Segregation Returns to US Schools

[Myth]

Mead is a fruit drink but it's also the drink of Vikings! I mean seriously, when visiting Denmark one would expect the whole viking theme to be played all over the place. Instead, it's a very peaceful capital with low to no traffic and everyone speaks perfect English. And there is no mead and no "Ye Olde Danish Axe Shoppe".

In fact, the only place in Copenhagen that I heard you can buy mead is a Norwegian gift shop. Humph.

I did see plenty of hot blond girls riding bicycles in mini skirts however. And it was raining sleet like the kind we have here in November. FYI right now it's 30 degrees celcius here.

Oh, when we're going on about stereotypes, here's a question for you:

Why do southern countries in general fail more than northern ones? Are the people more lazy and laid back because of the good weather? Scandinavia, the UK, the Netherlands and Germany are doing awesome. But Spain, Greece, Italy and not to mention the usual suspects like Greece and Bulgaria are doing very poorly. Is it the whole "manana" attitude?

The train in Copenhagen has free wi-fi and I didn't see sharpie drawings of football team names and penises. My mind was blown.

[Husar]

It is actually true that white people don't want to work when the sun is shining.
And by sun is shining I mean the subjective human interpretation, not the scientific fact that it shines all the time.

[Tuuvi]

The physical differences are obvious and non-negotiable. To then claim that our brains would be the same is, to say the least, stretching imagination to its fullest.

SERIOUSLY guys, different living conditions leads to different evolution. That is pure fact, and I honestly don't get how or why people would argue against it.

Why should there be differences in our brains, when we are all the same species? Humans everywhere, regardless of "race" or ethnicity, possess culture, language, and social bonds. We have have all practiced or practice some form of farming, gathering, or herding in order to obtain food.

American Indians invented agriculture, urban settlements, writing, organized religion, and states ruled by hereditary monarchs, all without any influence from the Old World whatsoever.

I asked you earlier what would have pressured some groups to evolve higher intelligence than others and you didn't answer me. Surely intelligence would be just as important to an African hunter as it would be to an Asian farmer. In order to live in a harsh environment such as the Kalahari you would need to possess an intimate knowledge of animal behavior, which plants are edible or have medicinal value, when and where they grow, where to find water to drink, how to build shelter and make tools out of the available resources, and so on.

And besides all this, the simple fact of the matter is Homo Sapiens has not evolved into genetically distinct groups. This is what scientists mean when they say there is no such thing as biological race. I think this can be hard to understand (it was for me), because you can usually tell what part of the world someone's ancestors came from just by looking at them. I think this website does a pretty good job of explaining why the concept of race has no bearing on human genetics.

http://www.understandingrace.org/hum...ce_humvar.html

[Montmorency]

SERIOUSLY guys, different living conditions leads to different evolution. That is pure fact, and I honestly don't get how or why people would argue against it.

This is precisely the fact that you conveniently ignore. You just take one shared or similar feature - e.g. skin color - and make the enormous leap that this one feature indicates a common evolutionary course when it comes to cognitive development.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Kadagar:

You would save yourself much argument if you would simply discard the mental category "race" entirely. Your problems are with differing cultural values and mores anyway -- and on that level you could make a better argument anyway.

Heaven knows I am not a fan of big pieces of certain cultural value sets -- traditional Arabic culture for example -- but human is human is human.

Now, you want to hammer out an argument along the lines of: The Iberian Hidalgo culture of the 16th century meshed poorly with the extant cultural values present in Central and Southern Amerind culture leading to a blend of the worst of both -- then you could get traction going.

And it is not as though there isn't a case to be made for a cultural values clash between ante-bellum Swedes and Post-Camp David Arab immigrant Swedes. Issues of assimilation versus multi-culturalism versus true integration etc. would allow you to really voice some telling points.

[Viking]

I asked you earlier what would have pressured some groups to evolve higher intelligence than others and you didn't answer me. Surely intelligence would be just as important to an African hunter as it would be to an Asian farmer. In order to live in a harsh environment such as the Kalahari you would need to possess an intimate knowledge of animal behavior, which plants are edible or have medicinal value, when and where they grow, where to find water to drink, how to build shelter and make tools out of the available resources, and so on.

I think that the concept of race based on skin colour alone is almost certainly bound to be meaningless. That's from pure probability.

At the same time, it's important to remember how much of a random process evolution actually is (according to theory, anyway). I am not going to suggest that some ethnic groups are genetically gifted when it comes to intelligence, but I will argue that is very much possible.

My knowledge of genetics is pretty basic, so I hope that I am not creating a nonsensical hypothetical - but here goes:

Imagine that a massive intelligence boost needs 4 mutations for the average human in a population; and those 4 mutations only benfit their carrier if they all are present in the DNA at the same time. In other words, it's not outside pressure that decides whether or not this genetic combination will occur, that's based purely on statistics and probability. If it does occur, then outside forces can decide whether or not it will spread. Even if it does start to spread, such a spread may be very slow. It will also spread much faster within populations than between them, since more or less per definition, there is not that much genetic exchange between different populations. If significant stigma exists for the mixing between certain populations, it may be that no genetic information is exchanged at all for centuries; perhaps even longer.

