Drew Fraser’s article
Jason Soon informs us that one of Drew Fraser’s racist mates has made his article available online. I challenge you to read the article and explain how it belongs in a law review. Even before the research and argument are considered, surely it should meet the threshold test of being in some way related to the law?
Law Review editor James McConvill told The Australian that “it was quite a well-considered piece, it wasn’t overly rhetorical. Before people could judge, they should actually read the article.” Now that we are in a position to do so, it’s blindingly obvious that McConvill read a different article. Take Fraser’s interesting conclusion, for instance:
[W]hite Australians now face a life-or-death struggle to preserve their homeland. … one of the major parties, indeed, not one member of the Commonwealth Parliament, offers citizens the option of voting to defend and nurture Australia’s Anglo-European identity. The problem, in short, is clear: The Australian nation is bereft of a responsible ruling class. The solution is, in principle, no less obvious: namely, the restoration of a ruling class rooted in the reinvigorated folkways of an authentically Anglo-American civic patriotism, a ruling class re-attached to the history and destiny of its own people. Only time will tell whether and how any such constitutional reformation could take place. … It may well be that only a miracle can save us now; all the more reason, then, to recall that God helps only those who help themselves. The capacity to act remains the key to our political salvation.
This is nothing short of a call for “white revolution”, especially when read in the context of his remark elsewhere that “only open and violent resistance to the Third World invasion” will save us from “the masses of non-white aliens crowding into our cities”.
But what of the research that allegedly underpins this tripe? There are four references to the Occidental Quarterly, which is described by the Southern Poverty Law Centre as “an academic-looking journal filled with articles by white-supremacist luminaries”. Interestingly, one of the articles referred to is Fraser’s own: he complains that Australia has been “[s]wamped by ‘the rising tide of color’ washing in from every overcrowded corner of the Third World” and predicts that “[i]n the end, a Patriot King may have to save us.”
Other Occidental Quarterly articles cited are worth a mention. For instance, Fraser refers to a book review by the late Sam Francis, who was sacked from the Washington Times for speaking to a pro-eugenicist organisation, and who “was in recent years and until his death the chief editor for the Council of Conservative Citizens, a leading white supremacist hate group.” Then there’s an article in which Louis R Browning claims that “the Jewish extended phenotype [which he characterises as a 'disease'] has been waging war on the Western biocultural organism”, including through “the Jewish development of Marxism”. Fraser also likes an article on Jewish culture by Kevin MacDonald, who supports David Irving and “who claims that Jews were evolved to be left-wing multiculturalists as part of a ‘divide and conquer’ survival strategy”. To use the words of the article Fraser cites,
[O]nce Europeans are convinced [by the Jews] of their own moral depravity, they will destroy their own people in a fit of altruistic punishment. The general dismantling of the culture of the West, and eventually its demise as anything resembling an ethnic entity, will occur as a result of a moral onslaught triggering a paroxysm of altruistic punishment.
How can anyone doubt the academic credibility of this stuff?
But it doesn’t stop with Occidental Quarterly. There’s Frank Salter, a founding member of National Action, a pro-apartheid terrorist group that, for instance, carried out a shotgun attack on the Australian representative of the African National Congress. There’s Steve Sailer, a journalist with no scientific qualifications, who argues (among other things) that the body fat levels of different races explain interracial marriage, and that homosexuality might be caused by an infectious disease that spreads like the flu. There’s a reference, too, to a “prescient” 1920 book by Lothrop Stoddard, The Rising Tide of Color, which warned that “the world will drift into a gigantic race-war”, and that “migrations of lower human types … must be rigorously curtailed.”
Jean-Phillippe Rushton’s Race, Evolution and Behaviour also rates a mention, as Ken Parish predicted it would. SPLC writes:
Although his training is unrelated to biology or genetics, Rushton has not hesitated to spread his opinions far and wide, especially through his major published work, Race, Evolution and Behavior. The book makes such claims as an inverse relationship between penis and brain size (blacks are supposedly more promiscuous and less intelligent than whites). … In recent years, Rushton has spoken on eugenics several times at conferences of the racist American Renaissance magazine, in which he has also published a number of articles. In 2002, after renting several academic mailing lists, Rushton mailed an abridged version of Race, Evolution and Behavior to 40,000 people — a mailing paid for by the [pro-eugenics] Pioneer Fund.
Fraser cites a publication by the New Century Foundation, a hate group whose leader has a “clear conception of the United States as a nation ruled by and for whites”. The pamphlet in question is a notorious attempt to fiddle crime statistics to show that black people are dangerous thugs, but it’s wrong:
[Jared] Taylor uses an incredibly simplistic analytical method that flatly ignores the fundamental conclusion of decades of serious criminology: Crime is intimately related to poverty. In fact, when multivariate statistical methods such as regression analysis are used, study after study has shown that race has little, if any, predictive power.
