Question: What do we do with largely true stereotypes?
Stereotype: Black people love basketball but have little interest in hockey.
Stereotype: Jews tend to be in the white collar professions and management, not the blue collar professions where people work with their hands.
Stereotype: Women have an inferior sense of direction to men.
Stereotype: Men have an inferior empathic understanding of what other people are feeling.
Stereotype: Native Americans have a particular ethnic/genetic vulnerability to addiction.
True, some stereotypes are due to factors which are not inherent. From social or educational diifferences, for example. And yet, they remain true generally,
Let’s imagine an intelligence test that wasn’t weighted in any way to favor men or women or any particular race or ethnic group and it showed that some gender or ethnicity was, in fact, as a group more intelligent than the rest. I personally wouldn’t expect it to be an overwhelming difference. Perhaps 2% at most but more likely a fraction of a percent. That still wouldn’t mean that the smartest person on the planet couldn’t come from the other gender or from a member of one of the other ethnicities. In that sense, the result would be meaningless for drawing general conclusions. But should we therefor bury the truth?
Tough question. Are some truths so inconvenient or hurtful that only a blessed or cursed few should know them?
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