Population of Blacks/Whites in US by IQ

[Bomb#20]

This sounds like something Trump would say when proven wrong.

Quote me saying whatever it is you think you proved wrong. You said something ignorant; I called you on it; now you're trying to make me out to have said something I didn't say so you can pretend to yourself that you scored some points. You're being pathetic. The correct response to my post was for you to say "Okay, bad example." and move on with your other arguments.

Since my only point is that systems resist change.

If that's true then you said a lot of stuff unrelated to your only point. That's your fault, not mine.

Moreover, unlike most other biological systems, the immune system doesn't resist change but actively promotes it -- it's a good way to stay ahead of constantly evolving diseases.

Pure nonsense.

The immune system has the ability to respond. It has no ability to anticipate or promote change, whatever that is supposed to mean.

It doesn't need to anticipate anything in order to promote change. All it needs is for people with rare alleles to survive epidemics at a slightly higher rate than people with more common alleles.

And all that has kept humans slightly ahead of microorganisms, for the moment, are antibiotics and other human creations.

Evolution is an arms race. Diseases aren't the only ones doing the evolving.

 

[untermensche]

Quote me saying whatever it is you think you proved wrong. You said something ignorant; I called you on it; now you're trying to make me out to have said something I didn't say so you can pretend to yourself that you scored some points. You're being pathetic. The correct response to my post was for you to say "Okay, bad example." and move on with your other arguments.

Because you make some insane erroneous point about the immune system I am supposed to give you a lollypop?

It doesn't need to anticipate anything in order to promote change. All it needs is for people with rare alleles to survive epidemics at a slightly higher rate than people with more common alleles.

That is not promoting anything. It is chance contingency. The story of evolution.

As I said, erroneous and insane.

And all that has kept humans slightly ahead of microorganisms, for the moment, are antibiotics and other human creations.

Evolution is an arms race. Diseases aren't the only ones doing the evolving.

The human immune system is evolving. That was never an issue.

But it hasn't changed much in at least 200 thousand years. Because it is a complete delicate system that is constructed with many many genes.

Most single mutations would disrupt the system to the point it would decrease the likelihood of survival. They would not be beneficial.

Unless of course you think some god is controlling random mutations.

 

[Canard DuJour]

Full article : The IQ Gap Is No Longer a Black and White Issue

The author states:

"What most of these theories failed to predict was that the children of these immigrants would also show exceptional achievements, especially academically. It is only in recent years, as the immigrants have stayed long enough to produce a sufficiently high number of offspring, that it has been observed that they are over-represented among high academic achievers, especially when compared to native blacks, particularly at very elite institutions."

This is not what regression to the mean predicts. The regression to the mean would predict that, if black immigrants are overrepresented in the higher-IQ right tail end of the native black African distribution, then the children of the immigrants would tend to have lower IQ than their PARENTS,

Which is precisely what ISN'T HAPPENING. It's almost the entire point of the article. I'd ask if you've even read it, but even the bit you've quoted says so.

Try actually reading it. Slowly.

not lower than native black Africans. It would be expected that the IQs of children and grandchildren of higher-IQ immigrants would be intermediately between their parents and the native black African median. Such a regression to the mean among such immigrants has long been a strong argument in favor of hereditarianism (see this article).

Indeed, which is why that argument is now all but dead in the water.

 

[ApostateAbe]

The author states:

"What most of these theories failed to predict was that the children of these immigrants would also show exceptional achievements, especially academically. It is only in recent years, as the immigrants have stayed long enough to produce a sufficiently high number of offspring, that it has been observed that they are over-represented among high academic achievers, especially when compared to native blacks, particularly at very elite institutions."

This is not what regression to the mean predicts. The regression to the mean would predict that, if black immigrants are overrepresented in the higher-IQ right tail end of the native black African distribution, then the children of the immigrants would tend to have lower IQ than their PARENTS,

Which is precisely what ISN'T HAPPENING. It's almost the entire point of the article. I'd ask if you've even read it, but even the bit you've quoted says so.

Try actually reading it. Slowly.

not lower than native black Africans. It would be expected that the IQs of children and grandchildren of higher-IQ immigrants would be intermediately between their parents and the native black African median. Such a regression to the mean among such immigrants has long been a strong argument in favor of hereditarianism (see this article).

Indeed, which is why that argument is now all but dead in the water.

