It’s not unusual for kids who have stellar scores to opt out of identifying themselves. They are not vying for special consideration as a minority and are basically making a statement about the general notion of having race/ethnicity be a consideration for admission.
Unfortunately, Medical Schools trying to make sure we have at least some diversity need this categorization. Without it, the score differences are so huge between, say, blacks and asians, that almost no black applications would even get past the basic screen.
His credibility in drawing conclusions may be zero from you; the American Psychological Association thought the topic important enough to publish that series of papers to which I linked, including alternate viewpoints and Rushton’s rebuttals.
I think your attitude is a common one: if you don’t like the data or the conclusions, just blacklist the author. Other approaches are name-calling or (as Kimstu does above) suggesting those who hold an opposite belief are “not all that bright.” And my observation is that those sort of folk huddle together and reassure themselves that there is weight in numbers.
From my perspective, there would be more weight in providing contrasting datasets, but of course for this particular debate, nothing exists except speculation. If it were possible to correct for score differences by adjusting opportunity, it would have been accomplished long ago in at least some representative subsets somewhere. The higher academic world is obsessed with promoting the notion that all groups are equal, and no (US, at least) major academic institution is without special programs geared specifically to getting their under-represented groups enrolled in the first place, supported and advised while in school, and graduated as successfully possible with as rigorous preparation as possible for post-graduate screening exams such as the MCATs, GREs and LSATS.
The “conclusion” in Rushton’s case is that blacks are oversexed brutes and Asians are effete intellectuals. He’s like a parody of 20’s racism, except that he uses polite language and lots of charts and graphs. Why the fuck should I take him seriously?
Honest question, and I’d appreciate an honest answer. Do you think there is anything at all to Rushton’s theory that the Asian race is genetically predisposed to higher intelligence and greater sexual restraint and hence reproductive quality over quantity while the black race is genetically predisposed to lower intelligence and lesser sexual restraint or reproductive quantity over quality, while the white race falls somewhere in between?
It’s a key part of Rushton’s view that not only are there genetically-based differences in intelligence between races, but that these differences are a trade-off with sexuality - essentially that blacks make up for being dumb by fucking everything in sight (he puts it more politely, of course). Do you accept this portion of his views, or do you only accept the portions of his work specifically on intelligence?
Instead of paraphrasing his position, would you mind citing it exactly?
In general, I think our genes play a major part in the expression of all our traits, but I’d have to see a particular study to comment more particularly.
The scores that I have seen suggest that Asians, as a group, are at the top of the tier for intelligence. I’m not sure how to quantitate aggression. If one group can’t seem to stop slaughtering one another with machetes and another group is excruciatingly polite but OK with building nukes that can take out the world, who is more “aggressive”?
The reproductive theories around race and intelligence you are talking about, I believe, relate to Rushton applying “the r-K selection theory” to what he considers the three broad categories of human races. (essentially, black, white and asian) this monograph. I have not been particularly interested in that and haven’t paid much attention to it. Here is Rushton’s concluding paragraph in that monograph above:
“In conclusion, it is time to end the relative neglect of theorizing about racial differences in behavior. International data show a distinct pattern. Asians and Africans average at opposite ends of a continuum that ranges over 60 anatomical and social variables, including brain size and testosterone. with Europeans intermediate. The pattern can be explained adequately only from a gene-based evolutionary perspective. If all people were treated the same, most racial differences would not disappear. This does not mean that environmental factors are unimportant for individual development. But, to deny or obfuscate the reality of a genetic basis for racial differences, as so many critics of the race concept have done, does not change reality.”
In general, what I am in favor of arguing is this:
Where we find differences, and nurturing has been normalized, we are likely to find genes as the supporting culprit.
If someone wants to argue that a given difference does not actually exist, or that a study showing differences is flawed, I don’t particularly tend to take much issue with it. So if there are differences found in aggression or genital size or brain size betwen races, I’d say it’s genetic. This is a different thing from insisting that there must be such differences, or automatically supporting any given dataset.
With specific reference to intelligence, I don’t think there is any real disagreement that all measurements to date do show differences among racial groups (and other population cohorts), and those differences are consistently the same pattern, study after study, across all systems.
I might add the way to not take Rushton seriously is to find datasets contradicting his…I suggest worrying less about whether or not he is a racist, as the application of such a term is irrelevant. The question is not what is racist, but what is correct. Precocious puberty is more common in black females than white females. Is that racist? Maybe. But as far as I know, it is correct.
Sorry; missed edit window for cite on precocious puberty in blacks versus whites:
“Herman-Giddens et al reported on the incidence of breast and pubic hair development by age and race in 17,000 US girls aged 3-12 years.4 They used the established definition that breast or pubic development in girls was precocious before age 8 years and estimated that approximately 8% of white and 25% of black girls in the United States exhibited evidence of sexual precocity”
And once again, Chief Pedant blithely ignores the fact that something is environmental, because he desperately wants to believe that them darkies is genetically different.
Of course the reality is that “An absent father, abuse and family dysfunction have… beenattributed to early onset of puberty in girls.”
And guess which of Chief Pedant’s “races” has the highest incoidences of absent fathers, abuse and family dysfunction?
But he will plead ignorance of these long established facts, because his belief system needs them Blacks to be breeding more like animals in order to bolster his belief that they are less intelligent than other people.