Patterico's Pontifications

11/30/2011

Yes, Andrew Sullivan is Sounding Kind of Racist, Too

Filed under: General — Aaron Worthing @ 8:02 pm



[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.  Or by Twitter @AaronWorthing.]

Apparently Andrew Sullivan is not new to the concept of crackpot theories.  Long before he went spelunking in Sarah Palin’s womb to explain the incongruous event of a woman over forty years old giving birth to a child with Down’s Syndrome (note: I am being sarcastic), he was exploring the racial differences in IQ.  Groan.

I admit I didn’t know that back The Bell Curve came out, it was Andrew Sullivan’s decision to give a cover story to an essay by one of the authors summarizing its findings.  Sullivan justified it by saying, “the notion that there might be resilient ethnic differences in intelligence is not, we believe, an inherently racist belief.  It’s an empirical hypothesis that can be examined.”

Well, first, actually yeah, that is kind of is racist.  The only question is really whether or not it is true.  And there is nothing wrong with a serious scientific inquiry into the subject.  We should never shrink away from a question because we are worried what the answer might be.  But The Bell Curve wasn’t that kind of serious inquiry.  It was plainly an attempt to dress up regular old racism with a scientific gloss, something bigots had been doing since eugenics was fashionable.

The Bell Curve of course is the book that asserted that black people, on average, had a lower intelligence than white people, or so that is what its authors claimed it proved.  What it actually proved, precisely understood, is far less useful: that the people considered by a myriad of persons to be “black” tended to have lower IQ scores than people considered “white.”  And when you state it like that, you start to see the hidden assumptions that completely undermine their analysis.

First, exactly who gets counted as a member of what race?  For instance our president is half black, half white.  So if he is in the group being measured, what do we write him down as?  Indeed, an ugly reality is that there is a great deal of “white blood” in most Americans descended from slaves and not all of that was the result of consensual unions.  Slave rape was a painful reality in plantation life.  So how on earth do you even hope to control for those factors?

Second, IQ test scores do not necessarily equal intelligence.  There are many kinds of intelligence that is in fact difficult to measure.  I believe, for instance, my parents are of roughly equal intelligence, but my mother is the classic “book smart” kind of person, while my father is the classic “people smart” kind.  Both kinds of intelligence are valuable, but only one is relatively easy to measure.

And there are accusations that there biases in the tests.  Don’t scoff, I have actually seen it myself.  In one IQ test I took I was asked at one point what the Koran was and answered it correctly.  Later in the same test, they asked me what the book of Genesis was and I answered it correctly.  So you see in that example I was asked a question of general knowledge about the holy book of Islam, but a specific question of the holy book of Christianity and Judaism.  If I happened to be Muslim, I would get no credit for my specific knowledge of the Koran, and I would be more likely to get the question about Genesis wrong (although arguably, it is well enough known in this culture that I suspect many Muslim Americans would know the answer anyway).  Clearly that question favors Christians and Jews over Muslims.  Cultural bias does exist in this context.

The clearest example to me that The Bell Curve was working toward a pre-determined conclusion instead of simply following the science where it led was in their treatment of a trans-racial adoption.  I made a study of the Bell Curve’s conclusion, although it has been a while, so I really dug into the data at the time.  In that study, the scientists tracked the IQ scores of black children adopted by white families and what they showed was fairly remarkable.  It showed that at first the black children had scores comparable to white children of like age, but then as time when on their IQ fell down to something more typical of black children raised by black parents.  And the amazing thing is that the authors of The Bell Curve read that as confirming their racial theories.  The black adoptees, they said, had their scores artificially raised by exposure to their white parents only to revert to the natural level of all black persons.  Even accepting that theory, that still requires you to believe that the IQ scores can be significantly affected by something other than good genes—a concession that undermines everything else they claim.  And further, the same data could be entirely explained by factors besides genes.  It could simply be the case that when they are younger the black adoptees are unaware of race and racism, and as they grow older they become aware of both and become discouraged.

And Sullivan gave a forum to that crap!

All of this is just a lead in to Rand Simberg stepping in today to defend Sullivan from charges of racism.  You see, Sullivan has decided to weigh in on the subject again (here, here, here and here—the Daily Beast must be so proud) and Gawker decided to translate choice lines from Sullivan’s post, here, and Simberg decided to step in and defend him, here, saying:

One wouldn’t have thought it possible, but I actually largely agree with Andrew Sullivan. The notion that intelligence is not heritable is ludicrous, and if it is, the notion that every “race” is going to be equivalent in that regard is equally so.

Well, Simberg’s very limited assertion is correct.  First, I am pretty sure the average anthropologist believes it is a “no brainer” that intelligence is inherited.  Intelligence—indeed specific kinds of intellectual talent—runs in families.  If intelligence was not inherited, then it would not be possible for the species to evolve into a more intelligent state.  The evolution of human intelligence (assuming you do not buy into a creationist theory—and I am not putting you down if you do) required individual humans to become smarter than others, to enjoy a competitive advantage in the struggle for survival because of that greater intelligence and most crucially, for that intelligence to be passed in some way down to their children.

And second, I am sure that however one defines race, the average IQ of each group doesn’t come down to being precisely equal to the 1/1,000,000,000 of an IQ point.  I am sure that if you had a good measure of intelligence and race, that you would find that one group edges out the others.  I likewise believe that more than likely the difference is insignificant and shifts depending on random variations of the current “crop” of children and the “crop” of elderly that had just passed on, so that one year white people might edge out black people and another black people might and so on.  It’s not precise mathematical equality but it is probably close, and indeed too close to provide you any guidance when deciding who to hire or admit to a law school.

But what Sullivan seems to be saying is a lot more than that mild and hard-to-dispute claim that Simberg assigns to him and really Gawker does a disservice to this discussion by resorting to crude caricatures that leave you having to believe that Gawker is being unfair.  They are, but Sullivan is wrong, too.  For instance, in the November 23 post I linked to above, Sullivan writes:

Two points: research is not about helping people; it’s about finding out stuff. And I have long opposed the political chilling of free inquiry into any area of legitimate curiosity or research. I’m not going to stop now.

First, Glen Reynolds, call your office.  I think we are seeing the higher education bubble right there.  Mind you, in his November 21 post, he relays a complaint that because of PC concerns there has been “an exodus of researchers away from the area, and a drying up of grant funding and research positions for researchers interested in IQ.”  The last two pieces of this complaint concern a failure to provide university support for research for its own sake regardless of its value to society.  The concept of “return on your investment” has no meaning to him.

But of course Sullivan is stalking a greater prey: affirmative action, writing in the November 23 post that

Secondly, I agree that there would be very little, if any, use for this data in our society, apart from the existence of affirmative action. But when public policy holds that all racial difference in, say, college degrees, are due to racism, a truth claim has already been made. So the p.c. egalitarians have made this a public and social issue by a statement of fact they subsequently do not want to see debated or challenged using the data. That’s an illiberal position, in my view.

