Critique this: Why blacks run faster

Great Debates
822

I’m sorry for the late reply…traveling.
Here’s one link. When I get back home I’ll post more if you are interested, but perhaps to a personal mailbox or something?. I have many many more, but it’s easy to find them on your own, as well. The thing is, I don’t think it’s appropriate to distract a debate on physical differences with academic ones, so I won’t be debating these. I just put them out there as examples of the fact that many knee jerk assumptions about nurturing differences do not hold water. They are widely assumed because we have a heavy bias toward the Religion of Genetic Equality.

From the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education:

Explaining the Black-White SAT Gap

*There are a number of reasons that are being advanced to explain the continuing and growing black-white SAT scoring gap. Sharp differences in family incomes are a major factor. Always there has been a direct correlation between family income and SAT scores. For both blacks and whites, as income goes up, so do test scores. In 2005, 28 percent of all black SAT test takers were from families with annual incomes below $20,000. Only 5 percent of white test takers were from families with incomes below $20,000. At the other extreme, 7 percent of all black test takers were from families with incomes of more than $100,000. The comparable figure for white test takers is 27 percent.

But there is a major flaw in the thesis that income differences explain the racial gap. Consider these three observable facts from The College Board’s 2005 data on the SAT:

• Whites from families with incomes of less than $10,000 had a mean SAT score of 993. This is 129 points higher than the national mean for all blacks.

• Whites from families with incomes below $10,000 had a mean SAT test score that was 61 points higher than blacks whose families had incomes of between $80,000 and $100,000.

• Blacks from families with incomes of more than $100,000 had a mean SAT score that was 85 points below the mean score for whites from all income levels, 139 points below the mean score of whites from families at the same income level, and 10 points below the average score of white students from families whose income was less than $10,000.*

823

Back to the OP: Maybe they’re just doping. :wink:

Well, I don’t really think this, but it was the only thread where my article almost fit.

824

colonial and Ibn Warraq, you will both refrain from making any further comment on the other’s argument. Stick to actually discussing the material and leave out the commentary on the other poster.

[ /Moderating ]

825

Ok, because you’re asking me to and I don’t want to make your job tougher or to derail this thread I’ll ignore his insults and drop the subject.

However, I’m a bit confused by the instruction to not make “any further comment on” his “argument.”

First, she golden rule of SDMB as I understand it has been to attack the argument not the poster and I’ve been addressing his arguments, including personal attacks on me and have not made personal attacks on him.

Second,

I haven’t insulted him and have addressed his arguments. The mods have already ruled that it is permissible to accuse other posters of sexism and racism so long as doing so is a description of the person’s beliefs not as an insult.

If calling him a racist or a sexist wouldn’t be out of line, what have I said that could be seen as more out of line than calling him a racist or a sexist?

I don’t see what rules I’ve run afoul of and don’t see why I’m being mod noted.

826

Claiming to apologize for having “humiliated” another poster and then turning around and claiming you have only attacked the “arguments” is a pretty quick way to get me to dismiss your appeal as the height of disingenuousness.

Attacking the argument means challenging the facts or the logic of the other poster, not claiming they need to “make a better argument.”

[ /Moderating ]

827

How is claiming they need to “make a better argument” not challenging the facts or logic of a poster?

Is it also not allowed for me to tell a poster that he needs to “get better sources”?

It was rather obvious that I had upset him so I’m not sure what was wrong with such a comment by me.

Beyond that, since previous mod rulings would seem to indicate that it would have been perfectly permissible for me to call him a racist and accuse him of engaging in racism, what did I say that would have been worse than calling him a racist.

He was the one who, by his own admission, directed personal insults at me.

BTW, if I’m wrong and you’d have viewed me accusing him of being a racist as a violation of board policy, despite previous mod rulings, please explain.

828

**Moderating **

Showing a poster a logical error in their argument is fine, simply claiming that they need to make better arguments in the context of claiming one has humilated them is simply sneering.

I am trying to see how you are simply lacking in understanding, but you are presenting yourself in a way that appears completely disingenuous.

You did not aplogize for offending him; you said you were sorry for having “humiliated” him. That implies very strongly that you had, indeed, so crushed his argument that he would have been humiliated–i.e., he should need to be ashamed for having made such an argument. That you would act as thoiugh this is not clearly an effort to insult another poster is not credible.

[ /Moderating ]

829

Do you have a “strawman quota” you have to fulfill in every post? It seems like you mention Creationism or this “Religion of Genetic Equality” in every post.

Anyway, I stand slightly more educated with regards to test scores. I am still not even close to convinced that nurture has been normalized. In addition, I can’t just accept a genetic explanation were the “nurture” one disproven (it hasn’t been)- there could be other biological explanations, or other non-biological ones. A genetic explanation requires genetic evidence- to use your own strawman, anything else is akin go “proving” creationism or intelligent design by “disproving” evolution.

Note that I’m making no claims about “genetic equality”, or the abilities of any populations in any field at all.

