# Please synopsize the answer to "Races have xyz innate characteristics/abilities/predispositions" **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 30, 2010, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-synopsize-the-answer-to-races-have-xyz-innate-characteristics-abilities-predispositions/545078 "2010-06-30T15:49:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2010, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-synopsize-the-answer-to-races-have-xyz-innate-characteristics-abilities-predispositions/545078/141 "2010-07-10T17:18:05Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > What throws a bit of a monkey wrench into the “blacks are just naturally more inclined to sports” is the fact that African Americans also have the highest obesity rates of any ethnic group. There is no reason to suppose that a group cannot both be the most enthusiastic about sports _and_ have a higher proportion of obesity. There are a whole number of assumptions you’d have to make that would make those propositions incompatible. Note also that the figures you cite are based on BMI, which does not distinguish fat from muscle. Most NBA players have at least an “overweight” BMI, and some are technically obese. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Flying\_Dutchman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/9fc348/32.png) [@The\_Flying\_Dutchman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Flying_Dutchman)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2010, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-synopsize-the-answer-to-races-have-xyz-innate-characteristics-abilities-predispositions/545078/142 "2010-07-10T17:32:07Z")
> [@Dreen](#): > > Exactly how does this refute what I’m saying? Your post only concerns only the dutch, not the danes, in relation to other scandinavians, and explicitly says the dutch continue to outgrow scandinavians. Danes are Scandinavians. ---
**Author:** ![Dreen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@Dreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dreen)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2010, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-synopsize-the-answer-to-races-have-xyz-innate-characteristics-abilities-predispositions/545078/143 "2010-07-10T17:40:27Z")
> [@The\_Flying\_Dutchman](#): > > Danes are Scandinavians. Oh. Well, I meant scandinavians in the sense of the ones more greatly removed from the rest of europe- finland, norway, sweden. Misunderstanding on both our parts, I guess. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Flying\_Dutchman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/9fc348/32.png) [@The\_Flying\_Dutchman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Flying_Dutchman)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2010, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-synopsize-the-answer-to-races-have-xyz-innate-characteristics-abilities-predispositions/545078/144 "2010-07-10T17:43:54Z")
> [@kingbighair](#): > > Yeah, because I believe that kids want to follow in the path of their heroes in the way that is most revered and celebrated in their community, I think they are stupid. :rolleyes: But thanks for putting words into my mouth. Thanks for putting words in my mouth > [@](#): > > . Do Canadian hockey players grow up thinking hockey is the only way to be successful? Canadian hockey players growing up playing hockey because they enjoy it, not because they are looking to their future. Black Americans growing up play basketball because they enjoy it, not because they are thinking of their future. ---
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2010, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-synopsize-the-answer-to-races-have-xyz-innate-characteristics-abilities-predispositions/545078/145 "2010-07-10T17:45:04Z")
> [@you\_with\_the\_face](#): > > Here’s a solid [analysis](http://www.gladwell.com/1997/1997_05_19_a_sports.htm) on the subject, by Malcolm Gladwell, author of _Outliers_. Well; it’s an opinion, anyway. I’m not sure he’s actually “analyzing” any studies, for instance. And Gladwell is not alone in that opinion of course. I am sure you are familiar with Claude Steele’s [work](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1992/04/race-and-the-schooling-of-black-americans/6073/1/) on the subject. This particular cite is for one of his early articles–1992 Atlantic. I highly recommend it, despite the fact that I do not agree that stubbornly persistent differences in performance (for either sports or academics) are simply the result of stubbornly persistent stereotype threats and/or self-esteem or self-confidence. A few lines from Steele’s Atlantic article: \*"Standing ready is a familiar set of explanations. First is societal disadvantage…Some analysts point also to black American culture, suggesting that, hampered by disadvantage, it doesn’t sustain the values and expectations critical to education, or that it fosters learning orientations ill suited to school achievement, or that it even “opposes” mainstream achievement. These are the chestnuts, and I had always thought them adequate. Then several facts emerged that just didn’t seem to fit. For one thing, the achievement deficits occur even when black students suffer no major financial disadvantage… Neither is the problem fully explained, as one might assume, by deficits in skill or preparation which blacks might suffer because of background disadvantages. I first doubted that such a connection existed when I saw flunk-out rates for black and white students at a large, prestigious university… Doing well in school requires a belief that school achievement can be a promising basis of self-esteem, and that belief needs constant reaffirmation even for advantaged students. Tragically, I believe, the lives of black Americans are still haunted by a specter that threatens this belief and the identification that derives from it at every level of schooling."\* ---
