On Mon, May 11, 2009 at 10:50 AM, Louis Proyect <[email protected]> wrote: > Jim Devine wrote: >> >> I can hardly remember all of the book under review, but there's one >> article in it that goes utterly against the sociobiologists' creed. >> Diamond argues that "racial" differences in appearance (black vs. pink >> skin, etc.) arise not from the usual suspects but from Darwin's sexual >> selection. In his view, men and women tend to seek out sexual partners >> who look like the people they know and trust. Thus, black men & women >> seek each other out, passing down genes for black skin, while pink men >> & women seek each other out, passing down the genes for pink skin, >> etc. > > Odd, I always attributed white men choosing white women and vice versa to > racism, not passing down genes.
_Of course_, it's racist. And this behavior is not "attributed to" the purpose of passing down genes. It's an _effect_ of racism, or ethnic prejudice. For all his faults, Diamond was not engaged in teleological explanation in that article. That's another thing that differentiates him from the sociobiologists (or at least the hard core of their tribe): their theories involve a lot of teleology, e.g., assumptions that evolution produces perfection. By the way, one of the most racist activities goes against Diamond's sexual selection theory. That is the common practice by white slave-owners of raping their slaves. -- Jim Devine / "If heart-aches were commercials, we'd all be on TV." -- John Prine _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
