Talk:Race and intelligence/unstable version
{{Recentism}} {{totally-disputed}} {{worldwide}}
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Race and intelligence are broad terms with many meanings that are often used to describe and measure human beings. The possibility of a relationship between race and intelligence has been a topic of considerable speculation, study, and debate, especially since the 19th century.[1] The contemporary debate focuses on the nature, causes, and importance of racial and ethnic differences in intelligence test scores and other measures of cognitive ability. In the 19th and early 20th centuries research on race and intelligence was often used to argue that one race was superior to another, justifying poor outcomes and treatment for the "inferior race".[2] Some early opinions about the differences among races grew out of stereotypes about non-whites developed during the period of colonialism and slavery.[3][4][5][6]
Modern theories and research on race and intelligence are often grounded in two controversial assumptions:
- the social categories of race and ethnicity are concordant with genetic categories, such as biogeographic ancestry.
- Intelligence is quantitatively measurable (see psychometrics) by modern tests and is dominated by a unitary general cognitive ability.
Much of the evidence currently cited is based on IQ testing in the United States. There is much less data from other nations, in particular the developing world, and conclusions from the US data cannot automatically be generalized to the world as a whole. While the distributions of IQ scores among different racial-ethnic groups in the US overlap and often have a comparable range, groups differ in where their members cluster along the IQ scale.[7] Similar clustering has been reported with related variables, such as school achievement, reaction time, and brain size.[8] Most variation in IQ in the U.S. occurs within individual families, not between races.[9] However, even small differences in average IQ at the group level might theoretically have large effects on social outcomes.[who?]
Several hypotheses have been proposed to explain why average IQ varies among racial-ethnic groups. Certain environmental factors, such as nutrition, are thought to moderate IQ in children,[10] and other influences have been hypothesized, including education level, richness of the early home environment, and other social, cultural, or economic factors. The primary focus of the scientific debate is whether group IQ differences also reflect a genetic component. Hereditarianism hypothesizes that a genetic contribution to intelligence could include genes linked to neuron structure or function, brain size or metabolism, or other physiological differences which could vary with biogeographic ancestry.
The findings of this field have engendered significant controversy. Press coverage has given considerable positive attention to theories of genetic racial differences in intelligence even though there is no consensus among researchers regarding their validity.[11] Upon publication, The Bell Curve, a controversial book that asserted that the gap in black and white IQ scores was, in part, genetic, received a great deal of positive publicity, including cover stories in Newsweek The New Republic, and The New York Times Book Review. Still, few strong propionates of the genetic theories of differences in intelligence do not think that press coverage has been positive enough. For example, media opinion of the role of genetic and environmental factors in explaining individual and group differences in IQ was studied in 1988 by conservative researchers Mark Snyderman and Stanley Rothman. They found it to differ from the opinion of mainstream experts.[12]
Some critics question the fairness and validity of cognitive testing and racial categorization, as well as the reliability of the studies and the motives of the authors, on both sides. This has included accusations of bias based on the political ideals of the researchers or the funding agencies, such as the Pioneer Fund. Some critics fear the misuse of the research, question its utility, or feel that comparing the intelligence of racial groups is itself unethical. The disparity in average IQ among racial groups does not mean that all members of one group are more intelligent than all members of another. Robert A. Gordon, a Pioneer Fund media critic, ranking group averages "high" to "low" is not the same things as moral ranking from "good" to "bad" or an overall ranking of "superior" to "inferior".[13] The conclusions of a few researchers: that racial groups in the US vary in average IQ scores, and the hypothesis that a genetic component may be involved, have led to heated academic debates that have spilled over into the public sphere.
Observations about race and intelligence also have important applications for critics of the media portrayal of different races. Stereotypes in media such as books, music, film, and television can reenforce old racist ideas and may influence the perceived opportunities for success in academics for minority students.[14][15]
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Background information
History
The Moors speculated that Europeans might be congenitally incapable of abstract thought. By the 19th century most Europeans probably believed that they were congenitally superior to Africans in intellectual skills. In the 19th and early 20th century research on race and intelligence was often used to confirm that one race was 'superior' to another. Francisco Gil-White, author of Resurrecting Racism: The Modern Attack on Black People Using Phony Science and Stephen Jay Gould author of The Mismeasure of Man have suggested that some modern research has similar motives. Because the Atlantic slave trade raised moral questions from its inception scientific theories about the mental capacities of Black people were provided to justify the enslavement of Africans. Scientific arguments about the mental inferiority of Black people were instrumental in keeping slavery alive as in institution in the United States. It was widely regarded that Black people lacked the mental capacity to handle freedom. The writings of Sir Francis Galton, a British psychologist, spurred interest in the study of mental abilities, particularly as they relate to heredity and eugenics. Galton estimated from his field observations in Africa that the African people were 'two grades' below Anglo-Saxons' position in the normal frequency distribution of general mental ability his work was seen as scientific validation of Africans' mental inferiority compared with Anglo-Saxons.
