Generally, what every institution of higher learning does is compete for the best students. Among the measures used are quantified exams (versus grades). It may be a separate discussion about how valuable and predictive they are.
As a skillset, the results for these exams vary, on average, in a consistent pattern by SIRE group that is not eliminated by adjusting for SES opportunity. Therefore separate “race-alone” weights must be given.
It is correct that the best–and even capable, perhaps–pool of black students will come from highly successful black families. Families that are well educated and wealthy. But if we don’t “judge these applicants based on skin color” then they will not make it into highly competitive schools or high-intellect pursuits such as STEM sciences, law, medicine and the like. The reason is that their average scores are far below those of their SES peers. (This dilemma is what underlies U Texas’ problem with Fisher.)
The only way to get anything close to proportionate representation is to have separate categories by SIRE group, and then from within those categories, apply criteria for admission. IOW, use “skin color alone” as a criterion. (And not really skin color, b/c a dark south asian would not belong in a low-score SIRE group)
We do this already. We do it sort of on the side, because it is no longer officially sanctioned. But you can look at the MCAT links I provided and see the enormous difference in scores, if you want to see what actually happens. There isn’t much hullabaloo about it (although the occasional court case does arise).
Regardless of whether or not it’s appropriate to use standardized scores or not as a criterion, what is clear is that there is a marked difference among SIRE groups, that this difference is stubbornly resistant to manipulation of nurturing variables, and that it is a remarkable constant pattern. For these and other reasons, I hold that the most plausible explanation is a genetically-driven difference.
Consider, for example, a 40-yard sprint “exam” as part of a pro football “application.” Such a performance skillset would have marked over-representation by the black SIRE group. (Epigenetics? Better parenting? Cultural predisposition? Sure…whatever.) But we might predict that such an “exam” would have some sort of utility in deciding which individuals would make the best NFL players at certain positions, and if we wanted to balance out the NFL for SIRE groups we would have to give other SIRE groups separate standards for the 40 yard dash “exam” or else we’d end up with an NFL that has a markedly disproportionate representation for a black SIRE group over others.
I’m less interested in debating the merits of quantified exams (although in some fields I believe they have substantial merit) than I am pointing out that the persistent disparity in average outcomes on those exams is genetically driven to a substantial degree. Therefore any social policy which assumes a fundamental equality of ability by SIRE group is doomed to failure. It would be akin to taking a college athletics department to task for not turning out proportionate numbers of white or asian basketball or football players. All the way down that chain–all the way to grade school–the cream of talent will have continually risen to the top, and in the case of those pursuits, the cream is not white.
Nobody has “manipulated nurturing variables”. Our society has changed at a glacial pace in the direction of greater inclusiveness. As a result there are many policy decisions meant to improve the outcomes of various disadvantaged groups. These policy decisions and SES are not “manipulation of nurturing variables”. These policy decisions are not meant to be controlled experiments; they are judged on whether they meet their goals. At best, they are circumstances from which scientists make observations. These observations have many legitimate interpretations.
In fact you simply just ignore the work that implicates our society’s structure in influencing group-evaluated outcomes. It’s been cited again and again and you offer no analysis of the weaknesses of these studies except to what amounts to ‘you just don’t like the studies’. You still have not named a single study from which you found compelling evidence supporting “nurture” as an explanatory factor in your SIRE group differences in test scores. C’mon not one? I can name at least 5 studies off the top of my head that on superficial examination support your view. C’mon just one. Don’t be coy.
You can’t even point out that there is a consistently shrinking disparity in your SIRE groups. Can’t you at least recognize that simple fact? One that is easily observable, verifiable, and oft commented-upon?
You’re only interest is in insisting there is some genetic difference between your SIRE groups leading to differences in test scores. You insist despite the lack of evidence supporting your view, you insist despite all the evidence to the contrary, and you insist despite the logical flaws in how you subdivide people and attempt to characterize them genetically.
As somebody mentioned before, you are looking for your genetic god of the gaps. It’s obvious in how your grasp at any population genetic data that supports the idea that different populations of people are different genetically. You stop at this superficial observation, pervert it to fit your agenda, and then studiously avoid analyzing what the data really means. There is no analysis there. No interest in examining what the genes actually do or if they do anything at all, as is the case with a vast majority of genetic markers. It’s all just “THERE’S A DIFFERENCE”. No shit there’s a difference. Nobody argues it. What most people who have actual experience with genetics will tell you is that most of the differences amount to nothing. You are just speculating.