**Author:** ![you\_with\_the\_face](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/ecccb3/32.png) [@you\_with\_the\_face](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/you_with_the_face)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2010, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-synopsize-the-answer-to-races-have-xyz-innate-characteristics-abilities-predispositions/545078/146 "2010-07-10T18:27:12Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > Well; it’s an opinion, anyway. I’m not sure he’s actually “analyzing” any studies, for instance. > > And Gladwell is not alone in that opinion of course. > > I am sure you are familiar with Claude Steele’s [work](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1992/04/race-and-the-schooling-of-black-americans/6073/1/) on the subject. This particular cite is for one of his early articles–1992 Atlantic. I highly recommend it, despite the fact that I do not agree that stubbornly persistent differences in performance (for either sports or academics) are simply the result of stubbornly persistent stereotype threats and/or self-esteem or self-confidence. Yeah, I’m familiar with Steele. What’s curious is that you don’t believe the stereotype threat could explain disparities, in addition to other environmental factors, despite the repeated studies that show it is a real phenomenon. I think this is a classic case of handwaving anything away that doesn’t click with your worldview. It makes one wonder: what exactly could convince a mind like yours to rethink its position? Anything at all? If every leading authority in anthropology, sociology, developmental psychology, genetic reseach, and sports physiologiy posted a detailed refutation of every single argument you’ve made in this thread, with cites and all, I have little reason to think that you would change your mind. You still would go on proclaiming blacks are natural athletes and whites are natural brainiacs, wouldn’t you? ---
**Author:** ![kingbighair](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/13edae/32.png) [@kingbighair](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kingbighair)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2010, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-synopsize-the-answer-to-races-have-xyz-innate-characteristics-abilities-predispositions/545078/147 "2010-07-10T18:48:49Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > Before you embarrass yourself again quoting **Kimstu** instead of actually looking up a cite, perhaps you’d like to find that study so we can take a look at exactly what was asked, who asked it, how it was asked, and what the context was. > > I am personally very suspicious that 70% of black teenagers “expect to play in the NBA” but you are right that I’ve never asked and I suppose that sort of cognitive disability could, in theory, be present to that extent. I doubt it, though. Maybe it was “dreamed of” or “hoped to” or something instead of “expect.” Maybe a reporter somewhere stopped by a neighborhood court and asked a group of blowhards in front of one another if they thought they were good enough for the NBA…would you mind finding the study instead of just pretending that **Kimstu** is a cite? > > It does make sense to me, for reasons I mentioned, that whites are more realistic than blacks about bailing out of an NBA dream. Still, even at the college level (which feeds most of the NBA, I think), whites far outnumber blacks except in the most elite programs. And of course, blacks disproportionately outnumber whites in elite programs because they are better players. > > In any case it doesn’t change the core supposition of mine a whit. It’s a universal case that talented children starting on a basketball pathway are a larger pool for whites than blacks, and of those two pools, the whites have greater nurturing advantages and drop out only when they underperform. Just because they know the chances are smaller doesn’t make them give up and never try. A passion for basketball, stardom and money are not passions peculiar to blacks. Umm, I was not citing **Kimstu**. I was referring to a cite (s)he gave, which I included in my post. The study referred to in that link I believe was conducted by Northeastern’s Center for the Study of Sport in Society referred to [here](http://books.google.com/books?id=HihOkrzTCqsC&pg=PA260&lpg=PA260&dq=harry+edwards+black+youth+nba&source=bl&ots=jcIiQriBRI&sig=Wg8CGQGQljQu9J9OOrDwi2kjAy4&hl=en&ei=ia84TJTKGMSAnQe19ZiMAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CCUQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=harry%20edwards%20black%20youth%20nba&f=false) on page 258. Unfortunately my subscription to that journal does not go that far back for the full text. If anyone else has access, I would appreciate it. Either way, you said this would not change your opinion, so I suppose this is settled. If I lose this point to the reader, so be it. Can you please explain how whites have a greater nurturing advantage for playing basketball? How does one become an elite basketball player? ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2010, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-synopsize-the-answer-to-races-have-xyz-innate-characteristics-abilities-predispositions/545078/148 "2010-07-10T19:57:32Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > In my opinion both you and YWTF are underselling black children’s cognitive ability to understand that a decent education is a better roadmap to success than basketball. > > I think almost anyone can grasp the statistical concept that there are very few NBA stars out of the entire original starting pool. I think the “education is important” message does filter even into the inner city black pool. I think white and asian kids also get that message. > > For the talented white kid starting down a basketball pathway, I have no doubt there is an earlier elimination of basketball as a primary place to concentrate effort once the kid is outperformed (by peers of any color). I do not agree that pathway is abandoned before being outperformed, so that the final pool still reflects a disproportionate representation that has been filtered by performance ability and not by _a priori_ assumption of inadequacy on the part of whites. > > For black kids, basketball may indeed become a “life and death” struggle for a handful who cannot otherwise perform in school at all, but I don’t buy into the notion that school is abandoned for basketball where school is a viable option. Rigorous schooling is abandoned for the same reason rigorous basketball pursuit is abandoned: you are less able to succeed in it and it seems a less viable pathway to success. In short, we focus on our best possible pathway to success, even if the chances are small, because the alternate pathways are even less likely to bring us success since we are even crummier at those skillsets. Assuming were talking the US cohort of about black and white kids who have substantial athletic talent I don’t think you’re fully plugged into the reality of how an urban black kid, who is also a talented athlete, sees the world and his opportunities. If he looks around him a lot of the time he and his black peers will be the products of families with single mothers struggling in an underclass or lower middle class existence, grinding away to keep the family moving forward. If he is a middling student a commonsensical assessment of his aspirational opportunities is not going to include a middle or upper-middle class future for himself. He sees (and his reasoning would not necessarily be inaccurate) a binary choice of underclass or lower middle class struggling as a non-entity or the opportunity to be a star. The talented white kid, all things considered, is much more likely to see middle path where, if things don’t work out re basketball he could still conceivably be a business owner like uncle Bob, or a salesman like his dad, or a middle manager like his aunt. Unlike the black kid’s perspective falling off the athletic success tightrope doesn’t mean plummeting into the abyss, there’s a safety net. Again this is strictly an opinion, but I think that if you believe you are working without a net it tends to focus your concentration and improve your determination to succeed. As a side note, I have to say your notion of athletically talented white kids and their white peers as wide eyed, hard core optimists about their athletic superstar chances PRIOR to being handed their asses by your hypothetically genetically superior black athlete is somewhat starry eyed. Kids are information sponges and fairly sophisticated in their reasoning ability, even at young ages. Your notion that they are fully invested in their chances for superstardom up the point of being whupped a few times is (IMO) is a somewhat naive take on the evolution of their perspective that there might be less risky and fairy acceptable life paths than fully investing (and gambling) your life and soul into the focus necessary to be an athletic superstar. Maybe the white kids I know are more worldly than the ones you know, but I doubt it. ---
**Author:** ![Dreen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@Dreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dreen)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2010, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-synopsize-the-answer-to-races-have-xyz-innate-characteristics-abilities-predispositions/545078/149 "2010-07-10T20:40:00Z")
Chief, it would be helpful if you get could back to me further, and my critique of your emphasis on family rearing practices and regression to the mean. Like I said, I don’t deny the phenomenon exists- it seems to be a basic phenomenon in genetics. However, even many of the people who push it off don’t seem to fully understand how it works, and it’s application to race differences is not only a poor example, but doesn’t even make sense in reality. In addition to the social mobility I outlined previously, it would imply the vast majority of upper-class blacks never, ever experience intergenerational inheritance of their wealth. Apparently the bulk of it’s composed of low IQ blacks giving birth to high IQ’s blacks, then they easily climb their ways out of extreme poverty, manage to go to good schools, then easily settle down and have kids, then their kids have lower IQ’s and fall back into poverty, and the cycle repeats itself. This supposedly also happens very similarly to hispanics, and whites in relation to rich east asians. But as I said, this kind of social mobility seldom exists anywhere in the world, and most certainly not in america. For example, even in Germany it doesn’t exist: [http://www.thelocal.de/national/20100624-28075.html](http://www.thelocal.de/national/20100624-28075.html) > [@](#): > > An upper-class child with the same intelligence as a child born to skilled labourers has 4.5 times the likelihood of attending a college-preparatory high school, results showed. > [@](#): > > Interestingly, on a state level this social difference was greatest in Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg, the states with the highest test scores. There, children of university-educated parents were respectively 6.6 and 6.5 times more likely to attend an upper-level high school, called a Gymnasium. The state with the most social equality among its students was found to be