The mean black IQ in America now stands at 89.1, according to the WAIS-III IQ test. For whites it is 102.6. That is a difference of 13.5 points. Other tests show the same kind of difference. So do university entrance tests, which makes it a serious issue.
But it gets worse.
The differences are not where you would expect: in the use of words and numbers where poor education could bring down scores. In fact, when it comes to words, numbers and memory, blacks do about as well as whites. Where blacks do worst is on the questions that require reasoning, in thinking something through!
Now know this: the IQs of twins separated at birth are different by only 6 points or so. So whether you grew up rich or poor, went to good schools or bad, it will only affect your IQ by about six points.
That means racism, poverty, bad schools and all that can only account for half of the 13.5 point difference between blacks and whites.
This difference does not square with my own experience, but then I do not know white people as a whole or black people as a whole.
I always thought it was because white people wrote the tests. Some of the older tests were unfair like that, but with the newer ones no one has been able to prove that it makes any difference for blacks who can speak and read English. In fact the tests work all too well: a low IQ means you will do less well in school, and that turns out to be just as true for whites as for blacks.
But when people try to prove blacks are born with less intelligence, it gets strange:
- Light-skinned or whiter-looking blacks do not have higher IQs than darker, blacker-looking ones.
- For blacks brought up by white parents the difference is small: three points or less.
- The difference does not appear right away, like you would expect for something you were born with. It comes out during the school years.
- The difference has been getting smaller over the past 30 years. It used to be 15 points.
There are enough strange facts pointing in different directions that you can make whatever argument you want about why black and white IQs are so different. We simply do not know enough yet. We have not found the smoking gun. Or the right way of thinking about it.
If we understood the Flynn Effect we might know what is going on. The Flynn Effect is where IQs in rich countries have been slowly rising. In America they have risen by 15 points in the past 50 years. That makes blacks living now as smart as whites from the 1950s, but whites smarter still.
No one knows what causes the Flynn Effect, but it shows up in the very part of the IQ test that blacks do badly in: the reasoning part. And it affects mainly those with low IQs, which is why blacks have been catching up. So understanding it might be the key.
See also:
- None of the Above – Malcolm Gladwell on the Flynn Effect and black IQs
- IQ
- Race in America
That’s fascinating. I’ve not looked at this issue, nor was I familiar with the Flynn Effect until this blog. At first glance that certainly appears
I wonder there those scores come from? For example, do they come from those IQ tests administered in the public schools? If so, I would speculate that one factor might be the antipathy of some blacks to educational acheivement as a sign of “acting white.” In other words, intentionally not doing one’s best because of social pressure.
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Blanc mentioned the “antipathy of some blacks to educational achievement as a sign of ‘acting white.'” I grew up in the burbs. My family was probably one of the poorest because we emigrated not too long ago and it was a one-parent household. We were still upper middle class though I always considered our family to be po’. Though the many black kids had both parents there for them (more and more of an anomaly), well-educated parents and financial resources, I noticed that there was definitely a fear of being too “white” that set in particularly for biracial kids. Many of us did well still but made it a point not to come off as bright in class.
Anti-intellectualism is very destructive.
I should add that this town was very diverse. People moved there for that reason. The racism there is probably the least one will find in America.
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I just want to know….how in the world can one accurately measure, and by points might I add, racism and it’s effect on a black child’s intellect?—especially with no tangible sample(s) (a black child(ren) who has never been exposed to racism)to compare one with the other.
“the IQs of twins separated at birth are different by only 6 points or so. So whether you grew up rich or poor, went to good schools or bad, it will only affect you IQ by about six points” “That means racism, poverty, bad schools and all that can only account for half of the 13.5 point difference between blacks and whites.”
I have to say…that is a HUGE assumption to make for a huge group of people who are in various circumstances based strictly on a mere set of twins; I wouldn’t consider this analysis sound, in the least.
As I said before, when people say “smarter” or “higher IQ” it is often equated to having a greater mental capacity to learn material, and that’s not accurate, more often than not. The truth of the matter is, we all have the same mental (brain) capacity (with the exception of the “genius”), it’s just a matter of using it, how often you use it, or if you use it at all.
It is more psychological than anything else and education defiantly plays a role. Here are factors I think mostly contribute, by order of importance, to this:
Childhood- This is the period where one is finding him/herself the most; it’s the foundation. A child who feels they lack the ability to do something, based on stereotypes, lack of leadership and/or positive influence, and never had anyone to show them/ push them that they can do anything they put their minds to, would likely lack confidence in just about every intellectual aspect of their lives.
This may play or may not play into the “reasoning” aspect of it for the “black IQ”. Lacking confidence just means lacking confidence to do something, not lacking the ability to do anything, but the two, of course, pay off each other cyclically.
Once a parent or some higher authority shows a child that they can do something they previously thought difficult/impossible for them, and they try and get good at it, they will have a lot more confidence in themselves and will carry this throughout life and the lesson learned—this is true for any child.
A lot of black children, especially in poor neighborhoods, don’t get this and don’t feel like they will amount to much because their environment and/or statistics say so. It’s kind of like calling a child “stupid” or “foolish” repetitively…you, in a sense, speak it on them.
Watch Akeela and the Bee (Movie). Blanc2, you have a point, but I think this is mostly true for poor public schools or more urban schools, in my experience, where the black children are simply set up to fail or at least not expected to fare as well as whites respectively.
I went to a public school that was average, 30% black 10% other, and 60% white; none of the blacks I new thought it “uncool” to do well on test or to be smart; we were all striving to do our best.
Environmental/Stereotypes/Society- This is no secret. Statistics say a lot of things about black people and most of the things are defiantly negative, especially when you put environmental factors and stereotypes into the equation. This IQ test is just one of many.
As one would turn on the TV or open a newspaper, or merely look around them, they would see all the biases that exist in the world OR they will just see their race as bad/negative.
Black people are excessively in the newspaper for murder, theft, rape, etc. You’d have to buy Ebony or JET magazine to hear any good news about blacks; do not dare turn on the TV or read the newspaper if that is what you want to hear.
