When Satoshi Kanazawa isn’t killing puppies, eating babies, and biting the heads off of chickens while on stage, he writes articles with titles like, “Why Are Black Women Rated Less Physically Attractive Than Other Women, But Black Men Are Rated Better Looking Than Other Men?” Fortunately for the Nurture Nazis, if you just read “Black Women Rated Less Physically Attractive Than Other Women”, you have yourself a platform from which to launch a witch (warlock?) hunt. Nevermind that starting a sentence with “Why” and ending it with “?” makes it a question. Nevermind that it was someone else’s data that made these claims and not Dr. Kanazawa. And definitely nevermind the second part where it talks about black men being more attractive. Nope… just take some bits out of context and twist them around a bit and the recipe for another barrage of anemic critiques of evolutionary psychology to keep us all busy pointing out the bullshit propaganda campaign and science denial being waged at the behest of creationists and hucksters of their own dystopian socialization regimes.

Truth be told, Kanazawa’s article didn’t really do anything for me. I read it on Sunday before the flak hit the interwebs on Monday, then just moved on to the next thing. I harbor no allegiance to Satoshi Kanazawa, although I do appreciate his thinking from time to time. No, the only reason I responded to this was the barrage of tweets that passed by me today using critiques of this article as just another example of why evolutionary psychology is phrenology 2.0. But really, critiques of evolutionary psychology are Darwin critiques 2.0. Conservative biologists and conservative Christians alike have been flogging notions of evolved human behavior since his 1872 follow-up to “On the Origin of Species”, “The Descent of Man”. I know, it’s only been about 130 years; we shouldn’t rush into these things.

Below are three of the articles that I saw referenced most often today. They all pretty much follow the theme of “bla bla bla racist bla bla bla evolutionary psychology sucks bla bla bla Satoshi Kanazawa stole my lollipop bla bla bla”. In other words, they’re all agenda-driven reactionary tripe offered in lieu of substance. I’m sure you’ll enjoy them as little as I did.

Oh, Psychology Today pulled Kanazawa’s article, there’s an archived copy here.

And yes, I realize that those I’m critiquing shun all logic and reason to deal in ad hominem and emotional pleas. And yes, I suspect that by calling out their lack of rigor and excessive rhetorical blather that I’ll be labeled a sexist racist boogeyman. Hopefully it’s worth that risk for the few whose agendas don’t get in the way of truth.

PZ Myers Detests Evolutionary Psychology

PZ Myers, holder of the esteemed PZ Myers Associate Professor Chair of Biology and Fear & Loathing of Evolutionary Psychology at the University of Minnesota (Morris), once again bestowed upon us a critique of such whithering paranoid banality to make the weepiest of Fox News contributors… umm… weep… with envy at the propaganda drenched splendor.

Invisible superhero magician from outer space knows, I’m a fan of word games… when the game is fun. However, Dr. Myers is apparently confused by Kanazawa’s proper use of the terms “subjective” and “objective”. Kanazawa uses the primary definition (1) of subjective and the converse adjective definition (6) of objective to delineate ratings of the self (read: subject) or the other (read: object). This is particularly non-novel in this context as “objectification” based on beauty has been in the vernacular since forever. Rather than stick with the standard English definitions clearly warranted by the context, Dr. Myers mangles Kanazawa’s piece by going Plato on us and using objective/subjective in a philosophical wordfuck. This misunderstanding should be taken as a warning of how far out of his depth Dr. Myers is when leaving his field and playing quasi-science pundit in evolutionary psychology. It wouldn’t be so bad, but his sycophantic commenters demonstrate their willingness to misinterpret politically inconvenient hypotheses by regurgitating the same objective/subjective criticism ad nauseum.

