This is why I love Mark Kleiman:
If, like me, you're heartily tired both of
* People who dogmatically deny either that some sort of generalized cognitive ability is measurable, and that IQ testing is a decent though imperfect proxy for that measurement, or that different human population groups with different genetic heritages might have different distributions of cognitive ability
and
* People who use the fact of intergroup differences in average cognitive capacity and the possibility that they are partly genetically mediated to justify indifference to the facts about how much worse off, on average, the descendants of slaves in this country are than the rest of us
I've had my fair share of battles with both the "neck-down Darwinists" and the black-people-are-just-naturally-stupid crowd, and I've never felt noticeably improved by either side. It takes some chutzpah to argue that intelligence is not heritable, and variant--frankly, I don't know why these people are arguing with me when they could be teaching their dog nuclear physics. But this is no stupider than using IQ to explain all differences in racial and gender outcomes, when we have good evidence that plain old discrimination is alive and well in the labor market. Resumes with identifiably black names on them are much less likely to be picked out of the pile than identical resumes with white names, and IIRC, there's also evidence that white job seekers are more likely to be offered a job after an interview than black applicants, even when they've been coached to give the same answers.
Similarly, while I am broadly comfortable with the notion that male IQ distributions may have fatter tails than female distributions, and that this may account for the difference in representations at the top of the academy, it's hard to avoid the evidence that women are judged by a different standard than men. For example, the "natural" difference in the representation of women and men in the ranks of professional orchestra turned out to be mostly due to the "natural" bias of the judges; when the auditions were "blind" (done behind a screen), suddenly we found out there had been a lot of talented women hidden under those skirts. Similarly, as Neil the Ethical Werewolf points out in the comments to Ezra's post on unionization,
A world without the patriarchy would be one in which these experimental results did not obtain:
Dr. Urry cited a 1983 study in which 360 people - half men, half women - rated mathematics papers on a five-point scale. On average, the men rated them a full point higher when the author was "John T. McKay" than when the author was "Joan T. McKay." There was a similar, but smaller disparity in the scores the women gave.Dr. Spelke, of Harvard, said, "It's hard for me to get excited about small differences in biology when the evidence shows that women in science are still discriminated against every stage of the way."
A recent experiment showed that when Princeton students were asked to evaluate two highly qualified candidates for an engineering job - one with more education, the other with more work experience - they picked the more educated candidate 75 percent of the time. But when the candidates were designated as male or female, and the educated candidate bore a female name, suddenly she was preferred only 48 percent of the time.
I've wondered about this occasionally reading the posts accusing my more . . . er, vehement critics . . . of sexism in their treatment of me. This always elicits hysterical denials, proclamations that of course they are just objectively responding to my awfulness.
But of course, the people in those studies, those auditions, didn't think that they were being sexist. Oh, perhaps some of them really did think "Women aren't good [violinists/scientists/etc], so I'm not going to even bother to listen--next!" But most of them undoubtedly thought that they were doing their level best to evaluate the performance--it's just that they'd already started out by deciding that the person who's work they were judging, being a woman and all, probably wasn't all that bright. And if challenged on it, they would have undoubtedly indignantly responded that they couldn't be sexist--after all, they're [scientists/musicians/whatever]. Besides, they love women scientists--they talk about Marie Curie all the time. It's just that this woman--okay, and this one over here, and this one too, and maybe that group there--all happen to be producing substandard work.
I don't actually have an opinion on whether sexism helps motivate my more obsessional critics; it's not an area of women's studies in which I'm particularly well versed, and I'm probably the person least qualified to judge whether my gender is helping me, as my critics aver, or hurting me, as my supporters claim. Although I confess, I can't help but wonder when people turn up in my comment section to accuse me of ignorance when their very comments make it obvious that they are markedly less well-versed in the subject than I am, and moreover, seem to have gathered their fierce confidence about my ignorance from some other commenter, always male, who also clearly knows less about the subject at hand than I do. At such times, I do tend to wonder whether they would have taken quite such a belligerently condescending tone with a man.
But that's just passing bemusement, the most vivid recent example of a broader thought, which is that self-examination is not always the best way to determine whether you are discriminating. Most of modern discrimination does not consist of calling someone "nigger" on the street; it consists of deciding, in the blink of an eye, that you'd really rather hire someone else. You don't need to think "someone else white"; statistically, that's the result--even when the candidates or their resumes have been carefully selected to be identical. Statistically, you are less likely to get hired as a black man with a clean record than as a white ex-con.
I think a lot of us, in considering whether America, especially our little part of it, is racist or sexist, rely mostly on this kind of self-check. "Do I want to use the N-word? Nope! No racism here!" And yet, statistically, we all seem to be discriminating. And statistically, the perpetrator is as likely to be me or you as some unpleasant stranger. I don't think I've ever discriminated--but I don't know. I can't remember every resume I've ever looked at, and even if I did, I doubt I could piece together why I rejected most of them. But I doubt its much consolation to the black people I didn't hire that I had no urge whatsoever to lob the n-word in their direction.
I don't think affirmative action works, for a variety of reasons, but with data like this presenting a sketchy but coherent emerging picture of systematic discrimination, it's not hard to understand the moral logic that motivates the program's supporters. And while I found the hysterical reaction to Larry Summers more than a little embarassing, it's also not hard to understand why their supporters get a mite testy when their opponents say that underrepresentation of blacks and women in high-level jobs just proves that they aren't good enough. Genetics could be a factor in distributional differences (and I think probably is, within groups)--but in a society that seems to have measurable levels of latent discrimination, I don't think there's any way to tell how much of a factor it is in inter-group outcomes.
"But this is no stupider than using IQ to explain all differences in racial and gender outcomes, when we have good evidence that plain old discrimination is alive and well in the labor market. Resumes with identifiably black names on them are much less likely to be picked out of the pile than identical resumes with white names"
Megan,
What's the mystery here? If you concede that IQ is real, then you must acknowledge the data that show that only one out of six African Americans has an IQ as high as the average white American. If that's not enough to explain black under performance, throw in the dysfunctional dominant American black culture into the mix. Don't you think there might be some correlation between having an "identifiably black" name and being raised in this culture? All things being equal, wouldn't you be more wary of a black job applicant named DeShawn over one named Steve? Is it so irrational to avoid the DeShawns then?
The truth is that most Americans like to root for the perceived underdog and are thrilled to meet an intelligent and competent African American (this is big, unspoken part of Obama's appeal). And there is no law or institutionalized discrimination keeping talent blacks from achieving success in America. Merrill Lynch, American Express, and Time Warner all have black CEOs (and two of the three are highly respected). He have had black Secretaries of State, black Senators, black college presidents, etc. The sky's the limit for talented blacks. The sad reality is that there relatively few of them. Average IQ explains a lot of this. Dysfunctional culture explains the rest.
At such times, I do tend to wonder whether they would have taken quite such a belligerently condescending tone with a man.
I have read enough blogs to know that some commenters will accuse the author of being an ignorant jackass over a petty disagreement about chewing gum flavors. It really does not matter what the gender of the author is. Vitriol is not indicative of sexual discrimination. (Unless, of course, someone addresses you as Honey, Sweetie or Snugglebuns.)
