"Over the past 15 years, educational aspirations have consistently had a greater impact on ACT performance than self-reported race or ethnicity. This suggests that by increasing students' aspirations, regardless of their demographics, their academic performance can be improved."
It seems to me that people who do better on tests would raise their educational aspirations, rather than the other way around? Obviously I can't exclude some benefit from positive thinking, but I would expect students to have a reasonably accurate assessment of their own academic ability by the time they take a test like this.
Jan 14, 2023·edited Jan 14, 2023Liked by Frederick R Prete
I was going to say the same thing. There's a correlation, but the causation could be in either direction. I could also imagine others factors that influence both.
For example, children of people with professional degrees are probably more likely to aspire to a professional career themselves, even when other factors (such as intelligence) are excluded.
And of course, people with professional degrees are also likely to be more intelligent and to pass this on to their children. Those children will be more likely to succeed academically, which will influence their aspirations as Jerden noted.
Edit: There's also the purely practical side, which is that people from families with more money are more likely to aspire to higher education, because their families can afford to send them there.
These are all good points! That was the reason that I suggested in the last paragraph that any other metric would be more informative than poorly defined "racial/ethnic" categories. I agree with you. Thanks for the comment.
Many sources state “race is not a biological reality”. That’s a commonplace view on the left, but is not actually true. A good parallel might be the Sun orbiting the Earth. Everyone “knew” that this was true, but of course it wasn’t. The biological reality of race has been demonstrated many times. However, since it is not a PC idea, the science just gets ignored. A few useful data points.
See “Genetic Structure, Self-Identified Race/Ethnicity, and Confounding in Case-Control Association Studies” (NCBI/PMC). Risch was able identify race with 99.86% accuracy. Not bad for something that doesn’t exist. Note that Risch did not look skin color genes at all. Quote
“We have analyzed genetic data for 326 microsatellite markers that were typed uniformly in a large multiethnic population-based sample of individuals as part of a study of the genetics of hypertension (Family Blood Pressure Program). Subjects identified themselves as belonging to one of four major racial/ethnic groups (white, African American, East Asian, and Hispanic) and were recruited from 15 different geographic locales within the United States and Taiwan. Genetic cluster analysis of the microsatellite markers produced four major clusters, which showed near-perfect correspondence with the four self-reported race/ethnicity categories. Of 3,636 subjects of varying race/ethnicity, only 5 (0.14%) showed genetic cluster membership different from their self-identified race/ethnicity. On the other hand, we detected only modest genetic differentiation between different current geographic locales within each race/ethnicity group. Thus, ancient geographic ancestry, which is highly correlated with self-identified race/ethnicity—as opposed to current residence—is the major determinant of genetic structure in the U.S. population. Implications of this genetic structure for case-control association studies are discussed.”
Take a look at “The Inconvenient Science of Racial DNA Profiling”. A scientist by the name of Tony Frudakis was able to identify the race of a serial killer in a police investigation in Louisiana. The police in Louisiana were looking for a white male killer based on (mis)information received early in the case. They were wrong. Frudakis examined DNA samples collected in the investigation and told the police that the killer was probably 85% Black and 15% Native American. Based on this new information the police starting examining new suspects and found the actual killer (who matched Frudakis’s description rather well). Tony Frudakis found that race could be determined from genes with 100% accuracy. Not bad for something that doesn’t exist.
Take a look at “How Genetics Is Changing Our Understanding of 'Race'” by David Reich in the NYT. If race didn’t exist it would not be trivial to identify race from genes. But it is. Quotes
“Groundbreaking advances in DNA sequencing technology have been made over the last two decades. These advances enable us to measure with exquisite accuracy what fraction of an individual’s genetic ancestry traces back to, say, West Africa 500 years ago — before the mixing in the Americas of the West African and European gene pools that were almost completely isolated for the last 70,000 years. With the help of these tools, we are learning that while race may be a social construct, differences in genetic ancestry that happen to correlate to many of today’s racial constructs are real.”