Strangely, Myers also holds Kanazawa responsible for the methods by which the data were collected. That would be fine if the data were collected by a study of Kanazawa’s design, but this was a blog post asking what someone else’s data meant. But no, Dr. Myers can’t resist his emotions when it comes to his “detest” for evolutionary psychology on days when he “simply cannot bear the entire field“. Congratulations Dr. Myers, the entire field can’t bear your Utopian heartfelt, yet science bereft critiques on any day.

As Robert Kurzban wrote the last time PZ Myers waded into the depths of his own misunderstanding, “Myers’ Critique of EP: Strong Language But Weak Tea“.

Somehow, Myers gets the question of population genetics wrong too (assuming the “Out of Africa” hypothesis is correct).

Kanazawa: “For example, because they have existed much longer in human evolutionary history, Africans have more mutations in their genomes than other races.”

Myers: “That makes no sense. My ancestors, your ancestors, and Kanazawa’s ancestors were all African — we share mutations with all Africans from before the time our European and Asian ancestors left Africa, and those ancestors then accumulated new mutations at the same rate as the populations left behind in the ancestral homeland. We European/Asian folk inherited a subset of the totality of human genetic variation, but there’s nothing that implies Africans are or have been mutating faster than anyone else.”

No, it makes perfect sense when you consider that the populations that left Africa ~45 KYA did not in fact “share mutations with all Africans from before the time” they left. The migratory populations were likely small and relatively isolated compared to the entire population of Africa at that time. Genetic analysis points to a very small set of common ancestors for non-African populations. If that’s the case, then it’s accurate to say that the genetic diversity in African populations would be larger because those populations didn’t experience such a narrow genetic restriction in their evolutionary tree in such recent history. If the genetic diversity was higher to begin with, and didn’t undergo restriction, the subsequent mutation rate being similar would not equalize the total genetic diversity of various populations on its own.

Jezebel.com Hopes a Funny Chart Will Make Up for Shoddy Analysis

Anna North’s critique of the article smacks of George W. Bush on the pulpit leading up to the Iraq War. If you want to attack somebody you already don’t like, just make the ‘facts’ fit your narrative.

“Kanazawa’s latest Psychology Today post aims to prove that black women are ugly and also full of themselves”

The title of the post was “Why … ?” Dr. Kanazawa looked at some data and asked some questions based on the data. The data (however flawed) showed  that black women were perceived as less attractive on average, and that their self-perceived attractiveness ratings were higher than average. Given those data points, it’s scientifically appropriate to ask why there’s a disparity. One of the obvious answers is that the data aren’t that great. However, Kanazawa simply said: “It is very interesting to note that, even though black women are objectively less physically attractive than other women, black women (and men) subjectively consider themselves to be far more physically attractive than others.” Sure, Anna North might be employing hyperbole for effect, but using a hackneyed literary device to distort someone’s words so you can then call them a racist to get more page views is cheap theater – I can feel my shoes being pulled by the sticky mess on the floor of this Jezebelian nightmare as I try to escape its mire.

The F Word Blog Should Have Added a Funny Chart

But in this case, the “f word” in question is “feminism”, so humor will be optional at best. Fortunately, Josephine Tsui kept us in amygdala mode by issuing a “Bad Science Alert“.

“Evolutionary Psychology has been riddled with debate of whether they are using scientifically sound methodology.”

Truth: Social scientists, postmodernists, social constructivists, and blank slaters have been riddled with debate on methodologies for portraying evolutionary psychology as scientifically unsound.

“Evolutionary psychology often uses the method of biological determinism.”

Truth: This argument is pure straw-woman.

“The truth of the matter is that scientist don’t know what makes the links between behaviour and genetics and you can’t postulate one from another.”

Truth: The inability to point to a specific “gene expression X” in a given circumstance does not preclude drawing links from behavior to genetics. The non-human animal field of behavioral ecology engages in such science daily without charges of gross methodological foul-play. However, the anti-evolutionary psychology camp denies that humans are animals by placing Homo sapiens outside the realm of evolved behavioral mechanisms. Applying their social constructivist bent in their direction, it is likely that this exceptionalist anthropocentrism derives from millenia of socialization by monotheistic domination.