And that is not the only “error” Taylor makes. How on earth did this pass the referees unchallenged? We are not talking about some obscure statistical work; this is a famous piece of racist propaganda that has been thoroughly and publically debunked.
Is Drew Fraser’s article a genuine academic endeavour? I don’t think so. The more I look at it, the more obvious it is that this is mere racist polemic.
“Heads should roll at Deakin for letting it get this far.”
True that. What sort of hack publication are they running?
Nice work, Rob.
Nice work indeed. Kudos for having the stomach to push through reading the dross, junk and repellent racist tripe.
Trackback.
Yep, well done.
It’s scary stuff isn’t it? Crazy. It will appeal to all those who subsribe to the magazines you have listed, and I don’t think will change the minds of any level-headed people who, thankfully, are still somewhat in the majority. However, this sort of droll should be publicly admonished and exposed for what it is – racist tripe (as Liam so well put it).
Jared Taylor’s ‘Color of Crime’ comes as no surprise. Interestingly enough the New Century Foundation recieve funding from the Pioneer Fund which supports the doctrine of ‘race realism’, whose current leader and fund recipient J P Rushton is also cited by Fraser on numerous occasions.
Critics of Rushton and the same can be said of Taylor is the desire to reach predetermined conclusions. That is to say, they in fact set out to prove that blacks are inferior to whites, whether it be related to intelligence or crime. An Australian report notes that whilst intelligence is indeed a correlate of to crime, it rates very low on the scale of factors that influence criminal behaviour:
http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/vda/vda-sec07.html
Mukherjee writes in another article for the AIC, that 5 major international studies find that crime is more likely to be related to the environment rather than to race and ethnicity. Strange how Fraser seems to be unware of the existence of professionally researched papers, or he chooses to ignore them here.
In the end the biggest problem with ‘The Color of Crime’ is not who wrote it, but the fact that it is unsupported by a majority of reliable criminal research.
Simon, just to clarify, is there any correlation between race and crime, once environment is screened out?
Wil
(first visit here across from Pr Quiggin’s blog)
Wil- as a start you could have a look at this:
http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/tandi/ti117.pdf
Jared Taylor would have you believe that blacks are more violent or commit more crimes simply because they are black- ie. they are more genetically inclined to do so. You can check out the previously posted aic link on violent crime for more information on that as well.
Now to your question- it seems that for the most part there is no link between race and crime. Some people tried to invoke the gang rapes of recent years as example of the link between race and crime- that somehow it was a lebanese thing for example. Yet as Scott Poynting reveals in his text ‘Bin Laden in the Suburbs: Criminalising the Arab Other’, its not as simply as that. Factors such as Robert Connell’s defintion of protest masculinity amongst others are cited as influences more than anything else.
To put an answer to your question simply and by no means am I a professional in this area, only a student- does there seem to be any significant evidence to suggest a link between race and crime.
Simon, when I used to teach criminology, I’d tell people that there are notorious methodological and statistical problems with correlations between crime and race. For instance, what effect does “racial profiling” have? And even if that’s not formalised, then you have to look at overpolicing of certain ethnic groups arising from within police culture. And you need also to take into account the stronger correlation between socio-economic status and crime. With any crime stats, what do you measure? Arrests? Convictions? How about crimes that are not reported to police?
Even leaving all that aside, the general story, as you can indeed find out from AIC research, is that immigrants commit fewer crimes than Australian born people.
And there’s very strong evidence that magistrates courts give differentially higher sentences and are more likely to record convictions for non-Anglos who come before the court.
None of this, I imagine, is addressed in Fraser’s paper.
I waded through the excerpted version of Fraser’s essay in the Australian today. It’s pretty clear why it was rejected on the initial review. In the exceprted version he starts out with what claims to be a critique of a couple of books on the White Australia Policy when in fact he is just berating the authors for not being racist enough to arrive at the “simple and obvious” conclusiong that the WAP was dismantled by some shadowy bi-partisan cabal operating at the highest level of government. Then he launches into the revolutionary tirade you have already covered.
Basically the piece does not appear in any way to be related to law and has no academic merit in any context.
Indigenous convicts actually tend to get lower sentences than “non-indigenous” convicts, despite having a higher proportion of re-offenders. Their median aggregate sentence is a little less than 2/3 of the non-indigenous median.
http://www.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/abs@.nsf/0/8d5807d8074a7a5bca256a6800811054?OpenDocument
On the matter of “ethnicity and crime”, several points need to be made.
