Re: Is white racism nec. all bad?

Frank Forman (forman@ix.netcom.com)
18 Apr 1995 23:31:59 GMT

In <3mqksd$o33@news.cc.utah.edu> pb1487@u.cc.utah.edu (Paul Bernhardt)
writes:
>
>Arun Gupta (gupta@mrspock.mt.att.com) wrote:
>
>: Here is another example of "science" produced by another of these
>: scientists, again, quoting Kamin :
>
>: "The high rate of sexual activity in Negroids," Lynn has suggested,
>: may be caused by a high level of the male sex hormone, testosterone.
>: The "crucial supporting evidence" for the notion that blacks have an
>: over-supply of testosterone is the fact that "Negroids have higher
>: rates of cancer of the prostrate than Caucasoids...an important
>: determinant of cancer of the prostrate is the level of
testosterone."
>: The chain of reasoned evidence is : prostrate cancer is caused by
>: testosterone; blacks tend to have prostrate cancer; therefore blacks
>: must have lots of testosterone; the abundance of testosterone makes
>: blacks sexually active; that causes them to produce lots of babies,
>: for whom they will not provide, and who will become criminals and/or
>: welfare caess. Its all in the genes.
>
>: ...To show that testosterone causes prostrate cancer ....Lynn cites
>: a paper by Ahluwalia et. al.. That paper, Lynn writes, reported
>: "higher levels of testosterone in patients with prostrate cancer
>: than in healthy controls." [But] Ahluwalia et. al. reported that
>: black prostate patients in the United States had higher testosterone
>: levels than did control subjects. But among blacks in Nigeria,
>: control subjects had higher testosterone levels than did prostrate
>: patients !.....
>
>Since I am a researcher in Testosterone correlates with behavior, I
feel
>qualified to comment on this.
>
>There is no unambiguous evidence for testosterone differences among
the
>'races'. Testosterone varies by about 50% over the course of the day.
By
>about 10% over the course of the year. Winning a competition increases

>testosterone (even if the competition is something like Chess).
>When a sports fan watches the favored team win, testosterone
increases,
>especially in persons with low self esteem. Just like intellegence,
the
>differences between individuals (and within an individual, depending
on
>situation, and time) are substantial and overshadow any differences
that
>might be observed between races.

I don't think intelligence varies that much over the course of a day
(at least when awake!), but certainly there should be more research
into these matters in light of the difficulties you mention.

Frank