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The race and intelligence controversy is a decades-old dispute about research which examines the nature, origins, and practical consequences of possible racial and ethnic group differences in intelligence.
Introduction
Overview
The 1969 publication of Jensen's "How Much Can We Boost IQ and School Achievement?" reintroduced race and intelligence to public and scholarly discussion. From that time through the publication of The Bell Curve in 1994, research on race and intelligence has sparked fervent controversy. Discussion in the public and from scholars outside of the field of IQ research has been predominantly critical.
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Controversial issues and scope of the controversy
Issues
- intelligence is measurable and/or is dominated by a unitary general cognitive ability.
- self-identified race is a useful categorization for social science research and can produce scientifically meaningful conclusions.
- racial categories divide humans into "breeding populations" with concordant variation in some heritable traits
- scientific racism
- nature versus nurture
Scope
Points made by supporters and opponents
Points made by supporters
IQ differences among 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 among races reflect (1) real and (2) significant differences in the same g factor. However, it is a matter of debate whether IQ differences among races in the U.S. are (3a) entirely environmental or (3b) partly genetic.
- Ulric Neisser et al., "Intelligence: Knowns and unknowns," American Psychologist 51, no. 2 (February 1996): 77–101.
- Linda Gottfredson et al., "Mainstream Science on Intelligence," Wall Street Journal, December 13, 1994.
Points made by opponents
- Demographic groups do not differ meaningfully, on average, in important abilities and aptitudes.
- Differences in cognitive ability and educational outcomes are ultimately due to differences in family advantage.
- Cognitive ability is the result of exposures to opportunities to learn (i.e., equalizing learning opportunities will equalize learning).
Definitions of race and intelligence
Race
Some scholars have argued that race and intelligence research is fundamentally flawed. One common criticism is that the concept of "race" is meaningless.
The 10,000-member American Anthropological Association criticized "mistaken claims of racially determined intelligence" in a public statement:
...differentiating species into biologically defined "races" has proven meaningless and unscientific as a way of explaining variation (whether in intelligence or other traits).
Template:AYref argued that the concept of "race" is both "logically incoherent" and incompatible with the existence of "gradations on a continuum of genetic data", and thus race "cannot explain psychological data."
Jensen summarized these views in his 1998 book The g Factor:
Nowadays one often reads in the popular press (and in some anthropology textbooks) that the concept of human races is a fiction (or, as one well-known anthropologist termed it, a "dangerous myth"), that races do not exist in reality, but are social constructions of politically and economically dominant groups for the purpose of maintaining their own status and power in a society. It naturally follows from this premise that, since races do not exist in any real, or biological, sense, it is meaningless even to inquire about the biological basis of any racial differences.
Jensen claims this line of argument has social and political sources rather than "scientific" ones, and that in the context of population genetics races are defined as "breeding populations with fuzzy boundaries".
Jensen (1973) claims that critics which argue against race and intelligence research from the view that racial groups are merely social constructs are committing an error of reasoning:
"Those social scientists who insist that there are no racial genetic differences in ability are often the most critical of studies which have used a social criterion of race rather than more precise genetic criteria. . . . seem not to have considered the idea that if the observed IQ differences between racial groups are due only to social-environmental factors, then the social definition of race should be quite adequate, and, in fact, should be the only appropriate definition. If it is argued that two socially defined racial groups which differ in mean IQ are not racially "pure" and that one or both groups have some genetic admixture of the other, it can mean only that the biological racial aspect of the IQ difference, if such exists, has been underestimated by comparing socially, rather than genetically, defined racial groups" (p. 219).
A 1985 survey (Template:AYref) asked 1,200 scientists how many disagree with the following proposition: "There are biological races in the species Homo sapiens." The responses were:
- biologists 16%
- developmental psychologists 36%
- physical anthropologists 41%
- cultural anthropologists 53%
(This survey did not specify any particular definition of race.)
Intelligence
Psychometric concepts of intelligence are also criticized by public intellectuals. In The Mismeasure of Man, Stephen Jay Gould argues:
" the abstraction of intelligence as a single entity, its location within the brain, its quantification as one number for each individual, and the use of these numbers to rank people in a single series of worthiness, invariably to find that oppressed and disadvantaged groups—races, classes, or sexes—are innately inferior and deserve their status" (pp. 24-25).
However, intelligence experts view psychometrics as "the most influential approach", "the one that has generated the most systematic research", and the one that has "produced a substantial body of knowledge" (Template:AYref).
Race and intelligence together
It is also common to argue that both "race" and "intelligence" are arbitrary social constructions. Sternberg and colleagues question the basis of race and intelligence research Template:AYref:
In this article, the authors argue that the overwhelming portion of the literature on intelligence, race, and genetics is based on folk taxonomies rather than scientific analysis. They suggest that because theorists working on intelligence disagree as to what it is, any consideration of its relationships to other constructs must be tentative at best. They further argue that race is a social construction with no scientific definition. Thus, studies of the relationship between race and other constructs may serve social ends but cannot serve scientific ends.
The views of IQ experts are significantly different from those of other scholars and public intellecutals.
In 1994, Linda Gottfredson published a Wall Street Journal editorial titled "Mainstream Science on Intelligence" (Template:AYref), meant to outline "conclusions regarded as mainstream among researchers on intelligence," and co-signed by 51 other professors, all experts in intelligence and related fields. As defined in this collective statement, intelligence is measurable and largely heritable. IQ experts believe that the cause of racial and ethnic group differences in IQ is not merely test bias, that environment is important, but that "genetics could be involved too".
End material
Notes
- Template:AYref, Template:AYref
- "Racial Scientist Rushton Takes Over Pioneer Fund," Bethune Institute for Anti-Fascist Studies, January 2003.
- Joseph L Graves, "What a tangled web he weaves: Race, reproductive strategies and Rushton's life history theory," Anthropological Theory 2, no. 2 (2002): 131–54; Leonard Lieberman, "How 'Caucasoids' got such big crania and why they shrank. From Morton to Rushton.," Current Anthropology 42, no. 1 (February 2001): 69–95; Zack Cernovsky, "On the similarities of American blacks and whites: A reply to J.P. Rushton," Journal of Black Studies 25 (1995): 672.
- Goosed-Up Graphics: A generalization of the Lie Factor, graphs from Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin, by Stephen Jay Gould (Three Rivers, MI: Three Rivers Press, 1997): 109, fig. 16.
- Linda S. Gottfredson, "The General Intelligence Factor," Scientific American.
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