The opinion that there are differences in the brain sizes and brain structures of different racial and ethnic groups was widely held and studied during the 19th century and early 20th century.[9] Average ethnic and racial group differences in IQ were first directly observed when analyzing the data from standardized mental tests administered on large scales during World War I.
The association of hereditarianism with Nazi Germany created an modern academic environment that has been very skeptical of suggestions that there are racial or ethnic differences in measures of intellectual or academic ability and that these differences are primarily determined by genetic factors. In 1961, the psychologist Henry Garrett coined the term equalitarian dogma to describe the then politically fashionable view that there were no race differences in intelligence, or if there were, they were purely the result of environmental factors. Reports on Jensen's article appeared in Time, Newsweek, Life, U.S. News & World Report, and The New York Times Magazine. Press attention returned to the issue of race and intelligence in 1994 with the publication of The Bell Curve, which included two chapters on the subject of racial difference in intelligence and related life outcomes. In response to The Bell Curve, Stephen Jay Gould updated The Mismeasure of Man in 1996. Among other things, he criticized the IQ test as a measure of intelligence, citing what he perceived as inherent racial and social biases as well as systematic flaws in the testing process.
Race
Racial distinctions are generally made on the basis of skin color, facial features, inferred ancestry, national origin and self-identification in the United States. In an ongoing debate, some geneticists argue race is neither a meaningful concept nor a useful heuristic device,[16] and even that genetic differences among groups are biologically meaningless,[17] on the basis that more genetic variation exists within such races than among them,[18] and that racial traits overlap without discrete boundaries.[19] Concordant with this, a survey of cultural and physical anthropologists done in 1999[20] found that the concept of race was rejected by 69% of physical anthropologists and 80% of cultural anthropologists. Other geneticists, in contrast, argue that categories of self-identified race/ethnicity or biogeographic ancestry are both valid and useful,[21] that these categories correspond with clusters inferred from multilocus genetic data,[22] and that this correspondence implies that genetic factors might contribute to unexplained phenotypic variation between groups.[23]
Worldwide, human populations are geographically bounded into five less than perfectly distinct continental areas: the Americas, Eurasia (including Europe, North Africa and West Asia), East Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the Pacific Islands (including Australia).[24] At least in the United States, self-identified racial labels correspond to geographic regions of genetic ancestry, with only a small number of individuals showing genetic cluster membership different from their self-identified race/ethnicity.[25] People labeled Blacks have most of their ancestors from sub-Saharan Africa, Whites from Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, and East Asians from the north-western Pacific Rim. Hispanics form a genetically diverse group that includes many recent U.S. immigrants of mixed ancestry, and are more often called an ethnic group.
It is well known that many alleles vary in frequency across (and within) human populations. Most of this variation is selectively neutral, but a significant number show evidence of recent positive selection.[26] These include genes involved in brain development and other neuronal functions, which have variants that have spread to high frequencies under selective pressure and now occur in substantially different frequencies in different global populations.[27] The actual functions of these genes, and their effect, if any, on IQ is unknown. (Discussed below.)
The political, social and cultural structure of the United States is still weighted by race. It was only in the 1960s that racial discrimination became illegal in many areas of public and private life, including employment and housing, and some consider discrimination to remain prevalent. The national and state governments of the United States employ racial categorization in the census, law enforcement, and innumerable other ways. Many political organizations intend to represent the interests of specific racial groups. See the articles Race and Race (U.S. Census) for further discussion.
Race as a social construct
Robert J. Sternberg, Elena L. Grigorenko, and Kenneth K. Kidd write that the overwhelming portion of the literature on intelligence, race, and genetics is based on folk taxonomies rather than scientific analysis. Race, they write fits into no known genetic pattern. Race is a socially constructed concept, not a biological one. This concept of race serves a social rather than a biological purposes. Different types of parentage have, at various times and places, given rise to racial labeling (e.g., “Aryan race,” “German race,” and “Jewish race”). Hence race is a highly inconsistent concept. In contemporary North American society, Blacks and coloreds are considered to be one “race,” since any individual who possess any degree of nonwhiteness is automatically grouped in the Black category.[28] (see: One drop rule) In other countries different racial grouping are often employed.
Intelligence testing
Intelligence is most commonly measured using IQ tests. These tests are often geared to be good measures of the psychometric variable g (for general intelligence factor), and other tests that measure g (for example, the Armed Forces Qualifying Test and the SAT) also serve as measures of cognitive ability.