And
“Recent research on the human genome challenges the basic assumption that human races have no biological basis. In this article, we provide a theoretical synthesis that accepts the existence of genetic clusters consistent with certain racial classifications as well as the validity of the genomic research that has identified the clusters, without diminishing the social character of their context, meaning, production, or consequences.”
It turns of the Razib Kahn has commented on this. See “To classify humanity is not that hard”. Quote
“The idea that human phylogeny is impossible is in the air, I have heard it from many intelligent people. I have no idea why people would be skeptical of it, the way it is presented by many scholars makes the implication clear that phylogeny is impossible, that differences are trivial. Both these are false impressions. I do not believe that the fact that mixed-race people’s real problems obtaining organs with the appropriate tissue match is a trivial affair. Human genetic differences have plenty of concrete impacts which are not socially constructed.”
A number of companies (23andMe, Ancestry.com, etc.) can easily identify the ancestors of anyone using a tiny DNA sample. If race had no biological basis, this would be impossible. But, of course, it is very possible.
It turns out that Stephen Hsu has commented on this. See “Metric on the space of genomes and the scientific basis for race”. Quote
“Now plot the genome of each human as a point on our lattice. Not surprisingly, there are readily identifiable clusters of points, corresponding to traditional continental ethnic groups: Europeans, Africans, Asians, Native Americans, etc. (See, for example, Risch et al., Am. J. Hum. Genet. 76:268–275, 2005.) Of course, we can get into endless arguments about how we define European or Asian, and of course there is substructure within the clusters, but it is rather obvious that there are identifiable groupings, and as the Risch study shows, they correspond very well to self-identified notions of race.”
Well over two hundred years ago, Blumenbach found that he could classify skulls by race. It is sad but true, that our understanding of our own species has declined (in some respects), since then.
There is actually a funny version of this. Quote
“Forensic anthropology and the concept of race: if races don't exist, why are forensic anthropologists so good at identifying them?”
Why indeed? If race had no biological significance, then it would be impossible to determine race from skeletons. But, of course, it is.
Thank you for this comment. Of course, I agree with you. I just don’t think that the categories that we use colloquially are accurate. And, I don’t think they’re useful as they are used commonly. As a biological psychologist, however, I recognize that they do exist. Also, as you pointed out, there are clusters within the broad categories. These have to be recognized too as having a validity.Thanks again I enjoyed your comment
My sense of it (based mostly on Risch) it that the categories are mostly accurate in the USA, but less so in other countries (for example, Egypt). I doubt that Risch could get 99.84% accuracy in some countries. However, in the USA it is not that hard. Keep in mind that (in the US), almost all black people came from one small area of Africa and hence are relatively homogeneous. That would probably be less true in Europe (with the possible exception of the UK). Not sure about this. Actual DNA testing would be needed.
Your epilogue made me think about the consequences of good intentions. I could imagine a particularly open-minded school administrator reading this, and thinking that they could close certain gaps by encouraging students to have greater post-secondary aspirations. I could see that morphing into some kind of educator professional development, which would morph into teachers either inferring or being outright told that the expectation is that their students have greater post-secondary aspirations. The result will inevitably be that nearly 100% of students will bubble in "Graduate Study." For some that will obviously not be true, for others who have been convinced it it true is nonetheless not what's best for them individually, but either way, it will render the survey question useless.
Nicely put. As you intimate, White and Black are nonsense categories. Descendants of American slaves, Afro-Caribbeans and recent African immigrants are three very distinct groups. Euro-Americans are also highly diverse. Melanin content of skin is not a useful sorting category except for things such as vitamin D deficiency risks. Which is why systems that attempt to actively racially segregate ended up having serious boundary-enforcement problems and continually generate various absurdities.
One thing I feel might blow up the whole race and Postsecondary Educational Aspiration(PEA) categories is considering the learning environment the student came from. I think considering the learning environment would dramatically change those numbers.
