I don’t see why this has to be true- in my mind, Affirmative Action and similar programs are meant to counteract systemic and institutional discrimination that still exists. My feelings (and most supporters of AA, I believe) about Affirmative Action have nothing to do with genetics, and any future discoveries relating to genetics would not change my opinion about AA at all.
It’s nice that you have feelings about this, but race-based AA is already under fire for the reasons I mentioned, and we’ll find out this summer in Fisher v U Texas what SCOTUS thinks.
The argument being made by Fisher is that race should not be a standalone criterion as are things like opportunity and family income. The argument is that we should all be treated equally. If we are going to treat lack of opportunity or poverty or background as criteria, than any race within any disadvantaged categories should have to compete equally with any other race in the same category.
But in practice, within every non-race category like income or background or educational opportunity or whatever, the exact same rank-order holds for US SIRE groups. As is pointed out in Jencks and Phillips book The Black White Test Score Gap (the one Frank Sweet likes so much), “the evidence suggests that a race-blind route to racial diversity is likely to be hard to find” for colleges. This is because “colleges are likely to have a difficult time finding any subgroup of high-scoring students in which blacks or Hispanics are anything but a small minority.” (p. 452)
As with all opportunity subgroups, the highest-scoring black students come from wealthier and more privileged backgrounds. But within that privilieged sub-category (as with all sub-categories), they still substantially underperform their opportunity peers. So the only way for colleges to get qualified black students is to use a race-alone criterion. That’s exactly what’s being complained about in Fisher, and this summer we may see yet another nail hammered into race-based AA. Currently, U Texas assigns a positive preferential value to the SIRE groups of black and Hispanic in just the same way we might assign a positive value to low-income. And right now the data says that such race-alone preferences are the only way to get diverse SIRE group representation.
I get your insistence that “systemic and institutional” discrimination still exists, but as it turns out, although this is a nice catch phrase, it’s pretty hard to demonstrate it. For the most part all sorts of employers and organizations and schools and programs operate exactly the opposite. So if you have a wealthy black candidate from a privileged background with marginal scores, it’s tough to get him admitted over a poverty-stricken white applicant with good scores on the grounds he’s somehow been discriminated against, or had lousy parents, or poor teacher expectations or was a victim of oppostional culture. You have to assign the black candidate special consideration based purely on his SIRE group. That’s what Fisher is going to take away (at least, that’s what I think SCOTUS is going to rule).
It’s simply not a good idea to make well-intentioned social policy based on bad science. It will eventually catch up with you. Race-based AA is at high risk because well-intentioned academicians are using whatever linguistic tricks they can to disguise the fundamental fact that our gene prevalences vary by SIRE groups and this can drive skillset differences.
Put the problem in perspective by pretending that you are in charge of making the NBA proportionately represented for SIRE groups. What the heck do you do with the whites and asians when the academicians keep telling you they have no genetic differences for that skillset? And the egalitarians keep pushing the farce that the huge number of whites in the “I wanna play basketball” starting pool electively abandoned NBA dreams to sell cars, instead of being forced to abandon those dreams because they were out-competed? Keep going to the few white sub-populations that seem to be any good at all? That’s not going to help your US whites much since right now those sub populations seem to be confined to eastern europe.
Evolution and science are going to win this one, and we’re going to have to decide how much silliness to muddle through before we accept what mother nature doles out, and create a just society using the hand we’ve been given instead of assuming everyone got the same genetic cards.
Obviously I agree. I just think yours is the “bad science”. No evidence and all.
Of course it will. Maybe someday there will actually be evidence for your hypothesis. But there’s none now. Historical trends for social statistics like economics, education, crime, etc, provide no data whatsoever about genetics. They never have and never will.
At least we’ve figured out where the disagreement is.
No need when we have evidence of people that believe this:
And so we have in essence why you are still at it. It is indeed to find evidence to justify that discrimination, unfortunately for you history shows that science did shot down the idea that we should discriminate because it is assumed that there is a difference in intelligence based genetics that justifies that discrimination.
As it has been many times, even reported by you, the evidence is not good enough to justify any pro or con solutions to societal injustices, in essence we have to rely more on plain justice and human rights.
