Statistically, blacks score poorly on IQ and IQ-proxy exams than whites, is black genetics to blame?

[tomndebb]

@Chen019

1. The PISA & TIMMS data is consistent with Lynn’s findings (which themselves are based on hundred’s of researchers around the world).

I doubt that they are really “consistent” for all 104 countries, (if at all), and the claim for Lynn’sd analysis being based on “hundred’s of researchers around the world” simply noptes that Lynn cribbed a lot of bad, outdated, data from “hundred’s of researchers around the world,” not that he actually invested the energy to examine the data.

[iiandyiiii]

@John_Mace

One thing that always amazes me in these threads is how people insist that Blacks excel at certain sports because they are of African decent. But “Black” in the US means mixed decent. Let’s just say, for the sake of argument, that African Americans skew more towards certain athletic abilities than European Americans do. Maybe it’s precisely because they are of mixed ancestry that they do so, not because the are mostly of African ancestry.

For the sake of the children my wife and I plan on having, I hope this is true. Yay miscegenation!

[Chen019]

@tomndebb

I doubt that they are really “consistent” for all 104 countries, (if at all), and the claim for Lynn’sd analysis being based on “hundred’s of researchers around the world” simply noptes that Lynn cribbed a lot of bad, outdated, data from “hundred’s of researchers around the world,” not that he actually invested the energy to examine the data.

1. Look for yourself.

Rindermann, in an earlier paper titled The g‐factor of international cognitive ability comparisons: the homogeneity of results in PISA, TIMSS, PIRLS and IQ‐tests across nations, showed that country IQ estimates of Lynn and Vanhanen were consistent with the educational performance data, and that a country level “G” factor explains most of the variation.

2. Also, note the note the figures are being found useful in terms of macro-economic analysis:

Recent economic research, including Hanushek and Woessmann (2007), Jones and Schneider (2006), Weede and Kampf (2002) and Ram (2006) has shown that cognitive ability scores are robustly associated with good economic performance. They invariably find that cognitive skill scores have vastly more predictive power than traditional schooling measures…

Instead, I use the database of IQ tests assembled by Lynn and Vanhanen (2006), and invariably find a robust relationship between national average IQ and the conditional rate of total factor productivity growth over the 1960-1995 period. In a horse race between IQ and education, national average IQ easily wins under all specifications. The results also hold even if only pre-1970 IQ scores are used.

[Chuck11]

@Belowjob2.0

Chen, I’m not doing your homework for you. You have seen, or certainly should have seen standardized test data from the past few years which show a gap in some states of half a standard deviation. Either you’re ignorant of a subject which you claim deep knowledge , or you’re deliberately ingoring data which contradict your thesis.

This brings to mind a passage from Model (2008)

Rather, West Indian success can be attributed entirely to the greater talent and ambition of those who choose to move. Similarly, the subset of African Americans who are voluntary internal migrants are better off than their less venturesome counterparts. Once this point is clear, it is easy to see why West Indian success offers no lessons for African American improvement.

Given the typically higher admixture rate in the higher scoring African-Americans from the North and West relative to their brethren from the South and East, Chen could just turn the argument around. Shockley made this argument 40 some years ago (see: “Hardy-Weinberg law generalized to estimate hybrid variance for Negro populations and reduce racial aspects of the environment-heredity uncertainty” on page 1390A)

(Interestingly, I haven’t head this regional difference argument made in a while. Belowjob2.0, did you come up with it yourself or did you pick it up somewhere?)

[Gorsnak]

Any “data” that suggests that entire nations have 70 for an average IQ is beyond ridiculous. 70 is remarkably dumb. You don’t need a study to refute that sort of bullshit, you just have to go chat with a few people on the street and realize that they aren’t all really fucking stupid.

[Chen019]

@Gorsnak

Any “data” that suggests that entire nations have 70 for an average IQ is beyond ridiculous. 70 is remarkably dumb. You don’t need a study to refute that sort of bullshit, you just have to go chat with a few people on the street and realize that they aren’t all really fucking stupid.

