Mental Segregation
Inequality, racism, and framing.
by William Saletan
May 4, 2009
People vary in their abilities based in part on genetic differences. Suppose these differences at the individual level sometimes add up to differences in average ability between people of one race and people of another. Should we say so?
Here are three perspectives on the question. On Wednesday, the New York Times ran the following story:'No Child' Law Is Not Closing a Racial Gap ...
On Thursday, I raised a question about the Times story:Why categorize and measure students by race? Aren't there better ways to organize the data? … [Parts of the test report] organize the data by factors that can help us target and adjust educational policy: kids with low scores, kids in public school, kids in high school, kids whose parents didn't graduate. … But race? Does that category really help? And what message does it send to kids when headlines assert a persistent "racial gap"?
On Friday, Steve Sailer, the founder of the Human Biodiversity Institute, responded to my question. He argued that I was wrong to propose to "stop counting" scores by race:
The reason people all over the world and of all different ideologies can't help but be interested in race is [that] a racial group is, fundamentally, an extended family. So, race is about who your relatives are, which is an inherently interesting topic.
Saletan has been arguing that we should just group people by looking at one gene at a time. (Of course, on average, individual gene differences will tend to follow racial lines.) But, more fundamentally, what he doesn't get is that racial groups have an existence independent of genetics. They are fundamentally genealogical entities—who begat whom. Unsurprisingly, when you stop and think about it, the genes tag along with the begats.
Sailer, like the Times, is embracing racial averaging of test scores. But unlike the Times, he's doing so in the belief that differences in the resulting averages are in large part genetic. He's arguing not just that some people do better than others based on inherited ability (the genetic question) and that this ability is more prevalent among people of one race than among people of another (the distribution question), but that this is how the data should be aggregated, averaged, and compared (the framing question).
To be precise, I am arguing that this is how the data is aggregated, averaged, and compared ... by law. The No Child Left Behind legislation godfathered by Ted Kennedy and George W. Bush is explicitly concerned with narrowing racial achievement gaps.
More generally, that mainstay of the civil rights industry, the concept of "disparate impact" -- as exemplified by the EEOC's four-fifths rule, which, in the Supreme Court's Ricci case was cited by the city of New Haven to justify throwing out a firefighter promotional test that no blacks passed -- requires the government to maintain vast statical offices for sorting employees by race. Similarly, the Community Reinvestment Act requires millions of mortgages to be sorted by race in the government's giant Home Mortgage Disclosure Act database in order to lean on the mortgage industry to lend more money to minorities. (How's that working out for us lately?)
Should the government count by race? In 2002, I endorsed and voted for Ward Connerly's California initiative that the state government should stop counting by race. I reasoned by analogy to religion. In the 1950s, the Census Bureau proposed adding a religion question to the Census, but Jewish groups protested, so the Census doesn't count people by religion. And that makes it very hard to file a disparate impact lawsuit over purported religious discrimination based on statistical differences. There simply aren't any government statistics on religion today, so religious discrimination cases require direct evidence of discrimination, so there are fewer lawsuits over religious discrimination than over racial discrimination, and so employers seldom impose religious quotas on themselves.
But, Connerly's initiative to eliminate data collection by race went down to defeat badly, and I haven't expressed much of an opinion on the subject of whether or not the government should collect data by race since. But if the government's going to collect collossal amounts of data by race and impose legal differences by race, then I think it's my duty as a citizen to look at the government's numbers and see what they say.
It's important to separate these three questions. We know that genes influence many abilities. We also know that some of these genes vary considerably in prevalence between ethnic groups. One example is the RR variant of ACTN3, a gene that affects fast generation of muscular force and correlates with excellence at speed and power sports. The opposite variant of the gene is called XX. Tests indicate that the ratio of people with RR to people with XX is 1 to 1 among Asians, 2 to 1 among European whites, and more than 4 to 1 among African-Americans.
We shouldn't overstate the case. Genes don't determine everything, and most genes don't vary significantly between populations. But research is constantly finding new gene-trait correlations and group differences. If your faith in equality depends on an ethnically or racially even distribution of all ability-influencing genes, you're in trouble.
That's why the framing question matters. People of your race may be on average faster, smarter, or more volatile than people of my race. But the opposite pattern may turn up if you and I are classified in some other way. My dad was black, my mom was white, I was born in Hawaii, I was raised in a broken home, I grew up in Indonesia, I went to private school, I played basketball, I used drugs, my grades were unspectacular, and I went to Harvard Law. Guess my IQ.
Rather than focus on an exotic such as the President, who wrote a 460-page book (helpfully subtitled A Story of Race and Inheritance so that you don't miss the point) justifying to himself that he was "black enough" to be a leader of blacks, I think it's more helpful to state what I've often pointed out: "Somewhere around eleven million Hispanics and seven million African Americans have higher IQs than the average white American."
I put a lot of effort a decade ago into trying to come up with broad evidence for Saletan's argument that the government's system of asking people to check off little race and ethnicity boxes is too error-prone and illogical to work, but I eventually had to admit to myself that, on the whole, it was good enough for government work. Sure, there are more than a few exotics like Tiger Woods (who came up with 1 word to describe himself: "Caublinasian") and Barack Obama (who came up with 150,000 words in Dreams from My Father to rationalize his claim to being "black enough"), but most of the time, the government's system kind of sort of works.
The distribution question doesn't settle the framing question, because race is just one way in which ability can be unevenly distributed. To answer the framing question in the affirmative, you have to show something more. You have to show that classifying and comparing by race, rather than using some other classification system or judging each person as an individual, does more good than harm.
It's Ward Connerly's view that the government classifying people by race does more harm than good. Judging from the Obama Administration's amicus curiae brief in the Ricci case, it's definitely not Barack Obama's view. Perhaps Mr. Saletan should take up his argument with the President of the United States rather than with me.
Sailer's argument is that racial classification is natural—that we "can't help but be interested in race" because we tend to define others as in or out of our extended family. I think he's right about that. We're prone to tribalism. But that's not a reason to encourage racial classification. It's a reason to beware it.
In other words, Steve Sailer will more or less win on the scientific grounds any debate over race he choose to engage in seriously, so it's best not to debate the topic at all.
Fine. But can we first get rid of all the government's laws, institutions, and regulations that not only count by race but then discriminate by race, such as the EEOC, the four-fifths rule, the CRA, and so forth?
