Study: Whites suffer higher rates of mental illness than blacks

This new study used data on more than 11,000 Americans to test the "Black-White Mental Health Paradox": researchers have found that blacks suffer lower rates of psychiatric illness than whites. 

The researchers looked at 12 disorders for the past year and also over one's whole lifetime:

Results showed overwhelming evidence of the paradox across lifetime and past-year disorders for women and men. In addition, Blacks’ mental health advantage over Whites widened after adjusting for socioeconomic factors.

So the data is clear that rates are higher for whites, and the gap is even wider if you compare high-income blacks and whites, or if you compare low-income blacks and whites.

Researchers call this a paradox, but it's only a paradox if you subscribe to the theory that America is a racist society, and so the trauma of oppression should cause rampant mental illness among blacks.

The greater mental health of blacks is evidence that there are big biological differences between the two races. Whites are biologically more vulnerable to psychiatric disorders.

In this context, liberals have told me that blacks are just really strong people. Who else could survive slavery and Jim Crow? Although they won't admit it -- they tend to be lazy, biased, dishonest thinkers -- they are really saying that blacks have a biological mental health advantage.

As the genetic evidence of racial differences becomes more and more indisputable, I imagine lefties will concede the importance of biology where blacks have an advantage in order to look scientific, but will continue to flip out over biological differences where blacks come up short.

Does a parent's love really improve a child's behavior?

This new study examined 227 pairs of twins:

They found that the twin who experienced stricter or harsher treatment and less emotional warmth from parents had a greater chance of showing aggression and a lack of empathy and moral compass—a set of characteristics known as callous-unemotional traits.

The researchers conclude that the study provides compelling evidence that parenting matters.

They might be right, but the scientific literature indicates parenting has little long-term effect on behavior. Overall the long haul, genes simply dominate. 

The scientists fail to mention that, in their discipline style, parents might be reacting to differences in the twins' behavior. Identical twins turn out different because of accidental events that happen during development. For example, one twin could get fall and get a brain injury which worsens his behavior, and parents might react more harshly and coldly to such behavior. One might ask why would a parent systematically treat one twin different than the other? The obvious answer is that the twins diverge first, and then parents treat them differently second. Parents typically delay punishment until the child seems old enough to understand it.  

One the other hand, if it is true that there are short-term benefits to more parental warmth and more moderate discipline, that is not without value.  I have 6 children and spend a lot of time managing them. If there are techniques that get my kids under better control, that is awesome even if it doesn't change their long-term character.

Shutting down Gab.com? Our elites are dumb

From this article:

Gab, the social network scrutinized following the shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue that left 11 dead, went offline as service providers suspended accounts and threatened to shut the website down. 

A message on Gab.com said the website would not be accessible for a period of time as the site shifts to a new hosting provider.  In a statement, hosting provider GoDaddy confirmed it has given Gab 24 hours to switch providers after claiming the website violated its terms of service.   

'GoDaddy investigated and discovered numerous instances of content on the site that both promotes and encourages violence against people,' read a statement from GoDaddy.  Medium, an online publishing tool, suspended Gab's account, which was used to release statements including one right after the synagogue attack on Saturday... 

The accused Pittsburgh shooter, Robert Bowers, appeared to have an account on Gab where he posted multiple anti-Semitic messages. 'I can't sit by an watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics. I'm going in,' read a post on the account right before the shooting. 

I'm a bit reluctant to help American elites, but instead of shutting down Gab, why don't you exploit it?  A wide open forum attracts all types, including lots of crazies. Give them a comfortable platform so they blab about their plans, and then intervene before they commit crimes. You really want to shut these people up so you know less about them? Our elites seem to be stupid about everything.

Red, White and Blue McDonald's latest ad campaign

McDonald's is running an ad campaign with pairs of photos of customers to show us how much we have in common and how kind we can be to each other.  Honestly, I am getting a lot of warmth from the couple (I'm in Mickey D's all the time but have never seen guys like this there -- they wouldn't be caught dead in such a place, too much taste) but I gotta be frank: the young woman is not melting my heart. What's the deal? After Michelle Obama we're supposed to think that cold, hateful black women are the greatest thing since sliced bread?

Americans cannot handle much truth about race

I ran across this piece by Jared Taylor which argues that President Nixon believed in biological racial gaps among the races, but felt he must keep them secret. Taylor claims that Nixon believed in the use of "Noble Lies": telling lies that are good for society. Taylor thinks it's always destructive to tell lies, and telling blacks they are as capable as any group of rising to the top actually hurts society by making blacks resentful when they don't rise.