Firstly, I recall one of Andrew Fraser’s arguments was that black Africans have higher testosterone levels, and therefore commit more crime. This requires him to establish two things – that black Africans have higher testosterone levels, and that higher testosterone levels lead men to commit more crime. He also claims that black Africans have lower IQs, and that lower IQ is correlated with higher crime. That sounds like an extraordinary bundle of claims that would require rigourous statistical reasoning to bear out: there are several independent variables in his hypothesis, and it is not clear that he actually has any training in this area, to put it rather mildly. (Actually, having skim-read his paper, he seems to have a number of research questions that he takes to like a blind sub-machine gunner)
Secondly, immigrants do tend to get into less trouble with the law than those born in Australia, based on research from 7 years ago by the AIC. However, immigrants are not a homogenous group – Pacific Islanders, Vietnamese, Lebanese and Turks, to take a few examples, tend to be imprisoned at substantially higher rates than people born in Australia. Most Asian migrants were imprisoned at substantially lower rates, while Africans were also towards the “low” end of the spectrum, although the African population 7 years ago would have been far, far smaller than the other data groups. Nevertheless, these figures certainly do not assist Andrew Fraser’s theory in any way.
http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/ethnicity-crime/ethnic-ch4.pdf
Ethnicity may have *some* relationship with crime, but it seems Fraser is going out on a limb to find some kind of causation. It sounds like a bizarre theory – does somebody want to tell me that people’s genes are making them hold up a bank? Perhaps this will form part of a defence case – “Your honour, my genes made me do it!” Where is this “crime” gene and what does it do to one’s mind? Does this gene (or however it might manifest) deprive us of moral agency in some way? I think people need to look outside of this kind of determinism that annuls the agency of individuals.
And finally, what on earth is “protest masculinity”? (I could hazard a guess, but I’ll wait for Simon’s reply)
Protest masculinity refers to what Robert Connell stated as being the hegemonic form of masuclinity in society. In Australia this would refer to the dominant notion of white heterosexual males in our society, however more than anything else they would be modelled on a tough guy image, rather than say the stereotype of a computer ‘nerd’. That was the best way I could explain it.
Mark- thank you for adding that in. I’m hoping to do more studies in criminology soon, as it is an area of great interest to myself, but at this stage I am still learning!
Speaking about non-homogenaity, if Drew Fraser and the like had bothered to try and keep up with research after 1960, they might have noted that there is in fact more genetic diversity in Africa than the rest of the world combined. Thus you may as well start talking about genetic correlates with the category “The rest of the world minus Africa” , and you would have a genetically more inclusive group than “Africans”. Given that is the case, reporting “the rest of the world minus Aftrica seems to be high in crime due to genetic reasons”, is in fact more legitamate than reporting, “Africans are high in crime due to genetic reasons”
“Protest Masculinity” therefore sounds like a ridiculous idea when applied to crime. “Your Honour, I raped her, not because I’m an unspeakable moral reprobate, but because of the evil institution of protest masculinity”. It sounds like another form of determinism, only this time without dabbling in genetics.
Anyhow, I actually don’t mind Fraser speaking his mind – freedom means the right to say “2+2=5″ as well as “2+2=4″, not to mention “Jews control the world using buggery and economic hoarding” (al-Hilaly).
‘reporting “the rest of the world minus Aftrica seems to be high in crime due to genetic reasonsâ€?, is in fact more legitamate than reporting, “Africans are high in crime due to genetic reasonsâ€? ‘
That still doesn’t resolve exactly what this “crime gene” is and how it is supposed to work.
I was going to post about this, but there’s no need for me to do so. Very comprehensive and very well done.
One of Fraser’s collegues has just posted an article at onlineopinion.com.au:
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=197
Is your problem with the article that it is rascist or that it is isn’t sufficiently ‘academic’?
And in that article Simon, she said:
”Those who now presume to manage the limits of free thought may have to reap the bitter fruits of the poisoned seeds they have sown. Once a people falls into despair, they may become dangerously unpredictable.”
O0000wwah, the nasty lawyers and fellow travellers who threaten to sue ‘a people’ (meaning the white supremicists one assumes) for vilification, may cause those downtrodden ‘masses’ to resort to violence no less!
Lefties of Australia, beware the mass protests of those not satisfied with publication in the Oz instead of the DLR.
Ask not for whom the bell tolleth
It tolleth for Lefteths and ‘Wogeths’
If you are referring to me Stu, its more the content or lack of scholarly writing that appears in the article that is disturbing.
So whilst there is an argument that Deakin rejected it for the wrong reasons which are correct, I believe that there is the possibility that Fraser may not have acted in good faith when presenting the article for publication. My evidence of that comes from his own words- when he stated on radio that the arguments supporting him were in fact ‘weak’. Now I am no lawyer, but if someone does not really believe in what they say, are they really acting in good faith in presenting it?