I read it last week, when a citation to the same article came up on Facebook. I won't read it again without good reason. Tell me what you are seeing that I am plainly not seeing.

 

[Canard DuJour]

Which is precisely what ISN'T HAPPENING. It's almost the entire point of the article. I'd ask if you've even read it, but even the bit you've quoted says so.

Try actually reading it. Slowly.

not lower than native black Africans. It would be expected that the IQs of children and grandchildren of higher-IQ immigrants would be intermediately between their parents and the native black African median. Such a regression to the mean among such immigrants has long been a strong argument in favor of hereditarianism (see this article).

Indeed, which is why that argument is now all but dead in the water.

I read it last week, when a citation to the same article came up on Facebook. I won't read it again without good reason. Tell me what you are seeing that I am plainly not seeing.

Seriously? Please yerself, I don't know how to make it any plainer. And I don't know whether you're wilfully blind to counterargument or just don't understand the concepts you bandy about, but you really have no cause to whine about being consigned to Pseudoscience.

 

[ApostateAbe]

Which is precisely what ISN'T HAPPENING. It's almost the entire point of the article. I'd ask if you've even read it, but even the bit you've quoted says so.

Try actually reading it. Slowly.

not lower than native black Africans. It would be expected that the IQs of children and grandchildren of higher-IQ immigrants would be intermediately between their parents and the native black African median. Such a regression to the mean among such immigrants has long been a strong argument in favor of hereditarianism (see this article).

Indeed, which is why that argument is now all but dead in the water.

I read it last week, when a citation to the same article came up on Facebook. I won't read it again without good reason. Tell me what you are seeing that I am plainly not seeing.

Seriously? Please yerself, I don't know how to make it any plainer. And I don't know whether you're wilfully blind to counterargument or just don't understand the concepts you bandy about, but you really have no cause to whine about being consigned to Pseudoscience.

You don't know how to make it plainer, but that's fine, I will let you know how to make it plainer. Just provide a quote from the article that claims that the children of black immigrants from Africa on average score equal to or above their parents. Emphasis on "parents." The only such recognition that regression to the mean must be with respect to the parents seems to be in the opening quotation of Arthur Jensen. He got it right. After that, the scores of parents are given not even the slightest recognition, as though completely irrelevant to regression to the mean.

 

[Bomb#20]

Because you make some insane erroneous point about the immune system I am supposed to give you a lollypop?

Is that why you're physiologically incapable of admitting a mistake or learning anything from an opponent? Because you perceive it as giving your enemies lollypops?

It doesn't need to anticipate anything in order to promote change. All it needs is for people with rare alleles to survive epidemics at a slightly higher rate than people with more common alleles.

That is not promoting anything. It is chance contingency. The story of evolution.

That's no more "chance contingency" than evolution as a whole is creationists' caricature of evolution as "a tornado in a junkyard". It's entirely predictable from thinking about herd immunity.

Evolution is an arms race. Diseases aren't the only ones doing the evolving.

The human immune system is evolving. That was never an issue.

But it hasn't changed much in at least 200 thousand years. Because it is a complete delicate system that is constructed with many many genes.

Most single mutations would disrupt the system to the point it would decrease the likelihood of survival. They would not be beneficial.

Wrong. You are not saying that because of anything you know about the immune system. You are simply extrapolating from what you know of other systems like the auditory system, and deducing that the immune system must be as fragile as hammer, anvil and stirrup bones.

"In addition, recent research in a variety of taxa and situations has revealed that evolution often occurs on contemporary timescales, often within decades (summarised in [32]). In some cases, the time span between the separation of populations might even be too short to leave a signal at neutral loci so that differences between populations are only detectable at genes under selection [33], such as those of the highly variable major histocompatibility complex (MHC). Contrary to neutral markers, MHC variability reflects evolutionary relevant and adaptive processes within and between populations and is very suitable to investigate a wide range of open questions in evolutionary ecology and conservation. The comparison with neutral markers allows the construction of null hypotheses concerning the diversity at selectively relevant genes and conclusions on the relevance of MHC polymorphism.
...
Genes within the MHC involved in antigen presentation constitute the most polymorphic loci known in vertebrates [52, 53]. The variability of the MHC-molecules is correlated with the diversity of the T-lymphocyte receptors which in turn determine the disease and parasite resistance of an organism and thus may influence the long-term survival probability of populations [54, 55, 56, 57]. The antigen binding sites show high levels of variation not only in the number of alleles but also in the extent of sequence variation between alleles [58]. Under neutrality theory, the rate of synonymous nucleotide substitution (ds) is predicted to be larger (ds > dn) than the rate of non-synonymous substitution (dn) because non-synonymous substitutions change the amino acid composition and are thereby likely to be deleterious [59, 60]. However, several studies demonstrate that the ABS display more non-synonymous than synonymous substitutions (dn > ds) ([61, 62], reviewed by [19]). This cannot be explained by a higher mutation rate in this specific region [58, 61, 62]. The emerging general view is that the determinant role in shaping patterns of nucleotide diversity in MHC genes is balancing selection [19, 59, 60, 63]. Balancing selection results not only in the maintenance of large numbers of alleles in populations, but also in greatly enhanced persistence of allelic diversity over extremely long time periods relative to neutral genetic variation [64], an observation termed 'trans-species evolution of polymorphism' [42]. The subsequent alteration in ABS allows binding of a diverse array of antigens [61, 62, 65]."​

