Some comments about "race" and "intelligence"

I didn't see anything in that delightful talk that applies to "Race and Intelligence" apart from his comment that what is "different" amoung us (in so far as a separation into different groups that are visible as different) tends to be a very small part of the genome and tends to be only about superficial surface differences. He pointed out that because they are visible, they are more likely to be selected for (or against) despite being superficial. That doesn't contradict anything that I've said, that I can see, nor does it support Brad's contentions, nor does it support the "there are no races" theory.

How does it not support "there are no races" theory, given that the superficial gene spectrum is so huge (due to environmental forces,) but that the DNA differences are so small? What I can't get my head around is the idea that there is some kind of hard defining line between one race and another. I just don't think it exists, other than to say "this individual is separate and distinct from all others." He can't be anything else in my view.

Post 101

Saturday, May 19, 2012 - 11:45pm

Teresa,

To say that there must be some fixed percentage of the total genes that differ or the item in question is ruled "not a difference" is not a logical necessity. It may be only one gene that differs to make someone blue eyed instead of brown eyed, but it is a visible difference. With only one gene differing out of the vast number of genes, does that mean that there is no such thing as eye color?

There is no "hard defining line" between races... but that doesn't make the term "race" meaningless. What about blondes, or skinny people, intelligent people - are there hard defining lines that mark blond from brunette? Skinny from medium? Intelligent from average? People could choose to define such lines, if there was a reason to do so. And because they haven't, it doesn't mean that blond, skinny or intelligent are categories with no existents.

If we work hard at "mixing" (which I think is a good idea :-) then the day will come when it no longer makes any sense to refer to races. That day hasn't come yet - people still see differences and react to the categories with absurd and often damaging, illogical attributions. But the cure isn't to claim that there are no differences. Bigots won't buy it and it just isn't logical.

Post 102

Sunday, May 20, 2012 - 8:06am

Good points all around.

Rand talked about conceptual efficiency or rather, conceptual economy -- i.e., only forming concepts when you need to, and always forming concepts when you need to. The question that arises is whether we need to form concepts of race or, in other words, whether there is an existential need to differentiate humans by race. There is a cart-before-the-horse conundrum here because in order to discover whether we should conceptually differentiate humans by race -- we have to first discover whether it makes for a meaningful difference to do such a thing (and you cannot discover whether there is a meaningful difference unless you start with the operational differentiation of humans by race).

You have to assume that, say, caucasians are a different race from asians -- before you can talk about whether and how or where that difference might matter. Thinking of caucasians as different from asians is a methodological starting point, and from there you can look to see if it is a difference that matters or is important in some context.

Ed

Post 103

Sunday, May 20, 2012 - 9:55am

Personally, outside of medicine and science (because "groups" are necessary to solve individual problems that those outside of these disciplines do not require,) I think race is merely a cognitively unevolved psychological heuristic. There are no meaningful differences, or inherent ideas connected to such differences, as they may exist.

Post 104

Sunday, May 20, 2012 - 10:54am

Ed,

Excellent post on conceptual efficiency. As Teresa says, science has a need to understanding grouping, simply because that is part of what they do. Medicine just barely needs groupings - only because they can rule in or out some diagnosis, and/or tests based upon race.
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Teresa,

We don't disagree by too much. The meaningfulness of any difference is, of course, context based. That is, the difference for a given medical context could be important, but only within that context for that individual at that time and any measurable increase in the efficiency of a diagnois or determination for testing.

The giant difference is the one you point out: an unevolved psychological process. I would describe it like this: People group other people by those visible genetic differences (which are superficial), then they identify the individual with a collection of values (racial discrimination), or, an individual identifies him or herself with a racial group and adopts one of the subcultural sets of values associated with that race. These two erroneous processes feed each other - discrimination and self-identification. This last is the least understood or discussed today - it is the person creating and perpetuating a blindly accepted, peer pressure induced stereotype. This is the tight bond between race and values - that the person chooses a set of values because they think that is what they should identify with given their race (a destructive and totally unnecessary choice).

