Steve, as a native White Southerner, I have decades of experience living among and working alongside blacks. Speaking of mental disorders, it's always been obvious (at least to me) that blacks tend to exhibit sociopathic/psychopathic traits at what I imagine is a much higher rate than other racial groups. Enjoyed the article as always.
I experienced something called school busing in the 70s, an effort to racially equalize the schools of the county where my family lived. The blacks bused to our school were vulgar and violent. Many assuredly had personality disorders. Over a fairly short time, whites in our county left the county for more civilized areas of the state.
I had the same experience in the 1970's (I was born in the early 60s). And I also remember that the blacks we were forced to integrate with were generally vulger, aggressive and often very hostile to White people. It was like mixing oil and water. Some things just don't belong together. My parents were fortunate to have attended segregated public schools in the South. I never mentioned the problems we had with the blacks and I don't think they ever realized how unpleasant an experience it was. But my parents weren't naive to black sociopathy. That's why they moved out of the local city when they married. But the counties in this area had their disproportionate share of blacks too.
My father grew up in 1950s Washington DC when it was still a Southern city. Desegregation began in 1954 and white flight began right after.
In the South, there are at least 100 rural counties where you can't send your children out of safety and cultural reasons. Yet Southern whites pay most of the property taxes to support the school systems.
One percent of Americans is higher than I realized. Free health care might explain the US/Europe difference.
Did I miss the prevalence of parent and child mental illness? Did anyone dare suggest to Miller that he not have children, or even warn him of the risk?
>In England, the gap for Black Caribbean and Black African immigrants runs between four to one and more than six to one.
A major issue currently bubbling under the surface in the UK is the motivation and legal status of the Southport child spree-stabber. A child of Rwandan refugees (Tutsi), I see the event as statistically probable given underlying base rates.
"Under the sway of the biomedical model, American psychiatry’s prevailing assumption has long been that because psychosis is primarily genetic, the prevalence of the disorder should be fairly equal across populations and shouldn’t be overly affected by societal forces."
How funny is that? When it comes to intelligence, the narrative is it CAN'T be genetic because that would necessarily imply inequality of outcome. Yet now we are being told that a genetic cause implies 'equality across populations'. I tell you it's "a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma."
I caught that as well. The unwillingness to accept obvious but socially uncomfortable realities is the key to 90% of the dysfunction in our society and politics.
However, I do think the ground is shifting somewhat, and even this piece nods at the genetic/biological component as something they don't want to believe is the prime factor but one that really cannot be ignored given the evidence. That's subtle progress for an institution like the NYT.
Over Thanksgiving, I had some coastal prog friends over and although we largely stayed away from politics, for some reason towards the end of the evening my counterpart started talking about how the left needs to be more realistic about the reasons for group disparities, which surprised me. He still tried to argue that societal trauma/income disparities played the dominant role and that social interventions through the political process were necessary and could succeed (which I mostly disagreed with) but he did essentially admit that gaps in economic and educational performance had a genetic basis and therefore expecting equal outcomes was a fool's errand. Unfortunately they had to leave and we couldn't continue the conversation but it was interesting that it was brought up by someone on the left and the acceptance of some level of biological reality. Given where they live I have no doubt his social circle has similar politics so I wonder whether his thoughts are reflective of ideas that are starting to circulate amongst peers or if he's a furtive reader of Sailer.
The two things are consistent. If intelligence were primarily genetic it would be evenly distributed across populations. It isn't, ipso facto differences in measured intelligence must not be primarily genetic. American psychiatry assumes Schizophrenia is primarily genetic therefore it should be evenly distributed...except it isn't so by the authors reasoning American psychiatrists should now assume that it is primarily environmental.
The reason for the inconsistency is the author of the article made up the part about genetics implying a condition would be fairly equal in prevalence across populations...you know like sickle cell disease, Tay-sachs, and hemochromatosis .
The author wrote something stupid but structured the sentence to imply the doctors believe the stupid thing
I have to say, contemporary academic discourse about genetics, especially in 'social policy adjacent' fields, is more like a game of intellectual 3 card monte than anything resembling a search for truth.
I’ve known two people with schizophrenia. Both are white, male and it was co-morbid with heavy cannabis use in late adolescence. Hard to know which caused which but that’s another story.