All such tests are often called "intelligence tests," though the use of the term "intelligence" is itself controversial. It is clear, however, that performance in these tests correlates with performance in similar life tasks (school grades and to a lower degree college grades). The correlation with many real-world results is lower. For example, while the correlation of IQ with job performance is strong, income is modestly correlated and accumulated wealth is only weakly correlated. The hereditary transmission of wealth via IQ is near zero. As commonly used, "IQ test" denotes any test of cognitive ability, and "IQ" is used as shorthand for scores on tests of cognitive ability. Some critics question the validity of all IQ testing or claim that there are aspects of "intelligence" not reflected in IQ tests. Historically, criticisms of the validity of IQ testing focused primarily on questions of "test bias", which has many related meanings. Several conclusions about tests of cognitive ability are now largely accepted by intelligence researchers:[29]
- IQ scores measure many, but not all of the qualities that people mean by intelligent or smart (for example, IQ does not measure creativity, wisdom, or personality)
- IQ scores are fairly stable over much of a person's life
- IQ tests are predictive of school and job performance, to a degree that does not significantly vary by socio-economic or racial-ethnic background
- For people living in the prevailing conditions of the developed world, cognitive ability is substantially heritable, and while the impact of family environment on the IQ of children is substantial, after adolescence this effect becomes difficult to detect.
Research
Race and intelligence research tries to measure the gaps between different races or ethnicities and to find the causes for these gaps. The gaps found between the average measures of races or ethnicities varies depending on methods used for racial grouping[citation needed], the method and setting used to test intelligence,[31][dubious – discuss] the health and economic situation of the test takers[citation needed], the interplay between the culture of the person taking the test and the culture of those who made the test[citation needed], and the period in history when the test was performed.[citation needed]{{POV-statement}}
Test data
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The modern controversy surrounding intelligence and race focuses on the results of IQ studies conducted during the second half of the 20th century, mainly in the United States and some other industrialized nations. In almost every testing situation where tests were administered and evaluated correctly, a difference of approximately one standard deviation was observed in the US between the mean IQ score of Blacks and Whites. Attempted world-wide compilations of average IQ by race generally place Ashkenazi Jews at the top, followed by East Asians, Whites, other Asians, Arabs, Blacks and Australian Aborigines. See IQ and the Wealth of Nations for an attempted compilation of average IQ for different nations and a discussion of associated measurement problems. The IQ scores vary greatly among different nations for the same group. Blacks in Africa score much lower than Blacks in the US. Some reports indicate that the Black–White gap is smaller in the UK than in the U.S.[4] Many studies also show large differences in IQ between different groups of Whites. For example, in Northern Ireland the IQ gap between Protestants and Catholics are as large as that between Blacks and Whites in the US. For example, in Israel, large gaps in test scores and achievement separate Ashkenazi Jews from other groups such as the Sephardi.[5]
Gaps are seen in other tests of cognitive ability or aptitude, including university admission exams such as the SAT and GRE as well as employment tests for corporate settings and the military (Roth et al. 2001). Measures of school achievement correlate fairly well with IQ, especially in younger children. In the United States, achievement tests find that by 12th grade Black students are performing on average only as well as White and Asian students in 8th grade; Hispanic students do only slightly better than Blacks. Whether the gaps are narrowing or not is debated.
Explanations
The consensus among intelligence researchers is that IQ differences between individuals of the same race reflect (1) real, (2) functionally/socially significant, and (3) substantially genetic differences in the general intelligence factor. A consensus also exists for the view that average IQ differences between races reflect (1) real and (2) significant differences in the same g factor.[6] However, it is a matter of debate whether IQ differences between races in the U.S. are (3a) entirely environmental or (3b) partly genetic. Several published consensus statements agree that the large differences between the average IQ scores of Blacks and Whites in the U.S. cannot be attributed to biases in test construction, nor can they be explained just by simple differences in socio-economic status. It should be noted that most research has been done in the US and a few other developed nations. That research cannot directly be generalized to the world as a whole. Blacks in the US do not constitute a random sample from Africa, and environmental conditions differ among nations. IQ tests done in developing countries are likely to have been affected by conditions associated with poverty that are common in the developing world, such as nutritional deficiencies and the impact of diseases (e.g., HIV, anemia or chronic parasites that may affect IQ test scores).
Regarding the IQ gaps in the U.S., it has also been suggested that Black culture disfavors academic achievement and fosters an environment that is damaging to IQ (Boykin, 1994). Likewise, it is argued that a persistence of racism reinforces this negative effect. John Ogbu (1978, 1994) has developed a hypothesis that the condition of being a "caste-like minority" affects motivation and achievement, depressing IQ. Many anthropologists have argued that intelligence is a cultural category; some cultures emphasize speed and competition more than others, for example. Even proponents of the view that the IQ gap is caused partly by genetic differences recognize that non-genetic factors are likely involved. Non-genetic biological factors that affect IQ have been proposed. Increased rates of low birth weight babies and lower rates of breastfeeding in Blacks as compared to Whites are some factors of many that have been proposed to affect the IQ gap. The Flynn effect is often cited as evidence that average IQ scores have changed greatly and rapidly, for reasons poorly understood, noting that average IQ in the US may have been below 75 before the start of this effect, and thus some argue that the IQ gap between races could change in the future or is changing, especially if the effect started earlier for Whites.