830

I think the genetic explanations are coming. They are there for dozens upon dozens of medical conditions the underlying genes for which vary among SIRE groups, proving that this “social construct” drives differences in average outcome base on differences of genes in those socially constructed groups. And if we do know that genes drive other differences (say, for medical conditions such as hemoglobinopathies or renal salt handling or cystic fibrosis or whatever), is it not more credible than not that genes for physical abilities would also be disparate across SIRE groups?

I note that right now most people vote with their feet wherever genes are concerned…an example use case is where infertile couples go looking for putatitve parents, they use every proxy they can to get physical or intellectual genes to buy for their child’s gene pool.

The nurturing explanations fall away as individual assumptions are peeled away (such as the example I mentioned) one by one, and as the various gaps remain “mysterious” or unexplained. Go looking for official positions of various organizations and you’ll see the language I’m talking about. We suddenly want “conclusive” proof for every possible putative nurturing theory even though in any non-human setting we would have long since accepted an obvious conclusion that genes control our average successes, and that we humans are not homogenously mutts. We group ourselves using social constructs into self-identified groups which, because of the way humans have diverged and evolved, cause those groups to vary with respect to the chance that group contains a particular gene. At birth we do not all draw from the same base gene pool with equal prevalence. In the same way that your immediate biological family has a pool of genes from which you draw, your SIRE group(s) have a gene pool from which you draw. There is no equal opportunity for genes, and–on average–the child of a black SIRE group does not have an equal chance to a child of a white SIRE group to have fine blond hair, regardless of how mutt-itized or socially-constructed a given black SIRE family might be.

This is the key point: average access to the same base gene pool does not happen even though SIRE groups are formally defined as “purely social constructs.” The inability or refusal to accept this simple fact is what I shorthand to the Religion of Genetic Equality. Like any religion, it requires overlooking the obvious science, emphasizing confirmational bias for exceptions while repeatedly ignoring fundamental concepts such as statistical averages, and promoting a “feel-good” conclusion of equality that resonates with our deepest desires even though it is at dissonance with evolution. In the particular case at hand, I find the idea that we are one big genetic family where every child born has roughly equivalent access to every ancestral gene pool a Creationist viewpoint. Your mileage may vary on that conclusion, and as the Pedant I apologize in advance for the surliness with which I occasionally toss it out there.

831

Much of this is crap (and I haven’t made these claims you repeatedly attack)- there are many ethnic groups in Africa (see here) that are more closely related (by mitochondrial DNA, at least) to non-African ethnic groups than to some other African ethnic groups (not to mention that Africa has more genetic diversity than the rest of the world combined). This is not surprising- it makes sense that as populations in Africa diverged, and some populations left Africa, some of the populations that remained in Africa might be more closely related to those that left than certain other far-flung African populations.

It is not scientific to say that “blacks” or “Africans” are a race or ethnicity in the biological sense (which would imply that all “blacks” or “Africans” are more closely related to other “blacks” and “Africans” than non-“blacks” and non-“Africans”).

832

Keep on arguing with arguments that don’t exist in this thread. I’m sure it’s much easier than arguing with actual people.

833

Fair enough. I should not have included the “humiliated” comment which crossed the line.

Anyway, you’ve asked us to drop the argument and even if you hadn’t continuing it would hijack the thread so I’ll drop it.

834

It’s important to understand that, when we are trying to determine whether or not two differently-performing groups have genetics as the basis for their average differences, there is no constraint that either group be more internally related than the other. See my example of the Tall and the Short earlier in the thread; the group of Tall may be much more diverse, or may not be as internally related as the Short, but their average height difference is nevertheless genetic.
With SIRE groups, there do happen to be ancestral gene pools which are more common for any given SIRE group, but there is no requirement that this be the case in order to argue that outcome differences are genetically based. And of course, if any given subpopulation happens to attach itself to a given SIRE group but is fairly unique, an average for that subgroup might be quite distinct from the group average for the SIRE group as a whole.

835

It’s worth noting that at the 2012 Olympics the Iranians did extremely well in the weightlifting and wrestling competitions.

In the Wrestling events, the only country to win more medals was Russia(though Japan won as many) and in the weightlifting events, the only country to win more medals was China, though Kazakhastan and North Korea, also tied them. If one excludes medals won in the women’s events in wrestling and weightlifting, their results are even more impressive.

Now, several writers have often noted Iran’s proficiency in wrestling and weightlifting, particularly in comparison to other countries, however no one has ever suggested that somehow “genetics” is responsible for their success in comparison to countries like the UK, the US, or a number of other countries.

It seems that it’s only when discussing black athletes do people seem to try and argue about “genetic differences” between “the races” being responsible for the results as opposed to other factors.

836

Well, that plays into my comments earlier, that it’s something about attempting to show that other athletes are successful as a result of hard work and training. Black athletes are successful because of “talent.” It takes away a little of the admirability when you make it inherent.