# Statistically, blacks score poorly on IQ and IQ-proxy exams than whites, is black genetics to blame? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 29, 2011, 12:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/statistically-blacks-score-poorly-on-iq-and-iq-proxy-exams-than-whites-is-black-genetics-to-blame/594488 "2011-08-29T12:43:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![strugglingChristian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a183cd/32.png) [@strugglingChristian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/strugglingChristian)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2011, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/statistically-blacks-score-poorly-on-iq-and-iq-proxy-exams-than-whites-is-black-genetics-to-blame/594488/61 "2011-08-30T17:27:17Z")
“It’s often incredible what people survive” This is why I’m so surprised AAs are not psychotic. Because I am not one of those people. I’m more of the Nat Turner turn. You kill my brothers, rape my woman, and beat my child and I set you and your house on fire. I have a strong revenge instinct and if I wasn’t coddled by Christianity as a child, I can imagine aggressive behavior from others would set me off. “But the people who were involved in slavery weren’t criminal” I was using criminals as an example of people who exhibit violent and aggressive behavior which is correlated with lower IQ. Just because it wasn’t illegal, doesn’t mean it wasn’t violent and aggressive. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2011, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/statistically-blacks-score-poorly-on-iq-and-iq-proxy-exams-than-whites-is-black-genetics-to-blame/594488/62 "2011-08-30T17:33:41Z")
Not all slaveowners were violent and/or aggressive. ---
**Author:** ![strugglingChristian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a183cd/32.png) [@strugglingChristian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/strugglingChristian)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2011, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/statistically-blacks-score-poorly-on-iq-and-iq-proxy-exams-than-whites-is-black-genetics-to-blame/594488/63 "2011-08-30T17:40:37Z")
I guess I’m going to have to take a stance here because i am being misunderstood. I do not actually “believe” in IQ tests. The originator of the standford-binet test is quoted as saying “Among laboring men and servant girls thousands are feeble-minded. They are the world hewers of wood and drawers of water…No amount of school instruction will ever make them intelligent voters. The fact that one meets this type with such frequency among Indians, Mexicans, and negroes suggest quite forcibly the whole question of racial differences in mental traits will have to be taken up anew and by experimental methods. From a eugenics point of view, their children constitute a grave problem because of their prolific breeding” Clearly this guy had an agenda. he set out to prove his point and created this test to support his egregious and clearly biased viewpoint. secondly, there are no satisfactory methods that have been used to correlate IQ to criminal behavior. Satisfactory to me at least. If I were to study it, I would only test prisoners with irrefutable objective evidence of guilt (DNA, video) or who admit to their crime. And I would segregate it by crime type. Stealing food is clearly different than murdering a stranger for fun. BUT, since the ideal test and the ideal methods are not available, we have no choice but to discuss this issue with faulty data. Saying blacks have lower IQs is akin to me to making it illegal for blacks to read and then quoting studies that prove that blacks are illiterate and saying it is a racial difference. ---
**Author:** ![strugglingChristian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a183cd/32.png) [@strugglingChristian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/strugglingChristian)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2011, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/statistically-blacks-score-poorly-on-iq-and-iq-proxy-exams-than-whites-is-black-genetics-to-blame/594488/64 "2011-08-30T17:42:57Z")
“Not all slaveowners were violent and/or aggressive.” but all who raped their female slaves thereby contributing to the genepoool of AAs were! And don’t bother stating not all who contributed were rapists. Because it is my firm belief that they WERE based on the circumstances. if they freed their slaves before bedding them, then i would posit it was not rape and that point would be moot. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2011, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/statistically-blacks-score-poorly-on-iq-and-iq-proxy-exams-than-whites-is-black-genetics-to-blame/594488/65 "2011-08-30T18:08:37Z")
> [@strugglingChristian](#): > > And don’t bother stating not all who contributed were rapists. Because it is my firm belief that they WERE based on the circumstances. if they freed their slaves before bedding them, then i would posit it was not rape and that point would be moot. Rapist, sure, because the slave can’t meaningfully refuse consent. But not necessarily violent. It seems to me that if somebody is trained from birth to believe that I was their natural, inherent superior; that they have a moral duty to obey me unquestioningly and that it is their responsibility to always put my needs and well being ahead of their own, then I’m probably not going to have to use very much violence to get what I want, even if what I want is sex. ---