Arthur Jensen and others have concluded that the IQ gap is partly genetic. They argue that while plausible environmental explanation for the lower mean IQ in Blacks in the U.S. can be offered in many cases, these explanations are less capable of explaining the higher average IQ of East Asians than Whites, and that overall the culture-only hypothesis is not "progressive" but "degenerating" (see Lakatos; Rushton & Jensen, 2005). To support these claims, they most often cite: (1) worldwide Black-White-East Asian differences in IQ, reaction time, and brain size; (2) correlation between the extent to which IQ subtests measure g, the magnitude of Black-White-East Asian average IQ differences on those subtests (called Spearman's hypothesis), and measures of those subtests' heritability; and (3) the rising heritability of IQ with age (within races) and the disappearance by adulthood of shared environmental effects on IQ (e.g., family income, education, and home environment). Other evidence, such as transracial adoption, racial admixture studies, "life-history" traits, and evolutionary explanations are also debated. The critics have counter arguments to all of this and a definite answer may not be possible until intelligence is directly linked to specific genes.
Interpretations
Small differences in IQ, while relatively unimportant at the level of an individual, could theoretically have large effects for the United States population as a whole. As a demonstration of these possible effects, Herrnstein and Murray 1994 used a resampling technique to argue that, all else equal, a simulated 3-point drop in average IQ had little effect on factors like marriage, divorce, or unemployment. However, their study found that a simulated drop in IQ from 100 to 97-points increased poverty rates by 11% and the proportion of children living in poverty by 13%. In the simulation, similar rises occurred in rates of children born to single mothers, men in jail, high school drop-out, and men prevented from working due to health-related problems. In contrast, when they simulated an increase in average IQ of 3-points to 103, they calculated that poverty rates fell 25%, children living in poverty fell 20%, and high school drop-out rates fell 28%.[36] Professors James Heckman and Nicholas Lemann, as well as several other scholars and scientists have the criticized validity and reliability of the data which led to the aforementioned findings by Herrnstein and Murray 1994 .[37][38]
According to Murray and Herrnsteins' Bell Curve, when IQ is statistically controlled for, the probability of having a college degree or working in a high-IQ occupation is higher for Blacks than Whites. Controlling for IQ shrinks the income gap from thousands to a few hundred dollars. Controlling for IQ cuts differential poverty by about three-quarters and unemployment differences by half. However, controlling for IQ has little effect on differential marriage rates. For many other factors, controlling for IQ eliminates the differences between Whites and Hispanics, but the Black-White gap remains (albeit smaller).
Some people have attributed differential economic growth between nations to differences in the intelligence of their populations. One example is Richard Lynn's IQ and the Wealth of Nations. The book is sharply criticized in the peer-reviewed paper The Impact of National IQ on Income and Growth.[39] Another peer-reviewed paper, Intelligence, Human Capital, and Economic Growth: An Extreme-Bounds Analysis, finds a strong connection between intelligence and economic growth.[40] Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel instead argues that historical differences in economic and technological development for different areas can be explained by differences in geography (which affects factors like population density and spread of new technology) and differences in available crops and domesticatable animals.[41]
Media portrayal
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Race and intelligence are sometimes portrayed as related in media. People of various races have been portrayed as more or less intelligent in media such as films, books, and newspapers. Likewise, reporting on research into race and intelligence has been criticized: either for giving scientific theories of race too much credit, or for rejecting the theories of some researchers in the name of racial harmony.
Critics of contemporary media have highlighted portrayals of minorities as less intelligent[43] (or in the case of Asians, on occasion more intelligent[44]) in films and movies. Entman and Rojeki assert that media images of Blacks may have profound effects on the perceptions by both Blacks and Whites about black intellectual potential.[45]
Even so-called positive images of Black people can lead to stereotypes about intelligence. In Darwin's Athletes: how sport has damaged Black America and preserved the myth of race John Hoberman writes that the prominence of African-American athletes encourages a de-emphasis on academic achievement in black communities.[46]Film director Spike Lee explains that these images have negative impacts "In my neighborhood, we looked up to athletes, guys who got the ladies, and intelligent people," said Lee. "[Now] If you're intelligent, you're called a white guy or girl."[47]
Blacks are not the only ethnic group in the US to be stereotyped as stupid. Shortly after the large waves of immigration in the 19th century and number of immigrant groups such as the Irish were stereotyped as being more closely related to apes or dogs[48] and therefore intellectually inferior. This changed after the definition of "white" was expanded to include the Irish.[49] Unlike other racial stereotypes of intelligence, the 19th century psudo-scientific ideas about of Irish stupidity and inferiority are not supported by most hereditarian proponents of modern race research. Other stereotypes, of Blacks, Jews and Asians endure to this day[50] as do the findings of Hereditarian researchers about these groups.
Other important aspects of the media portrayal of race and intelligence include recent books asserting a genetic cause to group differences, as well as various surveys and consensus statements made by various groups of scientists.
