“There is a great deal of goodwill, love, brotherhood in the air. Hooray for Jamaica. Jamaicans were riveted to their television sets and I am hoping from my vantage point here in Barbados that this would have made a difference to the astronomical crime rate in Jamaica.
Now that the Olympic games are over I suspect that Jamaicans will have a lot of free time on their hands. And the old saying is “The Devil finds work for idle hands”. I suspect that Jamaicans will return to their national pastime with relish. That is, murdering each other in large numbers.“
h/t Maz2
High crime rate ?
Might explain why some of them can run so fast.
Jamaica has a crime problem, Jamaican athletes do well at the Olympics.
I don’t see the connection. And congratulations to all their athletes, who provided some of the most exciting moments at the Chinese coming out party.
And before anyone starts yelping about Kate being biased, Jamaica does indeed have one of the highest murder rates in the entire world.
Look it up if you don’t believe it.
dmorris you need to lighten up a little, turn your blinders off, and re-read the letter.
Crime…
Exported to Tyranto…
Being a “Shota”(gangster) is the highest status that most Jamaican boys can hope to aspire to. It is a shame that a country that punches so high above its weight in sports and arts can be such a disaster on the other hand.
Oh ya, can’t talk about Jamaica without mentioning spicy meat patties : )
how about countries that kick above their weight like Cuba? and then get endorsed by their long time dictator.
“Jamaica has a crime problem, Jamaican athletes do well at the Olympics.”
Connection? Well, maybe if these elite athletes brought some role modeling the young street urchins just might not kill each other. Maybe. However, without following the bios of the Jamacian Olympians I’d venture a guess that they don’t live or train in Jamaica.
Ban indoor shooting ranges. That will fix the problem I’m sure. That mayor Miller is such a genius isn’t he?
If you think those Jamaicans in Beijing were fast, you ought to see the ones running down the streets of Toronto with a flat screen TV in their arms. Now …. that’s fast.
85% 0f Jamaicans are born out of wedlock. This article in a Jamaican newspaper says it all:
According to World Bank figures Jamaica ranks 76th out of 187 countries in per capita income, meaning there are 111 poorer countries than us, nearly all less murderous. In 1962 the average Jamaican was far poorer and less schooled than today. Yet, the 2005 homicide rate was over 10 times that in 1962. So neither the poverty or education argument holds water.
I blame global warming myself.
Who is maz2 and why does he/she make such ridiculous observations. I can’t help but think this person is some low level community college teacher devoid of a work ethic.
Jamaican athletes do well because of their genetics and training regimens. Not because they’re running away from a potential murderer!
If anybody were to live in Jamaica like I have they would realize two things. Firstly many Jamaicans are just like you and I, fun loving peaceful hard working people. Secondly, the serious issues facing the country today are the direct result of conservative colonialism, the emphasis being on conservative. Seeing firsthand what long term and unbridled conservatism actually leads to is the prime reason why I can’t adopt this regressive political ideology.
If this same type of racist dung were directed towards Jews I’m sure maz2 and company would be crying anti-semitism.
Thank you, Liberal Ron, for once again proving that some people are beyond parody.
First, maz2 didn’t make the crack about athletes running away from murderers. That was Fred. And it was a joke – admittedly not a knee-slapper, but an effort at humour, something modern “progressives” seem to lack.
And Jamaica’s problems result from conservative colonialism? Besides mixing your cliches, this is the most pathetic effort at projecting white liberal guilt I have ever seen.
The author of the linked letter was writing from Barbados, another survivor of “conservative colonialism”, where the murder rate is perhaps one per year, and a simple mugging is front-page news for a week (not to mention a national embarrassment).
Sorry Ron, but that dog don’t hunt.
Thank you, Liberal Ron, for once again proving that some people are beyond parody.
First, maz2 didn’t make the crack about athletes running away from murderers. That was Fred. And it was a joke – admittedly not a knee-slapper, but an effort at humour, something modern “progressives” seem to lack.
