Korean adoptees in the NY Times

The NY Times article about transracial adoptees from Korea raises several interesting questions.

(1) Do the authors have any ideological motivations?

(2) Liberals promote the idea that there’s no difference between races except for superficial external appearance, but if that’s the case, why do they promote the idea that white parents should send their Korean adopted daughters to Korean culture camps to learn about their Korean heritage?

(3) Transracial adoption makes liberals very unhappy. Maybe it’s because they know, deep down, that it allows researchers to discover the truth about human biodiversity? (For example, I bet the Korean adoptees are much better at math than the average white girl.)

(4) Anti-abortion people (like those at the National Review Corner) promote adoption as the magical answer to abortion. But the reality is that very few women in the United States actually give up their babies for adoption—women seem to consider giving away their babies to strangers to be as evil as abortion—which is why Americans have been adopting non-white babies from overseas. If anti-abortion people get their wish and abortion is made illegal, only a minority of the surplus babies will be given up for adoption.

Comments

[Levi]

This study should be a goldmine for HBD research.
I mean the central tenet of HBD is that IQ at the age of 40 is primarily determined by genes.

This study can look at the IQ at the age of 40 of the adopted korean kids and compare it to the IQ at the age of 40 of their non adopted siblings.

From an HBD perspective, what I expect to see is that (a) the adopted Koreans have an average IQ of around 110 (b) their non adopted siblings have IQ around 100 (c) most importantly, adopting a korean newborn in to the family of a low IQ, low education white family results in the same IQ as adopting a Korean in to the family of a high IQ, high education white family

If all of the above are proved by the study it is a real boon to HBD

[David Alexander]

But the reality is that very few women in the United States actually give up their babies for adoption

I suspect it's because an abortion is cheaper than going through the entire expense of being pregnant and the mental anguish of giving up the child.

[H.D.S.]

"Do the authors have any ideological motivations?"

Do you? Does Steve Sailer?

Of course. Everyone does. Pointless question.

[eh]

"Do the authors have any ideological motivations?"

Duh. That's a rhetorical question, right?

[FrankFudge]

"why do they promote the idea that white parents should send their Korean adopted daughters to Korean culture camps"

Good point. It's like the celebrate diversity thing. If we're all really the same, there aren't really differences to celebrate. It's not like one group is better at anything than any other...

As far as the ideological motivations, newspapers that pretend to be objective should eschew them.

[Peter A]

"Transracial adoption makes liberals very unhappy"

I don't think that's true - seems to me a lot of liberals are fine with adopting Chinese and Korean babies. And gay men - who are usually liberal - tend to go with transracial adoption as they usually have more limited options. It's black nationalists and the far left fringe that seems most opposed to transracial adoption.

[sabril]

"If all of the above are proved by the study it is a real boon to HBD "

I kinda doubt it. The problem is that (1) there is already overwhelming circumstantial evidence which has failed to convince the faithful; and (2) any disparities can be easily explained away by stereotype threat.

Liberals will simply insinuate that the adoptive parents of these children had higher expectations because they believe that Asians are smarter.

What we really need is to (1) find a set of alleles which together account for 90+ percent of differences in adult IQ; and (2) show that the incidence of those alleles varies among racial groups.

But even with direct evidence, there will be enough ambiguity for liberals to seize upon.

[Turambar]

"women seem to consider giving away their babies to strangers to be as evil as abortion"

thats not even cogent. Whats the 'evil' in adoption supposed to be?

If there is more domestic demand than there is supply, why do you think increasing domestic supply would be a problem?

[bigboy]

You love these strawmen. Liberals are touchy about culture, and certainly there's a large cultural component of a korean baby raised by white parents vs korean immigrants ones - the former would show lower SAT scores than latter.

Adopting Chinese/Korean babies is quite a yuppie thing to do these days, and the culture camp is some kind of liberal guilt that the white parents are oppressing their babies by denying them their "natural" culture. There are domestic babies to adopt, but again most of them are black.

[Wade Nichols]

Personal anecdote - One of my friends had two adopted Korean siblings, a boy and a girl. (He also has a "biological" sister.) When his adopted brother reached his 20's, that's when he entered his "Korean militant" phase. His brother started shunning his adoptive parents, he started doing "Korean things", and eventually he dropped all contact with his adoptive family completely (with the exception of his Korean sibling), to the point of "disowning" them. So much for "Christian charity", thanks a lot, son!