Anyway the impact on themselves and everyone around them was staggeringly damaging. Heartbreaking even.
So I’ve always thought that even small improvements in schizophrenia treatment would have massive social benefits. But I imagine it’s hard to do good science when it’s career suicide to state obvious truths about the condition.
I am no scientist but I think schizophrenics come from families and neighborhoods with great social anomie. Further, I would say that drugs causes many schizophrenics. For instance, I had a cousin who smoked PCP at 14 and was later diagnosed with schizophrenia. He lived as a schizophrenic and ward of the state for the last 35 years of his life.
As for the unusually high self-esteem of blacks, I think that is caused by low intelligence. Witness the idiot mayor of Dolton, Illinois, Tiffany Henyard. She's self-delusional to an absurdly ridiculous degree. But she has unusually high self-esteem.
I don't necessarily believe the study that showed higher self-esteem among blacks. They answered the survey questions as if they did, but I have encountered many insecure people who project a loudmouthed aggressive bravado to compensate. Difficult to know the internal dialog of a whole population from surveys given to high school kids.
>>Triggers are needed to profoundly alter the mind.>>
What it's like for black people to realize they're constantly being lied to in liberal white societies? They're told, "You're just like everyone else. You're just as smart, just as capable, just as law abiding. Any evidence to the contrary is the fault of white people." And yet this constant reassurance doesn't align with their experience and observation. How much actual racism does the average black experience? Very little that I've ever witnessed. I see white people bending over backwards to be nice to blacks, to coddle them, and yet they're told some invisible miasma of racism explains all their dysfunction. Can constant gaslighting drive a person crazy?
Black people long ago internalized a definition of "racism" which means the failure of whites to accord them exceptions and exemptions. Back in the 1980's the liberal New Republic magazine woukd often have commentary on "black special pleading."
‘Tell your children’ by Berenson is a good book about the evils of weed. I don’t think that all blacks smoke or that the ones that do are schizophrenic. However, if blacks smoke grass at a higher rate than whites (yes, I’m guessing) and blacks have a higher rate of schizophrenia than whites, and that pot can either uncover latent schizophrenia or cause it, then smoking pot would be more dangerous for blacks. A lot of ‘ifs’ but something to consider.
Have a look at Harlem, NYC in the 1930's https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Harlem+1930 ...and look at it now. What happened? LBJ's and the Democrat communist's Great Society which aimed at destroying the family unit in the United States, beginning with black families. Making people dependent on government handouts insures government growth and power. Worked like an evil charm, didn't it?
The definition of schizophrenia has evolved over the years and encompasses a few conditions. It is not a synonym for psychosis; rather psychosis is a symptom of schizophrenia. Paranoid schizophrenia is what people usually mean.
There are many psych disorders that plausibly are caused by mental stress, abusive childhood, difficult parent, especially the personality disorders. As was the fashion, back in the 1950s they proposed that schizophrenia was the result of being raised by a cold mother (or something). I think people were less materialist (in the philosophical sense) back then.
Having dealt with personality disorders and schizophrenics, I can't believe anyone seriously disbelieves that schizophrenia must be the result of something physically wrong with the brain. My guess is genetic propensity plus viral infection in utero or when young.
Schizophrenia is a strange thing because it is fairly heritable for something with seemingly no upside. Most things that kill you or cause you to have fewer kids (like cancer, gayness) are not, as you would expect.
>”The overwhelming cause of schizophrenia is genetic inheritance. It's true that outside factors can trigger or exacerbate the condition in adulthood.
“This article, however, tries to attach the condition to the Black experience. It does so mostly through implication and correlation. In my opinion this is incredibly insensitive and dismissive of the wide range of the human population that live with this terrible condition.”
Asians low self-esteem scores? It’s easy…they are good at statistics and know that amongst Asians half of them are below average.
Steve, as a native White Southerner, I have decades of experience living among and working alongside blacks. Speaking of mental disorders, it's always been obvious (at least to me) that blacks tend to exhibit sociopathic/psychopathic traits at what I imagine is a much higher rate than other racial groups. Enjoyed the article as always.