And Jamaica’s problems result from conservative colonialism? Besides mixing your cliches, this is the most pathetic effort at projecting white liberal guilt I have ever seen.
The author of the linked letter was writing from Barbados, another survivor of “conservative colonialism”, where the murder rate is perhaps one per year, and a simple mugging is front-page news for a week (not to mention a national embarrassment).
Sorry Ron, but that dog don’t hunt.
Someone please tell me that the moron above me, Liberal Ron, is just joking and forgot the Sarcasm tag???
Poor Liberal Ron like all of his kind has to resort to playing the “race card”. Jamaica’s crime rate is fact, and as there are a whole lot more countries also with large black populations not mentioned it shows that you, Ron, are the racist. You are the only one making a race connection, but of course you people insist on categorising everyone by colour, sex, ethnicity and even sexual behaviour.
Of course faithful to your misguided ideology you blame it on “conservative colonialism” (whatever that is), since for you people are just not responsible for their choices, actions or behaviour. The fact is that if Jamaicans returned to conservatism, there would be a greater majority of fun loving, peaceful hard working people than criminals in Jamaica. By the way I even know some who are fun loving, honest and hard working, who immigrated to Canada and are close friends, so go peddle your rubbish elsewhere.
Liberal Ron.
Would you agree that certain political ideologies might suit certain races of peoples? I only make that statement because no other race has granted more democratic freedoms than European. European paganism was far more conservative and granted more equality for women than any religion that came out of the middle East.
Excample:
http://www.odinsvolk.ca/O.V.A.%20-%20NNV.htm
Hey, Liberal Ron, a couple of things, just what is “conservative colonialism”, for heaven’s sake? Just how would one deconstruct that phrase? You threw that out there, now give us the who, what, when and why with some factual links relating that to Jamaica’s condition of course.
Secondly, while many Jamaicans most assuredly are “fun loving peaceful hard working” people just like most of us, they’ve got far too many that aren’t as per the statistics which are color blind. Facts don’t lie. That’s the point. 85% of my white peers do not have illegitimate kids. Nor are we topping the charts in homicides or dispproportionately over-represented in prisons. You don’t get a free pass from criticism as a group when you have the highest murder rate in the world and an astounding almost 9 out of 10 children born with no legitimate dad. How about educationing yourself via Google on all of the pathology with males that follows from that. There are plenty of research papers and statistics on that correlation.
Your attempt to stop the conversation because YOU don’t like it by smearing us as racists isn’t going to work for you here. Nothing has been said here that Bill Cosby hasn’t for years been saying to the black community. So deal with it. A drive-by nitwit like yourself doesn’t have the power to silence people.
A good number of my friends growing up were/are Jamaicans. With only one exception, all of these friends were from broken homes. More often than not the father was in Jamaica and had little or no ties to his kids. The one exception was a friend whose family owned a west-Indies food store that sold the aforementioned spicy meat patties.
WRT Lib Ron
“Don’t argue with fools, cause people at a distance can’t tell who is who”
Jay Z
Jamaica: gun control working as expected.
Doug – well said. And to blame jamaican crime on “conservative colonialism” betrays a political and social naivete that defies space and time. It’s the same while guilt-driven attitude that has blessed and encouraged the state to destroy the north american black family with welfare handouts, and to brainwash the black community into believing they are unable to succeed on their own, encouraging an entire segment of the population to embrace victim ideology as their creed.
Pitiful. And disgusting.
mhb23re
at gmail d0t calm
I have a sister-in-law who was living in Cayman at the time of the hurricane. Interestingly, she noted that the first people sent home from the Island in the event of the oncoming disaster were the Jamaican contingent.
Authorities were hoping to reduce looting after the fact, and they answer to their citizens.
Good crime prevention strategy, maybe in Toronto? And for the record I don’t care what colour they are.
I have to say, I’m with SDC on this one. Global warming is clearly to blame.
