It's important to remember that the overwhelming majority of the people left are not looting or committing crime. Most reporters in New Orleans have described the crowd as being orderly. It's only a very small minority that have taken advantage of the situation to create trouble.

Unfortunately 1 criminal gets more attention than 100 good citizens. Scenes of a few hundred people looting are more likely to get on television than scenes of thousands of people enduring quietly.

No doubt IQ, race, and even testosterone levels matter. However, we should remember that most people here are following the rules.

Apparently reports of looting and disorder were somewhat exaggerated. According to a story in the LA Times, troops arrived in New Orleans ready for combat and were somewhat suprised to find none.

I do agree that the psychological characteristic that most sharply distinguishes those who fled from those who didn't (for whatever reason: not watching the news, not understanding the warnings, not having a car, etc.) is undoubtedly IQ.

The images of misery and devestation that we are now seeing leaves me even more convinced that arrival of the means to manipulate g and other mental ability factors (whether by germline engineering or some other mechanism) is something to which all enlightened people should fervently look forward.

It's important to remember that the overwhelming majority of the people left are not looting or committing crime.

Highly doubtful that this is true of the "overwhelming majority".

http://www.wben.com/newsroom/ful...hp? newsid=03648

Explosions Rock New Orleans
WBEN Newsroom - Friday, September 2, 2005 07:41 AM

New Orleans, LA (CBS/AP) - New fears struck Friday morning in New Orleans, as explosions rocked the riverfront a few miles south of the French Quarter. The cause of the blasts at about 4:35 a.m. and the extent of any possible damage is not yet known.

An initial explosion sent flames of red and orange shooting into the pre-dawn sky. A series of smaller blasts followed and then acrid, black smoke that could be seen even in the dark. The vibrations were felt all the way downtown...

President Bush is to visit the hurricane zone today - first Mississippi and Alabama, and then New Orleans, where the situation continues to grow more desperate, with police reporting some refugees being raped and beaten...

Some who fled New Orleans' floodwaters for what they thought would be the safety of the Superdome for the city's Convention Center have found death instead.At least two bodies are in plain sight at the Convention Center...

Fights and fires have broken out, looting continues to be a problem, corpses lie out in the open, and rescue helicopters and law enforcement officers have been shot at as the more than 80 percent flooded city spirals into increased anarchy.

The governor declared war on looters who have made the city a menacing landscape of disorder and fear.

"They have M-16s and they're locked and loaded," Gov. Kathleen Blanco said of 300 National Guard troops who landed in New Orleans fresh from duty in Iraq. "These troops know how to shoot and kill, and they are more than willing to do so, and I expect they will."


About 15,000 to 20,000 people who had taken shelter at the convention center to await buses grew increasingly hostile. Police Chief Eddie Compass said he sent in 88 officers to quell the situation at the building, but they were quickly beaten back by an angry mob.

"We have individuals who are getting raped, we have individuals who are getting beaten," Compass said. "Tourists are walking in that direction and they are getting preyed upon."

In hopes of defusing the unrest at the convention center, Mayor Ray Nagin gave the refugees permission to march across a bridge to the city's unflooded west bank for whatever relief they can find. But the bedlam at the convention center appeared to make leaving difficult.

National Guardsmen poured in to help restore order and put a stop to the looting, carjackings and gunfire that have gripped New Orleans in the days since Katrina plunged much of the city under water.

Although more Guardsmen are on the way, CBS News Correspondent John Roberts reports that there's still a surprising lack of force on the ground and the mayor fears the city will be gripped by anarchy.

CBS News National Security Correspondent David Martin reports that with 40,000 National Guard troops already called up for duty, the Army is making preparations to send in as many as 10,000 combat troops from the active duty force.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said the government is sending in 1,400 National Guardsmen a day to help stop looting and other lawlessness in New Orleans. Already, 2,800 National Guardsmen are in the city, he said.

But across the flooded-out city, the rescuers themselves came under attack from storm victims.

"Hospitals are trying to evacuate," said Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Cheri Ben-Iesan, spokesman at the city emergency operations center. "At every one of them, there are reports that as the helicopters come in people are shooting at them. There are people just taking potshots at police and at helicopters, telling them, `You better come get my family."'

Some Federal Emergency Management rescue operations were suspended in areas where gunfire has broken out, Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke said in Washington. "In areas where our employees have been determined to potentially be in danger, we have pulled back," he said.

A National Guard military policeman was shot in the leg as he and a man scuffled for the MP's rifle, police Capt. Ernie Demmo said. The man was arrested.

Outside the Convention Center, the sidewalks were packed with people without food, water or medical care, and with no sign of law enforcement. Thousands of storm refugees had been assembling outside for days, waiting for buses that did not come.

At least seven bodies were scattered outside, and hungry people broke through the steel doors to a food service entrance and began pushing out pallets of water and juice and whatever else they could find.

The Superdome, where some 25,000 people were being evacuated by bus to the Houston Astrodome, descended into chaos as well.

Huge crowds, hoping to finally escape the stifling confines of the stadium, jammed the main concourse outside the dome, spilling out over the ramp to the Hyatt hotel next door � a seething sea of tense, unhappy, people packed shoulder-to-shoulder up to the barricades where heavily armed National Guardsmen stood.

At the front of the line, heavily armed policemen and guardsmen stood watch and handed out water as tense and exhausted crowds struggled onto buses. At the back end of the line, people jammed against police barricades in the rain. Luggage, bags of clothes, pillows, blankets were strewn in the puddles.

Fights broke out. A fire erupted in a trash chute inside the dome, but a National Guard commander said it did not affect the evacuation. After a traffic jam kept buses from arriving at the Superdome for nearly four hours, a near-riot broke out in the scramble to get on the buses that finally did show up.

Col. Henry Whitehorn, head of state police, said authorities are working on establishing a temporary jail to hold people accused of looting and other crimes. "These individuals will not take control of the city of New Orleans," he said.


But the ambulance service in charge of taking the sick and injured from the Superdome suspended flights after a shot was reported fired at a military helicopter. Richard Zuschlag, chief of Acadian Ambulance, said it was too dangerous for his pilots.

In fact, the media is downplaying the anarchy. Think about it -- even in peacetime 33% of black males end up in jail at some point in their lives, and that's only counting those who get caught and commit serious enough crimes to go to *jail*. Even more importantly, that's *with* the deterrent of arrest and imprisonment by a competent police apparatus. Without said deterrent, well...

let's just say that here you can see four police looting. I would download this before it goes down the memory hole.

Direct link
http://www.riotvideo.com/ videodi...85899154935.wmv

View in browser
http://www.riotvideo.com/ Cops_Lo...er_Katrina.html

One guess what the salient feature of that video is...

http:// seattletimes.nwsource.com...rinaloot01.html

...disaster-response researchers are intrigued, especially because
this behavior has been far from the norm. Sociologists cite more than
50 years of research showing that widespread looting after a natural
disaster is rare…


...I wonder what's different here? Hmmm, let me think. Sounds like a research project. Let's get the guys from NCLB on the case. They've been working hard on the related intriguing mystery of the test score gap. I have a feeling that the answer has to do with "white racism"...

Most reporters in New Orleans have described the crowd as being orderly.

Find me some. I really want to see who is reporting that up is down during the riots, rapes, murder, and mayhem at the Superdome.

Btw, dobeln and I independently came to the same analysis.

There is an obvious corollary: those at the Superdome have been selected from the most violent and uneducable subset of the population. And now they've been bused to Texas.

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssis...itorial/ 3337511

"Eventually, the Astrodome's occupants will voice why they stayed, and
whether they had a choice. But several facts are clear: They are
mostly poor. And most are black."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050...ts_nm/ mayhem_dc

Valenti and her husband, two of very few white people in the almost
exclusively black refugee camp, said she and other whites were
threatened with murder on Thursday.

"They hated us. Four young black men told us the buses were going to
come last night and pick up the elderly so they were going to kill
us," she said, sobbing. "They were plotting to murder us and then they
sent the buses away because we would all be killed if the buses came
-- that's what the people in charge told us this morning."

Other survivors recounted horrific cases of sexual assault and murder.

Sitting with her daughter and other relatives, Trolkyn Joseph, 37,
said men had wandered the cavernous convention center in recent nights
raping and murdering children.

She said she found a dead 14-year old girl at 5 a.m. on Friday
morning, four hours after the young girl went missing from her parents
inside the convention center.

"She was raped for four hours until she was dead," Joseph said
through tears. "Another child, a seven-year old boy was found raped
and murdered in the kitchen freezer last night."

Needless to say, flooding was the least of the problems there. Just watch the havoc the refugees from the Superdome are going to wreak in bone-dry Houston. That city has just seen a transplant of 10000+ members of the most violent and uneducable segment of the underclass. The filtering process has produced a reverse MIT -- it is those who did not plan for the hurricane and/or who didn't even have enough money to leave the city and/or won't have the resources to get
themselves off public assistance in the near future (or ever, for that matter). As such I would be surprised if the mean IQ is above 70.

