Men låtom oss förena dessa två rasismer i en lite mindre rasistisk poäng.
Somalierna är inte särdeles läskunniga. UNESCO rapporterar en literacy rate om 25 procent för kvinnor, och 50 procent för män. En av fyra kvinnor och varannan man kan läsa, ska vi tro UNESCO. Vi kan även notera att språket somaliska fick sitt alfabet först 1972, i ett försök att just öka läs- och skrivkunnigheten. Tidigare hade somaliska mest skrivits på arabiska, och framförallt hade andra språk använts för skriftlig kommunikation. Här kan nämnas att somaliska har många låneord och tydliga influenser från just arabiskan, samt från italienska och engelska.
Det är väl en sak; utbildningsnivå. Men, ras/IQ-striden handlar ju om huruvida de belagda rasskillnaderna i genomsnittligt IQ är resultatet av genetik eller miljöpåverkan. (Dessa och andra brasklappar finns mer utförligt beskrivna här.) Läskunnighet är en mäktig jävla miljöpåverkan, banne mig.
- Jasså?
- Ja.
- Varför?
- Jo:
Silva et al (2012) studerar
"performance of illiterate subjects and their matched literate controls on verbal and nonverbal working memory tasks. Results revealed that the phonological loop is significantly influenced by literacy, while the visuospatial sketchpad appears to be less affected or not at all. Results also suggest that the central executive might be influenced by literacy, possibly as an expression of cognitive reserve."
Ååååh! Antropofagi som lagt skitmycket tid på att förbättra sitt working memory genom att spela N-back! När allt jag hade behövt göra var att lära mig att läsa!
Peterson et al (2001) tycker att
"the study of illiterate subjects, which for specific socio-cultural reasons did not have the opportunity to acquire basic reading and writing skills, represents one approach to study the interaction between neurobiological and cultural factors in cognitive development and the functional organization of the human brain. In addition the naturally occurring illiteracy may serve as a model for studying the influence of alphabetic orthography on auditory-verbal language."
Studien kommer fram till att
"learning an alphabetic written language modulates the auditory-verbal language system in a non-trivial way and provided support for the hypothesis that the functional architecture of the brain is modulated by literacy. We have also indicated that the effects of literacy and formal schooling is not limited to language related skills but appears to affect also other cognitive domains. In particular, we indicate that formal schooling influences 2D but not 3D visual naming skills."
Ungefär samma forskargäng skriver i The Cambridge Handbook of Literacy om hur hjärnans konkreta, fysiologiska struktur ser ut och förändras. Tydligen lite som i den här bilden:
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Nämen ärligt. Bilden ska illustrera hur ett anpassningsbart kognitivt system relaterar till sin evolutionära historik, respektive sin nuvarande miljö. Källa: Petersson et al i The Cambridge Handbook of Literacy.
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Reis et al (2001) behöver dras med följande abstract:
"The modulatory influence of literacy on the cognitive system of the human brain has been indicated in behavioral, neuroanatomic, and functional neuroimaging studies. In this study we explored the functional consequences of formal education and the acquisition of an alphabetic written language on two- and three-dimensional visual naming. The results show that illiterate subjects perform significantly worse on immediate naming of two-dimensional representations of common everyday objects compared to literate subjects, both in terms of accuracy and reaction times. In contrast, there was no significant difference when the subjects named the corresponding real objects. The results suggest that formal education and learning to read and to write modulate the cognitive process involved in processing two- but not three-dimensional representations of common everyday objects. Both the results of the reaction time and the error pattern analyses can be interpreted as indicating that the major influence of literacy affects the visual system or the interaction between the visual and the language systems. We suggest that the visual system in a wide sense and/or the interface between the visual and the language system are differently formatted in literate and illiterate subjects. In other words, we hypothesize that the pattern of interactions in the functional–anatomical networks subserving visual naming, that is, the interactions within and between the visual and language processing networks, differ in literate and illiterate subjects." (Antropofagis fetstil.)
(Vid det här laget väljer jag att presentera en liten lättsam SvD-artikel om det kära forskargänget Peterson, Reis, och Ingvar. Håll till godo!)
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Vart vill jag komma? Jo, naturligtvis till följande: Det är fan en no brainer (no pun intended) att befolkningens IQ är lägre i länder där läskunnigheten är låg. Och, som studierna ovan starkt talar för, är det kausala sambandet - dvs. mekanismen, dvs. förklaringen - att hjärnan fucking förändras rent fysiologiskt av att man lär sig läsa och skriva! Just egenskaper förknippade med IQ-test verkar påverkas, om jag fritt får tolka Petersons, Reis och Ingvars resultat.
Självklart finns det andra än Antropofagi som vittrat ras/IQ-vedersakelse iom. läsningens fröjder och förtjänster. Denna studie, av David Marks, argumenterar för att just läskunnighet förklarar nationers välstånd, snarare än IQ:
"RESULTS: National literacy scores across the countries in the sample are highly skewed. In spite of this, the literacy measures are highly correlated with alleged differences in national IQ (r = .83-.86). The measure of literacy together with economic development (GDPpc) and income inequality (Gini coefficient) control at least 59-64% of the variance in national life expectancy at birth.
