# Why do black pupils in the US underachieve academically when one factors out poverty? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 25, 2009, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-black-pupils-in-the-us-underachieve-academically-when-one-factors-out-poverty/482948 "2009-01-25T20:13:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 9
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2015, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-black-pupils-in-the-us-underachieve-academically-when-one-factors-out-poverty/482948/161 "2015-01-05T21:20:19Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > The racism that white people have shown toward black people in our country is significantly worse than the racism white people have shown toward other racial groups in our country. Would you be able to show this in any substantive way? I don’t mean anecdotes. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2015, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-black-pupils-in-the-us-underachieve-academically-when-one-factors-out-poverty/482948/162 "2015-01-05T21:21:01Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > It doesn’t seem to be racism, since Jews and Chinese in the US who experienced vicious racism tend to outscore whites and blacks in the US. There is a _gigantic_ hole in your premise. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2015, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-black-pupils-in-the-us-underachieve-academically-when-one-factors-out-poverty/482948/163 "2015-01-05T21:27:04Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > Would you be able to show this in any substantive way? I don’t mean anecdotes. 😕 Really? I mean, do you seriously doubt this claim? That’s kind of astonishing. What do you need–diagrams of slave ships? Lists of slave children being sold? Early responses of cotton farmers to freed slaves? Murderous anti-black riots around the beginning of the twentieth century? Laws passed to de facto outlaw blacks voting? Lynching statistics? Redlining statistics? Details about segregated schools? [Let’s just start here](http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/05/the-case-for-reparations/361631/) for a big old smorgasbord of details. It’s a long read, but good god almighty, if you’re asking that question seriously, it’s worth the read. Edit: if you want to object that white folks have shown similar levels of racism toward Native Americans, I’ll concede that point. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2015, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-black-pupils-in-the-us-underachieve-academically-when-one-factors-out-poverty/482948/164 "2015-01-05T22:12:57Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > Then if I understand correctly, you are postulating some factor or combination of factors that cause blacks to under-achieve that does not cause non-blacks to underachieve. Call it X. What you think that X might be? > > It isn’t socio-economic status, since high-SES blacks underachieve as compared to low-SES Asians and whites. But SES is part of it – correcting for SES reduces the gap that exists without correction. > [@](#): > > It isn’t parental education, because blacks with a parent with a graduate degree score lower on average than Asians whose parents dropped out of high school. Again, parental education is part of it. > [@](#): > > It doesn’t seem to be racism, since Jews and Chinese in the US who experienced vicious racism tend to outscore whites and blacks in the US. We can’t conclude this, because the racism various groups have experienced is different both in character and in vehemence. > [@](#): > > It doesn’t seem to be language barriers - see, again, the Chinese, and the Japanese in the US. Unless speakers of certain dialects of English that are associated with black Americans are treated worse by society, educators, the justice system, etc. > [@](#): > > It doesn’t seem to be self-esteem, since self-esteem in blacks does not seem to be controlled by contact with racism ([cite](http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2780408?uid=3739616&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21105567818643)). IOW for blacks, none of the other factors that are associated with low academic test scores apply. > Therefore factor X must be something else. I think there are likely multiple factors. Reduced teacher expectations, parental involvement, social pressures, media depictions and role models, day-to-day racism and discrimination, and many other things may play a role that, combined, serves as significant obstacles that are still overcome to varying degrees by some. > [@](#): > > IOW and AFAICT we agree that factor X exists and explains the differences in black achievement. I think we also agree that factor X cannot be overcome by high SES, by parental training and example, or by anything that any other racial group has used. We simply disagree on what factor X _could possibly be_. Correct? > > Regards, > Shodan I assume we do disagree on what factor (or factors) X could possibly be. I think it’s quite unlikely that it’s a single factor – it certainly wasn’t a single factor during most of American history (for whatever gap existed at various times), so I think it’s unlikely to have been reduced to a single factor in the present. ---
**Author:** ![Some\_Call\_Me.Tim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@Some\_Call\_Me.Tim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Some_Call_Me.Tim)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2015, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-black-pupils-in-the-us-underachieve-academically-when-one-factors-out-poverty/482948/165 "2015-01-05T22:48:53Z")
> [@Hippy\_Hollow](#): > > There’s also the issue of differential item functioning. On standardized tests, some questions are answered incorrectly far more frequently by Blacks, women, and poor students. In more recent iterations of the SAT, questions with high levels of DIF are rejected. But as DIF is a relatively new line of research, and not every test tests for this, it’s hard to know what tests are reliable. One random comment as someone who took the SATs in the 80s, on my test one of the vocabulary words was antiphonally. The only reason I knew the definition was because as a kid I’d heard it once a week as part of an Episcopal church service. Even at the time I thought this was an unfair question. I’m guessing the demographics of churches formal enough to regularly use that word skew very white (and maybe Hispanic if Catholics use it too.) ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2015, 10:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-black-pupils-in-the-us-underachieve-academically-when-one-factors-out-poverty/482948/166 "2015-01-06T10:36:52Z")
