The reality of sex differences? Willing to bet he means there are only 2 genders when in actual fact, that is a cultural belief and not one based on the reality of the actual science of genetics, psychology, etc.
Ok...I looked him up and SHOCKINGLY, he's anti trans.
In Pinker’s defense, if you’re a man in your 40s+ and all the women you hang out with are entrapped 16 year olds, you might get the impression that women don’t seem to have the same aptitude for for discussing the finer points of race science as your male peers
"Those in power greedily lapped up the vomitus lies I spewed, because it reinforced their view of themselves as naturally deserving the power and influence they held."
Literally every claim is a green framing something fskd. Take drugs. Yes. There are benefits to control and cons to legalisation. That isn't the question. The question is on balance, which position has more pros vs cons. Legalisation.
Same with 'biological reality of race' if we get down to it. Melatonin expression is the most obvious. If we are grouping people by gene expression, there is a biological reality to eye shape. So the fuck what?
“I prepared a detailed debate topic from a position of academic authority, and invited half-asleep undergrads selected because they are teacher-pleasers to contradict me off the cuff. DEBATE!”
i get the impression that he spends his time thinking up rationalizations intended to justify oligarchy, this isn’t scholarship, it’s what right wing “think tanks” do, they start with a concept they believe in, irrespective of its objective validity, and spend years developing a plausible sophistry
I don't think this is true. It's hard to do good research but the first study I came across found that Chinese people are on the lower end for average hand/wrist sizes (highlighted). The study is by people with Indian names, re the "vibes of white experts" thing https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8321953/
It would be nice if he included the observation that "True statements can be still used to create misunderstanding and to organize unjust attacks against others". Many of Pinker's assertions there are so vague that they could be trivially true or outright lies. If true, they imply strawman arguments
“Educational attainment is partly in the genes” lacks class consciousness so utterly that I don’t think this man should be teaching anyone in any kind of school.
In 2009, returning to college as an adult in the field of psychology, I knew then what took the SCIENCE until 2021 to PUBLICLY admit the arguments I had with SOME professors… some studies and data were racist 🐂💩!
The people currently ripping through school libraries hunting degeneracy are here to tell you about the dangers of “being aware of what is in something before you read it”
“Hey listen here you kids, we the wise conservative adults have concluded that this shit is WAY too awesome for you. Whatever you do, do not look at this curated and age appropriate material and instead go to google and…”
And then after that all we need to do is add a trigger warning to the trigger warning of the trigger warning.
That way people who are upset by trigger warnings about trigger warnings can have a trigger warning to be ready for the trigger warning about the trigger warning about the trigger warning.
Not at all, because to them ratings on movies were for restricting what their kids could learn from sources they disapproved of (good) whereas trigger warnings are a tool for reducing trauma for snowflakes (bad).
Question for all wannabe racists. Define a race. Your definition must be sufficiently broad to encompass all members of that race and exclude all persons not of that race.
Straight up, reign-of-terror fascism also reduces crime. Why, I'm sure that the crime rate of North Korea is a tiny fraction of the USA. Cambodia under Pol Pot was a paragon of law and order.
More proof that when racists conservatives say they believe in "freedom of speech" what they mean is to lie with impunity, and especially if that lie is designed to incite hatred.
It's the age old "only we really know the truth".
it's kind of bizarre how racial classification still follows a "one drop rule" that predates the idea of genetics but people like this think of it as a *biological* phenomenon
Understanding of genes is evolving. Our understanding of race is devolving because race science has always been there. And ppl (such as Pinker and yourself) keep insisting you know what you're talking about. And your analysis is historically inaccurate.
I’ll point to the Coates quote elsewhere in this thread to note that as we understand more about the complex mysteries of the universe, including human DNA, race scientists merely look at that new info as a possible means to prove, once and for all, their small-minded theories about who is less.
The race scientists have been trying to fit a square peg into a round hole since ... the invention of race science. The fact that Pinker still has a well-paying job for life proves the lie.
Hi. Cancer researcher here. Race is a thing and it plays a huge role in how we screen, diagnose, and treat cancer patients on a daily basis. Always has, always will. Because, you know, race has a biological component. This concludes my Ted talk.
I’m sorry, who was claiming that Africans were not involved in the slave trade? What’s the point he’s trying to make? “Africans sold other Africans into slavery, take that you woke scolds?”
phonics vs. “whole language”, but there wasn’t actually a culture war about it, the right is retroactively positioning itself as somehow being on the correct side (phonics) in a debate they never participated in
I have a dyslexic child. I feel like I am pretty into the battles over the science of reading bc the dyslexic child had the misfortune of starting her education at a school that had adopted the Lucy Calkins UOS curriculum. I personally had no idea there was any culture war going on about it.
There’s a podcast called Sold a Story that explains big mistakes in reading education. It’s a big messy battle that never should have other political issues influencing the discussion. https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/
Oh there’s a whole thing. They started teaching kids to read by guessing what words meant from context, no phonics. Turned out to be really bad way to teach reading.
I disagree on culture war or not - but it was a different flavor. Bill Honig as CA education superintendent in the 1980s went all in on the Great Books aspect that was parallel to whole language (that kids will learn instinctively with good books, these good books) w/o explicit instruction. 1/3
It’s a time where a huge group of folks who are on the left side of the political spectrum got something very wrong, so the right claimed phonetic learning as their own, causing the left to dig in deeper. I see it especially in bilingual ed circles, ironically. Their students need phonics the most!
This is a perfect example of how "science" isn't this divine, infallible thing, it's a flawed process of highly privileged people attempting to investigate the world, with that process affected by personal biases. It's why scientific journals require conflict of interest statements on submissions.
'Race has some biological reality.' Is surely a statement of fact, consider our skin colours, features, hair type. They are biological differences we inherit but we are still all human & equal. It is not biological differences that divide some of us, it is fear of difference which creates prejudice.
