Steve Sailer

This is Lewontin's Fallacy. Briefly, there is no contradiction between the existence of clusters and the notion that there is more variation within clusters than between clusters. For example, the variation in height within the categories "male" and "female" is greater than the variation between them (i.e., the difference in mean heights), but this does not negate the validity of the clusters "male" and "female". Indeed, only a small number of traits are needed to determine biological sex to high accuracy—e.g., height, skeletal density, cranial volume, waist-to-hip ratio, etc.—even though in every individual case the variation within traits exceeds the variation between traits [1].

Likewise, simply because the variation within sub-Saharan Africans is greater than the variation between them and other groups doesn't mean the cluster doesn't exist [2]. Indeed, it's easy to tell from a genetic analysis what percentage of a person's ancestry comes from each cluster, including sub-Saharan Africa [3].

The study in the OP indicates that fingerprints are like DNA in this regard. That doesn't mean the study is right, simply that it shouldn't be rejected based on Lewontin's Fallacy.

[1]: This is why anthropologists can reliably determine sex based even on fragmentary skeletons (such as "Lucy").

[2]: The edges of the clusters are often fuzzy, but again this doesn't negate their existence. The clusters "red" and "green" are fuzzy, too, but that doesn't make the categories…

Steven Pinker agrees with you:

http://isteve.blogspot.com/2012/10/pinker-takes-crack-at-explaining-red-v.html

But while these theories help explain why the seemingly diverse convictions within the right-wing and left-wing mind-sets hang together, they don’t explain why they are tied to geography. The historian David Hackett Fischer traces the divide back to the British settlers of colonial America. The North was largely settled by English farmers, the inland South by Scots-Irish herders. Anthropologists have long noted that societies that herd livestock in rugged terrain tend to develop a “culture of honor.” Since their wealth has feet and can be stolen in an eye blink, they are forced to deter rustlers by cultivating a hair-trigger for violent retaliation against any trespass or insult that probes their resolve. Farmers can afford to be less belligerent because it is harder to steal their land out from under them, particularly in territories within the reach of law enforcement. As the settlers moved westward, they took their respective cultures with them. The psychologist Richard Nisbett has shown that Southerners today continue to manifest a culture of honor which legitimizes violent retaliation. ... Admittedly, it’s hard to believe that today’s Southerners and Westerners carry a cultural memory of sheepherding ancestors. But it may not be the herding profession itself that nurtures a culture of honor so much as living in anarchy.

The genetic basis is there. First, I suspect the Flynn effect is simply natural selection in modern society; after all, if environment changes in the Galapagos can change the shape of birds beaks in a few generations, industrialization should make people better at desk jobs. And according to Gregory Clark, this has happened to Anglo-Saxons between the 1300s and the 1800s. [1] The same appears to have happened to Ashkenazi Jews and East Asians.[2] Keep in mind they, too, were once very disadvantaged in American society, but there's no keeping them down; both groups are richer than whites now, and had to contend with heavy discrimination on their way to riches. In fact, because of the belief all races should be equally represented, Asian students are heavily penalized in college admissions to make room for African Americans and Hispanics. [3] Finally, I wouldn't go so far as saying emigration eliminates gaps; emigrants aren't necessarily representative of a group, as they're the ones who are ambitious or desperate enough to want to leave. Mexican immigrants in the United States do not form an accurate cross-section of Mexican culture. Nigerian immigrants in United States have the highest rate of PhDs and Master degrees per capita [4], but that has a lot to do with immigration policies. It's a lot easier to get into the States with a Masters or a PhD, so there's selection at…

A few other things: I should start by pointing out that your premise is flawed. I don't hate any ethnic group. I appreciate human diversity. Differences between human groups are real, and they appear to be somewhat genetic.

I was actually surprised to see how few race-y books I'd added to the wishlist. There's a sort of illicit thrill to buying something that you can't read in public.

By the way, if you're interested in the lynching issue you might give Thomas Sowell a read. He claims that there were more whites than blacks lynched prior to the Civil War. http://www.amazon.com/Black-Rednecks-Liberals-Thomas-Sowell/dp/1594030863

Again, I really appreciate that you can keep an open mind about this. When I first got interested in this issue, I didn't know the ethnic background of the guy who was arguing against me -- if I encountered these views from someone who considered his ethnic group smarter than mine, I would not have been nearly so open.

If you're open to considering the idea further, I would recommend adding http://isteve.blogspot.com and http://gnxp.com to your reading list for a little while. You'll find, as I did, that they present a view of the world that's just more consistent than the one most Americans are raised with.

Here's an explanation for why foot speed and intelligence are inversely correlated:

"Upper body strength is relatively equally distributed between the races, but footspeed most definitely is not. So, tailbacks, wide receivers, and defensive players have a need for speed, so they are disproportionately black. I haven't checked recently, but in most recent years since Jason Sehorn's retirement, none of the 64 NFL starting cornerbacks at the start of the season were white, and none of the 32 starting tailbacks were white. (For some reason, this never gets as much publicity as the perceived lack of black quarterbacks.)"

"As we all know, there is about a 15 point difference IQ gap between whites and blacks, so positions that are black dominated tend to have lower average IQs than positions that are more integrated (or that are white monopolized, such as placekicker and punter)."

( read the whole thing http://isteve.blogspot.com/2008/07/graphical-data-analyst-ben-fry-takes.html )

This seems like a much more plausible explanation of the facts than the "closer to the ball" theory. Are we really that scared of "things you can't say" not to point out something that is obvious to anybody who watches football?

Kenya was in Africa last I checked.

American blacks tend to be (mainly; averaging 83%) Bantu, whereas Barack Obama is (half) Nilote.

http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aisteve.blogspot.com+nilotic

http://isteve.blogspot.com/2008/01/east-africas-tall-vs-average-war.html

The tall black Nilotics generally see themselves as more intelligent than the shorter brown Bantus. Obama's Luo relatives in Kenya told him: "The Luo are intelligent but lazy." The Bantus tend to fear that they will be outsmarted by the Nilotics if they give them a fair shake, so they often treat the tall people like the Jews tend to be treated in Eastern Europe.

The dividing lines between the Nilotics and Bantus are not sharp. There's been lots of interbreeding. (This is Africa, after all.) But, they still exist. The situation is rather like that in Latin American, where after five centuries of interbreeding, the economic elites are still pretty white-looking, and the indigenous masses occasionally organize under demagogues like Hugo Chavez to fight back.