# I pit 'racial realism' projectionism. **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [September 7, 2011, 3:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-racial-realism-projectionism/595468 "2011-09-07T03:42:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Lago\_Ys-Transform](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a587f6/32.png) [@Lago\_Ys-Transform](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lago_Ys-Transform)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2011, 3:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-racial-realism-projectionism/595468/1 "2011-09-07T03:42:11Z")
> **[Statistically, blacks score poorly on IQ and IQ-proxy exams than whites, is...](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=622273)** > > http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/28/nyregion/a-fire-department-under-pressure-to-diversify.html ^ Consider this story, the operating assumption is that environmental factors are the primary reasons why blacks do poorly on exams (in this case, a... Now right-wing abuse of science/humanities, especially in the late 20th century/this one isn’t anything remotely new so when stacked up against grievous errors like AGW denialism and anti-evolutionism and more piddling ones like Silent Spring = Genocide or Abstinence Education = A-OK! this shouldn’t bug me too much. I mean it’s just a little ‘it’s so bleeding obvious that AAs have genetically inferior IQs don’t wave your statistical/historical/biological crap at me’. But it does. For some particular reason people are especially proud of holding this form of pseudoscientific belief, subtly and not-so-subtly indicating that people poking holes in their stupid-ass arguments are living in fairy-tale land and that people living in the ‘real’ world blithely assume those stereotypes. It’s really irritating. ---
**Author:** ![Rand\_Rover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/db5fbb/32.png) [@Rand\_Rover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rand_Rover)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2011, 4:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-racial-realism-projectionism/595468/2 "2011-09-07T04:21:44Z")
Meh. ---
**Author:** ![OneMissedPost](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/8e7dd6/32.png) [@OneMissedPost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OneMissedPost)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2011, 4:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-racial-realism-projectionism/595468/3 "2011-09-07T04:40:15Z")
Has this been declared a fail pitting yet? ---
**Author:** ![keeganst94](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/a6a055/32.png) [@keeganst94](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/keeganst94)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2011, 4:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-racial-realism-projectionism/595468/4 "2011-09-07T04:56:56Z")
You had all that material to work with and that’s the best you could come up with? ---
**Author:** ![Chen019](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f19dbf/32.png) [@Chen019](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chen019)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2011, 4:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-racial-realism-projectionism/595468/5 "2011-09-07T04:59:39Z")
> [@Lago\_Ys-Transform](#): > > [Statistically, blacks score poorly on IQ and IQ-proxy exams than whites, is black genetics to blame? - Great Debates - Straight Dope Message Board](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=622273) > > Now right-wing abuse of science/humanities, especially in the late 20th century/this one isn’t anything remotely new so when stacked up against grievous errors like AGW denialism and anti-evolutionism and more piddling ones like Silent Spring = Genocide or Abstinence Education = A-OK! this shouldn’t bug me too much. I mean it’s just a little ‘it’s so bleeding obvious that AAs have genetically inferior IQs don’t wave your statistical/historical/biological crap at me’. Could you make your post a little more understandable? Anyway, as David Friedman asks, [who is really against evolution](http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2008/08/who-is-against-evolution.html)? 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Zeriel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/58956e/32.png) [@Zeriel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeriel)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2011, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-racial-realism-projectionism/595468/6 "2011-09-07T16:39:43Z")
> [@Chen019](#): > > Could you make your post a little more understandable? Anyway, as David Friedman asks, [who is really against evolution](http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2008/08/who-is-against-evolution.html)? 🙂 “I am an academic economist who teaches at a law school and has never taken a course for credit in either field.” Yeah, THERE’S a motherfucker to take seriously. ---
**Author:** ![Omg\_a\_Black\_Conservative](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/7ba0ec/32.png) [@Omg\_a\_Black\_Conservative](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omg_a_Black_Conservative)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2011, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-racial-realism-projectionism/595468/7 "2011-09-07T16:55:28Z")
_shrugs_ I haven’t even been in that thread. Guess I should take a peek at it. ---
**Author:** ![VinylTurnip](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b2d939/32.png) [@VinylTurnip](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VinylTurnip)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2011, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-racial-realism-projectionism/595468/8 "2011-09-07T17:01:54Z")
Apparently you’re going to need a white or Asian person to help you with the bigger words. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2011, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-racial-realism-projectionism/595468/9 "2011-09-07T17:04:53Z")
Join date: Aug 2011. Mystery solved. ---
**Author:** ![Chen019](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f19dbf/32.png) [@Chen019](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chen019)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2011, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-racial-realism-projectionism/595468/10 "2011-09-08T00:27:58Z")
> [@Zeriel](#): > > “I am an academic economist who teaches at a law school and has never taken a course for credit in either field.” > > Yeah, THERE’S a motherf8cker to take seriously. Lol. [Milton Friedman’s son is a smart guy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_D._Friedman) with a Phd in Physics from the University of Chicago. In any case, his comment rings true regardless of his background. ---
**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2011, 12:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-racial-realism-projectionism/595468/11 "2011-09-08T00:28:04Z")
I’m genuinely not sure which side of the argument the OP is pitting. Even though I’m white! ---
**Author:** ![Chen019](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f19dbf/32.png) [@Chen019](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chen019)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2011, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-racial-realism-projectionism/595468/12 "2011-09-08T00:31:44Z")
> [@VinylTurnip](#): > > Apparently you’re going to need a white or Asian person to help you with the bigger words. Apparently you’re going to need some help in understanding a normal distribution and how population distributions can overlap. [Example](http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2008/01/no-scientific-basis-for-race.html): > [@](#): > > On the other hand, for most phenotypes (examples: height or IQ, which are both fairly heritable, except in cases of extreme environmental deprivation), there is significant overlap between different population distributions. That is, Swedes might be taller than Vietnamese on average, but the range of heights within each group is larger than the difference in the averages. Nevertheless, at the tails of the distribution one would find very large discrepancies: for example the percentage of the Swedish population that is over 2 meters tall (6"7) might be 5 or 10 times as large as the percentage of the Vietnamese population. If two groups differed by, say, 10 points in average IQ (2/3 of a standard deviation), the respective distributions would overlap quite a bit (more in-group than between-group variation), but the fraction of people with IQ above some threshold (e.g., \>140) would be radically different. It has been claimed that 20% of all Americans with IQ \> 140 are Jewish, even though Jews comprise only 3% of the total population.