So what he is really hoping for is that this strikes down affirmative action.  In this his obsession on race differences bears some resemblance to his Trig Trutherism.  In both cases you get the feeling that this isn’t really about the truth or falsity of the specific claim, but rather what damage it will do to something else—affirmative action in the case of The Bell Curve and the destruction of any chance of a Sarah Palin presidency in the case of Trig Trutherism.

But in this Sullivan gets things precisely backwards.  For instance, take law school admissions.  I don’t know hardly a lawyer alive who thinks that the LSAT (more or less the Law School equivalent of the SAT) is a good measure of aptitude for the profession.  And I say that as someone who scored very well on the exam: it measures abilities that have almost nothing to do with my job.  And yet opponents of affirmative action argue that we should use this flawed instrument that happens to result in racial disparities blindly.  Particularly when a state school uses a tool like this to deny people opportunities that happens to have a racial disparity in its results, the burden should rightly be on the state to show that the test really truly relates to the relevant abilities.  And I don’t know too many lawyers who could defend that test as a measure of the aptitude of lawyers with a straight face.

The logic puzzles section in particular seems to represent some pinhead’s idea of what legal reasoning is like, rather than what lawyers actually use most of the time.  Here’s an example of this kind of question:

A university library budget committee must reduce exactly five of eight areas of expenditure—G, L, M, N, P, R, S, and W—in accordance with the following conditions:  If both G and S are reduced, W is also reduced.  If N is reduced, neither R nor S is reduced.  If P is reduced, L is not reduced.  Of the three areas L, M, and R, exactly two are reduced.

Question 1

If both M and R are reduced, which one of the following is a pair of areas neither of which could be reduced?

(A) G, L

(B) G, N

(C) L, N

(D) L, P

(E) P, S

In analyzing statutes, case law, in arguing before courts, lawyers simply don’t think, don’t reason, this way.  It fits certain unsubtle stereotypes of legal thinking, but not the reality of it.  And denying the opportunity to enter the legal profession to a disproportionate number of racial minorities or what have you based on this P.O.S. test is just plain bad science.  That doesn’t mean using a crude tool to correct it like Affirmative Action is suddenly a good idea, but the choice doesn’t have to be limited to either 1) blindly accepting the perfection of the law school admissions process as it is, or 2) using crude racial tools to fix the problem.  There can be a third way.

Sullivan also digs himself in deeper in his November 28 post, writing:

No one is arguing that “that black people are dumber than white,” just that the distribution of IQ is slightly different among different racial populations, and these differences also hold true for all broad racial groups[.]

Um, no, when you argue that the real average intelligence of black people is lower white people, then, yes, you are arguing that black people are dumber than whites, especially when you argue that the difference justifies the dismantling of affirmative action.  Own it, Andrew.

And you see in that same post where the caricatures really do harm this debate.  Responding to the sarcastic hyperbole by Ta-Nehisi Coates that “[m]aybe the sterilizers and the slave-traders were wise beyond their years” Sullivan counters that “I don’t think any serious critic of my work could conjure up a defense of compulsory sterilization or slavery within it.”  No, Sullivan, what you can find is a lazy justification for things like a law school admissions process that is unscientific and has the net effect of disproportionately shutting out people of color from the legal profession.  It’s not slavery and sterilization, but it’s still wrong.  And the fact that Coates was over the top in his denunciation of you, doesn’t suddenly make you right.

On the bigger picture, I don’t think there is anything inherently wrong with exploring the relationship between race and IQ in a clinical, scientific matter.  I would for instance enjoy seing a lot of study into trying to explain racial achievement gaps and finding ways to bridge it without resorting to tools as crude and divisive as affirmative action.  But having watched these debates for a number of years, I have little confidence that such science can be done in such a dispassionate manner.

[Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]

80 Responses to “Yes, Andrew Sullivan is Sounding Kind of Racist, Too”

  1. The belief in the inherent superiority/inferiority of some races is by definition racist even if they think there’s a scientific basis for it.

    Gerald A (9d78e8)

  2. Gerald A:

    Would you also say that the belief that men are, on average, physically stronger than women is inherently sexist even if there’s a scientific basis for it?

    Counterfactual (6ca5c6)

  3. B-but he is a lefty he ain’t racist.

    By the way Herman Cain sexually harrased all of the women who say he did but Bill Clinton is is an innocent man right Ginger White?

    Dohbiden (ef98f0)

  4. Obviously Andrew Sullivan is a smart guy. He is an accomplished writer and editor. He has a loyal following. He gets paid scads of cash. He’s on TV! Well, at least he’s on TV that no one watches, but he’s on TV!

    Yet, he maintains ideas that are monumentally stupid.

    But, he’s smart! He is an accomplished writer and editor! He’s on TV! He’s gay and a conservative!

    Maybe, he’s a worthless tool, also. Maybe, Howell Raines made a right decision in his life. Just maybe.

    Ag80 (ec45d6)

  5. So Ginger White had an affair with a woman while supposedly seeing Cain?

    Dohbiden (ef98f0)

  6. The problem is that there’s an answer for why blacks score more poorly than whites. Most of us have heard it: the tests favor white (or Asian?) communication.

    This seems like bunk to me, but if you’re looking for a clinical analysis, it’s pretty clear that East Asians score much better than African Americans as a whole.

    BUT: you are not hiring all african americans or east asians when you have one applicant siting in that interview chair. You are not admitting the entire race when you’re reading their application to your school.

    And there are some extremely smart African Americans. They are hardly anomalies, either. There are a ton of extremely smart African Americans, however, one consequence of affirmative action is that many of these people are drawn to the more prestigious schools.

    Sure, you will still find some smart URMs at mid level schools, but the brilliant ones? Most of them are elsewhere.

    I suppose some people do not know or work with enough smart people to realize just how unreliable race is for evaluating them. But it’s true: a black person may be much smarter than an east asian person, or any other racial comparison you throw up there.

    Since there really is no instance where we can benefit from grouping people into race, it does seem pretty irrational to bother with this debate. Obviously, it’s also very insulting to blacks who are very smart, and again, there are many of these people.

    There are some very troubling cultural problems in the USA, but none troubles me as much as fatherlessness. I worry that this sort of factor also exaggerates the impression we get.

    How many Herman Cain like men are crunching numbers all over the country? I doubt 99% of them will ever make a headline. If you’re isolated from that, most of what you hear of blacks in the news are crimes, which are not caused by their skin color, but rather (in my politically incorrect opinion) the lack of a father figure.

    Anyway, I urge folks to never consider race as a reality when evaluating someone’s capabilities.

