February 13, 2009

Rise of the New Mulatto Elite -- Even in the NBA

For a couple of years, I've been pointing out that because African-American culture has become so narrow and inward-looking, it's now having a harder time producing high achievers outside of Officially Black fields such as basketball, football, and some forms of entertainment. Thus, the black race is increasingly represented at the top of many categories by half-black individuals (typically raised by white mothers or white maternal grandparents). Barack Obama is only the most obvious example of the rise of this New Mulatto Elite. (In contrast, the Old Mulatto Elite, such as Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington, generally had white ancestors in the paternal line.)

Now, Michael Lewis (author of Moneyball on the impact of Bill James-style statistics on baseball) has a New York Times Magazine article, "The No-Stats All-Star," on Shane Battier, a Houston Rockets NBA player whose contributions to winning only appear in the newest and most sophisticated basketball statistics. In all the old basketball statistics, he just looks like a slow, not very springy player with a white mom. (Here's a video of Battier singing a country song in a karaoke bar.) But the Rockets brain trust gives him (and nobody else on the team) all their super-sophisticated stats and he digests them before each game to understand how to shut down the opponent's best player, such as Kobe Bryant of the Lakers.

Lewis's article is a bit contrived in that he skips over mentioning that Battier is different from most NBA stars in that he spent four years in college, at Duke, learning how to play from Coach K. Also, in college he was a superstar by his senior year, winning all the awards as player of the year, so the new stats weren't necessary to distinguish his contributions at the college level. As Yogi Berra said, "Sometimes you can observe a lot just by watching." The question was always whether his lack of athleticism would prevent him from playing an important role in the NBA. That's where the new stats help.

Lewis writes:

In 1996 a young writer for The Basketball Times named Dan Wetzel thought it might be neat to move into the life of a star high-school basketball ­player and watch up close as big-time basketball colleges recruited him. He picked Shane Battier, and then spent five months trailing him, with growing incredulity. “I’d covered high-school basketball for eight years and talked to hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of kids — really every single prominent high-school basketball player in the country,” Wetzel says. “There’s this public perception that they’re all thugs. But they aren’t. A lot of them are really good guys, and some of them are very, very bright. Kobe’s very bright. LeBron’s very bright. But there’s absolutely never been anything like Shane Battier.”

Wetzel watched this kid, inundated with offers of every kind, take charge of an unprincipled process. Battier narrowed his choices to six schools — Kentucky, Kansas, North Carolina, Duke, Michigan and Michigan State — and told everyone else, politely, to leave him be. He then set out to minimize the degree to which the chosen schools could interfere with his studies; he had a 3.96 G.P.A. and was poised to claim Detroit Country Day School’s headmaster’s cup for best all-around student. He granted each head coach a weekly 15-minute window in which to phone him. These men happened to be among the most famous basketball coaches in the world and the most persistent recruiters, but Battier granted no exceptions. When the Kentucky coach Rick Pitino, who had just won a national championship, tried to call Battier outside his assigned time, Battier simply removed Kentucky from his list. ...

Battier, even as a teenager, was as shrewd as he was disciplined. The minute he figured out where he was headed, he called a sensational high-school power forward in Peekskill, N.Y., named Elton Brand — and talked him into joining him at Duke. (Brand now plays for the Philadelphia 76ers.) “I thought he’d be the first black president,” Wetzel says. “He was Barack Obama before Barack Obama.”

Last July, as we sat in the library of the Detroit Country Day School [tuition = $24,240], watching, or trying to watch, his March 2008 performance against Kobe Bryant, Battier was much happier instead talking about Obama, both of whose books he had read. (“The first was better than the second,” he said.)

Battier has good literary taste, too.

When he entered Detroit Country Day in seventh grade, he ... was also the only kid in school with a black father and a white mother. Oddly enough, the school had just graduated a famous black basketball player, Chris Webber. Webber won three state championships and was named national high-school player of the year. “Chris was a man-child,” says his high school basketball coach, Kurt Keener. “Everyone wanted Shane to be the next Chris Webber, but Shane wasn’t like that.” Battier had never heard of Webber and didn’t understand why, when he took to the Amateur Athletic Union circuit and played with black inner-city kids, he found himself compared unfavorably with Webber: “I kept hearing ‘He’s too soft’ or ‘He’s not an athlete.’ ” His high-school coach was aware of the problems he had when he moved from white high-school games to the black A.A.U. circuit. “I remember trying to add some flair to his game,” Keener says, “but it was like teaching a classical dancer to do hip-hop. I came to the conclusion he didn’t have the ego for it.”