Lynn & Vanhannen suggested that where scores were below 80, it was likely due to nutrition. They recommended provision of iodine and other micronutrients in those countries.

[Chuck11]

@tomndebb

This is the same Richard Lynn who wrote a book hyping his claims for IQ and national wealth, basing many of his “estimates” for any given nation’s IQ on samples as odd as a dozen schoolboys, tests administered under unclear circumstances to limited size groups dozens of years ago, or by “averaging” claimed IQ’s for two countries and then assigning that number to countries for which there was no data that lay between them.

To the chagrin of many, Lynn’s data has turned out to be fairly robust (at least outside of Africa). Garrett Jones has a good review of the research in his recent paper, “[National IQ and National Productivity: The Hive Mind Across Asia (2011).” See also: Rindermann (2011) “Intellectual classes, technological progress and economic development: The rise of cognitive capitalism.”

Lynn never argued that the genotypic African IQ is 70. He usually makes the case that it’s 80 or 85. Others, such as Jensen and Rushton, argue that it’s 85 to 90. Here’s a quote from Race Differences:

The conclusion that African Americans have a genotypic IQ of 85 does not mean that Africans in sub-Saharan Africa also have a genotypic IQ of 85. African Americans are not pure Africans but are a hybrid population with a significant amount of European ancestry. This has been estimated at 25 percent by Reed (1971) and by Chakraborty, Kamboh, Nwamko, and Ferrell (1992). We can estimate that pure Africans in Africa and in the United States have a genotypic IQ of 80 and that this IQ increases by 0.2 IQ points for every 1 percent of Caucasoid genes. Thus, the average African American will have an IQ of 85 (80 + 25 X 0.2 = 85), a figure confirmed by numerous studies summarized in Table 4.4. In the Southeastern states the percentage of European genes among African Americans is quite low. For instance in South Carolina it has been estimated at 6 percent (Workman, 1968) and in Georgia at 11 percent (Reed, 1969). These admixtures of European genes should raise their IQ by 1.2 and 2.2 IQ points, respectively, giving them an IQ of 81.2 and 82.2. This prediction has been confirmed by the study of 1,800 African Americans in five Southeastern states by Kennedy, Van der Reit, and White (1963), which found their IQ on the 1960 Stanford-Binet was 80.7.

African Americans with 50 percent European genes will have an IQ of 90 (80 + {50 by 0.2 = 10} = 90). This is about the mean IQ of African Americans in the Northern states, where the proportion of European ancestry approaches 50 percent. African Americans with 75 percent European genes will have an IQ 15 points higher at 95 (80 + {75 x 0.2 = 15} = 95), which is very close to the IQ of 94 of the interracial children in the Minnesota Transracial Adoption Study. Europeans with 100 percent European genes will have an IQ at 100.

This estimate of the genotypic African IQ as 80 means that the average IQ that Africans would obtain if the environments in which they were raised were the same as those of Europeans would be 80. Throughout sub-Saharan Africa the mean IQ of Africans is approximately 67, so it can be inferred that adverse environmental conditions in sub-Saharan Africa impair the African IQ by around 13 IQ points.

Notice that he reverses Belowjob2.0’s argument.

[tomndebb]

@Chuck11

To the chagrin of many, Lynn’s data has turned out to be fairly robust (at least outside of Africa).

Of course, since most of these claims are set up for the purpose of showing how dumb those black people are, having the weakest results in the one area that is being most examined is pretty much self-fullfilling as well as just dumb, itself.

Lynn’s stuff worked best on locations where there was an industrialized society, high universal education, and where intelligence testing was a common event and it failed miserably where the societies differed from that base. (Imagine that! The richest countries produce the “smartest” test results. Perhaps this is just post hoc, ergo propter hoc rationalization to support intelligence testing.) Using his results to then make claims about the locations with poor educational structures produces pretty much a foregone conclusion and applying his claims to those lcations is foolhardy, at best.