In the days to come, their refugee status will make them off limits to criticism. Like the Lost Boys from Somalia, it will be verboten to point out that they are responsible for the chaos and mayhem of the Superdome -- chaos which will accompany their presence in the Astrodome with probability 1. The best of them will simply be helpless burdens; the worst will be outright predators. Now, they're still American citizens in the midst of a disaster, so they're our responsibility...but this must be pointed out. It's one thing to take care of your insane uncle and it's quite another for someone to pretend that his fits of madness never occurred at all...and that they will *never happen again*, and that when they nevertheless inevitably *do* happen that they're *your* fault. (e.g., that you're "gullible" for expecting him to go buck wild whenever he has the opportunity to do so...)

That is, it must be pointed out that they're responsible for the crimes and destruction that will soon surround them, and that they
will cause more chaos unless they're under armed guard. It's good to see that they're being frisked for weapons, but nothing short of 24-7 monitoring will suffice.The atrocities in the Superdome were not
exogenous impositions of white society, after all.

As for the unfortunate people who live in the vicinity of the Astrodome...can anyone say "Houston, we have a problem"...?

As per the "small minority" observation. In one sense it is true, criminality in this catastrophe is a rarity. But if, say, homicide rates were a mere 1 in 1000, implying you have a 99.9% chance of not getting killed in any year, you still live in one of the most violent places on earth.

Violence can be both "rare" as in well less than 50%, but still "high" as in well above normal and materially impacting behavior.

criminality in this catastrophe is a rarity.

Eric, with full respect, I don't think you or Jay Z can say that right now. We are seeing a Somalia like situation. You have seen the video. You have read the reports of looting, carjacking, rape, robbery, murder, and attacks on medical and rescue personnel. Eyewitnesses report gunfire in the streets. Video of the Superdome reveals angry mobs chasing reporters. Video also shows black police officers looting stores.

Is it *really* the case that crime is a rarity?

Hmm, I stand corrected. I guess this is just another one of those cases where the word on the street is more reliable than what you hear from the media.

Perhaps many, most even (?), of these Katrina-victims are resisting all kinds of pressure to engage in looting, etc. The temptation to steal, especially under such horrendous circumstances where all is lost, must be enormous. One lady(black) waiting to get into the Dome admitted freely that it was her decision not to evacuate and she blamed no one but herself. There should have been forced evacuatinos maybe. Relief organizations should have had trailers, tents, water, etc., on the ready. This is America for crying out loud.
That said, I'm really cynical that such a "tiny minority" could render entire cities no-go, and not just N.O. after a devasting hurricane. Sorry. Doesn't wash.
On a more personal note, members of this "tiny" criminal minority have perpetrated murder, theft, assault and attempted rape on so many of my acquaintences and family, that, well, I just don't believe that minority is so "tiny." The only reason more crime hasn't happened to us is because we know certain areas and times of the night, are forbidden to us, and we don't go there, although that doesn't stop criminals from visiting us from time to time as we just try to get through life.
GC is right--the Government routinely downplays these disasters, even when race, rioting and looting are not a factor. I know from local grapevines that the number of deaths from the Florida Hurricane Ivan, was far greater than reported. The government and media know it is better to keep the populace unalarmed in most cases.
btw, I just read that some 50 European tourists caught in the Dome had to be (illicitly) sent to another place as violence against them was increasingly imminent.
Oh I know its nasty to believe our lyin' eyes, but, hey, it's getting easier with practice.

From the reports, it sounds as if many of the people who did not evacuate were elderly and/or in ill health. Probably no clear relation to IQ.

gc: Technically, I would bet that less than 50% of the inhabitants are commiting crimes, if only because they are too old, young, or female (and thus hiding in fear of rape). So grant the MSM that point: uncommon in perpetration by those left behind. Do not grant the observation that it is uncommon for victims, or near average levels for NO or post-hurricane environs.

1) its not clear to me why you have to separate the table into black and other in order to argue that the people left in the city have a lower average IQ. all you have to do is make one of the assumptions you make which is that only 40-80000 people are left and that people on the lowest end of the scale were least likely to evacuate..

2)
"In fact, the media is downplaying the anarchy. Think about it -- even in peacetime 33% of black males end up in jail at some point in their lives, and that's only counting those who get caught and commit serious enough crimes to go to *jail*. Even more importantly, that's *with* the deterrent of arrest and imprisonment by a competent police apparatus. Without said deterrent, well..."
my understanding has always been that there is a clear arrest, conviction, and length of sentencing bias with regard to black male defendants charged with the exact same crime as white defendants (especially with regard to drug-related charges).. while it is true that black males do perform more crimes than would be predicted just from their distribution in the population i think it is a stretch to say that that accounts for the 33%.. could you please use a different statistic if you're going to try to make this implication?

Here is a contrast. This is from Nicholas Kristof's book "Thunder From the East":

Just days after we moved to Tokyo in 1995, our son Geoffrey, then a baby, roused Sheryl for a 5:30 a.m. feeding. A few minutes later our bed began to shake. "Wake up, Nick!" Sheryl urged me with a poke. "It's an earthquake!" I grunted and, in an effort to reassure the household, kept sleeping. But it turned out to be the great earthquake that devastated the the port city of Kobe and killed 5,200 people. A modern city was reduced to rubble, and for the next few days ordinary middle-class families were thrown back virtually to the stone age, struggling to find water, food, toilets, and shelter. Homes and shops were abandoned, of course, and in America or Europe the result would have been widespread looting, as well as desperate fighting for water, food, and blankets.

Instead, the people of Kobe were majestic in their suffering. They lined ip for water and other supplies, never jostling, and nobody climbed through the shattered store windows to help themselves. Even the yakuza, the Japanese gangsters, suspended their criminal behavior and tried to improve their image by trucking food to the hardest-hit areas to give it away to the newly homeless.

I was fascinated by these displays of public honesty, and so I kept searching for a case of theft or looting. Finally, I was thrilled to find one. Two young men had entered a shattered convenience store, picked up some food from the floor, and run out. Rumors of this crime spread around the town, and finally I was able to find the store and its owner. "Of course, we expect this kind of looting if there is an earthquake in Los Angeles," I noted triumphantly, fishing for a good quote, "but were you shocked that your fellow Japanese would take advantage of the chaos to do such a thing?"

The shop owner looked puzzled. "who said anything about Japanese?" he asked me politely. "The thieves weren't Japanese. They were foreigners. Iranians, it looked like."

He was right, it turned out...

I did just remember the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923 in which over 100,000 died. Rumors of Koreans looting (and worse) led to civilian militias rounding up Koreans and killing them.

Canadiens during Montreal Police Strike, from Pinker's 'Blank Slate'

As a young teenager in proudly peaceable Canada during the romantic 1960s, I was a true believer in Bakunin’s anarchism. I laughed off my parents’ argument that if the government ever laid down its arms all hell would break loose. Our competing predictions were put to the test at 8:00 A.M. on October 17, 1969, when the Montreal police went on strike. By 11:20 A.M. the first bank was robbed. By noon most downtown stores had closed because of looting. Within a few more hours, taxi drivers burned down the garage of a limousine service that competed with them for airport customers, a rooftop sniper killed a provincial police officer, rioters broke into several hotels and restaurants, and a doctor slew a burglar in his suburban home. By the end of the day, six banks had been robbed, a hundred shops had been looted, twelve fires had been set, forty carloads of storefront glass had been broken, and three million dollars in property damage had been inflicted, before city authorities had to call in the army and, of course, the Mounties to restore order.

Ned, to be balanced, we need to compare similar time periods. Everyone, black and white, was more violent back in the mid-late '60s. So we should compare the Montreal Police Strike with, say, Watts: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watts_Riots

Watts Riots caused far more damage and that was despite the fact that the thin blue line was still on the clock. Given that the Montrealers had carte blanche to wreak havoc, you'd expect the opposite if there weren't racial differences in mean levels of violence.

And to compare Montreal to NO is also missing the fact that those running amok in NO are doing so *during a horrible natural disaster.* We can't rewind history, but if the Montreal riots were a result of post-natural disaster lawlessness rather than police strike lawlessness, my money is on the citizens being far more behaved since Canadians are generally more look-out-for-each-other than we are, and thus would've had more compassion for their fellow man.

All of two weeks ago there was a stampede and mini-riot in Virginia over $50 iBooks. People were injured. Observers commented that it did not look like geeks stampeding, but rather more like a scene somewhere in Africa.

Look, I think we can overlook looting and theft here, because they are under pretty dire circumstances. However, raping, murdering, rioting, and other extremely violent things should not be tolerated or excused under ANY circumstances. Also, there is nothing wrong with pointing out with whom such activities are going to be the most likely to occur...

I agree with GC here, totally, and I think it should be said a second time that, regardless as to the problems, these individuals are still American citizens... they may be the dregs of America, but the fact that they are still citizens means that we still have a responsibility to them. Because many of them are not following their obligations as citizens to follow the law does not mean that we should just ignore their plight.

