William Saletan has an ongoing piece up on Slate.com this week about racial intelligence. I have to say, this seems like a completely pointless topic.
First, there is the problem of obtaining relevant data. It is impossible to raise a child in isolation, separated from a community. Even if you somehow managed to do this you would have created an artificial environment that doesn't tell you much about real world conditions. Everyone knows that schools vary widely in quality (and not strictly along private/public lines either). Studies have consistently shown large gaps between the races when it comes to income and parental education. Saletan cites studies of adopted children but this still doesn't account for the behavior of other in these communities. Saletan recently cited another study showing that social expectations have an effect on weight gain. If your friends think it's okay to be fat then you will too. I'd wager that the same applies to IQ.
The second big factual problem is that race doesn't necessarily correlate with genetics. Why not just study genes that affect intelligence? Why even bring race into it? If you find a gene that directly affects intelligence and you develop a pill or a shot that will help people with or without this gene I don't think many people will be worried about which race has more of the gene than another.
Even if you ignore the factual problems you're left with the question, so what? What sort of positive social policy could you possibly base upon this information? I think Western society has reached the conclusion that human life is to be respected regardless of intellect. We allow inequality because this inequality allows even the lowest members of society to be better off than they would be under a system which forced equality through authoritarian means. Supposedly, equal opportunity is our goal rather than equal result. Given the vast and obvious inequalities in our educational system, why don't we worry about that before we start worrying about Nigerian breast feeding Mr. Saletan?
To reiterate, even if you could show that some races are generally smarter than others what are you going to do about it? Are you going to encourage some people to have more kids than others? Are you trying to justify a system that sticks some kids in terrible, violent inner city schools while others go to new clean suburban institutions? Saletan mentions 'truth' but this just seems like so much personal aggrandizement. If the only thing your truth does is make you feel superior to another it's not worth much.
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Picture Little Earl, reading this Slate piece at his desk, slowly smacking his hand against his forehead in a pseudo-comical manner. Dude is sliding down the world's slipperiest slope. The bottom line is that race is not an absolute category and you'll never be able to say with some kind of scientific authority that "blacks are like this" and "Jews are like that" because there are simply way too many variables involved and there's no way to know what's actually responsible for the results.
But at least his piece is honest and entertaining.
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