Why is it racist to say that blacks are faster than whites?

Siggy wrote:

What the hell?

He probably added more to the thread than anyone else. he posted historical and very relevant information.

WTF is your problem?

My problem is that he didn't answer the question. Kind of why the thread exists.

It is racist because it's not true. Everyone know that whites are way faster than blacks.

blah wrote:

Siggy wrote:

What the hell?

He probably added more to the thread than anyone else. he posted historical and very relevant information.

WTF is your problem?

My problem is that he didn't answer the question. Kind of why the thread exists.

Hey Blah you idiot, where the hell in your reply is the answer to the op's question?

Game, set, match!

Looooooooooser!

The Walrus wrote:

Game, set, match!

Not so fast, ref. Much like your post, I do not feel that the question was properly phrased. You, however, obviously did buy into the premise. Hint: take off the first word in the subject line.

untill 3-4 years ago, black athletes dominated the sprinting events, those champions were influenced by other black champions, world record holers... its like a culture for them to run the sprint events, but now there is a new generation of "white" sprinters like Liu Xiang, jeremy wariner.. they will influence and inspire a new generation of white sprinters.

i wont be surprised if, in about 10-50 years we will see more white sprinters and even world record holder just like Liu Xiang and jeremy warnier have broken the black athletes dominance.

and i dont agree that black atheletes are superior in any event, its not a question of color its a question of talent, Look at athletes like EL G, Sebastian coe, steve cram, aouita, morceli, Sergei Bubka , liu xiang, Jonathan Edwards,jeremy warnier, Jan Zelezny, almost all those are world record holders and are white i think..

R.L. Scribner wrote:

Louie G wrote:

Football coaches have been fired for saying the other team had faster black athletes than he did.

They probably got fired because that is a dumb thing to say, regardless of racism.

if football coaches got fired for saying something stupid, would we have any coaches?

Liu Xiang isn't white. Seriously. There are bound to be outliers in every population, but the fact that nearly all 100m runners in major meet finals are of West African descent should indicate something...

[quote]kartelite wrote:

Liu Xiang isn't white. Seriously. There are bound to be outliers in every population, but the fact that nearly all 100m runners in major meet finals are of West African descent should indicate something...[/quote

if Liu isnt "white" could you please tell me his color ?

Because Oprah's slower than me. Ditto Al Roker and countless others.

A statement doesn't have to be offensive to be racist.

not really wrote:

if Liu isnt "white" could you please tell me his color ?

Yellow.

Why do we need to categorize people by race and performance?

What if we started a discussion of which ethnic group had the higher IQ's the Germans, the Irish, or the English. What would be the point?

Horace Clarke wrote:

Why do we need to categorize people by race and performance?

What if we started a discussion of which ethnic group had the higher IQ's the Germans, the Irish, or the English. What would be the point?

Myth: Some ethnic groups have genetically inferior IQ's.

Fact: Poverty creates large IQ differences even between groups of the same ethnicity.

Summary

There are too many examples of discriminated minorities even within ethnic groups that score worse on IQ tests to believe the myth that the differences are genetic.

Argument

On average, African-Americans score 7 to 15 points lower than European-Americans on IQ tests. Many conservatives believe this is because blacks are genetically inferior to whites. But liberals believe that the IQ gap is the result of nearly three centuries of slavery and yet another 130 years of segregation and institutionalized racism. Even the Civil Rights Act and affirmative action have not eliminated discrimination against blacks -- they've merely reduced it somewhat. The result of this discrimination is that a disproportionate percentage of blacks work at lower-paying jobs, live in poverty and squalor, lack health care and child care, and do not receive the quality of education and personal development available to richer members of society. All these deprivations work to suppress IQ and educational achievement in children during their critical developmental years.

Which viewpoint is correct? The answer becomes obvious when you compare the lower IQ results of other discriminated minorities around the world, many of whom are of the same genetic stock.

Perhaps the most dramatic example is the Northern Irish. Even though they come from the same ethnic group, Catholics (the discriminated minority) score 15 points lower on IQ tests than Protestants.

In the U.S., both Korean and Japanese students score above average in IQ tests; many scholars agree that, genetically, they are about as close as two ethnic groups can get. But the Korean minority living in Japan scores much lower on IQ tests than the Japanese. Why? The Japanese are extremely racist towards Koreans; they view them as stupid and violent, and employ them only in the dirtiest and lowest-paying jobs. Tensions are so great between the two groups that violence often erupts in the form of riots.