“What Satoshi Kanazawa doesn’t realise is that attractiveness is a result of socialised behaviour.”

What Josephine Tsui doesn’t realize is that attractiveness is an integrated framework between socialized behavior, domain specific learning differentials, and evolved biases and heuristics reflecting game theoretic principles of parsimoniously maximizing survival and reproduction in sexual species. Rather than cite the billions of studies that completely refute Josephine Tsui’s remark, I’ll just reference the Psychology of Attractiveness Podcast. Dr. Robert Burriss lists multiple studies on multiple pages (and he’s funnier than a Jezebel.com chart). Heck, even I managed to cobble together an article about how butts and breasts are overrated, but that cross-cultural markers of attraction have been measured empirically.

“What he doesn’t realise is that it’s not that Black women are less attractive, it’s that all of his test subjects are inadvertently selecting for characteristics that are socially popular. What is currently socially attractive is a western ideal of attractiveness. You cannot predict the level of attractiveness by society (and people’s behavioural decision) by a group’s genetic dispositions.”

So close! What we have here is a testable hypothesis (or three). Unfortunately, it’s stated as fact.

So I Guess I Gotta Make the Arguments for the Haters

It’s true. These incessantly oblique critiques of evolutionary psychology have become so predictable that I feel sorry for their authors. The likes of PZ Myers have the tired and impotent formula down, but every time an inconvenient article comes out, a wave of neophytes jumps in to demonstrate their complete lack of understanding on all things based on evolutionary theory. It’s worse when they’re non-scientists.

So… I realize that agendas come before facts, but just in case someone with an agenda also wanted to throw in a fact (or question whether something is a fact)…

  1. The data here seem ripe for scrutiny. At this point, we have no idea who the interviewers who rated the students were. The attractiveness ratings would have been altered by varying degrees of prior familiarity between the individuals… whether the interviewers were of a certain age… the same sex or opposite sex breakdown… ingroup/outgroup… interviewer race… et cetera. There are simply a lot of variables that bring the reliability of attractiveness data into question. Perhaps this information is available, but it wasn’t in Kanazawa’s article, and I couldn’t find it on the study’s website. However, we also can’t reasonably write it all off to culture just because we don’t know these variables.
  2. Black women don’t have higher levels of testosterone than white women. Not only are they not higher, a 2005 study in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism found that: “Serum estrone sulfate, estradiol, androstenedione, and testosterone levels were significantly lower in African-American women than in Caucasian women.” It’s important to note that this was in pre-menopausal women. Many of the studies on female androgen levels are in post-menopausal populations. For some reason, PZ Myers and the rest of the internet spent all day whining about the things that Kanazawa didn’t say, and ignored the pièce de résistance – that the little that he actually did say appears to be wrong. Perhaps Kanazawa had other research in mind, but… it wasn’t referenced.

Ironically Racist?

It’s a mathematical oddity that Kanazawa is being relentlessly accused of being a racist because of the piece he wrote. In the title he was very clear that this data showed that black women were rated as less attractive than the other categories, but black men were rated as more attractive than the other categories. That forces me to ask, if the black men don’t count for anything in the calculus, and just the notion that a group of women was rated as less attractive than others was enough to get the title of racism, then what’s the difference between racism and feminism? And… if the postmodern feminists have enough power to turn an Asian dude who admits black guys are more attractive into a racist, how is that a demonstration of the oppression of women we’re required to assume underlies theories of pervasive patriarchy?

Psychology Today Lost Points (Today)

I subscribe to a few blogs on Psychology Today. We don’t know the full story, but it appears that Kanazawa’s piece was yanked because of political backlash. Upon reading how little Kanazawa actually brought to the article by way of explanation (beyond sharing the data), this all seems like a misguided case of shooting the messenger. The data are the data. If Psychology Today cares more about politics than data, why bother hiring PhDs? Censorship of opinion is bad enough, censorship of [scientific, non-private] data is doubly ugly.