Grumpy commenters are more likely to be male. Don't know why, but it's true.
Women in general are just more polite on blogs, except for the harridans on Kos.
I think part of the problem is our attitude toward prejudice itself. We think it is evil. A lot of people make no distinction between prejudice and bigotry. So, they decide that because they are not evil, they are not prejudiced.
Everyone is prejudiced. All experience is prejudicial. What matters is how you deal with your prejudices. If you don't accept their existance, you will not deal well with them.
Yeah, it's pretty savage out there. We are all rough beasts, barely capable of dealing civilly with our family and friends, much less anonymous strangers. But I think we know, in our better moments, that discrimination is wrong, that people ought to be treated fairly and equally, and that we can be better.
And in formulating policy, I think we ought to stick to that higher, aspirational principle. It seems like a better, more sustainable plan than legitimizing and elevating new forms discrimination to remedy old forms of discrimination.
Another day, another quiet slide back towards mainstream racism.
I think a lot of us, in considering whether America, especially our little part of it, is racist or sexist, rely mostly on this kind of self-check. "Do I want to use the N-word? Nope! No racism here!"
Precisely so. The great failure of the civil rights movement is that it collapsed into caring only about feelings and gave up the fight in improving the material conditions of black people's lives.
Let me say this: if you believe in genetic determinism, yes, you are a racist. Along with this rise in Bell Curve-style "race realism" has come the bizarre contention, repeated again and again from the people who are proposing that black men are inherently stupid and violent, that they are not, in fact racists. Usually the thought goes "But I have no animosity towards blacks!" Well, I'm sorry. But if you believe in the inherent inferiority or superiority of any one race towards another, you are a racist. No matter how "nice" you are. If you believe that black people are predisposed to violence and criminality, you are a racist. That is the definition of racism! Now, please, embrace your own views. Enjoy. But don't flee from the term because you find it socially objectionable.
Megan, I think yours is a very reasonable position.
However, I'm inclined to go along with Juan when it comes to "Steve" versus "DeShawn." I regard "cultural" names as a marker for the worst aspects of Black culture.
However, I'm inclined to go along with Juan when it comes to "Steve" versus "DeShawn." I regard "cultural" names as a marker for the worst aspects of Black culture.
Hey, I have a wild. How about the fact that a person doesn't choose their own goddam name! So now you're going to discriminate against him based on his race (since you believe he's more likely to be stupid) and his name (because... what, exactly? His parents didn't want him to have a boring, European name?)
Shorter Freddie: Megan and Mark Kleiman are racists, but I'm a good person.
You don't have to believe that natural selection had nothing to do with intelligence to believe that the variations in the normal range of intelligence is not particularly genetic.
I've never understood why people think that because you believe that the normal variation of a factor one sees in a populace isn't genetic then somehow you've decided that the broad reason for that factor existing isn't genetic.
How about "People who dogmatically deny either that some sort of generalized cognitive ability is measurable, and that IQ testing is a decent though imperfect proxy for that measurement, or that different human population groups with different genetic heritages might have different distributions of cognitive ability" while simultaneously asserting that their political/social group is innately or genetically superior to their opponents?
"And while I found the hysterical reaction to Larry Summers more than a little embarassing, it's also not hard to understand why their supporters get a mite testy when their opponents say that underrepresentation of blacks and women in high-level jobs just proves that they aren't good enough."
There is only one hole in this argument. If it is based on this argument, Asian American men would be holding a majority of high level jobs in this country as they perform better than whites. But that is not the case and the supporters of Affirmative Action have been foolish so far not to talk about this disconnect and white women have been fools to support bans on affirmative action. You say the word benefits "racial minorities" white women will supoort anti-affirmative action referendums. Most of white women despite feminism and trying to advance women's rights are racists in the back of their heads if not in their hearts. And in some cases being a racist benefits white women...
http://lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk/fashion/story/0,,2184302,00.html
Now, they really dont want AA in fashion industry, do they?
And unless US becomes a majority minority country racism will continue to last and perhaps worsen.
Feddie, you are correct that people don't pick their own names, or the households they grow up in, but the fact remains that one's upbringing has a LOT to do with their adult successes, or lack thereof. If a person in raised in a houshold that explicitly seeks to embrace Blackness, at the exclusion of mainstream American culture, then there will be tangible results down the road. A name is a good proxy for that.
I, for one, am in the midst of combing through names in preparation for my first child. There are a lot of factors I have to consider, including the fact that my child will have to live with name forever, on the playground, in a working environment, and among family and friends. So even though I might like some names, I have to discard them as being impractical for those reasons. I might like to name my daughter Tiffany or Amber, but I also have to know that to many people those are stripper names, and she will be judged on them.
Whether we like it or not, names carry information, good, bad, or otherwise about their holders.
By the way, I can't really take the name Freddie seriously because in high school a good friend of mind always referred to marijuana as Freddie. As I said, names are laden with baggage.
Isn't it more or less agreed that intelligence is half inherited?
Part of the difficulty here is that it is very difficult to speak honestly in this area. No one wants to wind up being Larry Summered, so it's safer to go with the PC line that all groups are basically the same, with only environment mattering. It must be really risky to do research on human intelligence that might inadvertantly undermine that conventional wisdom.
Similarly, while I am broadly comfortable with the notion that male IQ distributions may have fatter tails than female distributions, and that this may account for the difference in representations at the top of the academy, it's hard to avoid the evidence that women are judged by a different standard than men.
http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/math.htm
Most of the differential does appear to be explainable by the fatter tail effect. Yet women are still underrepresented in math and hard sciences. It seems that an equally likely explanation is that the few women who are not precluded from the right IQ are choosing other options. When we have a good grip on the number of women who are opting out, then perhaps we can start to look at the patriarchy effect to see if it accunts for the remainder, should there be one.
Shorter Freddie: Megan and Mark Kleiman are racists, but I'm a good person.
You've erased the only important part of my comment. So please tell me: what possible definition of racism can their be that doesn't include "Most black people are stupid" within it? Help me, here.
It must be really risky to do research on human intelligence that might inadvertantly undermine that conventional wisdom.
I'm afraid that it isn't. 30 years of political correctness, despite what you are told everyday, has not overpowered millenia of contrary attitudes.
"Isn't it more or less agreed that intelligence is half inherited?"
It's generally agreed that intelligence is mostly inherited, though there isn't a consensus on the exact percentage due to genetics. IIRC, Charles Murray estimates it to be about 70% inherited.
"It must be really risky to do research on human intelligence that might inadvertantly undermine that conventional wisdom."
Of course it is. Academia is filled with folks like Freddie who will treat you like the church treated Galileo for having the temerity to set aside dogma and investigate reality objectively.
Freddie,
Apparently, I am a sexist. I believe that most women are shorter than men and have less upper body strength then men.
If it's sexist to acknowledge a true difference between genders, then that's not really a useful definition. We still would need some way to distinguish between acknowledging real differences and treating individuals differently based on group characteristics without regard to their individual characteristics.
Likewise for racism.