In the U.S., Polish Jews arriving before 1910 were also perceived as stupid (for no other reason than they were accustomed to a different culture and spoke another language). So many "Pollock" jokes arose that Americans still tell them to this day, even if no one remembers why. The Polish Jews suffered heavy job discrimination and suspicion of criminality; not surprisingly, their children suffered low grades and IQ test scores. Today, of course, many Americans hold the opposite prejudice; Jews are viewed as the most brilliant of ethnic groups.

Russian-born Jews who became American soldiers in World War I also scored low on IQ tests. So low, in fact, that Carl Brigham, the creator of the Scholastic Aptitude Test, declared that the results "disprove the popular belief that the Jew is highly intelligent."

There are countless examples around the world where the dominant ethnic group scores higher on IQ tests than the discriminated minority, even when the two groups are of the same ethnic stock. Here is a partial list:

Group Differences Around the World (1)

High IQ/grades, Low IQ/grades,

Country Dominant class Discriminated class

----------------------------------------------------------

Australia Whites Aborigines

Belgium French Flemish

Czechoslovakia Slovaks Gypsies

Great Britain English Irish, Scottish

India Nontribals Tribal people

High caste Low caste

Israel Jews Arabs

Western Jews Eastern Jews

Brahmin Harijan

Japan Non-Burakumin Burakumin

Japanese origin Korean origin

New Zealand Whites Maoris

Northern Ireland Protestants Catholics

South Africa English Afrikaaners (Dutch)

United States Whites Blacks

Whites Latinos

Whites American Indians

Many conservatives argue that people who are smarter tend to go on to college more, and because whites are more intelligent than blacks, there are more whites in college. But regardless of the reason why this is so, it cannot be because of a genetic edge in intelligence. Consider the following information from the U.S. Census on the breakdown of white students who have graduated with a B.A. from college:

Proportions of Americans who have completed college by self-identified ancestries (2)

French-Canadian 16.7 percent

Dutch 18.5

Italian 21.0

Irish 21.2

German 22.0

Finnish 24.2

Norwegian 26.0

Danish 27.4

Swedish 27.4

Scotch-Irish 28.2

English 28.4

Welsh 31.8

Scottish 33.6

Russian 49.0

All the above are at least third-generation Americans, which would give them sufficient time to join the college caste. Is it really reasonable to blame the above differences on genetics? Notice that the Scottish have nearly twice the college attendance as the Dutch, even though their ancestors lived right across the Channel…

Most geneticists agree that there is far more genetic variation within groups than between groups. According to one commonly cited study, 85% of all human genetic variation is intra-population, 7% intra-race and only 8% inter-racial. (3)

Yeah, but ... wrote:

It's a "racist" (meaning race-based overgeneralized) statement so long as you imply "all" black sprinters are faster than "all" white runners, which can't be true.

Bingo. This is the credited response. It is "racial" to observe (accurately) that most of the world's top runners are black; it is "racist" to conclude from this that a white, brown, yellow, or combo person *cannot* be the fastest (or the world champion) in a particular running event.

So, to answer the thread title's question: It's racist to say that blacks are faster than whites IF: a) when you say it, you imply the overgeneralization, OR b) when you say it, you have reason to believe that your audience will infer the overgeneralization, OR c) you use it as the starting point for making or implying other overgeneralizations.

I mostly find racial threads boring, because people are so rarely willing to change their opinions about anything related to the subject. I'm outta this one.

The reason it's considered racist to say that blacks are faster than whites is because, if racial athletic superiority is possible, then racial intellectual superiority is also possible.

Now we're getting somewhere. However, is not the appropriate term in this instance "racialist"?

I don't see what being "conservative" or "liberal" has to do with the totally unrelated scientific question of genetic components of intelligence.

Aside from that little gripe of mine, thank you "The Walrus" for your post. I don't know to what extend intelligence is racial, but I am always happy when someone can provide what seems to be good evidence that it is largely environmental discrepancies that cause these differences between races we see. In an ideal world, that's the way it'd be, and perhaps it is, but I still wouldn't bet my life that there's no correlation, incidental or not. For better or worse, we'll never know for sure, but what does it really matter?

And to the guy way above, when's the last time you heard a Chinese guy refer to himself as "white?" Lots of hispanics are (Spaniards, Argentines, etc.) as well as North Africans, but Chinese?

marijuologist wrote:

The reason it's considered racist to say that blacks are faster than whites is because, if racial athletic superiority is possible, then racial intellectual superiority is also possible.

