I take it he is implying that these are accurate claims about black people. In case anyone is unsure, all of these claims, if referring to black people, are completely unsupported by history. Not surprisingly, once again, brazil84 is wrong.
I’m also puzzled by this post, having read over most (it’s long and repetitive) of the thread. What explains AA (that you ‘oppose’) other than a belief that non-genetic reasons must explain the academic achievement gap? particularly in case of AA tailored specifically to correct for supposed ‘biases’ in objective measure of academic achievement.
And ‘there’s no evidence of genetic explanation’ is indeed just a mantra. There’s no conclusive proof of a genetic explanation, let alone an exact description of what gene(s) might be involved in exactly what chemical process. But the persistence of the gap in various societies over a long time (Nubian domination of Egypt. really? :rolleyes:) is a significant indication.
And many highly intrusive and disruptive social polices (we’ve basically canned the 14th amendment in the US to allow race preferences) don’t make any sense unless we assume we’ve proved there isn’t a genetic explanation. And we manifestly have not done that. The burden of proof is often bizarrely misplaced.
Anyway science is a product of human nature and human politics, and there’s never going to be at this point a ‘mainstream science consensus’ that the explanation of the academic gap is even partly genetic, whether it actually is or not. The people who argue as if ‘science’ is some neutral referee above the fray of humanity, what a joke. The great unspoken conclusion of Gould’s ‘The Mis-Measure of Man’ is that just as (then) politically correct science in the 19th century found that whites were the superior race, today’s politically correct science is never going to conclude that (or that east Asians or certain subsets of Caucasians are of superior intelligence on average for genetic reasons, quite plausible possibilities from many everyday observations), no matter what the actual evidence. It is difficult science, and thus way too easy to obfuscate.
Nope, there actually is no evidence for the genetic explanation.
Complete nonsense. Virtually every single large population has been, geopolitically and socioeconomically speaking, at both the top and the bottom at various points in history. The pro-“blacks are inherently genetically dumber on average”-side insists that it’s just outcomes now that happens to perfectly reflect the “genetic hierarchy”, and that in the past, all things weren’t equal, so if Jews or the Irish were at the bottom (statistically), it was because of oppression. But then at the same time they claim that blacks being at the bottom, statistically, for all or most of history (a highly dubious claim beyond the last few centuries) is further evidence of their inferior average genetic potential. So oppression trumps genetics for the Jews and the Irish, but not for blacks? It’s just incredibly obvious that this is the same pseudo-scientific thinking that has driven this argument for more than a century.
Yes.
The Ron Unz analyses I linked to show a number of cases where there was a large IQ gap between genetically identical populations, and big changes in IQ over time in the same populations.
For starters, this isn’t an affirmative action thread, this is a thread about the existence of race. There are threads about AA here. Why don’t you find one?
Now, black Americans make up a minority of the population eligible for AA. White women are its greatest beneficiaries, Hispanics are the single largest group that qualifies for AA across the board (not just in public safety and STEM fields like white women do). Native Americans and Pacific Islanders also get AA. Yet the focus of anti-AA sentiment is always on black Americans. I’m not a supporter of AA myself, but the motives of most AA opponents are hardly noble. For the most part they’re just anti-black.
As I’ve explained numerous times, there aren’t any black Americans anywhere but the US and Liberia, except for small expat communities. Any other groups you’re hoping to reference are different population groups - different genetically from the genetically heterogenous black American population group. You can’t use anyone who’s not a black American as a basis for comparison. Period.
For example, many people in Brazil who look black, actually have majority European ancestry. The proportions of African ancestry from different parts of Africa, and the degree of mixture with Europeans and Native Americans are also different.
The Nubian conquest of Egypt is established historical fact. So, no nothing that you’ve posted is a significant indication of anything, and yes, you’re ignorant of basic history.
No, the social policies today in the US wrt to black Americans are far less intrusive and disruptive than at any time in the past. If a government entity denied white Americans the right to vote, or barred access to any licensed profession, or passed laws banning white people entirely from settling in certain areas, then we could talk about intrusion or disruption.