**Author:** ![strugglingChristian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a183cd/32.png) [@strugglingChristian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/strugglingChristian)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2011, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/statistically-blacks-score-poorly-on-iq-and-iq-proxy-exams-than-whites-is-black-genetics-to-blame/594488/66 "2011-08-30T18:55:20Z")
Sex against one’s will is by nature violent and aggressive I would say. If your penis is in my vagina when i don’t want it there, you are being violent. Not to mention the thrusting involved. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2011, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/statistically-blacks-score-poorly-on-iq-and-iq-proxy-exams-than-whites-is-black-genetics-to-blame/594488/67 "2011-08-30T20:23:04Z")
> [@strugglingChristian](#): > > Sex against one’s will is by nature violent and aggressive I would say. If your penis is in my vagina when i don’t want it there, you are being violent. Not to mention the thrusting involved. That’s the point. It’s not necessarily against the slave’s will, because the slave and master are in a cultural situation, and they’ve both been indoctrinated to the extent that the slave isn’t allowed to have an opinion of their own. ---
**Author:** ![Chen019](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f19dbf/32.png) [@Chen019](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chen019)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2011, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/statistically-blacks-score-poorly-on-iq-and-iq-proxy-exams-than-whites-is-black-genetics-to-blame/594488/68 "2011-08-30T21:55:59Z")
> [@drewtwo99](#): > > However, the questions become, is an IQ score indicative of “intelligence”? Are there certain cognitive tasks such as visual processes, auditory process, dexterity, etc that aren’t even considered when creating the IQ score but are very important higher brain functions nonetheless? What other assessments of “intelligence” might help us draw stronger conclusions? A strong scientific theory is backed up by multitudes of metrics, surveys, studies, etc, not just one type of test. Regarding intelligence what psychologists look at is the g factor. I’d recommend Steve Hsu’s talk the other week at Google regarding the BGI study on genetics and intelligence. He discusses how it is defined in the [talk](http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2011/08/this-is-video-of-talk-i-gave-at-google.html). Here are the [slides](http://duende.uoregon.edu/~hsu/talks/ggoogle.pdf) from the presentation. Hsu also explains it in more detail [here.](http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2009/11/iq-compression-and-simple-models.html) ---
**Author:** ![Chen019](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f19dbf/32.png) [@Chen019](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chen019)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2011, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/statistically-blacks-score-poorly-on-iq-and-iq-proxy-exams-than-whites-is-black-genetics-to-blame/594488/69 "2011-08-31T03:05:53Z")
> [@drewtwo99](#): > > Furthermore, what does the word “race” even mean? And if race is a real thing, as others have pointed out, by what metric do we measure it? As some posters have pointed out, skin color alone is a poor indicator of race, as evidenced, African people as a whole are more genetically diverse than all other races in the world. Since when is skin color alone what people look for in determining race? People tend to look at a number of features which tend to correlate. Also, note that self identified ethnicity tends to map almost perfectly to the [main continental clusters](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC139378/). [http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/14/opinion/14leroi.html](http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/14/opinion/14leroi.html) ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2011, 3:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/statistically-blacks-score-poorly-on-iq-and-iq-proxy-exams-than-whites-is-black-genetics-to-blame/594488/70 "2011-08-31T03:07:03Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Not all slaveowners were violent and/or aggressive. Even if true it doesn’t matter, since the slaveowning system certainly was. That’s why the slaves didn’t just refuse to obey or run off; because that was a way to end up being tortured to death in front of the other slaves to teach them a lesson. It didn’t matter much if a a particular slaveowner didn’t bother to personally dirty his hands. The slave system was built upon a foundation of continuous institutionalized terror and brutality. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2011, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/statistically-blacks-score-poorly-on-iq-and-iq-proxy-exams-than-whites-is-black-genetics-to-blame/594488/71 "2011-08-31T03:17:39Z")
> [@Chen019](#): > > Since when is skin color alone what people look for in determining race? It depends on what the racial difference advocates are trying to prove, or failing that, what day of the week it is. Segregation in the Jim Crow South was based on skin color, not what part of Africa the victim’s parents were from. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2011, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/statistically-blacks-score-poorly-on-iq-and-iq-proxy-exams-than-whites-is-black-genetics-to-blame/594488/72 "2011-08-31T03:18:47Z")
