…and that’s the point.
Motives don’t have a thing to do with facts.
You might as well ascribe a motive to mother nature, attacking her refusal to dole out gene variants indiscriminately.
Then you can sit back and enjoy a pithy little victory.
But, alas, those damn mods don’t seem to think attacking a motive has much to do with actual debate. :mad:
It was a (side) question specifically about motivation, I answered it. That’s all I’m saying outside the Pit.
I see someone else wants to join a thread late w/ words of regurgitated wisdom that have been covered upthread.
I have no idea what “americans” mean by “race.” There may be polls somewhere.
The debate here (at least by me) is using a broad division of sub-saharan and non-african gene pools, and you can read more about that on your own, or upthread.
If you have a serious interest in catching up, I suggest beginning with reading about the human migration out of africa 65kya, introgression of Neandertal genome into the non-african pool, and perhaps some of the charts showing how modern lineages have descended from their ancestral coalescent pools. All of this might help you understand the idea of an “average” gene pool for sub-saharans and non-africans, and why population geneticists commonly refer to those two pools (see upthread again).
Some links and notes upthread may help you as you start your reading.
Just to be clear, I’m interested in facts about the topic at hand, not irrelevant recreational indulgences.
That’s nice, but you weren’t the one who asked the question, or that I directed my answer to.
I do understand what you believe.
I am wondering what barrier/obstacle exists such that a black student from a family with a $200,000 income turns in, on average, an SAT score 149 points lower than his peers; barely on par with the average score from a white kid with a family income of $20-40,000.
The “unequal society” theme falls apart a bit here, does it not? What is it that happens in those classes? What is it that happens to that kid at home?
As I said, I get the buzzwords. I don’t get the mechanism. Whatever societal profound inequality there is was obviously overcome by these highly successful parents, but now jumps a generation and the kids are back at square one? You think the kid is unable to perform on par in school due to this “unequal society” despite having the opportunity afforded by parents making $200K/yr? And only black kids? Not south or east asians? And only for school? Not basketball? Not sprinting? :dubious:
What happens, exactly? The teacher says, “I’m gonna single out this black kid for failure.”? His peers say, “Let’s ridicule him into not trying.”? His parents say, “Hey; just coast on our money. School is unimportant.”? The coach says, “Hey kid; basketball is your ticket to success; not college.”)
What is it that travel gnome says? “Wake up and smell the roses!” 
No, the “unequal society” doesn’t fall apart here. It didn’t fall apart when (the very rare) rich black kids may have scored lower on tests 150 years ago, it didn’t when they did 100 years ago, it didn’t 50 years ago, and it doesn’t now. The same forces that made it harder to achieve while black then still exist, in varying and mostly lesser, but still significant degrees, now.
Teachers might treat him or her differently. He/she might see him/herself differently due to societal depictions and expectations. Treatment in day-to-day life might be different, including by police and other authority figures. Media portrayals are different. There are many, many things that might be different.
I don’t get this “skips a generation” stuff you’ve repeated. There’s no skipping a generation – the obstacles may have existed for everyone… and some overcome them, and some overcome them only partially, some perform well but not as well as they otherwise would have, and some are unable to overcome the obstacles. At the same time, some poor parents happen to have kids who do great. There’s no generation-skipping.
(again) it’s not that he’s “unable to perform on par”… he just might score lower (or might not). And yes, black people have been uniquely oppressed and brutalized in American history (only Native Americans have experienced, on average, anything close in America). Media and society have placed black people in certain roles in American history, and through most or all of it “intellectual achievement” was not considered by the media and society as compatible with “black”, while athletic (or entertainment) achievement was.
Much of it is very likely subtle and unintentional. A teacher, whether white or black, might unconsciously feel that the black students are less capable, and more of a discipline problem, and unconsciously acts on those feelings. Peers, whether white or black, might unconsciously assume that their black peers are less intelligent and more athletic. Coaches, whether white or black, may unconsciously steer the black kids into certain athletic roles. Individual students, whether white or black, may unconsciously absorb these interactions and media depictions, and are influenced to believe they are more or less intelligent, and more or less athletic, and more or less of a trouble-maker, then their peers.