The attempt here is to get once again to have most biologists and geneticists to give support to that discrimination, although you are just putting an effort to be benevolent towards the “inferior” ones. Unfortunately, the good old days of old race definitions are not coming back, specially when inconvenient evidence appeared, like the human genome showing that we are one human race.
We may find someday genetic evidence that influences differences between races, but it is more likely that it will not be as important as you assume.
May I suggest once again, that the campaign to discredit “race” as a biological term is misguided and useless. I’m fine with discarding the word, and if you were to peruse many of my posts here, you’d understand that. It’s a silly pursuit by academicians, in the hope that, if they can prove “race” is not a very strict biological construct, then “we are one human race.”
Of course we are.
The question at hand is whether or not SIRE groups have average prevalence differences for different sets of genes. They do.
And the further question is whether or not the genes for which there are prevalence differences include genes for brain (and physical) function. To date, the preponderance of evidence is that brain and physical function genes are included among the genes which have evolved (and why would they be specially exempt, anyway?).
We are all one human race. We do not all self-group into SIRE groups which have the same gene prevalences. If you are unhappy with that, your beef is with mother nature and evolution, not me.
Nope, you are only giving the game away, it is imperative to claim that people that complaint against your folly crusade are on the wrong side. The reality is that there are no easy pickings on people of importance supporting you, so the only solution is to misinterpret and tell others and yourself that we are against evolution.
Bottom line, you have no good evidence, you say so yourself, and as many others can tell you, “Science, to its great credit, can and does, at least in the long run, rise above the political and social beliefs that support slavery, colonialism, neocolonialism and racism.”
Your insistence that people like me are against evolution is bullshit. The differences you are depending on are mostly used in medicine, the fact that many times even the researchers tell you that one should not use that research to show that genes are also influencing intelligence is there for a reason, the reality is that you do hate that scientists are taking justice and human rights into consideration.
It appears that you are down to personal attacks and or maligning motives.
It would be more persuasive to actually present any evidence-based counter-arguments. Your crusade against “racism” is lovely, and may even leave you with warm and fuzzy feelings, but I don’t think you even understand the science being debated in your rush to defend the oppressed.
There aren’t any population geneticists (or other scientists) I know of who do not think gene prevalences differ by SIRE group.
There isn’t any evidence that skillset outcome differences among those SIRE groups can be equalized by any effort whatsoever, and in the last 50 years in the US alone, those efforts have been extensive and profound. Variables such as opportunity, income, family education and schooling have all been shown to make no difference as an explanation for the outcome difference.
There isn’t any evidence that evolution creates exceptions for genes that would create disparities in separated populations.
The only tack taken by scientists and academicians to reassure the public that we are all one big genetically egalitarian family is to ridicule the term “race” as a biological construct. I am not aware of a single respected researcher who ridicules the concept that gene prevalences differ between populations, including SIRE groups. So it becomes a game of reassuring those who think “race” is the fundamental debate without actually letting on that “gene prevalence differences” is the fundamental debate. That way folks such as yourself can happily go around mocking “racists” or pretending you have science on your side when you either do not understand the debate or continue to obfuscate what the real issue is.
Persuasive evidence that you can take two SIRE groups and normalize outcomes would be helpful.
Name-calling and parroting the mantra that “there is no evidence” while in the meantime these gaps persist despite all efforts to ameliorate them is not helpful. As we write this, admission committees all over the US are struggling to decide if they should admit the better privileged under-represented minority over the less-privileged over-represented majority groups. That’s the battle, and at every level of opportunity, the same SIRE groups underperform. This difference extends from pre-school to graduate school and on into professional or employer screening exams, across millions and millions of testees; across every SES.
We can get over our egalitarian obsession and move on. Or we can create social policies based upon a pollyannish notion that somehow every group has been gifted by mother nature with the same gene prevalences as every other group and there is “no evidence” otherwise. When we try to create that pollyanna world, we will not succeed because well-intentioned policy based on bad science craps out.
