Jeff Fink wrote:
I read somewhere a long time ago that the offspring of interracial unions
are, in general, bigger healthier and smarter than "pure breds". Does any
one know the source of that, or if it has been proven.
It's called "Heterosis" or more simply "hybrid vigor" ... if it were not
true in the plant world, most of us would be starving today.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_vigor
There are observers who will come close to repeating Watson's logical
error with the premise that the world dominance of the USA is based on
intellectual "vigor"; and that it is in part attributable to a
statistically superior hybridized population which benefited from an
unplanned influx of new genes over the past 200 years.
These new genes were partly African, as in the case of Watson's extra
"vigor" but statistically mostly Asian (American Indian). Long before
slavery, the new immigrant population was largely males from Northern
Europe, and the available females were, well ... every available female.
This claim of "interracial superiority" based on a mixed gene pool, can
easily lead to a thinly disguised, reverse-version of the same kind of
racist mentality that got Watson in hot-water to begin with.
Better stop now, before going down that road ....
Jones