People! Seriously! Why stoop to an objective consideration of the issues in this (or any) particular case when you could instead avail yourself of this handy, ready-made, popularly-palatable, one-size-fits-all scapegoat reason for everything that’s not perfect or to your liking?
Be responsible world citizens and conserve mental energy whenever possible, eh? The calories you use to engage in independent thought *increase your carbon footprint*!!!!
Don’t you know what you’re doing to the planet, with your wasteful discretionary cogitation? Ever heard of reduce, reuse, recycle? Well, it applies to thoughts too, okay? Get with the program.
Sheesh. You people have no sense of decency or responsibility to the broader community. I’ll bet you all water your lawns, too, just because you like them to be green.
Selfish, selfish, selfish.
“ridiculous observations. I can’t help but think this person is some low level community college teacher devoid of a work ethic.
Jamaican athletes do well because of their genetics”
Thanks liberal mo-ron, for the shiftless and race swipe.
Ask a Canadian-Trinidadian or Barbaidan their opinion of Jamaicans. Very interesting listening.
The estimated IQ in Jamaica gives one pause:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_IQ
As for colonialism: Canada is a former colony. Australia is a former colony. India and Pakistan are former colonies that both became independent at the exact same stroke of midnight on the same day. Yet one of them is more screwed up than the other. Discuss.
We travel to the Caribbean frequently but have always avoided Jamaica. First, my hair doesn’t need braiding and I don’t smoke ganja. Second, a populace that murders it’s business class [check Jamaican events in the ’70s] is not fit for tourism. While I have heard it is the most beautiful island in the Caribbean, there are plenty of others where one can wander around without getting harassed by pan-handlers or worse.
Why is Kate such a negative bitch!?
Jamaica …. is one beautiful place and there is NO excuse for that nation to be in the shape that it is in.
The problem is the predominant culture of ingrained indolence. No matter how hard the smarter and more industrious people work and build they are being outbred by the willfully ignorant.
No matter what achievements in the world of individuals it will make no difference to the majority who may take a passing notice only before returning to to await the now overdue second coming and the free spaceship ride to the utopian kingdom come of Zion.
Or whatever happens to fall into their laps by chance………………..or by violence.
This exactly the point of the article as I see it.
curtis balley – please put down the mirror.
kathy – for heaven’s sake; there is no such thing as a ‘national IQ’. THINK.
How you could fall for such a scam as that, is beyond me.
A nation is a political entity not a biological entity. IQ is a biological attribute and pertains to the individual. Never to a group.
THINK. Does this mean that if you are a citizen of one nation and you move to another – does your IQ change? If you move to Jamaica from Canada, does your IQ change?
If the political boundaries are redrawn – do the IQs change?
Again – IQ is a biological property of an individual. Never of a group. So, you can’t apply it to a population. And, a nation is a political or artificial creation; not a biological system.
THINK.
Nevertheless, ET, if one adds up the measures of a biological property across all the individuals in a group, and then divides by the number of individuals in the group, the result is the group’s average value of said biological property, which I think is pretty clearly what Kathy was referring to. Thus, for example, if one computes the average height of a group of dwarfs, and compares it to the average height of a group of giants, there will usually be a difference, even though neither group has a height per se. It depends on the measure: for example, each group will indeed have a weight per se (as well as an average weight of the individuals in the group, as well as the weights of each individual in the group). Those who study measurement and statistics probably have a fancy name that distinguishes between these two types of measures, however that’s not my field, so I’ll defer further definitions to them.
Can’t we all just get along?
King was awarded $3.8 million in a civil case and used some of the proceeds to start a hip hop music label, Straight Alta-Pazz Recording Company.[9]
King was arrested for spousal assault in 1999. In 2001, he was ordered to undergo a year of drug treatment after pleading guilty to three counts of being under the influence of PCP and one of indecent exposure.[10]
On August 27, 2003, King was arrested again for speeding and running a red light while under the influence of alcohol. He failed to yield to police officers and slammed his SUV into a house, breaking his pelvis.[11]
While going home on November 29, 2007, King was shot in the face, arms, back and torso with birdshot by two thieves attempting to steal his bicycle,[12] but his injuries were characterized as not life threatening.[13]
In October 2008, King will appear on the second season of Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew.[14]
From Wikipedia
Nations are composed of individuals. These numbers represent the estimated average IQs of each nation.