Berlin, where upper class students were only 1.7 times more likely to attend a Gymnasium. And yet Germany has alot less income inequality than in the US. I’m reminded of a rather desperate, and ultimately contradictory case of a racialist trying to use this concept- Jared Taylor himself. > **[VDARE.com](https://vdare.com/)** > > We inform the fight to keep America American > [@](#): > > Likewise this week, newspapers reported on a Pew Charitable Trust study [Economic Mobility of Black and White Families] that found blacks are three times more likely than whites to drop out of the middle class into the lowest fifth of income earners. [Middle-Class Dream Eludes African American Families, By Michael A. Fletcher, Washington Post, November 13, 2007] > > More specifically, 45 percent of black children whose parents were earning the 1968 median income grew up to be poor. Only 16 percent of white children from similar families hit the skids. > > Columbia sociologist Ronald B. Mincy, [send him mail] who was an advisor to the Pew study, says they went over the results again and again to make sure they were right. “There is a lot of downward mobility among African Americans,” he told the Washington Post. “We don’t have an explanation." > [@](#): > > There is something else the hand-wringers should think about: regression to the mean, or the tendency for natural phenomena to draw back from extremes towards the average. > > When very tall people have children, for example, they don’t keep getting taller and taller, generation after generation. The children are likely to be taller than average—but not as tall as their parents. > > The process works in the other direction, too: Very short people don’t keep having even shorter children; the generations drift up towards the average. > > The same goes for intelligence. Francis Galton noted in the 1860s that geniuses’ children are smart, but they usually aren’t geniuses. Likewise, dummies tend to have children smarter than themselves. > > Regression is only a tendency, however. Occasionally parents at the extremes produce children who are even more extreme. But that is rare. The more extreme the parents are, the stronger the pullback towards the mean. > > The people who agonize over the achievement gap would rather cover their ears than hear this—but regression explains what baffles both Mr. O’Connell in California and Prof. Mincy of Columbia. It explains both why the black-white (and Hispanic-Asian) achievement gap is greater at higher income levels, and why blacks are more likely to fall out of the middle class than whites. > [@](#): > > Among blacks, IQ regresses to a mean of 85 rather than 100. So a black who has a high enough IQ to be comfortably middle class—say 120—is much further out toward the IQ extreme for his group than a white with an IQ of 120. Which means the pull towards the mean is much more powerful for the children of smart blacks than it is for the children of equally smart whites. > > Put differently, if you match black parents and white parents for IQ, the black-white IQ gap for the children increases sharply as the parents’ IQs go up. > > And that, Mr. O’Connell, is why the black-white test score gap is greater for the children of rich parents than it is for poor parents. It may be a rotten shame, but it is just plain harder for middle-class blacks than for whites to pass on their intelligence—and therefore their social status—to their children. > > In his book, The g Factor, [Page 471] Arthur Jensen gives a striking example of regression to the mean. He collected the IQ scores of all the elementary school students in one California school district. He then picked out all the students—both black and white—with IQs of 120, a score well above the white mean but even further above the black mean. He found that the average IQ scores for the brothers and sisters of these children was 113 for the white children and 99 for the blacks. > > It was to be expected that siblings have lower IQs than the hotshots. But these figures show just how much more freakish it is for black than white children to have IQs of 120. These very smart blacks were, on average, 21 points ahead of their brothers and sisters; the whites were only seven points ahead. > > To repeat: Very smart whites have somewhat less smart children, but very smart blacks are likely to have markedly less smart children. The logic in this one is atrocious. I can imagine how this went for Taylor- the downward mobility among blacks and whites looks alot like the IQ overlaps. 50% of whites, according to measurements in the 80’s, score around an IQ of 100, and 16% of the black population has an IQ of atleast 100. And since IQ and SES are so tightly linked and anything else is PC mantra, then this explains EVERYTHING! But then Taylor tells us about a study of regression to the mean by Jensen himself. My figures were abit off, but close enough- both parents had IQ’s of 120, and the black average was 99 and the white average was 113. Too bad for Taylor that under his IQ-fetishist parameters, an IQ of 99 should be enough for a general middle class living. So why should blacks who score at around 100 be dropping so severely down into the supposed poverty range of IQ’s? And under his parameters, an IQ of 120 is more than comfortably middle class- it should be where the rich are found. So this is some great explanatory factor? Is this why even one of the most clear-cut studies of regression to the mean and race found the black children to regress to well above their national average, yet people like Chief parrot the idea that they do worse than poor whites? ---