Saletan continues:
In other words, Sailer has all the government data on his side, but that just makes it worse!Consider Sailer's views on immigration. A few months ago, he wrote:
Typically, the two most important factors influencing the long-term success of an organization are the quantity and quality of people involved. … This is particularly true for a country. Yet there has been barely any discussion in the U.S. prestige press on the implications of the demographic change imposed by immigration. … Is adding 100 million Latinos to the U.S. population a good idea? …
And there has been little change in the racial disparities in crime rates. Racial and ethnic differences of all kinds have been strikingly stable since the 1970s. In particular, the word that best sums up Latino America is inertia. Things just sort of keep on keeping on in the general direction that they were already moving. What we do know is that all of these troubles are exacerbated by the mass immigration of people with low human capital.
This is what can happen when you constantly look for racial angles in data on crime, IQ, and other measures of the "quality of people." You start aiming policies at ethnic groups. But I don't think this kind of racism is a product of uneven distribution. It's a product of bad framing.
By this point poor old kicked-around Saletan has finally collapsed into just plain pointing and sputtering about how I, and anybody else who notices the massive demographic changes brought about by our Establishment's immigration policy, is some kind of evil racist.
Okay!
(I will admit that it's also possible that Saletan has come around to agreeing 100% with me and he's just picking a fight with me to give my sensible views more publicity.)
Read the rest of Saletan's article here.
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
87 comments:
Saletan is looking to be the public face of hbd. Sailer's a bit to his right. Saletan is playing "I think hbd is real, but I'm not a nutjob like Sailer, so you can believe hbd and be a not-crazy public intellectual as well."
Sorry I ever suggested the denouncement strategy.
Framing by race is essential because that is the way people naturally and instinctively identify themselves. Failing to frame by race will fail to reflect natural self-identification, which will simply result in more confusion and perhaps oppressive measures (like firing folks like James Watson) aimed at repressing this natural instinct. The instinct to classify oneself by race would replace acknowledging racial genetic differences in mental traits as the new Crimethink.
Also, we just need to know so that white people can tell NAMs to go to hell when they blame us for their problems.
"This is what can happen when you constantly look for racial angles in data on crime, IQ, and other measures of the "quality of people." You start aiming policies at ethnic groups. But I don't think this kind of racism is a product of uneven distribution. It's a product of bad framing."
And what's wrong with aiming policies at ethnic groups? Left-wingers do it all the time, so obviously they don't think it's wrong when they do it or that it's wrong in principle. Left-wingers like Mr. Saletan typically think that it's wrong to target some ethnic groups, but not others. It's strictly a who-whom question for them. Talk about tribalism. By the way, if Mr. Saletan wants to prove to us that he's not that kind of a left-winger (or not a left-winger at all), he can declare his opposition to Affirmative Action right this minute.
If he does that, I will take his horror (horror!) at the suggestion that policies might somewhere, somehow be targeted to specific ethnic groups a little more seriously. Until he does that, I will be taking his horror as it was probably intended by him, namely as bold-faced BS.
"I think he's right about that. We're prone to tribalism. But that's not a reason to encourage racial classification. It's a reason to beware it."
He made a leap there which I failed to follow. What is the reason to beware it? And if it's "tribalism" then what is the reason to beware tribalism?
Lots of unexamined assumptions going on there.
Steve says:
"Somewhere around eleven million Hispanics and seven million African-Americans have higher IQs than the average white American."
Hmmm, about 16% will be above one SD above 85 ... but I thought AAs were about 12.4% of 300M.
6M perhaps.
"This is what can happen when you constantly look for racial angles in data on crime, IQ, and other measures of the "quality of people." You start aiming policies at ethnic groups. But I don't think this kind of racism is a product of uneven distribution. It's a product of bad framing."
What does that even mean?
Seriously, what sort of "framing" does he imagine would give him the results he wants? No breaking out of crime data by race, I suppose.
I do think it's rich when Jews lecture others on the evils of tribalism. You've gotta love that whole "Do as we say, not as we do" mentality.
I am Lugash.
One timid, cautious step forward for the truth, one giant, flopping back pedal for William Saletan:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/humannature/archive/2009/05/04/first-they-came-for-the-mexicans.aspx
I am Lugash.
Interesting. Saletan completely ducked the point you made that NCLB is SUPPOSED to address race and racial disparities.
And that bobbing and weaving is to be expected, I suppose.
Some liberals think that if race is a figment of our imagination, we ought not to notice it.
We ought to be color-blind, as all of France, for example, is officially color-blind.
Of course, this does not change the painful reality-on-the-ground. And France has accordingly decided to no longer ignore race as it has for centuries. Sarkozy announced thet FRance would be tracking race, if for no other reason than handing out welfare and AA to Africans and Muslims.
But perhaps Saletan has some residual bias against racial statistics gathering when reflecting upon his own race, the Jewish race. For generations now they have kept the Feds from gathering Jewish statistics in the census, seeing (perhaps rightfully) that the great good fortune experienced by Jews in America would redound to their great disadvantage. Hitler, after all, made his bones gathering and presenting racial disparity stats in Mein Kampf. Unfortunately for them, it showed a significant "disparate impact" on Aryans.
But Saletan does have his finger on something important that he is desperately squirming to avoid:
If all blacks do poorly because of Evil White Racism or its lasting effects (typically called "the legacy of slavery") then blacks are in no wise to blame for their disparity.
In fact, the greater the disparity, the greater the shame and guilt of white folks across America. The annual recital of racial disparity should chasten white folks, reinforcing the depths of their guilt and encouraging them to redouble their efforts to eliminate the vestiges of slavery ... and so it was after just a year or two of NCLB.
However, after six or eight years of NCLB, the picture is coming into focus: in every school district across the land, from the frozen wastes of North Dakota to the vibrant Haitian backstreets of Miami, from the mean streets of Manhattan, t the the lily-white precincts of Portland, Oregon, we are seeing the exact same pattern: black folks and Mexicans do very poorly.
Regardless of whether they are under the tender ministrations of High WASP teachers in Cambridge, Mass, or suffering under the lash of teachers in deepest, darkest Mississippi, the result is the same: they uniformly and without exception, in every school district with a statistically significant number of blacks, do worse than white folks and Asians.
The problem isn't, as Saletan notes, that we consider race. As you point out, Steve, of course we consider race: race was the whole point of the NCLB exercise.
