# Are you a racist? Warning signs **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [July 7, 2014, 8:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-racist-warning-signs/692519 "2014-07-07T08:12:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 34
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2014, 1:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-racist-warning-signs/692519/661 "2014-07-23T13:17:48Z")
> [@Hector\_St\_Clare](#): > > Are you seriously not aware that heritability for prettying most cognitive, behavioral, etc. traits is higher in adults than in children? The lack of effects in childhood, and then a strong effect in adolescence and adulthood, is exactly what we would expect of a genetically influenced trait. This difference in effects in childhood/adolescence are absent with same-race parents. And such a difference when the parents are of a different race are _exactly what we would expect_ from a culturally and societally influenced trait. > [@](#): > > African and Indian immigrants to this country represent a small slice of their population, self selected for high educational attainment. Cite? > [@](#): > > In any case, while I don’t know what the causes of the IQ racial gap are, immigrants from Africa, India or wherever else should not be viewed as representative of their population. Then why should white immigrants be viewed as representative? And you still haven’t addressed the study that demonstrates that degree of admixture is not correlated to test scores, as one would expect if genetics were involved in the test-score gap. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2014, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-racist-warning-signs/692519/662 "2014-07-23T13:18:48Z")
> [@Hector\_St\_Clare](#): > > Back when white Americans immigrated, we didn’t have stringent immigration policy, and the barriers to immigrants were much lower. Huh? We’re talking about contemporary, unassimilated 1st generation immigrant children. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2014, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-racist-warning-signs/692519/663 "2014-07-23T14:56:53Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > Huh? We’re talking about contemporary, unassimilated 1st generation immigrant children. I’m starting to think **Hector St Claire** lives on Mars or has access to some fantastic drugs. He usually sounds like he is experiencing a totally different reality from the people he is talking to. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2014, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-racist-warning-signs/692519/664 "2014-07-23T15:03:14Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > There’s a good plan! > > If you don’t have any science, bring out the Nazis! This is the heritage of your argument. The Nazis loved this racist science bullshit and you have been loudly making this argument for most of the last decade. Own it and face your forebears, you disgusting coward. > [@](#): > > Cockroach. Calling people genetically inferior? Check. Comparing them to vermin? Check. See, you’re a natural! Just work on your goosestep. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2014, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-racist-warning-signs/692519/665 "2014-07-23T15:16:46Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > Were you hoping your cite here suggests there is no biological correlation between “race” as a category and genetic clustering by race? Is that what I said it said, you illiterate fuck? ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2014, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-racist-warning-signs/692519/666 "2014-07-23T15:20:43Z")
> [@Hector\_St\_Clare](#): > > Indians _in India_ have really low IQ, lower than African-Americans Says who? ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2014, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-racist-warning-signs/692519/667 "2014-07-23T15:23:29Z")
> [@Hector\_St\_Clare](#): > > Immigrants are often not a representative sample of the countries they come from, if they’re in any way self selected. Yet the equally as selected (self- is immaterial) slave-descended African-Americans (and Jamaicans) are somehow magically representative of the entire continent of Africa to scientific racists… ---
**Author:** ![Hector\_St\_Clare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2014, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-racist-warning-signs/692519/668 "2014-07-23T16:06:24Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > This difference in effects in childhood/adolescence are absent with same-race parents. And such a difference when the parents are of a different race are _exactly what we would expect_ from a culturally and societally influenced trait. I’m not sure precisely what you mean. As a rule, for a large number of cognitive and behavioural traits, heritability increases with age. Here’s a good summary: > **[Age-Related Changes in Heritability of Behavioral Phenotypes Over Adolescence...](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/twin-research-and-human-genetics/article/agerelated-changes-in-heritability-of-behavioral-phenotypes-over-adolescence-and-young-adulthood-a-metaanalysis/F566104D2A3111992F9A74D976C13F82)** > > Age-Related Changes in Heritability of Behavioral Phenotypes Over Adolescence and Young Adulthood: A Meta-Analysis - Volume 10 Issue 3 To take a non-IQ related example: heritability of religiosity is high among adults (50%, similar to the estimates that I trust for IQ), but much lower for children and teens. This is because children are more behaviourally malleable, if they’re told to go to church they do, but when they get to be adults and make their own decisions, that’s when you start to see how heritable the trait _actually_ is. ---
**Author:** ![Nema98](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/d2c977/32.png) [@Nema98](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nema98)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2014, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-racist-warning-signs/692519/669 "2014-07-23T16:10:16Z")
Thankfully none of the above apply to me. ---
