Of "In-Group" & "Race"

[Yahzi]

You know, that's one of the things I love about this forum. I have people who are perfectly willing to tell me what I'll find before I even do the experiment.

I just wanted to point out that we do that all the time, actually. I don't think any of us have a problem with predicting the results of a homeopathic experiment.



And we do it for the same reason: because the underlying process that generated the theory is bogus. Thus, we can safely predict the theory is bogus, even when we have not tested every single aspect, because we know that the process that generated the theory is bogus.

And the process that generated the social theory of race is as bogus as it gets. Ergo, I feel quite safe in rejecting any specific claim it makes, for much the same reasons you feel safe in rejecting any specific but untested claim that homeopathy makes.

 

[bpesta22]

All right. Bpesta's claims bear even less relationship to reality than the typical claims of a Young Earth Creationist.

Ah, I knew you were making it up.

Admit it, be a skeptic, you were wrong.

Show me where courts are wrestling with what specific cognitive abilities make a test valid?

Show me that validation, legally, is more than demonstrating that test scores predict job performance.

Show me which specific cognitive abilities are important for job performance and have incremental validity over g.

 

[Dave1001]

But this has nothing to do with race: this has nothing to do with the idea that black skin means you're stupid.

Are you baiting me? Why are you the only person still bringing this up?

There's so much more to this topic than endlessly finding ways to work this point that white people are not genetically smarter than black people into a discussion on differences in abilities and human subpopulations.

 

[bpesta22]

bpesta: It seems counterintuitive to me that one thing "g" correlates with job performance and academic performance in any type of brain work rather than anything else. The cognitive skills to succeed in mechanical engineering and literary criticism, for example, just seem like they would be too different, and would select for people with rather different cognitive abilities. Could you flesh this out for us?

Dave

I guess the best analogy is computer processing speed. A faster processor will do everything faster-- from graphics to math, etc (ignore the floating point issue). Intelligence is not some complex, domain specific, human brain function-- it's something basic, like how fast we process information, or how much info we can process at one time.

What I was referring to is the "positive manifold". Give a battery of diverse cognitive abilities tests to a representative sample of people, and you will always get a positive correlation among the test scores (people scoring high on one test will also score high on the others). The positive manifold has been replicated so often it's referred to as a law. One has to really stack the deck to not find it (one study compared lawyers to engineers and found the opposite effect-- go figure).

The PM's driven by g, and explains why tests like block design (arranging blocks real fast to form a pattern) and vocabulary are both good measures of intelligence. What does arranging blocks to form a pattern have to do with one's level of vocabulary? They both depend on g! I'd argue, though, block design is the purer measure, as processing speed makes one smart. Vocab is an indirect but good measure of g because smart people tend to acquire big vocabs-- in other words, it's not true that having a big vocab makes one smart, but smart people tend to have bigger vocabs.

In fact, for any CAT that exists, one can calculate it's g loading-- how much of the test's variance can be explained by general intelligence (g) versus the specific ability being measured (s). The validity of any CAT depends almost exclusively on it's g loading. No one has ever invented or described a type of intelligence that has validity, yet can be measured without also measuring g. Partial g out of any IQ test and the test's validities crash. Measure g as it varies among individuals, and it will be the single best (but not the only) predictor of any important life outcome you wanna measure.

I don't know much about the biology of race, but I disagree that we need to precisely define what something is before we can measure it. Whatever one's opinion is on the issue, it's a moot point with regard to IQ and race differences, as anyone denying their existence is either ignorant, stupid or insane. The differences exist; the only issue is what causes them (with possible explanations ranging from complete test bias to genetic superiority of one race over another).

We can make "IQ tests" that show no race differences. Just throw out all the test items that are good measures of g. The result is a test where no race differences exist, but which also predicts nothing / has zero validity. That's the dilemma-- find a measure that predicts as well as g does, but doesn't also create adverse impact. No one's been able to do it despite 80 years or so of trying (dreaded positive manifold!).

Note that we can and have done this with sex differences in CATs. If a specific IQ test item shows large differences favoring one gender over another, it's thrown out. The result is an IQ test that by definition has the same mean for men and women. We can get away with this because the questions where genders differ typically are not good measures of g, or can be substituted by other good measure of g that show no sex differences.

