Black IQ

[Barry Shnikov]

Hmm... I have little doubt whether you are being pedantic or bloody minded here...

Neither. Why do you say that? I flagged up the possibility that I was asking a question she didn't mean to ask, to avoid that very thing.

[David Bailey]

But my point is WHY CAN'T WHITE PEOPLE BE ON AVERAGE MORE INTELLIGENT THAN BLACK PEOPLE?

Barry, I've stated - twice - already my position regarding this. It's simplistic, unscientific and patronising to class people as "black" or "white", simply because there's no such ethnic grouping - the only commonality is in similarities in skin colour, otherwise the groups are as ethincally diverse as each other.

It's like classing all East Asian people as the same signle ethnic grouping, simply because they share a skin colour.

And to attribute common behaviour to "black" people, as Watson has clearly done, is at best less-than-rigorous, and at worst is racist.

So to be crystal-clear, my answer to your original question is: no, it's not appropriate to try to identify a common characteristic for "black people".

[Barry Shnikov]

Hmm isn't it the main argument in American law regarding free speech vs causing harm

Don't know. If the opponents of the first amendment can't come up with better arguments than that then it's a pretty poor show.

In this case I take umbrage with "might"
Are you seriously suggesting large numbers of people are not going to misunderstand?

I'm thinking rather wider than that. If some persons are going to formulate a principle that 'Statements likely to cause offense [insert here some qualification about the kind and degree of offense] must not be made' then you make it difficult to say a whole bunch of things altogether, because the possibility that they might cause offense stops your mouth.

There's an additional and even more serious problem which is that it becomes possible for someone to be censured for saying something perfectly innocuous because people misunderstand what is being said. Like the idiots who (apparently) didn't understand the difference between a paedophile and a paediatrician.

Then respectfully I think you've chosen a bad example. I think Trampy's tagline is about respecting your right to have an opinion even if he disagrees with it. The line that gets drawn is when expressing your opinion causes harm.

If I understand you correctly, you are saying that opinions which cause harm cannot be expressed - surely not?

[David Franklin]

Er...yes it was.

Er, no it wasn't, and saying it was only makes it apparent that you're trying to put words in peoples mouths.

'Amazonian indians'? When has the word black ever been used to refer to them?

I suspect most would refer to the Amazonian Indian above as black.

[Barry Shnikov]

Barry, I've stated - twice - already my position regarding this. It's simplistic, unscientific and patronising to class people as "black" or "white", simply because there's no such ethnic grouping - the only commonality is in similarities in skin colour, otherwise the groups are as ethnically diverse as each other.

I disagree.

But if you don't like the term 'black' then whenever I write it, read it as 'sub-saharan africans' if you like. Or don't you accept that as an ethnic group?

Semantic arguments are seldom helpful in discussions like this.

The terms may be politically incorrect but we all know what is meant by 'black' (with a penumbra of uncertainty, sure). People from north Africa are not black, neither are people from Asia, nor people from the Americas, except for the ones who travelled there from sub-saharan africa.

Furthermore, there is nothing patronising about my referring to people in this context as black. I'm not patronised by someone describing me as white, whether as an individual or because someone is trying to draw a distinction between people like me whose ethnic background is northern Europe and any other ethnic grouping on earth. I don't define a person by his or her colour, but I'm not inhibited from using that colour as a shorthand way of referring to an ethnic group.

I've never had any residual feeling that people like me are any better or worse by reason of their 'race' than any others, I slept in the same dormitory and eaten at the same table and sat in the same classrooms and sang in the same choirs with jews, black africans, pakistanis, arabs, thais and uncle tom cobley and all since I was 11 years old and even then I could never figure out why people would dislike or fear someone because they looked or acted different.

[Barry Shnikov]

Er, no it wasn't, and saying it was only makes it apparent that you're trying to put words in peoples mouths.


I suspect most would refer to the Amazonian Indian above as black.

I suspect you are mistaken.

Take off the paint and he's only a little darker than me. Look at his face, ***!!

[Barry Shnikov]

and saying it was only makes it apparent that you're trying to put words in peoples mouths

Er, no it doesn't.

And, er, no I'm not.

Cheerfully accept I may misunderstand what someone posts, but that's different.

[David Franklin]

I suspect you are mistaken.