What makes what you’re doing go from silly armchair theorizing to truly disgusting is the sheer amount of effort you put into this speculation while obfuscating your primary interest, which is arguing against our social policies that attempt to increase the inclusiveness of our society. Quit dressing up your preferences as science. Quit shitting on behavior genetics and its related fields. Show an actual interest in the phenomenon of “SIRE group differences in test scores” and you’ll be treated as an intellectual instead of a crank.
Or just make it clear what your intentions are. You don’t realize what it says to see you discussing social policy and backing up your view based on the such poor evidence. It puts you at the Wakefield end of the spectrum scientifically and medically speaking and if I were you I would be ashamed of myself.
I think you are misunderstanding what is being claimed. The manipulation of nurturing variables Chief Pedant is referring to are in the studies, not in society at large. That is, some SIRE groups outscore others in various measures even when SES is held constant, or even is weighted to the advantage of the lower scoring group.
The disparity is not constantly shrinking; it is persistent.
By some measures, it has shrunk (and by others, it has not). In any case, at best we have a few decades of decent data after literally centuries of brutal oppression… it’s hardly reasonable to believe that because the gap has not been eliminated after a few decades of paltry efforts then it cannot be eliminated.
The difficulty being, even for those for whom the efforts to remove barriers to success have been successful, the gap persists. For some SIRE groups, even if the parents of some students have overcome the barriers to achieve graduate level degrees, or the top quintile of SES, they are still out performed by other SIREs at equivalent (or even lower) SES.
Which suggests that, even if there were no average disparity between one SIRE group and another in terms of SES or the academic success of their parents, the gap is likely to persist.
The variables are not “manipulated”. That is a jargon term. Chief Pedant is using the term in the sense that they are experimentally manipulated. In fact these variables are simply categorized and associated with one another.
In his post and in prior posts he discusses social policy as though they are experiments meant to establish cause-and-effect. The are clearly not. They do supply variables that can be measured and associated with one another.
What he is ignoring is that the positive outcomes are associated with these programs and positive outcomes are associated with changes in SES.
So in summary he is discussing two separate things, conflating them, making erroneous conclusions, and you are attempting to provide a reasonable explanation on something that is not reasonable.
The gap persists but it changes over time. The failure of a single variable to predict all the variability in another variable does not suggest the gap is likely to persist. It just means that a single variable fails to predict all the variability in another variable. Dozens of other factors can be assessed to attempt to fully understand the variability. Ibn Warraq mentioned some notable ones earlier in this thread.
Even if this is so, it says nothing about genetics. We already know that there’s more going on here than just SES and parental educational background- but so far there’s no evidence that points exclusively to a genetic explanation.
I don’t see how this invalidates anything he has said.
His point, AFAICT, is that the gap persists in spite of changes in SES. If the differences between groups are entirely due to SES (or parental education levels, or some other proposed factor), then one would expect that comparing groups from the same SES, or with the same level of parental education, would cause the difference in outcomes to disappear. But it persists, suggesting that there is some factor other than SES, or parental education, that is behind the gap.
Right - because there may be some factor other than SES or parental education that is causing the gap.
You seem to be quite sure that it isn’t genetics. I don’t see any evidence that rules it out, and some evidence that seems to argue against the other, traditionally suggested factors. If it is SES, why do blacks in the top SES quintile get outscored by whites in the bottom quintile? If it is discrimination, why do Jewish people outscore them? If it is an identifying physical feature, why do Asians and Hispanics and Amerindians outscore them? If it is a history of servitude, then why do Chinese outscore them?
I think it is premature to say that it is definitely due to genetics. I also think it is premature to say that it couldn’t possibly be due to genetics.
The only factual information he has provided is that different ethnic groups in the USA have a gap on test scores. He has also provided data that shows different ethnic groups differ genetically. Everything else he says is pure speculation. I don’t need to invalidate it since there is nothing there to validate in the first place.
He doesn’t merely suggest some other factor. He explicitly supports a genetic explanation as the sole remaining reason that this narrowing gap exists. I’m just asking him to discuss another factor he finds as convincing in explaining the current state of the gap.
In all the threads on this topic nobody has presented evidence that questions a genetic explanation for the differences we see in these test scores? I mean there were at least two links in this thread alone. It’s so boring that there isn’t even an agreed upon set of information from which to discuss this tired topic. That’s why these threads should just be banned with a sticky to the last one.
Don’t know, but Chief Pedant sure thinks he does.
So why don’t you just say “I don’t know” and post a reply to Chief Pedant questioning why he is so sure its genetics when no evidence supports his conclusion. None.
And data that show that tend to show that different SIRE groups with the same SES exhibit a gap in their test scores. And likewise for parental education. Which suggests that “nurture” factors do not completely explain the gap, since the gap exists even when those factors are held constant.