Imagine further that the combination also unlocks the potential of different single mutations (that previously gave either no boost at all or a very small one); who have a much higher chance of spreading since they only require one mutation. In this scenario, by the time the combination of 4 mutations has spread to the most distant population (relatative to the first population), the average intelligence of the first population were the combination originated may have increased significantly and be far ahead. This because of the extra mutations that have occured and spread there in the meantime.


That's one hypothetical; I could probably come up with loads more if I tried.

And besides all this, the simple fact of the matter is Homo Sapiens has not evolved into genetically distinct groups.

The website you link to treats the topic of 'race', and the non-existence of human races does not mean it is impossible for two groups to be genetically distinct. It's more like you'll find a continuous spectrum of human genetics, dotted with distinct and not-so-distinct groups of humans. I.e. there may be no major gaps in the spectrum, but some gaps may still exist - not every ethnic group overlap equally much genetically with other ethnic groups.

[Montmorency]

Yes, again, it is obvious that any group you formulate will be genetically distinct from any other such group, or else we would be identical. And indeed, it is easily plausible that small groups here and there are markedly more intelligent in one way or another than other small groups.

The point is that we can not gerrymander the existing genetic diversity into "races" like Caucasoid, Negroid, and Mongoloid - especially if intergroup similarities are greater than intragroup similarities! The point is that we should be looking to identify actually-useful groupings on the basis of strong links between genotype and phenotype, instead of taking some classification based entirely on skin color for granted and then complaining when that doesn't evoke any meaningful correlations. Even worse than that, though, is when they just resort to blatant stereotyping - at that point, evidence will not impinge at all on their mindset.

It gets really stupid, you know? "But blacks run fast hurr durr" - no they don't you fool, a few specific groups of dark-skinned people can run well because of the special environment in which they have existed for centuries. These groups constitute a tiny minority of all Africans. But, you know, I hear those Swiss do well in low-oxygen environments, so the white race must need less oxygen than other races, right?

[Viking]

Yes, again, it is obvious that any group you formulate will be genetically distinct from any other such group, or else we would be identical.

Such distinctions can be trivial and thus irrelevant in most contexts.

And indeed, it is easily plausible that small groups here and there are markedly more intelligent in one way or another than other small groups.

It does not have to be restricted to small groups.

[Montmorency]

It does not have to be restricted to small groups.

What large groups are there? Seriously.

[Viking]

What large groups are there? Seriously.

How large groups can you create based on a few specific genes? Pretty large ones, I think. The probability of this basically boils down to how genetics works when it comes to intelligence; which I think is almost completely unknown.

[Montmorency]

Ah, so you're positing the most literal interpretation.

This gives us the Parkinsonian race, the stuttering race, the cystic fibrosis race, and so on.

Just presses home the limited value of the term "race" itself. Nebulous from the outset, whatever legitimate classes it might capture with repurposing either already have terms or do not need them.

[Kadagar_AV]

So, what denominator should we use to explain the difference in humans from different social and geographical areas?

Cultural and socioeconomic influence aside, it's logically impossible for each and every sub-species (?) to have evolved in the exact same way, under different conditions.



As a sidenote, I think some has been "lost in translation". In swedish, race is a collective word. We talk about races of dogs, we have no comparison to "breed".

I have now understood that the word "race" is seen as a negative term.

I meant racial differences as the same way we have breeds of dogs.

YES all dogs are dogs, but different breeds leads to extremely different cognitive and physical abilities.

YES all humans are human, but we also differ, and that is - as you all know, a pure and simple fact.

So again, how do we diversify the different cultural and / or geographical tendencies... Without talking about race? Don't get me wrong, races can also be divided into sub-races...

South of Saharan Africans are from my perspective generally of a darker skin tone than ethnical Swedes. I think the use of the drug Khat is way, way, way bigger in that African area, compared to, say, European countries.

I believe that there exists differences between races yes. However, I am not saying the differences are so big you should judge someone solely from that perspective.

Heck, every race I ever heard of has had absolutely brilliant thinkers... Thus you should never "judge a book by it's cover".

However, on a political level (the level I am discussing) one has to face the FACT that, say, intelligence is divided unequally.

As an example, say that Swedes have 0,01% of its population that need extra pedagogical resources in school.

Say that Somali immigrants have 0,03% people who qualify for special pedagogical needs.

Does that mean all Somalis are stupid? Of course not.

It DOES however lead to 3x the pedagogical needs. This needs funding, and time from the teacher. In this example, a 300% increase is absolutely DEVASTATING on a national level.

It says absolutely nothing about individual people though.

I hope I made my point more clear this time around.

[Montmorency]

Fundamentally, the problem is of what constitutes a race. Similar skin tones, or living on the same continent, are pretty useless determiners since they don't tell us anything.