Fraser’s article falls into the catgeory of academic racism. Whilst racism in its purest form, such as blatant racial abuse is obvious to spot, when its woven into a neat discourse such as a an essay its a lot harder to realise. Most people in the general public would assume that if you claimed as Fraser did in an earlier edition of HES that “modern science has proven”, well then people are more readily able to accept it on first glance.
What is deceptive are the aims of people such as Fraser. They seek to reaffirm their own perceieved white dominance, hence the call for a ‘revolution’ of sorts amongst other things. It seems the only people who will oppose him “are the academic middle class”, as Fraser so neatly put it when the whole comments debate erupted in late July.
The common critique of many of Fraser’s references such as Rushton, and Taylor are that they fail to meet any strict scholarly standards- their work is filled with flaws in methodology and analysing stats.
That still doesn’t resolve exactly what this “crime gene� is and how it is supposed to work.
I agree, it just makes the arguement worse, since even if you happen to believe there are identifiable genes that somehow have a meaningful influence over extremely complex behavior (which would make you very gullible at present in my books), it just makes the argument about genetic correlations with ethnic categories like “African” worse.
Thanks for this research.
Deakin Law Review should release the referees’ reports: then we’d know whether it really took proper advice on
(a) the article’s suitability for publication; and
(b) whether it intended to initiate a genuine academic debate on the relationship between genetics and crime, or whether it was acting recklessly regarding the vilification laws.
The Deakin editor has spent a lot of time talking up his review and talking down other law schools’. This would be a good opportunity for him to show us the calibre of his review processes. He need not ‘out’ the referees – he could either identify them with their consent, or publish their reports anonymously.
Jennifer- have you had a read of the article yourself? The law review’s website says it prides itself on having high scholarly standards in its publications, yet I fail to see depth or coherence in his argument at all in the piece.
It’s merely a reinvigoration of his media statement where he argued that “experience practically everywhere else” was enough to justify the return of the White Australia policy- and there is not much more substance than that in there.
This really has to be my last post on this issue.
I’ve glanced over the article (no time), and it didn’t look good. However, I was prepared to give it the benefit of the doubt until I had time to look up some of its sources. Meanwhile, other people (eg this blog) have done a good job of showing how shallow and tendentious some of these are.
But the other issue here is that of what can be published in law reviews, what their standards are, and what claims they make about those standards. A lot of law reviews carry stuff which relates to wider social questions. Sometimes experts from outside law question those choices of subject-matter, but lawyers often don’t because of the expectation that law will take account of other disciplines. My view is that it’s better that legal education attempt to do this than for it to remain a silo but, as this case illustrates, there are risks.
Where a law review sets out to publish something on a topic of this kind, it MUST submit the manuscript to proper scrutiny by qualified experts. If it can’t do this, who wants to publish in it? Expert review is especially necessary where the subject-matter is sensitive, as it is in this case – ie, because individuals could be personally affected by the article, there’s a greater obligation to ensure that it is properly grounded in academic research. Unfortunately (at least some) law reviews do publish (at least some) other stuff which is academically sub-standard, but it’s usually about topics which don’t affect people personally.
It does look like the Deakin VC made the right decision about this article. But I would also like Deakin Law Review to reassure us that this episode doesn’t reflect poor editorial standards generally – by showing us what the editors relied on when proposing to publish.
PS: someone drew this page to my attention 3 days after it was posted. I hope this critique of Fraser’s views can be heard beyond blog-land (by other old people and those with limited net time).
You’re dead right, Jennifer. Andrew Norton (of Catallaxy Files) suggested that I submit an article to The Australian, which I have done. Unfortunately, I haven’t had a response. I think that if they are going to publish Fraser’s tripe as if it was genuine scholarship, they have an obligation to publish a response.
“I challenge you to read the article and explain how it belongs in a law review. Even before the research and argument are considered, surely it should meet the threshold test of being in some way related to the law?�
Well Fraser wouldn’t be the first to stretch the bounds of a discipline, although many humanities and arts subjects seem to have no bounds whatsoever. That aside your question is easily answered. British constitutional/precedent law, Sharia Law or Aboriginal Tribal Law folks? Make up your mind quick!
Observa- the more appropriate statement should be- what does something such as this have doing in a law journal whose mission statement states they include material of the highest scholarly standard.
Considering that to the best of my knowledge this is his first time effort at actually writing something on this topic also, It seems rather bizarre as to why McConville would actually have invited him to publish (See Kathe Boheringer’s article on http://www.onlineopinion.com.au) From all accounts he likes to weave it into his accounts whilst teaching yet even his students have little consensus as to its relevance in a public law subject- but what most of them seem to agree on is that he always managed to weave it in there somehow.
