Jon Weiner writes for the leftwing The Nation:
The third member of the committee is the big surprise, and the big problem: Christopher Jencks, for decades a leading figure among liberals who did serious research on inequality—a contributor to the New York Review, the author of important books including Inequality: Who Gets Ahead?; The Homeless; and The Black White Test Score Gap. Christopher Jencks knows exactly what’s wrong with the studies purporting to link “race” with “IQ.”
Richwine concluded his dissertation, “From the perspective of Americans alive today, the low average IQ of Hispanics is effectively permanent.” Why would Christopher Jencks decide that that dissertation was worth a Harvard Ph.D.? I asked Jencks whether he would comment. He replied “Nope. But thanks for asking.”
No less than Rush Limbaugh has cited the approval of the dissertation by Christopher Jencks, “a renowned left-wing academic,” as proof that the young man is being railroaded.
Fortunately, like a lot of leftists (other than the handful who have actually studied the subject, such as Christopher Jencks), Weiner knows that while science has proven that we all have the same IQ, he also knows that people who don't know that have been scientifically proven to be of lower IQ:
The last word in this story goes a study published in 2012 the journal Psychological Science. “In an analysis of two large-scale, nationally representative United Kingdom data sets (N = 15,874),” the researchers wrote, “we found that lower general intelligence (g) in childhood predicts greater racism in adulthood.”
ot: not all are happy in billionare land. elon musk leaves zuckerberg's eight and 1/2 is enough club. one might say a clusterzuck[tm] in the making.
ReplyDeleteI didn't think IQ was real or meant anything? But OK then, have it your way, Mr Weiner:
ReplyDeleteRacists are dumb, just not as dumb as Blacks and Hispanics.
What bothers me is why, exactly, Jencks is refusing to comment, and why the press is letting him off the hook? And why on earth is Borjas allowed to say "Hey, what do I know about IQ? It's not very interesting." Then why the hell did you sign on to his dissertation committee?
ReplyDeleteIt's extremely irritating. The press is blowing by "Harvard dissertation" as if it an undistinguished state school, while howling about Richwine, who wrote the dissertation at Harvard, and got three prestigious folks to sign off on it. Yet no one is holding Harvard's feet to the fire, forcing Harvard to stand by what the school knows is established science.
I don't find the notion that racial animus being positively correlated with low IQ all that surprising. After all it is disproportionately the less well educated white lower class being least able to escape local demographic transitions that have suffered the most from the negative consequences of racial diversity.
ReplyDeleteLooked at from this perspective, it seems that left-wing contempt for these white racists is just a socially acceptable form of classism.
B.B.
We need to specify WHICH Hispanics.
ReplyDeleteI mean it prolly doesn't apply to Conquis, and of course, most white libs hang around conquis than with black, mulatto, or mestizo 'hispanics'.
Bunch all races of Hispanics together is like bunching Chinese, Malaysians, and Hindus as 'Asians', OR like bunching Jews, whites, and blacks as 'Americans'.
Libs need to know that most 'hispans' are NOT conquis.
Btw, if there are no IQ differences, why are there so many Jews in the media?
Its been said a million times, but egalitarianism is a religion to these people. The futility in presenting reasoned arguments backed by research should be understood. Instead we can only present our views calmly and hope they'll snap to their senses. I did, and I suspect a lot of others here have as well. These kinds of stories are so redundant the only thing keeping me reading isteve is the wit. Otherwise, I'd probably smash my monitor/smart phone in frustration.
ReplyDeleteJon Weiner writes for the leftwing The Nation
ReplyDeleteI notice that, no matter how many stupid things they say, nobody ever questions how intelligent Jews are. They seem to have a "Get out of Stupid-Jail free" card.
I asked Jencks whether he would comment. He replied "Nope. But thanks for asking."
ReplyDeletePathetic coward. Folks in Warsaw Bloc risked infinitely more than this tenured prof would ever do and yet there were plenty who found a courage to say the truth.
Educational Realist- a key thing about a witch hunt is knowing when to stop. Going after the weak is pointless, so you need to go after those powerful or high status enough that deposing them will increase your power and status. Go after people too high will backfire. Harvard is untouchable, the advisors almost untouchable, and the press knows that.
