http://www.capitalismmagazine.com/cu...e-and-iq.html#



Race and IQ

8 October 2002 Thomas Sowell

Years ago, while doing research on education and IQ, I happened to be in the principal's office at a black school in Cincinnati, as he was preparing to open a large brown envelope containing the results of IQ tests that his students had taken. Before he opened the envelope, I offered to bet him that a large majority of the students with IQs over 110 would be girls.

He was too smart to take the bet. Studies had shown that females predominated among high-IQ blacks. One study of blacks whose IQs were 140 and up found that there were more than five times as many females as males at these levels. This is hard to explain by either heredity or environment, as those terms are usually defined, since black males and black females have the same ancestors and grow up in the same homes. Meanwhile, white males and white females have the same average IQs, with slightly more males at both the highest and lowest IQs.

This is just one of many unsolved mysteries that is likely to remain unsolved, because doing research on race and IQ has become taboo in many places. My own research was financed in part by a grant from a foundation that told me to remove any mention of IQ research from the activities listed in my project's application.

They didn't care if I used their money for that purpose but they did not want it on the record that they had financed research into race and intelligence

There is a lot of racism associated with the QB position. Just take the percentage of NFL quarterbacks that are black, and take the percentage of nfl players overall that are black. Then check the percentages for thirty years ago. It's pretty clear that there are many more QBs that are black now, than there were thirty years ago. The percentages don't change so drastically for any other position. In another thirty years, the percentage of black QBs might be the same as the overall percentage of black players. As for kickers, so many of them grew up playing soccer. Look at the MLS. Not many of the black players are Americans. Also, one does not have to be a great athlete to be a kicker. I kicked for my college football team, after having never played a down of organized football in my life. If someone is a great athlete, why would you put them at kicker instead of another position?

Edit: To expand a little on the athletics required for kicking. Kicking is mostly about technique. The reason I was the kicker on the football team, despite weighing about 130 at the time, was because I had played soccer growing up. Had the other guys played soccer growing up, they would have likely been just as good as me. I also have no doubt that with enough practice and conditioning, I could have kicked for a division one team. There is absolutely zero chance, no matter how much practice or conditioning, that I could have played Cornerback. I just didn't have the athletic ability for it. Thankfully, I was good at the position where athletic ability is not as important.

[QUOTE=soon2bepro;24033019]I didn't say the differences are strong. I said the tendencies are strong. [quote]

Add your word "tendencies" back in then. I thought you were capable of understanding that it was understood in my reply. It doesn't change the meaning of my statement.

Just a nit on your nit, but I did not "boast" about someone else's capitalization. One cannot boast about another person. I was doing what is generally called "being silly." Maybe you should learn to read before ...

I mentioned that physical differences could/should/would exist where they would make a difference in survival where problem solving would not be sufficient or valuable.

Unfortunately, the differences you give are sub-racial (closer to familial than racial) differences mostly. Not a lot of muscle bound Ethiopean marathoners, for instance. However, 78% of NFL players are black, which is ALL short bursts of energy. So, we have a race that must be different because it has strong genetic tendencies to have long gracile bone structure, and extremely heavy bone structure, and a large proportion of fast twitch muscles, and a large proportion of slow twitch muscles. Several mutually characteristics...

I have no idea of whether there are genetic differences between the groups causing these differences. Also, you will find that certain large sub-populations within the Asian population are WAY bigger and stronger than the average African.

The big problem is that physical differences (that matter for performance) are hugely determined by culture/nurture. A century ago, the Dutch were "normal" heighted, as compared to the rest of Europe and also America. Now, they are freakishly tall, on average.

Ahh, you are obviously referring to the Eyferth study on racial differences on IQ. Hmmm. I am guessing you aren't. It kind of showed the opposite effect as the one you are trying to espouse. And, you will find that there have never been "many" twin studies that have used IQ tests at all.

And studies of twins show more than genetic difference. Prenatal environment is huge as far as development goes. Also, someone black raised in a white home is still black by appearance (not surprisingly, they haven't designed a study where they painted the kids a different colors to control for this). They won't encounter the same life as a white kid adopted by a white family. Nurture issues are not just parenting issues. Equally important, the prenatal environment is hugely determinative of IQ, adult height, etc.

None of this plays much of a role in determining how curly your hair is (or any other physical appearance difference) though, but I cannot see how that would determine performance.

Kickers are likely culturally selected to a greater degree (skill in kicking/punting has about nothing to do with skill at any other football position), and blacks played a lot less soccer in the US. The ratio for QB isn't nearly as strong-only 26 of 32, on the upswing, and the past cultural bias there has been documented. You have white guys catching balls and running with them- TEs and occasional slot WRs (and occasional FB/RB). You have white guys covering and tackling- LBs. If the white guys were really good at the outside WR/DB game, there's no reason there wouldn't be more of them, instead of 63/64 black WR, 121/128 black DB, 16 fastest 100m times at the last olympics black, top 10 NFL combine times black, 10 fastest 100m and 200m runners of all time all black. Those ratios are beyond absurd unless you can demonstrate some kind of cultural selection process, and it would have to be global to explain the 100/200 results.

