Satoshi Kanazawa and black women

Satoshi Kanazawa, evolutionary psychologist and a lecturer in the management department of the London School of Economics, ran into some controversy this week over a blog posting, entitled "Why Are Black Women Less Physically Attractive Than Other Women?"

It's part of his Scientific Fundamentalist blog at the Psychology Today website, in which Kanazawa's subheading claims to take "A look at the hard truths about human nature". Psychology Today soon removed the offending article, and the London School of Economics is considering Kanazawa's future at the institution.

Fortunately, someone managed a screen-capture of his blog post, which you can see via BigWOWO's blog, here.

Here's an excerpt:

"It is very interesting to note that, even though black women are objectively less physically attractive than other women, black women (and men) subjectively consider themselves to be far more physically attractive than others… Nor can the race difference in intelligence [...] account for the race difference in physical attractiveness among women."

So is he a nasty racist, or truth-telling scientist who fell foul of political correctness gone mad?

Or a bit of both, perhaps?

It's telling that the title is not "Are Black Women Less Physically Attractive Than Other Women?"...

but:
"Why Are Black Women Less Physically Attractive Than Other Women?"


In other words, Kanazawa seems to accept unquestioningly that black women are less physically attractive, and thus straight away focuses on why this must be so, rather than whether such a highly controversial statement could be true, or how such a conclusion could be reached.

It's also interesting that such an article comes from a member of another group - Asian men - that is frequently perceived as undesirable and less attractive. The same study cited by Kanazawa that indicates that black women are seen as less attractive also paints a less-than-rosy picture of Asian male attractiveness. Would Kanazawa be so quick to accept the conclusion that Asian men are "objectively" less attractive than others? I wonder.

In any case, Kanazawa's approach is problematic.

Firstly, "black women are objectively less attractive than other women"? How the hell does someone measure black women's beauty, objectively? By popular vote, perhaps?
I would have no problem with Kanazawa writing a post about how people tend to find black women comparatively less attractive than other women. If surveys show that, then sure, write about it if you wish. But to treat this as some objective means of measuring the physical attractiveness of anyone is deeply suspect.

So how did the study come up with the objective evaluation of beauty?

"Add Health measures the physical attractiveness of its respondents both objectively and subjectively. At the end of each interview, the interviewer rates the physical attractiveness of the respondent objectively on the following five-point scale: 1 = very unattractive, 2 = unattractive, 3 = about average, 4 = attractive, 5 = very attractive. The physical attractiveness of each Add Health respondent is measured three times by three different interviewers over seven years."

Oh, I see. So the opinion of three different interviewers constitutes objectivity.

If you're smart, you might surmise that it might just be possible that these interviewers' judgement of beauty is subject to their own prejudices and preferences.
Even if there were not three but three thousand interviewers measuring people's beauty, it still wouldn't be worth a damn.
 
You could poll the entire world on their racial preferences in beauty, but what would it prove, in objective terms? A similar approach to music and food might reveal that Lady Gaga is "objectively" better than Aretha Franklin, and a hamburger and fries is "objectively" the best food in the world.
 
The other problem is one that you can commonly observe amongst the HBD crowd: treating social phenomena as if they have a basis in human evolution or genetics, and disregarding the importance of social context.
 
There are plenty of different social contexts that will affect the way we perceive the relative attractiveness of different races. But let's start with this one: since the dominant forces in global popular culture are mostly white and American, most of us are conditioned by a standard of beauty that is mostly white and American.
 
So rather than leaping straight to the assumption that black women are less physically attractive probably because they are dumber and have more testosterone, as Kanazawa does, he might reflect that the results represent the predictable outcome of a study conducted in a predominantly white country.