I personally don't understand why anyone who can't have children feels the need to go out and adopt someone from a different race or ethnic group. I've heard other anecdotes of white people who've adopted Russian children that have all sorts of behavior problems. You're just setting yourself up for a life of trouble if you ask me. The types of women who put their children up for adoption are not usually the types who understand quadratic equations and read Shakespeare.

"It's black nationalists and the far left fringe that seems most opposed to transracial adoption."

I agree with this statement completely. I remember a couple years ago, here in NYC, I saw one of those free gay newspapers in Chelsea, and on the cover it had two gay twinkies with their adopted black child.

I thought, if you ever want to start a major riot in NYC, just walk around with that newspaper cover on 125th Street in Harlem!

[kurt9]

HS,

You're assuming that the average run of the mill liberal-left person has something resembling a logically coherent thought process. You are forgetting that cognitive dissidence is an inherent trait of the liberal-left mind.

Stop making sense.

[The Engineer]

You have no evidence for #4.

The evidence against #4 is pervasive: the supply of adoptable American children is decimated by 4M per year by abortion, and in the past, before legalized abortion, adoption of American children by Americans was quite common.

Adoption is the answer.

[Love you half sigma.]

(2) Liberals promote the idea that there’s no difference between races except for superficial external appearance, but if that’s the case, why do they promote the idea that white parents should send their Korean adopted daughters to Korean culture camps to learn about their Korean heritage?

Simple, they want to promote diversity. Liberals are not really against the idea that people are different, just the idea that people will fail due to those differences is what they hate.

[Chi]

There was a good summary of the various transracial adoption studies at gnxp a few years ago.

"Contrary to "culture" theory, the ethnic academic gaps are almost identical for transracially adopted children, and to the extent they are different they go in the opposite direction predicted by culture theory. The gap between whites and Asians fluctuated from 19 to .09 in the NAEP data while the gap in the adoption data is from 1/3 to 3 times larger. This is consistent with the Sue and Okazaki paper above which showed that contrary to popular anecdotes, the values that lead to higher academic grades are actually found more often in white homes. In other words Asian-Americans perform highly despite their Asian home cultural environment not because of it. And though the sample is meager, I find it interesting that the gap between the black and white adopted children was virtually identical (within just 4-6 points) to the gap between whites and blacks in the general population, just like in the Scarr adoption study.

[1] Clark, E. A., & Hanisee, J. (1982). Intellectual and adaptive
performance of Asian children in adoptive American settings.
Developmental Psychology, 18, 595–599.

Frydman, M., & Lynn, R. (1989). The intelligence of Korean children
adopted in Belgium. Personality and Individual Differences, 12, 1323–1325.

Winick, M., Meyer, K. K., & Harris, R. C. (1975). Malnutrition and
environmental enrichment by early adoption. Science, 190, 1173–1175."

http://www.gnxp.com/MT2/archives/004064.html

[amir]

from the article: "Growing up in Georgia, Kansas and Hawaii, in a military family, she would date only white teenagers, even when Asian boys were around."
You see, even though she grew up with white people she had Asian girl dating habits.

[Pamela N Red]

I have heard mention that Asian children adopted by Caucasian families lose out on knowing their heritage. Perhaps that's the purpose of the camps.

This won't sound politically correct but some states actually encourage unwed mothers because of welfare and other programs that pay them to have children. So instead of it being a disgrace to the family it's now an asset.

[Ernest Scribbler]

I really don't understand why you are so unsympathetic to the way "liberals" think. We all would like to improve the social and economic standing of African-Americans-- go knows our nation has a historic responsibility towards them. Pointing out HBD would destroy all that by essentially giving an excuse for their poor academic performance. This would be doubly disastrous especially since part of what you consider to be HBD is not rooted in genes but in historical legacies. I guess it's easy for you to be certain about these issues, but anyone with some social responsibility would be more circumspect. Btw, I say our nation has a historical responsibility with respect to African-Americans even though I'm Jewish, and my family was not American when slavery went down. So don't try to claim that you yourself had nothing to do with it and therefore needn't be concerned about their plight.

[sabril]

"I personally don't understand why anyone who can't have children feels the need to go out and adopt someone from a different race or ethnic group."