[Chuck11]

@tomndebb

Of course, since most of these claims are set up for the purpose of showing how dumb those black people are

To whom do you outsource your thinking? Tim Wise? (Interestingly even he has begun to rethink his “anti-racism” – in light of the recent GWAS IQ study, no doubt.) Whatever the case, I’m fairly sure that Galton, the founder of the London School, the man who’s ideas Lynn has been developing (see: THE COMPARATIVE WORTH OF DIFFERENT RACES), wasn’t driven by the need to prove that Africans were dumb. His experience in Africa simply told him (and correctly so) that they were (at least by European standards), and his hereditarianism simply led him to attribute this, partially at least, to genes. Given the conditions in African relative to Europe now and then, and given the known impact of environmental factors on IQ, I fail to understand why you or anyone wouldn’t believe that Africans are and were “dumber.”

Lynn’s stuff worked best on locations where there was an industrialized society, high universal education, and where intelligence testing was a common event and it failed miserably where the societies differed from that base.

Based on a meta-analysis by Wicherts et al (2010), Lynn’s estimate under-counted
the African national IQs by about 10 points. The n-weighted average IQ was found to be 76.5, with standard deviations ranging from 7-10.) I’m not sure were you get “worked best on locations…” Sub-Saharan Africa isn’t the only developing region. The only problems found were with the African IQs.

[Chen019]

@tomndebb

Lynn’s stuff worked best on locations where there was an industrialized society, high universal education, and where intelligence testing was a common event and it failed miserably where the societies differed from that base. (Imagine that! The richest countries produce the “smartest” test results. Perhaps this is just post hoc, ergo propter hoc rationalization to support intelligence testing.) Using his results to then make claims about the locations with poor educational structures produces pretty much a foregone conclusion and applying his claims to those lcations is foolhardy, at best.

Not necessarily. Look at the results for China even under communism.

The quantitative results of the last two sections imply that differences in national average IQ are substantial drivers of global income inequality. Can simple reverse causality explain this relationship? In other words, does a dramatic rise in GDP per worker cause a dramatic rise in national average IQ?

The region of the world that has witnessed the most rapid increases in living standards the world has ever known is unambiguously East Asia. Surely, this region would be an ideal testing ground for the productivity-causes-IQ hypothesis. If most of the IQ-productivity relationship were reverse causality, then we would expect to see the East Asian economies starting off with low IQ’s in the middle of the 20th century, IQ’s that would rapidly rise in later decades, perhaps even converging to European IQ levels. In short, one would expect to see Solow-type convergence in national average IQ.

However, this is not the case. Lynn and Vanhanen’s (2006) country-level IQ data shows that average East Asian IQ’s were never estimated below 100 before the 1980’s (Figure 4). These IQ scores come from South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, China, and an East Asian offshoot, Singapore. In all cases, IQ scores are above 100—even in a poor country like China. Thus, East Asians both started and ended the period with high IQ scores.

Another place to look for massive IQ increases would be in a region of the world that experienced a dramatic increase in the price of its exports: The oil-rich countries of the Middle East. But a glance at that data, likewise, shows little evidence that being richer, per se, increases IQ within ten or twenty years:

http://mason.gmu.edu/~gjonesb/Immigrant%20IQ

[tomndebb]

@Chuck11

Whatever the case, I’m fairly sure that Galton, the founder of the London School, the man who’s ideas Lynn has been developing . . . , wasn’t driven by the need to prove that Africans were dumb. His experience in Africa simply told him (and correctly so) that they were (at least by European standards), and his hereditarianism simply led him to attribute this, partially at least, to genes.

So, one more racist decided to spend his efforts “proving” the validity of his prejudices.

Not very persuasive, I’m afraid.

[Der_Trihs]

Chen019 and now Chuck11? I wonder if there’s some significance to the numbers in the pro-racism subculture. I know about the “88” thing.