Again, no one's been able to find good measures of g that don't also show race differences, which is a shame, given the predicative power of g.

If such a measure existed, the courts / eeoc would insist upon its use. In fact, this principle is written into the 1991 amendment to the civil rights act (an employer can legally defend against the adverse impact of its IQ test by showing validity; however, the employer is obligated to abandon use of a valid selection method *IF* it can be shown that some other method exists which is also valid, but doesn't create adverse impact. Good luck there...).

B

***
p.s. My ph.d. is in cognitive psychology, which is the study of intelligence (from a nonpsychometric perspective-- though the two subdisciplines are nicely converging, which to me suggests we are perhaps on to something).

I have no publications on psychometric intelligence, but I have taught it to doctoral level students.

I also teach employment practices law to MBA students, and I have served as an expert witness in federal district and circuit courts for discrimination cases (including adverse impact cases).

I mention credentials only to show that perhaps my opinions are not as out there as others might imply.

 

[articulett]

I think you may be confusing me for someone else. I'd say Yahtzee but apparently not since you name him separately in this post.

Your posts, which I find fascinating and illuminating, have points that I think that we are all discouraged from discussing publicly and non-anonymously.

Because there seem to me to be social repercussions in public from straying from proclaiming that all human subpopulations (particularly subpopulations differentiated by geographic/migratory history) have equal frequency of ability across the board.

My main issue in this thread is people who look at it and feel compelled, over and over, to make the one publicly safe point: that white people are not genetically smarter than black people.

That's never been your approach in this thread, I've never criticized you for it, so I'm not sure why you think I ever attacked you for your politics.

But again, I think perhaps you have me confused for another poster?

Actually, I think I misinterpreted your "red meat" commentary...

And I probably did confuse you with Yahtzi who, to me, seems to take offense without really digesting what is said. We all clearly see that the way a person looks has a strong genetic component. This may be less true or more true for various features and various people (due to accident, plastic surgery, exercise, hair dye, colored contacts, etc.)--"Appearance" and "similarity" are fuzzy terms, but useful for understanding the concept. I'm not sure I'd associate physical appearance with mental ability except in known disorders such as Down Syndrome (congenital, but not inherited). But I think it makes for a valuable analogy in explaining population differences and tendencies in the area of personality, physical attributes, and intelligence (as measured via I.Q., school performance, writing ability or however you wish to measure it). That is, these fuzzy terms also have show strong genetic component just as physical stature, fat distribution, nose size (and other physical traits do).

Those who are more closely related are more likely to be more similar in non-physical traits just as they are in physical traits. A math genius is more likely to spawn another math genius than the average mating. Ashkenazi Jews in America show a strong founder affect and greater susceptibility to a number of diseases--but also a higher verbal intelligence on average then their peers who are not of Ashkenzi Jewish descent. We know from twin studies, that verbal ability has a strong genetic component. And people who look alike such as a phenotype we identify as "Asian" has recognizeable (though fuzzy) physical differences from a person that we might classify aboriginal Australian--Comparing the average scores in large groups of population that evolved for some time separately allows us to see which traits were important to the evolution of humans in the environments such traits evolved. Darker skin is more protective from the sun. Lighter skin is important in colder climates to allow for the absorbtion of as much vitamin D as possible in low sunlight conditions. Running fast may offer a major survival and reproductive advantage in one group of ancestors...where fine motor skills might have given an edge to another group. Verbal ability or animated emotions might aid communication and thus survival in one group....timidity and self effacing politeness might have conferred an advantage in another group. Females and males have evolved some differing tendencies that have aided the genes that pass through their particular vectors. Risk taking has a strong genetic component...and a strong male bias.