During the Jim Crow era, American society made war on its own citizens for decades. Exclusion, murder, ethnic cleansing. Only a few decades after this war ended, the burden of proof is right where it should be.
It’s clear that you don’t actually understand much about the scientific method in general, and about population genetics in particular. As we’ve posted again and again, the genetic hypothesis has been tried and found wanting. The test score gap in black Americans follows ethnic identity, not African ancestry.
Obfuscate? Again with the secret conspiracy to deny white folks the rightful scientific endorsement of their superiority? Please. No bullshit conspiracy theories.
Save your insults for the Pit; they don’t belong in this forum.
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It’s just a mantra not because there is conclusive proof of the genetic difference theory. I clearly stated there isn’t. It’s a mantra because it’s something just repeated to dodge a practical issue. We have, as I also said and you simply ignored, hugely distorting and intrusive social policies which could only be rationally based, at least in terms of how their proponents defend them, on proof that the gap in achievement is not genetically based. There is certainly no proof of that, and as many times as you say ‘no evidence’, the facts only really support ‘no proof’. There are indications, though you deny it. Lack of proof and lack of any evidence are not interchangeable terms, but you keep acting as if they are.
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This again dodges the actual point. In your examples you seem to be speaking of political power. ‘If’ (European) Jews were at the bottom in terms of perceived sagacity… when was that ever true? And how are people of African descent ‘oppressed’ somehow uniformly, you seem to imply, in all modern societies. All majority black countries as well as black majorities in every black minority country, have undistinguished academic performance on average. If you could give actual facts and statistics to refute that point, you would be undermining the achievement gap as a indicator or potential piece of evidence for a genetic explanation. And that indicator is stronger when it comes to the frequency of blacks found at the very right tail of the distribution in capability in fields like quantitative science. That’s not a description of an the actual biochemical mechanics of a genetic explanation, as I said, but an indicator which logically it should be up to the purveyors of race preference policies to refute.
In short, it’s not that your mantra is positively wrong. If society were just letting the chips fall where they might, then it would be neither here nor there. But society is proceeding, at significant cost, under an implicit assumption that the academic gap is a ‘social construct’ that social policies can change. That’s the basic problem with your incantation, as many times as you wish to recite it.
Re: belowjob2 I think you speak imprecisely. The latter phenomena you refer to, in particular, is comparing populations that one would assume haven’t had time to change or adapt genetically. In line with the admission (of the obvious) that there’s no proof of the effect of genes on intelligence, as in knowing the actual biochemistry, we also don’t fully understand relatively rapid physical change in populations either. It doesn’t mean they are unrelated to genes and doesn’t mean they be productively changed by social policies. But our social policies assume it can be changed, in case of the academic gap. I don’t see how to separate that burden of proof issue out of the discussion, if the discussion is to be practical.
Now, about these Asians. Always at the top of the hierarchy? No.
In fact, Asians are usually at the bottom of the social and economic hierarchy with regard to people of European and even people of African ancestry. :eek:
I’m sure many of you believe this is impossible. I’ll explain why it’s not.
Genetically, Native Americans are entirely of Central Asian and Siberian ancestry. All their genes come from Asia. All of them. (Assuming no recent Euro or Afro admixture.) That’s why geneticists can use Chinese genetic data as a reference to test for degrees of Native American ancestry in Mexicans. (This is one of the methods they use, look it up.:D)
If you want to use the race concept, Native Americans are Asian. And Mexicans, Central Americans, and most of the people of South America are Asian/European hybrids. No way around it. And these folks are pretty much at the bottom, in most countries, by virtue of every major indicator. (Are history and culture major factors in the current social and economic situation? You bet. Genocide, brutal discrimination, ethnic cleansing, legal and extralegal abuse and persecution. ) But if you entertain those explanations here, you have to entertain them everywhere.