On another note, the fact that crime is still rampant is partly due to the fact that martial law has not been declared for the state (only the city of New Orleans has martial law) and the military is not in control. The various military units have not been allowed to take charge and are reporting to local police units and state emergency units for orders; many of these units are either nonexistent or do not have the capabilities to lead. There's only so much that can be done as long as you have this totally moronic command and control structure operating there.

On another note...

GC! Start blogging again! You know you want to...

"8:00 A.M. on October 17, 1969, when the Montreal police went on strike. By 11:20 A.M. the first bank was robbed. By noon most downtown stores had closed because of looting..."


"Ned, to be balanced, we need to compare similar time periods. Everyone, black and white, was more violent back in the mid-late '60s."

What kind of relativistic, environmentalist sophistry is this?

When confronted with evidence that contradicts your racialist theories, you ignore the evidence. Typical.

When confronted with evidence that contradicts your racialist theories, you ignore the evidence.

What evidence? Blacks are more likely to commit crimes than whites; that doesn't mean that whites won't commit crimes. Russia would probably experience looting given a disaster like this. However, the state of most white countries/cities is not the same as the state of most black countries/cities -- and that's true internationally.

But I'm sure you'll come back and tell me that human biology has nothing to do with human behavior, and that evolution stopped at the neck 50000 years ago. With zero knowledge of genetics, you'll make confident pronunciations about how there is actually no geographic substructure of any complex trait in a global population of 6 billion people. Come on -- don't disappoint me.

I was fascinated by these displays of public honesty, and so I kept searching for a case of theft or looting. Finally, I was thrilled to find one. Two young men had entered a shattered convenience store, picked up some food from the floor, and run out. Rumors of this crime spread around the town, and finally I was able to find the store and its owner. "Of course, we expect this kind of looting if there is an earthquake in Los Angeles," I noted triumphantly, fishing for a good quote, "but were you shocked that your fellow Japanese would take advantage of the chaos to do such a thing?"

The shop owner looked puzzled. "who said anything about Japanese?" he asked me politely. "The thieves weren't Japanese. They were foreigners. Iranians, it looked like."

He was right, it turned out...


Just look at Kristof working the corners like that, intent on finding the exception and triumphantly brandishing it as the rule. Reminds me of Stephen Jay Gould. Or another Gold. Interestingly, the East Asians are in many respects insulated against this style of argumentation -- by appearance, language barriers, nontrivial ethnocentricity, and (not least) even more significant performance and behavioral differences.

On the TIMSS assessment, for example, you see essentially no overlap:

For example, Singaporean students had the highest average achievement
at both grades, with their average eighth-grade performance exceeding
performance at the 95th percentile in the lower-performing countries
such as Botswana, Ghana, and South Africa.

http://timss.bc.edu/PDF/ t03_down...T03_S_Chap1.pdf

Looting and rape after the tsunami:

http://gbgm-umc.org/umcor/05/ sri...chesworried.cfm

http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paper...ost- tsunami.php

these low iq blacks behaved like high iq whites and asians:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world...rica/ 655510.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world...ica/ 4505859.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world...ica/ 3556082.stm

SXN --

re: tsunami, South Asians and Southeast Asians are nowhere near as consistently law abiding as East Asians. They're also not as likely to commit violence as sub-Saharan Africans are. Not all nonwhites are the same.

As for the other links you gave, I don't see your point. South Africa has the resources to deal with flooding and is one of the wealthiest countries on the continent because of the residues of white rule..soon to be swept away as in Liberia, Zimbabwe, etc. All the same it is one of the most violent and anarchichal countries in the world...so how does this show "low IQ blacks" behaving like "high IQ whites and Asians"?

I mean, the disasters of the African continent -- from the Congo to Liberia to Zimbabwe to Rwanda -- are mostly the doing of Africans rather than mother nature.

Also, one of the links you gave has the following bit:

Red Cross and Red Crescent workers are bringing in emergency shipments of blankets, plastic sheeting, cooking utensils and medical supplies.

The rescue and relief efforts in these countries are overwhelmingly white, no? Again, I don't see what your point is.

my point, gc, was to show that incidence of violence behavior after natural disasters is not restricted to blacks. And that there are lots of cases where blacks didn't suddenly become lawless after enduring a natural disaster.

Who said anything about blaming whites?

my point, gc, was to show that incidence of violence behavior after natural disasters is not restricted to blacks. And that there are lots of cases where blacks didn't suddenly become lawless after enduring a natural disaster.


Of course. But the overlap of distributions does not mean that differences are immaterial, or that they do not have civilizational consequences. If the probability of population X rioting is .6 and the probability of pop Y rioting is .3, that affects a lot of logistical calculations.

Who said anything about blaming whites?

Not you, perhaps -- but Kanye West, Randall Robinson, and Jack Shafer, for starters. The rest of the media will soon follow suit. You can already see the developing conventional wisdom if you go to Atrios. The attacks on the photographer for that caption are typical; kill the messenger if you don't like the message :)

Anyway, welcome and stick around. Hope you didn't take the above as insulting...the internet has a way of making people come across as more curt than they intend, and I apologize if I ruffled any feathers.

A few hundred young men that are armed with AK47s and organized into gangs can paralyze an entire city if there's widespread disorder and chaos. They can shoot at police, start fights, beat and murder people, and loot. There's not much anyone can do when there's no effective law enforcement authority around.

It's easy for 1% of the city to terrorize the other 99% in this situation. I'm just happy that we haven't seen more violence given all the opportunities the criminals have to cause trouble.

Much of the "looting" was people taking food, water, and clean clothing from stores. If you don't include people taking neccessities, I doubt more than a few percent of the people actually looted.

I don't really disagree with you that race and IQ matter, but it's ridiculous to characterize the situation as "Somalia." I've seen reporters from CNN, FOX, and MSNBC walk around and talk to many different people. The situation they presented was definitely chaotic and the level of violence was definitely much higher than acceptable, but the crowd appeared to be behaved.

I saw reporters like Anderson Cooper, Shepard Smith, and Rivera moving through the crowd and talking to the people.

There's not much anyone can do when there's no effective law enforcement authority around.


Yes, but WHY is that?

http://www.riotvideo.com/ videodi...85899154935.wmv

Leaving aside the outright criminals for now, I think we agree that h-bd related things are a continuum. Those of 70 IQ who are not violent criminals are often nonviolent criminals or opportunistically corrupt. Those who are neither are simply helpless.

Rebuilding civilization is almost as hard as building it in the first place, and the non-criminal low IQ -- through no fault of their own, I add -- are dead weight when it comes to rescue efforts. They would not able to pitch in with engineering know-how and logistical aplomb to repair their city even if they were well. They are sitting in the wagon because they cannot push it -- and as such, the rest of the country has to push even harder.

oh, gc...please tell me about these distributions. It seems like you have actually observed them. are they normal, exponential, gamma, etc.? from racial iq scores, you can infer the probabilities of bad reactions to natural events as well?

look, I know it's generally accepted on this blog that blacks have the lowest iq of any racial group and therefore are expected to have the worst performance in activity that requires cooperation, self-restraint, calculation, etc.
what i see, gc, is your attempt to make almost anything (including this hurricane) fit the belief that blacks are most cognitively challenged group without bothering to see what has transpired in other places that have experienced such events.

I don't think people really understand what happened in New Orleans. Tens of thousands of people were crammed together for days after seeing their homes flooded and relatives/friends gone missing. Many weren't getting enough food or water. Sick people were being left to die. Sewage, human waste, and diapers were all around. Dead bodies laid unclaimed. It seriously was hell on earth. Almost any group of people in such dire circumstances would degenerate in mob behavior.

If the victims were mainly poor Chinese-American restaurant workers, my guess would be that Chinese-Americans would be blaming whites. So would Mexicans, Arabs, South Asians, and Jews if their group was in trouble.

I would like to propose a general rule. You should not be able to claim a genetic basis for a type of behaviour in group "A" if this type of behaviour has been engaged in by group "B" at any point within the last few centuries.
The point being that your claim that blacks in NO are acting the way they are due to low IQs is belied by the fact that their actions have been seen in "high IQ" groups at some point in history (not far back enough for them to be very different in genetic composition).

Any survey of recent human history will show that people can become very selfish when the centralized authority becomes disabled as it was in NO after Katrina. The dark ages in Europe were characterized by extreme violence and human depravity, mostly due to the fall of the roman colonial authority. Murder and rapes were very common and life was hell, particularly for women and children.
Unless you would like to argue that Europeans have evolved significantly since a few hundred years ago, you really have no basis for your arguments in this case. Recent work on brain structure and development pretty much prove that cognition, behaviour and hence, morality are highly influenced by poverty. It is quite accurate to say that the poor live in a parallel universe with very different rules. They may as well be living in the days of Robin Hood (a thief we interestingly enough hold up as a hero to children)

The human mind is constantly calculating costs and benefits. Any course of action that results in an excess of costs over benefits will be pursued. Hence, more equal and homogenous societies will be likely to avoid the kind of break down seen in NO due to the possibility of social reprimand. The US, which seems to pride itself on individual greed, fosters the kind of behaviour seen in NO. Any examination of the 100s of African disasters should be an interesting control experiment. Average IQ is supposedly 70; in the most propblematic countries, supposedly even lower at 60. Even when it takes forever for help to arrive, people are usually quite orderly as Doctors without borders etc can testify to.The mayhem seen in NO is quite rare in Africa considering the number of disasters experienced. No why could this be? After all, African Americans are on average 20 IQ points higher (even larger than the black-white difference)

Think outside the box....