I think it's important to watch the way terms are used because it's the connotations that cause the most emotional reactions. I don't like it when people say women are more gullible--I prefer to think of us as more "trusting" (perhaps it is because we are more trustworthy as a group ) I realize that talking about tendencies doesn't mean ME in particular, but I understand the offense. Guys don't like it when I point out that the biggest genetic predictor of violence, killing, rape, etc. is a Y chromosome. Most violent people ARE men--but most men are NOT violent. Most people who buy into new age thought and other stuff are women (I confess I was a naive waif once myself)--most fervently religious people ARE also women, (though it's men who are prophets, saviors, holymen, divinely inspired, favored by god, etc.--and it tends to be women seeing images of Jesus and the Virgin Mary on cheese sandwhiches and water stains). But the word "gullible" like "smarter" evokes the emotional reaction that makes it harder to discuss.

I hope one day we can discuss these topics more openly without provoking, because there is much to learn. I, personally, find it fascinating.

 

[Yahzi]

Why are you the only person still bringing this up?

Why are you still talking about it?

We cannot measure differences in intellectual ability between generations to better than 30%.

Ergo, the notion that we can measure differences smaller than 30% is baseless, pointless speculation.

The notion that we can measure any psychological ability, when we cannot even measure the one thing we all recognize and agree on, is baseless, pointless speculation.

The notion that we can identify and define genetic populations using metrics that cannot measure the purported differences between those populations is basless, pointless speculation.

That is why I keep bringing it up: because the foundation of all discussion on race is baseless, pointless speculation.

You admit that, but then you want to go on discussing race anyway. Just like a theologian will admit that God's nature is unknowable, and then proceed to discuss God's nature.

I am only doing to this conversation what any of us would do to a conversation on God's unknowable nature.

There's so much more to this topic

No, there isn't. There is only baseless speculation in the absence of any experiement we can currently peform.

 

[Yahzi]

I don't know much about the biology of race, but I disagree that we need to precisely define what something is before we can measure it. Whatever one's opinion is on the issue, it's a moot point with regard to IQ and race differences, as anyone denying their existence is either ignorant, stupid or insane. The differences exist; the only issue is what causes them (with possible explanations ranging from complete test bias to genetic superiority of one race over another).

And Dave complains that I keep bringing up intelligence. See this, Dave? This is where baseless speculation gets you.

1. Notice that defining something is not required before measuring it. The real interpretation here is, "Intelligence is whatever our tests are measuring." Not, "I hypothsize there is an electron, and this test will prove that true or false." But, "I have a test, and whatever it measures must be an electron."

2. Notice how the issue of race is once again taken for granted. What does the word even mean? In the welter of classifications of geographic populations, notice that our author here doesn't bother to specify which one he means. Because he means the same one everybody does: black skin = genetic heritage.

3. Notice that in the possible list of causes, the single most obvious one is not mentioned. Because mentioning it destroys the theory of race, and worse, makes it clear who is to blame for the problems of race.

We know that social expectations can govern primates to astonishing degrees, including controlling the onset of puberty. We know that people do what is expected of them, so much so that it is an axiom of common knowledge. And yet, the racists want to go on spouting their unjustifiable nonsense about how black people are stupid, even while they know they cannot scientifically prove it. They want to go on holding expectations that will bring about the result they desire. They claim, of course, that they are only being "objective," but in their next breath they admit their metrics are unreliable. The Flynn effect is duly trotted out, acknowledged, and then buried in a deep, dark hole.

Meanwhile, the social attitudes which create the effect they claim to measure are maintained and reinforced by their claims to measure it as an objective fact and not a social force.

Tell a kid he's supposed to do badly on an IQ test, and he will. How anyone can overlook such a fundamental realization is amazing. And yet, the racists go on nattering about how their tests - which do not hold up from generation to generation - couldn't possibly be giving them the result everyone expects.

The double-blind is the root of science. Measuring social performance in a social environment is the opposite of the double-blind. Ergo, there is nothing here to talk about.

Again, no one's been able to find good measures of g that don't also show race differences, which is a shame, given the predicative power of g.

And no one has ever measured a child who did taht was not raised with social expectations.

If the effect being measuring is influenced by social expectations, then how do you know the difference being measured isn't merely the influence? Has anyone, anywhere, ever measured a black kid who wasn't told from birth by every aspect of his entire culture that he was supposed to do badly on IQ tests? Why no, they haven't.

