athelas, can you please answer my question? I would like to know your opinion on the cause of the narrowing gap in test scores. Thanks.
Nonsense. First, the assertions I quoted were from several experts who know more about the specifics of the situation than you or I.
Second, all Chief or any other person would have to do is point to some valid peer-reviewed study, or some gene research that has shows significant differences between the intellectual capacity of Blacks, Whites, Hispanics, and Asians. No need to even address my contention. Just show me some proof of his. He can prove his contentions the same was I have in several thread. I shown that priming and societal expectations have measuarable effects.
Third, the reason why I attribute many of these disparities to racism is because there is often proof that there is some racism in play.
Well I believe he is, in fact, a racist. Not only based on his positions here and in other threads, but for his abiding faith in Black genetic intellectual inferiority despite the complete dearth of evidence. In some ways, I feel bad for him. I doubt he is a hateful person, or that he dislikes Black people, but I think he and his ilk need to be called out for what they are because they make it harder to society to function. Individual progress depends so much on societal expectations, that having people make arguments like he does actively hurts people.
Isn’t saying black people are genetically predisposed to be less intelligent than white people pretty much definitively racism? Now were someone to believe that, they could argue there is nothing wrong with being racist, but can it really be anything other than a racist view?
Webster thinks so:
Main Entry: rac·ism
Pronunciation: \ˈrā-ˌsi-zəm also -ˌshi-
Function: noun
Date: 1933
1 : a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race
It depends on what you mean by racist. If you’re thinking KKK, then no, not necessarily. If you allow the word to apply to doctors looking into sickel cell anemia and the role genetics plays in it, then yes you can say it is “racist”.
Let me ask you, is it racist to say that blacks are faster runners?
Those experts were themselves engaging in speculation.
No one is claiming that you’re the only one who shares your viewpoint. To the contrary, what you say is very politically correct.
There aren’t going to be any studies that either prove or disprove that type of thesis. No one is interested in studying this.
Sometimes there is and sometimes there isn’t. But the bottom line is that since, as above, you are not going to find peer reviewed studies of these matters, the best you can do is the type of evidence that Chief Pedant puts forth. If you are willing to arbitrarily dismiss all such evidence as itself the result of racism, then there’s no evidence that will ever suffice, and it’s meaningless to point to the absence of evidence.
Again, that doesn’t mean your underlying position is wrong, and it could be that you’re right that some of the issues are the results of other factors. (I happen to agree with you, based on my experience, that minority underclass members are more likely to sue than others.) But it does make your position unfalsifiable, as above.
Personally I think you being shrill and CP being calm tends to undermine your cause and not his. But that’s your decision. The issue I have is that the term racist has multiple connotations, and when you say someone is a racist most people don’t assume you mean a guy who supports affirmative action favoring minorities (as CP has supported repeatedly).
Maybe. I agree it would be icky, but facts are facts. The problem is that your side has no facts to point to. Skip the rhetoric, present some peer-reviewed studies that backup your point.
No I am not. I have studies and facts on my side. He has neither. The sad part is that we can both be right. There may be a day when Chief is proved right. It doesn’t mean nurture does not have an effect. The problem, again, is that he has no proof.
I assume you mean genetics, not race. Again, the point is that you have no proof. Just because something “makes sense” doesn’t make it so.
This isn’t a discussion because one side continually fails to engage in meaningful debate. Why would not mention that I believe that his ignorant opinions are borne out of racism?
Broadly and informally speaking, yes. But there isn’t a clear definition of race, and “physical attributes” could mean anything. Of course Black people share physical attributes like skin and eye color. If you are saying that we are better athletes, I would ask you to prove it.
Asian-Americans tend to work harder than those of us born here. There was an initial selection bias which has resulted in a cumulative advantage. Compare the native Chinese of Indian population to those who have immigrated here, then tell me why there is such a disparity.
Track and field is dominated by Blacks because Blacks work harder at it, and have fewer other options. The take away, IMO, is that people tend to gravitate towards, and excel in the things they are told they are good at or have a capacity for. Why do you think there are far more Black rappers than Black (traditional) poets or rockers? Are we naturally gifted in this style of music that didn’t even exist until ~30 years ago? Why are there far more Black graffiti artists than there are painters? Why are today’s women, who were thought to be most effectively utilized as homemakers only 50 years ago, blowing their male counterparts away in academia in nearly every aspect?