EI
I've had my fair share of battles with both the "neck-down Darwinists" and the black-people-are-just-naturally-stupid crowd, and I've never felt noticeably improved by either side.
Who are these people? Are there really educated people who deny that there are inherited differences in intelligence? I honestly have never met one. John Locke believed in a tabula rasa but I didn't think anyone (of any importance) really believed in that any more.
And as for the "balck-people-are-just-naturally-stupid crowd," again I wonder who Megan is talking about. A handful of illiterate Klansmen in the rural South? A few neo-Nazis in some compund in Montana? Are such rabble really worth debating with?
It is well established in the scientific community that "intelligence" is derived from a combination of nature and nurture. Given this, if you could perform an experiment where you had two racial populations with the exact same distribution of "intelligence" and subjected one of the populations to hundreds of years of slavery and social/economic/educational discrimination and then performed IQ tests on the two populations within a generation of the end of formal, legal discrimination, you would find that the oppressed population scored significantly lower on IQ tests, due to the nature of their nurture.
The fact that Megan (and others)haven't thought this through and are more than willing to embrace the idea of some kind of racial difference in intelligence based on contemporary analysis of IQ scores says a lot about them. And it's not good.
Academia is filled with folks like Freddie who will treat you like the church treated Galileo for having the temerity to set aside dogma and investigate reality objectively.
Exactly. Just look what they're doing to Walt & Mersheimer.
Perhaps MM should create a shadow blog under a male pseudonym, split her posts evenly between the two, and grade the vitriol directed towards her and her alter ego?
"Given this, if you could perform an experiment where you had two racial populations with the exact same distribution of "intelligence" and subjected one of the populations to hundreds of years of slavery and social/economic/educational discrimination and then performed IQ tests on the two populations within a generation of the end of formal, legal discrimination, you would find that the oppressed population scored significantly lower on IQ tests, due to the nature of their nurture."
Sounds great, but here's the reality: African Americans whose ancestors were subject to hundreds of years of slavery here have higher IQs than blacks in Africa, significantly higher.
"Exactly. Just look what they're doing to Walt & Mersheimer."
Walt & Mersheimer are far more popular in academia than, say, Lawrence Summers and Charles Murray.
Juan, blacks in Africa also grow up almost entirely in conditions that we positively know reduce IQ: disease, bad nutrition, etc. That's a stupid comparison. Africa is the poorest, most disease ridden continent; we would naturally expect that they would have lower average IQs even if there were no heritable component to intelligence whatsoever.
In general women are women and men are men. That's easy, so it's easy to know who you are testing. But I've never understood how we know who we're testing when we say we're testing black people, white people, and asians.
Did anyone see the thing on PBS about affirmative action in Brazilian universities, where a panel of judges looks at applicants' pictures to decide if they're really black? As you can imagine, it's a pretty silly exercise.
I know that you are referring specifically to one, recent, slavery event in mankind's slavery-rich history, but it's worth remembering that all Americans, of any race, are almost certainly the descendants of slaves, and of slave owners too.
So please tell me: what possible definition of racism can their be that doesn't include "Most black people are stupid" within it? Help me, here.
Having a low IQ does not mean you are stupid per se. It appears to mean that you are deficient in the ability to reason abstractly. You may not be able to do a solve a Raven's Progressive Matrix as well as your high IQ peers, but that doesn't automatically cosign you to the stupid bin. Because having a low IQ doesn't necesarily prevent you from becoming educated and, therefore, less stupid. Much of what what is taught at the K-12 level does not require a high IQ, though CHarles Murray would disagree, but then again what does he know about education.
What does require a high IQ is to learn academic material when it is not taught well, which is the default condition of k-12 education. In a recent thread, there was some talk about Direct Instruction which has been shown to be able to teach lower IQ people, regardless of race, much of the K-12 academic material.
Good teaching is an environmental effect and almost no one disagrees that environmental effects (like lead posioning and malnutrition) are able to effect IQ, usually for the worse.
So being stupid just means that you haven't been taught and being stupid correlates with IQ because teaching is generally bad, bad enough that only the high IQ people generally learn. This is unfortunate for those with low IQs.
There are many high IQ blacks and hispanics, so there is nothing inherently inferior about any member of these groups. High IQ people, regadless of race, tend to perform roughly similar. Just because the distribution of human traits, such as IQ, is not even among various groups doesn't mean that any group is inherently inferior to another. Are groups that are shorter, fatter, etc. inferior? Why is a value judgment ascribed to IQ?
Followers of the Austrian painter are fairly popular in Academia - see Columbia's Middle East Studies Department and Juan Cole - while there are many epithets thrown at someone who doesn't believe that exterminating the Jews is the only way to calm the Middle East. Unfortunately for W&M the rest of America is dramatically unlike academia.
On point, it is perfectly easy to change your name, or to go by another name. I have very, very many friends who go by an English name but have a very foreign name. It's pretty common to use a middle name or some other variant as well if you don't like your first name. Cultural prejudices are fairly valid and useful, and working around them is fairly easy as well. In the US and other Anglo countries, names tend to be class signifiers as well even with the white population, and I'm sure that there will be significant class/cultural discrimination based on these indicators (as well as accents that seem to be uneducated/inappropriate for the position).
Much of this won't be race, but rather class/cultural prejudice (or a heurestic - Ivy league degree preference is a prejudice as well as a good decision basis). Too many agenda driven people have horrible study designs that I just simply don't trust them. The "black people are just stupid" crowd is also horrid - it's mostly just a class thing/entitlement trap. You see nearly identical struggles and lakc of success in Apalachians, working class people in Nova Scotia & Newfoundland, and lower classes in Britain. Racism is an easy dodge for Liberals, since it helps evade their responsibility for trapping so many people of all races in generations of poverty to make themselves feel better!
Megan,
It's true that poverty-induced disease and poor nutrition decrease IQ, but why is Africa so poor? Might it have something to do with lower average IQs? That's the thesis of "IQ and the Wealth of Nations".
Again (and again and again and again...) fear of the term. Fear of the stigma. Look, have the guts to stand up for what you believe in. Forget the term racist, if it's so difficult for you to accept (accurate) labels. Many of you are people who believe that black people are disposed to being unintelligent, and as a corollary, that most black people are unintelligent. So let me ask you brave souls, you Gallileos-- who knows about your views, in your real lives? Do you go around talking about these things, away from your computer screen? Do you tell the black people at work "Odds are, you guys aren't that bright"? Would you come to my classroom and tell the black children to dial down their expectations? Do your friends know how you feel? Your coworkers? The people in your day to day lives? I'll keep my own counsel about who has "intellectual courage", thank you.
You are all patting yourselves on the back for your controversial views, your daring. But you refuse to accept the simple consequences of your attitudes. You won't admit to what you are.
But wait! I don't think the large majority of black people are unintelligent! That means I'm just some PC lefty, right? If you don't think black people are stupid, well-- you're just afraid to speak the truth to power. What a privilege to be surrounded by such noble crusaders, unafraid to speak the truth to no power.
Juan would do well to read Guns, Germs, and Steel.
Not really. He's obviously a (relatively rare in the US these days) hardcore racist. And nothing, no amount of emperical evidence or logic, is going to move him.
