Wanted: Facts on Racial Differences in Academic Performance

Factual Questions
21

It would be helpful if your objection bore a relationship with my statement:

Presumably, however, educational definitions are social ones, unless somehow education exists outside of society. No matter, the scientific question, or rather the biological question is the important one here.

Let me clarify. Readers will note that I clearly stated, if the OP intends to draw biological conclusions (i.e. regarding genetic basis of educational differences between racial groups however defined-- as suggested in the OP), he/she must engage the body of genetics literature regarding race and it’s non-viability as a biological construct.

This is in no way implies that
(1) Educational differences between groups do not exist
(2) They should not be investigated.
(3) Whatever currently fashionable method of categorizing social groups should be used.
(4) Individual variation and genetic basis for performance is not significant to an individual’s performance
(5) Other factors should not be accounted for/research

It only suggests that if you want to pretend to make biologically based statements about ‘races’ as units in terms of educational performance, get to know the relevant literature in genetics before you make a fool out of yourself.

No objection per se was made on my part. Do reread my statements. My comments, once more to be clear, are only directed towards conclusions based on assumed shared biological traits by racial groups.

Clear?

I snip the rather irrelevant information which followed.

22

Err this should be

And I will apologize in advance for the snippiness.

23

Bolding, mine. I read this to mean that the project is more of a literature search and summation, not drawing conclusions, which would be more of a thesis. SEDCAR definitions must be used.

And I guess we’re not helping all that much :o

I sure don’t want to propel this into some Great Debate as to the definition of Race. Nor, do I want to tie up bandwidth which could better be used to address your OP. Therefore, I will simply reiterate that there are many education journals that could help you, some of which may be dedicated to racial differences.

24

As an interested layman, one of the most interesting theories I’ve seen put forward for the discrepancy between blacks and other groups in educational performance is that of “stereotype threat”. Claude M. Steel outlined the evidence for this phenomenon in an article in The Atlantic Monthly last year.

While the Atlantic isn’t a peer-reviewed scholarly journal, I’m sure the article would point you in the right direction for more rigorous sources.

25

Gosh, Askia, you are right about this being overwhelming. There are so many angles to this.
If I remember correctly, John Ogbu did a case study of black students looking for factors that contributed to low academic performance and based on his observations of/conversations with these students concluded that the students–who were exceedingly intelligent–were afraid to do well in school for fear of their peers calling them “brainiacs.” Ogbu found that the fear of being labelled a “brainiac” was that the student’s peers would think that s/he was trying to act white. I don’t remember the name of the study, but I imagine if you type in his name and the keyword “brainiac” to the ERIC or maybe even the American Psychological Association (APA) database you may come up with the article. In terms of social sciences’ preference for the latest data, I don’t know if this article will help you because he published it sometime between the 1970s-1990s, but it’s an interesting, insightful read.
One other thing is to look at states whose educational systems use tracking to see the disproportionate amount of black and other minority students who are tracked into below average and average classes at an early age and find it difficult to break out of that track. There must be something listed somewhere about criteria used to label students and assign them into a particular track, and there may be some statistics about the actual number of students and their ethnic breakdown.
Let’s see. Also try looking into public school practices for placing primarily black students–a high percentage of whom are male–in Emotionally Disturbed classes. Again, these classes are extremely difficult to break out of once tracked into them. There must be something listed somewhere about criteria for labelling students Emotionally Disturbed at least, and there may be some statistics about the actual numbers of students and their ethnic breakdown.

I hope this helps.
26

Askia, here’s one last thing to look at. Try doing a keyword search for “teacher expectations” maybe combine it with “and minority students.” I know there must be some research out there on teacher expectations and how they influence student performance.
In terms of other ways to get information besides ERIC, try http://www.metacrawler.com

27

There was an article in Skeptical Inquirer sometime in the 90s about the alleged drop in SAT scores since about 1970. (There was a drop, but it was only a few points.) I remember a graph of SAT scores by year and race. FYI, Asians were just slightly higher than whites, followed by Hispanics and blacks. I know you asked for information about academic performance, but I mention it because it may contain references that may be helpful. I’m sorry I can’t give you a better date for the article except to add it was before the magazine began publishing every two months.

28

This may help you, Askia:

http://www.duke.org/library/intelligence/lynn.html

In addition, there’s a slew of resources given at the end of the report. I would imagine you can find a few of those:)

Best of luck.

29

How very helpful, a link to David Duke’s race baiting pages. Do any of us really not know what kind of source this is? I certainly hope you did not.

This is precisely what SDMB does not need.

Let me point out that the genetically or biologically based conclusions put forth in these pages is precisely what modern genetics refutes. Lynn is neither a geneticist nor a psychologist, but a physicist and well-known racist. Pity he wastes his time with this sort of trash.

This, in short is racist trash.

I don’t believe we need any more racist pseudo-science posted here.

30

iampunha, we’re in the ignorance-fighting business in this forum. That link you posted was to a racist garbage dump of a site specifically dedicated to spreading ignorance in furtherance of their evil goals.

You will not post a link like that in this forum again.

