Guy Harrison's "Race and Reality" Reviewed:

I had the unfortunate privilege to read a book by Guy Harrison, titled "Race and Reality." It was supposed to show me the error of my ways and prove once and for all that racism was a delusion.

Instead I found the same sophomoric arguments you would hear on PBS "we're all the same" or Jeffrey Imm "Choose Love, not hate." There was little to no attempt to discuss anything with scientific rigor, and when scientific studies were brought in, they were cherry picked to only favor his conclusions. For instance, even though the vast weight of transracial adoption studies show that blacks, no matter who raises them, have lower IQ's than whites (the Minnesota trans-racial adoption study for instance), all anti-racists ever cite is a lone study about black children raised in Germany who apparently scored the same. Proper scientific procedure is to throw out outliers in any data set. Liberals instead choose to quote them as the last word in scientific research.

Cherry picking isn't the only problem though. The larger problem is lying by omission. For instance, the author quotes Gould, but doesn't quote Rushton who has already refuted everything Gould ever said. The author points out invalid IQ tests, but neglects to mention brain size studies proving over and over again that Asians have larger brains than whites, who in turn have larger brains than blacks. He points out poverty in black communities compared to whites in America, but neglects to mention they are seven times as rich as Chinese who score higher than even whites in IQ tests. He also neglects to mention that children of rich blacks score lower on SAT tests than children of poor whites. He also neglects to mention that white IQ's in Argentina, Belarus, Russia and the like, all of whom make less than half than blacks in America, are also all far higher IQ than blacks. If people are ignorant and stupid enough, they can think the world consists only of high IQ rich people and low IQ poor people, and then blame everything on poverty. However, the world is full of rich low IQ people (like Kuwaitis) and poor high IQ people (like North Koreans and Chinese.) This forever invalidates poverty as any factor whatsoever in determining IQ. Will Harrison mention these counter-examples? No. It doesn't fit the agenda, so it's thrown out.

Harrison quotes Nisbett who quotes Flynn that the gap between black and white IQ scores is closing. However, Rushton has already proven that the gap, in fact, isn't closing and the other scientists are just cherry picking their data to create an artificial gap closing effect that suits them. Harrison talks about how traumatic the life history of the black race has been in America, while neglecting equally traumatic life histories for Irish under English rule, or Chinese who lived through Mao, or jews who lived through Nazi Germany, or Germans who had to rebuild Germany from the rubble after the war. All of these groups, all of them, overcame their past and prospered like the events had never occurred. The only group who apparently can never recover from a single bad event in their history, even if it was centuries ago, is the black race.

Harrison attempts to equate arcane skills like setting snares or poisoning arrows as being equal in intellectual demand to building skyscrapers and space shuttles. He neglects to mention, however, that whites at any time could learn the skills of savages, but have better things to do, whereas savages have never learned how to uplift themselves out of barbarism. He neglects to realize that some knowledge is better than others, and the reason not everyone has the more useful forms of knowledge, is because it is also more difficult to attain. Intelligence is necessary to know useful things like how to build planes or atomic bombs. Any idiot can figure out how to subsistence farm with time and training. It's just that food production has become so automated that less than 1% of us need to learn those things anymore in the civilized world.

Harrison pretends to cast IQ tests in doubt as 'culturally biased' or 'measuring an unknown quantity', but ignores the endless amount of evidence and data proving IQ tests are valid predictors of human accomplishment, education, income, job performance, and everything else good in life. How can IQ tests be wrong when they are accurate? It's like saying a scientific theory which perfectly predicts the future is wrong about the nature of the universe. The definition of a scientific theory's accuracy is that it perfectly predicts the future! There is no other meaning to 'true' or 'false.' 'Right' or 'wrong.' Also, how is it that IQ tests can all be biased in the exact same amount, so precisely calibrated such that the same results occur over hundreds of different tests over a hundred years, such that Asians always come out with 105 IQ, whites always come out with 100, and blacks always come out with 85? What kind of intricate conspiracy would be necessary to pre-ordain all these results over ostensibly so many different questions and so many different individuals over 100 years running? Are the illuminati doing it? Why can't blacks make their own damn IQ test if they're so worried about bias? Let them make a test that can more accurately predict the future economic, job, education, and nobel prize winning performance of the test takers than the current IQ tests, by removing all supposed biases that are keeping them down. If they can't make a more accurate test, then how dare they claim the rest of us are lying or cheating against them?