I agree. Anyway, raising a child is difficult enough even with the knowledge that you are propogating your genes.

Seems to me that if you are infertile, you get to pull a Roissy without any guilt.

[M Stein]

"What we really need is to (1) find a set of alleles which together account for 90+ percent of differences in adult IQ; and (2) show that the incidence of those alleles varies among racial groups."

Interesting post from earlier in the year:

"Below is a graph showing the prevelance of "beneficial" allele for each SNP for all population groups sampled in the latest Hapmap. I put the word beneficial in quotes because, as noted, candidate gene association studiees are notorioiusly unreliable. Why, then, am I bothering to post this at all? These SNPs are candidate genes in the first place because they are known to affect the brain in one way or other. Thus, if there is a pattern whereby the Japanese are consistently closer to the Chinese than either group is to the Yoruba, it shows that in the past 50,000 or so years of human evolution, alleles affecting the brain were not, as some people like to believe, magically floating free from the forces of genetic drift and natural and sexual selection.
....

As you can see, there's some clustering along traditional racial lines, most visible when comparing frequency rates among the three East Asian populations with the four black African populations. Regardless of whether these SNPs are ultimately found to be associated with intelligence (and even if they are, they are almost certainly going to be of very small effect), the fact that they are known to be expressed in the brain and that prevelance rates for all of them - with the possible exception of rs363039 - cluster to one degree or another along traditional racial lines illustrates that the forces of genetic drift and selection did not stop at the neck."

http://congenialtimes.blogspot.com/2009/02/evolution-didnt-stop-at-neck.html

[James]

There is an alternative explanation for the difficulties that Korean adoptee in the article had.

[She is not conventionally attractive. (Original comment text removed.)]

[HS: There are plenty of "beta" guys who would date her.]

[kurt9]

Seems to me that if you are infertile, you get to pull a Roissy without any guilt.

I assume your meaning is that, being infertile, you don't have to worry about knocking up women if you don't use a condom. Aren't you forgetting about STD's?

[Shawn]

"(For example, I bet the Korean adoptees are much better at math than the average white girl.)"

Koreans in general, yes. Adoptees, probably not.

I believe adoptees generally have lower IQs than their co-ethnics because they acquire low-IQ genes from their parents. People who give their children up for adoption generally have low future time orientation and are sometimes not even able to figure out how to use birth control. Also they often are part of the economic underclass. All this suggests that they generally have lower than average IQs (relative to their demographic). I also suspect that there is less breast feeding amongst adoptees, especially the ones who are given up at an early age; a consequence of not getting enough breast milk is a diminished IQ.

[HS: I've previously debunked the the theory that breast milk causes higher IQ. The cause and effect goes entirely the other way: women with higher IQs are more likely to breast feed because of the pro-breast-milk propaganda, and high IQ people are more likely to conform to what society thinks are best practices.]

[Shawn]

""Do the authors have any ideological motivations?"

Do you? Does Steve Sailer?

Of course. Everyone does. Pointless question."

Steve Sailer is biased on the abortion issue because he is adopted. Of course he has a very high IQ, something which is not as common amongst adoptees.

I am personally against elective abortion after he first trimester. There is no reason why a woman should not be able to make a decision in the first 3 months.

[I]

Few poor women give up their babies for adoption because having a baby opens doors to AFDC, WIC, public housing, etc. benefits.
Of course, how many SWPL-type liberals would want to adopt a fetal alcohol Native American or a -1.5 std dev black baby, if keeping a baby was not an option for poor mothers.

[sabril]

"I assume your meaning is that, being infertile, you don't have to worry about knocking up women if you don't use a condom. Aren't you forgetting about STD's?"

No, that's not what I mean. What I mean is this:

If I were out to maximize my sexual pleasure and general fun in life, I would probably aim to have a series of medium-term relationships, i.e. be with a girlfriend for 6 months to 2 years.

That's the most fun and erotic time in a relationship in terms of sex and also just a general feeling of connectedness.

A crass analogy, but relationships are a bit like cars. Lots of fun for the first year or two but then annoying problems start to develop. Life is nicer for people who lease a new car every couple years.

The problem is that if you want and plan to have children (and be a decent father to those children), you have to deviate from this approach. You have to stay with somebody for a good 15 or 20 years.