Never forget:  It’s Only “Good Science” if the Message is Politically Correct

37 Comments
  1. Emily 13 years ago

    Hah – I'm going to post on dopamine and the differences between men and women over at Psychology Today in the next day or so. I doubt it will get much attention.

  2. Dame Liberty 13 years ago

    The next question is: Will Dr. Kanazawa be appointed to Obama’s cabinet à la Larry Summers?

  3. Neill 13 years ago

    Really sad that these people are paid to write such drivel.

    And why (presumably) pay Kanazawa if you don't want to hear what he has to say?

    • Andrew 13 years ago

      I'm pretty sure Psychology Today bloggers get paid by the page view. Apparently the Fox News model of sensationalism pays.

  4. Author
    @mikhaill 13 years ago

    Our society has very different stereotypes about Black male versus Black female sexuality, which of course is related to perceived attractiveness. It is therefore not surprising that Black men fared better than Black women. However, this doesn't make the piece any less racist. Racism can and does intersect with other isms. Hurtful and unsubstantiated messages aimed at Black women but not at Black men can still be racist.

  5. Geoff 13 years ago

    Hey Andrew,

    Really enjoyed reading this one, there's nothing I hate more than overly PC bullshit getting propagated and appeased.

    Wanted to address your first criticism of the actual article about the validity of the data. While I know nothing about the validity of the data in this study, I wanted to point you to an article that reaches similar conclusions on the OK Trends blog, which I consider to be very reliable. Article is here: http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/what-if-there-w…. This article is a follow up to this one: http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/your-race-affec… which is less interesting since it doesn't adjust for relative population.

    I'd encourage you to read both at your leisure; they're very interesting, The data is of actual people messaging other people who they are trying to bang. No self reporting, no rating, just empirical results. The only limitations come from the possibility that for one reason or another the members of OkCupid are not representative of the greater population, which at this point I don't think has any basis.

    In any case, in the graph entitled Avg. Monthly Messages received per person, you can clearly see that blacks are still the least popular, although the difference is much less pronounced when adjusted for population density than it is in the raw data. You'll also notice that people overwhelmingly prefer their own race, which could very easily skew the data quoted in the Psychology Today article.

    Geoff

  6. hbd chick 13 years ago

    people who subscribe to the theory (with a big T) of evolution very often don't (want to) believe that natural selection also acts on humans and human behavior (type specimen: pc myers). oddly, very many people who don't believe in evolution subscribe to evopsych-like ideas about human behavior and human biodiversity.

    strange, but true. science says it's so.

    • Dana 13 years ago

      It'd be nice if ev psych people actually looked into evolution once in a while rather than using hoity-toity scientific language to justify stupid, insulting questions that don't even need asking.

      I mean, the black race died out long ago and Africa's empty. 'Cause NO ONE finds black women attractive.

      (yes, reducto ad absurdum… but there you go.)

      I suppose some of the same people standing up for Kanazawa privately ask one another why so many black women with fifteen kids are on welfare. Wow, someone found those women unattractive FIFTEEN TIMES.

      You see what I mean?

      • Andrew 13 years ago

        If what you mean is that you appear unable to enter into an attempt at dispassionate and reasonable discussion without abandoning logic, reason, and political agenda at every possible juncture, then yes, I totally see it.

  7. Thales Coutinho 13 years ago

    Professor Satoshi Kanazawa always liked sensationalism. He has done it again! =P

  8. ABlackWoman 13 years ago

    By all means, please don't feel the need to make any arguments for anyone. I could have don't without this as you did not state anything new in regards to the other pieces EVERYONE UNDERSTOOD THE DATA IS FLAWED. You made only one interesting observation that the critiques you went so hard against aren't evolutionary scientist. And they were delivering their messages from different viewpoints of feminism, social psych, political, biologist etc. So why not critique other evolutionary scientists critiques instead?