Point taken. I made the mistake of choosing that one so as not to get into an argument about "no, he's not dark enough to be black". But there are any number of other pictures of Amazon Indians that I think most people would describe as black, even though, objectively, they are nowhere near that colour. Black is a very broad term when referring to race. If you don't understand that, it puts a certain complexion(*) on your statements about whether other statements are likely to be misunderstood or misleading.

(*) See what I did there?

As for whether you put words into David James mouth: I could put his quote and your paraphrase next to each other, but in general that's the kind of thing I save for the people who don't even know what they're doing. I'm sure that's not the case here.

[NZ Monkey]

Science in the early 1900s is not science now. Any test in 'the early 1900s' would not have been the IQ test, since that wasn't invented until much later. And I believe it is accepted that the early IQ tests had a slight cultural bias; but the modern researchers who have been carefully investigating relative intelligence have been designing out the cultural bias - or at least, they claim to have been doing so.

Agreed - science has come a long way since those days. For a start, we're aware of the differences cultural bias can have. It wasn't slight either - I recall one of the questions involved understanding the rules of baseball and another the structure of American currency under whatever system they were using at the time. I may be stupid myself but I know I couldn't tell you exactly how many cents a dime is.

It's worth bearing in mind that some of the people claiming a racial IQ difference are 'african americans', and that nearly all of them are involved because they want to find ways to improve the opportunities for poor blacks in the US. They aren't doing it in order to commence some sort of mass eugenics programmes.

If I remember correctly the objective of the sudies wasn't to justify eugenics programs. That's what the data was used for though.

An intelligence test designed for africans might be different from ones designed for us. Doesn't mean you can't draw conclusions from how well the two groups of people do in their tests.

Yes it does! Make two people from vastly different cultures A and B take a test written by someone from culture A there will be a bias that will give A an advantage. Sure, we *try* to minimise that and to a large degree succeed, but we can't possibly eliiminate it. The way we think is shaped by our culture in very fundemental ways.

Non-scientists need to bear in mind that it isn't like someone walks into their office one day and says 'Gee. I'll test some black IQs today...well, whaddaya know?' The tests involve groups of researchers investigating the matter for years, trying this, refining that, going back and trying a different route. Their conclusions cannot be sidestepped just because they may be politically difficult to stomach.

You're stretching here Barry. I don't think anybody really beleives this is just a racist pot-shot at black people by an old gesser. Without any details of the study though, I'm doubting the science. If it can be verified independently by a credible source then I'll pay more attention.

But my point is WHY CAN'T WHITE PEOPLE BE ON AVERAGE MORE INTELLIGENT THAN BLACK PEOPLE? Doesn't make them better, not one little bit.

There's no reason why they can't be. The tricky part is proving/disproving it conclusively. As other posters have said there are a ton of very important factors to eliminate before you can tie IQ to a genetic level. That's virtually impossible to do on real, living test subjects in the real world.

I strongly suspect that on top of the knee-jerk PC reaction this study has provoked, there will be a core of objective and rational scientist out there who will find reasonable scientific reasons to criticise this research. There will be others who support it. It will take a while before any real consensus will be reached, and that will take even longer than normal because it's so politically sensitive.

If it was definitively shown that black penises are on average significantly longer than white penises, well we'd just have to learn to live with it, wouldn't we? No point bleating about it being an unacceptable thing to say, and not like all white males could never show their faces again.

Well, I think it's already been conclusively proven that given proper nutrition an african physique is better adapted for running. How many top level white sprinters do you see at the olympics?

I don't think anyone thinks that sex makes no difference to physical strength either, for instance.

I've got no problem with accepting that genetic traits make a difference to a whole host of abilities, and that race is likely to be one of those influences. Intelligence is notoriously difficult to measure though, so I'm talking any findings that don't become widely accepted after much peer review with a grain of salt.

[Ghost]

If I understand you correctly, you are saying that opinions which cause harm cannot be expressed

Pretty much. You might be able to argue the "greater good" in some cases, but I fail to see how that applies here.

It would be more accurate to say that great care should be taken in the expressing of opinions that can cause harm and considering whether or not to express them in the first place.

I don't feel that sufficient care has been taken in the way this opinion has been expressed.

[Stuart M]

I read once that sub-Saharan Africans are the most genetically diverse "grouping" of humans. Couldn't find specific research, but the abstract for this paper seems to suggest it. The relevant quote:

Though affected by natural selection, skin color variation shows the same pattern of higher [sub-Saharan] African diversity as found with other traits.