In my opinion, it's a bit selfish for educated people to not have children. For one thing, they are genetically screwing their parents who went through a lot of trouble to pass on their genes. Also, you are free-riding off society since you will be dependent on other peoples' children to keep the country running during your retirement. Last, if you are of European descent, you are contributing to the obliteration of your race.

But if you are infertile, you can screw around without all that guilt.

Just my opinion.

[M Stein]

"pointing out HBD would destroy all that by essentially giving an excuse for their poor academic performance."

HBD doesn't imply that individual members of different groups can't do well. If anything it points towards a more personalised approach to education as it is recognised that individuals vary in ability.

[David Alexander]

*Adoption is the answer.*

Adoption is only the when the adoptive parents are going to pay the biological parents market rates for their children with full-reimbursement of all medical expenses, lost wages, and potential psychological counseling in the future.

Abortion today, abortion tomorrow, abortion forever.

"I believe adoptees generally have lower IQs than their co-ethnics because they acquire low-IQ genes from their parents."

Isn't concluding that one lacks the ability to raise a child properly the sign of high IQ?

[David Alexander]

"HBD doesn't imply that individual members of different groups can't do well."

That's cute. In other words, instead of 100 black kids being useless, 5 of them may be useful at most?

In my opinion, it's a bit selfish for educated people to not have children.

The problem is that educated people are well aware of opportunity costs of having children, and some of the high IQ have a rather pessimistic view of the future which inhibits their desire for children.

[Richard Hoste www.hbdbooks.com]

"I really don't understand why you are so unsympathetic to the way "liberals" think. We all would like to improve the social and economic standing of African-Americans-- go knows our nation has a historic responsibility towards them."

I care nothing about improving the lot of African Americans. Where would they be without slavery? Most would've never even been born. The 30 sum million black American population comes from an original slave population of a fraction of that. They were able to expand because of access to white science and technology. The blacks that would have been born anyway would've been much worse off.

Blacks owe whites, not the other way around.

"This would be doubly disastrous especially since part of what you consider to be HBD is not rooted in genes but in historical legacies. "

I see no evidence of something called a "historical legacy" that causes children to do bad on IQ and standardized test. It's post hoc nonsense made up by liberals to deny the truth of HBD. Germany and Japan were by any means worse off than American blacks in the 1940s but their respective "historical legacies" didn't stop them from bouncing back.

[matne]

Actually one of the major problems with adoption in the US is that the adoption agencies make you jump through numerous hoops over a period of several months, and you can still get denied a child.

I have an aunt and uncle that decided to adopt after two miscarriages. They have a son, but wanted another child. They tried local adoption agencies first. After several background checks, they were denied because my aunt was 41. My uncle was 39. The adoption agency felt that she was too old, and preferred a younger parent. For a reason as stupid as being slightly older, this loving couple was denied a child. They ended up adopting a child that they love and care for dearly. Shes from Nicaragua.

You hear of a lack of interest in people adopting babies. I think that number is also distorted by the number of people turned away for trivial reasons. I can understand criminal records, history of drug abuse, and low income might not be a person to give a child to. Denying two working middle class people a child due to being a few years too old is absurd. They love and cherish their daughter from Nicaragua like she is their own. If some child here wasn't adopted, it wasn't my aunt and uncles fault, it was the adoption agency's.

[not too late]

"The problem is that educated people are well aware of opportunity costs of having children, and some of the high IQ have a rather pessimistic view of the future which inhibits their desire for children."

Ya gotta love the circular reasoning of such folks which Dave A. so clearly points out:
The future looks bleak so we smart folks will have fewer smart kids to guarantee that it sucks.

[David Alexander]

*Most would've never even been born. *

One could argue that they would have been spared from living as primates in a world of humans. If blacks do not have the ability to compete with whites intellectually and attain the white collar jobs that whites and Asians are able to attain, then not being born is probably the superior option.

*The blacks that would have been born anyway would've been much worse off.*

They'd have no (or little) knowledge of the Western world and it's immense wealth with few means of accessing it. I suspect that they would have been better off since they wouldn't be miserable knowing that they'll never become rich enough to enjoy the fruits of their labour and success. Instead, they live knowing that they'll never become happy and successful with proper, white collar jobs, and that their children are doomed to a miserable life in the underclass with the only mediation to their misery being suicide or murder.

