We recently discussed controversies on race criteria from college admissions cases pending before the Supreme Court to the threshold criteria used by President Joe Biden for his Supreme Court nominee. Now, a federal district court in Northern Virginia has handed down a major decision in Coalition for TJ v. Fairfax County School Board, ruling that a new admissions policy at the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, in Fairfax, Virginia is unconstitutional. Recently, the county decided to change the admissions system for the elite school to increase minority enrollment. Judge Claude Hilton ruled that the county unconstitutionally engineered the reduction of Asian-American students to achieve greater racial diversity.
As a parent of Fairfax public school students. TJ was always the premier high school for the most gifted students in the county. Even if your kids did not get into TJ, there has been great pride for its ranking as one of the best high schools in the country. Many parents were opposed when the county announced that it would pursue greater diversity in admissions. We have been discussing a movement to eliminate gifted and talented programs in cities ranging from Boston to New York to San Francisco.
The Court details the push to diversify the top school after the death of George Floyd.
“In June emails, Corbett Sanders promised intentional action. In an email to Brabrand, Corbett Sanders wrote that ‘the Board and FCPS need to be explicit in how we are going to address the under-representation of Black and Hispanic students.’ At a June 18 Board meeting, Keys-Gamarra said that ‘in looking at what has happened to George Floyd, we now know that our shortcomings are far too great . . . so we must recognize the unacceptable numbers of such things as the unacceptable numbers of African Americans that have been accepted to T.J.'”
As in the cases on the docket for the Supreme Court, Asian Americans alleged discrimination against them in these diversification programs. Judge Hilton wrote that “emails and text messages between Board members and high-ranking FCPS officials leave no material dispute that, at least in part, the purpose of the Board’s admissions overhaul was to change the racial makeup of TJ to the detriment of Asian-Americans….” He noted that, due to the new policy, “Asian American representation dropped from roughly 70 percent to around 50 percent of the class.”
As noted earlier, I believe that TJ should select students entirely based on scholastic achievement irrespective of their race or other criteria. While the country as a whole continues to fall behind other nations in math and science, TJ is one of the few exceptions — attracting brilliant students who are given highly advanced training. Math and science are fields given to objective testing and scoring. Students should be assured that they will be measured on their objective scores and rewarded for the hard work necessary to achieve admission.
What is interesting is how the diversification was achieved. The county limited the number of students admitted from any given middle school. That effectively limited the number of Asian-American students.
“FCPS staff then developed a proposal for a ‘Merit Lottery’ for TJ admissions, which they presented to the Board on September 15. The proposal stated that ‘TJ should reflect the diversity of FCPS, the community and Northern Virginia.’ The proposal discussed the use of ‘regional pathways’ that would cap the number of offers each region in FCPS (and the other participating jurisdictions) could receive. It included the results of Shughart’s modeling, which showed the projected racial effect of applying the lottery with regional pathways to three previous TJ classes. Each of the three classes would have admitted far fewer Asian-American students under the proposed lottery system.”
The summary judgment decision will now allow the county to appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
Bravo to the judge. The US with its woke leadership is the only country in the world advancing the notion that scholastic achievement is racist. Asian Americans are now becoming the disfavored overachieving .minority for whom quotas need to be put in place . A country that rewards merit in sports and entertainment but disdains it academia is doomed to fail. The message conveyed to minority children that “rigor, objectivity, pursuit of perfection, and worship of the word” are traits of white supremacy is beyond demented and racist. The aforementioned was actually stated by the former chancellor of the NYC school system. Let TJ be 99 percent Asian for all I care. Maybe parents of other children will see the light. But I doubt it in the society we live in now
America’s most elite college graduates, intentionally, greenlighted torture and war crimes – adopting torture techniques from the Spanish Inquisition. They were intelligent but had no moral or ethical compass. Education is meaningless without moral and ethics.
The bell curve is the sort of inconvenient truth that would be anathema to the 10th Circuit Court, which apparently believes its role is to suppress bad ideas, and the discussion on brain size and intelligence more properly belongs there. But Turley’s blogs of the 26th and 27th are related, and it worth contrasting what the authors of The Bell Curve, Hernstein and Murray, actually wrote, “It seems highly likely to us that both genes and environment have something to do with racial differences. What might that mix be? We are resolutely agnostic on that issue; as far as we can determine, the evidence does not yet justify an estimate.”