[QUOTE=DT] Even if true it doesn’t matter, since the slaveowning system certainly was. That’s why the slaves didn’t just refuse to obey or run off; because that was a way to end up being tortured to death in front of the other slaves to teach them a lesson. It didn’t matter much if a a particular slaveowner didn’t bother to personally dirty his hands. The slave system was built upon a foundation of continuous institutionalized terror and brutality. [/QUOTE] Sure, but that doesn’t tell us anything about slaveowners as a group, which is the assertion that I was responding to. That’s like saying that white Southerners are inherently sociopathic because Southerners have historically treated black people badly. I suppose it’s _possible_, but hardly the most likely explanation. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2011, 3:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/statistically-blacks-score-poorly-on-iq-and-iq-proxy-exams-than-whites-is-black-genetics-to-blame/594488/73 "2011-08-31T03:42:23Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Sure, but that doesn’t tell us anything about slaveowners as a group, which is the assertion that I was responding to. That’s like saying that white Southerners are inherently sociopathic because Southerners have historically treated black people badly. I suppose it’s _possible_, but hardly the most likely explanation. You must mean it “doesn’t tell us anything about slaveowners as _individuals_”, because it certainly tells us a lot about them as a group. As a group, they created and supported the escaped slave laws, as a group, they led the South’s secession from the Union, and as a group they created the Jim Crow laws after the war. ---
**Author:** ![Chen019](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f19dbf/32.png) [@Chen019](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chen019)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2011, 3:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/statistically-blacks-score-poorly-on-iq-and-iq-proxy-exams-than-whites-is-black-genetics-to-blame/594488/74 "2011-08-31T03:44:03Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > It depends on what the racial difference advocates are trying to prove, or failing that, what day of the week it is. Segregation in the Jim Crow South was based on skin color, not what part of Africa the victim’s parents were from. I’m talking about identifying the main racial groups which reflect continental ancestry. It’s not hard to distinguish a Chinese person from a Norwegian. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2011, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/statistically-blacks-score-poorly-on-iq-and-iq-proxy-exams-than-whites-is-black-genetics-to-blame/594488/75 "2011-08-31T04:09:06Z")
> [@Boyo\_Jim](#): > > You must mean it “doesn’t tell us anything about slaveowners as _individuals_”, because it certainly tells us a lot about them as a group. As a group, they created and supported the escaped slave laws, as a group, they led the South’s secession from the Union, and as a group they created the Jim Crow laws after the war. Yeah, that was a typo. ---
**Author:** ![orcenio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/orcenio/32/1036_2.png) [@orcenio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/orcenio)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2011, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/statistically-blacks-score-poorly-on-iq-and-iq-proxy-exams-than-whites-is-black-genetics-to-blame/594488/76 "2011-08-31T15:42:17Z")
[Svante Paabo: DNA clues to our inner neanderthal](http://www.ted.com/talks/view/lang/eng//id/1213) **Filmed** : July 2011 **Posted** : August 2011 **Duration** : 17 minutes Svante Paabo is the director of the Department of Genetics at the [Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Planck_Institute_for_Evolutionary_Anthropology). In this video he gives a quick summary of early human “geno-graphy” and it’s relation to current genetic variation among present day humans. Paabo also touches on many of the (mis)understood topics discussed in this thread. > [@Alka\_Seltzer](#): > > QFT. There is far more genetic diversity within african populations than the rest of humanity. > > A related fallacy is that “black people are superior at athletics”. As [this](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14679657) article points out, in fact it’s very small populations that tend to dominate particular fields. For example, Kenya is known for it’s distance runners, but it fact most of them come from Nandi, a small part of the rift valley. African/non-African degrees of genetic variation is discussed **03:03 - 04:39** > [@Chen019](#): > > Since when is skin color alone what people look for in determining race? People tend to look at a number of features which tend to correlate. Also, note that self identified ethnicity tends to map almost perfectly to the [main continental clusters](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC139378/). > > [http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/14/opinion/14leroi.html](http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/14/opinion/14leroi.html) > [@Chen019](#): > > I’m talking about identifying the main racial groups which reflect continental ancestry. It’s not hard to distinguish a Chinese person from a Norwegian. Continental ancestry and the **lack** of importance of hair form/skin colour/eye shape is discussed **04:39 - 08:50** ---