Battier was half-white and half-black, but basketball, it seemed, was either black or white. A small library of Ph.D. theses might usefully be devoted to the reasons for this. For instance, is it a coincidence that many of the things a player does in white basketball to prove his character — take a charge, scramble for a loose ball — are more pleasantly done on a polished wooden floor than they are on inner-city asphalt? Is it easier to “play for the team” when that team is part of some larger institution? At any rate, the inner-city kids with whom he played on the A.A.U. circuit treated Battier like a suburban kid with a white game, and the suburban kids he played with during the regular season treated him like a visitor from the planet where they kept the black people. “On Martin Luther King Day, everyone in class would look at me like I was supposed to know who he was and why he was important,” Battier said. “When we had an official school picture, every other kid was given a comb. I was the only one given a pick.” He was awkward and shy, or as he put it: “I didn’t present well. But I’m in the eighth grade! I’m just trying to fit in!” And yet here he was shuttling between a black world that treated him as white and a white world that treated him as black. ‘‘Everything I’ve done since then is because of what I went through with this,” he said. “What I did is alienate myself from everybody. I’d eat lunch by myself. I’d study by myself. And I sort of lost myself in the game.”

Losing himself in the game meant fitting into the game, and fitting into the game meant meshing so well that he became hard to see. In high school he was almost always the best player on the court, but even then he didn’t embrace the starring role. “He had a tendency to defer,” Keener says. “He had this incredible ability to make everyone around him better. But I had to tell him to be more assertive. The one game we lost his freshman year, it was because he deferred to the seniors.” Even when he was clearly the best player and could have shot the ball at will, he was more interested in his role in the larger unit. But it is a mistake to see in his detachment from self an absence of ego, or ambition, or even desire for attention. When Battier finished telling me the story of this unpleasant period in his life, he said: “Chris Webber won three state championships, the Mr. Basketball Award and the Naismith Award. I won three state championships, Mr. Basketball and the Naismith Awards. All the things they said I wasn’t able to do, when I was in the eighth grade.”

“Who’s they?” I asked.

“Pretty much everyone,” he said.

“White people?”

“No,” he said. “The street.”

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

47 comments:

Anonymous said...

Having diverse ethnic origins increases phenotype variance. While this is good for the lucky few who are extreme in a good way, it is bad for others who are extreme in a bad way. If the media starts reporting on this phenomenon, then they will only report the good and not report the good.

Fundamentally, increases in phenotype variance are BAD FOR SOCIETY. Why? Because society has rules and norms for behavior. These rules and norms are codified in laws and customs. Increases in variance means that a greater percent of people will go outside the expectations of society. So then society has to adjust by increasing enforcement of its rules. Society also adjusts by codifying once rare behavior as outside its norms. That is, behavior which was unacceptable, but rare becomes frequent enough to pass laws prohibiting it.

This is a fatal hole in libertarianism. The libertarians assume good behavior by most people and that bad behavior by some can be dealt with. What happens in a diverse society is that there is no one norm for behavior. Behavior is all over the place. Thus that society has to have many rules and regulations to deal with the different norms of behavior. A homogeneous society has a single norm of behavior and thus requires a minimal set of laws. Of course, libertarians refuse to acknowledge that their ideology is one that is viable only under special circumstances.....

Anonymous said...

It would be more interesting to talk about how Lithuania, a country of about 3 million people, beat the USA basketball team, which draws on a population of 35 million blacks in America.

J said...

For reference, Communist Cuba has long been called "La "Mulatocracia".

Anonymous said...

"For instance, is it a coincidence that many of the things a player does in white basketball to prove his character — take a charge, scramble for a loose ball — are more pleasantly done on a polished wooden floor than they are on inner-city asphalt? Is it easier to “play for the team” when that team is part of some larger institution?"

That's right, just give them a good breakfast and they will be as smart as the white kids.

Anonymous said...

Detroit Country Day school, huh? That is a rich and very exclusive school, with a lot of South Asian and Jewish kids, Big 3 execs kids, etc. Don't let the name fool you, there's nothing "Detroit" about it.