This seems less than a controversial comment because despite decades of research, nobody has been able to show that environment trumps hereditary, or that hereditary inevitably overcomes environment. The two are intertwined, which is why it would probably be wise to stop arguing about the different impact of each and do our best to assure that environments foster the development of traits which are hereditary. I suspect Mill and Marx would both have agreed on that, if the current woke crowd would find such a suggestion evidence of white supremacy.
As for Wikipedia, those who cite it should be aware that it is run by people who are not experts in the fields about which they write and frequently do not even know who the acknowledged experts might be. It is useful for quick facts based on general knowledge, but less so for informed anlaysis. The Encyclopedia Britannica is a better bet for on-line quick-and-dirty fact finding.
For those who, like me, balk at reading more than 800 pages, here is a concise discussion of The Bell Curve and the myths it engendered.
https://quillette.com/2017/03/27/a-tale-of-two-bell-curves/
Old Guy,
Great comment. Thanks!
The Quillette article was quite good.
Among other things it excoriates loudmouths who attack The Bell Curve without having read it and without truly knowing what it says.
Brain size is not a great indicator of cognition:
https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/if-modern-humans-are-so-smart-why-are-our-brains-shrinking
If it was, the baleen whales would be the most intelligent. Hmm, maybe they are?
Well, partly it depends upon brain organization:
http://www.differencebetween.net/science/difference-between-human-and-sheep-brain/
More important than sheer volume, as is well understood by neural scientists.
Which I learned in a year course in psychobiology conducted by
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Wolcott_Sperry
with
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Gazzaniga
as the TA. One of the laboratory exercises was to dissect a preserved sheep brain.
Summarizing, brain size isn’t of import, over some range.
Interesting but I don’t think anyone here has said it was. Neanderthal and, I believe, Cro Magnon both had larger brains than ours.
Young, you were the one to bring up cranial capacity, in connection with “The Bell Curve” I take it.
Was Neanderthal physically larger? A bigger body takes more nerves to control.
I brought up Stephen Jay Gould’s dishonesty in attacking another researcher whose results he did not like.
Having been dishonest in his attack on Morton one could have doubts about his honesty in attacking The Bell Curve.
The measurement of skull size was just that, not a measure intelligence. That takes a different test.
Funny that you failed to see that the point was Gould’s dishonesty.
Might be mistaken, but that doesn’t imply dishonesty. Tch, tch.
You didn’t watch the video of Gould’s ‘demonstration’ of Morton’s ‘errors’. Gould was either stupid or dishonest and nobody thought he was stupid.
Maybe he was also a coward. He basically sat quietly on his hands when students attacked his colleague and friend, E.O. Wilson, on stage.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mismeasure_of_Man#Reassessing_Morton's_skull_measurements
There are still those claiming to find a correlation between brain size and IQ: see references 42, 43, 44.
And of course skull size is, inside dimensions, brain size.
But fundamentally, there is no such thing as the N*gro race and nobody finds pygmies stupider than the Bantus who dominate them now. The whole “bell curve” completely misses the point, rather like a split brain patient.
Evolution of the Human Brain: IS Bigger Better?
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1440-1681.1998.tb02289.x
David: “Brain size is not a great indicator of cognition:”
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This is not something I needed to discuss but I remembered those old text book sketches of evolution showing early primates marching on and getting more erect and bigger brained and presumably smarter.
Brain size and intelligence were always linked.
Then we learned that Neanderthal had bigger brains than we and suddenly the dogma that big brain equals smart brains was dismissed. That reversal seemed a little self serving.
But what if it is still true? What if Neanderthals really were smarter than we are? After all, they survived the Pleistocene and hunted huge animals. They ate enough meat and fat to nourish big, smart brains.
Then things warmed, the big animals were scarce and the energy demands of big brains were selected against, no longer needed. Then they made the mistake of mating with stupider but prettier subspecies and produced us, a step down in brain power.
Just musing.
How swell to get to leave a reply based on race. Here our orb are just greed. Race be damed. 8 ppl killed and yet the city want a a dbb which increases death 25 %…. But the council sells insurance….and the alot is immune from suit. And how to hold to account? Mueller? Anyone how? How how how?
