4/26/2005 08:58:00 PM|||Dave|||Marginal Revolution reports on some politically incorrect research findings in this month's Journal of Law and Economics. Nobel Prize winner James Heckman and colleagues have an essay, “Labor Market Discrimination and Racial Differences in Premarket Factors”.
It has previously been established that most of the black-white wage differential can be explained by IQ scores, but the role of socio-economic factors/status (SES) in determining why one’s IQ is X is what is endlessly debated. Liberals want to believe that income disparities between groups is entirely the function of the environment, ie., SES.
The only problem is that virtually every major study that has looked at the roles of IQ, while statistically accounting for SES, determine that there is significant variable that can only be inferred as a genetic component.
As a science, genetics is every day discovering new correlations between health condition/ailment/characteristic X and some genetic factor. Still taboo, however, is the very possibility that cognitive ability might have a substantial correlation with genetic factors.
Heckman et al’s study controls for schooling and, as Marginal Revolution notes, “[t]he results are not encouraging. After throwing all kinds of factors into the analysis they are able to increase the unexplained wage gap somewhat but no matter how far back they go they still find big ability differences, even in children as young as 1-2 years of age.” Here is Heckman et al writing about another interesting finding from the study:
Minority deficits in cognitive and noncognitive skills emerge early and then widen. Unequal schooling, neighborhoods, and peers may account for this differential growth in skills, but the main story in the data is not about growth rates but rather about the size of early deficits. Hispanic children start with cognitive and noncognitive deficits similar to those of black children. They also grow up in similarly disadvantaged environments and are likely to attend schools of similar quality. Hispanics complete much less schooling than blacks. Nevertheless, the ability growth by years of schooling is much higher for Hispanics than for blacks. By the time they reach adulthood, Hispanics have significantly higher test scores than do blacks. Conditional on test scores, there is no evidence of an important Hispanic-white wage gap. Our analysis of the Hispanic data illuminates the traditional study of black-white differences and casts doubt on many conventional explanations of these differences since they do not apply to Hispanics, who also suffer from many of the same disadvantages. The failure of the Hispanic-white gap to widen with schooling or age casts doubt on the claim that poor schools and bad neighborhoods are the reasons for the slow growth rate of black test scores.
Though the authors apparently don’t admit as much, the entity of ‘g’ (genetic predisposition towards cognitive ability, general intelligence, or IQ) is begging to be recognized here. Such is but the latest indirect confirmation of a wide, accumulating body of evidence pointing towards what The Bell Curve, in its meta-analysis found: On average, approximately 50% of variability in intelligence is due to genetic inheritance, and there is a consistent and statistically significant difference worldwide between blacks, whites, and asians. (Say what? The horror! Racist! Nazi pig!)
Anthropologically, the varying ethnicities in the world can be categorized, by general genotype, into 3 characteristic groups: mongoloids, caucasoids, and negroids. Hundreds and hundreds of studies from all around the world, in a myriad of different places and contexts, indicate the consistent empirical fact that, ceteris paribus, mongoloids rank first in IQ ability, followed by caucasoids, with negroids being a distant third.
This does not mean that all persons of group X are ‘smarter’ than Y, or that all persons in group Y are ‘less intelligent’ than X. These are statistical averages extrapolated across populations.
Evolutionary hypotheses vary, but a consensus seems to be emerging that geography is the determining factor for cognitive abilitity, in addition to other differences in races. Basically, populations below vs. above the equator have had to deal with different environmental/geographical conditions which has shaped the populations’ evolution. In the extreme dry conditions of East Africa, for example, evolution selected for persons who could traverse great distances on foot. (This, by the way, provides the most plausible explanation for why Kenyans dominate marathon races; the body morphology of a Kenyan is noticeably different than a Somalian, Chinese, Swede, etc. Different limb-to-trunk ratios and the like).
Likewise, in the harsh winters of Europe (a geographical area with four distinct seasons), evolution selected for better spatial reasoning skills & the propensity for longer-term planning (think preparations for the winter season, the difficulty of finding food in the winter, etc), as well as for higher levels of altruistic, contractual social relations (e.g., I help you build your winter home and you promise to help me build mine).
Such evidence of differing cognitive skills among racial groups is, of course, absolutely appalling to the liberal’s sensibilities. It goes against their romanticized, Rousseauian notion of the mind as a ‘blank slate’. Many want to believe, and insist on believing, that all minds are identical and that, with the right environmental circumstances, anyone can excel in math, or become an Einstein or a Mozart. The irony here, of course, is that these same people usually don’t question the idea that child prodigies – a Kasparov or a Mozart – are ‘born that way’.
Nonetheless, when it comes to official science on the matter, liberals refuse to even entertain the hypothesis that cognitive ability (i.e., brain structure and functionality) might have genetic component, let alone actually acknowledge the evidence. Hence, their reaction is to not even bother to look at the body of evidence, dismissing en toto the entire intellectual pursuit. Politically correct, ad hominem attacks ensue, lobbed at the scientists who dare to look at this phenomenon in the first place. The science is then stultified and clouded by taboo. (Witness the tentativeness and recalcitrance among the small number of scientists involved with pharmaceutical discoveries that affect only certain races, e.g., the recent news story of NitroMed, the first drug targeting heart conditions unique to blacks). As was the case with Copernicus, who had to shelf his findings for 30 years for fear of assured persecution by the Catholic church, so is the case with the field of population genetics.
Unfortunately, truth has an annoying way of rearing its ugly head indefinitely. The evidence cannot simply be ‘wished away’ and so will inevitably be a reality that social theory will sooner or later have to recognize. We’re still decades away from an honest dialogue about race and group disparities in this country, so rife our society is with conditioned liberal white guilt for the plights of different ethnic groups. In the meantime, the meta-analysis of the Bell Curve has yet to be disproven. Gene Expression is an excellent site that reports on current research and findings. Steve Sailor, President of the Human Biodiversity Institute, writes about these matters frequently on his excellent site. Sailor writes:
Much of the Race Does Not Exist cant stems from the following logic (if you can call it logic): “If there really are different racial groups, then one must be The Master Race, which means -- oh my God – that Hitler Was Right! Therefore, we must promote whatever ideas most confuse the public about race. Otherwise, they will learn the horrible truth and they'll all vote Nazi.”
Look, this is one big non-sequiter: Of course, there are different racial groups. And of course their members tend to inherit certain different genes, on average, than the members of other racial groups. And that means racial groups will differ, on average, in various innate capabilities. But that also means that no group can be supreme at all jobs. To be excellent at one skill frequently implies being worse at something else. So, there can't be a Master Race. Sports fans can cite countless examples. Men of West African descent monopolize the Olympic 100m dash, but their explosive musculature, which is so helpful in sprinting, weighs them down in distance running, where they are also-rans. Similarly, there are far more Samoans in the National Football League than Chinese, simply because Samoans tend to be much, much bigger. But precisely because Samoans are so huge, they'll never do as well as the Chinese in gymnastics.
Race is a fundamental aspect of the human condition. Burying our heads in the sand and refusing to think about this fundamental aspect only makes the inevitable problems caused by race harder to overcome.
|||111456326660041073|||The Bell Curve – Latest Addition to the Meta-Analysis