That is, I've got more genetically in common with your average Ukrainian, than your average Senegali has with a Masai tribesman.

Guess the only point I'm trying to make is that even the term "sub-Saharan Africans" doesn't have much meaning either.

[David Bailey]

I'm going to leave the "black people" grouping debate alone, as it's clear we're not ever going to come to a meeting of minds about that one.

Don't know. If the opponents of the first amendment can't come up with better arguments than that then it's a pretty poor show.

There's no first amendment in the UK, or for that matter anywhere outside of the US, so I don't see how that's relevant.

Freedom of expression as a general right, as expressed in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But obviously this is not an absolute right even in the USA - the "shouting fire in a crowded theatre" argument.

I see this as a continuum. For example:

• Should Lawrence Summers have been allowed to express his opinions about gender and intelligence? Absolutely - and it's a terrible shame that he was hounded out because of political-correctness.
  
• Should Watson be allowed to express his opinion? Hmmm, probably. He is a scientist after all, if possibly a sloppy one in this area, and his views should be debated and (probably) debunked.
  
• Should a clear racist (neo-nazi or KKK member) be allowed to express and publicize clearly racist material - for example, glorifying the Holocaust, or saying that slavery in the United States was a good thing? No, not in my view.

It's not pleasant to see politicians gleefully jumping on the bandwagon with this one - I reckon Vaz in particular is a slimy git - so I guess, on balance, I believe Watson's theory should be publicly debated rather than censored.

So, mmm, it looks like I agree with Barry

[David Bailey]

I know I said I'd leave it alone, but:

Guess the only point I'm trying to make is that even the term "sub-Saharan Africans" doesn't have much meaning either.

- it's the new PC term for "black people" I reckon.

[Barry Shnikov]

Witch-hunt in full cry.

[Dreadful Scathe]

Witch-hunt in full cry.

Its ironic that his critic Dr.Venter says ""Skin colour as a surrogate for race is a social concept not a scientific one," as a complaint against Dr.Watsons quotes, when its social conventions that say anything politically incorrect must be censored and the quotes were taken out of context in the first place. I note Dr.Venter has a book out, I wonder how many more will jump on this easy "oh look how racially aware we are" bandwagon

[Gus]

Only had a quick glance, but seems the chap at the centre of this controversy says he was totally misquoted!! Anyone actually had the time to read his rebuttal (in today's Times)?

[Barry Shnikov]

There's no first amendment in the UK, or for that matter anywhere outside of the US, so I don't see how that's relevant.

IIRC the US was mentioned in the post to which I was replying.

[Barry Shnikov]

There's no reason why they can't be. The tricky part is proving/disproving it conclusively. As other posters have said there are a ton of very important factors to eliminate before you can tie IQ to a genetic level. That's virtually impossible to do on real, living test subjects in the real world.

I should say I don't care whether there is a genetic IQ difference. It won't make the slightest difference in the way I think of and behave toward white and black people. I suppose that's my most basic point - the hysteria about the comment about IQ and race is predicated entirely on the assumption that the conclusion (there is a genetic difference and black IQs are lower) is so appalling that it cannot be accepted, and therefore the point must not be raised - on pain of losing your job - and the investigation cannot be ruled out.

The only reason it's even worthwhile investigating the matter is that if there is such a difference then it should be taken into account where it is necessary to do so in order to ensure that notwithstanding an IQ handicap no-one loses an opportunity of which they could take advantage.

[Barry Shnikov]

• Should a clear racist (neo-nazi or KKK member) be allowed to express and publicize clearly racist material - for example, glorifying the Holocaust, or saying that slavery in the United States was a good thing? No, not in my view.

There, I disagree with you.

As somebody wrote and I recently read, the way to deal with despicable arguments and opinions is to present better arguments. I'm desperately trying to recall some doggerel lines "I hid my [something] and it did grow" - can't quite get it, but it's about how things which are forced out of the open can fester when it might be better to let them stay in plain sight when the boil can be lanced.

[Barry Shnikov]

I don't feel that sufficient care has been taken in the way this opinion has been expressed.

Now there, I absolutely agree with you. He may have been tired and emotional at the time but his statements about working with black people was not well thought out.

But I absolutely disagree with you about not permitting statements that might have harmful consequences. Think it through - isn't it clear that it would make meaningful dialogue on matters of morals, ethics and politics virtually impossible.