May post #1

I watched this video regarding the book The Bell Curve, a book published, at the time of writing this post, 26 years ago. The book, often written off as eugenicist, racist, malarkey, probably because it is, and is often used by far right and neo-fascist trolls as evidence of two things. 1) evidence of white supremacy, and the necessity to organize society according to fascist racial hierarchies placing whites at the top, and black and brown folks at the bottom. 2) after the release of the book there was major backlash in the scientific community, including peer reviews of the studies cited in the book, articles, and books debunking the claims made in the book, which some have used to show that academic institutions are anti-conservative, far-left echo chambers where nothing except for snowflake PC safespace SJW ideas are allowed. In an attempt to be fair, I read excerpts of this book including those covered in the video, which does a good job of contextualizing the information presented in the book. Largely, the book relies on the scores of subjects administered the US army entrance exam, and bases its claims of different races having different IQs, and the colloquial use of "heritability" as in, proportion of a given trait attributable to genetics. A scientific use of the word however, means the proportion of variance of any given trait within a group correlated with specific genetic differences. Definitionally, heritability can't refer to individuals (so for example, an individual's intelligence cannot be 60% genetically heritable, and 40% environmental, heritability only refers to populations as a whole). All this still assumes that intelligence is both quantifiable and adheres to the statistical bell curve in humans. There are many inaccuracies and mistakes that the book makes, and I will let you watch the very well researched and produced video to understand most of them. The effect of the book on discourse and its use as racial propaganda, however are what matter the most. So, despite the book being mostly wrong, neo-nazis still cite it. Even though their claims are easily debunked by anyone with a couple spare brain cells to rub together, it keeps popping up on the bookshelves of alt right talking heads on youtube like Blackpigeonspeaks, Sargon Of Akkad, and Paul Joseph Watson. This is because they use this book, and books like it as dog whistles, unseen signals of ideology. Neo-Nazi in-jokes. Now obviously not everyone who owns a copy of this book is racist, but to uncritically support the ideas and concepts brought up in the book is. To take the book at face value is to subscribe to open white supremacy. The solutions discussed in the final part of the book for the social ills ascribed to intelligence differences are blatant eugenics, and highly faulty because they are trying to fix a problem that doesn't exist. To be clear, the social ills are very real, they are not, however, the matter of racial superiority of any particular ethnicity. The problem is systemic ghettoization, apartheid, and the legacies of racism and genocide on the part of the US government and white Americans perpetrated towards natives and african americans. (Yes, the westward expansion of the US was genocide, if you disagree, I'm sorry, but you are unfamiliar with the history of colonialism. Conquest is genocide.) In conclusion, this book is horribly racist, anyone who says otherwise is lying or selling you something. Don't buy it.