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The average American man and the average American woman have the same IQ, were raised in fairly similar cultural environments, and received fairly similar educa

The average American man and the average American woman have the same IQ, were raised in fairly similar cultural environments, and received fairly similar educations. But compare the average black man and the average white man. The average black man has a lower IQ (Google it, many citations), somewhat different culture (more likely to have grown up in poverty, more likely to speak in AAVE, more likely to have come from a broken home, etc), and worse education (likely went to worse schools as a kid, less likely to have gone to college, etc). Maybe I am racist for writing that, but I think it would be more racist to ignore those facts, because that would lead to ignoring the problems and not trying to help disadvantaged groups.

gizmo 12y ago
Because of racist laws, policies and practices Black people have fewer opportunities from literally before they're born. Studies indicate that poor nutrition and other environmental factors explain the "IQ gap" nearly completely. The remaining points are most likely an issue of bias in the tests themselves. Most white people wouldn't do well in an AAVE based IQ test. Black people (and other minorities) are being actively discriminated against. In terms of the neighborhoods they live in (white flight), law enforcement (stop and frisk, minimum sentences, racial profiling), employment, housing (mortgage applications) and so on. This active discrimination is an ongoing and constant problem that goes all the way back to apartheid. Black people will do better when white people stop holding them back. Conflating black culture and active discrimination has racist connotations. For instance appalling Wall Street behavior is not condemned as a failing of white culture, but street crime is erroneously attributed as a failing of black culture. There are a thousand other examples. Black culture: music, food, dance, art, speech are not to blame. No more than white culture is to blame for WW2. It's part of the racist discourse where environmental factors are described as if they're innate failings of people who are genetically no different from anybody else. Now I don't believe you're a racist person (you probably don't think group X is inferior to group Y), but the arguments you make have racist connotations for the reasons I gave above.
- thrownaway999 12y ago
  When white people enter a black neighborhood, it is "gentrification", and it holds blacks back. When white people move out of a black neighborhood, it is "white flight" and it holds blacks back. White people! Stay exactly where you are!
  - gizmo 12y ago
    Individual people/families (regardless of race) are not to blame for the effect they have on the housing market, even though the consequences are predictable and well documented. The effects of gentrification and white flight demonstrate how ingrained the bias against black people and other minorities still is.
- streptomycin 12y ago
  I don't disagree with you. In fact, everything you wrote is in agreement with my original post. All of those challenges you describe are just some of the factors that make the racial disparity a more difficult problem to solve than the gender disparity. And yet, my original post is now deleted, so we can go along pretending these problems don't exist.
NaitJones 12y ago
"The average black man has a lower IQ (Google it, many citations)" - wow, well, that f'd up comment says alot about alot
- streptomycin 12y ago
  That you'd rather ignore things than try to solve problems? It's very easy to ignore the IQ gap and other differences between groups. It's harder to try to solve it with things like improved education, reduced poverty, etc. This is exactly the problem. Pretend the problem doesn't exist, and you don't even have to worry about attempting to solve it! In case you really are unaware and averse to Googling, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence#United_States_test_scores http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence#United_St... Rushton & Jensen (2005) write that, in the United States, self-identified blacks and whites have been the subjects of the greatest number of studies. They state that the black-white IQ difference is about 15 to 18 points or 1 to 1.1 standard deviations (SDs), which implies that between 11 and 16 percent of the black population have an IQ above 100 (the general population median). ... Roth et al. (2001), in a review of the results of a total of 6,246,729 participants on other tests of cognitive ability or aptitude, found a difference in mean IQ scores between blacks and whites of 1.1 SD. Consistent results were found for college and university application tests such as the Scholastic Aptitude Test (N = 2.4 million) and Graduate Record Examination (N = 2.3 million), as well as for tests of job applicants in corporate sections (N = 0.5 million) and in the military (N = 0.4 million).
  - NaitJones 12y ago
    That settles it, everything googled on the internet must be true, especially when they comport with your bigoted view of the world. I mean, I read on the internet that black people were 2/3 human somewhere, must be true.
    - streptomycin 12y ago
      You can Google for academic literature. I provided some pretty comprehensive citations in my last post. Or you can just ignore the world around you and not be troubled by the problems minorities are facing. Hey, did you know that the unemployment rate is higher for blacks than whites? Does citing that statistic also make me a bigot? Does it make you feel better to ignore that problem too?