Like usual Harrison trots out Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel," as an explanation for why white civilization is infinitely superior to the outside world. The problem is Guns, Germs, and Steel only accounts for a part of human history and a part of non-whites. Let's grant, for arguments sake, that North America, South America, Oceania, and sub-saharan Africa were fated to be backwards compared to Europe, until the two civilizations met. What excuse do these people have for what happened afterwards? The age of discovery was 500 years ago. Why haven't they adjusted to the innovations Europeans brought with them and improved upon them? If everyone is equal, but only lacked access to various crops and animals, well -- what's stopping them today? They have all the crops and animals they ever wanted, but still can't build more than a mud hut. There is one group of people who changed dramatically upon being introduced to European technology -- the Japanese. Wonder of wonders, they have an inherent IQ of 110. Likewise, when Vikings and other savages in Europe were introduced to civilization, they immediately transformed themselves and became a vanguard of western civilization. Today, countries like Norway and Sweden are leaders in the arts and sciences, when before they were little more than hunter-gatherers. Wonder of wonders, Scandinavians have around 100 IQ. When Germans gained access to the Roman Empire, they became civilized and became the leaders of Europe. All of this happened quickly, within 100 years of being exposed to the new culture. Therefore, why didn't Amerindians, Africans, and Australian Aborigines immediately transform themselves to be our equals or betters as well?

Furthermore, this leaves out the rest of Asia which has no such excuse. Why were the Arabs, the Indians, the Vietnamese, the Indonesians, completely incapable of keeping up with us either? These people had access to all the same crops and animals, all the same climate and trade routes, all the advantages of Europeans. Where are their conquests? Where are their inventions? Where is their supremacy? It's nowhere, just like their pathetic IQ's would predict -- 85. If Jared Diamond was right, Babylonians and Indians, who were the first to begin farming and living in cities, should have conquered the world. Instead Europeans, who picked up farming much later than these groups, not only conquered America and Africa, they went ahead and conquered the middle east and India too. Whereas Diamond's model can't explain why non-whites within Eurasia failed, and why non-whites outside of Eurasia failed after being given access to all the advantages of whites, IQ can explain both these questions. Therefore IQ is the patently superior model for explaining human history. So why does Harrison stick with Guns, Germs, and Steel? Why does Harrison avoid the damning questions that prove Diamond wrong?

Harrison talks about how bad black environments are, but acts as though these environments just rained down from the sky. Why is Africa a hellhole? It's been independent for half a century. Africans can make Africa into any sort of environment they please. No one else got a handout before building their nations. Europe and Asia started with nothing. When Europe went through the black death and one third of its people died, no one gave them a handout to start rebuilding their countries. When Europe was ravaged by muslim slave raiders, Mongols, Huns, Norse, and Turks, no one gave them a handout or paid them reparations. Europeans still went on to bring about the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the Industrial Revolution. They fought off all their enemies, rebuilt all their lost riches, and succeeded anyway. Every European nation has a sob story. Every single one of them has been visited by tragedy, conquest, disease, poverty, slavery, whatever. They all, without any handouts, rebuilt themselves. Eastern Europe has only recently escaped a Soviet Union that killed tens of millions of people and crushed out all freedom and prosperity for the rest. Even so, Eastern Europe has rapidly modernized and is approaching western standards of living. Far below what blacks make in the United States, but far more civilized and productive all the same. None of them sit around whining about past oppression.

We have handed out billions of dollars to Africans, far more money than any other civilization had when they built their environments. Africans have wasted it all through corruption, negligence, war and overpopulation. When the English first settled America, no one gave them a handout. They had a death rate of over 50%, the survivors had to fight Indians while hacking their way through forests and swamps, create new cities out of nothing, and tame a vast wilderness. Whites, no matter how hard the initial conditions, always prosper and always create civilization wherever they go. In Australia, they were transported criminals cast into a desert. Look at Australia today! One of the gems of the world, an earthly paradise. Canada was a frozen wasteland, but look at the Vancouver Olympics they just hosted. What a beautiful country they've made of it! Canadians and Australians weren't given a handout. They built everything through their own effort. They, themselves, created the environment their children grew up in. If their children benefit from good environments, it's because their parents earned it and worked for it and fought for it and died for this to be so. Why can't Africans do the same for their children? Why can't Africans reshape their environments? Why must whites not only build their own countries, but also build theirs?

