Buraku

I was looking into The Atlantic's past coverage of race and IQ issues, and found this 2001 article from Steve Olson that's really focused on other issues, but contained this paragraph:

Take IQ tests as an example. In Japan the Buraku are a caste of people discriminated against in education, housing, and employment. Their children typically score ten to fifteen points below other Japanese children on IQ tests—about the average black-white difference in the United States. Yet when the Buraku emigrate to the United States, the IQ gap between them and other Japanese vanishes.

This particular factoid seems to have come into the American consciousness through John Ogbu's Black American Students in an Affluent Suburb where he says:

However, there is a problem with their argument when it is placed into cross-cultural perspective: Differences in group IQ are not necessarily the result of differences in genetic endowment. Consider the case of the Buraku minority in Japan, which has lower IQ test scores and lower school performance than the dominant Ippan group in the Japan, even though the two groups are of the same "race." On the other hand, as immigrants to the United States, the Buraku minority and the Ippan majority do equally well on standardized tests, and both make good grades in school (DeVos, 1973; Ito, 1968; Y. Nabeshima, personal communication, August 30, 1999; Ogbu, 2001; Ogbu & Stern, 2001; Shimagara, 1991).

In a 1995 article, Nicholas Kristof wrote about the plight of the Buraku, concluding with emphasis on the enormous progress that has been made in recent decades, thanks to concerted effort to reduce discrimination and inferior living conditions:

Truancy rates in elementary school in 1960 were 12 times as high for buraku children as for others. Now they are twice as high.

Burakumin have almost caught up with their peers in the proportion who graduate from high school, a tremendous achievement. But only about 24 percent of burakumin go to college, compared with 40 percent of other Japanese.

Here's a 1973 Time article looking at rising demands for recognition and equal treatment. It's a fascinating subject -- Japan is usually portrayed in the US as an almost totally homogenous society and what discrimination I'd seen reporting about
in the past had to do with Koreans.

Comments

This is news? That the Japanese are extreme racists isn't news to anyone even vaguely familiar with their history and xenophobia, to this day. I'm just surprised MY finds this surprising.

Posted by Pan | November 24, 2007 5:30 PM

"This is news? That the Japanese are extreme racists isn't news to anyone even vaguely familiar with their history and xenophobia, to this day. I'm just surprised MY finds this surprising."

This has nothing to do with racism.

It's caste based discrimination, not race based.

Posted by Petey | November 24, 2007 5:32 PM

So THAT makes it okay then to be racists to boot? It's even worse when they have to pick on people within their own group for this special treatment.

Posted by Pan | November 24, 2007 5:40 PM

"So THAT makes it okay then to be racists to boot?"

Yes. Of course, that's exactly what I was saying.

You are a extremely sensitive reader to be able to parse out of my comment that I think that Japan's caste based discrimination justifies Japan's racism.

Folks must never be able to sneak one by you.

Posted by Petey | November 24, 2007 5:44 PM

Racism in Asia in general is rather interesting. I've heard things about blacks and (especially) Japanese from young friends of mine in China that are completely beyond what we consider acceptable in the West. Japan still holds a rather well-deserved reputation for its xenophobic kick. Indonesia and Malaysia both have long-standing, often violent, relations between the Chinese, the Malay and the Tribal peoples. The hatred of Bangladeshis and many Indians toward Pakistan is remarkable. Korea might top them both, however, in terms of xenophobia and insularity.

What makes this more troubling is that it often seems that more educated and younger people in these countries hold stronger racist feelings that the older and less educated population. It's really quite interesting (and a bit sad, I'm afraid).

Posted by cure | November 24, 2007 5:56 PM

I've seen this factoid before in the context of IQ debates.

A disadvantaged group has a 15 or so point IQ difference where they are disadvantaged, but no IQ difference when they get to the US.

If memory serves, I think Sowell points to this effect among Irish.

I've never seen this point well refuted by the "genetics control IQ" side of the debate.

Does anyone care to refute that point or direct me to a link that does?

Posted by Arnold Evans | November 24, 2007 6:10 PM

Consider: brave, scientific consensus changing, harsh truth, the left, failures of social programs, ironic, conclusions drawn, difficult, reality.

It's pretty obvious.

Posted by Thomas | November 24, 2007 6:19 PM

I have a theory that weird, incoherent blog comments are the result of someone's head exploding.

And with that parting shot, allow me to bow out of this comment thread.

Posted by Arnold Evans | November 24, 2007 6:24 PM

Arnold is just another creationist-style lefty. He can't handle all of the vast accumulated accumlation of accumlations of evidence to which I can not link.

Also, consider the following distinctions: Japan is over there , organic farming, sickle-cell anemia, several links to racist websites that support racial stereotypes had by alcoholic whites, 'just saying something doesn't make me a racist'.

Oh and affirmative action=apartheid + de facto an de jure segregation + slavery/2 + feminism.

Posted by Thomas | November 24, 2007 6:56 PM

Isn't "Japanese are racists" a racist statement? Yes, there are people in Japan who harbor sentiments that could be called racist. Not many countries in the world are free of such people. But in many ways, Japanese are a very tolerant people, and extremely curious about and appreciative of other cultures.

There is, for example, strong general acceptance of gay and transgendered people. Just turn on the TV for a couple of hours and you'll see plenty of evidence. The average Japanese is also much more aware of modern European culture than the average American, and more knowledgeable about the world in general (my observation from having lived 35 years in the East, West, and Midwest US and 30 years in Japan).

As for the burakumin, this is an ugly part of Japanese life from the past, when there was a caste of people who performed such tasks as leatherworking and meat handling. It still persists in some areas, but is dying out slowly. At least one prominent politician, Hiromu Nonaka, himself comes from this caste and has done much to improve the situation.

Posted by Wataru Tenga | November 24, 2007 7:17 PM

Before I read this post, I was really convinced that the persistent one standard deviation IQ gap between the average white and black American had a hereditary component as well as an environmental one. Now I am convinced that it's wholly environmental. Why? Didn't you read the post? It's obvious that the IQ gap between one caste of ethnic Japanese (the Buraku) and the rest is wholly caused by environmental factors -- after all, as John Ogbu points out, they are both the same "race" (scare quotes his). Since "race" is just a social construct, and doesn't connote any phenotypical differences between Japanese, blacks, and whites, it follows that African Americans are as similar to white Americans phenotypically as the Buraku are to other Japanese. Therefore, since the IQ gap between Buraku and other Japanese is wholly due to environmental factors, it's clear that the same is true of the black-white IQ gap.

