# Another Africa thread hijacked **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [April 1, 2011, 1:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-africa-thread-hijacked/576767 "2011-04-01T13:04:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 10
**Author:** ![New\_Deal\_Democrat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/9d8465/32.png) [@New\_Deal\_Democrat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/New_Deal_Democrat)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2011, 1:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-africa-thread-hijacked/576767/181 "2011-04-02T13:55:02Z")
> [@Rotlla](#): > > When IQ testing began there was a fifteen point gap between the average Italian or Irishman’s IQ scores and the average scores of people who were, at the time, culturally agreed upon as being “white”. Jews also tested as, in fact, lower in IQ than white people. > > Guess whether or not those “gaps” still exist. As the tests have continued they have become more accurate. ---
**Author:** ![Rotlla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/278dde/32.png) [@Rotlla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rotlla)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2011, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-africa-thread-hijacked/576767/182 "2011-04-02T14:04:22Z")
> [@New\_Deal\_Democrat](#): > > As the tests have continued they have become more accurate. Remarkable how IQ testing has always reflected the social status of human groups so well, isn’t it? Remarkable how ethnic groups that are treated as social inferiors (as were the Irish and Italians a hundred years ago) score consistently worse, and how much smarter they get once the racial animus they receive from the majority population disappears. Remarkable that your IQ is apparently too low to draw the logical conclusion from this fact. ---
**Author:** ![you\_with\_the\_face](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/ecccb3/32.png) [@you\_with\_the\_face](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/you_with_the_face)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2011, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-africa-thread-hijacked/576767/183 "2011-04-02T14:35:44Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > I doubt the racists, self-described or not, will actually follow my advice, especially since I’m an inferior negro. But I just thought I’d throw it out there for those who might be interested. Inferior Negro is a great band name. ---
**Author:** ![random6x7](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8baadc/32.png) [@random6x7](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/random6x7)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2011, 2:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-africa-thread-hijacked/576767/184 "2011-04-02T14:40:57Z")
Sigh. I’m glad I studied all this extra hard for my comps. And I kept saying that those damn things had no real world applications! \*\* New Deal Democrat\*\*, while the Holocaust had obvious implications for eugenics programs worldwide, and that was a catalyst to the ending of scientific racism (which is apparently still ongoing…), it wasn’t the only reason things were changing. First, Franz Boas had been promoting a culture based view of race for over fifty years by then. Biological anthropology in the US took longer to catch up, but well before World War I, race was no longer considered an adequate way of looking at other groups in the three other subfields. Moreover, around the 1940’s, I think, Washburn was putting bio anth through what is known as the New Physical Anthropology. He demanded that bio anths stop just describing what they see, and start trying to explain it from an evolutionary perspective. He basically brought it up to date with the rest of biology, although my bio anth friends still mutter about how behind their field is. 'Sokay, so’s mine. He also wanted to look at humans from a biocultural perspective, which only makes sense as we’re biocultural critters. At any rate, using Washburn’s method, race starts to look silly. In its proper biological and cultural context, race is clearly a social structure, not a genetic one. Probably the most important reason that race does not make sense as biological categories is because human geographical variation is clinal, not discrete. Skin color is a beautiful example of this. Skin color gradually shades into darker or lighter with latitude. There are no dinstinct boundaries where black people are on one side and whites on another. Instead, we have infinite shades of brown in between. Human characteristics are like this. There is no spot in Russia where you can draw a line with epicanthic folds on one side and none on the other. For race to be an adequate descriptor biologically, you would expect to see that, but you don’t. Blonds appear in Australia, and my white-as-toast friend has the eyefolds. Moreover, the various traits we use to describe the races don’t match very well geographically. The physical traits we describe as “black” (skin color, broad nose, tendency towards sickle cell anemia) are not universal within Africa, nor are they only found in Africa or even only in the same places. Speaking of Africa, another reason that race is not a good description is because of them. Africans, particularly sub-Saharan Africans are, of course, the most genetically diverse peoples on Earth. Any real definition of race that lumps all Africans together is clearly false, and any one that considers sub-Saharan Africans a separate race, rather than just humans with the rest of us being subraces, is dumb. Race has actual meaning in biology, folks, and arguing this stuff starts getting like arguing evolution with someone who thinks it’s just a “theory”. I also addressed the forensic anthropologist thing above. I’m more than happy to answer any questions, but I’ve got to go for a bit this morning. Study group and all. ---