@John_Mace

One thing that always amazes me in these threads is how people insist that Blacks excel at certain sports because they are of African decent. But “Black” in the US means mixed decent. Let’s just say, for the sake of argument, that African Americans skew more towards certain athletic abilities than European Americans do. Maybe it’s precisely because they are of mixed ancestry that they do so, not because the are mostly of African ancestry.

These people are I think the inheritors of the “one drop” theory of race; white is treated as a pure state, and everything else as contamination of white purity. So pure African, a little bit white, mostly white it doesn’t matter; what you are in their eyes is contaminated. “One drop of black blood” is enough to make you black.

[Zoe]

I taught for twenty years in an inner city school and did not see a difference at all in the intelligence of the dark-skinned students and the light-skinned students. And I just ran across a study which backs me up.

White students that go to predominately Black urban schools also score lower on intelligence tests. They are also on the other side of the gap. We were the schools where not many parents turned up on Parent-Teacher Conference Days. These parents often worked two jobs to support their families. And they didn’t have the extra money to buy air-conditioners for the rooms and extra computers for the libraries. Never once did I have a computer or even a typewriter in my classroom. (Of course, to be fair, I retired in 1989.) I never had a phone or any other way of signaling the office that I needed assistance. I did buy a big fan for the students when the temperatures were over 100 outside and higher inside, but someone stole it.

Yet I did have a student that became a member of the Board of Trustees for Vanderbilt University. He came out of the poorest school in town. This was a Southern city in the 1970s. Vanderbilt is usually rated one of the top ten schools in the country. I guess he didn’t know about the standard deviation.

From the Journal of Anthropological Research http://www.jstor.org/pss/3631210

When average group differences in “intelligence” test scores are encountered, the first conclusion to be drawn is that the circumstances under which intellectual capabilities are nurtured and developed are not the same for the groups in question. Where such tests show different “racial” averages in test scores, this should be taken as an index of the continuing effects of “race” prejudice and not of inherent differences in capability.

I find it interesting that those who want to find data to support their positions of equality can find it easily and those who want to find data to support their position of inequality can probably do the same – though I don’t find it as balanced. But why would they want to? That’s what puzzles me. Does it ever bother them? Do they ever question themselves about it?

[Chuck11]

@Zoe

I find it interesting that those who want to find data to support their positions of equality can find it easily and those who want to find data to support their position of inequality can probably do the same – though I don’t find it as balanced. But why would they want to? That’s what puzzles me. Does it ever bother them? Do they ever question themselves about it?

Keepin’ them kneegers down OR

Jesus, do you only have a cultural marxist theory of mind? You ask:

Those who want to find data to support their position of inequality can probably do the same – though I don’t find it as balanced. But why would they want to? That’s what puzzles me. Does it ever bother them? Do they ever question themselves about it?

And just above you have a quote that says:

When average group differences in “intelligence” test scores are encountered, the first conclusion to be drawn is that the circumstances under which intellectual capabilities are nurtured and developed are not the same for the groups in question. Where such tests show different “racial” averages in test scores, this should be taken as an index of the continuing effects of “race” prejudice and not of inherent differences in capability.

Why don’t you have any problem with this?
How did you become so twisted as to not recognize that it is moral wrong to falsely accuse people of iniquity? Help me understand this. You know my position.
It’s the same position that virtually every ‘racist’ takes: If you are going to blame black failure on conservative white racism, PROVE that it isn’t due in part to genetics. Test the genetic hypothesis for those highly predictive IQ differences, just as genetic hypotheses for differences in
blood pressure, cancer rates, and so on are now tested. It’s that simple.

I taught for twenty years in an inner city school and did not see a difference at all in the intelligence of the dark-skinned students and the light-skinned students. And I just ran across a study which backs me up.