My student was homeschooled, took the test after 2006, could check a race box other than white and did exceedingly well. He didn’t check the race box because he wanted to “be considered a person, not a race taking the test”, his words. He didn’t check the PEA box because he wasn’t sure at the time if he would do graduate work or not. How many others had/have the similar/same sort of profile? Do they ever look at the learning environment the student came from? I bet that would yield some interesting results.
Yes, you are correct, "learning environment " would be better... I agreed with your point in the final paragraph... any other meaningful variable would be more informative! Thanks for your comment!
I think it's not really fair to compare low educational aspiration students of one race to high educational aspirations students of another. How do students of different races with the same aspirations compare? My guess would be they are pretty similar and none of the races significantly outperform another.
That's an interesting point. However, none of that data is available. All we have to work with is the data that the ACT provides. I'm not sure that the racial categories make much sense as they are used, anyway. You may be absolutely right…
Dec 31, 2022·edited Dec 31, 2022Liked by Frederick R Prete
"One of the reasons is that there is much more genetic (biological) variability within human racial categories than between them".
A 'truth' that hails from Lewontin in 1972. Debunked by, among others, Edwards. It's true when you look at a single gen at a time, but hereditary traits are mostly polygenetic. Also, Lewontin ignored the quantitive aspect.
You might find a thai, who's 2 m tall, but chances are much better in finding a xhosa (Nelson Mandelas tribe) of that hight.
That's a very good point. I'm not taking the position that racial differences don't exist, I'm just pointing out that most scientists take the position that I noted in the essay. I agree with your comments. It is ironic that academics claim that human racial categories are invalid but at the same time continue to use them when it suits their needs. And, while they do exist (as you pointed out), the colloquial categories make no sense… For instance "white" doesn't refer to a race of people any more than "Hispanic" does. Thanks for your comment.
Yes, it is the acceptable position that almost everyone relies on - otherwise you risk problems.
Whether 'race' exists is a semantic question and the whole field becomes more or less meaningless when you do not define the phenomenon, 'race', which you are discussing.
One says on the one hand that 'race' does not exist, but in the same breath refuses to define what it is that one believes does not exist.
What we do know is that humans are found with different genetics and that there is a consistent and easily demonstrable tendency for the differences to group into 'clusters' according to people's kinship, which in turn is connected to the geographical location in which their ancestors developed.
What we should call the genetic groups is, as I said, semantics.
Yes, the language is inconsistent. On the one hand, one uses and does not use the concept of race at will, as you point out - and on the other hand one says that the concept of race is relevant, even if it does not exist, because many people mistakenly believe that it exists. This is how the argument goes. Those things make rational and factual debate within the field close to impossible.
No, you are right that the commonly used terms do not follow genetics very well - and especially that skin color only sometimes and not always says the most decisive thing about genetics. A good example is that people with a European background are much more closely related to completely black Somalis than to sub-Saharan Africans or Chinese - and that Somalis have even developed lactose tolerance just like Northern Europeans. As far as I remember, on a slightly different genetic basis, but with the same evolutionary history as an adaptation to largely live off cattle - at least some Somali tribes make a living by draining blood and milking their cattle rather than slaughtering them.
I read "The Bell Curve" and became curious when the authors didn't delve into the IQ results on the cohort of German children of black Americans. I also questioned the clumping together of "white" IQ results into a single figure, so I looked at the results of IQ tests by "white" countries and found some significant, in my view, variation.
I suspect it has more to do with family differences. A kid whose parents have advanced degree is unlikely to be ( or be allowed to be) of "low academic aspirations". In educated families education is the default option.
That too for sure, which may or may not be tied in with intelligence.
My personal opinion is that we should be done with a lot of this analysis and focus on producing happy people rather than optimizing the sorting mechanism, but that's another conversation. ;)
That could very well be. And, that's the point. However those subtleties are lost in the way the ACT reports, and people interpret the results (i.e., in terms of the crude racial/ethnic categories).
"Over the past 15 years, educational aspirations have consistently had a greater impact on ACT performance than self-reported race or ethnicity. This suggests that by increasing students' aspirations, regardless of their demographics, their academic performance can be improved."
