Ortho Stice wrote:Did you even read my post? Because what I said already explained why this thinking is wrong. I said you're confusing race with ethnicity. Ethnicity has to do with common ancestry. I guess I'll just copy what I initially said: People of the same race in America can come from very different parts of the word, with their ancestors growing up on disparate continents. Black people aren't just African-Americans. There are people from South America, the Caribbean Islands and even Europe, that are labeled black, as well. It's wrong to say that these dark skinned people from South America share anything in common with people from Africa. But people in America would think of them as the same, and say that since they're both black, they share similar cultural views and the same ethnicity, when that isn't true. Once again, race has nothing to do with people growing up near each other. People from completely different continents are seen as the same race. Ethnicity has to do with growing up in proximity to one and another and sharing similar ancestry and culture.
Stice, you've got this precisely bass ackwards. Race is genetic relatedness writ large, can be on continental scales, and is just shorthand to refer to such relatedness, but it can be more finely scaled. Ethnicity is just more finely scaled relatedness. Basically there are sort of concentric circles of genetic relatedness, and ethnicity is just closer to the center than race as the whole is. At the furthest, you are related to all humanity, the human race. The various monikers, verbal shorthand for designating group levels are no more than an identifier. And one last time, you stating the patently obvious, that blacks live in many countries and many continents, as do whites, Asians, and whomever, is merely saying where they live, not which genetic racial group they belong to. You seem terribly hung up on the word race. You could substitute it for the word subpopulation, and subpopulations are scalable, and have to do with degrees of relatedness. Here, it's like this, there's a subpopulation that is really small. Your immediate family, to whom you are most closely related. Then your extended family, then your ethnic heritage (not where you presently live), further out, your racial heritage (or that word you have so much difficulty with, race, then all of humanity. Your ethnic heritage has nothing to do with where you are presently living. It has to do with where countless generations of your ancestors grew up in near proximity to each other back before humans didn't really travel all that much for thousands of years, and there was necessarily a degree of inbreeding, not necessarily saying with immediate family, but people were more likely to breed with people who shared maybe a great grandparent, or whatever, but some level of inbreeding took place, and over many, many generations, enough people shared enough genetic history as well as shared culture and language to be regarded as a somewhat distinct subpopulation. In modern language we refer to them as ethnicities. Like I said, race is just shorthand to designate more genetic relatedness to some people than to others. I don't particularly care whether you wish to deny it or not.
Ortho Stice wrote:What I said earlier was that just because someone is black, it doesn't mean they're genetically similar (this I assume is what you're insinuating with the Jamaican born person that's genetically tied to Africa). See above comments. If West Africans win a lot of sprinting events, that tells us more about West African culture. It doesn't say that West Africans have a superior physical make-up. This would be like saying Eastern Europeans have some genetic make-up which makes them the strongest people in the world, since Eastern Europeans dominate the weightlifting category in the Olympics. It tells us instead that Eastern Europeans have a bigger weightlifting culture than anywhere else in the world. And no, it wouldn't be rational to state Eastern Europeans have some wonder gene that makes them stronger than everyone else in the world.
IIRC, almost all of the sprinting events have been dominated by people of West African heritage. As to Jamaicans, I'm saying if they're black, they're very likely to be of Sub-Saharan African (SSA) ancestry, though some Asian Indians are as dark as some SSAs, and I guess some Aboriginal Australians are as dark anyway. No, I'm not saying that skin color implies relatedness, I'm saying that where your ancestors came from determiines the relatedness. Clearly, SSAs, and Aboriginals, and Asian Indians are different subpopulations.
If you don't think that blacks (which I'm using as shorthand for people of Sub-Saharan African descent) are inherently superior to other groups in sprinting and that its just a cultural thing, I think you are so thoroughly marinated in the PC narrative that you've lost your ability to be objective. Clearly blacks are better at sprinting than any other group. Who ya gonna believe, your college profs or your own lying eyes? I agree with you about weightlifting being probably cultural, but everybody, the world over runs. It's not a cultural thing. Not everybody lifts weights.
Ortho Stice wrote:Earlier you stated, "Then, if there are no group level differences, you can at least move forward knowing that any inequities are environmentally caused (whether that be racism or something else). If there are group level differences, then you can at least dispense with the white guilt/privilege theory." So you're saying if black people have the same IQs as white people, then the inequities are caused by the environment? You're making a fundamental mistake here. It's actually the opposite: if black and white people had the same IQs, then you could feel better about getting rid of the notion of white privilege, but if white people came up with higher IQ scores than blacks, then that would show that it's environmentally caused. The environment one grows up in shapes a person's IQ scores. (Here's an article about it: http://correspondents.theatlantic.com/d ... out_iq.php).
But none of that really even matters, since white privilege exists independently of IQ scores. In the Crowley incident, we see the consequences of being black. A woman calls in a man for breaking into a house, despite the fact that he's old and had a cane, had a taxi waiting outside, and had his suitcases standing next to him in broad daylight. But because he was black he was reported to the police. Gates shows that despite being incredibly successful black man integrated into a white community, biases still occur.
Most people believe that IQ is some combination of nature and nurture (which is what I believe). What the percentage of each is, no one knows, but enough studies, including studies of identical and fraternal twins raised separately, as well as studies of adopted kids, have been done to conclude that heredity is contributing significantly (though by no means completely).
As to the white privilege allegation, the whole reason I brought up academic (and hence IQ) scores, is to point out that both Ashkenazim Jews (highest of all), and NE Asians consistently outscore whites, and also earn more than whites. So if whites are in the business of white privilege, they're doing a pretty crappy job of it. That's all. That's the whole point of exercise, to refute the notion of white privilege. Not to vilify anybody. In fact, it's an attempt to stop the vilification of whites as privileged and racist. Clearly, you and I will never see eye to eye on this, and that's fine.
Ortho Stice wrote:Finally, I really don't have the time for this, so I'll have to cut this ping-pong match short.
Agreed. Time to let it go.
, but truthfully nurture has pretty much everything to do with it - not nature. It's been proven time and time again that when you bring a young child into a completely different environment / culture / race they'll adapt similarly. And that includes western IQ tests. ANd I emphasize the word Western. This has everything to do with what and how children are taught from young age.