The relevance of racial realism

There are three people in a room: A, B and C.

They each possess the following skills in varying levels of excellence:

1. Zeroth Skill (ZS)


2. First Skill (FS)


3. Second Skill (SS)

ZS: A > B = C

FS: A > B > C

SS: A < B = C

If A, B and C belong to three different races, and if the observations made above applied to all individuals of the same race as A, B and C, respectively, then isn't it fair to identify the strength of each trait in a race with the race itself? Deliberately obfuscating such a persistent pattern in light of the social and cultural damage that racism has wreaked may be right when moderated by humanitarian ethics. Then, however, the scientifically provable biological realism of the association (between skill and race) will be lost out (I haven't mentioned any such traits, and the notions of the racially associated skills in the comparison above is only hypothetical).

"If anything, I’m a race realist, and that simply means to recognize and understand the fact that there are racial differences and that these differences have an impact on society, education, crime, and many other aspects of life. It is not being a racist. It’s simply being a realist and a person who’s in search of solutions, rather than simply allowing these problems to continue to escalate."

Carol M. Swain

A century of heady and steady technological progress has, more than anything else, taught us that statistical determinism still largely remains a son of chance. That means we must be as economical as we can with the data we have in order to utilize our human resources best. The real problem of racism lies in the threat posed by its misunderstanding and misuse. As a consequence of racially driven wars and sociopolitical movements, so much as recognizing a race has proved deplorable, condemning racial realism along with it. I'm not a racial realist. I only postulate that if the biological realism backing racism (as in the factitude of race and not the discrimination along the lines of race) stands proven, then we mustn't back away from that conclusion because the history of one scientific fact was blighted by the idiocy of humankind.

Moreover, continuing from the example, discrimination-by-race can occur only when a community forms that encourages, say, an eminence of the First Skill and so lets a community form solely on the basis of an inequality: A > B or B > C or A > C. In that case, a skill's association with the race is not to be blamed just as much as letting that association lend itself to the creation of a community is condemnable. In other words, the claim that "A can do this better than B can" can reek of racial realism as much as it wants to, but it can't acquire by itself a socially judgmental connotation if not for the society that tags it so.

And now, I'll start reading The Bell Curve (1994).