What Saletan desperately wants is to ignore race, now that it no longer serves to reinforce white.
Now that the pattern of ability and intelligence is clear and inescapable, each time one mentions it, white folks are going to ask themselves why they are being taxed to support it, and their gentile kids are denied jobs and an opportunity for an education forever.
For once white folks realize that in every school, no matter what state, city, town or village, the results are all the same, they will, at last, realize that there is something that goes beyond upbringing and some imaginary "legacy of slavery". There is something organic at work.
And THAT is the reality that Saletan wants to avoid at all costs. Trust me, Saletan LOVED NCLB before the universal, nation-wide, inescapable and ineradicable patterns started appearing.
But times are changing. We now have 12-20 million illegal Mexican peasants to take care of. And white folks don't have the extra time, money or interest to suckle racial whiners and complainers.
"In other words, Steve Sailer will more or less win on the scientific grounds any debate over race he choose to engage in seriously, so it's best not to debate the topic at all."
Steve, I think you're right. That's his motivation. He's winking to that section of the powers that be that reads Slate that unfortunately for those powers, some of the peasants have figured out that they're being bamboozled. And those racial stats collected by the government have helped them figure that out. To keep the secret and, more generally, to be able to keep raping the peasants, the powers should immediately classify those stats. If the authorities don't do that, more and more peasants will find out that they're being cheated, and the powers may end up being threatened.
This appears to be his point.
Medical diagnoses and treatment vary by gender, age, and RACE. Even the implications for such things as BMI and waist size vary across these categories. It is inevitable that use of racial categories will increase, not decrease (the only difference might be that they correspond closer to the genetics.. southern/northern european is more accurate than white and so on).
"This is what can happen when you constantly look for racial angles in data on crime, IQ, and other measures of the "quality of people." You start aiming policies at ethnic groups. But I don't think this kind of racism is a product of uneven distribution. It's a product of bad framing."
Wrong again, Will. That doesn't say anything about ethnic discrimination in immigration.
Steve has written some vicious, evil things about the American immigration system, though.
Like the time he argued that America should have an immigration system more like Canada's.
http://www.isteve.com/Canada_Doesnt_Want_Me.htm
That's what happens when you starting thinking in hatefacts. You start down the path of those racist, Nazi canucks.
"it's also possible that Saletan has come around to agreeing 100% with me and he's just picking a fight with me to give my sensible views more publicity."
I'm sure that's it. If Saletan sincerely believed that views like yours should be ignored, he could easily have ignored you. You really are not all that well known. Not that all of us here don't think you should be a major celebrity, you simply aren't one just yet.
"(I will admit that it's also possible that Saletan has come around to agreeing 100% with me and he's just picking a fight with me to give my sensible views more publicity.)"
I agree; Slate would kick him off their payroll if he came out and agreed with you.
"it's also possible that Saletan has come around to agreeing 100% with me and he's just picking a fight with me to give my sensible views more publicity."
Perhaps but more likely its just good ole fashioned triangulation.
I don't blame him though its just the smart thing to do given the circumstances.
"Also, we just need to know so that white people can tell NAMs to go to hell when they blame us for their problems."
Yes ... there are so many ways to make this important point. If this is understood then whites are not to blame for the average poverty and lack of attainment of blacks.
So we have to look to some other way to improve the lots of the average blacks. Like making unskilled labor scarce by restricting immigration.
And by making average blacks and hispanics qualified for the trades, which will be high-paying as a result, by appropriate education.
And by using IQ tests to search out high-IQ whites from Appalachia so that they may be appropriately trained.
And by using IQ test to search out high-IQ blacks so that they can be appropriately trained and not wasted in ghetto culture.
"it's also possible that Saletan has come around to agreeing 100% with me and he's just picking a fight with me to give my sensible views more publicity."
I don't see that. If it seems that way, it's only because Saletan isn't very good at what he does. I think that his intent, at least in this article, was to alert the PC police of Steve's heresies and to suggest a way of combating them. But since Saletan isn't particularly adroit with words or ideas, he let out that he agrees with Steve on the facts. He just wants to suppress those facts lest more of the wrong kind of people learn about them. He wasn't supposed to say that out loud, but being a bumbler, he did.
You have to show that classifying and comparing by race, rather than using some other classification system or judging each person as an individual, does more good than harm.What a stunningly obtuse understanding of science that man has (or is play acting at). Exactly what sense of 'harm' and 'good' are in play here? Are we supposed to question the 'good' of understanding important facts about patterns of disease and the distribution of traits? Must all systems of classifications meet this moralistic tribune? Aren't the truth and an accurate rendition of our world 'goods' anymore?
I'm with you guys. This is a massive tip of the hand towards HBD. No one could seriously believe such drivel.
How come there ain't no "of" between "beware" and "it"?
Must be some be some Elizabethan shiznat that I missed during college when I was living in the stacks of the Math-Physics library.
Anonymous: ...Hmmm, about 16% will be above one SD above 85 ... but I thought AAs were about 12.4% of 300M. 6M perhaps...
It's even worse than that - the average IQ of Black & Aboriginal Hispanic children in the USA today is probably no higher than about 80 [and possibly lower than that].
Although even back in the day [for Blacks who are now about 45+ years old, before the Welfare State decimated Black society & Black reproductive choices], the average Black IQ never got much above about 83.5.
Steve Sailer has been on fire lately. If he were a baseball player, I'd accuse him of being on roids'. Incredible insights almost every day.
Miles
"Somewhere around eleven million Hispanics and seven million African Americans have higher IQs than the average white American"
I've said it a hundred different times here - show me what these eleven million "Hispanics" (whatever that means) and seven million blacks can DO, on their own, vis-a-vis all the whites they outscore on some test where one manipulates shaded geometric figures or thinks syllogistically for half an hour. IQ only explains so much.
The problem with discouraging tribalism, either in the Saletan or the Connerly version, is that
1) this discouragement doesn't affect the people outside your country who immigrate and
2) historically such efforts are not aimed at minorities, but at the majority or dominant group. Tito-ist Yugoslavia, for example, gave ample opportunities to Croats, Albanians, Humgarians, etc to express their national identities, but cracked down hard on Serbs. The same is true about the Soviet regime and Russians. In the US, whitey plays the role of the Serb, which is why Harriet Tubman is now better known to high school students than the Wright brothers.
