Split and moved from this thread: Taiwanese people only like “white” foreigners?
You should give her a copy of Guns, Germs and Steel for her birthday. Mr. Diamond will set her straight.
I read that book myself after much pestering to do so by some left wing liberals. It was pretty good but not out standing in my opinion. I liked the bit about the Guineans having a better sense of direction. That was very interesting.
I cannot remember much else about it; please remind me.
Interestingly the book argues that a large part of the reason for differences is geographical, but of course culture is very important too. No doubt genetic differences do play a small part.
The Chinese had a more advanced society than Europe for thousands of years and were blessed with many cultivable food crops and a good water supply and plateaus for irrigation. The theory goes that the monolithic nature of Chinese culture and top down control inhibited it’s ability to adapt and incorporate outside technological advances. That’s the theory. Chinese are fond of blaming European powers for ‘destroying’ the integrity of China in the 19th centure but obviously the rot had set in before that and the rot was from inside not out.
As for ‘whites’ it is varied pale skin colour and not a race, even Han Chinese are a mixture of different genetic backgrounds. Also don’t forget the Arabs/Persians made many important scientific advances…ideas and information was constantly being exchanged around the world. Who was more open to these ideas or could efficiently apply them…that may have made the difference. For instance the British utilised their maritime might and fairly efficient but flexible governing structures (political territories, colonies, East India company) to dominate foreign lands politically and economically, they were open minded and far sighted (or greedy!) in some ways, for instance stealing tea from China to grow in India.
Well in a way yes because environment applies selection pressure on the organisms living in it. However, only organisms able to suvive and have progeney will continue their genes and some of that ability to survive will come not only from an organisms abilty to adapt to its environment but also to pro actively change it. Therefore genes will certainly have an effect and I cannot see it any other way. It only makes sense that certain groups on average will be better geneticaly adapted to do certain things. I cannot see why that is an issue at all. The old saying “white men can’t jump” makes a lot of sense ON AVERAGE.
That’s pretty much what I mean, take the average Caucasian or a person who was born into a Kenyan highland tribe, raise them in the same family, givem them reasonable amounts of exercise and ask them to run across the highlands for 20km, who do we think will get there first. The person with Kenyan heritage has very likely inherited different genes for fast/slow muscle use and makes it easier for him or her. The same for white swimmers, black basketballers etc. Just the way it is (of course we are dealing with averages here, something that always be made clear). There will obviously be differences in other aspects of the expression of our genes for intelligence, emotional response etc, the point is whether they are major or minor … most evidence points to a small influence. The debate becomes instantly characterised as racism, is almost impossible to touch the topic in a rational debate…TABOO.
To get back to the geographical influence, that was 99% on the food sources and climate and prevalent diseases and items available for tool making, not really on how it shaped body shape or intelligence etc. As we can see in reality, the differences between humans around the world in terms of phyisque or other aspects is actually quite small (although it may add up to significant effects when you assemble a whole population). There MAY be an argument for a phenonenon called ‘epigenetics’, a type of imprinting of DNA that takes generations to change. For instance why are the Dutch the tallest people in the world. The leading theory is that along with a propensity in their genes to be tall, they have had the longest existing middle class with sustained good nutrition…they have been allowed to reach close to their full genetic potential for height, but the key is this full potential cannot be reached in one generation but in multiple generations, as the DNA is subtly altered to allow more ‘height’ up to an unknown maximum. This is also the reason Japanese and Taiwanese kids are sprouting taller than me all around! It takes not one generation but a few generations. That means the next bunch should be even taller still!
Epigenetics was a theory that was thrown out 100s of years ago but it has powerful effects along with the traditional theories of evolution.
Interesting post. Thanks.
Lamark would like that idea.
Absurd. Obviously the people who made the program and your Taida friend still in their heart believe it is genetic - so they claim the Han are white too. They too can be part of the master race! If they didn’t believe whites were superior, they wouldn’t be trying to force facts to show the Han and white people are the same race.
I just asked her on facebook if she can give me the name of the book . It was around five years ago when she was at Tai Da but she said “i will try to get the name”.
Lets see if she can find the name I’d love to see this book or her teacher’s source.