**Author:** ![Dreen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@Dreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dreen)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2010, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-synopsize-the-answer-to-races-have-xyz-innate-characteristics-abilities-predispositions/545078/150 "2010-07-10T20:45:28Z")
So just why do so many blacks who are the offspring of rich parents do poorly in school? I don’t know. I honestly don’t know. I doubt parental influence is going to do much to remediate things, but this is an invalid variable that says nothing nowadays of the heritability of IQ. However, the explanation that this would require if regression to the mean explains so much- the ultra linear social mobility, the near non-existent lack of intergenerational inheritance in wealth, almost the entire black upper-class being composed of this cyclical pattern, etc.- is completely absurd. You can find almost no research to support this kind of pattern beyond casual glances at SAT scores and the kind of banal logic people like Taylor employ. And if one wants a better explanation of the meager dimensions of parental influence, look up Judith Rich Harris’ work. Her work isn’t that extreme when people like Malcolm Gladwell and the authors of Freakonomics are huge fans of her work. Her first book on the subject was even nominated for a pulitzer. ---
**Author:** ![Dreen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@Dreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dreen)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2010, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-synopsize-the-answer-to-races-have-xyz-innate-characteristics-abilities-predispositions/545078/151 "2010-07-10T20:59:52Z")
Oh, I misread Taylor’s Jensen citation- he only looked at siblings, not parents. It still has the same basic point. The outliers respective to their populations don’t fit at all with what the sort of differences we should see going by Chief and Taylor’s ideas. And I should note, which I think I said previously, that I’m quite convinced SES and IQ are very weakly linked when you really get down to it. Income and SES are such astoundingly complex and unstable variables that it’s hard to pin these things so tightly down to IQ differences. So I don’t think regression to the mean is playing much of a role in alot of these cases. ---
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2010, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-synopsize-the-answer-to-races-have-xyz-innate-characteristics-abilities-predispositions/545078/152 "2010-07-10T22:12:57Z")
> [@you\_with\_the\_face](#): > > Yeah, I’m familiar with Steele. What’s curious is that you don’t believe the stereotype threat could explain disparities, in addition to other environmental factors, despite the repeated studies that show it is a real phenomenon. I think this is a classic case of handwaving anything away that doesn’t click with your worldview. > > It makes one wonder: what exactly could convince a mind like yours to rethink its position? Anything at all? If every leading authority in anthropology, sociology, developmental psychology, genetic reseach, and sports physiologiy posted a detailed refutation of every single argument you’ve made in this thread, with cites and all, I have little reason to think that you would change your mind. You still would go on proclaiming blacks are natural athletes and whites are natural brainiacs, wouldn’t you? “Stereotype threat” may be a real phenomenon, but it is inadequate to explain the enormous gaps between black and eurasian scores that are seen in academia, and not even Claude Steele or Joshua Aronson (it’s most recent major promoters) argue that it does explain the gap. See [here](https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://www.aamc.org/data/facts/applicantmatriculant/table19-mcatpgaraceeth09-web.pdf) for the difference in MCAT scores for 2009 applicants to medical school, for instance. For Physical Sciences, black applicants scored 7.1, whites 9.3 and asians 9.9. These are enormous differences, not accountable for by low self-expectation or stereotype threat. Elsewhere Kimstu and I have argued over this notion of stereotype threat and dissected a study or two. The studies from Steele and Aronson, for example, do NOT show that the black-white score gap is due to stereotype threat. They show, instead, that adding stereotype threat may increase the baseline gap. See the [Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotype_threat) discussion for further references on this: \*\*\*"Furthermore, while Sackett et al. do not dispute the fact that stereotype threat has a real, measurable effect on test scores, they posit that in the part of the experiment where Steele and Aronson removed the stereotype threat, the achievement gap which did remain correlated closely with the existing African American – White achievement gap on large-scale standardized testing such as the SAT. In their own words: Thus, rather than showing that eliminating threat eliminates the large score gap on standardized tests, the research actually shows something very different. Specifically, absent stereotype threat, the African American-White difference is just what one would expect based on the African American-White difference in SAT scores, whereas in the presence of stereotype threat, the difference is larger than would be expected based on the difference in SAT scores. In subsequent correspondence between Sackett et al. and Steele and Aronson, Sackett et al. wrote that “They [Steele and Aronson] agree that it is a misinterpretation of the Steele and Aronson (1995) results to conclude that eliminating stereotype threat eliminates the African American-White test-score gap.”[15] In an editorial article entitled “The Threat in the Air”, which was published on April 18, 2004 in the Wall Street Journal, professor Amy Wax of the University of Pennsylvania Law School was highly critical of what she sees as Steele and Aronson’s presentation of their research. She was also skeptical of what she sees as claims about the real-world effect of stereotype threat on the black-white achievement gap."\*\*\* The search goes on (and on and on for those unwilling to include genetic differences) for the explanation for this persistent gap. It is not wealth. It is not opportunity. It is not educated parents. It is not stereotype threat. And, exasperatedly, to your last sentence: My position is that differences among any two groups, include SIRE cohorts, are genetic when nurture is reasonably accounted for. ---