    Dustin (cb3719)

  7. So facts can be racist too?

    I always thought at the heart of racism is a mistaken belief in some generalizable negative about some other clan.

    If the belief is not incorrect, can be proven and is still factually a negative conclusion about the other clan — then it is not racist.

    But education levels correlate to IQ scores and in this case I would wipe my nose with IQ scores given the facts I have seen plenty of helpless geniuses.

    ODB (7b1f89)

  8. “Anyway, I urge folks to never consider race as a reality when evaluating someone’s capabilities.”

    Yeah, sort of. But fact is race does come with certain cultural norms and approaches to life and work that are not constructive and therefore make them of lower capabilities to whatever endeavor I am involved in.

    ODB (7b1f89)

  9. I always thought at the heart of racism is a mistaken belief in some generalizable negative about some other clan.

    I don’t think that’s really the definition.

    Racism is the view that race determines traits. If you think a black person is dumber than an asian person, that is racist, even if, statistically, whatever you can come up with.

    These people are individuals, anyway, so their race’s score in some overall contest is not an accurate indicator. It just varies too much in any grouping. It’s about as bad as evaluating intelligence based on height (which I would guess is also statistically justifiable to some extent)

    I would wipe my nose with IQ scores given the facts I have seen plenty of helpless geniuses.

    That’s true. IQ is seen as more important than it probably is, for most success, even in highly intellectual professions.

    Dustin (cb3719)

  10. #8 …. and that is to say that the tails of the distribution curve are fatter for some races versus others. Not that a certain race is “missing a fat tail” while the other has a huge one.
    .
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    Kind of like penis size analysis done some years back setting median size bigger for some then others even but the driver to the median result was a “fatter tail” for the other group.
    .
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    Anyway, that was fun.

    ODB (7b1f89)

  11. Counterfactual, would you say that an apple and an orange are inherently different, even though both are classified as being fruit that comes from flowering plants?

    Icy (4c3508)

  12. #9, Correlation versus causation.

    I am not saying black makes you a or b.

    I am saying there are certain traits blacks have in general which in general have consequences in how I view them.

    I can say the same crap of Irish, Germans, Indians, Japanese ……………..

    ODB (7b1f89)

  13. race does come with certain cultural norms and approaches to life and work

    You mean the Eminem lifestyle?

    There are plenty of people who have the norms and approaches you are referring to who aren’t black, and plenty of blacks who have not lived under those norms.

    Not that you’re wrong. There is a crisis of fatherlessness and many other behaviors. And I know that you could show this effects blacks to a higher fraction than it does the Chinese or whomever.

    But I don’t think there’s a good reason to just sum this up as ‘that stuff = black people’. I think you can just note these lifestyles are themselves the problem.

    When evaluating a candidate, it can be very difficult to suss out these details. This is why I think affirmative action should be abandoned, and applicants should always be interviewed.

    Dustin (cb3719)

  14. #13, It is human nature and sign of intelligence to categorize and judge. To me, a Wigger or Trailor Trash is a group that I have opinions of and many of them negative.

    Again, causation versus correlation. Not saying being born from the womb black makes you anything other than alive. Same as being born white or brown or yellow.

    It is how folks group themselves and those norms which I can see and judge for myself that leads me to make quick judgements.

    ODB (7b1f89)

  15. Cultural norms and approaches to life and work may affect the appearance and application of intelligence, but they have no effect on actual brain power.

    All humans are the same specie. Some humans may be smart and others not so much. Racial differences do not enter the equation. Culture can be an affect, but it is not a cause.

    Ag80 (ec45d6)

  16. I am saying there are certain traits blacks have in general which in general have consequences in how I view them.

    I’m not busting your chops here. I just disagree that the generalizing is a very accurate way to evaluate people.

    It may take a little more work to see of an individual is hard working and intelligent, but … just a little, really.

    I guess I also don’t see much reason to view people in this general sense. I don’t like this idea that Bob is black and Tom is white.

    They are both individuals. If Bob is a failure with terrible attitudes and habits, then shame on Bob, but JUST Bob. Not Bob’s neighbor who has a similar skin color.

    I honestly think, not from some PC school of being nice, but from my experiences in the world, that there are just too many smart and good black folks for this to make any sense.

    Dustin (cb3719)

  17. Dustin,

    I grew up poor and in the ghetto. I am white but ethnic. Trust me, generalizing keeps you alive.

    To speak of the beauty of individuals and taking the time to know them before drawing conclusions is Quadrangle talk IMHO.

    If that makes me racist, I could give a rats ass really. I will give others the chance to prove me wrong so long as they prove to me thru action I am.

    ODB (7b1f89)

  18. It is human nature and sign of intelligence to categorize and judge.

    Yep.

    To me, a Wigger or Trailor Trash is a group that I have opinions of and many of them negative.

    And again, I think you would be making a mistake. What if that couple with an old trailer, roasting their chicken on a grill outside, were brilliant post graduates who were simply frugal? True story (those are my parents and my proud roots).

    I think the term ‘wigger’ gets to the point. You don’t need to think in terms of black and white, and that’s why you’re regrouping the white people who are just like the black exemplar you’re generalizing as blacks. Instead of saying, ‘hey, there’s a white person who has a lot of bad attitudes about work and family, and hey, there’s a black person who does too’, you say ‘blacks act like that, and whites who do are basically blacks… aka wiggers’.

    The shame is that you probably don’t hear about the black scientists and inventors and engineers and judges. They are out there. Some are at the top of their professions. But they don’t make the news, and Hollywood is not likely to lionize real accomplishments these days either.

    So all you know of are the criminals. And yes, there are a lot of black criminals too. But what makes these people failures is not their race at all.

    Dustin (cb3719)

  19. Groups align themselves for a reason which has nothing to do with intelligence.

    Ag80 (ec45d6)

  20. ___________________________________________

    I don’t think there is anything inherently wrong with exploring the relationship between race and IQ in a clinical, scientific matter.

    I’m far more interested in how political biases — or gut reactions — help or hinder people. I know Bill Clinton (designated by some folks as “America’s first black president”—and described that way by them without malice, irony or insult) is reported to have very strong retention skills. For example, when meeting rather obscure people he hasn’t seen in years, Clinton is able to recall their names immediately or rather easily. But that form of intelligence is offset by his being, well, almost retarded when it comes to good judgment and personal control. IOW, his IQ is offset by his flaky leftist instincts.

    Surveys indicate that around 90-plus of black America is of the left, or has gut biases that embrace liberalism/liberals. That is far more interesting (and revealing) to me than anything related to the Bell Curve.

    BTW, some folks may theorize such a political bent is related to the unique and sorrowful history of black America. But that overlooks all the leftism in nations where black Americans have an ancestral connection and where the dynamics (and history) of those societies are very different from the ones associated with this country.

