That’s all well and good, but:
Did these groups “underperform” before they were poor/enslaved/whatever?
Do individuals from these groups “underperform” when adopted as babies by “performing” groups?
Have any of those things you mentioned actually been systemically fixed?
ETA: nice username/thread combo
I recently saw a Danish documentary on the realities of aboriginal peoples today, focusing on Australia, Greenland and a part of USA I can’t recall. A really sad film to watch.
Casino-running kept the small “elite” of one particular NA tribe (don’t remember the name) very rich (fortified mansions, SUVs etc.), while the majority were left with their poverty, crime and alcoholism. In fact the (wealthy) tribal leaders actively cut people off the tribe for whatever handy reasons, to keep numbers small for high profit. The leaders were naturally very secretive, to the point of being hostile to journalists asking awkward questions. With their own tribal “police force” etc. it seemed they’d been left to do as they please, and traditional egalitarianism wasn’t high on the list.
Hey, I simply offered, in response to jackdavinci’s question, an accurate and temperate summary of your frequently-stated views on the subject of race-based differences in ability.
If you consider that “snitching” or “snark”, or if you don’t think that anyone but you should be allowed to describe your opinions, or that your opinions need to be presented with caveats or explanations, that’s your problem, not mine.
But you are willing to accept, say, studies of SAT scores about folks arbitrarily designated as blacks, without any sort of corroboration that they are genetically representative of some genetically meaningful group. Those studies don’t have anything to do with the science of the genomes of populations either.
My own position, as you well know, does not assert that different outcomes for different racial groups can’t have anything to do with genetic differences. I’ve acknowledged all along that the biological-differences-in-ability hypothesis expresses a scientifically reasonable possibility, and is worth studying scientifically.
Where I (and almost all geneticists) differ from you is in maintaining that existing studies of racial groups do not give us significant information about genetic differences in ability, because the relationship between “race” and actual genetic heritage is still so poorly understood.
This recent thread on nature vs. nurture contains many posts by Chief Pedant expressing the views I summarized above. Here is an example:
Race is a totally mixed-up, arbitrary definition. It can be a crude proxy for common population ancestry, but it’s not a very good one and in practice it’s used so loosely it can be nearly useless. Definitions for intelligence have been presented ad nauseum here and elsewhere.
Well, you’d have to clarify it if you want a yes or no. Genes determine intelligence. Gene distributions vary among populations. Race is sometimes used to describe populations, although it’s often used to describe cultures instead. Most often in the US it’s a self-attached label, although the categories presented might be defined by the government.
If you are asking if an individual’s race determines his intelligence, the answer is “no.”
If you are asking if self-described races can have average differences in intelligence (and many other phenotypic expressions dependent upon genes) among them at a group level, the answer is “yes.” To the best of my knowledge, no study has ever shown anything but a difference, and no attempt at eliminating environmental influences has eliminated the differences. It is frequently argued that “race” per se, is not a legitimate genetic grouping–that is to say, there is no commonality in some sort of gene(s) that creates a “race.” This may well be true, although of course it depends on how one is using the term “race” and it is also true that until the genome is better elucidated it’s a bit premature to embrace it too tightly. In any case, in modern times the gene flow among populations certainly exceeds what it has in the past.
It should be noted that the argument that “race” is not a genetic identifier for a group has no bearing on whether or not differences observed between races (or any other arbitrary cohorts) are genetic in nature. Suppose, for instance, that “self-described black” is a totally specious category for a genetically-linked population. Suppose further that short-distance sprinting is a genetically-based trait. If black short-distance sprinters are over-represented despite both groups having equal training, it means that the genes which underpin short-distance sprinting are over-represented in blacks (whether or not they are otherwise definable as a genetic cohort of common ancestry). And of course, very broad use of the term “race” to lump all humankind into races based on literal skin color is ridiculous. Could be a single population of damn-good-sprinters got lumped into the overly-broad category of self-described blacks.
It’s a pleasant, warm and fuzzy notion that all human populations everywhere are created equal. I would certainly argue that in terms of worth, of course they are. I have not seen a shred of evidence that various populations are genetically equal, whether the genes in question control athletic ability of various kinds, Tay-Sachs disease, gallstone-formation, height, age of sexual maturity, intelligence, or any other measurable phenotypic expression of genes. For the most part, if you can find population differences which persist despite equalizing environment, you’ve probably found a genetic difference.
As the human genome is defined, perhaps the notion that there are distinct populations will at last be cast aside and we’ll all turn out to be equal with the exception, perhaps, of our immediate family. At a grouping level larger than an extended family, perhaps, all of the genes coding for things we tend to prize highly (intelligence, athletic ability, musical genius, creativity–whatever) will turn out to be more or less equally distributed. Let us hope that turns out to be the case. It is my personal belief that it will not turn out to be so. I am interested in that possibility because I am interested in what it will take to create a just society with equal opportunity for all. If we pin policy onto false science, we are going to make bad policy.