Race is a social categorization based on appearance and imagined ancestry. It's not weird for a social categorization to draw on observable biological traits, and those may be correlated with hard to observe traits. But that's the social category using biology, not biology causing the category.
How is a difference not a reality?
I've always regarded it to be like accents within the same country. We can sound very different but we are all the same. I just try to see and accept humanity in all its diversity...
The issue is that "race" involves a backwards theory of the difference. People see differences, attribute them to ancestry, and that's called race. The differences, including behavior and inequality, can be real or perceived, but there's no good evidence that most of them are causes by ancestry.
I think the counterpoint is that being the tail wagging the dog, race is defined around occurrences like that but not usefully predictive compared to just looking at those components and knowing which are heritable.
Of course race has biological reality. It is a loaded statement. The question to ask is what biological reality is he talking about? Sickle cell anemia?
Andy, I have the feeling you are honestly inquiring, so I'll give a shot at an answer.
I think the issue is with what the term "Race" refers to.
In its inception (in imperialist / colonialist Europe), "race" referred to a comprehension of the people of the world falling into distinct categories...
.. ie "races". Categories that could be clearly deliminated (so, separated and told apart from one another), and of course at also, put into a hierarchy (with "white" people at the top, the smartest, most adept, etc.).
I'm pretty sure this isn't what you're thinking of! The question then becomes ..
You can use google as easily as I can. Research biological differences. You will find different levels of immunity, disease frequency, salt sensitivity, alcohol sensistivity, and many others that vary by ethnicity. Is this something people are really this ignorant about?
Before we could do DNA sequencing, observable traits were the only metrics we had to understand ancestry. But they are bad metrics. No one is denying that humans are diverse in many observable ways, but using race in the genomics era is like saying vapors are real because bad air makes you sick.
Though as you also know, genotype does have racial characteristics. That is not a value statement, simply a fact. As always, when politics hijacks science for nefarious ends lies are propagated.
Don't be obtuse, man. He's not talking about skin color or hair texture or even sickle-cell anemia. He's trying to launder racist pseudoscience about intelligence and propensity to violence by making it sound innocuous and like he's "just asking questions."
Sickle cell anemia is a genetic mutation based on environment, not race, it affects all cultures who have been exposed to malaria for centuries including people from India, Greece and the Middle East, not just Africa. The mutation makes carries of the trait resistant to Malaria.
They're not interested in this because then they'd have to acknowledge why the values of conservatives are the gravitational fields orienting their universes and holding them together.
NYT has been consistent as an uncritical mouthpiece for racism for decades.
I remember back in the day getting in a verbal fistfight with a professor of political science who insisted NYT was a paper of record and my ORIGINAL sources were not acceptable
We fought in front of the class for the whole class.
This is ultimately a list of lies though about what people believe. (The scientific racism is a pure pseudoscience lie.) What the right does is take a fact or event and build a whole narrative around it. The one they built about slavery is particularly stupid because it depends on THEIR RACISM.
I agree with that. I just don't think mainstream journalism has caught up. It's still like, "Oh, here's an important professor. He must have an important point of view."
And that is how we got here by the papers legimitizing every weirdo racist, transphobe and eugenetecist and propping them up in their platform uncritically.
And hell it's not just opinion pieces, they've been both siding the far right for years and scapegoating trans people while also sanitizing Trump and anti trans measures.
It's one of the reasons at this point these newspapers should be thrown in the trash were they belong.
No need for apologies. I think there's a huge difference between mainstream media and social media, and people keep expecting mainstream media to be part of the agenda they get from social media, and it just isn't. That's why everybody's mad at NYT all the time. In fact, NYT is doing amazing work.
His opinion seems pretty racist to me. I'm not surprised the Times printed this, they've definitely been trying to suck up to the Trump regime. I am disgusted by how the media appears to be printing garbage they know Trump will approve of.
I don't think the NYT is sucking up to Trump at all. I think they're still pursuing a model of featuring all points of view, and I understand that tradition though I do think that's about 20 years out of date. In a lie-based world, I do think the "marketplace of ideas" concept is dysfunctional.
Maybe? I remember them presenting "all sides," but they seemed to limit that to things based on facts and objective reality. I still checked to see what they had to say about things up until the past few years. It seemed like they did an okay job of pointing out Trump's lies during his 1st term.
Everything about this is dumb, but even if you just focus on stuff like "educational attainment is partly in the genes"- yes, and? All you're really saying is that nature and nurture both matter.
It's equivalent to saying "some days are hot". It's mindless drivel.
20 years ago people were still doing blackface in mainstream entertainment, with little to no backlash. Trump making racists more visible does not necessarily mean their beliefs are more widespread.
(Also, decline doesn't have to mean a perfectly straight line down)
terrible, terrible - even an amateur phrenologist can see by one look at the authors head that he is of low IQ and moral qualities, but honestly that is true of owners and much of the management of the NYT.
This is about the controversial book „A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History“ (2014) by NY Times science writer Nicholas Wade, which Pinker defended. @ardenthistorian.bsky.social
So much absolute bullshit in So few lines. At this point you can't say these people can learn. This is dry cement. Its set. All we can do is get the jackhammer and bust it up.
They have become a far right rag that is used to sanewash the most vile things ever & I’ve been saying this for 2+ years since they began going hard on lies on trans ppl (always canaries in the coal mine).
They will only get worse & worse. The new Daily Mail.
I get what the author is trying to do, but the point of science is that each of these "truths" are contingent, nuanced, maybe time and context dependent.
There’s a huge asterisk on that “day to day life” claim because SOME people at Harvard are unsure if they we’ll be sent to a prison camp, denied access to resources and education
Found another one even though I keep thinking I’ll run out some day soon as I’ve had to say it so often since the end of Jan 2025…. WTAF?!?!!! NYT- really?!?!!! Do better. This is unbelievably racist.