    Mark (411533)

  21. To speak of the beauty of individuals and taking the time to know them before drawing conclusions is Quadrangle talk IMHO.

    You’re talking about something at Harvard? I think I recall that from when I visited up there (tourist). The word Quadrangle always means Ft Sill Oklahoma to me.

    I grew up poor and in the ghetto.

    There is nothing irrational, in a bad neighborhood, about being very cautious about strangers. Though I don’t understand those who are very scared of black teens, but not white ones. Maybe it’s just something different in my brain, but I find suspicious guys in a bad neighborhood to be potential problems no matter what their race is. I knew a good friend who was scared of black people in bad neighborhoods to the point where she trembled at the sight of an old lady in Anacostia! Huge liberal, too.

    Dustin (cb3719)

  22. Cultural norms and approaches to life and work may affect the appearance and application of intelligence, but they have no effect on actual brain power.

    You are confusing causation with correlation. To me, saying being black makes you less intelligent than whites is racist. (CAUSATION) To me, say blacks, in general, have a lower IQ than whites is not racist. (CORRELATION)

    To determine causation, you would need to mix black with white in a variety of different combinations to find if causation exists.

    Mix White Smart with White Smart gives you???
    Mix White Dumb with White Smart gives you???
    Mix White Dumb with White Dumb gives you???
    Mix White Smart with Black Smart gives you???
    Mix White Smart with Black Dumb gives you???
    Mix White Dumb with Black Smart gives you???
    Mix White Dumb with Black Dumb gives you???
    Mix Black Smart with Black Smart gives you???
    Mix Black Smart with Black Dumb gives you????
    Mix Black Dumb with Black Dumb gives you???
    Add Male / Female to this.
    Get a decent size group to submit
    Then you probably need to add Make sure you use a big sample size and then normalize for education level and home environment.

    So, giant waste of time but if folks want to move beyond correlation to causation it can be done to some degree.

    ODB (7b1f89)

  23. Back when “The Bell Curve” came out, Charles Murray said in an interview that if there ever was scientific data to back up a claim of intelligence differences by race or ethnic group, that it would be ignored. No politician would allow it to be mentioned.

    #OccupyAnthonyWeinersShorts (d1c681)

  24. Dustin,

    I know plenty of blacks professionals with lots of degrees from very Ivy universities. My exposure to races and cultures probably is at the far right of the distribution curve. Don’t assume to much about what I am today versus what I was 40 years ago.

    Again, I know what racism is and it is not drawing a negative conclusion about a black kid walking into my office with an ear ring and tat coming out of his neck asking me for a job. Racism is a black kid coming into my office dressed properly with a quality resume who I dismiss because …. because.

    I have been on that end of the interview and I can sniff out a racist a mile away.

    ODB (7b1f89)

  25. I guess you missed the part where I said we are all the same specie, homo sapiens. I don’t think I’m confusing things at all.

    Humans are humans.

    Please, re-read what you just posted.

    Ag80 (ec45d6)

  26. And not only that Cains stamina was zapped by the chemotherapy treatment for cancer so how could he have an affair?

    Dohbiden (ef98f0)

  27. #22 Point is that to me it is all about behaviors and how folks present themselves. Not skin color.

    With that said, each clan I have ever identified has their negative habits which I look for moreso in someone blacks, versus someone white, versus someone from the south, versus a Cuban fresh off the boat, versus a Mexican, a chinese student ….. etc.

    ODB (7b1f89)

  28. #23, I think you need to re-read your #15 and carefully go thru your logic tree.

    Cultural norms and approaches to life and work may affect the appearance and application of intelligence, but they have no effect on actual brain power.

    Factually wrong so long as you equate IQ with rain power. Identical twins separated at birth raised in different homes can have big differences in IQ scores.

    All humans are the same specie.

    Circular. Does not address the fact that a “specie” sub-set may have different “brain powers.” And oh by the way if you ascribe to Darwin’s Theory of Evolution — you contradict yourself.

    Racial differences do not enter the equation.

    Saying it does not make it true regardless of your hypothesis. There is no definitive analysis showing factor A (skin color) has any bearing in producing high factor B (Brain Power as measured by IQ). All we have is that Factor A if measured right now has a median Factor B for white v black.

    Culture can be an affect, but it is not a cause.

    As with the identical twin example, this is just not true. Brains get wired over time from birth to death and Culture effects that wiring. And yes, there are other factors but how that wiring is done does move IQ scores in general.

    ODB (7b1f89)

  29. Don’t assume to much about what I am today versus what I was 40 years ago.

    The thought never occurred to me to assume you were anything.

    If you know a ton of smart black people, you understand why it makes no sense to think black people have low IQs. Individuals with low IQs have low IQs. A lot of dumbasses share some traits, and those traits carry across racial lines, though it’s fair to note that a lot of black youth lack fathers and have a lot of other problems. It’s not their blackness, but other things, that are the problem. Clearly.

    Again, I know what racism is and it is not drawing a negative conclusion about a black kid walking into my office with an ear ring and tat coming out of his neck asking me for a job.

    To be, racism is just to think that race determines traits. Whether it’s justified or not doesn’t change what racism is. I could be wrong, but that’s what the word means to me.

    But if a man walks into your office showing tattoos and earrings, why not draw a negative impression? The skin color has nothing to do with that. You’ve got an individual and a reflection of his personality, his choices. For some, the ink and jewelry might be a good thing, and for some, a bad thing.

    For me, I’d be curious about the person’s impulse control and interest in being a professional, but that’s just me.

    Dustin (cb3719)

  30. First, exactly who gets counted as a member of what race?

    Half-half presidents aside, this is trivially easy.

    Second, IQ test scores do not necessarily equal intelligence.

    Not precisely for individuals, but you’d rather your surgeon have a 140 IQ than 90, no?

    Both kinds of intelligence are valuable, but only one is relatively easy to measure.

    The one that’s easy to measure is the strongest predictor in social sciences. The one that’s hard to measure, “people smart,” is how parents describe the child that’s failing the 6th grade.

    The black adoptees, they said, had their scores artificially raised by exposure to their white parents only to revert to the natural level of all black persons.

    The malleability of IQ at younger ages is well accepted, if not well understood. The same thing happens when white children of low IQ parents are adopted by white high IQ parents.

    And there are accusations that there biases in the tests.

    Pure gibberish. Raven’s shows the same patterns as the others.

    Clearly that question favors Christians and Jews over Muslims. Cultural bias does exist in this context.

    I guess that explains why American Jews have such low IQ’s.

    I don’t know hardly a lawyer alive who thinks that the LSAT (more or less the Law School equivalent of the SAT) is a good measure of aptitude for the profession.

    Well it’s a hell of a predictor for law school success.

    In analyzing statutes, case law, in arguing before courts, lawyers simply don’t think, don’t reason, this way.

