Yes – unlike the genetic explanation, these explanations actually fit all the evidence. The fact that their parents overcame obstacles does not mean that the obstacles do not exist. They exist, as proven by the persistent signs of discrimination like stereotypically black-named resumes getting turned down in favor of white-named resumes with the same qualifications. They are not insurmountable, but they make it harder for black students to succeed academically, regardless of socio-economic background (though, of course, rich black kids are more likely to succeed than poor black kids).
Further, we’re just talking about test-scores. What about overall success in life – I asked earlier about income outcomes for rich black kids vs poor white kids, but you didn’t answer.
Right back at ya. And considering the scope of history, there is no persistent pattern. A few decades, with very weak efforts to correct it, is not even close to “persistent”.
No, it’s because you believe black people have inferior genes for intelligence, and you believe that this is evident for the same reasons that it’s evidence that cockroaches have inferior genes for intelligence.
Bullshit. Cite?
You’ve said straight up that black students with lower test scores are still qualified and perform well in medical school. That doesn’t sound like lower intelligence to me. It sounds like the problem is the admissions and the tests, not the black students.
LOL for the wording, and excellent wordsmithing if you are talking about that one study.
It’s a very poor study, and it is nowhere near the only one. However that one is badly designed, draws from a group already at the bottom of the barrel (like using only the handful of worst runners in the school to find out which backgrounds provide weak running ability instead of looking at the whole school), uses laughably primitive proxies to estimate genetic pool percentage, has such a limited number of participants that there is no way you’d get a representative sample of a given admixture, and comes to a weak conclusion, weakly stated.
Help me out with my use of “egalitarian.”
I use “egalitarian” to mean a position that all self-identified races have approximately equal genetically-based potential for average skillset outcomes for things such as physical skillsets or performance on academic exams.
I take it by your criticism when I use the term that you ALSO think those outcomes are genetically driven and that nature is NOT egalitarian? If so, I have to congratulate myself for helping you learn.
You will search in vain for a “black intelligence gene.” I have no idea what that is, other than a news headline. You will find that a concert of genes drive neurobiological function, and that average outcomes among populations whose average gene pools differ are driven by the disparate genes. The idea that “a black intelligence gene” drives those differences is sort of a fourth-grade simplification. Perhaps you’d be more comfortable staying at that level of understanding.
No it’s not. You haven’t even tried to show that the methodology is poor.
There are other studies that compare test score performance with proportion of African genetic ancestry among self-identified black people? Do tell! I’ve been asking for a new study like this for months!
Are you still talking about the Scarr study? “Running ability”? Huh?
No it doesn’t – the Duffy antigens have been a basic but pretty accurate measure of African ancestry for decades. They offer a pretty similar result to more modern methods. Perhaps there are better methods now – if so, to you and your allies, don’t be such a lazy coward and do the fucking study.
It tested over a hundred students. If you want a larger sample size, do some fucking science. And no, the conclusion is not “weak” or “weakly stated”.
At least for me, I don’t make such an assertion. In fact, I don’t make any assertion at all – I just point out the bad, bad science of the “blacks have inferior genetics for intelligence” crowd.
by CP:
*“One thing that won’t happen any time soon, with any amount of nurturing manipulation, is equivalent outcomes.”
You are getting confused between association and causation, and between contributory effect and full explanation. Let me try to help.
SES has an association with low academic skillsets. Poor schools; poor teachers; poor opportunity. However there isn’t good evidence it’s the reason for race gaps. Within every SES tier, when one looks at scores by self-identified race, the gaps remain. That is, all comers from the lowest SES tiers will still have asians at the top and blacks at the academic bottom. Within a low SES school, the asians in that same school, with the same teachers and the same curriculae, will be at the top.
So while we can debate whether SES “causes” low scores or that those who cannot perform academically find themselves in the low SES, there is little evidence that SES causes the score gaps among races. Further, very high SES blacks underscore very low SES whites and asians, again severely limiting SES as a fundamental cause of a race-based score gap.
You have also noted my skepticism that this gap will ever be eliminated by nurturing is unfounded. That skepticism is based on thousands upon thousands upon thousands of exams. Tens of thousands of SATs; ACTs; MCATS; LSATs; ordinary exams; high-school and grade school achievement tests; tests in every state in the US; government aptitude exams; workplace exams; specialty exams…
To the best of my knowledge (and I am willing to look at any data you find convincing), there is not a single broad study against this pattern. It is stubbornly resistant to all efforts to eliminate the gap.
Every year the same tired results get reported. The gap does not change after years of identical exposure to training and learning curriculae (as, for example, the pass rates for medical subspecialty exams despite the same college, the same medical school, the same residency and the same subspecialty training). Nor does it change in the workplace; Ricci deStefano is reflected over and over again for firefighters, policemen and any other workplace environment.
On the employer side, we all struggle with the same problem. Worldwide the success patterns for skillsets among races is no different, across every political system and every historical setting.