No such thing as the so-called N*gro race. Among other groups there are the Bantu who expanded their range to the south, reaching South Africa at about the same time as the Dutch arrived, sparking a war. Off to the south, a mountain community formed and the Kingdom of Lestho. I met a princess from there, studying at Pomona College. Black skin but finely featured, she was certainly quick-witted in American English, her third language.
More recently I have met two
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maasai_people
both young men studying at WSU. One actually earned the lion’s tooth he wears. The other is one of the brightest, quickest people I have ever known, which includes conversations with Richard Feynman. It seems that the Maasai, upon having to become citified, established a schooling system without equal. Some districts in the US are adopting their principles. Anyway, the Maasi are
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nilotic_peoples
not Bantu and don’t look like Bantus.
You might check into the ethnicity of the Kenyan ambassador highlighted in a previous entry here at Jonathan Turley’s.
David,
Clearly you haven’t read The Bell Curve or you would know that they said they could tell you little or nothing about an individual and that IQ is on a bell curve so there are many blacks who are smarter than most whites. Nothing you just said is inconsistent with their book.
When they spoke of racial IQ differences they were speaking of averages, not individuals.
Young — “The Bell Curve” is statistical gobbledygook. In high school, I read “How to Lie with Statistics”. I think it is still in print. You might do well to comprehend it.
You miss my point, stated clearly in the first sentence. Again, skin melanin content has nothing to do with intelligence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve
summarizes the damming criticisms.
The criticisms are typical of the mob cancel culture today. For example, Steven J. Gould whose criticism is included was involved in another issue of this type. Morton had previously measured the volumes of different skulls and found that those of blacks had less volume than whites. Gould attacked the study and repeated it without the bias imputed to Morton. Naturally he found no differences. But when the original skulls were measured with modern lasers it turned out that Morton’s measurements were very close and those of Gould very wrong. Gould had the bias and was wrong. Of course he’s the man to trot out to attack The Bell Curve.
I asked for your analysis, not that of a collection of obviously biased hacks.
Noam Chomsky? Good grief. He’s a linguist, not an anthropologist. But of course he has something useless to add.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_anthropology#Race,_class,_and_gender
Little do you know, you know…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Jay_Gould#The_Mismeasure_of_Man
Even less than I had supposed!
You may have read How to Lie With Statistics but you obviously didn’t read The Bell Curve.
The values collected by the Longitudinal Survey of American Youth were fairly straightforward and were distributed in a bell curve just as they would have done if they were measuring height or weight instead of IQ.
Where is the lie in that other than that you refuse to look at a simple bit of evidence? Amazing.
Where is the lie?
Young, read what Wikipedia has. There are books cited. Read those.
It is a matter of conclusions drawn, so see some alternatives.
Read The Bell Curve yourself and then come back. You really have nothing of your own to contribute to this.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/difference-between-race-and-ethnicity
The above is mistake #1. “The Bell Curve” is trash talk.
“The Bell Curve” is trash talk”
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Strong opinion, David. Have you actually read it?
If not you don’t know what you are talking about.
Anyone can wave someone else’s banner.
It means nothing.
By the way, most of it is not about race. Chapter 13 and that’s about it.
You are too clever to do this to yourself.
“There are books cited”
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Which ones have you read?
I suspect you are more full of hot air than the Hindenburg.
Young, you too refuse to look at evidence.
You can’t even bring yourself to admit that you have no explanation for why you consider Pygmies and the Dinka to be the same race, or to admit that your claim “basically every human characteristic varies from one habitat to the next” is wildly false, even when you’re presented with simple counterexamples such as the fact that mammalian biology is 100% common across all humans, regardless of what habitat we live in or what habitat our ancestors lived in.
50% of my DNA is that of a banana. My ancestors had appeal.
Anonymous : “50% of my DNA is that of a banana. My ancestors had appeal”
And hopefully opposable thumbs?
When the Russians start revolting against Putin, it will happen because Putin is pretty revolting himself.
Asians need to understand the white, education administrators who are doing this to them vote Democrat and call Trump a racist. These same white snobs also despise working-class whites and call them racists, too. Things won’t get better for Asians if they continue to agree with the snobs about who the racists are.
Asians oppose affirmative action in education because it hurts them. They favor AA in employment because it helps them. Essentially, they want the best of both worlds. They haven’t figured out, however, that Democrats have no interest in them beyond their votes.