> [@bump](#): > > I went to a very highly academically regarded private high school, and a black friend of mine (one of very few black guys at the school) commented that he caught nine kinds of hell from his black friends and acquaintances in his neighborhood and at church. Apparently he was seen as “wanting to be white” or putting on airs/thinking he was better than everyone else because he was going to a college prep school and planning to go to college. Very much the “crabs in the pot” type problem. This. ---
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2015, 12:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-black-pupils-in-the-us-underachieve-academically-when-one-factors-out-poverty/482948/167 "2015-01-08T00:24:12Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > My explanation doesn’t do either of those things – I don’t think you fully understand it. But we’ve been through this before. > > I’ll try to lay it out concisely: it’s possible that in our society there are multiple obstacles that make it harder for someone to succeed, academically and professionally in some fields, if they are black. This doesn’t mean it is impossible to succeed, and it doesn’t mean that those who succeeded despite these obstacles found some magic formula – they may have succeeded through a combination of nearly superhuman hard work/determination, talent, luck, and other factors, which may be almost impossible to purposefully replicate. This is just one possible explanation that would explain lower test scores and many other phenomena, and fit the entirety of the facts. There may be obstacles, but in our era, for the privileged black student (which is what the OP is about), there is a fundamentally enormous advantage: Race-based AA (functionally) which sets an incredibly low bar for admission to colleges and professional schools if you are black. This doesn’t mean success is automatic, but it sets a remarkably easy standard to meet as compared with whites and asians. Privileged black students nevertheless abysmally underperform in academic achievement, and success at those professional fields. But perhaps you are right that the privileged black student is just lazier than his hard-working parents, and too stupid to grasp the value of succeeding academically. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2015, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-black-pupils-in-the-us-underachieve-academically-when-one-factors-out-poverty/482948/168 "2015-01-08T00:33:24Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > There may be obstacles, but in our era, for the privileged black student (which is what the OP is about), there is a fundamentally enormous advantage: Race-based AA (functionally) which sets an incredibly low bar for admission to colleges and professional schools if you are black. This doesn’t mean success is automatic, but it sets a remarkably easy standard to meet as compared with whites and asians. > > Privileged black students nevertheless abysmally underperform in academic achievement, and success at those professional fields. > > But perhaps you are right that the privileged black student is just lazier than his hard-working parents, and too stupid to grasp the value of succeeding academically. I don’t believe these things. I believe that there may be obstacles that make it more difficult for a variety of reasons for a black student to succeed. There’s no reason to build up these straw men. These aren’t the things I’m saying, and they aren’t logically necessary for my point. It’s entirely possible, even if you disagree, that there are obstacles that may be very difficult for some black people to overcome. Even if someone’s parents managed to get through them, by determination, talent, or luck – that doesn’t mean that they will be able to. They may have even more determination and talent, but they just slip up, or have bad luck, or something else. It doesn’t make them lazy or stupid necessarily. ---
**Author:** ![Revenant\_Threshold](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f1d935/32.png) [@Revenant\_Threshold](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revenant_Threshold)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2015, 3:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-black-pupils-in-the-us-underachieve-academically-when-one-factors-out-poverty/482948/169 "2015-01-08T03:54:24Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > But perhaps you are right that the privileged black student is just lazier than his hard-working parents, and too stupid to grasp the value of succeeding academically. “Perhaps you are right”? \*\*iiandyiiii \*\*seems to be rebutting the opinion you’re imputing to him at every opportunity, but are you suggesting that they’re actually positions you personally find plausible? ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2015, 4:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-black-pupils-in-the-us-underachieve-academically-when-one-factors-out-poverty/482948/170 "2015-01-08T04:05:14Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > But perhaps you are right that the privileged black student is just lazier than his hard-working parents Riiight, because nobody has ever heard of the layabout wastrel children of hardworking successful white people, right? It’s not like the name Hilton ought to ring any bells. C’mon. Don’t be ridiculous. If an average level of hard work is insufficient to overcome the vicious racism of our society, and if above-average parents have children who work an average amount, of course those children aren’t going to succeed as well as their parents. Just because someone is able to sprint up the down escalator doesn’t mean the escalator has stopped moving, or that their kids will be just as good at sprinting. ---
**Author:** ![Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/budget_player_cadet/32/205_2.png) [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Budget_Player_Cadet)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2015, 7:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-black-pupils-in-the-us-underachieve-academically-when-one-factors-out-poverty/482948/171 "2015-01-08T07:13:19Z")
[It couldn’t be that racism plays a part in how blacks deal with college and higher learning. After all, we aren’t racist any more!](http://www.npr.org/2014/04/22/305814367/evidence-of-racial-gender-biases-found-in-faculty-mentoring) :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![The\_Joker\_and\_the\_Thief](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e79b87/32.png) [@The\_Joker\_and\_the\_Thief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Joker_and_the_Thief)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2015, 8:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-black-pupils-in-the-us-underachieve-academically-when-one-factors-out-poverty/482948/172 "2015-01-08T08:16:52Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > This. [Except…](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAT#Cultural_bias) > [@](#): > > However, according to Murray and Herrnstein, the black-white gap is smaller in culture-loaded questions […] than in questions that appear to be culturally neutral. ---
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2015, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-black-pupils-in-the-us-underachieve-academically-when-one-factors-out-poverty/482948/173 "2015-01-08T14:46:26Z")
> [@Revenant\_Threshold](#): > > “Perhaps you are right”? \*\*iiandyiiii \*\*seems to be rebutting the opinion you’re imputing to him at every opportunity, but are you suggesting that they’re actually positions you personally find plausible? When someone attributes success to “hard work” it is the same as saying that the unsuccessful don’t work equally hard. I am using the term “lazier” as a pejorative because that is exactly what that argument is advancing. It’s just a little more bluntly put to say “lazier” for the unsuccessful than “hard-working” for the successful. ---
**Author:** ![Revenant\_Threshold](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f1d935/32.png) [@Revenant\_Threshold](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revenant_Threshold)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2015, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-black-pupils-in-the-us-underachieve-academically-when-one-factors-out-poverty/482948/174 "2015-01-08T15:05:34Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > When someone attributes success to “hard work” it is the same as saying that the unsuccessful don’t work equally hard. > > I am using the term “lazier” as a pejorative because that is exactly what that argument is advancing. It’s just a little more bluntly put to say “lazier” for the unsuccessful than “hard-working” for the successful. You didn’t actually answer my question there. “But perhaps you are right” seems to suggest you find the argument plausible. Is that so? ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2015, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-black-pupils-in-the-us-underachieve-academically-when-one-factors-out-poverty/482948/175 "2015-01-08T15:23:46Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > When someone attributes success to “hard work” it is the same as saying that the unsuccessful don’t work equally hard. > > I am using the term “lazier” as a pejorative because that is exactly what that argument is advancing. It’s just a little more bluntly put to say “lazier” for the unsuccessful than “hard-working” for the successful. This is not what my argument is advancing. ---
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2015, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-black-pupils-in-the-us-underachieve-academically-when-one-factors-out-poverty/482948/176 "2015-01-08T15:25:23Z")
\ ***Originally Posted by Chief Pedant:** "There may be obstacles, but in our era, for the privileged black student (which is what the OP is about), there is a fundamentally enormous advantage: Race-based AA (functionally) which sets an incredibly low bar for admission to colleges and professional schools if you are black. This doesn’t mean success is automatic, but it sets a remarkably easy standard to meet as compared with whites and asians. Privileged black students nevertheless abysmally underperform in academic achievement, and success at those professional fields. But perhaps you are right that the privileged black student is just lazier than his hard-working parents, and too stupid to grasp the value of succeeding academically."\* > [@iiandyiiii](#): > > I don’t believe these things. I believe that there may be obstacles that make it more difficult for a variety of reasons for a black student to succeed. > > There’s no reason to build up these straw men. These aren’t the things I’m saying, and they aren’t logically necessary for my point. It’s entirely possible, even if you disagree, that there are obstacles that may be very difficult for some black people to overcome. Even if someone’s parents managed to get through them, by determination, talent, or luck – that doesn’t mean that they will be able to. They may have even more determination and talent, but they just slip up, or have bad luck, or something else. It doesn’t make them lazy or stupid necessarily. OK, you are postulating that the underperformance of privileged black students migh be: 1. Slipping up 2. Bad luck 3. Something else Got it. But it’s a pretty large group. It’s not just one guy. We’ve been through the data many times, and I’d be interested why you don’t believe the data. Will it help to haul out some of the relevant links again? The data shows: 1. High income black families and high-education black families have children who perform barely on par with low-income and low-educated whites and asian. 