Races and races
Boris says sorry over ‘blacks have lower IQs’ article in the Spectator
Race is complicated, and the answer might be to simply refuse to put people into racial categories in the first place. If you don’t make that first move, then the question simply does not arise. Why, afterall, are you applying that particular kind of categorization? What’s the motivation for doing so? What is the benefit going to be? For what reason is this being done?
But I don’t think you can have it both ways.
If you do make the first move of assigning people to races (like most UK civil administration forms require you to do) then you do immediately open up a can of worms.
You can’t on the one hand advocate not discriminating between races, and on the other hand force people to choose between racial categories.
For example, you can’t on the one hand advocate positive discrimination, and on the other hand trash psychometric testing that could be used in ways you find embarrassing.
However you test a population’s I.Q. — or any other characteristics — and whatever method you choose for allocating people to groups — race, gender, poverty level, whatever you like — when you do empirical research, you risk the possibility that some group or another is going to come out on top in a statistically significant way.
Secondly you need to have consistent and reproducible ways of allocating people to your chosen set of categories. How are you going to put people into race groups? Use a colour swatch chart? Some kind of DNA marker? Or what? (At this stage you might want to consider what the motivation is for allocating people to groups on that basis.)
Next, in order to really understand what statistical data is telling you, you need to understand distribution graphs. And an enormous number of people in the world simply do not.
Some people are stronger, some people are faster, some people are cleverer, some people are better looking, some people are more socially adept, some people have a funnier sense of humour, some people are more fun to spend time with, some people are better at taking care of other people, some people are better at talking to large groups of people, some people are more attractive. Whatcha gonna do? Ignore everything that makes anyone different? … I don’t think so.
