Meme - Athéna: "you are fascist"
Miyuki Supremacist: "Fascism is a white man ideology. l'm not white"
Athéna: "fascism is an ideology, doesnt matter who does it:
Miyuki Supremacist: "Fascism is European and bulit on European racism. Therefore me or other Africans cannot be Fascist"
FATAH: Tackling Islamic supremacy in India | Toronto Sun - "While Boko Haram in Nigeria and Al-Shabab in Somalia compete with the Taliban of Afghanistan and the ruling Ayatollahs of Iran, we have the likes of President Erdogan in Turkey and the ousted Prime Minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan, who calls for a return to a 7th century Arabia. Even in the tiny island country of the Maldives in the Indian Ocean, Islamists have killed liberal Muslims who challenged the bearded clergy. However, the most visible form of arrogant Islamic supremacy is today visible in India where Mullahs leading present-day Muslims—a mere 14% of the population — are bullying the rest of India."
Islamophobia!
Man jailed for 15 years for hate crimes after leaving bacon in mosque - "Michael Wolfe from Titusville in Florida pleaded guilty to the break-in at the Islamic Society of Central Florida Masjid Al-Munin Mosque in January 2016... Wolfe pleaded guilty to criminal mischief to a place of worship with a hate crime enhancement... A charge of armed burglary was dropped in exchange for the guilty plea, Mr Brown said. According to state records Wolfe has numerous previous convictions for burglary."
Those who keep complaining about how criminal justice reform is needed because of harsh and disproportionate sentences are silent
It’s now woke to like Louis Farrakhan - "Farrakhan is an American minister and activist known for his work within the black community, as well as for calling Jewish people ‘termites’, and believing that white people are an evil race created by a scientist named Yakub in a eugenics experiment... Farrakhan popped up once again recently when popular rapper and actor Ice Cube began effusively praising him... all manner of incredibly unlikely celebrities started jumping on the Farrakhan fun train. Aggressively clueless internet personality Jameela Jamil (sorry, I mean aggressively clueless ‘actress, presenter, model, writer and activist’ Jameela Jamil) managed to open up her own Instagram and post a video of Farrakhan with the caption: ‘Someone please tell me the name of this extraordinary man who so perfectly sums up white fear in under a minute.’... Sassy comedian — sorry, sassy ‘actress, writer, television host, producer and activist’ (gotta have the activist in there) — Chelsea Handler also posted the Farrakhan video straight to ‘the gram’ with the caption ‘I learned a lot from watching this powerful video’... You’ve got to hand it to Handler: defending anti-Semitism is a gutsy move. Especially when your grandfather was, like Chelsea’s, an actual Nazi. Not the kind that she likes to call other people, but one of the proper ones, with the uniform and everything. Or at least, he fought in the war for the Germans... Incredibly for someone supporting Farrakhan, Chelsea Handler has one Jewish parent and one white parent... What’s extra troubling to me — the topping on this massive slice of trouble cake — is that every denouncement of the Farrakhan fan girls (oh, did I mention Jennifer Aniston, Michelle Pfeiffer and Jennifer Garner also liked Handler’s Instagram post? You go girls) mentions Farrakhan’s anti-Semitism, but no one, not a single digital soul I can find on Twitter, points out his ultra-racist, anti-white eugenics theories. A couple of accounts cited his alleged misogyny and homophobia, but nothing on the white thing. White people are apparently now so hated that it’s just a given that you won’t get any traction at all suggesting they are anything other than the actual scum of the earth."
Liberals hate Jews - unless they can use them to shit on white people, after all
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Interview: Lin-Manuel Miranda - "‘The complete cast being people of colour, in the historical context of of what, of what you were doing. I think that was of course, very much ahead of its time. We're now much more used to colourblind casting’...
'Any song will get annoying if you hear it too many times. I promise you in, watch this space in about a month, two months when everyone's like, I'm so sick of the songs, because that's just you know, and the music from Frozen is fantastic, but nothing can withstand a child's ability to play, 50 times a day'"
Of course, "whitewashing" is still bad; colourblind casting means no white people.
