Verbal

I'm not suggesting survival of the fittest (a non-Darwinian term) over a short evolutionary period - merely that successful black sportsmen in the US are descended on the whole from slaves of West African origin. Certainly training and fitness regimes make a difference, but not even the most eminent geneticists like Steve Jones (with whom I've had the pleasure of discussing this issue) have any idea how you get at a 'genetic' component that says that fast runners are fast because they are black.

Even by your standards, you have no idea how stupid you look quoting the widely discredited psychologist Arthur Jensen. As for the Stanford-Binet test, it has had to be repeatedly revised eliminate the eugenics influence of the'Stanford' part of it - the notorious Lewis Terman, whose connection to Nazism and the Final Solution is quite interesting. (I'm sure it's of great interest to you) In any case, it's widely acknowledged by professional psychologists that IQ tests measure IQ, not intelligence. No one has found a reliable way of measuring intelligence. And not even the authors of The Bell Curve (you'll have to look it up - but don't bother reading because it's too big a book for you) have ever claimed a genetic cause of bell curve distributions. There are some hopelessly reactionary psychologists, like the thankfully retired Richard Lynn, who peddle this crap (and I have to say that link looks like it's plagiarised from one of his books) - but no one with ANY understanding of this subject takes him or his faux-evolutionary theories remotely seriously. No surprise that you do.

Oh, and while I remember - some helpful and well intended advice. Stay well clear of your 'understanding', for want of a better word, of genetics .

A simple explanation really. Just as the riots have exposed the thin veneer of civilisation, so has the reaction. Raging racism is barely beneath the surface of both these threads, and if you think 'liberals' are just going to stand by while dune and his gang run riot you're mistaken.

This is so disappointing. Still, your therapist could help you with anger management too. But do get her/him to explain patiently to you why you have such a desire to label all crowds of whatever ethnicity as 'black'.

Well my last paragraph is based on some experience. I think your slip is starting to show, as I thought it would. You are one of those people, are you, who want the ethnically mixed crowds, all to be described as black? I do think you should ask your therapist, if you have one, to find out how you can face your deep psychological fears and phobias.

Oh skin colour is part of the description of an attacker, certainly - although it's interesting you choose the phrase '6ft black man', which appeals to that old racial stereotype that had young black men hanging from trees in the Deep South. But as you watch the procession of people in court and see the obvious ethnic variety, the fact people want to label them all, white and black alike, as black, is of course racist. QED. Actually, for all the claims about racism in the police, if you report a crime in London, and you say the perpetrator is black, the police find that unhelpful - they want to know more about appearance - East African, West, etc etc.

Some excellent shots on Channel Four News of EDL supporters getting their just desserts for attacking police in Eltham last night.

So what exactly IS your point about 'genetics'?

Or a 6 ft genetically inferior black man in your parlance.

Who the **** knows. The fact that you don't doesn't surprise me.

I don't know that even that is true. 'Blacks' as a broad category are no better or worse. The fastest short-distance black runners in world athletics tend to be of West African descent and from the US and the Caribbean. If there were some biological component to their being faster than whites, say, then today's West Africans, from the countries the slave trade operated in, such as Mali and Senegal would also be up there in the medal positions. They are, however, nowhere near. It's not 'natural selection' that leads to black US and Caribbean runners being faster - it's bad old human intervention. To be targeted as a slave, you had to be healthy and otherwise physically marketable. Then you had to be strong enough to survive the awful slave ships. And finally you had to be strong enough to live through the life of a slave on the plantations. After all this, is it any surprise that the descendants of people who been through all this turned out to have been selected for better than average physical attributes lie short-distance speed?

But it does beg the question as to why you feel it so important that the colour of people's skin is worth highlighting. What significance do you attach to skin tone?

Enjoying your holiday then?

Well you're the one who wanted to go down this road. As soon as you start playing with 'genetics' it leads to the Tuskagee experiments - which are about how syphilis affects the 'genetically different' black man. The experiment, which continued until 1972, involved deliberately injecting syphilis into 'subjects', not telling them about it, and leaving them untreated for decades. All in the name of a eugenic theory that blacks are genetically inferior to whites.

How lovely to p!ss Campbell off!

It seems that neither the Met nor local residents appreciated the violence against the police offered up from the EDL as 'help'. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2024707/UK-riots-2011-Met-Polices-Tim-Godwin-warns-EDL-hijack-vigilante-patrols.html

So if we accept for the moment your underlying assumption that the UK is a socialist nirvana where there is no inequality, what are you suggesting?

Racism a taboo subject? Do you mean race? No it's not taboo. It's just tired old tosh - the kind of tosh that led to the disgusting Tuskagee experiments (google it), and many others in the now hopelessly discredited history of eugenics in the US in particular. If you can find a single respected professional geneticist to stand up an argument that there is a genetic cause to the riots, please go right ahead.

I think he means 'genetics'.

Just to be clear R-9, where has it been claimed that there wasn't a substantial black majority among the rioters?

The Big Society is something Thatch would have no time for. For her, there was no such thing as Society - not, at least, until Society gave her a big thump on the nose during the Poll Tax riots.

The EDL in Eltham attacked the police. Is that what you mean by inspiration?

Why don't you and your odd little mate dune just get on and focus on the thread rather than these silly ad hominem attacks?

I sensed you did.