Date:         Fri, 11 Feb 2000 03:21:03 -0600
From:         Mike Salovesh <t20mxs1@CORN.CSO.NIU.EDU>
Subject:      Re: Something good for a change

I promised myself to stay out of this discussion, because we've been
through it so many times in the past.  But there is something new (for
this list) in part of what John Goodrum said Thursday:
>
> And in the U.S., most people familiar with testing, or I should say a  plurality, don't believe the black-white IQ gap to be wholly environmental  (this is according to the large 1988 survey by Seligman & Rothman).  Trans-racial adoption studies lend support to this, where black, white and  mixed-race children adopted into advantaged white homes tend to score near the  mean for their population, rather than taking on the IQ characteristic of their  adoptive home.  I think the children of two black parents scored 89 on average;  the average adoptive parent scored 117.  I can find the reference for this if
you like.  There have been criticisms of this study - not sure of their
> validity.
>

To start with, Seligman is hardly a neutral source on this question.
For the sake of argument, however, I'll ignore that to look at what the
evidence is said to show about "trans-racial adoption".

It doesn't matter whether hereditability in intelligence is very high or
very low or somewhere in between.  What IQ tests measure, at best, is
the expression of genetic endowment in a given environment.  So long as
some portion of eventual IQ test results is attributable to environment,
there is no way to know what an IQ test tells us about the genetic
component, or indeed if there is any. Consider someone who has never
been allowed to go to school and has reached an adult age without
learning to read. That person is not likely to score as well on an IQ
test as a college graduate, even if the individuals involved are
identical twins.
What that says to me is that environment is a factor in IQ achievement.
(Note that I'm not alleging that anybody can measure how much of a
difference in IQ is attributable to the environment.  My argument's
validity depends on there being some effect of environment on IQ, and I
don't think anybody denies that.)

The facts of social life in the U.S. are that people who fit
stereotypical views of what "blacks" look like are treated as if they
were the same as anyone else who is considered "black".  Discrimination
and racism are always present and always expressed in the society as a
whole.  Mere adoption into a "white" home does not negate this fact.
Studies of so-called "trans-racial adoptions" can't control for the
discrimination that works against anybody in the U.S. who looks
"black".  There aren't any control groups: people who look "black" are
usually assumed to be "black".  Period.

The consistent 15-point difference in *average* IQ test scores when
people called "white" are compared with people called "black" might be
nothing more than a strong reflection of the social reality.  The
measure is real; its meaning is not at all clear.  I think it's an
excellent indicator of the cost of being perceived as "black" in the
U.S., and has nothing to do with genetics per se.

By the way, although people who "look black" usually are thought of
belonging to the black race", there is no guarantee that people who
"look white" will be regarded as "white". I have known many people who
lived in "black" neighborhoods, were (mis)educated in "black" schools,
held jobs usually not taken by "whites", and were regarded as "black" by
everyone around them -- even though they just did not "look black". The
way we usually define "race" in the U.S., there's nobody so blond and
blue-eyed that they could not possibly be regarded as "black".

I think of our last landlady in Chicago.  When we went to look at the
apartment, which was a perfect fit for us, we had a long and interesting
talk with Mrs. C, the building's owner.  She was fair-skinned,
blue-eyed, and had grey hair that still showed signs of having been
blonde in the past.  She was a longtime Chicago schoolteacher, and I was
about to start working for the same Board of Education that employed
her; that got us off to a good start.  As it turned out, we had lots of
interests in common. Peggy and I liked her so much that the fact that
Mrs. C lived in the same building was very much part of what made us
like the apartment.

Before giving us a lease to sign, our future landlady stopped the
conversation to tell us specifically that she was "black". I said "my
dear Mrs. C, if that's something we can't tell without being told, what
possible difference could it make to us?"  Her reply was telling: "I'm
just trying to avoid future trouble.  My mother and sister sometimes
visit us here in the building, and they are quite a bit darker than I
am.  We once had some tenants who saw them, realized that they were
"black", so I must be.  They moved out quickly, but not before trashing
the place."

Instant attribution of social attributes to so-called "race" came up in
another way when we moved out of Chicago.  I left to teach in the same
department as a man who earned his Ph.D. at Harvard, as his father had
done. My colleague clearly looked to be within the stereotypic range of
people called "black"; so did his parents and his wife. His family had
lived in "white" surroundings all the time he was growing up.  My
colleague's writing style could serve as a model for standard English,
and his vocabulary may well have been more extensive than mine. He had
never lived in a segregated "black" community; he was not familiar with
the spoken varieties of U.S. English that are sometimes called "black
vernacular". He knew much more about Africa, where he did much of his
research, than he did about how African-Americans lived in the same city
as the university where we taught.