Controversies
Utility of research
Theories of race and intelligence have been challenged on grounds of their utility. Critics want to know what purpose such research could serve and why it has been an intense an area of focus for a few researchers. Some defend the research, saying it has egalitarian aims or that it is pure science, others say that the true motivation for the research is the same as that of the eugenics movement and other forms of scientific racism.[51][52] Even supporters of intelligence research have described such research as analogous to "working with dynamite" or "dangerous play" in sports.[53]
As to whether research in this area is desirable, John C. Loehlin wrote in 1992, "Research on racial differences in intelligence is desirable if the research is appropriately motivated, honestly done, and adequately communicated." [emphasis original] Defenders of the research suggest that both scientific curiosity and a desire to draw benefits from the research are appropriate motivations. Researchers such as Richard Lynn have suggested that conclusions from the research can help make political decisions, such as the type of educational opportunities and expectations of achievement policy makers should have for people of different races. Researchers such as Charles Murray have used their conclusions to criticize social programs based on racial equality that fail in Murray's eyes to recognize the realities of racial differences.
Sociologist and demographer Reanne Frank says that some race and intelligence research has been abused "The most malignant are the "true believers," who subscribe to the typological distinctions that imply hierarchical rankings of worth across different races. Although this group remains small, the members' work is often widely publicized and well known (e.g., Herrnstein and Murray 1994; Rushton 1991)"[54]
Potential for bias
Proponents of genetic explanations of race/IQ correlation have often been criticized both of scientific misconduct and of their intimate links with groups that have historic ties to Nazis and eugenics of the early 19th century, such as the Pioneer Fund. The Pioneer Fund has been characterized by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group.
Proponents of genetic explanations of race/IQ correlation have in turn accused their critics of suppressing scientific debate in the name of political correctness. They claim harassment and interference with both their work and funding.
Policy implications
- See also: Intelligence and public policy
Public policy implications of IQ and race research are one of the greatest sources of controversy surrounding this issue. Regardless of the source of the gap, most educators agree that it must be addressed. They often advocate equitable funding for education.[55][56]
Some proponents of a genetic interpretation of the IQ gap, such as Rushton and Jensen 2005a and Gottfredson 2005b , have sometimes argued that their interpretation does not in itself demand any particular policy response: while a conservative/libertarian commentator[57] may feel the results justify, for example, reductions in affirmative action, a liberal commentator may argue from a Rawlsian point of view (that genetic advantages are undeserved and unjust) for substantial affirmative action.[58] Since all races have representatives at all levels of the IQ curve, this means any policy based on low IQ affects members of all races.
According to the "Mainstream Science on Intelligence" statement published in Intelligence in 1997:
The research findings neither dictate nor preclude any particular social policy, because they can never determine our goals. They can, however, help us estimate the likely success and side-effects of pursuing those goals via different means.[59]
While not specifically race-related, policies focused on geographical regions or nations may have disproportionate influences on certain racial groups and on cognitive development. Differences in health care, nutrition, regulation of environmental toxins, and geographic distribution of diseases and control strategies between the developing world and developed nations have all been subjects of policies or policy recommendations (see health and nutrition policies relating to intelligence).
Finally, germinal choice technology may one day be able to select or change directly alleles found to influence intelligence or racially identifying traits (such as skin color; see gene SLC24A5), making them susceptible to biotechnological intervention.[60]
End material
See also
- Ashkenazi intelligence
- Brain to body mass ratio
- Craniometry
- Hominid intelligence
- Neuroscience and intelligence
- Height and intelligence
- Race and crime
- Sex and intelligence
- Scientific racism
- The Mismeasure of Man
Notes
- ^ Race as Biology Is Fiction, Racism as a Social Problem Is Real: Anthropological and Historical Perspectives on the Social Construction of Race Audrey Smedley and Brian D. Smedley
- ^ Social Darwinism, Scientific Racism, and the Metaphysics of Race Rutledge M. Dennis The Journal of Negro Education, Vol. 64, No. 3, Myths and Realities: African Americans and the Measurement of Human Abilities (Summer, 1995), pp. 243-252
- ^ A History of Race/ism Produced By: Tim McCaskell Toronto District School Board
- ^ Jalata, Asafa 1954- "Race and Ethnicity in East Africa (review)" Africa Today - Volume 48, Number 4, Winter 2001, pp. 134-136 Indiana University Press
- ^ The Invention of the White Race By Chantal Mouffe, Theodore (Theodore W.) Allen
- ^ Media, Stereotypes and the Perpetuation of Racism in Canada by James Crawford
Indians were seen as a homogeneous group of savages despite the fact that individual groups varied extensively and had several well developed social systems. Black people were also portrayed as savage, uncivilized and having low intelligence. By creating these social constructs, expansion into North America was justified.
