By the way, even Thomas Sowell fell for Lewontin’s Fallacy. I once read him say that we have more in common with members of other races than with members of our own. Maybe that was a residue of Sowell’s youthful Marxism.
A tip ‘o the hate to the Countenance Blogmeister, who has returned home in one piece!
Lewontin’s Fallacy is alive and well
Posted on April 18, 2018
By Jewamongyou
Jewamongyou's Blog
It’s amazing how many people still cite Lewontin’s Fallacy, in support of racial egalitarianism, as if it’s a reasonable argument.
I’ve been arguing with a man on Quora about race, and he wrote:
You’ve never defined “dominant” so all your claims are BS. The reason biologists (like the one I linked to) say that “race” isn’t testable is that you can’t identify who falls into a “race”. And the similarities between people of different alleged “races” biologically end up being greater than among people within a socalled “race”. “Race” is just pseudoscientific bullshit.
But here’s how you can turn Lewontin’s Fallacy on its head to your advantage. I responded:
You wrote: “And the similarities between people of different alleged “races” biologically end up being greater than among people within a socalled “race”.”Yes, you can use Lewontin’s Fallacy to “disprove” income disparities between the races, along with incarceration rates, healthcare issues, graduation rates and employment differences. All of these are more pronounced among people within races than between races. I don’t expect to get a reasonable response from that man on Quora – though I do expect to get banned pretty soon. You can read the entire discussion here, and feel free to join in if you want.
That argument is called Lewontin’s Fallacy. You can read about it by looking it up on Wikipedia. You also wrote: “In fact the evidence is that whites are favored and blacks are three times more likely to be poor”
Don’t you know that there is more income disparity WITHIN races than BETWEEN them? Therefore, according to your own reasoning, you should not be able to cite such statistics in any meaningful way.
My opinion(and millions of others)would present the fact that illnesses,which seem race specific,as all the evidence you need to verify that "not all races are the same",biologically.
ReplyDeleteBetter to paste an article from "The Observer"--that I found by googling "race specific diseases",than summarize it myself.One scientist in this report agrees with that conclusion,another disagrees:
"Dr. Herman Sewagudde of Angels Medical Centre in Kamwokya opines that race is indeed a reality and some diseases are found in one race and not the other.
He points out that race is a biological classification rather than a social construction and DNA studies can prove this. According to him, each race may have its own genes and a disease may indeed be race specific.
Some diseases known to occur to specific races include:
Tay-Sachs disease which is an accumulation of lipids leading to death in early childhood and mostly affects Eastern Europeans of Jewish decent.
Cystic fibrosis where the digestive system fails to produce enough enzymes to digest fat thus making one susceptible to infections, mostly common among Caucasians.
Sickle cell anaemia is more common among blacks.
Tropical Splinomegally Syndrome, enlargement of the spleen, is common among blacks and people in the tropical region
Parkinson’s disease mostly affects whites in their old age
Mental disorders and suicidal tendencies have been mostly associated with whites
Caribbean people are said to be more prone to hypertension
TB, HIV/AIDS, Diabetes are said to be more common among black people
White women are more likely to be diagnosed with breast cancer though black women are more likely to die from it
Dr.Graves has however through his various works and research refuted the idea that there are diseases that affect people simply because of their race. In the article The Power of an Illusion, available at www.pbs.com , he explains that race is a sub division of the human species, yet biologically humans do not have sub species and no biological support for these exists.
According to him race has been created by society, and it would be possible to come up with new racial groups according to blood types, ability to taste certain chemicals, or even the physical appearance of one’s fingers. Thus biologically there are no whites, blacks, Asians or Hispanics, and we are all homosapiens.
Graves has referred to race as a myth, and that the so called race specific diseases occur within certain populations due to external factors such as geographical location.
Sickle cell anaemia, according to www.understandingrace.com, is the only disease that seems a hundred percent race specific. Unlike other diseases which are just more common in one race than the other, sickle cell anaemia occurs exclusively among Negroids and people of Negroid decent.
Those living in malaria belt regions of Africa, the Middle East and Southern Europe and South Asia are most affected. This seems to lend credence to the idea that race specific diseases do exist.
It has however been reasoned that sickle cell evolved due to its surprising upside, resistance to malaria.
Thus the gene variant for sickle cell is related to malaria not skin colour, and indeed there are places where darker skin colour does not necessarily correspond with malaria or sickle cell."
GRA:As with everything--and like economists and political pundits,there are as many opinions about the subject, as scientists.But if race-specific diseases can be used as evidence that races ARE different--in that narrow,specific way,why wouldn't they be divergent in other less detectable ways,biologically,but ways we observe over time,with our own eyes to be true?
---GR Anonymous
ReplyDeleteTYPO ALERT:
"By the way, even Thomas Sowell fell for Lewontin’s Fallacy. I once read him say"
"Yes, you can use Lewontin’s Fallacy to “disprove” income disparities between the races, along with incarceration rates, healthcare issues, graduation rates and employment differences. "
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely so. And across the board too. By what ever measure you are measuring differences.