Africans are less intelligent than Westerners

[Drolefille]

Originally Posted by KSig RC

This definitely requires citation - it violates any sort of transitive quality, which may or may not exist but certainly makes the claim beyond counterintuitive.

Essentially humans are too young evolutionarily and have mixed too much to make race meaningful as a biological construct. Skin color or eye shape are very tiny variables within a much broader diversity of genes. Would you assume that a black man from South Africa, a black man from Northern Africa, an indigenous Australian and an African-American are necessarily more similar than four people of different races from the same geographic area? Had Europe and Africa branched off many millions of years before they did, and then stayed separated due to continental shift or some other reason, we might have two different human subspecies today.

It's quite possible I may have explained it wrong but I'll try to do this anyhow. Essentially 85% of genetic variation occurs within a population, whether that is Japanese people, British, whatever. This number has been very consistent over the years. About 6-9 percent is between different groups within the same race. Japanese and Chinese, British and French. The rest is between populations.

And for the record, I'm not saying race isn't a real social construct. But it's one that can be traced to our desire to classify people like we did with animals, atoms, plants, etc. during the scientific revolution. Race isn't completely useless as a way to distinguish people, it's just not genetically accurate.

I pulled these sources out of Wiki articles on race because the articles themselves are huge and provide more than anyone here probably wants to read. However they do contain some of the actual data to back up the other articles.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race
See particularly the footnotes for these and other articles. The most interesting were pdfs but I can't link them because I'm on a Mac at the moment and I can't figure out how to capture the link.
http://raceandgenomics.ssrc.org/Lewontin/ Lewontin is big in this area.
http://raceandgenomics.ssrc.org/Goodman/

You don't have data because both the positive and negative forms of this type of study are grossly bad science. It should be easier to confirm racial bias than deny it, but conclusive studies of control groups get bogged down in politics - for instance, the easiest way to show "cultural" bias would be to take middle-class groups from the same neighborhood across multiple cultures and test them, normalize, test again. The definition of "cultural" makes this subjective, therefore trash. However, it is a plausible explanation why minorities underperform on standardized tests - inherently, it is nearly impossible to prove this concept. There are other plausible explanations that are just as impossible to prove. That's why it's a crappy point to put into argument.

I know it's bad science. But the fact is that there are IQ tests and that historically minorities do not perform as well on them as the majority does. There is data out there that backs that up even though I do not have it. I wasn't talking about data that discusses WHY this is the case.

The one way to do it would be to take X number of kids of different races and raise them in a completely neutral, closed, environment. That will never ever happen.

[macallan25]

Originally Posted by Tom Earp

Guess it is in the eye of the beholder no matter how ignorant he/she/it really is.

If one is talking about Africans in poor countries, of course they are as they have not had the traing or tools to use as westerners!

I hope you get speared by a Zulu.

[Taualumna]

If non-whites tend to perform poorer on IQ tests, then why do Asians have higher IQs? Didn't some guy once say that Eastern European Jews had the highest, followed by East Asians?

[CutiePie2000]

Originally Posted by Taualumna

If non-whites tend to perform poorer on IQ tests, then why do Asians have higher IQs? Didn't some guy once say that Eastern European Jews had the highest, followed by East Asians?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esKwU3BrUfM

[AKA_Monet]

Originally Posted by CutiePie2000

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esKwU3BrUfM

That is effin' funny...

[DSTRen13]

IQ is what IQ tests measure. It's a meaningless number based on biased tests.

I wish that the article posted by the OP shocked me, but it really doesn't. Scientific racism is far from new. He's an old man, and hasn't changed his ways or opinions for a long time. He's probably also senile.

[DaemonSeid]

2 Words....


Bell Curve

[MysticCat]

Originally Posted by madmax

Thanks for proving my point. We are not equal. Do you and Tom have same intelligence or should I say the capacity to learn? I think Tom was probably just held down by the man.

You had a point?

Of course not all people are of equal intelligence. That's quite a different statement from suggesting that not all racial groups are of equal intelligence.

[Munchkin03]

Didn't he say something similar about men vs. women a few years back?

He's an old bigot, and his achievements in science are just encouraging people to give lip service to his dried-up ass...

[neosoul]

as an African... I'm lightweight offended by this study...

[KSig RC]

Originally Posted by Drolefille

Essentially humans are too young evolutionarily and have mixed too much to make race meaningful as a biological construct. Skin color or eye shape are very tiny variables within a much broader diversity of genes. Would you assume that a black man from South Africa, a black man from Northern Africa, an indigenous Australian and an African-American are necessarily more similar than four people of different races from the same geographic area? Had Europe and Africa branched off many millions of years before they did, and then stayed separated due to continental shift or some other reason, we might have two different human subspecies today.

It's quite possible I may have explained it wrong but I'll try to do this anyhow. Essentially 85% of genetic variation occurs within a population, whether that is Japanese people, British, whatever. This number has been very consistent over the years. About 6-9 percent is between different groups within the same race. Japanese and Chinese, British and French. The rest is between populations.

And for the record, I'm not saying race isn't a real social construct. But it's one that can be traced to our desire to classify people like we did with animals, atoms, plants, etc. during the scientific revolution. Race isn't completely useless as a way to distinguish people, it's just not genetically accurate.

I pulled these sources out of Wiki articles on race because the articles themselves are huge and provide more than anyone here probably wants to read. However they do contain some of the actual data to back up the other articles.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race
See particularly the footnotes for these and other articles. The most interesting were pdfs but I can't link them because I'm on a Mac at the moment and I can't figure out how to capture the link.
http://raceandgenomics.ssrc.org/Lewontin/ Lewontin is big in this area.
http://raceandgenomics.ssrc.org/Goodman/

I agree with all of this, but this does not really support your counterintuitive claim that "random white/black comparisons will be more similar than random white/white comparisons" - since the variation is within populations, and it is more likely the person (regardless of race) will be outside of your population, there seems to be no reason why there would be any difference in variation. Scanning the Lewontin article yields no support for your claim, and seems instead to back up my intuition.

Do you have a specific citation that says different racial groups are more likely similar than within a racial group? Or was that misstated?

I understand completely the social construct model of race - I don't understand the specific "fact" you quoted.

[Tom Earp]

Originally Posted by macallan25

I hope you get speared by a Zulu.

Is this supposed to be any where near an inteligent post?

[AlphaFrog]

Originally Posted by Tom Earp

Is this supposed to be any where near an inteligent post?

IRONY.

[Drolefille]

Originally Posted by KSig RC

I agree with all of this, but this does not really support your counterintuitive claim that "random white/black comparisons will be more similar than random white/white comparisons" - since the variation is within populations, and it is more likely the person (regardless of race) will be outside of your population, there seems to be no reason why there would be any difference in variation. Scanning the Lewontin article yields no support for your claim, and seems instead to back up my intuition.

Do you have a specific citation that says different racial groups are more likely similar than within a racial group? Or was that misstated?

I understand completely the social construct model of race - I don't understand the specific "fact" you quoted.

Alas, at the moment, I've found it quoted multiple places but haven't been able to trace it back to its source. Perhaps my example wasn't what I intended it to be, but i'll try to find more primary sources for you.

[DaemonSeid]

Nobel prize winner apologizes for 'misconstrued' remarks

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/europe...ogy/index.html