They would behave just like they behave now, since this idea conveniently fits with racist school of thought already. Baseball, hello? Latinos are also known to have a lot of African ancestry too. So duh, of course they are more athletic.
This question isn’t thought-provoking in the slightest.
How do you think they would behave?
Let’s say someone posts a thread in GQ discussing a ground-breaking study that shows black people possess a greater innate intellectual capacity than white people.
Would the thread be twenty pages long before the end of the day?
Or would it rapidly sink to the bottom since it wouldn’t be all that interesting or debate-worthy?
They would behave exactly as they do now, because Latinos = better athletes fits right in with prevailing stereotypes. But if you told them that Latinos are naturally more intelligent than whites, they’d absolutely laugh in your face.
Speaking from the Asian male suburban view, we don’t really care so much about black affirmative action doubling the black population at some top schools from 150 to 300, We care a lot more about the prejudices that admits 6000 whites instead of 5000 whites.
To the OP:If it turned out that there were real differences in potential, then we would be more tolerant of differences in outcomes and as Terr said, why would we have to do anything to deal with those differences?
If we found real genetic differences in IQ, I think it is clear that it would severely undermine much of the rationale for AA. The notion that the differences in racial socioeconomic outcomes is the result of differences in opportunity rather than potential is a cornerstone of the rationale behind AA.
Sure, there is real discrimination but we aren’t going to start down the road towards Harrison Bergeron - Wikipedia
Its not all Asians, its just the ones that use chopsticks. THAT’S the secret to Asian intelligence 
Well, some people think that the disproportionate power and influence of whites is the manifestation their innate superiority.
Because AA is there to counter prejudices that lead to discrimination and also correct disparities resulting from past discrimination. It’s not all about ensuring equitable outcomes.
Even if it was determined that blacks are less likely to have smart genes than whites, that doesn’t mean their aggregate profile makes it okay to discriminate individuals. Genetics can’t also explain away hundreds of years of oppression that kept people out of schools and well-paying professions. Men collectively are more likely to be violent than women and women are more likely to be physically weak, and yet gender discrimination is still unlawful in the workplace, right? I’d expect AA to still apply to females pursuing STEM fields, even if it was discovered that men are naturally better in math.
Do you have some cites for these “top school” behaviours? Acceptance of American blacks into top tier schools is on the decline as those schools have turned increasingly to other sources of blacks in order to get their race-based diversity without over-diluting their academic pool with low performers. Most top schools already recognize that there are marked performance differences among self-identified races that cannot be effaced by accounting for SES. Top schools have much higher test score standards for asians; less so for whites, and a marked drop in standards for blacks from all SES deciles and all sources. Because of the paucity of high-scoring blacks in lower SES deciles, successful black applicants tend to be from high SES backgrounds. In recent years some concern has been raised that this means successful black applicants to top tier schools are increasingly from immigrant african and west indian black families instead of black US families with enslaved American ancestries. See p 177 here.. Underneath all the modeling of statistics, top schools are desperate to get top students, and no matter their lip service to “opportunity” they think top students get top standardized scores. These authors say that current top schools only draw 1/3 of their black students from the US pool.
They also suggest (on the same page) that the value of selected preferences based on their modeling between asians and blacks is 450 SAT points. That is, if you want to use their model of how the differences roll out in practice, you add 310 points to the black kid’s SAT scores, and you subtract 140 from the asian kid’s scores. (In fairness, they don’t suggest applying this totally mechanically, but that’s the idea of their data modeling.)
Top schools keep their admissions processes very close to their chests when it comes to race preferences, and for good reason given that you cannot eliminate a race-alone preference by adjusting for SES. There are way too many whites and way way too many asians with lousy SES backgrounds and much much higher scores than blacks from top SES deciles. Top schools dislike a Texas-style top 10% approach because the top ten percent of students from all-black schools woefully underperform in quantitative tracks such as STEM fields, and you leave the best black candidates behind since they are from the better schools (even though their scores are not as high as their better-school white and asian peers).
