POLL: Is it racist to assert that blacks have a low average IQ?

While they do have diverse cultures they also have many similarities between their cultures. Perhaps these similarities have more of en effect or just as much of an effect on the topic at hand as the differences do?

 

Well, I definitely disagree with your assertions. I will point out though that there is a definitive difference between what we call Intelligence, aptitude, and education. What IQ tests are supposed to show, I think is a mix of intelligence and aptitude. So I don't think a lack of "common sense" is really part of this specific issue. But I will say "common sense" and worldly knowledge and cultural knowledge are all different types of intelligence and all do actually matter to whatever extent in the real world. However I don't believe the topic of IQ scores really fits with the type of intelligence you are speaking about.

 

IQ tests are a joke anyway. They were created to give the upper classes a way to differentiate themselves from the masses so they could discriminate in their own favor. The human brain has been around for hundreds of thousands of years. I bet a person with a tested IQ of 132 would have a very hard time making it in Africa without modern conveniences yet the natives seem to get along just fine. This poll is racist.

 

Ok thats just a general bias and completely unfounded and untrue. I know plenty of people with very high IQs who are also very in touch with nature and love survivalism. In fact, I would say some of what lends itself to IQ tests would actually be extremely helpful in Africa or living in an even more rustic environment. Of course you will always have "nerds" who wouldn't cut it. But for every "nerd" there is just a regular very intelligent human being who could probably make it just fine ANYWHERE on this planet. Also, IQ tests were NOT invented for the reason you propose. Maybe some have used it in such a fashion but it's actual origins are far more innocent I think than that.

Also, It's not racist at all. I'm sorry. But to ask a question is not racist. These rules of "race" are not natural and thus must be learned because they are a generally made up thing. But here we are asking a real question because real statistics show a great variable.

 

The IQ test was invented by Alfred Binet in order to identify children with special needs. Binet predicted and feared that it would be misused for nefarious purposes and indeed it was used to rank people according to their intelligence level and during the eugenics movement it went as far as sterilizing the "feeble minded." Racists have been misusing science for decades in order to promote their ideology and social policies. When you have a biased agenda odds are you are not going to think objectively about topics of this nature.

I think that some mental testing is useful especially for identifying people with mental illness and different learning styles but I believe that there are multiple types of intelligence and intelligence cannot be generalized as a single unit and ranked in hierarchical fashion in the way that many psychometricians believe it can. A person may have many mental strengths and weaknesses. You could score very high on an IQ test because you have exceptional reading comprehension and reasoning skills but be very poor at socializing or artistic ability. I also believe that your nurturing environment has a profound impact on intelligence. Everything from prenatal environmental quality, nutrition, education, parenting and societal influences affect the development of intelligence. There is also a genetic component to intelligence but that doesn't mean that group intelligence is impacted by genetic differences. There's no scientific basis to make that claim.

 

Why can't you remember that your PRATT (points refuted a thousand times). It's hard to copy paste in the old rebuttals every time. Which you have no response to (again).

You totally failed to address Rayznack's question about culturally American East Asians. You can't address it.
Nobody denies economic systems (imposed on Korea from outside) affect economic performance. This is a facile analysis and you are avoiding more developed arguments for assessing racial differences.

 

In fact it's Marxists that perverted science for their ideology.

 

Where are the books on Egalitarians perverting science for their ideology? Plenty have been written about racists and their perversion of science.

 

Gould, Lysenko, Boas, Lewontin etc. etc.

Most of those books about "racists" were written by these proven frauds.

 

Probably because it didn't happen. Otherwise he could just repost the information.

I don't find his argument to be well-developed. He also has no answer for why the most recent derivatives of Northeast Asians (Native Americans) have lower average IQs than Whites.

They're not proven frauds. Where are the books written about Egalitarians perverting science? Racists (without quotes because they ARE racists) have a long history of perverting science to support racist ideologies. They are the frauds. Francis Galton for instance believed that certain breeds of dogs had higher intelligence than some humans! The attempt to rank human beings in fundamental worth is based on pseudoscience and modern racists are no more scientific than their ideological forebears.

 

Well now you are obviously being bias. I don't deny many have undertaken a sloppy process in this regard, but certainly on both sides of this argument. There is no doubt both sides have perverted science to fit their argument at some point or another. There is no doubt there are those out there who pick and choose what to believe as to support their agenda. You know that I'm sure.

To be fair, there are some dogs who I believe are actually smarter than some human INDIVIDUALS. But all of these humans have severe disability so that's not really worth much.

What's your take on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion? Factual or fictional? I mean it's obviously fictional but I wonder what you'll say.

Are you a polygenist? Please, please tell me polygenics is factual......

 

The information comes from the graph of world skull size from the beals et al. report you provided.