Q.E.D.

Posted by Fred | November 24, 2007 8:01 PM

Arnold: One point I've heard raised as an alternate explanation for the "IQ-gap-gone-after-immigration" phenomenon is that there's a selection bias. The folks who want/are able to get to America are supposedly the best and brightest, no matter the caste they are leaving behind. "Burakumin who come to America have higher IQs than the rest of the Burakumin -- that's why they made it to America, AND why their IQs are of Ippan level." I don't read the studies myself, so I don't know how well this factor is controlled for.

(Also, "Buraku" is, I guess coincidentally, the Japanese transliteration of the English word "Black." From Matt's excerpt, I was expecting a big reveal, where the study was actually talking about Black Americans and Black American emigrants, and that all the talk about Japan was just to keep the American reader's mind open until all the facts were out and accepted and the analogy could be reversed.)

Posted by Louie | November 24, 2007 8:06 PM

Matt,

I'm generally a fan of your blog. But for not bothering to mention selection effects, you are a monkey.

Best,
Ed

Posted by Ed | November 24, 2007 8:25 PM

Louie says: "(Also, "Buraku" is, I guess coincidentally, the Japanese transliteration of the English word "Black."...)"

Not quite, that would be burakku. Buraku itself means something like "community" or "hamlet," but of course it has come to have a special meaning because of the discrimination issue.

Posted by Wataru Tenga | November 24, 2007 8:47 PM

This holds for Tibetans as well.

Posted by Reality Man | November 24, 2007 8:51 PM

Also, as Ezra Klein has noted, when IQ tests are translated into ebonics (which some linguistics, such as McWhorter, point as has all the grammatical and syntax structures of an actual language) without changing the question and answers, the black-white gap disappears.

Posted by Reality Man | November 24, 2007 9:01 PM

The last race/IQ comment thread lasted 4 days and had 239 comments, a few of which were added after the post itself was put into the archives. This is obviously an interesting issue for a certain subset of blog commenters. Last time, however, many of the arguments were less than well informed (not mine, of course, I've done my homework). This time, I encourge everyone to read on both sides of the issue and take a few days to digest, reflect, and question assumptions before posting. Good luck, and my the best gap geek win.

Posted by cw | November 24, 2007 10:07 PM

You can empirically verify whether immigration has a selection effect by IQ testing the children of married buraku immigrants. If they regress to the buraku mean rather than the mainstream Japanese-American mean, it was a selection effect, stipulating that the original testing was valid and there's no fine substructure in the buraku caste.

Posted by turkey | November 24, 2007 10:31 PM

>>"This is news? That the Japanese are extreme racists isn't news to anyone even vaguely familiar with their history and xenophobia, to this day. I'm just surprised MY finds this surprising."

>This has nothing to do with racism.
>It's caste based discrimination, not race based.

Well, they're traditionally assholes to the Ainu and the Ryukyu Islanders, too.

Posted by Senescent | November 25, 2007 12:32 AM

Um... maybe Japanese IQ tests are/were biased against the Burakumin.

I think that would be the first hypothesis you'd want to examine given the available data. Until someone does that, further speculation seems pointless.

Posted by Who knows | November 25, 2007 4:43 AM

By the way, I pointed out the major misconceptions in this Atlantic article by Steve Olson back in 2001:

http://www.vdare.com/Sailer/darwinphobia1.htm

Posted by Steve Sailer | November 25, 2007 6:17 AM

And I reviewed Steve Olson's subsequent book "Mapping Human History" in 2002:

http://www.vdare.com/sailer/human_history.htm

Posted by Steve Sailer | November 25, 2007 6:22 AM

Too tired to find the citation now, but I think 'buraku' just are Japanese of Korean descent. It's still the racism-against-Koreans that Matt is familiar with.

Posted by Cala | November 25, 2007 6:35 AM

Matt,

While you're trotting out old chestnuts like Ogbu's, don't forget to also mention another oldie but goodie: the 1961 study by Eyferth showing that the children of black NATO soldiers and Western German women had the same average IQs as German children:

http://www.reason.com/news/show/116991.html

Of course, despite its enduring popularity, Eyferth's study hasn't been replicated in 46 years, but who wants to ruin a good story?

Posted by Steve Sailer | November 25, 2007 6:36 AM

Cala, that's completely false. Being tired (lazy) is not an excuse to post such misinformation.

Posted by Wataru Tenga | November 25, 2007 6:59 AM

"By the way, I pointed out the major misconceptions in this Atlantic article by Steve Olson back in 2001:"

I checked the link (someone had to) and there's nothing about Japan or the Buraku (the main point of this post of Matthew's after all).

Posted by michael farris | November 25, 2007 7:36 AM

I think 'buraku' just are Japanese of Korean descent. It's still the racism-against-Koreans that Matt is familiar with.

Where do you think many of the 'Japanese' originally came from? Perhaps Siberia but largely from ancient Korea too.

It is amazing that we are having to go through this sort of racial argument again (and again and again). Homosapiens are the only humanoid 'race' there is. Humans adapt in various ways, over long periods of time as well as relatively short ones - that's the distingushing characteristc of the race. Is this news?

Posted by jonnybutter | November 25, 2007 7:37 AM

Wkipedia:
"Burakumin (部落民: buraku, community or hamlet + min, people), are a Japanese social minority group. . . . The burakumin are descendants of outcast communities of the feudal era, which mainly comprised those with occupations considered "tainted" with death or ritual impurity (such as executioners, undertakers or leather workers), and traditionally lived in their own secluded hamlets and ghettos. They were legally liberated in 1871 with the abolition of the feudal caste system; however, this did not put a stop to social discrimination and their lower living standards. In certain areas of Japan, there is still a stigma attached to being a resident of such areas, who sometimes face lingering discrimination in matters such as marriage and employment.

. . . While in many parts of the country buraku settlements, built on the site of former eta villages, ceased to exist by the 1960s, either due to urban development or due to integration into mainstream society; in other regions many continued to suffer from slum-like housing and infrastructure, and lower economic status, illiteracy, and lower general educational standards amongst residents. In 1969, the government passed the Special Measures Law for Assimilation Projects to provide funding to these communities. Communities deemed to be in need of funding were designated for various Assimilation Projects (同和対策事業 dōwa taisaku jigyō), such as construction of new housing and community facilities such as health centres, libraries and swimming pools . . .However, cases of social discrimination against residents of buraku areas is still an issue in certain regions.