The people arguing for Fisher in the UTexas case are using your mantra to defeat race-based AA. They are making a tacit assumption that we are all of equal genetically-driven potential and that therefore there should be no special consideration given to any SIRE group based purely on their “race.” Fairness should rest purely on opportunity even if mother nature herself was not fair to begin with. By such a ridiculous approach we could argue away all gender-based divisions in sports. When Fisher defeats race-based AA, you will have helped hoist well-meaning academicians on their own petard of pretense. They have pretended that, since “race” is not a biological construct, gene prevalence differences driving performance outcome differences must also not be a biological construct.
It is about to bite them in the ass.
Instead of name calling, perhaps you would like to present a single bit of science that shows:
- Gene prevalences are the same among SIRE groups
- Genes do not drive the maximum potential for the outcomes being measured and observed
- Adjusting nurture eliminates performance differences
Coming from the guy with zero evidence for his explanation, this is rich. Really, just pretending that the data supports your side is getting old.
And yet most population geneticists and other scientists do not believe that “blacks are dumber”. I don’t know why you’d even try to appeal to authority, considering that most of the authority disagrees with you.
We know for a fact that there are lower teacher expectations, regardless of the ethnicity of the teacher. And we know that this can have a profound effect on the education and development of children. And efforts you call “extensive and profound” I call half-hearted and fitful. And once again, sociological data, like test-score, crime stats, economic stats, etc, has never and will never provide any evidence whatsoever for any genetic claims. Never has, never will.
And there is zero evidence that evolution drove black people to be genetically “dumber” (or everyone else to be genetically “smarter”). Zero evidence.
Once again, your ridiculous appeal to an authority that rejects your conclusion.
All you can do is pick away at the other explanations, because yours has zero evidence.
So now the tactic is “support the [evidence-free] claim that blacks are genetically dumber, or we might lose beneficial programs for them”! What nonsense. You have no evidence, of course, but in addition, it’s just comical that you think a widespread belief that blacks are inherently dumber would actually benefit black people. What world do you live in that believing in the average genetic inferiority of a people benefits them? Do you know any history at all? Has anything good in human history, or even anything not terrible, ever come from a belief that one group is, on average, inferior in mental faculty?
Or we can actually use science and data to find the source of the test-score gap and try to fix it. No, I don’t believe a few decades of weak effort means it’s hopeless. It’s ridiculous to believe the issue is settled after such a half-hearted effort for just a few decades.
What does this matter? Again you imply that every single human characteristic must differ by group. Do you recognize how ridiculous this implication is?
We already know that adjusting nurture has some effect on different test-scores. And we have no evidence of differing genes for intelligence between different groups. Why should anyone believe a type of claim such as yours, with a historical track record of causing some of the most catastrophic atrocities in history, without genetic evidence? No, sorry, not only do you have zero evidence, but such a claim would require overwhelming evidence.
You fail, again and again. You don’t understand how science works, and cannot get over your own biases. No, there’s no evidence that, on average, black people are inherently genetically dumber. Such a claim actually requires positive genetic evidence, and considering the awful history of such claims, overwhelming evidence. And you have none. And most unbelievably (seriously, it’s hard for me to believe that you actually make this claim with a straight face) you claim that widespread acceptance of this belief would actually benefit black people. Really, the mind boggles. We truly live on different planets.
Looking over the stats, I’ve decided that you must be the most calm and patient person to ever log on to this MB. What’s your secret? Herbal tea? Long walks? Wack-a-mole?
Nope, your points are bullshit.
As the scientists you quote are usuallly not supporting what you say, this repeated point of yours is no less insulting, as I have pointed before I see less racism but just plain ignorance coming from you, iiandyiiii also understands the science and his replies are more than enough, what you missed is that I’m not complaining now about any hypothetical racism of yours, but the bull-crap of claiming that people that are against you are against evolution, the reality is that tactics like resorting to tell even the experts that they will be proven wrong in the future, after so many decades of telling deniers that their assumptions were wrong, what you are doing is just wedge debating and quixotic empty rhetoric.