For me, it’s the slave trade bit that really doesn’t serve any purpose in the beyond shouting IT’S OKAY TO GO OUT OF ONE’S WAY TO DEFEND WHITE EUROPEAN SLAVE TRADERS - for a smart guy (arguably) this shows incredibly little self-awareness
obviously among the least of the issues, but why the fuck are they acting like phonics denialism is a thing? this feels like a slyly racist dig in a way I can't fully elucidate
most of those claims are either misleading (increased marriage rates may correlate to decreased crime rates, but it's absurd to say marriage reduces crime) or outright falsehoods (pretty much all the rest of it) but the phonics one is particularly weird because i've never seen anyone argue otherwise
there has been a move away from phonics in elementary schools, at least where I live, but as far as I've seen, it's not really because people are arguing that learning phonics doesn't help kids read. it's more of a side effect of some (poorly thought out) reprioritization. it's irrelevant either way
I've definitely seen ELA, history, and other liberal arts skills falling by the wayside as we try, in vain, to outcompete China on STEM. It's incredibly frustrating because we're not any better at science and math, now we're just worse at everything.
Whole Language reading is somewhat commonly used (and used to be far more common) and is very controversial because it is a massive failure in comparison to phonics education. that may be the root of why he brought this up in this horrendous mess of a paragraph, if I had to guess.
It's a dig at teachers. Elementary teachers are mostly women. It's misogyny-adjacent. "Those silly irrational women didn't use science based methods when left to their own devices" is the subtext I read in this context.
To clarify, saying phonics is the most effective reading instruction method isn't misogynistic. But notice this is entirely a list of things that minorities and women have done or thought that are "wrong." Not a single thing on this list is a correction the white male academy has had to make.
Phonics rhymes with Ebonics. See also Sesame Street.
That is why it was controversial when it was introduced in the 60s or whenever it was. Pinker is here again demonstrating enlightenment in an anachronistic way. As usual.
This is the case where conservatives turn out to be right. To design a reading curriculum that basically works for all kids, it needs to be based on phonetics. Liberals have thought otherwise for generations. My understanding is that the preponderence of research bears this out. See reporting ...
See, my confusion comes from having never once seen anyone critical of phonics. You say that liberals are against it but I don't know that that's currently true. Do you have examples?
It’s kind of educational inside-baseball, and it doesn’t connect at all to the other subjects Pinker mentions, but there is an ongoing debate about how to teach kids to read. It’s kind of reminiscent of the whole New Math mess my boomer relatives still complain about.
I will say I was in my final years of high school when they were first rolling out common core for math, and it confused ALL of us. Might have been growing pains, I'm not sure.
I know that many adults, especially older adults, still read one words at a time and frequently have to read aloud under
1/
Back to the Pinker op-ed, his rhetorical technique was to allude to "contrarian" views relating to race and then throw in the recerence to phonics. Because many people know this situation with reading curricula and phonics. So it adds a contact point of credibility for readers. Hey, maybe ...
4/
Last thing. And I say this as the most left person I personally know, at least in the 1990s through 2000s the curricular wars, parallel with cultural wars, had conservatives correct on teaching reading and math. Blame Rousseau. Correct in that ed research bears it out.
1/
No, just familiarity with how reading is almost universally taught in American schools. In a nutshell: not with phonics. Since the demise of the very popular Lucy Calkins curricula things might be different now.
Most kids learn to read to some extent regardless of the method. 20 something ...
2/
... years ago my oldest son totally failed to read in 1st grade. Classmates picked it up. But the handful of "reading strategies" they used turned out, for him, to essentially sabotage learning. Almost all words were "sight words". No sounding out. So its hard to read words you havent been taught
2/
... on criticism of the Lucy Calkins curriculum.
This is case of following the data, etc
So rhetorically Pinker argues that because he is correct on one controversy, by some Latin phrase to be inserted, he is correct on them all
I marvel at the lack of self awareness of TENURED professor at Harvard w/r/t academic freedom and freedom of expression. There is no more chilling speech force within the University community than the untouchable tenured elite.
There are no post tenure reviews at Harvard and it’s nearly impossible to remove tenure for misconduct (you’re in more trouble for mistreating your mice than your postdocs). And of course white men continue to make up the majority of the tenured, as well as the council Pinker founded. SMH.
It’s a weird statement and obviously has the risk of racist interpretation without further qualification. So, to the person who wrote this: What does this sentence mean? To me, “biological reality” just means differences in skin pigmentation, hair character & colour - full stop.
Racial categories as they are defined in modern nations do not (and never have) tracked "differences in skin pigmentation, hair character & colour." Consider "passing" -- which means we understand that a person may be indistinguishable from members of race X, but "really" belong to race Y.
In the U.S., racial definitions have always worked to the benefit of white supremacy, whether they increase the number of people eligible for slavery, or decrease the number of those who might help constitute politically powerful indigenous groups.
Racists like Pinker think there's a genetic basis to intelligence that Black people possess in lower quantities. In support they point to how few people of African descent have received honors like Nobels compared to Ashkenazi Jews.
As an Ashkenazi Jew, I can fully state dumbasses abound.
These people only care about Jews when they can be weaponized to oppress other ethnic and racial groups. One minute it's all about how Ashkenazi Jews have more Nobel prizes, the next it's about how they're using their cunning science brains to construct space lasers.
They genuinely think they've identified some kind of biological factor that determines intelligence, as opposed to socioeconomic factors that determine whether everyone has equal opportunity to compete.
These racists *hate* the idea that they got ahead because society gives a boost to white dudes.
There are obviously genetic differences in hair and skin. The problem is when you start assuming other biological characteristics are intrinsically linked to those visible characteristics.
It would be strange if he meant that since he was talking about potentially controversial positions. No one denies that skin pigmentation is biological.
Also it would be very strange if he thought that race was just about skin color, hair, etc.
No scholar does. I have had a lot of students who initially were horrified at my saying that in class because of the super-simplified understanding of the slave trade they got in high school.