Megan,
"Genetics could be a factor in distributional differences (and I think probably is, within groups)--but in a society that seems to have measurable levels of latent discrimination, I don't think there's any way to tell how much of a factor it is in inter-group outcomes."
I think there is a way to tell how much of a factor this is. If it is true that women and racial minorities are discriminated against in hiring, then on average the ones which are hired should be of higher quality than the average white male. We should expect then that the women and minorities will produce better (or more) work. We could measure this by looking at journal articles produced in enginering, science and math departments. They can be ranked by how cited they are and by absolute volume. IIRC acedemic journal articles are refereed and the names of the authors removed as part of the process.
dbp
I observe that the majority of NBA players are black. So must I be a racist?
It's true that poverty-induced disease and poor nutrition decrease IQ, but why is Africa so poor? Might it have something to do with lower average IQs? That's the thesis of "IQ and the Wealth of Nations".
Why was Europe so poor, relative to China & Japan, in 1000? Why was Northern Europe so poor relative to Italy & Spain in 1550? Why was East europe, esp the areas of The Pale, so poor in the late 19th century relative to Western Europe? etc. etc.
The thesis you cite above seems pretty weak.
Statistically, you are less likely to get hired as a black man with a clean record than as a white ex-con.
I find this very hard to believe. Anyone have a link?
I think there's a lot to what Megan is saying about "institutional" racism, but how does that relate to the population as a whole? How many people make hiring decisions, and how often do they do it? My husband has never hired anyone (other than contractors to work on our home) in his life. I've hired a few people here and there, but in software development, you get a lot of white guys' resumes, or at least you did, back when I was hiring (late 80s, early 90s).
Is it OK for me to say I'm not racist because I don't have the opportunity to be, I'm not making that kind of decision? I'm talking about behavior here, not attitude -- actions are what counts, right? If the people who are making hiring decisions are discriminating based on race, is that an indictment of the entire society?
Doesn't the answer to that question depend on the motivations behind the hiring decisions? If there is no formal policy eliminating certain races from consideration, then there is no institutional racism. (Of course not, it's illegal.) If in practice, certain races aren't getting the jobs or job opportunities, that may be either the result of racism on the part of individuals or departments -- an informal policy of racism -- or an unwillingness to give a chance to individuals belonging to classes that have been unable to perform well in the job before. There aren't many small businesses that can continue to offer jobs to ex-cons who only show up when they feel like it and still be profitable.
If no one objects to a little bit of anecdotal experience, I think my case might be illustrative of what Megan is talking about.
I'm mixed race caucasian/hispanic. My parents (for reasons of their own) chose to raise me with a white identity and that's actually how I tend to think of myself (i.e., "I am white"). My skin tone is light enough -- essentially a light tan -- that no one actually questions that I am white.
Every so often, just for fun, I will deliberately identify myself as hispanic to someone new I meet but will otherwise act and behave as I normally do. It's genuinely fascinating to me to see the differences in the way people treat me.
A surprising number of people will instantaneously presume that I'm much less intelligent than I actually am and behave towards me in a manner that I can only describe as condescending. This is true regardless of how conservative or progressive the person is (indeed, white progressives are some of the worst because they so obviously go out of their way to try and treat me as an "equal" while, never the less, clearly believing that I'm not *really* as smart and knowledgeable as they are).
It's not racism in the traditional sense of the term. They don't hate me because they see me as Hispanic. Never the less, their actions are predicated on a type of prejudice. They see me through the filter of a culture instead of as a presumed equal.
I think that this gets to the heart of the notion of assuming that someone with a name like DeShawn is less educated and less employable. The justification that DeShawn's name may be an indicator that he comes from an environment that might indicate that DeShawn has certain limitations doesn't negate the fact that DeShawn is being judged independently of himself as a person and that, more so, he has an uphill battle to convince someone who holds that against him that those prejudgments are misplaced. This is especially insidious given that in many cases -- such as with the review of resumes -- he's not going to have any opportunity, what so ever, to make that case.
Given this, I find Juan's justifications for prejudging a DeShawn to be rather feeble. Whatever cultural markers he may think such names indicate, unless he's willing to set aside those prejudgments and deal with the person as a person he is, in fact, being prejudiced... by definition.
I'm also not terribly impressed with El's argument that acknowledging differences in intelligence between groups is no different than acknowledging differences in height between men and women. In the latter case, if you meet a woman who's 6'4" (hi Megan!), you're not going to immediately think "Well, she's a woman so she's probably *actually* short". If you assume that a given women is less intelligent on the theory that women, in general, are less intelligent, that assumption is very likely to become self-affirming as you take not of statements and actions that confirm the assumption and ignore those that would disconfirm it.
That said, this sort of prejudice is very, very difficult to deal with and I, honestly, don't have a good solution. I do not, however, think that it's a good idea to dismiss it or to pretend that it's somehow justified to treat people in that way. Whatever we may or may not think about a group of people, an individual is an individual and ought to be treated as such.
"Princeton students," meaning not experienced engineering managers.
"Recent," meaning after hysterical campus campaigns against sexism replaced the "gentleman's C" with the "womyn student's B." Which Princeton students know all about. (In fact, non-engineering student participants probably rated the female resume lower, since sexist (anti-male) grading is even more prevalent in "soft" departments than in math or engineering, where tests are usually objective.)
An engineering manager would interview candidates.
A Princeton student getting $5 to participate in a sociology experiment by reading some artificial resumes will go with the obvious: a candidate female "engineer" with educational credentials but no experience is a bad bet.
Really, that's the problem with most of these "experiments" devised to reveal racism or sexism. They almost never account for confounding factors. Do people discount black/woman candidates' educational credentials? Of course! "Affirmative action" in education compels them to.
I read an article once and was pleasently supprised at seeing a brilliant logical economic argument published in a major newspaper. But part of that supprise was that fact that the author was female. Does that make me sexist?
"if you meet a woman who's 6'4"... you're not going to immediately think "Well, she's a woman so she's probably *actually* short". If you assume that a given women is less intelligent on the theory that women, in general, are less intelligent, that assumption is very likely to become self-affirming as you take not of statements and actions that confirm the assumption and ignore those that would disconfirm it."
This is exactly right. What's most maddening to me about the genetic determinist attitude displayed by Juan and others is the way it seeks to use evidence of genetic differences between groups as justification for rational bias.
Yes, it is entirely true that women are biologically different from men. No, an inequality of outcomes does not constitute prima facie evidence of discrimination. But it is vastly more important to recognize that you can never judge an individual by the median person in their demographic group. Whether there are fewer brilliant female mathematicians is completely irrelevant to whether the female mathematician applying for a position in your department is brilliant.
It's worthwhile to understand the differences between the median male and the median female, but once you begin basing your entire worldview of life, the universe, and everything on these differences, you're going to end up pre-judging people in a sexist, discriminatory way. As they say, that's just human nature.
These arguments are even stronger for issues of race than sex. Blacks and whites are NOT biologically distinct organisms. Period. Anyone who tells you otherwise knows nothing whatsoever about biology. Certainly, there are differences between ethnic groups, based on shared common ancestry and population clustering, but "race" is a completely artificial construct based on a single trait, skin color, and historical and cultural divisions.
