As sometimes happens, one of my favorite online forums brought up the issue of IQ tests, and how they show black Americans (and even worse, black Africans) as a class score lower than whites:

But male/female differences are insignificant compared to the real hot potato: differences in the mean IQ of racial and ethnic groups. These differences are real and they are large enough to have severe impact in the real world. In previous blog entries I’ve mentioned the one-standard-deviation advantage of Ashkenazic Jews over gentile whites; that’s roughly fifteen points of IQ. Pacific-rim Asians (Chinese, Japanese, Koreans etc.) are also brighter on average by a comparable margin. So, oddly enough, are ethnic Scots — though not their close kin the Irish. Go figure…

And the part that, if you are a decent human being and not a racist bigot, you have been dreading: American blacks average a standard deviation lower in IQ than American whites at about 85. And it gets worse: the average IQ of African blacks is lower still, not far above what is considered the threshold of mental retardation in the U.S. And yes, it’s genetic; g seems to be about 85% heritable, and recent studies of effects like regression towards the mean suggest strongly that most of the heritability is DNA rather than nurturance effects.

I am always amazed when this topic comes up. Someone produces facts that blacks (or other racial groups) have lower IQ, or perform worse on various tests, and then everyone jumps on that person for making such a statement. Generally the responses break down into these areas:

1. The test is culturally biased, is designed by a bunch of upper-middle-class white males, and cannot be trusted to reliably test intelligence or other categories. Many tests and researchers are actually racist, and are pushing some ulterior political goal.

2. The poor showing on the test isn’t an intrinsic, genetic disability in a certain race, they are purely environmental. If the black man was wealthy, went to good schools, lived in safe communities and had proper support he’d score just as well as anyone else.

3. The tests don’t matter, and are merely used as justification for racism and discrimination. Whether they are true or not, to talk about it only leads to bad consequences. People should be accepted and respected because they are people, not because they can get a good score on a test.

4. Sure they may have lower IQ, but they have many other positive skills and qualities in other areas and should be valued and respected for those.

To these people who make these arguments I say: You are right. I agree 100%. All the above arguments describe part of the problem that leads to these test results.

What baffles me is when these same exact people blindly accept data showing youth to be inferior, or less mature, or less rational, or dumber, or anything else. When I make the EXACT same arguments as those above, then I get yelled at for being some crazy kid who doesn’t know what I’m talking about.

So which is it? Are intelligence tests, and rationality tests and such inaccurate measures of a person’s worth (young/old & white/black) and should be discarded along with the discredited racial science of a century ago? Or are blacks and youth truly inferior because the tests say so?

Because frankly, if you can look at data showing one group of people (blacks) is less smart and say it is biased and doesn’t matter, and yet look at data showing of another group of people (youth) is less smart and say it is 100% correct and provides justification for laws X, Y, Z, then I think it is your ability to think clearly and reason competently that should be examined.

This is a glaring contradiction that many people haven’t had the courage to address. If environmental factors and biased tests can produce results saying Blacks are, on average, less intelligent than whites, couldn’t it be a possibility that environmental factors and biased tests are the reasons behind a lot of these “studies” and “facts” that show youth are less rational than adults?

Why are people afraid to accept that possibility?

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 24th, 2005 at 3:13 pm and is filed under Youth Rights. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.