Saletan obviously knows the score and the truth. He is doing everyone who believes in HBD a massive favor. He could easily cower in the background and do nothing, but instead he chooses to do something. My guess is that the number of people who actively follow HBD is less than 30,000. If Saletan brings forth an additional 1,000 investigators of truth, then what a massive contribution.
Everyone should check out the comments on his Slate article; they are rather enjoyable.
I don't see that. If it seems that way, it's only because Saletan isn't very good at what he does. I think that his intent, at least in this article, was to alert the PC police of Steve's heresies and to suggest a way of combating them.
I don't agree.
I think he's trying to look for a way to reconcile modern liberalism with HBD because he still considers himself a leftist but realizes evolution did not stop at the neck.
He doesn't want to choose one or the other.
Since he wrote about the Watson controversy, Saletan has been struggling to find a way for modern leftism to coexist with HBD.
"To be precise, I am arguing that this is how the data is aggregated."
To be even more precise, you are arguing that this is how the data are aggregated.
His whole argument seemed to amount to "If we don't look at these uncomfortable truths, then they won't exist." And I have to admit, while that's a horrible strategy for surviving in a hostile world, it's probably not a bad strategy for a journalist who knows if he ever crosses that particular taboo again, he'll be out of a job.
It would be easier for him if that data were not collected, or were not available to the unwashed masses who might "misinterpret" it.
Deckin wrote:
"...Exactly what sense of 'harm' and 'good' are in play here? Are we supposed to question the 'good' of understanding important facts about patterns of disease and the distribution of traits? Must all systems of classifications meet this moralistic tribune? Aren't the truth and an accurate rendition of our world 'goods' anymore?..."
Not necessarily. Just because something is true doesn't mean it is good. Why so much obsession with IQ? My dogs aren't very smart, but I like them better than a lot of humans I know. It is disturbing that some people who post here seem almost gleeful about certain races having lower IQs. I don't see that it anything to be happy about.
But I agree that it is useful and important to study the genetics of diseases. However, for many people even that is considered unacceptable. The other day I wrote a post on the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) News Forum, about a swine flu article. I suggested that maybe the reason the flu seems to be more virulent in Mexico is because indigenous North Americans might be more susceptible to it. Their forefathers haven't been living around pigs and chickens for 6000 years (or so) the way Eurasians have, so maybe their immune systems haven't evolved to protect them from swine flu.
According to an article about the 1918 influenza pandemic on wiki many indigenous people died from the flu at very high rates. In Alaska whole villages were wiped out.
I thought it might be useful to at least consider this theory, if only to warn indigenous people to be particularly cautious about washing their hands, etc. However, CBC did not publish my post. It just never appeared. They have published every other post I have made, and they also publish a lot of posts full of spelling and grammar errors that espouse all sorts of strange conspiracy theories. They are not very discriminating about what they post. But apparently my suggestion that susceptibility to flu might have something to do with race was considered beyond the pale and not fit for polite discourse.
Steve,
By muddying the waters with your "we find this inherently interesting" line of reasoning, you've given Saletan unnecessary room for maneuver. All you have to do is emphasize that we have to sort by race because the government makes us sort by race. If the government stopped assuming that disparate levels of achievement were prima facie indications of bias, then we could stop talking about this and let the chips fall where they will.
- Fred
(I will admit that it's also possible that Saletan has come around to agreeing 100% with me and he's just picking a fight with me to give my sensible views more publicity.)
Uhmm, yeah. You should've left that observation to the peanut gallery Steve. His piece practically screams it and you're pointing and sputtering "but he's leading with his chin!" to the ref and judges.
You left out an important point and I'm under no similar restriction in mentioning it:
Black "failure" (to behave like whites) is blamed on whites, collectively; ergo, race-realism is a moral and intellectual duty, at least for white men. When the left spends as much time, money, and effort apologizing for their false accusations and setting things right as they've spent making them in the first place, we can consider backing off a bit in this duty. When they've reversed all their unjust laws favoring NAMs at our expense, then we can consider taking a breather. Until then, our children need protecting from these lies and injustices.
Maybe. History suggests race-realism may be a permanent duty, to prevent a repeat performance.
He made a leap there which I failed to follow. What is the reason to beware it? And if it's "tribalism" then what is the reason to beware tribalism?
Lots of unexamined assumptions going on there.
Yep.
1: Pretend tribalism doesn't exist. Suppress it (selectively, of course) and hope it doesn't explode in your face (something you're kinda guaranteeing with the selectivity, inter alia).
2: Acknowledge human nature (including tribalism) and use that knowledge to inform your ideas about national identity. Pop quiz: how is racism a problem in a mono-racial society?
2 is bad because it'll gore the wrong people's oxen, PERIOD. It has nothing to do with the greater good.
Tribalism's just fiiiiine for Israel.
Bend the Abacus:
There are black and hispanic physicists, chemists, mathematicians, doctors, lawyers, and economists. There were even before affirmative action. Most people could not make it through a PhD in a hard science or in math, or through an MD or a law degree. Affirmative action means more blacks and hispanics get to try, but not that they get a free pass when trying to get the final degree, or when taking bar exams, becoming board certified, etc. That's all stuff that the average white person simply couldn't manage.
Hmmm, about 16% will be above one SD above 85 ... but I thought AAs were about 12.4% of 300M.
I'm curious, roughly how many have an IQ above 130?
> This is what can happen when you constantly look for racial angles in data on crime, IQ, and other measures of the "quality of people. You start aiming policies at ethnic groups. But I don't think this [Sailer's] kind of racism is a product of uneven distribution...
Aha, so Steve is a racist! I don't know exactly what makes this so, but it's bad! Child pornographers are also bad!
As Steve points out, NCLB, the CRA, and Ricci are all based on "constantly looking for the racial angle." So that means that Ted Kennedy, Barney Frank, and AG Holder are child pornographers, too.
Hey, Mr. Saletan, your game is fun, and anyone can play!
Svigor asks:
I'm curious, roughly how many have an IQ above 130?
See Wikipedia.
0.1%. About 20 to 1. Maybe they will take that page down, since it is racist.
"To be precise, I am arguing that this is how the data is aggregated."
To be even more precise, you are arguing that this is how the data are aggregated.
If you're going to be a grammar snark, at least try to get it right.
(hint: "are" your rice tasty too?)
