Joined: 07 Feb 2007 {Posts: 1829 } Location: Lookin DC Metro, Feelin Geneva
Posted: Wed 18 Feb 2009 16:42 Post subject: Debate over race and IQ (again)
I thought Frank and some others might be interested in following this. Nature Mag online appears to be having a fairly spirited debate as to whether people should study IQ and "race".
In the mosaic of America, three groups that have been unusually successful are Asian-Americans, Jews and West Indian blacks — and in that there may be some lessons for the rest of us.
Asian-Americans are renowned — or notorious — for ruining grade curves in schools across the land, and as a result they constitute about 20 percent of students at Harvard College.
As for Jews, they have received about one-third of all Nobel Prizes in science received by Americans. One survey found that a quarter of Jewish adults in the United States have earned a graduate degree, compared with 6 percent of the population as a whole.
West Indian blacks, those like Colin Powell whose roots are in the Caribbean, are one-third more likely to graduate from college than African-Americans as a whole, and their median household income is almost one-third higher.
These three groups may help debunk the myth of success as a simple product of intrinsic intellect, for they represent three different races and histories. In the debate over nature and nurture, they suggest the importance of improved nurture — which, from a public policy perspective, means a focus on education. Their success may also offer some lessons for you, me, our children — and for the broader effort to chip away at poverty in this country.
Richard Nisbett cites each of these groups in his superb recent book, “Intelligence and How to Get It.” Dr. Nisbett, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, argues that what we think of as intelligence is quite malleable and owes little or nothing to genetics.
“I think the evidence is very good that there is no genetic contribution to the black-white difference on I.Q.,” he said, adding that there also seems to be no genetic difference in intelligence between whites and Asians. As for Jews, some not-very-rigorous studies have found modestly above-average I.Q. for Ashkenazi Jews, though not for Sephardic Jews. Dr. Nisbett is somewhat skeptical, noting that these results emerge from samples that may not be representative.
In any case, he says, the evidence is overwhelming that what is distinctive about these three groups is not innate advantage but rather a tendency to get the most out of the firepower they have.
One large study followed a group of Chinese-Americans who initially did slightly worse on the verbal portion of I.Q. tests than other Americans and the same on math portions. But beginning in grade school, the Chinese outperformed their peers, apparently because they worked harder.
The Chinese-Americans were only half as likely as other children to repeat a grade in school, and by high school they were doing much better than European-Americans with the same I.Q.
As adults, 55 percent of the Chinese-American sample entered high-status occupations, compared with one-third of whites. To succeed in a profession or as managers, whites needed an average I.Q. of about 100, while Chinese-Americans needed an I.Q. of just 93. In short, Chinese-Americans managed to achieve more than whites who on paper had the same intellect.
A common thread among these three groups may be an emphasis on diligence or education, perhaps linked in part to an immigrant drive. Jews and Chinese have a particularly strong tradition of respect for scholarship, with Jews said to have achieved complete adult male literacy — the better to read the Talmud — some 1,700 years before any other group.
The parallel force in China was Confucianism and its reverence for education. You can still sometimes see in rural China the remains of a monument to a villager who triumphed in the imperial exams. In contrast, if an American town has someone who earns a Ph.D., the impulse is not to build a monument but to pass a hat.
Among West Indians, the crucial factors for success seem twofold: the classic diligence and hard work associated with immigrants, and intact families. The upshot is higher family incomes and fathers more involved in child-rearing.
What’s the policy lesson from these three success stories?
It’s that the most decisive weapons in the war on poverty aren’t transfer payments but education, education, education. For at-risk households, that starts with social workers making visits to encourage such basic practices as talking to children. One study found that a child of professionals (disproportionately white) has heard about 30 million words spoken by age 3; a black child raised on welfare has heard only 10 million words, leaving that child at a disadvantage in school.
The next step is intensive early childhood programs, followed by improved elementary and high schools, and programs to defray college costs.
Perhaps the larger lesson is a very empowering one: success depends less on intellectual endowment than on perseverance and drive. As Professor Nisbett puts it, “Intelligence and academic achievement are very much under people’s control.”
The discouraging thing about all three articles is their perception of differences in "IQ" or "intelligence" as a given. To be sure, the content of most recent article does not do this, but its title (undoubtedly concocted by the NY Times editor) does do this. The waving of IQ or "intelligence" is a red-herring that merely distracts.