More importantly, all of these are just a mere snapshot of how things are presently. You needn’t go back too far to find Jews dominating basketball, and Blacks dominating baseball. Now Hispanics seem to be dominating baseball. Canadians dominate Hockey. Eastern Bloc players seem to be making inroads into the NBA. There are far more Black quarterbacks now. Boxing was dominated by Blacks, but now Hispanics have made inroads. UFC and other mixed-martial arts leagues are still heavily represented by Whites. Why does one form of fighting have such a different ethic makeup than another? What accounts for all this? Did the gene pool vary in such a small amount of time?
Well, you called out someone for stating that the view that blacks are genetically predisposed to be less intelligent is a racist view. Given the definition posted, it simply is a racist view.
Saying “blacks are faster runners,” apart from being a ridiculous comment, isn’t necessarily racist. Just like saying “blacks perform less well on the SAT” isn’t necessarily racist. Where it might become racist is saying there was an element of the genetic make up of those we have chosen to label as black that makes them tend to be faster runners, or less able to score well on the SAT.
I’m not using racist here with any value judgment involved. This is a straight definitional thing.
Is that why you still haven’t come up with the examples of the self-evident persecution of WASPs in our society? Academic suppression of the truth?
Probably, since there is no evidence that Black people are faster runners. You could say that today’s elite sprinters disproportionately tend to be of West African ancestry, but that doesn’t have the same sexy appeal as your statement. However, it is more accurate and factually defensible. There is no evidence that Blacks are faster runners in general. Black obesity rates in the US are far higher than those of other backgrounds. That alone makes the statement unlikely to be true here in the states. Once you realize the statement probably isn’t true, you might start to ask why people believe that it is.
Perhaps. But it was more so educated guesses based on the likelihood of several possibilities based on the available information we have.
Bullshit. People can find money to do almost anything. People pay to have stars named after them and to buy property on the moon. Stormfront, the “white nationalist and supremacist neo-Nazi Internet forum”, has more than 40,000 unique users each day. In 1990, former Grand Wizard of the KKK, David Duke received 43.51% (607,391 votes) of the votes in his run for a US Senate seat in LA. Do you really think there are a dearth of apologetically racist people who will donate time and money to prove they are genetically superior to Blacks. That’s on top of all the people who would just want to advance the science.
The reason nobody sane does studies like this is because they don’t believe it will go anywhere, and because they realize that such a conclusion is a non starter when you can’t even define intellect to begin with.
He is not presenting evidence of his position. He is presenting scores, then assuming it’s because of some underlying genetic disparity when several other factors have been shown to be at work. It’s the God in the gaps logic that bothers me.
Shrill? How exactly does my writing come off as shrill and CP’s as calm? :dubious:
Besides the fact that he is a textbook racist, he has failed to prove any of his points. He just whines that they can’t carry out God’s work of proving his genetic superiority because lousy pc thugs keep them from buying a lab or whatever. As a doctor, I guarantee he could quit his job tomorrow and make the same amount of money doing said research assuming he is capable of such. I’ll even get him started with a donation.
Another possibility is that it’s what you speculate about if you have to ignore the elephant in the room.
“People” do and say all sorts of things. What you’re looking for is articles in peer reviewed journals.
That’s all you can ask for, and that’s all you get in peer reviewed journals. You present facts, and state why you believe you can infer your conclusions from the facts. If others find the inferences unconvincing, that’s the way it goes, whether in peer reviewed journals, internet MBs, or elsewhere.
I find the juxtaposition of these two paragraphs ironic.
The elephant in the room is that Blacks are not doing as well as Whites in a variety of ways. Most everyone admits that. What you, and CP, seem to suggest is that the reason this is the case is because of genetics. Yet, no proof.
The defense is that we don’t have/can’t get the resources to do the work. That is really not true. Why doesn’t someone go to China, and do some brain studies comparing them to Europeans and Africans. It would cost very little to do so relatively speaking.