Post 105

Sunday, May 20, 2012 - 2:21pm

An excerpt from "WHAT IF THE HEREDITARIAN HYPOTHESIS
IS TRUE?" by Linda S. Gottfredson (http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints/2005hereditarian-hypothesis.pdf):

Widespread acceptance of the hereditarian
hypothesis would, they say, put us on the slippery slope to racial oppression or
genocide. They do not explain how this would happen but usually imply that
because the Nazis were hereditarians, hereditarians must be Nazis at heart. But we
can no more presume this than that IQ-environmentalists are Communists because
the Communists were IQ-environmentalists. One might note, in addition, that
regimes with environmentalist ideologies (Stalin and Pol Pot) exterminated as
many of their citizens as did the Nazis, and virtually all the victim groups of
genocide in the 20th century had relatively high average levels of achievement
(e.g., German Jews, educated Cambodians, Russian Kulaks, Armenians in Turkey, Ibos in Nigeria). The critics� predictions of mass moral madness, like their
frequent demonization of scientists who report unwelcome racial differences,
seem mostly an attempt to stiﬂe reasoned discussion.

But might society be better off not knowing that races differ in g, whether
genetic or not? As Glazer (1994, p. 16) asked, �For this kind of truth, . . . what
good will come of it?� Summing up his argument against candor, he stated:

Our society, our polity, our elites, according to Herrnstein and Murray, live with
an untruth... I ask myself whether the untruth is not
better for American society than the truth.

But we must also ask, What harm might the untruth cause? Should we really
presume that denying the existence of average racial differences in g has only
beneﬁts and the truth only costs? Lying about the enduring Black�White difference in phenotypic g would seem to be both futile and harmful in the long run. It
is futile because the truth�and attempts to suppress it�will become increasingly
obvious to the average person. Phenotypic differences in cognitive ability have
relentless real-world effects that are neither ameliorated nor hidden by claims to
the contrary...

Lying about race differences in achievement is harmful because it foments
mutual recrimination.... Someone must be at
fault. Someone must be refusing to do the right thing. It therefore sustains
unwarranted, divisive, and ever-escalating mutual accusations of moral culpability...

Post 106

Sunday, May 20, 2012 - 9:48pm

I have a question for Steve: I'm not sure what your position is on this issue, so would you mind clarifying it for me? Are you saying that there are no average differences in innate physical or mental abilities between different racial and ethnic groups -- that all observed differences in these abilities are strictly a product of environment or of personal interest, effort or application?

If so, would you say the same thing for individuals within a particular racial or ethnic group -- that all individual differences within a particular group are themselves simply environmental or the result of personal effort and development? If that is your view, then I think it is highly questionable. It seems obvious to me that people are born with significant differences in their physical and mental capacities. To be sure, whatever one's innate potential, it has to actualized, but some people simply have more to work with than others. They are born with better brains, better bodies, better physical and mental assets. Ayn Rand was certainly more gifted intellectually than I; Michael Jordan, more gifted physically.

If this is true for individuals, why could it not also be true for groups of individuals? Why couldn't different racial and ethnic groups have average differences in their physical and mental capabilities? Why are people so uncomfortable with this idea? It certainly doesn't imply that a particular member of a group must possess the same physical or mental attributes as the average for his or her group.

The old stereotype of "white men can't jump" while true for the average white basketball player (vis-a-vis the average black player) certainly doesn't imply poor jumping ability for any particular white basketball player. Nor do I don't think that such physical differences are due solely to better personal development or to a stronger work ethic. Heredity undoubtedly plays a role here.

If this is true for physical talent, why couldn't it also be true for mental talent. A friend of mine is a math whiz, whose grandmother was also a math whiz. She got a perfect score on the math portion of an SAT test that she took when she was 100 years old. Amazing! I dare say that my friend's skill in math was due at least in part to a certain mental capacity that he inherited from his parents. The brain is a physical organ, just like the heart and lungs, and people are born with physical organs that have different levels of potential.

So the idea that some racial or ethnic groups happen, on average, to have better physical or mental potential than other groups should not be entirely surprising. It would be surprising if they didn't.

P.S. Suppose someone believed that in certain sports such as sprinting and jumping, blacks on the average were more innately gifted than whites. Would you call such a person a "racist"? And if not, why not?

(Edited by William Dwyer on 5/20, 10:24pm)

Post 107

Monday, May 21, 2012 - 12:44am

I think Steve revealed himself with this comment:

If we work hard at "mixing" (which I think is a good idea :-) then the day
will come when it no longer makes any sense to refer to races.

