Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #HowToArgueWithARacist
Most recents (16)
Well this is interesting. London mayoral candidate and former actor Laurence Fox has adopted the Glass of Milk emoji in his twitter handle. This is commonly used by White Supremacists in a misplaced attempt to indicate racial purity via lactase persistence. 
Here's another example from Richard Spencer, described by wikipedia as an 'American neo-Nazi, antisemitic conspiracy theorist, and white supremacist'.
I don't know whether this is Fox's intention or not, but this is a well known code used by White Supremacists.
Correct
This is not even a contestable fact. It’s demonstrably true. Human classification sits at the roots of the emergence of science in the 18th C, and in all cases it was both hierarchical and in service of the political ideology of European expansion, colonialism and subjugation.
As @rmathematicus says
A quick note of thanks. #HowToArgueWithARacist is at number 2 in the Times paperback charts. I'm very proud to be alongside friends @CCriadoPerez @Philippa_Perry and Deborah Orr, whom we miss terribly.
[I've no idea what that book is at 1, but I do not like the title at all]
[I've no idea what that book is at 1, but I do not like the title at all]
I'm proud of this book, and delighted that it has found an audience, not least with it being selected as @Waterstones book of the month.
bit.ly/370vcsj
bit.ly/370vcsj
Here's a line which I think is important - though I borrowed it from Helen Lewis, who borrowed it from someone else.
We know pretty much exactly when and how lactase persistence evolved in Europe and in other pastoralist societies.
I wrote a whole chapter on this in A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived.
I wrote a whole chapter on this in A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived.
They were of course able to *drink* milk, just unable to digest milk in adulthood before the evolution of lactase persistence. Before that, they were eating soft cheeses and yoghurts, in which the sugar lactose is already broken down.
The mutation itself is not in the gene LCT itself, but around 13,000 base pairs upstream in a control region; this C>T change accounts for the majority of lactase persistence.
Today in 1936 at the Berlin Olympics, Jesse Owens won the 100m in 10.3 seconds, his first of 4 golds there. He did this in front of Adolf Hitler.
This photo (for the Long Jump) is in the US edition of #HowToArgueWithARacist, which comes out tomorrow.
bit.ly/2Pm0ZLP
This photo (for the Long Jump) is in the US edition of #HowToArgueWithARacist, which comes out tomorrow.
bit.ly/2Pm0ZLP
Owen’s coach Dean Cromwell later said:
‘The Negro excels in the events he does because he is closer to the primitive than the white man. It was not long ago that his ability to sprint and jump was a life-and-death matter to him in the jungle.’
‘The Negro excels in the events he does because he is closer to the primitive than the white man. It was not long ago that his ability to sprint and jump was a life-and-death matter to him in the jungle.’
Though less overt, this type of racism is alive and thriving today, and propped up by misunderstood, misrepresented and plain hokey pseudoscience.
A fun story for Sunday night. Last week I posted a gloriously deranged review by Eran Elhaik of #HowToArgueWithARacist. He’s a scientist now at Lund U whose various businesses in genetic astrology I have previously publicly criticised for being nonsense.
khazardnaproject.wordpress.com/2020/07/21/how…
khazardnaproject.wordpress.com/2020/07/21/how…
He changed the review several times, deleting various things, such as how scientists fear me! He also called me antisemitic, which I think is libellous. Anyway, I noticed a new 1 star review of #HowToArgueWithARacist on Amazon which use the same language. How odd.
So I looked at FrodoMan’s other reviews. He is not a fan!
A gloriously deranged review of #HowToArgueWithARacist by Eran Elhaik, whose various businesses in genetic astrology I have previously publicly criticised for being absolute comical nonsense.
Scientists: FEAR ME! FEAR THE RUTHEFORD HOT DOG. 🌭
khazardnaproject.wordpress.com/2020/07/21/how…
Scientists: FEAR ME! FEAR THE RUTHEFORD HOT DOG. 🌭
khazardnaproject.wordpress.com/2020/07/21/how…
Oh bums, he’s edited the bit out about how scientists in the UK FEAR ME, and I didn’t screen grab it.
Thanks @adpbsc!
Well. I am pleased, though not celebratory, that #HowToArgueWithARacist has returned to the Sunday Times Bestseller list at No.5. In these troubling times, it is incumbent upon us all to learn our histories, and equip ourselves with evidence-based arguments against bigotry.
Alongside amazing authors on related subjects, inc. @renireni, Layla Saad #meandwhitesupremacy, her words below. Many of these books are sold out at major retailers, but you can always find them at your local indies.