Morton also had a few Southeast Asian skulls which were smaller in volume than Whites.

You have not responded to my point so I'm unaware what is undeveloped. Perhaps you find the arguments by Nisbett that Northeast Asians have high IQ because of their Confucian culture as incoherent as I since Japanese and Koreans do not have a Confucian culture.

So Ameri-indians have not had contact with Northeast Asians for at least 10,000 years and nothing could account for IQ differences in that span of time?

So why is Lewontin most famous for the fallacy named after him?

What do you call an 'academic' who makes up data by guessing?

 

That's interesting considering that paper explicitly denies a correlation between race and skull size.

Can you show which graph you are talking about?

Brain Size, Cranial Morphology, Climate, and Time Machines1 CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY V01. 25, NO 3, June 1984

He also had a few "Mongolian" (Chinese) skulls that were smaller in volume than Whites.



How does that fit your theory?

Japanese and Korean culture actually was influenced by Confucius....

http://onmarkproductions.com/html/japanese-confucianism.html

JAPANESE CONFUCIANISM
Jp = Jukyō 儒教 Jp = Juka 儒家

In Japan, as earlier in China, Confucian ideals played a major role in the development of ethical and political philosophies. This was especially so during Japan’s formative years (+ 6th to 9th centuries), when Confucianism and Buddhism were introduced to Japan from Korea and China. Prince Shōtoku Taishi 聖徳太子 (+ 547 to 622), the first great patron of Confucianism and Buddhism in Japan, enacted a 17-Article Constitution that established Confucianist ideals and Buddhist ethics as the moral foundations of the young Japanese nation. This served for centuries as the Japanese blueprint for court etiquette and decorum.

What do you propose could account for such differences in IQ? Devolution? Based on what?

Let's bare in mind that Joseph Graves refuted Rushton's life history theory which attempted to explain Northeast Asian intellectual superiority in the first place. There's simply no evolutionary basis to assume that human races differ in intelligence. Period.

Only in racist circles is Lewontin most famous for the title of Edwards paper. In the scientific community he is highly respected as are his arguments over race and genetics.

You're talking about Gould again aren't you? I'm not aware of him making up data by guessing only drawing conclusions based on available data.

In any case in the scientific community Egalitarians scientists are far more highly regarded than racialists who are viewed as fringe and biased.

 

The practical usage of the IQ test was to separate classes of people for discrimination based upon their knowledge of material one can only learn in the best schools. It is the same with the SAT. Someone said that a person could manage living in Africa even if plopped there from America. That is true, I did it myself and yes, my IQ is 132. I spent a year backpacking from Egypt to Uganda back in 82. There is no way I could have made it without the locals. What this person missed was that I relied upon the wisdom of the locals to survive. A reality show where two people live a couple weeks on the land is fun to watch but hardly realistic. Try living for 60 years in the bush, you better know how to survive and an IQ test means diddly squat in those circumstances. If it were true, then every single shamba is filled to the brim with genius's.

 

So by your logic a desert rat can do nuclear physics?

 

Great example of how our schools fail to teach us basic logic and reasoning skills. I fear that you would have a very hard time surviving with the skills you demonstrated here.

 

Wow, the poll above the OP sure could use some diversity in options. At least have one that states disagreement with the OP premise?

Maybe it isn't necessarily racist to say that certain populations or ethnic groups labeled "black" score lower on certain IQ tests by itself. It's how you interpret that data where the contention comes in. And let's face it, most of those who emphatically claim that African people are naturally less intelligent aren't doing so without bringing value judgements to the table as well. Notice almost all these so-called "race realists" also claim innate racial differences in aggressiveness, attractiveness, and sexual lasciviousness, with Africans always looking less favorable in these other comparisons. Even their "concessions" of black athletic superiority are often coupled with the old "brains against brawn" dichotomy, or maybe the "black male brute" trope. It doesn't take telepathy to figure that these charlatans have much more invested in their arguments than simply making objective observations.

I can vouch from personal experience that having disparate mental strengths and weaknesses can be a thing for certain individuals. The last time I took psychometric testing, I got a relatively mediocre IQ score of 108, but this mean score veiled a lot of unevenness in my intellectual powers. I tested in the "superior" to "very superior" range on verbal areas and below average on mathematical areas and process speed. My scores on other standardized tests like the SAT show the same pattern: I do great on the verbal section and (*)(*)(*)(*)-poor on the math. And while I had little problem whatsoever collecting A's on several writing assignments during my college days, I could never get through mathematical courses like calculus or economics. What can I say, I hate math with a passion.

I don't know if people who aren't on the autism spectrum like I am would find similar unevenness within their test scores, but it wouldn't surprise me if it were a common pattern among "neurotypicals" too.

 

It is isn't it.