NYT publishes crossword puzzle resembling swastika - "The New York Times on released its daily crossword puzzle in the shape of swastika on Sunday, Democratic Strategist Keith Edwards pointed out... "This is the NYTimes crossword puzzle today on the first day of Hanukkah. What the hell, @nytimes?" the tweet read. In a later tweet, Edwards pointed out that no major media outlet had covered the incident. "So far not one mainstream media outlet has reported on this"... This is not the first time the New York Times Crossword Puzzle has bore a resemblance to the swastika, a symbol used by various cultures but widely associated with Nazi Germany and neo-Nazism. In 2017, the last time this occurred, the Times dismissed criticism, with the New York Times Games Twitter account saying, "Yes, hi. It's NOT a swastika. Honest to God. No one sits down to make a crossword puzzle and says, "Hey! You know what would look cool?" A similar incident also occurred in 2014"
It's also unacceptable when non-liberals do it
The Demerara slave uprising | HistoryExtra - "‘The title of your book is White Debt. And I wonder if you could explain the meaning behind that title.’
‘Yeah, so I mean, at the time of slavery, the vast vast majority of people who were involved with and ran the slave societies were white. So the people who, who owned the ships, who manned the ships, which transported the enslaved people from Africa, the vast, vast majority of people who owned the plantations, who worked in the plantations or oversaw the supervisors, the managers were white. The vast majority of people who were involved with transporting the commodities, the the cotton, the tobacco, the sugar back to Britain, including my family, were white, again, were white... That's not to say there weren't countries in Africa, people in Africa, that black Africans who were involved, of course, there were countries, for example, like Ghana, the president of Ghana have apologized for their role in slavery. Again, there were some very few mixed race and people of African descent who were involved with the transport and then the plantations themselves. But again, this is a very, very small number of people, the vast majority of those who benefited and worked in the slave society were white... white people have a special responsibility, as a debt for what happened...
My father's family, we are German, Jewish, and we were forced to flee Germany, because of the rise of the Nazis. We lost people in the Holocaust. And I have personally received money from the German government, you know, you'd call that reparations, maybe, you know, and if I'm receiving money in that situation, I can't see why people who are descended from those who are enslaved by the British wouldn't also similarly… the Americans, they paid members of the Japanese families who were incarcerated. And it's happened in in other countries as well… What about recent arrivals? What about people who have only just come to Britain? And the answer really is, as a whole people in Britain have benefited from slavery’"
If collective guilt were ascribed to other groups...
Apparently someone alive getting reparations for something that directly happened to him within living memory is the same as someone getting money for something that presumably happened to his ancestors centuries ago
BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent Podcast, Japanese Justice and the Fugitive CEO - "[On India’s citizenship law] Many BJP supporters also hark back to history, saying the new law merely formalizes a pact that was originally signed between the first prime ministers of India and Pakistan after partition in 1947. One of my closest friends from school is a Muslim, we studied together at a Catholic institution. Each morning there, we'd recite the Christian prayer. Our Father in heaven."
BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent Podcast, Rebuilding Raqqa - "Switzerland's Muslims... a former female colleague who's a practising Muslim campaigned for a ban, arguing that the niqqa and the burka can't be separated from an oppressive ideology which requires women to cover themselves. The imam of Bern told me that he too supported a ban. There's nothing in the Quran that demands that women cover their faces, he told me... maybe the motivation behind this referendum is anti-Muslim, he said, but I'm interested in the effect, not the motivation. I think it will help to emancipate Muslim women in Switzerland"
Islamophobia!
This best-selling devotional has a prayer that literally says “Dear God, please help me to hate white people.” This is a real book you can buy. At Target. - "This is not a fringe book. It has been a recent hit trending toward the top of the NYT's best sellers! It's also written by, you guessed it, a PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY, Chinequa Walker-Barnes of Mercer University."