**Author:** ![Farmer\_Jane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Farmer\_Jane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Farmer_Jane)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2011, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-africa-thread-hijacked/576767/185 "2011-04-02T14:57:15Z")
Intelligence is largely about adaptation. If you were to find yourself in the middle of the Congo, how would you do? No car, no vaccinations, no cell phone. _shrugs_ Mm-hmm. Ya don’t know if you haven’t been taught, eh? It’s very hard to take people seriously when they claim that racial variation is really different groups of subspecies. If you want to look at different “racial” or “ethnic” groups and consider differences and similarities, that’s perfectly reasonable, but this race and intelligence by genetic variation junk is just silly. **Intelligence and cognitive function are influenced by hundreds of different factors in the cognitive development process.** If you take a child and isolate him/her from birth til puberty, that child will never acquire full use of language. Is that because of genetics? Of course not. I’m having a hard time telling if some people here are “racist” or just plain “ignorant”. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2011, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-africa-thread-hijacked/576767/186 "2011-04-02T14:58:42Z")
> [@Rotlla](#): > > When IQ testing began there was a fifteen point gap between the average Italian or Irishman’s IQ scores and the average scores of people who were, at the time, culturally agreed upon as being “white”. Jews also tested as, in fact, lower in IQ than white people. > > Guess whether or not those “gaps” still exist. I’m guessing they don’t, but I don’t see your point. If some differences between groups disappear when the environment changes, and others persist, that would appear to be evidence that the persistent differences are not caused by the environment, at least not the part that changed. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![New\_Deal\_Democrat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/9d8465/32.png) [@New\_Deal\_Democrat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/New_Deal_Democrat)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2011, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-africa-thread-hijacked/576767/187 "2011-04-02T15:01:40Z")
> [@random6x7](#): > > Why on Earth are we even arguing over IQ tests anyway? It’s well-known that they are flawed and incredibly culture-bound. I mean, seriously, The Bell Curve says that the average IQ of Africans is, what, 60? That’s low enough to warrant special schooling in the US. Do Bell Curve supporters seriously think that a continent full of people are mildly retarded? The average IQ of an African Negro is 70. This means that the average adult African Negro has the mental age of a white eleven year old in the United States. ---
**Author:** ![Rotlla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/278dde/32.png) [@Rotlla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rotlla)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2011, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-africa-thread-hijacked/576767/188 "2011-04-02T15:13:53Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > I’m guessing they don’t, but I don’t see your point. > > If some differences between groups disappear when the environment changes, and others persist, that would appear to be evidence that the persistent differences are not caused by the environment, at least not the part that changed. > > Regards, > Shodan I guess I should make my point clearer. You must be black, or you’d be able to understand this intuitively. There appears to be about a 15 point “gap” between the IQs of the majority and the IQs of members of minority groups. Back when Irish and Italian people were considered not to be white, their IQs tested significantly lower than those of white people; and coincidentally, now that Irish and Italian people are not distinct from white people in the general conception, they are just as smart as their fellow whities. Black people were and have remained a stigmatized minority group; therefore it’s no shock that their reported IQs have not changed. If you disagree with this logic, and if you think IQ testing reveals something useful about the average intelligence of people from different ethnic backgrounds, please explain why this tool revealed something totally incorrect about Irish and Italian people (and, incidentally, Ashkenazi Jews) back then, and why we can nonetheless rely upon its accuracy now. Or else explain how it is that Jews, Italians, and Irishmen changed from dunces on pair with black folk into people as smart as (or in the case of those Jews, even smarter than) white folk over such a historically short period of time. ---
**Author:** ![Rand\_Rover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/db5fbb/32.png) [@Rand\_Rover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rand_Rover)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2011, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-africa-thread-hijacked/576767/189 "2011-04-02T15:23:54Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > Anyone who believes that **The Bell Curve** even merits a glance at the dust jacket already has questionable intelligence. Ignorance, you haz it in its purest form. You think everyone should just ignore science that reaches conclusions they find uncomfortable. ---
**Author:** ![Rotlla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/278dde/32.png) [@Rotlla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rotlla)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2011, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-africa-thread-hijacked/576767/190 "2011-04-02T15:30:05Z")
> [@Rand\_Rover](#): > > Ignorance, you haz it in its purest form. You think everyone should just ignore science that reaches conclusions they find uncomfortable. What kind of scientist are you, exactly? Given your obviously nuanced and educated understanding of this topic. Because of my ignorance (given that I’m not Jewish or Asian) I can only set my trust in the scientific consensus within the fields of anthropology and psychology, which clearly hold that that pop science book you seem to enjoy so much is totally wrong. But obviously you have some specialist knowledge that enables you to go beyond what these so-called “experts” believe. Question for Rand Rover, Shodan, Chief Pedant, and the other scientific racists here: just purely out of curiosity, what racial groups do you believe exist? Do you consider “Malay” (southeast Asian and Pacific) to be a subclass of “Mongoloid”, for instance, or a totally separate group? What about American Indians. And for that matter, Aryan Indians (i.e. dot, not feather)? They’re awfully dark and India’s pretty poor. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2011, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-africa-thread-hijacked/576767/191 "2011-04-02T15:31:02Z")