"Just because something is true doesn't mean it is good."
But truth is an absolute defense and must emphatically be our measure of relevance in any intellectually honest inquiry, with ethics informing our discussions so that we don't consider inhumane courses of action based on what we discover about human nature.
- Maxwell
"I'm curious, roughly how many have an IQ above 130?"
Me, ha ha. Serious.
Affirmative action means more blacks and hispanics get to try, but not that they get a free pass when trying to get the final degree, or when taking bar exams, becoming board certified, etc. That's all stuff that the average white person simply couldn't manage.And because university admissions are a zero-sum game, AA means that there are above-average whites who could complete those programs of study, but who are not even allowed to try. So instead of a competent non-minority graduate, you have a failed NAM instead. Or worse, a minority grad doctor/lawyer who's less competent than the non-minority who would have graduated in his place. In the medical profession, for one, that differential in competence is costing lives.
That's a much better point than the one that you were trying to make, NOTA.
saletan is engaging in *faux inquiry* aka a bogus investigation as described in a previous isteve thread.
all over the world bad apple cops engage in bogus investigations where the real point is to shut people up and not discover any truth.
culture cops aka commissars engage in bogus investigations on our television shows and in our movies, plays, books, magazines and newspapers etc.
incorrect framing? hahaha
If Saletan sincerely believed that views like yours should be ignored, he could easily have ignored you. You really are not all that well known. Not that all of us here don't think you should be a major celebrity, you simply aren't one just yet.Sounds like you don't realize what kind of web traffic iSteve gets every day. A few years ago I was amazed to see a list of top 100 high traffic sites that had Sailer and Auster ranked up there with the brand name conservative political sites.
Some of the bigger web bloggers get more daily eyeballs than well known cable tv shows. But Steve never fixed the tech issues on his isteve.com domain so who knows what the traffic ranking technically is today.
PS I think isteve.com was never fixed probably because the CIA demanded that Steve move his stuff to Google-controlled blogger.com/blogspot.com in order to more easily perform surveillance on his politically incorrect commenter community.
I agree with the commentators above. You talk about race because our natural instincts point us in that direction and *the law* require it.
Saletan really does need to take it up with the "post-racial" president.
"How come there ain't no "of" between "beware" and "it"? Must be some be some Elizabethan shiznat that I missed during college..."
lol well done, sir.
Somebody [quite darkly] calling themselves -Planetary Eulogy- has unloaded with this comment title under the article at Slate.com:
Problem: The Evidence Doesn't Support My Ideology
Oh boy. Sometimes it really sucks to be a culture cop. I guess a Commissar's work is never done.
http://fray.slate.com/discuss/forums/2100253/ShowForum.aspx?ArticleID=2217571
Surely the powers-that-be knew all along that NCLB would fail, that racial achievement gaps would have another unforgiving light thrown upon them, what were they going to do then - or rather now?
Maybe they really did believe that NCLB could actually work - or that Steve's idea - that standards would be corrupted to the point where NCLB would appeared to have worked.
Or maybe, how about this...the elites do know the reality of HBD but they've backed themselves into a corner in terms of whats publically acceptable. NAEP & NCLB have been rolled out so that a few years down the line the crushing reality of HBD will totally unavoidable, at which point they will throw up their hands and say "Well, sorry, we didnt expect this but the proof is beyond debate now..."
Enough of this silly black-white race paradigm.
Let's get on with the mass importation of Asians into the USA (500 million at least), and then we can pass the baton of American Liberty, Freedom & Independence to the rightful meritocratic heirs, as determined by SAT scores and overall college level testing achievement.
Without a gigantic imported Asian populace this country is doomed. Doomed, I tell you. When I look around at the many positions of authority that are filled by non-Asians in my region of America, I literally shudder thinking about the unfulfilled potential in all fields of achievement. I might as well be living in an undeveloped Third World backwater!
I was in Seattle and Chicago recently, and all I could think about is why the hell aren't those cities just like Shanghai and Tokyo? And it occurred to me that only possible reason was vicious discrimination against Asians by jealous whites with low test scores!
Believe me, I've been to the East many times. And, each time I come home, I long for the cronyism, xenophobia, political and social conformity, comic book fiction offerings, authentic karate movies, really bad music, and annoying speech patterns of my beloved Asia.
All I can think about is why the hell can't Asia be present here at home also? Why can't Asia be everywhere? I think you know the answer to that question (the answer is evil white racism!)
"Framing by race is essential because that is the way people naturally and instinctively identify themselves." Scholars assure us that that wasn't true of the Roman Empire. While it's true that they were all white, they did range from pale to swarthy white. And I suppose they may have seen the odd subSaharan.
The tragedy of all this is that the moment you have 2 or more racial groups sharing a country things get ugly and there are losers. That's why it's so inconceivably stupid and irresponsible to aggravate the problem by wantonly importing foreign races to a country. It’s amazing how liberals can justify this pet activity of theirs.
From what I can tell, Sailer and Saletan agree that
(a) race matters; abilities vary by race and
(b) The US government should not discriminate by race, among citizens.
Sailer & Saletan disagree over whether the US government should discriminate among would-be immmigrants by ability - which could be done with a points-based system, common among other nations, that does not include race as a category but that would certainly have disparate impact by race. Pre-65 national origin discrimination is another good way to get good results without discriminating by race.
I think the reason government so astutely avoids race-realism is that it will force public institutions to have to make the kind of decisions which lead to Jim Crow or Apartheid. Considering their side-effects, nobody, not even boneheaded conservatives, wants to go there again.
I cannot imagine that Saletan is against affirmative action. That just wouldn't make sense considering his background, place of employment and generally leftist beliefs. He can't possibly be against school busing either.
Of course if he is against it, he may say so any time. But he won't.
So he's not against USING racial data in public policy, he's only against talking about it. And obviously, he can't have anything against himself talking about it with his friends. He only wants the wrong kind of people (us) to stop talking about it. So it really IS about tribalism at its core.
An unreflective person like Saletan would probably only process this kind of thing instinctively, subconsciously. A lot of people who do special pleading of any sort convince themselves that they're really defending universal principles. It's easy to see that they're full of it from the outside, and it's easy to laugh about it, but for the average person that kind of thing can be difficult to recognize in himself, from the inside.
So if Saletan is so average, why are we paying attention to what he has to say? OK, OK, because he's employed by a mainstream media outlet. Still, I kind of doubt that he represents any kind of a nascent media trend.