    So admission to law schools should be based on performance as a practicing lawyer? I don’t think that’s a tenable proposition.

    There can be a third way.

    Do tell.

    Um, no, when you argue that the real average intelligence of black people is lower white people, then, yes, you are arguing that black people are dumber than whites

    Nobody who knows anything disputes that blacks are “dumber” than whites in America. The real debate is over the causes. There’s been numerous attempts to create a fluid-type intelligence test that doesn’t have demographic disparities. Closing The Gap has been big business for forty years. If you’ve got the solution, there’s a lot of money for you.

    No, Sullivan, what you can find is a lazy justification for things like a law school admissions process that is unscientific and has the net effect of disproportionately shutting out people of color from the legal profession.

    It’s probably better that we admit people to schools harder than they’re qualified for. The massive failure and drop-out rates are entirely known beforehand, but it’s totally worth avoiding bad press.

    el duderino (0c2f97)

  31. So Sullivan is a white supremacist lefty?

    Dohbiden (ef98f0)

  32. The belief in the inherent superiority/inferiority of some races is by definition racist even if they think there’s a scientific basis for it.

    When I was in school, I never heard anybody say “Let’s copy the superior guy’s homework.”

    el duderino (0c2f97)

  33. Oh god I think our using cleaning products is destroying us via gorebull warming

    /Sarcasm off

    Dohbiden (ef98f0)

  34. IQ is just a talent, like singing or athletics or leadership. There are people with no talents, and people with many talents. It really only matters when you match people up against tasks. Rare talents are worth more.

    Although what this has to do with race is beyond me.

    Kevin M (563f77)

  35. All races have low IQ while sometimes they don’t

    Dohbiden (ef98f0)

  36. It is evident that you did not actually read The Bell Curve. Your opinion seems informed by attacks by hacks rather than actual knowledge. Try reading it and see if you can come back with a less ignorant opinion.

    Rachelle (e3a294)

  37. I concede the possibility that the genes which contribute to higher or lower intelligence could be concentrated in certain gene pools, which could lead to one race being more or less intelligent, on average, than another. But until we manage to define one unit of intelligence — which I’d suggest we call a Smartacvs — the whole exercise seems like an attempt to quantify a quality.

    The scientific Dana (3e4784)

  38. This entire topic is a tar baby.

    JD (a2078a)

  39. The Bell Curve didn’t do the IQ research. They used existing data from years or decades of various kinds of testing.
    When I studied psychology in the Sixties, we learned all the reasons why the data didn’t mean what they supposedly meant. But we weren’t taught that the data were actually false. The test results were the actual numbers from the tests.
    So the issue is with the tests.
    It is non PC to talk about lower average IQ among blacks, but it’s a matter of sneering gotchas to point out that Asians do better than whites. Not non-PC. So, by the latter case, we admit that races have different results on tests.
    I once ran a swimming program for black teens in Mississippi. Blacks have denser bones than whites, less subcutaneous fat, and smaller lungs than whites. Speaking of the West African phenotype which is primarily the one we see in the US. Thus, they have a higher specific gravity and things like the floating exercise to build confidence did not build confidence. The reach&pull dog paddle resulted in slow submergence. Discouraging. And our WSI could teach an anvil to swim, and could teach others to teach an anvil to swim. Not much help.
    All things considered, it still is racist to say such things, when the supposed reason blacks don’t swim well is that there are too few municipal pools. That way, we blame the whites instead of physical differences.
    It requires some external FACT, written on stone and notarized by fourteen archangels, or however many there are, that proves that all races are equal on everything before we can start looking for nefarious reasons they aren’t.
    That said, the only reason for worrying about this is that disparate results resulting from individual choice on individual merit may have some political use. If we quit worrying about group identity and instead concentrated on killing discrimination in whatever interpersonal actions (hiring, school admits) can be said to be the business of the state, we’d be ahead.

    Richard Aubrey (a75643)

  40. JD @ 36

    i think that is officially the thread winner. (Just my opinion, but yeah that’s how i feel.)

    Aaron Worthing (e7d72e)

  41. In that study, the scientists tracked the IQ scores of black children adopted by white families and what they showed was fairly remarkable. It showed that at first the black children had scores comparable to white children of like age, but then as time when on their IQ fell down to something more typical of black children raised by black parents. And the amazing thing is that the authors of The Bell Curve read that as confirming their racial theories. The black adoptees, they said, had their scores artificially raised by exposure to their white parents only to revert to the natural level of all black persons.

    That study (the Minnesota Transracial Study by Sandra Scarr et al.) actually included also white adoptees (who were adopted by similar well-to-do white families), and they exhibited the same pattern: at age 7, their mean IQ was significantly above the mean for whites in general, whereas at age 17 their mean IQ was similar to the mean for whites in general. The black adoptees were above the national black average at age 7, but at age 17 their mean IQ was similar to the black average nationally. Mixed-race (black+white) adoptees had IQs intermediate to those of black and white adoptees. The biological children of the adoptive families, most of which were of relatively high SES, were also tested, and they scored the highest of all.

    If you were familiar with the behavior genetics literature, you would not be surprised by these findings and the conclusions Murray & Herrnstein drew from them. Perhaps the most remarkable and most often replicated finding in behavior genetics is that the shared family environment exerts a strong influence on traits like IQ in childhood, but by late teens the influence of shared environment more or less vanishes, with heritability explaining most of the IQ differences. The following study documents this pattern in a sample of 11,000 pairs of twins from four countries: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2889158/

    Even accepting that theory, that still requires you to believe that the IQ scores can be significantly affected by something other than good genes—a concession that undermines everything else they claim.

    No, it doesn’t. Read the book.

    For instance, take law school admissions. I don’t know hardly a lawyer alive who thinks that the LSAT (more or less the Law School equivalent of the SAT) is a good measure of aptitude for the profession. And I say that as someone who scored very well on the exam: it measures abilities that have almost nothing to do with my job.

    The LSAT measures general intelligence, and general intelligence is the best single predictor of job performance and occupational attainment, particularly in the professions: http://www.unc.edu/~nielsen/soci708/cdocs/Schmidt_Hunter_2004.pdf

    JL (0e7bd5)

  42. Worthing, just reading your post lowered my IQ. Whatever race you are is certainly statistically less intelligent than mine. Do you have some Siberian tree rings and Pennsylvania hockey sticks to go with your brilliant analysis of racial characteristics?

    dr kill (06b97e)

  43. IQ tests measure how well you do on IQ tests. Any particular IQ test measures how well you did on that particular IQ test. It’s not about intelligence unless you accept that “intelligence”=”IQ test score”, and I don’t accept that.

    As such, IQ tests have very little social utility (we certainly shouldn’t be making education policy around them). And, in my opinion, they have very little academic utility, since they only measure themselves.