Whites are mostly in the paper for success. This doesn’t mean that whites don’t kill, rape, etc. and blacks do not succeed. It just means the media is biased so it shines a more positive light on whites than it does on blacks. Period.
Education- I guess I should really break this down. The quality of education varies greatly with private and public schools in America. It varies among above average public schools. It varies greatly among average public schools. It varies greatly in poor public schools. There are even public schools that are below poor. This should be a no brainer.
Unless children in these underprivileged school systems go the extra mile to learn just as much as their more fortunate counterparts, it is to be expected that they won’t do as well. The problem with this is that they shouldn’t have to go the extra mile when others have it handed to them.
Of course these things have been and can be overcome through sheer determination, courage, will, and going the extra mile, although the odds are against them. Most black people feel that they have to work twice as hard to prove themselves and get the same success someone white has but didn’t have to work as hard to achieve.
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This is fascinating. The Flynn effect sounds very interesting. Maybe it is something to do with e fact that nations with strong tertiary economies put more emphasis on training people in intellectual and social skills and less emphasis on training them for manual work. Or it could be to do with diet? People in poorer countries often lack nutrients – this may impair the development of the brain.
Low black IQs could also be attributable to the Jane Elliot phenomenon. http://www.janeelliott.com/
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All good points. I would suspect the answer is that it is a combination of the various things mentioned. It seems that it would be difficult to assess because of the hurdles to setting up an effective control experiment.
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sanabituranima:
Those are all interesting questions but aren’t those results just for blacks in America. I got the impression that you were referring to blacks in other countries indicated by “poorer” countries and lack of proper nutrition. I don’t think these two would apply in America.
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I have two problems with IQ testing:
(1) I’m pretty sure this is true, but I don’t have any evidence: People can get better at IQ tests, the more of them they take.
Certainly, people who take the SAT after an SAT training class do better than if they took no class.
I would bet that whites have more exposure to these types of tests, and therefore, do better from the increased practice.
(2) The IQ tests are paper tests, they do not test what I call “non-paper-tested” intelligence. I would bet that a farmer would survive better in an agrarian society, with a lower IQ, then a CPA paper pusher from NY would, even if the CPA had a higher IQ.
We “reward” people with high IQs by considering them “special,” even though a high IQ might have no relationship with their ability to succeed in certain situations or environments.
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How dim.
I’m black and my IQ is 135.
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The study on twins separated at birth studied over 100 pairs. The point is that while environment does affect IQ, it is unlikely to account for such a wide difference as 13.5 points. Something else is going on, probably something we are not thinking of. It is not genetics because that would have been proven already.
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What parents, teachers and friends expect I think makes a huge difference in how well someone does in school.
I am pretty sure that if you gave the right teacher any 20 black eight-year-olds with IQs below 90 and he taught them for ten years, he could get at least half of them in the top universities in the country.
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I’d be interesting in knowing more about this study because I have a feeling it’s biased. I’m guessing they chose twins because of their closeness genetically, but the test only seems to speak only for that..their genetic closeness, not the individual aspect of it.
I mean, if one set of twins had an IQ of 120, with a difference of ~6 points between the two and another set of twins have an IQ of about 90 with a difference of ~6 points between them…that doesn’t prove anything about individuals who are not twins nor does it speak on the differences of IQs among sets of twins; it seems to only speak on the genetic closeness of individual sets of twins.
I also am curious about the different races, as this would be a major contributing factor as well—if they weren’t all black; this could prove inadequate.
I could be wrong, but there are a few things that just don’t make sense to me. Lol…have any idea where I could get a sneak peak at this information?
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lunchcountersitin: Great points.
I would have to say that you are correct in your thinking on the first point; it’s just a matter of knowing the type of material on a test and knowing how to apply those things, more often than not.
Your second point goes back to what I said about people equating “higher IQ” with just being smarter, all together–not necessarily the case. IQ defiantly has nothing to do with knowing how to survive in the world, especially depending on where you are in the world.
I think it also plays into who makes the test and what exactly are they measuring as a standard of intelligence; it seems rather subjective.
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I do not know the races in the twin studies. I would also be interested to know how different these environments were. Like did any of them wind up in slums? If all they did was just change middle-class households, then of course the “environment” will not affect IQ much.
The study is called the “Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart”. It is about more than just IQ. It started in 1979 with 100 sets of twins. It is in turn part of a larger study about twins at the University of Minnesota.
Here is the paper I am referring to (I have not read it but a summary of it elsewhere):
http://www.euvolution.com/articles/differences.html
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The point of IQ tests is to see how well you will do in school. So that is the sort of intelligence it tries to measure. It is unlikely that people like Edison, Picasso or Stanley Kubrick would have done well on them. James Watson, one of the greatest scientists of all time (despite his own racism), only got like 105.
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How well you will do in which school— the concept in of itself is biased, in this case–when it’s apparent all school systems and schools within different systems have different standards all across the world.
I know it doesn’t measure “smartness”, but I was saying people often equate it to a measurement of “smartness”.
Thanks for the link Aba; I will check it out later.
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This post, more than others, has been smoldering in the back of my mind pretty much continuously. I don’t pretend to have any answers, but I’ve got to admit that in my gut I feel that the “Jane Elliot phenomenon” feels like it might be the most profound and yet insidious factor in this equation. The difficulty with “separated at birth” studies of twins is that, if the twins are black and both raised in the US, both will encounter this phenomenon.
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“More than 100 sets of reared-apart twins or triplets from across the United States and the United Kingdom have participated in the Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart since it began in 1979. Participants have also come from Australia, Canada, China, New Zealand, Sweden, and West Germany.”
“This study and the broader behavioral genetic literature, nevertheless, challenge prevailing psychological theories on the origins of individual differences in ability, personality, interests, and social attitudes”
I guess that answers the question about race. It’s more about the genetic, psychological commonality between sets of individual twins when separated at birth, in spite of being separated.
From what I read, these environmental differences were not necessarily in light of rich/poor; it was more solely based on the fact that they were reared and lived in different places, separate from each other yet showed a common way in intellectual thought due solely to their being twins.
