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Different races have different average IQs. This fact has been well-known for many decades.
What is the big deal?
"On average, a member of this race has this IQ" is or does come across as racist. Now saying "Not all members of this race but there are many who have this IQ" might not be as racist. Hypothetically, even if 40% of Black Americans* had a specific IQ range, that is still a lot even though the remaining 60% is much bigger!
*I am talking about literally 40% of the Black American pop., not surveying, say, 300K Black Americans then applying the most common surveyed IQ range to an 8-figure range of Black Americans.
I think it speaks a bit to confirmation bias, that scientists go in saying that things vary by race when in truth they are missing much of the bigger picture. In the example of IQ, it could be related to educational options, social support, health care, lead poisoning, etc.
No one would argue over whether the different racial groups are homosapien, but there are clearly different races & ethnic groups (sub-races) in our larger homosapien family. (very similar to your example of dog breeds)
If you are a medical practitioner, then you need to know about racial differences, because black patients can respond differently to certain medications than white patients due to genetic differences.
Political correctness has no place in science, in fact it could potentially get people killed!
Race is a social construct and is not specified biologically/genetically so it actually doesn't exist from a "scientific" standpoint in relationship with biology. If you read the article, it speaks specifically about black Americans and us suffering from hypertension and how this is not an issue for rural Africans like it is for black Americans. So if hypertension is a result of genetics, why are many West Africans in rural communities not suffering from it?
Many of the issues that black Americans have is based on our history as an oppressed group from a social perspective and is not related to our biology from Africa. Also, 95% of African Americans are actually "mixed -race" (to use terms you'd understand). We typically have 25% of European DNA. African Americans are a pretty unique genetic community just like the English are and the French and the Germans, etc. Because we have lived in the same place for a long time and primarily had children with the same social group, we have similar genetics, which in turn would make us suffer from similar illnesses and medications/etc. These are not because we are black, it is because of our genetic community here in America - not our distant African ancestry.
Sociological race is based upon the appearance of an individual and in different countries around the world, "races" are defined differently from a sociological perspective. Genetically and biologically there are differences within the human population, but "race" as most of us know it is just the color of someone's skin or shape of their nose/eyes and doesn't have anything to do with our deep ancestry in Asia or Europe or Africa in regards to certain medical conditions or responses to medication.
Scientific racism is now considered a pseudoscience within the scientific community. Ergo, it's become an oxymoron. The term 'race' is problematic in science since it has become entangled with political ideologies, which introduces bias. What is now studied in fields like anthropology are ethnic groups or communities.
I think it speaks a bit to confirmation bias, that scientists go in saying that things vary by race when in truth they are missing much of the bigger picture. In the example of IQ, it could be related to educational options, social support, health care, lead poisoning, etc.
This is exactly what the author of the review states that Saini's book is about.
Most of the posters, I bet didn't read the article (including the OP it seems).
The author of the review is indicating that the book by Saini is asserting that white Europeans created the concept of their racial superiority and in turn, started to use science as a means to prove their superiority. In doing so, they ignore all evidence that these subjects they are studying are not based on "race" but instead on social and environment circumstances of the populations of specific areas.
In the past in particular, many scientists focused specifically on proving the superiority of certain populations of people and so would purposefully ignore social and environmental conditions. Same was done for most IQ studies in the past, especially in relation to lead poisoning mentioned by gus2 which more heavily impacts poor black children in the USA.
"[Anti]Scientific America" <-- clickbait slanderous forum title. SA is a fine scientific publication and running one opinion column doesn't detract from their well-deserved reputation.
If you want to see real Anti-Science in action, direct your attention towards the Republican Party. Their War on Climate Science is front and center; by contrast, SA runs frequent articles on climate change science.
Different races have different average IQs. This fact has been well-known for many decades.
Kinda hard to focus on learning to read when you're 11 years old and have to plow the field with the family ox because your father, who only makes $200 a year on his subsistence farm, is flat on his back sick with malaria.
Scientific American, dating from 1848, is America's oldest popular science magazine.
From the current edition:
Notice that it isn't racism that's being called "insidious", rather science itself. This Scientific American writer is against any scientific investigation of race, no matter how objective and well done. And he's not too happy with the Enlightenment or Charles Darwin either...
No, the writer meant that the extent of our knowledge about racial difference must be limited to trivial stuff like your second paragraph. To know more would be dangerous. Therefore we need to ban research and discussion.
What exactly are the hypotheses that you want to be openly tested so badly?
Science already studies the racial differences that matter, although you might write them off as trivial.
Last edited by ohhwanderlust; 10-24-2019 at 11:31 AM..
No, the writer meant that the extent of our knowledge about racial difference must be limited to trivial stuff like your second paragraph. To know more would be dangerous. Therefore we need to ban research and discussion.
That is NOT what this article means, at all. I mean, when the author says, "Not all race research is inherently racist," what do you think that means? He is condemning "race science," not science. RACE-SCIENCE. Particularly any study that affirms a quality (negative or positive) purely on the basis of race. Something that is genetically linked doesn't necessarily have anything to do with race, which is a construct that is often used interchangeably with ethnicity (but shouldn't be). There are some things that are linked to our genetics, and their expression has particular conditions. That is often seen most clearing in groups that share genetic expressions. That isn't exactly the same as the social definition of "race."
This is a nuanced and interesting conversation, and I have now put two books on my list to read, so thanks for sharing this article (she also wrote a book on sexism in science, which should really cause a lot panty twisting).
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