- ^ Reynolds et al. 1987 ; Roth et al. 2001 ; Rushton 2000 ; Shuey 1958 ; Herrnstein and Murray 1994 ; Lynn 1991a . For samples of individual studies showing similar results, see the National Collaborative Perinatal Project, reported by Broman et al. 1987 ; the Minnesota Transracial Adoption Study reported by Weinberg et al. 1992 ; also Lynn 1977a , Lynn 1977b , Lynn 1982 , Lynn 1987 , Lynn 1991a ; Lynn et al. 1991 ; Lynn and Hampson 1986a Lynn and Hampson 1986b ; Lynn et al. 1987a , Lynn et al. 1987b ; Lynn et al. 1988 ; Lynn and Holmshaw 1990 ; Lynn and Shigehasa 1991 ; Montie and Fagan 1988 ; Rushton 1997 ; Rushton and Jensen 2003 ; Rushton et al. 2003 ; Notcutt 1950 ; Jensen 1993 ; Jensen and Reynolds 1982 ; Peoples et al. 1995 . For scientific consensus statements see Gottfredson 1997a and Neisser et al. 1996 .
- ^ The gap shows up before age 3 on most standardized tests after matching for variables such as maternal education. Other clustering: Thernstrom and Thernstrom 2003 ; Roth et al. 2001 ; Jensen 1993 ; Jensen and Whang 1994 ; Lynn and Holmshaw 1990 ; Lynn and Shigehasa 1991 ; Ho et al. 1980a , Ho et al. 1980b ; Harvey_et_al. 1994 ; Rushton 1991 . The East-Asian/White/Black difference in average IQ can be measured in very young children. For example, a one standard deviation gap is observed in Black and White 3-year olds matched for gender, birth order, and maternal education (Peoples et al. 1995 ). Lynn 1996 found that by age 6 the average IQ of East Asian children is 107, 103 for White children and 89 for Black children. Broman et al. 1987 found that the same trichotomy in brain size and IQ held at 4 months, 1 year, and 7 years of age.
- ^ Jensen 1998 reports on the distribution of IQ within and between families, social classes, and races using a technique to partition variance called ANOVA. The average IQ difference between two siblings (within families) is about 12 points, compared to 17 points for two strangers and 20 points for one White and one Black American. Jensen attributes the large differences within families to the high heritability of IQ and the small influence of family environment.
- ^ Whether or not this carries over to adulthood remains to be investigated.
- ^ HEREDITY, ENVIRONMENT, AND RACE DIFFERENCES IN IQ: A Commentary on Rushton and Jensen (2005) Richard E. Nisbett Psychology, Public Policy, and Law June 2005 Vol. 11, No. 2, 302-310
- ^ See: Snyderman and Rothman (study)
- ^ Some researchers[citation needed] explicitly reject the latter terms as inaccurately global in connotation and insensitive, but the terms are used by some critics (Gordon 1997b ,[1] p. 42).
- ^ Entman, Robert M. and Andrew Rojecki The Black Image in the White Mind: Media and Race in America 2001
- ^ Darwin's Athletes: how sport has damaged Black America and preserved the myth of race By John Milton Hoberman. ISBN 0395822920
- ^ Wilson et al. 2001 , Cooper et al. 2003 (given in Bamshad et al. 2004 's summary, p.599)
- ^ Schwartz 2001 , Stephens 2003 (given in Bamshad et al. 2004 's summary, p. 599)
- ^ It is well established that within-population genetic diversity is greatest within Sub-Saharan Africa, and decreases with distance from Africa. One study estimates that only 6.3% of the total human genetic diversity is explained by race.[2] This value is comparable to other reports which find that on average approximately 85% of genetic variation occurs within populations. In a hypothetical situation with two populations and a single gene with two alleles, this is equivalent to allele frequencies of 30% + 70% in one population and 70% + 30% in the other. Thus, using this single gene to classify individuals into populations would result in a 30% misclassification rate.
- ^ Sternberg et al. 2005 , Suzuki and Aronson 2005 , Smedley and Smedley 2005 , Helms et al. 2005 , [3]. Lewontin, for example argues that there is no biological basis for race on the basis of research indicating that more genetic variation exists within such races than between them Lewontin 1972 .
Some critics of race may not consider this a problem for race and intelligence inquiries. Jared Diamond, who praises Cavalli-Sforza's genetics research over the decades for "demolishing scientists' attempts to classify human populations into races in the same way that they classify birds and other species into races"(Diamond 2000 ), also argues "in mental ability New Guineans are probably genetically superior to Westerners" due to that intelligence was likely selected for in hunter-gatherer New Guinea societies where the challenges were tribal warfare and food procurement, compared with high population density European civilizations where the major survival pressure was on genes for resisting epidemics (Diamond 1997/99, p.21). - ^ http://www.ssc.uwo.ca/psychology/faculty/rushtonpdfs/Lieberman2001CA.pdf
- ^ Risch et al. 2002 , Bamshad 2005 . Neil Risch argues: "One could make the same arguments about sex and age! . . you can undermine any definitional system. . . In a recent study. . . we actually had a higher discordance rate between self-reported sex and markers on the X chromosome [than] between genetic structure [based on microsatellite markers] versus [racial] self-description, [which had a] 99.9% concordance. . . So you could argue that sex is also a problematic category. And there are differences between sex and gender; self-identification may not be correlated with biology perfectly. And there is sexism. And you can talk about age the same way. A person's chronological age does not correspond perfectly with his biological age for a variety of reasons, both inherited and non-inherited. Perhaps just using someone's actual birth year is not a very good way of measuring age. Does that mean we should throw it out? . . . Any category you come up with is going to be imperfect, but that doesn't preclude you from using it or the fact that it has utility" (Gitschier 2005 ).