And yet not once will you hear a "cognitive psychologist" say, "Gosh, maybe we're only measuring the effect of social cues on child development." No, what they all say is, "Those gorillas, from that crowded jungle, are genetically slow to develop into puberty. They measure poorly on all of tests. Ergo, they must be genetically different, even though we can't begin to describe what we mean by that in any other way than: look, our tests show they develop more slowly."

I mention credentials only to show that perhaps my opinions are not as out there as others might imply.

Your credentials merely show how deep and pervasive racism and the defense of its untenable logic runs in our society.

The simple and obvious answer - that people's behaviour and performance is influenced by social expectations - simply never gets noticed. Just like black slaves were invisible to whites in the Pre-Bellum South.

 

[Yahzi]

And I probably did confuse you with Yahtzi who, to me, seems to take offense without really digesting what is said.

I understand what is being said pefectly well. What I take offense to is baseless speculation that is not labeled as baseless speculation.

The evidence for race is no better than the evidence for God. After all, the technologically, politically, economically, militarily dominating genetic group of the world are Christians. Shall we deduce from that the possible validity of Jehovah?

What I take offense at is when the skepticism each of you would apply to religion is not applied to racial claims.

We all clearly see that the way a person looks has a strong genetic component.

For instance, I understand that this comment is utterly irrelevant. At what point has anyone here ever contradicted, or appeared to contradict, or implied they did not know this?

But I think it makes for a valuable analogy in explaining population differences and tendencies in the area of personality, physical attributes, and intelligence (as measured via I.Q., school performance, writing ability or however you wish to measure it). That is, these fuzzy terms also have show strong genetic component just as physical stature, fat distribution, nose size (and other physical traits do).

1. The analogy is deeply flawed. The physical components you described are generally controlled by one or two genes. The fuzzy terms you described are manifestly not. Hence, your analogy is already in deep trouble.

2. You completely dodged the point. There are multiple paths to dark skin; there are multiple genetic populations that are dark-skinned. Those populations are not all more closely linked to each other than some of them are to light-skinned people.

My point was that the social theory of race is that black people share a common heritage; not that people of a common heritage share black skin. Would you care to address this point?

Those who are more closely related are more likely to be more similar in non-physical traits just as they are in physical traits.

This has not been shown to be true, and it is not necessarily true, because the non-physical traits are not the same as the physical traits.

See how your over-simplified analogy leads to error?

A math genius is more likely to spawn another math genius than the average mating.

Has this been corrected - or even compared against - the fact that people raised by math geniuses are more likely to become math geniuses?

Has anyone ever even asked that question?

But in the absence of any research, you'll just assume you know the answer.

As always, the discounting of social expectation is automatic and unyielding. Because accounting for it robs the theory of race of any pretense of validity, and renders its baseless speculation obvious.

Verbal ability or animated emotions might aid communication and thus survival...

Do you know what a "just-so" story is? You might want to look the term up.

In the absence of evidence, your stories are no more informative than Kipling's tales, and considerably less entertaining.

I hope one day we can discuss these topics more openly without provoking, because there is much to learn.

We can discuss these topics without provoking outrage when we can discuss them without baseless speculation. We can learn something when we have evidence and procedures that are more accurate than the effect we are trying to measure. We can avoid charges of racism and cultural oppression when we can measure and discount for the effects of cultural expectation.

But as of yet, no one is even willing to discuss the fact that there is a huge elephant that can explain away all of the measured differences with one simple answer.

I am not asserting that it is necessarily the case that social expectation governs all percieved racial differences in ability. What I am saying is that, based on similar examples in primates, it is capable of explaining them all, and that until we know that isn't the case, it is unjustifiable to speculate on the fine distinctions we might weigh once we get the elephant off of the scale.

And I am saying the continued, automatic, reflexive blindess to the mere existance of this elephant in all of the discussions about race is evidence of at best sloppy thinking, and at worse, racism.

 

[Dave1001]

Dave

I guess the best analogy is computer processing speed. ...

<snip>

I mention credentials only to show that perhaps my opinions are not as out there as others might imply.