The situation was incompetently managed. There should've been law enforcement around, but the local and federal government screwed up.

I would agree that these people can't rebuild the city and that the country will have to do it. It's possible that the city might not even be rebuilt.

oh, gc...please tell me about these distributions. It seems like you have actually observed them.

Ummmm, actually, yes. See for example the TIMSS results cited above.

For example, Singaporean students had the highest average achievement
at both grades, with their average eighth-grade performance exceeding
performance at the 95th percentile in the lower-performing countries
such as Botswana, Ghana, and South Africa.

normal, exponential, gamma, etc.

Depends upon what's being assayed. For most complex traits a normal is a good starting place (for sound reasons).

For civilizational failure, you're going to have some kind of tail event probability. You could initialize this empirically by looking at the number of coups, riots, and so on in various countries around the world, and seeing if that had any correlation to ethnicity.

If you're talking about propensity to commit violent crime, I suggest you start here and here.

Or we can simply bet on whether the Astrodome is going to be known for violence in the days and weeks to come. It was not the flood waters that committed the rapes and murders inside the Superdome, after all.

So that's a prediction: care to bet that bone-dry Houston will see similar mayhem soon enough? We can't necessarily rely on the media to report the truth -- they covered things up with the Lost Boys for years -- so let's make a prediction. You think it's the disaster that affected the people's behavior -- I think it's the people's behavior that caused the disaster. We have a control of sorts in Miss., but now we have another in Houston.

I would like to propose a general rule. You should not be able to claim a genetic basis for a type of behaviour in group "A" if this type of behaviour has been engaged in by group "B" at any point within the last few centuries.

By this logic, because humans and fish have both entered the water, fish have no greater predisposition to aquatic environments than we have to terrestrial ones.

More to the point: do you or do you not believe that evolution applied to humans?

Ok. To SXN and Ina, in order to have a productive discussion I need to know which, if any, of the following points you disagree with.

1. Humans, like all animals, have been subject to natural selection pressures.

2. Geographical and reproductive isolation produces intraspecies variation both because of genetic drift and because isolated groups are in different selection environments.

3. There is a long list of physiological traits of genetic origin whose incidence differs by geographical ancestry.

4. The brain is not a special organ which is off-limits to the effects of selection pressure and drift.

More detail here.
http://www.gnxp.com/MT2/archives...ves/ 001948.html


It's hard to have a constructive debate if I don't know what your premises are. For example, I don't know whether you deny that blacks commit crimes at higher rates than whites or Asians -- or whether you accept that they do but believe the cause has nothing to do with genetics.

I also don't know whether you deny that people of sub-Saharan African ancestry generally do worse on IQ tests than people of East Asian ancestry, or whether you think the difference has nothing to do with genetics, or that we shouldn't measure anyway.

I need to know precisely which claim you're making, and the best way to get at that is if you'll humor me and tell me where you and I diverge on the four points enumerated above.

Recent work on brain structure and development pretty much prove that cognition, behaviour and hence, morality are highly influenced by poverty.

I would appreciate a pointer to this, if you're not referring to the Turkheimer heritability thing (which is obvious b/c higher environmental variance implies lower heritability, just as height is more heritable in the US than in poor countries).

Even when it takes forever for help to arrive, people are usually quite orderly as Doctors without borders etc can testify to.

I have heard stories to contradict this.

Two weeks ago people at slashdot were discussing the iBook riot in Virginia, of which most of the participants appeared to be black (in the available media photos).

Here was one response:

Meanwhile, in Sudan, Ethiopia, Niger etc. many people who are starving are patiently waiting for food supplies to be handed out.

1. When the UN provides food aid, they are usually smart enough to bring along well-armed peacekeeping soldiers to prevent riots.

2. In those cases where the UN did not bring said peacekeepers, food riots have often occurred.

3. In those cases where the food riots did not occur, it is usually because the people were so chronically malnourished that they were too weak to riot.

"Ummmm, actually, yes. See for example the TIMSS results cited above.


"For example, Singaporean students had the highest average achievement
at both grades, with their average eighth-grade performance exceeding
performance at the 95th percentile in the lower-performing countries
such as Botswana, Ghana, and South Africa."

your original comment was about distributions of rioting. these maps fully into performance on test? how many of your implicit assumption do you bother state explicitly?

Riots over food occur whenever people are starving.

how many of your implicit assumption do you bother state explicitly?

SXN -- most of what's "implicit" has been stated and treated in great detail in other article on the blog. I obviously can't recap everything in the comments; your specific denial of the link between IQ and violent crime is a case in point. I operate on the assumption that people are aware of the literature.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entr...1156& query_hl=3

The impact of low IQ on crime has been a focus of debate for several decades now. Although sociologists have virtually removed it from the list of possible factors influencing crime, the impact of IQ on crime continues to generate a significant amount of scientific research and a substantial number of publications. The purpose of this study is to assess intellectual levels and to compare two groups of incarcerated criminals. Using MANCOVA and ANCOVA procedures, 261 sex offenders and 150 non-sexual violent criminals were compared on IQ subscales. The results show significant differences on vocabulary, comprehension, arithmetic, mental math computations, object assembly, letter-number sequencing, and perception subscales, as well as on performance IQ and total IQ. The impacts of penal filtering and sample composition are hypothesized to explain differences between the two subgroups. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Now, if you'll humor me, I would appreciate a response to the four
points I outlined above. Which, if any, do you reject?

Riots over food occur whenever people are starving.

Jay Z, this is just not true. See the Kobe example above. See the Seattle Times article that points out that looting does not usually accompany natural disaster.

Almost any group of people in such dire circumstances would degenerate in mob behavior.

Again, this is just flatly false and has been debunked earlier in the thread. Please provide links for your assertions. I will post this again:

http:// seattletimes.nwsource.com...rinaloot01.html

...disaster-response researchers are intrigued, especially because
this behavior has been far from the norm. Sociologists cite more than
50 years of research showing that widespread looting after a natural
disaster is rare�

"1. When the UN provides food aid, they are usually smart enough to bring along well-armed peacekeeping soldiers to prevent riots."

UN soldiers are almost always lightly armed. it doesn't take much to make them helpless. e.g. congo and rwanda

"2. In those cases where the UN did not bring said peacekeepers, food riots have often occurred."

I heard there was a huge riot in Niger when aid groups were distributing food in the past couple of weeks. who's feeding you this information?

"3. In those cases where the food riots did not occur, it is usually because the people were so chronically malnourished that they were too weak to riot."

how do you know this? is it because riots occurs most of the time when the hungry are not emaciated? it's precisely because of individuals like you that i provided the links above. places where food convoys tend to be attacked by armed groups are places with war going on. eg. somalia. [let's keep it civil. --gc]

Edited By Siteowner

Unless you would like to argue that Europeans have evolved significantly since a few hundred years ago,

Ina, I don't want to go through your whole post unless you're going to stick around and fight. But this particular bit deserves comment. It's well known that the Black Death decimated European populations. The CCR5 mutant allele that is the cause of cystic fibrosis among homozygotes has the side effect of making heterozygotes less susceptible to Yersinia pestis.

In other words, the plague caused a measurable and sharp evolutionary response in the affected population. More than 1/3 of Europe died in about 30 months...and soon after came the Renaissance. We don't yet have the data sets, but large scale application of the kinds of algorithms developed by Bruce Lahn to European populations will reveal whether selection also affected cognitive loci. Note that Lahn himself believes this to be the case -- see here:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entr...1746& query_hl=1

Were people starving in Japan?

The article made it seem like there were shortages and that the situation was tense, but I don't know if I'd compare the earthquake in Japan to what's happened in Africa and South Asia before.

Of course he's right that it's amazing that nobody looted or fought over food and water. It seems to be a widespread opinion that the Japanese are honest people.

I remember once reading that a Japanese politician claimed that only foreigners (mainly Koreans and Chinese) would riot if there was an earthquake.

In response to the Seattle Times article, I'll say a few things:

1.) According to the article:

"major looting occurred only in St. Croix

Researchers later determined that St. Croix differed in several ways from the other areas.

'More than 80 percent of the housing was destroyed,' Tierney said. 'It's an island; there was nowhere to go. They didn't know when help was going to come. Law enforcement was rendered ineffective. They didn't know when they'd see another meal.'

Sounds close to the situation in New Orleans."

2.) "They cite Hurricane Hugo, the 1989 storm that sliced a massive path of destruction through locations including St. Croix, Puerto Rico, Charleston, S.C., and Charlotte, N.C. But major looting occurred only in St. Croix."