. . . . Cases of continuing social discrimination are known to occur mainly in western Japan, particularly Osaka, Kyōto, Hyōgo and Hiroshima regions, where many people, especially the older generation, stereotype buraku residents (whatever their ancestry ) with associations with squalor, unemployment and criminality."

Fascinating in its own right, but also freakishly familiar-sounding in some ways.

Also: Fred, you honestly just don't understand any of this, do you? You don't understand the post, you don't understand the idea of race as (whatever else it might be) a social construction . . . {shakes head}.

Reality Man - one thing: afaik the understanding that 'ebonics' (AAVE, etc.) isn't 'bad/ lazy/ dumb' English, any more than, say, British English, seems to be pretty much taken for granted in linguistics, instead of being a controversial position; it certainly has a complex and consistently rule-governed structure.

Posted by Dan S. | November 25, 2007 8:07 AM

All the black people in the country of Africa is one race, right? I mean, they're all black and all.

Posted by Barbar | November 25, 2007 8:29 AM

Cala, according to Kristof's article, Buraku are descendants of Japanese people who performed undesirable jobs, and discrimination against descendants of Koreans is another issue entirely.

The example of Buraku seems like an interesting natural experiment in the lasting effects of discrimination. Overt discrimination against the Buraku ostensibly has been over for a while, and indeed it's hard to discriminate if you can't tell who's a buraku. But buraku are still lagging behind in many areas.

You could postulate that there must be some kind of genetic differences, if you're absolutely committed to the genetic hypothesis, even though the initial criteria for becoming buraku were social. But it seems like a more likely explanation is that groups that are discriminated against suffer aftereffects even once the discrimination is ostensibly lifted -- because, they're poorer and more stigmatized. And then, you'd figure that it would be a lot worse for black people in the U.S., where it's still very easy to discriminate against black people overtly.

Posted by Matt Weiner | November 25, 2007 8:53 AM

I really wish someone would come up with a better name than "Ebonics". How about "Black American spoken English dialects"? I know that's a mouthful but it's accurate. These dialects after all are not a distinct language the way, say, Dutch is distinct from English. They are simply, well, dialects. And yes, note the plural there: not all Black people in America speak alike. If you travel across the South where these dialects originated you will find quite a variation, going from Richmond down to Charleston then west to New Orleans. Also, these are spoken dialects: they do not have a written form except where mainly white novelists and lyricists like Stephen Foster or Margaret Mitchell attempted to render them in writing (of course a trained linguist can represent them in the IPA quite well). Hence the task that the education system has, as with all speakers of any dialect of American English, is to educate children in the standard written form of our mutual language. Now, the Black dialects do a lot of consonant dropping at the end of words so the standard written language is a bit alien to the speakers. But given the fact that our written language is not spelled anything like anyone's spoken language (even in Britain) this is no more a handicap for a Black child than for a white child struggling with the paradoxes of the three forms of "to/two/too" or the complexities of "i before e".

Posted by JonF | November 25, 2007 10:10 AM

(fwiw, real linguists use the phrase "African-American Vernacular English", or AAVE.)

Posted by philosopher | November 25, 2007 10:19 AM

"Before I read this post, I was really convinced that the persistent one standard deviation IQ gap

A gap which seems to have shrank by at least 25% in the last 30 years . . .

Fred: No, the post doesn't argue that there are no phenotypical differences between Americans with some degree of African ancestry who are seen as Black and Americans seen as White (whatever their ancestry). It talks about a Japanese caste/occupational minority group that has faced severe historical oppression and resulting general crappiness - something which has continued down to the present day (though now lessened through great social effort). This group has an achievement gap and roughly 1sd IQ gap compared to mainstream Japanese, one which - Ogbu claims - pretty much vanishes when kids are raised in the US. Now, interestingly enough, we have a minority group here which has faced severe historical oppression and resulting general crappiness which has continued down to the present day, etc., and what do you know -they also have a similar (though shrinking) gap with the majority group. Does this suggest (though granted, certainly not prove) anything to you, Fred?

Also: to use a well-worn example, until recently in the US, a white woman could have a black baby, but a black woman couldn't have a white baby. In other words, the children of an interracial couple would be classified as black (not as possessing darkish skin, but as being in the racial category Black). Additionally, some children of black couples were able to pass as white, among whites who didn't know their parents (but if this was found out, they would revert to being black).

Whether else race might be, do you see how American concepts of race have not been, in fact, scientifically meaningful, but rather represent social understandings (and enormous repercussions) based on a history of enslavement and oppression? We can also see this in the changing status of the various white ethnics - the Irish, Italians, Eastern Europeans, Jews, etc. - who went from being seen as different, and inherently inferior, races to being "white". And at an extreme we have the Buraku in Japan, where the only difference was of historical occupation, but again, where a (here obviously entirely, and solely) socially constructed identity had enormous and very real effects.
-----

More info on the Buraku here, and specifically on education for Buraku children (some of the same text, but expanded - also info on Ainu education) here. I have absolutely no idea what biases or agendas USJP.org might have, but this is really quite interesting.

Posted by Dan S. | November 25, 2007 10:23 AM

According to an Ex-Public Security Investigation Agent (Koan Chosa Koancha), 60% of Yakuza cosists of Douwa, and 30% is Zainichi Korean (north and south). Less than 10% of yakuza members are ippan Japanese.

Posted by dude | November 25, 2007 10:46 AM

Many, many years ago I intuited a cultural lesson about our mass media regarding its predilection for irregularly recurring articles on how black people were genetically dumber than whites.

This was a lesson that was 'documented' in correspondence to friends, though I couldn't prove it today. I wrote to one of them, 'Hey, you know, isn't it about time for all the news magazines to have cover stories about IQ and black people again?'

Maybe I had somehow heard something, but this was the week when TIME etc. started their stories on The Bell Curve.

So, it had been a while, it seemed, and a few months ago I mentioned to one of my brothers that 'Hey, isn't it time again for more news stories on how black people have lower IQ's than white people?'

I'm not sure it counts, given that this seems to be a Salon blog thing, but, why not?

We should probably run some decades-long betting system to predict the next eruption of fascination into 'new research on why some experts conclude that black people are stupid' reporting.