The only real issue is that, on average, U.S. Black kids do worse than U.S. White kids on every test that measures mental skills important to success in industrial society. Again, the gap appears in every such test that has ever been devised. This odd phenomenon arouses curiosity, like it or not.
Obviously, such skills are hereditary in some sense. Dumb parents tend to have dumb kids and vice-versa. But equally obviously, the difference is not hereditary in any "racial" sense, since immigrant kids from Africa or the Afro-Caribbean excel in the U.S. and African-American kids excel if raised in England.
I wish that columnists would stop trying to distract their readers with the red flag of "intelligence," whatever that means. I with they would stop being distracted themselves. The U.S. B/W test-score gap obviously exists. A wealth of data shows that: (1) it is unrelated to "racial" genetics and (2) throwing money at it solves nothing. Harping on the semantic denotation of "intelligence," or even whether the term has an objective meaning, is mere distraction.
I was really interested in the comments, and read all 300+. One wonders whether Kristof edited out the blatantly racist and inflammatory comments you'd expect, but it was striking how few people questioned the notion of IQ as representative of "intelligence." Most either fell into the camp of "it's all about hard work" or "of course it's all about education."
I was intrigued because of the inclusion of West Indians, undoubtedly included to find a SSA African group that performs comparatively well to Europeans and Asians of American descent. Yet Kristof opened the door to the racial defenses of genetic differences that are often presented as "facts too politically incorrect to point out" (ceding the "realistic" argument for differences unaccounted for by environment to obvious racists like Jensen). "Jews," "West Indians" and "Asians" are not only ethnically diverse, but "racially" as well. Yet he knows his audience, and understands that they will read between the lines and walk away with racialized conclusions.
I don't think many people, scientist or lay person, are willing to focus on the issue, which is what can account for the observed differences in "success" between ethnic groups (racialized or not)? It seems painfully obvious to me from the little that I know about the subject that certain traits are passed on genetically and enhanced (or muted) by the environment. It seems clear that the expression of these traits is encouraged, discouraged or ignored according to cultural norms, leading to inter- and intra-group differences. What is unknown is the genetic capacity for "intelligence" or even "success" given a certain IQ, but the discussion progresses as if the observation of heritable traits/skills and changes in their expression is a proxy for genetic capacity.
Since the discussion starts at such a low point, for me this article represents progress. I'd be shocked if a follow-up dealt specifically with the Black-White test gap, which is what folks likely really want to sink their teeth into (and need to understand).
Frank do you know if anyone has data on the academic achievement of first generation African American immigrants (to, say, European or Asian countries)?
Frank do you know if anyone has data on the academic achievement of first generation African American immigrants (to, say, European or Asian countries)?
And this question leads to the issue of selectivity in immigration as a factor in the academic success of many people and their children who reside in the U.S., specifically South Asians and other Asian people. People rarely address this.
Frank do you know if anyone has data on the academic achievement of first generation African American immigrants (to, say, European or Asian countries)?
Not with any precision. This news article refers to a Black "reverse gap" in the UK, like the Asian-American reverse gap in the U.S., but they do not clearly distinguish between West Indian immigrant kids (who also do well in the U.S.) and African-American immigrant kids (who do not).
Probably a better source is the late John Ogbu's research. He shows that children of despised minorities, who do poorly in their own countries, do well as immigrants because nobody realizes that they are expected to be stupid. The classical example are Burakumin youngsters, who have a serious test-score gap in Japan, where they are seen as a genetically inferior "race," but excel in the U.S., where they are seen as just Asian-Americans. Ogbu might have collected some data on U.S. kids overseas.
Frank do you know if anyone has data on the academic achievement of first generation African American immigrants (to, say, European or Asian countries)?
And this question leads to the issue of selectivity in immigration as a factor in the academic success of many people and their children who reside in the U.S., specifically South Asians and other Asian people. People rarely address this.
Makes you wonder, doesn't it? It is probably the most obvious reason for the success of many immigrants. Who is more likely to uproot themselves and successfully make a way in a new country? People with the motivation and/or resources to succeed. To me, those who advance hereditary (racial) explanations for IQ differences need to explain to me why there would be significant IQ differences between immigrant Vietnamese Americans and native Vietnamese, for example.
fwsweet wrote:
[Ogbu]...shows that children of despised minorities, who do poorly in their own countries, do well as immigrants because nobody realizes that they are expected to be stupid.
