<p>A race is an extended inbred family. Subsets of Jews may fit this definition, but overall, definitely do not. Genetic diseases like tay sachs were rampant because Jews did not marry outside their community. Saying Jews are a race, is akin in principle to saying Christian is a race. No one would say that an Iranian and a German, a Chinese man and an ethiopian man are the same race, so the fact that they are co-religionists would not make it so. But this assertion of yours seems a vital part of your prejudice, so no argument can convince you otherwise.</p>
<p>"Ask yourself why Jews have been kicked out of every country they have moved into. Ask yourself why they are disliked in the United States by some. Take a hard look at reasons, not consequences. When you arrive at a conclusion, check it again."</p>
<p>That assumes that despots and politics are rational, a laughable assumption. How many hate Jews in the US? That ADL study cited 12% in 1998, but that is hugely over estimated, based on their spurious questions. In the U.S. immigration restrictions were enacted in 1924 supposedly to staunch the flow of Jews, but that was partially due to union interests. The greatest proponent for restriction in that case was Samuel Gompers, a jewish union leader asking that (Jewish) immigration be restricted. And Jews have not been expelled from the US. Maybe you should burn George Washington in effigy, because he had a Jewish friend who helped him finance (read: donate) some of the revolution (Haym Salomon).</p>
<p>The expulsion of Jews from Spain was the beginning of the decline of the Spanish. Same for the holocaust. So, to put it lightly, it is not clear that Jewish expulsion/elimination is beneficial.</p>
<p>But I've committed the ultimate folly, that thinking you deem your beliefs rational, and would dispose of them when they are shown not to be.</p>
<p>Jews are not a race but an ethnicity. Yes, anyone can convert to Judiasm and become Jewish, but people who descend from Jews are an ethnicity since they have distinctive genetic characteristics, a distinctive appearance, and a distinctive pattern of intelligence not seen in any other group, which probably has something to do with their genetics (their verbal intelligence is stratospheric, their mathemetical intelligence is high, and their visuospatial intelligence is below average; most groups score about the same in all areas).</p>
<p>Floridastudent593, your assertions regarding IQ are only somewhat correct (but very un-PC, so watch out - I got bashed for considering the heritability of IQ in a thread on affirmative action). The high IQ covers (from what I have seen) only Ashkenazi jewry, that is, Jews from Germany, Eastern Europe, and Russia, roughly. Ashkenaz literally means Germany. I'd bet that Mizrahi Jews (that is Iranian, Iraqi and other Jews hailing from the middle east and east of that) have lower IQ, based on my experience with them. How much less, I cannot tell. </p>
<p>Reread your source on IQ, and I'd bet that it says Ashkenazi Jews, not Jews.</p>
<p>Saying that Ashkenazi Jews are an ethnicity is (somewhat) plausible, but saying 'Jews' are an ethnicity is not. You really cannot say that an Iranian is the same ethnicity as a Spaniard or an Ethiopian or a Russian or central Asian. There certainly are people that are 'identifiably' Jewish, even without any special clothing or hair, but that does not mean Jews as a whole are an ethnicity. And even if every Jew descended from Jacob, they have diverged so much physically (phenotypically) that they are not one ethnicity or race.</p>
<p>ash, you're right: it does only apply to Ashkenazim. The IQ average of Sephardim lies somewhere between that of Arabs (~85) and Whites (100). Ethiopian Falasha Jews have an IQ average typical of Subsaharan Africans (60-75).</p>
<p>Floridastudent, would you give me a source for that? I've been interested for a while to know that. I go to a Jewish school where about a good portion (maybe 25%) of the kids are Iranian (aka Persian) and tend to perform worse and speak bad english even if born here. I'm friends with a couple, but I find many of them repulsive with their loud and uncivil manner. And, sepharadim is the wrong term. Sepharad literally means Spain. Thus Sepharadim are the Jews who left Spain after the expulsion of 1492. They generally at that point went to or their descendants ended up in Amsterdam, Britain, Northern Africa, Greece or Italy, and maybe to the middle East, although I'm not sure. Although I really have little to judge by, I suspect they have a high IQ, possibly comparable with or higher than that of Ashkenazi Jews. The original Spanish Jewish community was rich and cultured, especially compared to other Jewish communities. A couple Sepharadi Jews of note: Baruch/Benedict Spinoza, a prominent secular philosopher from Amsterdam, and Benjamin Disraeli, a former prime minister of England who converted to Christianity.</p>
<p>I don't know why I put Sephardim. I meant to put Oriental Jews. Anyway, the Oriental Jew IQ figure comes from Richard Lynn's new book, Race Differences in Intelligence: An Evolutionary Analysis:</p>
<p>"Earlier discussions of Israel's IQ, when it was listed as 94 in [IQ and the Wealth of Nations] treated it as a suspect score, because Ashkenazi Jews are thought to score 1 SD higher than other Europeans. Of course even if this were true (and Lynn himself (2004) estimates the IQ as only about 107), Ashkenazi Jews represent only about 40% of Israel's population, and Oriental Jews and Arabs, who make up the majority, are thought to score nearly as far (if not more) below Europeans as Ashkenazi Jews score above them, so the estimate actually wasn't unreasonable at all (although '95' in a country with a distinct, high scoring population is qualitatively different than a '95' country with a single bell curve). Lynn lists 8 studies for Israel with IQs ranging between 89 and 97 and with a median of 95, but none of the studies are broken down by ethnic background to provide direct estimates of the IQs of Oriental and Ashkenazi Jews. So Lynn uses population percentages (40% Ashkenazi, 40% Oriental, 20% Arab), results from one direct study of Israeli Arab IQ (86), and knowledge from several Israeli studies that indicate that Ashkenazi Jews score 12 points higher than Oriental Jews, to give indirect weighted estimates of 91 for the IQ of Oriental Jews and 103 for Ashkenazi Jews in Israel."</p>
<p>"Ask yourself why Jews have been kicked out of every country they have moved into. Ask yourself why they are disliked in the United States by some. Take a hard look at reasons, not consequences. When you arrive at a conclusion, check it again."</p>