Puerto Rico, Charleston, and Charlotte all have large black populations. So those are examples of blacks not rioting in a natural disaster.

3.) I don't think the situation in Japan after the earthquake or in the U.S. after "Hugo" was as bad as the situation people in New Orleans have faced. One reason is the huge difference in the numbers involved and ability of the governments to handle those numbers.

SXN, I am not clear about what you are arguing. I copied those responses out of comments about the riot in Virginia two weeks ago. Here is another comment on that same thread:

Meanwhile, in Sudan, Ethiopia, Niger etc. many people who are starving are patiently waiting for food supplies to be handed out.

Huh, last time I was in Africa (in the military) we were providing security for relief agencies handing out food to those patient, peaceful people. I felt in danger of my life many times, just from them. Nevermind the roving packs of armed thugs and "warlords" whose hands those supplies would have ended up in where we not there.

"re: tsunami, South Asians and Southeast Asians are nowhere near as consistently law abiding as East Asians. They're also not as likely to commit violence as sub-Saharan Africans are. Not all nonwhites are the same. "

Actually I believe Indians are generally supposed to be very law abiding. I'll give you some examples I can remember.

1.) According to data from a BBC article that somebody on GNXP linked to a while ago (I'll try and find the article), Indians in the UK actually had a slightly lower incarceration rate than the Chinese.
2.) While I don't have any data on Indian-Americans, anecdotal evidence suggests they have an extremely low crime rate also. At least comparable to North Asians if not lower.
3.) According to author Robert Arnett that visited India, it's safe to walk through the slums of the Bengali city of Calcutta at night. It's an extremely poor city with an astonishingly large amount of poverty, but people are not violent.
4.) According to this article (http://www.samarthbharat.com/crimepunishment.htm) , India has one of the lowest rates of sexual crimes in the world. It's also got low rates of many other crimes in the troubled urban slums - even with (in his view) incompetent and lazy police officers.
5.) An Indian friend of mine whose parents grew up in poverty in Fiji (mostly Indian at the time) claimed that the crime rate was very low, especially violent crime.
6.) Predominately South Asian Marutius has a low rate of violent crime. (www.ska.ac.za/bid2/supplementary_report_05.pdf)
7.) Singapore has a sizable Indian minority (7% of the population) that are descended mainly from poor laborers from Southern India. Up to a third may be untouchables. Yet their crime rate is low like that of the Chinese.

No doubt that some Indians are not law abiding. I'm sure there are some high-crime groups within India. However, Indians seem to be generally a very low crime group.

"Nevermind the roving packs of armed thugs and "warlords" whose hands those supplies would have ended up in where we not there."

China experienced an era of "warlords", armed bandits creating chaos, widespread violence, and anarchy during the 19th century. I wouldn't have wanted to be a relief worker living then.

Jay Z --

It would actually be interesting to see some reliable statistics on Indian crime rates. My hunch is that they'd be a notch higher than European rates, but I could be wrong.

Thing is, though, that South Asian is an umbrella category that includes Pakistanis and Bangladeshis -- who do commit quite a lot of crime in the UK. One can argue that this is because of Islam, and/or because the low status & crime prone were more likely to convert away from Hinduism (just as the harijans threaten to do today). But it muddies the picture considerably.

In any case, South Asians are also highly genetically inhomogeneous. To make a long story short, I would not at all be surprised if some of the many SA microraces are genetically predisposed to violence; it would be surprising if it were not the case.

Also, as for the rest...try to cut down on the one sentence, linkless comments. Neanderthal is talking about current events. Verbal equations between 19th century Chinese and 21st century Africans are irrelevant -- the former are obviously capable of technological civilization, while the latter have not yet proven themselves to be. You might as well say that the Jewish ghettos of the turn of the century and African American ghettos are the same thing because they're the same word. There is a qualitative difference between organized and disorganized violence, and it's disingenuous to equate the two.

You've tossed out a large number of straw men & false statements in this thread ("minority of looters", "everybody riots","19th century Chinese civil war = 21st century African anarchy"), and it is starting to annoy me. This is not the place for Oprah-esque fallacies about unpalatable reality.

Steve Sailer says it all quite well.

http://www.vdare.com/sailer/ 0509...new_orleans.htm

gyspies are a euro-indian hybrid population not known for their low crime rates :) the selection biasing of converts is not plausible in the case of the british pakistanis, my impression is that hardly any of the population in their region of pakistan (mirpur) was non-muslim to begin with (even prior to partition). muslims should therefore reflect the endogenous variation that was extent prior to conversion, though this neglects migration...but peasants tend not to engage in volkswanderungs for ideological reasons from what i can see. since indian muslims come from regions that were predominantly hindu such selection biasing of the parent-converted population could have occurred in this case, but all anecdotal evidence (ie; reports from individuals who live in britain) implies that this population is less prone to criminality (and religious fananticism) than the pakistani muslims. i was open to the possibility that there was selection biasing of the recruited populations...but personal communication informs me that the british sikhs who are now much more likely to be middle class than the british pakistanis (muslims) were recruited from the same SES background, and both these groups are punjabis who were a common breeding population until recently. so it seems than in this case one must point the finger at the religious culture of the pakistanis as that is the primary source of distinction between the sikhs and pakistanis (the nations of india and pakistan were less than a generation old when many of the original emigrants left).

the selection biasing of converts is not plausible in the case of the british pakistanis, my impression is that hardly any of the population in their region of pakistan (mirpur) was non-muslim to begin with (even prior to partition). muslims should therefore reflect the endogenous variation that was extent prior to conversion.

Right, I personally don't believe it's the case. I think Islam makes otherwise peaceful people more violent and expansionist (viz. Christian Lebanese vs. Muslims, etc.). Conversely, I think Hinduism makes potential expansionists into pushovers content for the next life. :)

I should have made more clear that I meant one *could* argue it, but that it muddied the picture of "peaceful Hindu" considerably. I don't think reliable crime stats are available for South Asia in general (and almost certainly not broken down by ethnicity, religion, etc.), so this'll have to remain conjecture for now...

Indian gangs in Vancouver:

Perhaps the most interesting thing about the RCMP's Top 20 list, however, is the group that didn't make the cut: Indo-Canadian gangs.

In the past decade, more than 60 Indo-Canadian men in the Lower Mainland have been murdered in a wave of gang violence.

However, Insp. Wade Blizard of the RCMP's criminal intelligence section said that while Indo-Canadian gang members are extremely violent, they are considered by police to be far less sophisticated than other groups, such as outlaw motorcycle gangs or Asian organized crime.

Staff Sgt. Wayne Rideout, head of the RCMP's Integrated Homicide Team -- responsible for investigating many of the Indo-Canadian gang deaths -- said most Indo-Canadian gangsters are relatively small players in the drug trade, often only a few steps above street dealers.

"They're not the millionaire gangsters," said Rideout. "They don't appear to be into the huge shipments. They tend to be low- end. Most of the people we investigate have leased cars. They drive fancy vehicles, but they don't have any assets."

The closest comparison to Indo-Canadian gangsters, said Rideout, is the inner-city street gangs in Los Angeles. "They're drawn by the status," he said.

And a bizarre one, an Indo-Canadian woman aspiring politician who was arrested smuggled drugs into the US:

Details of the month-long mutual courtship -- drawn from confidential sources, secret tape recordings and mobile surveillance teams -- is outlined in a sworn, 17-page complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Seattle by DEA Special Agent Joseph Parker, a former Marine Corps officer with a history of drug-trafficking investigation. His statement, including transcripts of a recorded conversation between Puar and an agent wearing a hidden body wire, portray a ruthless player in a deadly enterprise. Of drug drivers who have been with her for 10 years, Puar says in the transcript: "They don't f--- around with me because when they f--- around with me, guaranteed, they'll be . . . f---ing six feet under, and they know it." The transcript -- allegedly part of negotiations in a parked car between Puar and the agent -- includes a vivid description of the rough justice meted out by Indo-Canadian gangs. "Yeah, it's that simple," she's quoted as saying, "that's what the game is like in Vancouver: you f--- with us, you die."

I think Islam makes otherwise peaceful people more violent and expansionist

violent to outgroups often :) that the is the genius of monotheism, one is either a brother or a beast.

in any case, the more tangents this thread gets wrapped up in the more likely it is to lose all coherency, so i will kindly withdraw and allow you all to get back to addressing 'root causes' or not :)

Wow, western Canada really *is* less PC! the rest of the article:

Rideout said police estimate there are 30 to 40 separate Indo-Canadian gangs in the Lower Mainland, each made up of about three or four key members and maybe a dozen associates.

For the most part, he said, Indo-Canadian gangsters don't have the money at their disposal to move up the drug-trade food chain. "They don't have the cash base to go out there and buy homes like the Vietnamese [gangs]," said Rideout.

Which means, he said, that while Indo-Canadian gangsters are often involved in ripping off growing operations, they rarely set them up themselves.

And many, said Rideout, still live at home with their families.

"They're all mama's boys," he said. "They live with their moms. Their moms wash their clothes. Their moms cook their meals. And they go out and commit murders and then come home."