Every independent and free country or people is responsible for its own success or failure. Regardless of its starting conditions, and regardless of its history, countries like Singapore or South Korea can rapidly progress from any starting position, but Haiti and Nigeria can't. This can't just be a giant coincidence. The only possible explanation is inherently different racial abilities to create working civilizations.

Harrison argues that racism is holding back black IQ in the USA, but blacks in the USA score 15 points higher than blacks in Africa, who can't possibly be affected by racism because they live around only other blacks and are run by only other blacks. Does he even attempt to explain this disparity? Of course not, he's already running off to his next excuse.

But really, it's not for me to debate Harrison on race and IQ. Why can't he read Rushton, Lynn, Jensen, and other serious scientists on these issues? Why does he live in a liberal lying bubble of Diamond, Montagu, Gould, and their ilk? It's precisely because he chooses to. There is no way he could write a whole book about these issues, and never even hear who the scientists on the other side were or what they were saying. He just chooses to ignore them and hopes his readers will too. That isn't honest argumentation. That's propaganda.

On other matters, Harrison may have some good points. It's not really a 'black' racial trait that they can run fast or run far, it is the particular trait of a small sub-set of blacks with those genes. There's no good evidence that blacks have more testosterone, or are stronger, or are better athletes in general, than whites. The summer and winter olympics certainly say otherwise. No athletic competition is conclusive when it comes to genetic differences in body type until everyone has the same access to coaching, training facilities, diet, and so on.

There is little evidence that race-specific medicine has a better chance at curing people than generic medicine. People differ enough within races, that the only useful medicine would have to be tailored to the individual, not their race. Since individual genomic sequencing will soon be available cheaply for all, studying or pursuing medicine by race is a waste of time. Most racial disparities in health are probably due to different environments, not different genomes.

But the biggest problem with Harrison is his sophistry through which he writes the entire rest of the book. At the very beginning he claims that race, in fact, doesn't exist! He acts like this is somehow established, that because anthropologists (a nest of lying vipers) keep repeating it, it must be so, even in the face of all visible evidence. His arguments for this ludicrous stance are complete sophistry.

Take the lewontin fallacy, we have heard it many times -- "there is more diversity within a race than between races." But a short stop at wikipedia could have explained to Harrison why that's bullshit:

Lewontin argued that because the overwhelming majority of human genetic variation (85%) is between individuals within the same population, and about 6–10% is between populations within the same continent, racial classification can only account for between 5–10% of human variation, and is therefore of virtually no genetic or taxonomic significance. This implies that any two humans from the same group are almost as different as any two humans from different groups.
[edit] Edwards' critique

Edwards argued that while Lewontin's statements on variability are correct when examining the frequency of individual loci between individuals, the probability of misclassification rapidly approaches 0% when one takes into account more loci. This happens because differences at different loci are correlated across populations — the alleles that are more frequent in a population at one locus and those that are more frequent in that population at another locus are correlated when we consider the two populations simultaneously.

In Edwards' words, "most of the information that distinguishes populations is hidden in the correlation structure of the data." These correlations can be extracted using commonly-used ordination and cluster analysis techniques. As Edwards showed, even if the probability of misclassifying an individual based on a single locus is as high as 30% (as Lewontin reported in 1972), the misclassification probability based on 10 loci can drop to just a few percent.

Another argument Harrison uses is that all humans are 99% genetically identical. But this is meaningless when we learn that humans also share 96% of their genes with chimpanzees. By omitting how important a few % can be, he pretends that nothing possibly important could exist in that remaining 1% that separates the races. The truth is even a single gene, or even a single gene being expressed or not, can have enormous consequences in a person's life.

Men and women are even more genetically alike than people of different races, but no one says men and women are therefore the same and have no important differences. This is the level of argument of Harrison, a supposedly scholarly and informed work full of footnotes?

Another argument Harrison attempts is to complain that there are no 'distinct breaks' between human groups, only a gradual progression from one area to another. But this no more proves the non-existence of races than the same argument could disprove the existence of light or color. There is a vast continuum of wavelengths, with no distinct breaks, from radio waves to gamma rays, but that does not mean radio waves and gamma rays do not exist, or that radio waves and gamma rays are exactly the same and no important differences exist between them. Between white and black is a vast amount of shades of gray, this does not mean black and white do not exist, or that black and white are essentially the same. Between the numbers 1 and 10 are a vast array of numbers, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, etc, but still 1 and 10 exist, and are different. This logic he uses to disprove races cannot be used in any other field without breaking down as ridiculous -- but he treats it like a revelation from on high, a silver bullet, to deal with the concept of race.