Nonetheless, my colleague was much in demand for service on such things
as the "Mayor's Commission on Race Relations", and similar organizations
set up by the state's Governor, the university, and one of the state's
Senators.  It was assumed, without discussion, that because he was
"black" AND a tenured university professor he just naturally belonged on
all those committees, commissions, etc.

My colleague, despite having tenure as an associate professor, a very
good salary, and a wife who was professionally employed with another
good salary, could not buy a suitable house in that city because he
could not find a mortgage
lender who would work with him.  The only neighborhoods where he could
find willing mortgage lenders were crime-ridden, near-slum parts of the
city's small "black" ghetto. It was assumed, without discussion, that
because he was "black" he just naturally belonged in such places.

On the other hand, I was an assistant professor without tenure, and
there was little likelihood that my appointment could lead to tenure. My
salary was little more than half what my "black" colleague received. I
am usually regarded as "white" (although I don't claim the label for
myself).  When I arrived at that university, I got multiple offers of
mortgages from a wide variety of lending institutions, and we were all
but besieged by realtors eager to sell us houses that were way beyond
our ability to support, in upscale neighborhoods we couldn't afford to
live in even if somebody gave us a house there for free. Nobody tried to
sell us houses that might have been available in the "black" ghetto.

Those facts about mortgages in a northern U.S. city are exactly the kind
of thing I mean when I say that differences in average IQ between
"whites" and "blacks" could be nothing more than a measure of the cost
of being perceived as "black".

Some of us keep trying to say that the categories "black" and "white"
are not biological, even though biological differences are often
attributed to people assigned to the two groups.  Ron Kephart keeps
pointing to the peculiar fact that in the usual definition "white"
parents can have both "black" and "white" children, but "black" parents
can't have "white" children.  Push that to its very real extreme, and 63
"white" ancestors are somehow overwhelmed by one "black" one in the
sixth ascending generation.  There are no genes that are that potent in
any real biological sense!

To paraphrase but contradict John Goodrum, "I'm of the opinion that we
don't know whether human social groups differ genetically in
intelligence".  We're not likely to find any incontestable evidence to
the contrary, because nobody has come up with any biologically
meaningful criteria that incontestably identify membership in what
social criteria identify as "races".

We DO know that human groups differ widely in the opportunities they are
given to express whatever it is that IQ tests measure.  We also know
that the attribution of "race" is a very large factor underlying those
differences in opportunity, life chances, education, income, occupation,
and all the other cultural features that are alleged to be caused by
genetic differences.

What I conclude is that in our present state of knowledge, there is no
way that biology can be properly used to justify the U.S. social customs
that are so discriminatory that they cost a significant part of our
population the loss of 15 points on the IQ scale.

-- mike salovesh        <salovesh@niu.edu>          PEACE !!!

P.S.:  As usual, I have tried to be consistent about using quotation
marks around words such as "black", "white", and "race" in the context
of the present kind of discussion.  At very least, I think we are all
agreed that there can easily be a lot of confusion about just what these
terms refer to.

I don't accept the label "white" for myself because I don't think the
label means anything in human biology.  In the past, when the Bureau of
Census asked me to mark one category as my "race", I usually left that
space blank: I didn't recognize myself in any of the available
categories.  When given the chance, I prefer to answer "other" to this
kind of question.  Like all other human beings, I am of "mixed"
ancestry.  I wish I could tell that truth to the Census people.

If it matters, all of my grandparents were born in Russia.  I'm pretty
light-skinned, at least in winter; I have blue eyes and wavy hair.  In
describing my cultural affinities, I don't give precedence to one over
another. I feel at home in cultural settings that are defined as
"Midwestern American" or "Russian" or "Italian" or "African American" or
"Mexican" ("Mexican-American", "Latino", or "La Raza" don't shock me,
either) or "Polish" or "Jewish" or "Slavic" or "hillbilly" (take your
choice, eastern Kentucky or Missouri Ozarks).  Religiously, I feel at
home with Catholics, Methodists, African Methodist Episcopalians (and
those whose allegiance goes to A.M.E. Zion), Presbyterians, Quakers,
Jews, Unitarians, and some Lutherans. I am religiously uncomfortable
around most Southern Baptists, people who call themselves "Born-again
Christians", Mormons, and active door-to-door proselytizers. The only
biologically significant group mentioned in this paragraph is (or,
rather, was) formed by my grandparents. (Of course blue eyes are
biological, but I don't think that blue eyes define a biologically
significant population isolate.)