So, in light of this, we can look at the success of the Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans in the US and other places as the exception rather than the rule. Sure they’ve done well, but then again, African immigrants to the US and Britain also do better than the locals, white or black. That’s just a special case, right?
Feel free to separate Native Americans out as a separate population group if you like, but when you do, the concept of race goes right out the window. If Native Americans aren’t Asian, then neither black Americans nor Jamaicans are black.
- Same problem here as your previous point about rapid IQ changes. You are speaking of genetic history back 10’s of k years. If that were the only kind of genetic difference which could affect anything, we might as well just stick with the ‘proof’ that there can’t be any genetic significance to ‘race’ among modern humans at all, because we all have common ancestors only somewhat (in the whole history of hominids) further back than that (or alternatively, any significance to ‘race’ would depend solely on the validity of the ‘out of Africa’ theory).
And this tends to contradict to iandy’s mantra, ‘no evidence’ (though as discussed is really only ‘no proof’, which I’d accept). If we have no proof/disproof, it means we don’t fully understand. If we don’t fully understand, then there’s no basis to assume that the common ancestors of American Indians and mainland Asians many thousand years ago means that relevant though subtle genetic differences haven’t since emerged. As others have mentioned, away from the third rail of modern political correctness, black academic underachievement, even ‘mainstream scientists’ have entertained the idea of subtle genetic differences between Askenazi Jews and other Caucasians to explain the apparent tendency of the former to be over-represented among extremely intelligent people.
- The first characterization is kind of ridiculous. East Asians represent a large portion of the world’s population in their own countries, and the tendency is for them to outperform Western, and certainly African, countries. You’re seriously saying that’s a ‘special case’ contradicted by the case of American Indians?
The second characterization is based on an illogical comparison. Nobody, certainly not me, is saying that group genetics wholly determine academic performance. I’ll mention again that I accept iandy’s mantra if corrected to say ‘no conclusive proof of any genetic component’. But thus, realizing as we all do that multiple factors are probably at work, why would be deliberately ignore the other factors by comparing immigrant blacks to native born whites? The relevant comparison would be among of immigrants of different groups, or native born people of many groups, to try correct for obvious differences in situation. If African immigrant students outperform native born white one in the US (I’d be curious to see your actual source for that claim) and that’s proof/disproof of anything, why is it just a ‘special case’ that northeast Asian immigrant students outperform African immigrant students?
Greatest in terms of total numbers? Or greatest by some other measure? My sense is that, all things being equal, a black person gets a much bigger boost from affirmative action than a white female. Do you disagree?
Why not?
I would love to see solid proof of this claim. Do you have some?
The concept of “race” does need to go right out the window.
It is typically raised by either uneducated individuals prouder than they should be of their “race” (and, may I say, by my observation often at the lower end of the IQ spectrum) or, by academicians anxious to demolish all arguments that any given population has a greater prevalence of advantageous genes over any other given population.
Academicians and egalitarian apologists use two approaches.
The first is to emphasize wherever possible that genes have just flowed all over the place. We’re all pretty much the same hybrid mutt. Asian genes discovered in the Lemba!
The second approach is to emphasize there is that race is non-existent (see thread title) as a biologically-defined category. Show me the SNP fingerprint that defines “race”!
Both of these academic approaches dodge the question. The question is much simpler: In any two cohorts being considered for genetically-defined differences, is there evidence for a difference in the prevalence of genes advantageous for the skillset difference? (Assuming you are comparing cohorts for skillset differences, versus some other thing such as height or eye color or whatever.)
Now to support an argument for gene prevalence difference there has to be some reasonable explanation for a possible prevalence difference, and in the case you mention, that reason is a long separation of (current) “asians” from what you want to call North American asians. No one who studies population genetics thinks “asians” or “blacks” or “whites” are very good biologically-defined groupings. They are large, crude, and self-assigned to some degree. The specific N and M mtDNA subclade lineages post L-3 that populated the non-african world are still being worked out (along with Y chromosmal ancestries). It’s pretty clear not every single subgroup of L-3 gets every single post L-3 gene.