The correlation between IQ and Skin color in the African American population is typically low (between .15 and .20). That there is a correlations is shown by a number of studies. Given the reliability of skin color as an index of African IQ (~.19, i.e. the square of the African Americans IQ-Skin color correlation) and the genetic hypothesis’s predicted IQ-African ancestry correlation, this is not less than predicted by a genetic hypothesis. Of course, this skin color-IQ relation can always be explained by some ad hoc environmentalist theory (e.g. colorism).

White students that go to predominately Black urban schools also score lower on intelligence tests. They are also on the other side of the gap. We were the schools where not many parents turned up on Parent-Teacher Conference Days. These parents often worked two jobs to support their families. And they didn’t have the extra money to buy air-conditioners for the rooms and extra computers for the libraries. Never once did I have a computer or even a typewriter in my classroom. (Of course, to be fair, I retired in 1989.) I never had a phone or any other way of signaling the office that I needed assistance. I did buy a big fan for the students when the temperatures were over 100 outside and higher inside, but someone stole it.

In my 20’s I taught biology in a black inner city school. I know what it’s like. But this is a chicken and the egg type of thing. Genotypically lower IQ families send their genotypically low IQ children to lower IQ schools
(That study even showed a race x genotype x IQ correlation – but, oh no, there are no genetic differences!

Yet I did have a student that became a member of the Board of Trustees for Vanderbilt University. He came out of the poorest school in town. This was a Southern city in the 1970s. Vanderbilt is usually rated one of the top ten schools in the country. I guess he didn’t know about the standard deviation.

Smells like Affirmative Action! (Just kidding – here we are population statistical racists, not typological racists.)

[Chuck11]

@Der_Trihs

Chen019 and now Chuck11? I wonder if there’s some significance to the numbers in the pro-racism subculture. I know about the “88” thing.

These people are I think the inheritors of the “one drop” theory of race; white is treated as a pure state, and everything else as contamination of white purity. So pure African, a little bit white, mostly white it doesn’t matter; what you are in their eyes is contaminated. “One drop of black blood” is enough to make you black.

Let me ask this: Since virtually all academic hereditarians agree that admixture mapping studies of the sort linked to above would resolve the issue of race, genes, and IQ, and since such studies could readily be done, if only IRB approval was granted, why is the research embargo being kept up? Why don’t environmentalists, who control the IRB board, just allows the studies and allow it to be demonstrated that racial admixture is not associated with IQ? Why?

[Der_Trihs]

@Chuck11

Let me ask this: Since virtually all academic hereditarians agree that admixture mapping studies of the sort linked to above would resolve the issue of race, genes, and IQ, and since such studies could readily be done, if only IRB approval was granted, why is the research embargo being kept up? Why don’t environmentalists, who control the IRB board, just allows the studies and allow it to be demonstrated that racial admixture is not associated with IQ? Why?

Because they tend to turn into masses of lies manufactured by racists to support their fantasies. And because “race” isn’t even biologically meaningful, which makes it rather hard to study in genetic terms.

[elfkin477]

@Marley23

Yes, racial IQ is the most plausible scientific explanation for fascinating high achievers like the cast of the Jersey Shore.

@Really_Not_All_That_Bright

They’re not white. They’re orange.

I believe scientifically they’re classified as members of the robust line of the Oompa-Loompithecus genus.

[Chuck11]

@Der_Trihs

Because they tend to turn into masses of lies manufactured by racists to support their fantasies.

Translation: Because they would establish a genetic etiology to some of the IQ difference and that would fuel “racism,” (which, among other things, means believing that some of the IQ difference has a genetic etiology.)

And because “race” isn’t even biologically meaningful, which makes it rather hard to study in genetic terms.

Are you saying that there are no average genetic differences between the socially defined racial groups of Whites/European Americans and Blacks/African Americans?