gizmo 12y ago

Because of racist laws, policies and practices Black people have fewer opportunities from literally before they're born. Studies indicate that poor nutrition and other environmental factors explain the "IQ gap" nearly completely. The remaining points are most likely an issue of bias in the tests themselves. Most white people wouldn't do well in an AAVE based IQ test. Black people (and other minorities) are being actively discriminated against. In terms of the neighborhoods they live in (white flight), law enforcement (stop and frisk, minimum sentences, racial profiling), employment, housing (mortgage applications) and so on. This active discrimination is an ongoing and constant problem that goes all the way back to apartheid. Black people will do better when white people stop holding them back. Conflating black culture and active discrimination has racist connotations. For instance appalling Wall Street behavior is not condemned as a failing of white culture, but street crime is erroneously attributed as a failing of black culture. There are a thousand other examples. Black culture: music, food, dance, art, speech are not to blame. No more than white culture is to blame for WW2. It's part of the racist discourse where environmental factors are described as if they're innate failings of people who are genetically no different from anybody else. Now I don't believe you're a racist person (you probably don't think group X is inferior to group Y), but the arguments you make have racist connotations for the reasons I gave above.

thrownaway999 12y ago
When white people enter a black neighborhood, it is "gentrification", and it holds blacks back. When white people move out of a black neighborhood, it is "white flight" and it holds blacks back. White people! Stay exactly where you are!
- gizmo 12y ago
  Individual people/families (regardless of race) are not to blame for the effect they have on the housing market, even though the consequences are predictable and well documented. The effects of gentrification and white flight demonstrate how ingrained the bias against black people and other minorities still is.
streptomycin 12y ago
I don't disagree with you. In fact, everything you wrote is in agreement with my original post. All of those challenges you describe are just some of the factors that make the racial disparity a more difficult problem to solve than the gender disparity. And yet, my original post is now deleted, so we can go along pretending these problems don't exist.

NaitJones 12y ago

"The average black man has a lower IQ (Google it, many citations)" - wow, well, that f'd up comment says alot about alot

streptomycin 12y ago
That you'd rather ignore things than try to solve problems? It's very easy to ignore the IQ gap and other differences between groups. It's harder to try to solve it with things like improved education, reduced poverty, etc. This is exactly the problem. Pretend the problem doesn't exist, and you don't even have to worry about attempting to solve it! In case you really are unaware and averse to Googling, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence#United_States_test_scores http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence#United_St... Rushton & Jensen (2005) write that, in the United States, self-identified blacks and whites have been the subjects of the greatest number of studies. They state that the black-white IQ difference is about 15 to 18 points or 1 to 1.1 standard deviations (SDs), which implies that between 11 and 16 percent of the black population have an IQ above 100 (the general population median). ... Roth et al. (2001), in a review of the results of a total of 6,246,729 participants on other tests of cognitive ability or aptitude, found a difference in mean IQ scores between blacks and whites of 1.1 SD. Consistent results were found for college and university application tests such as the Scholastic Aptitude Test (N = 2.4 million) and Graduate Record Examination (N = 2.3 million), as well as for tests of job applicants in corporate sections (N = 0.5 million) and in the military (N = 0.4 million).
- NaitJones 12y ago
  That settles it, everything googled on the internet must be true, especially when they comport with your bigoted view of the world. I mean, I read on the internet that black people were 2/3 human somewhere, must be true.
  - streptomycin 12y ago
    You can Google for academic literature. I provided some pretty comprehensive citations in my last post. Or you can just ignore the world around you and not be troubled by the problems minorities are facing. Hey, did you know that the unemployment rate is higher for blacks than whites? Does citing that statistic also make me a bigot? Does it make you feel better to ignore that problem too?