Re: What Are the Race Deniers Denying?
(frank@clark.net)
9 Nov 1996 16:02:08 GMT
Ron Kephart (rkephart@osprey.unf.edu) wrote:
: Duncan@drmac.demon.co.uk ("Duncan R. MacMillan") wrote:
: >
: > I get the impression that a lot of people who rubbish "The Bell Curve"
: > seem to think that IQ was used to assign the subjects to their racial groups,
: > instead of the other way round.
:
: No, that's not the problem. The problem with the Bell Curve and other
: pseudo scientific attempts to correlate "race" and "IQ" is that people
: are assigned to "races" based on the US folk racial taxonomy, and then
: differences (real or otherwise) between these groups are projected
: onto their biology. The groups are NOT biological, but CULTURAL
: constructs, and thus the conclusion that differences in "IQ" reflect
: differences in genetics is wrong, wrong, wrong.
We seem to be getting no closer in finding out what the race deniers
are denying than before. But even if we do find out, folk races differ
from one another genetically, even if they do not precisely correspond to
races, whatever they are, as biologists might define them. If we were to
define the race of Evens as those who have even Social Security numbers
and Odds with Social Security numbers, these races would indeed have
nothing to do with genetics. And the average IQs would not differ
significantly either.
I do wish you would answer the basic question of what it is that the race
deniers are denying *before* you make the denial!
: Of course, there is also a problem with the whole concept of "IQ" and
: the notion that it represents anything more than performance on a test
: which happens to be called an "IQ Test."
I'm not sure the readers here understand what an IQ test is. An IQ test
has a bunch of questions, such as "Apple is to fruit as hamburger is to ?"
There are questions of greater and greater difficulty, and the point of
the test is to find out where the cut off point of the testee is. He can
answer questions up to a certain level of difficulty and not beyond.
May I ask you why anyone would administer these tests if they had
*nothing* to do with anything beyond the tests themselves?
The idea that the number
: arrived at by analyzing performance on one of these tests represents
: a genetically coded for "thing" inside the heads of people is also
: wrong, wrong, wrong.
Please explain to the readers why we should take your assertion on the
basis of your say-so.
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