If you are talking about SES, that is held constant in the studies, and the gap persists. If you are talking about changing SES as a way of eliminating the gap, that is held constant in the studies and the results suggest even if we could completely eliminate any SES differences amid groups, the gap would persist. Because in the case of one SIRE group, even those in the top quintile are out performed by members of a different SIRE at the bottom quintile. Therefore, SES is not convincing in explaining the current state of the gap.
No it doesn’t, because there are countless other nurture factors. “Nurture” just means anything not genetic, and can include a myriad of things like teacher expectations, peer pressure, media environment and role models, day-to-day racism and its effects, and many, many more.
So you look at two factors, haphazardly, and come to the conclusion in your final sentence. It took me little effort to find studies that do find a relationship between a narrowing gap in test scores or outcomes and these factors. Leading to the reasonable conclusion:
Some data supports the hypothesis and some that does not. Yet this is superficial and a better analysis would attempt to understand what methodological differences are involved in the different types of studies that lead to these separate conclusions.
On the other hand, how come all the direct attempts to test a relationship between genetic origins and the gap have come up with nothing?
By the way…quintile? Are you talking about SES or income? I can’t find what you’re talking about so I would appreciate a link. Thanks.
No; there are not “countless other nurture factors.” Black students from wealthy and educated parents are not crapping out on standardized exams because their teachers consider them lame, their peers mock them into underperforming, rap music has poisoned their minds, television has distracted them into thinking they should be playing basketball, or the neighborhood bullies are calling them niggers. They are just ordinary kids living ordinary lives with ordinary struggles. Sheesh. What is with your obsession about racism? What is with your determination to prosecute a case that a wealthy black kid somehow can’t get his shit together just because he’s black even though his parents have succeeded? What is with this idea that because he’s black–and only because he’s black–he has a special case reason to turn in lower scores that the white kid living in a trailer with parents who can’t complete high school? How many strikes against him does “black” count when he goes to a better school, has vastly better resources and comes home to wealthy and educated parents?
When I said we have manipulated nurturing variables, I meant something very simple: we have reasonably accounted for them when we evaluate differences among groups that have different genetic pools to begin with.
I hold that there are no “nurture factors” that are more persuasive than is the evidence that gene pool differences drive observable differences among SIRE groups.
The science is clear that the SIRE groups we typically talk about are broad groups, but nevertheless groups that separated at least 70kya, roughly speaking. Since then at least 1,800 genes (in one study) have been shown to be so pervasively penetrated that they cluster by self-identified groupings. This penetration suggests a significant reproductive advantage. IOW, we are not just talking about any old gene that had some sort of random and non-significant change.
Evolution affects all genes, without regard to fairness, and we see the result of this evolutionary change. We see that a significant part of SIRE self-identification is because genes for physical appearance drive–on average, and Navin Johnson notwithstanding–a difference in appearance. Evolution doesn’t have some sort of Intelligent Design-driven fairness to make us all look alike. My ebony wood statue of a Masai woman is obviously the most stunningly beautiful woman ever created. Evolution doesn’t give a crap if the next group over is butt ugly next to her.
Nor does evolution care if one group is stronger, or faster, or processes mental tasks differently. It just moseys along plinking away at DNA. Cultures and societies also evolve hand in glove to drive penetration of new genes. In a culture where athleticism is king, a different gene might become more highly penetrated than a culture where music is king, or accounting is king, or whatever. But it’s all just a random game of chance with no a priori end point, and so descendant pools far removed from their ancestors all tend toward different cultures and different gene pools underpinning the various competencies that evolution has doled out.
In our modern world, we’ve started to mix up those gene pools and mix together those cultures. We see some interesting results. We see individuals and even large sub-groups who are easily able to function in different cultures and societies from their source pool. We are all humans, after all, and we are not so far removed from our ancestors that most of our genes are completely different. But some of them are; and some in enough average frequencies to drive all sorts of characteristics, including the way we look, fine points around things like musculoskeletal systems and fine points around the way our minds work. Genes drive all these things, and average gene pools vary among all sorts of groupings, including groupings at the level of our modern SIRE groupings.
So if we want to find out what average outcomes are different because of genes versus nurture, one place to start is where observed outcome differences are marked and persistent, as well as consistently the same across a variety of circumstances.
