Sharon Begley, Newsweek, April 11, 2009
Granted, the study of racial and sex differences in intelligence has not exactly covered itself in glory. There was that unfortunate incident in the mid-20th century, when British psychologist Cyril Burt apparently made up data to “prove” that genes make blacks and the poor innately less intelligent than whites and the wealthy. Later studies reaching similar conclusions were based on statistics that would have done Mark Twain (“lies, damned lies …”) proud. But does this sorry record warrant the scientific equivalent of the death penalty for such research? That’s what some scientists are arguing. In a heated debate that began in the journal Nature and spread online, they are calling for an end to research on possible links between race, gender and intelligence. “Stupid science” and “evil science” are the more polite terms being hurled. But the arguments for and against the research are not what you’d expect.
Political correctness—as in, it’s offensive and destructive to even ask if women as a group, say, are less intelligent than men—doesn’t merit more than a brief nod, thank goodness. Instead, argues neuroscientist Steven Rose of Britain’s Open University, the problem is that both race and IQ are slippery concepts. Standard measures of intelligence are ridiculously flexible. In the 1930s and 1940s, for instance, when girls kept outscoring boys, IQ tests were repeatedly adjusted to make the results turn out “right.” That calls into question what studies of intelligence actually measure, and whether it’s too easy to choose and massage data to produce desired results. Worse, “race” in the sense of Caucasian, Asian and African is too broad to capture anything biological, including genetic differences. Only smaller groupings based on geographic ancestry (Basque, !Kung, Inuit …) do. Since each “race” is a hodgepodge of ancestries, it’s as hard to draw meaningful conclusions about how it relates to intelligence as it is to draw meaningful conclusions about food and allergies by studying a stew with 27 ingredients.
{snip}
Kudos to defenders of studies of how intelligence varies by race or sex for basing their case on something other than the obvious grounds of academic freedom. Instead, they argue, the studies must continue because of the wealth of important knowledge they produce. In the 1960s, for instance, psychologist Arthur Jensen presented evidence that African-Americans are inferior in intellect due to inherited genes. That prompted psychologist James Flynn of the University of Otago, New Zealand, to examine decades of IQ data from dozens of countries, something he never would have done without Jensen’s work to goad him. He discovered what is now called the Flynn effect. {snip} The Flynn effect “shows that substantial increases in IQ can and have occurred over a short period of time,” says psychologist Wendy Williams of Cornell University. “Genetics cannot explain such changes. Thus we look to environment … As experiences [for blacks] improve, so can and does IQ.” That has already happened: one quarter of the IQ gap between black and white Americans has been erased in 30 years (it’s now 10 to 15 points). Cultural effects are more powerful than we thought, says Williams, a conclusion that would have remained undiscovered if race and IQ were off limits.
{snip}
If race-IQ studies are viewed as the third rail of psychology, many scientists who might answer questions like that will stay away from them. That will leave the field to those whose agenda is to prove women and blacks intellectually inferior. If that happens, warns Flynn, they will win the debate “because the rest of us have all adopted a policy of unilateral disarmament.” On this fraught issue, science must not give up without a fight.
Original article
(Posted on April 16, 2009)
Comments
Sorry, Miss Begley. You can’t argue for bypassing political correctness and also spout PC bromides at the same time.
As experiences [for blacks] improve, so can and does IQ.” That has already happened: one quarter of the IQ gap between black and white Americans has been erased in 30 years (it’s now 10 to 15 points). Cultural effects are more powerful than we thought, says Williams, a conclusion that would have remained undiscovered if race and IQ were off limits.
I don’t think that’s Flynn effect. That’s a matter of the average American “black” becoming more and more white, thanks to cross-racial relationships. And thanks to the “progressive” attitude toward procreation (i.e. it should not happen because it interferes with you having a good time), the whites that are reproducing tend to the lower classes and usually less intelligent, degrading the white IQ average.
And then when you see the ‘racists” are current in their assertions, what’re they prepared to do?
Realize the fallacy of their inept stance?
White Wash the facts with disproven , old liberal ones?
Ignore it all together?
We all know the lefties would never bother to accept reason, so i don’t think staring the truth right in the eye will help any liberal wanting to actually educate himself on what ‘the racists’ use for their argument.
When the evidence shows that Whites are more intelligent than Blacks it’s:
““race” in the sense of Caucasian, Asian and African is too broad to capture anything biological, including genetic differences.
or:
“Thus we look to environment … As experiences [for blacks] improve, so can and does IQ.” That has already happened: one quarter of the IQ gap between black and white Americans has been erased in 30 years (it’s now 10 to 15 points)”
—Any possible excuse for Blacks they’ll find. Anything to “prove” that their poor scores on IQ tests are due to “evil White racism” as opposed to just their painfully obvious race-based lower IQ’s.
unfortunate incident in the mid-20th century, when British psychologist Cyril Burt apparently made up data to “prove” that genes make blacks and the poor innately less intelligent than whites and the wealthy.
This is an ignorant, garbled, disgusting, vicious smear on a distinguished psychologist by a politically correct stringer of a dying and long discredited “newsmagazine.” It is nothing but a “meme” from the hyper-leftist 1970’s propagated by the odious anti-IQ propagandist Leon Kamin, author (with others) of among other things, “Not in Our Genes,” the “Bible” for anti-intelligence research obscurants.
People interested in the true facts concerning the manufactured “controversy” over allegations of “fraud” in Dr. Burt’s twin studies, should read R. B. Joynson’s “The Burt Affair” or Ronald Fletcher’s “Science, ideology & the media: The Cyril Butt affair,” both in print for about two decades already.