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Hi. I’m really late at getting in on the discussion, but here are a few of my thoughts.
IQ scores show ‘intelligence’, but not judgment. A person deemed bright with a score of 150 may not have the same level of common sense in someone with an IQ of 100.
I can’t begin to count the number of secretaries who are far less education (and we can prejudicially assume have lower IQs) who have more foresight than their bosses, who screw up programs and agencies.
Possibly the dumbest thing smart people ever did was create nukes and other advanced weaponry designed to kill large numbers of people. The 2nd dumbest thing they’ve done is allow massive pollution of the environment. Even a farmer with an IQ of 80 knows you don’t piss in your own well. This is why common sense trumps a high Verbal and Math IQ every time. Ideally one would have both, but the worst is to have neither.
IQs have historically been used to devalue large groups of people. At one time tests were used to bar swarthy-complexioned Europeans from immigrating. One of the unspoken, unconscious values is that only smart people matter, and everyone else is expendable.
You might want to read a book titled Emotional IQ.
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We all know people with book smarts but no common sense. But even apart from common sense there is quite a bit that IQ tests miss. For example, Andy Warhol scored 86 and Muhammad Ali 78. No one for a second would regard either man as lacking intelligence – yet according to the tests they do!
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all people have the same brain copasity. the only difference is how it is reported. the orignal man walk out of africa so how can he change
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I think mankind spread over the earth far too quickly for there to be the kind of inborn differences in intelligence that racists imagine.
But some racists will argue that humans were bred for intelligence by the hard and cruel conditions of the far north, in places like Britain, Germany, Japan, Korea, etc.
This is a rather strange idea since so few whites have settled in the supposedly easy and kind conditions of the tropics even though they once ruled those places.
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have you noticed the headache between races sometimes? the mixing of the races is evolution and in unexpected mistakes and twists of nature that some would call “deviances” nature creates something new. i may have to find a black girl just to keep my family line from falling in on itself.
and also i’m seeing this now that america is a testing ground. a “lets see how they deal with this” situation posed by nobody or posed by god or some force of nature. cultures that were once separated by *everything* now together in this mix that has to get along. i mean these people were so different (and less different now maybe) but it goes into the core of a person. it goes as deep as family structure, family life, feelings for eachother.
what one man or woman feels about one is not what is felt for the other. but that’s not only racial tension. why does it become racist? it’s because one man’s closet is another man’s open air. that man’s open air is another man’s closet–or a woman’s closet. you don’t want to talk to someone who reminds you of your closet–or of any other small rooms that hold a certain feeling in it. maybe it’s the deep difference between genders or that may be an illusion too. it’s the duality i know this much is true, but how far can it go? i am guided to understand these things through nature and through science.
i will not know the answers but maybe my descendants will.
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I’m a Psychology major, and a lot of this post is right up my ally, though I think some things have been inadequately defined.
One thing I think you are trying to get at in your post is heritability, which is defined as (in layman’s terms) the amount of outward difference in a trait that can be accounted for by genetic variation. The heritability of IQ is known to be about 50%, meaning that 50% of the difference in IQs between individuals can be attributed to genetics. However, heritability says *nothing* about what causes the difference. We are recognizing the gap, but not that tells us nothing about the cause of the trait itself.
Also, the Flynn effect is generally thought to be an effect of increased technology, more educational opportunities, better nutrition, etc. That is why IQ tests, SATs, etc. have to continually be renormed to take all of these changes into account.
As far as disparities in White/Black achievement, one thing most studies have taken into account are stereotype threat and culture-free tests.
Stereotype threat is when an individual experiences anxiety in a testing situation because he believes that his performance will be judged as a member of a larger group. So, a Black student taking a math test might think “If I do badly, this will confirm the opinion that Blacks are bad at math.”
Culture-free tests refer to the fact that many standardized tests cater to a middle-class upbringing. For example, if a vocabulary test has the word “saucer” on it, a child from a low-income home might have no exposure to that term.
I wrote a research paper on the Black/White achievement gap, and there is a wealth of research out there on that and underachievement, Asians as the “model minority,” etc.
Just some food for thought.
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Wow, thanks! Having two children in school I would like to know more about the achievement gap and what lies behind it.
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If you want some quick info, you can Google Scholar “achievement gap”, and trust me a ton of articles will pop up. There have been studies on stereotype threat, picture selections (when students are instructed to select which person “looks” the smartest), “acting white”, etc. There haven’t been as many studies on internalized stereotypes, which is what I wrote my paper on, but people have spent well over 70 years trying to figure out the gap.
There is no catch-all solution, but parental involvement and instilling high expectations of success are both correlated with better academic achievement in school. I’m hoping to do more research on when students begin to internalize negative stereotypes, i.e., how aware they are of the significance of “acting white” in middle school vs. high school.
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Thanks! The sense that I get is that it does come down to what others expect of you, with what your parents expect sometimes being at war with what others expect. That was certainly true in my case.
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I think there might be a strong cultural aspect to it.
My 4 year-old son just took an IQ test and there were numerous questions involving things he had no experience with (like American sports or unfamiliar foods). In fact, he scored so dismally on one nonverbal section that she almost stopped the test prematurely except that he started getting them all correct. The hard ones were easier for him than the simple ones. He couldn’t tell you what an umbrella is (we never use them) or how a hockey stick and puck are related but he could point out a cylinder from a group of forms and new the difference between a carousel, roller coaster, and water slide and knew the difference between deciduous and evergreen trees.
I used to think the cultural stuff was baloney but after this, I’m more open to that explanation.
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I come from a family of highly intelligent warriors (I’m not joking about the warrior part.)
My younger brother did an I.Q. test a couple of years ago and his I.Q. stood at 147.
I’ve done a number of I.Q. tests as well and they’ve ranged from 130 to 166.
I.Q. though is just one of many things that rate intelligence.
To me common sense trumps I.Q. everytime.
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Sorry this is just an issue I’m so passionate about and I had to chime in on because it is so important to society in general. So sorry if I came in really late but I also wanted to inform people of some of the research out there about IQ.