Public institutions are under the dominion of the Constitution wherein undifferentiated “PEOPLE” are provided rights, and rights are not provided to differentiated “PEOPLE,” causing differentiation, by way of affirmative action, to be antithetical to the letter and spirit of the Constitution and unconstitutional.
Private institutions are under the dominion of the 5th Amendment right to private property, which is not qualified by the Constitution, and is, therefore, absolute.
No, Asians oppose affirmative action in education because it is affirmatively discriminatory!
I hit college that same year all the Vietnamese and Cambodians hit the US. They had to work many times harder than I as they also had to learn English while simultaneously taking college classes!
Later, I worked in teaching at a school with many teacher aides who had escaped Pol Pot with nothing but their lives. Since they had no paperwork, they could not teach without starting over (bureaucrats!!).
Very smart, motivated individuals who were happy to be here and spent their new-found freedom working diligently to make certain their children studied and worked hard to create the best opportunity they could for their lives.
OT.
More than 100,000 people attended a peace rally and demonstration in Berlin on Sunday in support of Ukraine. We should be doing the same.
Putin is starting to look like a cartoon villain, like Dr. Evil. When he is in that room with his generals, talking about what other tricks he has up his sleeve, it reminds me of Dr. Evil sitting around table with his co-villains.
The Night of the Long Knives may be descending on Putin.
Et tu, Brute…
Gennady, Yury, Dmitry?
**Off Topic** JT Blogger Friends, news is alerting the possibility of a cyberattack to water and sewage from overseas. Not sure if you can protect yourself unless you’re on well and septic. Be safe and protect yourself best as possible. Sorry to go off topic.
Margot……..Thank you.
This article presents a good summary of the issues in this case. However, the word “minority” is being misused by everyone. So, the starting point is to understand who the minority groups are in America before creating rules to benefit one minority over some other group of people, putting aside the contentious issue of whether or not racial or ethnic origin should even be a basis for admission to any institution in America under the false banner of “diversity.” Here’s the current breakout of minorities in America: Hispanics 18.7%, Blacks 12.2%, Asians 5.6%, and Jews 2.4%. Consequently, even if the objective is to favor minorities for admissions to certain institutions, however inappropriate that may be, Fairfax County School Board is favoring a substantially larger minority group over much smaller minority groups. How does that make any sense?
How truly bizarre that you introduce Jews as the sole religious minority in your list.
What is bizarre is that you obviously don’t pay any attention to the news. Does the name Whoopi Goldberg ring a bell? Maybe you should read your own leftist publications better: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/abc-suspends-whoopi-goldberg-for-comments-on-jews-race-and-the-holocaust.
That’s quite a non sequitur on your part. Whoopi Goldberg has nothing to do with your list.
Jews are not the only minority religion in the US. So why are Jews the only religious group on your list?
Well, you’re a bit too early, Anonymous. The Official “National Be Nice to the Lazy and Learning Impaired Week” doesn’t start until April. However, I’m willing to make a one-time exception here. The following excerpt from the NPR article I referred to will make the point clear:
“Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, praised Goldberg for being outspoken over the years on social issues but said he struggled to understand her statement on the Holocaust. “The only explanation that I have for it is that there is a new definition of racism that has been put out there in the public recently that defines racism exclusively as the targeting of people of color. And obviously history teaches us otherwise,” Cooper said. “Everything about Nazi Germany and about the targeting of the Jews and about the Holocaust was about race and racism. That’s the unfortunate, unassailable historic fact,” he said.”
If you’re still baffled, please wait until your Official Week starts in April and ask someone for assistance. Thanks and good luck to you.
Let me get this straight: you included Jews in your list because you agree with the Nazis that the Jews are a different race?
Sorry, Anonymous, but you missed the Official “National Be Nice to the Logically Impaired Week,” which ended in January. So, until next January, here’s your homework assignment. Please read the article at this link: https://www.aei.org/articles/dna-links-prove-jews-are-a-race-says-genetics-expert/. Combined with the other article I already referred you to, and with some assistance from people who actually know how to read and understand things, together, during the Official Weeks dedicated to people with your impairments, you should have answers to your questions by next year.
JFeldman, your juvenile insults only reflect on you.