This sums up the West Indian experience in the U.S. and Europe, not to mention all of the South and East Asian ethnics who immediately benefit from the pan-Asian racial categories that gloss over ethnic differences that are extremely important at home. I wonder if Canadians of Jamaican descent perform similarly to African Americans due to their outgroup status in Canada? There's are negative stereotypes of Jamaicans up there that is quite comparable to negative stereotypes of AAs in the U.S.
Posted: Wed 10 Jun 2009 15:55 Post subject: AA kids in England?
fwsweet wrote:
The discouraging thing about all three articles is their perception of differences in "IQ" or "intelligence" as a given. To be sure, the content of most recent article does not do this, but its title (undoubtedly concocted by the NY Times editor) does do this. The waving of IQ or "intelligence" is a red-herring that merely distracts.
The only real issue is that, on average, U.S. Black kids do worse than U.S. White kids on every test that measures mental skills important to success in industrial society. Again, the gap appears in every such test that has ever been devised. This odd phenomenon arouses curiosity, like it or not.
Obviously, such skills are hereditary in some sense. Dumb parents tend to have dumb kids and vice-versa. But equally obviously, the difference is not hereditary in any "racial" sense, since immigrant kids from Africa or the Afro-Caribbean excel in the U.S. and African-American kids excel if raised in England.
I wish that columnists would stop trying to distract their readers with the red flag of "intelligence," whatever that means. I with they would stop being distracted themselves. The U.S. B/W test-score gap obviously exists. A wealth of data shows that: (1) it is unrelated to "racial" genetics and (2) throwing money at it solves nothing. Harping on the semantic denotation of "intelligence," or even whether the term has an objective meaning, is mere distraction.
What study refers to "African American" kids raised in England?
Posted: Thu 11 Jun 2009 00:25 Post subject: Re: AA kids in England?
Powell wrote:
What study refers to "African American" kids raised in England?
See my answer to Saga, above. It was a news article, not a study. Unfortunately, as I mentioned to Saga, the article uses the generic term "Black," and so it does not clearly distinguish between BWI kids and A-A kids. It is an interesting question, though. I shall see if I cannot find something in John Ogbu's work.
The question is interesting because genetics, socioeconomic class, and parental education have all been shot down as "causes" of the early childhood (age 3) B/W test-score gap. This apparently leaves only two hypotheses: parental skill at mentally stimulating the infant (reading to her, etc.) or society's low expectation of A-A kids. (The high-school gap is something else again, since it appears even in White-adopted kids, who show no early childhood gap. Probably "oppositional culture.") If A-A kids do as poorly overseas as they do in the U.S., it would support the parental skills hypothesis. If they do as well as other kids overseas, it would support the teacher expectation hypothesis.
Posted: Tue 16 Jun 2009 05:04 Post subject: Wait a second now...
"the gap appears in every such test that has ever been devised."
- Frank
Why do you think that is? I don't think ANY of you have a pleasant answer you can honestly propose. Maybe its the racist oppression? Hmm? Maybe the poverty? Maybe genes? . OR MAYBE ITS ALL OF THOSE.
I wonder why people try so hard to make excuses for Black performance on mental tests. Perhaps they are looking at the wrong issue.
Who cares about IQ? NO ONE. What we care about is....BEHAVIOR.
If Blacks were as financially and socially successful as Asians EVERYONE WOULD BE TRYING TO LOWER THEIR IQs to be more like BLACKS. The fact is that group and individual behavior is a cross product of multiple factors. Consider a simplified theoretical example:
( Low IQ ) x ( Oppression ) x ( Poverty ) x ( Impulsiveness ) => CRIME
Do you get the implications yet?......
Hard working Asians with lower than White IQs might do better than "Less-inclined-to-work-Blacks" with lower than White IQs. See, I really doubt, and so do the most profound "scientific" racists, e.g. Jensen, Murray, Herrenstein, etc., that the ENTIRE white-black gap is genetic.
BUT MAYBE PART OF IT IS. Actually, why the heck WOULDN'T IT????