There are significant differences between the median black male and the median white male, but these differences pale in comparison (no pun intended) to the differences between men and women. Furthermore, each of these variables is distributed independently from skin color. So it's completely fallacious to discuss these things in terms of biological differences between the races. It's statistical correlation, no more and no less. The only real "differences between black people and white people" are cultural. Everything else is just differential clustering within partially segregated subsets of the population.
At such times, I do tend to wonder whether they would have taken quite such a belligerently condescending tone with a man.
I'm inclined to explain this tactically: If you think it is easier to intimidate women, you are more likely to try this tactic with a woman than with a man.
And if you think men are more intimidating than women, you are more likely to try this tactic if you are posting with a male pseudonym.
On a side note, I've always been a fairly tepid supporter of affirmative action, but I'd like to thank "Skeptic" for reminding us all why affirmative action is probably still necessary.
KDeRosa wrote:
"It seems that an equally likely explanation is that the few women who are not precluded from the right IQ are choosing other options. When we have a good grip on the number of women who are opting out, then perhaps we can start to look at the patriarchy effect to see if it accunts for the remainder, should there be one."
I think you're really on to something when you suggest that women who could succeed at the top ranks of the science profession might be opting out. But why do you think they opt out? There are a bunch of explanations, some (like pregnancy) of which might have nothing to do with sexism, but many of which have a *lot* to do with sexism. What if fewer capable women decide to pursue PhDs because their undergraduate professors are less inclined to advise or mentor them? What if more capable women drop out of PhD programs because male-dominated departments are unwelcoming and they feel socially isolated in a way that the men in the department don't? What if more women decide not to go into academia because they find it harder to get journal articles published than their peers? and what if the reason those journal articles don't get published is because female names are on the author list?
anrwlias
This is true regardless of how conservative or progressive the person is (indeed, white progressives are some of the worst because they so obviously go out of their way to try and treat me as an "equal" while, never the less, clearly believing that I'm not *really* as smart and knowledgeable as they are).
And there it is! Personal experience that differentiates from the Ivory Tower.
This phenomena goes on all the time in personal relationships between races. The lilly white kiss ass boy sucks up to the tough black boy. The progressive condescends every turn and never an argument.
Then there's the opposite case. The ones that acknowledge prejudice and are in your face all the time. A relationship of mutual respect is formed that goes deep in to the heart of what it is to be human.
Jews can talk about how much they have always stood behind blacks. But it is no surprise why Blacks hate Jews the most.
Sasha, any and all of those reasons are potential reasons why women opt out; however, none of the ones depending on a presumption of sexism have been proven by anything approaching a rigorous scientific study. Which is not to say that sexism doesn't exist. Maybe it does, we simply don't know at this time. But bear in mind as we move up the cognitive ladder, the disparity between what IQ differences predict and actual reality appears to lessen militating against a sexism theory.
My response, Megan, is here. http://firemeganmcardle.blogspot.com/2007/10/fine-ill-be-half-serious-for-moment.html
Frankly, you should be ashamed for this post.
Heh. Nah, but I am offended, as a supporter of feminist causes.
Rich white women who try to use sexism as a defense against personal criticism are abhorrent.
This is interesting, from Megan down to Juan.
I have a friend who is very liberal and a few of our debates about civil liberties and affirmative action result in him informing me I should be thankful to be free to debate the issue given my skin color, and that also, by virtue of my freeness, I should automatically agree with him. He's a twit, but a cool guy.
If I take up the name issue for a moment, I would argue that much can be correctly (and incorrectly) inferred from a name, whether Shaquaneesha, Bubba, Megan, or Finn. The parent who is very concerned about a child having an "African" name, however imaginary, might be the same parent who is interested in sending their child to a school that teaches Afro-centric education, where all good things derive from Africa, and all little black boys and girls are descendents of kings and queens; a haphazard conconcotion to say the least.
I am not saying I agree with using names to discriminate. That would be wrong. But I am suggesting that it is not a totally invalid indicator of the possible environment that a person has grown up in.
As to IQ and whites on average appearing smarter, a lot can be rolled into upbringing. For example, what effect might poor medical care and substance abuse during pregnancy have on the brain development of a person? If that child grows up, not the brightest, and raised in an environment that does not provide the type of intellectual stimulation or work ethic that might help him beyond his innate abilities, is that purely a sign of genetic inferiority?
I guess my point is that nature and nurture cross back and forth. In the example above, his genetic traits are influenced by the decision making process (even the morality) of his mother. This is a factor that crosses all ethnicities, but is likely to be of greater prevalence among the poor.
That one can narrow down a world of inputs into hereditary IQ seems absurd. In that sense, a child raised in front of the tv through his youth would show no measurable damage to cognitive ability or attention span. We ought all to try raising our next child in a box for ten years, and then (after we get out of jail for bad parenting methods), seeing if baby Finn or little Joanetta or spunky Juan Jr. is prospering.
I personally believe broad cultural religious traits inform IQ variance to some degree, but I won't get into that here.
"if you meet a woman who's 6'4" (hi Megan!), you're not going to immediately think "Well, she's a woman so she's probably *actually* short"."
and
"But it is vastly more important to recognize that you can never judge an individual by the median person in their demographic group."
The problem here is that the thing we're trying to observe in a job applicant or academic paper (i.e. whether the person will be a good worker or whether the paper is good) isn't as easy to measure as height. Height's right there in your face. I assumed Megan was short because she's a woman,then I saw her, and now I know better.
A person's quality as a worker can't be gauged nearly as well, especially not from a resume. Actually, economists often assume that you can *never* observe a worker's quality completely. So you look for low-cost signals of quality. Because race is a category in our society and assuming there's differences in worker quality by race, we look to race as a signal of quality. A resume with a black person's name will, on average, represent a person with lower quality.
When I used to review resumes for entry level positions, I consciously used the college a person went to as a signal of their quality. Berkeley students were assumed to be better than Stanford students and so on. (Go Bears!) This is probably unobjectionable, Cal students are just better on average than Stanford students. (At least using using college as a signal is unobjectionable... my ranking might not be :-) My reasons for doing this are exactly the same reason one might use to garner quality from the blackness of a name. All else equal about the resumes, the one from the Cal student represents, on average, a better applicant.
Racism would be discriminating in this way if, in fact, there were no differences between racial groups.
Actually, I'm of the mind that race is a particularly arbitrary construction and we'd be better off without it. There could be no variation between groups, if those groupings didn't exist.
Tom Sowell has an interesting article on this subject. Here is the highlight:
That seems to me to indicate that if there are any genetic differences in intelligence between the races (on average) then they are dwarved by environmental factors and are thus not very important. But I claim no expertise in genetics, and have no firm opinions here.
"Because race is a category in our society and assuming there's differences in worker quality by race, we look to race as a signal of quality."
What do you mean "we," kimosabe?