All of these could have very significant effects on student performance. To take an extreme example – if a kid is told every day “you’re dumb but you’ll be a great basketball player”, he’ll put a lot less effort into schoolwork and test-taking and a lot more into playing ball.
Yes, wake up. Discrimination and oppression are still very significant forces in our society. Black people really are treated differently in America.
Is the thinking here that wealth suddenly makes Black people less Black in the eyes of society and all the attitude is suddenly positive?
Or that wealth for Blacks is mostly acquired by overcoming societal oppression through cultural change rather than, say, sidestepping it in a way that has no cultural changes i.e. not by becoming middle class in values.
I mean, I’ve watched Cribs, none of those houses I’ve seen have a library, even when they have 8-car garages and a movie theatre… that’s got to be skewing the figures for wealthy Blacks away from the Cosby/Fresh Prince model towards an MTV one.
Were you crying when you wrote that? I did read the thread, of course. Your arguments seem to be that because we can find a difference in academic performance between more visibly African American pupils, and less visibly African American ones, and because some traits are genetic, this difference must be genetic.
And that there is a huge difference in genetics between Sub-Saharans and the rest of mankind. Which somehow ignores the fact that there are far larger differences within the Sub-Saharan group. the rest of mankind is basically an African branch, with other African branches further away. Also, you are fascinated with Neanderthal ingression. (not that I blame you there.)
What I haven’t seen is good evidence that there exists genetic traits for intelligence which are measurably different between populations, nor why this unproven difference has chosen to manifest only between more and less African pupils in specifically the US. Coincidentally, a country with a considerable racial fault-line between its black-non black populations. (Someone pointed out that most other Non-WASP people eventually gets absorbed into the general American culture. Irish, Scandinavians, Italians, Asians…only black people remain apart)
I’d agree this thread is a bit parochial. America is a racist cesspool, everyone knows that. Though some black people do alright. So black people should be succeeding even more in less racist societies, right? Like uh…parts of Western Europe? Parts of Latin America, maybe Brazil (though it’s still pretty racist from what I understand)? How about Canada? They have about a million black people, and people hold it up as a melting pot of harmony and rainbows. Better or worse than America?
(emphasis mine)
More than open person has characterized CP’s position this way. It’s not the impression I get, but I thought I’d highlight this and ask him.
CP:
Must be?
Is likely that?
May be?
The genetic argument as the answer to the OP’s question can be summarized as follows:
Perhaps we can agree that both nurture and nature drive a maximum potential superimposed upon a genetic foundation. I would be a better sprinter with maximum nurture; I could not be nurtured into Usain Bolt’s archrival.
If we turn to the OP’s question, and try to decide if the outcome gap is nurture or nature, the very first question should be whether or not we have two reasonably separate average gene pools. WRT that question, I find items 3-6 very persuasive; assorted details above and elsewhere. We have average gene pools with recent ancestry separated by at least 65,000 years of evolution, and a couple hundred thousand more if you throw in the Neanderthals. These are average gene pools; the distinction is not black and white 
. But this average difference exists independent of arguments about specific genetic signals found in populations X, or total diversity, or anything else. Self-identified whites and self identified blacks in the US have different average gene pools, separated by tens of thousands of years of evolution. As you yourself noted, you can take some more specific lineages (you mention the !Kung) and find even greater amounts of separation.
Let us then turn to the nurturing argument, which rests on the notion that even very wealthy blacks, and black students with educated parents, have some sort of anti-educational driver(s) which prevents them from performing on par, on average, with white and asian peers.
Until I see some persuasive data about exactly what that might be, I hold that an average genetic difference is a much more likely explanation.
We see average differences in these two populations for all sorts of traits (see upthread for examples). We see average outcome differences manifested in non-neurophysiological areas such as power sprinting sports. We see average outcome differences for physiologic measurements such as menarche or sodium handling or creatine kinase or bone density…in every area these outcomes are a combination of nurture and nature, but in general the average difference persists where nurture is reasonably normalized.
I hold that comparing a wealthy cohort of blacks with a poor cohort of whites or asians reasonably normalizes for the sort of nurturing variables involved with academic performance if large groups are studied.
