What exactly would I observe?
You’ll see what you want to see, of course. Which will be a small, possibly imaginary, subset of what is really there.
It was Frank Sweet, not Ron Unz that I got those explanations from, and here they are:
I’ll add my own hypothesis- there may be unmeasurable things, perhaps including media depictions and day-to-day interactions, that are intrinsic to the “black” experience in America (and likely in many other places), that may serve as barriers to academic performance and reaching one’s intellectual potential. They’re not insurmountable, obviously, but they may be tough enough to overcome that it makes a dent in things like test scores and other disparate outcomes.
None of these are certain, of course, but the genetic explanation is so weak (for many reasons, including several mentioned by Frank Sweet and Ron Unz) that these hypotheses are significantly stronger.
I never understood this, we should focus on the positive differences between the races. There’s evidence that blacks have bigger penises than white men. In fact, not only are there scientific studies but there is also the anecdotal evidence from millions of *extremely * satisfied white women all over the globe. Yes, indeed; these white women who’ve never felt such wanton joy and ecstasy with their white counterparts in the bedroom were now bequeathed a fiery secret by the black man: the vagina extends further than cervix. Think the confusion she must have felt when she discovered this apex could be rung like bell with just a wiggle of his hips. When this nether region is struck, it leaves an echo of pleasure that persist for days after copulation, reminding them (and again) of their pleasant experience. This happiness likely contributes to mood lifts, weight loss, and increased work productivity for the women who’ve suffered cruel and neglectful treatment from six inch penises. A study should be commissioned.
- Honesty
…the hell?
Say it with me: “necessary but not sufficient”.
The development of capillaries in the Netherlands must have impeded the development of gray matter.
Speak up, I didn’t hear you.
- Honesty
So you are indicting black culture as being inherently anti-intellectual? I’m not saying there’s nothing to that, but it does seem ironic that you seem to be coming from the position that tries to avoid being inflammatory. I suspect a lot of black people would be more offended by this than by a genetic paradigm.
By the way: I haven’t read the whole thread so I am wondering if the issue of lead exposure has been factored into the discussion. I always assumed that was a big part of the puzzle, but it would not explain why higher SES blacks are still doing poorly.
I spent several years providing this care and support, so I can speak to this. These individuals may work a few hours per week at menial jobs, but they often have a job coach working alongside them who is making more per hour than they are. Their rent, utilities, transportation, and medical care are all paid for by taxpayers. Additionally, there are generally two roommates in each ISL (standing for independent supported living home) and there is generally a staff member required to be present 24 hours a day, seven days a week (that was my job for 40 of those 168 hours, evenings and overnight four days a week).
These guys could take care of their own bathing and hygiene needs in the bathroom (thank god), and get snacks from the fridge; but staff members had to shop for them, cook for them, and “help” them clean the house. In addition to the staff members who were with them constantly, there were also administrative positions at the company and a staff nurse who covered several ISL’s. That covered the company that was contracted by the state for their direct care. Then there were various officials who actually worked for the state and provided staff trainings and oversight.
So the cost to the taxpayer for each mildly mentally retarded individual, or “consumer” as we were directed to call them, was maybe three or four full-time salaries plus the cost of rent, utilities, food, transportation, etc. I am a progressive but even I found it wasteful, especially in a state that is so stingy with benefits for people who have a couple more IQ points.
*I know that “mentally retarded” is becoming nonstandard due to euphemism drift but that was the terminology a decade ago when I worked in this field.
You may assume my group (white) is somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, and if you like you may assume my individual status is right at the bottom. I don’t care about those sorts of arguments in trying discern what is correct.
I do not find Mr Sweet’s reasons persuasive, since they are very poorly supported and since they are even less likely to apply to the particular problem of black kids from well educated families with high income underperforming. In general, that group of kids have both the advantages and status of wealth and education, and the idea that their poor self esteem or lowered teacher expectations obstructs them is very weak. But if it reassures you that’s fine. I certainly don’t find it a more likely explanation than a genetic one, for all the reasons I’ve described above, and I await your response to why none of that constitutes “evidence” in your mind (as opposed to “proof”).
The differences among SIRE groups are stubbornly persistent and stubbornly resistant to all efforts to ameliorate them. In my home state–and I bet all others–where school testing data is published, you can look at sets of scores and predict in advance that asians will be at the top of quantitative testing and blacks at the bottom even if the entire school is a crappy one; even if all of the students have the same teachers; even if the teachers are almost all black themselves and even if the asians are a marked minority. None of that is especially reassuring to your explanations.
The fact is, you want to promote the idea that nature arbitrarily leaves off toying with genes that govern neurophysiology, athletic skills, or anything else that results in quantifiable skillsets. But it’s just a hope; a wishful thought, utterly unsupported anywhere else in nature. That’s not a good foundation for appropriate remediation or sound social policy.
It’s not as pitiful as Honesty’s efforts to simply threadshit, above, but neither is it particularly persuasive.
