Or you could just state right here what your alternative plan is.
It wouldn’t happen to be “Ignore it, and it’ll go away”, would it? That has worked so well in the past.
There is some thought that by helping a sub-set of this disadvantaged population achieve college education, the following generation might see these disadvantages alleviated. I believe the top indicator of future success is still the level of success achieved by parents.
Some people underestimate the value of a network of community members that are all college educated with steady paying jobs. By building up such a network in the black community, or among women, the thought is that across generations the discrepancies we see in high school performance will be reduced.
Is it the only fix? No. But liberals, in general, believe that it can be an effective tool at both promoting diversity and reducing the gaps seen in the performance of demographic groups.
I guess my point was lost. We vote people into office. Smart people. People who we expect to tackle tough legislation.
Not people to sit back and go “whoo boy, that’s tough, I’ll leave that for the next Schmo”
And yes, my opinion is that eventually racism will be gone but no I don’t think repealing any and all AA legislation would be the way to go. Some of it surely would be gone if left up to me though.
That isn’t an alternative plan-that’s just waving your arms and saying, “Let’s elect somebody and have them do, ummm…something.”
We’ve been through all of this elsewhere.
Let me start with the President’s children: What would prevent them from getting their smart genes from the black side of their family? Maybe the subsaharan genes that Michelle and Barack carry code for greater intelligence than any Eurasian genes that came through Ann Dunham. Don’t confuse an individual with a group average. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that if a group average is different, an individual can only be that average. The fact that men are taller–on average–than women, and that this is a biologically based difference does not mean I am taller than my wife.
It’s lovely that you think differences among races are nurturing only, but unfortunately there isn’t much evidence for that, however good it makes you feel to think so. Nature doesn’t have any intention of fairness, and the various gene pools represented among “races” reflect tens of thousands of years of separation. In some of those pools, certain genes have become amazingly pervasive in very short periods of time, suggesting a marked advantage.
Look up, for instance, the haplogroup D variant of MCPH1, which is in about 70% of some populations but absent in sub saharans. Look up, for instance, the putative presence of Neanderthal genes in the Eurasian genome but its absence in sub saharans. Look up, for instance, any number of phenotypic and physiologic differences (say; testosterone levels in males) for SIRE groups of whites versus blacks. It’s simply untenable to pretend there aren’t biological average differences, even at the crude level of race.
Of course, if you want to hold that nurturing accounts entirely for some differences, such as average measured intelligence, it would be more persuasive if you could show that normalizing those nurturing differences normalizes the measured performance differences. Until then, I’d say the evidence is not on your side. The example I have given you is looking at SAT scores against relative advantages for educational and income level of parents.
Finally, may I try to dissuade you from this sort of silliness: “…because someone’s skin is darker…” ?
Genes that code for skin color are not involved in performance differences, as far as I know.
Oh…on the Asian front: I believe that asians have a genetic superiority for many of the tests we use for intelligence.
No, two things keep racism alive. The first is inferior people who want to find a reason to blame other people for their own failures. The second is a culture that hands them race as a reason.
We may not be able to do much about the first one - there are always going to be people looking to avoid blame for their own flaws. But we can eliminate the culture of racism - we can make racists afraid to say or do anything racist. They may still be racist in their hearts but they’ll have to keep it hidden and they won’t infect new people.
You have a better solution? I’ll admit affirmative action isn’t a perfect solution but it’s a partial solution. Better to fix as much of the problem as we can rather than just let it go.
Then what the heck are you talking about? Intelligence, as measured by standardized tests, is genetic?
Do you realize how silly that sounds?
Edit: To Chief Pendant
His dedication to this single talking point spans any and all (vaguely race-y) threads. Its really quite breathtaking.
If your theory that AA “promotes racism” is correct then the US of 2012 should be far more racist than the US of 1962.
That is quite obviously false.
Sigh…the term “hispanic” is a US government term. Not mine.
Either you have more trouble grasping easy concepts than I am willing to correct, or you are just pretending not to understand.