No it’s not. CP has done anywhere near the amount of study and work needed to substantiate his claims. He has not pointed to any genetic markers, genes, etc. that would explain his conclusions. The reason why no reputable body would ever publish something he wrote is not only because they disagree with his conclusions, but also because it is awful science. It’s god in the gaps logic. Don’t forget that people have though Blacks were congenitally stupid for hundreds of years now. This logic was often used as a basic for defending chattel slavery. Back then all the disparities between Blacks and Whites were of a natural origin. When science started to develop theories like priming, culture, etc., we started to discover reasons for these disparities. Then the logic became well, those things explain x% of variation, but the rest must be due to that congenitally stupidity we noticed before. And when more studies come out explaining our differences, the haters will just cling to the diminishing sliver of the unexplained.
Rather than actually trying to prove their point, they just claim our inability to account for everything means they have to be right. It’s bullshit, and the scientific community treats it as such. The day when someone like CP identifies an actually gene, or some kind of evidence to support their position, someone will publish it. It has nothing to due with political correctness, it’s about presenting something that could stand up to rigorous scientific scrutiny.
They have. We know that a truly bad environment, such as modern Africa’s, can depress IQ. Lynn has adopted the argument that the much lower IQs of black Africans (Lynn now estimates, based on 57 studies, that the sub-Saharan average is 67) compared to their African-American cousins (Lynn lists 31 studies since WWI with a median of 85) is proof that some combination of malnutrition, poor health, weak education, lack of mental stimulus, or other factors can drive IQ below its genetic potential.
For all your talk of evidence I have seen very little evidence from your side. I see CP providing data, and you saying “nyah nyah I don’t believe you!” Assertions of disbelief are not evidence, they’re a lazy way of making the other side do all the fact-finding work, while you continue your virtuous ignorance.
Interestingly, the one outlying data point among the NE Asian studies—a 92.5 average IQ in China in 1986—was found for a sample of adults, most of whom had lived through the terrible famine of the early 1960s and the anti-intellectual chaos of the Cultural Revolution. But when researchers also gave the same test at the same time to a few thousand Chinese children, who had enjoyed eight years of more sane government beginning with Deng’s pro-market reforms in 1978, they averaged 100. This magnitude however is not great enough to explain most of the gaps he found.
One more for fun: human evolution has been continuing after man had left Africa: This paper (PDF) lists 1,800 genes that have been under varying selection pressure in Africa, Europe, or East Asia over no more than the last 50,000 years. Note the high-level informatics used here: we are just beginning to scratch the surface of the human genome and even more data is likely to come with time.
Right now we only have a vague idea what most of these 1,800 genes do. It will take years to figure out the uses of each one. But the classic example of these differential gene changes is the selection for lactose tolerance in adults. This drove the frequency of the gene variant for the ability to digest milk from close to zero to over 90 percent in Northern Europe—versus no more than ten percent in modern East Asia. In turn, this new genetic capability had a big impact on Northern Europe’s cultural traits, including population density, economy, lifestyle, and cuisine.
I’m shocked to see that this thread has become a debate about how dumb blacks are. That’s such a rare occurrence in this place.
That’s not evidence of your position. That’s evidence regarding IQ, not anything linking genetic intelligence and race. Once again, IQ does not equal intelligence. Furthermore, this book has been discussed here before, and been roundly debunked by the scientific community. Just a cursory look at the list should raise eyebrows. Do you honestly think several African countries have national IQs below that of a mentally retarded person? You think the national IQ in North Korea is 105, despite there being claims that malnutrition there is so bad that they are several inches shorter than South Koreans?
Bullshit. I have presented evidence in this thread and many other about why you are wrong. You say the SAT is predictive, I show you a cite proving it’s not. You make an awful and inaccurate analogy about football; I correct you and explain why it makes absolutely no sense. You ignore it and continue to throw bombs.
The burden is on you to prove your point, particularly when it is such a bold, and improbably assertion. If you really want proof of racism’s deleterious effects, I’ll be happy to provide more cites for you. In the meantime, please humor me with evidence of your opinion.