(Source)

DNA bases in immune system genes at positions where variation changes the encoded amino acid are more likely to be variants than bases at positions where it doesn't. That's the opposite of the statistics in most of the genome. In most of the genome a change that makes no difference is more common. That's because chances are a change that does make a difference will be harmful, as you say. "Most single mutations would disrupt the system". Do the math. The reason SNPs in MHC genes have the opposite statistics from normal is because mutations in MHC genes are more likely to be beneficial than harmful.

Unless of course you think some god is controlling random mutations.

Unless of course the only reason you think it would take a god controlling random mutations in order for there to be a bias toward beneficial mutations is because, as Crick said, "Evolution is cleverer than you are".

 

[Canard DuJour]

Which is precisely what ISN'T HAPPENING. It's almost the entire point of the article. I'd ask if you've even read it, but even the bit you've quoted says so.

Try actually reading it. Slowly.

not lower than native black Africans. It would be expected that the IQs of children and grandchildren of higher-IQ immigrants would be intermediately between their parents and the native black African median. Such a regression to the mean among such immigrants has long been a strong argument in favor of hereditarianism (see this article).

Indeed, which is why that argument is now all but dead in the water.

I read it last week, when a citation to the same article came up on Facebook. I won't read it again without good reason. Tell me what you are seeing that I am plainly not seeing.

Seriously? Please yerself, I don't know how to make it any plainer. And I don't know whether you're wilfully blind to counterargument or just don't understand the concepts you bandy about, but you really have no cause to whine about being consigned to Pseudoscience.

You don't know how to make it plainer, but that's fine, I will let you know how to make it plainer. Just provide a quote from the article that claims that the children of black immigrants from Africa on average score equal to or above their parents. Emphasis on "parents." The only such recognition that regression to the mean must be with respect to the parents seems to be in the opening quotation of Arthur Jensen. He got it right. After that, the scores of parents are given not even the slightest recognition, as though completely irrelevant to regression to the mean.

From the article, re the US data :

"the hereditarians say they are the most intellectually elite, the ones from the topmost segment of the IQ bell curve in their countries; the outliers who got some lucky genes in an otherwise poor-gene environment. But like the hyper-driven-personality hypothesis, this argument cannot explain the equally, if not more impressive, achievements of their children : lottery winners never have children who also win the lottery. The stubborn refusal of their children to conspicuously regress to the much lower African genetic mean IQ (and not even to the African American mean IQ) predicted by hereditarians is simply inexplicable under their racial genetic hierarchy."​

Even if they weren't scoring quite as high as their parents, it wouldn't necessarily indicate a genetic tendency to regress to the mean, but they apparently are anyway.

And from the UK data, it's very unlikely that, say, the children of the children of Ibo immigrants now outperforming Chinese and elite whites will regress to a mean 2 standard deviations below that of the host country (can't be ruled out but that really is clutching at straws). Nor can it be written off as an elite self-selection artefact since the supposed racial hierarchy doesn't hold lower down the ladder either. In fact among Free School Meals kids (about 20% of whites and 44% of black Africans) white English score lowest except Roma who don't even send their kids to school.

 

[untermensche]

Is that why you're physiologically incapable of admitting a mistake or learning anything from an opponent? Because you perceive it as giving your enemies lollypops?

I have made no mistake. You are simply wrong. You don't know what you're talking about. The immune system varies slightly between all individuals, even identical twins who have different exposures. That is a feature it has always had. It is not a change.