“Race,” as we commonly use the term, is a social construct, by definition. It has a strong correlation with genomes derived from ancestral populations whose evolution is separated by tens of thousands of years from other populations. That evolution has caused marked differences in those genome pools to arise, and those differences create average phenotypically different outcomes based on those genes. Navin is a great example of an outlier in the self-description category. He is atypical, and for that reason he illustrates the concept of a social construct.
Because “race” is a self-identification, it’s ridiculous to talk about it as if were a rigidly defined biologic construct. It’s not. But when you are talking about group level averages, it’s easy to show average biologic differences because they are easily measured. Google “creatine kinase reference level by race” and educate yourself a bit. And stop wasting time confusing group level averages with pictures of individuals. If I’m a midget in a tall family, my family group average might still be above normal.
Yes, April. The maximum potential for an individual’s intelligence, as measured by standardized tests, is genetic.
Chief Pedant
You are talking about phenotypes, not intelligence or educational success. Everything you say makes sense with genetically passed traits, but what proof is there that intelligence is more nature and not nurture, on average?
You could use individual examples but that would go against your whole premise that individuals do not represent a population average.
Then my parents must have adopted me.
:rolleyes:
Only if affirmative action were the sole factor, which it obviously isn’t.
Regards,
Shodan
Welcome back, bucky! By the way, you forgot to answer the question in post #19.
So then why did you so stupidly insist that even if Navin Johnson “self-identifies as black” it’s irrelevant because he’s “biologically white”.
Now since you think “Hispanics” are a race, then please explain how one can be “biologically Hispanic”.
Since the US government has not traditionally classified Hispanics as a “race” this is a remarkably ignorant statement to make.
Since you’ve claimed to be a scientist involved with admissions at universities, I would have assumed you were familiar with how Hispanics have traditionally been classified as whites by the US government.
That’s why Mexican immigrants could become naturalized citizens when Chinese, Jamaican, and Philipino immigrants couldn’t. That’s also why Mexican Americans served in “white” units in WWII, and could marry white women in California and Texas when blacks and Asians couldn’t.
Hispanics aren’t a “race”. They’re a nationality.
Oh, good. Another scientific racism thread.
You’re providing a fix for the specific individuals who are getting into, say, a good university when otherwise they wouldn’t have. I don’t have my hands on it at the moment, but there have been recent studies showing that future success is correlated with getting through a good university, regardless of whether your qualifications were as good as everyone else when you were admitted.
Navin Johnson is an exception to the general rule that self identification tends to follow ancestral gene pools. I might add that Navin is fictional, and the fact that his self identification is so far off base–he follows a social construct of “black” but his ancestral population belongs to the “white” self-identifiers–is part of the comedic thrust.
I don’t actually give a crap about trying to classify Hispanics, other than making sure that we preserve race (and ethnic) based AA so that we continue to have some proportional representation for groups that would otherwise be non-competetive, and therefore not represented, if all we took into account was opportunity.
The evidence that intelligence (which is a phenotypic trait) is genetically influenced is that normalizing nurture does not normalize intelligence–at least, it does not normalize performance on quantitative evaluations.
For example, if one studies how children raised within similar–or even advantageous-toward-black–environments do, the rank order of various SIRE groups is remarkably consistent. As I mentioned above, you can correct for parental education and parental income, and wealthy black children from educated parents still underperform poor white kids with undereducated parents. This is a pretty significant blow to the idea that the problem is opportunity.
You can also show that the gene pools from which these groups draw are markedly different, and that many ordinary physiologic differences exist in those SIRE groups, on average.
Whether or not those two things constitute “proof” is a matter of much debate on this board.
I certainly find it easier to believe that there are differences. Turn on the TV to the NBA (why, hello, YWTF!) and talk yourself into lazy unmotivated white children who just couldn’t find the inclination or facilities to practice until their NBA dreams were realized, and who dropped out of the basketball pathway to sell cars instead.