    Kman (5576bf)

  44. Don’t mind the drive-by ^^^

    Perhaps it is Rachelle’s other personality.

    Icy (75814f)

  45. dr. kill

    > Worthing, just reading your post lowered my IQ. Whatever race you are is certainly statistically less intelligent than mine.

    I find it interesting that you assume I am a different race from you.

    Aaron Worthing (e7d72e)

  46. Well, Aaron, you are human. That is surely a different race from this other supposed person, right?

    Simon Jester (927690)

  47. Dr. Kill

    so care to share with us what race you belong to, that you presume I don’t?

    Aaron Worthing (e7d72e)

  48. A.W. – Did you get linked by Stormfront?

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  49. A.W. – Commenter like JL, and ODB seem to have missed your basic point, raising suspicions about their IQ.

    IQ Tests administered at various ages measure something called Intelligence Quotient at those various ages.

    Some social scientists claim IQ is a good proxy for overall intelligence and observable differences exist between groups of people and races.

    Other people claim IQ is not a good proxy for overall intelligence and point to other reasons for why IQ test differences result between groups of people.

    The debate continues.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  50. Andrew Sullivan is an equal opportunity taker of milky loads

    Icy (75814f)

  51. The evolution of human intelligence (assuming you do not buy into a creationist theory—and I am not putting you down if you do) required individual humans to become smarter than others, to enjoy a competitive advantage in the struggle for survival because of that greater intelligence and most crucially, for that intelligence to be passed in some way down to their children.

    Well, not exactly.
    One thing to remember about evolution is that it only serves itself, not any particular species, and definitely not any particular individual of a particular species.
    Further, “nature” (or dumb luck, or random occurrence, or whatever you want to call it) does not care one bit for evolution. You could have a transcendent superman born tomorrow and “nature” might decide that an earthquake and tsunami hits the hospital said superman is born in 15 seconds later. Goodbye uber-mutations! (Of course you could decide the “Teela Brown” effect from Niven’s Ringworld is a relevant mutation that would avoid that, but that is another story.)

    Taken together, evolution provides for the filling of ecological niches to the best degree possible at any particular time, remembering that ecological niches are transitory in respect to the overall lifespan of the earth.
    Not only survival, both immediate and long term, but also reproduction are critical to this.
    “Intelligence” to enhance such can manifest in many different ways.
    For a man, it may be more “intelligent” to be a massive jock who can beat up the nerds and take their lunch money to spend on all the babes so they sleep with you, as well as take the inventions of the nerds so you can defend your babe harem from competing brutes.
    For a woman, it may be more “intelligent” to be able get a man to spend excessive amounts of resources on you and your three to four children (remember, we don’t merely want to meet the replacement rate but exceed it in order to take over our ecological niche), while demanding only minimal amounts of attention in return. If this can be achieved by having 3-4 nerds giving you their lunch money and inventions while having only 1 jock dependent on your for tech enhancement to his might, then so be it.
    In such a scenario, high “intelligence” becomes a very subjective concept.

    It becomes even more shockingly subjective when one decides to wander into the realm of “Social” Darwinism.
    In such a case, it is in fact an “evolutionary advantage” to be a better social leech. You get a share in all the wealth of the society while not contributing a single thing to it, enabling you to spend more time on reproductive strategies, expanding your lineage’s dominance of the eco-social niche. And of course a particular talent for brutality when the productive elements refuse to continue supporting you helps in maintaining your position.

    From an evolutionary viewpoint, it is very much true that “intelligence is as intelligence does”.
    Plants have survived for epochs with little genetic change and less intelligence. Until supra-intelligent humans have matched that lifespan the jury is still out as to whether picking up sapience was really all that “good” for us.

    Sam (2fdd3d)

  52. Sam.
    The superman might get et up by a lion at the age of six weeks and there go the genes.
    However, given the huge span of time and the huge number of individuals, another superman may well show up with better luck, or a different type of superman.
    Or the first superman might well make it.

    Richard Aubrey (a75643)

  53. I read the Bell Curve carefully when it was published and then loaned it to a number of Dartmouth faculty and staff who wanted to read it but didn’t want to be seen buying it (Amazon solved that problem). Your post is full of crap. The racial theories of the book were a minor part of its theme. The authors were much more concerned about the formation of an intellectual elite in this country, a valid concern although they thought it would come from Ivy League colleges accepting women. I would say their latter concern has turned out to be far more important.

    Mike K (9ebddd)

  54. 1. There have been many subsequent twin and adoption studies which show that variation in mental abilities is significantly due to variation in genes (Steven Pinker ‘My Genome’ New York Times Jan 2009)

    2. There are group ethnic differences in g – a 1 standard deviation b-w average difference (see Philip L Roth’s 2001 meta analysis in Personal Psychology, Volume 54, Issue 2, pages 297–330, June 2001).

    3. The hard question is what causes these differences. When privately polled in the 1980′s relatively few academics seemed to think these were purely environmental, compared to those who thought they are due to both environmental and genetic variation.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_IQ_Controversy,_the_Media_and_Public_Policy_%28book%29

    4. Is there any plausible reason why different geographic and cultural environments would favor the exact same distribution of mental and physical traits?

    5. Professor Robert A. Weinberg, winner of the 1997 National Medal of Science. Weinberg delivers the final lecture in Biology 7.012 at MIT (2004):

    Weinberg (@ 32:40): … And what happens if one of these days people discover alleles for certain aspects of cognitive function? Chess playing ability. The ability to learn five different languages. The ability to remember strings of numbers. The ability to speak extemporaneously in front of a class, for what it’s worth, for 50 minutes several times a week. Whatever ability you want, valued or not so valued, what if those alleles begin to come out? And here’s the worse part. What if somebody begins to look for the frequency of those alleles in different ethnic groups scattered across this planet? Now, you will say to me, well, God has made all his children equal. But the fact is if you look at the details of human evolution, some of which I discussed with you a week ago, last week, you’ll come to realize that most populations in humanity are the modern descendents of very small founder groups…. So the fact is it’s inescapable that different alleles are going to be present with different frequencies in different inbreeding populations of humanity or populations of humanity that traditionally have been genetically isolated from one another.”

    http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/biology/7-012-introduction-to-biology-fall-2004/index.htm

    M Pearlstein (102a90)

  55. “I likewise believe that more than likely the difference is insignificant and shifts depending on random variations of the current “crop” of children and the “crop” of elderly that had just passed on, so that one year white people might edge out black people and another black people might and so on. It’s not precise mathematical equality but it is probably close, and indeed too close to provide you any guidance when deciding who to hire or admit to a law school.”

    That’s a nice story you made up for yourself.

    Here’s a useful resource on this subject:

    http://abc102.wordpress.com/

    Django (75c331)

  56. Damn, I love the soft sciences.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  57. Leftys such as Andrew Sullivan accusing critics of obama of being racism is rich.