Except that it's pretty easy to make all these empirical claims without testing them, isn't it?

It's quite plausible to suspect that it's entirely a cultural bias to slot white guys in positions like QB and keep them away from WR. There's also a self-fulfilling prophecy if people start to (erroneously) think that black people are inherently faster than whites, so that coaches (starting in middle school and high school) put black kids in those positions so that only they get the practice time in those positions to excel.

Seriously...just so stories are REALLY easy: empirically testing your 'anectdotes' and 'intuitions' is a lot more difficult.

Sure, except that a ton of high schools have only white students, and so obviously those schools have white kids playing WR, CB, and RB. The white kids that play those positions in high school aren't getting recruited to play D1 as often, not because they are white, but because they not good enough. And you say we can't test it? How about the 40 times of guys at the nfl combine? They even track 40 times of high school kids, to see how they project to the college level. If the white kids were running the best 40 times, they'd be playing RB, WR, and CB in college. But they don't, so they aren't.

When I was doing psychometric research, the ONLY studies I published as first author were on ETHNIC differences. Of course, the question of what ethnicity you identified as was based on race.

At the time, things had changed, and race/ethnicity research was in vogue at the time. Still, it was highly politicized. I was not allowed to do the research I wanted to do.

Running fast is largely learned/developed skill. I do not discount that genetics are involved, but the average black american is slower (and shorter) than the average white american.

The problem is, you are looking at a subgroup (specific position nfl players - super-de-freaking-duper rare) of a subgroup (nfl players super-de-duper rare) of a subgroup (college level+ ability football players - pretty darn rare) of a subgroup (Americans whose parents allow them to play HS football who the coach thinks is worthy of training - 1/100 rare-ish) of a subgroup (kids who want to join a sports team and actually do more than show up - 1/5 rare-ish) of a subgroup and compare relative prevalence of one big population in the sub-sub-sub-sub-subgroup to the prevalence in the same sub-sub-sub-sub-subgroup in another big population.

You can show statistical differences between the two big population's prevalence in the sub-sub-sub-sub-subgroup, easily. However, you would need to be one seriously clever dude to demonstrate that it is genetic differences that are the cause of the relative differences in prevalence.

I could posit that black people succeed at relatively better rates because a fro is more "cushy" than white people hair when wearing a helmet. Darn helmet people are racist for making the helmets uncomfortable for white people, especially those with thin hair.

I have a feeling that economic/cultural differences are probably sufficient to explain the differences.

As an aside, don't cut yourself short on being the kicker. "Technique" is what athletics is all about.

You have it backwards. I'm the one who actually HAS empirical data. All you have are potential stories. By whichever measure, percentage in the league, or percentage from the country, blacks are overrepresented with a p of 1 in a bazillion. MLB stolen base single-season leaders (from 1970 forward, so people who grew up from birth with an integrated game, and in relatively the same game)- the top SIXTEEN seasons are from blacks. But I guess all the equally-fast white guys just never run for some reason. Continuing on the MLB theme, where CF is the position requiring the most sprinting speed, of the 27 qualifying, 16 black, 7 latino, 4 white, in a league that's 60% white, 29% white, 8% black.

You're the one who needs to hit a giant parlay of globe-wide selection-bias confounds. I'll take my side and it's not even close.

When you mention that the average white American is faster than the average black American, what was the context of the study? I would definitely be interested in seeing it. Who were the test subjects? Did they just take 100 white dudes at random, and 100 black dudes? Because if so, I wouldn't be surprised if the results for average, out of shape people would differ from those groomed for athletics. For instance, aren't black Americans more likely to be obese than white Americans?? This would certainly hamper someone that is trying to run fast.

As for running fast, there is the expression that 'you can't teach speed.' Well, you can teach speed to some extent, but you can't teach world class speed.

Yes I agree that it's a small sample size, and doesn't represent the entire population. But isn't it at least some evidence that their might be outliers in the populations of blacks? If people of all ethnic groups were, on average, the same height, I would be more inclined to agree that sports achievements are purely nurture. But since our bodies are so obviously different in one way (height), I think it's reasonable to assume they could be different in other ways.

I am a lazy white dude. Try google. Black people in America are more likely to be obese, so you could just skip google.

You are correct on all counts.

The problem is that if there are more outliers in the black population, it doesn't really tell you anything other than it is a more diverse population. Diversity within a population usually implies greater likelihood of survival (past and future) if conditions change. I doubt that African Americans are more likely to have survived in the past than White Americans, so I doubt that any diversity differences between the groups is due to genetics.