Risk? C'mon, we're past that. They are NEVER talking about hair care products. Adults know that Stephen Pinker does not care about hair care products. But he can't shut up about whatever this is.
You are assuming he means physiological traits, which obviously do differ between (overlapping!) groups
He is using "biological reality" to imply that 1. there are reliable cognitive and behavioral differences between those groups, and by extension 2. this matters to how we run society
It's classic right-wing garbage - disingenuously asking the audience to agree with a prima facie "reasonable" factual statement, and then using it to make an entirely different argument
He's relying on you, the good-faith reader, to react exactly how you did - eg: "Well, of course it's true that white people have a higher rate of blond hair than Hispanic people. How can anyone argue otherwise?"
Now he has a better chance of getting you to agree with the lies that come next.
When you combine "race has some biological reality" with "educational achievement is partially in the genes" and "the heritability of intelligence", a fuller picture begins to emerge.
1/ Yes. Humans vary. If you take humans and group them up by similarity, you are inherently forming groups and saying the groups differ. Some differences look nice to have (looks like Ashkenazi Jews score well on IQ tests) some not so nice (white skin is thinner and so wrinkles earlier in life).
2/ None of these differences have any bearing or relation at all on the value of a life or a person, their rights and dignity, or our view of them as a fellow human being.
To imagine or argue they do is racism in the classic, evil sense, fabricating justifications to subjugate others.
Also somewhat concerning that they don't understand the difference between correlation and causation, which seems to be what most of these claims. Having a piece of paper saying you're married is unlikely to be the reason marriage rates are allegedly associated with crime rates
If they have evidence of race having a biological basis they should bloody well tell us what this claimed evidence is... this is just a series of confirmation bias claims.
the ones that conflate genes with "race". i don't think anyone disputes genetic factors, it's the categorisation of a supposed biological category of race
Members of my family have mostly European ancestors but dark skin and curly black hair. "Black" would of course be their race category, based solely on surface appearance. No reputable biologist would generalize about anything but skin and hair from that category.
Of course not. And what is considered "Black" , "White" etc changes over time. It's simply not a useful category to use...because it's not based on anything real.
The New York Times DID publish Steven Pinker’s silly claim, but it clearly labeled it “OPINION - GUEST ESSAY”. Far-right critics claim the Times doesn’t have enough diversity of viewpoint. You claim it has too much.
There is a causal link between the genes for white skin, curly hair, a last name starting with the letter P and a tendency to be dense when getting paid to be dense.
Yes, I learned in 1960s anthropology that "race" has no biological base. There are gene pools, but remembered when "Irish" was a race in America? Etc, etc, etc.
"Educational attainment is partially in the genes"? Sure pal
Lumping that together with phonics and "marriage reduces crime" as all being "politically incorrect" topics is a straight up attempt to normalize eugenics and racism
If all of you people who keep publishing links — and thus funneling traffic — to horrific NYT takes would just...stop doing that...we can make the paper irrelevant and impotent.
I don't even do that. Honestly, what the NYT has to say about anything is thoroughly devoid of merit and import in the year 2025. They have shown and continue to show what they are, and what they are is a fascist propaganda rag that needs killing. The best way to kill it is to actively ignore it.
The only awareness I have of them is what randomly drifts across my feeds, and I wouldn't get even that if hypocrites would cease the linking and dunking.
We have a cadaver in our anatomy lab that is black: the "race" part (the darkened epidermis) is incredibly thin; underneath that, the body is indistinguishable from all other human cadavers in the lab. A "biological reality" of observable racial differences is less than paper thin. Food for thought
It's one of those "Motte and bailey" statements racists love.
Anyone confronts them, they can retreat into claims like "obviously all I mean is skin colour is hereditary! How can you say it isn't?" or some similar BS.
But everyone knows they're defending 19th-century racial pseudoscience.
“…day to day life at Harvard,” you know, just day to day life, something we’ve all experienced, btw have you had brioche lately? lol what an out of touch racist.
I hate that phonics being necessary to learn to read is factually correct, amongst a heap of garbage, and also framed as controversial. GTFOH you uneducated Harvard alum.
Claims for the biological reality of race fail to (or refuse to) understand population genetics. Per Pinker’s “biological race” linked article, ancestry DNA testing can link some African-Americans to very distinct locations in West Africa. But not to East Africa. Same “race,” different genetics.
"Africans were active in the slave trade" nobody's arguing they weren't you weird racist dildo, nobody was making others buy slaves, Africans generations ago certainly aren't to blame for choices you're making to be racist today, and the "really makes you think, huh" delivery is childish at best
Just as easy to make a case with solid examples that ‘Legalising drugs has some benefits and cracking down on drugs has some downsides’.
For someone who used to be lauded as one of the great thinkers of our times, this is some extraordinarily lazy bullshit that I’d be embarrassed to say in public.
No evidence of that whatsoever in what he wrote. He posits them simply as politically incorrect ‘truths’ which he suggests are ‘based on the data’ like they are absolute, rather than subjective give the complexity of data, caveats in how it might have been collected and the ability to cherry pick.
I know we always say that MBA, engineering etc. students need to take more humanities classes, and they do, but if a Harvard professor and author of many best-selling books can’t conceive of “opportunity cost”, maybe arts academics should take a business 101 class now and again.
Pinker's posturing (I will no longer call it a 'position') is most frustrating because he genuinely thinks his ideas are purely data-driven, not ideological. He doesn't acknowledge how his own assumptions frame the data, shaping what he presents as objective truth. His framing itself is ideological.
I always hate when people talk about "marriage lowering crime" because not only does it do the classic error of making correlation causation, there are so many different and changeable variables associated with 'marriage' that it's unhinged to just say yeah, marriage does anything specific
At least half of my state uni stats instructors had this taped on their doors. Maybe someone can stick it up on Pinker’s fancy Harvard one. https://xkcd.com/552/
With the right technology and social policy you could create or destroy almost any correlation been a gene and educational attainment. What are these people on?