“Liberals must study IQ and genetics to prevent “racists” from winning the debate.”
Silly reporter! That won’t prevent racists from winning the debate. It will enable them to win the debate.
And that’s why the left simply won’t allow it.
Maybe the liberals are right, and IQ is genetic. That would make the lower IQ result for most people of color in the US nothing other than indicator of their ignorant and backward attitude and outlook. Something the ‘IQ debate’ can sometimes cover up. Quite, quite effectively.
“That has already happened: one quarter of the IQ gap between black and white Americans has been erased in 30 years (it’s now 10 to 15 points). Cultural effects are more powerful than we thought, says Williams, a conclusion that would have remained undiscovered if race and IQ were off limits.”
And so we can easily theorize that the closing of that gap has been acheived by dumbing down Whites while spending outrageous sums of money and creating unaccounted but obvious social damage for a paltry IQ gain among Blacks.
I certainly welcome open research on this topic. If real science can prove that blacks are not less intelligent I will accept that. I think the facts will shows the the differences are real and the genetic component is significant.
The author seems to state the cliche that race doesn’t exist because the boundaries between them are not clearly marked. I would be happy to help establish the demarcation point.
This topic never goes away, no matter how often or how emphatically it’s dismissed. Too many people are in a position to observe differences in intelligence between the races, up close & daily, even people who will deny it. I work with academics so I know the struggle that liberals go through when their experiences with blacks collides with their ideology. The strain must be excruciating.
First, that Newsweek would touch this “third rail” is surprising, although the article is written with editorial comments.(Expected at that magazine) The comments are interesting; some of them could come from AR posters.
This is a no-win situation for liberals (Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, etc.). They’ve avoided debate and argued via insult for so long, everyone who’s paying attention knows they have no argument. If they continue to duck and hide, they’ll continue to bleed on the issue. If they engage honestly, they’ll lose.
I think they’ve chosen the best path, really. Many are the sheep convinced by appeals to authority, argumentum ad hominem, etc.
It became apparent long ago that it’s all about power with these folks. They’ll only “learn their lesson” when they’re shown the door. They couldn’t care less for science or reason.
The scoring for IQ tests was not adjusted in the 30s and 40s because women outscored men, but because men outscored women. The adjustment was to give greater weight to verbal ability, and less to math. The SAT, which gives separate scores for the two modes of thinking, still shows that men do better at math, and women do better on the verbal section. Count on Newsweek to invert the truth.
I know that a lot of race realists think that liberals really believe that Blacks are equal to Whites in intelligence, but it isn’t true. Well, the young and naive do, but most do not. Just talk to a liberal who has children. They will never come out and say it but they know the truth. They move away from Black people and put their kids into schools where there are few Blacks. They will say they don’t want to live around crime or that certain schools have problems, but it’s clear when you talk to them that they know that Blacks are the problems they are afraid to mention.
The real truth is that most liberals know that Blacks have lower intelliegence, but they also know that if that were to become popular knowledge and accepted as undeniable fact, then America as we know would be over. And they would be right.
If you think the excuse making by the Black community is bad now, just imagine a world where Black people knew that they were intellectually inferior. America would turn into South Africa. Black crime would be astronomical and they would just blame it on genes. There’s no way that America is going to take up apartheid, so liberals think the next best thing to do is to placate Blacks and try their best to stop them from rioting.
“As experiences [for blacks] improve, so can and does IQ.” That has already happened: one quarter of the IQ gap between black and white Americans has been erased in 30 years (it’s now 10 to 15 points). Cultural effects are more powerful than we thought, says Williams, a conclusion that would have remained undiscovered if race and IQ were off limits”
Based on what tests? 10-15 point gap? Its more like a 15-20 point gap based on SAT-IQ correlations. http://www.blackexcel.org/06-sat-act-scores-by-race-ethnicity.htm
These “liberals” lie whenever they can. Never trust them.
However they try to spin it, when liberals admit that Black IQs are much lower than those of Whites, the cat is out of the bag. They’d never admit that if they didn’t have to. A year or so ago, this site had an article about how the truth would get out, and that the liberals would be “rushing for the lifeboats”. Newsweek is just trying to keep the lie afloat, to avoid a panic that might cause White people to doubt the wisdom of our Rulers.
TS for Sharon Begley and Newsweek. There has been much more recent and accurate data collected on Sex differences on Raven matrices(the culture free non-verbal one) and it does indeed point to an IQ gap favoring males. Typically past sixteen years of age and no more then 5 points in total.
However contrary to persistent assertions, there is apparently no sex difference in “variability,” simply sex differences(favoring males in adulthood) at the mean.
Blacks just as capable and intelligent as whites? How many black doctors in the U.S.(not counting actors)? What happened to “Dr. Jan Adams” of Oprah fame—after he killed the rapper’s mother? Are NBA team doctors black or white? Football? Baseball? Not the trainers, but the the ortho guys.
“As experiences [for blacks] improve, so can and does IQ.”
Hmmm, this is an interesting comment. So then how do you explain the fact that even though Asians have often faced conditions that were oppressive, chaotic, and genuinely racist, they still consistently score higher on IQ tests than either blacks or Whites?
“That has already happened: one quarter of the IQ gap between black and white Americans has been erased in 30 years (it’s now 10 to 15 points). Cultural effects are more powerful than we thought, says Williams, a conclusion that would have remained undiscovered if race and IQ were off limits.”