31

If there is so much contraversy over collecting up infomation… where do you draw the line as to what is legit information or not… It seems this project isnt nesessary for our ignorance-fighting times…

Sorry if i seem ignorant, why bring up a research assignment about things our society is trying to cover up/forget…

Thanks,
Russell

32

Thanks everybody, for your kind words, advice and suggestions. I thought I’d bring you up to speed on what’s happened in the past week, as well as clarifications.

The focus of the paper will probably be on high school and undergraduate student achievement, contrasting primarily black students and white students.

iampunha: I assume you meant the link as a joke, or an easy-to-refute ‘authoritative’ source of an unpopular opinion. In any event I’m not offended, but I’m not sure I’ll use it, either. But ya might want to watch it, manny definitely got torked.

Cartooniverse: Why say either/or? Let’s just say your kids could very well have the best of both a blood-heritage and home/school environment and leave it at that, hmm? “It takes a village to raise a child,” etc, etc. :wink:

Collounsbury: The idea of “different races” as an artificial social construct as opposed to a genetic one was an idea I had already had in mind to use as an angle when I selected the topic… BUT… I wanted to keep an open mind and see if that was, in fact, widely accepted fact. The only reason I’d assumed it was true is because my daddy, resident genius (quick aside – a man who’d gone to Fisk University at age 15 and gone on to a successful career at Columbia University as a law student and currently reads books on quantum physics for fun) said so. It helps to double-check Pop every once in a while- he amuses himself at my expense like the Dad in Watterson’s Calvin & Hobbes.

London_Calling: My professor picked the wording in the title when he gave us topics to choose from. I’ll probably keep it, refute it and substitute ‘ethnic’ in the subsequent text – gotta eat up the first six pages of this twenty page paper some kinda way.

eponymous: THANK YOU!

zgystardst: Hmmmm, I’ll have to try and find that chart. Or a similar one.

rackensack: The Atlantic Monthly article link is MUCH appreciated.

celestina: Likewise, thank YOU for the ‘teacher expectations’ search idea – it’s a good one. I ought to get a couple of pages out of that.

spritle: Agreed that this isn’t really a research paper, but this is what my professor calls it. As it means less work for me, I’m not arguing with the guy unless I don’t get my ‘A.’

Okay, as I took a break from writing to respond to this, I’ll get back to work now. THANKS again, everybody! I’ve PLENTY (maybe too much, as spritle said) to work with now.

Really, truly thanks.

  • Askia
33

Very good. One should always follow up the information. It probably suffices for your work to simply note that modern genetics has reached a consensus on race not being a biologically valid cateogory, while continuing investigation of smaller entities as well as individual level differentiation.

Good luck, and let me add in closing that my comments were really directed towards the ‘researcher’ who misunderstood Gould.

34

I did a similar report about preferential policies. I used a lot of books. These seemed to be the most helpful.

Why Race Matters - Michael Levin (1997)
Inside American Education - Thomas Sowell (1992)
Race, Evolution, and Behavior - J. Philippe Rushton (2000)

Also, if you search for any of those at amazon or barnes, they usually provide you with links to other similar books.

35

Pity that you depended on such trash, Rushton is a well=known racialist and pseudo-scientist. Aside from having been caught fabricating data, his understanding of evolution and genetics is absolutely nil. The book is not only worthless, it is a disgrace.

36

Cite?

37

Unfortunately the website detailing the incident disappeared when the University of Kent (if memory serves) mvoed servers, but one should still find reference to the incident on the old archives of the Anthro-L list, which Rushton briefly partook in.

The most telling incident, which was documented, was Rushton referring to supposed WHO data documenting difference in penis size by race. When this was investigated, his critics found there were no such studies or documents. The relevance being that (a) Rushton claims penis vary by race (b) larger penises mean lower intelligence. Nothing more than locker-room prejudice dressed up in pseudo-scientific babble. Further, fabricating data is the death of any academic respectibility. Anyone with the slightest degree of respectability avoids such like death.

Further background: Rushton is a psychiatrist --South African in origin-- with tenure at a Ontario, Canada university. I forget which. Although he frequently writes on race, biology and evolution, he does not demonstrate even an elementary grasp of the subjects. Nothing more than a crude racist pseudo-scientist.

There you have it.

38

I put the subject racial academic performance into Google, and the subject racial into AltaVista (couldn’t get good results in multi-word subjects at AltaVista).

I found the link to a book review that might have some bearing.

I am also trying to find information on a professor from a southern American university who did a study in the late sixties or early seventies that seemed to show that blacks were academically inferior to whites. I think his name was Alfred Jensen, or Albert Johnson, or something like that, but I am not having any luck with it.

The problem with these sorts of studies is that you usually want to hold all variables but one constant, so that you know that is what is causing differences in your results. With this man’s studies, he was comparing and contrasting scores of students who did not have the same opportunities for learning, if I remember correctly, so consequently, many people did not take his study seriously (I am one of those people).

39

Well, according to Cecil, there is some racial variation in penis length, but he doesn’t allude to any WHO data in his Answer (he used data from the Kinsey Report and the Trojan condom company).

40

Not exactly. I still don’t have a cite to back up a pretty serious claim about a person’s integrity. Lacking that, the claim would appear to be rather libelous.