[Belowjob2.0]

http://knol.google.com/k/the-race-notion-s-role-in-ethnic-assimilation#

The “social system” theory is most convincingly articulated by Jonathan W. Warren and France Winddance Twine. It claims that the “race” notion (the creation of a permanent endogamous, impermeable caste) benefits the United States as a whole, even as it sacrifices one group. America’s ethnic diversity is precisely what makes the nation uniquely resilient and creative. Historically, American diversity has resulted from the acceptance of each new group’s transformation from colored “race” to White ethnicity. Distasteful though it may sound, America’s unique hospitality is because each new ethnic group is embraced by America’s expanding blanket of Whiteness as soon as they learn to disdain African Americans. In other words, in an America without a permanent Black caste from which immigrants can distinguish themselves, ethno-cultural assimilation would be negligible. Such an alternate-universe United States would comprise permanently polarized, mutually hostile groups like Yugoslavia, say, or Rwanda.28

Given... that Blacks represent the racialized other against which Whiteness takes shape, we... map out... the consequences of this for Blacks and non-Blacks. For Blacks, it essentially means that they remain the defining other despite how much they conform to "White standards" of dress, speech, behavior, cultural values, and so on. As the "anti-Whites," it is much more difficult, if not impossible, for them to reposition themselves as unhyphenated Americans. However, for other non-Whites... it has the opposite implication. For them, it means there exists a cultural space in which they can reposition themselves as White by distinguishing themselves from Blacks and adopting the cultural diacritica of Whiteness.29

On the plus side, this theory avoids the flaws of the “own fault” theory. It says that integrationist leaders do, in fact, succeed in persuading Blacks to adopt mainstream values. And each generation of young African Americans starts out believing that all they need do, to be accepted, is to act White (hardworking, honest, frugal). The problem is that this tactic fails for all but the brightest and lightest-skinned. Disillusionment soon sets in for most. Nearly a half-century after two civil rights movements (the integrationist nonviolent movement and the separatist black power movement) and despite huge gains in Black education, Black men now earn 71.2 percent of what Whites earn, and this number has fallen since 1980, when it was 75.1 percent. Similarly, from 1994 to 1999 the net worth of the median Black family fell from $8,400 to $7,500 while median White family net worth rose from $54,600 to $59,500. Also, the “social system” theory needs no recourse to non-replicable cultural pathology. African-Americans are stuck in a permanent “other” caste by contingency, a single random event that happened 325 years ago–bad luck, nothing more.30

The problem with the “social system” theory is that it offers no obvious solution. Clearly, the separatist exhortations of blacker-than-thou activists are sheer madness. Unchecked, Black separatism will simply plunge the nation into its next every-hundred-year cycle of intolerance. And the government’s obsession for coercing everyone to sew a race-label on his or her sleeve is even worse than insane–it is insulting and demeaning.

I can see in the comments section that Chuck has fought desperately, but unsuccessfully to contradict the arguments in Sweet’s essay.

The old school American racialist social system appears to be crumbling around the edges, hence the need to defend it with pseudoscience and demonstrably false claims about US history. It strikes me that the need is particularly great for those whose “whiteness” is not entirely sure.

“The science that will prove us right is just around the corner,” they claim, and have been claiming for decades. The problem is that the science on the issue continues to trend against their position. Their fear seems to be that science will disprove their theories entirely. The racialist social system they need to maintain their identities may be slowly collapsing.

[Chen019]

@Belowjob2.0

“The science that will prove us right is just around the corner,” they claim, and have been claiming for decades. The problem is that the science on the issue continues to trend against their position. Their fear seems to be that science will disprove their theories entirely. The racialist social system they need to maintain their identities may be slowly collapsing.

Err, if you read his comments above you’ll see he is asking why those who favour exclusively environmentalist explanations would be opposed to admixture mapping studies of the sort linked to above would resolve the issue of race, genes, and IQ.

It’s a reasonable question. In reviewing Richard Nisbett’s book, Harvard’s James Lee indeed suggested that would be a way of resolving the issue.

Belowjob2.0, I’m not sure how much of other peoples comments you read, but your view that group differences are exclusively due to environmental factors is very much a minority one. Far more researchers consider than both genetic and environmental variation explains the average IQ difference between US whites & US blacks.