There’s plenty of good evidence that advantageous genes did arise post-africa (i.e. somewhere around the N-M split). We know this because some genes (MCPH1 is an example) are highly penetrated in non-african populations but nearly absent in sub-saharan populations. The same argument would hold for any progenitor line of a newly-mutated advantageous gene.
So if you just want to feel good about one big genetically egalitarian family, call us all anatomically modern humans. Lump like mad. Make “race” go away.
None of that has a shred to do with the scientific observation that genes do vary by populations, and within the US SIRE groups, vary in prevalence according to those SIRE groups, even when they are self-defined, and even if “race” is non-existent.
As a rule of thumb–even for lumpers–“black” americans draw about 80% of their average gene pool from sub-saharan populations (typically, but not exclusively, west african markers) and about 20% from european markers (i.e., post L-3 lineages). There are additional clusterings in what we consider an “asian” SIRE group. See my reference above for a paper discussing those genetic clusterings. In other words, if there were a (widely-penetrated) advantageous post L-3 gene, the statistical chance an american black would get that gene is significantly less than the statistical chance an american white would get it. This difference is what drives a difference for the skillset contributed to by that gene.
An argument for genetically driven differences is all about population-based gene prevalence differences. It’s not about what language to use, and it’s not an argument lost because of some fancy language.
The evidence that gene prevalences are different for SIRE groups is all around you. Indeed, if the black and white SIRE groups did not actually look different–on average–there wouldn’t even be an “oppositional culture” excuse for iiandyiiii to hang his hat on. One of the ironies here that makes me smile is that iiandyiiii wants to argue against genetic evidence, and yet clear evidence that genes differ by population underpins one of his key anti-gene arguments. And then on top of that he keeps denying evolution by making a default assumption that only some genes are selected out for mutation.
So every characteristic must differ in every population. Got it.
Actually, nope, that isn’t true. So there’s no reason to single intelligence out, because there’s no genetic evidence that intelligence varies (speaking of average genetics) between populations.
The reason to advance a genetic explanation is not that a characteristic must differ among populations with gene prevalence differences for some characteristics.
It’s because the observed pattern for a given difference appears with a consistent repetition even when environmental variables are accounted for. This is why your mantra of “zero evidence” carries so little weight. What you should be saying is, “the exact putative genetic mutations which differ in prevalence remain unidentified for the characteristics relating to average brain function.”
This is quite different from jumping to “zero evidence for genetics.”
So far, you seem to agree that:
- Gene prevalences differ among SIRE populations
- Measurable and persistent differences exist among SIRE populations
- The things for which gaps exist are at least in part hereditable
You’re just having difficulty jumping to the conclusion that some specific differences–for you, the big one seems to be intelligence–are a product of genes as well as nurture. It doesn’t seem to bother you nearly as much to have a genetic explanation for average physiological differences.
Given that we both agree genes could be an explanation, we’re down to tossing out or retaining nurturing explanations. You, in particular, are down to lousy parenting for small children, and teacher expectations/oppositional culture for teenagers. You do not have nurturing explanations for adults (such as, for example, a persistent pattern of disparate performance on something like an employment exam covering a specific body of material).
Your mantra of “zero evidence” relies on a faith that nature would have exempted the evolution of genes for brain functions. Otherwise, there is reasonable evidence based on a pattern of persistent disparate outcomes unamenable to efforts to control for nurturing variables.
Your three nurturing explanations advanced by Frank Sweet, for example, are based on a 15 year-old book (Jencks and Phillips). Efforts within educational institutions have been profound at correcting any such variables, with no effect. They all have very weak evidence, and even weaker evidence that correcting for those environmental variables results in any improvement.