Seriously, though, this nicely illustrates my objection to the people who run around shouting about the Bell Curve. Their data analysis was flawed in certain ways, and some of their conclusions were not really supported by the evidence, but there are unquestionably some very real differences in the test scores. So it boils down to this... you either believe that it's more important and more productive to use the differences between black and white test scores to justify discrimination and excuse inequality, or you believe that we should treat people as equally as possible and take steps to address the aspects of inequality that can be reduced and see how far we can get.
That really shouldn't be a tough decision.
The study on names and interviews granted gets cited all the time and from the way it's cited, you'd think that the success of the applicants was exclusively based on the perceived race of the name (that is the ten "white" names at places 1-10 in no particular order; then the ten "black" names, also in no particular order). The results are actually a good deal more interesting than that. The top few most successful names were "white," but "black" names did better than quite a few of the "white" names. When I looked at those names, it seemed clear to me that there was some class bias going on there (which is basically what Cristina was suggesting). Certain stereotypically "poor" white names didn't so so well, for instance. The sort of "black" names that did better (I remember "Ebony" doing quite well) also indicates that some commentator's implication that an "afro-centric" upbringing was not really a factor. To my eyes, it was social class. Don't have a link, but it's easy to find the actual distribution of names and success on the net.
All of the comments referencing "it is generally accepted that..." scientists agree on the contribution of heredity to intelligence display a willful ignorance of the subject. Scientists cannot even agree on the definition of intelligence much less the degree of genetic input.
To put the matter in general terms, the most recent theories of human consciousness point to a model of radically distributed cognitive function. What we measure in IQ, what we perceive as “intelligence” in our ordinary interaction with others is merely the most superficial components of our mental function. More basically how would one suitably measure the “intelligence” of Coltrane or Coleman or, for that matter, the physio-spatial “intelligence” of Jordan.
This whole discussion is riddled with poorly reasoned conclusions that substitute a political philosophy for rational observation.
You want to know a real-world reason why small business owners tend to prefer hiring white male workers? Because if the worker has to be fired the owner isn't likely to have an expensive EEOC complaint or discrimination lawsuit.
"you either believe that it's more important and more productive to use the differences between black and white test scores to justify discrimination and excuse inequality, or you believe that we should treat people as equally as possible and take steps to address the aspects of inequality that can be reduced and see how far we can get"
But employers looking for high quality workers don't care about either of these issues... They want good workers.
If you know nothing about the quality of a job applicant, you want to assess the probability he is a good worker. If you know that he belongs to a group with less quality on average, it seems reasonable to infer his probability of being a good worker is lower.
That logic doesn't change whatever type of group the applicant may belong to (e.g. race, alma maters, hair color, gender, social class, etc).
OTOH, here's a reasonable argument to ignore reality, i.e. ignore differences between groups.
Does anyone know if studies have been done on male scientists/science majors to see if the most successful ones are the ones with the highest IQs? Do scientists at the most prestigious schools whose articles are cited the most have higher IQs than their slightly less successful peers? A comon presumption is that there's a fairly linear relationship between higher IQ and success in science academia. Has anyone questioned that presumption? As a layperson, I find it plausible that there are diminishing marginal returns to each additional IQ point. Maybe as long as you've got a certain "high enough" level of intelligence your success is due more to personality factors, or even random things like which subject is "in vogue" at a given time.
ZT - can you provide evidence of that? It is a plausible effect - but plausibility is not proof.
"More basically how would one suitably measure the “intelligence” of Coltrane or Coleman or, for that matter, the physio-spatial “intelligence” of Jordan."
They be/have been all geniuses in their chosen fields, but this has nothing to do with the problem of deliberate ignorance about group differences and affirmative action. Michael Jordan and Coltrane achieved their success based on merit; in numerous fields today, African Americans demand to have the bar lowered for them. One example, that Heather Mac Donald discussed in City Journal, is the current campaign to label the FDNY's written test as racist, just because blacks don't do as well on it as other racial groups.
Are people better off when less-intelligent applicants are hired as fireman, physicians, or other jobs where lives are at stake? How does it help the black person in a burning building to have a less-qualified, but black, fireman try to rescue him and take him to an emergency room where a less-qualified, but black, physician tries to treat him? It certainly wasn't a boon for the women of South Central Los Angeles who were treated by affirmative action hero Dr. Patrick Chavis (who got into U.C. Davis medical school at the expense of the far better-qualified white applicant Bakke).
"Why was Europe so poor, relative to China & Japan, in 1000? Why was Northern Europe so poor relative to Italy & Spain in 1550? Why was East europe, esp the areas of The Pale, so poor in the late 19th century relative to Western Europe? etc. etc."
Africa has remained poor into the 21st Century. Why? Formerly poor countries with fewer natural resources (e.g., South Korea, Singapore, etc.) have prospered while Africa, rich in natural resources hasn't. Why? A "legacy of colonialism"? As if Korea and Singapore didn't have that?
How did Haiti go from providing a third of the French Empire's GDP to becoming a basket case after two centuries of black rule?
So, LaFollette, you think that having brought underqualified AA beneficiaries into schools, and having inflated their grades to pass them out, we must then AA them into jobs they didn't earn, all to preserve appearances?
So long as AA substitutes skin color or gender for academic merit in educational institutions, hiring managers will evaluate educational credentials appropriately. And so will everyone else.
PaleFire wrote: Certain stereotypically "poor" white names didn't so so well, for instance.
Voila...someone finally zooms in on the obvious. People generally pick names according to cultural traditions and memes. Unfortunately, certain cultural sub-demographics tend toward repetitions of common variants. Some "white" names convey the impression of a dull trailer-trash hick. Some "black" names convey the impression of a low-achieving slacker. Some hispanic names strongly suggest a Catholic religious background. And so forth.
Meanwhile, if the recent few years' birth announcements in the local community paper are any guide, a whole generation of whites and hispanics from my area will be facing a comparable problem in about fifteen to twenty, because the names are phonetically familiar but spelled in a dozen variants that nobody ever heard of before -- which may tacitly indicate to future employers that the child's parents were too busy screwing in the back bedroom to be bothered with attending their tenth grade Language Arts classes, with an according inadvertent prejudice applied to the candidate's likely skill level.
Regarding names as cultural/racial markers:
About ten years ago I was working at a mutual fund company's sales/operations center when they hired a new entry-level sales assistant/secretary (this company had a fairly liberal hiring process at this location: if a current employee referred a friend and that friend passed the drug test, they were pretty much in. This new girl was white but had an inner city black look -- the clothes, the big hoop earrings, the hairdo, etc. I was friends with another sales assistant who worked there, a smart white girl who grew up in a Hispanic ghetto neighborhood, and she said to me, "I bet that girl is a single mom, and the father's black". She was right on both counts.
The new girl had grown up in a black inner-city neighborhood, gotten pregnant at 19, and her baby's father had promptly left. The kid had a first name I won't share here, but suffice it to say it was unusual and sounded vaguely black. Years later, when I saw this name mentioned in an article about the most popular black baby names in California in the previous year, I e-mailed the article to the girl. She wrote back that she had never heard the name before she gave it to her child, that she just liked the way it sounded. Interesting how being steeped in a black environment led to her independently giving her baby the same name that lots of black women did.