    Dohbiden (ef98f0)

  58. “But The Bell Curve wasn’t that kind of serious inquiry. It was plainly an attempt to dress up regular old racism with a scientific gloss, something bigots had been doing since eugenics was fashionable.”

    Both Charles Murray & Richard Herrnstein – when he was alive – could take Aaron Worthing apart intellectually. To say not merely that you disagree with these authors’ conclusions or methodology, but that their inquiry was not “serious” and “dress[es] up regular old racism with a scientific gloss” is demagogic and stupid. This kind of easy and cheap personal attack will cause readers to re-access Worthing’s character.

    Brian (e2e897)

  59. I don’t recall accessing that in the first place.

    This topic is inevitably a tar baby.

    JD (0388c1)

  60. The Bell Curve said the opposite of what this post represents. The Bell Curve pointed out the blacks do worse on IQ tests, which is just a fact. The book then said that this result might not be due to genetic differences. It might be totally due to cultural differences, particularly due to the mistreatment of blacks over many years.

    David in Cal (a37153)

  61. Randy Andy you jew hater the Israeli government is going after palestine because of Hamas.

    Dohbiden (ef98f0)

  62. Brian loves taking milky loads.

    Dohbiden (ef98f0)

  63. It sounds like your argument is this:

    “I didn’t read The Bell Curve and have no idea what it is about, but I will assume a bunch of easily falsifiable premises and assign them to the authors to make Andrew Sullivan look bad, as if anyone would need to go through any real effort to make Andrew Sullivan look bad.”

    You clearly have not read the book. Maybe you should before you post manure like this.

    Lasagna (2e6f5c)

  64. First, I am pretty sure the average anthropologist believes it is a “no brainer” that intelligence is inherited. Intelligence—indeed specific kinds of intellectual talent—runs in families.

    On this:

    Generally speaking, no, the average anthropologist should have little to no reason to believe anything of the sort, as the average anthropolgist does not track individual families but a ethnic or cultural group as a whole. As a result, the appearances of lineages of superior individuals is going to be beyond his expertise.

    Now you should be able to get a statement regarding that from your average historian. Unfortunately I would expect more historians to tell you that for every great man in a particular field who was followed by a great son in that same field, or even another field, there are a dozen examples of them being followed by absolute losers. Granted you will get even more examples of absolute losers being followed by other absolute losers in the field of rulership, but that would only establish the inheritability of unwanted qualities, and only in a single field, so it is not of much of use as a reference point.

    Now the group who would be able to give you some reasonable guidelines regarding the inheritability of intelligence are geneticists. For some reason however you don’t seem to find any books like “The Bell Curve” written by genticists; instead they are written by psychologists (like Hernstein) and political scientists (like Murray).
    All bias for the specific books and their topic aside, I don’t really see many people being inclined to call their local DNC or RNC office to have a prescription written for their pneumonia, or asking their shrink to take out their appendix, yet they are more than willing to treat statistical analysis from similar people as expert in regards to the genetic component of intelligence.
    Maybe it is just me, but there seems to be a rather profound disconnect there.

    Sam (2fdd3d)

  65. Now the group who would be able to give you some reasonable guidelines regarding the inheritability of intelligence are geneticists..

    This is typical of the ignorance of AW’s post and many of the comments. You don’t need a geneticist to calculate the average genetic similarity of parents/children and siblings. But if you insist on knowing what geneticists have to say: Genome-wide association studies establish that human intelligence is highly heritable and polygenic

    General intelligence [IQ] is an important human quantitative trait that accounts for much of the variation in diverse cognitive abilities. Individual differences in intelligence are strongly associated with many important life outcomes, including educational and occupational attainments, income, health and lifespan. Data from twin and family studies are consistent with a high heritability of intelligence, but this inference has been controversial…
    51% of the variation in fluid-type intelligence [IQ subtests without knowledge questions] between individuals is accounted for by linkage disequilibrium between genotyped common SNP markers and unknown causal variants. These estimates provide lower bounds for the narrow-sense heritability of the traits.

    el duderino (0c2f97)

  66. And exactly what part of that summary links intelligence to race?
    Oh wait, none.

    Gee, it seems when you actually do ask the geneticists they provide a rather different answer from the psychologists and political scientists.

    Thanks for proving my point though!

    Sam (2fdd3d)

  67. Did I say it had anything to do with race? It’s clearly a response to what I quoted. I am interested* to see how you account for the one SD black-white IQ difference across all levels of parental education and income now that you know that geneticists have established the same lower bound of heritability that Herrnstein and Murray (and a hundred others) estimated.

    *not really

    el duderino (0c2f97)

  68. It is evident that you did not actually read The Bell Curve. Your opinion seems informed by attacks by hacks rather than actual knowledge. Try reading it and see if you can come back with a less ignorant opinion.

    Comment by Rachelle — 11/30/2011 @ 11:38 pm

    It’s interesting that this strange comment is repeated almost verbatim.

    If it’s really so obvious that Aaron is somehow mis-stating the book, you can should be able to show some evidence. Quote the book, and distinguish it from the ‘obviously’ ignorant summary.

    Or is it that everyone who reads it believes it? Is that the argument? Aaron is wrong because you don’t agree with him, in other words?

    Why not save a little time and write ‘stupidhead’?

    Ugh. Andrew Sullivan readers.

    Dustin (cb3719)

  69. @67
    Well seeing as you are openly saying the difference is racial, what exactly are you challenging; that I was able to identify you believed that was cause by the text and context of your original reply?
    Should I feel bad about my insight?

    It remains the report you cite does not identify any racial element yet you persist in asserting one based on statistical analyses of people in non-hard science fields.
    Again, thank you for proving my point. You really shouldn’t go through so much effort to do so though, as you leave me nothing to do in support of it.

    Sam (2fdd3d)

  70. I think we’re all missing a hugely important question here: “What’s the correct answer to the sample LSAT Question?”

    I say C.

    Paul (4a6505)

  71. Should I feel bad about my insight?

    No, I thought my biases were pretty obvious. But I’ve said nothing that isn’t an indisputable fact. Yes, I believe about 10 of the 15 point IQ gap is intractable, probably genetic. Adoption doesn’t close the gap. Neither does billions of dollars of education intervention. The latest fad, charters and vouchers, hasn’t closed the gap either.

    It remains the report you cite does not identify any racial element yet you persist in asserting one based on statistical analyses of people in non-hard science fields.