2. When opportunity is normalized for SES and the like, the performance gap is not erased. 3. The specific advantages extended to blacks for scholastic opportunity are extraordinary. Take Law or Medicine. Qualifying admission scores to college are substantially lowered. Having been given the same college opportunity, qualifying admission scores to Law and Medicine are substantially lowered. Having been given the same Law and Medicine opportunity, test scores for professional licenses are woefully lower. In Medicine, having been given the same post-MD training, pass rates for Specialty Boards are substantially lower. Bluntly, there are group performance differences among self-identified race-based groups. These differences appear in sports and they appear in educational success. They appear whenever metrics are quantified and they appear in the practical results of those metrics. They do not disappear when nurturing factors are ameliorated. Every outcome is a combination of nurturing and nature. Arguing that nurturing makes a difference–and it does–is not an argument that nature is probably irrelevant. In particular, the remarkable failure of high SES black cohorts to perform on par with low SES whites and asians is powerful evidence that–at a group average–there is a difference in nature. Nature has created gene pools separated by tens of thousands of years, and the idea that those gene pools have become so homogenized that genes are unlikely to play a role in observed average differences among groups whose self-identification correlates with disparate genetic histories is pollyannish at best, and deliberately ignorant of science at worst. The inflammatory nature of arguing for genes as an explanation means that we will dance around this forever. The reality of genes means that until gene pools are truly homogenized, group averages where the groupings contain disparate average genetic pools will never be erased by nurturing. You can split groups as finely as you like or as coarsely as you like. At the coarse grouping of “self-identified blacks” and “self-identified asians” or “self-identified whites” it is trivially easy to show average gene pool differences as reflected by any number of markers and gene frequencies, not to mention measured average physiologic differences. As to the genes themselves, I have given you a reference to Eric Wang’s [paper](http://www.pnas.org/content/103/1/135.abstract) showing that gene pools among self-identified race cohorts show Darwinian (advantageous for reproduction) selection among approximately 1800 genes for those cohorts. It’s time to stop grasping at straws. We can build a world where no individual is judged by their background, their choice of parents, the color of their skin or any other criterion. But we cannot build a world where everyone has an equal chance of success without extending special categories that recognize we don’t choose our gene pool; we don’t choose our sex; we don’t choose our birthright. The world needs people like you who reassure them that average group differences are not genes, just the way it needs people who claim women are as good at golf and firefighting as men. We have an innate sense of fairness and altruism that seems violated when mother nature’s brutal reality for the rest of the animal kingdom extends to human populations as well. We are not interested in grappling with the reality that some major population splits such as the out of africa migration 70kya along with archaic hominid gene introgression may have diverged gene evolution for very large average groupings. That we window-dress and wordsmith the science to reassure ourselves that we are not just another animal species with divergent clades does not mean that there are no gene-based differences at a group level. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2015, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-black-pupils-in-the-us-underachieve-academically-when-one-factors-out-poverty/482948/177 "2015-01-08T15:57:19Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > We’ve been through the data many times, and I’d be interested why you don’t believe the data. What data don’t I believe? > [@](#): > > Will it help to haul out some of the relevant links again? > > The data shows: > > 1. High income black families and high-education black families have children who perform barely on par with low-income and low-educated whites and asian. > 2. When opportunity is normalized for SES and the like, the performance gap is not erased. These aren’t in dispute (with the understanding that “SES and the like” pretty much just means SES). These are irrelevant to the larger question, which is ‘why does the gap remain after SES is normalized?’. > [@](#): > > 1. The specific advantages extended to blacks for scholastic opportunity are extraordinary. Take Law or Medicine. Qualifying admission scores to college are substantially lowered. Having been given the same college opportunity, qualifying admission scores to Law and Medicine are substantially lowered. Having been given the same Law and Medicine opportunity, test scores for professional licenses are woefully lower. In Medicine, having been given the same post-MD training, pass rates for Specialty Boards are substantially lower. > > Bluntly, there are group performance differences among self-identified race-based groups. These differences appear in sports and they appear in educational success. They appear whenever metrics are quantified and they appear in the practical results of those metrics. They do not disappear when nurturing factors are ameliorated. Here’s your mistake – nurturing factors have not been ameliorated. Some small number have been corrected for (SES, maybe a few others), but there are nigh-infinite nurture-factors that have not been corrected for. You assert that certain advantages must necessarily make up for any possible disadvantages, but this is just your opinion – I see no reason to accept this. I