The uproar associated with racial differences in IQ has two main reasons to me.
The first one is historical : black slavery and all its consequences still running in the modern world, the nazis and their racial theories, … those horrors of history justify, from a political point of view, an uproar against attempts to classify people in races and “rank” the races. We know where that path leaded often enough in history, and we don’t want to ever walk it again. Since most people don’t really understand statistics or bayesian reasoning, spreading that “black are less intelligent than white”, even if it were true (which I honestly don’t know, cf my other comment), can do a lot of harm.
The second one is not so much about skin color itself, but about being able to spot easily, from birth, that someone is supposed to be less intelligent. Individual intelligence difference do exist, but except in rare cases (Down syndrom and the like) it’s hard to detect. In day-to-day social interaction, you don’t know that the one in front of you is supposed to be more or less intelligent. When the first grade teacher sees the kids fo the first time when they enter school, he doesn’t know which kid is smart and which one isn’t. If you could detect that easily, if everyone, just looking at you, could say “oh he’s probably dumb” or “oh he’s probably smart”, it would greatly amplify the base unfairness of being slightly more or less intelligent. If skin color really has a strong correlation with intelligence, it would be somehow like tatooing people their IQ score on their forefront.
If you could detect that easily, if everyone, just looking at you, could say “oh he’s probably dumb” or “oh he’s probably smart”, it would greatly amplify the base unfairness of being slightly more or less intelligent. If skin color really has a strong correlation with intelligence, it would be somehow like tatooing people their IQ score on their forefront.
You seem to have the unstated assumption that fairness is desirable. What if the people who control policy WANT to perpetuate unfairness which happens to benefit them? What if perpetuating that unfairness would happen to benefit you? Why would you want to give up an advantage?
I consider fairness to be a terminal value, and it’s not something uncommon in primates, as shown by the studies of ultimatum games. Fairness isn’t the only terminal value, and when choosing between terminal values people will weight fairness differently, but fairness is a terminal values for humans, and I suspect it to be part of our CEV as well.
Then they’d have an incentive to perpetuate a belief that their race is smarter on average.
But people tend to look negatively on open attempts to create an uneven playing field. “If this person will try to change the playing field so that they personally come out ahead at others’ expense, would they do the same at my expense?” Unless you know that you and this other person mutually see each other as ingroup members, and the groups they’re disadvantaging as outgroup members, you’d have reason to suspect that they’d act against your social interests.
The uproar associated with racial differences in IQ has two main reasons to me.
The first one is historical : black slavery and all its consequences still running in the modern world, the nazis and their racial theories, … those horrors of history justify, from a political point of view, an uproar against attempts to classify people in races and “rank” the races. We know where that path leaded often enough in history, and we don’t want to ever walk it again. Since most people don’t really understand statistics or bayesian reasoning, spreading that “black are less intelligent than white”, even if it were true (which I honestly don’t know, cf my other comment), can do a lot of harm.
The second one is not so much about skin color itself, but about being able to spot easily, from birth, that someone is supposed to be less intelligent. Individual intelligence difference do exist, but except in rare cases (Down syndrom and the like) it’s hard to detect. In day-to-day social interaction, you don’t know that the one in front of you is supposed to be more or less intelligent. When the first grade teacher sees the kids fo the first time when they enter school, he doesn’t know which kid is smart and which one isn’t. If you could detect that easily, if everyone, just looking at you, could say “oh he’s probably dumb” or “oh he’s probably smart”, it would greatly amplify the base unfairness of being slightly more or less intelligent. If skin color really has a strong correlation with intelligence, it would be somehow like tatooing people their IQ score on their forefront.
You seem to have the unstated assumption that fairness is desirable. What if the people who control policy WANT to perpetuate unfairness which happens to benefit them? What if perpetuating that unfairness would happen to benefit you? Why would you want to give up an advantage?
I consider fairness to be a terminal value, and it’s not something uncommon in primates, as shown by the studies of ultimatum games. Fairness isn’t the only terminal value, and when choosing between terminal values people will weight fairness differently, but fairness is a terminal values for humans, and I suspect it to be part of our CEV as well.
Then they’d have an incentive to perpetuate a belief that their race is smarter on average.
But people tend to look negatively on open attempts to create an uneven playing field. “If this person will try to change the playing field so that they personally come out ahead at others’ expense, would they do the same at my expense?” Unless you know that you and this other person mutually see each other as ingroup members, and the groups they’re disadvantaging as outgroup members, you’d have reason to suspect that they’d act against your social interests.
Which is why part of the strategy always involves insuring that your in-group is the one holding all the normative power.