Anonymous said...

It's likely that Battier's father was black in a cultural rather than physical sense. In other words, he himself was racially mixed, as Shane Battier is clearly less than one-half black. I would estimate that Battier is something under one-quarter black.

Pictures of his father might help, but a Google Images search was unavailing.

Peter

Anonymous said...

...and some of them are very, very bright. Kobe’s very bright. LeBron’s very bright.

How did these guys do on their calculus exams? Calling Philippe Rushton.

Anonymous said...

Here's a nice hagiography of him. http://vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1021139/index.htm

He's apparently very intelligent, but at the same time does not possess a high IQ.

Well, which is it?

Anonymous said...

Ahhh! Stop!!!

You're posting too much too fast! I can't keep up.

Anonymous said...

Daryl Morey, the Houston Rockets GM, is the most quant-centric GM in the NBA. The Rockets would be a really great team if: 1) TMac wasn't soft and injured all the time (and settling for low % jump shots) and 2) If Rafer Alston was consistently good which is an impossibility since he is bad 3 out of 5 games.

Anonymous said...

Thanks, that was one of the better sports articles I've read in a long time. I'm not a big sports fan, but I am a tall guy who was obsessed with basketball in his teen years. The countdown shtick at the end nearly brought tears to my eyes.

While I'm at it, thanks for the recent Seligman reprints, too. I had never heard of him, but he is a rare combination of quant rigor with literary style. It is fitting that he should be your inspiration.

Anonymous said...

It would be more interesting to talk about how Lithuania, a country of about 3 million people, beat the USA basketball team, which draws on a population of 35 million blacks in America.

The issue is obviously one of different components scaling and interacting in different ways, a subject very common in my own software industry.

Napoleon put it best:

Any Frenchman will easily be defeated by one Mameluke. Ten Frenchmen have little chance against ten Mamelukes. But one hundred Frenchmen will always win against one hundred Mamelukes. And one thousand Frenchmen can defeat any number of Mamelukes in battle.

Broader societies are impacted by exactly the same copmlex scaling/combination/interaction issues of their human components as are software systems.

Truth said...

"It would be more interesting to talk about how Lithuania, a country of about 3 million people, beat the USA basketball team, which draws on a population of 35 million blacks in America...."

Why? How many Olympic golds has Lituania won?

The US Hockey team beat the Soviets in 1980, but if they played 50 times what would the result have been?

Anonymous said...

Lithuania certainly is an interesting case. I don't think any country approaching that size can field a team that good; I think Angola is the next-smallest country that consistently sends world-class teams to the Olympics, and their population is around 16 million.

These kinds of anamolies do seem to crop up. In chess there is a comparable case: everyone thinks of Russia and Ukraine as the chess powerhouses, but in terms of Grandmasters per capita, Armenia is way ahead. They have only 3 million people and still do quite well at the Olympiads. And yet, from all that I have heard Ukraine is more collectively obsessed with chess than Armenia (or Russia for that matter).

Anonymous said...

LOL. pure BS. this article is totally stupid. it would be laughed off a basketball board. everything in this article is completely, 100% wrong.

the idea that shane battier is secretley one of the best players in the NBA is absolutely retarded. NO, HE IS NOT.

some of the claims made in this article are the claims of people who do not even watch basketball.

there is no "rise of a mulatto elite" in basketball, just like there is no rise of a mulatto elite in music, another incorrect idea that steve has suggested in the past. anybody with a computer can check billboard.com to see that no, mixed race people are not dominating sales. if steve had watched the NBA rookie challenge on friday, he would have seen that single race, black or white players, accounted for 100% of the best 1st and 2nd year NBA players.

maybe next time, steve could consult somebody who knows basketball. then, he could talk about mulatto players that actually are good, like deron williams and tony parker.

not shane battier, a completely, totally average NBA player who is not good at anything at the NBA level. LOL at "shutting down the other team's best player". he never does any such thing. i also want the writer to explain how a guy that is, according to the writer, slower and less athletic than average, is supposed to even do this. how does a slower player "shut down" the fastest, most athletic players? how does shane battier "shut down" dirk nowitzki with his huge height advantage and dead-on jumpshot?

Anonymous said...