As to genes, I don’t think we are going to find (non-controversial) “real genetic differences in intelligence” real soon. We are not going to fund research with that blunt a goal. Genetics study is going to tell us the effect of any given gene, and our understanding of evolution and migration is going to show us that there is good reason to think we have different gene pools. It will become obvious that average gene pools are at play, but I don’t see it getting bluntly stated any time soon.
But our social history has been to try and efface the effect of genes where possible for any large-scale effects. As I’ve pointed out before, we have double standards for sex differences driven by genes, and we put them in place precisely because we recognize that there is a greater value in opportunity for all, and that we don’t choose our genes.
The cornerstone of race-alone AA has been a recognition that a difference exists. Why that difference exists is apparently the subject of discussion only for “racialists” and “racists”. The rest of polite society has no intention of allowing for any publicly-expressed opinion other than that there must be non-genetic factors which we haven’t exactly put our finger on. The public party line is that we need AA until differences in race-based performance are erased, as long as that takes–at least, for academics and jobs; not necessarily football, basketball or power sprinting.
I agree with that approach to AA. The genetics makes for interesting scientific debate in a private setting. Publicly, we need to not mention genes, and we need a race-based double standard for all large-scale areas where outcomes continue to be stubbornly resistant to the idea that SES (or some other vague nurturing variable) alone is what separates performance outcomes.
Except where I live, Indians are very high achievers, academically, too.
OK. Being trained in physics, we ALWAYS tackle the two-particle problem first.
So, suddenly scientists find a gene showing blacks are smarter than whites. What’s the empirical evidence to support “smarter”? I would assume we’d have the situation reversed from what we see now-- blacks averaging a higher IQ score (or some other measure) than whites, everything else being equal (or as equal as we can make it). But that would mean there was this whole history of having that data out there and who knows what the typical white person would be thinking.
I mean, you can’t just postulate finding a gene-- the gene has to be correlated with something, and in this case it has to be correlated with something that purportedly measures “intelligence”.
Again, notice how you’re arguing. When it was Asians who were smarter, you didn’t ask this question. When it’s black people who are smarter, suddenly you’re all about the details. Even when it’s a hypothetical, you’re fighting it.
Now imagine how it’d be if it were an actual study, and you’ll understand my prediction.
Well, of course, they’re Aryans.
But the “stereotype” for asians is not drawn out of a rectum somewhere. It’s based on a practical observation that extends to millions and millions of examples across every political spectrum; every national boundary. I can’t think of a broad situation–even in africa (!)–where asians underperform blacks in quantitative academic outcomes.
Bring asians to colonial africa as railroad laborers and a hundred years later some asshole dictator tries to kick them out of Kampala because they are at the top of the success heap.
Bring blacks to Panama as railroad laborers and a hundred years later Colón is still mostly a slum for its black inhabitants despite the incredible amount of commerce flowing through it.
Look at the world around you and make your own decision. It’s possible that the incredible degree of short-stickism for blacks is because of guns, germs, steel and racism, and that a stereotype forms which has no basis in nature. On the other hand, even black children from wealthy families follow the same “stereotypical” underperformance for exactly the same areas blacks with no opportunity underperform in. Hardly reassurance the stereotype is wrong.
So a hypothetical which is totally antithetical to what we see everyday does get questioned for “details.”
If I found proof that the europeans are genetically superior, on average, to the west africans for power sprinting, you betcha I’d raise an eyebrow and want “details.”
If only–IF ONLY!–you’d been given the reasons for this “underperformance” in a recent thread! If only–IF ONLY!–you’d taken the opportunity to educate yourself instead of fluttering your hands at the evidence and proudly assuring everyone how you didn’t find it plausible. If only–IF ONLY!–you didn’t start each thread as if you suffered from short-term amnesia, taunting us to educate you from scratch each time.
No, Lucy, I won’t kick the football.
Suppose a scientist found a gene (Gene X) was associated with quick processing speed, pattern recognition, and ability to learn. This finding was obtained by administering a battery of tests to a representative sample of 500,000 people in the U.S. After controlling for education, income, age, geographic region, and other potential confounders (but not race), it was determined that those who posessed this gene were more likely to perform better overall than those without Gene X.
