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Comment by pqhwan | Hacker News Reader

> very few whites are as intelligent as blacks like Neil deGrasse Tyson or Barack Obama

There is a stereotype of self-righteous closeted eugenics believers that I’m reminded of, when I read statements like this. But you go just short of pushing an agenda, so fine. Putting that aside, the thing that I find frustrating about people having this debate is that they never seem to ask “why would people with darker skin tones do worse at standard cognition tests?” Well, IMHO, a more plausible answer is that “populations that are treated and educated better, who encounter less barriers to privilege, enjoy relative ease of social mobility and physical safety, are more likely to spend time developing their abstract reasoning abilities”.

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As a black person I'm going to swallow my disgust at the fact I had to read that this drivel evening and point their own study is clearly stating the opposite point they made, that IQ tests are not measuring some sort of inherent intelligence difference in races:

> Second, even IQ scores clearly respond to changes in the environment. IQ scores, for example, have risen dramatically throughout the world since the 1930s.

Pseudo-intellectual "redpilled" types like to pretend that racial conflict ended the day slavery ended, but since out redlining wasn't even fully illegal until the late 70s... it makes sense that a test highly affected by environmental factors would reflect systemic and persistent policies that were designed to destroy the environment of minorities.

As a black person I'm going to swallow my disgust at the fact I had to read that this drivel evening and point their own study is clearly stating the opposite point they made, that IQ tests are not measuring some sort of inherent intelligence difference in races

You attribute a position to me that I did not make, and do not hold. You then criticize a straw man of your own invention.

My position is that IQ scores reflect actual intelligence. However the environment that you grow up in is one of the biggest drivers of how intelligent you will become. Therefore population differences in intelligence are mostly attributable to differences in environment, not genetics.

That said, the position I hold that you don't like is that there are population differences and those population differences have a significant impact on real lives. I don't like that either. However that is what the data says, and I'm strongly in favor of accepting unpleasant realities rather than sweeping them under the carpet.

You will note that the article that I linked to supports all of my actual positions.

Let's pretend for a second, that you just don't know how to write a simple thought in a coherent way, accidentally tried to say "the stereotype blacks are stupid is true", and aren't instead just backpedaling from your original shitty comment after being called out...

You say it's a difference in environment, so why use that difference to defend a statement like "blacks are stupid"?!

Why try to make a try and enforce a racist statement like "blacks are stupid", that's actually _less valid_ and _much more easily disproven_ than the hypothesis you claim you're _actually_ backing, that environmental differences lead to differences in intelligence?

After all, while it's trivial to find studies questioning the reliability and validity (not just statistical validity) of IQ tests... it's _more_ trivial to find studies showing the effect of different cultures on IQ tests ability to even measure intelligence: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Culture-Fair-Cognitive...

_The study you link is making connections to race with specific goals in mind that have nothing to do with trying to defend a stereotype as heinous as "blacks are stupid". In fact their point is literally the opposite, that what appears to be a simple gap in races, is actually a reflection of environmental differences._

It's clear to me that your own underlying bias caused you to try and draw a conclusion that literally does not exist, and you internally try to write off every single attempt to call out your own stupidity as pearl clutching.

It's literally the opposite of defending a statement like "blacks are stupid"

No testing gap being closed is continent on people "not sweeping under the rug the fact that blacks are stupid!"

Now, let me be a little personal here, you are the worst kind of person and part of a growing plague.

This new wave of people overestimating their intelligence and understanding, and undervaluing basic human decency because "it flies in the idea of logic!" and "you're only mad I said something heinous because of <insert overused logical fallacy>!!!!".

There are a lot of truly awful things that you can justify if your only criteria is "I can misconstrue a study to make a shitty defense of it!"

Do your friends at "Lean St" know that you spend your time defending statements like "blacks are stupid"? Maybe you should tell them?

I've read your rant multiple times. You haven't exactly demonstrated good reading comprehension. Nor do I believe your personal attacks are justified.

If you wish to argue that blacks do not score over a standard deviation lower on IQ tests, you're arguing against a mountain of evidence. If you wish to argue that this difference doesn't have pretty serious real-world consequences, you're arguing against another mountain of evidence.

You can choose to argue that IQ is culturally biased. I have to admit that culture affects people's IQ. But in turn IQ measures mental abilities that will help you do well in a technologically based society. So if particular cultural ideas help kids grow up with better IQs, those ideas are worth adopting. If specific family interventions have a positive impact, they are worth considering as well. And if you refuse to do that for kids, you bear a share of the responsibility for their future failures.

Seriously. IQ is a better predictor of your future success than your socioeconomic background. It is a better predictor than the color of your skin. The good side of that is that people are being judged more on their abilities than their background and race. That's good. But the bad side is that every year in which we see a large gap in SAT scores between blacks and whites, we are looking a future economic gap that will last decades.

As a society, we refuse to even think about that. Which means that we choose to continue the problem.

Read it again then, your entire comment is already answered to above.

You can keep trying to switch direction like a weasel, but I could cut and paste the comment you replied to and it'd still be accurate because you didn't answer a single point brought up.

