Re: IQ AND RACE. The taboo subject.
Eric John Nute (ejnute@raptor.sccs.swarthmore.edu)
10 Feb 1995 22:03:03 GMT
allison@nauvax.ucc.nau.edu wrote:
:>>Clearly, most claims that race and IQ are not correlated are tainted by
:>>this political pressure, and are invalid.
:>More accurately, I think the claims are that neither IQ nor race have as much
:>objective meaning as you think they do. Given this fact, the correlations that
:>can be observed between IQ and race are extremely unlikely to mean that blacks
:>are genetically inferior to whites. The differences in intelligence between
:>humans and, say, chimpanzees, certainly have a genetic basis, and genetics may
:>very well account for small differences in IQ among humans. There are so many
:>other factors that influence IQ, though, that genetic variability is swamped by
:>differences in family and educational environments and language learning
:>contexts. The racial differences in intelligence are much more likely to be a
:>result of these factors. The very best we can say is that whatever genetic
:>component there is to IQ is poorly understood, but there is little (or no)
:>reason to expect it reside in racial differences.
Not to mention that, as Boaz pointed out in 1932 (article entitled " Aims of
Anthropological Research"), many biological characteristics and
differneces average out over populations, so that taken in the aggregate
populations are other rather similar.
:>Jim Allison
:>Northern Arizona University
--
---Eric J. Nute <ejnute@sccs.swarthmore.edu>
My name is my address.
|