Originally posted by dadudemon
[B]Oh, what's up Ziggs.You know my position on this: I cannot take a hardline genetics stance against black people.
Not Hardline. Just considering what might be a missing piece of the puzzle along with culture. One people don't, or more importantly, don't want to consider.
It's because I've seen far too many black people not acting like animals to buy into the "it's in the genes" argument.
The vast majority aren't violent criminals, but that doesn't deny possibility of aggression being inherent.
The stance is that black populaces have a greater percentage of criminals, in the same way that black people are 1000 x more likely than other races to inherit sickle cell disease, despite a minority actually having that gene.
But you're correct that there are sub-groups of sub-Saharan Africans all over the place. Most African Americans were from West Africa. If you take a look at those countries, homicide rates are not as high as other African countries. When you think of "Ghana", you don't normally think of violence.
This does make matters more complicated, true.
So even if we go with the idea that sub-Saharan Africans are more violent than the average human ethnicity, then explain the relative lack of violent crime in Western Africa (where the slaves were mostly purchased and shipped from) and the preponderance of violent crime among African Americans in the US? Why aren't they as peaceful as their Western African relatives?
Is it possible that by selecting the strongest of bunch to be slaves, America also selected the most aggressive? As free T levels correlate with both and can predict violence in a person too. African Americans greater free T than whites, and I expect it's not purely an environmental difference.
Even when controlling for poverty, our African Americans are extremely violent.
This mostly (but not completely) eliminates a genetics argument. When you pull out nature from the equation, you're left with nurture. In this case, it is a culture that feeds on violence, egoism (machismo bullshit that the Italians had do deal with back in the day), shallow-worldly pursuits, etc.
I personally wouldn't hedge my bets on nature being the only argument, but here's a thought, perhaps it's the stricter culture of those countries in west africa, along with a patriarchal family structure, that inhibits people from committing crime? And instead, what we're seeing in a much more "liberated" and free culture, we're just seeing the nature of people expressed plainly.