I encourage anyone interested in what you seem to feel is “actual genetic evidence” to read this. Parts of it will make you laugh out loud, although the effort is earnest.
It is, as you know, a 40 year old study. Before modern DNA markers were readily available. So they come up with this crazy-ass “odds coefficient” scheme, actually admitting that any reasonable person would have severe reservations about their ability to accurately figure out ancestry percentage. They find some twin data to use, pay the kids ten bucks and some snacks to participate, and lose a chunk of the black kids cohort for part of the test because “the established instructions were not sufficiently understood.” The intellectual tests are so lame no reading skills were required. (I swear I am not making any of this up.) They look for skin darkness and blood type to help them determine ancestry percentage by plugging it into their coefficient.
The difference between blacks and whites on the intellectual tests was about 0.9 standard deviations. (I’ll let iiandyiiii chime in on which group did better). They then decide based on their odds coefficient thingy that the black students who were more black didn’t do any worse than the black students who were more white.
I’m not even going to bother mocking this.
I will say that if modern scientists wanted to put the “admixture” argument to rest, and if they really believed that genes had nothing to do with group average differences, this type of study could be readily repeated using modern DNA techniques for determining percentage of recent ancestry. Cohorts could be taken from across a variety of spectrums so you are not comparing poor kids at the bottom of the barrel–i.e. those in both white and black cohorts that are already not likely blessed with good intelligence genes.
Such a study would be very very persuasive if, for example, blacks who had very high quantifiable academic test scores could be shown to have no more eurasian gene percentages than blacks with very low quantifiable academic test scores.
No such study will ever be done. It will be shot down as racist; as ill-conceived; as inappropriate and yada yada yada. But the real reason it will not be done is that there is not a shred of confidence in the scientific community that the outcome would show that genes do not play a substantial role in group average differences for quantifiable academic test performance. Atlhough it is a career-ending move to even hint publicly at it, any scientist familiar with genes and evolution–and academia’s unsuccessful effort to make nurturing variables erase differences–knows these stubbornly resistant gaps are not because Grampa was a slave and Jimmy feels stereotyped.
And you, of course, are ignoring the fact that a self-identified grouping even so broad as “black” or “white/eurasian” completely changes the odds that you will belong to a gene pool split at the out of africa migration.
That split–among many others–established descendant lines which have evolved mostly in separation. So that, for example, if I am “black” I have a very small chance of having Neandertal introgression, or MCPH1 haplogroup D variant. If I self-define as “white,” the odds that I have both of those increases remarkably.
At an individual level? Meh, particularly where recent migrations have produced higher odds of admixture.
At a group average level? there is plenty of scientific validity to the idea that gene pool average frequencies vary quite remarkably even for groups so broad as a self-defined association with “race.” And there is fabulously good evidence why this is so when one looks at the history of human migrations over the planet.
At issue here is the play of genes, not word play about defining “race.”
That’s what’s at play this decade, sure, after the phrenology has been disproven. Next I expect there to be some quantum proof that white people are smarter, and after that it’ll be nanobot racism.
Much of this is false (or twisted around). They used “blood group loci”, which is a legitimate, though older, genetic marker used for ancestry determination.
Yes – among black students, there was no correlation between African ancestry and test scores.
No, you’ll just dismiss it, as you have many times before. You’ll dismiss a good study, using good (if old) methodology, because it conflicts with your insistence that black people are inherently intellectually inferior on average.
If no such study is repeated, then it certainly won’t be for these reasons. It will be because your side, the “blacks are inherently inferior for intelligence on average” side, lacks the courage and true scientific curiosity to actually conduct what would amount to a relatively cheap and easy study that could provide good data.
There’s no good excuse. There’s no conspiracy against good science. No good and decent scientists who have been driven to the poorhouse for doing good science on race and intelligence. Most scientists don’t secretly agree with you. Black people really might actually be inherently intellectually equal. They really might not be inferior. The slavery-justifiers of the 19th century really might have been wrong on the science.
