Race, Evolution, and Behavior

[Ganatra]

Hi,

Recently I read “Race, Evolution and Behavior” by J. Philippe Rushton, 3rd Ed., see www.ssc.uwo.ca/psychology/faculty/rushton_pubs.htm and www.harbornet.com/folks/theedrich/JP_Rushton/Race.htm In addition, I decided that there were some interesting ideas I would like to expose readers here to, as well as discuss.

In chapter 10 of this book, he goes into what evolutionary biologists call life history theory. This theory is a way that biologists theorize what sort of adaptations different species, or sub-species as in races, make to adapt to various environmental stimuli.

In his book, he details how the three major racial groups have various genotypic, phenotypic and behavioral differences. Some major examples would be brain size and IQ scores (with a correlation between the two as larger brains equals more neurons), gamete production (sperm cells and eggs), hormonal differences (testosterone production for example) and what I will mostly touch on here: reproductive strategies.

Reproductive strategies can be classified into two major types: r and k strategies. Species which practice r-strategies usually emphasize gamete production, mating behavior, low parental care, and high reproductive rates. Species, which practice k-strategies, conversely emphasize high parental care, lower reproductive rates, resource acquisition and a higher degree of social complexity. The k-strategy requires a more complex nervous system as well as larger brains than the primarily r-strategist species do.

In nature, we can see the difference between extreme cases of r and k strategist species. For example, an oyster can produce 500 million eggs a year, while the great apes can reproduce only one infant every 5 or 6 years. Thus, the oyster will have reproduced itself 2500 million times, by the time a great ape will have reproduced itself once. The oyster will not spend any time “parenting” over its offspring, while the great ape will put much time and energy into nurturing their offspring.

While primates in general are the most k-strategist of all of the species, there still remain differences between them. For example, a lemur is more r-strategist than a gorilla. In fact, going across the primate spectrum, research has shown that primates become more k-strategist with increasing brain size, with a correlation of .98.

While humans are primarily k-selected, again differences appear in sub-groups like races as they did within species. As the increased brain size in primates is indicative of k-strategist over r-strategist species, brain size in racial groups also shows a correlation between increased brain size and k-strategist reproductive strategies.

Different means of measuring brain size have been used to gain the average brain size of the three main racial groups that anthropologists usually classify. The methods involve measuring the skull size and estimating brain size, volume displacement of skulls( I.e. filling up an empty skull with a substance and measuring the volume of the skull), autopsy measurements, and more recently, (and the most effective form) MRI. No matter what methods used, the results consistently come out as Mongoloids and Caucasoids both having larger brain sizes than Negroids, with Mongoloids having a slightly larger brain size than Caucasoids who in turn, have much larger brains than Negroids. The mean listed for all of the measurements, to give you an example of the differences of brain size are: Mongoloids 1,364 cm^3, Caucasoids 1,347 cm^3 and Negroids 1,267 cm^3.

The phenotypic, genotypic and behavioral differences between the races are a result of adaptation to environmental stimuli. So what kind of environmental stimuli are responsible for the adaptation of r vs. k strategies and brain size, and what sort of relation are there between the two?

Rushton and others postulate the Single Origin theory. This theory is that Caucasoid and Mongoloid peoples dispersed out of Africa about 100,000 years ago and migrated to the colder, northern environments, while the Negroid peoples remained in Africa in their warmer environment. About 41,000 years ago, there was a split between Mongoloid and Caucasoid peoples, with the Mongoloid peoples splitting migrating towards and even colder environment than the Caucasoid peoples.

Another theory related to the Single Origin theory is one that I will call the bio-energy theory. The bio-energy theory is that each developing sub-species possess a similar amount of bio-energy that a sub-species will expend to act adapt to their environment.

In colder, northern environments, Whites and Asians had to hunt for their food, provide shelter and put more mental energy into survival and social structure than in the sub-Saharan environments of Africa, where the warm weather and abundance of food required less mental energy to be put into survival, I.e. tool building, constructing shelter, farming, etc. Because of these environmental stimuli, Whites and Asians grew bigger brains to deal with this harsh northern environment. A word that evolutionary biologists used to describe this phenomenon is encephalization. Encephalization is an increase in brain size during the evolution of a species, with no concomitant increase in body-size.

While Whites and Asians expended their respective bio-energy on encephalization as response to their environment, blacks on the other hand, adapted r-survival reproductive strategies and used their bio-energy on reproductive efforts. In his book, Rushton details how blacks have higher intercourse frequencies than Whites, who in turn have higher ones than Asians, have a higher developmental precocity (age of first intercourse, first pregnancy) and higher primary and secondary characteristics ( genital size, salient voice, muscularity, buttocks, etc.) than Whites and Asians. They also produce more hormones than Whites or Asians and have more permissive attitudes to pre-marital sex than Whites or Asians and have differing biological behavioral control than Whites or Asians (I.e. length of menstrual cycle, periodicity of sexual response, etc.) In fact, all of these behaviors show a correlation with both brain size and r vs. k selection, with Asians being more k selected than Whites who are more k selected than Blacks; with the abovementioned brain sizes: Asians> Whites> Blacks.