No confusion here. I know that SES is not the full explanation, but it definitely plays a part. I have no idea why you seem to forget this with your posts every so often.
That’s probably millions of individual letters and numbers, and maybe billions of pixels! yawn. It’s a snapshot in history, dude. A tiny fraction of the history of this nation, much less the history of humanity. And test scores say nothing whatsoever about genetics.
“Stubbornly resistant” over a tiny period of time, with only feeble efforts to eliminate the gap. Not convincing. If you had generations and generations of test score data – hundreds and hundreds of years – then maybe that would count as a shred of evidence about the genes (though even then, we’d still need to know the genes). But a few decades? In this country, with this country’s history, and the legacy of a still unequal playing field?
Hell, it would be shocking if there wasn’t a gap, considering our history! You think it’s just a coincidence that the two groups treated most brutally through American history – Native Americans and African Americans – just so happen to have the lowest average performance in academic tests? Did the early racist Americans just so happen to brutalize and exploit the two groups with the most inferior genes for intelligence?
Considering, as you’ve said, that black students do fine in medical school, even with lower test scores, it sounds like the problem is with the tests and admissions, not the black students. Fix yourselves.
I’m not sure where I said that black students perform academically on par with whites and asians, on average. They do not. Not before med school. Not in med school. Not after med school during the rest of the academic evaluations such as licensing and specialty exams. And out in practice, as a group blacks have significantly higher disciplinary rates for medical misjudgments.
The JBHE article I gave cites a position that blacks can make excellent physicians and can perform well. I heartily agree with that. But the debate at hand is about gaps.
I believe that we do not have to identify which genes make humans more intelligent than cockroaches in order to suggest genes are at play for the observed differences in outcomes. Similarly, if we are comparing two populations of humans, we do not have to identify the exact gene to infer a genetic difference. We can normalize for nurturing and infer the residual difference is genetic. It is a strawman argument to pretend we have to know the “exact gene(s)” and that if we don’t, there is “zero evidence” for genes.
The fundamental issue between you and me (other than your propensity for foul language, name-calling, and infantile gloating over my cockroach example as if I compared blacks with cockroaches) is that you believe no equivalent nurturing can be said to take place until there is no vestige of “racism” left in the world, or until there is no residual effect of centuries of discrimination or some such other nonsense.
That’s ridiculous. Put two kids in a classroom. Give them the same teacher; the same material; the same exam; the same opportunity to study. Repeat times thousands to get representative samples. If the wealthy black students in the best schools with unlimited opportunity to learn don’t get the answers right any more often than the poverty stricken whites and asians in crappy schools with very limited opportunity to learn, it ain’t the “history of discrimination and oppression” creating the disparity in scores.
You claim academia in the US has a shabby record of addressing whatever problems you perceive. I call bullshit on that; no stronger advocate for the educational achievement of blacks exists than modern higher academia. Yet the gaps persist and persist and persist, and always with the same pattern.
I am curious why you think an ancestral history of brutality prevents a student from learning that 2 + 2 = 4.
And why whatever reason that is would apply, say, to blacks but not the Ashkenazi?
Can you be more specific about what it is that happens with a history of brutality to prevent a current student from learning? I’ve interviewed hundreds of candidates for med school over the years, and I actually saw quite a few neat success stories for immigrants (Vietnamese, e.g.) whose parents suffered quite a bit, but who themselves were still able to learn once given an opportunity.
I don’t remember the exact post, but you said something to the effect that black students, once accepted, do fine.
They also have significantly higher rates of incarceration for certain drug offenses, even though black people don’t do certain drugs any more than white people.
I don’t see why this is the case at all, and in fact this seems the opposite of logical, when culture and society play such a massive role in human behavior. If two groups of humans display a different preference for tomatoes, and humans and cockroaches display a different preferences for tomatoes, I don’t think the reason for the human/cockroach difference in tomato preference can tell us anything at all, or is in any way comparable, to the human/human difference in tomato preference. And the same goes for intelligence – it’s just not comparable at all, in any way, and in no way is it useful.
We haven’t yet, not even close. Maybe we could in a couple of biospheres, with newborn babies, and robot attendants.
Not in this case, because we haven’t normalized nurture – not even close. In this case, because normalizing nurture would be a monumental task without two identical, robot-run biospheres, we need to find the genes.
Wow, I’m impressed that you finally seem to get a point.
Bullshit. You have no way to know this, and this isn’t logical. Just being white in America, or black in America, or Latin in America, or Asian, Native American, Arab, etc., makes things different – even with the same schools, the same exams, the same teachers, etc. Society and culture are huge and disparate, even for two kids in the same school and the same town.
Not “always” – a few decades. And whatever the motivations of “higher academia”, the actual efforts have not been very strong, possibly mainly because it’s nigh-impossible to fight against the effects of society and culture at large. If, day after day, a black student sees black people in the media portrayed in a certain way (just as one example), and white people in a certain way, that might just have some sort of effect on their performance.