You have no idea what actual scientists think. I’m sure it makes you feel better about your belief in the average intellectual inferiority of black people to pretend that everyone secretly agrees with you, but these childish hopes don’t actually translate to reality.
There’s nothing special about outcomes now. There’s no reason to believe that outcomes now are based on some special natural genetic hierarchy, with no influence from discrimination and other societal factors, while outcomes of the past were influenced by society, discrimination, and the like.
Uh, who claims that Indians are particularly smart? (Other than Chief Pedant with his ridiculous ‘India has a nuclear weapon’ argument).
Most of the people I know who believe in race & IQ stuff also believe that Indians are pretty low intelligence. (I know, Richard Lynn has some terrible methodology, but in this case his estimate of an Indian IQ of 82 was based on other people’s work, and it’s backed up by the horrendous Indian performance on the international PISA test a few years ago.)
As for Chinese, that’s less clear, but my understanding is that Chinese-Americans generally score lower than Chinese in China.
First of all, I’ve never heard anyone describe non-African peoples as “black”. Not Andamanese, not Tamils, not Philippine Island Negritos, and not indigenous Australians. Maybe you have, but you’re using a different definition of the term than the one I’m familiar with.
Second, yes of course it’s true that people even within Africa have a huge amount of genetic variation. That doesn’t, itself, mean they can’t have some genetic traits in common. And more importantly, you can have a group defined in a non-biological way, that shares some biological characteristics.
Let’s take an example: white Christians (in the United States, at least) are less intelligent than white atheists. Obviously neither ‘Christian’ nor ‘atheist’ is a biological term, but I’d guess that the reason for the IQ difference between Christians and atheists is still probably genetic in origin. (i.e., less intelligent people tend to be more attracted to Christianity, more intelligent people are more attracted to atheism). The fact that religion is not a biologically meaningful term doesn’t mean that, on average, people in one religion may not be drawn from a somewhat different gene pool than another. Likewise, East Germans prior to reunification were less intelligent than West Germans. There are a few different explanations for that, but one of them is that gene pools were different: smarter people in the east had been migrating to the more developed and prosperous west for centuries, and that picked up following the Soviet invasion.
Again, I have no opinion on this particular race & IQ question, and iiandiii, at least for the present, has shown some evidence that tips the scales somewhat against the genetic explanation. But I don’t think arguing with the definition of ‘race’ is really a good argument, because even if race was an arbitrary social construct, like religion or nationality, gene pools could still differ.
Really? I’ve heard plenty of people (including Crocodile Dundee) refer to Australian Aboriginals as “blacks”. Not sure about the other groups.
Along with that diversity comes some non-intuitive genetic relationships – some random ethnic group in, say, northern Kenya is very likely to be genetically much more closely related to Middle-Easterners and Europeans (and possibly all non-Africans) than they are to certain far-flung African ethnic groups (like the Khoi-San). So there’s no biological way, in terms of common ancestry and genetic heritage, to include them both in a group that doesn’t include many or all non-African groups.
Argument from personal ignorance is no argument at all. It happens all the time. Which racial group’s males are colloquially described as “blackfellas”?
Not that I give a toss if your personal definition of “Black” is the same as “Sub-saharan African” - it’d be wrong (Khoi-san ain’t black), but I don’t care.
If you’re talking about international tests, there are some significant confounding politics. The US puts significant attention into making sure tests are conducted equitably, representing people across the country of various races and socioeconomic statuses, rural and suburban and urban alike. To the extent that there’s a political motive, complaining about the state of education in our country is a decades-old pastime of politicians. China, by contrast, has a strong drive to showcase their educational system, and consequently tends to conduct the tests in the best-run capital districts, neglecting rural districts that are unlikely to perform as well. Take China’s results in such tests with a grain of salt.