This is the type of post I was hoping for in this thread (not because your conclusions match my intuition -they obviously don't) but because you were able to illuminate this topic so clearly to a layman like me. The icing is that you are an expert in the field. I'm going to nominate your post (although I don't know what "nominations" do). Your post was the awesomeness.

 

[Dave1001]

And I am saying the continued, automatic, reflexive blindess to the mere existance of this elephant in all of the discussions about race is evidence of at best sloppy thinking, and at worse, racism.

Oh lord. racism? Can we talk more about "g" and less about race?

"g" seems fascinating to me. Bpesta, your analogy was computer processing speed. Is that what the best speculation of what "g" is? How quickly one can think? Does this most likely correlate with # of synaptic connections? I think I remember reading that that was the one thing that distinguished Einstein's brain from most others. What does cutting edge research in the field indicate?

 

[bpesta22]

Yahzi.

I was a bit unclear. I meant I'm not sure what the definition of race is, nor do I know much about the bio of race (but I can line people up based on what I think race is. And, I bet if I gave those people a g loaded IQ test, there would be significant group differences based on my eyeball race classification).

I think intelligence-- g anyway-- is fairly nearly pinpointed as something basic, biological and congitive. I suspect it's the intertwining of neural speed and efficiency which then translates into working memory capacity which then determines how much info you can deal with at one time, and how fast you can deal with that info.

g has convergent and divergent validity so I don't know where you're getting your hunches about how scientists define the construct.

As far as race differences, they exist on very pure measures of cognition (like the time it takes to lift one's finger from a home key when a light bulb turns on, but NOT the time it takes one's finger to touch the bulb after the finger has left the home key).

Please explain to me how racism and white males have devised a culture such that the black man is unmotivated to rapidly remove his finger from a home key when a lightbulb turns on, but then less than 100 ms later, is suddenly motivated to touch that light bulb fast.

Please explain to me how racist IQ tests just so happen to get race differences that correlate very nicely with g-- why is digit span backward (repeat back these numbers I'm going to read, but in reverse order) 2x as racist or unmotivating as digit span forward (repeat back these numbers in the same order as I read them)?

The race differences are twice as large on the backward version (which burdens working memory moreso than does the forward version). Think of the odd explanation which appeals to test bias or the social stuff you mention:

Digit spans forward and backward occur in the same IQ test, and are administered at about the same time. Something happens during the admininistration of the test that makes black people motivated to perform relatively well on the forward version, but then lose motivation on the backward version.

And you claim my world view's based on unreasonable hunches?!

FWIW, I'm certain races differ in mean IQ. I'm near certain the difference is not due to test bias. I am quite certain that no one knows why races differ, but that ignoring the difference won't make it go away.

I think it's probably not something simple in the environment that's causing the difference. I'm not sure it's genetic either. If I had to specualte, I would think it might be biological, perhaps due to differences in prenatal environments, but I wouldn't bet the farm on it.

BTW, I have many black students who would argue that I'm not racist.

 

[DanishDynamite]

Races obviously exist, as anyone with functional eyesight can easily confirm.

The term "race", as has been touched on before in this thread, is another word for "breed" or "sub-species".

A Doberman is different from a Dachshound. This is obvious from sight alone, but even if they were almost indistinguisible by sight, they could still be categorized as seperate races, based on the definition of races. One example is the case of the Northern White Rhino and the Southern White Rhino. They are seperate sub-species, as determined by the scientists who determine such things. And yet they are indistinguisible from each other if based on pictures alone.

 

[AmateurScientist]

Tell a kid he's supposed to do badly on an IQ test, and he will. How anyone can overlook such a fundamental realization is amazing. And yet, the racists go on nattering about how their tests - which do not hold up from generation to generation - couldn't possibly be giving them the result everyone expects.

As much as I hate to counter an assertion about tendencies and averages with a mere anecdotal counterexample, I'm going to do it here.

I can't imagine any better circumstances to counter your assertion above about social expectations than what I'm about to describe. I live in Alabama. I was born here, schooled here as a child, and except for a seven-year period when I attended university out of state, have lived here my entire life -- 43 years. The popular conception is that I have grown up in a hotbed -- no, the traditional hotbed of redneck southern racism and discrimination against black persons. Let's assume for the sake of argument that conception is true.

