On Nov 27, 3:46=A0am, "." <bbbbbdfgdfgdgd...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> One of the great intellectual divides is the venerable =A0nature/nurture
> dichotomy.
>
> Conservatives tend to be on the side of nature:
>
> Race exists as a biological reality; there are race differences in
> socially im****tant traits like IQ; people=92s brains are wired to prefer
> people like themselves; they are more likely to contribute to public
> goods like health care and education if the beneficiaries are of the
> same ethnic group; people trust others more if they live in
> homogeneous societies.
>
> The left takes the opposite tack:
>
> Race doesn=92t exist; the idea that it does exist is a fantasy of moral
> reprobates. To the extent that differences in traits like IQ are
> interesting at all, they are the result of capitalism, discrimination,
> or general evil. If it weren=92t for white people behaving badly, we
> could easily build a strong, racially diverse multicultural society
> where all people can live happily ever after.
>
> I am not going to try to convince you of the merits of either side of
> this debate. Over the years, VDARE.COM has certainly published some of
> the premier writers on the nature side.
>
> But if you pick up the New York Times, you=92ll get a very different
> version of these issues. It=92s a version which, sad to say, has a lot
> more influence.
>
> So what makes culture so powerful and how does it work at the
> psychological level?
>
> Psychologists have shown that there are two different types of
> processing systems=97the implicit and the explicit.
>
> Implicit processing is the way the ancient parts of our brain operate=97
> automatically and unconsciously.
>
> Say you are talking to a salesman about a used car. Without any
> conscious effort on your part, your brain is processing an enormous
> amount of information. Some parts of your brain are processing the
> colors and shapes of the furniture, while others are responsible for
> recognizing the face of the salesman and picking up on his emotional
> expressions. Your brain is also *****sing how similar this salesman is
> to yourself, and, without any conscious awareness on your part, it is
> making you trust him more if he is more like yourself. Furthermore, if
> he is from a different race or ethnic group, it is flagging that fact
> and it is coloring your interactions with stereotypes=97whether negative
> or positive=97that your unconscious mind associates with that race or
> ethnic group.
>
> These implicit mechanisms - psychologists call them =93modules=94 - are
> like zombies or robots. They go about their business without any
> conscious effort, and quite a few of them are beyond our control.
>
> A good example is the face recognition module. If I am looking at
> someone I know, I can=92t help but recognize him. I can=92t simply turn
> off the module. The module takes in the information from the
> environment and simply does its thing in a preprogrammed way.
>
> Im****tantly, the implicit brain includes mechanisms related to
> ethnocentrism. There are several different evolved mechanisms that
> make us prefer people like ourselves and be wary of people in
> outgroups.
>
> Phil Rushton=92s Genetic Similarity Theory [PDF] is a good example.
> Birds of a feather do indeed flock together. People tend to make
> friends and marry people who are like themselves on a wide range of
> traits, from IQ and personality, to ethnic group and even wrist size.
>
> Research in Genetic Similarity Theory finds a biological basis to this
> flocking tendency. Each system of genes wants to re****oduce itself,
> and has the best chance of doing so if it chooses to mate with a
> system of genes which has some overlap.
>
> But some aspects of ethnocentrism may be learned as well. The human
> mind is prone to rapidly learning negative stereotypes about
> outgroups. And even if these stereotypes are learned, they act just
> like the biological ones=97they are triggered automatically via implicit
> processing.
>
> The point is that in either case people tend to have negative
> stereotypes of other races and they prefer people from their own race.
> But, of course, that=92s not the end of the story=97only the beginning.
>
> The other part of the brain is the more recently evolved part=97the part
> responsible for explicit processing. Explicit processing involves
> language and thought.
>
> The implicit brain processes information in a zombie-like reflexive
> way, but explicit processing is effortful and controlled. It=92s the
> kind of processing that we use when we are solving a problem in math
> class, where we have to make a plan to solve the problem.
>
> And it=92s the part of the brain that takes in cultural information.
> When a person reads the New York Times, there a lot of explicit
> messages=97immigration is good; people who oppose immigration are
> uneducated racist Neanderthals; there are no genetic differences
> between the races, yada, yada.
>
> It=92s easy to see that there can be conflicts between implicit
> processing of our ancient brain and the explicit messages one gets
> from the New York Times. The implicit part of the brain makes you more
> comfortable socializing with people like yourself. In fact, the
> implicit part of the brain leads white people to seek out implicit
> white communities =97 =A0communities like NASCAR, country music, and
> certain kinds of rock music (like AC/DC) where the faces are pretty
> much all white.
>
> White flight is one of the most salient phenomena of the late 20th
> century. And where are these white people fleeing to? To the suburbs
> where there are lots of other white people and where their children go
> to schools with other white children.