I would make one point: It is clear from the quotes that Nixon believed that social programs will be limited in how much they actually help blacks, so in this sense he did not think lying was good for society.

If I were Nixon, I would have talked about racial truths only to the extent that I could remain politically successful. Honest losers don't help anyone. I can't emphasize this enough. Race realists have a strong streak of social autism. You have to meet the American public where they are at. And in my view, at the moment -- even decades after Nixon -- they cannot handle much truth. Talk candidly, and you will be marginalized, and you will lose. Trump has shown about how far a very talented man can take the truth and still win. And he hasn't said much at all.

You don't lie for the good of society. You lie as much as you need to in order to win.

Readers might ask why a Christian would be okay with lying. I am with Machiavelli here.  He contended that Christian ethics should operate on a personal level, but when it comes to politics, saints ALWAYS LOSE. Politics is vicious. It's simply unavoidable.

Trends in the Jewish population

The declining religiosity of Americans is discussed a lot, but less attention is given to the shrinking and shifting of non-Christian groups. This graph shows that into the 1980s, Jews were just about the only non-Christian game into town. Jews as a share of non-Christians began to drop precipitously in the 90s, and is now under 50% (General Social Survey data):

Of course, some of this is due to the immigration of non-Jews, or Jews dropping out of the religion, but the number of offspring for those ages 40-64 has been dropping since the 70s (with an interesting reversal in this decade):

Orthodox Jews have helped fertility from falling further by having more kids than other Jews, especially in the last couple of decades:

On the other hand, Orthodox Jews are a fairly small minority within the Jewish community, and those who are some "other type" of Jew are growing, and they tend have few children.

Data: The family size split between the religious and secularists has grown

A recent study of the Canadian General Social Survey shows an increasing split in the fertility of religious vs. non-religious women.  From the paper:

For more than 100 years, women who attend church weekly have had more children than never-attenders. But the split accelerated from the 1950s to recent times. (More recent cohorts aren't finished yet.)

One standard explanation is that religious women use less birth control, but many religions, even conservative ones like Mormons, are fine with birth control, just not abortion. I imagine religious women are less likely to abort an unwanted pregnancy because of beliefs against it.  Religion also tends to stress the importance of motherhood. Mary, the feminine ideal, was first and foremost a mother.

In addition, research suggests that religious people tend to score higher on the trait of agreeableness and to a lesser extent, conscientiousness and emotional stability. Agreeableness, which includes trust, compliance, and tender-mindedness, predicts investment in church and family life.

This is one reason I'm a religious person (in addition to being pro-science). I feel at home with people who are pro-life in the broad sense. Secularism seems to me the road to death.

My kids and I go to our first Trump rally

Some of my kids and I were able to attend our first Trump rally. It was a blast -- the President is obviously a talented man -- but I pretty much know his routine, so my main focus was on the crowd. 

Frankly, I love these people. They are my father multiplied by 10,000. Ordinary Americans. People who fix things. The backbone of the country. I didn't see very many business-looking types. I didn't see many intellectual types. 

They were polite and friendly but tough. We were packed in like sardines. Animal behaviorists would have predicted several fights, but I didn't hear an unkind word. I was worried that my kids would hear a lot of bad language, but there was very little. 

Some really responded to the opening Christian prayer; others didn't seem religious at all but were respectful. Respect again and obvious pride when the Pledge of Allegiance was said and the National Anthem was sung. 

If journalists see fascism in these people, they are liars. These are the descendants of pioneers. Love of freedom is in their blood. They are wary of government and despise tyranny. They are not Fascists, they are Americans.

UPDATE: Two points on race: 1) Crowd applause rose and fell. I was one of the only people in my area who said "Yay!" when Trump said Hispanic unemployment was at an all-time low. Working-class whites seem pretty focused on their own situations. Don't expect them to show up in droves to vote for you if your main message is that other groups are benefitting from your policies. 2) I did not see a single white nationalist. I know folks might blend in and look like everyone else, but as for proud, visible WN's, none. 

One key difference between people like me and white nationalists

If people didn't know better, they might think from my last post on too much population growth in Africa that I am a white nationalist (WN). I am not. There are crucial differences between them and me.

While members of a movement do not agree on everything, I assume most WNs believe that the white race has an ultimate value, I suppose the ultimate value, at least for whites. My attitude is basically the same as it was 20 years ago. I place a high value on my family, my country, and humanity (and God, if we want to go beyond the natural world). The welfare of these groups tends to be enhanced by white people. Thriving is correlated with whites. They are a means to the desired ends of human success, achievement, and virtuosity. I'm not saying whites are only valuable because they benefit others. I'm saying they have the same value as all humans, but they contribute more. They are needed more.

