New study finds that black Americans are 18% white, but the number varies by city

 

A small percent of whites have an allele that is associated with hemochromatosis--a hereditary disorder in which iron salts are deposited in the tissues, leading to liver damage, diabetes mellitus, and bronze discoloration of the skin.  This polymorphism is completely absent in West African blacks.  This is the kind of difference race deniers tell us doesn't happen. 

In this new study, researchers estimated the European ancestry of African Americans using the frequency of this hemochromatosis allele. 

They found that, indeed, the frequency of the allele is 0.00000 in people from the Gambia, Nigeria, Senegal, and Sierra Leone. The frequency in white Americans was 0.060-0.067. For all black Americans it was 0.012.

The average white ancestry for black Americans was 0.180 for the whole sample, but it differed by city:

Proportion white ancestry

Rochester, NY   0.132

Birmingham, AL   0.146

Upper Savannah Region, SC   0.157

Portland, OR   0.161

San Diego, CA   0.175

Hartford, CT  0.178

District of Columbia   0.196

Oakland, CA   0.238

Irvine, CA   0.243

The proportion white of blacks living in Irvine is 1.8 times higher than for those living in Rochester, NY, so the variation is noteworthy. I don't see a clear regional pattern here. 

The authors report that their findings are consistent with studies using other methods. They also found both paternal and maternal contributions of white American ancestry in black Americans.

High-status blacks more violent than low-status whites?

The high rate of violence by blacks is commonly explained with the fact that African Americans are poorer than whites. Ordinary folks don't think about it any more deeply than that. They never ask, for example, why blacks are poor. They never ask, is there some common denominator that makes them poor and violent.  Or they never ask, why a lack of resources would make a person assault somebody. A quick glance at the statistics reveals that people rarely kill each other for money. 

This superficial level of thinking is found even among professional sociologists and criminologists. I once told a sociologist that, according to Marvin Wolfgang's famous study of Philadelphia crime, middle-income blacks were more violent than low-income whites. The guy was completely discombobulated. He asked me, how do we explain it and said sarcastically, "Is it the amount of melanin in the skin?" I told him that I didn't really know (I didn't at the time).    

The ironic fact is that everyone thinks poverty explains black violence, but there are few studies that actually assess the hypothesis.  In 2010, if there is a big hole in the research literature, it is not an accident.

We can take a step to plug that hole by looking at Add Health data. Based on Wolfgang's study, I'm confident enough to predict that the violence of high-status blacks is at least as high as that of low-status whites.  There is no perfect measure of social class, but I will use mother's education. "Low-status" is having a mother who, at most, finished high school or got her GED. "High status" is some college all the way up to grad school. Most of the black sample has mothers with at least a 4-year degree. (By the way, this analysis showed me that ADD Health selected for high-end blacks, so the overall black-white difference in violence in the real world is surely larger than that indicated by Add Health data). Here are the percentages of teenagers who admit to committing the act at least once in the past year:

The percentages are similar.  Where we see a significant difference, high-status blacks are more violent: they are more likely to have pulled a gun or a knife on someone. That is, they are more likely to do this than lower-class whites--you know, "white trash" teenagers.

These findings parallel those seen in IQ studies: poor whites score as well or better than privileged blacks.

I thought social class was everything; so vital, an entire discipline--sociology--was built around it. We've been hoodwinked by ideologues masquerading as scientists.

Sensitivity to testosterone and risk of lifecourse-persistent criminality

Studies show that blacks don't have markedly higher levels of testosterone than whites, but recent research suggests that they might be more sensitive to it.

A difference has been found in androgen receptors which vary in the their number of glutamines (an amino acid). The length of the glutamine chain is important in determining a person's sensitivity to testosterone. The shorter the chain, the more sensitive. 

Black men have shorter glutamine chains than white men, and this difference might help explain the higher rate of prostate cancer among blacks.

Having short chains is also linked to ADHD, conduct disorder, and oppositional defiant disorder--disorders which are more prevalent among blacks (in symptoms, but not diagnosis).

These disorders strongly predict a lifecourse-persistent pattern of criminality, a pattern also seen more frequently in blacks compared to whites.