Notice how he emoted at the idea of "mixing" to the point of obliterating all racial distinctions. This is the end game for him. This is why he so aggressively attacks my views. It's not about the freedom to mix with blacks. I don't deny anyone that freedom within a free society (just as I don't seek to censor dadaist art). He hates race realists such as me because he shares the same ultimate goals as the race deniers and race levellers: to blend away racial distinctions, such as blonde hair and the American Indian phenotype, to the point where they cease to be. He's thus a radical egalitarian who objects to geographic patterns of human biodiversity at the metaphysical level.

He longs for a world consisting exclusively of brown-skinned, dark-haired mediocrity. He longs for a lowering of IQs in Europe and Asia after they all become hybridized with Africans.* He publicly evades evidence for racial IQ heritability and denies that IQ is important, but I suspect privately he knows full well the consequences of what he's advocating.

Lower IQs correlate with more poverty, more crime, less wealth, and fewer cultural achievements. For him, though, idealization of equality trumps rational consideration of the aforementioned real-world consequences of lowering a nation's IQ infrastructure.

*At current growth rates, sub-Saharan Africa, which now makes up 12 percent of the world's population, will account for more than a third by 2100 (http://video.nytimes.com/video/2012/04/14/world/africa/100000001488374/africas-population-peril.html).

Post 108

Monday, May 21, 2012 - 11:17am

Brad,
I get the impression that you would never date a black person or hire a black person because of what you see on a plot of the IQ Bell Curve of the black race vs. one of the white race. Don't you get that you cannot determine an individual's IQ by looking at the Bell Curve of a group to which they belong?

You cannot determine an individual's employment status, criminality, whether she is an unwed mother, etc., etc., from looking at the Bell Curve of the race to which he or she belongs.

We don't even need to go into the question of what you can determine about an individual's worth from that individual's IQ score, because apparently you never view people as individuals anyway.

Post 109

Monday, May 21, 2012 - 12:15pm

Bill,

You asked, "Are you saying that there are no average differences in innate physical or mental abilities between different racial and ethnic groups -- that all observed differences in these abilities are strictly a product of environment or of personal interest, effort or application?"

No. There are many average differences. All observed differences are NOT strictly a product of environment, choices, effort, or application.

I'm saying, primarily, these three things:
1. IQ is not intelligence and only a very small part of real intelligence is inherited.
2. Subcultures often tend to roughly correspond with race where many members of a given race identify with a given set of values. But that is a matter of choice - not genetics. And this is important because outcomes are far more dependent upon chosen values than genetically influenced potentials. Thus people make a mistake of saying this or that race is genetically prone to things that are actually coming from the adopted subculture's values.
3. The innate, or genetic components usually have a very great overlap between races despite differing averages. This makes it a fallacy to attempt to reason from the general (the race) to the individual.

I think that you can see from the above that I would apply the same principles to differences between individuals within a race.
-------------------

You wrote, "So the idea that some racial or ethnic groups happen, on average, to have better physical or mental potential than other groups should not be entirely surprising. It would be surprising if they didn't. "

I've never disagreed with that - depending upon what you mean by "mental potential." Real intelligence is not a potential, but rather the actualized portion of their potential. It is very dependent upon choices made - values accepted. Which is why some people who could score extremely high on an IQ test can also have very little common sense, behave irrationally, hold obviously nutty values, etc.
---------------------

You wrote, "Suppose someone believed that in certain sports such as sprinting and jumping, blacks on the average were more innately gifted than whites. Would you call such a person a "racist"? And if not, why not?"

No (unless I had prior knowledge that the person was a racist and that this was there motivation). The statement, separate from the motivation of the speaker, is true and it is not racist.

Here is Ayn Rand on race:

"Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man�s genetic lineage�the notion that a man�s intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry. Which means, in practice, that a man is to be judged, not by his own character and actions, but by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors.

Racism claims that the content of a man�s mind (not his cognitive apparatus, but its content) is inherited; that a man�s convictions, values and character are determined before he is born, by physical factors beyond his control. This is the caveman�s version of the doctrine of innate ideas�or of inherited knowledge�which has been thoroughly refuted by philosophy and science. Racism is a doctrine of, by and for brutes. It is a barnyard or stock-farm version of collectivism, appropriate to a mentality that differentiates between various breeds of animals, but not between animals and men.