Entine doesn’t say that Jews are a race; he says “Jews are a homogeneous group with all the scientific trappings of what we used to call a ‘race.’” It seems that he and Ostrer are focusing largely on the Ashkenazi Jews, not all Jews. It’s no surprise that the Ashkenazim are genetically identifiable. Here’s more research discussing this: https://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/gb-2009-10-1-r7
Ethnically, I’m an Ashkenazi Jew. Racially, I’m white. Neither Entine nor Ostrer dispute that Ashkenazi Jews are racially white.
Interesting, women are a “minority” but over 50% of the population. That is what happens in the perverted world of the “rain forest math wokester”.
Seeings how I’m the majority, what’s in it for me. Maybe I should pull an Elizabeth Warren and tell everybody I’m a n Indian. Somehow identify as a minority so you can be part of this identity politics BS. This is not helping this country, it’s tearing it apart.
When referring to “minorities,” they’re not speaking of aggregate numbers in the population as a whole. They specifically reference what they call “under-represented minorities,” and define those as blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans. Although whites are considered the benchmark, Asians (and Jews) have much higher levels of income and education than do whites. Americans are simply uncomfortable with the fact that IQ is largely determinative of success, and that there are significant IQ differences among racial groups. If you Google “world IQ map,” you will see studies showing that average IQs range from 80 in some areas the world to 115 in other areas. That is a massive difference, and studies further show that IQ is largely immutable. Efforts to improve IQs in “dull normal” children were unsuccessful, and the only way to have higher IQ children is to marry someone smarter and hope that they inherit the higher IQ genes. Moreover, people with low IQs tend to establish and maintain dysfunctional, self-destructive cultural norms. The fact that people from China, So. Korea and India immigrate to the U.S. and become highly successful within the same or at most, one generation, is a function of IQ. There’s no way around it, and blaming the lack of success of some groups on the “Great Society” and other social programs that simply provided food to the poor is utter nonsense.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ
No IQ difference between racial groups.
I found this from the article interesting “ Race is a socially constructed concept, not a biological one. It derives from people’s desire to classify.”
And yet an analysis of DNA alone will reveal sex and race. You can’t b.s. yourself out of what you are.
It has gotten so precise it can identify country of origin, eye color and family. We are long past the point where we can sanely pretend that races are made up.
It is a classification but of biological realities.
There is no DNA marker that says “Black.” DNA can indicate ethnic ancestry, but you’re the one looking at ethnicities and assigning them to races.
Law enforcement successfully creates accurate facial drawings of suspects based on DNA. In fact, in Napa CA the DNA from a cigarette butt produced an artist’s sketch of a blond, blue-eyed, slender male murder suspect that was so accurate that he turned himself in. The resemblance was so remarkable that a Forensic Files t.v. episode was based on it. Sorry, but the actual science of DNA has rapidly outpaced the sociologists’ wishful hypothesis that race is merely a “social construct.” No, sociology is a social construct. DNA is science.
TIN- They [here] clearly haven’t been following it. People working in the field know so much now that they have been quietly warning academics that they need to prepare for the fact that the genetic differences are genuine and that they need to start thinking of ways to reduce the potential for misuse and harm.
As to the recent acceleration of human evolution that I mentioned there is this: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2012.11912
I agree that DNA analysis is scientific, nor did I write anything that suggests otherwise. But the fact remains that **race** is not a biological construct. It’s a social construct, and your claim that “the actual science of DNA has rapidly outpaced the sociologists’ wishful hypothesis that race is merely a ‘social construct’” is false.
I’ll ask you the same question I asked Young: Why do you put Pygmies and Dinkas in the same race?
It’s not because they’re genetically close. In fact, if you read the research, you’ll find analyses like the following:
Yu, Ning, et al. “Larger genetic differences within Africans than between Africans and Eurasians.” Genetics 161.1 (2002): 269-274.
Why do you put Pygmies and Dinkas in the same race?
It’s not a “biological reality.” It’s a social construct that groups them together.
The concept of race developed after “Bacon’s Rebellion” in 1676. When white indentured servants, Black indentured servants, and Black slaves joined forces to attack Jamestown, it became necessary to break up the lowest classes by race in order to maintain control. While Black indentured servants were treated worse than white ones because fewer of them understood the language and found it more difficult to get their contracts honored. They were basically treated the same until after Bacon’s Rebellion. After that, white indentured servitude almost ended and the lowest and poorest white person was considered better than the Black man he used to work alongside. Race wasn’t a social construct, it was an economic one.
Economics is also a social construct, not a biological one.