It doesn’t prevent anything. But the combination of many related factors can make it harder.
Two completely different situations. Different sorts of brutality, and different sorts of exploitation. Different representations in the media. Different stereotypes. Different sorts of ghettoization. Different responses from the justice system. Different group dynamices.
Different history.
You probably don’t realize this, but you give yourself away so easily: “prevent a current student from learning” – do you really believe black people can’t learn? “whose parents suffered quite a bit, but who themselves were still able to learn” – do you really believe black people are unable to learn? If not, why the fuck do you keep implying it?
It’s probably dozens or hundreds or millions of factors, all rolled up and adding up, that make it harder (but not impossible) for black students to succeed. Media depictions, day-to-day interactions, peer group dynamics, home and community life, teacher expectations, books in the home, parenting, etc.
A question right back at you – Do you think it’s just a coincidence that the two groups treated most brutally through American history – Native Americans and African Americans – just so happen to have the lowest average performance in academic tests?
It’s indisputable that the harsher treatment of blacks in the justice system has contributed toward the black/white test gap. If you deny that then you can’t even pretend to follow the science any more.
Here’s a simple question for you, requiring a simple yes/no answer:
Do you think the harsher treatment of blacks in the justice system contributes to the black/white test gap?
I am having trouble understanding how “culture” makes it difficult for a highly advantaged child to learn that 2 + 2 = 4, and why any difficulty might accrue to highly advantaged blacks with oppressed ancestry versus highly disadvantaged asians with oppressed ancestry.
Do you have a specific learning theory around this, or do you just have a general idea that a history of ancestral oppression is a really really good excuse for a highly advantaged black to perform poorly?
YOU are the one saying races have an egalitarian potential. There is not shred of evidence to support that.
So what you choose to do is misstate me over and over again. “Cannot learn” is not the same as an academic gap. When I give you an example of "cannot learn that 2 + 2 = 4 because of ancestral oppression " I am giving you your position. It is you who hold that the score gap is due to some sort of undefinable, soft, black-specific ancestral/cultural reason. I think that’s bullshit.
As to the general average quantification of what blacks, whites, asians, and any other group “can” learn, look to the metrics. For academic skillsets as measured by test scores, the metrics are readily available. For physical skillsets, you’ll have to go watch an NBA game, and decide for yourself if:
The starting pool is about the same for all groups in terms of number of players interested in playing basketball in the first place
The nurturing environment favors one group over another for things like opportunity to play, coaching, facilities, family support and so on
The idea of comparing cohorts for nurturing is to take approximately equivalent cohorts.
If a really stupid person came along and tried to compare all comers, anyone who looked at the results would say, “But you didn’t account for X.” For example, if we are looking at a black-white test score gap and we throw in black and abused underprivileged prisoners with highly privileged whites, we cannot draw a conclusion about the contribution of an unfair justice system on a raw ability to learn. It’s a variable that is highly disparate between the two cohorts.
If we design a better study and compare highly privileged blacks with access to the best education and no history of incarceration or abuse by the justice system to their white peers (or, in point of fact, to very disadvantaged white peers), then we find the gap is not even close to being closed.
So we can draw a conclusion that:
It is not SES, or abuse by the justice system that is responsible for the substantial gap which exists between blacks and other race groups. We can eliminate the contribution of SES or abuse by the justice system by establishing cohorts for which that variable is controlled.
(Unless you’ve got some kind of theory that privileged Johnny can’t learn properly because cousin Vinny is in the big house for unfair reasons)
Funny you should say that, because some of your cites for the black/white test gap do just that. In fact, whenever you say “blacks on average score a SD lower than whites…” or equivalent, you are doing exactly that. So, maybe rephrase your above quote to remove the “really stupid person” language?
The gap exists precisely because we aren’t comparing like with like. The simple fact of the matter is that no black person in this country is going to have an equivalent experience to a white person, simply because we have an entrenched racism that affects everything a black person does regardless of their wealth, education, etc. A wealthy black person is going to get pulled over by the police for no reason (which has happened to high-income colleagues of mine). Is going to be treated differently by teachers (which I have seen happen). Is going to be treated differently by almost every single person they come into contact with.
Now, our society is getting better (in fits and spurts), which is reflected by the decrease in the test gap. But until we have a fully equal society we will continue to have a test gap.
If the culture at large specifically treats black people differently to some degree, and portrays them differently in the media to some degree, then this might very well have an impact on how individuals develop self-esteem, self-worth, role models, etc. All this could have an impact on the difficulty of learning various specific skills, even simple ones like basic arithmetic. A child with a high self-worth, good self-esteem, postive role models, and the like, will probably learn 2 + 2 = 4 more easily and more quickly than a child without these things, or with these things in lesser quality and quantity.
I do not have a specific learning theory. But I don’t believe it’s a coincidence that the lowest-scoring groups in the US are also the groups that were historically treated the most abominably. This idea, which is a very broad one, fits the facts.