Do you consider yourself more left or right wing?

[sc94597]

JuliusHackebeil said:

sc94597 said:

But culture is definitely socially constructed. And culture can run along racial lines as borders. Nothing surprising about that. And cultures are different of course. This would have to mean that some are better at some things and worse at other things. I think this can easyily have a messurable effect on things like education.

Sure, but when we suggest culture is the source of the problem we have to explain the historical and current social forces that shape that culture. 

Thank you for you thoughtfull response. I am still not convinced to call race a social construct. As fas as I can tell by your explanation, it is still biology, just more complicated than most people would presume (-you cannot really neatly categorise people into such broad categories like balck, white, asian and expect to be able to do research on that basis).

I also still think that race could have an effect on intelligence. I tried looking into it for a hot second and found almost nothing (that would speak for or against that theory). I mean, we have to treat people as individuals anyways, so it would not matter much if there is an effect, as far as I can tell. You could still be a genius or a dumbass no matter your background.

Race isn't based on "populations" in the genetic sense, so it can't be biologically-grounded. Race is mostly a loose social category based in part on superficial physical features and in part on arbitrary ancestral categories. The argument made by those who suggest there is a racial component to IQ (or a correlation between race and IQ) is that IQ is mainly heritable. But if the "groups" we are identifying as distinctive groups aren't genetic populations, the argument of heritability falls apart, because we aren't looking at distinct genetic populations with "White" vs. "Black". Many different populations constitute "white" and "black" respectively if we are going to be very specific with "population" or all humans are essentially one population if we are going to be general with what constitutes a "population." 

Furthermore, there is heavy mixing in the post-colonial era. African-Americans, on average, have 30% European ancestry and about 2% Indigenous American ancestry. African-Americans are also mixed between various different African populations, and as noticed in my first response -- Africa is extremely genetically diverse, so much so that Eurasians essentially look like a branch of East Africans who are distinctive from West Africans, who are distinctive from Central African foragers, and who are distinctive from Khoi-San (in order of more closely related to less closely related.) 

If somebody wants a theory of intelligence associated with race, they really need to ground it in the actual phylogeny of human beings, not social categories like "black", "white", etc.  

But really, I am skeptical there are significant group differences, even if you do that, because the features of our anatomy that seem to correspond the most to intelligence (such as brain capacity to body ratio, after controlling for epigenetic and environmental factors as an example) are roughly within a similar range across all Homo Sapiens, with more variations within groups than between them. Most differences in IQ score, as an example, between groups are caused by factors like culture, nutrition, and socio-linguistic biases. The race realists attempt to argue that IQ is mostly heritable (which isn't the same thing as being mostly genetic) but they're looking at the individual level to support that, and individual heritability isn't the same thing as heritability from being a member of a population group. Parents and children are much more closely related than any two people of the same "race." 

But what if culture is the source of differences between races? You say we have to explain the historical and current social forces that shape that culture. This is a little vague for me, because there is no Plan of action attached. What if we can sufficiently explain all the forces that shaped a culture. And then? We would have to try and change the culture, I guess. Don't know how that could work though. I certainly don't think that affirmative action is the way to do it.

The whole reason why there are "Black" or "White" culture with only intermittent cross-over is because of segregation. The whole point of "affirmative-action" and integration is to eliminate segregation. 

So if there are aspects of "black culture" that keep people from advancing, they only dominate and limit black people because of the relative isolation from other cultures. 

Suppose it is true that "black culture" de-emphasizes academic achievement. Well concentrating black people, with a similar culture, into social institutions and geography are going to prevent them from seeing other cultures and perspectives (not from a distance, but right there) that might put more emphasis on academic achievement. 

This also applies to sociological groups. People of a working class background who might de-emphasize academic achievement (culturally) benefit from integration with people of higher-SES.

So merely saying "it is cultural, not much we can do" is a cop-out here. Why are the cultures segregated by race in the first place and why is this still mostly true even today? 

Last edited by sc94597 - on 05 September 2025