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Your comments are apt, but you need to consider also the reality that people make their own culture--not the other way around. Also, that most IQ tests measure the type of intelligence that best correlates with academic achievement; types of intelligence that relate to other forms of achievement are not necessarily measured.

The examples of students of hispanic background who resisted pressure to not pursue academic courses, and persisted to do well, probably reflected those who had the better genetic academic potential to begin with. In all population groups there is a fairly wide range of aptitude levels.

To illustrate the significance of this factor, consider the personality types--other than those being transported involuntarily--of those who braved the ocean, wilderness & whatever was unknown to settle the original Colonies. These people were not completely typical to their various human stocks. They tended to be exceptional in the ways that the culture they created proved to be exceptional. American values have always reflected that exceptionalism.

The Left wants to pretend that people are interchangeable. If you look more closely at the Academics who would deny the realities of human difference--of the uniqueness of the different peoples of the earth--you will find that most of those who push the denial seek some form of World Government; for the destruction of the very concept of the traditional nation.

Of course the pretense that people are simple products of their environment also fits neatly into the Communist theory that the rich only succeed by exploiting the poor, etc..

The Heritage Foundation has made not only a moral error in turning their back on Dr. Richwine. They have made a ridiculous logical error in turning their back on an honest effort to study the characteristics of human societies--the varied characteristics of human societies, which is pretty much what "heritage" is all about. The only people who should be offended by the study are those who are ashamed of heritage. (There is nothing wrong with being different or unique.)

William Flax

Also, that most IQ tests measure the type of intelligence that best correlates with academic achievement; types of intelligence that relate to other forms of achievement are not necessarily measured.

That right there!

My neighbor in my new home in rural Kentucky only has an eight grade education, but he is one smart cookie. And his intelligence serves him very well here.

One of the great benefits of higher education, to me, is demonstrated in the concept of “music appreciation”. The more you know about the creation of music, the more you enjoy it. The more you know about how things work, the more you enjoy the world that contains those items. The more you know how to deal with them. The more accurately you can anticipate their future actions and adjust your life course accordingly.

But you don’t need to go to college to know how to drive over that shiny spot in the road in the dead of winter. And this touches on why I gained so much value back in 1970 from spinning donuts in the snow of the school parking lot. :-)

Which is why most leftists favored the "blank slate" or tabula rasa theory when I was growing up fifty years ago. If you agreed with that "theory," then the only differences between different ethnic groups in wealth or achievement could be attributed to discrimination and oppression by one group over another. That theory has since been thoroughly disproved, but it hasn't stopped many leftists in believing in and promoting that theory. Of course, most arch-feminists still believe in that theory. Many, including Gloria Steinem, still argue that males and females are exactly the same apart from sexual differences.

If different rates of achievement could be attributed to individual, hard-wired genetic characteristics and not one group oppressing another, the edifice of lies that constitutes leftism would be thoroughly discredited.