It seems to me that people who do better on tests would raise their educational aspirations, rather than the other way around? Obviously I can't exclude some benefit from positive thinking, but I would expect students to have a reasonably accurate assessment of their own academic ability by the time they take a test like this.
I was going to say the same thing. There's a correlation, but the causation could be in either direction. I could also imagine others factors that influence both.
For example, children of people with professional degrees are probably more likely to aspire to a professional career themselves, even when other factors (such as intelligence) are excluded.
And of course, people with professional degrees are also likely to be more intelligent and to pass this on to their children. Those children will be more likely to succeed academically, which will influence their aspirations as Jerden noted.
Edit: There's also the purely practical side, which is that people from families with more money are more likely to aspire to higher education, because their families can afford to send them there.
These are all good points! That was the reason that I suggested in the last paragraph that any other metric would be more informative than poorly defined "racial/ethnic" categories. I agree with you. Thanks for the comment.
That is a good point!
That’s a very interesting point.
Many sources state “race is not a biological reality”. That’s a commonplace view on the left, but is not actually true. A good parallel might be the Sun orbiting the Earth. Everyone “knew” that this was true, but of course it wasn’t. The biological reality of race has been demonstrated many times. However, since it is not a PC idea, the science just gets ignored. A few useful data points.
See “Genetic Structure, Self-Identified Race/Ethnicity, and Confounding in Case-Control Association Studies” (NCBI/PMC). Risch was able identify race with 99.86% accuracy. Not bad for something that doesn’t exist. Note that Risch did not look skin color genes at all. Quote
“We have analyzed genetic data for 326 microsatellite markers that were typed uniformly in a large multiethnic population-based sample of individuals as part of a study of the genetics of hypertension (Family Blood Pressure Program). Subjects identified themselves as belonging to one of four major racial/ethnic groups (white, African American, East Asian, and Hispanic) and were recruited from 15 different geographic locales within the United States and Taiwan. Genetic cluster analysis of the microsatellite markers produced four major clusters, which showed near-perfect correspondence with the four self-reported race/ethnicity categories. Of 3,636 subjects of varying race/ethnicity, only 5 (0.14%) showed genetic cluster membership different from their self-identified race/ethnicity. On the other hand, we detected only modest genetic differentiation between different current geographic locales within each race/ethnicity group. Thus, ancient geographic ancestry, which is highly correlated with self-identified race/ethnicity—as opposed to current residence—is the major determinant of genetic structure in the U.S. population. Implications of this genetic structure for case-control association studies are discussed.”
Take a look at “The Inconvenient Science of Racial DNA Profiling”. A scientist by the name of Tony Frudakis was able to identify the race of a serial killer in a police investigation in Louisiana. The police in Louisiana were looking for a white male killer based on (mis)information received early in the case. They were wrong. Frudakis examined DNA samples collected in the investigation and told the police that the killer was probably 85% Black and 15% Native American. Based on this new information the police starting examining new suspects and found the actual killer (who matched Frudakis’s description rather well). Tony Frudakis found that race could be determined from genes with 100% accuracy. Not bad for something that doesn’t exist.
Take a look at “How Genetics Is Changing Our Understanding of 'Race'” by David Reich in the NYT. If race didn’t exist it would not be trivial to identify race from genes. But it is. Quotes
“Groundbreaking advances in DNA sequencing technology have been made over the last two decades. These advances enable us to measure with exquisite accuracy what fraction of an individual’s genetic ancestry traces back to, say, West Africa 500 years ago — before the mixing in the Americas of the West African and European gene pools that were almost completely isolated for the last 70,000 years. With the help of these tools, we are learning that while race may be a social construct, differences in genetic ancestry that happen to correlate to many of today’s racial constructs are real.”
And
“Recent research on the human genome challenges the basic assumption that human races have no biological basis. In this article, we provide a theoretical synthesis that accepts the existence of genetic clusters consistent with certain racial classifications as well as the validity of the genomic research that has identified the clusters, without diminishing the social character of their context, meaning, production, or consequences.”
