Inherent genetic intelligence (whatever it may be) may vary by race/ethnicity/population (the “can”). Considering the experimental evidence against this assertion, and the complete lack of genetic evidence for this assertion, I see no reason to accept it as true or likely at all. In fact, considering the evidence against it, I see the assertion that black people have inferior genes for intelligence on average as far, far less likely than explanations based on “nurture” (society, parenting, etc.).
What “race” does epicanthic folds align with – unless you define the race as “people with epicanthic folds”? Are the San and Japanese really the same race?
JFC!!! Look at the list of sprinters. Look at all the speed positions in football. Compare the number of people with black skin there with the general populations. You say you want data. But when it is presented to you the size of a billboard you try to wiggle away from it. No one is saying that black skin causes greater A or less B, only that there seems to be a strong correlation in the case of spring tin, and a weak correlation when it comes to innate intelligence, as is suggested by testing. Hell it could very well be that to be really fast you need a black skin gene and some other gene that isn’t so easily seen. But to deny the correlation is just asinine.
It’s becoming increasingly evident that you and Dibble are too emotionally vested in the outcome to have a reasonable debate. ::shrug::
Most of this doesn’t conflict with my post. I recognize the disparities and the correlations – the question is what is the best explanation? The existence of these disparities and correlations tells us nothing about their cause. Of course these correlations exist – they just tell us nothing about genetics.
That’s why your turnstile hypothetical is so pointless – all it does is recognize an appearance-based correlation. It tells us nothing about the reason behind that correlation.
I’m emotionally invested in two things, relating to these topics – calling out racist claims (like ‘black people are inherently genetically inferior in intelligence on average’) – and calling out bad science (like making assertions about the genes for intelligence in various populations with no data about which genes one is talking about, much less their relative prevalence, or making judgments about intelligence based on who has nuclear weapons).
I haven’t heard you make racist claims in this thread (or other threads, I don’t think), and I don’t recall you defending any particularly egregious science – our only disagreement seems to be that you don’t think I’ve left enough doubt or something that maybe genes are involved. I don’t think such a disagreement is really worth discussing – I’m not close to certain about any explanation for various disparities, including the test-score disparity… I just make it a point to strongly refute the extremely poor science and conclusions that the “blacks are dumber” crowd continues to repeat ad nauseam. And it doesn’t help that they repeatedly make racist claims.
Nope. But they certainly occur in much greater percentages in one particular non-Asian traditional “race” than they do in the Asian “race” as a whole.
Seriously, man, we’ve done epicanthic folds before. They’re a trait from my back yard. Find a new schtick.
As mentioned previously, this is a Finagle Factor - the correlation “might” be due to something untestable.
And there might be invisible birds flying over your head.
Right - apart from telling where someone is descended from, it doesn’t tell us anything. Likewise, your address doesn’t tell much about where you live.
Regards,
Shodan
Ironic that you bray this to a man who might have non-zero Khoisan ancestry with nary a tinge of awareness.
You are kind of all over the place here…
It shouldn’t take any generations at all to make what happened to gramps irrelevant for grandboy. If grandboy’s parents are wealthy and grandboy still underperforms academically to poverty boy, then ten thousand years of ancestry are irrelevant as SES explanations. In point of fact, for every group in every system except blacks, ancestry beyond parents is irrelevant, and the pattern is stubbornly persistent across the world, whether or not a history of race-specific oppression exists.
These are not a “few data points.” These are tens of thousands of data points, and repeated daily year after year. It doesn’t matter if it’s the SAT, the LSAT, the MCAT or the Connecticut firefighter exam for promotion. Same broad pattern.
The “nuclear weapons” point I made was that it’s hard to paint an entire country as dumb if they have internal skills to let them develop nuclear weapons. (And for India, there are many more markers than just nukes.) I’ll stick with that assertion. Lack of nuclear weapons does not mean a country is dumber, so I did not use it as a relative indicator of anything.
However if you are interested in advancing some of the markers you feel are significant indicators for the overall intellect of african-majority countries, have at it. I would be happy to entertain them.
For the last time your 40 year old study which showed exactly the same overall pattern (about a standard deviation in black/white performance difference) and purported to put to rest genes by using blood groups and skin intensity to create an admixture proxy for which black kid is blacker genetically is silly. Sounds good when you summarize it so confidently, though. 
Maybe you can get by with repeatedly citing it and hope no one actually reads it.
It’s not just about what happened to previous generations, it’s what’s happening now. It’s about society in the present. This pattern is not “stubbornly persistent”, it’s barely a blip. A few decades in a few societies, with paltry efforts at best to correct it.
Same pattern over a tiny portion of time in a society that is still far from equal. It tells us nothing.
It’s hard to paint an entire country as dumb if they doctors or lawyers or engineers. It’s hard to paint an entire country as dumb. Nuclear weapons have nothing to do with this.