So given that it appears to be a first time effort- why even consider it to be published in such as supposedly high scholarly journal such as the DLR?
“…journal whose mission statement states they include material of the highest scholarly standard. ”
Jesus Simon, if all the universities and their disciplines stuck to that lofty standard, Oz would be covered in trees.
As the years go by, events make me feel more and more like a member of the tin-foil hat brigade, and I resent that. Nonetheless, events like the topic of this thread and other more-or-less related developments just give me the sick feeling that they’re softening us (the public) up for something to fight about when and if oil fails to meet demand/the global economy crashes/both of the above. Would love to be completely wrong.
I can’t let that comment about sharia or tribal law go unanswered.
Articles about these topics can be published in law journals. But if an article concerned with the contents of sharia or Aboriginal law were to be accepted for publication, it should be refereed by a specialist in Islam or Aboriginal cultural values as well as by a lawyer. Using two referees is standard practice in law journals with which I’m familiar.
Thanks for the thorough answer, Simon.
The question is whether you are expecting a higher level of scholary research because the subject matter is ’sensitive’ or because you expect such high standards generally.
To be more direct, I’m questioning whether you are suffering from disconfirmation bias. Its OK to say yes – I just think these kinds of cognitive biases need to be open :) In the same way that Fraser suffers from his own confirmation bias in that he tends to dismiss the scientific evidence weighing against his worldview and the race/culture distinction*.
The other question is whether if the Deakin VC asked the DLR to obstain from publishing an article that you -agreed- with (such as, say, an article ripping apart the Howard Governments proposed IR reforms) you would be so accepting of such an abuse of power.
* i.e. he tends to view Western Liberalism as a construct of ‘the Anglo-celtic people’ but rather than seeing it as a construct arising form their culture, he sees it as a construct arising from their race… Of course, by arguing that its a racial construct he can cling to notions of essentialism, which are fundamental to his praeto-conservative agenda.
[To point out my biases for the interest of openness.. I was amongst the many left wing law students who took Frasers classes. Why did we take them? Because arguing about multiculturalism and justice just seemed more significant than accepting the status quo because it was economically efficient.]
Stu- my position comes from having researched the whole Fraser business from start to where we find ourselves now. Certainly its not a simple matter of restricting someones right to publish just because we disagree with them, however from the outset of his earlier comments what we are in fact seeing now is a desperate attempt to legitimise his views in the form of an academic paper.
There are many ways to look at the whole Fraser thing. Firstly we look at his motivations in making his inital public statements and now his motivation in attempting to publish something. Has he been genuine,was his attempt to promote public debate a reality or a mere fallacy designed to protect his own academic integrity? The problem as I see it is that Fraser himself admitted that he never really expected things to go this far, and now it seems that he’s on the bandwagon and he may as well make the most of his day in the sun, his 15 minutes of fame as our new ‘celebrity racist’.
What this all boils down to in my view is the whole good faith argument, and on some level his paper as a piece of academic writing. I find it hard to believe that Drew Fraser’s intentions all along are exactly what he says they have been. After all, he has his debate, we would not be here without Fraser now would we?
Discussions of things such as the white Australia policy need not be taboo- and nor do I discourage publications of such topics. However, we have to perhaps understand the context of his writing, I for one more or less knew what to expect from Drew Fraser based on his earlier comments- his argument offered nothing new for starters.
I am drawn to a quote from a review of one of Fraser’s favorite references- J P Rushton. This taken from a review of Rushton’s text Race, Evolution and Behaviour-
“The low standards of scholarship evident in this book render it largely irrelevant for modern science. The main question it raises in my mind is a sociological one: Why is so much attention devoted in the mass media to a work of this quality?”
More than anything Fraser’s essay is propagandistic, more than scholarly- that is my issue with it, taken in the contex of the DLR’s supposed dedication to academic standards.
‘PARIS – Firebrand Islamist cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed, banned from Britain since August, called on Muslims to leave Europe, in an interview with France 3 television to be broadcast Monday.
Bakri, a Lebanese national of Syrian origin who was living in Britain since 1986, was interviewed in Beirut where he is now based after the British government stripped him of his residency in its campaign to rein in radical Islamist leaders.
“There must be two distinct camps and so all Muslims must leave Europe,�? said Bakri, declaring that he was convinced “the Islamic flag will fly one day over Downing Street.�?
Bakri is head of the extremist movement Al Muhajirun — meaning the emigrants in Arabic.
Last January he said a “pact�? between the British government and Muslims was “violated�? because London started hunting for radicals after the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States and later sent British forces to join the US-led intervention in Iraq.