And so we can easily theorize that the closing of that gap has been acheived by dumbing down Whites while spending outrageous sums of money and creating unaccounted but obvious social damage for a paltry IQ gain among Blacks.
I’ve heard that if blacks show high intelligence, it’s usually due to white DNA that they’ve picked up in their ancestry. Miscegenation seems to be the latest fad.
And combine this with dumbing down whites.
“Liberals must study IQ and genetics to prevent “racists” from winning the debate.”
What debate? The facts are the facts. Any lefty trying to skew them around would have better luck trying to prove the sun doesn’t rise in the East.
What is wrong with admitting that blacks may be biologically equipped to do some things better than whites, or Asians to do some things better than whites?
Nothing. It’s is just that people are squeamish about admitting whites may be better at some things than other races.
Oh, God, the intellectual contortions that people engage in to explain black African failure and incapacity. The cultural differences are not a satisfactory explanation, as Anomymous pointed out in his comments.
The simple fact is that black Africans are at an intellectual disadvantage when competing with either whites or Asians.
This doesn’t mean that they can’t be contributing and useful members of a modern society. But to expect them to be equally represented among graduate engineers, doctorates, and scientists is absurd.
In truth, most of us honkeys can’t qualify for the above positions, either.
In the 1930s and 1940s, for instance, when girls kept outscoring boys, IQ tests were repeatedly adjusted to make the results turn out “right.” That calls into question what studies of intelligence actually measure, and whether it’s too easy to choose and massage data to produce desired results.
It is true that in conventional IQ tests the tests and questions used are chosen so that men and women have the same average IQs. This is possible because women tend to do better on tests of verbal ability and men tend to do better on tests of visualization and mathematical ability. Why hasn’t anyone constructed a test where blacks do as well as whites? Because there aren’t any tests that plausibly test an aspect of intelligence where blacks consistently do better than whites. So no matter what distribution of tests you use whites score higher on average.
Even in the case of men and women it is not possible to rig the tests so that the IQs of both sexes have the same standard deviation.
Sharon Begley takes it as axiomatic that if good, right thinking liberals study IQ they’ll find that blacks are just as smart as whites. She bases her assumption upon nothing other than a personal horror at the prospect that it may not be so. Perhaps people who study IQ honestly and objectively will wind up agreeing with Jensen?
I once heard a rule of thumb as far as IQ goes: Start at the north pole. The further south you go, the lower the IQ. There are mild exeptions but overall it holds true.
“unfortunate incident in the mid-20th century, “
I thought she was referring to World War II!
I am the ultimate left-liberal ivy league intellectual snob amren types loathe so much.
All libs know blacks are on average less intelligent, they attribute it to historic white crimes against blacks, which was plausible in the early 60s, when blacks hadn’t yet had a chance to really prove themselves.
Back then, it wasn’t as obvious that the issue was more hereditary (genetic) than psychological.
But I don’t believe for a minute that all but a few scientists have stayed away from race and intelligence.
On the contrary, I think a large number has actively sought to prove that racial gaps and intelligence are environmental, and have failed.
I suspect there is an enormous corpus of unpublished research pointing towards the genetic thesis.
I suspect that legions of psychologists have been attempting to disprove it, but that their data (reality) has betrayed them.
After all, a scientist who came up with any plausible evidence for the environmental hypothesis would have become instantly world-famous, when a Nobel Prize, a professorship at Harvard, and would spend the rest of his life earning 50.000 $ to give the same speech over and over again to adoring crowds.
in the politics of science, proving that racial gaps in intelligence were purely environmental would be the equivalent of curing cancer.
It’s not really the kind of thing you leave lying around in a drawer somewhere and forget all about.
Actually, the argument should be reversed:
before we invest trillions of dollars in programs premised on racial equality and intelligence, it has to be proven scientifically.
When they point out that the genetic thesis is still unproven (actually, it’s pretty well-established), race realists should point out that the environmental thesis has no evidence to support it at all.
Ps. Yes, libs are in total denial about race, just like you guys are usually in denial about the cataclysmic nature of climate change and the dying off of the oceans & and frogs and bees worldwide about 50 other truly terrifying disasters resulting from industrial pollution (like exploding cancer rates globally, mindboggling rates of defective children, etc.).
That libs can be so utterly crazy about race should give you pause & make you wanbt to examine your own assumptions.
Pps. most posters here seem to assume that more white children is an intrinsically good thing, but dysgenic patterns among whites mean we are getting dumber all the time.maybe that’s what’s narrowing the racial gap in intelligence.
The unstated problem in this white woman’s thinking is this: “Ohmigod, if blacks really aren’t as smart as whites, then maybe women really aren’t as smart as men and I’m not worthy of my rank and position I have attained in society?”
White women are the vanguard of race-IQ deniers. I speak with basically conservative white women who again and again deny that blacks are really substantially less intelligent and have less aptitude than whites, and these white women resist the idea. Why? Because (whether they admit it or not) white women are for the most part feminists these days.
Using a myth of gender equivalency to turn women against men and to neglect their maternal role was an ingenious move by the anti-West agitators. Brilliant. Feminism is their Queen in the chess game against the West.
Why? The average black would be considered retarded by white standards. Literally. If a white kid acted like Busta Rhmyes or P-Diddy without a “racial” implication, they would be considered severely challenged.
But the intelligence difference between white women and white men is subtler, and as much qualitative as quantitative. A white man and a white women can have similar genetic aptitudes, and the women will apply that aptitude in a completely different way. Women look at their immediate environment and care much less for the far horizons of history, big scale politics, etc.