Worse, there is a danger to a societal goal of proportionate representation for SIRE groups by advancing false arguments such as teacher expectations or oppositional culture. Where those are shown not to exist for a given candidate looking to get into college or med/law school, or looking to gain employment based a screening aptitude exam, consideration will not be given for SIRE group alone as a criterion. This is what the Fisher versus University of Texas supreme court case is all about. When you hurt race based affirmative action by creating a false construct, you risk having it thrown out completely. This is exactly what is going to happen. Ricci v DeStefano is a specific example.
I do not think you will like the society your well-meaning efforts are going to create.
Nope, you’re still not getting it. At least part of intelligence is heritable (and probably genetic)- smart people tend to have smarter kids. But there’s no evidence that the reason for the test-score gap is because of heritable genetic characteristics.
Let me put it another way. You throw out, as relating to genetics, times in history when the Irish, Jews, Chinese, etc, were at the bottom of any particular society because all things weren’t equal, and there was tons and tons of oppression, and those groups are no longer at the bottom of various statistics. But then you say that the times in history when black people were at the bottom is evidence of the genetic differences. You don’t get to have it both ways- if past oppression trumps genetics for the Irish, Jews, and Chinese, then I see no reason why it would not trump genetics for every other group that has been at the bottom. I throw it all out (as relating to genetics)- the oppressive culture was far more powerful than any minor genetic differences (a trend in human history- remember, for the past tens of thousands of years or so, the major adaptive tool for humans has been culture, not biological evolution)- so it doesn’t matter what the societal pyramid looked like a hundred years ago- and until we have a truly equal society (with regards to everything- media, politics, etc), then it doesn’t matter (for genetics) what the societal pyramid looks like now. Just as test-score gaps from 1885 would tell us nothing about genetics, they tell us nothing now. It doesn’t mean that there can’t be a genetic explanation- maybe there is. But there’s zero evidence for it. You need the genes. Otherwise, there’s no reason not to conclude that whatever the factors were that influenced the test-score gap (or other gaps) in the past very likely continue today, if at lower levels. I believe society has advanced a long way from the 19th century, but it still has a long way to go. And just as looking at the social strata from past centuries told us nothing about genetics, looking at the social strata (and associated data like the test-score gap) tell us nothing about genetics today.
For pretty much all of recorded human history, it was culture and not genetics that told the story of why certain groups were at the top and others at the bottom. I see no reason why that does not continue today.
You may have me confused with someone else…?
Are there good examples of the Irish, Jews and Chinese (a few mixed up SIRE groups there… 
) underperforming on intellectual skillsets relative to other populations? I’d certainly guess sub-groups of them have, I suppose; I just haven’t seen the data. One would expect that an immigrant Chinese laborer in the 1800s might not have been selected from the top of his class back home.
The pattern I see in today’s world is that asians seem to be doing a better job finding themselves on top in sub-saharan countries than do africans finding themselves on top in asian countries. At one point in Uganda’s history, the asian remnant from when the British imported them as laborers and clerks were successful enough in business that Idi Amin tried to expel all of them.
What examples would you like to advance of black populations being “on top” when juxtaposed with other populations? Again, I’m not saying that doesn’t exist, but it does not seem to be the general pattern.
I don’t disagree with the position that oppressed peoples can be poor examples for comparing populations. Most of the time it’s not that hard to figure out if the reason for some sort of underperformance is plain old oppression or lack of a skillset. I’ve used the Hebrew basketball leagues as an example of how not to assume blacks have an inferior average genetically-underpinned skillset for basketball. When the basketball doors were opened to them, they excelled despite the fact that the playing field was not anywhere near leveled. That’s pretty powerful evidence to me of a substantial average genetic advantage for that skillset.
There was the lower Irish IQ mentioned in post #375, but my main point is that any such data doesn’t matter at all for any discussion about genetics- because there’s no way to eliminate the massive (and largely unquantifiable) effects of oppression, economics, culture, and other historical factors. Lower Irish IQ at any particular point provides zero evidence for any genetic explanation, just like lower test scores for any other group at any particular point in history provides zero evidence for any genetic explanation.
