Inductivist

 

Face-to-face interviews were conducted with 36,309 respondents in the 2012-2013 National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions–III. I was surprised that this study published the percent of each racial/ethnic group that has antisocial personality disorder (ASPD). Having ASPD is closely related to being a psychopath. 

Natives have the highest rate -- 11.9%. Blacks are second with 5.3%. Asians are at the bottom with 1.9%. So the Native rate is 6.3 times that of Asians. 

The heritability of ASPD is around 50%.

This CDC table shows that the Native homicide rate is high (the victim rate is a proxy for the offender rate) but the Black rate is higher. Why would that be if ASPD is more common among Natives?

  

It could be that Blacks tend to live in urban settings, while Natives are more likely to be rural. Urban life seems to be conducive to crime. Cities enable a critical mass of antisocial individuals to come together and form gangs that produce more crime than would be committed by solitary individuals. 

The high Native rate seems consistent with Harpending and Cochran hypothesis that groups with weak histories of agrarian life, which selects for submissiveness, will tend to be more disagreeable.

People who are racially mixed often say they feel like they are in a racial "no man's land," neither one race nor the other. Are they less happy than people of only one race? Let's look at Black-Whites first (2021 GSS data): 

Mean happiness for White-Blacks (2.02) is slightly higher than the mean for Whites (1.96) or Blacks (1.90). Those who say their "race" is both Hispanic and White are less happy (1.78) than Whites (1.97) or Hispanics (2.08).

The same pattern is found for those who say they are both White and Native American: a mean of 1.82 versus 1.97 for Whites and 1.91 for Natives.

Finally, I merged Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans together and found that the White-NE Asian group tended to be less happy (1.78) than either Whites (1.97) or NE Asians (2.01). 

So with the exception of Black-Whites, people of mixed race tend to be a little less happy than those of one race. There is some support here for the contention that having a mixed identity is not conducive to happiness. 

 

Some people argue that blacks do not perform academically as well as other groups because they lack a culture that places a high value on education. Is such a view supported by General Social Survey data? In 2021, respondents were asked, "Please show for each of these how important you think it is for getting ahead in life . . . c. Having a good education yourself?" Answers ranged from 'essential' to 'not important at all.' 

The table displayed below shows the distribution of responses for blacks (raceacs = 1) and non-blacks. 46.2% of blacks say education is essential, compared to only 31.8% of others. This contradicts the claim that African Americans do not value getting an education as others do. 

You might respond that blacks have been taught the importance of education, but many only pay lip service to the idea and have not internalized the attitude. If true, this points to the impotence of attempting to improve performance through teaching and stressing certain values.   

I was watching "Being the Ricardos" last night, and one of the film's themes was Desi Arnaz' infidelities. It made me wonder if there is any truth to the stereotype of the Latin lover. 

The General Social Survey asked married men if they had ever cheated on their spouse. Here are the percentages (N = 4,243):

Percent of married men who have cheated

Non-Hispanic black  25.2
Black Hispanic  20.0
White Hispanic  16.9
Non-Hispanic white 16.3
Hispanic--other race  15.0
Non-Hispanic--other race  13.9

I calculated percentages for each race because I know it is relevant for infidelity. There is evidence here that black men cheat more than other groups, but rates are not high for Hispanics.

Some people argue that mean IQs for whites and blacks differ because blacks tend to come from poorer families. A black kid raised with resources equal to a white kid will have the same IQ. Is this the case? 

Using data from the General Social Survey, I calculated mean IQ for blacks, whites, and others for several ranges of father's socioeconomic index (SES): 1-2 standard deviations (sd) below average, 1 sd below average to average, average to 1 sd above average, 1-2 sds above average, and over 2 sds. The sample size is 12,016 (immigrants were excluded). Here's a graph that summarizes the results: 

Blacks and whites raised at the same SES level do not have the same mean IQs. The higher white average ranges from about 7 points among the poorest group to more than 10 points among the wealthiest group. By the way, other non-whites--mostly Hispanics--are closer to blacks than whites. 

 Wilfred Reilly (@wil_da_beast630) has a discussion going on at Twitter about which race currently faces the most "systemic racism." Some people are assuming that Asians are victimized by blacks more than whites are. Two sources of data are not very helpful here: hate crimes and victimization data from the National Crime Victimization Survey. Hate crimes are a tiny drop in the bucket of all violence, and you don't see NCVS tables with Asian victims by race of offender. (Let me know if I've missed them.) Victim data in general indicates that Asians face low levels of victimization, which makes sense because most crime is intra-racial, and Asians have very low rates of criminal offending. 

Perhaps homicide data is the best way to go here. I looked at expanded FBI homicide data and the Census to calculate rates for being murdered by a black person for two groups: 1) Whites/Hispanics, and 2) Asians/ Native Americans/Pacific Islanders. I'm afraid the FBI lumps people together that way. The rate for group 1 is 2.30 murders per 1 million population. For group 2, it's 1.44 murders per million. According to FBI data, blacks pose more of a threat to whites and Hispanics than Asians plus. 