Finally, I note that beyond the US borders, the general pattern of rank order for academic performance does not seem to be violated. I don’t see other countries and societies and political histories with completely opposite outcomes. I don’t see a CERN scientist meeting with a huge (or even representative) proportion of self-identified blacks. I don’t see an Olympics where self-identified white and asian sprinters have regained the glory they ceded when the Olympics became inclusive of all groups.
It isn’t that I think self-identified populations are rigidly definable by genetic ancestry. We are talking averages. It isn’t that I think there is no diversity within a population such that all X invariably outperforms all Y. We are talking averages. It isn’t that I think no nurturing variables exist such that individual X must have had absolutely equivalent nurturing. We are talking averages.
But given the marked and persistent observed outcome gaps for things such as academic performance (within paradigms largely developed by one group and not the other, as an aside) and sports performance (within sports equally attractive to both groups), I find a genetic explanation for average differences very persuasive.
I predict ongoing failure at trying to eliminate these gap, in the US and elsewhere, until such time as underlying gene pools no longer represent such a long evolutionary average distance.
Of course, it would fabulous fun to see if you could take the !Kung and see if you could get Professor Higgins to have some of them rise to the top tier of MIT. Unfortunately, science does not permit us to indulge ourselves in those kinds of experiments. So perhaps, as iiandyiiii suggests, until we work out the exact genes, we are left with deciding how persuasive an argument it is that a wealthy and privileged black student is unable to learn on par, on average, with any cohort but poor whites and asians, because of some sort of pervasive nurturing disadvantage for which that incredible opportunity enhancement is insufficient boost.
What’s so special about now? Would you argue this was the case in 1850 – that the children of (the tiny number of) wealthy blacks had equal opportunity to succeed? How about 1900, or 1950? If not then, then why now? Why isn’t it possible that the same things that made it more difficult for black people to succeed in the past, and even in the recent past, might still exist to varying degrees?
As I’ve said many times, nurture has not been “reasonably normalized” in this case. It’s reasonable to believe that the same non-SES factors that have affected the achievement opportunities of black people for hundreds of years may exist, to lesser but still significant degrees, today.
I strongly disagree, for the reasons stated above.
Science does permit you (or other proponents of the genetic explanation hypothesis) to recreate the Scarr study with modern methods, but you just give excuses. Your lack of curiosity and interest in this, to me, demonstrates that you aren’t really curious about answering these questions with facts.
More weird usage of “unable to learn on par” – this time for a single black student. I don’t get it – you talk about averages, and say that you’re just speaking of gene pools and not individuals, and then you assert that a single “wealthy and privileged black student is unable to learn on par”.
I’ll point it out again. Many black students, wealthy or not, are able to “perform on par” with anyone. But there may still exist obstacles which make it more difficult for black students, regardless of wealth, to succeed.
But considering the history of the US, and ongoing institutional discrimination (like that pointed out in the Ferguson PD report), and other obstacles that serve as challenges to the success and achievement of black students through our history, I see no reason to believe that this outcome difference is any different than outcome differences of the past, when other varying groups were “on bottom”.
Native Americans and African Americans have, on average, the worst and lowest test scores and outcomes (crime, education, etc.) in the country. They are also the two groups that were, by far, treated most abominably by the American government and American society in our history. No other group has come close in the scale of the brutality and oppression – not Jews, Chinese immigrants, Hispanic immigrants, or any other group (in America). Are we to believe it’s just coincidence that the two groups that were treated by far the worst have the lowest scores and the worst outcomes on average? Without any data at all about the genes for high or low intelligence, much less their prevalence in different populations, isn’t it possible and even likely that those two facts are related?
Thank you for taking the time to address my points properly.
Agreed.
I’ll certainly take your word for it.
Well, this is getting into it a bit. Does a 25 % exchange of genes still allow us to call the gene pools separate? Remember, we are looking for a signal that does not seem to show up, or show up much less strongly, in less mixed gene pools out side the US.
Well. That is somewhat inaccurate.
I am not sure the inaccuracies are relevant to the issue though, but… First off, it is not a split between Europeans and Africans. All non sub-saharan populations were part of the split, not just Europeans. Basically adding a small split to the already extant splits in the African populations.
While most studies -not all- indicate that Neanderthal DNA is very slightly higher in Europeans, with Tuscans at the top, all extant populations contain some Neanderthal DNA.