The test-score gap exists- just like many such gaps have existed (most of them, no doubt, going unnoticed and unrecorded) in all the different periods of history. There’s no doubt that the explanation for virtually all of them in the past was cultural (including economics, geo-politics, religion, etc). Why should it be different now? What’s so special about now? We don’t know the genes for intelligence, so how could we know which populations have more or less of them? And whatever genes they are, we know that every single population on Earth has geniuses and doofuses- so every population must at least have some potential for these genes. Intelligence isn’t like height, or skin tone, or metabolism- it’s complicated enough that scientists can’t even agree on how to measure it. It seems highly naive, to me, to suppose that test-scores now (or for the past few decades) are indicative of any inherent genetic ability- when we know that test scores from the 19th century (if they existed) or any other century would hardly be valid indicators of anything genetic.
I don’t know about the Irish. As with any other area of research, one does not want to use a single test somewhere or a single study. You need to look at patterns, historical and current, as broadly as possible. Sometimes those patterns are not by themselves proof, but on the other hand, they help in establishing a sniff test for jumping to a different conclusion based on an isolated example.
You had mentioned the Jews as a group where “past oppression trumps genetics,” meaning, I think, that they found themselves on the bottom. That’s what caught my eye.
Historically, “the Jews” have been oppressed, and frequently brutally. Yet over time they are well represented in the upper echelons of academia, business and professions, even if their story began as immigrants, expelled from a previous country with nothing. I don’t think anyone would look at “the Jews” as a whole and need to use “centuries of oppression and brutality” or “oppostional culture” as excuses for persistent underperformance once obvious cultural barriers were ameliorated. Despite all that oppression, there’s no pattern there of disparate performance once they are given even half a chance.
Note I am using “the Jews” as an example of how to look at patterns, and not genetic populations, per se. But I don’t think anyone would look across the broad expanse of Jewish history and think, “Hey; this cohort seems to really underperform consistently for intellectual skillsets across time and political histories.”
Using these patterns as evidence for historical analysis, sociological trends, etc, is fine. But using these patterns as evidence for anything about genetics? Nonsense.
Chief Pedant, in your view is this an approximate intelligence ranking?
Jews
East Asians
South Asians (including India)
North European whites
South European whites
Middle Eastern
Non-white Hispanic
Native American
North Africa
Sub-Saharan Africa (pleb tier)
I wasn’t sure where to place the Middle East. It’s close to Africa so it should be dumb, but then again they had a decent golden age of intellectualism so I dunno.
LOL. I have no inclination to bite on that.
My premise is much simpler:
If any two cohorts show a consistent pattern of average difference for a skillset, and one can reasonably normalize nurturing variables, the difference is likely to be genetic.
I am completely uninterested in ranking populations, and I sort of think it’s stupid to do so. It becomes a “my race is better than your race” for the retarded* and the racist.
At issue for me in the US is our Affirmative Action programs which at least tacitly use self-identified groupings by race and ethnicity as a means of assuring diverse representation by those groups within society. I believe the evidence shows the SIRE group of “black” does not perform as well as the SIRE group of “asian” and “white” for many academic skillsets, particularly ones related to quantitative sciences underpinning STEM fields, but also in many other academic areas. I believe there is an average prevalence difference for genes underpinning the ability to perform these skillsets, in the same way there is an average prevalence difference for genes underpinning certain physical skillsets. These biological differences drive many of the outcome differences we see in daily life around us.
These are average differences, of course, and say nothing about an individual. But at a societal level, if the differences reflect an average biological difference and not just an average nurturing difference, we need to be careful discarding that fact. If we do discard biological differences as an explanation and then it turns out to be correct, then at every opportunity level, blacks will be underrepresented if the only special criterion for preferred inclusion is opportunity/nurturing and not SIRE group.
In my mind, with the exception of driving social policy, there isn’t any reason to give a rat’s ass about population rankings.
*Take your complaint about this word use to the “politically correct” thread, please.