[Jdanz]

i think i may have mispoken in my first post, but i think my following post made it clear that i do agree with you.

Groups certainly diverge, i mean black skin has to do with an evolutionary bottle neck, i'm not saying that groups aren't different.

What i am saying is that there is a massive amount of evidence that black underperformance is not in fact due to this bottleneck but due to historical oppression. I happen to have studied the Irish famine pretty extensively, but having a pretty fair amount of knowledge about that, i see them as a near perfect parrallel for a society where one groups social and economic rights were systematically disrespected.

I can't think of any other group where the laws that held them from owning land or participating in government were so similar, so when i look towards the history of the repeal of these laws (in the Irish case) i see what i expect to happen in the black case, an incredibly slow and painful process of overcoming historical disadvantage.

I'm not argueing that groups aren't different, i'm argueing it would be absoultely absurd to think that because we changed some laws a little while ago that the race's economic situation should now be similar. This is quite like pvn's dislike of the somalia arguement, it completely ignores incredibly relevent historical context.

groups are different, but it's pretty clear that the difference in how "black america" has developed stems from other reasons then that.