If there's one thing more poisonous than racism it's publicly equating the failure to denounce x with believing x. That is a classic tool of demagogues. In fact, arguably the classic tool of demagogues.
So here's a denunciation for you: lexlibra's comment is lame, and yours is 10x lamer.
People who advocate conclusions for which the evidence is weak merely lead one away from the truth, but people who drag debates down to the level of "whoever's not with us is against us" strike right at the heart of it.
lexlibra's comment is lame ... People who advocate conclusions for which the evidence is weak merely lead one away from the truth
I'm curious what was lame about the comment?
The evidence for the two main propositions is pretty overwhelming. People of West African descent dominate short distance running at the highest levels. For instance, in the past six olympics, all 48 male finalists in the 100 meter dash were of West African descent. Likewise, the speed positions in football are dominated by African-Americans compared to the non-speed positions.
On the second proposition, for whatever the reason, black Americans of West African descent consistently score a standard deviation lower on IQ tests and IQ-like tests ( SAT, Armed Forces Qualifying Exam). The American Psychological Association reports: "The relatively low mean of the distribution of African-American intelligence test scores has been discussed for many years. Although studies using different tests and samples yield a range of results, the Black mean is typically about one standard deviation (about 15 points) below that of Whites (Loehlin et al, 1975; Jensen, 1980; Reynolds et al, 1987)." ( http://www.lrainc.com/swtaboo/taboos/apa_01.html ) The existence of the IQ gap is simply not in dispute.
It seems that my explanation fits the evidence better than anything else proposed here. If there is evidence controverting my view, or supporting another, I would be happy to hear it.
I don't think there is anything lame about your comment. The article in question explicitly involved IQ, and (because of differential representation by position) implicitly involved race, so your comment was relevant and on point, whether or not any given reader agrees with you.
I did not equate publicly or otherwise "failure to denounce x with believing x". Indeed (and listen well here), failure to denounce x, if one knows x to be false, is WORSE than believing x.
This is the mechanism by which ignorance persists. The above is the opposite of education and what makes it even worse is when the silent party has the demagogue-ic status to immediately educate the many with a simple statement.
I don't know what you believe - as I said before I won't speculate. All I know is that if you knew lexlibra's comment to be nonsense, your silence (and calling it lame (and my comment 10x lamer) - sigh - just an embarrassingly juvenile response of the type I thought you sought to avoid here) says something you perhaps didn't want it to say; if you didn't know - I really should be spending my time elsewhere.
So here's a denunciation for you: lexlibra's comment is lame, and yours is 10x lamer.
People who advocate conclusions for which the evidence is weak merely lead one away from the truth, but people who drag debates down to the level of "whoever's not with us is against us" strike right at the heart of it.