Europeans have the highest fraction, with Asians having a very slightly smaller amount. Africans have far less Neanderthal DNA. However, within Africa there are also discernible variation. Populations in east Africa which have had considerable contact with Arab, Indian and other non-African populations, such as the Luhya, have somewhat less Neanderthal genes than more isolated west African population, such as the Yoruba. The highest amount of Neanderthal ingression have been found in reconstructions of the pre-neolithic Tunisian population in North Africa, which exceeds even European levels.
On an individual level, Otzi is still the champ, of course.
Nor is it the only ingression even we know of. We have evidence of one more, and strong indications of a third. Well, and some weak kindof a fourth, even if no-one saying it straight out yet.
This does not follow. If we see such an effect based on the small differences within the out-of-africa group, we should see much stronger differences in the in-Africa groups. However, I can go along with it for the sake of argument.
Agreed.
Well, no. First off, we need to look at what kind of genetics we are looking at. Its not just “genetics”. Cognitive function is indicated to be highly polygenic. It is also possible it is epigenetically mediated. I could probably make an argument that the latter is not improbable.
Well. First off, neanderthal ingression does not actually move the separating point back hundreds of thousands of years. It is in fact likely to be irrelevant, since neanderthal gene fractions appear to have dropped of precipitously in the last few thousand years, indicating that at least the European populations have been heading in the direction of African ones for some time.
Second, I am not at all convinced 3 - 3500 generations is enough to create cognitive differences, for reasons I’ll go into later. However, you’d need someone with more experience than me to judge.
I don’t agree. The genetic explanation seems speculative, resting on suppositions about gene pools and lacking actual evidence about the frequencies of genes known to affect cognitive function.
Whereas the nurturing argument is observed in action everytime some black kid gets called an oreo for doing well in school.
All differences are not created equal. The problem here is that you are equating simple, often physiological issues with more complex neurological ones. Sprinting performance can be affected by such simple things as leg length. We cannot just make the leap from saying that since this trait is mediated by an gene that differs in frequency between populations, this other trait, mediated by a large group of genes is also likely have its genes frequencies differ in populations.
What is more, the notion presupposes different selective pressures for cognitive function.
It does not. The nurturing side of the argument presupposes a large cultural pressure on black youth to reject academics, on pain of loss of peer-status and on Asian youth to gain status through academic achievement. And can point to individual example of such pressure. The comparison you want to make yields the same result regardless of whether the reason is cultural or genetic.
Also, it does not account for the possibility of epigentically mediated function. It is quite possible that the gap can be entirely genetic with no difference in the gene pool in the genes mediating it.
Have a look at how some public health studies are conducted.
I don’t really see that. In the UK study, black and white groups performed much the same, with the mixed group outperforming both. In Scandinavia, which does a large amount of adoption from the third world, I don’t see black adoptees perform differently from their adopted peers. You know who underperfroms in Scandinavia? Refugees fellows from the out-of-africa group. Pakistanis, Albanians and Iraqis.
Also CERN is an European organization and shouldn’t be expected to have a larger percentage of black scientists than the general percentage of black people in Europe when they started their careers. Also, it is very expensive research, and will be dominated by countries which have money.
The thing is, the same laws of average affects the cultural argument. Not every kid is going to be influenced by the rapper or gangstas lifestyle. Just enough to create a gap.
Like I stated previously, you cannot equate the two. Cognitive ability seems to be far more complex. Also, I don’t think sports are culturally equally attractive to both groups. Historically, blacks (Mainly in the US, but also internationally) have had far fewer opportunities to succeed, with sports being one of the few vehicles available.
I would like to see evidence that this gap is not just a US thing. Comparisons across a number of cultures to eliminate cultural pressures and expectations. What is more, look at extant and historic populations that were or are socially disadvantaged, to see if a similar gap appears in spite of gene pools.
Pakistanis in Norway, Iraqis in Sweden, Chechens in Russia, Aboriginals in Australia, Inuit in Denmark, American Indians in Argentina etc.
But something quite similar has been done. Like I pointed out, a large number of children has been adopted from the third world in the last generation or so. Do we observe a significant gap in academia ability between the ones of subsaharan extraction and the ones from the out-of-Africa group? I have never heard of one.