CONCLUSIONS: There is no scientific justification for believing that alleged intelligence differences play any role in explaining international differences in health status. Measures of alleged national IQ scores are highly confounded with differences in literacy. Literacy is a key factor in the health of any community and policies designed to enhance the literacy of a population are expected to lead to significant improvements in health status."
Det jag uppfattar att studien kanske förbiser är att läskunnighet inte bara samvarierar med IQ (och utvecklingsnivå), utan också förklarar IQ. Jag anar onda spiraler i görningen såväl som hjärnan.
Wikipedia tar upp samme David Marks i samband med beskrivningen av Flynn-effekten - dvs. att vår IQ tenderar att stiga i varje generation - och Wiki skriver: "Citing a high correlation between rising literacy rates and gains in IQ, David Marks has argued that the Flynn effect is caused by changes in literacy rates." I en studie hävdar Marks att "literacy variations across time, place and race are highly associated with changes in IQ scores."
Och "ja", liksom! Är en av fyra kvinnor och varannan man läskunnig, och läskunnighet förändrar hjärnans struktur och förmågor, så är det väl inte märkligt att Somalias nationella IQ normalfördelar sig kring ett lägre genomsnitt (IQ 68) än i t.ex. Sverige (IQ 99)? (Källa. Notera att siffrorna härrör från bl.a. Lynn, som Antropofagi har kritiserat förut, och som verkar vara en galen rasist.)
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Det är kanske värt att återvända till en av DeBoers poänger:
"Simply consider the differences in the paths of genetic information we’re talking about here. While unsolved questions still abound in genetic research, the general mechanisms through which genetic information is passed down within families have been well understood for decades. We know how parents contribute genetic material to children, and we thus know how grandparents and great-grandparents influence genotype too. If we say that a particular trait runs in families, we can look through very clear lines of descent to show how genetic information is pass along. We know more or less how an individual genotype is formed, we know how various generational connections contribute different pieces of genetic data, and we know more and more about how genotype defines phenotype.
Contrast that with the construct of race. What does it mean to call two people 'Asian'? The connection between, say, a third generation Hmong American college student whose family came to Santa Barbara as refugees from Vietnam and a Indian IT specialist whose family has lived in Madurai for generations seems, uh, unclear to me. Yes, I understand that there are phenotypical markers which often (but not always) indicate closer common ancestry between individuals. But “closer” here still can mean people whose families branched off the family tree hundreds of generations ago, making the genetic connections extremely distant. Low-cost genetic testing has revealed vast complexity in the genealogy of individuals and groups, with once simple stories of descent everywhere complicated by intermixing and the tangled lines of history. (I have bad news for the alt-right: the volk does not exist and never did.) Meanwhile, the concept of race entails vastly more baggage than just genetic lineage, all of the cultural and social and linguistic and political markers that we have, as a species, decided to package with certain phenotypical markers, historically for the purpose of maintaining white supremacy. To suggest that this process of racialization must be implied by acknowledging genetic influences on individual human outcomes is, well, thinking like Charles Murray.
If nothing else, I think it’s profoundly important that everyone understands that the belief that genetics influence intelligence does not imply a belief in 'scientific' racism. In fact, most of the world’s foremost experts on genetic behaviorism believe the former and not the latter."
Contrast that with the construct of race. What does it mean to call two people 'Asian'? The connection between, say, a third generation Hmong American college student whose family came to Santa Barbara as refugees from Vietnam and a Indian IT specialist whose family has lived in Madurai for generations seems, uh, unclear to me. Yes, I understand that there are phenotypical markers which often (but not always) indicate closer common ancestry between individuals. But “closer” here still can mean people whose families branched off the family tree hundreds of generations ago, making the genetic connections extremely distant. Low-cost genetic testing has revealed vast complexity in the genealogy of individuals and groups, with once simple stories of descent everywhere complicated by intermixing and the tangled lines of history. (I have bad news for the alt-right: the volk does not exist and never did.) Meanwhile, the concept of race entails vastly more baggage than just genetic lineage, all of the cultural and social and linguistic and political markers that we have, as a species, decided to package with certain phenotypical markers, historically for the purpose of maintaining white supremacy. To suggest that this process of racialization must be implied by acknowledging genetic influences on individual human outcomes is, well, thinking like Charles Murray.
If nothing else, I think it’s profoundly important that everyone understands that the belief that genetics influence intelligence does not imply a belief in 'scientific' racism. In fact, most of the world’s foremost experts on genetic behaviorism believe the former and not the latter."
din teori borde vara enkel att falsifiera. Somaliska män borde ha högre IQ i snitt än kvinnor eftersom hälften så många somaliska kvinnor är läskunniga.
SvaraRaderaHej, väldigt bra poäng. Ska givetvis efterforska detta. Tack!
Radera