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I don't see what this statement has to do with anything, since the policies we don't like or even consider racist has nothing to do with "black people are just dumber."
I don't see what this has to do with anything either. Sure, it doesn't play well. It doesn't then follow that if this kind of information became common knowledge, then that would cause greater racial hatred or the like.
This is what I mean by sheer force of will. First of all, no, they weren't using these very arguments; they were using claims about fact that were similar to the facts that are being claimed now. Arguments are something different altogether. But either way, whether or not these forms of segregation, dehumanizing talk, and, let's be honest, plenty of straight-up murder and genocide, were justified by such arguments doesn't answer the question of whether or not more such bad behavior were caused due to the availability of such arguments.
When I say the dots have no actual underlying connection, this is what I mean; I see societies that were already extremely racist projecting their racism onto science and taking out what they wish. Despite the best efforts of many people, our current Western society has largely based itself around egalitarianism, as imperfectly as it may be.
I think the strongest argument to be made about this is that our egalitarianism is imperfect, and there's plenty of latent and not-so-latent racism hanging around, and HBD being available can "activate" that latent racism and exacerbate it. This would have to be weighed against the value we get from HBD in explaining phenomena more accurately which also help to reduce the rates of racist acts. The calculus on this can never be properly done, but I can see how someone would be convinced that, on net, this would cause more racism than less, and perhaps also worse racism or pushing society in general into a more racist direction, to the extent that censorship is justified. I would disagree vehemently and believe that the person has far too high an opinion of their ability to do this kind of moral calculus, but it's a defensible position. It's not the position I hear from the overwhelming majority of people who want to suppress HBD, sadly, who seem to overwhelmingly just poo-poo the idea that HBD, even if true, could have any sort of positive influences whatsoever.
My original comment was about leftists believing that HBD is so dangerous as to justify censorship of it, so that's the context I was writing into. Maybe it's not doeish naivete, I don't know and I honestly don't care. I think the reaction is naive, but likely more hawkish than doeish, to mix metaphors. If we're not talking about censorship, then I don't know what the conversation is; do you agree with me that it would be better if people on the left didn't believe that HBD was an idea that was dangerous to an extent to justify censorship of it?
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