how to live on enough food for half a billion Africans.

It’s About To Get Uglier

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Baltimore has always been full of tension, by nature of the historical arrangements that evolved following the Civil Rights Movement. The uneasy coexistence after Reconstruction between blacks and whites south of the Mason-Dixon Line was held together via legal and private discrimination. Whites stayed in their areas and blacks stayed in their areas. Both sides policed their side of the line, figuratively if not always literally.

The Civil Rights Movement swung a wrecking ball through that arrangement. After all, the northern whites were sure their way of handling blacks was superior. In the north they herded blacks into urban ghettos. That way they could pretend to treat blacks as their equals because they were never within eyesight of them.

So, the northern whites swung the wrecking ball through the Southern way of dealing with blacks, by banning public and private discrimination. In Baltimore, this resulted in a thing called “block busting.” Jewish neighborhoods would suddenly sellout to blacks or their intended landlords. The surrounding blocks would be quick to sell at a discount and whole areas of the city went from white to black.

Since the old covenants against selling to blacks or renting to blacks were no longer enforceable, there was no way for these old neighborhoods to hang tough against the onslaught so they fled to the county. To this day state regulators in Maryland try to trap real estate agents into making discriminatory statements. They now say these things in code.

That’s how things evolved in the Baltimore area. The phrase “good schools” means few blacks. The word “diversity” means lots of blacks. Those with anything on the ball have fled the city and moved to the county. There are sections of Baltimore county that are very black, but very safe and middle class. There are areas that are very white, as well.

The city has become an urban reservation, for the most part. There are parts that managed to remain white, but they are upper middle class areas where home prices prevented block busting. There are very wealthy areas as well, and the small gentrified areas near the tourist traps. Otherwise, the city is a holding pen for people no one wants in their neighborhood.

This has worked fairly well for the area. The cops keep the tourist areas running which brings money into the city. That also keeps the state involved, hoping to avoid the fate of Detroit. Having massive Federal spending in the state due to proximity to the Imperial Capital has financed these arrangements. West Baltimore operates as a giant reservation system, holding the pre- and post-convict population of the city.

Now, the Soros Army is at the city walls demanding the whole system be dismantled. They have no replacement for the current arrangements. They are here for the mayhem. These incidents are just billionaires playing human chess with the hoi polloi. Imagine Soros betting the Koch Bothers a dollar over whether he can burn Baltimore to the ground.

Unlike Ferguson, Baltimore is not a small town with small town police and small town criminals. Baltimore is a big city with big time criminals. The city is called Bodymore Murderville for a reason. The locals are proud of that label for a reason too. More important, there are rich people with assets in the city they want protected – by the police.

The cops are already reporting that things are getting hot on the streets, following the announcement that the six cops will be hanged in accordance with the demands of the Soros Army. The rational thing here is for the cops to simply withdraw, letting the animals kill as many libertarians and anarchists as they can find. That would do us all a favor, but that will not happen.

“I have been to five calls today and three of those five calls for service; I have been challenged to a fight. Some of them I blew off but one of them almost got ugly. I don’t want anybody to say that I did not tell them what is going on. This is no intel this is really what’s going on the street. This is my formal notification. It is about to get ugly.”

Here’s something the news will not report. That’s a cop patrolling a mostly white area and he is a white cop. The whites in the city are frightened out of their minds right now and the white cops are now paralyzed. White cops will be banging out sick, taking vacation and   applying for jobs outside the city.

Things are going to get very ugly.

Africa: Corruption

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I’ve been posting about Africa this week mostly because I find it interesting. My guess is most of my readers find the topic a bit dull. Never let it be said you are not getting your money’s worth here at The Z Blog. My interest is mostly anthropological. Africa has been populated by humans longer than anywhere on earth. More important, Africa has not changed a whole lot since modern man debuted on this planet.

Of course, there’s the fact that a billion Africans are sitting around their hut dreaming of life in your neighborhood. My guess is ten percent of them will make their way to Europe and the US over the next 25 years. I’m probably being conservative. The US political class would gladly take 100 million Africans tomorrow. Either way, it’s probably a good idea to get learn a bit about our soon to be fellow “citizens.’

In prior posts, I’ve highlighted the fact that Africa is poor, disease ridden and full of stupid, violent people. That’s not a great recipe for building a competent modern society. One of the great measures of a society is the corruption index. It’s a measure of social trust. Low trust societies cannot engage in complex social investment. High trust societies can create large-scale social institutions.

Here are the numbers for Africa. The lower the number the higher the corruption. As a touchstone, the Anglosphere is in the high 70’s.