I suspect the teacher’s source is all in her/his mind. “White people are obviously superior - just look at their culture compared to ours. What a loss of face! But wait - we’re not like those dirty Indonesians and Filipinos. We’re white too! Problem solved, loss of face averted. I’ll just have to manipulate a few ‘facts’ taken out of context to prove my point. My gullible students don’t want to lose face either, so they’ll buy it.”
Good post bababa
I was slightly surprised when a few minutes ago she got back to me with the source which is from this book.
According to her this is also a fairly well known and popular book among Taiwan academics and a lot better know than “Guns Germs and Steel”
I have not read it so do not know if the “Chinese being white” claim is actually in the book. It does however seem to mention China and Chinese history a lot.
headhonchoII
This could be true but then again, maybe, maybe not. The Kenyan thing has that been tried? It could be. I don’t know if this would happen for sure.The white swimmers are…? Faster, better? My black roomate was reading the history of slavery and I borrowed his book. I found out that coastal black Africans would often jump slaveships and swim away at very great speeds (Witnesses & recorded by whites). So when they came to the new world slavemasters made sure that they usually could not teach their offspring how to swim = easier escape The same was done in Colonial Africa.. It went on to say social factors as well culture and racism keep/kept blacks out of the pool for generations and it’s still not become a popular sport among many black people today. Seems there is no conclusive proof whites are just better than others at swimming. Just 1 example. I believe in rational debate, but in order to have this we need all of the facts and quite often we don’t because they are hidden or unknown to us.
Yah this is true but i feel you are missing the big picture here (no disprespect intended).
Those population “groups” that have undergone selection pressures for certain abilities will in the end (as a population made up of the survivors’s genes) be better at those abilities than a populaton which has not. There are no doubt some groups of Africans whose survival has been influenced by their ability to swim. Therefore those groups will as a group be better at swmming. Populations that have needed to radically change their environments in order to survive and have viable offspring will after a few generations as a popualtion be far more skilled at whatever skill(s) were needed in order to change those environments.
I think she is seriously oversimplifying and misunderstanding the point of the book. It is certainly true that the author doesn’t think racial differences are the cause of the West’s superiority, but he spends 600 pages explaining and discussing what is.
Looking through the parts of the book you can see from the link it looks like a pretty interesting read.
Yah I am very very tempted to buy it. It is a long book too so maybe big bang for the buck. I bet her teacher interpreted it his own way as bababa said but I think one of us need to read it! Bsimark you go first mate as you are richer than me so I can buy it off you second hand :roflmao:
Well yes some of it is cultural factors but think about it. Black people are better physically adapted to living in climates with direct sunlight. Long and thin bodies may possibly make these tribes people better at endurance running. There are tests for fast/slow muscle twitch and other influences on our metabolism, things will be a lot clearer a few years later. A little known fact is that Africans have by far the most genetic diversity of any population on earth, the difference between people from different tribes/backgrounds in Africa is often MORE than the difference between those people and Caucasians. The secrets of diversity are hidden in the genes, that’s why I speficially mentioned Kenyan highlanders, who are very likely to have genes adapted to low oxygen levels and endurance running, compared to native Kenyans from the coast.
It’s obvious that in basketball taller is generally better. Are African-Americans taller than average Whites? These are all generalisations, I already said but there is a core of physical differences to them that can’t be denied. The real debate should be in the level of influence/variation, not in whether there is no difference.
The argument about colonial this and that…bogus. Let’s throw true racist inferences out of this argument please. Most people worldwide could not swim until the 20th century, even now huge numbers of people can’t swim having never been taught. Swimming is not a popular sport among white people either. Another note, there are not many Asian top swimmers but certainly China would have tried it’s best to get them into the Olympic medallists, they’ve done it for diving but have not succeeded in swimming, at least not yet. Same with basketball..physical attributes make a difference.
I’m not saying cultural factors don’t have a role, they obviously do, but there is a core difference (in general) due to body/muscle type. You don’t see many tall older female gymasts do you?
Let’s look at it another way, nobody would say women and men have the same attributes, they evidently don’t both physically and emotionally, except for very few people nobody argues mixing the sexes in sport, they would regard it as unfair. But if you mention the obvious fact that there are differences (in general) between different groups of people everybody gets all hotheaded.