Yes there is an IQ difference between racial groups. Wikipedia information is polluted with political correctness on this issue. Try The Bell Curve and decide for yourself.
Young, “The Bell Curve” was written by a prejudger and long ago debunked. Try someone who actually understands statistics.
Young, you could start here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence
Obviously you have never read it. And it was never ‘debunked only attacked and smeared. They used data from the Longitudinal Study of American Youth collected over years by the government in association with universities. The information was there in plain view. Murray and Hernstein merely presented it. Their report was consistent with a US Army study conducted between the world wars that I have seen. It received less exposure.
You presumably believe in evolution. How is it possible for basically every human characteristic to vary from one habitat to the next with only intelligence magically remaining exactly the same? It isn’t without supernatural intervention. Knowing how all organisms adjust to different environments one should expect variation in IQ along with everything else and that is what essentially every study finds.
Do remember that the invention of farming and then civilization and writing and math are in themselves enormous changes in evolutionary pressure powering genetic change. If I recall, some genetic changes relating to human brain formation have appeared in the last 10,000 years with the Neolithic Revolution.
Wikipedia can make your mind evolve backwards or rot with subjects like this. Not safe.
Young, if you believe that “basically every human characteristic varies from one habitat to the next,” you’re exceptionally ignorant when it comes to biology.
The vast majority of human characteristics don’t vary from one habitat to the next. Our DNA is 99.9% identical.
Wow. Your claim really takes the cake for biological ignorance.
Chimps and humans share about 98.8 % of their DNA.
A very small amount can make a big difference.
Just how do you separate human instinctive actions from societally opted actions?
I wonder how we separate human behavior from chimp behavior. There is overlap.
The neat thing about human culture is that it arises in part from our genetic inheritance but it is itself a driver of evolution. When writing is invented and being able to learn to read and write confers an advantage in a culture then there is evolutionary pressure favoring those with a greater ability to learn it.
Then having a literate society causes the culture to evolve. There is a feedback between culture and genetics. No wonder evolution is accelerating.
But to speak like that is to incur wrath from the left. There are some studies in genetics that indicate that certain other proclivities, such as social structure and group behavior and the ability to trade/negotiate have evolved at different levels with different environmental factors. This is heresy if it were to imply that there are subtle differences between racial groups but statistical data is data to be reckoned with.
Instinctive actions aren’t taught. Examples in humans are the suckling and rooting reflexes.
Alma: “There are some studies in genetics that indicate that certain other proclivities, such as social structure and group behavior and the ability to trade/negotiate have evolved at different levels with different environmental factors.”
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I think that is true. In shifting from hunter/gatherers to stationary life in denser groups we may not have gotten along so well at first. There are indications that while we were domesticating crops and animals we were also domesticating ourselves, partly, I suppose, by killing annoying people, an instinct not totally lost to us.
It’s still false that “basically every human characteristic varies from one habitat to the next.” It’s a biologically ludicrous claim to make.
Name a single human that isn’t a mammal. You cannot. Mammalian biology is 100% common across all humans, regardless of what habitat we live in or what habitat our ancestors lived in.
Name a single human that doesn’t have a cardiovascular system. You cannot. Cardiovascular systems are 100% common across all humans, regardless of what habitat we live in or what habitat our ancestors lived in.
And since you bring other apes into it: it’s also not true that all ape characteristics vary from one habitat to the next.
One interesting study I read concerned the Finnish people. Every year, international testing of high school students shows Chinese, Japanese, So. Koreans and Finns in the top four places in science and math.The rankings among the groups may vary, but the top four is virtually always the same. So why do the Finns place at the top with the Asians? The study pointed out that the Finns migrated 10s of thousands of years ago from Asia. Their language is not Indo-European, and DNA testing shows Asian DNA markers. Many of them, although fair skinned and blond, have the Asian elliptical fold in their blue eyes. In fact, a Finnish immigrant many years ago had to go to court to have himself declared white, because at the time the U.S. government had restrictions on Asian immigration, and the government classified Finns as Asians. The Federal Judge agreed that Finns originated in Asian, but ruled that at present they are conventionally considered white, so he ruled in the plaintiff”s favor. But the point is, that even after thousands of years of adaptation to their environment, making them among the whitest people on earth, they still apparently maintain the DNA or IQ that allows them to excel above other whites and remain competitive Asian peoples in math and science. Interesting, to say the least….