AI Can Identify Race From Just X-Rays And Scientists Have No Idea How - "In another display that AI can see things that humans inherently can’t, researchers have discovered that AI may be able to identify race from X-ray images, despite there being no clear difference to human experts. Based on X-ray and CT images alone, the AI was able to identify race with around 90 percent accuracy and the scientists are unable to understand just how it can do this... To test AI’s ability to identify images, a deep-learning model was first fed CT and X-ray images of many different areas of the body on various groups of people, with each image labeled with the person's race. Then, the tags were removed, along with any possible identifying features – such as skin color, and hair color. For each image, the AI was asked to identify the race of the individual. For all areas of the body, the AI was able to identify race with around a 90 percent accuracy, even without any identifying features. Covering all bases, the researchers wondered if the AI was being sneaky and using statistics to make the guess based on covariables, such as body-mass index (BMI) or breast density, which could suggest one race over another. The researchers took the possible covariables out and only showed the AI datasets of people with similar BMI and body types, but still the AI was able to identify race. How can it do so? Frankly, the researchers are unsure. This isn’t the first time AI has surprised scientists by identifying race through almost impossible conditions – previous studies have shown it can do so when the image is heavily corrupted or altered... “We need to take a pause,” said Leo Anthony Celi, co-author and associate professor at Harvard Medical School, to the Boston Globe. “We cannot rush bringing the algorithms to hospitals and clinics until we’re sure they’re not making racist decisions or sexist decisions.”"
Someone forgot to tell the AI that race has no biological basis
The Disgraceful Firing of Joshua T. Katz - "Joshua Katz knew it was dangerous to go public with his objections to a Princeton faculty letter, but he did so because his conscience demanded it. For this, he has paid an intolerable price... In the mid-2000s, Joshua Katz, a tenured Princeton professor and distinguished classicist, engaged in a consensual affair with a 21-year-old student in violation of university policy. When this matter was brought to the attention of college administrators in late 2017, Katz was disciplined following an internal inquiry and handed a year’s suspension without pay, which he accepted without complaint. But in late 2021, two new investigations into the affair were opened by the university’s Dean of Faculty and by the Office of Gender Equity and Title IX Administration, respectively. As Aaron Sibarium reported in an article for the Washington Free Beacon, the Title IX investigation dismissed the charges of sexual harassment it had been asked to evaluate. “Conduct must, among other things, be ‘unwelcome’ in order to constitute sexual harassment,” explained Michele Minter, Princeton’s Title IX coordinator, and Katz and his student “were willing and active participants” in a consensual relationship. However, the 10-page report by Faculty dean Gene A. Jarrett recommended that Katz’s employment be terminated. On May 10th, 2022, Princeton’s president, Christopher L. Eisgruber, wrote to the university’s board of trustees also recommending dismissal, and on May 23rd, Katz was formally stripped of his tenure and fired... One of the most powerful corrupting forces in human affairs is the desire for a quiet life. It leads good people to join mobs they don’t support and to be spectators to injustice. Joshua Katz, on the other hand, knew it was dangerous to go public with his objections to the faculty letter, but he did so because his conscience demanded it. For this, he has paid an intolerable price. We remain proud to have published his article at Quillette and dismayed that it has been used to destroy his career. But there is a price to pay for appeasement too. And if Eisgruber believes that feeding Katz to the DEI crocodile will make his own life easier, he is in for a nasty surprise. His weakness will only have inflamed its appetite."
