Serum testosterone levels in healthy young black and white men.
http://www.ncbi.nlm..../pubmed/3455741
"Mean testosterone levels in blacks were 19% higher than in whites, and free testosterone levels were 21% higher. Both these differences were statistically significant. Adjustment by analysis of covariance for time of sampling, age, weight, alcohol use, cigarette smoking, and use of prescription drugs somewhat reduced the differences. After these adjustments were made, blacks had a 15% higher testosterone level and a 13% higher free testosterone level. A 15% difference in circulating testosterone levels could readily explain a twofold difference in prostate cancer risk."
In fact people from warmer climates have higher testosterone. Northern Europeans will have less than a Southern European et. al.
Now, I'm not saying anything racist here, just pointing out facts. This is a likely reason for things like youth crime and having children out of wedlock. These two things perpetuate poverty.
Well well, a politically incorrect finding! If one looks into it, other politically incorrect biological differences can be found between various ethnicities. That said, connections between T and crime or T and childbirth are tenuous; there's more to it than hormones. Still, it's such a comforting fantasy to believe that everyone is identical under the skin, and all differences in outcomes are due to "discrimination". Doesn't seem to be entirely the case, though.
Well, at least you're not taking this finding to the next conclusion....
However, a causal relationship between race and serum testosterone is unlikely to exist, because the alternative variables that I offered provide a satisfactory explanation for the 24 year old finding that he cited as validation of his criminal behavior theory. More importantly, though, the results weren't replicated in a better designed study, which nonetheless, did suggest that serum estrogen levels may vary with race. And you're right, even if testosterone differences were race determined, they would likely not be statistically significant enough to rationalize racial differences in criminal behavior. There might be aberrant findings like this on occasion, but ultimately, they're meaningless, and don't lend credence to the baseless notion that innate differences between race, gender, and ethnicity determine inequality. That was the thesis that was being promoted---which he broadened to gender in another thread, and that is what I objected to the most. Finally, before I begin a pugnacious course, I was wondering if you could expound upon the last two sentences of the previous entry.
Black and white males have comparable serum testosterone levels after the age of 40. That's basically what your study alluded to I believe. However, when you look at youth, there's a big discrepancy, and that's what i postulate as being the reason for the cycle of poverty. Basically this leads to juvenile crime which leads to a criminal record and inability to rise above menial jobs, and this also leads to having babies out of wedlock. Those are two things that perpetuate poverty which are a big problem with black youth (http://en.wikipedia....ison_population). I've even posted scientific claims to ascribe my positions, all you've posted was "blacks were enslaved" and that's the reason for the poverty. Where blacks enslaved in Europe or Canada or most African countries? Why do they still have the same problems with crime and poverty in these places then? It would be a significant thing to recognize this to get at the root causes of crime and poverty so we can as a society treat it. Black youth have high testosterone levels, this leads to having babies out of wedlock and aggressive behavior/crime. This is the reason i believe for the cycle of poverty. It's no secret most aggressive crime is committed by young people, regardless of race, and the testosterone reason was never disputed.
http://www.ncbi.nlm....pubmed/11586501
" Serum levels of total testosterone were 29.4% and 23.9% lower at 8:00 PM than at 8:00 AM in African American and Caucasian men, respectively. Significantly higher serum levels of total testosterone (P<.01) and SHBG (P <.02) were found in the African American than in the Caucasian men in both the morning and evening"
Now, I'm fully aware there's tangible racial disparities when it comes to blacks going to prison. This is explained by blacks not being able to afford good lawyers and legal aid defenders plea bargaining them into jail whereas whites can afford lawyers to fight charges, etc. But when blacks make up 12% of the overall American population yet 60% of the prison population that should be alarming, and you should start asking question like "why" instead of just blindly and ignorantly calming it's some sort of racist agenda.
You're trying without much success to revive a long moribund debate about the biological differences between the races, and their suspected role in shaping behavioral outcomes. But this question has long since been abandoned, but not because a progression of norms and laws rendered the subject taboo. Rather, it was because academics have failed to find a sufficient basis for proof. So instead, a scholarly consensus has formed around the notion that although systematic genetic differences may exist between racial groups, they are of little behavioral or cognitive importance, and that beneath distinguishing superficial qualities, humanity is largely homogenous. Yet antiquated beliefs about racial differences persist, and are sustained by resentment over individual plight created by sectarian tension, a failure of governance, social alienation, economic deprivation, and the hunger for a comprehensible answer to problems of confounding origins.