Science is no ally to racists. Science can and should be deployed as an anti-racist tool.
For my American friends, a rewritten US-specific edition will be out Aug 11, with a new introduction
(and all the references to football changed to soccer)
theexperimentpublishing.com/catalogs/sprin…
For my American friends, a rewritten US-specific edition will be out Aug 11, with a new introduction
(and all the references to football changed to soccer)
theexperimentpublishing.com/catalogs/sprin…
I wrote about this in #HowToArgueWithARacist, how our changing culture has emboldened casual expressions of racism. In A Brief History, I briefly mention my early experiences of racism, the first of which occurred about 3 miles from where Brian was abused in the story above.
Anyway, this is the normal, everyday experience for millions of people. If you thought it had gone away, you weren't paying attention.
(screengrab from an early, now-corrected proof: yes the date should 1857, as Darwin, with his several powers did not write letters after he was dead).
Ah so ‘men evolved beards to protect their faces in bouts of fisticuffs’ is an actual paper.
A thread. 1/x
bit.ly/3d4PDW4
A thread. 1/x
bit.ly/3d4PDW4
However, it is still whiffy adaptationism, and one whose experimental data is weak but supports a classic just-so-story of human evolution, but just the type of poor quality research that evo psych people love. 2/x
Or, Panglossian, from Voltaire of course – Dr Pangloss argued that we have two legs cos trousers were cut way, or noses were there to rest the spectacles on. 3/x
Here is a tweet from an internet man with far right interests, who claims to be an 'international Science Communications specialist' and 'an historian'.
His tweet, predictably, is ahistorical, and scientifically illiterate meaningless puffinwank.
His tweet, predictably, is ahistorical, and scientifically illiterate meaningless puffinwank.
Apart from being continually invaded by Romans, by endless people from the Eurpoean continent, and a almost complete population turnover from Beaker folk about 4500 years ago, England wasn't really a nation till the 10th century.
Before which there was widespread Roman Briton Christianity. See @holland_tom on Æthelstan and Æthelflaed for more info on that.
Fan mail! Extra points for the big font, and filling it right to the edge (that’s A4, landscape). #HowToArgueWithARacist
Wait! There’s more!
I get quite a lot of these, but this one from a couple of years ago is still the benchmark. Notable also for the commitment to A4 spatial efficiency. #HowToArgueWithARacist
I'm a bit overwhelmed by this. Thank you to all who have bought, listened, read, and helped. We are legion, and they don't get to win, we do*
Power, thanks, love and rockets to all.
#HowToArgueWithARacist
Power, thanks, love and rockets to all.
#HowToArgueWithARacist
* Free signed copies to the 1st 3 people to tell me the name of the character who said the line I'm referencing here.
It was Ellis Carver from the Wire
Congrats to the first three!
Congrats to the first three!
The tweets below have come to my attention, and I'd like to respond. It is of course about me, and Angela and I have been congenially discussing this offline. 1/n
Due credit is incredibly important to me, and I always aim to both give it, and to raise the profile of scientists and others, especially from under-represented groups, notably women and people of colour. 2/n
I hope that this is evident in my work. But I clearly could do more, and I will endeavour to do so. 3/n
I can see this damn Andrew Sabisky situation is not going away. I have written two books about Eugenics and race, teach it, at the place where it was founded, in the lab named after its creator, Francis Galton, where I was an Undergrad and still am a Fellow, so, some thoughts 1/n
2/n like Cummings, he appears to be bewitched by science, without having made the effort to understand the areas he is invoking, nor it’s history. Here’s a para from #HowToArgueWithARacist
The argument that humans are susceptible to selective breeding as in agriculture (as expressed by Dawkins) is not incorrect, though it is simplistic to the point of being almost meaningless. 3/n
#HowToArgueWithARacist doesn't address Harvard geneticist David Reich or MIT's Robert Weinberg? Traits influenced by genetics, including cognitive & behavioural traits, are expected to differ somewhat across groups as allele frequencies differ. nytimes.com/2018/03/23/opi…
The section in the @guardian asked why black athletes don't dominate swimming. Aside from the obvious point that swimming has higher barriers to entry than sprinting, there are average biomechanical differences Rutherford omits to mention. pratt.duke.edu/about/news/spe…
“Blacks tend to have longer limbs with smaller circumferences, meaning that their centers of gravity are higher compared to whites of the same height,” Bejan said. “Asians and whites tend to have longer torsos, so their centers of gravity are lower.”