“I’ve never done anything wrong in my entire life and actually being mean to me, one guy, is worse than racism and if you’re mean to me I’ll throw up and cry and it’s your fault” cool man
the most important application i learned in my intro sociology class in state college was correlation is not causation, yet every one of these high minded tenured eugenics professors with their NYT best selling books seem to be granted the option, in print and action, to ignore this simple axiom.
Lewontin long ago showed that eugenics/sociobiology/evolutionary psychology) relies on reductionism, which is just a systematic application of correlation, not causation.
Herrnstein and Murray lowered the bar, asserting a race/IQ correlation without even an coefficient of determination.
It’s *almost* as if some of these libertarian idols were full of shit all along, and were hiding behind a veneer of respectability and intellectual rigour before Trump/Musk et al put a bunch of their sacred cows to the test and their masks fell off.
Chomsky must be so embarrassed by his links with Pinker, who seems to get further right wing with each passing year
To anyone confused:
Race does not have any biological reality
Human variation has biological reality. That variation is continuous throughout the species.
My point, sweetie, is that people who consider some humans to be "less human" then themselves need to remove the stick they have shoved up their asses.
I’m so sick of subpar white men, angry that they suck at life, ruminating about how to create propaganda that guarantees them sexual access to a woman (marriage does not reduce crime) and cuts out large swathes of the competition (white ppl are not superior)
That entire paragraph is a right wing boogeylist of what they think libs think about.
For example, libs wouldn’t deny that Africans were involved in trans-Atlantic slave-trade, we just don’t think it gives the Confederacy a “pass” over the damn civil war (that they lost!)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but IIRC the African traders almost NEVER enslaved their own cultural/ethnic group, so they didn't see it as enslaving "their own people" to begin with (ꏿ﹏ꏿ;)
Not really. I think the idea that all african people woulda been on the same side is ridiculous, and infantilizing- many POWs were dumped off into european slavery bc African leaders had no idea and no care of the system that would be effecting someone they were willing to rid their hands of
They were probably benefiting from it just like the Europeans were. Slave trade was good business, if that's all you care about, then why wouldn't you get in on that? 😬
That's the point. Its capitalism and people profit from it. That's the reason they were complicit not because the thought people from Africa are inferior.
Some off-duty Civil war reenactors at my school I was chatting up tried to use this as a gotcha. I explained that saying the seller is worse than the buyer is weak as hell. They also got to such hits as “I was just following orders”. Had to explain that one too.
Living most of my life in the southeastern US, the most common dipshit apologia I've heard for Confederate slave ownership was "black people owned slaves [here], too!"
To which I reply, "because white people outlawed emancipation and they had to 'own' their family members."
It's wild because earlier he bemoans "splitting", a Manichaean worldview where things are all good or all evil.
But the only reason "Africans sold slaves" would be relevant is if you don't see injustice as proportional power. It only makes sense if you need perfect victims for a good/evil binary.
Possibly the dumbest argument I've had since 2016. Guy couldn't wrap his head around the party platform swap. He thought I was arguing the party members literally switched sides and I couldn't get him to read anything that explained it.
He insisted I meant every member of congress walked out one day and came in the next as the opposite party. They resent being called stupid but won't do anything to change it.🤷♂️
Even if you didn't learn it first hand, anyone who's watched the Lincoln movie could have that mindblown moment at the point Tommy Lee Jones (Thaddeus Stevens - Republican) argues the abolitionist side.
And that goes for everything on the list. Like, no one is denying that cracking down on drug use has its benefits, and that legalization has its problems. 1/
But what we don't agree with is the idea that the problems that come from legalization, outweigh its benefits; or that they outweigh the other slew of problems that come from a war on drugs. 2/
Or for example markets. Most* people on the left agree that having markets makes for a better world. But the issue we have is how the lack of regulations on major corps is leading to price gouging, monopolies, worse products, disgusting business practices, being overworked & underpaid etc...
What is appalling is that he clearly *did not* read the article he linked to.
This article makes it very clear that arguing for race as basis for treating people or groups differently makes no sense.
and yet, even in the article he cites, this is the author's bottom line:
"I think the answer is obvious: We should both recognize that genetic differences between males and females exist and we should accord each sex the same freedoms and opportunities regardless of those differences." /1
"...conceptually it is straightforward. And if this is the case with men and women, then it is surely the case with whatever differences we may find among human populations, the great majority of which will be far less profound." /2
1. Make an outrageously bigoted statement with some mealy-mouthed qualification tacked on
2. When Very Intelligent idiots have adopted 1. into use because they can't see step 2. form a mile away, drop the qualification and just press on with the outrageous bigotry
what I meant is that even the other guy he pointed to as the supposed scientific expert for his "race means something important for society" doesn't agree with him, at least not in that particular opinion piece
"We should both recognize the genetic differences between attached and detached earlobes exist, and we should accord each earlobe-haver the same freedoms and opportunities regardless of those differences."
"Excuse me when I stand here and argue a position that is, from what I'm claiming, completely meaningless and should not have any bearing on politics, (so it's really odd I'm saying it!) but other people will use that position and the supposed truth of it to be bigots."
My response can only be: There are genetic differences between me and Pinker, but I don't think that because of those genetic differences, Pinker should be beaten to death with baseball bats, and laws should be written, as much as possible, to ensure it doesn't happen.
"Cracking down on drugs has benefits, and legalizing them has harms."
Allow me to quote System of a Down:
ALL RESEARCH AND SUCCESSFUL DRUG POLICY SHOWS THAT TREATMENT SHOULD BE INCREASED AND LAW ENFORCEMENT DECREASED WHILE ABOLISHING MANDATORY MINIMUM SENTENCES.
(Their evidence that legalizing is more harmful than the status quo always ignores the fact that many of the downsides are caused by criminalizing drugs, not by the drugs themselves.)
While problematic, the paragraph is completely taken out of context. Context matters, whatever one thinks of Pinker. The article is a strong apology of Harvard University. As such, it has merits.