Bakri famously praised the September 11 hijackers as �?magnificent�?. Then, he triggered more outrage after the July 7 bombings on London Underground trains and a city bus when he said he would never tip off police if he knew a Muslim was about to carry out an attack.
In the French TV interview, Bakri went further saying the backgrounds of the four suicide bombers responsible for the July 7 attacks prove that the message of Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden �?has reached the moderate communities.�?
He also called on the converts to Islam to come join him in Beirut “to learn Arabic before returning to Europe.�? ‘
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayA … ion=theworld
Is Drew Fraser really a man ahead of his times?
Aus First have started a new campaign. Check it out:
http://ausfirst.alphalink.com.au/fraser/index.html
Seems like Fraser cant get enough attention for himself!
No, observa, he’s not. There will always be loudmouthed dickheads. Some, like the one you’ve cited, are Muslim. Others, like you and Fraser, are Christian.
If you think Fraser is “ahead of his time”, do you believe the great Patriot King will overthrow Australian democracy and save us from the rising tide of colour?
Fraser would probably like himself as the patriot king with Pauline Hanson as Queen, by his side.
[Spam comment deleted. If you wish to read it, the exact same comment was left here. ---RC.]
Speaking of scholarly research and wasting good trees, hows about this gem from the Australia Institute here
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,16726259-29277,00.html
You orta pop over to their website and take a dekko at the list of their ‘research’ into pressing social issues. What a grab bag from the usual suspects and you reckon Deakin wander about the ether a bit. Sheesh!
Actually, more like the contents of a woman’s handbag
Of course, the Australia Institute is a private organisation that can do whatever the heck it likes.
Could you try to refrain from posting off-topic links every second day, Observa? If there are news stories you think need to be covered, start your own damn blog.
From the Australia Institute website -
“The Australia Institute is an independent public policy research centre funded by grants from philanthropic trusts, memberships and commissioned research.
Philosophy
The Institute was launched in 1994 to develop and conduct research and policy analysis and to participate forcefully in public debates. In addition, the Institute undertakes research and analysis commissioned and paid for by government, business, unions and community organisations. Those involved in the Institute have each, from different viewpoints, been concerned about the impact on Australian society of the priority given to a narrow definition of economic efficiency over community, environmental and ethical considerations in public and private decision making. A better balance is urgently needed.
Private markets, while effective at encouraging efficiency in many circumstances, frequently fail to reflect adequately the ethical, social and environmental priorities of the community. Governments must provide the appropriate institutional framework in which private markets operate so as to ensure that they contribute to justice, equity and sustainability as well as efficiency. Market outcomes are not value free and the Institute reasserts the place of ethics in making public and private decisions.”
Note particularly ” the Institute undertakes research and analysis commissioned and paid for by government, business, unions and community organisations.”
Well Robert, I would have thought the points about ‘quality’ and ’scholarliness’ and ‘politicisation’ of research were all points touched on here with your attack on Fraser, Deakin Uni, etc. Also the question of who was paying for it and why they/we really should. For mine, I can’t imagine too many businesses like Range Rover kicking in for the Australia Institute can you? Who does that leave Rob? Yes, the usual suspects and their apologists here, rabbitting on about value for ‘public’ money research and what is the politically correct use of it. Time for Deakin to do a survey of latte drinkers on their attitudes to the law and other socially pressing issues of the day eh Rob?
Where does that leave us all? Addressing Fraser’s arguments.
[Spam comment deleted. If you wish to read it, the exact same comment was left here. ---RC.]
What rubbish, Nick Lindsley.
I believe (based on fairly extensive reading) that there is no link between race and crime, and that there is even less of a link between immigration and crime:
see the piece entitled ‘Academic notoriety…’ on http://law.anu.edu.au/cipl/expertopinion.asp
But I would want to know if there was a link between genes and crime, because (like most people in the world) I want to live in a relatively crime-free society, and I want that privilege to be extended to other people, including Africans wherever they live.
Genes do play a role in crime: men commit far more crime than women. I wouldn’t entirely rule out the possibility that they contribute to criminality in other ways, but I would want to see these questions addressed thoroughly, in the context of the other evidence we have about the relationship between crime and a far more complex set of factors: inequality, for example, or poverty, intellectual development, parenting practices and peer criminality.
Andrew Fraser’s article does not enlighten anyone on these issues because it is not based on proper research into the genetic questions, let alone the wider questions. That is why it shouldn’t have been published in an academic journal. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I’ve never seen another poorly-researched article in an Australian law journal – I think Australia has far too many law journals – but I think we should be particularly intolerant of poorly-researched work which targets particular social groups, especially vulnerable minorities.
[Spam comment deleted. If you wish to read it, the exact same comment was left here. —RC.]
Hmmmm. So I am spam now?
