Re: Filling the vacuum

Date: 5th Mar '02

Name: John Edale

The main points in the Wall Street Journal article posted by circular ruins which are relevant to this debate are:

"8. The bell curve for whites is centered roughly around IQ 100; the bell curve for American blacks roughly around 85; and those for different subgroups of Hispanics roughly midway between those for whites and blacks. The evidence is less definitive for exactly where above IQ 100 the bell curves for Jews and Asians are centered. "

and

"14. Individuals differ in intelligence due to differences in both their environments and genetic heritage. Heritability estimates range from 0.4 to 0.8 (on a scale from 0 to 1), most thereby indicating that genetics plays a bigger role than does environment in creating IQ differences among individuals."

However there are other studies which point to genes having much less direct influence on IQ. Firstly it has been shown that average IQs for all races can change markedly from one generation to the next. The following is from a New Scientist article (The Great Leap Forward, William Dickens, New Scientist magazine, vol 170 issue 2287, 21/04/2001) :

"a worldwide survey of IQ trends over time found that the current generation outscores the previous generation by between 9 and 20 IQ points. The size and speed of these IQ gains virtually dictate an environmental explanation because genes just don't change that fast"

The article goes on to suggest that the reason environmental influences may have been underestimated in the past is that slight genetic differences between individuals from the same background can steer them into different environments :

"Take those born to be a bit taller and a bit quicker than average. When they start school, they are likely to be a bit better at, say, basketball. The advantage may be modest, but then reciprocal causation between the talent advantage and environment kicks in. Because you are better at basketball, you are likely to enjoy it more and play it more than someone who is a bit slow or short or overweight. Your genetic advantage is upgrading your environment, the amount of time you spend playing and practising. In turn, your enhanced environment upgrades your skill, so you are much more likely to be picked for your school team. There you get professional coaching, which makes you even more proficient.

So thanks to genes capitalising on the powerful multiplying effects of the feedback between talent and environment, a modest genetic advantage has turned into a huge performance advantage."

Another consideration is that negative stereotypes of how people are expected to perform on intelligence tests can have a significant effect on the results. The following is from an article entitled Pigeonholed by Robert Adler (New Scientist magazine, vol 167 issue 2258, 30/09/2000) -

"Steele has also investigated the stereotype that African Americans are intellectually inferior. He found that black college students score lower than white students on standardised tests of school achievement, aptitude and IQ, but only if they're told the tests are measuring intelligence, or if race is raised in some other way. Steele has found that he can completely erase the black-white differences on such tests by convincing students that the particular test they will take is not related to intelligence. Conversely, he can recreate the racial gap by an intervention as minor as having students indicate their race on a questionnaire."

The reason for mentioning these examples is not to try and prove that there are no differences in average IQ between races, but that the issue is far from clear, and for every finding trumpeted by the far right a counter example can be provided.

But either way the problem for racists remains the same - if issues such as IQ are treated as a deciding factor in judging the worth of individuals then race has to take second place. Whatever the average IQ of a given race there will always be individuals within it who have a higher IQ than other individuals in the best performing race.

It has been said here before that the logical conclusion of all the far right emphasis on genetics is that, if there is to be any separation between different sections of the population in terms of the rights they should have, then it would be between the smarter/more able individuals and the less gifted, regardless of skin colour.

For some reason the far right are consistently relectant to be drawn on this. The most likely explanation being that although they are courting support from the white working class they privately suspect that most of this section of society would fall into the 'less gifted' category.

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