An account of how nineteenth-century studies aiming to find a biological basis for human races were dismantled by good scientific practices — although their effects are still felt today.
An account of how nineteenth-century studies aiming to find a biological basis for human races were dismantled by good scientific practices — although their effects are still felt today.
I always look at RA Fischer on this topic.
He basically invented most of modern statistics, pioneered genetics research, and was an open unapologetic eugenicist.
In the end he wrote that he opposed statements that race-based differences didn’t exist, but he was never able to prove or provide any evidence to support that claim.
Fischer’s point was genetic differences that contribute to race differences probably impacted intelligence. It’s a persuasive and logical argument that’s hard to refute.
But it turns out that what we know about within group heritability and genetics says nothing about other groups or races. No races have been shown to have selectively bred for higher intelligence, and all races perform roughly the same. As racial environments improve so do test and IQ scores, and IQ is largely influenced by familiarity with the structure of IQ tests and puzzles.
There are simply a lot of variables that add up and average out, there’s no one intelligence gene, and our own memory and experiences do more to shape intelligence than our genetics do.
I think the easier refutation of “race science” is that there’s no valid, accepted scientific definition of “race”. No matter how many backward “common sense” definitions people come up, there’s always too many exceptions and those common definitions have changed constantly over time. It’s simply a construct that’s widely used, but has no basis in scientific fact. So any assumptions about “race” and inherent advantages or disadvantages are immediately suspect because they’re based on something that doesn’t actually exist (other than the effects of people continuing to believe in it).
So I am a girl. I feel like it’s not controversial to say the obvious = on average men are taller and stronger than women.
This does not mean you can assume the height of someone knowing their gender. It does not mean that tall women are less female / somehow masculine, or that short men are less male / more feminine.
It bothers me that we are fine with “on average men are taller/stronger”, but we can’t even bring up the subject of “are there intellectual differences” without upsetting people.
I say this as a woman whose brain is good at some things that men are more often drawn to. My experience is that of course there are women who are drawn to / excel at data structures and programming… I am one of them. But on average men are more likely to be good at that sort of work. I know some of that is because of cultural norms / social pressure, but “some”, not “all”.
I’m female so I can say this without getting hauled into HR for diversity training, but there are men who are called sexist for even brining it up.
I don’t think it’s sexist to acknowledge that testosterone and estrogen have different effects on a developing human brain.
I DO think it’s sexist that we pay top dollar for engineering expertise and next to nothing to people who teach and care for children - which in my mind is both more difficult to do well and FAR more important.
I know sex is a different topic than race, but… it feels culturally sensitive in a similar way I guess?
If in the last sentence you would replace sex with gender than i would agree.
I think it’s more appropriate so compare race to gender because both are social constructs (that doesn’t make them less real. It just means the implications of it are not fixed changing over time and are depending on the society)
The historical race concepts tell that differences are genetic and biological. But they are wrong. To cite Wikipedia:
Instead about the sex you are right. It is proven to make biological differences. And I find it often difficult to decipher which of them are based on sex and which on gender
It is easy eough to dispute, just look at the data that shows experience completely overshadows the possible genetic impact when it comes to testing for intelligence.
Right, but if you’re trying to push a point it sounds logical.
It’s good we can see it falls apart under any scrutiny.
It only sounds logical if someone still believes in genetically defined races intead of catching up with modern science where race is a social contruct.