 

Precisely. And to add to that:

4. Even if IQ is valid and measures what we think it measures, there is so much variation within each race that it's difficult to come up with a scenario where average IQ is meaningful. What possible policy or other decisions would we make based on average racial IQ, as opposed to specific individual IQ?

 

That's interesting as you previously claimed the paper showed low correlation between race and skull size. Could you explain which it is, and why you lied?

The graph on page 12.

One group of samples of Chinese skulls out of a larger set?

Please explain.

Vietnam was also influenced by Confucianism.

In other words, your argument is a wash.

CTRL + F: "Vietnam"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confucianism

Why would I know? Why would I believe two groups sharing a common ancestor and completely split off for over 10,000 years cannot have different IQ's just as they have different phenotypes?

You mean the brain volume data you ignore?

And the brain volume/IQ studies you ignore?

Feel free proving that.

What comes up in the google search box when you type in 'Lewontin'?

You're not aware Gould 'corrected' Morton's data with his own that he made up? Please explain how he drew conclusions based on available data? The only available data were Morton's skulls, and he never touched one in his life.

Please explain why group think is a compelling argument.

 

So why is it you are the one failing logic?

Your argument:

Africans - testing low on IQ - survive where someone with a purported high IQ cannot.

Africans therefore highly intelligent (or, IQ tests are meaningless).

Mikes parody of your argument:

Rats can survive in harsh conditions you cannot.

Rats therefore are highly intelligent (or, IQ tests are meaningless).

 

That was an interpretation by Lieberman. This is what they actually said:

7. We find little support for the use of brain size in taxonomic assessment (other than with paleontological extremes over time). Racial taxonomies which include cranial capacity, head shape, or any other trait influenced by climate confound ecotypic and phyletic causes. For Pleistocene hominids, we doubt that the volume of the braincase is any more taxonomically "valuable" than any other trait. Ecotypic differentiation (fig. 9) appears sometimes greater than average taxonomic difference. A slight increase in head size combined with a rounder cranium has a disproportionate effect upon volume. Even with absolute capacity difference, a connection to reproductive isolation is questionable given the lack of such connection among modern peoples.

Also....

The implication is that any effort to attribute racial or cognitive
significance to brain size is probably meaningless unless
the effect of climate is controlled. For example, the endocranial
volumes of Europeans and Africans differ little from what one
would expect given the difference in their respective winters.

So basically they reject the notion that variation in brain size has anything to do with intelligence.

I notice that the graph groups parts of China and Central Asia with Southeast Asians.

That's what Morton chose as his sample for Mongolians. Any error lies with him.

Reading over The Mismeasure of Man (p. 88) I find this passage to be interesting:

Morton thought little better of other Mongolians, for he wrote of the
Chinese (p. 50): "So versatile are their feelings and actions, that
they have been compared to the monkey race, whose attention is
perpetually changing from one object to another."

Morton's view of Chinese skull size seems to have fit his prejudices.

It's Nisbett's argument. I personally do not believe that the cultural influence of Confucius alone is the cause of high Northeast Asian IQ though surely culture is an important variable. I think it really boils down to the wealth of a nation and its ability to provide its people with a good nurturing environment.

You're the one defending the superiority of Northeast Asian intelligence so why are their most recent deriatives not on equal footing with them? You have no explanation? If there is none why should we believe in this theory?

If we accept Rushton's cold winter theory and the Bering Strait theory then Native Americans simply must have undergone natural selection for higher intelligence prior to their migration across the American continents. Rushton also had no explanation for lower average Native American IQ other than to call them an anomaly, exposing the selectivity of his data.

I have addressed them. They were refuted by Leonard Lieberman among other scholars.

Wikipedia entries come to the top of the Google Search but that is irrelevant. The fact is that Lewontin is highly respected by the scientific community.

He looked at Morton's data and made corrections based on the literature.

It speaks to the credibility of scholarship when it is widely supported by a community of professionals. Scientific Racism has been subjected to rigorous critique and exposed as pseudoscience.

 

Are you not aware Taiwan, South Korea,China and even Japan were backwaters a century ago?

So compare Northeast Asia to Northern Europe.

Not sure how to respond to this. Can you read a map? Where does most of Vietnam fall based on the map?

Native Americans are not a derivative of Northeast Asians. The two groups share a common ancestor and Native Americans geographically removed themselves from Asia over 15 thousand years ago.

This is comical. Feel free linking the post 'addressing' racial brain volume differences and IQ, in your own words, of course.

This wasn't a Wikipedia search but a Google search. Try typing 'Lewontin' into the search box before hitting enter and what pops down.

It's also not a fact to state your unsupported claim as a fact.

This is tiresome lecturing you on how to debate.

Sorry, care to elaborate? He asserted Morton's measurements were wrong, point-blank, and offered his own data.