Posted by El Cid | November 25, 2007 10:47 AM

I have some questions for the racialists posting here:

1. It is my understanding that DNA doesn't actually code for features; they contain instructions for the creation of proteins. The proteins in turn, through a number of complicated steps, produce the features we see. By what biochemical mechanism does DNA produce the features you denote as "intelligence?" Has anyone located any distinctions in neurochemicals between human groups? How were those groups defined?

2. How do you define a race? Let me give you an example of a clearly defined 'race' in the obsolete biological meaning of "subspecies." I used to be an avid birder, and my favorite birds were the Northern Orioles, which exist in two common forms, both easy to see here in central Texas: the Baltimore and the Bullock's. The two subspecies were separated geographically and genetically for thousands of years until human settlement provided trees across the Great Plains, allowing the two to interbreed, producing fertile offspring. Is there any corollary among humans? How many years of separation is necessary for division into a race? If a short period of separation is enough, what grounds are there for including Slavs, Celts, and residents of the Mediterranean coasts in a single race?

3. Even if no one answers my questions, at least look at the bird pictures.

Posted by Karen | November 25, 2007 11:20 AM

El Cid - I'd say around 2020 - using the 13 year gap between The Bell Curve and Little Lord Saletan's outburst - but that assumes it's somehow regular. It gets us back to the important question of 'Why now?' Does it correlate with rising economic inequality/popular concern over same? (as Ken Phillips and others have written in terms of social-darwinist-ism in the Gilded Age and 1920s?) Perhaps debates over/justifications for the role of gov't/social programs/social inequality? Need to cover up sudden eruptions of visible and grotesque inequality through the placid surface of American life, as Amanda suggests re: Hurricane Katrina? Something else entirely?
-----

"I really wish someone would come up with a better name than "Ebonics". How about "Black American spoken English dialects"?"
That JonF doesn't appear to be aware of the real terms linguists use should suggest something about his treatment of the issue (that is, kinda simplified and misinformed). See for example the section of the Wikipedia AAVE article on grammatical features - the article also points out that "There is little regional variation among speakers of AAVE".

It is probably a lot more accurate to call AAVE an English dialect (or given the unavoidable popular connotations, a variety of English), as opposed to a different language. And mastery of standard english is very important for (most kinds of) mainstream success, but the issues here are kinda complicated. Lisa Delpit, in - I think - Other People's Children discusses a very meta (and specifically, meta-linguistic) approach that knowingly presents standard and non-standard ways of speaking as distinct, differently useful, and both valuable ways of doing things - that brings out the almost game-like nature of language use and utilizes students' own knowledge and abilities as a bridge and way forward - that explicitly engages students in thinking about how language (and other things) work in the world . . .

Well, that's kinda OT - except to the degree that it isn't, really . . .

JonF - would I be right to assume that you got "But given the fact that our written language is not spelled anything like anyone's spoken language from Pinker, or is that completely unfair? (It is a rather good point in terms of spelling reform (although surely there are some discrepancies that could be usefully fixed up without needing perfect (and unobtainable) correspondence . . .) Anyway, sorry to jump on you - you're not, after all, dribbling racist crap (and barely understood crap, at that) like some folks here -

Posted by Dan S. | November 25, 2007 12:24 PM

There's a million articles and studies by experts on both sides (and in the middle) of this issue out there on the internet. There are also lots of good articles about the authors of some of these studies and articles that might help one to assess the credibilty of those authors. For instance, Rushton, the guy Saleton bases a lot of his article on has stated many times that people of African descent are impulsive and oversexed for genetic reasons. He also seems to have said that brain size (which he equates to intelligence is inverse to penis size. Bigger penis = smaller brain). On the other hand he is a main-stream researcher whose work is taken seriously by some in the field.

This whole topic is complicated in every possible way. There's the complicated science, there's the complicated statitics, there's the complicated motives of the researchers and their supporters.

Posted by cw | November 25, 2007 12:24 PM

cw - I don't think you can call Rushton a mainstream researcher at all in terms of his work on race - his earlier work on altruism seems to be a different matter. He used to show up on the Anthro-L listserv back in the mid90s, and folks there, at least, were pretty clear re: him being kinda freaky.

But then again, this is a guy who's been criticized on the grounds that "some of [his] references to scientific literature with respects to racial differences in sexual characteristics turned out to be references to a nonscientific semipornographic book and to an article in the Penthouse Forum." [wikipedia]. And that's not including the infamous 'wandering around a shopping mall paying guys to talk about their penis size' incident, or being the president of the Pioneer Fund, which has funded eugenicists and neo-nazis and is regarded by the Souther Poverty Law Center as a hate group.

Finding out that Saletan was significantly relying on this guy - let alone serving as a mainstream mouthpiece - {shakes head} jeez.

Posted by Dan S. | November 25, 2007 12:49 PM

Re: "There is little regional variation among speakers of AAVE".

Um, have you ever traveled across the South? There's a fair amount of variation in the vernacular of the Black peoples, as I suggested. Where I grew up I was used to hearing the Alabama variant. So I find the Carolina variant almost unintelligible. And for that matter although we refer to the "southern accent" of white people, there are variations there too: The Virginians speak differently than the lowland Carolinians, than the Mississippians than the mountain folk of the Ozarks. I'm sorry if Wikipedia (quite famous for its errors) disagrees, but that's the real world and it's under no obligation to obey the rules laid down in a book.

Re: Anyway, sorry to jump on you - you're not, after all, dribbling racist crap (and barely understood crap, at that) like some folks here

No I'm not. And I have no more disrespect for the Black dialects than I have for my own, or any other white people's dialects. Language variations are a fact of life. I (mostly) write these postings in standard American English, but my spoken language (in non-formal situations) isn't much like this. I don't disparage the vibrancy of Black English, though I do recommend that everyone should master the standard language for use when appropriate.

Re: For instance, Rushton, the guy Saleton bases a lot of his article on has stated many times that people of African descent are impulsive and oversexed for genetic reasons.

Oversexed?!!? Now there's a description of about 95% of the whole human species! Homo sapiens are the sluts of the animal kingdom. I'm surprised respectable kittens and puppies are allowed in our company.

Posted by JonF | November 25, 2007 1:15 PM

I wish someone of consequence to him would link this article to Andrew Sullivan. Were he not such a chicken, and have active commentary at his site, I would. Instead, my link will get lost in his AOL nightmare of email.

