What's REALLY Behind Research Claiming Black Women are Less Attractive
I feel sorry for Dr. Satoshi Kanazawa, the evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics, who recently declared in a blog post (now removed from Psychology Today), that black women are less attractive than women of other races. Being of Japanese origin, he is new to a field of pseudo-science, which has operated on American soil for nearly three hundred years. But in my own work as a historian, I have grown intimately familiar with this type of research, and the impulse that drives some well-educated men to make such baseless pronouncements.
They invariably do so with the fury of a religious convert, even though contemporary bio-geneticists have proven that the 19th century definitions of race -- Caucasoids, Negroids, and Mongoloids -- do not in fact correspond with genetic reality. For instance, people who call themselves “black Americans” may, in fact, be genetically closer to white Americans and the Native Indian groups with whom they have interbred for the past three centuries, than they are to any random group of East Africans, regardless of outward similarities in skin color.
Even though I have never met Dr. Kanazawa, my own research has offered an amazingly accurate profile of such researchers. They are invariably men of small stature or those who were at an early age frustrated in their own athletic pursuits. But what does this have to do with research claiming that black women have excessive testosterone levels?
Firstly, the testosterone business is a non-issue. The primary symptom of an excess of testosterone in women is an abundance of body hair. Women of African ancestry have less body hair than those of other groups. The real target of Dr Kanazawa’s preoccupations are tall, muscular, athletic black men. After all, the women who give birth to members of the National Basketball Association are seldom tiny and fragile. Thus, the London-based psychologist is merely offering a new twist on deeply-rooted masculine insecurities, which have been around for centuries. A friend and colleague of Dr. Kanazawa, psychologist J. Philippe Rushton, exemplified these unspoken preoccupations when he began pushing false dichotomies in an interview with writer Adam Miller in the October 20, 1994 issue of Rolling Stone Magazine:
It is regrettable that the fastest way for a publicity-seeker to gain the attention he craves is to present faulty research, which preys on vulnerable minorities. One of these days, and I hope that it is not too far in the future, a scholar will concoct some racially-polarizing nonsense, and the public’s reaction will be nil. People will tiptoe around this individual gingerly. And members of the media will merely shake their heads in sorrow, as they would for any individual, pushing a shopping cart down a city street, shouting to passers-by that he really is Sir Lancelot.
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They invariably do so with the fury of a religious convert, even though contemporary bio-geneticists have proven that the 19th century definitions of race -- Caucasoids, Negroids, and Mongoloids -- do not in fact correspond with genetic reality. For instance, people who call themselves “black Americans” may, in fact, be genetically closer to white Americans and the Native Indian groups with whom they have interbred for the past three centuries, than they are to any random group of East Africans, regardless of outward similarities in skin color.
Even though I have never met Dr. Kanazawa, my own research has offered an amazingly accurate profile of such researchers. They are invariably men of small stature or those who were at an early age frustrated in their own athletic pursuits. But what does this have to do with research claiming that black women have excessive testosterone levels?
Firstly, the testosterone business is a non-issue. The primary symptom of an excess of testosterone in women is an abundance of body hair. Women of African ancestry have less body hair than those of other groups. The real target of Dr Kanazawa’s preoccupations are tall, muscular, athletic black men. After all, the women who give birth to members of the National Basketball Association are seldom tiny and fragile. Thus, the London-based psychologist is merely offering a new twist on deeply-rooted masculine insecurities, which have been around for centuries. A friend and colleague of Dr. Kanazawa, psychologist J. Philippe Rushton, exemplified these unspoken preoccupations when he began pushing false dichotomies in an interview with writer Adam Miller in the October 20, 1994 issue of Rolling Stone Magazine:
"It's a trade-off, more brain or more penis. You can't have everything."However, such pseudo-scientific assertions have been debunked so many times that they no longer garner media headlines. Enter the London-based lecturer, falsely claiming that the black females, who give birth to the black-male targets of this peculiar masculine envy or insecurity, somehow deserve to be diminished by being called “unattractive.”
It is regrettable that the fastest way for a publicity-seeker to gain the attention he craves is to present faulty research, which preys on vulnerable minorities. One of these days, and I hope that it is not too far in the future, a scholar will concoct some racially-polarizing nonsense, and the public’s reaction will be nil. People will tiptoe around this individual gingerly. And members of the media will merely shake their heads in sorrow, as they would for any individual, pushing a shopping cart down a city street, shouting to passers-by that he really is Sir Lancelot.
RELATED POSTS:
If You Want Super-Smart Kids, Marry a Pygmy
Will New Research Depict Neanderthals as Budding Geniuses?
Should Health Care Providers Focus on "Racial Genetics" as a Means of Reducing Black-White Health Disparities?
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