(re Honesty’s comment, I assume…)
Honesty once got so confused about genes in another thread that he made a statement to the effect that every human being on the planet had the exact same genes. When I took him to task for confusing the nickname of a gene (say; ACTN3) with a particular variant (X, e.g.), he gave up any effort at debating about how genes work.
This must be his new tack for what is apparently an inability to articulate a cogent counter opinion…just post something inane and hope coherent exchange is lost in the distraction.
We’ve already went over this, Chief Pedant: You’re an amateur. Your grasp of biology is of a layman and I’m not going hold your hand in a debate when you don’t even have a basic grasp of genetic nomenclature or can’t stop equating the existence of a polymorphism with a change in genetic function. Not unlike a lumbering Frankenstein, you haphazardly lurch from gene-to-gene in your quest to prove your hypothesis that blacks are dumb as rocks.
It’s sloppy, messy, and unsightly.
What’s humorous is that you have half of the posters here lapping your bullshit up as if it were the Gospel, bless their hearts. It goes to show you that if you package bullshit with proper punctuation, feigned concern, and sprinkle gently with a saccharin and sucralose mixture of enthnocentrism, you can have the masses taking you seriously.
Didn’t Rushton - the Jesus of the Neo-Racism movement - publish his findings that black men have superior penis sizes? Why not focus on this for discussion? Or is Rushton sort of like the Bible - one picks and choose what findings one believes in? Haven’t you, Chief Pedant, described black men has having higher testosterone levels? Since testosterone is the principal sex hormone in men, shouldn’t this suggest a link between higher testosterone levels and bigger penises for blacks? We have yet to talk about the impact black penises have on white women and whether it is beneficial to their psychological and physiological well-being.
- Honesty
Yes, and yet schools with very high minority populations and very low test scores are invariably called “failing/failed schools”. There is pretty much never any suggestion that it might just possibly be true (and I say this as the spouse of a special ed teacher and a supporter of public schools and teachers unions) that the people who run these schools are working hard, doing the right things, not “failing” at all but are being faulted for their inability to perform miracles.
Honesty, if you want to rant against another position, take it to The BBQ Pit.
These attempts at sarcasm or satire or whatever you think you are doing are not promoting the discussion. They are very likely going to result in a hijack–which it appears is your intention.
Stop it, now.
[ /Moderating ]
Tom, he may have gone about it in a far too inflammatory way, but in all fairness to Him, it is worth noting how many people who champion Rushton’s silly research purportedly proving how stupid black people are consistently ignore his equally silly research proving how small white men’s penises are.
Beyond that, while I can understand your concerns RE hijacks I don’t think proclaiming that white men are anatomically inferior and sexually inadequate when it comes to bringing women to orgasm is somehow less inflammatory than claiming that most black Africans have the IQs of people who are mentally regarded as numerous people on this thread have done.
If he wanted to debate Rushton’s sexual idiocy, he should have opened a new thread.
What he posted was nothing but a hijack of this thread.
They certainly fit the facts better than the genetic explanation, for many reasons that Sweet and Unz reiterate. And there’s no reason those things (including my hypothesized “things unique to the black experience” wouldn’t apply to rich kids too.
The efforts have been weak and have only been made for a few decades. And just a few decades ago, good, solid data tells us the average IQ in Ireland was 87. Whatever non-genetic factors held back Ireland’s IQ back then could easily apply to many other groups today. arked minority. None of that is especially reassuring to your explanations.
Nope, Mr. King of the Hay People… I have never promoted this. I don’t know why you keep acting as if I did, but I have never said anything like this. I understand well that it’s likely that genes affect all these things. Please quit with the damn straw men already.
It explicitly and unconditionally says that “they can become fairly self sufficient.” Agreed?
Anyway, I take it you concede that even those that do need support to function, do not need full time support?
Roughly 70.
It’s not just that I disagree – you have not proven your case. You claim that there would be no agriculture in a society with average IQ of 70.
Your argument, as best I can understand it, is as follows:
(1) Somebody with an IQ under 75 is utterly incapable of performing any kind of meaningful work in agriculture.
(2) In a country with average IQ under 75, the people who were above average would be spending all of their time taking care of those with IQs under 75 and therefore they would be unable to be involve in agriculture.
Therefore, according to you, there would be nobody at all available to work in agriculture and therefore no crops would be grown at all.
You have not substantiated your first premise at all. And in fact if you do a Google search on the question “can mentally retarded people work,” you will see page after page which asserts that they can. For example:
You haven’t substantiated your second premise either – even in the United States with all of its resources, mentally retarded people do not generally receive the equivalent of full time adult care. A typical caseworker often handles 20, 30 or more cases. Agreed?
Or those folks might be left to fend for themselves, resulting in large numbers of people who are living in miserable conditions.
Roughly speaking, I agree.