Conservatives often prefer to gripe about Wikipedia instead of improving it.
There is absolutely a verified IQ difference among racial and ethnic groups, and those published studies reexamined, updated and reverified for nearly a century. No serious scholar would cite Wikipedia as a resource; my son’s high school doesn’t even allow citations to Wikipedia in homework.
TIN —- Wikipedia, like any other encyclopedia, is but a place to start.
It’s like starting a long journey in a foetid swamp on issues like this.
Not if you’re intelligent enough to know how to use it.
Are you intelligent enough to know how to use it?
“Asians (and Jews) have much higher levels of income and education than do whites.”
Most Jews *are* white. Did you mean that Jewish whites “have much higher levels of income and education” than non-Jewish whites?
“the only way to have higher IQ children is to marry someone smarter and hope that they inherit the higher IQ genes”
One of the simplest ways to improve the IQ of children in poor families is to improve parents’ nutrition before pregnancy, the pregnant woman’s nutrition during pregnancy, and child nutrition after birth.
Jews as an ethnic group within the white race have an average IQ that is higher than non-Jewish whites (110 vs. 100, on average). Ashkenazi Jews have, on average, higher IQs than Sephardic Jews. So long as scientists test among races; among ethnic groups within races, and among nationalities within races (e.g., Japanese test higher than Chinese, who test higher than Vietnamese, who test higher than Filipinos, and so on), people who actually read the studies will be able to cite them intelligently. And no, enhanced nutrition has not made an appreciable difference in IQ. IQ is inherited and is largely immutable. Extensive tutoring and improved nutrition made short-term improvements in testing among schoolchildren, but their IQs unfortunately slipped back once they reached adulthood. Read the scientific studies. Not Wikipedia or People Magazine.
TIN:
Nicely presented and easily verified outside of Wikipedia and People and Seventeen.
I an Ashkenazi Jew and could join Mensa if I wanted.
You’re mistaken that “enhanced nutrition has not made an appreciable difference in IQ.”
Just a couple of examples of relevant research:
Melough, Melissa M., et al. “Maternal Plasma 25-Hydroxyvitamin D during Gestation Is Positively Associated with Neurocognitive Development in Offspring at Age 4–6 Years.” The Journal of Nutrition 151.1 (2021): 132-139.
Liu, Jianghong, et al. “Malnutrition at age 3 years and lower cognitive ability at age 11 years: independence from psychosocial adversity.” Archives of pediatrics & adolescent medicine 157.6 (2003): 593-600.
These ARE scientific studies. Do you care to discuss them?
IQ is important and a discussion of racial difference in average IQ scores is virtually verboten but family structure is a good part of getting a potentially good student to perform and it depends also on support from family and local environment and that IS what The Great Society has destroyed.
Alma : “a discussion of racial difference in average IQ scores is virtually verboten”.
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Why? Didn’t Eric Holder say we should have an honest discussion about race?
An honest discussion or a discussion wherein certain concepts are not allowed? Eric Holder was not the most forthright person.
One of the most regular features in Professor Turley’s comment section is forum sliding.
A quick synopsis: “If a very sensitive posting of a critical nature has been posted on a forum – it can be quickly removed from public view by ‘forum sliding.’ In this technique a number of unrelated posts are quietly pre-positioned on the forum and allowed to ‘age.’ Each of these mis-directional forum postings can then be called upon at will to trigger a forum slide.”
Today Professor Turley gave us a great breakdown on a school who tried to “level” the racial playing field by skewing the pool of admission by eliminating a large number of Asian students; an act which I find particularly reprehensible. In the comments section, there are numerous posters who have their own agenda which is not related to the topic.
While I do appreciate those who label their posts as “OT”, or off topic, they really have no place in the discussion, so I don’t bother to read them. Then there are those who ramble on about their pet news of the day without an off topic label. For some unknown reason, they seem to view the comments section to be their own sounding board. Neither belong.
In the future, I’d love to see more posters call out these forum sliders so that we can get back onto the topic at hand.
Sorry for the off topic post. It isn’t intended to forum slide, but to educate fellow readers about an issue that plagues the comment section on a daily basis.
You are an arrogant little SOB, aren’t you, OT?
Social Darwinism is how Nazi Germany operated.