I don't know PA. I think taboos of cross-racial marrying apply only to White men and Black women, which is viewed as politically incorrect and "racist" and hated by both Black men and women, and the White Status folks (SWPL).

Having a Black husband has many advantages, as long as he is not too "thuggy." He gets (and any children get) instant Affirmative Action benefits, are the first hired and last fired (reverse for White men), he has a more masculine image and perceived at least higher level of testosterone. He brings more status/cachet to the SWPL crowd. Any male child will have more perceived masculine attributes (higher mating success) along with a privileged position.

Independence of income makes bad provider reps irrelevant, and women don't really care much about infidelity (see John Edwards, Bill Clinton, any NBA star) ... as long as the man is perceived to be socially dominant.

The only negative is the much higher rate of HIV/STD among Black Men vs. White/NE Asian men. Which is hardly discussed and often not in awareness.

Anecdotally, I've seen lots of Black Male / White women pairings in the SWPL society, particularly in coastal urban centers. The White Woman of lower socio-economic background paired with Blue collar Black man is common inland.

The one outlier is the military. It's common to see equal amounts of both pairings, particularly in Crytal City (one stop over from the Pentagon on the DC Metro) because there's the military society and the civilian. Lifers tend to care little about the separate civilian society and norms, an attractive mate willing to put up with the military life is usually found ... in the military. You can see couples of either mixing walking around, usually enlisted, both in uniform.

The big issue in the collapse of Black sports is the larger collapse of Black culture. Lack of team play and extreme individualism speak to deep patterns of radically changed sexual selection (only the biggest individual is selected) and extreme personal physical mobility, lack of neighborhood institutions and organizations.

It's worth noting that Black colleges and organizations as recently as the 1960's were noted for self-less team play, in football, basketball, and baseball. This individualism is a recent cultural shift that hit the Black community first, but not last.

Anonymous said...

There is a clear trend in which successful Black males, made successful in part because of their IQ...

Stop right there. Do you really believe in that? Snoop Doggy Dog is a successful Black male. So is Terrell Owens. A disproportionate percentage of wealthy Blacks got their wealth from two industries (sports and entertainment) that place no premium whatsoever on IQ. I read somewhere not long ago (was it iSteve?) that Muhammad Ali had an IQ of 78.

As Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and all those mayors of largely Black cities have shown, politics isn't really a magnet for smart black guys either. You've got to appeal to the masses in politics. Yes, Barry O smart, but he got where he did by appealing to SWPL and wealthy donor audiences, not to the ones that the typical Black politician has to appeal to.

Where do smart Black guys end up? I think that to a large extent it's mid-level corporate bureaucracy. That's not rich, that's upper middle class.

Anonymous said...

Truth wrote:

Why? How many Olympic golds has Lituania won?

From the Wikipedia's article on the Lithuanian national basketball team:

Lithuanian men competed in two of the pre-war Eurobasket competitions for the European championship. They won both the Eurobasket 1937 and Eurobasket 1939 competitions....

Being part of the Soviet Union, Lithuanian players frequently formed the core of the Soviet national team. This was especially so for the 1988 Olympic Basketball gold medal winning team which got most of its scoring from four Lithuanians: Valdemaras Chomičius, Rimas Kurtinaitis, Šarūnas Marčiulionis and Arvydas Sabonis.

After the restoration of Lithuanian independence in 1990, the national team was resurrected. Lithuania won bronze medals in the first three Olympics to feature NBA players—1992, 1996, and 2000, and finished fourth in 2004 and 2008.

The Lithuanian team won the Eurobasket 1937, 1939 and Eurobasket 2003.


I don't know why this tiny country is so good and/or in love with basketball either, but apparently it goes back to the 1930s.

Anonymous said...

1. I;m intrigued who is more the quant, Battier or Morely? How do they view each other? How does the player view quant work? Same as Morely?

2. How does Battier compare to other defenseive specialists? Is hre the first of his kind or have other played the same style?

Jokah Macpherson said...

I remember watching Battier as a senior when Duke won the national championship. I'd committed to Wake Forest by then and took a natural interest in our rival. He was a solid, Tim Duncan-like player and a class act. There has not been a better Duke team since.

Anonymous said...