Country Name Corruption Country Name Corruption
Algeria 36 Malawi 33
Angola 19 Mali 32
Benin 39 Mauritania 30
Botswana 63 Mauritius 52
Burkina Faso 38 Morocco 39
Burundi 20 Mozambique 31
Cameroon 27 Namibia 49
Cape Verde 57 Niger 35
Central African Republic 24 Nigeria 27
Chad 22 Republic of Sudan 11
Comoros 26 Republic of the Congo 23
DR of the Congo 22 Rwanda 49
Djibouti 34 São Tomé 42
Egypt 37 Senegal 43
Equatorial Guinea 19 Seychelles 55
Eritrea 18 Sierra Leone 31
Ethiopia 33 Somalia 8
Gabon 37 South Africa 44
Ghana 48 Sudan 11
Guinea 25 Swaziland 43
Guinea-Bissau 19 Tanzania 31
Ivory Coast 32 The Gambia 29
Kenya 25 Togo 29
Lesotho 49 Tunisia 40
Liberia 37 Uganda 26
Libya 18 Zambia 38
Madagascar 28 Zimbabwe 21

If you take a simple average, the typical African country is about as corrupt as Mexico. The difference is that Mexico is right next door to a giant economic power with a very high level of social trust. The typical African country is surrounded by countries that are bordering on anarchy. Place like Sudan and Somalia are in the state of nature.

If you are living in one of these countries, you cannot trust anyone from the state. Call the police and they will want a bribe or they will rob you. Go to court and the judge will demand a bribe from you and your opponent. Even if you pay, he may still rob you. The only thing you can really count on are your blood relations and even there the wise man is cautious.

Now, you talk to your cousin Tongo who is back visiting from France and you are going to think that maybe he has it great. The cops don’t ask for bribes. The government gives him free stuff. If someone steals his free stuff he can go to the authorities and they will try to get his stuff back. Even better, there are all sorts of “public” things that are magically maintained and they even work!

The problem is your new neighbors will most likely bring those old habits with them. Africa is a low-trust world because it is full of Africans. Transplant them to Sweden and they are not going to take up curling and start investing themselves in traditional Swedish social life. Europe and probably America is going to become much more African over the next 25 years.

Africa: IQ

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This has been Africa week at the blog. The Dark Continent is an endlessly fascinating place for some of us in the Occident, primarily because it is such a baffling place. That and the greatest degree of human genetic diversity exists in sub-Saharan Africa. As much as it pains many white people, the cradle of humanity is Africa.

I see Steve Sailer has gotten in on the act this week. His angle of entry is, as always, immigration. There are a billion Africans in their huts right now thinking about how life would be much better in a country not run by Africans so it is a good place to start. African migration is driven by sky high fertility rates and that’s a unique feature of Africa. Everywhere else has figured out how to stabilize fertility.

That brings me to another metric to consider and that’s national IQ. I used the list here from Richard Lynn, Tatu Vanhanen and Jelte Wicherts. I spot checked some figures against other sources and that list seems to square with others so I’m using it here. Raw numbers are not important. Relative IQ is what we’re after.

Here’s the consolidated version for Africa:

Country Name IQ Country Name IQ
Libya 83.00 Mali 74.00
Mauritius 76.00 Cameroon 64.00
Egypt 81.00 Equatorial Guinea 59.00
Sierra Leone 91.00 Algeria 83.00
Morocco 84.00 Nigeria 84.00
Tunisia 83.00 Chad 68.00
Cape Verde 76.00 Liberia 67.00
Comoros 77.00 Burundi 69.00
Madagascar 82.00 Angola 68.00
Eritrea 85.00 Namibia 74.00
Senegal 76.00 Niger 69.00
Tanzania 72.00 Rwanda 70.00
Mauritania 76.00 São Tomé 67.00
Seychelles 86.00 Mozambique 64.00
Sudan 71.00 CAR 71.00
Republic of the Congo 78.00 Kenya 80.00
Djibouti 68.00 Somalia 68.00
Benin 70.00 Ivory Coast 69.00
Guinea-Bissau 67.00 Uganda 84.00
Ghana 73.00 Republic of Sudan 71.00
Gabon 64.00 Malawi 69.00
Togo 70.00 Botswana 70.00
South Africa 77.00 Lesotho 67.00
Ethiopia 69.00 The Gambia 66.00
DR of the Congo 78.00 Swaziland 68.00
Guinea 67.00 Zambia 79.00
Burkina Faso 68.00 Zimbabwe 82.00

What jumps out here is you have scads of people in many of these countries with the cognitive skills of the retarded bag boy at your local grocery market. Africa has a very small smart fraction and a very large not so smart fraction. In order to conduct any large scale public projects, you need people smart enough to think of them, but also a large cohort that is bright enough to implement them.