Some of you guys are throwing mud in the face of evolutionary theory. Isolated inbreeding populations could DEFINATELY produce different genes for intelligence that remain population-specific rather than migrate.
DUH!
But.....I doubt those differences would be gigantic. Because once they confer a strong evolutionary advantage, its likely they would migrate, through conquest, if not other means. Only an environment which selected for stupidity would sufficiently prevent this. That...or extreme isolation such as being on another continent like the Americas.
Anyway, the point is, that....
1. SMALL Genetic gaps in Intelligence are PREDICTED by evolutionary theorey and population genetics.
2. LARGE Genetic gaps in intelligence are NOT, because IQ is universally adaptive.
3. Its likely that part of the White Black gap is GENETIC.
4. The observed behavioral differences between Whites and Blacks, not IQ, are what actually matter.
5. IQ is a factor in Black behavior ( as for any ethnic group ), but it doesn't determine everything. Herrenstein and Murray could never prove that, though they tried. Black behavior is a multi-factor variable that can be directed however we wish it to be, with sufficient SOCIALIZATION. That's what people are missing. Low IQ is not a death sentence. Just look at how much better low IQ whites do than Blacks in terms of poverty, crime, and so forth. THAT OUGHT TO TELL YOU FOLKS SOMETHING.
But...a bad attitude, poverty, oppressive experiences, impulsiveness, low opportunity, and low intelligence, well that would lead to....
Don't confuse intelligence with IQ. "Intelligence" is like "self-esteem" or "motivation" - no one has provided a universal and measurable definition. Therefore, these tests are not measuring "intelligence" or some sort of genetically determined capacity for cognition. They are measuring a heritable competency (set of knowledge/skills/behaviors) associated with success in modern industrialized (and now post-industrial) societies.
The bottom line is that if there was a significant RACIALIZED genetic reason for why ethnic groups of SSA descent score lower there would be no explanation for the success of West Indian kids in the UK. If Jensen et al. were sincerely interested in solving this apparent genetic mystery rather than proving that SSA "genes" produce cognitively and behaviorally defective people then maybe I would take his research seriously.
It seems obvious from the mountains of research on I.Q. (itself NEVER designed to measure anything but INDIVIDUAL ability) that scores rise when competencies associated with success are gained.
This paper brings up the construct of heritability, which is extremely important to get (and contrast with genetic determinism):
Quote:
To understand The Bell Curve's fallacy, we need to distinguish two concepts: the ordinary idea of genetic determination and the scientific concept of heritability, on which all Herrnstein's and Murray's data rely. Genetic determination is a matter of what causes a characteristic: number of toes is genetically determined because our genes cause us to have five toes. Heritability, by contrast, is a matter of what causes differences in a characteristic: heritability of number of toes is a matter of the extent to which genetic differences cause variation in number of toes (that some cats have five toes, and some have six). Heritability is, therefore, defined as a fraction: it is the ratio of genetically caused variation to total variation (including both environmental and genetic variation). Genetic determination, by contrast, is an informal and intuitive notion which lacks quantitative definition, and depends on the idea of a normal environment. A characteristic could be said to be genetically determined if it is coded in and caused by the genes and bound to develop in a normal environment. Consequently, whereas genetic determination in a single person makes sense - my brown hair color is genetically determined - heritability makes sense only relative to a population in which individuals differ from one another - you can't ask "What's the heritability of my IQ?"
Posted: Tue 16 Jun 2009 11:46 Post subject: Re: Wait a second now...
ImBack wrote:
See, I really doubt, and so do the most profound "scientific" racists, e.g. Jensen, Murray, Herrenstein, etc., that the ENTIRE white-black gap is genetic. BUT MAYBE PART OF IT IS. Actually, why the heck WOULDN'T IT????
No respected authority says that the moon is entirely made of green cheese. But maybe part of it is. Actually, why the heck wouldn't it?
The answer is, "Because empty speculation is pointless." If there were even the slightest genetic component related to "race," then self-identified A-As with little SS ancestry would score better on tests than non-AAs with a lot of SS ancestry. In fact, as Sagascend mentions, the reverse has been measured and replicated many times.