Intelligence is complicated to assess and most recent studies suggest that IQ tests actually aren’t good measures of “intelligence” because they rely not on some innate “intellectual ability” but rather on your exposure to “outside” information which is unevenly distributed based on class, race and other socio-economic factors.
If you give blacks and whites modified tests that rely on the use of information provided in the test, they do equally as well, suggesting that both groups have equal ability to process information, reason, etc when provided with the same information. However the information tested in IQ assessments is based on your ability to process/reason with information that you are “expected” to know (from outside sources-as determined by creators of IQ tests) which is often related to cultural factors, much like Black&German suggested.
So information used to determine intelligence in IQs is unevenly distributed based on social factors but there are also numerous other factors besides some erroneous belief in the innate inferior that explain why blacks may do worse than other groups on IQ tests.
1)Psychological factors (as mentioned by someone else nicely above), including stereotype threat, repeatedly have been shown to impact IQ results.
2)Environmental factors, including environmental toxins. Studies show that minorities, particularly poor minorities have higher exposure to toxins like lead that not only impact brain structure/function but also ability to learn in schools (hyperactivity etc). The lead levels in soil/children/adults were much higher in the 50s-70s when we had leaded gas.
3) Social environments i.e. some minority and poor children have fewer exposures to a) words of positive encouragement from parents/adults, b) less exposure to language in general (& thus know fewer vocab words entering Pre-K etc) c) less family stability, d)more violence in urban neighborhoods, etc..
This list goes on and on in terms of the disparities that black youth disproportionately face vs. other non-minority and minority youth. Any one of these factors, and most likely all of them acting together, effect differences in IQ attainment for black kids.
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“Where blacks do worst is on the questions that require reasoning, in thinking something through!”
But reasoning (logic) is something that is learned, not necessarily an innate ability.
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An IQ of 89 really isn’t low by global standards. That’s around what most Latin American nations, the middle east, India and SE Asia score, as well as the Philippines. It only seems low when compared to the scores of advanced industrial nations.
I’ve read that too. Skin color is not necessarily a good indicator of “African-ness”. I have dark skin, yet my sister with the same parents has light skin and looks mulatto. My IQ is way higher than hers, even though she is above average as well.
I’ve read that the Flynn Effect is happening in the developing world as well. I know Robert Lindsay has written a lot on that topic.
I think that’s true, but there’s going to be an upper limit to that. I don’t think that argues against the legitimacy of IQ testing. A person who might score 100 on a normal day might be able to bring it up to 105 after practicing a bit. I don’t think it’s any different than someone someone doing a few practice marathons before running the real one. That extra practice is going to boost their time beyond what it would have otherwise been, but only up to a point. Then the issue also becomes, if a black, a white and an Asian took the same amount of practice IQ test, would that make the gap shrink? What if the black now gets 90 instead of 85, the white now gets 105 and the Asian now 110. They’d have all improved their scores but not closed the gap.
True, raw intelligence or what psychometricians theoretically call “G” is a different thing from “common sense” which is more of the ability to accrue wisdom and steer clear of trouble in the real world. I think anyone has access to that type of intelligence no matter what their IQ is(up to a point).
High IQ people may not necessarily turn out to be highly productive for whatever reason, but most highly productive jobs do require above average IQ. I’ve never heard of a moron that got a job as an aerospace engineer or law professor.
I have my doubts there. I don’t think people with IQs below 90 will get into a “top university” or survive the rigorous 4 years there to get a degree. I do think however, a more basic university is not out of their reach. To get into Ivy League, I do think you need a high IQ, especially if you studying the hard sciences or engineering. Maybe a person of average intelligence can get a degree from Yale studying English Lit, History or some other humanities program that depends more on memorizing facts than problem solving. I don’t think low IQ people are going to cut it in advanced math, sciences and engineering. You have to have advanced abstract reasoning skills.
Yeah. We can’t write someone off as “unintelligent” because they do poorly on an IQ test. What IQ test are really getting at IMO is your ability to utilize abstract reasoning which in turn allows one to solve complex problems. I can think of people I know who may be capable of having an intelligent conversation and don’t come across as dumb, but who I know for a fact aren’t very good at solving problems. I might go to these guys for advice on girls or something, but wouldn’t go to them if I need to troubleshoot why my computer won’t work. I think these are different types of intelligences and IQ test are primarily about problem solving, not how witty you are in conversation or your social savvy. They are two different things. And that’s why I think someone like Warhol or Ali can bomb an IQ test, but not come off as “dumb” in normal conversation. Just means they probably have normal common sense and social intelligence, but don’t expect either of them to be discovering a cure for cancer. IQ test should probably be renamed PSTs, Problem solving tests. That way, it doesn’t demean people who do below average on them or make them feel stupid. They may not be stupid in all regards. They may have good common sense and social intelligence, they just can’t solve abstract reasoning problems above average level. That might also explain why many African nations score very low on IQ, but the average African does not seem retarded as their scores would indicate. What Africa does seem to lack sorely is people with problem solving abilities. Africa is a case in point of a continent with very many problems and not enough people with the ability to solve them. Whether that ability is mostly environmental or genetic, I have no idea for sure, but the result in standard of living is the same regardless.
I’d be surprised if it was that low. I googled it and could’t find much, but the lowest someone reported his IQ was 115 and one link said it was 120. Btw, I don’t think he’s a racist. Even Henry Louis Gates who sat down and had a dialogue with him on the subject of race and IQ came away with the conclusion that he is not racist. He believes there are racial differences in IQ not out of hatred, but because he just happens to believe that’s what the science reveals. I’ve had lots of discussions online with “race realists” who are not hateful people, but have done a lot of study on the subject and walked away believing that genes do account for most the gap. Many of them didn’t want to believe it but simply ran out of counter-arguments to the heredicists. These are not Stormfront type people, they aren’t arguing for ethnic cleansing or hating Obama or banning inter-racial marriage or anything. So I do see how someone can have that belief just for objective reasons, but not possess any visceral hatred of any racial group. These same people are also quick to acknowledge that there are millions of high IQ blacks and millions of low IQ whites, but that the differences are simply in the average.