I experienced something called school busing in the 70s, an effort to racially equalize the schools of the county where my family lived. The blacks bused to our school were vulgar and violent. Many assuredly had personality disorders. Over a fairly short time, whites in our county left the county for more civilized areas of the state.
I had the same experience in the 1970's (I was born in the early 60s). And I also remember that the blacks we were forced to integrate with were generally vulger, aggressive and often very hostile to White people. It was like mixing oil and water. Some things just don't belong together. My parents were fortunate to have attended segregated public schools in the South. I never mentioned the problems we had with the blacks and I don't think they ever realized how unpleasant an experience it was. But my parents weren't naive to black sociopathy. That's why they moved out of the local city when they married. But the counties in this area had their disproportionate share of blacks too.
My father grew up in 1950s Washington DC when it was still a Southern city. Desegregation began in 1954 and white flight began right after.
In the South, there are at least 100 rural counties where you can't send your children out of safety and cultural reasons. Yet Southern whites pay most of the property taxes to support the school systems.
One percent of Americans is higher than I realized. Free health care might explain the US/Europe difference.
Did I miss the prevalence of parent and child mental illness? Did anyone dare suggest to Miller that he not have children, or even warn him of the risk?
>In England, the gap for Black Caribbean and Black African immigrants runs between four to one and more than six to one.
A major issue currently bubbling under the surface in the UK is the motivation and legal status of the Southport child spree-stabber. A child of Rwandan refugees (Tutsi), I see the event as statistically probable given underlying base rates.
"Under the sway of the biomedical model, American psychiatry’s prevailing assumption has long been that because psychosis is primarily genetic, the prevalence of the disorder should be fairly equal across populations and shouldn’t be overly affected by societal forces."
How funny is that? When it comes to intelligence, the narrative is it CAN'T be genetic because that would necessarily imply inequality of outcome. Yet now we are being told that a genetic cause implies 'equality across populations'. I tell you it's "a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma."
I caught that as well. The unwillingness to accept obvious but socially uncomfortable realities is the key to 90% of the dysfunction in our society and politics.
However, I do think the ground is shifting somewhat, and even this piece nods at the genetic/biological component as something they don't want to believe is the prime factor but one that really cannot be ignored given the evidence. That's subtle progress for an institution like the NYT.
Over Thanksgiving, I had some coastal prog friends over and although we largely stayed away from politics, for some reason towards the end of the evening my counterpart started talking about how the left needs to be more realistic about the reasons for group disparities, which surprised me. He still tried to argue that societal trauma/income disparities played the dominant role and that social interventions through the political process were necessary and could succeed (which I mostly disagreed with) but he did essentially admit that gaps in economic and educational performance had a genetic basis and therefore expecting equal outcomes was a fool's errand. Unfortunately they had to leave and we couldn't continue the conversation but it was interesting that it was brought up by someone on the left and the acceptance of some level of biological reality. Given where they live I have no doubt his social circle has similar politics so I wonder whether his thoughts are reflective of ideas that are starting to circulate amongst peers or if he's a furtive reader of Sailer.
The two things are consistent. If intelligence were primarily genetic it would be evenly distributed across populations. It isn't, ipso facto differences in measured intelligence must not be primarily genetic. American psychiatry assumes Schizophrenia is primarily genetic therefore it should be evenly distributed...except it isn't so by the authors reasoning American psychiatrists should now assume that it is primarily environmental.
The reason for the inconsistency is the author of the article made up the part about genetics implying a condition would be fairly equal in prevalence across populations...you know like sickle cell disease, Tay-sachs, and hemochromatosis .
The author wrote something stupid but structured the sentence to imply the doctors believe the stupid thing
I have to say, contemporary academic discourse about genetics, especially in 'social policy adjacent' fields, is more like a game of intellectual 3 card monte than anything resembling a search for truth.
I’ve known two people with schizophrenia. Both are white, male and it was co-morbid with heavy cannabis use in late adolescence. Hard to know which caused which but that’s another story.
Anyway the impact on themselves and everyone around them was staggeringly damaging. Heartbreaking even.
So I’ve always thought that even small improvements in schizophrenia treatment would have massive social benefits. But I imagine it’s hard to do good science when it’s career suicide to state obvious truths about the condition.
My (adopted) cousin had schizophrenia and he was pretty big into cannabis as a teenager.