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2010, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-synopsize-the-answer-to-races-have-xyz-innate-characteristics-abilities-predispositions/545078/153 "2010-07-10T22:31:42Z")
> [@kingbighair](#): > > Umm, I was not citing **Kimstu**. I was referring to a cite (s)he gave, which I included in my post. The study referred to in that link I believe was conducted by Northeastern’s Center for the Study of Sport in Society referred to [here](http://books.google.com/books?id=HihOkrzTCqsC&pg=PA260&lpg=PA260&dq=harry+edwards+black+youth+nba&source=bl&ots=jcIiQriBRI&sig=Wg8CGQGQljQu9J9OOrDwi2kjAy4&hl=en&ei=ia84TJTKGMSAnQe19ZiMAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CCUQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=harry%20edwards%20black%20youth%20nba&f=false) on page 258. Unfortunately my subscription to that journal does not go that far back for the full text. If anyone else has access, I would appreciate it. Either way, you said this would not change your opinion, so I suppose this is settled. If I lose this point to the reader, so be it. > > Can you please explain how whites have a greater nurturing advantage for playing basketball? How does one become an elite basketball player? Nitpick: actually, you did cite **Kimstu** , who in turn cited an article which in turn did not reference any cite at all, and as it turns out the article contained in that **Kimstu** reference probably got it wrong. The reference you give now changes that verbiage to 2/3 of black teenagers think they can earn a living playing professional sports versus 1/3 of white teenagers. While I think both those values are outrageously high–surely they cannot have surveyed a large number of random youth–I’m not surprised at the ratio itself, particularly. I’d love to see the study but thanks for the research to find that much. I’ve already explained how whites have better nurturing for professional sports. They have better facilities, better coaching, more stable families, are more likely to have fathers, have fewer practical distractions such as finances or transportation to the gym or wondering where dinner is, get sidetracked to jail far less often and have fewer other distractions. They have, for sports, all the putative advantages that their better academic performances are attributed to. A typical young white male who plays basketball gets every chance to nourish and develop that skill. ---
**Author:** ![kingbighair](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/13edae/32.png) [@kingbighair](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kingbighair)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2010, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-synopsize-the-answer-to-races-have-xyz-innate-characteristics-abilities-predispositions/545078/154 "2010-07-10T22:34:11Z")
Do you think the smartest blacks apply to medical school in the same proportion as the smartest whites and Asians? Just wondering if you recognize any selection bias in using the MCAT. ---
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2010, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-synopsize-the-answer-to-races-have-xyz-innate-characteristics-abilities-predispositions/545078/155 "2010-07-10T22:43:21Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > I don’t think anyone was putting it that way. > > I think what **astro** was getting at, is similar to my experience: that, rightly or wrongly, inner city black youths often don’t believe that the education route is open to them. > > If you ask a group of black children whether they think they are smart enough to be doctors, very few I think would answer yes. Where do they get this belief from? It seems to happen very early and it doesn’t seem to matter if they are at the same standard as their peers. > And they don’t believe that they could afford to go to college. > And they just don’t think their family / situation / neighbourhood is stable enough that they can invest in their future in that way. > > And yeah, at least part of the problem is black culture: an image that if you work hard at something, and it doesn’t make you mega rich, you’re a chump. > (So any academic route that _isn’t_ doctor, lawyer etc looks like chump street). It’s a popular, but unsupported, position that low black performance is a result of low self-esteem. See [here](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WY5-46HJHD3-2&_user=10&_coverDate=01/31/2000&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1396528391&_rerunOrigin=google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=30a8a92974903cb233a7b79890e9580b) for a UNC meta-analysis looking at 261 studies of black-white self-esteem: _ **Abstract** _ _“Research on racial comparisons of self-esteem was examined. Early research in this area, exemplified by the doll studies of racial preference, was viewed as demonstrating that Blacks have less self-regard than Whites. However, a meta-analytic synthesis of 261 comparisons, based largely on self-esteem scales and involving more than half a million respondents, revealed higher scores for Black than for White children, adolescents, and young adults.”_ And a [news report](http://www.unc.edu/news/archives/jan00/graylit012400.htm) listing some key points, in case you don’t have a subscription for the full article. _“Provided that self-esteem scores for both black and white young people are equally variable with normal, or bell-shaped, distributions, our results suggest that the average black young person’s self-esteem is higher than that of about 56 percent of white young people,” she said. "Put another way, the average black young person’s self-esteem falls at about the 56th percentile of self-esteem for white children and adolescents._ ---
