# Why do black pupils in the US underachieve academically when one factors out poverty?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-black-pupils-in-the-us-underachieve-academically-when-one-factors-out-poverty/482948>\
**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:** 1\
**Showing post:** 811

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**Author:** ![Great\_Antibob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47c2d/32.png) [@Great\_Antibob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Great_Antibob)\
**Post date:** [March 14, 2015, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-black-pupils-in-the-us-underachieve-academically-when-one-factors-out-poverty/482948/811 "2015-03-14T03:38:06Z")

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> [@magellan01](#):
>
> This “crowd” (at least as far as you’re talking about a subset of the SDMB), as far as I can tell, has a population of exactly zero. Is there someone I’ve overlooked? Can you point to these posters? I don’t recall anyone being of the mind that culture/nurture cannot or do not play a role.

Didn’t look very hard, then.

For the first part: it’s in the OP itself. This very thread was started back in 2009 because both **CP** and **brazil84** suggested that culture/nurture factors are sufficiently controlled for to determine that genetics explains academic performance differences in black students.

Also, that’s not what I said. I did NOT say these posters claimed those factors do not play a role but that they claimed those posters dismissed those factors as explanations. Like I said, it’s in the OP - “when one factors out poverty”.

That’s not really a subtle distinction. In fact, that’s rather a large mischaracterization of my post.

Anyway, here’s [one post](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=12596194&postcount=41) in another thread where **CP** directly claims that all non-genetic factors have now been normalized and that genetics is the explanation for performance differences:

> [@Reasons Africa is "lagging behind"?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reasons-africa-is-lagging-behind/543711/41):
>
> It’s the whole group average I’m talking about, for various skillsets, when **nurturing is normalized**.

(bolding mine)

But going to a different thread isn’t really necessary. **CP** makes the claim in this very thread in [this post](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=18036255&postcount=176), for which this is a very relevant quote:

> [@Chief\_Pedant](#):
>
> 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.**

(bolding mine)

In other words, **CP** claims those factors are sufficiently controlled, which is and has been a major ongoing bone of contention in this thread and several similar threads before this one.

As for other posters, well, yes, others posters have made similar claims. The aforementioned **brazil84** , for one. I really don’t want to dig through several depressing threads on racism to find more of these examples, so I won’t. There’s plenty of them out there, if you want to find them.

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