Africa is, in many respects, the exact opposite of what is required for a modern complex society. Steve Sailer seems to think Africans can be trained to used condoms and birth control to reduce fertility rates, but that may not be possible. There’s a reason that white trash girls from the trailer parks get knocked up as teenagers. They are simply not smart enough to think beyond the moment.

Putting that aside, the issue for Europe is how many of these low-IQ people can they reasonably absorb into their societies? Modern, automated societies require far fewer people who can only provide labor. Europe, on its own, can supply all of the low end labor it needs. Bringing in 75-IQ Africans may help bolster the local soccer team, but at what cost?

Of course, part of why these numbers are what they are is that every African with something on the ball left a long time ago. Africa has been boiling off its high-IQ population for generations. If you are someone in Ghana, for example, who speaks English and has a 105 IQ, you are getting out of Ghana at the first opportunity. Those left behind breeding like rabbits are the low-IQ nitwits.

In this regard, the best thing Europeans countries could do is send the high-IQ Africans they have now back home. Skimming off the smart fraction is part of why Africa is such a mess. The world has plenty of funky sounding guys at the UN and World Bank. What the world lacks are native Africans with the wherewithal to run a sane country in Africa.

Africa: Disease Rates

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The Ebola outbreak in Africa brought a few things about Africa to the public’s attention. One is the fact that people eat bats in Africa. First world people don’t think much about Africa, but the image of people eating bats is a jarring reminder that Africa is nothing like the rest of the world.

Of course, lot of Africans are moving out of Africa into the rest of the world. This summer we are sure to have the suicidal Western media moaning about the millions of Africans trying to cross the Mediterranean into Europe. If you are willing to cross the desert and the Mediterranean in order to live in a European ghetto, it is safe to assume you’re fleeing someplace much worse.

The question is just how awful are these countries?

Yesterday I posted about the murder rates. Getting murdered is the worst thing that can happened to you in any country. The next worst thing, I think, is getting some horrible disease like Ebola or AIDS. Worse yet, dying from curable things like cholera or measles that are beyond the individual’s ability to avoid. One can avoid sex and bat eating, but you have to drink water.

Disease rates are one of those things that drive migrants to and from countries. It’s a natural instinct. Anthropologists think Sub-Saharan Africans did not advance beyond simple village systems because of disease. Large population centers would be disease magnets. The better response is small isolated villages with a natural hostility to outsiders.

Given the communications revolution, even the most backward in Africa know that Brits and Franks don’t regularly die from the runs. They get their broken bones mended and no one rots to death in their hut for want of medical care.

Here’s the disease rates from WHO for Africa:

Country Name Disease
 Country Name Disease
Libya 974.18 Mali 16123.99
Mauritius 1027.27 Cameroon 16696.47
Egypt 1208.84 Equatorial Guinea 17396.06
Sierra Leone 1295.18 Algeria 17785.00
Morocco 1336.15 Nigeria 17976.10
Tunisia 1425.32 Chad 18199.74
Cape Verde 3558.65 Liberia 18575.71
Comoros 5218.65 Burundi 18706.93
Madagascar 7071.54 Angola 19078.39
Eritrea 7081.69 Namibia 19094.46
Senegal 7931.82 Niger 19113.87
Tanzania 8692.63 Rwanda 19857.85
Mauritania 8766.12 São Tomé 20028.42
Seychelles 9251.88 Mozambique 20148.13
Sudan 9923.59 C. African Republic 20453.29
Republic of the Congo 9923.59 Kenya 20742.34
Djibouti 10816.33 Somalia 21162.37
Benin 10870.93 Ivory Coast 21244.21
Guinea-Bissau 11303.92 Uganda 22335.54
Ghana 11517.62 Republic of Sudan 22646.43
Gabon 12506.99 Malawi 28720.38
Togo 14131.60 Botswana 32483.12
South Africa 14369.42 Lesotho 32692.74
Ethiopia 14752.42 The Gambia 32765.00
DR of the Congo 15033.42 Swaziland 33428.76
Guinea 15144.15 Zambia 34593.00
Burkina Faso 15706.29 Zimbabwe 57454.07

These numbers are for all infectious, parasitic diseases per 100,000. Not all disease is deadly, but without proper health care, even the flu can be deadly. That’s the utility of disease rates as a metric. High disease rates suggest not only something about the ecology and culture; they tells us how the population is organizing to address public health.