I’m actually more worried about my own sons trying cannabis than alcohol.
Alcohol can be highly destructive but it it’s a process that takes years if not decades.
If there is an underlying susceptibility to schizophrenia weed use can be hugely and rapidly destructive
I am no scientist but I think schizophrenics come from families and neighborhoods with great social anomie. Further, I would say that drugs causes many schizophrenics. For instance, I had a cousin who smoked PCP at 14 and was later diagnosed with schizophrenia. He lived as a schizophrenic and ward of the state for the last 35 years of his life.
As for the unusually high self-esteem of blacks, I think that is caused by low intelligence. Witness the idiot mayor of Dolton, Illinois, Tiffany Henyard. She's self-delusional to an absurdly ridiculous degree. But she has unusually high self-esteem.
I don't necessarily believe the study that showed higher self-esteem among blacks. They answered the survey questions as if they did, but I have encountered many insecure people who project a loudmouthed aggressive bravado to compensate. Difficult to know the internal dialog of a whole population from surveys given to high school kids.
Trying to understand why these researchers failed to ask the obvious question of psychotics: "what color are the voices you hear"?
>>Triggers are needed to profoundly alter the mind.>>
What it's like for black people to realize they're constantly being lied to in liberal white societies? They're told, "You're just like everyone else. You're just as smart, just as capable, just as law abiding. Any evidence to the contrary is the fault of white people." And yet this constant reassurance doesn't align with their experience and observation. How much actual racism does the average black experience? Very little that I've ever witnessed. I see white people bending over backwards to be nice to blacks, to coddle them, and yet they're told some invisible miasma of racism explains all their dysfunction. Can constant gaslighting drive a person crazy?
Black people long ago internalized a definition of "racism" which means the failure of whites to accord them exceptions and exemptions. Back in the 1980's the liberal New Republic magazine woukd often have commentary on "black special pleading."
Too much weed.
Which way does the causality run though? Or perhaps either way depending on the individual?
But plenty of people use weed and don’t have schizophrenia.
I should add though that the idea is popular in the NYT comments, with several people saying they think it caused schizophrenia in a relative.
‘Tell your children’ by Berenson is a good book about the evils of weed. I don’t think that all blacks smoke or that the ones that do are schizophrenic. However, if blacks smoke grass at a higher rate than whites (yes, I’m guessing) and blacks have a higher rate of schizophrenia than whites, and that pot can either uncover latent schizophrenia or cause it, then smoking pot would be more dangerous for blacks. A lot of ‘ifs’ but something to consider.
I would add that most lefties, irrespective of color, are somewhat crazy.
Have a look at Harlem, NYC in the 1930's https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Harlem+1930 ...and look at it now. What happened? LBJ's and the Democrat communist's Great Society which aimed at destroying the family unit in the United States, beginning with black families. Making people dependent on government handouts insures government growth and power. Worked like an evil charm, didn't it?
The definition of schizophrenia has evolved over the years and encompasses a few conditions. It is not a synonym for psychosis; rather psychosis is a symptom of schizophrenia. Paranoid schizophrenia is what people usually mean.
There are many psych disorders that plausibly are caused by mental stress, abusive childhood, difficult parent, especially the personality disorders. As was the fashion, back in the 1950s they proposed that schizophrenia was the result of being raised by a cold mother (or something). I think people were less materialist (in the philosophical sense) back then.
Having dealt with personality disorders and schizophrenics, I can't believe anyone seriously disbelieves that schizophrenia must be the result of something physically wrong with the brain. My guess is genetic propensity plus viral infection in utero or when young.
Schizophrenia is a strange thing because it is fairly heritable for something with seemingly no upside. Most things that kill you or cause you to have fewer kids (like cancer, gayness) are not, as you would expect.
There are known severe genetic diseases that exist despite evolution. Evolution isn’t that clean.
The most upvoted comment is blunt:
>”The overwhelming cause of schizophrenia is genetic inheritance. It's true that outside factors can trigger or exacerbate the condition in adulthood.
“This article, however, tries to attach the condition to the Black experience. It does so mostly through implication and correlation. In my opinion this is incredibly insensitive and dismissive of the wide range of the human population that live with this terrible condition.”