Posted by ella | November 25, 2007 1:37 PM

Can we get a primary source on the Buraku scoring an SD below other Japanese in Japan, but not in the US?

Posted by Rob | November 25, 2007 2:43 PM

Until it's investigated whether or not the Buraku who emigrate to the United States are smarter than the average Buraku, the tidbit about the IQ gap "vanishing" is absolutely meaningless.

There are many cases where immigrants represent the cream of the crop. It depends upon whether the culture and economic circumstances form which they are from encourage the best, or the worst, to emigrate.

Posted by Half Sigma | November 25, 2007 2:46 PM

The agotes from the Basque provinces of Spain were another interesting "caste".

Posted by O | November 25, 2007 2:59 PM

Dan S.:It gets us back to the important question of 'Why now?'

Um, because of the James Watson thing. That's the only reason "why now." No sinister conspiracies about silencing debate over income inequality.

Posted by Glaucon | November 25, 2007 3:03 PM

To be a bit fair to Sullivan (and other Brits) Britain lacks our racist past and so racialist theories are more socially acceptable there. Doesn't make them any more true, but they are more widespread and accepted, even by people who are otherwise liberal or progressive in their views.

Posted by JonF | November 25, 2007 3:57 PM

"Homo sapiens are the sluts of the animal kingdom. I'm surprised respectable kittens and puppies are allowed in our company.

JonF, that's awesome.

"Can we get a primary source on the Buraku scoring an SD below other Japanese in Japan, but not in the US?"

I've been looking - briefly - but I suspect it might take decent library/online resource access. Obviously we can't take this as fact rather than factoid 'til then.

The folks arguing that immigrant self-selection could be messing up the (presumable) results seem to be overlooking something - they're being compared against similarly immigrant mainstream Japanese. Although I suppose one could argue that only super -smart Bunraku people are making it over here, as opposed to merely unusually smart (or merely average, or not even) mainstream Japanese folks, but this starts sounding a bit . . .

"Um, because of the James Watson thing. That's the only reason "why now." "

That's a kinda simplistic explanation. (Direct causation-thinking strikes again). Certainly the disgusted response to Watson's senile babblings about how anyone's who's ever had black employees knows that racial equality is a crock, etc. did have some effect in terms of Saletan's piece. But presumably there are tons of plausible alternate worlds where Saletan choose to write about the subject without serving as a transmitter for unregenerate pseudoscientific racists, or didn't choose to write about the subject at all, or didn't get welcoming responses among certain moderate conservative bloggers, etc., etc., etc. I'm not talking sinister conspiracies, I'm trying to figure out the why behind certain attitudes, inclinations, dispositions, etc., especially seen in light of certain other developments over the last few years - rapid resegregation of schools in many places, recent Supreme Court rulings on AA and desegregation, even wider developments in terms of gender equality, and even still wider developments . . . etc.

Posted by Dan S. | November 25, 2007 4:00 PM

"Now, interestingly enough, we have a minority group here which has faced severe historical oppression and resulting general crappiness which has continued down to the present day, etc."

I'm sorry: when you walk into any American consulate in the world and see a black woman's photo on the wall as the Secretary of State (our second black Secretary of State in a row, both nominated by a President of the party which is putatively less amenable to blacks); when a black man just got paid $160 million for leading the largest U.S. brokerage firm to massive losses; when admissions officers of elite universities trip over themselves to offer spots and scholarship money to marginally qualified African Americans -- your claims of caste oppression against blacks in present day America don't fly anymore. You'll have to find another reason to explain the 15-point average IQ gap between whites and blacks here.

Try not to cut yourself with Occam's Razor.

Posted by Fred | November 25, 2007 4:58 PM

An alternative hypothesis is that more intelligent people employ more complicated languages, and that languages are dumbed down by the more cognitively challenged ...

I hear that State classifies Chinese as the most challenging of all languages to learn. I wonder if they have a ranking for AAVE?

Posted by Loki on the run | November 25, 2007 5:22 PM

Loki, that is an interesting supposition. I recall reading that "tone deaf" people tend to have lower visuospatial ability than people with normal pitch discrimination. http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070618/full/news070618-18.html
http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Music/Pitch_Test.html

Interestingly, Chinese is tonal, and Asians do better on visuospatial tests than do Europeans and the European diaspora.

Posted by Rob | November 25, 2007 6:26 PM

"To be a bit fair to Sullivan (and other Brits) Britain lacks our racist past and so racialist theories are more socially acceptable there."

Do what now? Wog what? East India who? Who ha? I don't know how the hell Britain has managed such a soft landing in public opinion. I hope a superpower as oafish as we are takes the heat off of us when we remember we're a shitty little colony again.

Posted by turkey | November 25, 2007 6:40 PM

"An alternative hypothesis is that more intelligent people employ more complicated languages..."

Think about this for a moment, would you? Being a more intelligent guy did you choose to speak chinese rather than AAVE? Or do you speak Standard English because that's what you grew up with?

Posted by cw | November 25, 2007 6:45 PM

An alternative hypothesis is that more intelligent people employ more complicated languages, and that languages are dumbed down by the more cognitively challenged ...

You mean that white people are stupider, which is why we choose to speak a language without complex aspect markings? I don't buy it.

Posted by Matt Weiner | November 25, 2007 7:03 PM

Re: I hear that State classifies Chinese as the most challenging of all languages to learn.

This is of course relative to English, and I suspect it's mostly due to the complex writing system (and maybe a little to the unusual phonology). To the speaker of another Chinese language like Min or Cantonese Mandarin is quite easy to learn.

Now, in terms of "dumb" and "smart" langauges, no linguist would suggest that there is any such thing as a birth tongue. However it is true that when a whole lot of people have to learn a foreign language (either because they have conquered or been conquered by the speakers of that language) the language tends to lose a lot of its more complicated features. That's true of Black English maybe-- but it's profoundly true of the whole English language courtesy of the Danes and Normans having to wrap their tongues and brains around it. Compare that with Icelandic which has barely changed since the days of Leif Erikson as the Icelanders have had few people needing to learn their langauge and have pretty much kept it intact for a thousand years.

