Race and intelligence
I see that William Saletan has written a piece in Slate called Race, genes, and intelligence, or rather he has written 3 articles, starting with that one.
Saletan is a careful writer, so he adds a lot of remarks about average doesn't equal individuals, but he is basically writing about the long debunked idea that there is some kind of racial base for intelligence.
There is probably some basis in the belief that heritage has an influence on intelligence, but only if we speak about genetic and social heritage. The kind of heritage the Bell Curve crowd (Saletan included) speaks about, only take skin pigment into account, and ignores the simple fact that unless you can show some kind of relation between IQ and the genes that influences the skin color of an individual, there is no more common heritage between an African American, a Zulu, an Australian Aboriginal, and Moroccan, than there is between any of those and a Northern European. Speaking about heritage, when referring to skin color is just trying to hide the real meaning.
IQ is known to be heavily influenced by upbringing, health, and other social factors, where the poorest part of the population have a lower IQ than the richest part. Given the racial inequity, it shouldn't come as a surprise that black people in the US on average scores lower on IQ tests (as the Irish did in the past).
Anyway, IQ isn't really a particular good measure of intelligence - and again, intelligence is not even a well-defined attribute.
Greg Laden, a man who knows much more about this subject than I do, have written some good posts about race and iQ in the past, but two relevant posts are:
this and this.
Edit: I forgot to say that I became aware of Saletan's articles through Tapped
Saletan is a careful writer, so he adds a lot of remarks about average doesn't equal individuals, but he is basically writing about the long debunked idea that there is some kind of racial base for intelligence.
There is probably some basis in the belief that heritage has an influence on intelligence, but only if we speak about genetic and social heritage. The kind of heritage the Bell Curve crowd (Saletan included) speaks about, only take skin pigment into account, and ignores the simple fact that unless you can show some kind of relation between IQ and the genes that influences the skin color of an individual, there is no more common heritage between an African American, a Zulu, an Australian Aboriginal, and Moroccan, than there is between any of those and a Northern European. Speaking about heritage, when referring to skin color is just trying to hide the real meaning.
IQ is known to be heavily influenced by upbringing, health, and other social factors, where the poorest part of the population have a lower IQ than the richest part. Given the racial inequity, it shouldn't come as a surprise that black people in the US on average scores lower on IQ tests (as the Irish did in the past).
Anyway, IQ isn't really a particular good measure of intelligence - and again, intelligence is not even a well-defined attribute.
Greg Laden, a man who knows much more about this subject than I do, have written some good posts about race and iQ in the past, but two relevant posts are:
this and this.
Edit: I forgot to say that I became aware of Saletan's articles through Tapped
Labels: intelligence, IQ, race, racism, stupidity, William Saletan
posted by Kristjan Wager at 4:00 PM
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Black immigrants do better than Whites & Asians
Black Immigrants, An Invisible 'Model Minority'
March 19, 2007
Black Immigrants, An Invisible 'Model Minority'
By Clarence Page
WASHINGTON-Do African immigrants make the smartest
Americans? The question may sound outlandish, but if
you were judging by statistics alone, you could find
plenty of evidence to back it up.
In a side-by-side comparison of 2000 census data by
sociologist John R. Logan at the Mumford Center, State
University of New York at Albany, black immigrants
from Africa average the highest educational attainment
of any population group in the country, including
whites and Asians.
For example, 43.8 percent of African immigrants had
achieved a college degree, compared to 42.5 of Asian
Americans, 28.9 percent for immigrants from Europe,
Russia and Canada, and 23.1 percent of the U.S.
population as a whole.
That defies the usual stereotypes of Asian Americans
as the only "model minority." Yet the traditional
American narrative has rendered the high academic
achievements of black immigrants from Africa and the
Caribbean invisible, as if it were a taboo topic.
Instead, we should take a closer look. That was my
reaction in 2004 after black Harvard law professor
Lani Guinier and Henry Louis Gates Jr., chairman of
Harvard's African-American studies department, stirred
a black Harvard alumni reunion with questions about
precisely where the university's new black students
were coming from.
About 8 percent, or 530, of Harvard's undergraduates
were black, they said, but somewhere between one-half
and two-thirds of black undergraduates were "West
Indian and African immigrants or their children, or to
a lesser extent, children of biracial couples."
If we take a closer look, I said at the time, I bet
we'll find that Harvard's not alone. With all of the
ink and airwaves that have been devoted to immigration
these days, black immigrants remain remarkably
invisible. Yet their success has long followed the
patterns of other high-achieving immigrants.
As one immigrant Jamaican friend once told me, "I'm
too busy working two jobs to worry about the white
man's racism."
Now comes a new study that finds a consistent pattern
of Ivy League and other elite colleges and
universities boosting their black student populations
by enrolling large numbers of immigrants from Africa,
the West Indies and Latin America.
Immigrants, who make up 13 percent of the nation's
college-age black population, account for more than a
quarter of black students at Ivy League and other
elite universities, according to the study of 28
selective colleges and universities. The authors of
the study, published recently in the American Journal
of Education, included Douglas S. Massey of Princeton
University and Camille Z. Charles of the University of
Pennsylvania. The proportion of immigrants was higher
at private institutions, 28.8 percent, than at the
public ones, where they comprised 23.1 percent of
enrollment.
Are elite schools padding their racial diversity
numbers with black immigrants who do not have a
history of American slavery in their families? This
development immediately calls into question whether
affirmative action admission policies are fulfilling
their original intent.
But as Walter Benn Michaels, a professor of English at
the University of Illinois at Chicago, writes in his
book "The Trouble With Diversity: How We Learned to
Love Identity and Ignore Inequality," the original
intent of affirmative action morphed back in the 1970s
from reparations for slavery into the promotion of a
broader virtue: "diversity." Since then, it no longer
seems to matter how many of your college's black
students had slavery in their families. It only
matters that they are black.
That said, I don't begrudge black immigrants or any
other high-achieving immigrants for their impressive
achievements. I applaud them. I encourage more
native-born American children, particularly my own
child, to take similar advantage of this country's
hard-won opportunities.
But I also think we need to revisit the meaning of
"diversity." Unlike our current system of feel-good
game-playing, we need to focus on the deeper question
of how education can be improved and opportunities
opened up to those who were left behind by the civil
rights revolution.
We tend to look too often at every aspect of diversity
except economic class. Yet, the dream of upward
mobility is an essential part of how we Americans like
to think of ourselves.
It's also why a lot more people are trying to get into
this country than trying to get out.
Page is a Pulitzer Prize-winning syndicated columnist
specializing in urban issues. He is based in
Washington, D.C. E-mail: cptime@...
(C) 2007 Tribune Media Services, Inc.
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