ReplyDelete>Jewish values--emphasis on education, verbal skills, debate.<
ReplyDeleteWith 10,000 hours of practice, anyone is a Jew. Interesting.
Brace yourself for Jencks's apology and "voluntary resignation." (Just a hunch, we'll see if this happens.)
Controversial scientists need to get savvier about this kind of thing. Clearly, they should always hire private detectives to take photos of their bosses, their university presidents, et al., in the act of doing compromising things. Think of blackmail-prep as a necessary investment in any academic career. How do you think the underdog can get an edge? That's right. 10,000 hours of sleuthing.
If IQ and racism are actually negatively correlated, that still doesn't mean low IQ leads directly to racism. It may be that low IQ leads to greater exposure to non-Whites, and that causes racism. If I remember correctly, that UK study controlled for education. Without controlling, IQ and racism were positively correlated. Controlling for IQ or education when looking at the other is iffy. The two are strongly correlated, even though black slaters (can we call them slaters?) think education raises IQ. The corelation isn't spurious, and high IQ low-education people and low IQ high-education types certainly differ on personality and from high-highs and low-lows.
ReplyDeleteSmarter people are more likely to rationalize their dislike and avoidance of non-Whites as nonracist. Smart people look for good schools and good neighborhoods. Totally coincidentally, those schools and neighborhoods have very few blacks. Less intelligent people might tell you they prefer white schools and neighborhoods.
Finally, 'Are you a racist?' has a right answer. Smart people are more likely to give right answers. That's an easy question. If the questions are subtler, less intelligent people are less likely to give the right answer.
Unless an Implicit-Association style test.
Back to Hispanics, what does race have to do with Hispanic IQ? Hispanics are not a race. Even the FBI will tell you that. Hispanics are people who have recent ancestors who happened to speak Spanish. That's why the feds track race and ethnicity separately. Really what Richwine discovered was a population of white people with low average IQ.
Can you believe racists don't want to live in a country with lots of Hispanics? Importing more Hispanics will really upset those racists. Thank god there are plenty of Hispanics ready to immigrate because they don't want to live in countries full of Hispanics!
Would anyone buy an anti-immigration case that letting more Hispanics immigrate is not fair to the Hispanics who immigrated to escape Hispanics?
Even people like D. Azz, who think dumb aliens immigrating benefits Americans because the dumbs pick fruit and mow lawns, freeing up smarts for higher value work must know that there is an inflection point. Arguendo, dumbs free up smarts to do higher value things, at some point dumb fruit-pickers could only free up other dumb fruit-pickers, and per capita income starts declining. Can these people give an estimate of when we'll have enough dumbs? Americans use more resources and pump out more CO2. Why are spending butt-tons of resources trying to educate children of the dumbs, just so we can import more dumbs?
There are times when people discuss potential downsides to policies. Is there really no potential downside? The US really could end up more like Mexico. Then where would Mexicans go to escape Mexicans? Nope. Never here about that. Moar Mexicans means moar Economy!
Will the Republicans finally notice when Texas turns 'blue'? Will Democratic donors notice when populist candidates actually raise taxes and close loopholes? It's real tough to pretend the other party is holding you back when the other party is out forever. Being shills for corporations is pretty worthless when the shills never get elected.
rob:
ReplyDeleteThe demographic changes that will hurt the GOP are far in the future, but the need to raise funds and appease the billionares who own the media (particularly conservative media) is immediate and urgent so you can win your next election. This works the same way as never getting around to dealing with the deficit, and coming up with fairy tales about how deficits don't matter or you can run ever-increasing deficits forever--this will probably end very badly for the country, but by then, you will long since have left office. Not your problem.
Anonymous said...
ReplyDeleteI asked Jencks whether he would comment. He replied "Nope. But thanks for asking."
Pathetic coward...
===
The Prof sounds more like he doesn't think the question asked of him by Wiener the Chekist deserves an answer.
I think the point here is that Jencks is a serious social scientist, not some joke affirmative action leather chair warmer at CSU Chico who couldn't perform inductive reasoning, even if he were starving to death in a room with a chair and a bunch of bananas tied to the ceiling. Jencks knows quality research when he reads it and Richwine's thesis meets all the criteria of original research, certainly worthy of a Harvard PhD.