"Race has some reality"=Africans have far more genetic diversity than the rest of humanity. If "whites" are a "race", "blacks" are at least 7 races, at the DNA level. Human genetic diversity doesn't correspond remotely to what these ignorant buffoons believe about "race". They love Nazi eugenics.
Ethnic origin remains relevant in certain medical contexts. For example, sickle cell trait is most common in people from Africa, cystic fibrosis in people from Northwest Europe, fava-ism in mideastern people, thalessemia in pacific islanders…. Symptoms + ethnicity raises suspicion to look for these.
Notice that these have nothing to do with a persons, social value, integrity, ability to lead, skill in the workforce or any of the other things that the racists try to use ethnicity for.
Sickle cell most hits a minority of Africans in regions prone to malaria. Much of Africa isn't prone to malaria(regions of North, East & Southern African) and indigenous folks there don't have sickle-cell at all. Small African countries have more genetic diversity than all of Europe.
Yes. And for those not aware, the reason sickle cell occurs in those areas is because if you have only one gene for sickle cell it protects you from malaria without giving you sickle cell disease. If you have two genes you get sickle cell disease, which is usually fatal without modern medicine.
"Africans were active in the slave trade"=Europe invaded & eventually conquered all of Africa, starting around 1400. Trump is importing some of the millions of whites who still remain in Africa from those centuries of European genocide, slavery & apartheid in Africa.
The intended corollary to "Africans participated in the slave trade" is "So there was nothing wrong with white people building a society based on enslaving Africans."
Of course. Just like there are white jackasses who want to try to lessen the importance of African enslavement to the development of the Americas by babbling about "the irish were slaves too" -a statement that is untrue. Indentured servants were bondsmen, but they were not chattel.
Unfortunately, while my Irish example is an untrue statement, Africans did participate in enslaving other Africans. Whole nations were built on the practice. The European demand for enslaved people was all-pervasive corrupting, and in many instances elites sold out their own people.
Acknowledging this fact is to recognize the evils of the triangular trade, in my opinion. Sadly, the import of your statement is true: any idea can be misrepresented and misused by the willfully stupid, and this one often is. It's like stupidity hangs like pollen in the very air we breathe
Cracking down on drugs has benefits? To the cartels sure it does. Show me all the amazing success of the last 60 years of the drug war. You fucking knob.
If harm reduction/safe supply doesn't solve all problems overnight it fails. So go back to prohibition/police state which has failed by every metric for decades and created the world's biggest prison population. Fuck these charlatans.
The New York Times has been normalizing the land theft that made possible ethnic cleansing for almost a century while ALSO providing narrative cover for the genocidaires and minimizing the harms suffered by Palestinians for decades.
I’m supposed to like the Atlantic’s social commentary by the likes of Douhat and ignore that it is edited by a former IOF prison guard? I’m saying they’re both terrible but you seem on the fence
Like 80% of those so-called prima facially true claims are… not. Just off the top of my head. I imagine the ones I don’t know about are also similarly bullshit
For 'biological reality', the article he cites, of course, is another NYT op-ed from another Harvard. Both pretend that the core issue is not that racists cite biology as showing racial superiority; they harrumph that there are biogeographic clusters of genetic differences. Red herring fallacy.
The Reich article is directly about racists citing biology for racial superiority. His claim is that ignoring some real things correlated with ancestry that some call race (e.g. his colon cancer example) helps those racists bc it discredits the larger point that biology doesn't support racism.
Genetic traits are familial and they exist. That doesn't mean race isnt a fucking societal construct used to oppress people for millennia. I inherited my grandmother's cheekbones. Because she's half Italian and tans easily, people treated her like shit. Decades later, I'm seen as not "white" enough.
I understand that and I don't think Reich disagrees, though I also agree that he doesn't go far enough to distinguish the concepts (the criticism in that buzzfeed article eslewhere in this thread). But that wasn't the claim I was responding to.
I've read Reich's book and I think he is not above criticism--I think he is overreacting to people denying any differences between different populations. But you just can't say he's not aware of how biology can be used by racists--it's central to his thesis even if you disagree with the thesis.
Yes, and citing the Reich article to "race has some biological reality" while not exactly wrong is pretty contrary to the point Reich was trying to make.
Omg hot spot policing? Hot spot policing reduces crime in that spot only. Sometimes it goes up in other areas. We can't turn the whole country into a hot spot. That's called a police state.
I followed the effects of this strategy in NYC. data showed most crime was generated by a few gangs operating in one area of the Bronx. (Most crime occurs in Black and brown communities). They arrested and incarcerated violent criminals. crime decreased substantially-and has remained at
Perhaps it’s another thing. But yeah you want to increase police presence where crime is increasing or concentrated. Residents in those communities want the police there - so they can let their kids play outside and try to stem gang recruitment and offer other activities for teens to engage in.
The way they just list shit implying there is something good in xyz but not saying anything concrete is the whole problem. They know exactly what groups will cite this and for what reasons.
I've always believed (personally) that that's the purpose of an opinion editorial page; publishing important views on a given topic (in this case a professor at Harvard), not necessarily ones the publisher agrees with.
I agree with your points Corey, however, this is an Op-Ed piece. The Times is publishing it. They don't agree or disagree. You'll find Op-Ed pieces in every newspaper, from the WSJournal to the NYT to the Financial Times of London who publish opinion pieces that they don't necessarily agree with.
Publishing opposing views is always fine; publishing nakedly racist pseudoscience, even as an opinion column, should be far beneath any self-respecting periodical.
The cellphone, search bar, internet light bulb, airplanes, indoor plumbing, gas mask, the modern bathroom, GPS, roller coasters, indoor plumbing, 3d movies, cataract surgery, heart transplant, immunizations, music, art, writing, science, & blood bank shouldn't exist. Invented by Black people.