Since my family and I are white, our fate is tied up with that of whites, but the fate of America and of other races depend on how whites are doing as well. The main difference between me and the run-of-the-mill conservative is that I recognize the overwhelming power of genes. Group differences simply cannot be wished away. The market cannot solve all our problems. We have to deal with these realities. And while I disagree with WNs (I focus on only one difference here), their intelligent representatives are much more in touch with social reality than the Loony Left is.

CDC: American fertility is now as pathetic as Europe's

The figure below is taken from an October 2018 CDC report. It shows large drops in US fertility over the past decade. Whites from counties of all sizes are now well below replacement. White women in large metro areas average about 1.6 kids each. These are pathetic European levels. People in the developed world want their trips to Aspen, not the hassle of raising kids. And don't give me the excuse that people can't afford kids. My grandfather had eight children on a maintenance man's wage. They lived simply, that's all.  I have six kids, and our household income is average.

And if you're celebrating because this is a sign of progress toward a sustainable global population, think again. Current trends just mean a shift away from whites and Asians and toward blacks, God bless them. We need thriving scientific populations, not exploding, perennially poor ones.

By the way, it's ironic, but Michelle Obama might save the day. She is pushing for much more female education in Africa. What works in one population doesn't necessarily work in another, but if history is any guide, nothing dries up a woman's uterus better than staying in school.

You don't see me kissing up to my 100% German boss by telling her stories of my single German ancestor from 19th century Pennsylvania

Carl Zimmer and Razib Khan have made a big deal on Twitter about the inaccuracy of the claim that Elizabeth Warren is no more Indian than the average White American. Razib, a geneticist, says that when the data are interpreted accurately, Warren would probably have 10 times the Indian ancestry of the average White American.

Truth is, 10 times the tiniest fraction is still tiny. Zimmer said the vast majority of white Americans have ZERO Indian ancestry. So you can have a absolutely trivial amount of indigenous blood and still have much more than most of us.

Assuming the Stanford geneticist is correct, Warren had an Indian ancestor 6 to 10 generations back. My parents have carefully documented our ancestry going back many generations. Most of my ancestors are English with a little Welsh, Irish, Scottish, and Danish mixed in.

But I do have one grandmother exactly six generations back who was born in Germany but ended up in Pennsylvania in the 19th century. Have any of my relatives ever dreamed they were German, or even part German? A huge tree of ancestors, and one damn German? It's absurd. I would be a liar if I told people I was German. My boss is 100% German, but you don't see me kissing up by telling stories about my German grandmother.

UPDATE: Hmmm. I wonder if it would work...

Data: White Americans seem fairly homogeneous (so far)

I recently showed that white Americans whose families are from east of the Hajnal line tend to be more clannish than those from west of the line.

In addition to the issue of clannishness, hbdchick also presented evidence that Western Europeans have a number of positive traits at higher levels than Eastern Europeans. Do these differences hold up in the US?

So far I've seen little evidence that they do. Their mean IQs are not different, nor are their chances of an arrest, nor their frequency of donating blood. The one difference I've detected so far is that W. Europeans are slightly less approving of cheating on their taxes--not even 1/5 of a standard deviation difference.

At least so far, American whites seem fairly homogeneous. European differences seem to have faded.

Meta-analysis: Mass immigration is unrelated to crime (and it leads to more crime long-term)

In this new meta-analysis of 51 studies, liberal researchers found a whopping correlation of -.03 between immigrants and crime. In other words, even when liberals try REALLY hard, they cannot say that more immigration results in less crime.

And further, even they have to admit that the children and grandchildren of immigrants have MUCH higher crime rates.

Notice, too, how all of their studies conflate legal with illegal immigration. What they have attempted to do is show everyone that conservatives are wrong in saying illegals are more criminal than native-borns by showing the effect of overall immigration on crime. Dishonest.

They also confuse the issue by mixing groups, for example, Mexican and Chinese immigrants--two VERY different groups in terms of street crime (the Chinese, of course, have very low rates).

Anyway, they have talked very loudly about lower crime rates among immigrants, but this meta-analysis shows that this is false, and they fail to acknowledge that their own data and methods indicate that LONG-TERM our crime problem gets much worse with mass overall immigration.

As for illegal immigration, they have a lot more research to do. And I don't trust them.

What kind of person thinks cheating on taxes is okay?

What's the profile of someone who thinks cheating on one's taxes is okay?

