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Does Race Exist? By Michael J. Bamshad and Steve E. Olson (Scientific American, December 2003)
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IQ and race
The three great strategies for obscuring an issue are to introduce irrelevancies, to arouse prejudice, and to excite ridicule.... ---Bergen Evans, The Natural History of Nonsense
"IQ" stands for "intelligence quotient." A person's IQ is supposed to be a measure of that person's intelligence: the higher the IQ number, the greater the intelligence. This is inaccurate, however, since it assumes that there is only one kind of intelligence. Most people recognize that there are some people with fantastic memories, some with mathematical minds, some with musical genius, some with mechanical expertise, some with good vocabularies, some good at seeing analogies, some good at synthesizing, some at unifying, etc. Some people excel at more than one of these behaviors. It would be more accurate to speak of human intelligences than of intelligence. An IQ test, therefore, should be considered a measure of some kinds of intelligence, but not all. The most accurate claim one can make about an IQ test is that it measures IQ.
The research on IQ and race by Arthur Jensen, William Shockley, Herrnstein and Murray (The Bell Curve) and others have not found any significant correlations between race and intelligence. They have found correlations between race and IQ, which has been used to support the notion that some races are inferior to others.
The term 'race', however, is even more problematic than the term 'intelligence.' While all humans are members of the human race, few deny that there are many races or that there are obvious physical and cultural differences among different ethnic groups. But it has become a widespread belief that race is genetically determined in much the same way as, say, eye color. Having a certain gene or set of genes means you have blue eyes. Likewise, it is thought, having a gene or set of genes makes one Caucasian. However, there is no such thing as a racial gene or set of race genes any more than there is such a thing as an intelligence gene or set of intelligence genes. This does not mean, of course, that a person's genetic makeup is not a significant factor in individual intelligence in particular areas or in physical features associated with different races, such as skin color, breadth of nose, shape of eyes, etc. It should be obvious, however, by the tremendous variation in intelligences among individuals of any race, that environment is a much more significant determinant of racial features than it is of intelligence. This seems to imply that whatever genetic differences exist among the races are most likely due to natural selection and sexual selection. It also seems to imply that the notion of a "pure" race is an absurdity. Even if the fundamentalists are right and there was an original Adam and Eve, no race can claim to be "pure." Each race evolved according to natural processes such as natural selection.
some race data
"There's about a 15 percent genetic variation between any two individuals," according to science writer Deborah Blum. "Less than half of that, about 6 percent, is accounted for by known racial groupings....A randomly selected white person, therefore, can easily be genetically closer to an African than another white" (Blum).
Joseph Graves, an African-American evolutionary biologist at Arizona State University-West in Tempe, notes that most people and researchers who try to establish correlations between various natural abilities and skin color are not geneticists.
Click to order from Amazon
For information on ordering from B&N or from other countries, click here
Does Race Exist? By Michael J. Bamshad and Steve E. Olson (Scientific American, December 2003)
<br>
IQ and race
The three great strategies for obscuring an issue are to introduce irrelevancies, to arouse prejudice, and to excite ridicule.... ---Bergen Evans, The Natural History of Nonsense
"IQ" stands for "intelligence quotient." A person's IQ is supposed to be a measure of that person's intelligence: the higher the IQ number, the greater the intelligence. This is inaccurate, however, since it assumes that there is only one kind of intelligence. Most people recognize that there are some people with fantastic memories, some with mathematical minds, some with musical genius, some with mechanical expertise, some with good vocabularies, some good at seeing analogies, some good at synthesizing, some at unifying, etc. Some people excel at more than one of these behaviors. It would be more accurate to speak of human intelligences than of intelligence. An IQ test, therefore, should be considered a measure of some kinds of intelligence, but not all. The most accurate claim one can make about an IQ test is that it measures IQ.
The research on IQ and race by Arthur Jensen, William Shockley, Herrnstein and Murray (The Bell Curve) and others have not found any significant correlations between race and intelligence. They have found correlations between race and IQ, which has been used to support the notion that some races are inferior to others.
The term 'race', however, is even more problematic than the term 'intelligence.' While all humans are members of the human race, few deny that there are many races or that there are obvious physical and cultural differences among different ethnic groups. But it has become a widespread belief that race is genetically determined in much the same way as, say, eye color. Having a certain gene or set of genes means you have blue eyes. Likewise, it is thought, having a gene or set of genes makes one Caucasian. However, there is no such thing as a racial gene or set of race genes any more than there is such a thing as an intelligence gene or set of intelligence genes. This does not mean, of course, that a person's genetic makeup is not a significant factor in individual intelligence in particular areas or in physical features associated with different races, such as skin color, breadth of nose, shape of eyes, etc. It should be obvious, however, by the tremendous variation in intelligences among individuals of any race, that environment is a much more significant determinant of racial features than it is of intelligence. This seems to imply that whatever genetic differences exist among the races are most likely due to natural selection and sexual selection. It also seems to imply that the notion of a "pure" race is an absurdity. Even if the fundamentalists are right and there was an original Adam and Eve, no race can claim to be "pure." Each race evolved according to natural processes such as natural selection.
some race data
"There's about a 15 percent genetic variation between any two individuals," according to science writer Deborah Blum. "Less than half of that, about 6 percent, is accounted for by known racial groupings....A randomly selected white person, therefore, can easily be genetically closer to an African than another white" (Blum).
Joseph Graves, an African-American evolutionary biologist at Arizona State University-West in Tempe, notes that most people and researchers who try to establish correlations between various natural abilities and skin color are not geneticists.