Reply #85: #5 opens the door to the possibility of racism as you define it being right in some circumstances.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

So far as I know, the balance of evidence does not currently reliably show and correlation between race and the inherent properties of the mind.

However, it also doesn't reliably show and *absence* of correlation between race and properties of the mind, and given a) what is known about the correlation between race and the physical structure of the brain and b) the correlation between things affecting the brain and things affecting the mind, it would strike me as more surprising if there *weren't* correlation between race and the inherent properties of the mind than if there were.

I would expect much more low-level things than "intelligence" or "laziness" - things like "response time to bright lights" or "prevalence of perfect pitch" - but the former wouldn't amaze me, either. And, of course, I'm a mathematician and not a neurologist, and my predictions have very little beyond guesswork to back them up and should in no way be viewed as authoritative.

(Incidentally, I'm taking the word "inherent" as being crucial here - there's clear and incontrovertible evidence of correlation between race and intelligence and behaviour, but so far as I know there's nothing reliable that suggests that that correlation is partly genetic as opposed to wholly cultural, and I'm assuming that if it isn't then that doesn't count as "inherent").

If and when such evidence does come to light, if it shows that such inherent correlations do exist (and it may not, but as I say it would surprise me more if none do than that if at least some do) then it will be the - by your definitions racist - people who are right and the non-racists who are wrong.

The analogy with the Nazis fails because the scientists the Nazis were paying attention to were *wrong* (and for lots of other, more important reasons too, involving how they reacted to the observations). That's not an argument for ignoring *valid* scientific evidence of correlation between race and the functioning of the mind, any more than there's anything wrong with my mother getting special attention from breast cancer specialists as a result of being an Ashkenazi Jew.

You can argue that "any claim of non-culturally-induced correlation between race and behaviour is racist", or "all racism is bad", depending on how you define racism, but not both at the same time.

It's also worth, once again, drawing attention to the word "inherent" - some people try and argue both that "any claim of correlation between race and behaviour is racist" and "all racism is bad", and this - unlike your claim - I think is a serious danger, and should be strongly opposed - race *does* correlate with behaviour, and we need to acknowledge that.