7 ms·

There is a study often cited by Thomas Sowell, which is never, ever mentioned by those on the political left in the US and never mentioned by the far right in t

• sethjgore 9y ago
  What is the name of this particular study?
  • lr4444lr 9y ago
    Sounds like the Flynn Effect. (Not one study.)
    • deleted 9y ago
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• lev99 9y ago
  Here is an article written by Thomas Sowell in case someone wanted to read from him first hand. https://townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/2002/10/01/race-and-iq-n1000028 https://townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/2002/10/01/race... I am not well read enough on the subject to have my own opinion. My summary of his words: The average score of an IQ test is defined as 100, so the raw intelligence each score represents changes over time as population intelligence changes over time. Some nations have seen an increase in average IQ of 20 points. There is a difference of IQ between African Americans and the rest of the US population, but that can be explained as being socially isolated, and the same difference can be found in other socially isolated populations. * Edit: I am embarrassed to have linked to such a publication, but will not modify my original words.
  • eunoia 9y ago
    I can't yet comment on the substance of Thomas Sowell's argument, but when I went to read his article I was struck by townhall.com's top 3 trending pieces. • Why Science and Experience Command That You Buy an 'Assault Rifle' • An Eagle Scout Explains the Fatal Folly of Taking the ‘Boy’ out of Boy Scouts • Liberalism Must Be Destroyed Draw your own conclusions on bias. Edit: To those downvoting, why? If I'm in the wrong to point this out and let people draw their own conclusions please comment and let me know why.
    • lev99 9y ago
      Wow! I suffer from chronic tunnel vision and missed some important context about that website.
    • deleted 9y ago
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    • jimmywanger 9y ago
      Argue the point, do not attack the website. Simply because the website publishes other ideas that you disagree with, doesn't mean that the author is fundamentally incorrect in his reasoning. Ad hominem attacks are never good.
      • eunoia 9y ago
        I appreciate the point you're making, but I don't feel my comment was made to attack the website while ignoring the argument. I merely pointed out what they choose to display as their "trending articles". Do you find context to be completely irrelevant when engaging in political discussion?
      • wilsonnb 9y ago
        Ad hominem attacks are sometimes good. It's reasonable to evaluate a source before you trust what comes out of that source. For example, I have ample experience being lied to by Donald Trump and therefore I feel comfortable ignoring most of what he says or assuming it's a lie. There is too much information in the world today to not rely on filters like the reputation of and your experience with the source.
• JepZ 9y ago
  I can see how such a story is against the 'right/racist' narrative as they think race has a major influence on intelligence, but why doesn't it fit the 'left' narrative which seems to categorize humans based on their social class?
  • deleted 9y ago
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  • lev99 9y ago
    You could frame it as a class issue, but democrats have a much stronger hold over the African American voting population than the poor population. So it's better for democrats keep to framing conversations around race instead of class, to fire up their base.
    • okreallywtf 9y ago
      I don't think the democratic party has a hold over the African American voting block in so much as it has been the only real choice for them for the last 40 or 50 years (unless you have Stockholm syndrome that is). Couple that with the increase in leadership roles and overall candidates and the democratic party is becoming more representative by the day. This results in more and better legislation targeting the issues of black Americans. Contrast that with the republican party, how well are poor whites represented in the party (aside from near-constant lip service)?
      • dzdt 9y ago
        The republican party platform combines the roughly orthogonal financial interests of the wealthy and moral interests of white evangelicals. Some of the key demands of poor whites are addressed within that latter category.
  • stcredzero 9y ago
    I can see how such a story is against the 'right/racist' narrative It's not against the narrative of the right in general. The US political right likes the narrative of the early 20th century. It's only the Far Right extreme which doesn't like it for going against the idea that race has a major influence on intelligence. why doesn't it fit the 'left' narrative which seems to categorize humans based on their social class? Well, for one thing, to accept it is to give credence to IQ and intelligence testing. Once that is done, then you have to give credence to a lot of other inconvenient studies. Also, it's part of a larger picture that supports the idea of assimilation over cultural isolation. It's also pro-military.
• deleted 9y ago
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• jonbigbootay 9y ago
  It would be highly ironic (and tragic) if the fight for Civil Rights in the 60’s negatively affected schooling outcomes for AA children.
• hirsin 9y ago
  Integration and fighting redlining are pretty "left" goals as are school lunch programs and their ilk that attempt to alleviate some of the stress at home. You won't hear "AA/POC have lower IQs" because of the soundbites, but you definitely hear "Everyone has the right to a safe and stable home life" / "Kids deserve equal opportunity in schools" - all attempts at preventing the damage being cited here (or rather, getting the outcomes seen in the study). It doesn't need to be talked about directly because there's actual work to be done about it.
