The great IQ and race debate

In the latest issue of The New Yorker Malcolm Gladwell wades into the dispute over the difference in intelligence between blacks and whites.

Actually, he doesn't. He wades into the row over differences in IQ between blacks and whites. The difference is crucial.

The remarks of DNA pioneer James Watson and a series of Slate articles by William Saletan have re-opened a long-standing debate about whether differences in IQ between ethnic groups are genetic or environmental. Saletan and Watson support a largely genetic explanation.

Gladwell does not. And in a book review of James Flynn's What is Intelligence, he explains cogently why. Flynn's work demonstrates that IQ is a complex and changing measurement and that the rapidly increasing IQ of the population suggests strongly that IQ levels are heavily influenced by environment. (You can watch a debate between Flynn and Charles Murray on the Manhattan Institute site).

On his blog Gladwell goes further, linking to other papers making convincing arguments about IQ and genetics.

None of this, however, settles the basic question.

While the critics of Watson, Saletan and Murray manage to show to my satisfaction that IQ measures are heavily influenced by the environment, all that means is that IQ measures are not good measures of innate intelligence.

We don't know whether there are racial inherited difference in innate intelligence (either blacks being more innately intelligent than whites or vice versa) because we haven't a measure that can tell us.

And maybe creating one would be impossible.

For the moment the only thing one can say with confidence is that the Watson camp has failed to make its case.

 

Comments

[Douglas]

It is a strange scientific debate that for social reasons requires higher burdens of proof. People in the public-eye like yourself cannot comment unless you are openly against any theory that implies that there might be differences or your career will be damaged seriously. Of course almost every measurable characteristic such as height and hair composition and even brain mass varies between races implying that variation in this is likely, but not proving anything. Chance could have it that even though exposed to very different evolutionary pressures our mental capacities were one of the only things to remain the equal or the same, other things have remained the same but they are few and far between. More than 99% of features and characteristics than can be measured vary although variation need not be great and can be tiny/insignificant. It is a fallacy to think that IQ tests are any test of raw intellect. This is borne out by the fact that by simply practising for them one can improve ones score and that the same people after education usually have increased scores although they are affected by intellect as shown by the fact that people with certain types of brain damage do poorly regardless of education or practise. just as it would be scientifically wrong to say that intellects differ due to race it would be wrong scientifically to say that intelligences are equal as this also isn't proved. If Finlelstien thinks that current evidence cannot prove it eitherway then as the only real academic journalist at the times and someone whos grasp of logic is sound I would take it on his authority alone. Just hope Daniel isn't corrupted by politics.

[Lee Jakeman]

Has it never occurred to anyone that intelligence is all about KNOWING YOURSELF? That it's all about CONSCIOUSNESS, which has nothing to do either with genetics or environment?

[Dave Bartlett]

As I understand it, IQ was developed to measure performance during education. It was designed to be mutable, not fixed.

[Guy Herbert]

Perhaps the whole idea of "innate intelligence" is flawed. Abandoning it would free us from worrying about the 'unfair' disproportionate recruitment of people from good schools and well-equipped families into the better universities. And consequently from strange nonsense assumptions such as the Sutton Trust's latest study, where the faster cognitive development of better-off children regardless of their starting-point is treated as a revelation of the supernatural.

There is such a thing as bad luck.

[F Kimbal Johnson]

You can always find 'scientists' to support fashionable/expedient ideologies; they sing for their supper. The difference in racial IQ is a self-evident fact of history.

[John of York]

Kimbal Johnson wrote "The difference in racial IQ is a self-evident fact of history."
That is only true if you believe that history has ended and the "winners" have "won". 3,000 years ago presumably Kimbal Johnson would have pointed to the pyramids and Great Wall to champion the racial superiority of the Chinese and Egyptians?
No, thought not.

[Alison]

You question the definition of IQ. But what about the definition of race? Why is skin colour the key differentatior? What is a race? It's a complete nonsense of a concept.