Like every form of determinism, racism invalidates the specific attribute which distinguishes man from all other living species: his rational faculty. Racism negates two aspects of man�s life: reason and choice, or mind and morality, replacing them with chemical predestination.

I agree with her description completely.

Post 110

Monday, May 21, 2012 - 12:18pm

Well said, Laurie.

I'm not going to bother to reply to the ugly statements Brad addressed to me. His racism is as clear in that post as are the logical failings in his arguments.

Post 111

Monday, May 21, 2012 - 1:13pm

I get the impression that you would never date a black person or hire a black person because of what you see on a plot of the IQ Bell Curve of the black race vs. one of the white race. Don't you get that you cannot determine an individual's IQ by looking at the Bell Curve of a group to which they belong?

If I thought that group averages were determinative of individual IQs, then I wouldn't depict the overlapping bell curves. We all operate somewhere within the distributions!

The point is, we shouldn't be surprised or morally outraged that in professions requiring high-level mental functioning, blacks will be relatively scarce absent Affirmative Action interventions. Denial of racial differences in distributions of cognitive capacity will tend to foster surprise, moral outrage, and demands for Affirmative Action in response to what is natural and entirely predictable.

Post 112

Monday, May 21, 2012 - 2:10pm

Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man�s genetic lineage...

Racism claims that the content of a man�s mind (not his cognitive apparatus, but its content) is inherited; that a man�s convictions, values and character are determined before he is born, by physical factors beyond his control....

Like every form of determinism, racism invalidates the specific attribute which distinguishes man from all other living species: his rational faculty. Racism negates two aspects of man�s life: reason and choice, or mind and morality, replacing them with chemical predestination.

I think that genetic lineage is socially significant and is so objectively, meaning regardless of whether we want it to be. I argued this aspect of Ayn Rand's conception of racism here: http://rebirthofreason.com/Forum/Dissent/0249.shtml

I believe I could convince Ayn Rand of the objectivity of racial differences were she alive today. She didn't study evolution and didn't have acess to all the data on race that is now available.

I certainly don't claim that "that the content of a man�s mind...is inherited; that a man�s convictions, values and character are determined before he is born." Rather, the cognitive apparatus is inherited. It is no more a negation of reason and choice to point out brain differences within our species than to point out brain characteristics and limitations we have in common. The "crow epistemology" (unit economy) is an example of Rand's recognition that our brains are insufficient for processing large quantities information at once.

That individuals who share a common geographic ancestry that gave them large brains may be able to process more information more efficiently than others who share different geographic origins in which smaller brains were selected for does not imply that higher IQ makes one more moral. Who actually believes that, anyway? Nazis think Jews are innately evil even though Jews have high IQs. Blacks operate at about an 8th grade level compared to whites in the 12th grade. I don't think 8th graders are immoral by virtue of not being 12th graders. Nor do I negate the morality of rational selfishness. I've argued explicitly for it.

Nor do I negate choice. Choice itself comes from the fact that our genes give it to us -- which is to say, chemical predestination. Ants don't have free will because their genes don't give it to them. What is not chemically predetermined are particular, individual choices, though we can make accurate predictions of what large numbers of people will choose in aggregate (sex, violence, welfare dependency, etc.) based on their biologically given natures and the environments in which they operate.

(Edited by Brad Trun on 5/21, 2:25pm)

Post 113

Monday, May 21, 2012 - 4:12pm

Steve,

Thanks for replying to my questions. You wrote,

I'm saying, primarily, these three things:
1. IQ is not intelligence and only a very small part of real intelligence is inherited.

Hmm. I would say that IQ tests seen to do a pretty good job of measuring "G", or general mental capacity, which is largely inherited. Of course, one must actualize one's potential; one must develop it, but a significant part of that potential, I believe, is inherited, at least according to what the science of psychometrics has been able to ascertain.

2. Subcultures often tend to roughly correspond with race where many members of a given race identify with a given set of values. But that is a matter of choice - not genetics. And this is important because outcomes are far more dependent upon chosen values than genetically influenced potentials. Thus people make a mistake of saying this or that race is genetically prone to things that are actually coming from the adopted subculture's values.

Well, sure. That I agree with.

3. The innate, or genetic components usually have a very great overlap between races despite differing averages. This makes it a fallacy to attempt to reason from the general (the race) to the individual.