It is interesting you bring this up because the statistical evidence arguing for racial/ethnic intellectual superiority is far more convincing than that of athletic superiority. This is because the "n" values used to compare different racial groups is so small in sports comparisons and so huge in measures of intellectual capacity.

For example, lets assume 19 of the top 20 sprinters in the WOrld are "Black". The fact is that if you are the 100th fastest person in the World, you are not going to make living doing it and noone will know or care who you are as a sprinter let alone your "color" If speed is distributed in a Gaussian distribution among so called races, tiny shift to the right among the "Black" population can easily account for 19/20 of the top sprinters being Black. 20 is in the 99.99999whatever percentile and on teh far far far rightof the curve. Noone knows or cares what the vast majority of sprinters are or do to the left of the curve. The small fraction of people on the far right cannot give a good picture of the huge majority on the left. In addition, 20 is a very small "n" and thus, the fact that 19 are Black can be attributed to Chance as per CHI square. 19/20 may not even make the p value of 0.05 19/20 is not statistically significant...as least not anywhere near as much as the differences documented below...

Lets tale SAT scores

We are looking at a enormous "n" value here and the differences are most definitely statisically significant just because the "n" value is in the hundreds of thousands. Throw in the fact that over 50 percent of Asian-Americans are Foreign born yet still score close to Whites in the verbal part even though Whites are overwhelmingly Native born and primary English speakers. See article below

the fact that the stats are significant does not mean the stats aren't open to many interpreptations...

One interpreptation is the Asians and Ashkenazi Jews are in fact smarter. (it is a fallcay that Asians tend to be educated in their native lands and come to America educated but poor because of poor Englsih skills. Studies indicate that educational gaps between Racial groups actually widen when one compares racial groups, matches them along the same socioeconomic educational backgrounds and goes down the socioeconomic and education ladder)

ANother is that the tests are culturally biased...which is true but how does one find a culturally unbiased test?

Another interpreptation is that Black Americans don't calue education...this migh tbe true in the current climate where Michael VIck and 50 Cent are held in high esteem by young Blacks and Whites..but this a fallacy as well...one need only look at the history and founding of traditional Black colleges and one will realize education has always been important to the Black population.

Another is that Blacks believe the garbage that White society feeds them...like Blacks are stupid, Blacks canonly play basketball...unfortuantely many Blacks feed this garbage to other Blacks. This might be true but noone forces anyone to believe anything about themselves. Welive in a fairly democratic society right?

The stats are impressive but does it mean Blacks, Hispanics and WHites are intellectually inferiro to East Asians and Ashkenazi jews? Don't really know

The Walrus wrote:

Fact: Poverty creates large IQ differences even between groups of the same ethnicity.

This is correct. This link (check Figs. 3, 4, 5, and 6) shows how SAT scores vary with parental education or family income:

Note, however, that this shows more: On average, the children of high-income black families do no better on SAT than do the children of low-income white families; the children of black people with graduate degrees do no better on SAT than do children of white high-school graduates. Hence environment is most likely NOT the entire determinant of SAT (or its correlate, IQ).

* * * * * * * * * *

Separate topic: Some say that the "Wall Street Journal" piece (signed by dozens of leading psychometricians) is BS--in particular, its assertion that American blacks have an average IQ around 85.

Let's do a thought experiment. Do the children of felons; children born to unwed parents; and children born into poverty have lower average IQ's than the population at large? In fact, they do, and I don't think anyone would be surprised to hear it.

Yet it is also true that the American black population has higher-than-average rates of felony conviction, unwed parenthood, and incomes below the poverty line. Especially if you believe that IQ is entirely the product of upbringing, you would have to conclude that American blacks *should* have lower average IQ's than the rest of the population.

A discussion of WHY blacks have lower average IQ's--and, on average, better running ability--is potentially useful. Gainsaying the FACTS of lower IQ and higher speed is not useful.

BUT EVEN LESS USEFUL IS JUDGING INDIVIDUALS BY GROUP AVERAGES. The reason that people are wary of some facts (including some in this post!) is precisely because there are other people who will try to use those group characteristics to say something about *individual* character and ability. THE ONLY RACE THAT *REALLY* MATTERS IS THE HUMAN RACE, AND HUMANS SHOULD NOT BE PRE-JUDGED.