> [@The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](#): > > So instead you prefer every GD thread about Africa get hijacked bigoted trash? > > That’s a good debate system to you? > > Face it being able to call the bigots out would help end those hijacks. Do you not see the irony of posting that in this thread? ---
**Author:** ![Gorsnak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gorsnak/32/7587_2.png) [@Gorsnak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gorsnak)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2011, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-africa-thread-hijacked/576767/192 "2011-04-02T15:54:18Z")
> [@New\_Deal\_Democrat](#): > > The average IQ of an African Negro is 70. This means that the average adult African Negro has the mental age of a white eleven year old in the United States. The idea that the average intelligence of Africans is two standard deviations below that of western white populations is pretty much a reductio ad absurdum of the idea that actual general intelligence is being accurately measured by these studies. I mean, seriously. 70 is really freaking stupid. If you bring solid, carefully collected data, you might convince me that there is some measurable difference in intelligence (though if you figure out how to actually measure general intelligence accurately do let us know) between various large human populations, but when you start out by just accepting the idea that the average Gambian is borderline mentally handicapped it’s pretty hard to take anything you say seriously. For the time being, the null hypothesis rules the day. ---
**Author:** ![Rotlla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/278dde/32.png) [@Rotlla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rotlla)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2011, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-africa-thread-hijacked/576767/193 "2011-04-02T15:58:28Z")
> [@Gorsnak](#): > > The idea that the average intelligence of Africans is two standard deviations below that of western white populations is pretty much a reductio ad absurdum of the idea that actual general intelligence is being accurately measured by these studies. I mean, seriously. 70 is really freaking stupid. > > If you bring solid, carefully collected data, you might convince me that there is some measurable difference in intelligence (though if you figure out how to actually measure general intelligence accurately do let us know) between various large human populations, but when you start out by just accepting the idea that the average Gambian is borderline mentally handicapped it’s pretty hard to take anything you say seriously. For the time being, the null hypothesis rules the day. Hell, I’d feel some measure of satisfaction if they even came up with some evidence that “general intelligence” (or _g_) is in fact a valid concept. Since there’s hardly any consensus on that point among those so-called ‘psychologists’ who invented the term. ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2011, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-africa-thread-hijacked/576767/194 "2011-04-02T16:14:04Z")
Ya’ll should watch this: [Battle of the Brains](http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/battle-brains/#). The documentary discusses just what is intelligence, whether an IQ relates to other measures of intelligence, and puts several people through rigorous tests to see who comes out on top. I thought it was pretty interesting. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2011, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-africa-thread-hijacked/576767/195 "2011-04-02T16:27:56Z")
> [@Chen019](#): > > In the popular media maybe, but not amongst researchers if you ask them privately. Mark Snyderman & Stanley Rothman surveyed 661 members from the Behavior Genetics Association, American Educational Research Association, National Council on Measurement in Education, American Psychological Association, American Sociological Association & Cognitive Science Society. Only 15% considered group or population differences in intelligence to be attributable solely to environmental factors, while 45% considered it was a “product of genetic and environmental variation”. In other words, 3 times as many researchers held the view of Jensen compared to the Leon Kamin view. > > [The IQ Controversy, the Media and Public Policy - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_IQ_Controversy,_the_Media_and_Public_Policy_%28book%29) > [@](#): > > The study also revealed that the majority (55%) of surveyed experts believed that genetic factors also help to explain socioeconomic differences in IQ. Respondents on average identified themselves as slightly left of center politically, but political and social opinions accounted for less than 10% of the variation in responses. > > The study found that psychologists were not in agreement about the heritability of intelligence; almost all felt that it played a substantial role but half of those that felt qualified to reply in this section agreed that the there was not enough evidence to estimate heritability accurately. The 214 who thought there was enough evidence gave an average estimate of .596 for the US white population and .57 for the US black population. That 55% number does reveal that indeed there is a lot of discussion on the subject and that is hardly a consensus, [aside] do you realize that experts on climate research agree with AGW by more than 90%? That is why we can talk about a consensus there and not here. > [@](#): > > In 2002, senior editor of Skeptic magazine Frank Miele interviewed Arthur Jensen about the public and academic reception of his work. In his response, Jensen cites the Synderman and Rothman study as a “thorough presentation of expert opinion among behavior geneticists and psychometricians” on the subject of intelligence.