Another interesting component of r vs. k reproductive strategies are some of the social system characteristics. R strategists tend to show low social organization and low altruism while k-strategists tend to favor higher social organization and higher altruism.

Raj Ganatra

[Ganatra]

In "Taboo: Why black athletes dominate sports and why we're afraid to talk about it," by Jon Entine (January, 2000), he writes:

"Diamond offered a more colorful version of an argument advanced in 1972 by Richard Lewontin, a Harvard University geneticist. Lewontin had become convinced that virtually all meaningful differences between races are either random or culturally determined. Based on his review of the available data, he concluded that only a tiny fraction of the differences between individuals could be considered "racial." In other words, Lewontin maintained that the differences that separate "races" are little more than what distinguishes two random fans at a World Cup match--statistically nothing, genetically speaking. The article, published in the prestigious journal Evolutionary Biology, amounted to a frontal attack on the concept of race.

"For sure genetic differences between any two individuals are extremely small in percentage terms. Coming from a geneticist, rather than a sociologist or anthropologist, Lewontin's article had enormous influence, although not everyone was convinced. Lewontin's finding that on average humans share 99.8 percent of genetic material and that any two individuals are apt to share considerably more than 90 percent of this shared genetic library is on target. Interpreting that data is another issue, however. Lewontin's analysis suffers both scientifically and politically.

"Although the politics of a scientist is not necessarily an issue in evaluating their work, in Lewontin's case it is crucial. According to his own account, his sensibilities were catalyzed by the civil rights movement of the 1960s. He made it very clear that his science was in part a mission to reaffirm our common humanity. To geneticists and biologists with less of an avowed agenda, Lewontin appeared to leaven his conclusion with his personal ideology.

"From a scientific perspective, Lewontin and those that have relied on his work have reached beyond the data to some tenuous conclusions. In fact the percentage of differences is a far less important issue than which genes are different. Even minute differences in DNA can have profound effects on how an animal or human looks and acts while huge apparent variations between species may be almost insignificant in genetic terms. Consider the cichlid fish, which can be found in Africa's Lake Nyas. The cichlid, which has differentiated from one species to hundreds over a mere 11,500 years, "differ among themselves as much as do tigers and cows," Jared Diamond has noted. "Some graze on algae, others catch other fish, and still others variously crush snails, feed on plankton, catch insects, nibble the scales off other fish, or specialize in grabbing fish embryos from brooding mother fish." The kicker, these variations are the result of infinitesimal genetic differences--about 0.4 percent of their DNA studied.

"In humans too, it is not the percentage of genes that is most critical, but whether and how the genes impact our physiology or behavior. Diamond mused that if an alien were to arrive on our planet and analyze our DNA, humans would appear, from a genetic perspective, as a third race of chimpanzees. Although it is believed they took a different evolutionary path from humans only five million years ago, chimps share fully 98.4 percent of our DNA. Just 50 out of 100,000 genes that humans and chimps are thought to possess--or a minuscule 0.3 percent--may account for all of the cognitive differences between man and ape. For that matter, dogs share about 95 percent of our genome; even the tiny roundworm, barely visible to the naked eye, share about 74 percent of its genes with humans.

"Most mammalian genes, as much as 70 percent, are "junk" that have accumulated over the course of evolution with absolutely no remaining function; whether they are similar or different is meaningless. But the key 1.4 percent of regulatory genes can and do have a huge impact on all aspects of our humanity. In other words, small genetic differences do not automatically translate into trivial bodily or behavioral variations. The critical factor is not which genes are passed along but how they are patterned and what traits they influence.

"Lewontin did collate genetic variability from known genetic markers and find that most of it lay within and not between human populations. Numerous scientists since have generalized those findings to the entire human genome, yet no such study has been done. Now it is believed that such an inference is dicey at best. The trouble with genetic markers is that they display "junk" variability that sends a signal that variability within populations exceeds variability between populations. However, the "junk" DNA that has not been weeded out by natural selection accounts for a larger proportion of within-population variability. Genetic makers may therefore be sending an exaggerated and maybe false signal. In contrast, the harder-to-study regulatory genes (that circumscribe our physical and athletic abilities) signal that between-group variability is far larger than has been believed. In other words, human populations are genetically more different than Lewontin and others who have relied on his work realize.

Raj Ganatra

[Ganatra]

Harvard University professor comments on racial differences and IQ:

IQ Since "The Bell Curve"

Christopher F. Chabris

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

THIS PAST January, Governor Zell Miller of Georgia asked his legislature for enough money to give a cassette or CD of classical music to every newborn child in the state. The governor cited scientific evidence to support this unusual budget request. "There's even a study," he declared in his State of the State address, "that showed that after college students listened to a Mozart piano sonata for ten minutes, their IQ scores increased by nine points." And he added: "Some argue that it didn't last, but no one doubts that listening to music, especially at a very early age, affects the spatial-temporal reasoning that underlies math, engineering, and chess."

