As a young African-American man, I would like to thank you for reopening this festering wound on our national consciousness.

Thank you sir, for re-validating the need for black professionals like myself to serve as race representatives, striving to prove that we are not like the rest of our simple-minded brethren and we deserve a chance at the American dream.

I appreciate the opportunity your well-crafted prose provided for me to look myself in the mirror and ask existential questions such like "I'm I smart enough to compete, or do my genetics determine my destiny?" and "Maybe don't have what it takes, I am black after all."

After a long day at work, I throughly enjoy relaxing with a Slate article which helps me to understand that if my future children don't succeed academically,I can take comfort in the knowledge that they can't help themselves, they're black. Maybe if they work hard enough they will have the opportunity to scrub the toilet of someone as smart as you.

Thanks for helping me to understand why we shouldn't be alarmed at a 75% dropout rates among black males, high crime, drug abuse rates in some inner-city, majority black communities. Thats to be expected, they are black after all. Maybe we shouldn't continue to subsidize this insanity through welfare, public housing and public schooling. Maybe we should let the savages destroy themselves, I'm sure it wouldn't be any great loss.

While we're at it, lets cut off aid to Africa, clearly these people are too stupid to get-it-together, just look at the size of their heads. Of course, silly liberals will prevail upon us to respect their humanity but I would argue that humanity is better off without such genetic bottom dwellers, wouldn't you agree?

Finally, I'd like offer my sincerest thanks to you and your people for giving black folks equal protection under the law despite your well-founded misgivings. Clearly we are undeserving on such benevolence given our losing status in the genetic lottery. You're right, we aren't created equal, I'll never be as smart as you. I don't even feel right taking a paycheck, I should be working for free, Robert E. Lee was right.

Great satire! Glad to see you are not sweating this fool's revelation that he is a card-carrying racist.

Slate makes advertising money by using slightly over the top headlines to get people to read articles on controversial subjects which induce many of them to post outraged or outrageous responses that other people read. All these “Race, Genes, and IQ” articles are a gold mine for Mr. Saletan.

If you don’t like the article then don’t go to Slate’s website anymore and under no circumstances should you post a well written, outraged and sarcastic response to a Slate article.

You make Saletan's point that people (liberals) will irrationally refuse to confront the "facts" (facts which I'm neither prepared or prone to argue with).

Might this be a good measure of intelligence required in the modern world: Understanding that a fact of averages about a group says nothing about an individual from the group?

Prejudice is, AFTERALL, a habit of stupidity.

I LOVE how laymen become scientists as soon as they meet a scientific opinion they don't like: all fundamentalist christians become paleontologists; all conservatives become climatologists; and now, all liberals become psychostatisticians and neurogeneticists.

You don't seem to understand the OP. It did not take a position on whether or not the science is valid, only on its political implications if intellectually ill disciplined people like William Saletan are able to make breezy policy arguments based on it.

And I LOVE how some doofuses -- well, many of them , at any rate -- display the exact same behavior they condemn in others by using stupid blanket generalizations about "all liberals".

Way to go!

that's a ridiculously cheap shot, edmond. The "all" in my groupings was there for it's alliterative allure. You're obviously VERY emotional about this topic.

No where in the opening post did the poster actually engage Saleten's arguments. It was just a diatribe against racism. So, he doesn't like the idea of there being genetic differences between the races? No crap! It is a tough pill to swallow. But the statistics don't change simply because we don't like the outcome, that's how science works.

When is the last time a non-black person won the gold medal for 100 meter dash? I'm not sure, but it's been awhile. So what makes us think these genetic differences don't also apply to the brain? The truth is, they do.

It isn't racist to scientifically inquire into the differences between the races. It is racist not to.

But as Saleten says: "Remember, these are averages, and all groups overlap. You can't deduce an individual's intelligence from her ethnicity. The only thing you can reasonably infer is that anyone who presumes to rate your IQ based on the color of your skin is probably dumber than you are."

I don't think you got the OPs point at all. I think he was making a point about the social and political implications of this type of group determinism becoming a dominant meme in public discourse.

