FalconAg06 said:
Infection_Ag11 said:
WestAustinAg said:
Interesting theory starting here:
Discrepancies in IQ across populations is a well documented fact that is in no way debatable or controversial in the scientific community. The data is overwhelming. The debate centers around how much of these differences are attributable to environment/nutrition/etc. For example, Americans and Wester Europeans of Nigerian descent have a higher average IQ than native Nigerians. It is likely a given person has a maximum and minimum IQ range allowed for by their genetics and their circumstances dictate whether that is maximized or minimized.
My only real problem with this topic is that it has frequently been used by virulent racists who ignore that the discrepancy is far more broad than simply between blacks and whites. East Asian and Nordic populations have higher IQ averages than those of western and Central European descent, for instance.
I think the topic has been used to call people racists for simply pointing to the data as a reason for why some races do better than others.
It is important. If certain races are doing poorly in schools, it isn't because of racism, its because they're not as genetically blessed with intellect than other races.
It's an extremely important subject. The default assumption seems to be if non-white non-asians don't perform well in school, it's racism, and the solution is more money to throw at the problem
Another point: From a scientific perspective, race is a meaningless term. It is an arbitrary and ill defined system of human categorization that puts Nigerians and Ethiopians into the same box. French and Finnish people are the same "race" according to most people, but Finnish people have higher IQs.
We should really be discussing these things in terms of ethnic origins, which is an objective criteria. Discussing genetic differences between "whites" and "blacks" and "Asians" isn't very meaningful.
But with respect to our educational system, the issues go far deeper than some groups being less intelligent than others. A person with an IQ of 90 is still more than capable of doing well in grade school under the right circumstances. We aren't talking about IQs so low that knowledge acquisition at that level of education is compromised. We're talking about differences that limit a populations ability to produce MDs, PhDs and provide innovation, not graduate high school and run a dry wall business.
TLDR: IQ differences aren't the predominant reason why American black students/schools do more poorly on average.
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