You don't need to think "someone else white"; statistically, that's the result--even when the candidates or their resumes have been carefully selected to be identical.
Ah, but are their resumes really identical, at least in the eyes of the students? I suspect that in some of the cases that the students evaluating are discounting the educational experience of people whom they believe (correctly or not) to have benefited from affirmative action. So to them, and with some reason, those resumes are not identical; a degree from X University has a different meaning. Similarly, if you gave me such resumes but informed me that one of them was by a revenue sport athlete or a legacy, I'd discount their degree somewhat.
There is the argument that racism makes affirmative action necessary, but I've seen lots of cases where affirmative action creates racism. The "dumb jock" stereotype is strictly untrue; being good at sports does not make someone dumber. The skills are largely independent, and sports in some cases are correlated with academic performance.
However, at a university where lots of athletes are admitted because of their athletic prowess, ignoring their academic achievements, the impression is different. The athletes are not compared against all the non-athletes who were not admitted, but against all the people who were admitted for academic reasons, and they suffer by comparison. Hence the stereotype. The "mismatching" effect of affirmative action can be similar; the lower 20% at most elite colleges is disproportionately filled with black students (and athletes, and legacies), many of whom would be average at a slightly worse college. Such events can only fuel stereotypes (and harm self-esteem-- for going on to grad school, it's often much better to be the big fish in a little pond for undergrad than the reverse.)
Also the fact that the goal of leaving the countries as stable democracies after decolonization was subordinated to the goal of ensuring that they would be American client states rather than Soviet client states.
Uh, random commenter, the French, for example, have cared not at all about those countries being American client states. French foreign policy in Africa has long been concerned with keeping countries as French client states, though, so there's definitely some truth to what you're saying, except for the really odd remark about all the ex-colonial powers being concerned about making states American client states.
So long as AA substitutes skin color or gender for academic merit in educational institutions, hiring managers will evaluate educational credentials appropriately. And so will everyone else.
Posted by Skeptic
Exactly. Liberals have long supported grade inflation, pass-fail grading, and social promotions, and often opposed testing. Furthermore, they support policies that bring black kids into colleges they are hardly qualified for, so you can't even judge an individual's quality by his school. They have thus done everything within their power to make it impossible to judge applicants on their individual merits - leaving hiring managers with little to go on but such inaccurate guides as race, sex, and and class.
A conspiracy theorist would think that liberals are deliberately trying to perpetuate racism and sexism, so that their race & gender-based politics can continue to be effective.
Well, for my part, I criticize you because you are intellectually vacuous. You're the blogger, after all, who said the Bush administration didn't need to share all of their thinking about why they wanted to invade Iraq. That was was a howler whatever your gender.
But if it comforts you to imagine your critics are all foaming sexists, go for it. The constellation of ideas in your head is pretty bizarre already, so you might as well throw another one in there for the fun of it.
Markm, do you have facts to support your startling assertion that, "{liberals} support policies that bring black kids into colleges they are hardly qualified for." For example, can you cite the average SAT scores of these "black kids" compared to their average classmates? Or are you just making this up in your head?
There are two or three major factors which predict success in most workplace settings. Intelligence, as measured by IQ, is one of them. Work ethic is another, and general personality factors are another. (Which personality factors vary from job to job. I am *not* a salesman - in any sales job, someone with an IQ 2sigma lower than me, but with a sales personality, would be a much better hire than me.)
IQ can be measured. Work ethic can be measured somewhat too - it's hard to get good grades in selective colleges without having a decent work ethic, and previous employers will know your work ethic if you've been out of school long enough. But even where it is legal and acceptable to "measure" personality, it's very hard to do so effectively. Most personality tests rely on direct self-report, which is too easily gamed when the stakes are high.
So hiring managers have to use much more subjective measures of whether someone has the right personality to do the job and fit in with the team. This is where racial and cultural stereotypes get translated into racial and cultural discrimination. Even an interview isn't a reliable way to get a good read on a potential employee's personality, so hiring managers may use their cultural knowledge of people to weigh the evidence presented by the candidate's track record and interview performance.
UCLA (from the Daily Bruin): "...in fall 2007, black applicants’ SAT scores were on average 293 points lower than those of white and Asian students, and Latino applicants’ scores came up 249 points short." (The scores are those of applicants offered admission.)
Things are worse at Harvard, Stanford, Yale, etc.
UCLA 2007 (all races) mean admitted SAT score (total): 1996 (source: U.C. Office of President).
That is at 93rd percentile for all SAT takers (source: College Board).
(Note that the White/Asian mean must be higher than the combined mean, because the Black and Hispanic means are far below the White/Asian mean (per Daily Bruin). So the White/Asian SAT percentile must be higher as well.)
I don't have a link to a breakdown of UCLA admittees' SAT scores by race. So I don't know what the Black, White, Hispanic, and Asian mean scores are. The Daily Bruin says the Black mean lags the White/Asian mean by 293 points.
Just to get an idea of what that signifies, suppose that the Black mean might be just 200 points below the overall combined mean. If that were the case, then the Black mean would be at the 81st percentile for all SAT takers. That is much lower than the average for all UCLA admittees.
In fact, it's so much lower that it would indicate that many Black admittees had qualified for admission on some basis other than academic merit (and furthermore, had likely displaced more qualified non-Black applicants).
What Megan misses:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com/2007/10/megan-mcardle-misses-some-very-basic.html
Thanks, Mark Seecof, for posting that information. I won't ask you to do any more homework on my behalf, but I do wonder about your comment that things are worse at Harvard, Stanford, etc.
While deploring the colonialization of Africa as a "root" cause of lower IQ, perhaps some mention should be made of the Arab colonialists who came before the Europeans and who remain there today. It might also be useful to remember that the vast majority of slaves were not "captured" by white slavers-- they were sold to white slavers after being captured by black or arab slave traders. To put it bluntly, those that became slaves were not just a subset of a homogeneous population: they were demonstrably less fleet of foot and/or less clever in that they were captured by the (black)slave traders.
Megan McArdle,
As with any kind of social science phenomenon there is no perfect, unbiased method of measuring almost any characteristic in populations (whether they be female, male, white, black, or otherwise). In social science, latent statistical bias lurks in even the best thought out experiments and just because we can't subject the laboratory of human society to the same rigors of a particle physics laboratory doesn't mean that we should give up on understanding social science phenomenon altogether.
Simply put, if latent bias against women and minorities can be measured in a well conducted experiment and published in an academic journal and reported on by people such as yourself, then it's related effects can certainly be corrected (or controlled) for when studying inter-group differences (both racial and gender) in a similar experiment.
random_commenter:
You could also imagine a feedback loop. Poverty and disease and lack of any schooling probably do stunt intellectual growth quite a bit, and this probably does slow economic growth.
I've seen the "names" study cited a few times but rarely have I seen the actual data posted. What is revealing in the data is the wide variation within each group of "White" names and "Black" names. Some Black names received more call backs than White names. Note also the small samples used for the White male names (less than 77) and even smaller for Black males.