It's likely that Battier's father was black in a cultural rather than physical sense. In other words, he himself was racially mixed, as Shane Battier is clearly less than one-half black. I would estimate that Battier is something under one-quarter black.

American blacks are already 20-25% white:

http://scienceblogs.com/gnxp/2009/02/ancestral_quanta_predicts_phen.php#more

Anonymous said...

I think LeBron is surprisingly articulate for a black basketball player from a broken home. I wouldn't be shocked if his IQ cracks 100. Kobe's SAT score was about 1100, so that's certainly not genius territory, but definitely shows an above median IQ as well.

Chuck said...

When I looked at that picture I thought it was Blake Griffin, the half black / half white forward from #2 Oklahoma. He scored 40 points and had 23 rebounds tonight, and will go in the top 3 in this year's draft. Also, last years #2 pick, Michael Beasley is mixed.

But overall, all black or mostly black players are still dominant in NBA and NFL.

Anonymous said...

"For instance, is it a coincidence that many of the things a player does in white basketball to prove his character — take a charge, scramble for a loose ball — are more pleasantly done on a polished wooden floor than they are on inner-city asphalt? Is it easier to “play for the team” when that team is part of some larger institution?"

Wow, even in sports writing do we see political correct excuses for behavior? This silly comment assumes that white kids in the suburbs learn to play on wood floors, while blacks learn to play on the playground.

We suburban white kids played on the playground just as much as black kids did. In fact, black kids probably had more opportunities to play on wood floors because we never had "midnight basketball" in the suburbs. We didn't have community centers either.

A lot of times we played in the driveways of kid's homes. Or we played at the park. We fell on loose balls and took charges becuase we had to make up for our lack of running and jumping ability.

So we see again how politically correct "logic" is wrong and stupid and the root of all kinds of evil.

Anonymous said...

"He's apparently very intelligent, but at the same time does not possess a high IQ."

"Well, which is it?"

Maybe it's just the inverse of what I think a lot of us see on a daily basis - high IQ, low intelligence.

Truth said...

"Kobe's SAT score was about 1100, so that's certainly not genius territory, but definitely shows an above median IQ as well."

Not only did Kobe score an 1100, he took the test knowing that there was absolutely no chance that he was ever going to spend a day on a college campus; probably as a lark or to make his mother happy. And LeBron James, there is something special about him. I don't know if if's IQ, but I have never seen an 18 year old with the sort of personality he had. In the interviews, he seemed (and looked) like a 30-year old man. Conspiracy?

"2. How does Battier compare to other defenseive specialists? Is hre the first of his kind or have other played the same style?"

Battier is a very good defensive player and his style is all almost totally reliant on position defense; that is get in the right position to keep the man from receiving the ball, the get in the right position to keep yourself between the man, and where he wants to go with the ball, then get a hand in his face when he shoots. Contrast that from his teamate Ron Artest, also known as a great defender, who is 6-7 265 lbs.

Artest plays much more traditional defense in that he goes for a lot of open court steals, then he bangs his opponent around attempting to tire/intimidate him. Once the man catches the ball and/ or puts it on the floor, Artest uses his quick hands to try to take it away, and finally attempts to block the shot. Both styles are effective, but the fans would consider Artest more formidable because he "looks" like he's playing defense, and registers many steals, blocks and charges.

Almost exactly according to phenotype, Artest is the more "instinctive" defense player, Battier is the more "studious".

Truth said...

BTW; here's a study you might actually find interesting

The highlights:


The only study I know of done about the sex and race of one’s parents is one done by Willerman, Naylor and Myrianthopoulos in 1974: mixed children brought up by a black father and a white mother had a mean IQ of 104.7, more than 8 points higher than those raised by a white father and black mother: 96.4. And, by the way, almost 5 points higher than the mean white IQ and, in those days, nearly 20 points higher than the mean black IQ.

Steve-O this one just BEGS for your particular "expertise" (spin).

Dutch Boy said...

My impression is that countries like Lithuania, Argentina, Croatia, etc. play basketball as it was meant to be played (passing, defense, hit the open shot). There are fewer black players playing NBA-style palm the ball/muscleball so their game is not "corrupted". Also, their national teams play together on an extended basis unlike the ad hoc conglomerations offered by the USA.

Anonymous said...

An example of a studious, Gym-rat type Black player was Jerry Rice.