Height is hugely problematic, due to the Dutch problem I mentioned in an earlier post.

Of course, I don't discount that genetics are hugely important. You, when you were a kicker, were a wee person. I am also white, and am about twice your previous size. I imagine that the rest of your family is also small for the most part. My family, for the most part is pretty big. Doesn't say much either way about us being white. Your family will never play in the NFL (due to size). Mine won't either, but for different reasons (we avoid owies).

In sum, genetics is definitely important, but it is smarter to dig a little deeper than just looking at race.

Another thing about athletics. If the white players were just as fast, but were being passed as CBs, WRs, and RBs because of racism, wouldn't the person who decided to give them a shot have a huge advantage? Wouldn't he have his choice of whatever fast white athletes he wanted? And since the US population has more whites than blacks by far, he would have a pretty huge pool to choose from. I know if I were a coach, even at the lower levels, I would be putting the fastest athletes in at the positions requiring the fastest athletes. Coaches aren't dumb. They would certainly be exploiting this huge, untapped pool of world class white sprinters, if it existed.

I dunno, I can think of a pretty good genetic explanation for the big difference in hypertension rates between american blacks and whites (hint: this difference doesn't exist in Africa, and it survives a lot of confounds in the US)

Things change fast in genetics. I recall the good old days where the best runners were the middle class engish race and the best cricketers tended to come from the west indian race.

I blame Thatcher.

Well the reason all this is important, as far as I'm concerned, is that if you correlate IQ and birthrate you see a rather alarming inverse relation (e.g. average IQ in parts of sub-saharan Africa around 75, birthrates around 6, while the most developed nations with the highest average IQ's have sub-replacement birthrates). Since I am not religious and believe in a godless cosmos, I don't see any of this as a moral issue, but strictly an evolutionary one. I believe it is in our long-term interests as a species to practice enlightened eugenics, and if people want to call that racism then that's their issue, not mine. I guess it really comes down to whether high intelligence truly has any evolutionary advantage in the modern world, or if thuggish breeders are getting the last laugh on the nerds who are subsidizing their demographic ascendance.

Letting people with your standard of intellect choose a eugenics program is a very silly idea. You better be pretty.

As bad as IQ as a measure of eugenic worth is in one place, trying to use it as a measure of inherent relative worth on a population who's generally terribly lacking in prenatal nutrition, nutrition, education and the like, is just.. wow.

I'm assuming then that you have proof for the above empirical claim that black kids work harder when it comes to basketball? Please note, if you look at exclusively U.S. players, you need to account for the significant population differential in the U.S. (75% white to 12.5% black), and the resulting distrubtion in the NBA of 90% black-10% white (again looking at U.S. players, discounting European players).

While I think it's foolish not to consider the possibility that there could be some genetic advantage, I would guess that the more likely explanation for these positions is not that whites have on average a genetic advantage, but rather, they don't have a genetic disadvantage at these positions. Then, when you account for the fact that the U.S. is 75% white and 12.5% black...the conclusion is obvious why you'd see more white players at QB/kicker.

i'm pretty sure not having a disadvantage = not not having an advantage.

Eugenics?!?!?
Oh, you should have said so from the beginning. SO, what you want is a bunker where 244 playboy bunnies bear your brood. Good luck with that plan. You are doing it wrong.

lol.

I told him that back in post 18, but didn't realize he wanted to be Khan.

If a lot of people are calling you racist op then it might not be them, it might be you...

Enlightened Eugenics.....LOL. Its pretty obvious you have prejudices, your passive aggressive approach is not as subtle as you think it is.

I don't think the kicker ratios mean much. A lot of the times kickers are taken from sports like rugby and soccer(Mostly white dominated in the US). In the US soccer and rugby are 2nd tier sports at the college and professional level. A lot of the times there are economic goals related to the choosing of a sport. Soccer and Rugby dont have as many college scholorship opportunities nationwide and dont pay quite as well as Football/Basketball.

Regarding the speed discussion, it is not blacks in general that dominate the speed events. It is primarily Western hemisphere blacks descended from slaves from Western African populations. This isolated group was selectively bred for 100s of years for athletic characteristics. That is why this group dominates speed events. If you compare whites to blacks in general, there is probably not a significant difference. A white person has never broken 10s in the 100m. The world record is now 9.58.

LOL, yes they have! There's a Canadian white sprinter that has done it multiple times.

I love how there are SO many empirical claims with no evidence to back it up.

Also, saying that 63/64 WR's in the NFL are black is NOT EVIDENCE.

I for one feel very sad that the whites who had sex with blacks over the past 200 years contributed nothing to the genetic makeup of American blacks. Oh wait, that's not how sexual reproduction works.