Do those people agree that black Americans are noticeably and significantly less intelligent than whites? This is something which is obvious to any reasonably bright American who interacts with other Americans of different races objectively and intensely enough to gauge intelligence. Do those people agree that roughly 20% of black Americans are at the IQ level for mental retardation? This is a statistical fact.
If the answer to those questions is “no,” then such people are not assessing things accurately. I would guess that they are either (1) not interacting with a representative sample; (2) letting political correctness color their judgment; or (3) not interacting intensely enough to assess intelligence.
You said that there were “typical” people in Africa, right? And to you, “typical” means that the people are “representative” right? The roughly 20% of African-Americans whose IQs are below 75 are not “typical” or “representative,” right?
First of all, you have not demonstrated that an IQ of 70 or more is necessary to work in agriculture. Second, most African nations do in fact have serious problems. At least by Western standards.
Well where do you get the idea that mentally retarded people would “perish” without support?
Based on my general experience and observations, I would say it’s pretty common. But anyway, you have the burden proof on this point.
Since you don’t really know, it seems to me that it’s hard for you to credibly assert that mildly retarded people are incapable of working simple jobs with close supervision.
“Full time support”, as in a caseworker in the same room as them at all times? No. “Full time support”, as in requiring someone to regularly assist them with basic tasks, as SlackerInc describes? Yes.
Noted.
No, that’s not it. It’s not that there’d be no agriculture, just very poor agriculture, and very poor commerce, and a very poor military, and so forth. Certainly the non-disabled portion of the population could plant crops and buy and sell things. The question was whether such a society would be functional, not whether a single stalk of wheat might be successfully planted and harvested.
I’m sure it varies by jurisdiction, but SlackerInc reports full-time supervision, and the group home my friend worked at featured full-time supervision as well.
Alright then, consider this: clearly African nations face some severe problems. Are these problems the results of an average IQ of 70, or other factors? What sort of problems would characterize a society with an average IQ of 70?
I’ve identified a few that I find compelling:
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Low labor productivity due to the need for very close and careful supervision and the barriers the mentally retarded have to performing work (memory, focus, etc)
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Low levels of education, due to students being physically unable to grasp the material.
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A social structure devoted to providing care for the mentally retarded, or, large numbers of retarded people living in squalor and misery, or dying, because they are unable to take advantage of opportunities that a non-disabled person could.
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15% of the population being rather severely retarded, with an IQ of less than 55.
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A lack of entrepreneurship and independent efforts at bettering one’s condition amongst much of the population, as the mentally retarded can only work under close supervision and with clear, simple orders.
Obviously, the mere existence of social problems is not evidence of an average IQ of 70, because a myriad of factors can cause such problems.
I can’t answer for other people.
Could you provide a cite for 20% of African-Americans being mentally retarded?
No, a trait shared by only 20% of a group is not typical of that group.
As noted above, the existence of problems isn’t evidence of an average IQ of 70, unless they are the sorts of problems that would be caused by an average IQ of 70.
Common sense? They are easily taken advantage of, and struggle with essential tasks like buying food or procuring medical care.
Some are, and some aren’t, but that only goes to the “functionality” metric. I’ll ask you: what would characterize a society with an average IQ of 70?
Expanding on my post in the pit thread, here’s a common sense way of looking at what is, IMO, a good explanation for disparate outcomes:
Group B was brutally enslaved and institutionally dehumanized for centuries by group A. After a few centuries, this slavery ended, but slightly lesser brutality and institutional dehumanization continued in significant parts of the country for another 100 years or so. The institutional brutality and dehumanization ended with legislation. Many people in group A, including large majorities in some parts of the country, still believed that group B is innately inferior for decades- and there still existed brutality, oppression, and dehumanization on a smaller and informal but significant scale. Group B, on average, scores lower on some tests, are statistically more likely to be involved in crime, and on average are in poorer economic circumstances.
So, taking genes completely out of the discussion, we can reasonably surmise that an individual child from group B has more significant barriers to reaching his or her intellectual potential than group A. Even if we correct for every measurable social aspect, like income, parental education, and the like, it’s very reasonable to surmise that some obstacles of an immeasurable nature (which may include things like media depictions, in-group and out-group culture and peer pressure, teacher expectations, and probably many things I haven’t even thought of) may remain that make it harder for a child of group B to reach his or her potential than a child from group A.
In essence, I think it’s very likely that there are immeasurable parts of the “black experience” in America (and likely elsewhere) that serve as obstacles towards reaching one’s intellectual potential that do not exist for individuals of other groups. So, regardless of one’s genes, it’s harder (on average) to reach the potential of those genes if you’re black than if you’re not. It doesn’t mean it’s impossible, of course – just harder.
Taking all of this into account, it’s reasonable to demand genetic evidence for a genetic explanation for such disparate outcomes. There is just so much of the human experience that we can’t measure (or don’t know how to measure yet), and that may affect a child’s development in way’s we don’t know, that it’s ridiculous to come to a conclusion about the genes for intelligence for different groups without such genetic evidence.