The violence among Indo-Canadian gangs is also more sporadic than in other crime groups, said Rideout. While Asian gangs or bikers may carry out calculated hits or acts of extortion for economic reasons, many Indo-Canadian killings are over issues of pride or bravado, he said -- sometimes over something as simple as an insult.

"It's done more for passion than economics," he said.

Yet, despite their lack of sophistication, Indo-Canadian gangs are still a concern for police because their violence has greater potential to hurt innocent bystanders than the violence of other gangs.

"The bikers tend to take someone out in the bush," Rideout said. "But the East Indians want to let people know that they're capable of doing it, so they want to do it in the most brazen way possible."

That means shootings in clubs and restaurants -- or spraying homes with gunfire -- all of which increase the potential that innocent bystanders could get caught in the crossfire.

Rideout said police get reports of about three to four drive-by shootings a week in the Lower Mainland that are connected to Indo-Canadian gang violence. "It's miraculous that no one [innocent] has been shot in their bed," said Rideout. "It's going to happen. They're so unpredictable and bravado-driven."

What's the demographics of the Indo-Canadian population like? Is there an obvious nationality disjunction like in the UK between Indians & Pakistanis/Bangladeshis? Or something else? Tango, you probably know more...

violent to outgroups often :)

Yes, sorry, I coupled it with "expansionist" but I can see how it might be unclear. I wouldn't doubt that for a given population, Islamic law would tend to reduce the crime rate. Depending on how harsh, though, it might cause other atrocities to rise (Iran probably became more crime-ridden under the Ayatollah than the Shah).

Anyway, this is getting off topic, but the Indo-Canadian gang stuff does deserve its own post/thread.

b.c. religions-source:

Muslim 1.5
Hindu 0.8
Sikh 3.5

that should tell you something (BC has had sikh PMs and lots of khalistan related political problems from what i recall).

From the little I know, there is a HUGE Sikh presence. They're in the news because the kids can take Kirpans to school, Sikh police officers don't have to wear hats and are permitted to wear turbans. IOW they're very visible.

As for the other sub-groupings, they're no more distinctive that other groups, though they and the Asians are the two largest, and longest standing, minority groupings (other than natives) and very integrated into the professional community. Don't see too many blacks or hispanics (and the ones I do see see, mainly through happenstance, seem to be Andean street musicians playing a pan flute), especially using California as a baseline.

South Asian seem to be quite dominant in the farming sector. Lot's of greenhouse operations. Lot's of chain immigration for the farm operations. Huge monster houses with 10-20 family members living together are quite common.

I can't give you a finer analysis than that, sorry. From my vantage point, it's all very cosmopolitan, so I'm not intersecting with other demographics.

BC has had sikh PMs and lots of khalistan related political problems from what i recall)

Air India bombers.

According to the British prison doctor and author Theodore Dampryle, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis in the UK previously were extremely law abiding like the Indians. Previously only a miniscule number were in jail - mainly for minor crimes like tax fraud. It's only been recently that they've developed a crime problem. He attributes differences in crime between South Asian ethnic groups to cultural/religious differences.


Indians from different parts of India have immigrated to the different parts of the world.

1.) Poor laborers from southern India went to Singapore. Up to one third were untouchables.
2.) Uneducated Indian factory workers from the northern state of Punjab went to the UK.
3.) Indian indentured laborers from the western state of Gujarat went to East Africa to build railroads.
4.) Poor Indian laborers from northern/central India (mainly lower caste) went to Marutius.

All these groups ended up doing well for themselves. The first three groups actually became "model" minorities. The fourth group are successfully running a modestly prosperous, peaceful, democratic, and safe (even with a relatively large African population) country. So I'm optimistic about the Indian population's genetic potential.

Most articles about India claim it has a high rate of minor crimes (theft, scams, bribery), but a low rate of violent crimes.

It's likely that some ethnic groups within India do have high crime rates, but overall the trend seems to be toward low crime rates.

Definitely more studies on India need to be done.

Pakistanis and Bangladeshis in the UK previously were extremely law abiding like the Indians. Previously only a miniscule number were in jail - mainly for minor crimes like tax fraud. It's only been recently that they've developed a crime problem.

This is quite interesting if true. As the UK is developed, the statistics would exist to show this as long as they weren't covered up by PC. Worth digging for.

According to one site, a study of Bradford youth found that Pakistanis were only 1/3 as likely as non-Asians to be prosecuted for crimes. It gave as a source McCulloch & Batta, 1979. Non-Asian = white.

I also found a 1995 report (source: Commission on Systemic Racism in the Ontario Criminal Justice System) that claimed Arabs, Indians, and Asians were only 1/2 as likely as Canadian whites to be imprisoned in Ontario.

Sorry. Let me make that more clear.

Source that Pakistani youth prosecution rate in Bradford was 1/3 non-Asian prosecution rate:

McCulloch, R.I. Mawby and Batta, I.D. (1979) "Crime Amongst Asian Juveniles in Bradford" International Journal of the Sociology of Law 7: 297­306 August No.3 Mirande, Alfredo (1987) Gringo Justice Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, pp. 129­138.

Source that Arabs, Indians, and Asians were only 1/2 as likely as Canadian whites to be imprisoned in Ontario:

(1995) Report of the Commission on Systemic Racism in the Ontario Criminal Justice System Toronto: Queen's Printer. December 445pp.

"In response to the Seattle Times article, I'll say a few things . . . Puerto Rico, Charleston, and Charlotte all have large black populations. So those are examples of blacks not rioting in a natural disaster."

J.Z. you're kidding - that Seattle Times article is a comical (and dishonest) affirmation that race is a strong correlate of lawlessness after disaster. Let's look at the demographics of their four examples (that they "forgot" to mention), and see if there's anything of possible significance in their loot-distinguished St. Croix:

Puerto Rico: White 80.5%. Black 8%.
Charleston, S.C.: White 63.8%. Black 34%.
Charlotte, N.C.: White 58.26%. Black 32.72%.
Virgin Islands (St. Croix): White 13.1%. Black 76.2%.

So St. Croix was the only one of the bunch that was majority black and had more than twice the black population of even the next highest in Charleston. You'd think the article would mention that since its main point was the irrelevancy of race! Even their explanations are massaged:

"Researchers later determined that St. Croix differed in several ways from the other areas . . . Tierney said. "It's an island; there was nowhere to go."

Puerto Rico isn't an island??

Note that according to the article [and in contrast to this William Saletan article asserting that such behavior is "normal"] St. Croix and New Orleans both stand out as unique examples of anarchy after disaster (in the developed world- for a number of special reasons the third world appears to keep order after disaster, be it in Asia or Africa). But NO had its Puerto Rico and Charlestons too - namely all the areas along the Gulf Coast facing similar destruction and breakdown of law enforcement, but again the differences in reaction tracked demographics:

Slate's Jack Shafer points out what the papers have been hesitant to: Most of those left in New Orleans are black and poor.

Mississippi's Harrison County is still getting little help but doesn't seem to be as uniformly chaotic as New Orleans. The LAT says looters "swarmed" through stores in Gulfport. But the Post, citing officials, says overall the filching has not been "widespread."

Harrison County: White 73.15%. Black 21.09%.

So there was nothing close to the civil breakdown of NO in the similarly decimated 3/4 white Harrison County.

Ina: "I would like to propose a general rule. You should not be able to claim a genetic basis for a type of behaviour in group "A" if this type of behaviour has been engaged in by group "B" at any point within the last few centuries . . . Recent work on brain structure and development pretty much prove that cognition, behaviour and hence, morality are highly influenced by poverty."

Really, even if we found the genes? Why can't we reformulate your rule like such: You should not be able to claim [an economic] basis for a type of behaviour in group "A" if this type of behaviour has been engaged in by group "B" at any point within the last few centuries? Is poverty any more deterministic than race? Actually it isn't:

Differences in personal wealth - a favorite sociological cause of crime - have declined considerably since the turn of the century, but crime has gone up several hundred percent. Poverty? From 1979 to 1987 there has been a particularly steep rise in crime, but poverty has decreased dramatically (Eysenck & Gudjonsson 1989). Unemployment? Some authors have analyzed U.S. crimes and found an inverse relation between unemployment and crime. Gross national product, an indicator of national wealth? Ellis and Patterson (in press) found it to correlate positively and highly with criminality in a sample of 13 industrial nations (.68 with total theft). The evidence, if anything, is strongly opposed to sociological theories. Naturally, poverty, unemployment, and wide differences in wealth are undesirable and ought to be eradicated or at least diminished; however, doing so might increase rather than diminish crime, counter-intuitive as such a prediction, might seem. Possibly, of course, the regression is curvilinear. That is, perhaps great poverty, great unemployment, and great differences in wealth lead to low crime (as, e.g., in the early days of the Weimer Republic?); middling poverty, medium unemployment, and middling differences in wealth lead to high crime (as in the United States of America?); and little poverty, little unemployment, and few differences in wealth lead to low crime (as in Switzerland?)

