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I used to think it was just a matter of reaching enough people, but I've now come to realise that evidence doesn't really matter for a great number people if it interferes with their ideology and/or personal interest.
The amount of people in the West who would be negatively affected if HBD became the dominant intellectual frame of reference is now massive. They have a clear personal stake at never allowing that to happen. Dispassionate scientific inquiry is in fact something very few are interested in. You can show them a thousand papers. It won't matter. They will only use it to indict you for heresy.
What does "HBD" actually entail? It's a term you never see used outside of this forum, afaik. All I know is that it stands for human bio diversity and means that you take seriously the findings that all sorts of tests like the SAT etc show in terms of group differences? What else?
A major implication of this is that, even if you are able to provide perfect equality of opportunity, groups will still have different outcomes because of their differing inherent ability. As a result, for example, cognitively-demanding (and high-status, high-compensation) professions will never reflect the distribution of groups in society; instead they would be occupied mostly by members of groups with higher ability. The alternative to this is to weigh the scales: to hire based on some attribute other than merit alone, which many find to be unfair.
And these "good" professions are just one example - you would expect to see this phenomenon in every area of human endeavor where ability comes into play.
There are issues associated with what you mention that bother me about the complete anti-HBD stance in the general public. Let's say that groups do not have the same attributes or inclinations on average for higher education and highly cognitively demanding work. Yet most people want "equity". No one wants to hear anything different than "everyone is the same" or a complete non-debate. And let's say that equal opportunities are given. The results are inevitably going to end up skewed due to hereditary (and cultural) reasons. And, given that "everyone is the same" is the accepted truth, someone must take the blame for how a group ended up performing badly. Racism must be the culprit. Professors who were simply doing their job well will be accused. Some will speak up and get cancelled. Others will tip the scales so that their results don't appear "racist". Dumping more qualified students out and including less qualified ones. So there will be false accusations, and dishonesty will reign for others. The grifters who make their living off the existence of systemic racism get to justify their positions. Not to mention the fact that some people who don't have the abilities for doing a demanding job well will get those jobs. Might be dangerous in some cases. And it might be hard to get rid of them, due to the fear of accusations. I wouldn't want my neurosurgeon being an ass-covering, entitled, 100 IQ person.
Right, what you're describing here are major elements of the pro-HBD position. Most people on this forum, including myself, agree with you about this.
Be sure to consider as well the nature of the opposing viewpoint. Many people strongly value what they consider as fairness. The idea that some people are disadvantaged in life, through no fault of their own but only through an accident of their birth, strikes them as being unfair. I agree that it is unfair, though it's unfair on a sort of cosmic level, not in a way that should affect who becomes a neurosurgeon for instance.
But there is a worthwhile question to consider in it, one which I think Freddie DeBoer touches on at times: if there is a group of people who are natively less intelligent, does that mean they are destined to have worse lives? Is it right that they should have worse lives? It is important to bear in mind that intelligence is not equal to humanity. I can understand why, when you see one group of people having lives which appear to be worse in many areas, one would feel called upon to try and help that situation and correct it. But as you can see in the real world, when this desire is also motivated by false premises, it can lead to injustice too.
I think all this stuff about fairness is beating around the bush- the African American community is a little over 10% of the population with low and decreasing HBD potential and a broken culture which prevents them from making the best of it. Their TFR is actually above the American average.
You cannot have a 10%ish percentage of the population be a community that’s just destined to mostly live shitty lives without getting a whole lot more mask off authoritarian than the USA is likely to be anytime soon. It’s very important to maintain the illusion that Jayquan and Lashondra have access to meaningful and aboveboard upwards mobility to prevent the entire community from making things a whole lot worse for the country’s social structure. If that entails a playing field that is not perfectly level, then so be it.
Seems to me that the problem here is looking at them as 'the blacks' (okay you actually said 'the African American community') instead of as individuals. There is a high degree of European admixture in black Americans. The average American black has roughly 20% white genetics. Plenty of 'blacks' are half or even majority-white. One even became President! Treat individuals as individuals and this problem becomes a lot more tractable. Insist on lumping people into groups and those groups must shortly be at each others' throats. (EDIT: And, you know, it's not like they're actually 'a community' by any stretch.)
Besides which, the strategy which I perceive you to be espousing here might work today, and it might work tomorrow, but at some point it becomes untenable sheerly due to numbers. Perhaps a technological singularity will save us. I don't like betting on that.
In the meantime, every major institution is sliding because standards are being lowered to desperately attempt 'equitable' outcomes. The elements of our society which produced this wealth in the first place are precisely those under attack.
Most of them seem to see themselves as a group, though.
A whole lot of non-black entities have a major interest in making this so. I'd suggest that they're a substantial part of the problem.
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