It turns of the Razib Kahn has commented on this. See “To classify humanity is not that hard”. Quote
“The idea that human phylogeny is impossible is in the air, I have heard it from many intelligent people. I have no idea why people would be skeptical of it, the way it is presented by many scholars makes the implication clear that phylogeny is impossible, that differences are trivial. Both these are false impressions. I do not believe that the fact that mixed-race people’s real problems obtaining organs with the appropriate tissue match is a trivial affair. Human genetic differences have plenty of concrete impacts which are not socially constructed.”
A number of companies (23andMe, Ancestry.com, etc.) can easily identify the ancestors of anyone using a tiny DNA sample. If race had no biological basis, this would be impossible. But, of course, it is very possible.
It turns out that Stephen Hsu has commented on this. See “Metric on the space of genomes and the scientific basis for race”. Quote
“Now plot the genome of each human as a point on our lattice. Not surprisingly, there are readily identifiable clusters of points, corresponding to traditional continental ethnic groups: Europeans, Africans, Asians, Native Americans, etc. (See, for example, Risch et al., Am. J. Hum. Genet. 76:268–275, 2005.) Of course, we can get into endless arguments about how we define European or Asian, and of course there is substructure within the clusters, but it is rather obvious that there are identifiable groupings, and as the Risch study shows, they correspond very well to self-identified notions of race.”
Well over two hundred years ago, Blumenbach found that he could classify skulls by race. It is sad but true, that our understanding of our own species has declined (in some respects), since then.
There is actually a funny version of this. Quote
“Forensic anthropology and the concept of race: if races don't exist, why are forensic anthropologists so good at identifying them?”
Why indeed? If race had no biological significance, then it would be impossible to determine race from skeletons. But, of course, it is.
Thank you for this comment. Of course, I agree with you. I just don’t think that the categories that we use colloquially are accurate. And, I don’t think they’re useful as they are used commonly. As a biological psychologist, however, I recognize that they do exist. Also, as you pointed out, there are clusters within the broad categories. These have to be recognized too as having a validity.Thanks again I enjoyed your comment
My sense of it (based mostly on Risch) it that the categories are mostly accurate in the USA, but less so in other countries (for example, Egypt). I doubt that Risch could get 99.84% accuracy in some countries. However, in the USA it is not that hard. Keep in mind that (in the US), almost all black people came from one small area of Africa and hence are relatively homogeneous. That would probably be less true in Europe (with the possible exception of the UK). Not sure about this. Actual DNA testing would be needed.
Thank you for writing this.
Your epilogue made me think about the consequences of good intentions. I could imagine a particularly open-minded school administrator reading this, and thinking that they could close certain gaps by encouraging students to have greater post-secondary aspirations. I could see that morphing into some kind of educator professional development, which would morph into teachers either inferring or being outright told that the expectation is that their students have greater post-secondary aspirations. The result will inevitably be that nearly 100% of students will bubble in "Graduate Study." For some that will obviously not be true, for others who have been convinced it it true is nonetheless not what's best for them individually, but either way, it will render the survey question useless.
That’s a very interesting comment. I could imagine that too.
Nicely put. As you intimate, White and Black are nonsense categories. Descendants of American slaves, Afro-Caribbeans and recent African immigrants are three very distinct groups. Euro-Americans are also highly diverse. Melanin content of skin is not a useful sorting category except for things such as vitamin D deficiency risks. Which is why systems that attempt to actively racially segregate ended up having serious boundary-enforcement problems and continually generate various absurdities.
I agree! Thanks for your comment.
One thing I feel might blow up the whole race and Postsecondary Educational Aspiration(PEA) categories is considering the learning environment the student came from. I think considering the learning environment would dramatically change those numbers.
