Breeds

Everyday we are told that races don't exist, that they're just a social construct. Differences, if there are any at all, are just skin deep. In fact they are so minuscule that the average difference between two individuals of the same race is usually higher than the difference between the aggregate races themselves. That is, to say it shortly, simply not true.

Differences between human races are most akin to differences between dog breeds. The "argument" the left uses to discard this claim is the fact that the differences between dog breeds are larger than the differences between human races. Or, to be more precise, 65.1% of genetic variance was within breeds, 31.1% between breeds, and 3.8% between breed groups (retrievers, molossers, etc). Fst distance is 0.31. How do humans compare to that? Well, 85% of variance is between individuals, 5% is between populations in the same racial group, and 10% is interracial with Fst distance of 0.15.

There's a few interesting things here to notice. First of all, even though dog breeds are significantly more varied amongst themselves than different human groups of the same race, human races are actually further apart than dog breed groups. In other words, while the difference between an Italian and a Dutch are negligible in comparison to the difference between an Alaskan Malamute and a Samoyed, the difference between whites and blacks is larger than the difference between the terriers and the hounds. As a matter of fact, the difference between terriers and hounds is almost 3 times smaller than the difference between whites and blacks, and it's pretty obvious that the two groups are clearly identifiable and have completely different character and capabilities.

They're all the same, aren't they?

Now, let's see how the Fst distance factors in. Although it is twice as small in humans as it is in dogs, it basically means that the difference between whites and blacks is something like half the distance between a chihuahua and a rottweiler. A chihuahua/rottweiler cross is still obviously different, in both character and capabilities, than a purebred of either type.

Even more importantly, a trait that is strongly selected for can strongly differentiate in as little as 20 generations, as the Russian fox experiment shows.

So, how does all that compare to people? First of all, what's important to notice is that, even though overall interracial diversity is somewhat high, the spread is not equal on every genetic difference. Which means that, although we as groups are not all that different in most things, there do exist some things we are very different in. Skin color, for example, is one of them. Whatever internal differences whites may have between themselves, they're all, well, pretty much white. There's practically no intraracial variation in that gene whatsoever, and it's pretty much a 100% sure indicator of one's genetic and racial ancestry. It would be silly to believe it is the only one.

One of the most important factors, at least in today's industrial society, is intelligence. And the difference is all but staggering - even when compensated for all the external factors, the difference in IQ between whites and blacks is a whooping 15 points. On the other side of the curve, Jews seem to average around 110. For some reason, their spatial intelligence is average at best, which drags their whole score down. If measured for math and verbal skills alone, they seem to reach well above 120. Which sort of explains how a group that makes up 0.2% of the world population manages to win more than 20% of Nobel prizes. And 50% of Nobel prizes for economics, to keep true with the stereotype.

On the other hand, there seems to be only one (1) black person who won a Nobel prize for something other than feel-good stuff. Kudos to him, of course, but you'd expect more from a population that's somewhere around a billion people or 15-20% of the world.

Some people, usually those on the wrong end of the bell curve, will take this realization to the extreme and force racial laws and segregation. I believe that to be both unnecessary and unfair. Although few and far between, and most often carrying a few important non-black genes, there are some very intelligent black people, such as Colin Powell, Condi Rice, Thomas Sowell, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Ben Carson, and, as mentioned, Ser William Arthur Lewis. It would be unwise and unfair to limit such people to manual labor, just as it would be unwise and unfair to let a half-retarded white or Jewish person overlook their work.

But the solution to one blanket generalization is not to make another, even more inaccurate, blanket generalization. Instead of forcing black people to do simple and lower paid jobs, or artificially distorting the labor market to equalize the race-job structure, the solution is to accept the reality for what it is. We need to realize that black people will perform, and should be performing, a disproportionate amount of simpler and lower paid jobs, but we also need to realize that it's something that should be let alone and never be enforced for its own sake.