In addition, the findings of this study corroborate several animal studies which show that animals that either lacked Gene X (or were manipulated so as to not permit Gene X expression) took significantly longer to learn new tricks or problem solve than those with the gene. In all other capacities, the animals performed identically, though.
In addition to this, studies at the biochemical and molecular level show that Gene X is associated with expression of certain proteins known to play a role in developing parts of the frontal cortex thought to be involved in complex cognitive processing. When these proteins are only weakly present at critical stages during development, these areas of the brain tend to be smaller and less active (as determined by MRI) than when protein concentrations are strongly present.
So in other words, there is a strong chain of evidence that Gene X is the holy grail for intelligence, at least in the area of processing speed, pattern recognition, and knowledge acquisition.
So let’s go back to our 500,000 human subjects mentioned in the first paragraph. As a group, we see that Gene X is associated with intelligence. But a closer inspection of the data reveals that 13% of the subject population buck the overall trend. Proportionately more people in this subpopulation (the Blacks) had Gene X than the majority group (the Whites), and yet the Blacks did not outperform the Whites as expected.
“What a fascinating finding!” one researcher says. “To what should we attribute this?”
“Well, you know, nature is only one part of the equation,” points out another researcher. “Nurture is an issue, too. I’m not a historian, but haven’t Blacks been subject to an awful lot of discrimination through the years?”
“Yes, but we controlled for income and education! Surely that addresses the discrimination thing.”
So with all of this spelled out, hopefully John and others can finally entertain this hypothetical.
I just provided some background on some hypothetical studies that support the hypothetical scenario. Will now sit back and wait for the attacks on the hypothetical conclusions.
We can only hope.
If it pleases the audience, I’ll add an additional line of evidence. Multiple studies have shown that the expression of Gene X is extremely sensitive to environmental factors, particularly those of early childhood. Mice who carried Gene X and who were subjected to harsh stimuli during the first five days of birth were found to perform only half as well on learning tests as mice without Gene X but who were raised under ideal conditions. But Gene X mice who were raised under ideal conditions performed twice as well as their control counterparts.
There is also strong evidence indicating that these effects can span multiple generations. The offspring of traumatized Gene X carriers also tend to perform worse on tests, even when raised under ideal conditions. All available evidence indicates that it takes at least three generations after the initial trauma for Gene X mice to out-perform non-Gene X mice. The prevailing hypothesis is that the initial trauma triggered epigenetic disabling of Gene X. Follow-up studies will be performed to determine what kinds of trauma are more likely to cause epigenetic effects, and whether these effects (and their generational cascade) can be mitigated.
I’m still working on why wealthy black parents subject their children to such harsh stimuli during the first 5 days of birth compared with poverty stricken white trailer trash. LHoD has some ideas on this, as does iiandyiiii.
And why those black kids still end up being better basketball players and sprinters, even with the harsh treatment…
But if these sorts of hypotheses and extrapolations reassure you, I have good news: there is no end of them, ever, and for that reason hope can go on indefinitely that mother nature has provided all groups with the same genetically driven maximum potential.
Emphasis added. I don’t know what that means. Outperform on what or in what way?
Presumably, this particular gene is strongly associated with high performance on this test; people with this gene tended to outperform those without this gene.
But black people buck the trend. More black people than white people have the gene. You’d expect, therefore, that black people would outperform white people on that battery of tests. But they don’t.
In this hypothetical, our best evidence is that black people tend to be more intelligent than white people due to genetics, but not in achievement on tests. How do you think people would respond to this study?
(How’s that, ywtf? I’m trying to rephrase here, to clarify a few bits that were ambiguous; lemme know if I missed something, please)
You’ll have to cite, unless you’re being sarcastic.
What harsh treatment? If black people of African descent had a genetic advantage for sprinting, then one would expect the best sprinters to come from the place with the most dense and varied African genepool. Is it just coincidence that most of them come from either a tiny island country that just so happens to have a cultural obsession with sprinting, or a huge country with probably the best athletic infrastructure in the world?
If I meet anyone expressing this hope, I’ll let them know about your straw man, oh King of the Hay People.