Posted by JonF | November 25, 2007 7:22 PM

The table for "caste-like minorities" can be found on the Wikipedia page for race and intelligence, and on the Tom Huppi website. The references are cited secondhand through the book Inequality by Design. The suggested scientific implication of this chart is that the IQ difference between US blacks and whites is not plausibly genetic because low status ethnic groups the world over have similar 1 SD gaps compared to the high status majority group. Since examples such as Aborigines in Australia and Maori in New Zeland are also susceptible to similar 'racial' interpretations, we can assume the two most important examples on this chart are the supposed 1 SD gap between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland and between the Non-Burakumin and Burakumin in Japan. Both of these claims include a primary citation.

For Japan: A. Shimahara, "Social Mobility and Education: Burakumin in Japan," pp. 327-356 in Margaret A. Gibson and John U. Ogbu (eds.), Minority Status and Schooling: A Comparative Study of Immigrants and Involuntary Minorities (New York: Garland, 1991).

For Ireland: Richard Lynn et al., "Home Background, Intelligence, Personality and Education as Predictors of Unemployment in Young People," Personality and Individual Differences (1984), 5:549-57.

In fact neither of the citations given for these "facts" contain any information whatever to support these claims. In Matt's quote above, Ogbu himself is using this same citation to make a very specific claim: that we have IQ data for Japanese-Americans of Burakamin heritage. The reference does not support the assertion being made.

I have checked one other reference used by Ogbu and others said to support this claim, one of the G.A. DeVos citations. It also did not contain the information it was said to contain.

The Ireland claim was, not to mince words, a lie. This data does not exist and it never did. Proponents of the castelike minority "hypothesis" invented this claim out of thin air and gave it a citation that does not support it.

The Burakamin claim, until I can check all the given references, merely looks exceedingly suspicious at this point. Two references commonly used to support this claim were found to be fradulent citations.

Posted by Jason Malloy | November 25, 2007 7:49 PM

AAVE is not any less complex than English. It IS English with a very small number of slightly different rules.

Posted by cw | November 25, 2007 8:05 PM

Indeed - at least according to McWhorter, etc, iirc - really tremendously convoluted languages tend to be spoken by relatively small groups (including many brownish people, but certainly not exclusively) with relatively low levels of (historic) political organization, largely because they can - (to oversimplify - but basically, becoming a (n often second) language of trade, expansion, and/or empire and conquest, tends to iron out a lot of the rococo stuff that accumulates over generations in small, tight-knit groups. )

Anyway, that Loki - what a joker!

Posted by Dan S. | November 25, 2007 8:07 PM

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think the literature on Burakami IQ is anywhere near as extensive as is the literature on the black-white IQ gap here in the U.S. I've looked for studies myself and haven't been able to find any. Are we sure these reports aren't apocryphal?

I personally don't subscribe to the idea that racism is causing blacks to score lower in the U.S., seeing as to how blacks reportedly score as low in Britain, Canada and the Netherlands:

http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2006/02/world-of-difference-richard-lynn-maps.php#2.01

Posted by Marc | November 25, 2007 8:09 PM

"AAVE is not any less complex than English. It IS English with a very small number of slightly different rules."

Sure it's less complex. Consider, for example, the conjugation of the basic verb "to be". Here's the standard English present tense conjugation:

I am.
We are.
You are.
He is.
She is.
It is.
They are.

And here's the Ebonics/AAVE conjugation:

I be.
We be.
You be.
He be.
It be.
They be.

I'd bet also that if you compared the average vocabulary size of Ebonics/AAVE speakers, including both the standard English words they know and however many Ebonics/AAVE words they know, their total vocabulary would be smaller than that of a typical American standard English speaker.

Posted by Fred | November 25, 2007 9:32 PM

Thanks Jason,

I was wondering about that. What did those references actually say that was misrepresented or misinterpreted?

Posted by Rob | November 25, 2007 10:00 PM

Sure it's less complex. Consider, for example, the conjugation of the basic verb "to be".... And here's the Ebonics/AAVE conjugation:

I be.
We be. [etc.]

Yeah, this is just absolutely wrong, in a way that indicates not only that you know nothing about AAVE but that you're too lazy to click through any of the links that've been provided. If you don't like the Wikipedia article which was linked before, try this from Geoffrey K. Pullum:

"But the uninflected be of AAVE is normally a habitual aspect marker." Later on Pullum mentions that "I'm sayin' hello" is idiomatic AAVE. And Pullum notes (as the Wikipedia article does) that "be" in AAVE carries all sorts of aspectual meaning.

It really doesn't mean anything one way or another whether AAVE is more or less complex than the dialect you speak, but you really don't help your case by making stupid stuff up. And of course your main motive is to insult the intelligence of black people, and that's not honorable at all. (Earlier you seemed to object to my suggesting that you were being racist; deal.)

Posted by Matt Weiner | November 25, 2007 10:27 PM

So, to sum up Jason Malloy's research, it appears that the old Burakamin chestnut is based mostly on wishful thinking. It always sounded dubious that we would have reliable IQ data on a representative sample of a tiny minority (the Burakamin) of a small minority (the Japanese) within the U.S.

That said, there is a _much_ better documented example of a bad environment depressing average IQ scores. As I wrote in VDARE.com in 2002:

"A clear example of how a bad environment can hurt IQ can be seen in the IQ scores for sub-Saharan African countries. They average only around 70. In contrast, African-Americans average about 85. It appears unlikely that African-Americans’ white admixture can account for most of this 15-point gap because they are only around 17%-18% white on average, according to the latest genetic research. (Thus African-Americans white genes probably couldn't account for more than 3 points of the gap between African-Americans and African-Africans.) This suggests that the harshness of life in Africa might be cutting ten points or more off African IQ scores.

"Similarly, West Africans are significantly shorter in height than their distant cousins in America, most likely due to malnutrition and infections. The two African-born NBA superstars, Hakeem Olajuwon and Dikembe Mutombo, are both from the wa-benzi [people of the (Mercedes ) Benz]upper class. Only the elite in Africa gets enough food and health care to grow up to be NBA centers.

"This also implies that African-Americans might be able to achieve higher IQs too, although the environmental gap between white Americans and black Americans appears to be much smaller than between black Americans and black Africans. As I pointed out in VDARE in 2000, the most promising avenue for improving African-Americans' IQs is by promoting breastfeeding among blacks mothers, who nurse their babies at much lower rates than whites.

http://www.vdare.com/Sailer/wealth_of_nations.htm

Posted by Steve Sailer | November 25, 2007 11:02 PM

One cost-effective way to raise average IQs in poor countries is through micronutrient fortification. As I wrote in VDARE.com in 2004:

"Of course, if, like most American opinion-leaders, you never allowed yourself to think about IQ, then you wouldn't know that the sad state of Africa stems in part from IQ deficiencies.