The so-called "Mozart effect" is one of the most publicized recent examples of our ongoing preoccupation with intelligence, a subject that not only refuses to go away but continues to raise whirlwinds of controversy. The largest such controversy, of course, surrounds The Bell Curve (1994), by the late Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray. A mountain of essays and books purporting to refute that work and its conclusions grows and grows to this day. But now we also have the magnum opus of Arthur Jensen,1 a leading figure in IQ research and, like Herrnstein and Murray, a favorite target of academic liberals, as well as a posthumous volume by another leading IQ researcher, Hans Eysenck.2 So it is a good moment to look again at what we know, what we do not know, and what we think we know about this vexed subject.

Complete text at www.wjh.harvard.edu/~cfc/Chabris1998a.html

----------------------------------------------------

From www.rlynn.co.uk/

Richard Lynn
Professor Emeritus,
University of Ulster
Research Interests:
Intelligence
Sex Differences
Race Differences
Eugenics

Address:
North Wing, Siston Court,
Bristol BS16 9LU, (UK)
Tel [phone].
E-mail [e-mail]

"I have also published several papers showing that intelligence is associated with brain size and reaction times."

"My major discovery is that the Oriental peoples of East Asia have higher average intelligence by about 5 IQs points than Europeans and peoples of European origin in the United States and elsewhere. I first published this finding in 1977 in a paper on the intelligence of the Japanese. In subsequent years the high Oriental IQ has been confirmed in numerous studies of Oriental peoples in Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, China, Singapore and the United States.

" In 1991 I extended my work on race differences in intelligence to other races. I concluded that the average IQ of blacks in sub-Saharan Africa is approximately 70. It has long been known that the average IQ of blacks in the United States is approximately 85. The explanation for the higher IQ of American blacks is that they have about 25 per cent of Caucasian genes and a better environment.

" The theory I have advanced to explain these race differences in IQ is that when early humans migrated from Africa into Eurasia they encountered the difficulty of survival during cold winters. This problem was especially severe during the ice ages. Plant foods were not available for much of the year and survival required the hunting and dismembering of large animals for food and the ability to make tools, weapons and clothing, to build shelters and make fires. These problems required higher intelligence and exerted selection pressure for enhanced intelligence, particularly on the Orientals.

Read more at www.rlynn.co.uk/

----------------------------------------------------------

From www.douance.org/qi/brandtgf.htm

"In the Spring of 1996, a new book about intelligence and education, THE g FACTOR, created shock waves in Britain by tracing educational failure largely to genetic deficiency in mental speed. The book, by an Edinburgh University academic, appeared after years in which educationalists and the media had played down to vanishing point the importance of inheritance in yielding individual and group differences in attainment. Britain's politically correct academics were aghast to find fast track learning and streaming urged by a psychologist (as it had been by British Labour leader Tony Blair in a major speech in February, 1996). Under pressure from self-styled 'anti-racists', the New York-based academic publishing house, Wiley, unilaterally broke its contract with author Chris Brand by de-publishing the book for 'racism.'

"After years of hysterical attacks on hereditarian theorists like Cyril Burt, Hans Eysenck and Arthur Jensen, it is time to show that London School ideas continue to stand and will not be defeated by intimidation, suppression or sacking. Commended by professors of psychology at Cambridge (England) and Austin (Texas), and in a New Scientist editorial, THE g FACTOR is now re-launched in a revised edition (correcting minor errors*) via this page in electronic format. It is at once a textbook about IQ and a think-piece about what should be done to reverse dumbing-down in education and to help children at all intellectual levels. It rejects the tired educational philosophies of both conservatives and leftists and backs a new liberalism that would give children more choice. It is free of charge and may be copied -- though not altered, please.

"Chris Brand ([e-mail]) invites applications from mainstream publishers willing to re-publish his book in paper format, to advertise it and to place it in bookshops. He thanks the Woodhill Foundation, USA, for helping make it possible to gift THE g FACTOR to the Internet community.

"* The book's political incorrectness, however, remains entirely intact -- so as to show for how little the forces of PeeCee (headed by Wiley, Edinburgh University and the Anti-Nazi League) were prepared to censor an academic work.

You can download the book for free at www.douance.org/qi/brandtgf.htm And here is Professor Brand's personal website with lots of intelligence/race data: www.crispian.demon.co.uk/index.htm

Raj Ganatra

[Ganatra]

From www.mugu.com/cgi-bin/Upstream/Issues/psychology/IQ/bouchard-twins.html

"Since 1979, a continuing study of monozygotic and dizygotic twins, separated in infancy and reared apart, has subjected more than 100 sets of reared-apart twins or triplets to a week of intensive psychological and physiological assessment. Like the prior, smaller studies of monozygotic twins reared apart, about 70% of the variance in IQ was found to be associated with genetic variation. On multiple measures of personality and temperament, occupational and leisure-time interests, and social attitudes, monozygotic twins reared apart are about as similar as are monozygotic twins reared together. These findings extend and support those from numerous other twin, family, and adoption studies. It is a plausible hypothesis that genetic differences affect psychological differences largely indirectly, by influencing the effective environment of the developing child. This evidence for the strong heritability of most psychological traits, sensibly construed, does not detract from the value or importance of parenting, education, and other propaedeutic interventions." Visit link for more data.