DGo (@Go321) on Twitter wondered which lower IQ groups still manage to be well-behaved as groups. Criminality is a decent measure of behavior, so I looked at General Social Survey data to see which groups with low average IQs also have lower than average arrest rates: 

The percent arrested for the whole country is 12.7%. The groups listed above with an arrest rate lower than that are: Filipinos, West Indians, and Non-Spanish West Indians. And let me add that these three groups have IQ means that are not very low: 96.7, 98.8, and 95.9, respectively. 

Most lower-IQ groups have high arrest rates, as expected.

UPDATE: After checking, I see that Arabs do not have a low mean IQ: it's 102.   

To answer this question, I calculated mean IQs for all self-described whites by the country they said their ancestors came from. Only people born in the US are included since immigrants are at a disadvantage on a vocabulary test (the measure of IQ used here). Here are the results:

Mean IQ

Africa  93.4
Mexico  90.0
Puerto Rico  93.2
Spain  97.2
American Indian  94.7
India  95.8
Other Spanish  95.9
American only  90.4

It looks like many of these people are racially mixed. They label themselves as white but often have some non-white ancestry. The mixed groups that do not have low mean IQs are self-described whites whose ancestors came from east Asian countries--Japan, China, or the Philippines. 

UPDATE: The mean IQ for self-described whites whose ancestors are from east Asia is 99.8. 

 

Based on the General Social Survey, if you ask Americans where their families originally came from, they will typically give you an answer. But about 1% of whites and 13% of blacks will tell you they are "American only." 54% of whites who give this answer live in the South, and Americans of Scots-Irish ancestry are known to sometimes give this answer. By contrast, "American only" blacks are concentrated in the mid-Atlantic and East North Central regions. 

And their mean IQs? 

 

  

Wow, it's around 90 for whites. That is low. 

I wouldn't generalize these findings to the Scots-Irish. Many of the whites, and perhaps some from other races, who say "American only" are probably from lower IQ families who simply have not kept track of where their people are from. Or lower IQ people might be more likely to prioritize their American identity. 

You often see the argument that the central political divide is social class, not race and ethnicity. If this were true, then we should see it in voting patterns. 

The General Social Survey asked participants who they voted for in 2016, and they also asked about annual income and race. The results below are estimates from a logistic regression model that predicts 2016 voting for President with income and race. The three racial categories are white, black, and other race. Whites are the reference category and so are omitted from the model (sample size = 1,360).

From the p-values (probability) you can see that, once you adjust for race, REALINC (inflation-adjusted income) does not significantly predict who you voted for in 2016. By contrast, blacks and people of other non-white races were less likely than whites to vote for Trump, regardless of one's social class. 

Race trumps.  

 

A small percent of whites have an allele that is associated with hemochromatosis--a hereditary disorder in which iron salts are deposited in the tissues, leading to liver damage, diabetes mellitus, and bronze discoloration of the skin.  This polymorphism is completely absent in West African blacks.  This is the kind of difference race deniers tell us doesn't happen. 

In this new study, researchers estimated the European ancestry of African Americans using the frequency of this hemochromatosis allele. 

They found that, indeed, the frequency of the allele is 0.00000 in people from the Gambia, Nigeria, Senegal, and Sierra Leone. The frequency in white Americans was 0.060-0.067. For all black Americans it was 0.012.

The average white ancestry for black Americans was 0.180 for the whole sample, but it differed by city:

Proportion white ancestry

Rochester, NY   0.132

Birmingham, AL   0.146

Upper Savannah Region, SC   0.157

Portland, OR   0.161

San Diego, CA   0.175

Hartford, CT  0.178

District of Columbia   0.196

Oakland, CA   0.238

Irvine, CA   0.243

The proportion white of blacks living in Irvine is 1.8 times higher than for those living in Rochester, NY, so the variation is noteworthy. I don't see a clear regional pattern here. 

The authors report that their findings are consistent with studies using other methods. They also found both paternal and maternal contributions of white American ancestry in black Americans.

This study, using a sample of ~94k teens and young adults, examined the link between religiosity (church attendance and saying religion is important in their life) and drug selling and theft. The researchers found a robust inverse association for various age and demographic groups. The magnitude of the link was considerable for black males and females: the incidence of drug selling and theft was between 1.6 and 3.3 times higher for irreligious blacks compared to their religious counterparts.

Of course, a correlational study can't tell us anything about causation, but this study provides pretty good evidence that one finds more law-abiding blacks at church, and the Church has always been a central institution in the black community.

It's hard to find good stats on racial differences in intimate partner violence since this is the kind of information that makes blacks look bad. One way around this problem is to focus on the easily available homicide victim statistics. We can learn about race and perpetrating domestic violence with victim stats for two reasons: 1) at least 90% of homicides are intra-racial (within a race) so if the victim is black, the perp is too. (And when crimes are interracial, they are more likely to be black-on-white than the reverse); and 2) if a woman is killed, it's usually by a man with whom she had some kind of relationship: a boyfriend, husband, ex, or on the rare occasion, a John.