**Author:** ![Dreen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@Dreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dreen)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2010, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-synopsize-the-answer-to-races-have-xyz-innate-characteristics-abilities-predispositions/545078/156 "2010-07-10T22:54:07Z")
I don’t agree stereotype threat explains everything either. However: > [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > “Stereotype threat” may be a real phenomenon, but it is inadequate to explain the enormous gaps between black and eurasian scores that are seen in academia, and not even Claude Steele or Joshua Aronson (it’s most recent major promoters) argue that it does explain the gap. > > See [here](https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://www.aamc.org/data/facts/applicantmatriculant/table19-mcatpgaraceeth09-web.pdf) for the difference in MCAT scores for 2009 applicants to medical school, for instance. For Physical Sciences, black applicants scored 7.1, whites 9.3 and asians 9.9. These are enormous differences, not accountable for by low self-expectation or stereotype threat. How heavily due to IQ differences are these, though? The overall GPAs don’t differ markedly by race, for example. > [@](#): > > The search goes on (and on and on for those unwilling to include genetic differences) for the explanation for this persistent gap. It is not wealth. It is not opportunity. It is not educated parents. It is not stereotype threat. > > And, exasperatedly, to your last sentence: My position is that differences among any two groups, include SIRE cohorts, are genetic when nurture is reasonably accounted for. You have a vague definition of genetic, however. You seem to be conflating “genetic” with something deep-seated. And please get back to my other points, such as those regarding your allusions to regression to the mean. ---
**Author:** ![kingbighair](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/13edae/32.png) [@kingbighair](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kingbighair)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2010, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-synopsize-the-answer-to-races-have-xyz-innate-characteristics-abilities-predispositions/545078/157 "2010-07-10T22:54:54Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > I’ve already explained how whites have better nurturing for professional sports. They have better facilities, better coaching, more stable families, are more likely to have fathers, have fewer practical distractions such as finances or transportation to the gym or wondering where dinner is, get sidetracked to jail far less often and have fewer other distractions. They have, for sports, all the putative advantages that their better academic performances are attributed to. A typical young white male who plays basketball gets every chance to nourish and develop that skill. You are explaining a nurturing advantage for professional sports, not basketball specifically. I was wondering if you had anything to add from the last time, but as it seems you do not, I will just [link](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=12242209&postcount=81) my [replies](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=12245886&postcount=96) and leave it as an exercise for the reader. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2010, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-synopsize-the-answer-to-races-have-xyz-innate-characteristics-abilities-predispositions/545078/158 "2010-07-10T22:59:12Z")
> [@Dreen](#): > > Chief, it would be helpful if you get could back to me further, and my critique of your emphasis on family rearing practices and regression to the mean. > > Like I said, I don’t deny the phenomenon exists- it seems to be a basic phenomenon in genetics. However, even many of the people who push it off don’t seem to fully understand how it works, and it’s application to race differences is not only a poor example, but doesn’t even make sense in reality. > > In addition to the social mobility I outlined previously, it would imply the vast majority of upper-class blacks never, ever experience intergenerational inheritance of their wealth. Apparently the bulk of it’s composed of low IQ blacks giving birth to high IQ’s blacks, then they easily climb their ways out of extreme poverty, manage to go to good schools, then easily settle down and have kids, then their kids have lower IQ’s and fall back into poverty, and the cycle repeats itself. This supposedly also happens very similarly to hispanics, and whites in relation to rich east asians. > > But as I said, this kind of social mobility seldom exists anywhere in the world, and most certainly not in america. For example, even in Germany it doesn’t exist: [http://www.thelocal.de/national/20100624-28075.html](http://www.thelocal.de/national/20100624-28075.html) > > And yet Germany has alot less income inequality than in the US. > > I’m reminded of a rather desperate, and ultimately contradictory case of a racialist trying to use this concept- Jared Taylor himself. > > [VDARE.com](http://www.vdare.com/taylor/071113_stumped.htm) > > The logic in this one is atrocious. I can imagine how this went for Taylor- the downward mobility among blacks and whites looks alot like the IQ overlaps. 