[muir_redwoods]

Swedes are taller than Italians but that doesn’t mean that Swedish jockeys are taller than Italian basketball players. Even if Watson is correct, and no one can even define intelligence so I don’t know how he can be, knowing someone’s ethnicity tells you very little about the individual.

[Recovering_Democrat]

...knowing someone’s ethnicity tells you very little about the individual.

Exactly. Knowing how someone thinks, maybe how they vote, will tell you more about their intelligence than their race.

Thomas Sowell is more intelligent than more than 99.9% of the caucasians you'll see on any given day.

Al Gore & Ted Kennedy, trust fund rich white boys, are almost as smart as a bag of hammers.

So race isn't necessarily a factor, you see, in determining intelligence.

[NCLaw441]

You posted: Even if Watson is correct, and no one can even define intelligence so I don’t know how he can be, knowing someone’s ethnicity tells you very little about the individual.
***
You have made the important point here. There are certainly enough highly intelligent blacks and stupid whites that intelligence is a matter that has to be assessed on an individual and not a racial basis.

That said, I don’t know what the science may prove, but it seems to me that in the absence of evidence on either side, we should wait for the science to determine the answer.

Finally, why should science be concerned with social perceptions? If it turns out to be true that, as a race, blacks are less intelligent, as proven by valid scientific methods, should that science be censored?

[Godebert]

"....knowing someone’s ethnicity tells you very little about the individual."

Perhaps.....but it increases your odds of making a good guess.

[SauronOfMordor]

Swedes are taller than Italians but that doesn’t mean that Swedish jockeys are taller than Italian basketball players. Even if Watson is correct, and no one can even define intelligence so I don’t know how he can be, knowing someone’s ethnicity tells you very little about the individual.

You're right about his statement having no weight about specific people, black or white.

When you talk about averages, though, it has long been documented (but not readily talked about) that black scores on IQ tests and tests like the SAT, tend to average significantly below whites. The situation in the US is more complicated than it is in Africa, since such a large percentage of US blacks are genetically mixed, where someone may be referred to as "black" when he's genetically as much as 90% white

[Reeses]

no one can even define intelligence

Nature's IQ test is below as is in fact the reason humans developed intelligence far in excess of that needed to find food and shelter. This definition of higher intelligence probably holds throughout the universe. In the most recent test handed out by nature, it has determined that America has a superior combination of intelligence, teamwork, economic sophistication, and culture than Iraq. Nature has removed many of the low scorers from the gene pool so they do not continue to pass on their genetics and culture.

[headsonpikes]

“Swedes are taller than Italians but that doesn’t mean that Swedish jockeys are taller than Italian basketball players. Even if Watson is correct, and no one can even define intelligence so I don’t know how he can be, knowing someone’s ethnicity tells you very little about the individual.”

Fifteen years ago I lived in an ethnicly diverse inner city neighbourhood in Vancouver BC, and used the bus system for travel.
I soon discovered that the shoes a person wears tells you more about them than skin color or language ever could - seriously!