- ^ Harpending and Rogers 2000 , Bamshad et al. 2003 , Edwards 2003 , Bamshad et al. 2004 , Tang et al. 2005 , Rosenberg et al. 2005 : "If enough markers are used... individuals can be partitioned into genetic clusters that match major geographic subdivisions of the globe".
- ^ Mountain and Risch 2004
- ^ Risch et al. 2002
- ^ Tang et al. 2005
- ^ According to a recent review by Sabeti et al. 2006 , seven large-scale studies of positive selection in the human genome have been published. The "advantageous traits" that were being selected for are mostly unknown, but some make inferences based on the known functions of those genes in the regions that show signs of selection.
- ^ Mekel-Bobrov et al. 2005 , Evans et al. 2005 , Voight et al. 2006 , Wang et al. 2005 , Harpending and Cochran 2002 . The neural dopamine gene studied in Harpending and Cochran, previously found to occur in substantially different worldwide frequencies, is also tied to behavior, with bearers displaying greater novelty-seeking behavior and being at increased risk for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. Harpending and Cochran suggest this gene "may be a model system for understanding the relationship between genetic variation and human cultural diversity," noting high frequencies in South American Indians, such as the Yanomamo (sometimes referred to as "the Fierce People"), intermediate frequencies in Europeans and Africans, and very low frequencies in East Asians and !Kung Bushmen (sometimes referred to as "the Harmless People").
See the NYTimes' "Researchers Say Human Brain Is Still Evolving" (September 8, 2005), and "Still Evolving, Human Genes Tell New Story" (March 7, 2006) for discussion of Mekel-Bobrov et al. and Evans et al., and Voight et al. - ^ Intelligence, Race, and Genetics Robert J. Sternberg, Elena L. Grigorenko, and Kenneth K. Kidd Yale University
- ^ For statements directly reporting what views are in the majority see Neisser et al. 1996 , Gottfredson 1997a , and Snyderman and Rothman 1987 . These findings are also discussed in the major handbooks, manuals, and encyclopedias on intelligence. For more detail, see the articles on IQ and intelligence.
- ^ The 1981 normalization of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale
- ^ Carraher, Carraher, and Schliemann (1985) studied a group of Brazilian street children. The investigation found that the same children who are able to do the mathematics needed to run their street businesses were often unable to do mathematics in a formal setting. See: Street Mathematics and School Mathematics By Terezinha Nunes, David William Carraher, Analucia Dias Schliemann ISBN 0521388139
- ^ Data taken from tables in review by Lynn 2006 .
- ^ Heredity April 2004, Volume 92, Number 4, Pages 359-360
- ^ The 1981 normalization of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale
- ^ Source: Social Consequences by Gottfredson
- ^ For this calculation, Herrnstein and Murray altered the mean IQ (100) of the U.S. National Longitudinal Survey of Youth's population sample by randomly deleting individuals below an IQ of 103 until the population mean reached 103. Their random deletion procedure was conducted twice and the calculated results were averaged together. Herrnstein and Murray note that their calculation ignore secondary effect. (Herrnstein_and_Murray 1994 , pp. 364-368)
- ^ Cracked Bell by Professor James Heckman in Reason (March 1995).
- ^ The Bell Curve Flattened by Nicholas Lemann in Slate (January 1996).
- ^ Thomas Volken, "The Impact of National IQ on Income and Growth."
- ^ Jones and Schneider 2005
- ^ Richard Nisbett argues in his 2004 The Geography of Thought that some of these regional differences shaped lasting cultural traits, such as the collectivism required by East Asian rice irrigation, compared with the individualism of ancient Greek herding, maritime mercantilism, and money crops wine and olive oil (pp. 34-35).
- ^ Patricia J. Williams: "Racial Ventriloquism". The Nation. June 17, 1999. Retrieved June 11, 2006.
- ^ THE PORTRAYALS OF MINORITY CHARACTERS IN ENTERTAINING ANIMATED CHILDREN’S PROGRAMS
- ^ Media Portrayals of Major League Baseball Pitchers
- ^ Entman, Robert M. and Andrew Rojecki The Black Image in the White Mind: Media and Race in America. 2001
- ^ Darwin's Athletes: how sport has damaged Black America and preserved the myth of race By John Milton Hoberman ISBN 0395822920
- ^ Spike Lee discusses racial stereotypes
- ^ Early hereditarian James Redfield's 1852 book Comparative physiognomy; or, Resemblances between men and animals saw Irishmen as dog-like.