As expected, the countries in the Maghreb have the lowest disease rates in Africa. As with the homicide numbers, the accuracy of the data is a problem. In the West we track this stuff closely. No one has the slightest idea of how many drop dead from the runs in places like Eritrea.

For the sake of comparison, Iceland is 157 per 100,000. Most of Europe is around 175, even tropical places like Greece. Ukraine, the most corrupt country in Eurasia is 1545, similar to Arab North Africa. The US is at 330 and that’s with absorbing 30 million people from tropical fever swamps.

Some of these numbers are mind boggling. If you are an African in a place like Mali, why would you not take your chances on that leaky boat over the Mediterranean. The odds of being killed at sea are lower than dying from tuberculosis back home, if you are not murdered by a local thug.

Bigot Watch: Jake Flanagin

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I’m sure you’re wondering who is Jake Flanagin and why would anyone care if he is a racist. Up until five minutes ago, I would have wondered that myself. Here’s the answer. Mr. Flanagin is a writer who works the Progressive side of the street producing de rigueur filler material for a small fever swamp publication called Quartz. Looking at his twitter page, I’m going to further assume he is a homosexual.

Quartz is a site owned and developed by Atlantic Media, the people who own The Atlantic. It’s supposed to be a business site aimed at the global elite. As is the case with all agit-prop organs of the Cult of Modern Liberalism, it is mostly sermons extolling the faithful to be true to the gods of Progressivism.

What got my attention was this piece I saw on twitter. I followed the link only because it must be a joke of some sort and I like jokes. South Africa is 82% black and 9% white. The number of whites continues to decline in the face of the outlandish levels of violence by blacks on non-blacks. Rape is so common, housing and communities are now organized around preventing it.

To give you a sense of the rape culture that is South Africa, it is the only country that has a special Wikipedia site just for its rape culture. This is from that entry:

According to the report by the United Nations Office on Crimes and Drugs for the period 1998–2000, South Africa was ranked first for rapes per capita.[3] In 1998, one in three of the 4,000 women questioned in Johannesburg was raped, according to Community Information, Empowerment and Transparency (CIET) Africa.[4] While women’s groups in South Africa estimate that a woman is raped every 26 seconds, the South African police estimates that a woman is raped every 36 seconds.[5]

More than 25% of a sample of 1,738 South African men from the KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape Provinces admitted to raping someone when anonymously questioned; of these, nearly half said they had raped more than one person, according to a non-peer reviewed policy brief issued by the Medical Research Council (MRC).

The idea of whites being responsible for a crime wave against foreigners is so ludicrous I just assumed it was satire. I like satire, but apparently Mr. Flanagin does not. He is serious when he claims:

High unemployment and other economic woes appear to be the driving force behind anti-immigrant violence and nativist rhetoric. Zulu nationalism—a longtime presence in South African politics—has likely also played a significant hand. But the muscular ethnocentrism behind Goodwill Zwelithini’s statements did not develop in a vacuum. Competition between Zulus and other native South Africans against non-native, non-white laborers has deep roots in colonial history, dating back to the very foundation of the South African state.

He then goes onto describe how white settlers were mean to the natives for 100 years. The Zulus enjoy special victim status because they have a cool name and the writer is a fan of Michael Caine movies. He fails to mention that the native population exploded after the PPP arrived, due to better agriculture, sanitation, medicine and social organization.

What I find stunning about these narcissistic lefties who write this nonsense is they are blissfully unaware of their own staggering racism and bigotry. Obviously, he casually paints all whites as sinners in the hands of the anti-racists gods. That can be written off has juvenile self-loathing. The writer hates himself and everyone like himself.

It is the object of his affection, the Zulu warrior, that comes in for the crudest of bigotry. The underlying assumption on the part of the writer is these people are savage morons lacking agency of their own. They are unable to think for themselves. Instead, they are tossed about like corks on the sea, completely lacking free will. The Zulu Mr. Flanagin imagines is an unthinking wild animal.

Even the most hardcore of genetic determinist would not go this far. Men are not just moist robots. Only a sociopath thinks of people in the same way they think of furniture. Most of what we are is in our genes, but it is not all of what we are and that’s why we hold men responsible for their actions.

Mediocrities like Mr. Flanigan can never understand these things so he falls back on simple stereotypes taught to him by his coreligionists. He repeats them and waits for the pat on the head.