Oh, I agree, and I don't think Brad is guilty of that fallacy.

I wrote, "So the idea that some racial or ethnic groups happen, on average, to have better physical or mental potential than other groups should not be entirely surprising. It would be surprising if they didn't. "

I've never disagreed with that - depending upon what you mean by "mental potential." Real intelligence is not a potential, but rather the actualized portion of their potential. It is very dependent upon choices made - values accepted. Which is why some people who could score extremely high on an IQ test can also have very little common sense, behave irrationally, hold obviously nutty values, etc.

So true!

You wrote, "Suppose someone believed that in certain sports such as sprinting and jumping, blacks on the average were more innately gifted than whites. Would you call such a person a "racist"? And if not, why not?"

No (unless I had prior knowledge that the person was a racist and that this was there motivation). The statement, separate from the motivation of the speaker, is true and it is not racist.

Okay, but then you're not calling the person a "racist" based on the statement itself.

Here is Ayn Rand on race:
"Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man�s genetic lineage�the notion that a man�s intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry. Which means, in practice, that a man is to be judged, not by his own character and actions, but by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors.

"Racism claims that the content of a man�s mind (not his cognitive apparatus, but its content) is inherited; that a man�s convictions, values and character are determined before he is born, by physical factors beyond his control. This is the caveman�s version of the doctrine of innate ideas�or of inherited knowledge�which has been thoroughly refuted by philosophy and science. Racism is a doctrine of, by and for brutes. It is a barnyard or stock-farm version of collectivism, appropriate to a mentality that differentiates between various breeds of animals, but not between animals and men.

"Like every form of determinism, racism invalidates the specific attribute which distinguishes man from all other living species: his rational faculty. Racism negates two aspects of man�s life: reason and choice, or mind and morality, replacing them with chemical predestination."

I agree with her description completely.

So do I, but observe how Rand defines "racism." According to her, "Racism claims that the content of man's mind not his cognitive apparatus, but its content) is inherited." Of course, the content of one's mind is not inherited; that's the doctrine of innate ideas. According to Objectivism, man is born tabula rasa.

Post 114

Monday, May 21, 2012 - 8:11pm

Bill,

You wrote,

"Of course, one must actualize one's potential; one must develop it, but a significant part of that potential, I believe, is inherited..."

Yes, but that is like putting an engine into a car (the size of the engine relates to the size of the potential speed), but it stays potential, which means NOTHING until the engine is connected to the wheels, and under the control of steering, throttle, etc.

Potential is not actual.

The variation between the sizes of engines might be very, very minor when compared to the size of variation in connections that turn the potential to actual. What we inherit is minor in comparison to the various components of intelligence that arise from choice/values.

We seem to agree almost everywhere - except for perhaps a disagreement as to the size/significance of the difference between potential and actual intelligence.
------------------

As to what Rand wrote, take a look at this, "[Racism] is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man�s genetic lineage...", which I believe you agree would agree with.

Now, notice how bluntly Trun contradicts Rand when he says, "...we can make accurate predictions of what large numbers of people will choose in aggregate (sex, violence, welfare dependency, etc.) based on their biologically given natures..."

Post 115

Monday, May 21, 2012 - 8:59pm

Trun says, "I think that genetic lineage is socially significant..." That statement could have been made by any of the supporters of Eugenics, Apartied, or even of those who call for the execution of inferior races. I'm NOT saying that Trun has gone that far, but there is an obligation for him to explain just what "socially significant" means in the context of race.
----------

Trun said, "I believe I could convince Ayn Rand of the objectivity of racial differences were she alive today. "

He would not need to convince her that there are objective facts that support physiological racial differences. That's silly. His statement that Rand didn't understand evolution is absurd. She would never be convinced that those things that arise from choice were actually generated by genes. No more needs to be said on that.