I don’t think genetics would have proven it already because we aren’t even close to discovering all the genes that account for intelligence and figuring out how they work together. Plus few really want to do DNA research into race and IQ because people are afraid to touch that subject. Like you, I don’t think the whole 13.5pt gap is due to genes. But if half of it is, I can live with that. 6pts is no big deal. Put it this way, if you’re talking to someone with an IQ of 97 and someone with an IQ of 103, you’re not going to be able to tell the difference and there won’t be any statistically significant difference in their income or school performance(at least that can’t be overcome with hard work). That Malcolm Gladwell essay you had referenced showed that Chinese immigrants once scored in the low 90s, yet they still prospered. It’s not always what the IQ score is, it’s how hard you work, your values and determination as well. These Chinese immigrants with low IQs still managed to earn good money and send their kids to college, and the kids ended up doing well.
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“Maybe a person of average intelligence can get a degree from Yale studying English Lit, History or some other humanities program that depends more on memorizing facts than problem solving.”
What a silly statement. Writing a paper with a thesis (the most common assignment given to English majors at ANY university, not just Yale) has very little to do with “memorizing facts.” In fact, if you major in English (lit or otherwise) and just regurgitate the plots of books in your papers instead of formulating arguments, you will flunk every paper you write.
I understand this remark is off-topic, but this comment deserves to be called out for its ridiculousness.
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History shows us something very different about this subject. Once again, the hypothesis is that african american blacks may be inferior. Use your common sense. Look around really good. Black Americans have been contributing to this society in every possible way imaginable. From 1625, up to now. This fact alone should dampen the effects of the illusion of african american blacks being inferior in any type or sense of the word or questionable about the expression of IQ. Stop buying into the hype. All of this retoric about IQ seems to be intended to derail any advancements made by any african american progress. African americans do not suffer from any supposed IQ problems what so ever. If we could ask Elijah Gray,Lewis Latimer, Granville T. Woods, George Washington Carver, Madame C.J. Walker, Garrett Morgan, Dr. Patricia E. Bath (still alive) Lonnie G. Johnson etc… Do you think that any of these people thought that they had a learning problem or inability to use their cognitive skills ? The survivors of the North American Slave Trade are alive and doing well here in America. Scientifically they carry the genes of those that came before them. African americans in the past endured some of the worst treatment known to be recorded in the last 500 years. This gave way to a level of Entropy (look it up) that pushed the survivors of those old slaves to a new genetic realization which makes all of their genetic offspring as resourceful, smart, determined and socially functional as any other race or group. In some cases even better than most groups combined. The old slaves actually made greater offspring than most other groups thru their ability to endure inhuman and barbaric treatment which lead to the best that nature could provide towards superior survival genes thru the process of entropy. As cruel as it may sound now, it is every bit a case of survival of the fittest. And it worked. Comparing an IQ test to this ingenius transformation is a no brainer. If you want to believe that these people are inferior in any way then you have no idea of how nature or science actually works. The proof is standing before you. If you don’t believe its true, then black people stand in the mirror and be amazed at the results of a fantastic and accidental miracle that you are looking at.
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I dont believe in standardized test because they are demographical. And they are written by people who think this what you “should” know, Which is still demographical. Just take a look at how the Arts are being drained out of schools and recess being taken away. These areas of learning deal with the thinking and reasoning side of the brain. I also feel that Parents do an excellent job at dumbing down their children. Everytime parents are too busy or dont take the time or continuously tell there kids “stay in a childs place” you are instantly discounting there value. So by the time their young adults gratuating High School they have no idea what they want to do because no one has taken the TIME to shepard and mold the children who are supposed to be our future.
Also, Parents are not saving money to help there children along in the future. Most kids know they are not going to College because there is no money set aside for them. There is also no mention of wealth building in most homes. These children are coming up in the “get it now” era. No one is teaching them the value of a Dollar. Financial education is critical for the future of Black Children. So with all these issues they deal with even before setting foot in class is it any wonder that test scores are continuously low?
At some point you have to realize that we in many cases sabotage ourselves because we allow preventable stupid shit to happen.
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This is maybe a little out of the original issue, but I have also seen some studies proving that some people have lower IQ than other, lowest has Aboriginals from Australia followed by Africans south of Sahara.
I have a bachelor in Marketing and Public Relations. A lot of the books I read in my studies were from the U.S. I’m Norwegian. Even if those countries have some similarity, they still very different in their environment and the way people thinking. Marketing methods proven effective in the U.S. would in many cases not work at all in Norway and in many cases even considered stupid by the public.
Norway is a very small country and it’s impossible to just have literature fitted to Norwegian surroundings. We have some but most are imported.
Once I was in the library to one of the highest rated secondary schools in Tanzania. Except from some political books by Julius Nyerere, the library mainly contained of books from UK dated before 1964.
The way I see it, one big problem with colonisation of Africa is that the Europeans removed the African cultural and intellectual elite and management, and replaced it with Europeans. When they left, they left Africa with nothing. When Zaire was decolonized, you could count on one hand all native with a college degree, mainly medicine degrees. Idi Amin more or less went directly from Sergeant to Colonel, when the Brittish left Uganda.
If you filled up African schools and colleges with up to date foreign literature and foreign educated staff, it may have some effect, depending on subjects as well. But it exist too few African righter and editors all the way from children’s books to professional literature fitted to African environment, culture and business.
You can get Open Office and MS-Office in New Norwegian (a language that fewer than 400 thousand use), but you can’t get either of them in Swahili.
This problem is an evil circle, and very hard to find a quick solution. It takes time to re-establish an working cultural and intellectual elite who can do the science, write the books and educate the people adjusted to the local surroundings.
Of course you have the aspect of globalization and the effects of that: the world comes closer and people get more similar, but I still think the local aspect is very important.
