The fun and athleticism you see is awe-inspiring, but I haven't seen a single Asian person competing or even at the event. My guess is a math competition would look a lot different.
This is not a good example because the immigration process itself is highly selective. For the most part, only best and brightest from Nigeria are able to come to the US. Try comparing the average black American to the average Nigerian in Nigeria instead.
You compare the average Nigerian in Nigeria to the average Kenyan in Kenya, or Jamaican in Jamaica, or black American in the US, and you'll see an entirely different story.
There is something to these racial differences, and it can't be explained away by, "Well, if i only consider the top 0.01% of whatever group then they can do as well as the run of the mill 25 percentile Asian!"
Now I will concede that "mixed" kids outperforming all other non Asians was a surprise. But other than that one positive surprise, all this information is surprising in the other direction. Asians outperform at a level that is undeniable. No one is even in their league. Heck, no other racial grouping even catches the "mixed" kids. And unless I'm reading that data wrong, at the top, Asians are doing 3 times better even than the "mixed" kids. And 5 to 25 times better than any group other than the "mixed" kids.
We have to up our education game, because that is pathetic if this data is factual. (And I have seen no reason presented in these comments to believe it is not.)
There are big differences in educational levels and cultural views within every racial group. Is that relevant to the question of whether there are significant mean differences between racial groups on the population level?
Handwave of the century
Here's a question: How is it that we're able to measure the degree to which various racial minorities are underrepresented in congress, in colleges, in industry and in Emmy Award nominations? How is it that we're able to measure racial disparities in income, in COVID exposure, in medical outcomes and in every other conceivable context, if race is such a tricky concept to nail down?
Well, given that track and field is brutally dominated not just by black Africans/Caribbean Islanders, but that they tend to come from only a handful of ethnic groups, I tend to think that direct race has at least some influence.
Most body builders intuitively understand that being black is an advantage in building muscle.
But don't trust me, trust a study that also points this out: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/26298766_Ethnicity-....
I hesitate, to think obstacles are the reason why things are the way they are. Again, going back to sports. Black people faced all the same obstacles in the sport arena and still came out on top. Also, Asian people also faced discrimination too. Don't forget concentration camps.
And yes, all those other things you mention cultural, socio-economic, and historical are true too. Even within the Asian "grouping" there are groups that don't live up to the "stereotypical" standard of success. John Oliver talked about it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29lXsOYBaow
> Black people faced all the same obstacles in the sports arena?
No, African-Americans endured physical slavery for hundreds of years, leading to a disposition for physical work. Africans also come from a continent with the hottest average temperature, and in general are more athletically inclined.
And let's look past even that for a moment - why do you think some of the best players in the NBA are starting to come from Eastern Europe? Hmm, I wonder, could it have anything to do with the massive amount of investment into training and player facilities that is pouring into the area? Perhaps we could apply that analogy to academics as well, and realize the INCREDIBLY obvious fact that Asians tend to perform well because our parents have money to push us, we grow up in a culture surrounded by other kids who push us to do better, and we have _privilege_.
It has absolutely nothing to do with "race". It is an entirely privilege-driven issue (do you have resources, or do you not?), and if you still fail to see that, then you're most likely just letting your intrinsic bias/racism drive your thought process.
If it has nothing to do with "race" let's stop talking about race.
The coarse divisions that we call "race" don't help much here, either - there's a lot of variance between different groups of asians as well as different groups of whites (think of how different italians are from irish). The way we're lumped together is actually very arbitrary (and changes depending on how the lumpers are trying to score political points).
are those differences just because of race
or they are made because of external factors due to race?
For example:
You're successful because of X race
or
You're successful because you were treated differently than if you had Y race
Is it even really "classical liberal"? I'm fairly certain it's religious in nature. If the sky daddy made us all 6,000 years ago then we are in fact all the same.
The problem arrises when science discovers that humans co-evolved over millions of years and that we are a hybrid of multiple species _with no single common ancestor_. Even "modern" humans have had geographic isolation for tens of thousands of years in very different climates/selective pressures.
There are traits individuals can have, some of which are immutable, and some of which correlate with what we call "race". But race itself is, even taking the most benign meaning possible, at best a surrogate.
The sooner we get rid of that awful meme the better.
This may be true, but I find it interesting that white people are the only ones who think this way.
Every other group has in-group racial bias, and actively organizes to that end.
Not really - Asians are pretty quick to point out that lumping Japanese immigrants in with Indian immigrants makes for a pretty meaningless classification.
And of course the Philippines, Japan, China, Korea etc all have very different cultures/customs. However in my experience at a fortune 500 my Korean and Filipino coworkers still organize an "Asian Culture Club", in fact one of them is the president of an Asian advocacy group that interacts with the city for events around Asian American And Pacific Islander Heritage Month.
All that's fine, I'm not bashing anyone, just saying that from what I've seen it's seemingly only white people who are averse to any kind of ethnic organization.
Not stating this is reality. I'm genuinely curious what the science is on this.
The traditional concept of race (i.e. the one where "white", "black", "asian" and so on are well-defined terms) is scientifically untenable (fact) and socially harmful (opinion).
There are some narrow use-cases where the concept can be fruitfully applied. For example, some diseases are correlated with genetic characteristics themselves correlated with race. If you are a physician making a diagnosis, the patient's race is usually very apparent; you can and should make use of that information. But that's just keeping the English friar happy, correlation does not imply causation.
Tell that to the medical community, who routinely give different interventions based on race.