What the fuck is that dude even talking about, he says biology then just lists a bunch of fuckin racist bullet points. Like why the fuck talk about the slave trade? Sounds like an asshole.
So white people do get sickle cell anemia and aren't more prone to skin cancer? Because I was talking medical traits in the white population. I still don't know what the Harvard guy linked to.
These are all true if you squint real hard and bonk yourself on the head first.
These facts are either partially correct or just so imprecise as to be useless.
To pick one example I hadn't heard of but can immediately spot the flaws in: I'd bet you anything that marriage reducing crime is correlation, not causation. The kind of person that is likely to get married is less likely to cause crime. So does incentivising marriage change crime rates? No.
This is what Richard Spencer & his ilk were saying back in 2015. It says a lot about the NYT that they are now happily filling that niche for the regime.
Thing about encouraging your students to disagree with your bigoted ideas is that they are students, less experienced, still learning, and they are learning from you. You're in a superior position over them, and arguing with you can have consequences for their acceptance in class and success
Speaking out in front of a whole class against the professor is already daunting, and the work you have to put into gathering and presenting info to disprove his bigotry is pointless when you realise the professor already should have access to the same info, and still chooses bigotry.
And, I was that student who spoke out when a prof served up sexist and homophobic BS in class, which led to 1) him publicly mocking me, 2) me filing a complaint about his sexism and homophobia, and 3) absolutely nothing being done. Miserable fucking semester.
Any professor who needs to make a public claim about warm relations with deans and university presidents is 99% chance the enemy of every other faculty member on that campus.
"the heritability of intelligence" is a claim that requires extreme nuance and understanding of what intelligence actually is, something they likely didn't do, and their claim was really just some unholy assertion of "black ppl dumb"
Comments
Ok...I looked him up and SHOCKINGLY, he's anti trans.
that is, definitionally, racism. textbook.
Whereas, saying that Chinese women have small fingers is ... racist pseudoscience based on the vibes of white "experts."
Racists believe what they CHOOSE!!!
https://www.psychiatry.org/news-room/apa-apology-for-its-support-of-structural-racism
It's so funny for anyone who live through the ratings on television and music debate in the '90s.
" Trigger warnings"... Are you opposed to ratings on movies, You dip s***?
It might get kids to read more.
“Hey listen here you kids, we the wise conservative adults have concluded that this shit is WAY too awesome for you. Whatever you do, do not look at this curated and age appropriate material and instead go to google and…”
;-)
That way people who are upset by trigger warnings about trigger warnings can have a trigger warning to be ready for the trigger warning about the trigger warning about the trigger warning.
And then the trigger warnings will just freeze in the winter.
https://pxlnv.com/blog/american-iphone-fantasy/
It's the age old "only we really know the truth".
I have to respeKKKt their hustle
It’s obviously got some basis
White supremacy is a contradiction in terms.
https://bsky.app/profile/gbrockell.bsky.social/post/3lpwdlst6rk2x
I've always regarded it to be like accents within the same country. We can sound very different but we are all the same. I just try to see and accept humanity in all its diversity...
I think the issue is with what the term "Race" refers to.
In its inception (in imperialist / colonialist Europe), "race" referred to a comprehension of the people of the world falling into distinct categories...
I'm pretty sure this isn't what you're thinking of! The question then becomes ..
They're literally a garbage publication and there's so much to document that.
No one has ever cared.
NYT has been consistent as an uncritical mouthpiece for racism for decades.
Exactly.
I remember back in the day getting in a verbal fistfight with a professor of political science who insisted NYT was a paper of record and my ORIGINAL sources were not acceptable
We fought in front of the class for the whole class.
Dumb Bitch.
(Except the race thing, fuck that)
It's one of the reasons at this point these newspapers should be thrown in the trash were they belong.
It's equivalent to saying "some days are hot". It's mindless drivel.
“In white. Therefore, I’m right” is not an argument, NYT pedo. Drop dead, cracker.
That explains why we've twice elected the most openly racist President in the past century.
(Also, decline doesn't have to mean a perfectly straight line down)
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8568288/
5 seconds later:
"racism has been in decline."
https://bsky.app/profile/coreyatad.com/post/3lpu5dctsnk2d
carried in our blood,
really is true.
You, and I,
in fact everyone,
all over the world,
we're all literally
African,
under the skin.
Old fashioned concepts of race
are not only socially divisive, but scientifically wrong.
DR. SPENCER WELLS
https://youtu.be/P6nEGfcwMNA?si=Wf18lgh6jAKrQ_P5
Kay... 🫠
Wtf is wrong with people?
They will only get worse & worse. The new Daily Mail.
By design, by MAGA mgmt and owners.
That is why it was controversial when it was introduced in the 60s or whenever it was. Pinker is here again demonstrating enlightenment in an anachronistic way. As usual.
There’s a podcast about it:
I know that many adults, especially older adults, still read one words at a time and frequently have to read aloud under
Back to the Pinker op-ed, his rhetorical technique was to allude to "contrarian" views relating to race and then throw in the recerence to phonics. Because many people know this situation with reading curricula and phonics. So it adds a contact point of credibility for readers. Hey, maybe ...
Last thing. And I say this as the most left person I personally know, at least in the 1990s through 2000s the curricular wars, parallel with cultural wars, had conservatives correct on teaching reading and math. Blame Rousseau. Correct in that ed research bears it out.
No, just familiarity with how reading is almost universally taught in American schools. In a nutshell: not with phonics. Since the demise of the very popular Lucy Calkins curricula things might be different now.
Most kids learn to read to some extent regardless of the method. 20 something ...
... years ago my oldest son totally failed to read in 1st grade. Classmates picked it up. But the handful of "reading strategies" they used turned out, for him, to essentially sabotage learning. Almost all words were "sight words". No sounding out. So its hard to read words you havent been taught
... on criticism of the Lucy Calkins curriculum.