Another, equally ludicrous argument, is that because a black and a white can have a multiracial child, therefore black and white does not exist. The same argument could be used to say that because blue and yellow combine to make green, blue and yellow don't exist. The concept of race doesn't break down when races combine, the result is simply a half-and-half. The more races mix, the more delicate the percentages become -- but dna testing can identify every single drop, every tiny percentage, no matter how mixed you become we can accurately depict your entire racial ancestry and every contributor thereof. There is no escaping race, no matter how mixed you become. Even ethnicity, even the region of a country you come from, is all easily discoverable in your DNA.

Another argument is that because there is no such thing as a 'pure' race, therefore there is no such thing as race. But this is ludicrous. First off, he never even defines what a pure race is. Why can't any race that currently exists be considered a pure representative of that race? Whites, as they are today, are the pure white race, no matter where they came from or how they came to exist or how many elements were combined to make them. But even supposing whites of today do somehow deviate from some imagined 'pure' race, that doesn't invalidate the fact that we are extremely similar to said 'pure' race, far more so than, say, non-whites. It's like saying there is no 'pure' scientific theory and therefore all science is worthless. If some scientific theories are closer to the truth than others, they can still be held in higher esteem and preserved above all competitors. There is no logic behind discarding anything if it isn't perfect, while ignoring the degrees of separation from perfection.

Another argument against race is that we all derive from a common ancestor. But all life derives from a common ancestor. Does this mean there's no such thing as species? As genus? As family, order, phylum or kingdom? Since we're all composed of atoms why do we discriminate against inanimate objects anyway? It doesn't matter where we came from, it matters where we currently are. Where we are, is vastly different. The world we have to live in is the present, not some past 100,000 years ago where we were the same. That world is dead. We live here, where everyone is completely different. How can such elementary logic elude him? How can he imagine that nothing changed in the intervening time?

And yet, the entire thrust of the book requires people disbelieve in race. The book requires that people ignore what's visible to everyone's eyes, and pretend it somehow doesn't exist. The book then requires people to believe that beneath people's skin, race hasn't changed anything else. That there are no behavioral, moral, or mental changes whatsoever in our genes. Even though the world around us is full of variance between the races that nothing else can explain. Why have whites walked on the moon at the same time as Africans haven't figured out how to dig a hole in the ground before taking a shit? Even DOGS kick dirt over their droppings, but blacks just stand up and walk away. Hundreds of millions of blacks have not even adopted the basic sanitation of latrines and have no designated place to go to the bathroom. I'm not even asking for sewage here, something whites had figured out by Roman times. I just want a designated hole in the ground! They can't do it! The concept is beyond them! While whites are colliding atoms beneath Switzerland to reveal the secrets of the universe, blacks are cutting people's body parts off and using them to cast black magic spells on each other. What can possibly explain this difference in civilization? Blacks have eight times the murder rate of whites. Blacks are only 13% of the population, but account for 50% of STD's. Africans account for a far greater portion of AIDS than the rest of the world. Blacks have an over 70% illegitimacy rate. Blacks rape children and babies in South Africa by the tens of thousands -- such a case is almost unheard of in the outside world. Their behavior is nothing like anyone else's. No one acts like them, no one thinks like them, no one lives like them. They are uniquely detestable beings. Culture cannot explain it, because every other culture, once exposed to European ways and mores, has changed and adapted to the better model. India got rid of its suttee, Japan gave up on its cruelty and warmongering, the Aztecs abandoned their human sacrifice and cannibalism, only the Africans carry on like it was still 2,000 B.C.

So after making ludicrous leaps of logic concerning the meaning of, and therefore the supposed non-existence of, race, he proceeds to cherry pick data and omit any contravening facts that show races are mentally and morally equally endowed. He then proceeds to warn against the dangers of racism, as though the truth cares one whit how dangerous it is.

The book constantly argues its points in a two point statement, "Not only is belief in biological race differences wrong, it's also evil." And his fallback statement is, "When in doubt as to the existence of biological race differences, considering how evil the belief is, isn't it better to say there aren't?" But believing the truth can never be evil. Truth is an absolute good. It purifies and sanctifies anything it touches, no matter what it might be. Truth is God itself. Therefore, it's meaningless to complain about what all the evil consequences of racism are. Racism is evil if it's false, but it's good if it's true. Therefore the only question is whether it is true or false. While that is still being debated, it is impossible to say anything else at all. His two part statement is therefore gobbledygook. You cannot say that something is both 'false, and evil besides.' Since nothing he has said has proven belief in biological race differences to be false, he cannot make a single conclusion as to the morality of believing in it. Everything hinges upon whether it is true or false. It is impossible to go on arguing with that still in doubt.