[20] When Miele points out that, despite the findings of Snyderman and Rothman to the effect that the majority of experts silently agree with Jensen’s views, no official body such as the APA has issued a statement explicitly supporting him or his findings, Jensen responds that, in his opinion, no scientific organization such as the APA should make such public statements, as “these questions are not answered by a show of hands”.[21] And this is also telling, the reality is that that 55% number is bound to be less due to the fact that most of the “great” books cited have lousy information on them. And since I already know that Jensen is dead wrong on the idea for the reasons why there is no official statement supporting him (It is not impossible in other sciences) I have to go for the consensus in this thread, there is controversy on this subject, but the conclusions and solutions to the issues made by the crackpots in this tread are even less supported. [http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v457/n7231/full/457788a.html](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v457/n7231/full/457788a.html) > [@](#): > > James Flynn, the foremost proponent of the environmental basis of intelligence, notes that when he first rebutted Jensen’s hereditarian claims 30 years ago, he never anticipated later breakthroughs that evolved from the debate. Without Jensen, he has written, “I would never have made any contribution to psychology”. His landmark documentation of the steady rise in IQ scores across generations and nations, known as the Flynn effect, might never have been done. > > Such work has advanced our understanding of intelligence immensely. Flynn showed in 2007 that the IQ of African Americans today is 10–15 points below that of white Americans, but equivalent to the score of such whites in 1947 (the racial groups described here are based on social constructs and rely on study participants defining their own race). Children in the United States and many European nations have surpassed their grandparents’ IQs by more than 15 points in 60 years, so it is clearly possible to close the racial gap. This has been happening: 25% of this difference has been eliminated over 30 years4. IQ scores of offspring of German women and Second World War black US soldiers have been shown to be indistinguishable from scores of offspring of German women and white US soldiers4. No longer are there claims of a linear relationship between IQ and European genes. It is now recognized that cultural effects are more powerful than previously thought. > > Regarding gender, no one now claims women are unable to excel at complex maths: 48% of US mathematics majors are female, and women earn higher maths grades than men throughout schooling5. The maths gender gap among the top 0.01% of students, which 30 years ago favoured males 13-to-1, now favours males only 2.8-to-1 (ref. 5). Some nation’s women (including those in Singapore and Japan) outscore US males on maths tests by an amount far larger than the gender gap within the United States5. ---
**Author:** ![Gorsnak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gorsnak/32/7587_2.png) [@Gorsnak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gorsnak)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2011, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-africa-thread-hijacked/576767/196 "2011-04-02T16:36:40Z")
> [@Rotlla](#): > > Hell, I’d feel some measure of satisfaction if they even came up with some evidence that “general intelligence” (or _g_) is in fact a valid concept. Since there’s hardly any consensus on that point among those so-called ‘psychologists’ who invented the term. Well, regardless of the validity of the concept of _g_, it’s pretty clearly that people have varying degrees of prowess in carrying out various intellectual tasks. So even if intelligence is comprised of a bunch of non-commensurable elements that don’t correlate with each other, you could at least in theory find that some populations are measurably below others across the board, or at least across most of the board. I would expect drawing any conclusions from this sort of data would become hopelessly muddled and subjective, however, and that’s even before taking into account the way human populations all fuck each other at the least opportunity and mess up the nice genetic isolation between groups that God Intended[sup]TM[/sup]. ---
**Author:** ![Peremensoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ce7236/32.png) [@Peremensoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peremensoe)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2011, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-africa-thread-hijacked/576767/197 "2011-04-02T16:46:28Z")
nm ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2011, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-africa-thread-hijacked/576767/198 "2011-04-02T17:07:26Z")
> [@Rand\_Rover](#): > > Ignorance, you haz it in its purest form. You think everyone should just ignore science that reaches conclusions they find uncomfortable. The Bell Curve wasn’t science. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/73ab20/32.png) [@The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Tao_s_Revenge)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2011, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-africa-thread-hijacked/576767/199 "2011-04-02T17:20:44Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Do you not see the irony of posting that in this thread? I do, and yet what you call a system that prevents you from using accurate words to describe things? Do actually believe **Chief Pendent** isn’t a bigot or racist? If he is why shouldn’t one be able to point out this fact? ---
**Author:** ![Rotlla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/278dde/32.png) [@Rotlla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rotlla)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2011, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-africa-thread-hijacked/576767/200 "2011-04-02T17:26:41Z")
> [@The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](#): > > I do, and yet what you call a system that prevents you from using accurate words to describe things? > > Do actually believe **Chief Pendent** isn’t a bigot or racist? If he is why shouldn’t one be able to point out this fact? Pendent? As in something hanging from something else? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-africa-thread-hijacked/576767.md?page=9) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-africa-thread-hijacked/576767.md?page=11)