If a phenomenon does not correlate at all with genetic heredity then it lacks a genetic component. The phenomenon in question does not correlate at all with genetic heredity of SS ancestry, once this factor is split off from ethnopolitical group membership. Hence, it lacks a genetic component related to "race." The phenomenon in question correlates only with ethnopolitical group membership. Hence, it is entirely cultural. The only issues remaining to be determined are: how much of the phenomenon in question is related to A-A parenting, how much to adolescent oppositional culture, and how much to low societal expectations of A-As.
One more thing, the phenomenon in question is test scores, not crime, poverty, attitude, or behavior. Test scores, nothing more. If you want to discuss other aspects of U.S. society please start a thread in the appropriate forum. If you are speculating that "behavior" can affect test scores, please define precisely what you mean by "behavior," suggest a mechanism whereby it affects test scores, and provide some evidence.
Posted: Wed 17 Jun 2009 13:36 Post subject: Re: Wait a second now...
fwsweet wrote:
If there were even the slightest genetic component related to "race," then self-identified A-As with little SS ancestry would score better on tests than non-AAs with a lot of SS ancestry. In fact, as Sagascend mentions, the reverse has been measured and replicated many times.
Mary Lee points out a flaw in that reasoning. It is possible that, in the same way that the U.S. is unique in having two distinct genetic populations, and unique in displaying signs of selection (see the last few paragraphs of Afro-European Genetic Admixture in the United States for details), it is possible that the U.S. is also unique in somehow having selected its Afro-descended enclave for low test-taking ability. This speculation would explain why the test-score gap correlates with ethnopolitical self-identity and not with SS ancestry, and yet could be genetic nonetheless. This speculation seems extremely unlikely to me, since I cannot imagine a selection mechanism that favors low test-taking ability. Also, the 300 or so years that the endogamous color line has existed seems too short a period (only 15 generations) for such a weak selection to have an effect. Still, it is logically conceivable, so I thought I should mention it.
Posted: Wed 17 Jun 2009 15:35 Post subject: Re: Wait a second now...
fwsweet wrote:
fwsweet wrote:
If there were even the slightest genetic component related to "race," then self-identified A-As with little SS ancestry would score better on tests than non-AAs with a lot of SS ancestry. In fact, as Sagascend mentions, the reverse has been measured and replicated many times.
Mary Lee points out a flaw in that reasoning. It is possible that, in the same way that the U.S. is unique in having two distinct genetic populations, and unique in displaying signs of selection (see the last few paragraphs of Afro-European Genetic Admixture in the United States for details), it is possible that the U.S. is also unique in somehow having selected its Afro-descended enclave for low test-taking ability. This speculation would explain why the test-score gap correlates with ethnopolitical self-identity and not with SS ancestry, and yet could be genetic nonetheless. This speculation seems extremely unlikely to me, since I cannot imagine a selection mechanism that favors low test-taking ability. Also, the 300 or so years that the endogamous color line has existed seems too short a period (only 15 generations) for such a weak selection to have an effect. Still, it is logically conceivable, so I thought I should mention it.
What if it isn't selection, but the consequence of sustained white supremacist elimination of high-ability African slaves and then AAs from the population over 300 years? Many of these people wouldn't have had the opportunity to have children or raise them.
It might be unlikely but I've always wondered what was the environment effect of killing or mentally crippling the most talented/able in this population. Perhaps the problem is that the white supremacist environment "selected" lower-test-taking ability as the most fit representatives in the population, when nature would do no such thing.
The problem with this reasoning is that it is obvious that highly capable African slaves/AAs learned how to hide their cognitive ability in order to survive.
Posted: Wed 17 Jun 2009 16:49 Post subject: Re: Wait a second now...
sagascend wrote:
The problem with this reasoning is that it is obvious that highly capable African slaves/AAs learned how to hide their cognitive ability in order to survive.
I can imagine the possibility of selection for docility, but I cannot see selection for inability to learn and adapt (or even to hide your intelligence). Just the opposite, in fact. The most valuable slaves were the skilled craftsmen, not the unskilled agricultural laborers. The wealthiest woman in 1820-40 Florida was a professional slave-trader who bought unskilled teenagers, put them through a two-year vocational training program, and then sold them at enormous mark-up as skilled mechanics, carpenters, millwrights, cabinetmakers, cobblers, cooks. and shipwrights. She accumulated staggering wealth thus and her descendants are upper-crust Florida society to this day. Court cases of the time show that such skilled slaves were far better treated than the unskilled. If a planter mistreated a farm laborer, nobody cared. But mistreat a master mechanic and every other slave-owner in the region would drag you into court, in hopes of winning the slave for himself.