**Author:** ![Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8edcca/32.png) [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hentor_the_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2011, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/statistically-blacks-score-poorly-on-iq-and-iq-proxy-exams-than-whites-is-black-genetics-to-blame/594488/77 "2011-08-31T16:12:49Z")
> [@strugglingChristian](#): > > I guess I’m going to have to take a stance here because i am being misunderstood. I do not actually “believe” in IQ tests. They do in fact exist. > [@](#): > > The originator of the standford-binet test is quoted as saying “Among laboring men and servant girls thousands are feeble-minded. They are the world hewers of wood and drawers of water…No amount of school instruction will ever make them intelligent voters. The fact that one meets this type with such frequency among Indians, Mexicans, and negroes suggest quite forcibly the whole question of racial differences in mental traits will have to be taken up anew and by experimental methods. From a eugenics point of view, their children constitute a grave problem because of their prolific breeding” > > Clearly this guy had an agenda. he set out to prove his point and created this test to support his egregious and clearly biased viewpoint. Lewis Terman, a Stanford professor who revised an earlier measure developed by Alfred Binet, certainly espoused some horrific ideas and involved himself in eugenics. That’s actually independent of the psychometric properties of the Stanford-Binet measure. Furthermore, even if it was a crippling indictment of the Stanford-Binet, it would do nothing to undermine the validity of the Wechsler measures of intelligence, including the WAIS and WISC, which are more widely employed to measure IQ. Similarly, it would have nothing to do with the validity of any other measures of IQ. > [@](#): > > secondly, there are no satisfactory methods that have been used to correlate IQ to criminal behavior. Satisfactory to me at least. If I were to study it, I would only test prisoners with irrefutable objective evidence of guilt (DNA, video) or who admit to their crime. And I would segregate it by crime type. Stealing food is clearly different than murdering a stranger for fun. First, the methods of correlating crime and IQ are simply that - identifying what the correlation between the two measures are. What you are arguing is that the methods for operationalizing what defines “criminal” might potentially affect the relationship between IQ and crime. That’s certainly plausible enough, but it simply helps to explain the relationship between IQ and criminal behavior better. > [@](#): > > BUT, since the ideal test and the ideal methods are not available, we have no choice but to discuss this issue with faulty data. The data isn’t faulty, and you’ve not made clear what the ideal methods would be. In actuality, across a variety of types of operationalizations of IQ and behavior, the relationship between IQ and antisocial behavior is quite robust. ---
**Author:** ![orcenio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/orcenio/32/1036_2.png) [@orcenio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/orcenio)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2011, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/statistically-blacks-score-poorly-on-iq-and-iq-proxy-exams-than-whites-is-black-genetics-to-blame/594488/78 "2011-08-31T16:17:50Z")
…also (@ **Chen** ) that 6 year old NYtimes Op-ed by Armand Marie Leroi was heavily critizied for **many** unfounded assumptions, inaccuracies and an outright/blatant miscariterization of various conclusions drawn by the contributing authors in Nature’s “[genetics for the human race](http://www.nature.com/index.html?file=/ng/journal/v36/n11s/index.html).” [A year ago I brought up a few (13)](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=12912246&postcount=238) different articles all critiquing Leroi’s “A Family Tree in Every Gene.” I suggest you read one of them. ETA: the articles can be found at the [Social Science Research Council participants on race](http://raceandgenomics.ssrc.org/). ---
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2011, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/statistically-blacks-score-poorly-on-iq-and-iq-proxy-exams-than-whites-is-black-genetics-to-blame/594488/79 "2011-08-31T22:48:10Z")
Orcenio, stop using reality-based arguments. ---
**Author:** ![magellan01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@magellan01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/magellan01)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2011, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/statistically-blacks-score-poorly-on-iq-and-iq-proxy-exams-than-whites-is-black-genetics-to-blame/594488/80 "2011-08-31T23:16:37Z")
I’m always entertained by these threads. It’s obvious that skin color correlates with other traits, like hair texture and some facial features. And it’s obvious to anyone who watches world track and field events or the NFL or the NBA that there is also a correlation with skin color and some skills that serve one well in certain sports. But to entertain the notion that skin color also correlates with the brain and IQ—IMPOSSIBLE!!! :rolleyes: [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/statistically-blacks-score-poorly-on-iq-and-iq-proxy-exams-than-whites-is-black-genetics-to-blame/594488.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/statistically-blacks-score-poorly-on-iq-and-iq-proxy-exams-than-whites-is-black-genetics-to-blame/594488.md?page=5)