The Race Card’s Steep Cost...By Thomas Sowell

[Luis Gonzalez]

As a southern Italian, I don't lose too much sleep about it.  The oldest person tracked with my last name, went from Palermo to one of the smaller towns on the Adriatic.  Whether or not she's a direct ancestor, I don't know.  I don't play by the "One Drop Rule".

My people are mostly from NE  and NW Spain.

We tainted the French bloodlines.

[truth_seeker]

My people are mostly from NE  and NW Spain.

We tainted the French bloodlines.

I can trace back to what I think is a Catalonian ancestor. This area today is mostly in Spain, but a small part is in modern day France.

My ancestor's names occur today in Spanish language locations. Therefore by the "one drop" rule, I too am Hispanic.

I totally understand your criticism of using a language grouping, alongside a racial grouping. Blame the fedgov, not me.

One of my earliest memories is the guy who drove the water truck, to keep the dust down on the gravel street we lived on in Colorado. He convinced me he was the Cisco Kid, back in the early 1950s.

Then when we moved to California, about 1/4 of my first grade class were Hispanic kids, or whatever we call them this decade. I am still in contact with a few of them. Most have intermarried, so in our area people with essentially the same blood mixes might be named Smith or Garcia.

James Michenor's books titled "Texas" and "Mexico" explain history of early European colonization. In the early days, there was a hierarchy of status, for Spanish born (top), Spanish born in Mexico, mixes with native Indians, and pure native Indians (bottom).

That hierarchy continues, to some extent. 

[Luis Gonzalez]

I can trace back to what I think is a Catalonian ancestor. This area today is mostly in Spain, but a small part is in modern day France.

My ancestor's names occur today in Spanish language locations. Therefore by the "one drop" rule, I too am Hispanic.

I totally understand your criticism of using a language grouping, alongside a racial grouping. Blame the fedgov, not me.

One of my earliest memories is the guy who drove the water truck, to keep the dust down on the gravel street we lived on in Colorado. He convinced me he was the Cisco Kid, back in the early 1950s.

Then when we moved to California, about 1/4 of my first grade class were Hispanic kids, or whatever we call them this decade. I am still in contact with a few of them. Most have intermarried, so in our area people with essentially the same blood mixes might be named Smith or Garcia.

James Michenor's books titled "Texas" and "Mexico" explain history of early European colonization. In the early days, there was a hierarchy of status, for Spanish born (top), Spanish born in Mexico, mixes with native Indians, and pure native Indians (bottom).

That hierarchy continues, to some extent.

Read both Michener books.

[Cyber Liberty]

Well, I dispute them.

"Hispanic" is not a "clan" an ethnicity or even a culture. It is a fabricated classifgication of people based on a common language created by Richard Nixon. There were no "Hispanics" prior to 1973.

Identifying the IQ of Hispanics makes as much sense as classifying you, some guy from Cameroon, a woman from Sierra Leone and a kid from South Africa as one culture/ethnicity since all share English as a primary language then establishing your IQ based in that.

Murray has a race (Caucasian/white) another race (Negroid/black) another race (Mongolian/yellow), then a cultural grouping (Hispanics) and that cultural grouping is made up of a conglomerate of all races.

How does that make any sense?

It doesn't make sense, Luis.  I mentioned, but not very loudly, in a post upthread, that since nobody's really "pureblood" anymore it's difficult to measure the populations under study.  That makes any kind of analysis, no matter how thorough, suspect in its conclusions.  I get that.

I haven't spent that much time contemplating it because I don't see any practical application for such data anyway.  I use statistics for observing the effects of different configurations of building electronic components in semiconductors.  It's easy to control for, unlike anthropology.  It's just data to me.

Edited to fix my opening sentence.  I misread your final one.

[Oceander]

It's a "Bell Curve" of a statistical population  Fully a quarter of the population in that curve is well up over 110 on the IQ, which is great.  This is why Murray got in so much trouble over it because people saw the "mean" and assumed the vast majority is in that range (not "median," BTW.  Not the same thing).  That is a significant misunderstanding of statistics.    (The fact that almost everybody is a mix of the "races," makes it really, really difficult to fix the numbers.)  I personally don't care about what the various bell curves mean, because I see no practical application in my life.  Nobody does, except maybe cops and community organizers.  I assess the level of intelligence of the individuals I deal with, as they do mine, on a one-by-one basis and that's what matters.  The statistics of the population doesn't tell me squat.

Here is where study of the overall population is useful:  Don't walk in bad neighborhoods if you don't fit in.  Odds are you'll get mugged or worse by people who enjoy a placement well in the -3 Sigma of the bell curve.

Statistics is a very important component of what I do for a living, so this is the aquarium in which I swim.

Could not have said it better myself.

[truth_seeker]

Genetic DNA tests these days can reveal the percent for an individual, from ancient racial origins.

Because many Jews were isolated, they often have surprisingly high "semetic" patterns today.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genealogical_DNA_test