Groups of people do have known IQ scores, in general. Almost a century of US Armed Forces IQ tests, performed on hundreds of thousands of individuals, indicates that Ashkenazi Jews and Asians score highest, whites are around 100 and blacks and Hispanics score lower. And that women score lower than men.
In nations that are more homogenious, such as Jamaica, then national IQ is not an outlandish notion.
If national boundaries change, then yes, there probably is a change in mean IQ, and no doubt the scholars behind “IQ and The Wealth of Nations” take such things into account.
And as for those ‘hard working’ Jamaicans, Liberal Ron clearly has never heard the expression — used most proudly by Jamaicans themselves — “Jamaican time”, i.e. showing up 2 hours late for everything then vegging out when you get there.
Finally, can I just thank Kate for thoughtfully stepping in to shoulder all the “racist” jibes today? I am SO on deadline right now I’m barely able to blog my usual bigoted hateful etc diatribes 🙂
The trick is to keep in mind that in the case of averageable measures, one can’t go backward. That is to say, while it may be possible to calculate the average of some measure across the individuals of a group, there is no way to calculate the value of said measure for any given individual in the group from the value calculated for the group as a whole. That would be -ist.
vitruvius – yes, you can indeed obtain a statistical average for a biological property among a group. That’s not my point. Of course, you’d first have to select your population and define it as CLOSED, ie, its members must all have that same biological property. So, dwarves and giants couldn’t mingle. And remember, these variables are biological properties.
What Kathy is trying to do is connect a biological property with a non-biological property. It cannot be done. It is unscientific.
No, Kathy, your statement that because a nation is composed of individuals ..who have IQs..that this average represents the IQ of the nation is an invalid and unscientific claim.
Again, that’s because your two variables: IQ and Nation are not similar. One is biological; the other is non-biological. You simply can’t connect the two.
Ashkenzi is not a political variable but a group with common genetic (biological) values. Women and men are biological variables – not political. Again, you cannot link a biological variable to a non-biological variable. The one does not cause or even correlate with the other.
As well, your support for Rushton’s claim that Asians score highest and blacks score lowest has been rebutted numerous times.
Again, you cannot connect two variables with such different basic properties. You cannot state, for example, that being a Canadian citizen – that this means that you are predisposed to cancer. You cannot state that being a Dutch citizen means that you are predisposed to Alzheimers. Or that being short-sighted means that you are a Finnish citizen.
See the error? One variable is biological; the other variable is non-biological. You cannot connect the two.
Certainly, you can take the IQ of a ‘quota sample’ or closed group. You can take a group of people from one or from many nations, who have been already pre-selected for high IQs and obtain the average of this select group. But you can’t link this group to any non-biological property, ie, the town in which their school is located.
That goes for Jamaica or any of the other nations in that ridiculous ‘study’. Their declaration of the IQs of most of the world’s countries is sheer nonsense. You cannot connect a biological with a non-biological variable.
I beg to differ – the people behind ‘this IQ of Nations’ aren’t scholars.
Agreed, vitruvius, you can’t extrapolate from the average or ‘universal’ to the particular. The mathematical action of abstraction is, fortunately, from the particular to the general.
But that’s not the problem, as I noted above.
That ridiculous study (which is somewhere in my files) makes outlandish claims – such as that various countries, particularly in Africa, have ‘national IQs of about 65 to 70. Sheesh.
That would mean that the people in this country would, since they are defined as essentially ‘retarded’, be unable to do anything on their own. Since all these peoples were at one time, pastoralists, hunters-gatherers, or horticulturalists, they obviously were quite capable of managing their economy.