Let's narrow the foxhole though, see if you can answer yes or no to a few simple questions:

> The answer to the implicit question is simple and obvious. The stereotypes that proved accurate were often ones which people, for political reasons, wished to be inaccurate.

> A simple example will demonstrate this. There is a stereotype that blacks are stupid.

Your comment is attempting to support the stereotype "blacks are stupid" as "accurate but inconvenient". Yes?

You must realize it's possible to talk about differences in education outcomes for different races without deciding to frame it in defense of the stereotype blacks are stupid, since you link to an article that does so. Yes?

Yet you decided to use it support the stereotype "blacks are stupid". Yes?

"Blacks are stupid" is a racist stereotype. Yes?

You are supporting racist stereotypes on HN. Yes?

You should should keep trying to double down on it? No.

Yes, I did not push an agenda. I also linked to an article that was all about how we can reduce the gap. But the very first step is to admit that said gap actually exists.

But my point is that people's current experience is going to be based on the reality that the tests reveal. Which is that the average black that they meet will, statistically, be noticeably less intelligent than the average white. And experience is going to lead to prejudices. And the fact that these prejudices are shocking and horrifying to people is obvious from the comments.

I take it that you find this frustrating. But in this political climate, I find it understandable that people are “triggered“ when you put emphasis on the current state of things, even if it is a fact, than how we ended up here. Underneath those statistics is an injustice at a large scale that span generations, and many people don’t want to build a society on top of injustice, without addressing it first. That’s not a matter of statistics, it’s a matter of values. So when you put emphasis on statistics, people will suspect that you don’t share those values.

Yes. I get that.

And they are about half wrong when it comes to me. I actually have similar values. But I have very different beliefs about how to achieve those values. And as a result, I disagree with most of the agendas being pushed to try to address the problems left by the awful history.

Yes, I want equality. But I want it to be obtained with a hand up, not a handout. We cannot successfully mandate equal outcomes for populations with unequal abilities. We've done that for 60 years and it has not worked.

In California today, black kids score a standard deviation lower than whites, and graduate high school with reading skills matching the average white 8th grader. We can't even talk about that fact. But IQ is a better predictor of your future life trajectory than the color of your skin. And those test scores guarantee that decades from now, those white kids will be enjoying better lives than those black kids. Not because of something that someone in the past did, but because opportunity is available to all, and the benefits accrue to those who are capable of more.

This isn't actually a hopeless fact of nature. Thanks to the Flynn effect, the black-white IQ gap is roughly the same magnitude as the IQ gap between white kids today and their Boomer grandparents. If black parents could learn what white parents have learned in the last 50 years, and receive support to help actually raise their kids well, I believe that in one generation we could erase the IQ gap, and most of the wealth disparity afterwards.

But nobody is chanting, "We need parenting classes!" And suggesting anything like that will get you accused of victim blaming.

So we're going to double down on the same basic ideas that have failed to solve the problem for 60 years now. Is there any reason to believe that it will start working at any point in the next 60 years?

I think your "values" are leading you to believe blatant racist and victim-blaming tropes like "black people have disparate outcomes because... they're worse parents". How about we instead start by closing the 23 billion school funding gap. Or would you consider that to be a "handout". https://www.npr.org/2019/02/26/696794821/why-white-school-di...

I see. It is racist to say things like, "We should encourage black parents to not beat their kids so much." And yet as articles like https://www.apa.org/pi/families/resources/newsletter/2017/04... point out, that happens to be a very real problem. And so we refuse to even discuss the very interventions that are most likely to have the biggest impact.

On the school funding gap, I'm all for fixing it. That's one of the root causes behind why black boys are under half as likely to meet state reading standards in California as white ones. It isn't the only one - black kids are already substantially behind before they enter school - but it sure needs fixing.

But along with that, let's not lie to ourselves about the consequences of the current situation. A black high school graduate is half as likely to have actually learned what they were supposed to as a white. A business should be able to hire high school students but require a literacy test. The fact that blacks are half as likely to pass said test should be viewed as a judgment on our school system, and not blacks.

But in our legal system, businesses who try that are likely to be sued and are likely to lose the lawsuit. (Many have.) Because insisting that your employees can read and write is considered racial discrimination.

So businesses instead require a college degree and don't have a literacy test. The result is that businesses get literate employments, they hire fewer blacks than they otherwise would have, and now there is more demand for college degrees. Which helps cause tuition to go up, and saddles young people with debt. Which means that everyone loses.

In short I support creating results. Not mandating them. What it takes to create results sounds shocking because those ideas have been off the table for discussion for decades. And likewise discussing the failures of the current system is also off the table.

The two things you've suggested as solutions are "parenting classes" and "encourage black parents to not beat their kids so much".

You're doing the same thing here as you did above with your original post.

No anti-racist would look at the results of IQ tests and frame their conclusion as "don'tcha see, black people are stupid".

No anti-racist would look at the article you posted which acknowledges that "the use of corporal punishment in black communities today is a byproduct of centuries of slavery, the racial terrorism of the Jim Crow era, and exposure to racism that continues to chip away at the vitality of black life." and come to the conclusion that "black parents just need to learn what white parents have learned".

Everyone can hear the dog-whistles loud and clear.

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