The heightened incidence of violent crime among colored individuals is a depressing state of affairs, but there is a serious lack of supporting evidence for theories that suggest a causal relationship with ostensible racially determined differences in biology. In the body of literature that I reviewed, the presence of serum testosterone differences is inconsistent, and has not been found to be statistically significant or causative. Instead of being racially determined, any differences found between subject groups are again, the result of gonadal disorders, age, dietary habits, and environmental conditions---which was actually confirmed by the authors of your cited study. Moreover, for methodological standards of proof to be satisfied, positive results must be recorded repeatedly, and all alternative explanations must be neutralized. Nothing of the sort has happened with your testosterone thesis, or with any of the research that you've offered. And with your premature enthusiasm about the explanatory promise of this thesis, you've reached a conclusion that any reasonable analysis would decide to be unsound. Indeed, it's likely that your prejudice and desperation for answers has clouded your judgment, and blinded you to limitations that most everyone finds palpable.
The variance in violent crime between racial groups has been a subject of considerable inquiry, and like all complicated problems, has several roots. The causal relationship between crime and poverty is not a satisfying one, because most studies have concluded that crime pays an average dividend far below the median wage. Indeed, in an astonishing study of the economics of gang participants, the study's author found that a leader of an organization of several thousand members was only able to accumulate approximately a half a million dollars in untaxed income annually, while the average member in his employ worked for the meager wage of $3.25 per hour.
In place of the oft cited poverty explanation, I find environmental conditions to be more formative and causative. But poverty still remains important, because it is the conditions of poverty, though not its financial source, that breeds criminal behavior. In urban cities, where poverty is especially concentrated and visible, the inhabitants of these communities are often the parts of broken families, deprived of positive role models, bereft of the hope of liberation, and consequentially, much more inclined to disregard the statutes and norms of society. They find themselves surrounded by a self-perpetuating ghetto, and thus, only have the aspiration to live as an inhabitant of this ghetto, while often feeling compelled to emulate the sometimes criminal behavior of fellow inhabitants---whom act as their sources for normative guidance.
Academics have speculated that this environmentally influenced cycle is likely to continue stubbornly unless radical changes are made, and in response, some governments have launched pilot experiments to test the validity of this thesis. The city of Atlanta, for example, has allocated funds for hybrid housing developments that offer both rent subsidized housing, and space to be occupied by tenants not receiving public assistance. In each development, those relying on public assistance represent no more than 40% of all occupants, and as a condition for the assistance rendered, program participants are required to successfully seek and maintain an occupation. With the combination of incentivizing behavior, and surrounding the publicly subsidized tenants with a competing source of normative behavior, the level of crime relative to the standard and criminally thwarted subsidized housing developments has dropped by an average of 90%, which is a result that has been sustained with Atlanta's expansion of the program. Indeed, as a result of this program, it appears evident that its participants have decidedly abandoned their former culture of apathy and amoralism, and embraced the cultural norms of work and responsibility, which have served as critical sources of American exceptionalism since the founding of our nation-state.
The environmental influence thesis was also famously endorsed by the late Senator Daniel Moynihan, who boldly challenged partisan orthodoxies about racial poverty and its sources. He concluded that the breakdown of family structure was most likely to contribute to the incidence of criminal behavior, and associated the heightened incidence of single parent households found in the demographic profiles of African American households to be linked to relatively higher rates of illiteracy, poverty, and incarceration. As the number of African American children born out of wedlock has grown to 2/3 of the total population, efforts to reduce racial gaps in income have proved to be disappointing, and are strongly believed by academics to act as significant confounding obstacles. Former ghetto resident turned Harvard professor Roland Fryer concurs with the conclusions of Moynihan, and the direction of this body of scholarship. And in an effort to put a final nail in the coffin of scholarship that suggests a racial predisposition to lower intelligence quotients, Fryer and a colleague conducted intelligence assessments of children between the ages of eight to ten months, and much to their delight, they found no statistically significant difference between the subject groups. But in subsequent age groups, a divergence in the scores of the groups began to take shape, which led Fryer et.al. to the conclusion that environmental conditions are likely to have a causative effect on future subject behavior. Pinpointing and quantifying the weight of independent variables continues to be the occupation of ongoing scholarship, but demographic data on family structure, and the implications of the Atlanta program may act as useful guides. But for African Americans, Fryer found an additional rationale when analyzing the determinants of the education successes of African Americans. Much to his surprise, he found that higher achievement was correlated with a smaller number of friends, but with white American students, there was an inverse correlation with students that have a small number of friends. These results have convinced Fryer that a cultural norm of stigmatizing achievement is to blame for relatively poorer education outcomes, and constitutes further evidence of the formative role of environmental conditions.
Edited by Rol82, 12 November 2010 - 02:18 PM.