>
> As sociologist Kevin Kruse notes in his book White Flight: Atlanta and
> the Making of Modern Conservatism, race is never part of the explicit
> rhetoric of white flight. Instead, white flight tends to be expressed
> as opposition to the federal government, the welfare state, taxation,
> and perceived moral dangers like abortion and homo***uality. But at
> the implicit level, the desire for white communities and the aversion
> to contributing to public goods for nonwhites are the overriding
> motivations.
>
> Each of these identities allows white people to associate with other
> whites without any explicit acknowledgement that race plays a role.
>
> Indeed, the granddaddy of implicit white communities is the Republican
> Party. In the recent election, the Republicans received at least 90%
> of their votes from white people. The delegates to the Republican
> convention in August were 93% white, 5% Latino, and 2% black. If these
> were all rich white oligarchs at the Republican convention, as Jon
> Stewart=92s Daily Show would have it, that would be one thing.
>
> But most Republicans are not rich white oligarchs. The fact is that
> the Republican base is really about the Sarah Palin phenomenon=97white
> Christians=97many with small town roots in the South and West=97who
yearn
> for the America they are rapidly losing: a white America.
>
> But all of that is down deep in their brains, at the implicit level.
> In the upper reaches of their prefrontal cortex, they would never
> dream of saying explicitly that they are a party of white Americans.
> That would be "racist."
>
> The same goes for their spokesmen=97although calling these people
> spokesmen for the Republican base is being a bit generous.
> =93Conservative=94 commentators like Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and
Bill
> O=92Reilly studiously avoid saying anything that could be construed as
> "racist". Nor do they dare to oppose the massive legal immigration
> that will make the Republican base a permanent electoral minority even
> if we stopped illegal immigration immediately. That=92s because the
> explicit processing system is in charge, at least at the conscious
> level.
>
> Here=92s how it works. Implicit attitudes on race are *****sed by tests
> like the Implicit Association Test. (You can take the test here.)
> Subjects are presented with photos of blacks and whites in succession
> and asked to pair positive or negative words (e.g., "intelligent,"
> "law-abiding," "poor," "success") with the photos.
>
> Eighty percent of whites take longer to associate positive words with
> blacks than with whites. This is interpreted as indicating that whites
> have implicit negative stereotypes of blacks.
>
> The interesting thing is that there is a gap between whites=92
> explicitly positive attitudes about blacks and their implicitly
> negative attitudes. Even white liberals show implicit negative
> attitudes toward blacks, although their implicit attitudes are less
> negative than those of conservatives.
>
> In fact, white liberals are more hypocritical about race than
> conservatives: There is a larger gap between implicit attitudes and
> explicit attitudes toward blacks among white liberals than among white
> conservatives.
>
> What=92s happening is that the conscious, explicit brain is thinking
> positive thoughts about blacks because it reads the New York Times.
> And it is suppressing the negative thoughts that are deep below the
> surface in the implicit part of the brain.
>
> In one study, subjects were shown photos of blacks and whites while
> hooked up to an fMRI machine that takes pictures of the brain in
> action. When the photos were shown for very brief periods=97too short to
> be explicitly processed, the fMRI showed that whites had a negative
> response to the photos of blacks. This procedure therefore measures
> implicit negative attitudes toward blacks.
>
> However, the photos of blacks were presented for a much longer period,
> so that they were processed by the explicit part of the brain. The
> difference in negative reaction to black and white faces decreased.
>
> This happened because the prefrontal cortex and explicit processing
> were activated. In other words, people who are consciously aware that
> they are seeing photos of blacks are able to suppress the negative
> automatic responses produced by their ancient brain. The explicit part
> of the brain suppresses the implicit part.
>
> So implicitly processed feelings and perceptions are suppressed out of
> conscious awareness. But that doesn=92t mean they have no influence.
> Besides affecting responses on the Implicit Association Test, the
> implicit brain is seeking out white communities like the Republican
> Party, and it has negative gut feelings about massive non-white
> immigration.
>
> This disconnect between the implicit and the explicit brain produces
> some interesting phenomena. Young children tend to have unabashedly
> explicit bias in favor of their own race. Explicit race bias emerges
> early, as young as age three or four, peaks in middle childhood, and
> then undergoes a gradual decline through adolescence, and disappears
> in adulthood. Quite a bit of this decline is doubtless due to active
> campaigns to instill the official racial ideology of the Left in
> schools. Multicultural propaganda permeates education, from
> kindergarten through college, pushed by groups of cultural Marxists
> such as the National Association for Multicultural Education: "NAME
> celebrates cultural and ethnic diversity as a national strength that
> enriches a society and rejects the view that diversity threatens the
> fabric of a society."
>
> However, there is no such decline in implicit racial preferences,
> which remain strong into adulthood. Indeed, there is also a decline in
> cross-racial friends and companions as children get older. White
> schoolchildren are much more likely to have white friends than chance
> expectation would account for, and this trend increases as they get
> older.