That is true and why is it that this concept of survival of the fittest seemed so rational when Darwin uttered it as a refutation of divine creation yet when applied to humans it is now anathema? It appears that progressives want to aspire to the ability to right all wrongs and care for all in need but without the shibboleth of actual divinity – yes the left is that certain of their rectitude in all things.
Well said… man evolved through survival of the fittest, but now everyone should have an equitable result.
First, the phrase “survival of the fittest” originated with Herbert Spencer, not Darwin.
Second, Darwin only ever spoke of survival of the fittest in the context of biology. He did not suggest that “social Darwinism” has any factual basis, and among the things that are anathema to science is pretending that social Darwinism is a scientific concept. It isn’t.
Third, evolution isn’t “a refutation of divine creation.” If any gods exist, then they certainly could have created evolution.
You touch on some salient points but the distinction between Darwinism vs social Darwinism is moot. We are social animals just as chimps and gorillas and all of the great apes utilize social structures for the benefit of enhancing the group – the survival of the fittest so to speak. As for Darwin’s backsliding on his theories and terms, he was reluctant up until the end to actually take a stand on much of what he proffered and many have reconsidered the starkness of his original offerings in light of just what you mentioned; the more intricate we perceive the universe the more difficult it is becoming to attribute it to random chance.
No, the distinction between biological Darwinism and social Darwinism is NOT moot, and suggesting that it’s moot only indicates how little you understand biology. Social Darwinism is not a biological construct.
And no, “enhancing the group” is NOT “the survival of the fittest so to speak.” Benefiting the group is not at all the same as benefiting the most biologically fit. In fact, our social development allows us to care for those who are not biologically fit, which is why (for example) we have neonatal intensive care units instead of just letting ill newborns die.
Darwin didn’t “backslide,” nor have you quoted anything he wrote that suggests he did.
It’s your opinion that “the more intricate we perceive the universe the more difficult it is becoming to attribute it to random chance.” Your opinion is not a fact.
You have your world view securely cemented to your brain, discussion is impossible since you need to only accept data that comports with that view. I am sure you are contented in that enclosed space.
You’re looking in the mirror.
NOT Random Chance alone, Random Chance AND Natural Selection.
What do you do when it seems that some people pursue happiness by making you unhappy?
Has anyone ever seen a picture of Putin with facial hair?
You wanna go to TJ? Work harder than the next guy or have the inate ability. That should be the criteria and nothing else. Elevating the unworthy does no one any good least of all those wrongfully elevated who must contend with the label of “token” and then inevitably fail. Oh and society suffers too when we don’t get the best and brightest.
I agree with you 100%. Nobody who has any amount of self worth wants to feel as if they achieved anything of value due to anything other than their own merits.
I’ve talked with many talented and successful minorities and women who have expressed worry that they got to where they were in their field simply because they are female. In truth, most of them would have faired the same in a society where we didn’t prioritize female or minority advancement, but to them, they always will have their doubts.
Programs like the one implemented by TJ High School should never be put into place. It’s racism pure and simple.
‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
– Declaration of Independence
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To pursue happiness is to attempt to merit success.
It is impossible to merit success and to merit failure.
Students must be considered for enrollment solely on merit.
Students must be rewarded for succeeding on merit.
The Constitution provides rights, freedoms, privileges and immunities to undifferentiated “PEOPLE.”
Nowhere do the Framers differentiate “PEOPLE” in the application of fundamental law.
The application of “race criteria” and affirmative action are antithetical and unconstitutional.
The Fairfax County School Board must be summarily terminated and prosecuted with extreme prejudice for malicious administration detrimental to illicitly differentiated students who manifestly merited success.
Congress has no authority to legislate in the favor of differentiated “PEOPLE.”
Public institutions are bound by and under the dominion of the rights, freedoms, privileges and immunities provided to undifferentiated “PEOPLE” by the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
The owners of private institutions are the sole entities with the power to “claim and exercise” dominion over their properties.
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“[Private property is] that dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in exclusion of every other individual.”
– James Madison
OT
Whatever you do, don’t let “Crazy Abe” Lincoln hear about the secession by “Buckhead City!”
“Crazy Abe” will be starting an unconstitutional war against a “sovereign city,” suspending habeas corpus, smashing printing presses, throwing Buckhead war opponents in prison, confiscating private property, killing one million Americans (i.e. 1,000 actual Georgians), and sending mail-in ballots to every person in Haiti and Africa.