But let's say there is a 50% chance biological race differences are true and a 50% chance it is false, based on current information. Harrison trots out all the possible evils of racism. What if it leads to slavery, or oppression, or hurts people's self esteem, or genocide? What if it leads to war and death and pain? He acts like these are big deals. Only, the abuses of racism are inconsequential compared to the abuses of egalitarianism.

Suppose racists wrongly suppose race is important and kill off, say, a billion non-whites for the sake of supposed race differences. It's sad that a billion people died for no reason, but the world carries on as normal because nothing is lost. After all, everyone has the same potential so those who survive carry on just as before. Billions of new people are born to take up the new niches in the human ecology and life goes on like the genocide never happened.

Suppose alternatively we believe, falsely, in egalitarianism, when really biological racial differences did exist? Suppose this time a billion whites, the entire white race, are not killed by murder, but simply somnanmbulate off the face of the Earth via differential birth rates or miscegenation. Suppose all whites decide we're all equal, divide up their money evenly between the other races, and adopt only black children from here on. What if we were right? The tragedy isn't a temporary, unimportant setback. Instead, all civilization collapses and the world returns to a dark age (let's ignore Asians for now, pretend they are whisked away to paradise or something.) After millions of years of black ape-men being the only inhabitants of Earth, only ever managing to scratch out a subsistence farming living, the Sun eventually explodes and life in the universe comes to an end. We go from a future of endless opportunity in 'genocide-world' that could still develop into space flight and transcendence, to a future of zero opportunity in 'egalitarian-world' that can never develop the intellect necessary to achieve anything. A world of eternal poverty, suffering, and eventually death.

It is like God standing before us and saying, "Behold, I give thee life and death, therefore, choose life."

We are playing for much larger stakes than he pretends. Harrison is baffled at why anyone should care about racial differences, as though he can't imagine what could go wrong. This despite the fact that he has been to places like Kenya and other black slums and knows full well how desperate and miserable black life is. Why does he imagine this same situation wouldn't be true world-wide if the smart races endorse their own extinction and pretend everyone is really the same? And do we really want a world-wide Haiti? One giant Detroit? One sink of human depravity, cruelty, stupidity and misery stretching like a slimy, putrescent plague across the Earth?

Racists have far more to fear than egalitarians! Far, far more is at stake for us than them! Who cares about slavery or genocide? It's happened thousands of times, it hardly needs racism to justify, and whites are hardly the only ones who do it. It has never stopped the march of progress. It has never shut out all hope for mankind. But without the intelligent races, with the concept of egalitarianism firmly in place, with low IQ being treated as equal or better than high IQ, the whole universe could be lost to life forever. Why don't egalitarians admit the potential destructive abuses of their ideology?

Fewer people have been enslaved or killed due to racism than the amount blacks kill through their own bad behavior in the same time frame. More blacks die due to their own overpopulation, STD's, crime, civil wars, corruption, etc than any other group has abused them. Blacks are their own worst enemy, not racism against blacks. They have hurt more blacks than we could ever dream of doing. So let's get off this whole holier than thou crap where those who argue for egalitarianism are saving the world from evil sadists. The truth is only racism can save the world. Only eugenics can ever help blacks save themselves from themselves. And only the preservation of the white race can possibly continue the charity and inventions we enrich blacks with every day. Egalitarians are trying to destroy the only thing that makes life livable for blacks in the world today, their golden goose, the very whites who gave them everything they own today. Their clothes, their food, their phones, their buildings, their electricity, their oil, everything.

So much for 'Race and Reality.' The true title of the book should be, "How Liberals Stick Their Heads in the Sand to Ignore Racial Differences -- Sophistry, Cherry Picking, Lying by Omission, Appeals to Authority, Scaremongering, and Anecdotes 101."

When will the world get over this crap? When the genomes of all mankind have been sequenced and we find a clear correlation between IQ and genes, which in turn vary between the races. When will this happen? Soon. It may be too late for whites to make any use of this clenching argument, but the Chinese, at least, won't forget. I can't wait to see the looks on these lying liberal faces when the data comes in.