Is It Racist If Science Shows One Race Has More Intelligence Than Another?

[darko100 1]

Since it insults the person , yes it's racist :)Nobody would like to be named stupidier / has less intelligence. I mean , that makes a lots of problems and doesn't solve any problem in our world. Shouldn't scientific experiments be done to solve world problems?But anyway , i don't think science can prove such a theory. I see it completely random... Even if it's proven , it doesn't mean anything. You can archieve anything even with lower intelligence.

[Bikerman 2]

Since it insults the person , yes it's racist

Sorry but that is a fairly useless way to decide. If someone takes offence at something I say, that does not mean that I intended to offend and nor does it mean that they are justified in taking offence. People take offence far too easily in my experience.
Racism is the irrational belief in the superiority or inferiority of people based on race. The important word is 'irrational'. If the belief is rational - based on evidence - then it isn't racist, any more than saying that someone born in Japan will be, on average, slightly shorter than someone born in England. It WOULD be racist to make a generalisation - all blacks are stupid, all Japanese are short. Those are both stupid (irrational) statements that I would clearly consider racist.

Nobody would like to be named stupidier / has less intelligence. I mean , that makes a lots of problems and doesn't solve any problem in our world. Shouldn't scientific experiments be done to solve world problems?

If people don't like it being pointed out that they are less intelligent then that is their problem, not the person making the claim. It may be considered rude, bad taste, insensitive, boorish, but NOT racist.The notion that science should be restricted to solving problems is a very dangerous one. Who knows what problems the research done today will solve in future. Scientists should be free to pursue ANY line of enquiry they like and limiting academic freedom is a very bad idea indeed.

But anyway , i don't think science can prove such a theory. I see it completely random... Even if it's proven , it doesn't mean anything. You can archieve anything even with lower intelligence.

Science can certainly prove such things. Either there is a correlation between racial origin and intelligence or there is not - the difficulty is in devising a measurement that does not introduce secondary factors. Edited May 28, 2012 by moderator
The link mentioned is not working (see edit history)

[Acidify 0]

There very definition of racism is the belief that one race is superior to another. The truth does not change whether or not a belief, theory, fact, or scientific law is racist or not. If you believe that race plays a factor intelligenc which contribute to making one race superior to another, you are racist. This does not say that racism will not become socially acceptable if science proves that one race is superior to another, but it will still amount to racism.Of course racism and discrimination is two different issues. I think the problem though is that racism leds to discrimination. If you believe that an individual or group of people are inferior, you treat them differently. Human beings have not, and unfortunately, will probably never envolve to a leave where the belief of inferiority or supriority will not be explioted to the detriment of one or both parties. If someone presumably is inferior, it is easy to abuse that individual without it being socially unacceptable and outside of the social norms of society.However, the very idea that intelligence based on race is relevant is quite problematic. Not only, as already mentioned, intelligence is difficult to measure, but how can the obtainment of intelligence be measured? How can other factors be caculated? How can family background, enviroment, wealth, education, and opportunity to factored in to decide if one race or another is inherently more intelligent then another? I personally do not believe that one race is natural superior to another. I do believe in superior, but I don't believe it is determined by race. No more than someone's inherent physhical strength or attractiveness is based on race. Some people, for one reason or another, are born with a stronger brain. Their skin color has nothing to do with the strength of their brain.In addition, it would also be difficult to define race. If you didn't know, scientifically race does not exist. All people fall under one race, and that is the human race. Race was actually created around the time of slavery in order to justify the enslavement of other human beings on the basis of them being inferior. Even if we were to successfully define race on the basis of something such as color, how does that work? Do you put everyone side by side and measure the color of their skin? Do you go all the way back through their bloodline until the beginning of time to see how light or dark each member of their family was or to see what ethnic groups their answers were in. Do you take two guys with white skin and check to see how many guys with dark skin is in their ancestry.

[Bikerman 2]

There very definition of racism is the belief that one race is superior to another.

No that is YOUR definition, not mine. I would accept it if it is qualified slightly 'the belief that discrimination is justified by differences in racial traits' or something along those lines. I do note that the use of the word 'superior' is itself a subjective term in most cases and COULD be the basis of racism, but not necessarily.The FACT that, in general, some 'races' are 'superior' to others IN SOME SPECIFIC REGARDS is neither controversial nor, in my opinion, racist. It is a fact that people of the Japanese 'race' are, on average, shorter that people of the (say) caucasian 'race', and I do not accept that either the fact itself, or the statement of that fact, is in any way racist.
Now, if I then went on to say that 'because Japanese are shorter this means ......x,y,z' then I might well be making racist statements. For example, I could say 'because Japanese people are shorter, they should not play basketball'. Now that is clearly racist because it generalises in an unwarranted manner,

[eInfiniti 0]

Although scientists may not want to start a program to prove scientifically whether one race is more intelligent than another because it could be politically incorrect, I would not rule out the possibility that that statement is proved or disproved to be true at some unknown time in the future.I don't think it is racist. One of the earlier posts has explained what racism is.I also agree that intelligence is not everything one can offer. Everyone is different and has the potential to make contributions related not so much to intelligence.

[BordaForx 0]

Some have touched on this, but I'd like to expound on the topic.I believe race only exists as a social construct. It is a fairly modern idea without an genetic basis. One of the first modern racial classification system was created by Francois Bernier in the 1700s. In it, he indentified and ranked certain races as superior and inferior.Biologically though, race does not exist. Human beings are one of the most genetically similar species in the world. We have more in common with each other than two houseflies that look completely identicial to each other. That's because the number of genes that determine our appearances make up just a very small portion of us. I'm of German descent, but I may be more genetically similar to an individual living in a mud hut in Nigeria, than another German man.Just look back at history to see how the definition of race has changed over the years. Italians, during the earlier parts of history, weren't considered "white" in America, but they are now. We're also seeing a movement towards labelling "non-Hispanic whites" as "white." The definition of race only changes because it's a social construct.

Edited January 3, 2013 by BordaForx (see edit history)

[k_nitin_r 8]

If purely scientific evidence is used to prove that one race is better than another, then you cannot really say that it is racist. It is only racist if it is due to a bias. If there is a bias behind saying that one race is superior to another, then the bias does make one racist. It's not like someone is going to get back to you from the dead for presenting scientific evidence.