You can assert that everyone should be judged as an individual, but even well meaning people can be bigotted, and even well meaning, non-racists will be tempted to employ statistical discrimination when judging individuals is prohibitivly expensive. Children of 'inferior' groups will become stigmatized. Thus talk of racial inferiority as an explanation for poor outcomes can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I'm sorry if this message is to subtle or depressing for those 'speakers of truth' who would rather comfort themselves with strawmen about what the other side is thinking.

The only strawmen being attacked here are in the OPs post. Saleten did not and does not endorse any of the things the OP mentioned in his caricature of Saleten's column.

But your worry about people using racial statistics to discriminate against individuals is a legitimate one, and one that has been thoroughly discussed. But letting political correctness seep into scientific inquiry is inexcusable. Eliza (and me, less thoroughly) explore your worry in this thread. <link>

Also, the OP posted in it and more coherently expressed his own worries.

Most people in the US probably have the perception of blacks being better athletes, largely due to the prevalence in football, basketball, and the aforementioned, track.

I think what is being overlooked in this argument is game of Soccer, which is more popular worldwide, and has had many predominant teams from all across the country. I point first to Italy's success in the world cup, also South Korea, Brazil, etc. Soccer is a pretty a game which requires many athletic skills, so its a pretty fair benchmark.

Athlete's aren't all that drawn to track. You don't make money, and its pretty boring for many athletes, which is why a lot instead turn to more complicated forms of athletics.

I'll submit that the 100 meter dash point is flawed as a stand alone, but not in aggregate with other evidence.

Soccer is not a good counter example, however, as the success of the teams you just mentioned are national teams. They are funded by the government in a country that has a long standing tradition of soccer and as a result aren't statistically salient. The Italian government can dump far far more money into its program than most African countries can. Not to mention Italy is a more stable country than many African nations and as a result the Italians can focus more on sports rather than survival. For your example to be effective, all of the countries in the world would have to be provide the exact same infrastructure for soccer, training facilities, funding, etc. in the same environment. One good example would be Ghana. Ghana, in respect to most sub-Saharan African countries, is fairly well-off and stable. They also field a pretty solid soccer team.

The American professional sports leagues are actually the best litmus test for our purposes. They don't discriminate based on nationality, they have a big draw due to high wages, etc.

Roughly 13% of America is Black. Roughly 70% of NFL and NBA players are Black. These statistics speak for themselves. And in conjunction with nearly every dominant sprinter in recent history being black? That isn't easy to explain away.

Porcupine,

Not saying Soccer is ultimate equalizer, just an example of how different races/nationalities have had wide success.

But your assertion that the NFL is the litmus test isn't a lot better. While the NFL is 70% black, you have to look at the backgrounds of those players. Many of them (including whites) come from schools which aren't that well off and don't have extensive arts, music, science, etc. programs, and football, for which many schools charge for tickets to the game, is more emphasized. Not to mention that lower class players in high school may have more motivation to succeed than upper-class players, who know they are going to college regardless. Believe me, its important to be honest about race in the NFL, and I think the amount of black head coaches we have is only now starting to go in the right direction. But at the same time, the socio-economic factors are damn strong, and in my opinion, are responsible for the statistical differences.

The majority of impoverished people in this country are white. A higher percentage of the black population is impoverished than the white population, but that is just within their respective populations. There are more poor white people in this country than black people (statistically, more welfare goes to white people than black people). Thus, socio-economic factors cannot account for the statistical differences in professional sports, otherwise, there'd be far more white people in the leagues than there are. So, either way, you're stuck.

Porcupine, your psychological need be a racist has resulted in desperation. At least I hope that is why you make so little sense. (The other possibility is that you are just plain stupid.) Historically, white Americans dominated all the sports you have named, including track. It was not until the 1930s that Jesse Owens became the first famed black sprinter in the Olympics. What has changed in the last 40 years is opportunity to choose a sport and compete. Increasingly, African-Americans have chosen basketball, football and track. An early focus on baseball has dissipated. Meanwhile, most white Americans are choosing other sports. Athletes from other countries, some of them white, are largely filling slots not filled by black Americans in basketball, particularly. This reveals something about opportunity, economics and conformity. To try to explain the situation by claims of genetic inferiority and superiority is foolish.