Also, slavery per se is a weak paradigm to explain any U.S. phenomenon. For one thing, serious importation of Africans to British North America did not start until the close of the 1600s and slavery ended just one and a half centuries later. That is just 6-7 generations--too short to have genetic impact. For another, slavery was ubiquitous in Latin America: starting more than a century earlier, ending later, involving a much higher fraction of the population, and yet there is no test-score gap in Latin America. (Nor an endogamous barrier, either.)
Still, the speculation should be testable in theory. Consider for instance the grandchildren of immigrants from Haiti, Jamaica, Trinidad, Barbados, etc. Most probably consider themselves A-As and see their grandparents' origin as a curiosity, personally unimportant to themselves. And yet genetically, they are West Indians not A-As. Do they show a test-score gap? If not, then Mary Lee's odd speculation may be onto something. But if so, then it is one more nail in the genetic-difference coffin.
Posted: Wed 17 Jun 2009 17:24 Post subject: Re: Wait a second now...
fwsweet wrote:
I can imagine the possibility of selection for docility, but I cannot see selection for inability to learn and adapt (or even to hide your intelligence). Just the opposite, in fact.
I agree. I do not think that general cognitive ability contributes much to the gap. My personal opinion is that there are specific cognitive abilities and behaviors that might lead to higher test-taking ability if developed, but that differences are mostly due to how kids are taught by they parents (mothers) and teachers, environmental factors like national or ethnic culture, nutrition and also personality traits.
What I am speculating about is whether there is also a heritable, environmentally-driven effect that 1) removed people from the population (could not have kids or raise them/pass skills on) or 2)altered the behavior of the remaining population (i.e., did not nurture these abilities due to fear of violent repercussions).
fwsweet wrote:
The most valuable slaves were the skilled craftsmen, not the unskilled agricultural laborers. The wealthiest woman in 1820-40 Florida was a professional slave-trader who bought unskilled teenagers, put them through a two-year vocational training program, and then sold them at enormous mark-up as skilled mechanics, carpenters, millwrights, cabinetmakers, cobblers, cooks. and shipwrights. She accumulated staggering wealth thus and her descendants are upper-crust Florida society to this day. Court cases of the time show that such skilled slaves were far better treated than the unskilled. If a planter mistreated a farm laborer, nobody cared. But mistreat a master mechanic and every other slave-owner in the region would drag you into court, in hopes of winning the slave for himself.
My question about this is around the type of competencies demonstrated: Do the same sorts of competencies that lead to higher IQ scores correlate with higher artistic/artisanal/engineering ability? I don't know, just asking the question. It seems to me that there are likely countless entrepreneurs, even a few billionaires, whose IQ/test taking abilities are subpar to dismal. It takes nothing away from their talent, only that these talents are not relevant.
fwsweet wrote:
Also, slavery per se is a weak paradigm to explain any U.S. phenomenon. For one thing, serious importation of Africans to British North America did not start until the close of the 1600s and slavery ended just one and a half centuries later. That is just 6-7 generations--too short to have genetic impact.
The only genetic impact from this perspective is less people with "test taking" competencies. I guess the analogy would be that these people became "endangered."
fwsweet wrote:
For another, slavery was ubiquitous in Latin America: starting more than a century earlier, ending later, involving a much higher fraction of the population, and yet there is no test-score gap in Latin America. (Nor an endogamous barrier, either.)
I didn't know that - so are you saying that there is no significant IQ gap between people with significant SSA ancestry (various admixture proportions) and people with significant Euro or Asian ancestry in Latin America? So: X Brazilian with 70/30 Afro-Euro and Y Brazilian with 90/10 Afro-Euro (let's assume they have the same socioeconomic status) are not presumed to show significant test score differences???
Why doesn't anyone point this out? This pretty much kills the genetic argument if true.
fwsweet wrote:
Still, the speculation should be testable in theory. Consider for instance the grandchildren of immigrants from Haiti, Jamaica, Trinidad, Barbados, etc. Most probably consider themselves A-As and see their grandparents' origin as a curiosity, personally unimportant to themselves. And yet genetically, they are West Indians not A-As.
