The science of racism

Thanks Julian. But .....that the traditional notion of intelligence, based on I.Q testing, is far too limited ( Multiple Intelligence - Howard Gardner ).

In my opinion, intelligence is a gift from God, and a gift does not distinguish the color of skin.

Gardner's ideas are interesting but he hasn't really produced much in the way of data to back it up.

What would be interesting would be if they identified the genes associated with myelination which appears to be an important factor in processing speed & is highly hereditable. This may allow intelligence to be enhanced.

http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/22333/

Intelligence is the head working with the heart. The head ( minds ) just know and recognize, but the heart that feels anything known. Heart gives a reaction and instructs its mind to do it. Without feelings, minds can't live and grow. That it is the facts, I.Q testing is far too limited.

The genetics of intelligence don't live up to the fanfare. The best case I've seen is catechol O-methyltransferase (COMT). Valine 158 of this protein is replaced by methionine in some people - more often in Europeans than some other races - and this decreases the protein's function a little bit. Early reports sold this as the "Worrier vs. Warrior" variant and claimed benefits of as much as a 4% improvement in performance in one kind of card sorting test for people with the weak allele. Problem: recent meta-analysis of the reports that have come out since suggests that there is really very little effect, though still not zero. The gene's effect, if any, can barely be seen above the noise.

Note: If anyone envies this ancient Aryan worrier secret, a similar effect of inhibiting COMT probably can be had by drinking a little bit of green tea.

A more interesting (and still highly controversial and highly dubious) topic may be the epigenetics of racism, because while all human populations have been selected for intelligence, it seems conceivable that not every human is optimized for intelligence in every generation. This time our iconoclasts can discuss the biology of Lamarck and the politics of Lysenko. There have been enough interesting publications regarding things like variable yellow and the effect of Dutch famine on future heart disease, that it is not beyond the range of possibility that by offering one generation of African Americans proper civil rights and affirmative action, we might see one or two future generations do better on standardized tests as the methylation state of their genes comes to resemble that of other people whose grandparents led the Dolce Vita. True or not, it has to be more fun than debating the relevance of card sorting tests.

Very good points made. Race, color or religion has nothing to do with someone's personality or talent. We pride ourselves as being "liberal" and "progressive" and yet believe in racism????

I was particularly ignorant of this fact. Thanks for noting it here

ROBERT180144 wrote:The entire concept of "race" is meaningless as far as human beings are concerned. Human experienced a population restriction some 100,000 years ago, or less, and the species lost most of its genetic diversity as a result. T

nice one

It is unfortunate that educated people still need to defend against racism at the scientific level, when simple history should be enough to tell the story. We should know that Egypt was a pioneer of civilization, that Rome and Carthage were rivals, that Timbuktu has an older university than any in Europe. The only way that racists can even try to make a point is with magic tricks - Egypt isn't "really" part of Africa, that North Africa isn't part of Africa, that any Muslim or Christian influenced tradition isn't really part of Africa (never mind that both originated from just past the rather arbitrary division from the Arabian peninsula), and above all, that Europe's various millennia of Dark Ages don't count for any sort of comparison.

A little magic spell to remember, to ward off such nonsense, is a Latin phrase,

"Non Angli, sed Angeli"

It was coined by the good Pope Gregory the Great in the year 554, when the Huns left Rome to administration by its eastern empire. Meaning "Not Angles but angels", he used it to refer to the little English children being sold at the slave auction block, a sort of equivalent to "Black is Beautiful". He was a great crusader against slavery in his time, well respected by many.

We should remember that England was once remote and backward, that Scotland was a wild country of feared tribesmen, that even in recent centuries the refugees from conquered Ireland were despised above any other race, that Germany and Scandinavia were seen as a home to wild raiding barbarians, and so on. All we vaguely call "white" has had its turn in the iron maiden of imaginary racial inferiority. Most likely the same has been true of every race in the world at some time or other, whether recorded to history or not.

Racism is just an ugly word conjured up to describe a human trait that allows people to distinguish one person ( or one thing ) from another. I view it as just discrimination to the nth degree. Even among people of the same village, there will always be discrimination. It is a way for people to differentiate themselves. I don't believe that racism will ever die.

I wish I'd said that.

BobTS1007522 wrote:Did anyone happen to catch Henry Louis Gates Jr. interviewing James Watson on theroot.com the other day? I watched it yesterday from The Scientist editorial office, where I am an editor.

It was a very interesting situation because Watson, who was skewered last year for insinuating to Britain's Sunday Times Magazine that black people were intellectually inferior to whites, sat down to talk with Gates, a leading black intellectual.

The interview wandered in and out of some pretty strange territory. Gates and Watson discussed the possibility of a basketball gene, and at one point, Watson mentioned a product tester who self-administered a hormone derivative, giving himself a ten-hour erection. The back-and-forth was made all the more bizarre by the fact that through the entire interview, Watson had a band-aid dangling from his left nostril. I'm sure it was necessary, but it just lent the already-bizarre interview that extra touch of surreality.