And from www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/twins/twins2.htm

"These statistics have shown that on average, identical twins tend to be around 80 percent the same in everything from stature to health to IQ to political views. The similarities are partly the product of similar upbringing. But evidence from the comparison of twins raised apart points rather convincingly to genes as the source of a lot of that likeness." Read more data by visiting the link.

-------------------------------------------------------

Jon Entine on Innate black athletic ability: www.jonentine.com/

Archive of Professor Jensen's research on racial differences in intelligence: psycprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00000022/

From www.vdare.com/sailer/may_24.htm

This is Cavalli-Sforza's description of the map that is the capstone of his half century of labor in human genetics:

"The color map of the world shows very distinctly the differences that we know exist among the continents: Africans (yellow), Caucasoids (green), Mongoloids … (purple), and Australian Aborigines (red). The map does not show well the strong Caucasoid component in northern Africa, but it does show the unity of the other Caucasoids from Europe, and in West, South, and much of Central Asia."

Basically, all his number-crunching has produced a map that looks about like what you'd get if you gave an unreconstructed Strom Thurmond a paper napkin and a box of crayons and had him draw a racial map of the world.

-------------------------------------------------------

If we want to test the hypothesis that ethnic groups have the same levels of intelligence, we can consider several sources of evidence:

1. Standardized tests
2. History
3. Social indicators
4. Brain size

Well, East Asians and Ashkenazi Jews score very well on IQ and achievement tests, whites somewhere in the middle, then blacks and Latinos. This is inconsistent with the hypothesis that ethnic groups have the same levels of innate intelligence.

History shows the progress of civilization and science occurring throughout Eurasia, with Africa lagging. This is also inconsistent with the hypothesis that ethnic groups have the same levels of innate intelligence.

Social indicators show a strong trend for East Asian societies to have high levels of wealth and low levels of crime, with African societies having low levels of development and a variety of backward beliefs and cultural norms. This, too, is inconsistent with the hypothesis that ethnic groups have the same levels of innate intelligence.

And of course brain size studies find that (even when controlling for body size) blacks have smaller brains than East Asians. This, too, is inconsistent with the hypothesis that ethnic groups have the same levels of innate intelligence.

While a variety of explanations for these phenomena exist, only one can account for all of them. Poor socioeconomic environment (the "standard" theory) and Discrimination (Ogbu's theory) can apply to 1 & 3; Guns, Germs, and Steel (Diamond's argument) can apply to 2; but I am not aware of any theory which can adequately explain all four points other than the default hypothesis (Jensen's theory) which says that different racial groups differ from one to another for much the same reason that individuals differ from one to another - because of a combination of genetic and environmental factors and the way in which they interact. Occam's razor favors the simple explanation over a collection of entertaining ad-hocs.

Raj Ganatra

[Ganatra]

Professor Rushton is an active participant at groups.yahoo.com/group/evolutionary-psychology/ Here are some of his comments he posted there:

Here's what I just sent to amazon.com

Sweeping Away Culture-Only Orthodoxy --- Almost

This is a great book - well almost. In 24 punchy chapters, Pinker
counter-blasts the culture-only theories of human nature that have
dominated the social sciences over the last 70 years. Franz Boas and his
students are often praised (or blamed) for having successfully decoupled
the social and the biological sciences and thereby Burked the Darwinian
Revolution of the 1860s. Pinker's book is the latest in a series that
joins together what Boas did asunder. In the catacombs and labyrinths of
academia, in the research labs and debating halls, in specialist after
specialist journal, evidence from behavioral genetics, evolutionary
psychology, and cognitive neuroscience has been ushering in a
counter-revolution in the behavioral sciences. Much of what Pinker ably
pulls together is a far-ranging review of this research on children and
family life, love and attraction, personality and temperament, religion,
politics, and the arts. Time after time he shows how scientifically
necessary it has now become to examine genetic as well as cultural
influences.

Pinker rarely meets a phenotype for which he can't find some genetic
variance. But alas, Pinker then blinks and stumbles when it comes to
race, "gender" (i.e., sex), brain size, and IQ. Early in the book, he
explains in detail about how it was the political ramifications of the
controversy over issues of race that undermined the Darwinian
perspective in the 1920s and established what he terms the Blank Slate
Orthodoxy whose stranglehold on the behavioral sciences he now hopes to
break. Perhaps this is why when it comes to the topic of the
"Black-White IQ gap in the United States," Pinker safely opines that,
"the current evidence does not call for a genetic explanation" (p. 144)
and omits telling us what this evidence is or what, if anything, is
wrong with it. For Pinker, apparently, traits may run in families for
genetic reasons, but not in families of families. Race is the glaring
exception to his otherwise general rule that phenotypes require genetic
as well as cultural explanation.