That's no more "chance contingency" than evolution as a whole is creationists' caricature of evolution as "a tornado in a junkyard". It's entirely predictable from thinking about herd immunity.

All of evolution is chance contingency. So to claim some part of it is not is pure nonsense.

You claimed the immune system "promoted" change? Do you know what it means to promote something? It means to make in some way come to be.

But the immune system makes no changes come to be. It merely varies between individuals and always has.

And the article you provided says nothing except the immune system varies between individuals.

It does not say it has changed at all.

It has always varied between individuals. It has always used T-Cells and B-Cells and antibodies and things like the compliment system.

You can't demonstrate the immune system has changed by showing aspects of it that have not changed, like individual variability.

 

[Canard DuJour]

In fact, Abe, the parental comparison you insist on is implicit in the data (barring almost supernatural circumstances). Unless the black African kids currently excelling in US and UK schools took it upon themselves to emigrate as infants, they ARE the children of the supposedly exceptional immigrant parents. If these kids are regressing to the mean, their parents must have been godlike geniuses. Again, can't be ruled out I suppose, but clutching at straws

 

[ApostateAbe]

Which is precisely what ISN'T HAPPENING. It's almost the entire point of the article. I'd ask if you've even read it, but even the bit you've quoted says so.

Try actually reading it. Slowly.

not lower than native black Africans. It would be expected that the IQs of children and grandchildren of higher-IQ immigrants would be intermediately between their parents and the native black African median. Such a regression to the mean among such immigrants has long been a strong argument in favor of hereditarianism (see this article).

Indeed, which is why that argument is now all but dead in the water.

I read it last week, when a citation to the same article came up on Facebook. I won't read it again without good reason. Tell me what you are seeing that I am plainly not seeing.

Seriously? Please yerself, I don't know how to make it any plainer. And I don't know whether you're wilfully blind to counterargument or just don't understand the concepts you bandy about, but you really have no cause to whine about being consigned to Pseudoscience.

You don't know how to make it plainer, but that's fine, I will let you know how to make it plainer. Just provide a quote from the article that claims that the children of black immigrants from Africa on average score equal to or above their parents. Emphasis on "parents." The only such recognition that regression to the mean must be with respect to the parents seems to be in the opening quotation of Arthur Jensen. He got it right. After that, the scores of parents are given not even the slightest recognition, as though completely irrelevant to regression to the mean.

From the article, re the US data :

"the hereditarians say they are the most intellectually elite, the ones from the topmost segment of the IQ bell curve in their countries; the outliers who got some lucky genes in an otherwise poor-gene environment. But like the hyper-driven-personality hypothesis, this argument cannot explain the equally, if not more impressive, achievements of their children : lottery winners never have children who also win the lottery. The stubborn refusal of their children to conspicuously regress to the much lower African genetic mean IQ (and not even to the African American mean IQ) predicted by hereditarians is simply inexplicable under their racial genetic hierarchy."​

Even if they weren't scoring quite as high as their parents, it wouldn't necessarily indicate a genetic tendency to regress to the mean, but they apparently are anyway.

And from the UK data, it's very unlikely that, say, the children of the children of Ibo immigrants now outperforming Chinese and elite whites will regress to a mean 2 standard deviations below that of the host country (can't be ruled out but that really is clutching at straws). Nor can it be written off as an elite self-selection artefact since the supposed racial hierarchy doesn't hold lower down the ladder either. In fact among Free School Meals kids (about 20% of whites and 44% of black Africans) white English score lowest except Roma who don't even send their kids to school.

In fact, Abe, the parental comparison you insist on is implicit in the data (barring almost supernatural circumstances). Unless the black African kids currently excelling in US and UK schools took it upon themselves to emigrate as infants, they ARE the children of the supposedly exceptional immigrant parents. If these kids are regressing to the mean, their parents must have been godlike geniuses. Again, can't be ruled out I suppose, but clutching at straws

Thanks, I really did miss that "...equally, if not more impressive, achievements of their children," etc. I am being honest, not trying to dodge that point. It has been difficult wading through that article trying to find relevant source data that expresses that claim. Each expression of the source data seems to be at a singular point in time, maybe with the exception of a citation of an analysis by a blogger (not an article in a peer-reviewed journal) who made the extraordinary claim that the NAEP data showed that American blacks in 30 states that had an IQ above 89. Last week I tried downloading the NAEP data myself, but the downloadable data is insufficient, and I need to mail in a written and signed document to get the complete data on a CD. I may do that next month.