What does Barack Obama's race have to do with anything? - "Isn't there something pathetic and embarrassing about this emphasis on shade? And why is a man with a white mother considered to be "black," anyway? Is it for this that we fought so hard to get over Plessy v. Ferguson? Would we accept, if Obama's mother had also been Jewish, that he would therefore be the first Jewish president? The more that people claim Obama's mere identity to be a "breakthrough," the more they demonstrate that they have failed to emancipate themselves from the original categories of identity that acted as a fetter upon clear thought. One can't exactly say that Sen. Obama himself panders to questions of skin color. One of the best chapters of his charming autobiography describes the moment when his black Republican opponent in the Illinois Senate race—Alan Keyes—accused him of possessing insufficient negritude because he wasn't the descendant of slaves! Obama's decision to be light-hearted—and perhaps light-skinned—about this was a milestone in itself. But are we not in danger of emulating Keyes' insane mistake every time we bang on about the senator's pigmentation? If you wanted a "black" president or vice president so much, you could long ago have turned out en masse for Angela Davis—also the first woman to be on a national ticket—or for Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton. So, why didn't you? Could it have been the politics? Last week happened to be the week that the nation of Kenya—birthplace of Obama's father—was convulsed by a political war that contained ghastly overtones of violent and sadistic tribalism. It would sound as absurd to a Kenyan to hear praise for a black candidate as it would sound to most of my European readers to hear a recommendation of a "great white hope." A white visitor to Kenya might not be able to tell a Kikuyu from a Luo at a glance, but a Kenyan would have no such difficulty. The time is pretty much past, in our country, when a Polish-American would not vote for a candidate with a German name or when Sharks and Jets were at daggers drawn, but this is all because (to borrow from Ernest Renan's definition of a nation) people agreed to forget a lot of things as well as to remember a number of things. So, which are we doing presently?... The unspoken agreement to concede the black community to the sway of the pulpit is itself a form of racist condescension. The sickly canonization of Martin Luther King Jr. has led to a crude rewriting of history that obliterates the great black and white secularists—Bayard Rustin, A. Philip Randolph, Walter Reuther—who actually organized the March on Washington. It has also allowed a free pass to any demagogue who can manage to get the word reverend in front of his name. The white voters who subconsciously make the allowance that black folks sure love to hear their preachers are not only patronizing their black brothers and sisters but also helping to empower white ministers or deacons who make the same pitch, from Jimmy Carter to Mike Huckabee."
From 2008, by Hitchens
The Ways Racism Fuels the Fire of Domestic Violence - "Among the root causes of domestic violence in Black communities specifically, 72.6% of participants in the 2017 Black Leaders Survey on Domestic Violence cited systemic racism, a factor ranking slightly behind economic stress (85.6%), childhood trauma (84.9%) and substance abuse (72.6%). Racism perpetuates domestic violence in all races—Asian-American, Indigenous, Hispanic and Latinx, Black and more—and advocates say ending one issue cannot be done until both are eradicated."
When minority couples beat each other up, it's white people's fault
ZUBY: on Twitter - "It's bizarre how acknowledging biological reality, being skeptical of Big Pharma, and supporting freedom of speech have all become 'right wing' positions."
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Jacky Wright’s Today Programme - "‘The story of US GIs is well known. Millions came through the UK in the 1940s, bringing their music and culture. Lucy Bland is a professor of social history at Anglia Ruskin University’
‘British women found them really intriguing, not least because they were bringing new dances, new music over here. The Brits didn't have these dances, didn't know how to do it. And the black GIs were more attractive than the white GIs precisely because they were seen as exotic. Many people in Britain hadn't actually seen black people before. And quite a lot of relationships were formed. And it's estimated about 2000 children were born.’
‘These relationships were the first of their kind, but many was short lived.’
‘There was quite a lot of hostility, certainly from British men, but also from older British women, who thought this was just unacceptable.’"