Since Pinker is a cognitive psychologist, it is even more surprising
that he doesn't give his readers a clue as to the latest research on
brain size and IQ. Since Pinker provides only a modified, limited hang
out, I shall, briefly, let it all hang out. Those seeking detailed
information, complete with citations to the original scientific
research, should refer to either the Abridged Edition or the Unabridged
Edition of my RACE, EVOLUTION, AND BEHAVIOR (Charles Darwin Research
Institute, purchasable via amazon.com). High-tech, state-of-the-art MRI
imaging studies reveal a 0.40 correlation between brain size and
intelligence test scores. Other brain size studies show an average
Black-White and male-female difference amounting to about 100 grams (the
size of a quarter-pounder), favoring Whites over Blacks, and men over
women. When Pinker does dare whisper of such forbidden truths, he
quickly shouts out enough technical details about small brain parts (men
also have larger "interstitial nuclei in the anterior hypothalamus, and
a nucleus of the stria terminalis, also in the hypothalamus" (p. 347),
whereas women have larger "cerebral commissures") that the central theme
is drowned out by a cacophony of qualifications, caveats, and minutiae.
He is silent about the average 15 IQ point difference between African
Americans and Europeans, or the 30 IQ points between unmixed Africans in
Africa, and Europeans, although these have been repeatedly corroborated
by over 100 years of research on millions of people. He also skirts the
evidence of the large male greater than female differences in spatial
and mathematical ability, which may explain the comparable sex
differences in brain size (even after adjusting for body size).


One novel, braver message is Pinker's marrying of evolutionary
psychology and behavioral genetics. For the most part these disciplines
tactfully avoided each other. Many evolutionary psychologists worry
about being perceived as fellow travelers of behavioral genetics, some
of whose disciples have, on occasion, carried out research on IQ, crime,
and race. Some behavioral geneticists, in turn, dismissed the
evolutionary psychology "science of just-so stories." Here, Pinker
performs his greatest service to the behavioral sciences, advocating
consilience over fragmentation. This book sweeps Blank Slate orthodoxy
toward the dustbin of history. One only wishes Pinker had used a wider
and stiffer broom.

--------------------------------------------------

The following was posted at groups.yahoo.com/group/evolutionary-psychology/ by Professor J. Philippe Rushton.

C. Loring Brace has replied that the East Asian>White>African
American>African differences in mean IQ scores found worldwide in
hundreds of studies are all due somehow or other to "bigotry" and he
recommends Prof. Leiberman's critique of my work on brain size that
appeared in the 2001 issue of Current Anthropology. Here is the url for
that article. My reply to it is on pages 85-86 of the same article
(along with other commentaries).
www.ssc.uwo.ca/psychology/faculty/rushton_pubs.htm

As for the African IQ of 70 depending on giving instructions by signs,
what nonsense! Studies of every age and region confirm the study using
all kinds of different tests. In their book, IQ AND THE WEALTH OF
NATIONS, Lynn and Vanhanen (2002) reviewed over two-dozen studies from
West, Central, East, and Southern Africa and found they yield an average
IQ of around 70. For example, in Nigeria, Fahrmeier (1975) collected
data on 375 6- to 13-year-olds in a study of the effects of schooling on
cognitive development. The children's mean score on the Colored
Progressive Matrices was 12 out of 36, giving them an IQ equivalent of
less than 70. In Ghana, Glewwe and Jacoby (1992) reported on a World
Bank study that tested a representative sample of 1,736 11- to
20-year-olds from the entire country. All had completed primary school;
half were attending "middle-school." Their mean score on the Colored
Progressive Matrices was 19 out of 36, which gives an IQ equivalent of
less than 70. In Zimbabwe, Zindi (1994) gave the Wechsler Intelligence
Scale for Children-Revised (WISC-R) and the Standard Progressive
Matrices to 204 African 12- to 14-year-olds, and reported mean IQ scores
of 67 on the WISC-R and 72 on the Matrices. In South Africa, Owen (1992)
found that 1,093 African high school students solved 28 out of 60
problems on the Standard Progressive Matrices, which is around the tenth
percentile, or an IQ equivalent of about 80.


Studies published since Lynn and Vanhanen's (2002) review continue to
find low scores. In Kenya, Sternberg et al. (2001) administered the
Colored Progressive Matrices to 85 12- to 15-year-olds who scored 23.5
out of 36, an IQ equivalent of about 70. Again in South Africa, Skuy,
Schutte, Fridjhon and O'Carroll (2001) found mean scores one to two
standard deviations below U.S. norms on a wide variety of tests
individually administered to 154 African high school students under
optimized conditions. These tests included the Wechsler Intelligence
Scale for Children-Revised (WISC-R), the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning
Test, the Stroop Color Word Test, the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, the
Bender Gestalt Visual Motor Integration Test, the Rey Osterreith Complex
Figure Test, the Trail Making Test, the Spatial Memory Task, and various
Drawing Tasks. On the WISC-R, the African students averaged -1.81
standard deviations below American norms (-1.58 SDs with the vocabulary
sub-test excluded).