"Nor would you know that it's likely that Africa's average IQ could be raised.

"Indeed, the heavyweight psychometricians backed by the much-denounced Pioneer Fund, such as Lynn, the late Hans Eysenck, and Arthur Jensen, have long pointed to vitamin and mineral deficiencies in Third World diets as a likely contributor to low average IQs.

"The Pioneer Fund website says specifically:

"'Some research has demonstrated that food supplements have the potential to enhance cognitive ability. Most non-genetic explanations for IQ deficits in non-developed countries have focused entirely on cultural factors such as prejudice, poor education, and poverty. The biological, but not genetic contribution to cognitive ability has largely been ignored. However, we do know that minute daily additions of essential amino acids, minerals, vitamins, and other trace elements can be critical. (Malnutrition in childhood is a different phenomenon.) There may even be group differences in the optimal daily requirements of these substances. Research of this kind carried out in developing countries such as South Africa could pay great dividends.'"

"Now, in a stunning vindication for IQ realists, the Associated Press has reported (March 25. 2004):

"'The brainpower of entire nations has diminished because of a shortage of the right vitamins, and slipping nutrients into people's food seems to be the only solution, a new U.N. survey says.'

"This survey, co-produced by UNICEF and the Micronutrient Initiative, begins:

"'Few outside specialist circles are aware of the scale and severity of vitamin and mineral deficiency, or of what it means for individuals and for nations. It means the impairment of hundreds of millions of growing minds and the lowering of national IQs… And it means the large-scale loss of national energies, intellects, productivity, and growth.'"

"There's a simple reason that only specialists are aware of this:

"BECAUSE THE ESTABLISHMENT MEDIA CENSORS DISCUSSION OF IQ.

"Got that?

"The UNICEF survey notes, for example, that iron shortages are driving down national GNPs by lowering national IQs:

"'In most developing countries today, iron deficiency is now estimated to be preventing 40% to 60% of children from growing to their mental potential… In the last 10 to 15 years, iron deficiency has assumed even greater importance as evidence accumulates linking iron deficiency with mental impairment. In various tests of cognitive and psycho-motor skills, for example, lack of iron has been found to be associated with significant levels of disadvantage—affecting IQ scores by as much as 5 to 7 IQ points.'

"Similarly, iodine shortages cause the swelling of the thyroid gland called goiter, which can lead to what the U.N. report calls "cretinism."

"In the U.S., these two problems were almost completely solved decades ago—by fortifying salt with iodine and flour with iron and other micronutrients. Similar methods should work in the Third World.

http://www.vdare.com/Sailer/national_iq.htm

Posted by Steve Sailer | November 25, 2007 11:24 PM

Hey Mr. Sailer,

You never responded to my point in the other thread.

If there are racial differences in intelligence, then how come Indian immigrants in England and the US are so much 'smarter' (as well as less crime, more literacy, etc.) than the much older groups of South Asian immigrants (=Gypsies) in Eastern Europe.

The Gypsies in Eastern Europe have so many social problems that they make US inner cities look like paradise. So tell me, what about the Gypsies? How come they are so much less 'smart' then their racial cousins.

(I don't believe in racial differences in intelligence, myself, but it's amusing to play stump-the-racist.)

Posted by Hector | November 25, 2007 11:33 PM

"And of course your main motive is to insult the intelligence of black people, and that's not honorable at all."

Since you feel free to ventriloquize what you assume to be my main motivation, let me return the favor. Your jumping on the bandwagon of ideologically-motivated scholarship about Ebonics is an expression of your bigotry -- the "soft bigotry of low expectations", as one of President Bush's speech writers once eloquently put it. You speak highly of Ebonics because you really don't think most African Americans are capable of speaking standard English. I disagree with you on that.

It may not be realistic to expect the IQ and academic achievement gaps between African Americans and American whites to completely close anytime soon -- so much effort has been invested so far, to little effect -- but it most assuredly is possible for most African Americans to learn to speak standard English. After all, Britain is full of blacks who speak English as well as the typical educated Englishman. Certainly the same is possible here.

Which would help African Americans advance more academically and economically: learning standard American English or having wholly-headed liberals like you convince yourselves of the genius of Ebonics?

Posted by Fred | November 26, 2007 12:06 AM

Hector writes:

"If there are racial differences in intelligence, then how come Indian immigrants in England and the US are so much 'smarter' (as well as less crime, more literacy, etc.) than the much older groups of South Asian immigrants (=Gypsies) in Eastern Europe."

They come from quite different backgrounds within South Asia. Due to the caste system, India is probably the most genetically diverse place on earth.

Asian Indians rival Jews for the highest IQ group in the U.S., but the average IQ of India appears to be unimpressive. How to account for this?

Well, that's how an immigration system ought to work: you bring in high potential people. Indian immigrants in the U.S. tend to be top academic performers or their close relatives.

India itself is notoriously segmented by the caste system that divides up the Hindu populace into thousands of mostly endogamous subcastes. Most Indian immigrants are from the upper castes and almost none are from the 160 million Untouchables below the lowest caste.

Gypsies (Rome) appear to have begun as an Indian subcaste that somehow migrated in medieval times into Europe.

Gypsies' academic and economic performance is, as Hector points out, quite low, whether due to dyslexia or general low intelligence is uncertain. I've seen an estimate of an average IQ of 80, but I don't recall the source.

Their musical skills, however, are famous. A prominent concert pianist told me of several Gypsies who made it through the the most rigorous classical conservatory in Budapest with him, despite being unable to read music - they simply memorized entire scores upon hearing them.

For more on Gypsies, see
http://www.vdare.com/sailer/euro_gypsies.htm

Posted by Steve Sailer | November 26, 2007 12:38 AM

For a brief genetic overview of India, see

http://www.vdare.com/sailer/india.htm

Posted by Steve Sailer | November 26, 2007 12:43 AM

Sailer,

Re: The average IQ of India seems to be unimpressive.