This is case of following the data, etc
So rhetorically Pinker argues that because he is correct on one controversy, by some Latin phrase to be inserted, he is correct on them all
As an Ashkenazi Jew, I can fully state dumbasses abound.
These racists *hate* the idea that they got ahead because society gives a boost to white dudes.
Or at least, start assuming those are genetic.
Also it would be very strange if he thought that race was just about skin color, hair, etc.
He is using "biological reality" to imply that 1. there are reliable cognitive and behavioral differences between those groups, and by extension 2. this matters to how we run society
i.e., equivocation
Now he has a better chance of getting you to agree with the lies that come next.
Largely on people who, unlike you, don't have the critical thinking skills to ever question their own priors
To imagine or argue they do is racism in the classic, evil sense, fabricating justifications to subjugate others.
distortions
and categorical
alterations to how we are each socialized
according to how we are designated
obstacles & hurdles
cliches
typecasts
reinforcement
and discouragement
varying
due to such
The New York Times DID publish Steven Pinker’s silly claim, but it clearly labeled it “OPINION - GUEST ESSAY”. Far-right critics claim the Times doesn’t have enough diversity of viewpoint. You claim it has too much.
Maybe the truth is somewhere in the middle.
That’s okay!
Beware the extremists. ISIS doesn’t have any “secret insight” into . . .
anything!
And neither does the American Nazi Party.
Lumping that together with phonics and "marriage reduces crime" as all being "politically incorrect" topics is a straight up attempt to normalize eugenics and racism
If all of you people who keep publishing links — and thus funneling traffic — to horrific NYT takes would just...stop doing that...we can make the paper irrelevant and impotent.
Want me to show you how?
I don't personally like my feed that way but it's not hard.
Anyone confronts them, they can retreat into claims like "obviously all I mean is skin colour is hereditary! How can you say it isn't?" or some similar BS.
But everyone knows they're defending 19th-century racial pseudoscience.
It's dopamine dependency mixed with an unwillingness to enact stable boundaries.
Sad state of affairs for everyone. 😔
https://help.nytimes.com/hc/en-us/articles/360003499613-Cancel-Your-Subscription
Harvard professor of 22 years discovers that different decisions have different outcomes, some you might like and some you might not.
For someone who used to be lauded as one of the great thinkers of our times, this is some extraordinarily lazy bullshit that I’d be embarrassed to say in public.
Next up: poachers cause elephants.
https://bsky.app/profile/joolia.bsky.social/post/3lpwokddpo22k
Anyway,
🫠
wrt:markets ( they found their niche )
"the principle of really existing free market theory is: free markets are fine for you, but not for me. "
🙃
https://chomsky.info/19960413/
Herrnstein and Murray lowered the bar, asserting a race/IQ correlation without even an coefficient of determination.
To anyone confused:
Race does not have any biological reality
Human variation has biological reality. That variation is continuous throughout the species.
— Ta-Nehisi Coates
This obsession about excluding certain variants needs to be put to rest.
You know what's less human than me?
Gorillas, dogs, cats, dolphins...etc.
For example, libs wouldn’t deny that Africans were involved in trans-Atlantic slave-trade, we just don’t think it gives the Confederacy a “pass” over the damn civil war (that they lost!)
African slavery was mostly about warfare and debt. It was generally not life-long slavery and it was certainly not hereditary slavery.
the taiping rebellion took place around the same time, 30 million died, and it took 15 years for them to be put down
To which I reply, "because white people outlawed emancipation and they had to 'own' their family members."
But the only reason "Africans sold slaves" would be relevant is if you don't see injustice as proportional power. It only makes sense if you need perfect victims for a good/evil binary.
Lib: "No I do--"
Maga: "Black people did slavery too!"
Lib: "ok b--"
Maga: "so see, black people are evil!"
Lib: wtf?
This article makes it very clear that arguing for race as basis for treating people or groups differently makes no sense.
https://archive.ph/XpaC6
He is misusing the article to give credibility to his blatant racism.
THAT is context and it is being abused.
These clowns are weaponizing legitimate research for their culture war by stripping it of context and deliberately misunderstanding it.
When they're proven wrong - its the scientist who they slandered who gets the blame.
"I think the answer is obvious: We should both recognize that genetic differences between males and females exist and we should accord each sex the same freedoms and opportunities regardless of those differences." /1
1. Make an outrageously bigoted statement with some mealy-mouthed qualification tacked on
2. When Very Intelligent idiots have adopted 1. into use because they can't see step 2. form a mile away, drop the qualification and just press on with the outrageous bigotry
what I meant is that even the other guy he pointed to as the supposed scientific expert for his "race means something important for society" doesn't agree with him, at least not in that particular opinion piece
These people sound fucking ridiculous.
Allow me to quote System of a Down:
ALL RESEARCH AND SUCCESSFUL DRUG POLICY SHOWS THAT TREATMENT SHOULD BE INCREASED AND LAW ENFORCEMENT DECREASED WHILE ABOLISHING MANDATORY MINIMUM SENTENCES.
When putting forth a meritless argument, it's better to answer questions you wanted critics to ask and not answer the questions they actually asked.
But obviously, and unfortunately, that is not what the average Black man looks like.
It’s in favor of almost everything decent people oppose.
Heck, they even both have Arthur Brooks on staff.
NYT actively takes stances and promotes ideas that imply the public good is irrelevant.
And then wonders why democracy is collapsing.
It's not close.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/bfopinion/race-genetics-david-reich#.bi00VOnb5
To be a better person can you tell me why?
Thanks and appreciated,
Cagedfox
People didn't stand up when they talked their segregation shit about and I doubt they'll stand up to this too
It seems in trend to just let bigotry flow freely nowadays as long as it uses the word "biological"
Because that’s the only context I can think of that makes this make sense.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/23/opinion/sunday/genetics-race.html
#BoycottMSM
These facts are either partially correct or just so imprecise as to be useless.
https://www.pinkerite.com/2025/04/what-happened-to-adam-rutherford-part-4.html