50% of whites, according to measurements in the 80’s, score around an IQ of 100, and 16% of the black population has an IQ of atleast 100. And since IQ and SES are so tightly linked and anything else is PC mantra, then this explains EVERYTHING! > > But then Taylor tells us about a study of regression to the mean by Jensen himself. My figures were abit off, but close enough- both parents had IQ’s of 120, and the black average was 99 and the white average was 113. > > Too bad for Taylor that under his IQ-fetishist parameters, an IQ of 99 should be enough for a general middle class living. So why should blacks who score at around 100 be dropping so severely down into the supposed poverty range of IQ’s? > > And under his parameters, an IQ of 120 is more than comfortably middle class- it should be where the rich are found. > > So this is some great explanatory factor? Is this why even one of the most clear-cut studies of regression to the mean and race found the black children to regress to well above their national average, yet people like Chief parrot the idea that they do worse than poor whites? I ignored your earlier post in part because calling me Chief Pendant annoyed me (I actually wish it were my name, but using it here in GD is right on the line of name-calling, and until I’ve had the chance to personally irritate you, it seemed a little forward 😉 ), and also because you went off on a “regression to the mean” sidetrack that I did not start. I made the point that black/white rich/poor scores are at odds with the notion that differences are explainable because of family income. It’s simply not true that whites do better on SATs and other exams simply because they come from more privileged backgrounds. All wealthier students do better than all poverty-stricken students, but even wealthy blacks underperform whites of substantially lower income. Why that is so is a separate topic, but I am using the dataset here to argue that, with respect to income, you can normalize for that particular nurturing point and you still do not normalize performance. ---
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2010, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-synopsize-the-answer-to-races-have-xyz-innate-characteristics-abilities-predispositions/545078/159 "2010-07-10T23:06:21Z")
> [@Dreen](#): > > How heavily due to IQ differences are these, though? The overall GPAs don’t differ markedly by race, for example. > > And please get back to my other points, such as those regarding your allusions to regression to the mean. The “regression to the mean” point is yours. While I am familiar with the point, I did not make it. I agree that GPAs don’t correlate perfectly with scores for medical school applicants. Among my biases is that GPAs don’t correlate with much of anything quantitative these days. For that reason I am interested in measurable differences and not something as soft as a grade, and for looking at cohort differences I tend to look at quantitative sciences because…well, because they are quantifiable. When our kids were in high school and college, I marveled at the machinations around grades. I’m impressed if you can document what you’ve learned. I’m not impressed with grades (and I had very good grades, along with very good scores). But it would be a pretty significant hijack to argue the merits of grades versus scores here, so may I suggest you take that to a new thread if you want to debate it? ---
**Author:** ![Dreen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@Dreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dreen)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2010, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-synopsize-the-answer-to-races-have-xyz-innate-characteristics-abilities-predispositions/545078/160 "2010-07-10T23:07:15Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > I ignored your earlier post in part because calling me Chief Pendant annoyed me (I actually wish it were my name, but using it here in GD is right on the line of name-calling, and until I’ve had the chance to personally irritate you, it seemed a little forward 😉 ), Er, what’s wrong with that? > [@](#): > > and also because you went off on a “regression to the mean” sidetrack that I did not start. > > I made the point that black/white rich/poor scores are at odds with the notion that differences are explainable because of family income. It’s simply not true that whites do better on SATs and other exams simply because they come from more privileged backgrounds. All wealthier students do better than all poverty-stricken students, but even wealthy blacks underperform whites of substantially lower income. Of course. The idea of SES alone being such a decisive factor into so many outcomes is quite naive. But your emphasis on the idea of rich black children doing worse than poor whites almost invariably leads to the proponent of that alluding to regression to the mean. You could say I was putting words in your mouth, but I have seen that piece of “evidence” to lead to that explanation so often that it gets almost predictable. Not saying you believe that’s why, but still. So sorry, regardless. On another note, what do you mean be SIRE? What are is its relevance to genetic factors? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-synopsize-the-answer-to-races-have-xyz-innate-characteristics-abilities-predispositions/545078.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-synopsize-the-answer-to-races-have-xyz-innate-characteristics-abilities-predispositions/545078.md?page=9)