If you are suggesting that self-identified blacks outside of africa are much more likely to have genetic makeup that includes out of africa (eurasian, e.g.) genes, I completely agree.
In the US, it’s estimated that an average admixture for self-identified blacks is probably around 20% of genes from recent eurasian ancestry. Self-identified whites have a smaller percentage of sub-saharan ancestry.
This is not enough to change average gene pools, though.
I do not understand your claim that self-identified groupings have “jack” to do with genetics at the level of an average pool of genes, despite the fact that this may be true for a given individual.
Is it the case that you think there are not average gene frequency differences among blacks and whites even in the US that are a consequence of historic migration and evolution patterns? That, for example, you think it’s just as likely for a self identified black to have the haplogroup D MCPH1 gene, or a Neandertal component reaching 1% or more?
Comments on this study? “Genetic cluster analysis of the microsatellite markers produced four major clusters, which showed near-perfect correspondence with the four self-reported race/ethnicity categories. Of 3,636 subjects of varying race/ethnicity, only 5 (0.14%) showed genetic cluster membership different from their self-identified race/ethnicity. On the other hand, we detected only modest genetic differentiation between different current geographic locales within each race/ethnicity group. Thus, ancient geographic ancestry, which is highly correlated with self-identified race/ethnicity—as opposed to current residence—is the major determinant of genetic structure in the U.S. population.”
Since this is simply wordsmithing, I have no particular quarrel with it, and of course it’s used all the time when we talk about genes.
The typical listener leaves reassured about the wrong thing. They get the idea that, if race is a social construct, there must be no such thing as different average gene pools.
They leave reassured that genes don’t drive the average differences among self-identified race groups, and that is a completely wrong conclusion.
Average gene frequencies vary by self-identified race groups. Since genes drive outcomes, those average differences in genes drive average differences in outcomes.
Further, there is very good science suggesting a broad branching of human gene pools into an out of africa+descendants branch, and a sub-saharan+descendants branch. It’s a pretty crude division, but it is enough to create two different average gene pools. Because self-identification with “black” aligns one into one of those pools, we can expect that where there are average gene differences, we observe average outcome differences. In medicine and physiology where the differences tend not to be quite so sensitive, many many different outcomes have been observed based on average genetic differences in those self-identified clumpings.
Groupings can be arbitrary and not “scientifically definable,” but that doesn’t mean observed differences are not therefore genetic.
I could create a totally self-defined grouping of “tall” and “short.” The average outcome difference between those two groups for height would be because of genes, even without a scientifically definable definition for tall or short.
Just because they exist as social constructs does not mean that there aren’t genes that group people. I’ll tell you what, we both go stand at a NYC subway turnstile. We each give each other $100 for each person we correctly identify as Black, as it relates to this discussion. Since, according to you race doesn’t exist except as a social construct, you are blindfolded and simply get to choose people randomly as they pass us. Me? I get to choose people who look to be of this non-existent Black race. According to your position, we should both do equally well. So, I’ll tell you what, I’ll give you $125 for each correct “guess” and you just give me $100. You should clean up. When wold you like to start?
There are genes that group people, but the “black” group is not grouped by genes. Sure, you might do better than a random selection, but you’d probably surprised how many people you picked as “black” that were much more closely related to various white populations than African populations. In all likelihood, you’d be picking many people with big, big chunks of non-African ancestry, and probably some with very little or even zero African ancestry.
The point of this distinction is that it’s very hard, if not impossible, to craft some genetic evolutionary scenario that just happens to more strongly affect/afflict people who are in the sociological group called “black people”, since so many “black people” are actually a lot more closely related, genetically, to white people (or others), than they are to various far-flung representatives of the sociological grouping of “black people”.
With this in mind, in addition to the actual experimental data that refutes the genetic explanation for the test-score gap, it seems incredibly pre-mature to make a conclusion about the genes for high and low intelligence when we have virtually no idea which genes are responsible for these characteristics, much less in which populations they are most prevalent.