    I think all you know is wrapped in your books and computer screen. Your other article is drivel as well. I hope your goal of trying to be 'funny and unique' works out for you. What would be even better is you coming back as an 'inconvenienced' Black woman with and loads of testosterone who no one finds attractive. Have good one, cheers!

    • EightiesSupport 13 years ago

      Is this Kristen Wiig?

    • Andrew 13 years ago

      Believe me, if people had been out there making good arguments, I would have spent my time doing something way more fun.

      I disagree with your statement that everyone understood the data is flawed. The degree to which it is (and is not) flawed is still not even understood because the information needed to make that assessment is not available.

      Your dehumanization of me says more about you than anything else you wrote.

      • ABlackWoman 13 years ago

        The data is incomplete and skewed and people did and do understand that; not that data on this subject can ever be assessed without bias. So again you haven't said anything new. Now you can freely go have fun.

        Your assessment of that article being inconvenience says more than the unconvincing intellectual diatribe you wrote.

        I am glad you felt I dehumanized you for stating you should come back as a Black woman. I know that feeling pretty well I mean after all who would want to a Black woman. Unfortunately I am. So when I read things like why I am considered unattractive or that articles like those are just inconvenient and everyone just has their knickers in a bunch because flawed and not flawed data.

        To many this was just another dehumanizing article stating 'scientifically' why I'm considered ugly and unimportant. Not that we don't see it historically, hear it in music, see it on TV/ in movies, feel it legislatively…the list can go on and on etc. I needed a reminder that I have to work 4x as hard as you will ever need to or white woman or as of late Black man.

        Cheers!

        • Andrew 13 years ago

          Puh-lease. The dehumanization I mentioned was your reduction of me to "books and [a] computer screen". As books and computer screens are the only inhuman objects you attempted to reduce me to, it seems you're just going to interpret everything I say in the absolute worst way possible. That hostility is both unfortunate and counterproductive.

          There are some valuable perspectives in your last two paragraphs. That's all I'm going to say because I don't look forward to having my words twisted further.

          • ABlackWoman 13 years ago

            Geez Louis. Relax! I don't hate you (or Kanazawa). Why does the Black woman have to be hostile? Just joking. I just didn't find your articles stimulating/enlightening or enjoyed you putting others down. There are other articles that manage to say the same things you did without sounding condescending.

            Cheers!

  9. Kadphises 13 years ago

    Although I can't agree with Myers' total refusal of Evolutionary Psychology, I think he got the population genetics right and Kanazawa got it wrong. Of course, there is more genetic diversity (differences between individuals) in Sub-Saharan Africa than in other parts of the world (for the reasons you mention), but this has nothing to do with the mutation load of any person (the number of deleterious mutations in the genome of this individual), as Kanazawa mistakenly implies.

    • Andrew 13 years ago

      http://colorlines.com/archives/2011/05/fire_kanaz

      “We support free speech and academic freedom, but…”

      Behold the tyranny of the majority mob rule.

      • Jon 13 years ago

        If somebody repeatedly adds to the stupidity of the human race, either through willful distortion of the data or because he’s a really bad scientist, should he still have a job as a teacher at a prestigious school?

        Is it mob rule, or the tyranny of the majority when we want creationists cast out of universities?

  10. Andrew 13 years ago

    Men tend to find female faces that are the most averaged most attractive. That doesn't mean the most average or common, but a composite face of geometrical features averaged into one face. I don't have a study handy, so I don't recall if studies along those lines have been controlled for culture.

  11. Andrew 13 years ago

    Ah yes, the author of Sex at Dawn. I didn't realize who you were talking about at first. I do have some problems with his work. I've been promising a review/critique of the book since forever. One more reason to crank that thing out.

    Poo flinging… Yes… I sometimes forget the allure of that among us social primates.