But I don't think this kind of racism is a product of uneven distribution.The fact that "racism" is such a loaded word, and that he used it in this context, i.e. when talking about (the obvious fact that) how economically successful and/or competitive a country can or will be is, other factors being roughly equal, significantly influenced by the people who live in that country, tells you something about Saletan. And maybe all you need to know about how intellectually honest he, or any other mainstream writer, is willing to be, or is capable of being, on this question.
Someone should ask him why he thinks digital cameras are designed in Japan and not, e.g, in Ghana.
http://globalhealth.kff.org/Daily-Reports/2009/May/01/050109-World-Bank.aspx
I am shocked, shocked, to know that the World Bank's programs against AIDS fail 75% of the time. Those guys are uber-smart, have the best degrees possible, are among the highest IQ people anywhere and are not only enlightened, but are the true source on Enlightment.
What could possibly go wrong with the World Bank's programs against AIDS? I have absolutely no clue.....
"it's also possible that Saletan has come around to agreeing 100% with me and he's just picking a fight with me to give my sensible views more publicity."
If he wasn't a jew, I would aggree. Given all the persecutions and the current golden age they are enjoying in America, jews have every reason to fear race-realism.
0.1%. About 20 to 1. Maybe they will take that page down, since it is racist.
Muchos gracias for that link. I can't believe how long I operated under the impression that standard deviation was complicated.
@Tadpole: "Sounds like you don't realize what kind of web traffic iSteve gets every day."
I check the sitemeter every now and then. It looks like daily traffic hovers somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 unique visitors. That's a nice following. I'm certainly glad my blog doesn't have to host so many. Even so, it hardly reaches the level where it would be difficult for someone like Saletan to ignore our kindly host were he so inclined.
"Acilius said...
I'm sure that's it. If Saletan sincerely believed that views like yours should be ignored, he could easily have ignored you. You really are not all that well known. Not that all of us here don't think you should be a major celebrity, you simply aren't one just yet."
I agree, Saletan's disingenuousness aside, there's no reason for him to even bring up the topic, or to mention Steve specifically, unless he somehow tacitly agrees with it, and wants to give this topic a public airing. If he wanted the topic of HBD to remain buried he could just leave it where it is - under six feet of earth.
Steve Hsu wrote recently about the American Human Development Project, reprinting one summary table of Human Development Index values for different groups in the US.
"It looks like three different countries when broken out this way! There is one group clustered at 7.5 (Asians), another around 5.5 (Whites) and another around 3.5 to 4 (Blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans)."
Analyzing the data this way is good because [insert conventional wisdom trope here], and these researchers are honest, upstanding social scientists because [CW trope here].
On reflection, however, I realize that framing the data this way could result in increased support for [policy not desired by SWPL'ers]. Any writer who would comment on these obscure findings is thus a [favorite leftist insult], obviously.
"There are black and hispanic physicists, chemists, mathematicians, doctors, lawyers, and economists. There were even before affirmative action. Most people could not make it through a PhD in a hard science or in math, or through an MD or a law degree. Affirmative action means more blacks and hispanics get to try, but not that they get a free pass when trying to get the final degree, or when taking bar exams, becoming board certified, etc. That's all stuff that the average white person simply couldn't manage."
Not my point. Show me a single modern society built on physicists, chemists, mathematicians, doctors, lawyers, and economists. These are the crust on a developed society.
Long ago, when Zionists actually talked about what was wrong with Jewish socio-historical development, they pointed out the inverted pyramid of their professions - too top heavy, no substantial base. If these higher strata folk of color were performing their professional roles in a society that had their racial kin as the base then their roles would have more meaning. Steve and many here fetishize civilizational accomplishment and IQ equally, but the latter has only a degree to do with the former.
My Chinese roommate in college used to tell me that whites (of a certain type) concentrate too much on IQ instead of ethics. The hard working Chinaman with a 90 IQ is going to outperform, economically at least (which leads to family formation, etc...) the lazy white whiner.
High IQ certainly allows you to live off of a society. It doesn't necessarily mean you can create one.
From personal experience, I can say that Mr. Saletan's latest offerings on this subject look an awful lot like what a certain type of intellectually honest ideologue starts throwing out when he begins to feel the evidence against his comforting beliefs closing in on him.
Things just get more and more ... "complicated." Yeah, that's it. It's all very "complicated." The accumulating evidence that contradicts what I've thought for so long just proves how complicated it really is.
Saletans' article reminded me of a machine pouring out smoke just before it completely breaks down.
Whatever else he's done with this article, he's added a new word to my vocabulary: Framing. I really hope it sticks in the vocabulary of Sailer too, everyone else reading this, and even the other side.
I'm pretty sure Framing will need to be defined, argued, explained, and so forth by people on all sides of this debate before any further progress can be made in this ongoing debate. It seems like a word, and a topic, that can be used to explain Sailer's position in a not-crazy way. So... if this word DOES stick in everyone's vocabulary, this will be a step forward.
"I'm curious, roughly how many have an IQ above 130?"
Ah, good old Svigor is back with his delusions of intellectual grandeur. I think I preferred t99.
Okay Will, we will not look at ethnicity. We will just exclude immigrants who bear the "RR variant of ACTN3" (your suggestion Mr. Saletan) along with low-IQ variants of CHRM2 and some gene variants associated with high testosterone production.*
(Oooh, can you say "disparate impact?")
*We will improve the specificity of this screen over time, until we exclude 80%+ of strong aggressive dimwits.
Big Bill: However, after six or eight years of NCLB, the picture is coming into focus: in every school district across the land, from the frozen wastes of North Dakota to the vibrant Haitian backstreets of Miami, from the mean streets of Manhattan, t the the lily-white precincts of Portland, Oregon, we are seeing the exact same pattern: black folks and Mexicans do very poorly. Regardless of whether they are under the tender ministrations of High WASP teachers in Cambridge, Mass, or suffering under the lash of teachers in deepest, darkest Mississippi, the result is the same: they uniformly and without exception, in every school district with a statistically significant number of blacks, do worse than white folks and Asians.
Anonymous: Or maybe, how about this...the elites do know the reality of HBD but they've backed themselves into a corner in terms of whats publically acceptable. NAEP & NCLB have been rolled out so that a few years down the line the crushing reality of HBD will totally unavoidable, at which point they will throw up their hands and say "Well, sorry, we didnt expect this but the proof is beyond debate now..."