But in the classroom, women tend to be good learners and more submissive to the teacher, so girls and women will grow up noticing the boys being “stupid” and never forget this. When they hear about how men as smarter than women, these white women really question that. The wives of even the most brilliant white men think their husband is a nitwit about certain things, the things that women notice and care about.
So these white women have some good reasons for personally doubting that the gender (and therefore race) IQ differences are really there. They are also politically invested in denying differences in aptitude as feminists competing with men in the work place. They also have the equalitarian female instinct that “all my children are equally loved” that obscures their thinking on this issue.
Flynn himself has retraced on his “effect”. There is no observable drift in math or writing, only on the visual portion of the tests (probably reflecting increasing TV and videogame use, i.e. some stimulation does have an influence).
They have managed to humiliate Watson - a man a hundred times their caliber - in his old days, much as their sort did with Galilei.
As for the article, that Boasist/Lysenkoist drivel does not even merit comment.
I think Ms. Begley is to be commended for writing this article.
When James Watson said the same thing, he was forced to recant and wound up forfeiting his career anyway.
I think she may be risking her career writing this piece.
I hope she’s got a trust fund. And I wonder if her editors know she’s been reading Steve Sailer behind their backs.
People forget the root of this crisis situation is derived from the evil injection of cursed black slavery into the blessed white race using the verse to con the elite whites 400 yrs ago.
Has slavery never occured there would never have been a need for these studies in the first place and the black race would have been uncorrupted and left in the jungles where they were assigned. Whites can only blame themselves and especially the elite whites who bought into this as clearly GOP elitist Bush displayed this exact same mentality with his idiot comment to allow 20 million illegal reds into this country to “do jobs noone else will do”? Huh? Who did these jobs before the reds?
It all goes back to the evil and mistake of slavery. Why didnt elite Americans consider that all of Europe was built and thrived with a single African black slave so why did they suddenly have to use them?
There are many theories as to why the American elite used the Ham verse to justify African black slaves not the least being the recent split of the original Rome church by Luther that created choas and confusion and new age thinking along with the general new mindset of those who undertook the massive trip across the Atlantic to make a new beginning that opened up their minds to things that were taboo in Europe for thousands of yrs along with the risks involved.
African slave labor was never needed in America under any circumstances and had slaves been needed the easy thing would have been to have used the reds already here but we know clearly this was never done and no reds were ever made slaves mainly because of the religious beliefs.
It all goes back to religion of the white elite and to the Ham verse that technically means that whites did not need black slaves in the first place and were only tricked into slavery due to their beliefs while sharecropping or hired help was the much better economic method.
Slavery was not only a trick and a mistake but it was not needed and the worse form of economics.
“That has already happened: one quarter of the IQ gap between black and white Americans has been erased in 30 years (it’s now 10 to 15 points). ”
Nuff said.
To gain insight into the IQ issue, all you have to do is either work with blacks or attend college/high school with them to see how much lower their intelligence HAS to be! 20 years ago I couldn’t believe how much pandering I saw directed by white administrators/teachers to the black “affeleafs” in my high school. Dumber than a rock most of them were and spoke ebonics to boot, but they somehow got promoted along to the next grade. Must have been that IQ gap closing at the last minute for final report cards. Working with blacks further drove that home. Take a day or so in a field where the blacks have to email certain requests/comments/topics of interest and their lack of basis grammar coupled with an obvious absence of coherence is enough to make your head spin. And it only seems to be getting worse with the higher their numbers become. No difference in intelligence? Only the people who live in some fantasy world where they wear rose-colored glasses believe these lies. More propoganda!
“How many black doctors in the U.S.(not counting actors)?… Are NBA team doctors black or white? Football? Baseball?… How many black doctors are attending the Obama black cabinet? What color is the Obama family doctor. What color is the doctor of the idiot who wrote the piece for Newsweek?”
The way things are going, your doctor’s not going to be black, or white, but some shade of yellow or brown. I suppose to the sick diversity-minded, that’s considered a wonderful improvement. As long as whites don’t count as people, that’s considered good news on all fronts.
“It became apparent long ago that it’s all about power with these folks. They’ll only “learn their lesson” when they’re shown the door. They couldn’t care less for science or reason.”
It would certainly explain the dumbing down.
You gotta admit, tho, high school and college grads (and there are less of them) do know some things. They know a heck of a lot about how good diversity is. At least how beneficial everyone who’s not white is.
perhaps i’m not sophisticated enough for Newsweek and its white collar readers.
this article did not deny that IQ averages, as measured by standards recognized by psychologists, vary between whites and blacks. Whites, higher. Blacks,lower. Do I have it right?
Funny how East Asians (average IQ 106) and Ashkenazi Jews (average IQ 120) don’t have lower IQs due to the oppressive environments in which they suffered.
Begley just doesn’t understand the Flynn effect at all. Furthermore she claims that over time 25% of the black-white IQ gap has been erased, and that gap gap now stands at 10-15 points. No! For generations that gap was put at 15 points(see Audrey Shuey’s 1950s study and subsequent ones).
In any case, the Flynn effect, simply put is as follows: IQ scores within white cohorts have been growing at the rate of 0.30 points yearly since 1947. That’s why IQ tests have to be continuosly normed to reflect more accurate cognitive measurements. Such advances could hardly be attributed to genetic changes. Thus, it’s the environment that trumps genes in explaining group IQ scores.
The principle would therefore apply to black/white intergroup scores—given that both groups live in cultures that educationally and culturally distinct.