Excellent post, Grim Render. It’s nice to see points addressed without people talking past one another.
I just wanted to make one point, in response to this:
[QUOTE=Grim Render]
[QUOTE=Chief Pendant]
I hold that comparing a wealthy cohort of blacks with a poor cohort of whites or asians reasonably normalizes for the sort of nurturing variables involved with academic performance if large groups are studied.
[/QUOTE]
It does not. The nurturing side of the argument presupposes a large cultural pressure on black youth to reject academics, on pain of loss of peer-status and on Asian youth to gain status through academic achievement. And can point to individual example of such pressure. The comparison you want to make yields the same result regardless of whether the reason is cultural or genetic.
[/QUOTE]
This applies to iiandyiiii’s response, as well. One thing I think you’re ignoring is that the comparison does not just seek to remove the cultural/nurture influences that might cause blacks to perform poorly. It also increases those cultural/nurture influences that cause sites to perform less well than they do when those things aren’t dialed up. So, I think your response makes sense in this scenario:
A) Remove some of the negative influences that cause blacks to perform well.
But probably is not as valid in this one:
B) Remove some of the negative influences that cause blacks to perform well AND increase the negative influences for the white group they are being compared to.
(Point of clarification for post 708, knowledge of median laws is not even necessary)
We may be able end this discussion on a conciliatory note by making a few observations from the statistical data given in the link that our good friend was kind enough to provide in post 706.
This sort of data is perhaps the most pertinent to this discussion. Talking about absolute numbers of students who achieve certain scores is rather misleading given the population disparity of the groups being compared. It’s also less relevant to blather about LSAT, Medical exam and other sorts of post-graduate exam statistics given the asymmetry caused by the differences in admission scores. The really interesting question is how the percentages of blacks that get certain (pre-college) SAT scores compare with those of whites (and other groups).
First, according to the data, 10.4% of all SAT test takers were African American. This is an interesting fact in itself. It is roughly equivalent to the black percentage of the US population as a whole. Given that about 65 percent of the US black population would fall below the ‘average iq’ cut-off of 90 (under the 85 IQ average assumption), as opposed to about 25 percent of the white population, and the disparity gets much worse if you take the average at 100, it’s a wonder that roughly the same percentage of blacks in the general population is reflected in those that take the SAT test.
Now the percentage of black test takers that scored at least 700 on the math SAT was just 0.7 percent, compared to 6.3 percent of white test takers. If we assume that these scores correlate perfectly with IQ, and that only about half the student population (for every group) actually takes the test, this would mean that a deviation IQ of about 128 for the white group would be equivalent to a deviation IQ of about 141 for the black group – with a difference of almost one standard deviation of the white one. To be specific, it brings the average IQ of African Americans to about 87. This number squares rather well with the starting assumption of 85. If we’re even more precise and consider that the black students were 10.4% of the test takers and not actually 12% (their true percentage of the population), then the average would fit even more neatly with the starting assumption of 85.
It’s interesting that African American SAT performance corresponds rather well to their IQ test performance. There’s generally a good correlation between the two tests -about 0.82 according to Wikipedia- but it’s obviously not perfect. The SAT has a more apparent knowledge component than IQ tests do (particularly those that attempt to measure ‘g’). People can (and do) study for it and take tutorials in order to improve their SAT scores. It is normally said that whites generally have a much greater advantage in test preparation than black students do in terms of facilities and opportunities available to them, course curriculums and so on. Furthermore, given what has been discussed so far about the problems in ‘black culture’ in the US, it’s safe to assume that they are also at a disadvantage when it comes to putting in given amounts of work in preparing for these tests. Therefore, given these factors, and the fact that blacks are already at a supposed disadvantage in intelligence alone, the SAT gap ought to be larger than it is. However, I’ve read that SAT preparation doesn’t actually improve scores by much and they generally tend to be fairly consistent. Nevertheless, this does suggest that IQ tests (even the so-called ‘g-loaded’ ones) really do have a strong knowledge (prior-learning) component to them that are just not as apparent and obvious to people (which partially explains the Flynn effect).
The LSAT statistics that were also provided on this thread seem to also suggest an equivalent difference of about one standard deviation below the white mean for African American students (given that the numbers of exam takers in each racial group were also proportional to that of the overall population).
