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69 of 76 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Very relevant book for South Africa, July 25, 2001
By A Customer
The scale of recent social problems in South Africa needs another explanation than the glib "nurture" argument with which we have been fed ever since World War II. This makes Rushton's book so relevant to understanding our situation. Despite huge efforts and money spent on black education, not only in separate schools under apartheid, but now, less than 50% of black children obtain the most basic school-leaving qualification.In fact, Rushton refers to some IQ testing done in conjunction with psychologists at the local liberal University of the Witwatersrand which shows that the mean IQ of first-year black university students is 84, conistent with the mean for the population at large of 75. All of Rushton's theory can be corroborated by everyday experience in South Africa: extreme violence and aggression displayed by young black males of low intelligence and high sex drives. This country has the highest rate for murder and rape in the world, 50 per 1000 members of the population, as against 8 per 1000 in the US, and about 4 for Britain. Also differential levels of demographic expansion predicted by his theory fits the SA case perfectly: over the past century blacks multiplied by 20, whereas whites only trebled (with the help of outside immigration of Europeans). Despite a high degree of initial scepticism (I have also been trained in the liberal, politically correct mode of thought), I found all of Rushton's arguments very convincing, as well as the theory of the evolutionary split 110 000 years ago between Africans and the rest, and 40 000 years ago between Caucasians and Mongoloids. With my current knowledge of evolution, the latter was both fascinating and highly plausible. Holding views like Rushton's in contemporary South Africa under black rule will probably land one in prison or at least make one liable for a large fine. And yet, given the level of violence experienced by whites who are being killed by the thousands in so-called "criminal" attacks, the tendency of different races towards aggression needs to be held up in broad daylight. The issues addressed by Rushton - he does not at all come across as a right-wing fanatic, rather more like a cool scientific mind - are of such relevance for South Africa and the rest of the world that it reminds one of Galileo confronting the Catholic Church to say that the earth revolves around the sun and being damned for it. Despite the fundamentalist outrage at this kind of reasoning, courageous people everywhere need to get a serious, scientific debate about race going. Rushton has already made a significant contribution.
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150 of 180 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
R E B E L, July 15, 2001
The scientific evidence marshaled forth in this book is not only a scathing attack on the pseudo-scientific ramblings of Stephen Gould, Jared Diamond, Leon Kamin and the like, but an implicit denunciation of the political tendencies of the past thirty years that have elevated race-centric policies to a national obsession. Like all great scientific works of unimpeachable integrity, this book is apolitical, but it would be naive and simplistic to presume that this work carries no social or political implications. Rushton makes this point in the introduction of the book when he quotes a famous sociologist who openly admits sociology does not exist as a value-free science, but to push an agenda. Rushton's book is "controversial" and "incendiary" only because it conflicts with the aims of leftist politics. The science itself is solid and indisputable. Underlying Rushton's explication of empirical race differences is what population geneticists refer to as the r-K continuum. Without going into too much detail, the idea is that in order to cope with different environments species adapt specific reproductive strategies to maximize gene-flow into the next generation. K-selected species devote more energy to nurturing and less to reproduction, while r-selected species tradeoff parental support in favor of reproducing. While humans are at the K end of the spectrum, it is possible to differentiate among separate human populations (races). Rushton provides an overwhelming amount of empirical support -- everything from brain size, maturation rates, dizygotic twinning, age of menarche, gestation periods, frequency of sexual intercourse -- that shows the races consistently lining-up in the following order: Africans, Europeans, and East Asians, with East Asians being the most K-selected and Africans the least. The data ably refutes the two theological premises of egalitarianism: 1) race is not a valid scientific category and 2) races differences are due to environmental factors, not nature. Let's push the argument some more and think about it this way: either the races are equal or they are not. Now, what evidence can an egalitarian put forth that makes racial equality more plausible than racial inequality? Since the world conforms quite perfectly to the theory of raical inequality -- compare and contrast the history of the European race with the African race -- from what evidence does it make sense to infer that the races are equal? Since the facts directly contradict the theory of race equality the burden of proof lies squarely on the shoulders of egalitarians. To those who still shutter at the prospect however, I pose a simple question: If race equality is true, then why don't we observe it? Many critics here and elsewhere seemed upset that Rushton did not provide a stark and clear dividing line between the races. This however confuses the scientific concept of race. Is there a Siberian Husky gene that differentiates it from a Pit Bull gene? Is there a lion gene that differentiates it from a tiger gene? Of course not, yet no one has any intellectual confusion when thinking of dogs in terms of breeds, so why can't they think of human in terms of race? (Politics). Additionally, the critics bring up the fact the many Europeans have some African blood in them, and many Africans have European blood. Entirely true, but this in no way nullifies the concept of race -- in fact it strengthens it. The fact that black-white hybrids have on average higher intelligence than full-blooded Africans proves that race is real, and not a social construction. The critics suffer from the misnomer that race is an essentialist definition and are therefore only successful in shooting down their own strawmen. Rushton's work is remarkable and the attempt to try to silence him only reflects the fact that academia no longer embraces the unfettered pursuit of science, but wishes to restrict whatever conflicts with their (leftist) political aims. The growth of political liberalism over the last thirty years has been tied in some form or another to racial egalitarianism -- civil-rights law, voting rights, school integration, affirmative action, massive immigration, diversity is a strength, reparations -- and could not exist without it. The false doctrine of egalitarianism is the oxygen that keeps liberalism pushing forward and advancing. While conservatives might make legitimate arguments against affirmative action or uncontrolled immigration, they are conceding too much ground to liberalism. Rushton's work shows definitively that equality is a lie and (hence) liberalism a fraud.
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61 of 72 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Remarkable achievement, December 17, 1999
By aggregating data on some sixty behavioral and physical traits, Rushton shows that they cluster on a racial continuum comprised of Negroid, Caucasian, and Mongoloid. This is an amazing result, because it shows in the clearest manner that racial differences are robust (a biological reality, not a social construct). Amazing too is the fact that the data used derive from quite varied sources over an extended period of time. One just does not expect such a beautiful result. Seems too tidy to be true. Critics have disputed his results, and to his credit, Rushton usually responds. Rushton explains his results in evolutionary terms, using the life history (r/K theory) approach. The differences between the three races derives from the adaptations each human population made as it encountered new environments on migrating out of Africa. His key point is that the sixty traits associate with a particular ecology AND that the racial variation of these traits correlates with the adaptive demands made on the populations that became Caucasians and Mongoloids. This part of the argument depends on the Out-of-Africa view of human phylogeny (populations that became Caucasian and Mongoloid migrated out of Africa about 110,000 years ago). But Multiregionalists propose a different interpretation. So there is no consensus on human phylogeny, and new evidence is constantly coming to hand that troubles both interpretations. For example, Chinese archaeologists recently reported fossil human remains dating to 200,000 BP. If this and other startling new findings hold up, the phylogenetic tree must be redrawn in its entirety! So it's premature to claim closure on this debate (not that Rushton DOES claim closure).Since Galton's pioneering work, psychologists have devised many methods for estimating trait heritability in the absence of direct genetic evidence. Such is Rushton's procedure. However, as human genetics becomes ever more refined, direct evidence about the genetics of traits will come to light and thus provide a set of tests for Rushton's theory. He underscores this fact and welcomes the tests. This is a robust, empirical theory of race that makes many testable predictions. Well done!
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