My student was homeschooled, took the test after 2006, could check a race box other than white and did exceedingly well. He didn’t check the race box because he wanted to “be considered a person, not a race taking the test”, his words. He didn’t check the PEA box because he wasn’t sure at the time if he would do graduate work or not. How many others had/have the similar/same sort of profile? Do they ever look at the learning environment the student came from? I bet that would yield some interesting results.
Yes, you are correct, "learning environment " would be better... I agreed with your point in the final paragraph... any other meaningful variable would be more informative! Thanks for your comment!
I think it's not really fair to compare low educational aspiration students of one race to high educational aspirations students of another. How do students of different races with the same aspirations compare? My guess would be they are pretty similar and none of the races significantly outperform another.
That's an interesting point. However, none of that data is available. All we have to work with is the data that the ACT provides. I'm not sure that the racial categories make much sense as they are used, anyway. You may be absolutely right…
"One of the reasons is that there is much more genetic (biological) variability within human racial categories than between them".
A 'truth' that hails from Lewontin in 1972. Debunked by, among others, Edwards. It's true when you look at a single gen at a time, but hereditary traits are mostly polygenetic. Also, Lewontin ignored the quantitive aspect.
You might find a thai, who's 2 m tall, but chances are much better in finding a xhosa (Nelson Mandelas tribe) of that hight.
Lewontin was an activist.
That's a very good point. I'm not taking the position that racial differences don't exist, I'm just pointing out that most scientists take the position that I noted in the essay. I agree with your comments. It is ironic that academics claim that human racial categories are invalid but at the same time continue to use them when it suits their needs. And, while they do exist (as you pointed out), the colloquial categories make no sense… For instance "white" doesn't refer to a race of people any more than "Hispanic" does. Thanks for your comment.
Yes, it is the acceptable position that almost everyone relies on - otherwise you risk problems.
Whether 'race' exists is a semantic question and the whole field becomes more or less meaningless when you do not define the phenomenon, 'race', which you are discussing.
One says on the one hand that 'race' does not exist, but in the same breath refuses to define what it is that one believes does not exist.
What we do know is that humans are found with different genetics and that there is a consistent and easily demonstrable tendency for the differences to group into 'clusters' according to people's kinship, which in turn is connected to the geographical location in which their ancestors developed.
What we should call the genetic groups is, as I said, semantics.
Yes, the language is inconsistent. On the one hand, one uses and does not use the concept of race at will, as you point out - and on the other hand one says that the concept of race is relevant, even if it does not exist, because many people mistakenly believe that it exists. This is how the argument goes. Those things make rational and factual debate within the field close to impossible.
No, you are right that the commonly used terms do not follow genetics very well - and especially that skin color only sometimes and not always says the most decisive thing about genetics. A good example is that people with a European background are much more closely related to completely black Somalis than to sub-Saharan Africans or Chinese - and that Somalis have even developed lactose tolerance just like Northern Europeans. As far as I remember, on a slightly different genetic basis, but with the same evolutionary history as an adaptation to largely live off cattle - at least some Somali tribes make a living by draining blood and milking their cattle rather than slaughtering them.
I agree with you... these are very good points. Thank you!
I read "The Bell Curve" and became curious when the authors didn't delve into the IQ results on the cohort of German children of black Americans. I also questioned the clumping together of "white" IQ results into a single figure, so I looked at the results of IQ tests by "white" countries and found some significant, in my view, variation.
Good observations...
Is "aspiration" just picking up individual intelligence differences? Smart kids early on get the idea that they will go far?
I suspect it has more to do with family differences. A kid whose parents have advanced degree is unlikely to be ( or be allowed to be) of "low academic aspirations". In educated families education is the default option.
That too for sure, which may or may not be tied in with intelligence.
My personal opinion is that we should be done with a lot of this analysis and focus on producing happy people rather than optimizing the sorting mechanism, but that's another conversation. ;)
Agreed!
That could very well be. And, that's the point. However those subtleties are lost in the way the ACT reports, and people interpret the results (i.e., in terms of the crude racial/ethnic categories).
Good on you for breaking up these common assumptions.
That data is eye-opening. Thank you for the article.
Thank you very much!