Let's also assume for the sake of argument that we can place racial labels on persons based on visible facial and sometimes body features and skin tone which roughly correspond to those shared by a visually identifiable group. Let's call it "race," as that term has historically been used in the US.

I attended and was graduated from a public high school in the city. Its composition was fairly representative of the racial makeup of my state as a whole at the time. I'm guessing it was roughly 70% white, 20% black, and about 10% other, which included Asians, Latinos, and Native Americans (although the latter could arguably include probably about 1/2 the white population, as a great many "white" kids here claim to be of at least 1/16th Cherokee heritage).

Out of 465 graduates in my high school class, our valedictorian was a black female. Anyone who agrees with the premise that by and large, most of us can readily identify someone as "black" if they have many facial features commonly associated with black persons and a dark skin tone as well would readily identify her as "black." She most certainly self identified with being "black" as well, as did her entire family. My point is that she didn't look racially ambiguous, as some persons do; she was definitely black. She was our valedictorian because she is brilliant and highly motivated to succeed, as is her entire family, which includes her father, her mother, a younger sister, and two younger brothers.

Not only did she handily finish first in my class by quite a margin, but she scored extremely well on her SAT and ACT tests (although I don't know the precise numbers). She attended MIT for her undergraduate and graduate degrees on academic scholarships. Today she is president of a large construction company she runs with her dad and her brother. Her younger sister finished 4th in her class at Harvard Law School and clerked for Justice Thurgood Marshall. Now she's a partner in a Wall Street law firm in New York City. Her middle brother got his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Vanderbilt, and her younger brother had to make do with two degrees from Auburn, poor underachiever that he is. Their mother is a college professor.

Anyway, my point is that according to your theory that social expectations largely determine outcomes on intelligence tests (and I'll play fast and loose and use the SAT and ACT as roughly corresponding with IQ tests measuring "q"), then my classmate shouldn't have done so well. For Ed's sake, she grew up as a black girl in Ala-f'ing-Bama in the 60s and 70s. Weren't them NASCAR lovin', rasslin' watchin' idiots down there still hanging negroes from trees and burning crosses in their yards? How the hell did that little black girl end up besting all her high falutin' white classmates? Hell, she even beat all them Oh-ree-ental kids in math. WTF?

I think the answer probably lies with her family. At some point or other -- and they are all descended from former African slaves, by the way, although I suppose as is true of so many southern black persons, at some point some of her ancestors may have had a few rolls in the hay with a white person or two -- her folks or her grandparents or someone in there decided not to play into expectations of them imposed by society and they used their own brains, their own work ethic, and their own self-respect to break out of the ghetto, or more likely the cotton picking share-cropping serfdom of The Man. Boy, did they break out of it.

Of course, that doesn't mean that the larger society around them suddenly expected them to do well. Their names and reputations didn't precede them when we began high school. They excelled solely on their own merit, despite all social expectations -- those from the larger "white" society around them, and those from their own "black" society that didn't expect them to be able to make it in a white man's world -- that according to you should have prevented them from scoring well on tests. After all, they were told by society that they were supposed to be stupid and lazy.

Sorry, Yahzi, I'm not buying the social expectations nonsense as an explanation. Does it play some role? I suppose that's possible. Does it account for the profound differences in the mean IQ test scores when broken down by "race" that cannot be due to chance that Pesta has been discussing? Nope, not by a long shot. Personally, I think this "q" we've been reading about has got to be the result of some complicated interplay between heritability and strong, positive parental influence when children are very young, and likely necessarily continuing through puberty. My classmate and friend got both in abundance. Social expectations were hardly the chief determinant in her academic performance and measured IQ that you suggest they should have been, nor have they been in her professional success.

Of course I'm no professional with respect to social sciences, hard sciences, or psychology or psychometrics, so all of that is merely my own lay postulating. Your mileage may vary, etc.

