As long as what Charles Murray wrote in his essay, “The Inequality Taboo,” remains the truth: “The Orwellian disinformation about innate group differences is not wholly the media’s fault. Many academics who are familiar with the state of knowledge are afraid to go on the record. Talking publicly can dry up research funding for senior professors and can cost assistant professors their jobs,” it cannot be said that there is a candid discussion of racial differences. Public statements by credentialed experts will deserve to be viewed skeptically if they repeat liberal platitudes that race is a social construct, IQ tests measure noting important, and so on.
So it’s a conspiracy, then. Well, it’s a conspiracy against a “side” with an unscientific, incoherent, and non-discrete classification of “race”, zero genetic data regarding intelligence, and an apparent willingness to disregard any evidence that counters their own assertions (like this phyogenetic tree). One doesn’t need much of a conspiracy to demonstrate the absurdity of such weak arguments.
I assume you mean an IQ of 70, not 70 percent. But anyway, there is no data for this. Lynn made up the data to give him this “estimate” of 70 as the average IQ for African “blacks”.
The similarities of IQ, even when biological siblings are raised apart, and the persistence of racial differences in average IQ is impressive evidence of genetic causes for intelligence. All that remains is the discovery of IQ genes. Even then people of your persuasion will deny the truth. As time goes on, fewer people will pay any attention to you.
No one has denied that there is a genetic component to intelligence. But you have absolutely zero data of any tie between any “race” (or even populations) and any genetic tendency towards high or low intelligence.
Yes, that is what I meant. Lynn used the best data available. It correlates with all the data on racial differences in intellectual performance and ability.
Lynn had no data for more than half the countries he examined, and had terrible data (like 1 IQ test of 40 school children representing an entire country) for most of the rest of the African countries. No actual scientist could come to any conclusion on such miserable data. Terrible, terrible science.
What about when someone suffering the effects of a concussion undertakes a psychometric assessment to see the impact on their information processing? Or psychometric testing to determine if a child has some degree of mental impairment from lead poisoning? Are those measurements of no value?
I contend that the Black-White US gap is probably more genetic than not. My argument would be that:
(1) Contrary to the claims of some, the behavioral genetic default is that the gap is probably more genetically conditioned than not. That is, were we to treat “African-Americans” as an arbitrary sub-population within the American population (e.g., “people who pick their noses in public” or “people who went to community college” ), given the heritability of IQ in the American population and given the magnitude of the deviation, we would conclude: more nature than nurture.
(2) The data is not inconsistent with a partial genetic hypothesis (i.e., 50/50 nature/nurture). If you can find an inconsistency name it.
(3) The data is not obviously consistent with any known 100% environmental explanation. If you know of one that can be reconciled with the facts, name it and we will discuss.
(4) Contrary to the claims of some, there have been studies which have linked genetic differences to race differences. For example.
That’s all well and good, but it still misses out on the fundamental problem of the OP: there’s no actual genetic evidence.
It also misses the point in other ways.
Saying a genetic component is “not inconsistent” with existing data is radically different from asserting absolute proof, which is what the OP has done.
It makes for at least a plausible hypothesis, but what most of us have been clamoring about (for several weeks now), is that there’s no actual genetic proof linking intelligence to race.
Even the study you link hand-waves away the idea that American cultural conditions may have an impact (much like the OP does). Also, it contradicts findings from other countries that show no such racial achievement gap in their own kids.
Basically: what’s different about blacks in America vs blacks in Germany or the UK that we produce such an achievement gap while they don’t?
A specific goal of NCLB was to close the gap. Its failure indicates that the gap is not due to those factors which were successfully addressed. More informative, though, is the failure of early intervention programs. Here is Nathan Brody’s 1992 discussion of this:
You can check out the most recent meta-analytic results here. The failure of EE to make lasting improvements for Blacks suggests that the difference, by adulthood, is not due to early environments, no? Well, what is it due to?
That has to be one of the silliest things I have seen, here. Testing for differences between siblings, they found that in both black and white families, there was a high degree of correlation regarding test scores.
So what? People in the same families are liable to have similar outcomes. Boy, is that a surprise.
(Note: I am not challenging the actual survey that seems to be attempting something different. I am noting that extrapolating from that survey to a reason behind the variance in perceived racial populations is baseless since the survey fails to provide anywhere nearly enough information to make that conclusion. Even in the survey, the method used to identify “nature” vs “nurture” factors is little more than mathematical gamesmanship that really proves nothing, but I will let that pass.)
Just about everyone knows the answer to that question. The fact that it is dangerous to answer the question truthfully and publicly demonstrates that political correctness has inhibited intellectual freedom more than the McCarthy Era ever did.