Weird. We're told that black people have always been in Britain, yet many people in Britain hadn't seen black people before
BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent Podcast, Lasting tensions in Jaffa - "Rather than agreeing on a collective national story, the trend has been towards separate narratives: Black History Month, LGBT history month, Italian American History Month, Native American Heritage Month. History has become hyphenated. But it's also more complete. And it's no longer written solely by the winners, marginalized voices are telling stories that need to be heard. In a country where the national conversation has become so binary and simplistic, complex narratives have also become harder to convey. But it's the very contradictions of the American story that helped us make more sense of it... even if this history doesn't lend itself to easy celebration, does that mean it should be canceled or raised? A San Francisco Education Board recently voted to rename 44 schools, including those honoring George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. A committee advising the mayor of the District of Columbia recommended the renaming of dozens of parks buildings and schools, stripping them at the names of seven presidents, including Thomas Jefferson, and even Washington himself. One of the driving ideas on the left right now is presentism. The notion that figures from the past can legitimately be by contemporary mores and values, so the Founding Fathers are cast less as architects of the New Republic, and more as slaveholders and white oppressors. One of the more cerebral ideas on the right, by contrast, is originalism. The belief that you can only make sense of America's foundational document, if you understand the intentions of its authors at the time it was adopted. It's essentially saying 18th century history should be our modern day guide. US history is so fiercely contested, because so much of it is unresolved"
Too bad he conflates separate narratives with a nuanced narrative. And courts need to and already do consider the intent of the legislature when writing a law when interpreting it. Judicial activism is not preferable to constitutional amendment; unilaterally amending a contract because you think it's outdated is convenient if it benefits you
Will Smith refused gay kiss scene and Ian McKellen was having none of it - "The two actors met in 1993 on the set of Six Degrees of Separation, a comedy-drama based on the true story of gay hustler David Hampton, who is named Paul in the film... When the script called for Smith to kiss co-star Anthony Michael Hall, he flatly refused, and the scene was cut around the moment to appease Smith... The news that Will Smith had drawn the line at a gay kiss didn’t go unnoted by Ian McKellen, who also starred in the movie as the South African billionaire, Geoffrey Miller. He described the drama in an interview with Time Out London years later, revealing how he cheekily confronted Will Smith at the movie’s premiere. “[Smith] arrived for the read-through with a huge entourage — his family, his agent, his publicity person, his acting coach, his nanny,” he recalled. “He was a charmer, and a good actor. But he did one silly thing: he refused to kiss another boy on screen, even though it was there in the script. “Which was why, at an early preview, I met him in public outside the cinema and gave him a great big kiss on the lips.”"
If a female actor had refused to kiss male actors and a male actor had forcibly kissed her... good luck to him. Sexual assault is good when it's on "homophobes"
Meme - "Looking for some guidance when it comes to sharing content made by black creators. It is well known that black creators on TikTok are often not credited for their work, and overlooked when it comes to monetary gains. There is a black creator who made this awesome TikTok that she titled, "the black teacher at Hogwarts." She is dressed as a witch and records herself saying things as if she were a teacher at Hogwarts. "Myrtle, girl, hush," "you know I rock the claw, ravenclaw all day every day." Things like that. It's funny and creative, and I'd love to share it. But it's a joke about putting a black person in a very white (fictional) space. That's not a joke *for* me. Is it okay for me to share it and maybe extend her reach and exposure, or is it better for me to appreciate it and let those who the joke is for be the ones to share it? TIA!"
Meme - "l need....to know if I did the right thing? Because now I‘m thinking I might have just white womaned the situation. I work down town Minneapolis. For reference. Next to the windows of myjob a tall Black man was physically assaulting a smaller woman of Color. She kept trying to walk away and he kept grabbing her and pushing her back into the window where I was standing. (They're full length windows that are more like walls). The woman is crying. He's screaming at her and my last straw was when he took his whole hand and pushed her forehead and her head hit the window. I started pounding on the window for him to stop assaulting/touching/grabbing her. (There‘s no quick exit for me to have gotten there and physically told him). He proceeds to scream "fuck you" at me and punch the window three times. The girl is screaming and starts to run away. The dude has literal foaming drool coming out of his mouth. He follows her. I call the police. They disappear down the street. Ten minutes later I see them across the street holding hands like nothing happened. Of course this is Minneapolis so the police never came. But now I'm wondering if I just should have minded my own business. After seeing them hold hands just now I'm |ike...ok well...it's their life and if she wants to live like that it's on her....idk I did honestly think she was in danger and he looked wild. But idk idk. Did I ww this situation or was getting involved valid? I'm not looking for an ego stroke or to be told by other ww "noooo you're fine." I want an honest answer....so I can be better in the future and stop going over it in my brain. Thanks in advance and I really appreciate this group being somewhere I can ask this."