believe the nurture factors that are unaccounted for are probably far, far more significant. We can skip this entire discussion if you just accept that I believe that we haven’t come close to actually normalizing nurture. > [@](#): > > Every outcome is a combination of nurturing and nature. Arguing that nurturing makes a difference–and it does–is not an argument that nature is probably irrelevant. I haven’t argued that nature is probably irrelevant. I’ve argued that without actual data that directly points to nature (i.e. genetic data about the specific alleles for intelligence and their prevalence in various groups), there’s no reason to consider the genetic explanation as more than a hypothesis. I’ve also argued that what few studies that have actually tried to explore this (like, for example, the Scarr study we’ve discussed many times) actually specifically refute this hypothesis. It wouldn’t be hard to do a new experiment – why don’t you, or your colleagues, or others, try? Just gather up a large group of self-identified black people, give them IQ tests or similar, analyze their DNA for African/non-African ancestry, correct for SES and superficial identifiers (like skin darkness), and see if African ancestry among self-identified black people actually correlates to lower test scores. That’s what Scarr et al did – and they found that it didn’t correlate. They also found that skin color does correlate – which would be expected if it is cultural factors related to racism that are involved. Seriously – why don’t you do this? Why don’t you try and get others to do it, if you can’t? > [@](#): > > In particular, the remarkable failure of high SES black cohorts to perform on par with low SES whites and asians is powerful evidence that–at a group average–there is a difference in nature. No it’s not. It’s powerful evidence that the difference is not caused solely by differing SES. > [@](#): > > Nature has created gene pools separated by tens of thousands of years, and the idea that those gene pools have become so homogenized that genes are unlikely to play a role in observed average differences among groups whose self-identification correlates with disparate genetic histories is pollyannish at best, and deliberately ignorant of science at worst. No one’s arguing this, so there’s no point in repeating it. You mention this every time – it doesn’t strengthen your argument, because it could be just as likely that African ancestry correlates to _better genes for intelligence_ as it does for inferior genes for intelligence. Further, there’s no reason to believe that _every single human genetic characteristic_ must vary by ethnic group/race/population. Do you really think we can rank _every single race_ by some hierarchy in _every single characteristic_? Is there really not a single characteristic that might be pretty much the same, on average, for every group? > [@](#): > > The inflammatory nature of arguing for genes as an explanation means that we will dance around this forever. Your insistence on straw-man arguments, and your refusal to consider the possibility that maybe there are nurture factors that haven’t been tested for, will cause us to dance around this forever. (more pointless straw-man argument is snipped – no reason to bring up stuff that no one is arguing) Your insistence that your view will actually _help African Americans_ is the weirdest, though. For most of American history, most white Americans believed, as you do, that black people were inherently inferior, on average, in intelligence. This didn’t go well for African Americans. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2015, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-black-pupils-in-the-us-underachieve-academically-when-one-factors-out-poverty/482948/178 "2015-01-08T16:44:21Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > When someone attributes success to “hard work” it is the same as saying that the unsuccessful don’t work equally hard. If someone attributes success entirely to hard work, then besides that person’s being an idiot, that person is making your claim true. However, nobody in this thread is doing that. Folks are suggesting that for some black people, exceptionally hard work is one factor that helps them overcome widespread entrenched vicious racism. And of course not all black people work equally hard, just as not all white people work equally hard. > [@](#): > > I am using the term “lazier” as a pejorative because that is exactly what that argument is advancing. It’s just a little more bluntly put to say “lazier” for the unsuccessful than “hard-working” for the successful. The most charitable interpretation of your use of the word “lazy” in this context is that you have an astonishing tin ear and are unaware that “lazy” is a common racist stereotype of black people, and so your echoing of this racist stereotype is purely unintentional. Given your enthusiastic participation in these threads, I’m unconvinced we owe you such a charitable interpretation. ---
**Author:** ![Hector\_St\_Clare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2015, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-black-pupils-in-the-us-underachieve-academically-when-one-factors-out-poverty/482948/179 "2015-01-08T16:53:42Z")
> [@The\_Joker\_and\_the\_Thief](#): > > [Except…](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAT#Cultural_bias) +1. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2015, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-black-pupils-in-the-us-underachieve-academically-when-one-factors-out-poverty/482948/180 "2015-01-08T16:55:55Z")
> [@Hector\_St\_Clare](#): > > +1. I don’t know if you realize this, but citing **The Bell Curve** (even indirectly) to buttress claims about how black kids just aren’t very smart won’t be persuasive to folks who aren’t already convinced of the conclusion. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-black-pupils-in-the-us-underachieve-academically-when-one-factors-out-poverty/482948.md?page=8) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-black-pupils-in-the-us-underachieve-academically-when-one-factors-out-poverty/482948.md?page=10)