And by the way African Americans score higher than Asian Indians, Persians and Iraqis on IQ tests—which further reinforces the environmental argument, given that such peoples supposedly developed technical civilisations long before Europeans ever did.
“I’ve heard that if blacks show high intelligence, it’s usually due to white DNA that they’ve picked up in their ancestry. Miscegenation seems to be the latest fad.
And combine this with dumbing down whites.”
Posted by Alexandra at 10:15 PM on April 16
Also, does anyone besidess me notice how so many of these high achieving Blacks had White parents, usually a woman? Aside from the now famous presidential example, I saw Condi Rice on Leno last week. She was talking about her childhood, etc. Her mother taught her piano and she originally wanted to be a concert pianist. Such lofty goals don’t come from Black males out to get a White woman.
“Pps. most posters here seem to assume that more white children is an intrinsically good thing, but dysgenic patterns among whites mean we are getting dumber all the time.maybe that’s what’s narrowing the racial gap in intelligence.”
Posted by elitist at 4:53 AM on April 17
Interesting comment - But note that many geniuses have autistic like symptoms or other mental health issues. The famous example of Howard Hughes comes to mind, but there are so many others in history. Autistics are often geniuses in math. I recall being at a mathmatics contest in high school. The winner was a kid who just stared up at the ceiling - nothing else. Such kids are often bullied and social outcastes. I would like to suggest that enviroment - social enviroment has more to do with our perceptions of what is normal than we think.
I am sure that I was a child with too much energy who got bored in the classroom. My mind just went faster than the class. I would hate to think what I would be like today if I had been given ritalin or some of the other stimulant drugs that are meth or meth like in effect and side-effects. A wrecked metabolism and nervous system and who knows how that affects the reproduction system?
We are being conned and conning ourselves into the idea that any exception - like a Mozart-like idiot-savant is a mark of a declinging genetic pool. I know an attorney whose son has been diagnosed autistic. We have discussed the issue to death. Her best and most sincere guess is that when really intelligent people produce children, some come out autistic. She is a very quiet, poised woman. She notes how computer whiz populations produce more autistic children. Together we journeyed to a sudden view of the possibility that autism might be a step in human evolution that society is not ready for and traditional medicine simply wants to invent drugs to treat for profit.
I must note that having lived in Europe in a country with socialized medicine - working with a European trained medical doctor, these drugs were not only not pushed, but the children seemed more normal than American kids.
“Using a myth of gender equivalency to turn women against men and to neglect their maternal role was an ingenious move by the anti-West agitators”
I disagree. Yeah, some women don’t like men but some men, more I think, don’t like women. Most women, however aren’t against men. As far as having kids, more women want to do this than a lot of men who don’t want to “commit” these days.
“Women look at their immediate environment and care much less for the far horizons of history, big scale politics, etc.”
I disagree again. There are plenty of women who are interested in history and large scale politics,etc. However, in day to day life, women have to look at the immediate environment more than men because women are usually the ones raising the kids so you have to look at little details when dealing with kids.
“When they hear about how men as smarter than women, these white women really question that.”
Women don’t believe men are smarter then women and men are not though a lot of men tend to think they are. Men tend to score higher on spatial IQ and women on verbal IQ. However, IQ doesn’t measure all kinds of intelligence. When it comes to group intelligence, you have to look at a group and the type of society it builds and what it contributes to determine overall intelligence and this definately varies among groups ie. Germany vs. Somalia, definite group and intelligence differences overall. However, there are different types of intelligence that IQ’s don’t measure. People are smart(or stupid) in different areas. You can’t put an exact number on intelligence.
..”, given that such peoples supposedly developed technical civilisations long before Europeans ever did.”
Occam, Asian Indians, Persians and Iraqis have never developed a technical civilization. Technological civilization is a very recent developement originating in Northen Europe. If you meant that they developed urban civilization early, you are right, but then they stagnated at that level for at least 6000 years. Northern Europe didnt reach their level until about 700-800 years ago and then quickly pulled ahead of them. If it wasnt for white people, these areas would still be in the late iron age.
“And by the way African Americans score higher than Asian Indians, Persians and Iraqis on IQ tests—which further reinforces the environmental argument, …”
It reinforces the importance of genetics, as American blacks are roughly 15% white.
“And by the way African Americans score higher than Asian Indians, Persians and Iraqis on IQ tests—which further reinforces the environmental argument, given that such peoples supposedly developed technical civilisations long before Europeans ever did.”
No matter how you try to skew it, my friend, blacks are at the bottom of the totem pole of all the races of the earth, not only regarding intelligence, but most all other mental abilities as well.
In every society on earth where blacks have fled to escape their failed societies, they amount to the least intelligent, most prone to crime and violence, all of which is supported by their abysmal track record throughout the centuries.
Black claims of accomplishment can be refuted merely by observing what they have done for themselves and mankind as a whole, which is absolutely nothing worthwhile. But the Persians, Iraqis, Indians, etc., all have civilizations, art, writings, etc., which go back to the period long before Christ. Blacks never invented a written language nor even the wheel, and they’ve lived a stone-age existence in Africa for 5000 years.
The best measure of ability is success. All the other races of the earth, excluding Australian Aborigenes, have achieved some measure of civilization above a rudimentery hunter/gatherer level, but not blacks.
Blacks are the world’s failures. If they did not try to steal the accomplishments of other people, they wouldn’t be able to brag about anything other than constructing witch doctor’s masks, spears and arrows.
It would be far better for blacks if they strove to overcome their shortcomings and work to better themselves, rather than attempt to coopt the success of other peoples, because they have none of their own.
I strongly suspect that the American black average group I.Q. score of 85 has been manipulated some way, because I’m certain they’re on about the same level as their homeland kin, which is about 70.
Quite frankly, I honestly wish that blacks were more intelligent, because every nation in the West is being dragged down by having to take care of them like children, and America right this minute has to play “let’s pretend blacks are equal,” in order to prevent them from rioting and causing a disintegration of the country.
Why can’t you leave us alone and build your own country, or take a state or two here and move en masse? The answer, of course, is that blacks couldn’t survive without whites standing by to take care of them. The failed states throughout Africa, Detroit, Atlanta, New Orleans, Los Angeles, Houston and many other places, reveal what happens when blacks are on their own: The civilization disintegrates.
One can’t argue with success, nor can he argue with failure.
“White women are the vanguard of race-IQ deniers. I speak with basically conservative white women who again and again deny that blacks are really substantially less intelligent and have less aptitude than whites, and these white women resist the idea. Why? Because (whether they admit it or not) white women are for the most part feminists these days. “
——-
Well, rest assured that this conservative white woman is a race realist and anti-feminism. I’m very much a traditionalist and I’m in my mid-30s.
And by the way African Americans score higher than Asian Indians, Persians and Iraqis on IQ tests—which further reinforces the environmental argument, given that such peoples supposedly developed technical civilisations long before Europeans ever did.
By what way? Lynn and Vanhanen’s estimates of average contemporary IQ are 87 for Iraq, and 84 for both Iran and India, i.e., more or less the same as the tested average of 85 for American blacks.
But whether or not these averages are lower or the same in comparison to US blacks, how does that “further reinforce the environmental argument” for IQ differences? If the Flynn effect demonstrates anything, it is that group average IQs are not static over time, so that the estimated average IQ of Iran today does not necessarily indicate what its average IQ was in 1000 BC, or for that matter, how those averages compared to the average European IQ of the time.
Ultimately, the so-called “environmental argument,” in order to be scientifically plausible instead of just politically “correct” and emotionally satisfying, has to explain how the Iranian, Iraqi, and Indian “environments” allowed each of these populations to develop “technical civilizations” ahead of the Europeans, but then allowed each of these civilizations to be surpassed by the Europeans within the last half millennium. Clearly the “environmental argument” respecting group IQ differences is not an explanation as congruent with Occam’s razor as one based on genetic selection.
Three-quarters of Begley’s article is disclaimer blather, so she can then get to what she really wants to say. Rather ‘innocently’ she says it: African-American IQ’s are 10-15 points lower (but getting better: just 10 points if administered at the game arcade). One must define the issue before moving on to address the issue. Sharon, you GO, Girl!
“The best measure of ability is success. All the other races of the earth, excluding Australian Aborigines, have achieved some measure of civilization above a rudimentary hunter/gatherer level, but not blacks.”
Only a fool underestimates his enemy. His proudly self-proclaimed mortal enemy. In this regard, it truly seems a contest between liberals and conservatives both as to who can be the biggest fool. It’s the major failing of both their ideologies.
“I disagree. Yeah, some women don’t like men but some men, more I think, don’t like women. Most women, however aren’t against men. As far as having kids, more women want to do this than a lot of men who don’t want to “commit” these days.”
Anonymous, absolutely true. When educated whites in the US and Europe decided to catapult Christianity, they had no idea what they have lost. Those Christian values were OUR values forged from our cultures and inner character over two millenia. The chivalrous knight and the dainty princess? That was our tradition.
Now that we are so “sophisticated to know those Christian fairy tales can’t be true,” where are we? Being out-competed by men of low birth and breeding in our own territories.
Where is a King Arthur, or a Constantine?
Funny how East Asians (average IQ 106) and Ashkenazi Jews (average IQ 120) don’t have lower IQs due to the oppressive environments in which they suffered.
Posted by john at 10:46 AM on April 17
Read Richard Lynn’s work. E. Asians average 105 - 106, but Ashkenazi Jews average 107.8, not 120. The oft repeated claim of an average of 117 for Ashenazi came from one study of a small group of children (less than 35) in a school for gifted students. Lynn also has Germans at 107, Poles at 107 and N. Europeans generally around 106 - 107. The numbers in Lynn’s work go up and down a couple of points here and there depending on the year, but they remain fairly constant overall. The white “average” of 100 is due to lumping all kinds of groups together under the heading of white or Caucasian (Turks, etc). E. Asians are not lumped with SE Asians in IQ studies however. Lynn maintains E. Asians on average score higher on tests of visuo-spatial reasoning than Caucasians, and Caucasians, on average, score higher on tests of verbal/analytical reasoning than E. Asians. There is broad overlap between the two main groups for the most part. The real problem is the significant gap between blacks, Amerindians, and other low scoring groups when compared to Asians and whites. There doesn’t seem to be much hope, at the moment, of the low scoring peoples being able to ‘catch up’ as technology grows more advanced.
elitist: Ps. Yes, libs are in total denial about race, just like you guys are usually in denial about the cataclysmic nature of climate change and the dying off of the oceans & and frogs and bees worldwide about 50 other truly terrifying disasters resulting from industrial pollution (like exploding cancer rates globally, mindboggling rates of defective children, etc.).
That libs can be so utterly crazy about race should give you pause & make you wanbt to examine your own assumptions.
Pps. most posters here seem to assume that more white children is an intrinsically good thing, but dysgenic patterns among whites mean we are getting dumber all the time.maybe that’s what’s narrowing the racial gap in intelligence.
Actually, outside matters of race realism I think you’ll find a great many differing views here. I am pro-environment, and as much as I like Ron Paul one area where I do have strong disagreements with him is on environmental matters. There are excellent reasons to believe that the steady increase in atmospheric CO2 since the beginning of the industrial age is human caused, and very good reasons to believe that that is causing global warming. It is also causing ocean acidification, which is putting stress on coral reefs and shell fish. By the end of this century coral reefs may be wiped out.
But making every environmental problem worse is the steady increase in human population. Mainstream environmentalists used to worry about this. But then they noticed that almost all the population growth today is non-white. So they suddenly got silent about the issue, and demonize anyone who wants to cut immigration so we can stabilize our population.
There is a dysgenic trend within the races. Smart blacks have fewer children than less intelligent blacks do, and smart whites have fewer children than less intelligent whites do. This trend seems to be due to the growth of the welfare state (which lowers the cost of children for the incompetent) and the rise of feminism (which encourages the smartest women to jump out of the gene pool). I don’t see any feasible way to end this trend.
“WR the Elder” is absolutely right re population and dysgenics, EXCEPT there ARE ways of getting smart women back into the gene pool without preventing them from becoming doctors, professors, researchers, or even heads of state (this is the US & EUROPE, not SAUDI ARABIA!!!!):
you have to get flexible & creative & rearrange things so that smart women can “have their cakes and eat them,” as with growing numbers in the US & Europe:
(Lowering births among the less bright is a matter of better health care and education and using/withholding social benefits to reward small families.)
ALL women should be educated & capable of working & supporting themselves, but this is NOT “feminism,” it called SURVIVAL:
INDEPENDENT THOUGHT BEGINS where cliched thinking & labels like feminism, liberal, etc, END.
“”Sharon Begley TAKES IT AS AXIOMATIC that if good, right-thinking liberals study IQ they’ll find that blacks are just as smart as whites. She bases her ASSUMPTION upon nothing other than a personal horror at the prospect that it might not be so.
Of course they will. As voter said above, bringing science into the debate will not squash the arguments of the racists, it will strengthen them. (“It won’t prevent racists from winning the debate. It will enable them to win the debate.”)
This is what the egalitarian ideologists have been fighting against so frantically. Their most fundamental beliefs are being threatened. If the cornerstone falls, the whole edifice will tumble. Like medieval theologians, they put ideology above science, belief above knowledge, trust above proof.
A few things.
Blacks were in the iron age and far into the agricultural age long before colonization. The endlessly repeated lie that Africans were only hunter gatherers is so wrong.
US Black IQ is 87.5, in my opinion. That’s 13.5 points below Whites. I guess you could look at some scores a while back and find an 18 pt gap, so I suppose you could say 1/4 of the gap is gone, but that’s kind of a reach if you ask me. I would say that the gap has been reduced 10%. Most sane people seem to think there has been some reduction in the gap.
By pure genetics, US Blacks should have IQ’s of about 72. Instead, they have IQ’s of 87.5. I figure 15.5 rise just from living in the US alone. Living here is the best thing that ever happened to Blacks.
Flynn rise is not due to increasing White % in US Blacks. It’s rising way too high for that.
Scores of 107-108 for N Europe are absurd.
Flynn rise is concomitant with a massive increase in skull size in US Blacks over 100 years, in part environmental but partly genetic. Rather than being explained by increasing White genes (dubious since White skulls grew just as much) what seems to be occurring IMHO is that Blacks have been genetically selecting for smarter and Whiter looking phenotypes. IOW, US Blacks have been practicing eugenics. Bully for them.
Dysgenic trends are interesting theoretically, but have not yet shown up in any data. No one seems to know why. Maybe dysgenic trends are being wiped out by Flynn Effect. *There is no evidence that we are getting stupider.* Zero.
US Black IQ is 87.5. Iraq IQ is 87, Iran IQ is 85, Indian IQ is ~82.5. For sure US Blacks outscore all of them. Living here has been very good for them. When E Indians come to the UK, their IQ goes up from 82.5 to 96. Living in the White West is good for your brain!
Males score 3.5 pts higher than females on IQ tests. That’s not a very big difference. Males and females do not have the same average IQ’s. If the tests were manipulated to that, they sure screwed up.
I’m a bit of a racist. When I meet a Black person, I automatically think, “How smart could they be?” Over and over, I’m flummoxed at all these Blacks that are way smarter than they ought to be. I guess they are getting smarter and there is something to Flynn. Just my observation.
I’ve had 2 Black docs for a while. Both of them were really smart. The man was gay, but the other was a woman who was married and had kids. She’s a really cool person.
People get too wrapped up in the ‘skull size’ theory when it comes to intelligence, forgetting that some groups have demonstrably thicker skulls (in some cases by large amounts). While the correlation is as ‘high’ as .3 in some studies, many psychometrists feel that neurological efficiency is the key, meaning the more intelligent a person is, the less ‘pathways’ information is crossing inside the brain. In short, a more efficient set of pathways. Smarter people don’t have a jumble of circuits throughout their brains.
“Black crime would be astronomical and they would just blame it on genes”
Questionable, Black crime was lower in the 1950s when the conventional wisdom was that Blacks were less intelligent, and went up in the 60s when conventional wisdom said they weren’t.
“Most women, however aren’t against men. As far as having kids, more women want to do this than a lot of men who don’t want to “commit” these days.”
Makes sense, with religion less influential now, it comes down to biology, and the female maternal instinct is stronger than the male paternal instinct.