‘Deconstruction basically scuppers conversation. And scuppering conversation is what it is all about.”
Thanks for the proof.
Jennifer Clarke said “What rubbish, Nick..” (re Andrew Fraser and sub saharan immigration)
Hang on. I didn’t say I agree with him. I just raised the issue of the consequences of his detractors being wrong.
I still want to know if we are all indeed a clean slate just waiting for a nice home and what is the evidence for that as opposed to evidence saying Fraser et al are wrong.
Simple enough question.
NL
Posting the same comment here (repeatedly) as well as on other blogs is spam, yes. I directed people to read it at Larvatus Prodeo. There is no sense having the same debate in several different places, especially as almost everyone who reads this blog reads that one, too.
Your point’s a valid one Rob, but it does assume readers here do read LP, etc. I guess it does raise the thorny question as to whether or not there should be a pecking order for issues of the day. ie first to blog gets the gig or gentlemans agreement to rotate the stewardship of debate? It also assumes different bloggers don’t have different nuances to the same issue.
Nick.
I am tmepted to simply echo Jennifer clark but at the risk of being accused of “deconstruction”:
The popular concept of race in humans has very little to do with actual genetic variation and a lot o do with a small number of obvious external physcial characteristics.
This is not to argue that there is not a lot of genetic variation within humans (although humans are apparently much more genetically uniform than the other primate species despite our much larger population and broader geogrpahic distribution).
Rather what I mean is that the average western would probabyl assume that an Australian Aboriginal is mroe closely related to a subsaharan African than to a European based on similarity of skin and hair color.
In fact, when we look at other genetic markers (such as blood types), it appears that Aborigines are more closely related to Eruopeans than to Africans. (Not that surprising when you consider that the probable migration route from Africa to Australia was by following the sea around the bottom of Arabian then along the Persian and Indian coasts to south East Asia and that Western Europeans’ ancestors include the Aryans who spent an extended period in India intermarrying with the local Dravidian peoples before migrating west.)
Similarly, what does it mean to argue that American blacks are “genetically” predisposed to this or that behaviour when they have, on average. roughly 25% European ancestry along with a significant Native American contribution – and “whites” in some states of the American south carry sickle cell trait at rates which imply 25% or more of them have African ancestors?
Up until 50 years ago the popular view in the west was that Asians were also genetically intellectually inferior to whites. funny how World War II and the subsequent Japanese economic boom put paid to that theory – only to see it replaced by claims that the superior academic performance of East Asian students must, obviously, be genetically based.
Finally, how do you explain the flourishing civilisations of black Africa from aroudn 1500BC to 1000 AD including Nubia, Ethiopia, Mali and Benin?
I can’t help picturing a couple of educated Timbuktuans debating whether their “Frankish” slaves were intellectually inferior due to nature or nurture.
Natural selection just doesn’t work that fast.
Observa, I have no objection to debate on the same topic happening at more than one place. However, it is simply pointless if the same comments are cut and pasted at several different blogs. That is spam, not discussion.
Ian’s thoughtful response enlightened me somewhat although I confess that I wasn’t aware of flourishing nations in Africa. I remember seeing an article many years ago that revealed that the Ghananians taught the Greeks everything technical. I also remember that is was disputed and said to be ficticious and done to raise the level of pride. Was that part of the flourishing Africa?
I am interested in the proof for the “blank slate” idea relating to groups (either gender or race etc) and your detailed post doesn’t actually address that possibility. If there is no “blank slate” then one is left with impression that everyone agrees with Fraser and we are only quibbling over the degree.
Nick,
There’s a lot of nonsense spouted about early African civilisations.
None of which alters the fact that, for example, the Nubians of what is now Sudan repeatedly fought the Egyptians to a stand-still and at one point conquered Egyptand ruled it for several centuries – establishing what was known as the Black Dynasty.
It’s also well-documented that around the 10th and 11th centuries Timbuktu, one of the major staging posts for the trade in gold and slaves was one of the largest cities in the world and probably possessed more books than all of western Europe at that time.
It’s past 11 PM so I hope you’ll excuse me if I don;t address your question in depth. A few points:
1. You seem to be proposing a false dichotomy – it’s fairly obvious that some mental abilities are innate, it’s also fairly obvious that we must also have some generalised capacity for reasoning not tied to specific cirumstances – otherwise we’d never learn to cope with new situations.
2. There’s little or no evidence that there’s a statistically significant difference in those innate abilities which varies between human populations, much less for ones that vary according to the relatively subjective divisions between races.
3. In order to prove any such variation you’d need to firstly account for a whole series of confounding environmental factors. To take the case of American blacks, you’d need to prove that any difference in apparent IQ wasn’t due to factors such as higher levels of child abuse and neglect; reduced access to remedial classes and medical services and poor nutrition.