University students in South Africa also show low mean test scores.
Sixty-three undergraduates at the all-Black Universities of Fort Hare,
Zululand, the North, and the Medical University of South Africa were
given the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised (WAIS-R) and found
to have a full scale IQ of 77, 1.5 SDs below U.S. norms (Avenant, 1988;
cited by Nell, 2000, pp. 26-28). A study at the University of Venda in
South Africa's Northern Province by Grieve and Viljoen (2000) found 30
students in 4th-year law and commerce averaged a score of 37 out of 60
on the Standard Progressive Matrices, equivalent to an IQ equivalent of
78 on U.S. norms. A study at South Africa's University of the North by
Zaaiman, van der Flier, and Thijs (2001) found the highest scoring
African sample to that date -- 147 first-year mathematics and science
students who scored 52 out of 60 on the Standard Progressive Matrices,
equivalent to an IQ of 100. Their relatively high mean score may have
been because they were mathematics and science students, and also
because they had been specially selected for admission to the university
from a pool of 700 on the basis of a mathematics and science selection
test.


At the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, Rushton, Skuy,
and colleagues gave Raven's Standard Progressive Matrices in three
separate studies under optimal testing conditions. Rushton and Skuy
(2000) found 173 first-year psychology students averaged an IQ
equivalent of 84. Skuy, Gewer, Osrin, Khunou, Fridjhon, and Rushton
(2002) tested another 70 psychology students who averaged an IQ
equivalent of 83. After receiving training on how to solve Matrices-type
items, their mean scores rose to an IQ equivalent of 96. Rushton, Skuy
and Fridjhon (in press) gave 198 African first-year engineering students
the Standard Raven's and found they averaged an IQ of 97. (In contrast,
the White university students in these three studies had IQs from 105 to
111; East Indian students had intermediate IQs, from 102 to 106.) See for example: www.ssc.uwo.ca/psychology/faculty/rushton_pubs.htm

Sincerely,
J. P. Rushton

[Ganatra]

Posted on Tue, Dec. 16, 2003

Washington has highest incidence of new AIDS cases in U.S.
By David Goldstein
Knight Ridder Newspapers


WASHINGTON - It's not a distinction that the nation's capital cares to trumpet, but Washington has the highest incidence of new AIDS cases of any big city in the country.


It's gotten so bad, the city is planning to install free condom dispensers in the government buildings the public frequents most often, such as the motor vehicle bureau and public housing offices. Bars and hair salons also will participate.

Complete article is at www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/7506049.htm

----------------------------------------------------

Why Race Matters in Sports
April 25, 2001

By JON ENTINE


Jason Williams, the cat-like guard of the Sacramento Kings, is affectionately called "The Thrilla in Vanilla" by his teammates. As in: Wow, maybe some white guys can jump and run.


But let's be real: the best whites and Asians cannot jump as high as elite African American athletes. Blacks have redefined modern sports, making up 87% of the NBA and 75% of the NFL. And while only one in eight people in the world are of African ancestry, blacks hold every major running record.

Complete text at www.jonentine.com/reviews/AOL_Why_Race_Matters.htm


Here are some 40 more articles on the same topic: www.jonentine.com/sports_race.htm

By the way, here is some info. about the Jon Entine from www.jonentine.com/bio.htm

"Jon Entine is a maverick author, columnist, and Emmy-winning network television news producer who has earned an international reputation for integrity and independent thinking. He is scholar-in-residence, teaching communications and journalism, at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio. He also writes for newspapers and magazines around the world and lectures on a range of subjects including business ethics, media bias, and science and politics.

"Jon is currently working on a book on "Jewish Genes" for Gotham Books/Penguin, which examines the nexus of social and genetic identity. He was recently given a grant and named an adjunct fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C. to support his genetic research and its policy implications. Jon's book focuses on the effort to identify medical cures for diseases that disproportionately effect specific populations, and the social and political tempest that this research into population genetics is stirring. This book follows on the heels of Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We are Afraid to Talk About It [PublicAffairs], which addressed the important subjects of "human biodiversity" and "race and sports."

[SwordandCompass]

Yawn.

[SwordandCompass]