In the past, I've been lambasted here at iSteve for defending Dubya and pointing out that the genius [even if only accidental] of NCLB was the NAEP testing requirements, which would eventually prove - beyond any possible shadow of a doubt - the utter & complete hopelessness of the situation.
BTW, in case you haven't noticed, the "elites" in this country are now pretty dadgum NAM-ish.
Just out of curiosity - does anyone know how the ANC approaches this topic in post-Apartheid South Africa? Does South Africa have anything akin to the NAEP? Or has the entire topic been placed completely off-limits in [what passes for] South African social & political discourse?
RobertHume: Like making unskilled labor scarce by restricting immigration. And by making average blacks and hispanics qualified for the trades, which will be high-paying as a result, by appropriate education... And by using IQ test to search out high-IQ blacks so that they can be appropriately trained and not wasted in ghetto culture.
I don't think there's a chance in Hades that Steve will let me say what I am about to try to say [lately my batting average in these parts hasn't been much better than about 0.500 (if that)], but I'll go ahead and roll the dice and see whether I can make it through the censorship filter here.
Two points:
1) First of all, there's an internal inconsistency in your comment: "The trades" are skilled labor, not unskilled labor.
2) But, more importantly, if you are going to be [brutally] honest with yourself, then you have to be prepared for the possibility that - at least STATISTICALLY speaking - there will prove to be NO Blacks or Aboriginal Hispanics who are [intellectually] qualified for "the trades", or who will shine on any IQ test which you offer them.
Now I am not saying that such Blacks and Aboriginal Hispanics do not exist - I am saying that to the extent which they do exist, you [if you are going to be brutally honest with yourself] must be prepared for the possibility that their numbers will prove to be so small as to be [STATISTICALLY] indistinguishable from background noise.
In other words - as an example - the most likely explanation for the 50% unemployment of Black Males in New York City is that, even with Affirmative Action, half of all blacks have IQs so low that they can't be gainfully employed as quota-hire janitors.
The government not long ago stopped reporting the amount of money in circulation. The peasants might get bad ideas from knowing this information.
The government also has stopped collecting or reporting crime data by race. I believe 2007 was the last year the information was available.
Folks, archive your stuff on hard drives. ALL of it. All the studies, all the charts, all the articles, all the research.
And then, bury the drives in your back yard. The government giveth information and freedom; the government taketh them away.
Can it happen here? Well, it *has* happened here, in the land of the free and the home of the brave. In World War I, H.L. Mencken - of German extraction - had to bury his personal papers in his back yard, pave it over, and quit his job for almost two years.
We must preserve this information by having it in our own hands - not in the government's hands, not exclusively on some web server somwhere - but in our control. Why? So the truth can't be erased, but will survive to inform the next generation of true scientists and underground rebels.
Ah, good old Svigor is back with his delusions of intellectual grandeur. I think I preferred t99.That presumes I and my delusions ever left. I must've missed that. It also seems to presume that Evil Neocon has gone somewhere, and if so I've overlooked that one too.
(P.S., I could say that I just wanted to know how many blacks are two deviations above the mean vis-a-vis whites, since my IQ is 135, not 130, but the truth is I just wanted to leave myself some wiggle room. P.P.S., What's wrong with wondering how many blacks have higher IQs than I? P.P.P.S., I only have two years of college, well three, kinda; not much of a base for delusions of intellectual grandeur)
High IQ certainly allows you to live off of a society. It doesn't necessarily mean you can create one."
What a weird perspective. High IQ is absolutely essential for creating a materially and technically advanced society. It is absolutely necessary for high achievement in the arts.
As has so often been said, high IQ is not necessary or even desirable as a predominant percentage though. There's a reason the average is 100.
The work of Gottfredson and others has made clear how IQ manifests and what it means at different levels. For instance, much below 100, people don't just don't read much above the level of newspapers and very simple books. They're not dumb but the incentive to read more complex material is just not there in significant numbers in people with IQs of less than the lows hundreds. As steve has noted:book stores are not that popular in Mexico. Societies where the AVERAGE IQ is less than 100 will have a different set of priorities and they won't be SWPL.
Again, we who understand HBD know perfectly well about the shortcomings of high IQ. That is why we are devoted to keeping the AVERAGE IQ of current first world nations at about 100. If it falls below that we will become Mexico.
And believe me, you wouldn't want to live in China as the vast majority of Chinese live in it. There's a reason why so many are still trying to come here.
good old Svigor is back with his delusions of intellectual grandeur. I think I preferred t99.
I think what you get with Svigor is intellectual purity. He strips the argument or point to the core and deals with that, no waffle.
Svigor:
Honestly, play around with the statistical functions in Excel or in Open Office Calc for awhile, and you can get both direct answers and an intuition for how the probabilities work out.
For example, =normdist(x,100,15,True) will give you the approximate fraction of whites with IQ below x. Similarly, =normdist(x,85,15,True) will give you that for blacks.
@Bend the Abacus: "Show me a single modern society built on physicists, chemists, mathematicians, doctors, lawyers, and economists. These are the crust on a developed society."
You have a very interesting idea there. I wish you would post an essay about it at a site of your own and link to that site here.
"Anonymous said...
Whatever else he's done with this article, he's added a new word to my vocabulary: Framing. I really hope it sticks in the vocabulary of Sailer too, everyone else reading this, and even the other side."
Assignment: use "framing" in a sentence.
I think that Saletan's dissembling is a framing load of crap.
none of the above: Similarly, =normdist(x,85,15,True) will give you that for blacks.
Steve is probably getting sick of me posting this to every thread, but you need to be prepared for the [looming] possibility that it's more like "=normdist(x,80,14,True)".
"I think what you get with Svigor is intellectual purity. He strips the argument or point to the core and deals with that, no waffle."
No, not unless you consider his expounding on how much smarter he is than other mere mortals to be waffle.
First rule of conversation, written or spoken: other people can say you are smart, but you cannot say it about yourself.
"It's Ward Connerly's view that the government classifying people by race does more harm than good. Judging from the Obama Administration's amicus curiae brief in the Ricci case, it's definitely not Barack Obama's view. Perhaps Mr. Saletan should take up his argument with the President of the United States rather than with me."
