The existence of a racial gap in IQ is simply not in dispute. It shows up in SAT scores, it shows up in military IQ tests during times with a draft, and it shows up in numerous psychological studies. See for instance this paper from Brookings Institute, which is about as mainstream liberal as you can get (
http://www.brookings.edu/views/papers/dickens/20060619_iq.pd... )
The only question is if the difference or environmental or genetic. I'm not positive what causes the difference myself. If you put a gun to my head and forced me to make a bet, I'd probably say a substantial portion of the gap is genetic in origin. For evidence of this, I'll point you to this article in Slate (a very mainstream news source): http://www.slate.com/id/2178122/entry/2178123/
no data suggests there are fundamental genetic differences between the races that result in the expression of differences in intelligence or footspeed or any other significantly complex trait.
Percent of body fat, physique, testosterone levels, and brain size have all shown to be correlated with race.
Men of West African decent have broken 10 second barrier on the 100m dash 134 times. No member from any other ethnic group has ever broken 10 seconds. Meanwhile, East Africans routinely monopolize gold medals in the long distance events ( 10,000 meters, marathons). Can you think of any non-genetic explanation for this? Examining the physiques of West Africans versus East Africans makes the genetic explanation pretty obvious.
Studies of IQ highly correlate with latitude. People of northern Chinese and Mongolian origin score higher than the Vietnamese. In limited studies, Intuits score higher than Native Americans from Central America. 60,000 years is actually quite a long time, and the skills necessary to survive harsh northern winters are very different than those needed to survive in tropical jungles.
I will gamble there is a significant inverse correlation between education and racism.
I'd agree with you there. But note that education is an industry. And just like Coke tries to convince you that drinking coke will make you cool, the education industry tries to convince you that there is no problem that cannot be remedied just by spending more on education. In academia, freedom of thought about the issue of IQ is simply not allowed (see Larry Summers and James Watson).
For the record, I am Ivy league educated myself. I would love it if the IQ gap was environmental, and we could figure out the formula for making it disappear. I spent a fair amount of time working for charities in the inner city. But I believe that we must try to get an accurate view of reality, even if the truth might be unpleasant. Willfully denying evidence helps nobody.
FYI, I specially created this account to post on this thread, because I was scared of being called a racist and didn't want that tarnishing my normal account.