IQ Will Put You In Your Place

By Charles Murray
Imagine several hundred families which face few of the usual problems that plague modern society. Unemployment is zero. Illegitimacy is zero. Divorce is rare and occurs only after the children's most formative years. Poverty is absent - indeed, none of the families is anywhere near the poverty level. Many are affluent and all have enough income to live in decent neighbourhoods with good schools and a low crime rate. If you have the good fortune to come from such a background, you will expect a bright future for your children. You will certainly have provided them with all the advantages society has to offer. But suppose we follow the children of these families into adulthood. How will they actually fare?
A few years ago the late Richard Herrnstein and I published a controversial book about IQ, The Bell Curve, in which we said that much would depend on IQ. On average, the bright children from such families will do well in life - and the dull children will do poorly. Unemployment, poverty and illegitimacy will be almost as great among the children from even these fortunate families as they are in society at large - not quite as great, because a positive family background does have some good effect, but almost, because IQ is such an important factor.
"Nonsense!" said the critics. "Have the good luck to be born to the privileged and the doors of life will open to you - including doors that will let you get a good score in an IQ test. Have the bad luck to be born to a single mother struggling on the dole and you will be held down in many ways - including your IQ test score." The Bell Curve's purported relationships between IQ and success are spurious, they insisted: nurture trumps nature; environment matters more than upbringing.
An arcane debate about statistical methods ensued. Then several American academics began using a powerful, simple way of testing who was right: instead of comparing individual children from different households, they compared sibling pairs with different IQs. How would brothers and sisters who were nurtured by the same parents, grew up in the same household and lived in the same neighbourhood, but had markedly different IQs, get on in life?
The research bears out what parents of children with unequal abilities already know - that try as they might to make Johnny as bright as Sarah, it is difficult, and even impossible, to close the gap between them.
A very large database in the United States contains information about several thousand sibling pairs who have been followed since 1979. To make the analysis as unambiguous as possible, I have limited my sample to brothers and sisters whose parents are in the top 75 per cent of American earners, with a family income in 1978 averaging £40,000 (in today's money).
Families living in poverty, or even close to it, have been excluded. The parents in my sample also stayed together for at least the first seven years of the younger sibling's life.
Each pair consists of one sibling with an IQ in the normal range of 90-110 ,a range that includes 50% of the population. I will call this group the normals. The second sibling in each pair had an IQ either higher than 110, putting him in the top quartile of intelligence (the bright) or lower than 90, putting him in the bottom quartile (the dull). These constraints produced a sample of 710 pairs.
How much difference did IQ make? Earned income is a good place to begin. In 1993, when we took our most recent look at them, members of the sample were aged 28-36. That year, the bright siblings earned almost double the average of the dull: £22,400 compared to £11,800. The normals were in the middle, averaging £16,800.
These differences are sizeable in themselves. They translate into even more drastic differences at the extremes. Suppose we take a salary of £50,000 or more as a sign that someone is an economic success. A bright sibling was six-and-a-half times more likely to have reached that level than one of the dull. Or we may turn to the other extreme, poverty: the dull sibling was five times more likely to fall below the American poverty line than one of the bright. Equality of opportunity did not result in anything like equality of outcome. Another poverty statistic should also give egalitarians food for thought: despite being blessed by an abundance of opportunity, 16.3% of the dull siblings were below the poverty line in 1993. This was slightly higher than America's national poverty rate of 15.1%.
Opportunity, clearly, isn't everything. In modern America, and also, I suspect, in modern Britain, it is better to be born smart and poor than rich and stupid. Another way of making this point is to look at education. It is often taken for granted that parents with money can make sure their children get a college education. The young people in our selected sample came from families that were overwhelmingly likely to support college enthusiastically and have the financial means to help. Yet while 56% of the bright obtained university degrees, this was achieved by only 21% of the normals and a minuscule 2% of the dulls. Parents will have been uniformly supportive, but children are not uniformly able.
The higher prevalence of college degrees partly explains why the bright siblings made so much more money, but education is only part of the story. Even when the analysis is restricted to siblings who left school without going to college, the brights ended up in the more lucrative occupations that do not require a degree, becoming technicians, skilled craftsmen, or starting their own small businesses. The dull siblings were concentrated in menial jobs.
The differences among the siblings go far beyond income. Marriage and children offer the most vivid example. Similar proportions of siblings married, whether normal, bright or dull - but the divorce rate was markedly higher among the dull than among the normal or bright, even after taking length of marriage into account. Demographers will find it gloomily interesting that the average age at which women had their first birth was almost four years younger for the dull siblings than for the bright ones, while the number of children born to dull women averaged 1.9, half a child more than for either the normal or the bright. Most striking of all were the different illegitimacy rates. Of all the first-born children of the normals, 21% were born out of wedlock , about a third lower than the figure for the United States as a whole, presumably reflecting the advantaged backgrounds from which the sibling sample was drawn. Their bright siblings were much lower still, with less than 10% of their babies born illegitimate. Meanwhile, 45% of the first-born of the dull siblings were born outside of marriage.
The inequalities among siblings that I have described are from 1993 and are going to become much wider in the years ahead. The income trajectory for low-skill occupations usually peaks in a worker's twenties or thirties. The income trajectory for managers and professionals usually peaks in their fifties. The snapshot I have given you was taken for an age group of 28-36 when many of the brights are still near the bottom of a steep rise into wealth and almost all the dulls' incomes are stagnant or even falling. . . .
The inequalities I have presented are the kind you are used to seeing in articles that compare inner-city children with suburban ones, black with white, children of single parents with those from intact families. Yet they refer to the children of a population more advantaged in jobs, income and marital stability than even the most starry-eyed social reformer can hope to achieve.
You may be wondering whether the race, age or education of siblings affects my figures. More extended analyses exist, but the short answer is that the phenomena I have described survive such questions. Siblings who differ in IQ also differ widely in important social outcomes, no matter how anyone tries to explain away the results. Ambitious parents may be dismayed by this conclusion, but it is none the less true for all that.
A final thought: I have outlined the inequalities that result from siblings with different IQs. Add in a few other personal qualities: industry, persistence, charm, and the differences among people will inevitably produce a society of high inequalities, no matter how level the playing field has been made. Indeed, the more level the playing field, and the less that accidents of birth enter into it, the more influence personal qualities will have. I make this point as an antidote to glib thinking on both sides of the Atlantic and from both sides of the political spectrum. Inequality is too often seen as something that results from defects in society that can be fixed by a more robust economy, more active social programmes, or better schools. It is just not so.
The effects of inequality cannot be significantly reduced, let alone quelled, unless the government embarks on a compulsory redistribution of wealth that raises taxes astronomically and strictly controls personal enterprise. Some will call this social justice. Others will call it tyranny. I side with the latter, but whichever position one takes, it is time to stop pretending that, without such massive compulsion, human beings in a fair and prosperous society will ever be much more equal than they are now.
From the Sunday Times, UK, May 25 1997.
A longer version of this article appears in the summer issue of The Public Interest. Dr. Murray is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (1150 17th Street NW, Washington, DC, 20036)

