memetic_sisyphus@memeticsisyphus
One of the great wet roads causes rain moments of our lives. They scanned over 7,000 kids studying various parts of the brain including the amygdala (processing emotion) and the prefrontal cortex volume (long term planing and complex analysis).
They found a statistically significant smaller volume in black children in both regions.
They also asked the parents about their socioeconomic status and found, not all that surprisingly, that the parents had lower academic achievement, higher rates of criminal convictions, and of course higher rates of poverty. All the negative behaviors one would expect with poor planning and emotional regulation.
The structures and size of the brain are genetically related, the parents and children won’t differ all that much. Instead this paper simply makes the claim that the poverty and shitty life the parents made has damaged the children’s brains. There’s no before or after, there’s no signs of damage or malformation, there’s no comparison to the parents etc… they simply gave the kids an MRI, measured a significant racial difference and said this is because racism.