From my understanding of things, until colonialism, the West and China had very little direct contact. They knew of each other basically through intermediaries (which is precisely what spawned the desire to search for a shortcut to Asia and the discovery of the Americas). Given the number of Westerners actually in China interbreeding during the colonial period, let alone before it, I think it’s a very, very long bow to claim Europeans and Chinese are from the same race.
In terms of natural selection in Europe accounting for DNA differences, that’s actually probably only a very small part of the explanation of any DNA differences in modern Europe. Immigration accounts for a much, much bigger part of the picture. The period of Great Migrations (as well as North African/Arabic conquest of certain parts of southern Europe, and much later with Turkish conquest of much of the Balkans), which began near the end of the Roman Empire and continued basically until about the 10-11th centuries, is largely responsible for the genetic makeup of Europe today. That’s why, for instance, the Celtic people, who originated in Central Europe and eventually came to populate much of Western Europe, have been pushed to the very extremes of Western Europe, largely by Germanic and Slavic people.
Anyway, Diamond’s theory on Europe vs China goes as follows (and I was actually telling my wife about this last night, including in reference to places such as the Caucasus Mountains and also Afghanistan and the diversity in those two places). Essentially, China is a big, largely flat land with two rivers running in parallel that were connected via canals and roads fairly early in history. As such, it was possible for one culture or state to dominate at different periods in time. Europe has never had one master. The Roman Empire never even got close. Neither Napoleon nor Hitler hung around for long enough, and the different peoples of Europe are pretty resistant even to the E.U. The reason is because Europe is composed of a number of islands and peninsulas, has several mountain ranges, and its rivers are radial. Also worth mentioning is that part of the reason the Roman Empire – which had the best shot at controlling Europe – failed to make any real progress across the Danube and Rhine was because those regions were heavily forested at the time. This means that different regions were very difficult to dominate politically and culturally and naturally lent themselves to a very high degree of diversity. Thus, in the 15th century, when China had a huge fleet that reportedly travelled as far away as Africa and maybe even Australia, when the new emperor didn’t want to do that anymore, it was game over. In Europe, when Christopher Columbus had his crazy idea to find a shortcut to Asia, he could shop it around the many countries of Europe. I believe he was successful on the sixth try (which was actually his second try with the Spanish).
I have never understood why people get hotheaded at that. I really can’t understand it at all perhaps I am not smart enough. People don’t get hot headed someone says the earth is not flat so why get hot headed saying there are differences between different groups? 
It’s like we are living in “Alice through the looking glass” where small is big and big is small.
I wonder how many western graduates actually graduated in the “hard sciences” these days compared to other non science subjects. I bet it is small and getting smaller.
Yah i guess the fall of the west will be coming quicker than expected considering most seem to be living in “noddy” land when it comes to logic.
Regarding East African long distance runners, I believe it’s something to do with having lower bone density, which essentially makes them lighter.
One thing that has always interested me is how certain countries that are located at very high altitudes haven’t produced really good endurance athletes. Is it their body type being wrong/too stocky? Is it because they’re poor? I’m just very surprised that we don’t see some Nepalese or Peruvian endurance athletes.
I’m sure there must be something about Chinese that makes them less suitable for swimming. Obviously, they have strong development programmes in place, and they’ve figured out to chase certain sports such as gymnastics, diving and shooting that have a high number of available medals (because such athletes can compete in a number of closely related disciplines). Swimming can be a high yield sport for medals, so surely the Chinese would be trying to target it if they could. I read an article a while ago that said that America losing the medal count to the Chinese at Beijing wasn’t because of a home turf advantage and is highly unlikely to reverse itself in the near future. It was because the Chinese really target these high yield sports, whereas the vast majority of American athletic talent either ends up in a sport that has a very low medal yield (basketball – one medal per team), or in a non-Olympic sport (American football, which would still be only one medal per team even if it were an Olympic sport). Is baseball an Olympic sport? If so, it would be a very low yield sport for medals. That’s because those (and other) professional sports make more sense financially than taking up gymnastics or diving.
fenlander: People don’t want to talk about race in the West. They especially don’t want to talk about race in America. You can get in deep shit for even saying the word niggardly, which has no etymological connection with nigger.
Americans like to super-size other things, so why not their obsession with race?