AS

 

[Dave1001]

Out of 465 graduates in my high school class, our valedictorian was a black female. Anyone who agrees with the premise that by and large, most of us can readily identify someone as "black" if they have many facial features commonly associated with black persons and a dark skin tone as well would readily identify her as "black." She most certainly self identified with being "black" as well, as did her entire family. My point is that she didn't look racially ambiguous, as some persons do; she was definitely black. She was our valedictorian because she is brilliant and highly motivated to succeed, as is her entire family, which includes her father, her mother, a younger sister, and two younger brothers.

...

Her younger sister finished 4th in her class at Harvard Law School and clerked for Justice Thurgood Marshall. Now she's a partner in a Wall Street law firm in New York City.

AS

I think you make some good points in your post, but I honestly say I have to doubt that her younger sister finished 4th in her class at Harvard Law School. It strains my personal credibility given when she had to have gone there based on your narrative cues (a time when there were few women -of any race) and how many ruthlessly intelligent, and just plain ruthless, people she would have to outperform to finish #4. To me that reads as an embellished tale, though I'm sure not by you. I don't doubt the other details, though.

 

[AmateurScientist]

I think you make some good points in your post, but I honestly say I have to doubt that her younger sister finished 4th in her class at Harvard Law School. It strains my personal credibility given when she had to have gone there based on your narrative cues (a time when there were few women -of any race) and how many ruthlessly intelligent, and just plain ruthless, people she would have to outperform to finish #4. To me that reads as an embellished tale, though I'm sure not by you. I don't doubt the other details, though.

Not embellished. I know the family personally, as does my sister who is close friends with the elder of the two brothers. Just today at lunch I was asking a black female colleague who knows the family very well, especially my classmate, as they are in some social clubs together, about my friend. We reiterated the family's accomplishments and she reaffirmed my own independent recollection that the younger sister finished 4th in her class at Harvard Law. She was on the front page of the local paper at the time for that accomplishment, and I vividly recall her having clerked for Thurgood Marshall. Only the best law students in the country ever have the extraordinarily high privilege of clerking for a US Supreme Court Justice. That is without a doubt the best thing a young lawyer can put on her resume. She was one of his last clerks before he retired, and he died shortly thereafter.

I understand your doubting the family's accomplishments, but I'm not exaggerating in the least. I have a signed photograph of their father with President Bush receiving an award for the Small Business Person of the Year for the entire country in 2001. I wrote to him congratulating him after I heard about his award in the paper, and I wrote to his daughter as well, and he sent me the signed photo in return.

Also, only half an hour ago I spoke with my mother by phone and related to her my lunchtime conversation with my colleague. My mother also affirmed what I've related, and reminded me that the mother in the family taught my sister her LSAT preparation course. Remember, the mother is a local college professor. Again, that's not apocryphal. I know some professors at that university, and she is in fact on the faculty there and has been for years.

AS

ETA: As for when the younger daughter would have attended Harvard, it wasn't that long ago. I am 43 years old. I was graduated from high school in 1981. By then, schools were fully integrated and the cartoonishly overt racism I described in my earlier post was gone, at least in my city. The younger daughter who went to Harvard Law was a year behind us, so she would have entered law school either in 1986 or 1987. She would have been graduated in 1989 or 1990. By then, there were plenty of black law students, and she was in fact one of them. She was one of the very best of the best. She was no affirmative action placement. She earned her place there and her class standing, as did her older sister at MIT. Her sister and I shared all of our upper level classes together in high school, and I am very familiar with how bright she was and how she did on our class tests. Do you think I'm exaggerating that she was our valedictorian? Don't you think I would remember something like that, especially given that she was a friend of mine and we shared nearly identical class schedules the last two years of high school?

Oh, and something else. A time when few women were in law school? You've got the wrong decade, Dave. I was in law school at the same time as her, albeit a year ahead, and about 45% of my classmates were women.

 

[AmateurScientist]

Here's a link to the photo of my friend's father with President Bush receiving the award:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/05/images/20010508-3.html

Does that help with the credibilty of the facts as I have related them?

AS

 

[Foster Zygote]

Races obviously exist, as anyone with functional eyesight can easily confirm.

If we're classifying by eye then my nieces, both sisters born to the same two parents, might be considered as two separate races by many observers. And the aforementioned Australian natives would be classified as belonging to African races by many observers as well.

