IQ is 60-80% heritable
But this is modulated by SES.
The heritability of IQ reduces with socioeconomic status. Primary source. So lets go with 60%.
this is fairly strong evidence to start with that race itself is the cause
How? If it is 60% heritable, and if the mean is 100, is a loss of 15% due to environmental factors really that unlikely?
Attempts to test that have controlled
Attempts to control for things do generally reduce the gap, but yes, you are right that they do not completely eliminate it. This is the reason why we can't dismiss the idea that behavioral differences of genetic origin exist, not a reason why we should accept the idea. It isn't possible to control for all factors. It could easily be something weird and unexpected (say, vitamin D deficiency, or maternal health) that creates the difference.
Consistently it has been found that not only is this gap a question of genetics
No: Consistently, attempts to control for things have not accounted for the entirety of the gap. There is a difference.
fact is patently obvious to anyone who's even glanced at the statistics or has lived/worked on a college campus.
I've done both. My anecdotal experience disagrees. My glances at statistics haven't settled anything.
PhD
African immigrants to the US (not African Americans, recent voluntary immigrants) are currently one of the most impressive model minorities in the US, outperforming both Asian and European immigrants in educational achievement. (I know that the "race realists" will say that this is because only smart people can immigrate. That explanation is not be sufficient to extinguish the doubt the evidence raises, especially since we're comparing immigrants to immigrants)
Keep in mind, I'm only maintaining that there is cause for uncertainty. The evidence I provide is not meant to refute your claim - only to reduce what I perceive as your overconfidence and to dispute your claim that any layman could see that you are right, but for their biases. Mine is the weaker claim.
We can keep putting data back and forth, but the very fact that a reasonable argument can be made for either case is my evidence for the claim that uncertainty is warranted.
To quote moldbug on this issue:
The leopard’s name is human cognitive biodiversity. While the evidence for human cognitive biodiversity is indeed debatable, what’s not debatable is that it is debatable. Since it’s also the case that everyone who is not a white nationalist has spent the last 50 years informing us that it is not debatable, we have our leopard one way or another.
May or may not be relevant.
People want to tell everything instead of telling the best 15 words. They want to learn everything instead of the best 15 words. In this thread, instead post the best 15-words from a book you've read recently (or anything else). It has to stand on its own. It's not a summary, the whole value needs to be contained in those words.
I'll start in the comments below.
(Voted by the Schelling study group as the best exercise of the meeting.)