  12. Bennett 13 years ago

    Does anyone else get the feeling like Kanazawa just trolled the academy?

  13. igel 13 years ago

    attractiveness is a 'social concept' – perhaps in part…

    but there is an easy way to see who is considered attractive and who is not: composition of interracial marriages:
    there are only very-very few of them where a wife is black, but a lot when a husband is
    the reverse situation is with asians: almost no women want to marry asian men, but a lot of men of various ethnic (and social as well) backgrounds want to marry asian women

    • Jon 13 years ago

      To me this implies only that a lot of men consider asian women to be demure or submissive, as opposed to black women. Maybe it’s an evolutionary trait to find demure women more attractive, but it might just as well be social. I don’t see how the data would support your assertion.

  14. Emily 13 years ago

    Here is a nice critique in Scientific American blogs: http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?i

    Most important bits – AdDHealth was a study of adolescents starting at the age of 12 – unclear what it means with respect to adult ratings of "attractiveness.". Race of raters was not recorded. Some raters found everyone unattractive, some found everyone attractive…

    We bloggers just hit the button and publish without oversight until after the fact. There is condemnation of the PT editors – they edited after the fact, and one flaw in the SA analysis is that there were no statements by PT editors – there were – The editor-in-chief made a statement about the article being pulled. I don't know that there have been any statements from Kanazawa. The students at his university are calling for his removal.

  15. Nanonymous 13 years ago

    But really, critiques of evolutionary psychology are Darwin critiques 2.0.

    Rrrrright. Since when a bunch of just-so stories have the same status as monumental discovery grounded in tons of meticulously collected experimental data?

    • Andrew 13 years ago

      It might be related to your naive perspective, or it might be because evolutionary psychology builds on the ideas introduced by Darwin himself in the later major works, The Descent of Man (Part II in particular), and The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals.

      The quasi-argument about “just-so stories” has the same anemic logical footing as theists’ “god of the gaps” tendencies. Invoking Regurgitating it hints that your understanding is just shallow enough to mount an attack failing to surpass the threshold of a “just-ain’t-so story”.

      • Nanonymous 13 years ago

        Well, I've heard that defense (roughly: "you don't understand evo psych therefore you won't understand what I am saying hence I won't even say anything") too many times. What I've never seen is someone actually demonstrating that what looks, smells and quacks like just-so story is actually not one. Everything I read points unequivocally to one simple observation: Evo psych is perfectly in line with Freudianism and Marxism – the all-explaining non-falsifyable set of quazi-religious beliefs that allows its proponents to go about their charlatan ways fooling gullible public for profit.

        So, once again: How do you think it is reasonable to even start comparing mountains of solidly linked theoretical and experimental data (theory of biological evolution) with hot air fantasies that have explanatory and predictive power of five year old kids' theories on how things work?

        • Andrew 13 years ago

          "I've heard that defense…too many times."

          What we've haven't heard is an actual argument from you that requires a defense. Until you've somehow demonstrated some understanding, spouting sarcasm and chanting "just-so stories" is fucking lazy and boring, particularly when they're lobbed obliquely (we're forced to presume) at every hypothesis in which evolution enters the realm of not only cognition, but all human behavior. You're simply demonstrating argument from incredulity.

          We all anxiously await your groundbreaking insight refuting the five decades of work on innateness of language from Chomsky (1969) to Culbertson, et al (2011).

          When you've done that, refute this study demonstrating the genetic influence on gender…
          Reiner, W. G. and J. P. Gearhart. 2004. Discordant sexual identity in some genetic males with cloacal exstrophy assigned to female sex at birth. New Engl. J. Med. 350:333-341.

          Until then, enjoy worshiping at the altar of data manipulating Stephen Jay Gould and the sycophantic proponents of ID who recite his non-arguments as freely as you.

          • bigh 13 years ago

            Funny that you respond to his calling EP "just so stories" by citing Chomsky when that's exactly how Chomsky criticized EP.