4. you’d also have to ask whether any such genetic factor had any practical signifcance. Say, hypothetically, the average IQ of blacks is 99 and the average IQ of whites is 100. Functionally in terms of, for instance holding down an average job, this would have no practical impact.
observa said “Well Fraser wouldn’t be the first to stretch the bounds of a discipline..”
True. Any Norm Chomsky critics here?
I’ve read Fraser’s article carefully and done a detailed analysis, focusing on what he has to say about East Asians rather than Africans
http://bowlingforillidan.blogspot.com/2005/09/white-australia-redux.html
It’s pretty clear Fraser’s spouting white supremacist rhetoric rather than academic argument, even without looking at the handful of sources he quotes every second sentence. You canjudge how far off the political spectrum he is by the fact that he attacks Keith Windschuttle for the latter’s ‘tender-minded attitudes’ towards immigrants – Windschuttle having just published a book arguing that the White Australia Policy wasn’t racist.
It’s not surprising to see his case being taken up by nut factories around the world – I found his article on National Vanguard (”Standing up for White Americans”)
http://www.nationalvanguard.org/index.php
As Fraser points out, xenophobes flock together
Norm Chomsky is a piece of shit that still owes me $60 for a VCR I sold him three years ago.
Noam Chomsky however, is a gentleman and scholar.
Greetings from the United States. The article is full of crap. Jared Taylor is no academic, and neither was Sam Francis..I think Francis had a PhD in literature..if he had shown as much concern for his weight and health as he did for white racial purity, he would not be rotting in his grave and turning brown by the second.
However, we need to answer why Fraser is a racist. He vilifies blacks for their failures and then turns around and vilifies Asians for their success. So, by elimination unless you are white and preferably Nordic, you are not a real Aussie, according to him. I think what Australia needs is to mix white and Asian genes and perhaps then we can have a discussion as to whether mixed asian-white folks are smarter than whites and how much the Asian gene has to do with it.
Greetings from the United States. The article is full of crap. Jared Taylor is no academic, and neither was Sam Francis..I think Francis had a PhD in literature..if he had shown as much concern for his weight and health as he did for white racial purity, he would not be rotting in his grave and turning brown by the second.
However, we need to answer why Fraser is a racist. He vilifies blacks for their failures and then turns around and vilifies Asians for their success. So, by elimination unless you are white and preferably Nordic, you are not a real Aussie, according to him. I think what Australia needs is to mix white and Asian genes and perhaps then we can have a discussion as to whether mixed asian-white folks are smarter than whites and how much the Asian gene has to do with it.
Greetings from the United States. The article is full of crap. Jared Taylor is no academic, and neither was Sam Francis..I think Francis had a PhD in literature..if he had shown as much concern for his weight and health as he did for white racial purity, he would not be rotting in his grave and turning brown by the second.
However, we need to answer why Fraser is a racist. He vilifies blacks for their failures and then turns around and vilifies Asians for their success. So, by elimination unless you are white and preferably Nordic, you are not a real Aussie, according to him. I think what Australia needs is to mix white and Asian genes and perhaps then we can have a discussion as to whether mixed asian-white folks are smarter than whites and how much the Asian gene has to do with it.
“Noam Chomsky however, is a gentleman and scholar”
Whoops, yup, Noam, not Norm.
Noam speaks outside of his field of expertise just like Fraser. Any complaints?
Nick, I think the question was answered for you on another forum. I see your point, but as you were told elsewhere Chomsky’s arguments are well thought out and referenced. Fraser has absolutely no publishing experience in the area of which he has just attempted to publish his article in, whereas Chomsky has published extensively on his topics of interest.
Whilst academic freedom maybe widely interpreted, in Fraser’s case its questionable since in fact he has never published or at least to my knowledge in any recognised academic publication on issues of race and ethnicity and multiculturalism.
Well if you are out to hang him, I guess if it isn’t one thing (outside his area of expertise) it will be another (PUBLISHING outside his etc).
It is a great way of having your cake and eating it. It leaves Noam, an icon of the left wing baby boomers, intact.
Mind you, why does publishing make any difference if it is outside ones field of expertise? I await another cake eating explanation.
NL
>Mind you, why does publishing make any difference if it is outside ones field of expertise? I await another cake eating explanation.
Fraser has written, so far as I know, one article on the issue of race.
Chomsky has written numerous books and articles on politics and world affairs over a period of several decades.
You can disagree with his conclusions, but it is fairly clear that he has researched the topics and spent considerable time thinking about them.
Well ian it sounds like you are trying to hang something on Fraser that you wouldn’t hang on Chomsky (even if Noam had only published one off subject book – which he must have at one stage, ie the very first).
NL