 

[Canard DuJour]

Which is precisely what ISN'T HAPPENING. It's almost the entire point of the article. I'd ask if you've even read it, but even the bit you've quoted says so.

Try actually reading it. Slowly.

not lower than native black Africans. It would be expected that the IQs of children and grandchildren of higher-IQ immigrants would be intermediately between their parents and the native black African median. Such a regression to the mean among such immigrants has long been a strong argument in favor of hereditarianism (see this article).

Indeed, which is why that argument is now all but dead in the water.

I read it last week, when a citation to the same article came up on Facebook. I won't read it again without good reason. Tell me what you are seeing that I am plainly not seeing.

Seriously? Please yerself, I don't know how to make it any plainer. And I don't know whether you're wilfully blind to counterargument or just don't understand the concepts you bandy about, but you really have no cause to whine about being consigned to Pseudoscience.

You don't know how to make it plainer, but that's fine, I will let you know how to make it plainer. Just provide a quote from the article that claims that the children of black immigrants from Africa on average score equal to or above their parents. Emphasis on "parents." The only such recognition that regression to the mean must be with respect to the parents seems to be in the opening quotation of Arthur Jensen. He got it right. After that, the scores of parents are given not even the slightest recognition, as though completely irrelevant to regression to the mean.

From the article, re the US data :

"the hereditarians say they are the most intellectually elite, the ones from the topmost segment of the IQ bell curve in their countries; the outliers who got some lucky genes in an otherwise poor-gene environment. But like the hyper-driven-personality hypothesis, this argument cannot explain the equally, if not more impressive, achievements of their children : lottery winners never have children who also win the lottery. The stubborn refusal of their children to conspicuously regress to the much lower African genetic mean IQ (and not even to the African American mean IQ) predicted by hereditarians is simply inexplicable under their racial genetic hierarchy."​

Even if they weren't scoring quite as high as their parents, it wouldn't necessarily indicate a genetic tendency to regress to the mean, but they apparently are anyway.

And from the UK data, it's very unlikely that, say, the children of the children of Ibo immigrants now outperforming Chinese and elite whites will regress to a mean 2 standard deviations below that of the host country (can't be ruled out but that really is clutching at straws). Nor can it be written off as an elite self-selection artefact since the supposed racial hierarchy doesn't hold lower down the ladder either. In fact among Free School Meals kids (about 20% of whites and 44% of black Africans) white English score lowest except Roma who don't even send their kids to school.

In fact, Abe, the parental comparison you insist on is implicit in the data (barring almost supernatural circumstances). Unless the black African kids currently excelling in US and UK schools took it upon themselves to emigrate as infants, they ARE the children of the supposedly exceptional immigrant parents. If these kids are regressing to the mean, their parents must have been godlike geniuses. Again, can't be ruled out I suppose, but clutching at straws

Thanks, I really did miss that "...equally, if not more impressive, achievements of their children," etc. I am being honest, not trying to dodge that point. It has been difficult wading through that article trying to find relevant source data that expresses that claim. Each expression of the source data seems to be at a singular point in time, maybe with the exception of a citation of an analysis by a blogger (not an article in a peer-reviewed journal) who made the extraordinary claim that the NAEP data showed that American blacks in 30 states that had an IQ above 89. Last week I tried downloading the NAEP data myself, but the downloadable data is insufficient, and I need to mail in a written and signed document to get the complete data on a CD. I may do that next month.

Well that's good but won't address the implications of the data referred to by the article. It's extremely unlikely that the black African kids excelling in US and UK schools suddenly got that much smarter than immigrant parents with a mean IQ two standard deviations below the US or UK. If OTOH the immigrant parents were a self-selecting group of genetic lottery winners, their kids are also apparently winning the lottery. Or if these kids are regressing to a black mean (African or American), their parents would have to have been almost superhumanly intelligent. However you slice it, you have to favour highly unlikely explanations to preserve the genetic racial intelligence hierarchy touted by "scientific" racists.

 

[ApostateAbe]

Which is precisely what ISN'T HAPPENING. It's almost the entire point of the article. I'd ask if you've even read it, but even the bit you've quoted says so.

Try actually reading it. Slowly.

not lower than native black Africans. It would be expected that the IQs of children and grandchildren of higher-IQ immigrants would be intermediately between their parents and the native black African median. Such a regression to the mean among such immigrants has long been a strong argument in favor of hereditarianism (see this article).