The inference that I draw from all of this is that this is not a problem of ‘black culture’ (as has been talked about) nor is it necessarily a problem of income (as has already been pointed out ad nauseam) but rather a problem of expressed intelligence (given that intelligence is at least partially a genetic trait). Therefore the question is whether this significant gap in expressed intelligence (at least in certain areas) is the result of genes, as many people claim, or the result of something else.
There are already good reasons to believe that the IQ gaps between major groups of people (races or nationalities) that are often claimed are not actually a reflection of genetic differences in intelligence. The Flynn effect is one of the biggest reasons. Tests conducted by actual researchers (as opposed to hatchet men masquerading as researchers) have placed average IQ scores in sub-Saharan Africa at about 80. This is only a couple of points lower than the designated averages for people in many other parts of the world (like in Asia, the middles east, and some racial groups within America). Given how little sub-Saharan Africa has benefitted from the ‘Flynn effect’ compared to western countries, that serves as a good indication as to what this actual ‘g’ gap might really be.
Also, it has already been shown (in a rather ironic way) that there is a strong non-genetic factor that significantly depresses the academic performance of African American students that has nothing to do with income (or even culture). Essentially, the ‘blacks are naturally dumb’ crowd, in their over-exuberance to provide overwhelming evidence for their case, basically shot themselves in the foot by providing statistics showing black students with highly educated and successful parents generally doing badly academically, thereby destroying their own genetic argument. If they had just left it as “high income” or “non-poor” black students, it would have been okay. Needless to say, I suspect that this non-genetic factor is precisely the thing that I wrote about earlier. Of course, this doesn’t necessarily mean that there may not also be a genetic component that explains a part of the gap. It would depend on just how much this non-g factor negatively impacts the performance of these students that have been talked about. However, given the sort of language that has been used on this thread to describe the academic performance of extremely high-income black students in the US, it’s reasonable to suspect that these kids perform up to one full standard deviation less than what would normally be expected of them. In other words, this non-g factor probably accounts for almost the entire gap.
And that leads to another thing: Isn’t it a little curious that the IQ average of the most victimized and underachieving - and most conspicuous minority- group (who have longed served as the scapegoats of the society) happens to be exactly one standard deviation below the population average? Not 1.2 or 1.3 or 0.7; but 1 exactly. For Hispanics (which is a rather ambiguous category), I believe it’s around 0.5 sd below the mean; for Asians, about 0.4 above; Jews about 0.8 above, and so on. For African Americans it just so happens to be a neat one full deviation below. Of course, I’m not suggesting that the test scores are somehow set to make it that way. The scores (and their normalization) are exactly what they are. Rather, I think it is society that makes it that way. This is just another natural phenomenon (a particularly interesting one for that matter) that is a testament to the applicability and cogency of the Gaussian curve.
Suppose you were to take the very portion of the population that typically and essentially represents the ‘dumb’, less desirable half of the population. In other words, the segment of the population that essentially acts as the poster boy for the undesirable side of the population. This would have to be the very group of people whose IQs are low enough for them to play this representational role, but are not too small in number (and therefore inconspicuous). Obviously, functionally retarded members of the population wouldn’t work because their numbers are too small. The segment of the population that achieves this perfect balance (of both stupidity and prevalence) is precisely those that score exactly one standard deviation below the population average. Of course, they would have to be distinctly identifiable for this ‘poster child’ role to be effective. As long as this condition of easy identification is met, it doesn’t matter that they don’t all have the same amount of intelligence. All that matters is what their average intelligence is and that it is at precisely this perfect level.
African Americans, it seems, unwittingly play this exact role in US society. And it is not a choice that they have by any means at all. It is psychology determined, by subconscious means, through the depictions, dictates and directives of the dominant society. That’s not to say that similar phenomena do not occur in other societies in the world; no doubt they do. Human nature is, after all, extremely complex (as ‘dumb’ as people may be). Then again, of course, it could just be a coincidence.