I'm confused. What would be the genetic difference other than average admixture within the ethnic populations? Doesn't pretty much the majority of the New World population with SSA ancestry come from a hodgepodge of SSA tribes most frequently found in West/Central Africa?
Which leads me to another question: Is there any data on ethnic IQ differences among SSA tribes in Africa?
Is it even possible for populations of the same species to develop different levels of intelligence over the span of a little more than 150,000 years?
On a global scale, the iq gap DOES correlate with SSA ancestry, not just AA ethnopolitical identity. The average SSA has an iq of 70, and I'd guess that the median of west indian nations isn't much higher. The median for predominately white countries is about 100. So it's worth noting that iqs of west indian immigrants aren't representative of the general population of their home countries.
Anyway, this whole debate appears to be taking place within the fields of psychology and sociology, not genetics. If geneticists ever identify any genes that correlate with high iq, they could simply test each population to see if the alleles are more frequent within white or asian samples, couldn't they?
I'd like to think that this kind of 'experiment' would end the whole debate, but it wouldn't. The main proponents of the genetic (really, they mean population specific genes) theory are eugenicists who would remain unconvinced in spite of any evidence to the contrary. In that sense, they're no different than christians who advocate for the teaching of intelligent design in public schools, or medical doctors who refuse to believe that aids is caused by hiv.
Is it even possible for populations of the same species to develop different levels of intelligence over the span of a little more than 150,000 years?
On a global scale, the iq gap DOES correlate with SSA ancestry, not just AA ethnopolitical identity. The average SSA has an iq of 70, and I'd guess that the median of west indian nations isn't much higher. The median for predominately white countries is about 100. So it's worth noting that iqs of west indian immigrants aren't representative of the general population of their home countries.
The mean (average) IQ score of 70 for SSAs is misleading. Mean IQ may vary quite a bit from one country to another and from one ethnic group to another.
Further the mean (as opposed to median) of predominantly white (I assume you mean European countries) isn't 100. The mean IQ for white Americans is 100. Mean IQs for European countries vary; some are as low as 95/93 or so and some as high as 102, Italy's for example. One can't blame the low scores on the presence of outsiders either. Many of these countries do not have significant immigrant populations.
BlackHaze wrote:
Anyway, this whole debate appears to be taking place within the fields of psychology and sociology, not genetics. If geneticists ever identify any genes that correlate with high iq, they could simply test each population to see if the alleles are more frequent within white or asian samples, couldn't they?
There are geneticists who are involved in this as well. The hostility to engaging in this kind of research is intense in Western countries for obvious reasons. I predict much the research will shift to places like China in the future.
BlackHaze wrote:
I'd like to think that this kind of 'experiment' would end the whole debate, but it wouldn't. The main proponents of the genetic (really, they mean population specific genes) theory are eugenicists who would remain unconvinced in spite of any evidence to the contrary. In that sense, they're no different than christians who advocate for the teaching of intelligent design in public schools, or medical doctors who refuse to believe that aids is caused by hiv.
It's a common claim that the main proponents of the genetic theory are eugenicists. Many if not most are not. Most, however, are supporters of the concept of human biodiversity, and some of these people do support eugenics. Simply believing in significant genetic differences among human beings, including something called intelligence isn't the same thing as the support for improving human stock through selective breeding, which is what eugenics is.
I'd also argue that people who believe that evolution only affected appearance and body type and had no affect at all on mental function, temperament, etc, among humans are more akin to supporters of intelligent design as they are more resistant to scientific inquiries into human biodiversity.
What if science discovers that cognitive functioning can be more or less accurately measured and there are average differences in that functioning between population groups? "Eugenicists" won't be the people who play the role of Christians who believe in intelligent design then. That role will be assumed by egalitarians and other modern progressives who find this information threatening to their ideology.
The bottom line is that if there was a significant RACIALIZED genetic reason for why ethnic groups of SSA descent score lower there would be no explanation for the success of West Indian kids in the UK.
Is this the case of West Indian kids in the U.K.? I was under the impression that West Africans were more successful academically with West Indians, working class whites, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis clustering at the bottom.