"I found this *amazing* group where white women try to not be racist and subsequently attack each other in the comments for being "problematic" and try to out-woke each other. But here are two examples of posts. One witnessed an assault and was worried that calling the police was a bad idea. The other can't figure out if she's allowed to share TikTok videos."
From VVhite VVomen Discussing Racism
Men who beat women – Alan John - "Sometimes I wish I was a Chinese man. Then, when I start talking about family violence in Singapore, people listening wouldn’t look at me and think right away: That’s a sad and awful Indian problem. It happened again this week, when I attended a meeting of people in the social service sector and the man next to me asked which agency I represented. I told him I was with Pave, Singapore’s lead agency dealing with domestic violence. He was interested in what Pave did, the kind of cases and how many we saw. And within two minutes, he asked the question uppermost in his mind about men who beat women: What race are they? “Mostly Chinese,” I said, and his surprise was familiar. Like many others he assumed family violence in Singapore is mostly an Indian problem... The race breakdown of Pave’s cases in 2015? Chinese, 55 per cent; Malay, 25 per cent; Indian, 15 per cent; with a mix of others making up the rest.
Of course, Chinese being 75% of the population is irrelevant when it comes to "refuting stereotypes". Yet, liberals know how to correct for population when it helps their agenda. For example, in the US if you say the majority of those killed by police are white, they will say that whites are the majority so that's fine, no problem
BBC World Service - The Food Chain, America's 'food apartheid' - "‘There are many reasons people in Tyrion’s neighborhoods might not buy fruit and vegetables. But a scarcity of food in the state of Missouri is not one of them. As we've heard, fresh food is plentiful and more affordable in stores and markets just a few miles away. This is why Tyrion and many others argue that to call the north side of St. Louis and areas like it food deserts is misleading. They say the term implies the absence of fresh produce is because of the natural environment and unavoidable. Tyrion also points out that Missouri has no shortage of agricultural land. Apart from Texas, it has more farms than any other US state… So Tyrion doesn't see the north side as a food desert, and prefers a term that's been growing in popularity over the past couple of years: food apartheid. It suggests a situation that's due to manmade political and economic systems that create unequal access to resources, and implies that race is at the heart of the problem.’...
‘A lotta underlying racism, really. Now we talking about Missouri, Missouri was the last slave state, but it's in the Midwest, but but we have a lot of downside values... long history of racism’,,,
‘Why is it do you think that there's such a disparity between the food available in different neighborhoods?’
‘I really think this is part of a racist, a racist setup. And as soon as I think about it, it has to be, because you don't see the same things in white communities. You don't see the same marketing in white communities. You just don't. You don't find these corner stores like every other black in white communities. You don't find all this junk food on every other corner in white communities, but you will absolutely find it here.’"
White people are to blame for minorities not wanting to buy fresh food, and this is "apartheid". The power of "structural racism"!
Capitalists are more evil than they are greedy, so they will lose money in order to be racist and feed black people trash. Liberals pretend to be against conspiracy theories, but they love those that push their agenda
Read this absolutely hilarious thread of New York Times writers discovering nobody uses the woke language the paper has been pushing for years - "The New York Times distributed a quiz asking readers what politically charged words or phrases they would or wouldn't use. The results were broadly in favor of normal language and broadly rejecting of woke, far-left lingo — and this thread summarizing the reactions of Times writers to those results is hilarious"
Thread by @MatthewFoldi on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "Going to do a thread on some WILD admissions by New York Times staff that show how wildly out of touch they are with America, biology, and basically the entire world. Starting off with how they admit they want to erase pregnant women. Here, one of their editors admits she won’t use the term “pro-life”…because that’s not the preferred term of the left, which is obviously their entire readership. [Ed: their preferred term is "anti-abortion"]
Here, they discuss the term “master bedroom,” and admit the term has nothing to do with slavery, but that they understand why people would be triggered and want to stop using it anyway. Here, another writer says it’s “interesting” that 80% of people across all races use the term “master bedroom,” which the New York Times’s own reporting confirms is in no way problematic if you have 5+ brain cells (I understand this disqualifies much of their readership). On immigration, one NYT editor thought it was a “curveball” to learn that over half of America uses the term “illegal alien.” “I thought most people had stopped using this term.”... This editor was “surprised” to learn that ~75% of Americans use the term “third world country,” which she calls demeaning. This is exactly who I would expect reads WHO reports and thinks that represents how normal people speak. In dismissing the term BIPOC, one of the NYT writers says that it “sounds like the name of a disease” or a type of sexuality. Here the NYT editor acknowledges that fake women term Latinx is not used by anyone—and that Latinos are the least surprised by this reality. This observation from @JohnHMcWhorter is true: “a certain sliver of our population will control a rich jargon of prescribed terms, of little import to most people.”"