The main problem with discussions like this is that many people (who are sort of privileged and lucky) find it very difficult to comprehend that there can be very real differences between a person’s actual (genetic) intelligence and the person’s manifested (or ‘expressed’) intelligence. Even if they are able to accept, and even appreciate, such a discrepancy for single individuals, they find it all the more impossible to comprehend that the very same thing can be true of entire groups of people who share a collective identity. Also, people have a tendency to exaggerate or overstate the role that intelligence plays in human behavior. It doesn’t play as much of a role as we like to think it does. Furthermore, the more psychologically troubled or unbalanced a person is, the less of a role intelligence would play in their behavior. That fact is readily understandable to most people. But what they have a harder time appreciating is that the same thing is extendable to people as collective entities. This is particularly true – this lack of willingness to extend individual phenomena to a group level- when they are negatively predisposed towards the group in question. They tend to grant such ‘excuses’ only to groups that they just happen to like (or are neutral towards).
Suppose you take the entire 400 year history of African Americans and shrink it to just 40 years, and then take their population to be just one person: a 40 year old guy. Map all the horrible things that characterized those centuries with respect to that group into the life of this one person, from birth to age 40. Now, would any reasonable person expect such a psychologically abused individual to be a paragon of mental and emotional health and stability? I don’t think so. Would you expect him to be radiating with manifestations of his talents and potentials? I don’t think so either. Some people have repeatedly mentioned the historical problems that blacks have faced in America. Their opponents have responded, in their usual dismissive attitude, that history doesn’t matter. And actually I happen to agree: history, for the most part, doesn’t really matter. What matters is what the situation is at the present time. What matters is present attitudes and social inclinations. Of course, the problem (and what is disingenuous about those responses) is that we are talking about a particular group that is constantly being held to its unpleasant history. They’re just not granted the luxury of being relieved of the stigmas attached to their history. So, when history relentlessly dictates the perception and treatment of a particular group, it is disingenuous to say that history doesn’t matter. It looks even more disingenuous to say that while pretending, for example, that proportional representation policies by universities somehow serves as proof that there is no racism in society.
I once linked, in a different topic a couple of months ago, to an experiment carried out by a woman known as Jane Elliot about four decades ago. Whatever one may think about the morality of the experiment, it is nonetheless worth reading for those who still have difficulty grasping the concept of social phenomena affecting cognitive performance. By the way, before someone strawmans what I’m saying, note that I take care to emphasize “at least in certain areas (of cognition)”. I personally don’t think areas like social intelligence (intelligence in social interactions) and creativity are affected by it. It’s more likely to be things that are more stereotypically associated with intellectual functioning like academic endeavor or ‘aptitude tests’.
Anyway, those are some of the factors that one ought to consider when trying to understand why a person (or persons) in such contexts can critically underperform in academic areas (or any other areas) with respect to their actual abilities even without suffering from any apparent learning disorders. Whatever one may think about such ‘factors’, the bottom line is that there is already good evidence that there is a non-genetic variable that significantly depresses the academic performance of a large group of students in the US of a particular race, whatever that variable may be - and it isn’t money. Therefore, if one is truly serious about “helping” such students, then instead of mockingly jabbering on about the need for institutions to drastically lower their standards to “help” those hopelessly deficient “non-members of our genetic pool”, much better time would be spent trying to genuinely understand the problems that such students may be dealing with that may be affecting them negatively in their academic life (or any other aspect of life) and doing something to try to put an end to such problems.
Wow…I’m overwhelmed.
Read the rest, above.
Underneath all this is rhetoric are the following facts.
On average:
Self-identified blacks who are highly privileged for opportunity score barely on par with poorly-privileged whites. This is not the case with whites and asians.
Even when you take the highest-achieving black subset and expose them to the highest opportunity for learning, they never catch up. IOW, the best of the best admitted to college will still be behind (Medicine exams, e.g.) after 8 years. This is not the case with whites and asians. As with basketball or sprinting, the same pattern exists across all systems when opportunity is normalized.
The ancestral gene pools for self-identified groups have been separated, on average, for about 65,000+ years
If I could figure out what your summary point is underneath a general wordsmithing that seems to conclude US blacks are profoundly crippled for academic performance because of a psychological burden assessed by their history, I would try to address it.