Averae speed at best. He quuickly figured out that his best bet to compete was through superior conditioning, one thing he could control, to wear out defenders in the Fourth Quarter, and use a conditioning advantage to beat them.

That was basically what will get him into the Hall of Fame. Simple. But very effective. Reliant not on superior speed but work ethic.

THAT kind of attitude used to be a hallmark of Black players, who were as much gym rats as guys like Byrd. Johnson and Kareem spent as much time in practice as Byrd, and both had essentially failures as coaches at the NBA level because "stars" would not listen to them.

The NBA is a game of a bunch of individuals concerned about stats and highlight reels, because that is what pays off in endorsements, not winning championships. The money is all in lucrative, Black-oriented sneaker endorsements. Not mainstream ads (only Shaq really has had success with lots of mainstream commercials, notably Icy Hot).

No one listend to Kareem coaching the big men, because success as a team was irrelevant, only stats and highlights. Same with Magic when he briefly coached the Lakers.

It's now infecting football. 49'ers Coach Singletary is going to be rudely awakened -- guys with guaranteed contracts are not going to care about winning, and doing things like blocking, or what have you that create wins, rather individual stats and such. That's particularly true on a losing team that has little chance to reach a Superbowl. Even his intensity is going to be discarded by guys who make more money from commercials and guaranteed contracts than actual winning. See: Michael Vick.

This is particularly true as Black culture has pioneered or been affected first by massive cultural shifts to extreme individualism and hype rather than real accomplishment. However, Whites are rapidly catching up in this dysfunction, and we can look to Britain to see it (or many of the White cheating Baseball players with roids).

Anonymous said...

These kinds of anamolies do seem to crop up. In chess there is a comparable case: everyone thinks of Russia and Ukraine as the chess powerhouses, but in terms of Grandmasters per capita, Armenia is way ahead.


This is interesting... I've always wondered why there isn't more discussion of Armenians in HBD-land - I don't know if there have been any IQ studies of Armenians, but if I had to guess I'd say they are probably above the average European IQ, but not as smart as Ashkenazic Jews.

It's interesting that Garry Kasparov, probably one of the highest-IQ people on the planet, is half-Armenian and half-Jewish. Maybe he lucked out and got rare IQ-boosting mutations from both sides of the family?

Anonymous said...

Steve-O this one just BEGS for your particular "expertise" (spin).

Funny, you seem to spend quite some time here with Steve's spin and all.

Anonymous said...

I agree with the commenter "Reader" about Armenian IQ. Somewhere between the the European and Ashkenazy means sounds plausible. One World Chess Champion (Tigran Petrosian) was fully Armenian, one (Kasparov) was half-Armenian. Then there's Kirk Kerkorian. There are only 3.2 million people in Armenia, perhaps a little more than that outside of it.

In the early 1990s Armenia waged a war with Azerbaijan, which has twice the population, a somewhat powerful ally (Turkey) and lots of oil. Armenia does not have any natural allies or any oil. In spite of this it won that war outright, annexing a lot of territory and "cleansing" it of Azeris. An IQ gap between the two countries probably explains the otherwise surprising outcome.

Armenians have for centuries been a mercantile minority. They're brainy, very ethno-centric, most of them live in the diaspora and they're often disliked - they're Jews lite. The southern Chinese fill a somewhat similar (though in other ways different) niche in SE Asia.

Anonymous said...

Lebron and Kobe are obviously quite bright. Lebron's early childhood had a crippling level of instability, poverty, and dysfunction, but as soon as he got with a stable family (the Walkers, in sixth grade), he turned it around and posted a solid high school academic record. Since he got into the NBA he has managed his career brilliantly, in terms of relationships with fans, teammates, the press, and the business community. That's not easy for an 18 year old to do.

Kobe is bright but a jerk.

Anonymous said...

Lebron is extremely well spoken and has managed his career extremely well he almost certain has an IQ in 100-115 range. Kobe has a 100-115 IQ as well but Lebron is more impressive considering his upbringing.

Anonymous said...

Lynn and Vanhanen estimate Armenian IQ to be 94.

Truth said...

If the mean IQ in Armenia is so high, why is it such a backwater, and why do so many of them move here?

Anonymous said...

Lynn and Vanhanen estimate Armenian IQ to be 94.