They are humans. They are not a separate population who are all more closely related to each other than to outsiders. There’s no way to group them all together by common group ancestry without including most or all non-African groups. There is specific experimental evidence that refutes the assertion that they are inherently less intelligent, genetically, on average.
They didn’t use “skin intensity” as a proxy for ancestry. You constantly describe this wrong – they used blood group loci. Those are genetic markers used for ancestry, even if they may be less precise then modern methods.
If you or others in the “blacks are dumber” crowd really cared to dispute this study, you or they could easily repeat it. It wouldn’t be hard, and it wouldn’t be expensive. But you and they haven’t. And it’s not because there’s a conspiracy to keep the truth out – it’s because the “blacks are dumber” crowd is either too lazy to actually do good science or not actually interested in doing good science.
You forgot an option: They are too dumb to understand science.
If this is true, are complaints about “racial profiling” false?
I thought that complaint was based on the idea that someone was treated differently just based on their appearance. But of course if there is no such thing as physical characteristics aligning with race, than this complaint is invalid.
You cannot be stopped for driving while black because the officer would have no idea whether or not you are black since there is no alignment of appearance with race.
Teachers and employers cannot treat you differently because you are black, since they would have no idea because your appearance does not align with your race.
The public history of discrimination toward blacks didn’t really exist because the public wouldn’t even know if someone was black since these appearance characteristics don’t align with a self-identified race category…
Am I understanding you point correctly?
No one is going to do a study looking at genes, admixture and intelligence. It is way too inflammatory a topic to touch. If you want to cling to a belief that this is a doable grant funding in the modern world, have at it.
I understand there may be variables beyond ancestry. I’m asking you to lose grampa’s situation as a reason for why a black child underperforms poor white and asian peers when Dad is wealthy.
I won’t keep beating up your 40 year old study because you and I are probably the only ones who have read it. I’m not sure you read it carefully enough if you think the authors did not use skin color as part of their crazy ass approach to admixture, who was blackest, and why blacker blacks could be compared with whiter blacks using their odds coefficient to explain why admixture rules out genes even though in their own study the exact same gap occurs between black and white kids:
"Skin Color Reflectance.
Both black and white twins were measured on skin reflectance. Three filters (red, blue, green) and three locations (forehead, medial aspect of the lower arm, andinside of the upper arm) combined to produce nine measures of skin color reflectance. Thereflectance values were so highly intercorrelated (r > 0.8) that only one, red filter-forehead, willbe reported here. The reliability of the skin color measures is reflected in the very high heritabil-ities, between 0.85 and 0.98."
Bullshit. It would be cheap to do, with modern methodology – any group (or even any individual) with a little desire and effort could get it done on their own. That no one seems interested (and folks like you keep making excuses) speaks volumes about how they really feel about good science. Good scientists manage to do good science even if a topic is controversial.
My hypothesized obstacles that exist for black students doesn’t rely on ‘gramps’ at all. If they exist, they exist for wealthy black kids (who might be better equipped and thus have a better chance of overcoming such obstacles) and poor black kids alike.
Skin color was looked at to see if the test scores correlated at all to skin color, and this was compared to any possible correlation to ancestry by blood group loci. Skin color was not used as a proxy for African ancestry – quite the opposite. It was looked at to see if a visible indicator of perceived ancestry is correlated to lower test scores – and it turns out that it is. So kids who are perceived as ‘more African’ (by having darker skin) score lower, but kids who are actually ‘more African’ (by genetic ancestry) do not. Which is exactly what we’d expect if it was societal factors like day-to-day discrimination, media representations, and the like, rather than genetic factors, that were to blame for the test score disparity.
Wait a minute. Didn’t someone already link to such a study in this or one of the [dozens of] other threads on this subject?
We’re talking about repeating the Scarr study. CP doesn’t like that study (which I’ve linked to multiple times), and I’m telling him that if he or anyone else doesn’t like that study because the methodology is older (it’s from the late 70s), then they should repeat the study with modern methods.
From what I understand, there are a number of people who are interested, and I suspect this kind of study will be done and public available within a few years.
If the study is invalid, then it doesn’t prove anything. If you want to prove anything, you should repeat the study with modern methods. You are trying to shift the burden of proof.
Regards,
Shodan
This is nonsense. I’ve seen papers get published all the time on at least equally controversial topics (including stuff that touches on racial and gender hot buttons). I’ll take a bet with you that something will get published on the topic within five years. (I have no clue what they may find).
The study is valid. There’s nothing wrong with the methodology. But if anyone doesn’t like it, they are free to repeat it. That they don’t shows that they’re either too lazy, too incompetent, or too uninterested to do good science themselves.
If so, I look forward to reading about the findings.