The black-white IQ gap has been almost entirely explained by controlling for SES and other factors.
I used to think the same thing. But when I actually spent some time reading and evaluating the evidence, it turns out that is far from the case. The official scientific consensus is that the jury is still out. But there is certainly a strong case for the genetic basis - see this article in Slate for example: http://www.slate.com/id/2178122/entry/2178123/
Intelligence is certainly very complicated. For the sake of this discussion, I was taking intelligence to be "intelligence as defined/measured by IQ tests". Perhaps I was being sloppy and should have used a different word.
lexlibra's comment is lame ... People who advocate conclusions for which the evidence is weak merely lead one away from the truth
I'm curious what was lame about the comment?
The evidence for the two main propositions is pretty overwhelming. People of West African descent dominate short distance running at the highest levels. For instance, in the past six olympics, all 48 male finalists in the 100 meter dash were of West African descent. Likewise, the speed positions in football are dominated by African-Americans compared to the non-speed positions.
On the second proposition, for whatever the reason, black Americans of West African descent consistently score a standard deviation lower on IQ tests and IQ-like tests ( SAT, Armed Forces Qualifying Exam). The American Psychological Association reports: "The relatively low mean of the distribution of African-American intelligence test scores has been discussed for many years. Although studies using different tests and samples yield a range of results, the Black mean is typically about one standard deviation (about 15 points) below that of Whites (Loehlin et al, 1975; Jensen, 1980; Reynolds et al, 1987)." ( http://www.lrainc.com/swtaboo/taboos/apa_01.html ) The existence of the IQ gap is simply not in dispute.
It seems that my explanation fits the evidence better than anything else proposed here. If there is evidence controverting my view, or supporting another, I would be happy to hear it.
maybe it's because I live in Texas or maybe because I'm a minority, but I sense more hostility from whites towards blacks than vice versa
My experience as a white person living in northern cities is very different. I've been called racial slurs when walking through black neighborhoods, and several of my friends have been mugged. Walking through black neighbords and hearing hip-hop blasting that demonizes people of my skin color is not a very comfortable experience. This blog post is good introduction to the topic, from the black northerner perspective: http://www.ta-nehisi.com/2008/07/a-very-uncomfortable-post-a...
the phrase "telling black people that" really bothers me because it subtly implies black people can't figure it out without help
Most people rely on the media and educational institutions for their information, that's the job of those institutions. And a lot of it is black leaders telling black people that racism is the problem.
I haven't seen any research that has tied racial hostilities to lack of economic advancement in the US. You could actually argue the opposite since US became an economic powerhouse after WWII, and racial tensions were very high then
In the north, there is far more residential segregation today than there was fifty years ago. I think a major factor for this is that it's just not very safe for a white person to live in many predominately black neighborhoods. This ends up cutting off the black community economically.
I don't doubt that environment plays a role. And note that the paper you cite did not rule out genetics, and I think he quite overstated the conclusion based on the evidence presented. For the opposing case, try this article: http://www.jonentine.com/reviews/UPI_reconstruction.htm
Even more telling is the case of West African sprinters:
1) In the past six olympics, all 48 male finalists in the 100 meter dash were of West African descent. The chances of this happening by chance is infantesimally small.
2) Despite having the same West African descent, they all grew up in very different environments ( West Africa itself, the Carribean, U.S., Canada, England)
3) Sprinting is one of the most universal of all human activities. It's also one that requires the least number of hours to acheive world class training and conditioning ( I believe I've read world class sprinters only train about 10-20 hours a week ).
Studies have also shown that men of West African decent have more fast twitch muscle and higher levels of testostorone. The evidence for a substantial genetic component seems overwhelming to me.
I agree. I think that's why so people ( including me once upon a time) want to avoid talking about genetic explanations for the IQ gap as long as there is any possibility of it being environmental.
But I also think a lot of damage can be done by avoiding talk of genetic differences. The media, politicians, and educational institutions have been telling black people that the problems in the black community are all a result of racism. This has created a hostility towards whites that only harms the cause of economic advancement.
"white kids from households with annual incomes of $20,000 to $30,000 easily outscore black kids from households with annual incomes of $80,000 to $100,000."
In an adoption study where black and white babies were both adopted by high IQ white parents, there was a one standard deviation difference ( 15 IQ points) between the black and white children.
The existence of a racial gap in IQ is simply not in dispute. It shows up in SAT scores, it shows up in military IQ tests during times with a draft, and it shows up in numerous psychological studies. See for instance this paper from Brookings Institute, which is about as mainstream liberal as you can get ( http://www.brookings.edu/views/papers/dickens/20060619_iq.pd... )
The only question is if the difference or environmental or genetic. I'm not positive what causes the difference myself. If you put a gun to my head and forced me to make a bet, I'd probably say a substantial portion of the gap is genetic in origin. For evidence of this, I'll point you to this article in Slate (a very mainstream news source): http://www.slate.com/id/2178122/entry/2178123/
no data suggests there are fundamental genetic differences between the races that result in the expression of differences in intelligence or footspeed or any other significantly complex trait.
Percent of body fat, physique, testosterone levels, and brain size have all shown to be correlated with race.
Men of West African decent have broken 10 second barrier on the 100m dash 134 times. No member from any other ethnic group has ever broken 10 seconds. Meanwhile, East Africans routinely monopolize gold medals in the long distance events ( 10,000 meters, marathons). Can you think of any non-genetic explanation for this? Examining the physiques of West Africans versus East Africans makes the genetic explanation pretty obvious.
Studies of IQ highly correlate with latitude. People of northern Chinese and Mongolian origin score higher than the Vietnamese. In limited studies, Intuits score higher than Native Americans from Central America. 60,000 years is actually quite a long time, and the skills necessary to survive harsh northern winters are very different than those needed to survive in tropical jungles.
I will gamble there is a significant inverse correlation between education and racism.
I'd agree with you there. But note that education is an industry. And just like Coke tries to convince you that drinking coke will make you cool, the education industry tries to convince you that there is no problem that cannot be remedied just by spending more on education. In academia, freedom of thought about the issue of IQ is simply not allowed (see Larry Summers and James Watson).
For the record, I am Ivy league educated myself. I would love it if the IQ gap was environmental, and we could figure out the formula for making it disappear. I spent a fair amount of time working for charities in the inner city. But I believe that we must try to get an accurate view of reality, even if the truth might be unpleasant. Willfully denying evidence helps nobody.
FYI, I specially created this account to post on this thread, because I was scared of being called a racist and didn't want that tarnishing my normal account.
Here's an explanation for why foot speed and intelligence are inversely correlated:
"Upper body strength is relatively equally distributed between the races, but footspeed most definitely is not. So, tailbacks, wide receivers, and defensive players have a need for speed, so they are disproportionately black. I haven't checked recently, but in most recent years since Jason Sehorn's retirement, none of the 64 NFL starting cornerbacks at the start of the season were white, and none of the 32 starting tailbacks were white. (For some reason, this never gets as much publicity as the perceived lack of black quarterbacks.)"
"As we all know, there is about a 15 point difference IQ gap between whites and blacks, so positions that are black dominated tend to have lower average IQs than positions that are more integrated (or that are white monopolized, such as placekicker and punter)."
This seems like a much more plausible explanation of the facts than the "closer to the ball" theory. Are we really that scared of "things you can't say" not to point out something that is obvious to anybody who watches football?
I used to think the same thing. But when I actually spent some time reading and evaluating the evidence, it turns out that is far from the case. The official scientific consensus is that the jury is still out. But there is certainly a strong case for the genetic basis - see this article in Slate for example: http://www.slate.com/id/2178122/entry/2178123/