125 lines
8.4 KiB
Plaintext
125 lines
8.4 KiB
Plaintext
Racism and group differences
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<p>At the end of my essay <a href="http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=129">What good<br />
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is IQ?</a>, I suggested that taking IQ seriously might (among other<br />
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things) be an important step towards banishing racism. The behavioral<br />
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differences between two people who are far apart on the IQ scale are<br />
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far more significant than any we can associate with racial origin.<br />
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Stupidity isn’t a handicap only when solving logic problems; people<br />
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with low IQs tend to have poor impulse control because they’re not<br />
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good at thinking about the long-term consequences of their actions.</p>
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<p>Somebody left a comment that, if what I was reporting about group<br />
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differences in average IQ is correct, the resulting behavior would be<br />
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indistinguishable from racism. In particular, American blacks (with<br />
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an average IQ of 85) would find themselves getting the shitty end of<br />
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the stick again, this time with allegedly scientific justification.</p>
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<p>This is an ethically troubling point. It’s the main reason most<br />
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people who know the relevant statistical facts about IQ distribution<br />
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are either in elaborate denial or refusing to talk about what they know.<br />
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But is this concern really merited, or is it a form of tendermindedness<br />
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that does more harm than good?</p>
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<p>Let’s start with a strict and careful definition: <em>A racist is a<br />
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person who makes unjustified assumptions about the behavior or<br />
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character of individuals based on beliefs about group racial<br />
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differences.</em></p>
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<p>I think racism, in this sense, is an unequivocally bad thing. I<br />
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think most decent human beings would agree with me. But if we’re<br />
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going to define racism as a bad thing, then it has to be a behavior<br />
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based on <em>unjustified</em> assumptions, because otherwise there<br />
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could be times when the fear of an accusation of racism could prevent<br />
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people from seeking or speaking the truth.</p>
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<p>There are looser definitions abroad. Some people think it is<br />
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racist merely to believe there <em>are</em> significant differences<br />
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between racial groups. But that is an abuse of the term, because it<br />
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means that believing the objective truth, without any intent to use it<br />
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to prejudge individuals, can make you a racist.</p>
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<p>It is, for example, a fact that black athletes tend to perform<br />
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better in hot weather, white ones in cool weather, and oriental asians<br />
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in cold weather. There is nothing mysterious about this; it has to do<br />
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with surface-area-to-volume ratios in the population’s typical<br />
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build. Tall, long-limbed people shed heat more rapidly than stocky and<br />
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short-limbed people. That’s an advantage in Africa, less of one in the<br />
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Caucasian homelands of Europe and Central Asia, and a disadvantage in<br />
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the north Asian homeland of oriental asians.</p>
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<p>And that’s right, white men can’t jump; limb length matters there,<br />
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too. But whites can <em>swim</em> better than blacks, on average,<br />
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because their bones are less dense. I don’t have hard facts on<br />
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how asians fit that picture, but if you are making the same guess I am<br />
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(at the other extreme from blacks, that is better swimmers and worse<br />
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jumpers than white people) I would bet money we’re both correct. That<br />
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would be consistent with the pattern of many other observed racial<br />
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differences.</p>
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<p>Sportswriter and ethicist Jon Entine has investigated the<br />
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statistics of racial differences in sports extensively. Blacks,<br />
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especially blacks of West African ancestry, dominate track-and-field<br />
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athletics thanks apparently to their more efficient lung structure and<br />
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abundance of fast-twitch muscle fiber. Whites, with proportionally<br />
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shorter legs and more powerful upper bodies, still rule in wrestling<br />
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and weightlifting. The bell curves overlap, but the means — and<br />
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the best performances at the high end of the curve — differ.</p>
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<p>Even within these groups, there are racially-correlated<br />
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subdivisions. Within the runners, your top sprinters are likelier to<br />
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be black than your top long-distance runners. Blacks have more of an<br />
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advantage in burst exertion than they do in endurance. I don’t have<br />
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hard recent data on this as I do for the other factual claims I’m<br />
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making here, but it is my impression that whites cling to a thin lead<br />
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in sports that are long-haul endurance trials — marathons,<br />
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bicycle racing, triathlons, and the like.</p>
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<p>It is not ‘racism’ to notice these things. Or, to put<br />
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it more precisely, if we define ‘racism’ to include<br />
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noticing these things, we broaden the word until we cannot justifiably<br />
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condemn ‘racism’ any more, because too much<br />
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‘racism’ is simply recognition of empirically verifiable<br />
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truths. It’s all there in the numbers.</p>
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<p>Knowing about these racial-average differences in athletic<br />
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performance would not justify anyone in keeping a tall, long-limbed<br />
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white individual off the track team, or a stocky black person with<br />
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excellent upper-body strength off the wrestling team. But they do<br />
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make nonsense of the notion that every team should have a racial<br />
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composition mirroring the general population. If you care about<br />
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performance, your track team is going to be mostly black and your<br />
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wrestling team mostly white.</p>
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<p>In fact, trying to achieve ‘equal‘ distribution is a<br />
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recipe for making disgruntled underperforming white runners and<br />
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basketball players, and digruntled underperforming black wrestlers and<br />
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swimmers. It’s no service to either group, you get neither efficiency<br />
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nor happiness out of that attempt.</p>
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<p>Most people can follow the argument this far, but are frightened of<br />
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what happens when we apply the same kind of dispassionate analysis to<br />
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racial differences in various mental abilities. But the exact same<br />
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logic applies. Observing that blacks have an average IQ a standard<br />
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deviation below the average for whites is not in itself racist.<br />
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Jumping from that observation of group differences to denying an<br />
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individual black person a job because you think it means all black<br />
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people are stupid <em>would</em> be racist.</p>
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<p>Let’s pick neurosurgery as an example. Here is a profession where<br />
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IQ matters in an obvious and powerful way. If you’re screening people<br />
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for a job as a neurosurgeon, it would nevertheless be wrong to use the<br />
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standard-deviation difference in average IQ as a reason to exclude an<br />
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individual black candidate, or black candidates as a class. This<br />
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would <em>not be justified by the facts</em>; it would be stupid and<br />
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immoral. Excluding the black neurosurgeon-candidate who is<br />
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sufficiently bright would be a disservice to a society that needs all<br />
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the brains and talent it can get in jobs like that, regardless of skin<br />
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color.</p>
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<p>On the other hand, anyone who expects the racial composition of the<br />
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entire population of neurosurgeons to be ‘balanced’ in<br />
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terms of the population at large is living in a delusion. The most<br />
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efficient and fair outcome would be for that population to be balanced<br />
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in terms of the distribution of IQ — at each level of IQ the<br />
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racial mix mirrors the frequency of <em>that IQ<br />
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level</em> within different groups. Since that minimum IQ for<br />
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competency in neurosurgery is closer to the population means for<br />
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whites and asians than the mean for blacks, we can expect the<br />
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fair-outcome population of neurosurgeons to be predominantly white and<br />
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asian.</p>
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<p>If you try to social-engineer a different outcome, you’ll simply<br />
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create a cohort of black neurosurgeons who aren’t really bright enough<br />
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for their jobs. This, too, would be a disservice to society (not to<br />
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mention the individual patients they might harm, and the competent<br />
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black neurosurgeons that would be discredited by association). It’s<br />
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an error far more serious than trying to social-engineer too many<br />
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black wrestlers or swimmers into existence. And yet, in pursuit of a<br />
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so-called equality, we make this sort of error over and over again,<br />
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injuring all involved and creating resentments for racists to feed<br />
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on.</p>
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