- ^ Deconstructing Whiteness: Irish Women in Britain Mary J. Hickman, Bronwen Walter Feminist Review, No. 50, The Irish Issue: The British Question (Summer, 1995), pp. 5-19 doi:10.2307/1395487
- ^ Alien Menace
- ^ e.g., Sternberg, 2003, pp. 386-387
- ^ e.g., Sternberg, 2003, pp. 386-387
- ^ Hunt & Carlson, in press
- ^ Frank, Reanne, The Misuse of Biology in Demographic Research on Racial/Ethnic Differences: A Reply to van den Oord and Rowe, Demography - Volume 38, Number 4, November 2001, pp. 563-567
- ^ Achieving Equitable Education in Calhoun County
- ^ Educational Studies: A Jrnl of the American Educ. Studies Assoc.
- ^ For example, the policy recommendations of The Bell Curve were denounced by many.[citation needed] Herrnstein and Murray 1994 wrote: "We can imagine no recommendation for using the government to manipulate fertility that does not have dangers. But this highlights the problem: The United States already has policies that inadvertently social-engineer who has babies, and it is encouraging the wrong women. If the United States did as much to encourage high-IQ women to have babies as it now does to encourage low-IQ women, it would rightly be described as engaging in aggressive manipulation of fertility. The technically precise description of America's fertility policy is that it subsidizes births among poor women, who are also disproportionately at the low end of the intelligence distribution. We urge generally that these policies, represented by the extensive network of cash and services for low-income women who have babies, be ended. (p. 548)" Two year later the 1996 U.S. welfare reform substantially cut these programs. In a discussion of the future political outcomes of an intellectually stratified society, they stated that they: "fear that a new kind of conservatism is becoming the dominant ideology of the affluent - not in the social tradition of an Edmund Burke or in the economic tradition of an Adam Smith but ’conservatism’ along Latin American lines, where to be conservative has often meant doing whatever is necessary to preserve the mansions on the hills from the menace of the slums below. (p. 518)"Moreover, they fear that an increasing welfare will create a "custodial state": "a high-tech and more lavish version of the Indian reservation of some substantial minority of the nation’s population. They also predict increasing totalitarianism: It is difficult to imagine the United States preserving its heritage of individualism, equal rights before the law, free people running their own lives, once it is accepted that a significant part of the population must be made permanent wards of the states. (p. 526)"
- ^ Gottfredson 2005b
- ^ Gottfredson 1997a
- ^ Gregory Stock argues "current debates about whether some of the differences among ethnic and racial groups are cultural or biological will soon become irrelevant, given the coming [malleability of biological traits]" (Stock 2002 , p. 194; race and intelligence discussed on pp. 44-47).
References
External links
Collective Statements
- The Wall Street Journal: Mainstream Science on IntelligencePDF
- APA Task Force Examines the Knowns and Unknowns of Intelligence
- Statement on "Race" and Intelligence. American Anthropological Association. Adopted December 1994.
Review Papers
- James Flynn and Charles Murray debate - news summary
- June 2005 issue of Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, Vol. 11, No. 2.
- Thirty Years of Research on Race Differences in Cognitive Ability J. Philippe Rushton & Arthur R. Jensen
- There Are No Public-Policy Implications Robert J. Sternberg
- What if the Hereditarian Hypothesis is True? Linda S. Gottfredson
- Heredity, Environment, and Race Differences in IQ Richard E. Nisbett
- The Cultural Malleability of Intelligence and Its Impact on the Racial/Ethnic Hierarchy Lisa Suzuki & Joshua Aronson
- Wanted: More Race Realism, Less Moralistic Fallacy J. Philippe Rushton & Arthur R. Jensen
- Race, Genetics and IQ Richard E. Nisbett (PDF)
- The Inequality Taboo Charles Murray archived version
- The Black-White Test Score Gap (1998) online (page-image) version of ISBN 0-8157-4609-1
Others
- Crippled by Their Culture - Race doesn't hold back America's black rednecks. Nor does racism by Thomas Sowell
- Race and IQ: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 by Thomas Sowell
- The Skeptic's Dictionary entry on IQ and race
- (Skeptic Magazine): Two book reviews, by Paul R. Gross and Alondra Oubre, of Sarich’s and Miele’s book, Race: The Reality of Human Differences
- Criticism on source material of Bell Curve book
- Poverty and Brain Development in Early Childhood 1999 report
- Miscellaneous articles by Richard Lynn et al.
- Are IQ Tests Biased?
- Scholars Provide an Overview of Explanations for Black-White Test Score Gap
- School Readiness: Closing Racial and Ethnic Gaps
- La Griffe du Lion - pseudonymously released statistical analyses on this and related subjects. (Review)
- A review of the field (Jan. 2006) Kohn, Marek, "This racist undercurrent in the tide of genetic research: As taboos fall away, there's a danger that denial of racial difference will be replaced with uncritical acceptance," The Guardian.
- The Lessons of the Ashkenazim: Groups and Genes, Steven Pinker, June 2006, The New Republic.
- Are all races equally intelligent? -- Or: When is knowledge knowledge? by John J. Ray
- Black-White Gap in IQ Scores Closing, Study Finds
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