An Intelligent Discussion About Race and IQ Is Possible

Wall Street Journal ^ | December 15, 2020 | Jason L. Riley

[GOPJ]

“I am happy to discuss the race and IQ debate with colleagues who hold contrary views,” he wrote in a 2017 paper. “Telling someone that what they believe is morally remiss or telling them that if they persist in disagreeing, I will expose them is not my style.” These days, unfortunately, it’s precisely the style of many liberal elites when it comes to discussing racial inequality. Question racial preferences, Black Lives Matter activism or critical race theory, and you are considered not merely in error but in sin. For Flynn, dodging difficult topics was intellectual cowardice. “To advise scholars that they should not systemically investigate race and IQ seems to me to raise the question of what we are afraid of.” Earlier this year we lost Abigail Thernstrom and Walter Williams, two of the country’s leading race scholars. Flynn didn’t share their conservative politics. He was a committed leftist who named his son after the socialist Eugene Debs and left for New Zealand in the early 1960s because he was disgusted by McCarthyism and Jim Crow. What Flynn did share with his fellow controversialists was courage and a commitment to prioritizing facts and evidence over faddish thinking. He taught us how to discuss intelligence intelligently.

This man has a pair...no lack of courage here.

[Red6]

The problem is that you don’t need to do it, other will do it for you.

When I went to school “all” the children were given IQ tests (where I went). This allowed for some kids to get the attention they needed and for others to be put in more accelerated programs... However, because anything tied to race, sex, national origin, religion or today sexual orientation is taboo (if there is a correlation to something derogatory), they stopped testing children all together. In my case as a child it was the race - IQ issue.

Gays: This is true for HIV/AIDS and how the fact that 67% of all new infections belong to a group that is only 2% of the population, or their suicide rates, or their pedophilia rates... The point is this, any correlation or causality that is tied to a “special protected group” that is derogatory is taboo. Women and their non-deployability rates in the armed services, their horrible retention rates... It may be factually correct, there may even be useful information contained that could benefit that group if applied correctly, BUT it is not allowed in America to have a derogatory connection to a special protected group.

It’s better to pretend everyone is the same even though you can see we are not.

[brownsfan]

“It’s better to pretend everyone is the same even though you can see we are not.”

And that brings you back to: The right sees the world as it is, the left sees the world as they wish it to be.

[Greetings_Puny_Humans]

Just saw it, thanks. First link took me to a paywall.

[redgolum]

My wife is a teacher.

Meritocracy is considered part of systemic racism because not enough blacks are getting PhDs, so to reward high performers is part of oppression.

It gets more detailed and nuanced than that, but the upshot is since not everyone is smart enough for college work, then the work is racist.

[brownsfan]

“It gets more detailed and nuanced than that, but the upshot is since not everyone is smart enough for college work, then the work is racist.”

And that is how we end up with bridges that fall down. It is horrifically stupid to see everything through the lens of race.

Just one more reason I absolutely, without reservation, despise the left. I have recently jettisoned some acquaintances because they are lefties. I won’t tolerate it anymore.

[Bookshelf]

It is easy to grow a pair in New Zealand. Try that schtick in Detroit, or Chicago and see them shrivel.

[Grampa Dave]

Zero Intelligent Discussions About Race, IQ or any subjects Is with liberals and so called moderates is Possible

[Grampa Dave]

Discussing anything to do that requires objectivity, scientific methods, and race...is impossible in most places in America.

This will get worse, until we stop talking to our controllers!

[Vermont Lt]

I talk to my “controller” every day. And He controls everything. LOL.

[Jim Noble]

As *I often say, liberty and equality are antonyms.

Our Constitution was drafted to “secure the blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our posterity”. Draw your own conclusions.

[kaehurowing]

Not in America, though.

[sphinx]

I devoutly hope that differences in IQ will ultimately be explained entirely by environmental factors. To further that discussion, however, we should take a hiatus on the black-white issue, which has become hyper-politicized, and focus on something more manageable. Let's try the white-East Asian gap, or the gap between white of European ancestry and Ashkenazi Jews. I have yet to see an environmentalist explanation of either of these differences.

I truly hope one can be discovered. If all we need do is adopt dreidels, yarmulkes, and matzoh ball soup -- well, we could do that.

Nature and nurture are both in play. The debate is about relative weights. But the left makes rational discussion impossible. The left talks about "white supremacy" the way the anti-Semites used to talk about the international Zionist conspiracy. The theory is adopted as an ad hoc explanation to account for differences for which other explanations are ideologically forbidden. The absence of concrete evidence is taken as evidence for the depth of the nefarious skullduggery at work.

[Jim Noble]

I devoutly hope that differences in IQ will ultimately be explained entirely by environmental factors

Why?

[Hiddigeigei]

"Discussing anything to do that requires objectivity, scientific methods, and race...is impossible in most places in America."
"Civilization, in fact, grows more and more maudlin and hysterical; especially under democracy it tends to degenerate into a mere combat of crazes ..." — In Defense of Women, H. L. Mencken.

[apostoli]

Bell Curve doesn’t lie.

[myerson]

NFL, NBA?

[tsomer]

I recall a study made in Northern Europe comparing IQs of adopted kids and their siblings. One of the pair was raised in an affluent environment and the other in a poor setting. They concluded that environment had little if any influence.

One thing it seems hasn’t received enough attention: nutrition. Vitamin D is associated with neural development and is produced by exposure to sunlight. Black skin adapted to high exposure, resists sunlight; white skin developed as people migrated to where there was less available light. Maybe at least part of the problem is a deficit in certain forms of vitamin D.

That’s how the theory would go and I must have heard it somewhere. What do you think?

[palmer]

I devoutly hope that differences in IQ will ultimately be explained entirely by environmental factors....Nature and nurture are both in play.

Your second statement is correct, regardless of what you hope.

[Greetings_Puny_Humans]

I haven’t heard that one but wouldn’t be surprised if Vitamin D—which I think is extremely important for many other reasons—plays such an important role in neural development too.