Indeed, which is why that argument is now all but dead in the water.

I read it last week, when a citation to the same article came up on Facebook. I won't read it again without good reason. Tell me what you are seeing that I am plainly not seeing.

Seriously? Please yerself, I don't know how to make it any plainer. And I don't know whether you're wilfully blind to counterargument or just don't understand the concepts you bandy about, but you really have no cause to whine about being consigned to Pseudoscience.

You don't know how to make it plainer, but that's fine, I will let you know how to make it plainer. Just provide a quote from the article that claims that the children of black immigrants from Africa on average score equal to or above their parents. Emphasis on "parents." The only such recognition that regression to the mean must be with respect to the parents seems to be in the opening quotation of Arthur Jensen. He got it right. After that, the scores of parents are given not even the slightest recognition, as though completely irrelevant to regression to the mean.

From the article, re the US data :

"the hereditarians say they are the most intellectually elite, the ones from the topmost segment of the IQ bell curve in their countries; the outliers who got some lucky genes in an otherwise poor-gene environment. But like the hyper-driven-personality hypothesis, this argument cannot explain the equally, if not more impressive, achievements of their children : lottery winners never have children who also win the lottery. The stubborn refusal of their children to conspicuously regress to the much lower African genetic mean IQ (and not even to the African American mean IQ) predicted by hereditarians is simply inexplicable under their racial genetic hierarchy."​

Even if they weren't scoring quite as high as their parents, it wouldn't necessarily indicate a genetic tendency to regress to the mean, but they apparently are anyway.

And from the UK data, it's very unlikely that, say, the children of the children of Ibo immigrants now outperforming Chinese and elite whites will regress to a mean 2 standard deviations below that of the host country (can't be ruled out but that really is clutching at straws). Nor can it be written off as an elite self-selection artefact since the supposed racial hierarchy doesn't hold lower down the ladder either. In fact among Free School Meals kids (about 20% of whites and 44% of black Africans) white English score lowest except Roma who don't even send their kids to school.

In fact, Abe, the parental comparison you insist on is implicit in the data (barring almost supernatural circumstances). Unless the black African kids currently excelling in US and UK schools took it upon themselves to emigrate as infants, they ARE the children of the supposedly exceptional immigrant parents. If these kids are regressing to the mean, their parents must have been godlike geniuses. Again, can't be ruled out I suppose, but clutching at straws

Thanks, I really did miss that "...equally, if not more impressive, achievements of their children," etc. I am being honest, not trying to dodge that point. It has been difficult wading through that article trying to find relevant source data that expresses that claim. Each expression of the source data seems to be at a singular point in time, maybe with the exception of a citation of an analysis by a blogger (not an article in a peer-reviewed journal) who made the extraordinary claim that the NAEP data showed that American blacks in 30 states that had an IQ above 89. Last week I tried downloading the NAEP data myself, but the downloadable data is insufficient, and I need to mail in a written and signed document to get the complete data on a CD. I may do that next month.

Well that's good but won't address the implications of the data referred to by the article. It's extremely unlikely that the black African kids excelling in US and UK schools suddenly got that much smarter than immigrant parents with a mean IQ two standard deviations below the US or UK. If OTOH the immigrant parents were a self-selecting group of genetic lottery winners, their kids are also apparently winning the lottery. Or if these kids are regressing to a black mean (African or American), their parents would have to have been almost superhumanly intelligent. However you slice it, you have to favour highly unlikely explanations to preserve the genetic racial intelligence hierarchy touted by "scientific" racists.

OK, do you happen to know what source data the author is referring to, that shows intelligence of children equal to or better than their parents?

 

[Elixir]

Sorry - AFAIK there is no purely scientific means of assigning an individual as black or white or red, yellow or brown. I could be underinformed...

You are.

Go ahead and enlighten me then Jon. What purely scientific means can be applied to every individual to determine their "race"?

YMMV.

Exactly.

 

[Elixir]

Race doesn't exist. Expect when it does.

Lara Casalotti, from Hampstead, needs a stem cell transplant but her "unique" Thai and Italian heritage meant a mixed-race donor was needed.
Just 3% of worldwide stem cell donors on the register are mixed-race.
Charity Anthony Nolan searched in Italy, Thailand and the US to find a match with a similar ethnic background.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-35523890

It seems every couple weeks there's a new medical article out reporting on how disease risk and treatment modalities differ between races. But race doesn't exist, so how can that be?