    There’s only two people I know of from hard science fields who have an academic interest in differences in population IQ’s, Steve Hsu ( infoproc.blogspot.com ) and Greg Cochran ( westhunt.wordpress.com and The 10,000 Year Explosion). They’re both physicist BTW. Hsu is a former Harvard Junior Fellow and is currently a physics professor at Oregon and consultant to Beijing Genomics Institute. Cochran is a DoD consultant and anthropology professor at Utah. Is that hard science enough for you?

    el duderino (0c2f97)

  72. It’s interesting that this strange comment is repeated almost verbatim.

    It’s because criticisms are mostly of the “it’s a big mean racist book” variety. Most of it was in fact about social stratification, with only a couple chapters IIRC about race. Going back and arguing about the book is really silly considering the heritability estimates have gone up and new interventions have proven ineffective since 1994.

    el duderino (0c2f97)

  73. @71
    So you know of two physicists who have an interest.
    “Oddly” you do not cite what their views are.
    Why is that?

    It seems no matter how many times I ask, supporters of “The Bell Curve” and similar books can never present any support for the principle of racially determined intelligence from inside the field, rather presenting just another in a line of social scientists with the inevitable agenda they want to push.
    One would think if the fundamental science were so “obvious” there would be a wealth of support within the field, and no need to rely on the advocacy of social scientists with questionable agendas, and yet there you have it.

    Sam (2fdd3d)

  74. It seems no matter how many times I ask, supporters of “The Bell Curve” and similar books can never present any support for the principle of racially determined intelligence from inside the field, rather presenting just another in a line of social scientists with the inevitable agenda they want to push.
    One would think if the fundamental science were so “obvious” there would be a wealth of support within the field, and no need to rely on the advocacy of social scientists with questionable agendas, and yet there you have it.

    Given that merely mentioning the possibility of intelligence being different for certain races is enough to get the most esteemed scientists banished from society…witness James Watson.

    I wouldn’t hold my breath for any sort of proof given that anyone asking for funds to research whether it is true or not would likely be burned at the stake by ignorant folks like the author of this blog post.

    I suspect that the “proof” of the entire of Africa being a certified mess is blamed on the white man correct?

    JohnAdams (ad65b7)

  75. Aaron, if you truly believe your blog post then your life is at a ethical fork in the road. You have to make a decision… should you create a replacement for the LSAT where blacks don’t score slightly more than one standard deviation below whites(and asians) or you should work pro bono on a disparate impact suit against the LSAT.

    If only LSAT scores were used, about 84% of blacks couldn’t get accepted in the top 142 schools. In the testing year 2008–09, those 142 schools would be fighting over 2100 blacks.

    From the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education.

    “””””
    In 2004, 10,370 blacks took the LSAT examination. Only 29 blacks, or 0.3 percent of all LSAT test takers, scored 170 or above. In contrast, more than 1,900 white test takers scored 170 or above on the LSAT. They made up 3.1 percent of all white test takers. Thus whites were more than 10 times as likely as blacks to score 170 or above on the LSAT. There were 66 times as many whites as blacks who scored 170 or above on the test.

    Even if we drop the scoring level to 165, a level equal to the mean score of students enrolling at law schools ranked in the top 10 nationwide but not at the very top, we still find very few blacks. There were 108 blacks scoring 165 or better on the LSAT in 2004. They made up 1 percent of all black test takers. For whites, there were 6,689 test takers who scored 165 or above. They made up 10.6 percent of all white students who took the LSAT examination.

    The nation’s top law schools could fill their classes exclusively with students who scored 165 or above on the LSAT. But if they were to do so, these law schools would have almost no black students.
    “””””

    soren (5b16b2)

  76. Stay classy racist.

    I guess Herman Cain isn’t black enough for you.

    Dohbiden (ef98f0)

  77. “Oddly” you do not cite what their views are.
    Why is that?

    Six Black Russians
    Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence
    Sociobiological implications of the (historical) rural Chinese economy?

    That was in less than 5 minutes of surfing the sites I linked.

    el duderino (0c2f97)

  78. I read “The Bell Curve” and it backed up its contention with data.
    Sorry if the unvarnished truth hurts, but…

    TexasJew (6434bc)

  79. Perhaps you have been inhaling some varnish.

    Icy (7e0657)

  80. ***Perhaps you have been inhaling some varnish.***

    Look, group differences in g are not controversial amongst psychometric researchers (see Philip L Roth’s 2001 meta analysis in Personal Psychology, Volume 54, Issue 2, pages 297–330, June 2001).

    The hard question is what causes these differences. When privately polled in the 1980′s relatively few academics seemed to think these were purely environmental, compared to those who thought they are due to both environmental and genetic variation.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_IQ_Controversy,_the_Media_and_Public_Policy_%28book%29

    In theory this is not overly surprising – different geographic and cultural environments may favor different physical and mental traits.

    The video below is of the final lecture in Biology 7.012 at MIT (2004), co-taught by Professor Eric Lander, Director of the Broad Institute at MIT and a principal leader of the Human Genome Project, and Professor Robert A. Weinberg, winner of the 1997 National Medal of Science. Weinberg delivers the final lecture.

    Weinberg (@ 32:40): … And what happens if one of these days people discover alleles for certain aspects of cognitive function? Chess playing ability. The ability to learn five different languages. The ability to remember strings of numbers. The ability to speak extemporaneously in front of a class, for what it’s worth, for 50 minutes several times a week.

    Whatever ability you want, valued or not so valued, what if those alleles begin to come out? And here’s the worse part. What if somebody begins to look for the frequency of those alleles in different ethnic groups scattered across this planet? Now, you will say to me, well, God has made all his children equal. But the fact is if you look at the details of human evolution, some of which I discussed with you a week ago, last week, you’ll come to realize that most populations in humanity are the modern descendents of very small founder groups.

    … So the fact is it’s inescapable that different alleles are going to be present with different frequencies in different inbreeding populations of humanity or populations of humanity that traditionally have been genetically isolated from one another.

    It’s not as if all the genes that we carry have been mixed with everybody else’s genes freely over the last 100,000 years. Different groups have bred separately and have, for reasons that I’ve told you, founder affects and genetic drift, acquired different sets and different constellations of alleles. So what’s going to happen then, I ask you without wishing to hear an answer because nobody really knows?

    Then for the first time there could be a racism which is based not on some kind of virulent ideology, not based on some kind of kooky versions of genetics, because the eugenicists in the beginning of the 20th century, as well as the Nazis hadn’t had any idea about genetics, they were just using the word, even though they knew nothing about the science of genetics as we understand it today. But what happens if now for the first time we, i.e., you who begin to understand genetics, begin to perceive that there are, in fact, different populations of humanity that are endowed with different constellation of alleles that we imagine are more or less desirable?

    What’s going to happen then? I don’t know. But some scientists say, well, the truth must come out and that everything that can be learned should be learned, and we will learn how to digest it and we will learn how to live with that. But I’m not so sure that’s the right thing. And you all have to wrestle with that as well. …

    http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/biology/7-012-introduction-to-biology-fall-2004/index.htm

    M Pearlstein (3732c0)


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