  • stcredzero 9y ago
    You won't hear "AA/POC have lower IQs" because of the soundbites You do read a lot of opposition to the validity of IQ testing. There are also attacks on the notion of objective truth and objective standards from the far left fringe as well. Most of my life, I have counted myself as a part of the left, and my Political Compass test came up as center-left when I took it. It's the Far Left I would object to. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwZ651i5vls https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwZ651i5vls you definitely hear "Everyone has the right to a safe and stable home life" / "Kids deserve equal opportunity in schools" - all attempts at preventing the damage being cited here (or rather, getting the outcomes seen in the study) Then why the opposition to school choice?
    • drzaiusapelord 9y ago
      >Then why the opposition to school choice? Because 'school choice' is a loaded political term for defunding the public school system these people depend on so that the money earmarked for these systems gets handed out to private or charter schools, thus leaving the public system in a worse place, especially when the public system must take the worst students while charters can dismiss them. In other words you're socializing your losses and privatizing your winnings. Even then, the "opposition" is more like healthy skepticism. Even in liberal Chicago we have a charter school boom and thus far the results aren't impressive especially when you consider they benefit from the 'cream of the crop' issue defined above. They can dump the low performing students onto CPS while enjoying the test scores and metrics more motivated students or the students without learning disabilities or the students when more involved parents can produce. But no, we're not going to defund CPS entirely overnight and hand out its budget in its entirety to charters. That's not "opposition" that's sane thinking. And yes, if charters can't deliver the goods and if they cannot deal with the worst students or improve them, then they have failed and shouldn't be subsidized by the taxpayer. My tax dollars shouldn't be an entitlement to those with experimental and untested educational theories who can fill out an application to create a school. You have to earn it by showing your methods produce results - with all the kids, not the cherry picked one. That's what they currently don't seem to be able to do. Even then we still give them money hoping they do someday or that the added competition creates a stronger educational dynamic. That said, many charter schools are just a ploy to get taxpayers to fund weirdo religious schools. A lot of charters are extensions of churches/mosques/temples or ethnic groups (often with religiosity as the main motivator). That isn't exactly the education revolution you're looking for here in many cases.
• okreallywtf 9y ago
  Having "control" over cities does not mean being able to cancel out systemic racism and discrimination. That doesn't mean I give the left a pass, but it has been a constant fight to make progress of any kind, especially given that cities don't often have the resources to deal with systemic issues. Cities are on the front line of these issues doing symptom relief (affordable housing, homelessness etc). It often requires legislation to tackle systemic issues, like redlining[0]. To compound that, a lot of urban areas that are "controlled by the left" are at the mercy of their state governments for a lot of funding and the ability to make major changes. Some states are disallowing their cities from enforcing their own minimum wage increases while also enshrining discrimination as legal. Expecting cities to be able to take on a national issue stemming from the enslavement of millions of people and the subsequent economic subjugation of said people is like expecting developers to be able to take on decades old technical debt while completing their day to day work. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining
• drzaiusapelord 9y ago
  > It's largely been the political left in the US which has had control of large urban areas. Control of what, exactly? Inheriting a broken series of communities from the weight of the history of slavery? Let's remember the US's history of slavery and Jim Crow did to these communities and how hard the urban north fought against it while the south reveled in it. Also let's remember northern urban African-Americans didn't live under the constant threat of lynching like their southern counterparts did, so the conservative handling of black communities was far worse historically and a lot of the northern urban systems were overwhelmed by southern migration to the north to escape these very social issues! Its like chasing jews out of your country than laughing at the jewish ghettos in the country next door. >Poles and Italians were able to increase their average IQ's to parity with the US as a whole in that period. People without a history of being slaves here and, of course, people with white skin. This isn't apples to apples. I really think you're missing the forest for the trees here in some hamfisted attempt to blame everything on the bogeyman "of the left." You can't just dismiss racism and the legacy of the Jim Crow era as a non-existent factor in the lives of black communities. As for progress peaking in the 60s lets remember how Republicans treated blacks during and after the civil rights movement. Its no coincidence. Lee Atwater on using blacks as society's scapegoats to push for tax cuts and other unrelated policies by driving race hate as much possible in he GOP's Southern Strategy. You start in 1954 by saying ‘Nigger, nigger, nigger.’ By 1968 you can’t say ‘Nigger.’ That hurts you. It backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states rights and all that stuff and you get so abstract. Now you talk about cutting taxes and these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that’s part of it. I’m not saying that. But I’m saying that if it is getting that abstract and that coded, we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. Obviously sitting around saying we want to cut taxes and we want this, is a lot more abstract than even the busing thing and a hell of a lot more abstract than nigger nigger. So anyway you look at it, race is coming on the back burner. --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy