NYTimes Discovers, Denies Racial IQ Differences

Update 30 November 2010: I am adding a more rigorous graphic portraying SAT score by race by SES. The source of the image is sociologist La Griffe du Lion.   SAT math scores are a fair proxy for IQ scores, and this graphic illustrates the clear and sustained gap between white and black scores, all the way across the SES spectrum.  More observant readers would have already noticed the contradiction in the graphic further down (2nd image down), showing IQ scores and IQ gap by SES.  Despite the IQ gap remaining at about 1 SD (15 points) all the way up the SES spectrum, the PC graphics designers chose to narrow the IQ gap as the SES rose.   Such gratuitous editorials-in-graphics form give social science a bad name.   I left the IQ gap graphic in despite a number of problems, to see if any reader would point out the most obvious one -- the erroneous narrowing of the gap.  Please try harder next time.  ;-)

In tony suburban Shaker Heights, Ohio, funding is generous, support programs aimed at black students (about half of the student population, not an alienated minority) abound, there is no ability tracking (students track themselves), and such racism as can be found is too intermittent to destroy the academic curiosity of a human being of normal resilience. Yet blacks there cluster at the very bottom of the school _McWhorter

We know that blacks -- particularly black males -- lag in academic and professional achievement worldwide, whenever pitted against members of any race except Australian aboriginals. There is no limit to the number of excuses given for why blacks cannot compete -- poverty, a sick culture, racial discrimination, legacies of slavery, a history of tropical diseases, lack of role models... A new report described in the NYTimes takes another look at the "achievement gap." The report finds that poverty cannot be used as a credible excuse -- the achievement gap starts at the earliest stages of life, even among wealthy blacks.

“There’s accumulating evidence that there are racial differences in what kids experience before the first day of kindergarten,” said Ronald Ferguson, director of the Achievement Gap Initiative at Harvard. “They have to do with a lot of sociological and historical forces. In order to address those, we have to be able to have conversations that people are unwilling to have.” _NYT_via_IHE

The achievement gap only widens as children grow older, as can be seen by comparing testing results for all age groups. There is a good argument to be made that only 4% of American Blacks are qualified for a rigorous 4 year college degree -- regardless of their socioeconomic class or preparatory training.

The denial of human biodiversity (HBD) goes deep in American academia and general culture. Genetics is a relatively new science compared to political and economic philosophy, and will require time to be integrated into the general psyche -- particularly when it is fighting against embedded prejudice.

The sheer persistence of the racial achievement gap across time and geographic space argues for a more rigorous examination of its causes -- no holds barred, no topic off the table for research and publication. That is the only way to achieve as level a playing field as we will ever get, and it will require the deepest understanding of genetics possible.

This map shows IQs of indigenous people for various continents and nations. European and East Asian people evolved to average population IQs of roughly 100 or slightly higher. Most of the rest of the world's population IQ average is somewhere between 80 and 95. Only among African and Australian aboriginals does one find average population IQs which are so low as to allow one to foresee a worldwide stratification in achievement whenever these low-IQ groups might be paired against higher-IQ groups in an academic or professional achievement race.

This is basic information that has been known since the early 1900s when reliable psychometric testing first became available. How ironic that it is those claiming to be most educated and sophisticated who are the slowest to comprehend the obvious -- and to use that information in order to help those who lag. For it is the persistent denial of basic facts which holds those who lag down, without any genuine hope.