And in this reply you are also showing that in general you love to follow the footpath of creationists and climate change deniers. It even has a name: Inevitable victory
It would be fun, but over here I have to report that I’m on record on telling even supporters when they get wrong, your benevolence is wasted when it is clear that many who are following you here demonstrate that they can support the most outrageous solutions and you never take them to task.
As TalkOrigins reports elsewhere, Racism historically has been closely associated with creationism (Moore 2004). That may be, but as I always like to say in discussions like this one there is no need to depend on the opponent being racist, ignorance will do.
I come to this discussion from a historical perspective of science, seeing how you use the same quixotic tactics with climate change (even the wedge issue you rely there - population control - has been pointed before by other anti-racial and environmentalist organizations as being pushed by prejudiced groups) just shows where those ideas come from, they are not original either nor coming from scientists nor geneticists, biologists, anthropologists, historians or sociologists at large.
In light of this, any political “solutions” implied and affirmed are bound to also suck.
You are still feeding the wrong wolf Chief.
Actually it looks like CP is a bit more calm and patient.
How could you know? You’ve been “ignoring” me. Of course, everyone knows you don’t actually ignore anyone- you just pretend to.
Don Quixote was too, but he had episodes of Recklessness.
I served in the Navy for five years, most of which was as part of the crew of a submarine. I’m glad I served, and very glad to be done- and every time something’s not going my way, I think “at least I’m not on a submarine any more”, and I smile and feel great.
I agree. You know, a few posts back Belowjob2.0 asserted that the test score gap in black Americans follows ethnic identity, not African ancestry.
If that’s true and not made up, it’s a good piece of evidence against my (and your) position. So where’s the proof that this is so?
I’ve asked for it a couple times now.
Are you able to clarify which one is incorrect, or are you hoping that such a label has sufficient weight to carry the day?
Are you able to give a single example of a cite I have given where I misinterpreted the science, or used a weak cite?
I am underwhelmed at the self-appointments of you and iiandyiiii as the arbiters of who understands science…
Here are the three main points:
- Gene prevalences vary by SIRE group
- Outcomes vary by SIRE group, and no adjustment of environmental variable has eliminated the gaps.
- Evolution does not exempt genes underpinning the skillsets reflected in those gaps
( You seem a bit bitter over AGW and population control. It smacks of desperation to bring those discussions into this thread, like you are hoping to dilute out the discussion so much we forget you have not offered a single shred of evidence for your apparent faith that all populations are equal in their genetic potential. 
)
Desperation? you just showed that you peffer to ignore that your points were already replied by **iiandyiiii **.
And you are still missing the point that you got most of your ideas and tactics are coming from racist sources, not only the population control wedge points, but from creationists too. So once again, it is bullshit to claim that we or the experts are denying evolution. And you only are just pushing your best Don Quixote impersonation.
I’ll take that as, “No, Pedant, I don’t have any actual facts. Just name-calling.”
Which of my cites are “racist”?
It’s just silly to keep dragging out that term. I’m uninterested in labels. I’m interested in facts. I don’t care if something is “racist.”
I care whether or not it is incorrect.
Let me ask again: Of the three points I’ve just made above, which are incorrect, and based on what source are they incorrect?
This idea that managing to label something “racist” amounts to an actual counter-argument is beyond stupid.
Piffle, the fact is that biologists that study this issue do use evolution, it is indeed bullshit to claim they do not.
A previous discussion I had showed that most of the people using the odd population angle in climate change change discussions are using ideas coming from prejudiced sources.
And I already granted that you don’t need to be a racist, now pushing crackpot or ignorant ideas is the problem.
Good that I clarified several times that I’m not considering you a racist, but you have to be aware of the wells of information you are relying on. I would think also that you are not stupid, but you are not paying attention of what I’m discussing here, it is not racism but the sorry origin of your ideas and illogical tactics you are using.
Have Ashkenazi Jews ever been at the bottom of statistics relating to cognitive ability?
Or Chinese for that matter? Or consider East Asians brought to parts of South America as indentured labor.
Those groups are an basic example of cultures favouring selection for cognitive ability increasing the average population ability in that respect, just as I noted there appears to have been selection for certain abilities with the Australian Aborigines with their significantly larger visual cortex.