I will predict this, if we could control for crime rates before the natural disaster, black or white, then I would guess there are no independent effects of race. For example, New Orleans had 10x the average American crime rate to begin with, which means it had a crime bell curve far shifted to the left, in addition to those left behind probably being an even much more crime prone demographic of the city, meaning many were ready for crime and violence when the enforcement structure subsided in the wake of destruction. If we had filled Harrison County with Russians beforehand, it would have probably behaved more similarly to NO. If we would have filled NO with Japanese people we would have probably seen a reaction closer to (and probably much better than) what we saw in Mississippi.

Razib,

If I remember correctly, you had some data on the percentage of lower castes in Muslims verses the percentage of lower castes in the Hindus.
Can you please cite that date again.

AM,

source (PDF):

...this haplogroup may have been brought to India by Indo-European speakers from the Middle East. The frequency of this haplogroup is highest (23.5%) among the upper-ranked caste Brahmins and is lower (17.1%) among the middle-ranked caste Rajupt...It is noteworthy that HG-9 is absent among the low-ranked caste group, Chamar [Dalit -r]. A large section of the Muslims of Uttar Pradesh are known to be religious converts from both upper and middle-ranked caste groups. Our observation that HG-9 occurs in lower frequency (10.5%) among the Muslim compared to the Brahmin and the Rajput is consistent with the known social history of this group....

...we found that the (delta)ccr5 [HIV resistence allele most common among northern europeans, frequency declining clinally as a function of distance -r] completely absent or only sporadically present in most populations. However, among the Muslims of Uttar Pradesh, the frequency of this allele was 5.36%, which may be due to admixture with immigrants from central and west Asia....

caveats - this is ONLY on the Y (male) lineage. only for uttar pradesh, but, i think it is relevant to the question of muslim differential conversion because unlike western punjab or eastern bengal the overwhelming majority of the population has not converted to islam, only 20%. this is large enough that a persistent selection bias in conversion would be significant for society and also not be skewed by particular contingent historical conditions (ie; if the muslim population was really small one historical quirk, like the turning of a very powerful rajput and his extended area of clans might have an effect). i could be that the source population of muslims exhibited the haplogroup in question at 10%, but i suspect a more likely probability is that the study ignores substructure within the UP muslim community (ie; converts from all castes probably remain somewhat distinct).

on the ccr5 allele, selection could be at work, but i'm skeptical. i don't see why non-muslims would not be effected by it since they go up and down the SES ladder and are spatially dispered.

p.s. the sample sizes are too low IMO, but you can find similar lines of evidence elsewhere if you look hard enough.

i don't understand why there are so many newspaper reports being cited here as evidence when its clear that hardly anyone involved trusts the media.. is it okay to trust them when they are taking pictures of black rioters but not okay to trust them when they are underreporting post-disaster violence? i'm trying to wrap my head around the discussion but i honestly do find it a little unpalatable and it seems to me that using pubmed ref's and criminological journals would be a better source than news reports.. that said i haven't any links to provide.. sorry..

actually.. here's one to back up my earlier assertion about racial sentencing disparities.. http://scholar.google.com/url?sa...0/vol_3/ 03i.pdf

Jason. If you read what I wrote in prior posts, I agreed that IQ and race were important factors that contributed to aggravating the situation in New Orleans. My disagreement was over the extent to which demographic variables mattered and over the severity of the situation in New Orleans.

GC linked to the Seattle Times article as evidence that looting in New Orleans is unusual. I quoted a paragraph out of the same article as evidence that a similar situation occurred in St. Croix and was followed by looting.

Blacks are only 12% of the population. So Charleston and Charlotte both have 3 times the percent of blacks as the national population. Likely large parts of both cities are dominated by blacks.

As for Puerto Rico, there's no way 80% of Puerto Ricans are "white." Most sources I've seen describe Puerto Ricans as "mulatto." Given the social prestige attached to be "white," I'm not surprised that Puerto Ricans with some white ancestry would identify themselves as white.

However, social statistics for Puerto Ricans indicate they're closer to African-Americans than whites. Puerto Ricans living in the U.S. had a 60% illegitimacy rate in 1997. About half the island received food stamps and 13% were unemployed. According to "IQ and the Wealth of Nations," Puerto Ricans have an average IQ of 84. According to data in an article by Steve Sailer ("Mapping The Unmentionable: Race And Crime"), Puerto Ricans have the highest crime rate of all Hispanic ethnic groups. Predominately Puerto Rican Hispanics in Connecticut have an imprisonment rate comparable to that of African-Americans.
So Puerto Ricans are definitely different from whites.

I'm skeptical about claims that the media is underreporting the violence, anarchy, and looting in New Orleans for these reasons:

1.) The media are in business to make money. If one news station underreports the violence, they lose ratings and money. So I don't see that happening.
2.) I remember seeing the same 30 second clip of looting almost every hour on Friday on different networks. I saw it a few more times on Saturday.
3.) The international media have no reason to downplay scenes of anarchy and violence in an American city.
4.) Underreporting and undersensationalizing a story isn't something I'd worry about FoxNews doing.

Some people have mentioned "food riots." The N.O. riots were not food riots. The rioters were looting guns, tvs, luxury boutiques. These people were not coming out of the middle ages or post-war Cambodia, so cut the comparisons to 500 years ago or refugees from third world countries. They were born and raised in the U.S. with public education, free libraries, enough food to cause obesity or fine athletic bodies, tv, movies, etc. They have had access to some levels of education for decades.

"The media are in business to make money. If one news station underreports the violence, they lose ratings and money. So I don't see that happening."

You seem to miss the point. No matter what, mainstream media has been "downplaying" race for a very long times. Just last week, newspapers in Boston had a controversy about whether to mention race in the description of criminals, and that is common. I'm surprised they are showing it to the extent they do. But personal reports coming out of that city are harrowing and we haven't begun to hear of all that has happened.

is it okay to trust them when they are taking pictures of black rioters but not okay to trust them when they are underreporting post-disaster violence?

mccm, the words don't match the pictures. The looters are overwhelmingly black, but the only time race is broached is to blame white people for what's happened. The main difference between today's looting and the LA Riots of 1992 is that we have the internet. And eyewitness accounts make it clear that much is being covered up. For example:

http://www.tinyvital.com/BlogArc...ves/ 000923.html

Report from the Superdome

Two friends of my daughter were tourists in New Orleans. They spent several horrifying days in the SuperDome, and this is her report on a phone call from one, now that they are in a Dallas hotel. Earlier she had gotten alarming text messages while they were in the dome - they didn't expect to survive. I won't bother to justify their reasons for staying through the storm - they shouldn't have. We expect more details in the future, after they get some sleep.

Account from the Superdome

Two friends of mine went to New Orleans last weekend, and refused to listen when told to evacuate. They decided to stick it out in their French Quarter hotel. During the actual storm, their window blew out, but the hotel stayed solid. Monday, the two decided to leave and seek shelter. They walked to I-10, where hundreds were already standing and waiting. Between them and the Superdome was rising water, but the situation on the road looked bad, so they trekked out through the water to the Dome...

Quickly, they realized things were going to get bad. Looters broke into the restaurants and vending outlets, bringing out liquor bottles and cases of beer. They were offered beer at $1 per can. Soon, fighting broke out, and people were left bleeding or dead in the corridors. No one came to help the sick or dead.

Hoping to find safety, they set out to find a place to hide. A trash can held the corpse of a 4 and a half year old girl. The mourners nearby said she had been raped and killed. A storage unit looked promising, and the duo hid out for several hours listening to the chaos beyond. Deciding that they would get mauled if found hiding, they left the unit and went down to the field, where they saw Army and National Guard troops. The Army told them they couldn ’t hang around for safety, so they went to where the National Guard was forming a ring. The Guardsmen told them they could hang around the perimeter if they wanted, so they sat about 10 feet away from where two Guards were posting entrance to their circle. At some point after, a man came out of the flooded areas of the Dome with a pipe. He hit one of the Guards, a woman, on the head. He then shot the other guard in the leg (origin of gun unknown). The female Guard ran screaming away. The perpetrator ran back to the water. He was found with just his nose above the surface, and locked up.

While all this was taking place, the Superdome became increasingly dirty and the people panicked.

They watched two women beat a man to death after he tried to grab one of their daughter ’s, presumably to rape. Before his cell phone battery died, he text-messaged me how scared he was, and that he didn’t think he would make it out.

As the bathrooms became disgusting and were quite unsafe, my friends stopped eating and only drank the available grape juice, so as to not need to use the restrooms. They urinated in bottles. One friend began vomiting by Wednesday on this diet. When they were finally told to go outside to line up for bus convoys, they thought relief was in sight. Hardly. The masses stampeded, crushing at least three people that they saw. They held back, staying away from the fray. A Guardsman told them that 53 people had died over the previous night (Tues/Weds), and my friends think most were murders. A morgue tent was set up in the middle of the Dome.

