Now, I'd like to address Ms. Grace's much ballyhooed dissertation concerning the "average intelligence of African Americans" by saying that I think it seems to be somewhat of a knee-jerk response for someone to automatically call this racism or racial supremacy. I don't find the tone of her commentary to be as ethnocentric as some people are making it and I think we're all being a little oversensitive by labeling her as we have.

From what I've read, she was having an intellectual sparring match via email with a fellow law student, an occurrence which happens frequently in many law schools amongst various ethnicities. The topic turned to race and African Americans came up in what some might feel was an offensive context. I read the email, and from one law school graduate to another, I feel she supported her arguments very well with evidence from reputable identical twin studies and other research findings devoted to understanding the balance between nature and nurture in intelligence.

Ms. Grace clearly is using the well-supported nature argument to support the idea that a good portion of intelligence is heritable, but also is sure to note the interaction genetics have with nurture or environment to point out that the combination might be specifically unfavorable for those of us who are African American. Again, as a black law school graduate, I see no foul in the argument she's made. Does this mean I agree with her statement that blacks are genetically predisposed to be less intelligent and that there's nothing we can do to change that? No, because that's not what she's saying. She's quite accurately using the identical-twin/adoption study argument in conjunction with the statistical environmental differences between blacks and whites to explain the achievement gap. She also goes on to imply that it is possible to eliminate this unfortunate truth "by controlling for the right variables" (read: socioeconomics) and that by doing so "we would see that they are, in fact, as intelligent as white people under the same circumstances." This is a well structured argument and I believe it is perfectly true. The poverty stricken girl in North Korea probably won't score as well as the kids at Andover and disadvantaged students in Harlem won't claim the perfect 2400s kids at Hotchkiss with SAT tutors do. It's not racism, it's reality.

I disagree that the lesson here is "don't be racist." I believe the lesson here is "who gives a shit what some HLS student has to say in a private email." As for the content and how it should affect the black community, move the hell on. So some white girl at Harvard thinks we're less intelligent. I went to Yale Law w/o the assistance of affirmative action and Obama's the fucking president. Sitting around whining about it solves nothing. Like it or not, intelligence has been proven to be determined by (as Ms. Grace noted) a mixture of genes and environment, but it is not 50/50, and is more like (for illustrative purposes only) 30/70. So, let's all go read a book so we can keep defeating stereotypes and enhance the efficacy of that other 70%.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1941962&forum_id=2#20629335)

Where did it come from?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1941962&forum_id=2#20629679)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1941962&forum_id=2#34726264)

http://www.lw.com/people/StephanieNGrace

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1941962&forum_id=2#20629497)

*gets an offer*

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1941962&forum_id=2#20629708)

http://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=1300089&mc=211&forum_id=2&PHPSESSID=59fdaabe773a36bd474d94e524bc2cc7#16598952

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1941962&forum_id=2#20629473)

YOU: posting on xoxo

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1941962&forum_id=2#20631057)

http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1300089&forum_id=2#14879810

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1941962&forum_id=2#20847006)