The conversation got very interesting, though, when Gates pondered the possibility of an unequally shared genetic root of intelligence. He asked Watson how our civilization would respond to findings that suggested blacks were indeed genetically less intelligent than whites. Watson replied: "Black people and white people, we're going to both be better because of this knowledge. Everyone should be judged [as] individuals. No one should be judged by a term like 'black.' So I'm optimistic about where we're going. I don't think it's going to lead to people being just discriminated. I see them being helped by knowing what genes might affect your health, and also in understanding when you don't fit in."

Though Watson attempted to allay Gates' fears, their conversation raises a crucial question. If science does uncover key genetic differences between people of different ethnicities (by no means a foregone conclusion) how will society (and researchers) react? What do you think?

Intelligence is relative.
Unless you were referring to schorlarly intelligence.
Else, it takes intelligence to be a great basketball player,
and the earnings are a proof thereof.
Thank you.

Interesting discussion, I might write a paper about this

I still can't believe that there could be racism in such a honored position and field

Racism in science I can't believe this...but if it exists then that is shame.

This whole concept is laughable, because there are so many different parameters around intelligence that any claim of "superiority" or "inferiority" is completely subjective.

Years ago, I spent a few months in a small town in Belize, and on one occasion was cooking in the home of a friend. This woman's husband, who himself had only a third-grade education, was amazed that I did not know the simple trick to peeling garlic--smash it first, and the skin comes right off. I could tell he thought that the college-educated scientist was something of a moron, and my complete incapability when it came to moving quietly through the jungle, handling a machete, killing a chicken, and so forth probably just confirmed his impression of me. If he were the one who had to determine intelligence, I'd have been ranked among the terminally stupid. Yet he could not have passed a basic IQ exam himself, since he was only semi-literate. So it's all a question of context.

If a scientist wants to investigate any variance in skills in finding hidden objects due to phenotype differences and uses acceptable experimental design and proxy markers for measurement, would that be racism?

if a scientist wants to investigate any variance in skills in music due to phenotype differences and again use acceptable methodologies and designs is this racism?

if a scientist wants to investigate any variance in skills in answering mathematical questions due to phenotype differences and again use standard scientific methods and designs is this racism?

Now imagine if instead of humans, we are talking about breeds of dogs, cats, horses, chimpanzees, etc.

The problem actually is that valid scientific questions are becoming taboos only because they are not politically correct. Humans are animals plain and simple. And science is science, politically correct or not. If a person is curious about something and has the capability of finding that answer, why not! Those who are onion skinned and feel that the answer to the question is not good they'd rather not hear about it.

True that intelligence is multifaceted and culturally linked. But then again, we could separate each skill and maybe say that native Africans are marginally better that native Europeans in athletics or maybe native East Asians are a bit better in mathematics and abstract logic or possibly Native Americans have an edge in intuitive skills. So, if we breakdown intelligence into specific skills and investigate any variance in performing a specific skill, and our study claims validity only for that skill, then why not. That I believe is not racism but science.

If then we can link that variance to a particular gene then the exercise would have been fruitful.

And even if the scientist who did the research is a chauvinistic racist pig but his methodology, design, data collection and analysis are above board, the important thing is what comes out of the research and not out of the mouth of the researcher.

Here ya go. Thanks for the support guys!

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JulianTS1051918 wrote:It's not surprising Japanese technology was so good - remember there average is slightly above the white european average. Your point about Egyptians being African though is mistaken, that is an Afrocentric myth.

There have been literally hundreds of IQ studies of various racial groups from many different countries and they show the same pattern (although note these are group averages & do not imply much about individuals):

highest IQ: Ashkenazi Jews
next highest: East Asians (Mongoloids)
next highest: Whites of European ancestry
lower: American Indians and Latinos
lower still: American and European Blacks
very low: sub-Saharan Blacks
lowest: Bushmen and Pygmies

Rushton, J.P. and Jensen, A.R. (2005). Thirty Years of Research on Race Differences in Cognitive Ability. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, Vol. 11, No. 2, 235-294.

IQ tests, in my opinion, can be skewed as well. But on a different note, societies where there tend to be more in-breeding ( pygmies and bushmen, possibly ) seem to suffer more in terms of intelligence.

The question is not whether racism is correct but how would the society respond if race , as is commonly understood, is linked to intelligence.Assuming that intelligence is definable( which has not been done till date, except describing it),such a finding as would link race to intelligence shall , as I see, result in the race being labeled as Superior in intelligence , will tend to look down upon the other;but as intelligence alone does not matter in relationships and social interaction, this finding will not adversely affect the social fabric any more than it is to day.

See an interesting article
ATOMIC CONCEPT OF QURAN VS SCIENTIST'S ATOMOS
http://oqasa.org/YEA/Archieve%201/YEA020.htm

You know what..we are all related (somewhat) so we (whites, and blacks) should get along no matter what our skin color is...racism is SO ridiculous. WE ALL came make a change in our world.