These three groups may help debunk the myth of success as a simple product of intrinsic intellect, for they represent three different races and histories.
I must have missed something. Couldn't he just as easily have said "These three groups may help confirm the fact that success is a product of intrinsic intellect, for they represent three different races and histories, with different average levels of intellect, which strongly correlate with their outcomes."
Yeah, I took this article as a great case study on how different people can look at the exact same data and draw totally opposite conclusions. Almost exactly the same example is used in The Bell Curve to argue that intelligence is innate, because Ashkenazi Jews and Asian-Americans tend to have higher IQs than whites, while West Indians tend to have higher IQs than Africans.
And I can't believe I missed this earlier, but: he cites the IQ difference between the Ashkenazim and the Sephardim (two groups with a common culture and very different genetic characteristics) as proof that culture, not genetics, determines success.
I must have missed something. Couldn't he just as easily have said "These three groups may help confirm the fact that success is a product of intrinsic intellect, for they represent three different races and histories, with different average levels of intellect, which strongly correlate with their outcomes."