The CDC has a great website for analyzing mortality data. I generated female homicide rates for race and Hispanic status:

2018 homicide victimization rates (per 100k)

Black  6.3
American Indian  4.4
Hispanic  1.9
White 1.8
Asian  1.0

So the victim rate for black women is 6.3 times that of Asian women,  and 3.5 times that of whites. While these racial gaps are large, they are not as big as those for men (39.0 for blacks and 3.7 for whites). The male-male dynamic--killing for vengeance or saving face--seems to separate blacks and others more than the intimate partner dynamic: the man kills the woman out of jealousy, a desire to get his way, or to punish the victim.

Methods

Results

Abstract

Introduction: In the U.S., asthma disproportionately affects urban minority populations, with Puerto Ricans showing the highest asthma prevalence 16.1%. However, what causes high asthma
prevalence among the Puerto Ricans is not very well understood. The varying proportions of African, European, and Native American genetic ancestry in Puerto Ricans can be leveraged to identify genetic determinants of clinically significant measures and outcomes such as lung function and asthma severity. We have previously demonstrated that genetic ancestry is associated with lung function.

Methods: In this current study, we sought to discover potential causal genes that may be associated with lung function in Puerto Rican islanders by applying admixture and fine mapping methods. A genome-wide admixture mapping study of lung function was conducted in 841 Puerto Rican children with and without asthma, who were recruited from Puerto Rico. After mapping admixture segments, we fine-mapped the genomic region using whole genome sequencing data. RNA-seq and eQTL mapping were used to elucidate underlying biologic links between genetic variants and lung function.

Results: The association test between local genetic ancestry and forced expiratory volume in 1 second (FEV1) identified a strong admixture mapping peak on chromosome 1q32, indicating that each African ancestry allele was associated with a 0.13 liter decrease in the volume of exhaled air [95%CI: -0.08 to -0.18, p-value=4.90×10-8]. Three variants identified from the fine-mapping analysis were eQTL of TMEM9 gene in nasal epithelial cell. The minor allele of the variant associated with TMEM9 gene (rs10920079) tracked with African ancestry and was associated with significantly decreased lung function and TMEM9 gene expression. TMEM9 was inversely correlated with proinflammatory cytokine IL-6 and IL-1β gene expressions.

Conclusion: The results from admixture mapping discovered variants that were associated with decreased lung function. Functional annotation and validation with RNA-seq and eQTL mapping indicate that these SNPs may be involved with regulating cytokine production, which may influence the lung function of Puerto Ricans.

Abstract
Background: Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most common form of dementia worldwide, and bears remarkable evidence for a differential prevalence among continental populations. In this scenario, estimating ancestry proportions in recently admixed populations is a strategy that can help increasing knowledge about the genetic structure of this complex trait.

Aim/Methods: Our purpose was to assess mean ancestry estimates for the three main parental contributors to the Brazilian contingent (European, African and Amerindian) using a panel of 12 ancestry informative markers. Outpatients with the late-onset form of AD (n = 120) were compared for ancestry levels with non-cognitively impaired subjects (n = 412) in the Midwest Brazil, controlling for classic clinical, social and anthropometric risk factors.

Results: Our findings show a 3-fold greater genetic Amerindian content among control subjects compared to AD patients (p < 0.001).

Conclusion: Our results suggest that the allelic architecture of Native Americans can confer protection against the onset of the disease.


See how anti-Native American racism destroys... oh, I guess it doesn't work this time.

From Genetics and Molecular Research:

"We genotyped 11 ancestry informative markers to estimate the contributions of African, European, and Amerindian ancestries in a case-control sample of 213 individuals from Bahia State, Northeast Brazil, including 104 prostate cancer patients. We compared this data with self-reported ancestry and the stratification of cases by prostate cancer aggressiveness according to Gleason score. A larger African genetic contribution (44%) was detected among cases, and a greater European
contribution (61%) among controls."

But don't forget: Race has nothing to do with genes.

Many people who saw armed white citizens in the Michigan Statehouse recently assumed they were violent-prone, and that armed black men would not be given the freedom to act that way. (I remember seeing armed black men unmolested at conservative rallies.) 

The General Social Survey asked participants if they own a handgun and also if they have ever been arrested (male sample size = 5,194). The percent of male handgun owners with at least one arrest is as follows:

Percent of men with a handgun who have ever been arrested
Whites  18.4
Blacks  28.3
Other race  26.7

Let's keep things simple and call arrestees criminals.  The conclusion we can draw here is that if all we know about a man is that he has a gun, our best bet is that he is NOT a criminal. Second, a black man with a handgun is 1.5 times more likely to be a criminal than a white man, and the increased risk for a man of another race is 1.45. 

Research indicates that black males are more reluctant than white males to admit to ever having been arrested, so the actual racial gap might be even bigger. Studies of large cities like DC or Philadelphia have found that roughly 50% of black men have ever been arrested.