*Ya gotta love the circular reasoning of such folks which Dave A. so clearly points out:
The future looks bleak so we smart folks will have fewer smart kids to guarantee that it sucks.*

The problem is that for the pessimists, they see that they're unable to maintain a "proper" standard of living to ensure that their children can live better than they did. In my case, I'm not willing to play the HBD gambling game to determine whether my children will have a life worth living, or if it would be best if they didn't exist. If you're remotely smart, it makes far more sense to simply enjoy your life and then kill yourself once you start aging terribly to the point where one can no longer enjoy life.

[kurt9]

"In my opinion, it's a bit selfish for educated people to not have children..."

I don't feel this kind of guilt at all.

[sabril]

"The problem is that educated people are well aware of opportunity costs of having children, and some of the high IQ have a rather pessimistic view of the future which inhibits their desire for children."

I'm not sure I understand this, but to me it smacks of unsupported rationalization. Absent strong evidence, the assumption should be that most people follow their personal self-interests.

[Eman]

The dregs of Korea are sent to the USA for adoption.

Babies which are: retarded, deformed, fetal alcohol syndrome, crack babies, drug babies, ugly babies, etc.

The same of true of many other nations like Russia, Indonesia, China, Ukraine, etc.

[jimbo]

"thats not even cogent. Whats the 'evil' in adoption supposed to be?"

You are assuming that women think rationally - a common mistake.

Most women think it is better to have their children dismembered and vacuumed up like liposuction fat than to allow them to be raised by loving strangers.

Y'know, it's "for the children"...

[mike]

"They'd have no (or little) knowledge of the Western world and it's immense wealth with few means of accessing it. I suspect that they would have been better off since they wouldn't be miserable knowing that they'll never become rich enough to enjoy the fruits of their labour and success. Instead, they live knowing that they'll never become happy and successful with proper, white collar jobs, and that their children are doomed to a miserable life in the underclass with the only mediation to their misery being suicide or murder."

'They', DA?

However, I agree that there is a pervasive fallacy of confusing objective prosperity with subjective happiness. The mo' money we come across, the mo' problems we see.

[Lucian]

David Alexander makes a good point.

David's IQ puts him in the top 10% of people in Africa and in the bottom 10% of people in Korea

David would therefore feel smug and good about himself if he lived in Africa and would feel bad about himself if he lived in Korea.

Why bring NAM children to the USA if they are just going to feel crummy

Again, listen to David

[HS: David's IQ is above average even in Asia. And I don't buy into the fact that David hates it here as much as he lets on. There are lots of white people who would be happy to have David hang out with them if David has nothing in common with the average black American. David's only problem is lack of motivation.]

[David Alexander]

*'They', DA?**

The unborn black children.

*David would therefore feel smug and good about himself if he lived in Africa and would feel bad about himself if he lived in Korea. *

The problem with being in the elite in Africa is that it's like being the smart kid in the slow class. There's an honors and regular class above you, and while you long to join those classes, you're stuck in the dregs with the other slower students, and you'd be in the bottom of both classes. You're miserable in both spheres.

The only way I'd be happy in Africa is if I was dictator for life and ran a brutal, repressive government with it's only focus on the conversion of the country from a third world backwater into a first world nation at all costs.

*And I don't buy into the fact that David hates it here as much as he lets on.*

I don't hate the United States, and given that my parents are immigrants from Haiti, even being a part of the elite there requires considerable trade-offs that I think some would find rather restricting. The real problem that I find depressing is the reality of HBD meaning that most black people will never get to enjoy being "white". They'll never have access to nice neighbourhoods or elite jobs, and they'll never have any accomplishments compared to whites or Asians. They'll always live in worse conditions when compared to those of other races regardless of the country, and they'll always do the "nigger" work. It's rather disheartening, and it's certainly why I'd argue for the high IQ black population to avoid having children to spare them from having to live such a confused existence of being flukes that stand out wherever they go, being social phobics who don't connect because they're smarter than their racial peers, but feel uncomfortable being the minority around other races.

Of course, one could argue that I've simply fallen prey to the upper-middle class Marxism of the SWPL-types where everybody must be upper middle class to be happy...

[LP]

DA, can't you band together with other high IQ blacks and form your own society? I mean, you might as well get started on your "repressive government", kind of like Jonestown, only without the Kool-aid, and everybody has internet access.