The basic principles of evolution started with Darwin and Rand was very clear on those principles, as she was on the difference between chosing between values, and being born with innate ideas.
------------

Trun wrote: "The 'crow epistemology' (unit economy) is an example of Rand's recognition that our brains are insufficient for processing large quantities information at once. " That Trun statement is also silly. The 'Crow epistemology' phrase can be used to refer to the need to abstract to create concepts that subsume many units (which Rand was saying), or to refer to the fact that humans can only hold 5 to 9 units in short/working memory at one time and, as memory experts refer to this, we "chunk information" - reducing two or more units to one unit so we can work with it. That is combining two units into one so we are effectively holding, say, 7 instead of trying to holding 8 which is harder. Try this, "How high off the ground would your hand be if you held it straight up in the air while sitting on a camel?" You have to take pieces of that and do computations, then take that summation as a single unit before moving to the next attempted computation. If we don't do that 'chunking' we don't have enough working memory (which is like a conveyor belt where the 5th, 6th, or 7th item will fall of the end if we try to put another item on the belt. Neither race nor brain size change that simple fact for working memory.

Nor can anyone say that the physical size of the brain determines the ability to form good concepts. We can teach people (black or white) to improve in thinking ability - that is a skill. We can do far more effective thinking if we have more valid values to start with. We can do far better thinking if we aren't troubled by unneeded neurotic defensiveness. The distance between potential and actual is enormous.

Trun leaps forward to say, "...individuals who share a common geographic ancestry that gave them large brains may be able to process more information more efficiently than others who share different geographic origins in which smaller brains were selected for..."

In other words, he says some races have bigger brains and that makes them more intelligent and that is socially significant. He keeps saying that he does not negate choice, and that he isn't talking about morality, but he gets around to talking about the meaning of "socially significant" - he says, "... we can make accurate predictions of what large numbers of people will choose in aggregate (sex, violence, welfare dependency, etc.) based on their biologically given natures..."
--------------

Hence, his full argument is that blacks have smaller brains, that makes them less intelligent, and that means we can predict that blacks will engage in more "sex, violence, welfare dependency, etc." In other places he has mentioned things like immigration, implying that race should be a criteria for immigration.
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Post 116

Tuesday, May 22, 2012 - 12:21am

In Post 101, Steve wrote,

If we work hard at "mixing" (which I think is a good idea :-) then the day will come when it no longer makes any sense to refer to races.

To which Brad took strong exception, on the grounds that it would create "a world consisting exclusively of brown-skinned, dark-haired mediocrity." In short, Steve wants us to work hard at racial mixing, while Brad deplores racial mixing.

My question is: why in the world should we "work hard" at racial mixing, on the one hand, or abstain from racial mixing, on the other? Why shouldn't people simply marry whom they choose, regardless of the race of their partners? We're not collectivists, after all; we're individualists. Besides, people tend to choose partners who are close to their own level of intelligence anyway, so in a free society, I don't think one has to worry about any leveling to "mediocrity" due to miscegenation.

Post 117

Tuesday, May 22, 2012 - 2:36am

William,

I don't think being neutral on all forms of race mixing to all extents is a viable stance for a rational valuer. Rand romanticized caucasian facial features and hair in her novels. These features weren't, for her, interchangeable esthetically with negroid features. I am not neutral on the question of whether I'd want to live in a world where we could only read about blondes or see them in old movies.

I value the preservation of the Swedish blonde phenotype and the Japanese oriental phenotype purely as a matter of esthetics. I wouldn't want to see Sweden and Japan mixed so thoroughly that you couldn't tell them apart anymore, even if it had no adverse effects on GDP or crime rates for either country.

Mixing sub-Saharan Africans with all Swedes or all Japanese would have severely negative consequences across the board for those societies. It would shift the innate IQ bell curve to progressively to the left in proportion to the level of African admixture and at 50% would virtually eliminate IQs above 135 (the top 1%, the creative geniuses) from those societies. Are you neutral on that?

People who don't care about the genetic legacy they are leaving through miscegenation with blacks should at least consider their own well-being. Interracial marriages involving black spouses statistically are more likely to lead to domestic violence and spousal
homicide as well as child abuse and children with psychological and behavioral problems, than same-race marriages.

Post 118

Tuesday, May 22, 2012 - 3:44am

Rand didn't know many racial minorities during her lifetime, and I think the look of her characters just reflected what she was most familiar with. Given the world wide popularity of her books now (especially in places like India,) I'm willing to bet that if she were to write any more fiction, it would include people of color.

(As a side note, I'm a little bewildered by people who are upset by the casting of Rand's characters to include racial minorities. I personally think Rand would be delighted by the idea. Her books weren't written for "white people." They were written for everyone.)

Post 119

Tuesday, May 22, 2012 - 7:25am