If we look at power sports across the globe, we see a striking pattern: groups with west african ancestry are disproportionately represented across all cultures and societies once they have been given a chance to join the starting pool. They don’t need much to be successful. We don’t ascribe Jamaican bobsledding success to superb winter sports in Jamaica. We don’t think the average NBA player had anywhere near the starting opportunity that a 6 year old white kid with basketball talent and dreams is given. What the black kid gets more commonly is a neighborhood ramshackle basketball hoop and a life fraught with dodging an incredible amount of negative distractions. The white kid gets summer basketball camps and every advantage possible until its obvious he’s no longer competitive–at which point he drops out.
Is that nurture driving black success in the NBA? Maybe. But gene science is not pointing that way. We aren’t finding ACTN3 rs1815739 mutation homozygosity in the black SIRE group with anywhere near the frequency in whites and asians. It’s not like gene science is rapidly undermining this idea that average gene pools are different for SIRE groups. Gene science is, in fact, confirming that average gene pools are different, and it’s slowly working out how those genes might be influencing average outcomes. We’re a long long way from working that out, but it’s not like science is going in the wrong direction and proving instead that we all have the same genes in the same freuencies, more or less randomly distributed. Our SIRE groups draw from different average pools, and those average pools are different because of our migration history and evolution.
What about nurturing as an explanation for how our minds think differently? Until we started looking closely, the default assumption was that SES and opportunity drove test score differences. Only after that explanation crapped out did we decide there were “lots” of other nurturing factors. iiandyiiii is persuaded that a long history of terrible oppression affects test scores for black students from wealthy and educated parents. How? Such an explanation does not affect any other SIRE group. It does not affect vietnamese immigrants who came here destitute and downtrodden. It does not affect chinese descendants whose parents were essentially enslaved labor in foreign countries. It does not affect south asians whose coloring and accents marked them as underdogs. No; when we look at the children of successful parents within those subgroups, the children remain successful. And we don’t think the disasters that happened to their grandparents should somehow render them less proficient. We do not even give them much additional slack even when their parents come from meager circumstances.
The differences in a test-taking skillset are profound and persistent. Clinging to “you have not sorted through all the important nurturing variables” is very tenuous given the striking repetition of this general rank-order throughout the world. Where do you want to use as an example of an environment in which the asians are power sprinting and the blacks are innovating in engineering?
For what reason other than “it’s a racist conclusion” would not the simplest explanation be average gene pool differences. How many special-case (only applying to blacks) nurturing variables pass this acid test: Were it not for the fact that you want an other-than-genes explanation, would they get more than a passing glance? The only reason egalitarians cling to them is that want a Creationist model with an Intelligent Designer who was structured the human species to be evolution-free so that we can create a race-free Shangri La. We can probably get to a race-free world by defining it away, but the genetically egalitarian Shangri La is a pipe dream.
Regarding educational level of parents:
See graphs 5 and 6 here for a 1995 analysis.
Score gaps are not diminishing. Example, but just my first hit on the query…
See my earlier posts for MCAT scores, but you can look up pretty much any standardized score you want, and you’ll see the same pattern: modest improvement through about mid 90s and then minimal to no closing. There’s no question nurturing has an effect on better outcomes. It just doesn’t close the gap, even when SES is completely reversed. In the 1995 data, blacks from families where the parents have graduate degrees barely outscore whites from families where the parents have no high school. That’s a pretty profound difference in backgrounds which would be expected to contribute to a successfully educated youngster.
May I suggest further reading?
Start here: Global landscape of recent inferred Darwinian selection for Homo sapiens “The 1,800 genes identified by the LDD test were clustered according to Gene Ontology (GO) categories. Based on overrepresentation analysis, several predominant biological
themes are common in these selected alleles, including host– pathogen interactions, reproduction, DNA metabolismcell cycle, protein metabolism, and neuronal function.”
The gist of the article is that at least 1800 genes for the functions listed above in the partial abstract I quoted are positively selected for. They aren’t just “nothing” or they would not have been driven to a high-enough degree of penetration to result in clustering by SIRE group. Part of the article addresses the problem of figuring out which genes have been selected for and which might be prominent for non-selection reasons (such as a historical bottleneck). From the article again:
“We conclude that inferred recent Darwinian selection is the most likely explanation for these unusual genomic architectures…Although the calculated intraallelic coalescence time for many of these alleles in European and Asian ancestry populations is similar, the same allele exhibits a more rapid LDD, and hence a longer coalescence time in African ancestry populations. The model that best explains these data is the ongoing balanced selection for these alleles for at least the last 40,000–50,000 years after the out-of-Africa expansion”
As this thread is on “racism” and not genetics, I’ll not press the point with other cites, but I did not want you to think there is no actual genetic science around a proposition that SIRE groups have different gene pools, and that those gene pools are different in a way that suggests non-trivial changes in genes.