Are you saying that there is no significant IQ gap between people with significant SSA ancestry (various admixture proportions) and people with significant Euro or Asian ancestry in Latin America? So: X Brazilian with 70/30 Afro-Euro and Y Brazilian with 90/10 Afro-Euro (let's assume they have the same socioeconomic status) are not presumed to show significant test score differences?
Maya, if you ask the question in that way, then there is no test-score gap in the U.S. either. There is no test-score gap in the U.S., "between people with significant SSA ancestry (various admixture proportions) and people with significant Euro or Asian ancestry." To paraphrase your question, a USAmerican with 70/30 Afro-Euro and a USAmerican 90/10 Afro-Euro (assuming they have the same socioeconomic status), in fact, do not show significant test-score differences. Dozens of studies have confirmed and replicated this fact over and over.
Genetic correlation studies fall into five types regarding how they estimate admixture: those that employ skin-tone and facial features, those that employ blood proteins, those that employ genealogical research of the subjects' families, those studying the German descendants of Black GIs, and those studying test-score differences between first-gen biracial kids with W mother and B father versus vice-versa.
Test-score correlation with skin-tone is 0.15 (negligible). Correlation with "negroid" features is even lower. Correlation with blood proteins (the phenotype expression of DNA markers) is 0.05. If you then contrrol for skin-tone and scocioeconomic class, one study got a test-score correlation of -0.02. (In other words, if two individuals have identical external appearance and socioeconomic status, the one with more Afro markers gets higher test scores.) Another study tried to replicate this and got an even stronger (-0.38) correlation that the more Afro, the higher the test scores. (Nevertheless, most researchers consider -0.38 insignificant.)
Studies employing genealogical research show a slight advantage for Afro ancestry (the fewer Euro ancestors, the higher the test scores). Test scores of German descendants of Black GI's do not correlate with the number of generations removed from the Black GI (zero correlation). Finally, kids with W mothers and B fathers consistently get better test-scores than the reverse. A genetic hypothesis would predict no correlation with which parent was Black.
For a synopsisof the many dozens of studies that have beaten this dead horse into the ground, see Chapter 3 of Christopher Jencks and Meredith Phillips, The Black-White Test Score Gap (Washington DC: Brookings Institution, 1998).
Let me repeat: There is no test-score gap in the U.S., between people with significant SSA ancestry (various admixture proportions) and people with significant Euro or Asian ancestry. A USAmerican with 70/30 Afro-Euro and a USAmerican 90/10 Afro-Euro (assuming they have the same social status and group membership) do not show test-score differences. Dozens of studies have confirmed this fact over and over. The test score gap correlates with ethnopolitical group membership. It does not correlate with Afro genetic admixture.
sagascend wrote:
Why doesn't anyone point this out?
Sigh. It has been pointed out. It has been pointed out over and over again. Dozens of studies, collections of studies, and meta-studies of studies have been published over the past two decades showing the absence of positive (indeed, slight negative) correlation between Afro admixture and test-scores. Please, please, please read at least Chapter 3 of the book cited above.
sagascend wrote:
This pretty much kills the genetic argument if true.
"True"? I cannot say anything about "truth." But those findings have been replicated by many independent researchers, all of them peer-reviewed before publication.
About Brazil. Brazil lacks an endogamous barrier, so there is no way to correlate test-score with ethnopolitical self-identity. Hence, there no interest in Brazil in studying a test-score gap where it cannot even be defined. Presumably, one could try to correlate test-scores with degree of Afro admixture in Brazil, but there has been no interest within Brazil in funding such a study. After all, many replicated studies in the U.S. have conclusively shown the lack of any such correlation in the U.S. What incentive would Brazil have for repeating them?
On the other hand, Brazil is interested in the correlation between census label (pardo, moureno, branco, preto, etc.) and socioeconomic class. As shown by George Reid Andrews, “Racial Inequality in Brazil and the United States: A Statistical Comparison,” Journal of Social History 26, no. 2 (1992): 229-63, when a Brazilian family rises in socioeconomic status its color desgination on the census gets lighter and lighter. When a family falls, its census label gets darker and darker. "Money whitens" is not a joke in Brazil. It is dead serious. And so there is Brazilian interest in studying that, but not in relating test-score gap to genetics—something that U.S. researchers have flogged to death.
'
FAQ
Search
Register
Log in
. OR MAYBE ITS ALL OF THOSE. 