Well, asumming arguendo that this is true, I would assume (as a South Asian myself) that might have to do with
1) millennia of malnutrition among the lower castes, which has quite possibly created selective pressures for smaller, less intelligent (the brain is a very energy-inefficient part of the body) people
2) millennia of endogamy (=inbreeding) among the upper classes, which probably has exerted negative effects on the genetic stock.
3) in an ascriptive society, offices/status/scholarship is hereditary and not assigned by merit, so there is no selective pressure to be intelligent (since it won't help you advance yourself in society).

However, any 'average' study of IQ in India is going to have to take into account the facts about the demography of the country. The majority of people are malnourished, at least a large minority severely malnourished, a significant minority has never been to school for a day in their lives, women are traditionally treated as chattel in large sections of the country and their intelligence is stifled, the families of these children have never been educated or litrate, etc. How do you even envision trying to measure intelligence? I wouldn't credit any such study for a moment.

It's not necessarily clear that the Gypsies' problems are genetic. They're probably cultural. I would think that the poor performance of Gypsy students has more to do with the fact that Gypsy culture (according to what I've heard, so correct me if I'm wrong) celebrates criminality and denigrates education, than any genetic factors.

Posted by Hector | November 26, 2007 1:02 AM

Of course, if, like most American opinion-leaders, you never allowed yourself to think about IQ, then you wouldn't know that the sad state of Africa stems in part from IQ deficiencies

Well God help you, Steve Sailor, get the word out. I know you've been a tireless supporter of aid to Africa and the eternal champion of mankind's ability to think for itself about IQ deficiencies. I can't help but admire all the work you've done helping African nations receive micro-nutrients. And the work you did, touring Africa teaching black women to breast feed, was marvelous. Thank you, thank you, Steve Sailor, for always seeking out and destroying the environmental conditions that can lower IQ scores. Your grand support of governmental social policies designed to equal the environmental playing field has been inspirational.
It is comforting to know, with all this uncertainty about the complexity of genetics, that IQ gives us a number we can hang on to. A rock solid measurement of something that might exist that we can use to calculate our superiority. Even though we don't know how intelligence works or what we are measuring, it's nice to have a figure we can use to make sweeping generalizations.

Posted by Just Karl | November 26, 2007 1:24 AM

Can someone clarify something for me?

Often times, in liberal circles, John McWhorter is seen as a tool because of what appear to be his conservative leanings.

In this thread, he seems to be a champion of ebonics, which surprises me.

What is John McWhorter's views on the use of ebonics in schools, is he a tool, and where can I sign up for the RSS feed of how lib/tool changes over time?

I'll let you guys get back to your perpetual hatefest. I don't have a stake in this, but if you read the thread, ... the labeled "racists" are certainly more civil to the self-identified "non-racists" and are the less obnoxious and arrogant.

While I have no beef with incivility, when I see one side being polite and civil and providing links, and the other side being impolite, name calling, shouting and not providing links, it makes me think one side didn't come prepared or doesn't know how to argue a complex point.

Thanks, so really, what's the scoop on McWhorter, tool or good guy?

Posted by anon | November 26, 2007 1:28 AM

Yeah, so no offense intended JustKarl, but if Sailer wrote about it in the ways he claimed at the times he did, than he most likely has done far more about it than you have.

Or do you consider writers' contributions to society to be nil?

Snark can be used to point out the ironies and contradictions of a situation. Sadly, it can also be used merely to tear down and in a way that masks the hollowness of the actual argument, like in your case JustKarl.

If you want others to believe that Sailer is a hypocritical racist, that merely stating it over and over does nothing.

While I understand that the SPLC lists them as a hate cite, the SPLC is not infallible. (Ask Harper's Magazine.) An SPLC claim means something, but I think it is lazy to rely on them alone.

Just saying, because I know you don't want your arguments ignored because they seem like lazy snark.

Posted by anon | November 26, 2007 1:46 AM

Yeah, so no offense intended JustKarl, but if Sailer wrote about it in the ways he claimed at the times he did, than he most likely has done far more about it than you have.

Yeah, like the guys who read Sailor threw a fund raiser. The had a bake sale and a car wash in the WalMart parking lot to send iron to Africa.

Or do you consider writers' contributions to society to be nil?

I think a writer should be judged by the entirety of their work, anon. A platitude thrown out to bolster an agenda of hate is no favor to Africa.

anon, you seem like a Very Serious Person, can you tell me, why does he spend so much time trying to prove a difference in intelligence between the races, anyway?

Posted by Just Karl | November 26, 2007 2:12 AM

Beats the hell out of me. I say we tase him until he tells us.

Of course, maybe he spends lots of time doing all sorts of things and you're just spinning your wheels in argumentem ad hominem.

Maybe as he claims he has an understanding of science that beats yours. Who knows with all the shouting at him you guys do? I mean, you don't have any links to any real analysis of Sailer's writings do you, and scientific take downs of his opinions, or maybe the checks he sends off each month or deposits.

But yeah, I think we need a big agency to determine how much time every writer spends and what they spend writing it on. Making sure they only write on acceptable topics and all.

Until we get that, let's you and me waterboard the guy....

Posted by anon | November 26, 2007 2:21 AM

Maybe as he claims he has an understanding of science that beats yours. Who knows with all the shouting at him you guys do? I mean, you don't have any links to any real analysis of Sailer's writings do you, and scientific take downs of his opinions, or maybe the checks he sends off each month or deposits.

Well, sorry, I should keep a permanent file of the mountain of evidence that refutes the junk science Sailor promotes, but alas, who has the time to follow him around the web posting it everywhere he crawls. If you are new to the argument, perhaps you should wiki phrenology to get a better understanding of what he's selling. Also try scientific racism, and eugenics.

Genetic differences are provable facts today. Which genes and how do they differ? Sailor is a journalist making claims that there are genetic differences in intelligence among the races. The burden of proof is on him to demonstrate which genes are different and how those genes are used in intelligence. Until he can identify those, he's just speculating about the source of behavioral differences.

Posted by Just Karl | November 26, 2007 3:10 AM

"In Matt's quote above, Ogbu himself is using this same citation to make a very specific claim: that we have IQ data for Japanese-Americans of Burakamin heritage.

Actually, he didn't. The actual Ogu quote only mentions standardized tests and grades - immigrant IQ shows up in the Olson piece, and may be from another source/citation creep/fabricated/whatever. I was being rather sloppy in my comments here, should have read closer. I also would be interested to hear what (if anything) the references support. I imagine that the idea of an diminished but