Is claiming Germans are "genetically intelligent" racists?

[unimackpass]

A war room conversation brought this subject up. I've always admired German ingenuity as a lot of others I know do. I've never viewed anyone with this point of view as a racist but have bin informed that it's actually textbook racism.

Things are usually multi faceted and I'm sure nature/nurture plays into this but nurture can't add what nature didn't include.

A family I go to church with is German and the kids grandfather, on the moms side, is a medical doctor and and and Prophesor of Philosophy at Rice University.
They home schooled their kids and they are all super sharp, speak several languages, and headed out to conquer the world so to speak. Anyway it appears to me that the genetic component is obvious and they've also had the advantage of a healthy nurturing environment to utilize what nature added.

I always tell him "you might be German but my dad was a wild Finlander that liked to but heads so my head probably harder than yours, so there's that." It's all in good fun but now I'm finding there's a racist component here?

Some of his history before a "I don't believe you" thingamajig post.

"Professor Engelhardt is among the pioneers of the movement known as bioethics, though that term characterizes the scope of his work far too narrowly. He has written more than 300 books, chapters, and articles that examine personhood and identity, bioethics, genetics, secular humanism, the deprofessionalization of medicine, Christian theology and ethics, animal rights, health policy, and much more. Professor Engelhardt has written and presented in 3 languages and been translated into 7 more. His Foundations of Bioethics, first published in 1986, was translated into Chinese in 1996 co-incident with the appearance of its 2nd edition in English. He is currently professor of philosophy at Rice University and professor emeritus at Baylor College of Medicine."

https://philosophy.rice.edu/people/faculty/tristram-engelhardt

H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr.
Professor of History and Philosophy of Medicine
229 Humanities Building, MS 14
[email protected]
713-348-2491




Education: Professor, Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin, 1969. M.D., Tulane University, 1972; Professor Emeritus, Baylor College of Medicine

Fields: History and Philosophy of Medicine, Continental Philosophy.

Representative Publications:

• Mind-Body: A Categorial Relation (Nijhoff, 1973).
• Bioethics and Secular Humanism (Trinity, 1991).
• The Foundations of Bioethics (Oxford, 1986; rev. ed. 1996).
• The Foundations of Christian Bioethics (Taylor & Francis, 2000)
• Global Bioethics: The Collapse of Consensus (edited volume) (Scrivener, 2006)

Current Research: Explanatory models in medicine, the development of modern concepts of health and disease, rights and responsibilities in health care.

Courses Taught

• Phil 314: Philosophy of Medicine
• Phil 315: Ethics, Medicine and Public Policy
• Phil 521: Seminar in Kant and Hegel
• Phil 523: Seminar in Kant
• Phil 524: Seminar in Hegel

Featured Publications

 

[Higus]

hooo boy...

 

[HomerThompson]

 

[The Diplomat]

Any kind of stereotype can be racist/bigoted/nationalist/whatever-ist. Even good stereotypes.

Btw, apparently on average, Germany is tied at 8 for a national IQ of 99. Countries like UK, Italy, China and Japan are higher.

https://iq-research.info/en/page/average-iq-by-country

 

[ZOD66]

WTF

 

[ZOD66]

All religions ho believe in one God are good. How can Germans be smart if they hate Jewish people and love Muslims

 

[FrankensteinMMA]

no but its not an accurate statement.

germans have a culture that facilitates ambition and drive.

if germans were geneticaly more intelligent then they would have been accomplished just as much as the greeks.

germans have only been advanced for about the last few hundred years.

they didnt even have a written language. the runes were largly borrowed from the greek and latin alphabet.

 

[syct23]

Yet...

Unable to build a decent bridge across the Rhine before the Romans would show them how its done...

 

[Billy no mates]

They had two world wars and fought on two fronts both times so they're not as clever as all that .

 

[tonni]

it's mostly a stupid statement

 

[Rholk]

They had two world wars and fought on two fronts both times so they're not as clever as all that .

I think they finally found their way to dominate Europe
Didn't even fire a shot this time

 

[MadSquabbles500]

In spite of losing in World Wars, they seem to bounce back quite nicely after both attempts.

 

[unimackpass]

Any kind of stereotype can be racist/bigoted/nationalist/whatever-ist. Even good stereotypes.

Btw, apparently on average, Germany is tied at 8 for a national IQ of 99. Countries like UK, Italy, China and Japan are higher.

https://iq-research.info/en/page/average-iq-by-country

Not saying Germans are the smartest people in the universe but that there is a hereditary genetic component involved.

Is it racist to say there is a genetic component to Asian intelligence in certain areas?

 

[ultramanhyata]

germans have a culture that facilitates ambition and drive.

My experience with native Germans and German society says that their culture is less class and materially driven than the US's. By a fairly meaningful margin.

 

[The ScorpioN]

This thread is heading straight to the Dump.

 

[unimackpass]

no but its not an accurate statement.

germans have a culture that facilitates ambition and drive.

if germans were geneticaly more intelligent then they would have been accomplished just as much as the greeks.

germans have only been advanced for about the last few hundred years.

they didnt even have a written language. the runes were largly borrowed from the greek and latin alphabet.

It's a complex discussion no doubt.
If we leave the German element out of it and say Asians have genetic strengths is that racist? Or pick your poison.

 

[lfd0311]

no but its not an accurate statement.

germans have a culture that facilitates ambition and drive.

if germans were geneticaly more intelligent then they would have been accomplished just as much as the greeks.

germans have only been advanced for about the last few hundred years.

they didnt even have a written language. the runes were largly borrowed from the greek and latin alphabet.

This just isn't even remotely correct. They didn't have a STANDARDIZED written language up until about 200 years ago. There are so many different German dialects and individual languages that it took until the mid 1800s for it to actually be codified into one official language. Saying Germans weren't an advanced people until the last few hundred years is also frankly silly.

 

[Possum Jenkins]

Anyway it appears to me that the genetic component is obvious and they've also had the advantage of a healthy nurturing environment to utilize what nature added.

Where were their genetics when the Sumerians were creating the first civilization?

For a couple of thousand years when the Persians and Greeks were building nation-states, the high IQ Germans were living in caves and eating dirt.

Shit, even when Europe started conquering the world they were late comers. The Portuguese, Spanish, English, French, and Dutch were out sailing, making discoveries and plundering. The Germans were still fighting with the village next door over religion.

 

[The Diplomat]

Not saying Germans are the smartest people in the universe but that there is a hereditary genetic component involved.

Is it racist to say there is a genetic component to Asian intelligence in certain areas?

I do think intelligence can be hereditary, but it's also another nature vs. nurture debate. It'll still be over generalizing - Not every German or Asian is intelligent, just like not every Zimbabwean or Liberian is an imbecile. I think education, environment, technology and upbringing has a lot to do with it, as well as the history of geography and people's movement across the globe.

 

[The Diplomat]

Where were their genetics when the Sumerians were creating the first civilization?

For a couple of thousand years when the Persians and Greeks were building nation-states, the high IQ Germans were living in caves and eating dirt.

Shit, even when Europe started conquering the world they were late comers. The Portuguese, Spanish, English, French, and Dutch were out sailing, making discoveries and plundering. The Germans were still fighting with the village next door over religion.

Indeed. +1 for bringing up the OGs, the Sumerians.