YIKES! Here’s where the problem is. You are the one setting up a nature/nurture dichotomy. No one is of the opinion that nurture doesn’t play a role. No one is arguing that. So you’re setting up a strawman. Everyone agrees that nurture plays a role. The question is if, and to what degree, nature plays a role for race populations.
That there are physical differences to what we call “races”, is self-evident. Look at the hair, melanin levels, and facial features that make up the group that we consider to be black. Similalry, Asians have different facial features and are slighter in stature. If you are not willing to grant this real-world evidence and carp about “there’s no such thing as race” there’s very little to debate.
What I don’t get is how YOU can be so sure that your position is correct. We KNOW that there are physical differences like skin color, facial features, stature, etc, that we see among the races. Why would nature draw a line there and allow for physical differences and not mental ones, never mid physical ones that merely manifest themselves mentally? I really don’t see how that is a reasonable position. Can you explain?
It also doesn’t make it not so. You seem to desire some grand scale of proof for the nature side of the debate. Assuming that if the differences were real we would necessarily have proof. That doesn’t follow. Now, it also might not follow for someone to definitively assert that nature does, in fact, play a role. But I don’t know how you get from there to “they’re wrong”. At the very least, they’re no more wrong than you. But you have no “proof” that nature does not play the role they assert. Grated, you have a higher bar, trying to prove a negative, but that’s the position you’ve taken. Given that one can see physical differences, and we know that different races are predisposed to different medical conditions, it seems that there is ample evidence on their side to have their position held as a reasonable one, and not try to characterize them as “racist”. The fallacy of your ad hominem argument aside.
Aside from raising the temperature of the debate for no good reason—and to no good end, because it’s beside the point. If you’re going to engage in a meaningful debate and try to win your point, how the hell does it help to revert to fallacies like the ad hominem, or. Let’s say the person you’re arguing against IS an irrational racist, shouldn’t you be able to show the holes in his argument using legitimate debate and logic? Or do you think you get to take a short cut be characterizing someone as a racist and then win by default. Sorry, it doesn’t work that way.
Like I siad earlier, if you want to take the position that it is meaningless to talk about race, then there is no debate. You’d be debating something that has an admittedly “meaningless” premise. But I’m glad you’re not playing that game. So we can continue.
As far as “proof”, I don’t know what you would accept as proof. And I don’t know if it even exists. But we can look at evidence. And track is an excellent piece of evidence. For one, it may be the most socially democratized sport—the fairest. It requires no expensive programs, no equipment, and is engaged in by all cultures. There is no stigma attached to it—positive or negative—and all cultures seem to value faster as being better than slower. Also, it is class-blind, rich and poor alike eagerly participate it.
And what do we find? We find that virtually all world records for running, and going 10 or 20 spots, deep are held be people we consider to be “black”. How you can look at that evidence and come to a conclusion other than blacks have something that makes them faster is puzzling. The only alternate reason you offer is that [GULP] “blacks work harder at it”. Well, I’ll have to ask you for a cite for that. Because it sounds like pure nonsense. Never mind racist. And pretty ironic.
But let’s look at another sport: football. Virtually every speed position is held by a black player. Look at halfbacks, wide receivers, defensive backs, I’d say over 90% of the players are black. How do you account for that. Go look at high schools. Teams are more mixed. Do you mean that more black kids in high schools make it to college teams because they “work harder”? Keep in mind, we’re talking about the population of football players at this point. Those who have demonstrated both a degree of talent and interest in the sport. Why is it that as you go up in the ranks, the percent of blacks in speed positions goes up? Do you think it is because blacks work harder? Really? Or do you think it might be that while everyone can improve their god-given speed to a degree, that equal work will result in the same god-created unequal dispersal of speed, and that blacks are, as a population, innately faster runners. This seems like the much more logical reason. No?
I’m not sure what you’re asking here exactly. But it is no question that culture/nurture plays a role. Again NO ONE is arguing otherwise. But that does NOT mean that nature hasn’t made one race more predisposed for success in a particular endeavor than another.
I think your “work harder” claim is nonsense, and I’ve already asked you for a cite on that.
Mainly, because there is (was, anyway) less of a hurdle to it than becoming a traditional poet. To start, you’d probably need an English degree. Rock is something valued by a different culture, so not many blacks have a desire to go into it. Same reason Motown was born.