Columbia University actually tweeted out this racist op-ed from its official account - "Sure, Asians have worked really hard and deserve spots in school, but they've benefited from privilege so it's not like they ACTUALLY earned it... her argument is that these students are smarter and better prepared for college BECAUSE racist teachers help them achieve academically. THEREFORE, we should make the standards tougher for Asians because they get an unfair and racist hand-up... I guess, in the end, it shouldn't be a shock that this is coming from the university that censored a literal North Korean refugee so she felt like she was back in freaking North Korea"
NIH Blocks Access to Genetics Database - "A policy of deliberate ignorance has corrupted top scientific institutions in the West. It’s been an open secret for years that prestigious journals will often reject submissions that offend prevailing political orthodoxies—especially if they involve controversial aspects of human biology and behavior—no matter how scientifically sound the work might be. The leading journal Nature Human Behaviour recently made this practice official in an editorial effectively announcing that it will not publish studies that show the wrong kind of differences between human groups. American geneticists now face an even more drastic form of censorship: exclusion from access to the data necessary to conduct analyses, let alone publish results. Case in point: the National Institutes of Health now withholds access to an important database if it thinks a scientist’s research may wander into forbidden territory. The source at issue, the Database of Genotypes and Phenotypes (dbGaP), is an exceptional tool, combining genome scans of several million individuals with extensive data about health, education, occupation, and income. It is indispensable for research on how genes and environments combine to affect human traits. No other widely accessible American database comes close in terms of scientific utility. My colleagues at other universities and I have run into problems involving applications to study the relationships among intelligence, education, and health outcomes. Sometimes, NIH denies access to some of the attributes that I have just mentioned, on the grounds that studying their genetic basis is “stigmatizing.” Sometimes, it demands updates about ongoing research, with the implied threat that it could withdraw usage if it doesn’t receive satisfactory answers. In some cases, NIH has retroactively withdrawn access for research it had previously approved. Note that none of the studies I am referring to include inquiries into race or sex differences. Apparently, NIH is clamping down on a broad range of attempts to explore the relationship between genetics and intelligence... The cost of this censorship is profound. On a practical level, many of the original data-generating studies were set up with the explicit goal of understanding risk factors for various diseases. Since intelligence and education are also risk factors for many of these diseases, denying researchers usage of these data stymies progress on the problems the studies were funded to address. Scientific research should not have to justify itself on those grounds, anyway. Perhaps the most elemental principle of science is that the search for truth is worthwhile, regardless of its practical benefits. NIH’s responsibility is to protect the safety and privacy of research participants, not to enforce a party line. Indeed, no apparent legal basis exists for these restrictions. NIH enforces hundreds of regulations, but you will search in vain for any grounds on which to ban “stigmatizing” research—whatever that even means... NIH has historically enjoyed high levels of public confidence in its professionalism and integrity. That trust is now deteriorating. The decline began with evidence that its personnel may have been complicit in blocking investigations of the possibility that Covid-19 escaped from a Chinese laboratory. The restrictions on scholars’ access to the dbGaP don’t have nearly the same public visibility as the Covid story, but they strike equally at the heart of NIH’s integrity."