Contrast the above report to this piece by Jack Shafer that focuses on the fact that the *victims* of the storm are largely black...without mentioning that the victimizers (gangs, looters, etc.) and the local government are also overwhelmingly black. The government clearly failed as the mayor did not use the available buses and the overwhelmingly black police force is busy looting WalMarts (link to video) and abandoning their posts.

This is not surprising as the department is filled with racial preference hires:

http://www.crimelibrary.com/gang.../6.html? sect=18

"The department was being depleted of experienced officers and the numbers within the ranks were decreasing as crime stats were rising at an alarming rate… In order to beef up the rapidly dwindling numbers of NOPD, the department was forced to lower its acceptance standards. Recruits with criminal records, DWIs, unfavorable employment records and dishonorable discharges from the Armed Forces were allowed to enter the Police Academy, whereas they had previously been excluded … Their records were expunged and, on completion of their training, they were issued badges, guns and patrol cars and turned loose on the street… These new officers were expected to suddenly straighten up and begin enforcing the laws they had not-so-long-ago been breaking. They were expected to arrest those suspected of crimes, even if those accused had once been their street buddies. But this was an unrealistic expectation."

Indeed it was, as this photo of black policemen looting DVDs also shows (PDF link).

The reports in the national media do not mention race at all. They do not compare and contrast MS and NOLA's response to the hurricane on racial grounds, when that is clearly the differentiating factor. And you and I both know that nothing on, say higher basal levels of testosterone or increased androgen receptor density is going to be linked to the events in New Orleans. No one in the national media is going to point out that the same elevated crime rates and low test scores among individuals of sub-Saharan African ancestry is observed from Britain to Brazil, and from the South to South Africa.

See this thread for a ton of relevant links.

I know this all sounds harsh. It's not that I don't have sympathy for the genuine victims of the hurricane; what I resent is being blamed for the violence and lawlessness there, and the incompetence of local government (btw, I'm not white). I used to be a liberal on these issues too. And I would like to have a constructive debate with you, but I need to know what your premises are. If you could answer the four points in this post, I think our conversation could be more productive.

1.) The media are in business to make money. If one news station underreports the violence, they lose ratings and money. So I don't see that happening.

Again, just flatly false. You seem to know these things to be false, so why repeat them? The Passion, among other things, demonstrates that money is not the only guiding force in Hollywood. It made more than $300 million dollars but was almost strangled in the cradle.

You will also want to read Bill McGowan's "Coloring the News". It extends far beyond Reuter's refusal to use the T-word. How many people know that blacks commit murder at 8x the per-capita rate of whites? If the media were reporting the truth, this would be as commonly known as, say, the fact of black underrepresentation in college. The media is not about reflecting reality, so don't pretend otherwise.

I used to be a liberal on these issues too.

I get the distinct impression that many race realists were at one time committed leftists or at least very strongly liberal leaning. I know this is true in my case. In fact, it's also true of Arthur Jensen, the most notorious race realist of all!

Prof. Jensen has been around long enough to remember Brown v. Board of Education. At the time of the decision, he was attending a conference where many of the psychologists were Southerners. Talk inevitably turned toward the bombshell Supreme Court decision. "After listening to these Southerner psychologists, I decided to get out of there," Prof. Jensen says. "I thought to myself, 'The conversation of these bigots is not to my liking.'" Of course, Prof. Jensen now knows better! "But, looking back, I realize that what they were saying was actually quite sensible. Many of those psychologists had worked in the schools, and they knew the score." Many years later, Prof. Jensen voted for Lyndon Johnson specifically because of his support for desegregation. It was only after beginning research for a book about the plight of the educationally disadvantaged that Prof. Jensen began to change his views about the causes of racial differences in behavior.

I know that there some people in academia who are closet race realists but just generally don't like to think about these things. But my sense is that they are not typical, that most race realists are passionately engaged with the subject of human biodiversity and political/social issues such as affirmative action, media partiality, etc.

I wonder whether the former leftism of many race realists and their passion about the issue (if my impressions of these things are in fact correct) can be explained as an "apostate effect." Leftists are obsessed with racial issues, and so it is likely that many race realists will have come from their ranks. And once the members of this remarkable minority of leftists--remarkable for their openness to reason and evidence--come to be familiar with the empirical and theoretical considerations that make race realism the only tenable stance toward the issue of racial differences, a sense of betrayal, of having been deceived and misinformed, sets in. I'm sure many of us get the feeling that the most vehement unbelievers are those who nurse the wounds left by the departure of a passionate and nourishing faith, a faith that will never return. Might not the same dynamic explain the like vehemence of us race realists?

It would be interesting to take a poll of readers who accept gc's four postulates of human evolution and see what percentage were at one time leftists or left leaning.

I've copied gc's post from earlier because I've never seen these questions asked so cogently and I really want to hear the responses (of course, this applies to anybody arguing that race doesn't matter or matter much):


Ok. To SXN and Ina, in order to have a productive discussion I need to know which, if any, of the following points you disagree with.




1. Humans, like all animals, have been subject to natural selection pressures.

2. Geographical and reproductive isolation produces intraspecies variation both because of genetic drift and because isolated groups are in different selection environments.

3. There is a long list of physiological traits of genetic origin whose incidence differs by geographical ancestry.

4. The brain is not a special organ which is off-limits to the effects of selection pressure and drift.



More detail here.
http://www.gnxp.com/MT2/archives...ves/ 001948.html


It's hard to have a constructive debate if I don't know what your premises are. For example, I don't know whether you deny that blacks commit crimes at higher rates than whites or Asians -- or whether you accept that they do but believe the cause has nothing to do with genetics.

I also don't know whether you deny that people of sub-Saharan African ancestry generally do worse on IQ tests than people of East Asian ancestry, or whether you think the difference has nothing to do with genetics, or that we shouldn't measure anyway.

I need to know precisely which claim you're making, and the best way to get at that is if you'll humor me and tell me where you and I diverge on the four points enumerated above.

The media is an equal opportunity sensationalizer. New Orleans just provides so much material.

I wonder whether the former leftism of many race realists and their passion about the issue (if my impressions of these things are in fact correct) can be explained as an "apostate effect."

I think that's exactly right. It's the "God that Failed". The difference is, though, that we've moved away from a reliance on prayer to bring rain, but we're still relying on the equivalent of prayer to prevent crime and level test scores.

With respect to this god, deicide is the obligation of thinking individuals. Put another way: we're now living in the year 2005 P.C., but it'll soon be 2020 A.DNA ;)

GC. I've heard a lot on television about dead bodies lying around unclaimed, sewage flowing through the area, fights and stabbings, murders, rapes, and unruly mobs. The media are not covering that up. The only thing I didn't hear about was the racial tension. So I think you bring up a valid point about the media not giving us the whole story, but it seems the media has mostly presented the situation like it is.

The "Passion" is different from the situation in New Orleans. Unlike Jewish-Americans in Hollywood, African-Americans have almost no positions of high importance in the media. So it's not like they have the power to block out negative coverage of themselves in the media.

The media might not want to address the topic of black crime, but it's not like they don't cover black crime. The urban media do a lot of coverage of crime in black areas. They just don't mention the racial element generally. That allows them to make money, but lets them avoid charges of racism.


I'll check out the book you mentioned sometime.

Also, I wouldn't say that FOX News is afraid to let its employees talk honestly about race and other issues that offend liberals. Commentator Bill O'Reilly has been repeatedly criticized for making "racist" remarks about blacks and Hispanics, but the network continues to support him strongly. I also remember a few years ago they had a popular special story about reverse discrimination that targeted white fire fighters, which liberals criticized. Fox has generally been on the conservative side on the immigration issue and did give positive coverage to "Passion." I believe that even Pat Buchanan was allowed to talk about this book "Death of the West" on the network a few years ago. So I'm skeptical they'd engage in any coverup of black looting and violence.

This article described the crowd as "orderly" in one situation.

http://www.tampabaylive.com/ stor...eworleans.shtml

"Within minutes of the soldiers' arrival at the convention center, they set up six food and water lines. The crowd was for the most part orderly and grateful for the first major supply convoy to reach the arena."

I'm not sure why exactly data from past centuries isn't considered admissable in this discussion. I don't mean the Middle Ages, but fairly recent centuries. From some of the remarks I have heard lately, not so much here as at other "race realist" websites, you might think that non-black people had never rioted or perpetrated atrocities. Nineteenth century America was full of riots. Some of them resulted in truly heinous acts. The mainly Irish New York City draft riots of 1863, among many acts of extreme violence, destroyed an orphanage for black children, an act that was alluded to by anti-Irish and anti-Catholic propaganda for years to come. (There are Thomas Nast cartoons from the 1870s that in the foreground are about Tammany Hall corruption or the alleged menace of parochial schools, but in the background have a burning building labeled "Colored Orphan Asylum.") The Protestants were forgetting their own history, however, for there had been violent anti-Catholic riots earlier in the century, including one in Boston in 1834 that burnt down a convent.
This is not white guilt. I don't believe that whites are "the cancer of the human race," in Susan Sontag's absurd phrase, but I don't believe that blacks are either. I believe that, unfortunately, human beings of all varieties are capable of gre