And indeed Nisbett has two studies he cites, repeatedly. They are both about children and they both have very small sample sizes. It is sad to see someone of Nisbett’s stature stoop to this kind of thing.

These studies don’t invalidate hereditarian claims. Blacks enjoy an IQ advantage over Whites until around the age of 12 because of faster Black maturation rates (Bayley scales, dental development, etc.). Black IQ peaks in the early teens at which point Whites begin to overtake Blacks. For this reason studies by egalitarians that draw conclusions about adult IQ from studies of children’s IQ are invalid, and are, since the difference in and significance of faster maturation with regard to intelligence is well known in anthropology, fundamentally dishonest.

Even in Canada, it was not until I was in my first year of university, studying sociology, that I learned this line of reasoning. Of course I was already very familiar with the nature arguments. It’s a shame this knowledge, these studies, are not more widely disseminated. I don’t think nurture is beyond the reasoning of most children and adolescents. It might go a long way in helping the anti-racist campaigns that I was bombarded with as a child, to back them up with the rather sound scientific evidence that supports them. “Don’t be racist,” took on greater meaning for me when I realized that this construct was just that, something I and my community had created and could hypothetically render otherwise.