Once more from Cavalli-Sforza The History and Geography of Human Genes:

"It may be objected that the racial stereotypes have a consistency that allows even the layman to classify individuals. But the major stereotypes, all based on skin color, hair color and form, and facial traits, reflect superficial differences that are not confirmed by deeper analysis with more reliable genetic traits and whose origin dates from recent evolution mostly under the effect of climate and perhaps sexual selection."

The term "race", as has been touched on before in this thread, is another word for "breed" or "sub-species".

From Wikipedia:

Important difference between species and subspecies.
Subspecies: a taxonomic subdivision of a species. A group of organisms whose behavior and/or genetically encoded morphological and physiological characteristics differ from those of other members of their species. Members of different subspecies of the same species are potentially capable of breeding with each other and of producing fertile offspring. However, animals of different species may not interbreed even if there is no geographical impediment.

(Bolding mine)

Again from Wikipedia:

The International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (4th edition, 2000) does not attempt to codify any "infrasubspecific entities" (e.g. human races).

A Doberman is different from a Dachshound. This is obvious from sight alone, but even if they were almost indistinguisible by sight, they could still be categorized as seperate races, based on the definition of races.

Dog breeds have been artificially selected in a manner that humans have not. As always, analogy is imperfect, but a much better analogy for humans than domestic dog breeds would be North American wolf populations.

One example is the case of the Northern White Rhino and the Southern White Rhino. They are seperate sub-species, as determined by the scientists who determine such things. And yet they are indistinguisible from each other if based on pictures alone.

The phylogenetic study of the two white rhino subspecies indicates that they have been separated for over 2 million years. Anthropologists think humans migrated from Africa as recently as 70,000 years ago.

Steven

 

[blutoski]

(quotes wikipedia)

Which is why Wikipedia is not a good resource for technical questions. I've brought two examples to this thread which directly contradict the explanations above (lions and tigers can produce offspring, but are different species, which conflicts with the Wikipedia definition of a speciation as two varieties that cannot interbreed)

Another in the case of humans is H. sapiens sapiens (the variety of homosapiens currently alive) versus H sapiens neandertalensis (a variety of extinct homosapiens).

Species? Variety? Race?

Semantics.

And science.

 

[Foster Zygote]

Which is why Wikipedia is not a good resource for technical questions. I've brought two examples to this thread which directly contradict the explanations above (lions and tigers can produce offspring, but are different species, which conflicts with the Wikipedia definition of a speciation as two varieties that cannot interbreed)

Lions and tigers can mate to produce a hybrid. Male lion/tiger hybrids are sterile. These hybrids are prone to numerous health problems. I have a few biology textbooks on my shelves that say the same thing about sub-species and hybrids as the Wikipedia entries.

Another in the case of humans is H. sapiens sapiens (the variety of homosapiens currently alive) versus H sapiens neandertalensis (a variety of extinct homosapiens).

We are discussing modern humans. There is still no taxonomic division of modern humans into sub-species. My "mixed race" nieces are not intra-specific hybrids, they are both H. sapiens sapiens resulting from two H. sapiens sapiens parents.

Species? Variety? Race?

Semantics.

Within common usage, yes.

And science.

Science is rather more specific, pun intended.

Steven

 

[Dave1001]

She was on the front page of the local paper at the time for that accomplishment, and I vividly recall her having clerked for Thurgood Marshall. Only the best law students in the country ever have the extraordinarily high privilege of clerking for a US Supreme Court Justice. That is without a doubt the best thing a young lawyer can put on her resume. She was one of his last clerks before he retired, and he died shortly thereafter.

The only area where I suspect embellishment is that she graduated 4th in her class at Harvard Law School, for the aforementioned reasons. That's a much harder accomplishment than clerking for a supreme court justice (just do the math). And to be fair, I suspect one would have some advantage relative to one's competition class as an black american in securing a clerkship with Justice Marshall, who probably exerted extra effort to make sure that black lawyers received some of his clerkship spots. In contrast, there have been some years since Marshall left the court when none of the justices hired a black clerk.