>
> This means that at the same time that explicit racial preference in
> white children is declining, children are becoming less and less
> likely to actually interact with and form friend****ps with children
> from other races. In effect, schools undergo a process of self-
> segregation. And among adults, whites are significantly less likely
> than other racial groups to re****t interracial friend****ps and
> contacts.
>
> The bottom line, then, is that as children get older they become
> increasingly aware of the official explicit racial ideology, and they
> conform to it. The explicit processing centers are becoming stronger,
> so that they are better able to suppress positive attitudes about
> their own race in order to conform to the demands of their teachers.
> At the explicit level, they are free from any negative attitudes
> toward nonwhite groups and may even be politically liberal or radical.
>
> At the same time, however, they are "voting with their feet" by
> choosing friends and companions of the same race.
>
> And their parents are doing the same thing. I have noted that liberals
> show a greater gap between explicit attitudes and implicit attitudes
> and behavior than do conservatives. Indeed, while highly educated
> white parents tend to have liberal explicit attitudes on racial
> issues, a recent study shows that these same highly educated whites
> seek out schools that are racially segregated and are more likely to
> live in racially segregated neighborhoods. In other words, there is a
> positive correlation between the average education of white parents
> and the likelihood that parents will remove their children from public
> schools as the percentage of black students increases.
>
> Michael Emerson, an author of the study, is quite aware of the gap
> between explicit attitudes and behavior. He writes:
>
> =A0"I do believe that white people are being sincere when they claim
> that racial inequality is not a good thing and that they=92d like to see
> it eliminated. However=85their liberal attitudes about race aren=92t
> reflected in their behavior."
>
> The explicit parts of their brains have been programmed to say and
> believe the right things. But the implicit parts of their brain are
> controlling their behavior.
>
> This might be cause for hope for those of us whose explicit brain is
> more in tune with their implicit brain.
>
> But the fact is that if explicit messages on race are repeated often
> enough, they start to become automatic and implicit. People can be
> brainwashed. This is the great hope of the cultural Marxists=97that
> constant repetition and propaganda actually could produce what the
> Frankfurt School =97 the fons et origo of cultural Marxism in the West =
=97
> called a "genuine liberal": someone who in his heart of hearts really
> has the gut instincts of a cultural Marxist; a white person who
> prefers non-whites on an Implicit Association Test.
>
> They have a ways to go on that. But the election of Barack Obama will
> probably aid the cultural Marxist onslaught on the educational system.
> I can=92t see any principles of human psychology that would prevent them
> from getting there eventually. (Of course the collapse of the Soviet
> Union indicates that religion and national identity are harder to
> eradicate than Stalin thought they were, and he tried very hard.) It
> would probably take a 1984-like police state to do it. But quite
> obviously that is not seen as a drawback by its proponents.
>
> My conclusion: The New York Times is im****tant because it and media
> like it control the explicit messages on vital issues like race and
> immigration. The culture of critique has become the explicit culture
> of the West, endlessly repeated in media messages but packaged
> differently for people of different levels of intelligence and
> education.
>
> The message here is that by programming the higher areas of the brain,
> this explicit culture is able to control the implicit ethnocentric
> tendencies of white people.
>
> The explicit culture may not be able to prevent white people from
> moving to white neighborhoods, and it may not prevent them from going
> to a NASCAR race. But it does make them supine in the face of a
> massive invasion of other peoples and cultures. It prevents the
> Republican Party from saying explicitly that they are a party of
> European-Americans intent on ending immigration and retaining their
> political majority and their cultural dominance. =A0And it makes them
> cringe in horror when someone calls them a =93racist=94.
>
> In attempting to find a way out of this morass, therefore, changing
> the explicit culture is critical. That=92s why media like VDARE.COM and
> my own The Occidental Observer are so im****tant. To paraphrase Bill
> Clinton=92s presidential campaign slogan, it=92s the explicit culture,
> stupid.
>
> Changing the explicit culture won=92t be easy. I suggest that the first
> step is a psychological one: Proud and confident explicit assertions
> of ethnic identity and interests among white people, and the creation
> of communities where such explicit assertions are considered normal
> and natural rather than a reason for ostracism.
>
> The fact that such assertions appeal to our implicit psychology is
> certainly an asset. It=92s always easier to go with a natural tendency
> than to oppose it.
>
> And in this case, our natural preference for people like ourselves is
> intellectually defensible: That is, it can withstand the probing
> rationality of the explicit processing system.
>
> It=92s the ideology of New York Times and the cultural Marxists that
> can=92t withstand intellectual scrutiny.
>
> [Vdare.com note: This article is partly based on MacDonald, K. (2008).
> Effortful Control, Explicit Processing and the Regulation of Human
> Evolved Predispositions. Psychological Review, 115(4), 1012=961031. (pdf
> on request)]
>
> Kevin MacDonald [email him] is Professor of Psychology at California
> State University-Long Beach. For his website, click here.
>
> http://www.vdare.com/macdonald/081125_ethnocentrism.htm
|