If I'm not mistaken, this is an average based on IQ scores of countries bordering Armenia, not a result of actual tests on Armenians. I don't take it too seriously. In any case, Lynn and Vanhanen also give Israel a score of 94.

I'd be willing to bet that a test of Armenian-Americans would come out above the Euro-American average.

Truth said...

"Kobe Bryant a "jerk"? That's an awfully nice way to put it. I was going to say "anal rapist".

You were there?

Truth said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Black Sea said...

"If the mean IQ in Armenia is so high, why is it such a backwater, and why do so many of them move here?"

Most of the Armenians living in America come from Armenians diaspora populations, rather than the current nation of Armenia, which only became an independent republic in 1991.

Truth said...

That's not quite true. Most of the Armenians in Southern California and Ohio (the two largest enclaves
of Armenians in the US) from what I'm told by Armenians, come from Armenia.

There are basically two groups of Armenians here, the
Hyastansi who are Armenians from Armenia and the Farskahi who are Arab Armenians, mostly from Iran. The Hyastansi are the very pale armenians with very dark eyes and hair. The Dracula types, and the women generally have rear ends like black chicks. Think Kim Kardashian.

The Farskahi have darker skin and more Arab features, often indistiguishable from other Arabs. Think Jerry Trakanian. There are also large Armenian communities in Argentina and Uruguay, and the Armenians were probably the first true Christian "community" in Europe, and the original white people as that is where the Caucasus mountain range is located.

Anonymous said...

Scott commented above:

"However, I have also noticed that White women who commit miscegenation and have a child tend to half [sic] IQs below the median, so perhaps this ameliorates [sic] any gain."

ameliorates, which is roughly synonymous with improves, is misplaced here. If a polysyllabic word derived from Latin is wanted, attenuates can be made to serve, though the less exotic decreases, or lessens might perhaps be clearer and more precise.

Here at Mr. Sailer's blog, readers are familiar with the concepts of "Dads vs. Cads", and differential fertility rates between the prudent and the imprudent. If, as seems likely, the children of the imprudent are more numerous than the children of the prudent; and if, as seems likely, the children of the imprudent have absent and/or unfit parents, then a child of the imprudent may perform as poorly as the least able of its parents.

Anonymous said...

...and the Armenians were probably the first true Christian "community" in Europe, and the original white people as that is where the Caucasus mountain range is located.

Truth, the Caucasoid race received its name more than 200 years ago, when little was known about pre-history. A German scientist of that time hypothesized that all populations of Europe, Middle East and India had their origin in the Caucasus mountains. This view is outdated. No one who follows anthropology accepts it anymore. The name has stuck out of inertia.

Armenians belong to the Middle Eastern sub-group of the Caucasoid race. Not a lot of people would call them white and almost no one considers Armenia to be a part of Europe. They're a historically Christian Middle Eastern people.

Anonymous said...

A previous comment said:

It's likely that Battier's father was black in a cultural rather than physical sense. In other words, he himself was racially mixed, as Shane Battier is clearly less than one-half black. I would estimate that Battier is something under one-quarter black.

American blacks are already 20-25% white:

http://scienceblogs.com/gnxp/2009/02/ancestral_quanta

Nonsense. The "blacks" in question are nearly all college students and descendants of the traditional mulatto elite or born from mulatto/black intermarriages. Successful black males always look for mulatto elite trophy wives. None of those scientists are going to the unpleasant, dangerous black ghettoes to take DNA samples.

Anonymous said...

Armenians belong to the Middle Eastern sub-group of the Caucasoid race.

"Middle Eastern" is not a race, ethnicity or subgroup. The Middle East covers a wide and varied group of ethnicities.

Armenians cluster closely with the Greeks on genome association studies. See Bauchet, 2007.

Armenids are closer to Continental Europeans than Turks are and most Turks are clearly Europid:

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_ro2ijOk8JWc/SLs7sALkwoI/AAAAAAAAATs/sa2Ig1gv31M/s1600-h/novembre.jpg

Truth said...

"None of those scientists are going to the unpleasant, dangerous black ghettoes to take DNA samples."

More brilliant, exhaustive scientific analysis brought to you by the posters at isteve.blogspot.com

Anonymous said...

After several days of waiting, I've come to the conclusion that we're not allowed to say "bastard" at iSteve.