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I'm not sure how discussing statistics is racist, particularly when later in the article he says: "And that is actually a valuable hint about how to get beyond

I'm not sure how discussing statistics is racist, particularly when later in the article he says: "And that is actually a valuable hint about how to get beyond racism. A black man with an IQ of 85 and a white man with an IQ of 85 are about equally likely to have the character traits of poor impulse control and violent behavior associated with criminality — and both are far more likely to have them than a white or black man with an IQ of 110. If we could stop being afraid of IQ and face up to it, that would give us an objective standard that would banish racism per se. IQ matters so much more than skin color that if we started paying serious attention to the former, we might be able to stop paying attention to the latter." Making discussing statistics "racist" is a disservice to disadvantaged communities.

jchrisa 11y ago
I'd like to see upfront mention of things like environmental lead before I'm comfortable with that angle of analysis.
- DonHopkins 11y ago
  I'd like to see some mention of the fact that blacks are incarcerated at MUCH higher rates for committing the same crimes as whites, which he never addresses (and he ignores it when people bring it up), yet that totally undermines his statistical argument. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/keith-rushing/the-reasons-why-so-many-b_b_883310.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/keith-rushing/the-reasons-why-...
  - ikeboy 11y ago
    Those statistics are somewhat flawed. See http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/25/race-and-justice-much-more-than-you-wanted-to-know/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/25/race-and-justice-much-m....
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
  - tzs 11y ago
    His point is based on the rates of crime commission, not the rates of incarceration. The source cited by the article you link to says that "Yes, African Americans and Latinos disproportionately commit certain crimes", and so actually provides some support for ESR's argument. They do say that for drug use crimes, the crime rates are about the same for blacks and whites, but ESR was specifically talking about violent crime. Also, they say that the differences in crime rates by race can be explained by socioeconomic disadvantages. But among the effects of socioeconomic disadvantages are poor early childhood nutrition and more likely exposure to toxic environments (hello, old buildings with lead paint!). These things tend to hold back cognitive development, which tends to result in lower IQ scores. So to deny a link between lower IQ on average and higher crime rate on average is in effect denying a link between socioeconomic disadvantages and higher crime rates. Whether or not someone is being racist when writing about the link between IQ and crime depends on what they think is the causality behind the link between IQ and socioeconomic disadvantages, and the factors behind whichever one of those they think is the cause of the other. ESR may indeed be a racist, but you've not shown it, and the source behind your link could be reasonably cited to support the ESR statement you quoted. We need to find some way to get some statistical sense into people at an early age, so as they grow up it becomes routine and automatic to recognize when you should care about group averages and when you should not. In almost every situation where you are dealing with individuals, the fact that one individual comes from a group whose bell curve for some characteristic of interest is slightly displaced from the bell curve of the group that some other individual comes from is meaningless trivia when it comes to deciding which individual to choose for something that depends on that characteristic.
snowwrestler 11y ago
It's racist to only quote statistics that support one's racist point of view. And it is racist to be credulous of statistics that support one's racist point of view. Statistics come from actual data, so shortcomings in the data collection can produce shortcomings in the statistics. For example the testing that goes into IQ is not without controversy. And crime statistics are directly dependent on the policing and prosecution of crime--they don't reflect the objective reality of crime, they reflect the outcomes of an imperfect system that detects and punishes crime. There is ample and growing evidence that many such systems are significantly biased by racism. See: the recent Justice Department investigations of municipal police deparments like Ferguson, Cleveland, etc. So judging the criminality of a particular "race" by aggregate police statistics is not likely to be objective. Finally, the concept of race itself is socially constructed, and therefore not objective. If a person has a white mother and a black father, are they black or white? What if one grandparent is Asian? Ultimately the attribution of race is a human social decision--a person self-identifies with a particular race, and/or others define their race based on how they look. Neither is scientifically objective the way that height or eye color is.
- philh 11y ago
  > It's racist to only quote statistics that support one's racist point of view. > And it is racist to be credulous of statistics that support one's racist point of view. Note that these are kind of circular. You've judged that the speaker's point of view is racist, and therefore his use of statistics is racist. Also note that, to a first approximation, everybody only quotes statistics that support their own point of view, and everyone is credulous of statistics that support their own point of view. It's easy to think of reasons why statistics would be biased in favor of showing IQ differences between races. It's also easy to think of reasons why statistics would be biased against that. In a world where most people don't believe in IQ differences between races - or even a world where people don't want to look like they believe in them - there's going to be publication bias against that direction. That's true even if there are no true IQ differences between races. > Finally, the concept of race itself is socially constructed, and therefore not objective. Imagine a world where there was a single gene which added ten IQ points to someone. (Which is definitely not the world we live in.) Imagine it was a mutation which arose in a single location a thousand years ago. It didn't become fixed in that population, and it's spread outside. But it's certainly more common in people who were born in that region, whose parents and grandparents were born there, than in people born on the other side of the world. In this world, it seems to me that race would be just as much a social construct, and therefore not objective. But it would also be true that there would be a strong correlation between IQ and race.

jchrisa 11y ago

I'd like to see upfront mention of things like environmental lead before I'm comfortable with that angle of analysis.