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2014, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-racist-warning-signs/692519/670 "2014-07-23T16:11:59Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > And then you totally ignore the contrary evidence, like the fact that degree of African admixture has zero correlation with lower test scores, and the fact that 1st generation immigrants do not show this disparity. Unless you are going to fetch out that idiotic study for “African admixture” that you used in the past (feel free to post it again for a laugh; was it the one that used skin color or blood types to determine “African admixture”?) and use some kind of Jamaican immigrant isolated study in a subpopulation that has no evidence whatsoever it’s a cross section of a source population, your idea of “evidence” is pretty weak. I have no disagreement at all with a contention that any given population will have a different skillset than any other given population, though. I’m pretty sure it would not be difficult to find a group of sharp subsaharans at the top of their source population getting the hell out of africa and finding themselves besting some sort of peanut-head caucasion demographic in some other country. This has little to do with the notion of “average” skillset at the race level, though (other than the fact that, when we find differences and adjust for nurture, the residual difference is genetic, regardless of which population ranks how). ---
**Author:** ![Hector\_St\_Clare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2014, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-racist-warning-signs/692519/671 "2014-07-23T16:21:15Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > Says who? Seriously? Check out some of the cites here, especially the Suryanarayana et al., 2011 one which estimates Indian IQ might be as low as mid-70s. Again, I think any results from extremely backward, malnourished and disease-ridden parts of the world (like India, and like much of sub-Saharan Africa) are dubious and don’t tell you much about inherent potential, or about genetics. Still, _right now_, test scores for Indians are exceedingly low. [http://www.sabhlokcity.com/2013/07/the-average-intelligence-quotient-iq-of-indians-is-around-80-85-with-significant-potential-to-increase/](http://www.sabhlokcity.com/2013/07/the-average-intelligence-quotient-iq-of-indians-is-around-80-85-with-significant-potential-to-increase/) ---
**Author:** ![Hector\_St\_Clare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2014, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-racist-warning-signs/692519/672 "2014-07-23T16:24:48Z")
**Chief Pedant** Ron Unz makes a big deal out of how certain European populations (Ireland, Poland, East Germany, Serbs) have seen quite large gains in IQ over the last couple generations- what do you make of that? He thinks urbanization, much more than ending poverty per se, causes increases in IQ. It’s the key point in his argument that the Black/White gap is _mostly_ not genetic in origin, though he doesn’t rule out some genetic influences. Also, what do you make of the fact that one of the ‘whitest’ countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, Ethiopia, also has one of the lowest scores on IQ tests? ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2014, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-racist-warning-signs/692519/673 "2014-07-23T16:29:11Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > Unless you are going to fetch out that idiotic study for “African admixture” that you used in the past (feel free to post it again for a laugh; was it the one that used skin color or blood types to determine “African admixture”?) [Here’s the study](http://www.scribd.com/doc/3616665/Sandra-Scarr-Andrew-J-Pakstis-Solomon-H-Katz-and-William-B-Barker-Absence-of-a-relationship-between-degree-of-white-ancestry-and-intellectual-s) (for the third time in the last dozen or so posts). And no, it doesn’t use skin color or blood types – it uses genetic markers, specifically blood group loci. To reiterate: rates of African admixture do not correlate to lower test scores. Awfully convenient that a study that happens to mostly shoot down the “black people have inferior genes for intelligence” assertion just so happens to be “idiotic”, in your eyes. Are these researchers “cockroaches” too? > [@](#): > > This has little to do with the notion of “average” skillset at the race level, though (other than the fact that, when we find differences and adjust for nurture, the residual difference is genetic, regardless of which population ranks how). Of course, no study yet has successfully managed to “adjust for nurture”. I’ve suggested an experiment that might do so, but they would be rather difficult and costly. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2014, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-racist-warning-signs/692519/674 "2014-07-23T16:32:53Z")
> [@Hector\_St\_Clare](#): > > Seriously? > > Check out some of the cites here, especially the Suryanarayana et al., 2011 one which estimates Indian IQ might be as low as mid-70s. > > Again, I think any results from extremely backward, malnourished and disease-ridden parts of the world (like India, and like much of sub-Saharan Africa) are dubious and don’t tell you much about inherent potential, or about genetics. Still, _right now_, test scores for Indians are exceedingly low. > > [The average intelligence quotient (IQ) of Indians is around 80-85, with SIGNIFICANT potential to increase – Sanjeev Sabhlok's blog](http://www.sabhlokcity.com/2013/07/the-average-intelligence-quotient-iq-of-indians-is-around-80-85-with-significant-potential-to-increase/) Based on Richard Lynn’s “research”? That’s a laugh. Lynn’s “estimates” on IQ in various countries have been totally discredited – in some countries, he “estimated” the IQ scores based on a single study of a few dozen children _that weren’t even from that country_. Lynn’s crap ‘data’ was mostly just made up. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2014, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-racist-warning-signs/692519/675 "2014-07-23T16:33:55Z")
> [@Hector\_St\_Clare](#): > > Also, what do you make of the fact that one of the ‘whitest’ countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, Ethiopia, also has one of the lowest scores on IQ tests? Is this based on Lynn’s made-up data? If so, you should completely discard it from any argument you make. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2014, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-racist-warning-signs/692519/676 "2014-07-23T16:37:53Z")
Richard Lynn estimated the IQ of the _entire country of Equatorial Guinea_ by looking at a [single study](http://www.nature.com/hdy/journal/v92/n4/full/6800418a.html) of 48 (yes, forty-eight) school-age children. And in most countries he estimated, he didn’t even have a single study to look at _at all_. ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2014, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-racist-warning-signs/692519/677 "2014-07-23T16:40:52Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > Based on Richard Lynn’s “research”? That’s a laugh. Lynn’s “estimates” on IQ in various countries have been totally discredited – in some countries, he “estimated” the IQ scores based on a single study of a few dozen children _that weren’t even from that country_. Lynn’s crap ‘data’ was mostly just made up. That’s my personal favorite of all of the arguments. “Entire countries are completely retarded!” When you add that to “But that’s not some sort of value statement or anything” it gets hilarious. ---
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2014, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-racist-warning-signs/692519/678 "2014-07-23T16:43:45Z")
> [@Hector\_St\_Clare](#): > > I entirely agree with you, but eliminating the ‘nurturing’ explanation still doesn’t negate the possibility that the Black/White gap could be due to, say, prenatal/maternal effects. Even adoption studies couldn’t and wouldn’t correct for that. First, those effects are shown to be quite limited unless we are talking about truly starving people, crackheads, drunks, and the like. But it seems unlikely we’d find a strong distribution of that crowd within the wealthy and educated black families whose privileged children barely score what uneducated and poverty stricken white kids score (and those white kids in turn underscore asians). So it’s not a very satisfying hypothesis. See [here](http://www.jbhe.com/features/49_college_admissions-test.html) or [here.](http://lesacreduprintemps19.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/why-ses-does-not-explain.pdf) Putative alternate explanations include a wealth gap (difficult to believe that blacks with incomes over 200k/year are wealthier than whites with incomes under 20k a year), lousy parental education (but surely better than whites in those pitifully low income groups), and so on. [See graphs 5 and 6 here](http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/testing.htm) for some '96 data on parental education and test results. Despite fairly intense efforts, the gap is not closing. See [here](http://www.jbhe.com/2012/09/no-progress-in-closing-the-racial-gap-in-sat-scores/). [Here is another graph of scores versus SES](http://occidentalascent.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/2008-ses-gap-new.jpg) But you can look up this data on your own if you like; there’s lots of it, and the pattern is consistent across the US and the world (where you can find data reported by race). ---
**Author:** ![Hector\_St\_Clare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2014, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-racist-warning-signs/692519/679 "2014-07-23T16:44:54Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > Based on Richard Lynn’s “research”? That’s a laugh. Lynn’s “estimates” on IQ in various countries have been totally discredited – in some countries, he “estimated” the IQ scores based on a single study of a few dozen children _that weren’t even from that country_. Lynn’s crap ‘data’ was mostly just made up. Check out the 2011 citation I mentioned (you need to scroll down), it extrapolates IQ from test scores and is independent of Richard Lynn. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2014, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-racist-warning-signs/692519/680 "2014-07-23T16:55:15Z")
> [@Hector\_St\_Clare](#): > > Check out the 2011 citation I mentioned (you need to scroll down), it extrapolates IQ from test scores and is independent of Richard Lynn. I’m unable to access that link – it’s blocked by a firewall (or something). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-racist-warning-signs/692519.md?page=33) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-racist-warning-signs/692519.md?page=35)