            Since I am actually attracted to women based on their physical features, not their race, and sometimes even *gasp* their personality and interests, I'm trying to figure out if I should consider myself as having some genetic mutation that makes me a random outlier or that my upbringing in a multicultural environment had something to do with it. I just feel that Occam's razor could be used to slice of the entire "science" of EP without much loss.

          • Andrew 13 years ago

            I'm not sure that's an accurate representation of Chomsky's position on the totality of EP. And yes, I intentionally used Chomsky's linguistic work to hammer home how far-reaching the implications of wholesale rejections of EP really are. Most are motivated by the blank slate hypothesis so ruthlessly dismantled by Chomsky's pupil, Steven Pinker.

            In any case, the "just-so story" critique is ultimately anemic. Even in the instances where it's a potentially accurate criticism, all it does is question whether a trait actually evolved for the hypothesized reasons. It neither negates data, nor that the trait exists, nor that the trait evolved. So it may be appropriate for a philosophy of science style argument, but that line of argumentation is more nuanced and less damning than most people who who recite it every time they want to dismiss EP think it is.

            To add to their multi-level ineptitude, "just-so story" critiques are, in themselves, just-so stories in the negative. Hence my previous reference to "just-ain't-so stories".

            "…I am actually attracted to women based on their physical features, not their race…"

            It would be interesting to see a definition of race that didn't include any reference to physical features.

            "I just feel that Occam's razor could be used to slice of the entire "science" of EP without much loss.

            This feeling may be greatly aided by some permutation of the following:
            1. A misunderstanding of Occam's razor.
            2. A misunderstanding of evolutionary psychology.
            3. Disregard for truth.

  16. Dana 13 years ago

    What possible scientific motive could lie behind either proving black women are considered least attractive, or questioning why the data say black women are considered least attractive? Seriously, what purpose does it serve? It makes about as much sense to ask why redheaded men are considered least attractive among whites. But, at least a redheaded man, who is nearly always going to be white, at least in European and American culture, has got some socio-political advantage over a black woman.

    It's not like we're talking about a haircut here, or a style of dress, or hey, even one's BMI, which sometimes can be changed for the better. We're talking about an essential part of the person that can never be changed. You can bleach a redhead's hair, but you can't stop the roots growing out red. And you can't make a black woman not be black.

    So I ask again. What is the point?

    And you have to understand that this idiotic article *and* the idiotic data it referenced come on the heels of a whole lot of other cultural insults lobbed at black women over the centuries, at least since the advent of black slavery in Europe and the Americas and possibly even before then. If black people have historically been held to be inferior to every other race, well, women have historically been held inferior to men, so black women get a double whammy.

    You can't expect them to not be angry. And since the only question that matters to people like you is whether or not you're being properly scientific, that's what they're going to use against you–they're going to tell you you're not scientific because that's the only place they can hit you.

    If you don't like it, pursue some scientific question worth pursuing. Because plainly *someone* finds black women attractive, or there wouldn't be a black race anymore. Nor black-and-other mixed-race people, either.

    And by the way, those were questions asked of college students. Affirmative action or not, which race is still predominant on college campuses? Wow, why in the world would black women have come in last on *that* vote?

    Science, huh… We'll see, won't we?

    • Andrew 13 years ago

      That you asked "what possible scientific motive could lie behind" {insert anything here} demonstrates perfectly that you're confusing science with politics. The motive of science is truth. You couldn't even make it out of the paragraph without framing the scientific validity of questions in terms of "socio-political advantage".

      Because plainly *someone* finds black women attractive, or there wouldn't be a black race anymore.

      Fuck this is just tiring. Whatever the question, it's always about probabilities and averages, not some binary system. Tall people are more attractive. "But… but… I know a short guy who has a girlfriend." That's why there's a hoity-toity scientific term for this type of reasoning: anecdotal nonsense.

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