Again, the hurdle of years of formal training is removed. I think that is the biggest reason.
I think it’s because once artificial barriers were removed one would expect that they should perform just as well. Given that they have less distraction (testosterone), it shouldn’t be surprising that they do well in an endeavor in which sitting a for long periods has it’s rewards. It could be, also, that their brains are better evolved to process and retain information.
Similalry, before blacks had an equal opportunity to compete in track, they were under represented. Sure people like Jesse Owens and Rayford Johnson set the standard, but the numbers were lopsided. Once the artificial barriers having to do with racism were removed, one should have expected to see an equal dispersal of races on the podiums. But that turned out to not to be the case. There is a reason for that. You say it is that balcks work harder (with no evidence as of yet). I say the evidence points to blacks having a natural advantage. Given that we know that the races DO differ to some degree physically, that seems to me to be the more logical conclusion.
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That’s a lot of stuff. and not all of it is of the same kind. Let’s take basketball. Jews did well in basketball because they were interested in it. Anglos were playing other sports. Italians and Irish gravitated to boxing. And blacks were unable to compete. Once the sport had equal opportunity of participation, Jews became history. Boxing is a similar story. I think it is safe to say that it has always attracted people from the poorer classes. There was a time that that meant Irish and Italians. Blacks pretty much then took over the top slots. Now we see Hispanics seeming to dominate, especially in the mid-weight and lighter divisions. It appears to me (though it’s way to early to tell), that hispanics might enjoy the same advantage with hand speed that blacks enjoy with foot speed. This might also help explain the quickness with which they’ve been able to make such great inroads in MLB. Now, both these sports are a little “noisier” than track. In track their is one thing you need: speed. In boxing and other sports there are more factors at play, e.g., strength, ability to take a punch, etc.
So you’re not going to answer the question I posed to you concerning the definition. That’s not very helpful in a debate.
Even if it’s true?
And why is “blacks are faster runners” a “ridiculous comment”? Please be specific. I can see why you might claim it to be erroneous, wrong, incorrect, untrue, etc… but why “ridiculous”?
But you didn’t answer what I asked of you regarding the definition. I’m tempted to conclude that you’re one of those who like to play the game of “Oh yes, technically, a doctor who is looking into how to save blacks from sickle cell anemia can be considered racist. So that means any time someone discusses race in a way I don’t approve of, I can yell “RACIST!” and be oh-so-consistent.”
It’s a childish game, and certainly not helpful to discussion. Which, actually, may be why the tactic is used.
Here’s a question, just so I can see where you’re coming from: is it racist to say “Blacks have darker skin than whites.”?
Correct me if I am wrong, but isn’t it a fundamental definition of racism that it ascribes superiority in a particular characteristic or set of characteristics to a group based upon membership of a racial grouping? I thought that is what racism means.
Saying “blacks are more likely to be of lower intelligence because they are black” is therefore a racist comment. Saying “blacks are more likely to score poorly on standardized tests because of factors including lower access to education and cultural bias in the tests” is not racist.
This is definitional, without any regard as to whether either statement is true or false.
If I am wrong on the definition of racism, please tell me. I wasn’t trying to be helpful in a debate. I was pointing out that the statement made was by definition racist, and so rolling your eyes when it is called racist is kinda silly.
As I said, it has nothing to do with ‘truth.’ It is to do with the definition of racism.
It is ridiculous because it is a massive, sweeping, generalization. What does it mean? That every black person is faster than every white one? That the modal black person is faster than the modal white one? That the median black person is faster than the median white one? Faster how? I don’t know if any of those statements are true. What is apparently the case is that at the top end of athletic performers, black people provide many of the world’s most successful runners. I don’t know why that is the case, but ascribing it to the runner’s ‘blackness’ is a jump I dont feel capable of making.
What question did you ask about the definition? You rolled your eyes at something which is by definition racist being called racist.
Is it racist to say “blacks have darker skin than whites”? No. Why not? Because that is part of the definition of being ‘black’ - a darker skin tone. It is a tautology. I don’t think saying “blacks are genetically less intelligent than whites” is the same thing at all, unless you think that part of the definition of blackness is being of lower intelligence.