DonHopkins 11y ago
I'd like to see some mention of the fact that blacks are incarcerated at MUCH higher rates for committing the same crimes as whites, which he never addresses (and he ignores it when people bring it up), yet that totally undermines his statistical argument. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/keith-rushing/the-reasons-why-so-many-b_b_883310.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/keith-rushing/the-reasons-why-...
- ikeboy 11y ago
  Those statistics are somewhat flawed. See http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/25/race-and-justice-much-more-than-you-wanted-to-know/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/25/race-and-justice-much-m....
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- tzs 11y ago
  His point is based on the rates of crime commission, not the rates of incarceration. The source cited by the article you link to says that "Yes, African Americans and Latinos disproportionately commit certain crimes", and so actually provides some support for ESR's argument. They do say that for drug use crimes, the crime rates are about the same for blacks and whites, but ESR was specifically talking about violent crime. Also, they say that the differences in crime rates by race can be explained by socioeconomic disadvantages. But among the effects of socioeconomic disadvantages are poor early childhood nutrition and more likely exposure to toxic environments (hello, old buildings with lead paint!). These things tend to hold back cognitive development, which tends to result in lower IQ scores. So to deny a link between lower IQ on average and higher crime rate on average is in effect denying a link between socioeconomic disadvantages and higher crime rates. Whether or not someone is being racist when writing about the link between IQ and crime depends on what they think is the causality behind the link between IQ and socioeconomic disadvantages, and the factors behind whichever one of those they think is the cause of the other. ESR may indeed be a racist, but you've not shown it, and the source behind your link could be reasonably cited to support the ESR statement you quoted. We need to find some way to get some statistical sense into people at an early age, so as they grow up it becomes routine and automatic to recognize when you should care about group averages and when you should not. In almost every situation where you are dealing with individuals, the fact that one individual comes from a group whose bell curve for some characteristic of interest is slightly displaced from the bell curve of the group that some other individual comes from is meaningless trivia when it comes to deciding which individual to choose for something that depends on that characteristic.

snowwrestler 11y ago

It's racist to only quote statistics that support one's racist point of view. And it is racist to be credulous of statistics that support one's racist point of view. Statistics come from actual data, so shortcomings in the data collection can produce shortcomings in the statistics. For example the testing that goes into IQ is not without controversy. And crime statistics are directly dependent on the policing and prosecution of crime--they don't reflect the objective reality of crime, they reflect the outcomes of an imperfect system that detects and punishes crime. There is ample and growing evidence that many such systems are significantly biased by racism. See: the recent Justice Department investigations of municipal police deparments like Ferguson, Cleveland, etc. So judging the criminality of a particular "race" by aggregate police statistics is not likely to be objective. Finally, the concept of race itself is socially constructed, and therefore not objective. If a person has a white mother and a black father, are they black or white? What if one grandparent is Asian? Ultimately the attribution of race is a human social decision--a person self-identifies with a particular race, and/or others define their race based on how they look. Neither is scientifically objective the way that height or eye color is.

philh 11y ago
> It's racist to only quote statistics that support one's racist point of view. > And it is racist to be credulous of statistics that support one's racist point of view. Note that these are kind of circular. You've judged that the speaker's point of view is racist, and therefore his use of statistics is racist. Also note that, to a first approximation, everybody only quotes statistics that support their own point of view, and everyone is credulous of statistics that support their own point of view. It's easy to think of reasons why statistics would be biased in favor of showing IQ differences between races. It's also easy to think of reasons why statistics would be biased against that. In a world where most people don't believe in IQ differences between races - or even a world where people don't want to look like they believe in them - there's going to be publication bias against that direction. That's true even if there are no true IQ differences between races. > Finally, the concept of race itself is socially constructed, and therefore not objective. Imagine a world where there was a single gene which added ten IQ points to someone. (Which is definitely not the world we live in.) Imagine it was a mutation which arose in a single location a thousand years ago. It didn't become fixed in that population, and it's spread outside. But it's certainly more common in people who were born in that region, whose parents and grandparents were born there, than in people born on the other side of the world. In this world, it seems to me that race would be just as much a social construct, and therefore not objective. But it would also be true that there would be a strong correlation between IQ and race.