These you can relate to IQ. I have taken some IQ tests myself (MENSA test) and my score varieties from around 90 to around 125 depending on day form, concentration and motivation. I tend to score lower if the test are in English than Norwegian, and I probably would score lower on a test translated from English to Norwegian than one made in Norwegian.
I’m quite shore few IQ tests are made by native Africans or Aboriginals. If they exist they, are made by Africans or Aboriginals corrupted too much whit foreign influence, so the target group does not understand it full out or relate it to their everyday situation of unravel things.
You have prove that black people brought up by white parents score 3 points or less lover than their similar white. Statistically that’s probably not enough to prove significant that black people have less ability to score high on an IQ test. If its enough you can always find other factors to disapprove it, like the burden of being different in a white environment can affect it.
From a European point of view I agree that Aboriginals and people in Africa have less IQ than Europeans or Asians, and may less intelligent. I must stress that this is from a European point of view. I don’t think its have anything whit ability to do, but quite much whit what I all ready have described. Not to forget that the type of knowledge I value is far different from the knowledge an Aboriginal value. I have absolutely no interest in knowledge to how survive in the Australian desert e.c.t. In the end I can mention that I once tried to establish a business in Africa, whit a lot of resources and a lack of local knowledge. It didn’t end with success.
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What’s fascinating is that two or three years after the Bell Curve came out (the main study that a large number of armchair geneticist whites like to cite), researchers at Washington University in Saint Louis, using the VERY SAME longitudinal database that Murray and Ernstein used for their research, which had demonstrated this persistent IQ gap between whites and blacks, looked at the same data and were able to take what Murray and Erstein didn’t mention in their book from the data. What they discovered was that when African Americans in the US go to college, they raise their IQ FOUR TIMES FASTER than whites who go to college, and in the process close the average IQ gap between whites and blacks in half in just 4 years.
This would not be possible is IQ was fundamentally related to biology, and yet it is EXACTLY what the very database that Murray and Erstein used, actually demonstrated the average gap, which used to be back in the old studies, 15 – 20 points between whites and blacks. Some evidence now suggests that the average prior to college is only 10 points and it is the college experience in 4 years cuts it down to half or about 5 points, (which again is statistically insignificant) which clearly demonstrates the importance of access, opportunity, and environment on IQ scores, that could not happen and it did. That could not happen if IQ was fundamentally a biological concept.
http://wupa.wustl.edu/record_archive/1997/11-06-97/7682.html
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I’d like to throw my hat in on this one (Psst. I’m black) . So we say there’s 13.5 difference and the difference is not in areas affected by education, heh. Well, I say, based on the fact that we read only about 50% of our white counterparts http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2011/06/28/the-racial-gap-of-leisure-reading/ I would hypothesize that we’re losing about 3-4 from cultural reading habits. Next I would offer http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18287970, in which I will posit that we’re losing 2-3 points from neo-natal diet. I’ll subjectively and anecdotally say we’re losing 2-3 from family structure(we disprapportionately come from single parent homes). Lastly, I’ll reach a bit and say we’re losing about 1 point from stereotype threat. I wouldn’t give any more than a point from this one, because even I’m not sure if I believe in this one fully. All but the last one are cultural things that we ourselves should be dealing with. If I’m right then after all adjustments we’re only giving up about 2.5 points. Given our relative strength in wrote memory, arithmetic computation and improvisational creativity, we should be dominant players at least in the financial sector.
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yes, the truth is racist .. the Negro is highly emotional and aggressive, incapable of thinking things through and face to face he or she attempts to shout you down when they’ve demonstrably lost the argument. The Negro is NEGATIVE EQUITY in the west. An unmitigated disaster – all they contribute to society is higher crime rates. An absolute bake. Never invented anything, no initiative, thick as f***, ugly as sin, animalistic.
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What are these evil racial IQ analyzing pumped up big headed people motives of studying racial IQ? I know that family support and a good education in a great school system makes a difference. A big one for anyone ( a 6 point difference my eye) who applies themselves. Our black daughter has a full ride at Stanford U and it wasn’t because she looks like Halle Berry. It was because shes got the chops. Your education, hard work and enviorment are crucial in how well you perform in school.
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I have to say I’m pretty surprised you would even publish something like this on your website. Do you believe White people are smarter than Black people? If not, then what is the point of this information?
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@ Mamzer HaKodesh
I talk about IQ because it is used against black people to excuse white racism. I do not think any one race of people is born with more intelligence than another. It does not square with my experience and, given how fast and how recently mankind has spread across the earth, it is unlikely. But there are plenty of racists out there who will jump at something as problematic as IQ tests and hold it up as proof.
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@ Abagond
I totally agree with you!
There is no one race of people born with more intelligence than another.
Whites came up with that applesauce in order for it to be used against black people to excuse white racism, period!
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Stumbled across this post while perusing your website, which is quite excellent, by the way. Thanks for putting this out there.
Just a small quibble with the twin studies “evidence”. Twin studies are HIGHLY misleading. The logic is compelling and everyone understands the way that studying identical twins reared apart cleanly separates nature from nurture.
The problem is that the real worlds is much messier. There are two gaping problems with this. First, reared apart twins are usually adopted. Who gets to adopt? How much does it cost? How many hoops do potential adopters have to jump through?
The answer to all of these questions is that adoption agencies are actively looking for parents who fit a certain profile. It should surprise no one here that this is tacitly racist–that profile is basically one that conforms as closely as possible to white middle class standing, norms, and values. The more closely a couple/family (seldom a single parent) falls to this profile, the more likely they will be able to adopt. And the fee-for-entry is quite high, screening out a lot of lower income folks.
So what does this means for the research itself? Nature/nurture studies are premised on the idea that you can essentially “control” for genes and thus assess differences in environment. And then, that the range of environment experienced by the twins in the study is somehow analogous to the real world.
It turns out that the range is quite limited in twin studies–the variance surrounding the mean experience on whatever measure is tiny compared to that experienced in the real world. Scientists haven’t created the perfect study, they’ve simply measured small differences between very similar environments.