Using a General Social Survey question, this is what I found:

Thinking cheating on taxes is okay (sample size = 2,348, standardized coefficients)

Age  -.05*
Male  .07***
Non-white  .08***
City size   .05*
Immigrant  -.04
Education  -.08*** 
Church attendance   -.12***
Liberalism   .10***

So people who think cheating on taxes is not wrong are likely to be (from strongest to weakest): not religious, liberal, non-white, less educated, male, young, and living in a big city. Pretty close to a profile of a street criminal.

UPDATE: Amusing, isn't it, that liberals want to force you to turn over so much of your money to the government, but think it's fine to avoid paying their own taxes.

The clannishness of white Americans (or the lack of it) mirrors that of Europe

I recently presented evidence that non-whites tend to be clannish because they are non-white, not because they are outnumbered. But I also mentioned that there is variation among whites. This is consistent with bloggers hbd chick  and JayMan who stress that not all Europeans are the same, and that the Hajnal line divides them.

Using the General Social survey question ("When you think about yourself, how important is your ethnic group membership to your sense of who you are?" 1 = not at all, 2 = slightly, 3 = moderately, 4 = very) I calculated the mean score for various white groups:

Mean clannishness score (N = 2,173)

Orthodox Jew  3.50

Conservative Jew  3.43

White Mexican  3.38

Greek  3.20

White Puerto Rican  3.15

Reform Jew  3.09

White Spanish  3.08

Czech  2.89

Austrian  2.70

Italian  2.61

Russian  2.59

Swedish  2.56

Irish  2.55

All whites  2.54

Norwegian  2.51

Hungarian  2.50

Polish  2.48

Dutch  2.48

Scottish  2.47

Jew--no affiliation  2.46

German  2.44

English/Welsh  2.39

Danish  2.38

Finnish  2.29

French   2.23

French Canadian  2.19

To get a sense of the variation, the difference between Orthodox Jews and French Canadians is over one standard deviation--a very large difference. 

Following hbd chick, I categorized white Americans as Western Europe (=3, 53.1%), Mixed (=2, 22.5%), or Eastern Europe (=1, 24.4%). Next, I conducted OLS regression to see if this measure, along with several others, predicts clannishness:

Clannishness (standardized coefficients)

Age  .13***

Male  .01

Education  -.03

Conservatism  .09*  

Church attendance  .04

Westernness  -.07*

So whites are more ethnocentric if they are: older, politically conservative, and if their families came from outside these lines: 

 

 It's pretty amazing that Americans whose families left Europe a long time ago still show some of the clannishness found in the Old Country.

"Europe's dead cross may bud and blossom there"

All my emprises have been fill’d with Thee,
My speculations, plans, begun and carried on in thoughts of Thee,
Sailing the deep, or journeying the land for Thee;
Intentions, purports, aspirations mine—leaving results to Thee.
O I am sure they really come from Thee!
The urge, the ardor, the unconquerable will,
The potent, felt, interior command, stronger than words,
A message from the Heavens, whispering to me even in sleep,
These sped me on.
By me, and these, the work so far accomplish’d (for what has been, has been;)
By me Earth’s elder, cloy’d and stifled lands, uncloy’d, unloos’d;
By me the hemispheres rounded and tied—the unknown to the known.
The end I know not—it is all in Thee;
Or small, or great, I know not—haply, what broad fields, what lands;
Haply, the brutish, measureless human undergrowth I know,
Transplanted there, may rise to stature, knowledge worthy Thee;
Haply the swords I know may there indeed be turn’d to reaping-tools;
Haply the lifeless cross I know—Europe’s dead cross—may bud and blossom there.

                                                       --from "Prayer of Columbus,"  Walt Whitman, 1871
                                                     

Non-whites are clannish because they are non-whites, not because they are outnumbered

Using General Social Survey day, I've shown before that non-white Americans are much more ethnocentric or clannish than whites.

Now this could be due to whites, especially those with ancestors from northwestern Europe, being more universalistic than other groups, or it could be due to the self-consciousness that comes from being in a very small group. You feel surrounded, so you stick together. This would mean that tiny whites groups would be clannish, too. Are Greek Americans, for example, somewhat clannish because they are a tiny slice of America, or because they are naturally ethnocentric?

I looked at this by creating a variable for ethnic group size. The group was scored 1, 2, or 3 depending on whether it was small, medium, or large.  English, Italians, and Finns, respectively, serve as examples.

Next, I regressed how important your ethnic group is to you on to variables I thought might be related to clannishness.  Here I show the standardized OLS coefficients (sample size = 1,959):

Importance of ethnic group to you

Age   .10***
Male   .00
Non-white  .32***
Immigrant   .06*
City size  .02   
Education   -.03
Ethnic group size  .03

The variables that significantly predict clannishness from strongest to weakest are: non-white, being older, and being an immigrant. The other variables, including ethnic group size, don't matter.