Saletin just argues to the left and to the right, no matter how contradictory, in order to somehow come to the conclusion that he is correct and Steve is a racist. Why doesn't he just say it in 2 sentences and save us having to read his screed?
"I'm curious, roughly how many have an IQ above 130?"
Svigor's only got 130? That's a little low.
First rule of conversation, written or spoken: other people can say you are smart, but you cannot say it about yourself.
Well, I am saying he [Svigor] is smart.
Disclaimer: I am not Svigor.
"What a weird perspective. High IQ is absolutely essential for creating a materially and technically advanced society. It is absolutely necessary for high achievement in the arts."
I guess you mean the perspective is weird to your perspective. Like the other commenter, you read me wrong. I'm not going to reiterate or further explain. Consider this, though. Do you find it at all ironic that Steven Pinker's grandfather can be busily working away getting a few extra ties from some fabric, using a sewing machine invented by the descendants of farmers, in a land settled by, again, farmers, fishermen, trappers - presumably of that dreaded low IQ, or else why hadn't their ancestors been able to cut it where they'd come from, right - and when asked why he's doing it himself rather than letting his workers do it he says, "goyische kopf".
A million high IQ jews, or high IQ anyone, should presumably be able to be dropped into the Sahel and turn it into France by themselves alone, by their high IQs alone.
No farmers, no arts.
none of the above says:
Similarly, =normdist(x,85,15,True) will give you that for blacks.
There seems to be evidence that the SD for that group is around 12.
Anonymous: There seems to be evidence that the SD for that group is around 12.Do you have any earthly idea what a SD of 12 coupled with an average of 80 [and falling] would mean?
I can't even begin to describe such a world - the description itself would never make its way through the filter here at iSteve.
PS: You got any links/citations for the "12"? [I had seen "14", but I don't think I had seen "12".]
Thanks.
"Well, I am saying he [Svigor] is smart."
Well, I am saying that his comments here contradict you. And I think that by "smart" you mean "says things which I agree with".
"High IQ is absolutely essential for creating a materially and technically advanced society. It is absolutely necessary for high achievement in the arts."
What does that even mean? It means nothing at all. What is a "materially and technically advanced society"? Ancient Eygypt? The Roman Empire? Modern America?
Who had the higher achievment in the arts, the Celts or the Sumerians?
You're throwing around terms you don't even understand.
"Do you find it at all ironic that Steven Pinker's grandfather can be busily working away getting a few extra ties from some fabric, using a sewing machine invented by the descendants of farmers, in a land settled by, again, farmers, fishermen, trappers - presumably of that dreaded low IQ, or else why hadn't their ancestors been able to cut it where they'd come from, right - and when asked why he's doing it himself rather than letting his workers do it he says, "goyische kopf".
Oh--it's that goy/jew thing. Think I see. Even agree. It is bit stupefying to hear HBD believers falling over themselves in praise of the Chinese and Jews and Indians and Eskimos, all the while we all live a world pretty much invented by European gentiles. Yeah, I know about Arabic numerals and algebra, etc. But let's face it--we know who got us here; whatever the Arabs were doing with their numerals, or the Persians with their alebra, or the Hindus with the 0 or the Chinese with the Art of War, or the Native Americans with their Machu Pichu--they'd still be where they were 500 years ago if Europeans had done what they did. None of those civilizations gave any sign of progressing beyond where they were at about 1500 or earlier and all were in steep decline. The Aztecs and Incas were already in free fall and were pretty much waiting for Godot. Instead they Pizarro.
Would I want to live in a Jew-free world? NO WAY. I remember two old guys who used to like to hang out in a cafeteria where there were a lot of Jews because "they are so alive intellectually." Would I want to live in an Asian free world? NO WAY! I just don't want to be overwhelmed by them.
Actually I do understand what you are saying, I am not being facetious. However, leaving ethnicity aside, the inventors of the sewing machine were higher than average IQ. Everything discovered about how IQ manifests suggests that inventiveness and the kind of foresight and cognitive rigor necessary for invention, must be accompanied by higher than average IQ. There's a reason why 140 is considered "genius." Trappers and farmers had high IQs among them. Why would they not? Part of the misfortune of the working class is they lost their smart guys to desk jobs and computers. When you had no options, no matter how smart you were, you stayed in the class you were born. That worked for your trade or profession.
Well, I am saying that his comments here contradict you. And I think that by "smart" you mean "says things which I agree with".
Care to point out some of those comments?
dc watcher,
I wish one could hear voices with comments rather than guess at the tone the font's banged out in. You might be being snarky, but I'll assume you're not. I'll also assume you're not imputing motives to my comment that aren't there. I used the Pinker forebear example because it stuck me as one in which some high IQ group member can smear the lower IQ group that made (makes) it possible for him to, in essence, exist. It doesn't have to be across ethnic lines - I see it on these boards constantly, the kin-group mocking of lower social status and, presumably, lower IQ whites, as if the ancestors of the commenters 12 generations back were uniformly a) members of the elite, or at least in social positions higher than the bottom, and b) phenomenally, measurably "intelligent" as we describe it. This mildly hostile stance not only many times manifests itself as a "who cares about 'em" attitude, but presumes that evolution will stop and that, in a few generations every descendant of these lower status white will be exactly as "worthless" as those who came before them (meaning, the ones who are currently scorned).
As for the various accomplishments of different races or cultures, I, personally, choose to compare apples to apples. The accomplishments of an Israeli are of greater measurable value to me than those of a German Jew, and more easily compared to those of a German. Early Zionists understood this.
I've commented on various posts here that, with a couple of hundred families of 100 IQ whites and the optimal environmental conditions - enough land, good soil, water, etc... - one could bring forth a society/civilization that higher IQ outlanders would eventually eagerly choose to settle in. Only certain groups, it seems, can be pioneers, and only others can live off of the accomplishments of those pioneers. I assign no value to this. It might as well be Holldobler's and Wilson's ants and wasps.
Except of course, I'm caught in all the chaos.
--they'd still be where they were 500 years ago if Europeans had done what they did."
Errata:
meant to say --they'd still be where they were 500 years ago if Europeans had [NOT] done what they did.
"I used the Pinker forebear example because it stuck me as one in which some high IQ group member can smear the lower IQ group that made (makes) it possible for him to, in essence, exist. "
yes, I get it. You're right. I'm as caught in the chaos as you are. No snark intended. Peace.
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