My summary point is this:
There is no psychological/cultural/non-genetic compelling reason to think that a highly privileged child should underperform a poorly privileged one. When this happens on a broad enough scale to create large pool averages, and the gene pools can be shown to be separated by tens of thousands of years, and substantial exceptions do not exist across any other national boundary, a genetic explanation for the difference is far more powerful.
The masses may find your rhetoric reassuring. If it doesn’t cripple race-based AA, I guess it’s pretty benign, and possibly helpful to those clinging to a hope that mother nature is a genetic egalitarian.
I personally find it incredibly insulting and demeaning toward blacks, and would never use it with my black friends or professional colleagues. Sort of like saying, “There, there; don’t worry about the kid’s scores. He has been psychologically abused by his ancestral history. It’s very unlikely he’ll ever succeed.”
LOL, but to be frank yours is an amazingly patronizing post, in my opinion.
Well, we don’t have an “exchange” of 25% of genes, do we? We have introgression of 25% into one pool from the other; a few percent in the other direction. However, either way, yep. That still leaves an average difference. I won’t insult you by suggesting you look up “average.”
I’m not sure I have the time or inclination to address everything all at once (it’s all been addressed elsewhere), so would you be willing to focus on this premise first ( and then we can work through the rest one by one)? The OP is asking a question about a fairly specific self-identified group: US blacks. And there is data at hand for that group wrt another self-identified group: US whites.
I hold that the gene pool for self-identified US blacks and self-identified US whites are two different average genetic pools, separated by 65,000 years.
Whether you find ancestral marker signal for either group anywhere else is utterly irrelevant; you are getting your arguments for “black is a biologic group” mixed up with “a self-identified US black has a different average gene pool than a self-identified US white.” Remember that these are the two cohorts about which the OP is asking.
The evidence they are two different average pools is as follows:
For recent ancestry, about 20% (you can have 25% if you like) of US black ancestry is european; about 80% west african. About 95+ % of US white genetic makeup is european.
The coalescence point for ancestral groups between modern lineages represented in west africans and europeans is about 65,000 years ago, at out of africa; roughly an L3/M-N splitting point if we use mtDNA lines.
Post out of africa, gene exchange between west african and european lines has been relatively limited.
Post out of africa, for european lines, there has been introgression of Neanderthal genes; perhaps 20% of the Neanderthal genome is still retained, with an average of 1-4% retention in european lineages. Those Neanderthal gene variants represent another 200,000+ years of separation. Persistence of a high number of Neanderthal variants in some areas of the non-african genome while other gene locations are devoid of them suggests Darwinian preservation for some variants, as other less advantageous variants decay. It will be some time before each Neanderthal variant is studied thoroughly, so the argument here is not they were a good deal for modern europeans; just that they represent a different gene pool.
Direct studies of certain gene variants showed marked frequency differences. For example, MCPH1 haplogroup D variant is far more penetrated into european (eurasian, actually) lines than west african lines. What this tells us, along with obvious average phenotypic appearance differences, is that gene frequencies vary, on average, between these two groups.
Direct studies of physiologic outcomes frequently show average differences. [Ethnic differences in tissue creatine kinase activity: an observational study - PubMed]Here, for example, but there are thousands and thousands of similar studies.
So, what say you?
Do we have two different average gene pools separated by 65,000-300,000+ years, or do we not, for US self-identified whites and blacks?
If they were separated, there wouldn’t be 25% admixture in any direction.
There are such compelling reasons, but you don’t like them. That would be fine, except that you just make excuses about actual good science that has attempted (and would potentially attempt, with another experiment) to test this.
Except the gene pools aren’t separate (the aforementioned 25% European admixture, plus any prior exchanges between Africa and the rest of the world), and the discrepancies vary in character around the world (in addition to the fact of rather paltry testing over most of the world, especially in Africa).
More “egalitarian” staw-man crap – no idea why you go back to this well (full of straw!) so often.
And more weird insistence that 19th century thinking would actually lead to stronger Affirmative Action! No thank you… I’m far from confident that those with 19th century views about black intelligence would be in favor of Affirmative Action.
I personally find your explanation offensive, insulting, and demeaning toward blacks, considering that you continually assert that they are inherently inferior on average in intellect. Your view about the intelligence of black people is the same as white supremacists’ (except in more flowery and scientific terms) throughout American history.
I’m sure you recognize that the feeling is likewise.