(For age, perhaps people tend to "come home" as they get older, similar to what you see with religious involvement.)

So non-whites are not clannish because they're small and thus feel they need to stick together; rather, they are ethnocentric because that's who they are. Whites tend to be universalistic because that's who they are.

This has implications for assimilation. Evidently, non-whites will remain clannish even after being here for generations, as blacks and Native Americans have done. (I should mention that there is variation: according to GSS data, Japanese Americans are not ethnocentric, while Orthodox Jews are.)

If you want immigrants to become true blue Americans with no other loyalties, invite whites to move here.

Our elites are sick

Our elites are sick.

I made the mistake of watching a CBS News story of how Gala apples are now passing Red Delicious as America's number 1 apple. I was pleased because Gala's are great, and I've always hated Red Delicious -- mealy and too sweet.

Then like an OCD patient who has to wash his hands 100 times a day, the journalist had to turn this amusing story into a moral message: Red Delicious represents 1950s White America where only one uniform color was valued. Galas represent 2018 America where a variety of colors -- read: fewer whites -- makes a superior apple.

Our elites need Zoloft, and I need some Pepto-Bismol.

Aristotle and Darwin tell you how to live

Few things have frustrated me more than the modern philosophical view that there is a gulf between facts and values. While hypotheses can be tested against the empirical world and rejected if not supported, there is no similar way to test claims about right and wrong. Morality only exists in our imaginations, we're told. I don't know about you, but that is completely unsatisfactory.

Only one man has offered a way out of this mess: Aristotle. According to him, your design dictates your morality. A knife is a good knife if it does well what it is intended to do -- cut stuff.

Aristotle used this approach to develop an ethics for man, which was further refined by Thomas Aquinas centuries later. But neither man, of course, knew the works of another genius, Charles Darwin, who figured out natural selection centuries later.

What is man's design, according to Darwin? Simple -- to propagate. To turn the world into copies of yourself.

It just so happens that this is roughly what Aristotle and Aquinas argued.

Three geniuses from three very different eras agree more or less about what you are.  So what is right for you?  To go forth and propagate.

What Frederick Douglass said when asked what must be done for former slaves

When former slave Frederick Douglass was asked what must be done for former slaves, his answer was, "Do nothing for us... Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. If the Negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall."

Study: Large numbers of immigrants cause working-class citizens to have fewer children

This new study looks to see if the flood of Cuban nationals into Miami in 1980 had a negative impact on the fertility of non-Cuban Miami women.

The researchers found that it reduced, at least in the short-term, the number of births to women who rent because rental costs went way up.

By contrast, women who owned homes were unaffected. As expected, it looks like working-class Americans are hurt the most by mass immigration.

Data: "Free love" causes more rape, and more sex partners do NOT make you happier

Liberals are so insensitive to reality, they don't realize that their advocacy of sexual freedom generates more rape. How? Despite the stereotype of getting jumped like Ford claims about Judge Kavanaugh, most rape is date rape. It's casual intimacy gone wrong. At some point in the seduction, the girl wants to stop, but the guy keeps going. The sequence is typically persuasion, pressure, then force.

So the more casual sexual interactions, the greater the odds of interactions that go south.

Sex liberationists would deny the connection -- again, these kinds of people are immune to reality --but if an honest one came along, perhaps he might argue it's worth it because free "love" generates so much overall happiness. Is that true?

One measure of lots of causal sex is the number of partners one had in the past year. The General Social Survey asks this question, so I looked to see if this and control variables predict being happy. Here are the ordinary least squares (OLS) results for almost 15,000 cases.

Being happy (standardized OLS coefficients)

Age  -.01
Male  -.01
White  .09***
Size of city   .01
Native-born  -.02*
Education  .12***
Church attendance  .11***
Liberalism  -.05***
Number of sex partners  -.01

* p < .05,  ***p < .001, two-tail test

So what predicts being happy?  Being white, an immigrant, educated, religious, and conservative. Race, education, and religious involvement are most important.

Age, sex, and city size don't matter, and people get nothing out of many sex partners.

Now you're thinking, maybe lots of partners don't make women happy, but c'mon, it's a man's paradise.

I ran the numbers for men only: the coefficient is negative (-.02) but the p-value is .074. In other words, more partners makes no difference in a man's happiness. Same thing if I run the numbers for women only.

Like Greg Cochran says: Sociologists are useful because if you take the position that is the opposite of theirs, you're probably right.

UPDATE: By the way, if you suspect that I added a bunch of controls to wipe out a positive partners/happiness correlation, you're wrong: it's -.02 (and not significant).