ReplyDeleteWhat is in question is not whether Hispanics have low intelligence. It's settled science that they do. The question is whether this is a permanent state of affairs going forward, and what will be the consequences for our nation if they become the majority. California, with 10% of the US population and a Hispanic majority is a scale model of our future. And it looks real bad folks.
I just don't see how you can debate immigration reform honestly without mentioning the economic, cultural, and social decline of California.
Here's an idea: a temporary moratorium on immigration until we can assimilate and integrate the 40-to-50 million foreign born minorities who are already living in the US. If all goes smoothly we can open the borders again. That way we can see who is right.
ReplyDeleteI taught on an Indian Reservation for ten years and I met at least a dozen Patterson's. Blonde hair, blue eyed 1/16th something…usually Cherokee. SWPL types who wore their hair in braided ponytails, wore traditional clothing, and taught drumming classes to the Native kids…pitiful frauds.
ReplyDeleteThis is true…
“Especially when you’re a kid, you see it. You’re constantly going to funerals. Death by drugs or alcohol. Car wrecks. Suicide. You don’t have any high expectations.”
"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."
ReplyDelete-H.P. Lovecraft
The silver lining here is that mainstream conservatives like Rush Limbaugh are talking again about race and IQ. (David Frum had been talking constantly about low Hispanic achievement as a reason to stop mass immigration, but I don't think he talked about IQ specifically.)
ReplyDeleteOn the other side, the Nation article is pretty funny. ("There is no `Hispanic race'...But of course what the [IQ] test really measures is test-taking ability.") A while ago I said that the "race is a myth, racism is real" thing went out with the 1990s. Reading a lot of the liberal/left comments on this story, I see that it's back with a vengeance, which means it hadn't totally gone away. It's all interesting. Party like it's 1994.
Good to see that Christopher Jencks had the balls to tell that journalist on his own ideological team to fuck off. Wish there were more people like Jencks on the side of the devils.
maybe this study on mexican american education gap wasnt controversial then? ortiz and telles book "Generations of Exclusion" came out in 2008. Richwine's doctoral thesis came out in 2009.
ReplyDeleteAnd Borjas, Jencks and Richwine all read the UCLA Chicano Studies prof ortiz's book and research.
Jewish values include Talmudic arguing of white into black, which is incompatable with ideas of honor and forthrightness in your dealings.
ReplyDeleteKicked out of every country they've lived in, but everyone else is the problem.
When will Pinker speak out on behalf of Richwine?
ReplyDeleteWhen will Pinker speak out on Richwine's behalf?
ReplyDeleteCalifornia's size is the problem. With more than 10% of the US population living in CA, being majority-Hispanic means that 30-40% of all the Hispanics in America are in one state. This means not that people will view it as a petri dish, but as an excuse to blow off any problems with mass immigration. Since for SWPLs living in other major cities, there just aren't that many of these immigrants and most SWPLs are not Californian.
ReplyDeleteRegarding IQ and racism: Over at West Hunter, the blog of Profs Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpening, they have written,
ReplyDelete"Dumb people think X. Smart people think Y. Really smart people think X".
To Anonymous, who on 5/11/13, 10:34 PM said...
ReplyDelete"When will Pinker speak out on behalf of Richwine?"
I (F.r.) strongly doubt that Pinker, who wrote in his recent book
"[] … binding elimination of all nuclear weapons, now sometimes called Global Zero. Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev have endorsed it in speeches (one of the reasons Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009),
Pinker, Steven (2011-10-04). The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (Kindle Locations 6171-6173). Penguin Group US. Kindle Edition."
will defend Jason Richwine any time soon.
Your F.r.
"Dumb people think X. Smart people think Y. Really smart people say X".
ReplyDeleteFTFY.
From what I can tell The Nation has about 1/5 of the readers it had in, say, 1982. So all this guy is doing is trying out for Slate or WaPo. It's the D leagues.
ReplyDeleteBlacks have lower IQ than whites. They must be more racist.
ReplyDeleteZionist 'racists' who crush Palestinians are stupid?
Poor whites with lower IQ can't afford to move away from criminal blacks who are physically stronger and beat them up, which is why they are more 'racist'. Why should they like blacks who rob them? Rich whites with higher IQ live in whiter communities with fewer dangerous blacks. So, smart 'rich whites can afford to be 'less racist'.