The mess that some of them are in now, has nothing to do with ‘IQ’, a biological property, but with political and economic causes.
IQ could be correlated to available protein.
vegans tend to be dumber. whether this is the cause or the effect of veganaism is debatable.
Dwarfs and giants can’t mingle? Obviously you’ve never been to some of the nightclubs I have, ET (what’s the emoticon for a rimshot, anyway?). We agree that you can’t go backward from the general to the specific. Where we perhaps disagree is on the notion of what variables I’m “allowed” to combine. The way I see it, as long as the units work out I’ve got a “valid” value. Whether it is causal, whether it is correlative, whether or not it is useful, whether or not even makes sense will be open to debate, but the act of combining them per se is not necessarily illogical. It’s the going backward from normative values to individual values that we agree is necessarily illogical.
vitruvius – you are far too smart to not know what I am talking about. Of course dwarves and giants can mingle! But if you want the ‘average height’ that defines Being-a-Dwarf, then you statistically pre-select your ‘population’ to exclude giants. Otherwise – there goes your data base!
And of course you can mix variables. Mixing variables is simply a mathematical operation. But that doesn’t mean that it’s a rational operation.
I can certainly take the average for, let’s say, people with Ivory Soap detergent in their homes. And, I can take the average for people who have blue eyes. In that same population. But that doesn’t mean that there is any relationship between the two!
These are two variables whose relation is purely spurious.
Fine, never mind the rimshot. Now let’s take the average susceptibility to, say, some particular medical condition, within a given national population. Would one not want to titrate the nation’s commitment of resources to that problem according to that average value? In other words, if, say, one measured a nation’s average susceptibility to influenza, and if one found it to be higher than other nations, wouldn’t one want to order more vaccine (per capita) than was normal for said other nations?
I thought I read somewhere that Jamaica did not have any serious crime problems until the 1970s, when Michael Manley and Edward Seaga were the political leaders. And a former Jamaican I used to work with claimed that Pierre Trudeau gave Manley millions of aid dollars to help fix the 1976 election in his favour, and he used some of that to arm his supporters.
And another thing, ET; say you did measure average possession of Ivory Soap and average possession of blue eyes, across multiple populations, and you found a very strong correlation. Would you not, at least potentially, if it was your field, be interested in why? After all, as Isaac Asimov said, “The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’, but ‘That’s funny…'”.
ET is one smart person!
“The mess that some of them are in now, has nothing to do with ‘IQ’, a biological property, but with political and economic causes.”
political = conservatism
economic = colonialism
Colonialism in that the wealth of a colony is stripped naked leaving nothing for education and infrastructure which leads to desperation which leads to crime.
I rest my case.
Like mama always told me “Stupid is as stupid does”.
Jamaicans do some pretty stupid things! There or abroad………………..
You’ll never see people like Liberal Ron flocking to live in a Toronto Jamaican area though will you? They just want you and your children to enjoy the “cultural” experience as they have better things to do or excuses to be elsewhere.
ET >
“If the political boundaries are redrawn – do the IQs change?”
Exactly why the UN and other powers that be (EU & future NAU) would like to erase those boundaries and make one big semi literate working slave class. The degrading global education systems are all a consequence of the process,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
Liberal Ron: “Firstly many Jamaicans are just like you and I, fun loving peaceful hard working people. Secondly, the serious issues facing the country today are the direct result of conservative colonialism, the emphasis being on conservative. Seeing firsthand what long term and unbridled conservatism actually leads to is the prime reason why I can’t adopt this regressive political ideology.”
I don’t doubt the first sentence. Just because the current situation in Jamaica is a little sub-standard doesn’t mean it has no potential to improve. We’re all human beings cut from the same cloth, with individual differences in many areas but with certain characteristics in common.
However, the comments about colonialism and conservatism are pure hogwash. It was Michael Manley socialism that did more to wreck Jamaican culture than anything else.