Mean Call-Back Rates By First Name
White Female
------------
Emily 8.3% 19/228
Anne 9.0
Jill 9.3
Allison 9.4
Sarah 9.8
Meredith 10.6
Laurie 10.8
Carrie 13.1
Kristen 13.6 29/214
Black Female
------------
Aisha 2.2% 4/180
Keisha 3.8
Tamika 5.4
Lakisha 5.5
Tanisha 6.3
Latoya 8.8
Kenya 9.1
Latonya 9.1
Ebony 10.5 22/209
White Male
----------
Neil 6.6% 5/76
Geoffrey 6.8
Brett 6.8
Brendan 7.7
Greg 7.8
Todd 8.7
Matthew 9.0
Jay 13.2
Brad 15.9 10/63
Black Male
----------
Rasheed 3.0% 2/67
Tremayne 4.3
Kareem 4.7
Darnell 4.8
Tyrone 5.3
Jamal 6.6
Hakim 7.3
Leroy 9.4
Jermaine 11.3 6/53
So why is Jermaine more popular than Neil, Brett, Geoffry, Brendan, Greg, Todd, and Mathew...?
And Ebony apparently is favored over Emily, Anne, Jill, Allison, and Sarah..?
Small samples, wide variations within each name group, and a lack of inclusion of Asian and Latino names lead me to believe this study is flawed.
Readers of "Guns, Germs, and Steel" would do well to read Lynn and Vanhanen's "IQ and the Wealth of Nations" and Landes' "The Wealth and Poverty of Nations."
Megan should read Gary Becker's 1957 classic "The Economics of Discrimination." Irrational discrimination costs the discriminator money, so a free market economy works against it. For an example of how Becker's insight helps explain the history of the baseball industry, see my 1996 National Review article "How Jackie Robinson Desegregated America" at
http://www.isteve.com/JackieRobinson.htm
Freddie | October 5, 2007 11:57 AM:
“Again (and again and again and again...) fear of the term. Fear of the stigma. Look, have the guts to stand up for what you believe in. Forget the term racist, if it's so difficult for you to accept (accurate) labels. Many of you are people who believe that black people are disposed to being unintelligent, and as a corollary, that most black people are unintelligent. So let me ask you brave souls, you Gallileos-- who knows about your views, in your real lives?”
That the average American black has an IQ of 85 is not a “view,” but a fact. Do you dispute this fact, Freddie? If you do, you’re either dishonest or an ignoramus. In either case, you don't belong in a classroom.
Do you think an IQ of 85 is bright, Freddie?
And where you get off, acting as if people were cowards for not putting themselves at the tender mercies of racists – blacks, whites, and whatever you are — who would violently assault them, get them fired from their jobs, professionally whitelist them, and destroy their lives for telling the truth. Hell, you’re such a coward that although you have nothing to fear for your pc views, you still don’t sign your name!
(What is it with you racist teachers on the Web? You’re all liars, you race-bait anyone honest, while promoting the dominant views in education, yet you all hide behind aliases.)
“Do you go around talking about these things, away from your computer screen? Do you tell the black people at work ‘Odds are, you guys aren't that bright’?
“Would you come to my classroom and tell the black children to dial down their expectations? Do your friends know how you feel? Your coworkers? The people in your day to day lives? I'll keep my own counsel about who has ‘intellectual courage’, thank you.”
Do you tell your black students that they can be anything they want to be? (By the way, why do you act as though you have only black students?) Do you imbue your black students with one set of expectations, and your other students with other expectations? Do you treat your white and Asian students as well as you do you your black students? (That was a rhetorical question; of course, you don’t.)
Why? Kids can’t be anything they want to be. Anyone who tells them otherwise is a liar, and unfit to teach. a competent teacher helps his charges find their specific talents and encourages them, while seeking to guide them away (discourage) them from wasting their energy on that for which they lack talent.
And if the posters’ friends are intellectually honest, they already know the same things.
“You are all patting yourselves on the back for your controversial views, your daring. But you refuse to accept the simple consequences of your attitudes. You won't admit to what you are.”
You are saying that anyone who is honest about IQ is a “racist.” But group IQ differences are matters of fact. Facts are not racist. But you are. You want to subordinate the classroom to blacks’ prejudices and illusions. You sound like the diversity trainer who calls on people to honestly express themselves, only so he can get the honest ones fired.
And you refuse to accept the simple consequences of your attitudes. You won't admit to what you are – a racist, totalitarian thug, who wishes to make it impossible for even one honest person to live in this society.
“But wait! I don't think the large majority of black people are unintelligent! That means I'm just some PC lefty, right? If you don't think black people are stupid, well-- you're just afraid to speak the truth to power. What a privilege to be surrounded by such noble crusaders, unafraid to speak the truth to no power.”
No power? Just the power over life and death.
Nicholas Stix
Hehe, we sure are going to be in for some "interesting times".
Freddie, the spell's broken. You're right to worry.
Freddie -- Would you come to my classroom and tell the black children to dial down their expectations?
What do you mean, your classroom? Where do you teach that you have the time and ability to post here all day long?
Hello, I didnt read everything there was just too much and i need to study for school. I am only 18 years of age and this is my understanding from my little experience of how the world works..
I don’t think any one 'Group' is to blame for the way things are in this world.
People are racist or discriminate because of the imperfections within themselves as an individual person. They are not wise enough, perhaps ignorant, to realize that their reasoning for hatred of a whole group of people is not justified, perhaps if it was one individual they disliked but an entire race can not be held accountable for the actions of someone else. Also the hatred can not be because of something such as colours of skin that is not justified. What if the person consumed by hate was blind? Would his anger dissolve? (Rhetorical Question everyone. Lol)
Individuals in a collaborative effect are the reasoning for young children of all backgrounds learning that they fit in a certain group or 'stereotype'. A name is nothing but a name, a colour is nothing but a colour. These things are not a basis for prejudice they are the ridiculous excuses individuals use to excuse their own unjustified hatred.
Anyone thought perhaps we are all to blame...? Society as a whole, every individual person places labels and stereotypes on each other and creates ‘groups’ in society which for example are labeled female, white , black etc.
WE ARE THE REASON!
A Person both will fight against these stereotypes and show they are not defined by their given status or they will turn and believe every word society has told them since birth. "You fit this stereotype. This is the limit of your potential and you cannot improve any further then your station".
IT IS OUR FAULT AS PEOPLE IN SOCIETY FOR SENDING THIS MESSAGE.
Whether you believe you are Racist or not, you are contributing to this incorrect generalizing of the potential of a human being, this ‘Grouping’.
All people despite nationality, colour, gender, age etc are people who think with a mind, a heart and have it in themselves to succeed.
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Very interesting responses and discussion of Megan's article.
I would question whites who supposedly have higher IQs than blacks, how could the majority of you possibly vote for Bush twice, in 2000 and 2004?
Apparently, IQ is not as important as common sense and intuition, which black voters demonstrated significantly in those elections, with an insightful and stinging rejection of Bush with less than 10% support in both elections. What did the dumber blacks know that you smarter whites did not????
I'd rather have more common sense and native intelligence suitable for surviving, than a high score on a culturally biased, self-serving, IQ fraud of a test, devised by and for whites.