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To: mnehrling
Intelligence is more based on cultural and environmental factors, not racial. In all situations being equal testing scenarios, you don’t see the standard deviation that you do if you pull those with diverse environmental backgrounds.

Sorry, but that is utter nonsense. The one standard deviation difference between white and black populations in the U.S. is one of the most consistent findings in psychometrics.

How much of this is genetic and how much is environmental is of course a subject of considerable debate. I think 50/50 is as good an estimate as any.

10 posted on 12/10/2007 7:22:33 AM PST by freespirited (I'm voting for the GOP nominee.)
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To: freespirited
I would love to see your source on this. Studies like the Miele and Grasso studies have shown that, while there are some genetic traits that impact intelligence, they are not distinctly racially passed, more related to individual family groups, and this still doesn’t overcome environmental impacts. At that, the infamous the Milwaukee Project pretty much debunked the blanket ‘racial’ difference argument.
11 posted on 12/10/2007 8:15:07 AM PST by mnehring (..one candidate did not display any moderateness or liberalism...Fred Thompson - Rush Limbaugh)
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To: freespirited

I too. “Nurture” (environment) is way overplayed these days. It is the dominant theory these days that every problem (and maybe every good thing, too) is due to:

-the parents methods
-the lack of 1 parent
-the neighbors
-the owner/master
-the previous owner/master
etc, etc, etc

It’s as true in dogs and horses as it is in humans. It’s always in vogue to blame whoever has the dog as the cause of the dog’s “viciousness”, etc. Also if they cower in fear - it’s because of some bad human owner, not the dam nor her genetics nor the rest of genetics. Never mind all the problem children out there - it’s not genetics, but the raising. Or at least what they had to see in the neighborhood around them.

I don’t want to discredit environmental factors altogether, but we have to be serious. These days, it seems 95% of “blame” goes on “the environment” whereas it’s undoubtedly closer to 50/50.


32 posted on 12/10/2007 10:44:48 AM PST by the OlLine Rebel (Common sense is an uncommon virtue.)
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To: freespirited; All
White and black populations...how much is genetic and how much environmental...I think 50/50 is as good an estimate as any.

One must consider other factors. Where the smarter blacks able to escape being captured and sent to the US? Were the more highly intelligent more emotionally sensitive or rebellious and thus died or were killed on the boat trip or in slavery? There is a place in the South called Ibo Landing. An entire boat load of Ibo slaves after being taken off the slave ship in chains marched themselves into the sea and drowned rather than be slaves. Many Ibos were killed in Nigeria a few decades ago. They were hated by other Nigerians for being smart and canny traders (like Jews). Also Africa had large, civilized cities and towns. The slaves were often captured in small villages in the Jungle. Did the smarter more ambitious Africans gravitate to the cities? My brother traveled by truck, train, bus and thumb across about 10 African countries. He said it was fascinating to see some areas where there were large numbers of educated, cultures Africans and others were the level of culture and apparent intelligence was very much lower. I have traveled into a number of rural and small town areas of this country and noticed quite a number of less than adequate people who simply could not survive in the complexities of city living--mentally and physically handicapped as some of them obviously were.

37 posted on 12/10/2007 12:58:39 PM PST by gleeaikin
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