By whom? Please prove that Scientific 'Racism' is on par with astrology, and has no scientific merit and no support by any mainstream scientists.

 

They certainly weren't 1st world countries which supports my argument that race is not a determinant of culture or nation wealth.

What about them?

Yes, I can read a map. Let's look at the map:



All of Vietnam falls within the area labeled "cross hatching" on the map. Take note of what I said. Part of China also falls under "cross hatching." Some of China falls under "checkerboard."

The area labeled "cross-hatching" encompasses most of Southeast Asia and India, much of Central Asia and part of Russia. Incidentally, Northeast Asians do NOT have the largest crania according to the map. Northern Russia, Alaska and Canada in the black shaded area have the largest crania. Beals et al. (1984) does not support your racial/cranial claims at all!

Who was that common ancestor other than Northeast Asians themselves? Do you have evidence that 15,000 years ago an ancestor of Northeast Asians and Native Americans that was anatomically different from either group inhabited the region? If not then it is correct to say that Native Americans derive from Northeast Asians.

I'm not going to bother with old debates.

I did do a Google search and two Wikipedia entries were the top results. Yes, one of them is Lewontin's Fallacy but that certainly doesn't mean that Lewontin is most famous for Lewontin's Fallacy. It just means that the second most searched topic for Lewontin on Google is Lewontin's Fallacy, probably because racists are obsessed with that phrase.

You lecturing me on how to debate? Now THAT is hilarious. Richard Lewontin is a eminent evolutionary biologist.

He won the Sewall Wright Award in 1994 and the 2015 Crafoord Prize in Biosciences.


His work on population genetics revolutionized thinking on human genetics. He's a first rate scholar.

Here's a reference:

http://authors.library.caltech.edu/5456/1/hrst.mit.edu/hrs/evolution/public/profiles/lewontin.html

[video=youtube;piDznzrNymE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=piDznzrNymE&t=49m0s[/video]

Take a look at this lecture at Yale to see how Lewontin has influenced the field on human differences.

Based on corrections.

The proof that Scientific Racism is on par with astrology and other pseudoscientific fields is its lack of currency in academia. What college or high school courses are you aware of that teach racist ideas about human biology? I took psychology, biology and anthropology courses in college and never heard a thing about Rushton or Jensen and the racialist hereditarian position. Race & IQ was covered in the differential psychology section of the course and what was taught is very similar to what I showed you in the lecture with the Yale professor.

Aside from that there are official statements by the American Anthropological Association denouncing Scientific Racism and several books with glowing academic reviews which denounce Scientific Racism as a pseudoscience. The few mainstream scholars such as James Watson who have provided opinions supporting racialism have been vehemently criticized by other scholars and men like Rushton are regarded as fringe quacks in the scientific community.

Now the proof that racialism has no scientific merit is in the many rebuttals by credible scholars. There's video proof for that as well.

[video=youtube;lUjo31DChcE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUjo31DChcE[/video]

 

Yes; once they were introduced to new ideas they certainly adapted well, unlike low-IQ nations.

Northern Europe is geographically further north than most Northeast Asia (China, Korea, Japan) but Northern Europeans have smaller brain volume.

Indeed. Vietnam is largely below the region of larger brain volume encompassing most of populated China, all of Japan, Taiwan and Korea.

That may explain a difference between the purported IQ differences between Vietnamese and Chinese you claim exist.

Tell us about Northern Europe vs. Northeast Asia, again. Does that support Beals' claims?

I don't know. Why don't you find out? Ameri-indians and Northeast Asians look pretty different to me.

It's funny. You expect me to dig up an old discussion on Vietnamese brain volume but you can't link to old 'debates' you claim to have had?

How have you 'refuted' the Black-White brain volume differences found from a recent MRI study I posted before?

What part of not hitting enter did you not understand?

And your response to the fact Lewontin's Fallacy being the second result is that 'racists' like to look it up?

LoL.

I am mistaken if he's won the Crafoord Prize.

He's the great academic who happens to have a more prestigious academic label his arguments a fallacy.

Fell free to elaborate.

You mean biological differences? You were until recently unaware of fast-twitch muscle fiber differences between races, which is what I learned in physiology, so I'd say quite a few.

So your argument isn't on the basis or merit of science but whether it is taught. Astrology has no scientific basis, while 'scientific racism' is chalk full of scientific evidence and logical reasoning.

Tell us about those Black-White brain volume differences found in an MRI study a few years ago you claim you addressed.

The last poll I saw showed a significant number of anthropologists subscribing to the belief in race. I'm curious the number of physical anthropologists subscribing to a belief in racial brain volume differences.

You continue posting a video of Dr. Graves no one but yourself says makes Graves look good in the debate. Am I missing something from his incoherence? Perhaps his inability to discuss Haiti's low IQ after being the first slave free nation in the Western hemisphere?