I hope you apologize to iiandyiii for saying there weren’t other variables when that article listed dozens. It’s interesting that the test score gap can both diminish and expand over time. Those crazy black genes!
Holy shit, that was the most racist website I’ve ever been to. I think I’ll go take a shower. Unsurprisingly it has data that seems to counter the idea that the gap is shrinking, provided that you don’t care to think. It simply does not address the well-documented shrinking gap over time.
So its shrinking then? Thanks for admitting it. What an utter waste of my time. Go back to your first cite to see what the shrinking gap is up against in terms of black-white differences in our society. None of it ‘in the genes’.
They are unrelated to SIRE group. Nothing like that is in the article. It shows how at least some of the genetic markers displaying higher-than-expected linkage disequilibrium but levels of linkage disequilibrium decay consistent with selection were closely associated with genes with known function or function inferred by sequence similarity to other genes.
Here’s the rest of that quote:
In its entirety it says nothing about your favorite hypothesis. The genes exhibit signs of selection in all the populations; the pattern looks different because of the hypothesized bottleneck during the out-of-Africa expansion.
Because this is a thread about racism, I think it is instructive that you continue to post articles to peer-reviewed articles on genetics so that others can show how your prejudice - your cognitive bias - causes you to misinterpret the results. In fact, when I look at all of your cites except the explicitly racist one, I see a very instructive pattern of studiously avoiding information that counters your cherished belief in favor of the tidbit that you clearly feel does support your racist notions.
Yes there are. You’re just way, way wrong about this.
You have no idea at all why any particular individual struggles. You may think you do, but you are deluding yourself.
It’s so sad that I’m demanding solid evidence for such a claim. Poor, poor you.
And this is false- we have not reasonably accounted for nurturing variables… not even close.
And I hold that you are way, way wrong.
There is no evidence that any of these genes have anything to do with intelligence.
Skipping the laughable “creationist” canard… all the more hilarious coming from someone who is convinced of a conclusion about genetics (that just so happens to mimic the results of pseudo-scientific racialism from previous centuries) with no actual genetic evidence. I don’t know all the reasons why the gap exists. But we haven’t accounted for all nurture factors- I’ve offered many possibilities that actually fit all the facts (unlike the genetic explanation), and there’s juts no reason yet to accept that hypothesis. You’re convinced way, way too early. And you’re whining because we’re not convinced.
The article did list other nurturing causes. Unlike you perhaps, I read on both sides of the fence. That article is from the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, recognizing and addressing the marked score gap for the SAT in the face of such incredible advantage for blacks in the study for wealth. Which of their “dozens” of putative variables did you find so persuasive? Perhaps you might list the most persuasive one. I thought they were lame and totally unsupported.
The data itself is not contested; they simply quote it there. It’s a widely-spread data point from a study on the SAT. I assume you are objecting to cite where it was quoted because you have no answer for the data itself?
Did I misspeak or did you misread? In any case, score gaps are not diminishing since roughly 2000. Perhaps you would like to post some alternative data. Like many egalitarians you seem happier critiquing existing studies than putting up alternate ones.
The article in question, p 136-7: “These data were generated by genotyping 71 unrelated individuals from 3 populations: 24 European Americans, 23 African Americans, and 24 Han Chinese from the Los Angeles area.” Do your and my definitions of SIRE group vary? The whole point of the article is that “Darwinian selection” (this is why it’s titled that way) and not bottlenecks, are the reason for the clustering.
And further on: “Together, the evidence of this first-pass study shows many promising regions with inferred recent Darwinian selection, which undoubtedly will guide numerous future studies. Specifically, our method identifies the region likely responsible for the inferred selection, at or near the minima of calculated recombination”
I assure you this article says exactly what I am telling you it says: for this study group containg 71 self-identified people by black (African Americans), white (European American) and asian (Han Chinese), gene clustering was found for 1800 genes that the authors inferred were highly penetrated because of “Darwinian selection” (evolution) and not population bottlenecks. They present in the paper the technical reasons they think is so. I apologize for its technical nature, but if you can find a friend with expertise in genetics to help you through it, I think you’ll realize your criticism of my summary is incorrect.
Which of the data points I cited were “racist” (other than by iiandiii’s definition)? I hope you don’t make the common mistake of attacking a messenger rather than looking at the data they cite. Do you have data to the contrary, or evidence that the data cited is incorrect? Or are you just hoping that throwing out an inflammatory term like “explicitly racist cite” conveniently discards data itself.
Evolution doesn’t give a crap if the next group over is butt ugly next to her.