Every few weeks there are articles showing how certain maladies afflict various body types too. That doesn't make tall people or fat people a "race" in most minds...
That said, ANY genetic profile can be said to make an individual more or less susceptible or more or less likely to contract a given illness than the average. Dark-skinned people do not have a total monopoly on sickle-cell trait for instance. But the predominance of sickle-cell anemia cases afflict dark skinned people. Dark skin and sickle-cell trait genetics tend to coincide, but they're not associated with the same locii.

 

[Trausti]

Race doesn't exist. Expect when it does.



http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-35523890

It seems every couple weeks there's a new medical article out reporting on how disease risk and treatment modalities differ between races. But race doesn't exist, so how can that be?

Every few weeks there are articles showing how certain maladies afflict various body types too. That doesn't make tall people or fat people a "race" in most minds...
That said, ANY genetic profile can be said to make an individual more or less susceptible or more or less likely to contract a given illness than the average. Dark-skinned people do not have a total monopoly on sickle-cell trait for instance. But the predominance of sickle-cell anemia cases afflict dark skinned people. Dark skin and sickle-cell trait genetics tend to coincide, but they're not associated with the same locii.

You think "dark skin people" have sickle cell trait because they're "dark skin," and not because of an adaption to the environment?

 

[Elixir]

Every few weeks there are articles showing how certain maladies afflict various body types too. That doesn't make tall people or fat people a "race" in most minds...
That said, ANY genetic profile can be said to make an individual more or less susceptible or more or less likely to contract a given illness than the average. Dark-skinned people do not have a total monopoly on sickle-cell trait for instance. But the predominance of sickle-cell anemia cases afflict dark skinned people. Dark skin and sickle-cell trait genetics tend to coincide, but they're not associated with the same locii.

You think "dark skin people" have sickle cell trait because they're "dark skin," and not because of an adaption to the environment?

Read carefully before telling me what I think, please. Both sickle cell trait and dark skin are adaptive. They are NOT (always) associated with the same genetic locii. Therefore the genetic markers for either cannot be reliably used to determine "race". Of course JonA tells me I'm misinformed about the absence of any purely scientific means to determine an individual's race, but as yet he has only offered a naked "nuh unh".

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

When did this forum turn into Stormfront lite?

People are eagerly awaiting the Unblackening.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Were race totally superficial differences you would be right. 84% of NFL lineman would be white if the differences were superficial.

Sports participation is largely cultural, sometimes discriminatory, and class-based. It was just a decade or two ago, that people were claiming blacks could not be quarterbacks or football managers. They're proving that wrong. Now besides that, in inner cities there is a huge focus on sports such as football and basketball as a way to get out of poverty. That's where the male role models are besides the high rate of crime and aggression by police in these areas. Few make it out but this no doubt has a large effect. There aren't tons of famous role models to become accountants. There aren't the same types of enrichment opportunities for youth in academics. There are often places you can go learn how to box, practice, and that's a thing, too in the city but hardly accessible in the suburbs or rural areas. There are hardly opportunities to become a great golfer either--you need to buy golf clubs and have good access to a country club or golf area.

 

[Bomb#20]

Sorry - AFAIK there is no purely scientific means of assigning an individual as black or white or red, yellow or brown. I could be underinformed...

You are.

Go ahead and enlighten me then Jon. What purely scientific means can be applied to every individual to determine their "race"?

You appear to have moved the goalposts from "an individual" to "every individual". "An" and "every" aren't equivalent. You wouldn't deny the existence of a scientific means of determining whether an individual is male or female merely because the world contains some intersex people, would you? Well, Jon said an individual can be assigned scientifically. In the event that you exhibit some other individual whose race can't be determined, that doesn't make Jon wrong.

As with all applications of our digital languages to an analog world, passing scores are a matter of taste. To me it seems silly to pick a number other than 50% as the passing score. YMMV.

Exactly.

Hey, if you want to claim that somebody who's 97% Caucasoid and 3% Negroid is "black", science isn't in the business of telling you your terminological preferences are underinformed. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. But if you want to jump from that observation to the conclusion that science isn't capable of analyzing a blood sample and figuring out the guy it was taken from is 97% Caucasoid and 3% Negroid, that's something science is in the business of telling you you're underinformed about.