[Batesy]

Based on IQ tests, Ashkenazi Jews are the second smartest peoples in the world (With IQ's of 117), yet Sephardic Jews are only average at 100. Now, why would Ashkenazi Jews share more in common (IQ-Wise) with plain Whites and Asians while their closer genetically related Sephardim cousins are significantly lower on the scale?

In conclusion, I'd say it's all a cultural thing.

[Melnorme]

Actually, the average IQ of both groups is probably lower than what you said. I've read that Ashkenazim in Israel have an average IQ of 100 and non-Ashkenazim have an 88. The AJ in the Anglosphere are smarter ; I've seen figures ranging from 107 to 115.

[Graeme]

IQ has more to do with culture and socioeconomic factors. That is what was found by studying identical twins raised totally apart and not in related families. Everyone knows that people from well off backgrounds are smarter, it is the way it goes. Poor folks are dumber. That of course does not mean that given the right culture and so on that they couldn't improve. East Asians are not smarter or more intelligent, their culture esteems educational achievements and study. The average Asian is just as stupid as any individual of any race. Average IQ is about 108.

Ganatra, please use links and give precis of the article.

[nordicyouth]

Europeans seemed to behave in a 'conquering' manner.... ;D

[kiengi]

I read some of the long posts. "Race, Evolution" -- the part I have no problems with but "Behavior"-- the part, I don't agree.

Isn't most of the mixed racial society try to educate people to not to stereo type a person based on the perceived race.

I know that even the people of majority ( whites ) suffer from stereo typing, let alone, most of the minority suffer from such pre-judgements.

Due to the modern day technology advancement, people live anywhere they wish, almost. The racial type and the geography has very little relations.

The size of brain and estimated neurons a person might have has absolutly no relation to the intelligence of a person. On the contrary, it has been proven that the humans use very small fraction of the brain most of their life. Most of the human has brain way too large for what they need to survive and live and work. ( My dog probably has 1/4 of the brain size of human but, often times i feel my dog is smarter than some people i met )

As far as i am concerned, Individual as a person has far more superiority than the preconcieved notion of what are advantageous of being of what perceive race one might be. In other words, for most people, trying harder benefits them the most then relying on what gift they might have gotten from their parents on gene wise. However, not to say, for somethings that exclusively matter on external apearances or physical skills at the highest level, the best thing one can have is the gift just mentioned.

[Sandwich]

I find it extremely difficult to arrive at a conclusion on these issues: every theory seems to leave itself exposed to being debunked by the next one.

It is not really surprising that everybody in the west is getting smarter than their grandfather, if the "Listen to Mozart" schema is true. We all live in such an increasingly information-rich world, processing visually packaged data at a speed that would have baffled our forebears. This is training for processing information in a particular way, dished out to all and sundry from infancy. It probably encourages certain neural nets to develop, possibly at the expense of the kind that were encouraged in the 19th century, or in a hunter-gatherer.

Anyway, here's one theory / set of data on IQ heritability. It's from here: homepage.eircom.net/~odyssey/Quotes/Life/Science/Matt_Ridley.html

General IQ remains surprisingly constant at different ages : between 6 and 18, your intelligence increases rapidly, of course, but your IQ relative to your peers changes very little. Indeed, the speed with which an infant habituates to a new stimulus correlates quite strongly with later IQ.

Percentage correlation of IQ tests :

Same person twice 87
Identical twins rearer together 86
Identical twins rearer apart 76
Fraternal twins reared together 55
Biological siblings 47
Parents and children living together 40
Parents and children living apart 31
Adopted children living together 0
Unrelated children living apart 0

The influence upon our intelligence of events that happened in the womb is three times as great as anything our parents did to us after birth.

Heritability will be greater in an egalitarian society than an unequal one. Indeed, the definition of the perfect meritocracy, ironically, is a society in which people's achievements depend on their genes because their environments are equal.

You inherit not your IQ but your ability to develop a high IQ under certain environmental circumstances. How does one parcel that one into nature and nurture? It is frankly impossible.

Human beings evolved their complex behaviour by adding instincts to those of their ancestors, not by replacing instincts with learning.

[Agrippa]

Melnorme said:

Actually, the average IQ of both groups is probably lower than what you said. I've read that Ashkenazim in Israel have an average IQ of 100 and non-Ashkenazim have an 88. The AJ in the Anglosphere are smarter ; I've seen figures ranging from 107 to 115.

I have the impression they different physically as well.