In the past the male paternal instint was probably fortified by Christianity, which discouraged sex outside marriage etc.
“When the evidence shows that Whites are more intelligent than Blacks it’s:
“race” in the sense of Caucasian, Asian and African is too broad to capture anything biological, including genetic differences.”
[…]
Actually, I think her point in this particular case is quite valid. These overly-broad categories of ‘Caucasian’, ‘Asian’, and ‘African’ are totally meaningless. The world doesn’t breakdown this way, either objectively or subjectively.
Objectively the categories are pointless because they overlook the vast diversity that exists within them. Europe is extremely variegated racially; so is Asia and Africa. Trying to lump them into three major ‘branches’ is clearly wrong.
They also don’t make sense from a subjective point of view. Since when have Chinese ever considered Japanese as their ‘racial brothers’? How about Germans and Russians? I could on and on. The world doesn’t breakdown according to nebulous categories such as these, no matter how convenient they might be for researchers like Rushton or Lynn. The world is ordered by ethnicity more than anything else.
Myself, for instance, have NEVER considered myself to be ‘White’; I consider myself to be Northern European/Germanic. I don’t want to be lumped in with other ‘Europeans’ just because of geography. That’s just stupid. 100 years most Americans would have thought the same way, they considered themselves ‘Anglo-Saxon’ more than anything else (White was just a short-hand for Anglo-Saxon). Trying to lump the European gene pool together is just as undesirable as trying to lump the human gene pool together.
Lol, there’s plenty of evidence to support the notion of dysgenic breeding patterns in the modern world. For starters, you might check out the book ‘Dysgenics’ by Richard Lynn. Furthermore, you should also read the work by Richard Lynn and Marian Van Court; they studied reproductive behavior in the United States and found a very identifiable dysgenic pattern with respect to intelligence. There are plenty of other researchers who have observed the negative relationship between intelligence and fertility (or social class and fertility, which is dysgenic in impact).
It’s possible that SOME of the dysgenic behavior has been offset by superior nutrition; but, even then, this still doesn’t negate the existence of dysgenics, it only means that the immediate consequences are being mitigated. The humans that result ARE stupider in innate, genotypic intelligence, but their phenotypic intelligence is artificially boosted by enhanced environment. This just means that the intellectual inferiority of these humans can be temporarily ‘disguised’ under favorable conditions; on a inter-generational level, the differences between the genetic composition of the past and present population will make itself manifest.
Regardless, I think the evidence still demonstrates a decline in genotypic intelligence of about 1 IQ point per generation over the last 150 years (roughly). This of course refers only the the populations of Northern Europe and North America. The dysgenic behavior in other racial communities is probably totally different. East Asians, for instance, probably haven’t suffered too much dysgenic impact due to modernization because of their strong cultural pressures on high IQ females…
Robert Lindsay, I take it you are from the UK (we don’t say “bully for them here in the states”).
All I can say is, there is a reason we had a “one drop” rule in the US. Once you breed black, getting rid of the behavioral and physical Curse of Ham takes generations. Blacks have dominant genes for anti-social and primitive traits.
Take a long hard look at Africa or any majority black country and ask yourself if that’s what you want your descendants to be.
Historama, be careful with peddling to petty particularistic nationalism. Race is not nationalism, and that was the whole point of the early racialist ideas of people like Madison Grant. “Aryan” never meant German except in the sense of finding a word to mean White Christian without a religious implication.
White Northern European. That is something real, it is physical and national borders don’t matter to it. Nordic meant the same thing. Same roots different branches, that is all.
Making this into a “Germanic” movement is divisive and stupid. A tall, big-boned proud descendant of the people of William Wallace or Robert the Bruce is every bit as Nordic or White Northern European as their racial cousins in Norway or Denmark. Labeling that “Germanic” and then doing mental gymnastics to explain how the Scots-Irish were “really Germanic” is hogwash and it is inflammatory. It has done a lot of harm by dividing Northern Europeans.
Russians and Finns and Germans and Danes and Scots and Austrians and Dutch who are of noble character and Nordic physical constitution are brethren, period. That was the point of going back to the old pagan symbols. Divided we fall. Period.
Historama, be careful with peddling to petty particularistic nationalism.
Making this into a “Germanic” movement is divisive and stupid. doing mental gymnastics …is hogwash and is inflammatory. It has done a lot of harm by dividing Northern Europeans.
Divided we fall. Period.
I couldn’t agree more with Anonymous’ post, although I am not disparaging Historama’s points about the differences that surely exist between ethnic subdivisions. Nonetheless, national/ethnic groups are merely sub-groups within a race. The basic racial relationship still stands.
History and politics aside, Poles certainly have more genetic connections with Germans or Spaniards or Italians than they do with Zulus or Hottentots. And similarly, whatever the Chinese may think of the Japanese, or the Japanese of the Koreans, that doesn’t change the fact that they are all of the same race (whether they like each other or not).
This is not to say that they are all the same, however. I am sure there are significant differences between different ethnic groups (just as there are between different families) but they remain all under the same racial umbrella.
French, Swedish, Irish, German, and a little taint of Jew, that’s me, an American White man. Whites who get too hung up on which Europeans are the real Whites have enlisted in a losing cause. “Sorry, we don’t want any of you Wops and Polacks and Hunkies watching our backs, only Teutons and Celts will be allowed to defend against the brown onslaught.” Wear your kilts and drink your lager, but don’t be so brainless as to dismiss the goatherds and wine drinkers. It was they who kept the Moslems out for centuries.