As for dogs, which are much simpler creatures in the first place, they have in terms of breeds been systematically bred to exaggerate specific attributes.

This has never been done with humans. Now, if we were to spend a thousand or two years cross-breeding the most successful humans, bolstering this with genetic engineering, maximal quality of diet, and so on, we could expect to produce a legitimate "race".

Until that happens, get a grip - there are no races or breeds of men that come even close to matching up with preconceived sociocultural categories. "Black", or "sub-Saharan African", is simply not a productive racial classification if you're looking for genetic regularities.

[Beskar]

"sub-Saharan African", is simply not a productive racial classification if you're looking for genetic regularities.

Paradoxically, Sub-Saharan Africans are the most genetic diverse population, more so than the rest of the world combined.

[Viking]

Ah, so you're positing the most literal interpretation.

This gives us the Parkinsonian race, the stuttering race, the cystic fibrosis race, and so on.

Not really. Let's say we have X number of ethnic groups where the prevalence of some genetics are above, say, 90%. These groups could then on average exhibit greater intelligence than other groups, and unless we knew about the genetic cause, this average is all that we would be able to observe, anyway.

Just presses home the limited value of the term "race" itself. Nebulous from the outset, whatever legitimate classes it might capture with repurposing either already have terms or do not need them.

I've already argued against the concept of race, so race is not what I am talking about. At least not with the common meanings of the word, anyway.

[Fragony]

As for dogs, which are much simpler creatures in the first place, they have in terms of breeds been systematically bred to exaggerate specific attributes.

And how would inbreeding not lead to specific attributes then with humans. Granted in advance, that goes beyond racial theory and is not intended to be one. We can make a full 360 when it comes to social-economic considerations on why some groups perform so badly without taking race into the equation, but a much nastier one, culture.

[Montmorency]

Let's say we have X number of ethnic groups where the prevalence of some genetics are above, say, 90%

Sure. The problem for genetic supremacists - of any stripe - is that intelligence is too diffuse*, and whatever genes there may be around that enhance relative cognitive performance would only be subject to random, or incidental, selection in any population defined in social-racial terms.

For example, it is technically possible that:

1. The Black Death did not affect sub-Saharan Africa.
2. The Black Death affected all of Eurasia.
3. Resistance to the Black Death somehow happened to coincide with intelligence-boosting genes in Eurasians.
4. The Black Death killed the stupider half of Eurasia and left only the more intelligent to breed with one another.
5. Average intelligence in Eurasia increased.

Of course, just because something is possible doesn't mean that it has happened, so any way you look at it the genetic supremacists have an uphill struggle when it comes to assembling evidence that there are regular genetic differences between any grouping (to say nothing of evolutionary explanations for them), again recalling the arbitrariness of racial groupings.

Also keep in mind that a scenario such as the one I made up above ignores the massive ethnic variation within sub-Saharan Africa, meaning that those who entertain such possibilities must also own that its technically possible for the most intelligent group of humans (by virtue of genetics) to be a group of sub-Saharan Africans. I see no coherent reason a priori why this could not be the case, if we are taking a proper agnostic approach to the issue.

*i.e. intelligence is clearly not "additive", though it is modular and subject to developmental baseline and differential expression under variable environmental conditions

[Montmorency]

And how would inbreeding not lead to specific attributes then with humans.

Africans in general - and their 'diaspora' - are obviously not inbred, Frags. But yes, this is for example why Ashkenazi Jews have relatively-high rates of incidence of Tay-Sachs and cystic fibrosis.

[Fragony]

I'll order one of these if I see them.

[Viking]

Of course, just because something is possible doesn't mean that it has happened, so any way you look at it the genetic supremacists have an uphill struggle when it comes to assembling evidence that there are regular genetic differences between any grouping (to say nothing of evolutionary explanations for them), again recalling the arbitrariness of racial groupings.

The possibility of such a thing happening as well as how it could happen is what I originally replied to. If it actually has happened is indeed a separate topic.

*i.e. intelligence is clearly not "additive", though it is modular and subject to developmental baseline and differential expression under variable environmental conditions

I don't see any incompatibility between modularity and additivity. Not sure what your point is.

[Montmorency]

I don't see any incompatibility between modularity and additivity. Not sure what your point is.

Well, first note that you're not the only person included in the discourse, so I shouldn't be considered as addressing these solely to you.

In principle there is no incompatibility between modularity and additivity, but we have observed that additivity in itself can't really be associated with intelligence.

Think about it: what exactly would that look like, both behaviorally and epistemologically, if intelligence could be 'added up like a sum'. It recalls to mind the cartoon image of a person with an opened cranium having brains scooped into his skull so that he could become "more smarter".

This isn't to say that intelligence is fixed within or between individuals, that it can't change or increase, just that with regards to the present context we should not approach this from the assumption that the base is "zero" intelligence and genes 1-10 can each "add" some amount of intelligence for a 'natural' maximum where all the genes are present.