Part two is what’s know as epigenetics. Essentially the genetic identicailty of twins is itself overly simplistic. Twins differ in the rates in which they get genetic diseases, etc. That couldn’t happen if they were 100% identical. So scientists went back and figured out that epigenetics–in essence, a series of activation codes for genes–were responsible for turning genes on and off. For example, I might have the gene for a certain trait, but if it’s “turned off” it’s as though I don’t have that gene at all.
All in all, the strong claims made about heritability, particularly with respect to intelligence, which is a field fraught with normative statements and eurocentric assumptions, need to be taken with MASSIVE grains of salt…
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Why are there so few blacks in math, science and engineering? I went to a huge state University in New York, a state were there is a lot of funding for minorities. They even pay to have you go there extra years to make you catch up if your high school was lacking. There were hardly any blacks at all and most dropped out. They were not filling the English classes either. I would never label a whole group, but the lack of blacks at many Universities in hard core math, science and engineering is strange, as is the lack of black medical students as a percentage of your population in current times. Even the middle class blacks in my neighborhood couldn’t swing high school, let alone college. They fill special education classes big time. They can’t keep up with the Asian and white kids at all. The only black girl who could, was half white. No offense, but perhaps blacks need a different way to learn. That’s my theory… that just like girls and guys learn differently, perhaps blacks need a different way to learn. Maybe some brains are structured to learn differently due to environment and selection. Aboriginal Australians developed amazing visual spacial abilities because they needed it to survive. I think there are differences in different groups. Perhaps IQ tests don’t test what blacks are good at and perhaps schools don’t account for this when teaching.
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ANN
“Why are there so few blacks in math, science and engineering? ”
********
We are not as few as YOU’d like to think. Yet there would be many more of us if not for well entrenched (white) RACIST social/economic/educational structures, systems and policies at work.
This blog site does well in uncovering what much of these evils are. You should read it!
You’re absolutely correct about their being differences in different groups, which is why no other group should imitate or look up to WHITENESS.
It is an unparalleled immoral evil that lacks positive social, spiritual, economic, sage and PEACEFUL directives. Whiteness encompasses a culture of deceit, VIOLENCE, theft and an unholy insatiable greed.
Our brains (and hearts) are more advanced than you can perceive. It’s not our fault you can’t see what you can’t see …. that intelligence goes well beyond the physical realm. Which is what whites, as a collective, surely and sadly lacks.
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Somehow, this question is not asked in Jamaica, Nigeria, or Ghana. I wonder why?
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I don’t make any claims regarding genetics vs. environment on this topic. As the abagond stated, we simply don’t have the information to parse this out, and so I don’t find it helpful to discuss at length something that cannot be settled and may not be important after all.
I would like to play a mathematical thought experiment though that involves not fixating on the average score, but looking at the distributions in a slightly different manner. I haven’t seen this mentioned, so I will risk posting in a “broken record” thread in order to bring it to light.
Let’s assume for the sake of argument, that IQ score does positively correlate with achievement in some way.
If you look at the shape of the two IQ distributions given, it is obvious that they are roughly bell-shaped (normal, Gaussian, there are a few words for it). Now, let’s say that there is a threshold IQ and a score above it indicates a greater likelihood of some desired achievement and position. For my argument that follows to work, we need only assume that this threshold is somewhere above average. For the sake of argument, let’s say that threshold is an IQ of 120.
So, put a vertical line on the graph given in the original blog post and set it at an IQ of 120. Consider the ratio of blacks and whites with IQs equal to or above this threshold line (the area of the respective curves demarcated by that line). Because of the ramped shape of the curves at the ends (exponentially increasing/decreasing in slope as one moves toward the mean), you see that what seem like small increases in the average score of blacks relative to whites will vastly change this ratio. This is due to the shape of the curves. This, of course, is all predicated on believing IQ is a thing and that it matters. I’m merely assuming it does for a moment.
The larger point I’m trying to make is that what would seem like small increases due to modified environment might pay off big time in terms of what we see in society, if you buy into the idea of some threshold for certain jobs. When we view data like this, it is easy to fixate on the difference in the averages only. It is often informative to take the data from another angle.
A weird corollary to this is if the number of people above a threshold is important, then the human species might be better off if our overall curve were more spread out (had more variability and appeared flattened and less peaked around the mean value). Our species would have more people below an IQ of 40 but also more with an IQ above 160. So, we’d possibly have more great inventors or whatever running around, and that might be preferable. I don’t think it would be good if all of us were right at the mean (one big spike), if that mean stayed where it is at now.
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A lot of excuses. The gap remains over the generations. There are no Black Winners of Nobel Prizes for Physics, Chemistry, Sciences, No Black Millennium Prize Winners, No Black Fields Prize Winners. For those who think there are no differences between human races, spend a day with Tribal Australian Aboriginals. Achievement Gaps confirm the tests. Asians with an Average IQ of 107 are dominating everywhere. Jews with an average IQ of 115 run off with all the measures of achievement. African Americans run off with a murder rate 7 to 8 times the rest of the population. The children of Middle Class African American Professionals don’t score as highly as the children of lower class poverty class whites. The facts stare you in the face, the inability to deal with them is not a sign of intelligence,
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@Leeada:
Feel good about yourself now. It seems that white folk need this type of ego boosting in order to feel good about themselves. I have indeed dealt with the fact that I am inferior intellectually and have decided to respond to white racist such as yourself in a terse and mocking manner. Here’s a crudity for you; blow it out you hole!
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In my perception of aceivement, black Americans have built the foundation of culture in America…what could be more higher leval than that? If you want to just sluff that off and pretend it isnt true, that doesnt change the truth one iota
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The three point deficit in black children raised by white parents could be caused by poor prenatal conditions, e.g. the poor nutrition or drug abuse of the black bio mom (who was likely young, unmarried, impoverished, and in over her head). Even sperm and egg quality could be affected by lifestyle factors like family diet and chemical exposure.
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Since the first IQ tests were established, their first speculation was that of a strong categorization of people, according to their educational and social establishment. Most of the IQ tests focused on investigating the various race intelligence, rather than focusing on cultural and educational reasons that suggested a higher intellect. These tests lacked in valid ‘fair-test’ variables as they were standardized with white children whose backgrounds included similar lifestyle experiences.
In Figure 15, the line-graph shows a series of discrepancies between black and white children as well as on scientific grounds. For instance, the number of white children tested is nearly 4 times larger compared to the number of the black children. Therefore, the line graph is not scientifically valid because it is not a representative of the mean value that would have otherwise been affected when the number of children was controlled.
There are, of course, plenty of other factors contributing to mean IQ score of white and black children and that is strongly linked to the differences between the socioeconomic classes. Even rural white children tend to score below the norm (sfsu.edu, 2002).
Nowadays, there is greater effort in suggesting culture-fair intelligence tests. The norm in these tests is to introduce material, that all cultures would have taught to their children and avoid the items that in different cultural settings would have affected the total score. Culture-fair tests use objects and events that almost everyone has been introduced with, wherever socially, culturally that person may has been brought up. Another approach is to balance items so that each group’s experience is about equally sampled (sfsu.edu, 2002). Nevertheless, there is still no culture-fair standard intelligence test available, but the most recent intelligence tests are by far fairer compared to those initially introduced a century ago and they are still advancing with more culture-fair amendments (e.g. Wechsler IV- 2003, instead of Wechsler III-1991).
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Alfred Binet created IQ test’s to see which children weren’t profiting from the Parisian school system, not so that they could be labeled stupid but so new educational programs could be created to help those children.
Intelligence isn’t some innate unchangeable gift. People can always become more intelligent with hard work. People aren’t born good at math, science, reading, etc. You have to put in the time and effort. Men aren’t naturally better at math and science than women the same goes for whites and blacks. Women and blacks are both hindered by an educational system that pushes these stereotypes instead of focusing on educating students equally.
Female students are pushed into less demanding math and science classes just as African-Americans are pushed into less challenging academic courses. It they aren’t being equally challenged how are they expected to learn as much.
Schools are too focused on graduating students instead of educating them so they push students into easy academic paths.
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I think stereotype threat needs to be considered. I participated in a study in elementary school in which an IQ test was administered by a black woman at the start of the year and a white man and the end and my IQ dropped. Given practice effects of anything it should have risen so who administers the test is just as important as what is on the test. I think having seen a professional black woman mitigated racial and gender stereotypes. I also think part of the issue is that structural inequality can impact brain development. We all know about food deserts and lack of affordable nutrition in many black communities and nutrition during pregnancy greatly impacts IQ potential. Some studies have shown that nutritional deficits can account for as many as 6 to 10 IQ points. Maternal stress can also help to determine the IQ of a person and being a pregnant woman can be stressful let alone a pregnant black woman. If we factor in racism, diet, stress, an stereotype threat the numbers should be on par. To me this is the legacy of racism and structural inequality rather than some deficiency in black culture or black DNA.
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Abagond,
“Now know this: the IQs of twins separated at birth are different by only 6 points or so. So whether you grew up rich or poor, went to good schools or bad, it will only affect your IQ by about six points.”
By reduction to absurdity, it seems that
education only affects IQ by six points.
My IQ would only be six points lower if I never went to school. Is that what this means?
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Here are some of those uneducated “Low I.Q” Africans playing/singing Beethoven in the Congo… in German.
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lROK5pu5jxg)
I wonder if you could get a comparable group of intellectuals at a Nascar event to learn German symphony in their spare time?
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@ Solesearch
Not just education but any non-genetic influence.
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So either that assertion is false or IQ tests don’t measure intelligence.
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Black people perform worse on IQ tests because they go to worse schools. Middle class black kids go to worse schools than middle class whites because they still live in neighborhoods with high poverty levels. Segregation(racism) is the cause. The affect of racism(segregation) could be mitigated if the funding for schools wasn’t based on property taxes(income). Equal funding for schools is thwarted by racism.
The reason for the gap in IQ is pretty obvious for anyone who wants to see it.
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“No one knows what causes the Flynn Effect, but it shows up in the very part of the IQ test that blacks do badly in: the reasoning part.”
Flynn himself sees it as explained by abstract thought. No one is born with the ability to do abstract thinking, the ability to reason and analyze. This is a learned behavior. It has to be taught and so is highly dependent on the rates and quality of education. The rates and quality of education have been slower to improve for minorities than for whites.
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White Education:
(m.youtube.com/watch?v=ygSvVhbaxw0&itct=CDkQpDAYACITCMaY8qqRvcACFUwifgod8DYASFIPV2hpdGUgZWR1Y2F0aW9u&client=mv-google&gl=US&hl=en)
Black Geniuse:
(m.youtube.com/watch?v=W-oV_S5QjRo&itct=CB4QpDAiEwitu8fZkb3AAhUCYn4KHU5xACcyC2M0LXZpZGVvcy11WhhVQ1N3cDhYSC1JMmNHdWh2UEIwX19ib1E%3D&hl=en&gl=US&client=mv-google)
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Kiwi – I’m glad to see someone explain the problem with twin studies. There are some great discussions about that topic in books I’ve read in recent years. Twin studies don’t show what most people think they show.
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Just look at the achievements or lack of achievements by the various races.
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Christoph von Kahler, READ THE THREAD, Dummy.
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actually, twin studies are bogus anyway.
Bouchard and co. failed to realize several bits of damning data to the public.
for example, MZA and DZA twins failed to exhibit a statistically significant difference on FIQ and the Raven’s.
to illustrate the significance of this factoid:
The classical twin design compares the similarity of monozygotic (identical) and dizygotic (fraternal) twins. If identical twins are considerably more similar than fraternal twins (which is found for most traits), this implicates that genes play an important role in these traits
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_study
and so if the opposite is true….
and in most cases the twins weren’t reared far apart at all. indeed, when one just looks at twins reared in nearby towns the correlation drops to .42!
behavioral genetics IS astrology and so is HBD.
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that is *release.
and i should say, they didn’t come to light until many many years later, after the media deluge.
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Another low IQ African.
(https://vilcek.org/prizes/prize-recipients/ibrahim-cisse/)
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