And while I'm at it, can we please not go all American and refer to 'blacks and whites' but to black people and white people? I am not "a white", if you think about it for a moment, it is quite offensive to label someone in that way. Would we go around calling disabled people 'disableds'?

[Roberta Stevenson]

Whose history then? And could those 'fashionable and expedient ideologies' have something to do with equality,decency and good relationships with all human beings of whatever race? How can you compare Martin Luther King with David Beckham, or Tony Blair with Ghandi? People are complex in their abilities and talents; why bother about their IQs?
There are, of course, no 'self-evident facts of history'. Grow up.

[Sam Mccartin]

Before you do anything else first define 'black' and 'white' . You will find that such a definition is impossible thus making the question you pose (are blacks more intelligent than whites or vice-versa) completely meaningless.

[Ras Tafari]

The people that perpetuates this myth are heavily influenced by natural selection and need for racial ''one upmanship". For ease of understanding, I have not met an Indian, Chinese, African person agree that anyone is more intelligent than them. Same applies to white people.

[Kim]

Who cares!?

[Eddie]

What the heck is 'innate intelligence' anyway, and why should it matter? If being innately intelligent doesn't help you achieve what you want to in the real world, who cares?

[Julian Cox]

A few years ago now, a French magazine conducted a poll on national, rather than racial intelligence - but that didn't fool anyone, least of all the French who of course, were intelligent enough to work out what they really meant.

Over 70% of respondents claimed the French were more intelligent than other nations and 70% per cent thought that they were within the top 20% per cent of intelligent Frenchmen.

Just shows what hubris can make of statistics.

[Joe]

I heard a report that a particular species of small mammal that lived in a valley was split as each part of the group moved to the hills on opposite sides. Within a few generations, each group had developed some different characteristics. Intelligence wouldn't be immune to this sort of thing, would it?

[Sunyam]

If there are innate differences in IQ between races, and one dominnat race is superior to any other, then you have to show that there is no single dummy in the dominant race.

[Martin Boddy]

To answer questions such as this in any meaningful scientific way, the question has to be defined in a scientifically meaningful way. Firstly, we need to define intelligence as a quantitative measurement, something that is not currently done. This is due to the fact that the term intelligence means very different things to different people. Therefore a rigourous scientific definition of it would undoubtedly be disputed left, right and centre, making a consensus definition difficult if not possible to achieve.

Even if you were to achieve this, all you would be able to prove or disprove would be the genetic component to the agreed definition, which would then be open to further disputes once the results of the study were realised.

Add to this the problem of defining genetic variation between races, and you have what is effectively and unanswerable question.

[Pierre B]

Well that's something.

Definitions:
1 ability to adapt to one's environment - eg learn to read and write to make money, if that's important
2 ability to transcend one's environment - e=mc2, produce a work of art (although this may fit into 1).

We might differentiate according to competence in mathematics - but philosophy won't do. Therein lies the problem: can one choose to be poor at maths? Is BHL more intelligent than Sartre? Pascal invented the calculator. But... emotional intelligence squares the circle. Should IQ measure talent? memory? what use is mental agility? Better a steamroller or a ferrari?

And
3 discipline

It might be a start to measure cultural, rather than individual intelligence (see Foucault and Barthes or wikipedia for the difference between doxa and episteme).

[Malcolm McLean]

Intelligence testing has a rather silly, socially ambitious feel to it.

However regression, correlation, and most of the other standard statistical techniques were developed to analyse IQ scores. We have to admit that much.

[John Scott]

When are people going to wake up and stop all these ridiculous false claims.
Its so pathetic that its not even worth mention it.

[Brian J Deller]

Can someone who is not bound by political bias explain to me why Africans, even though they have a very fertile continent below the Sahara, always need aid to survive even for food, yet when the Europeans were allowed to live there, the food production was outstanding and even in times of drought, sufficient. Also, they are generally even after 150 years of living with Europeans, unable to design and make technical products and also destroy those systems that were set up and working well before the Europeans were driven out leaving chaos now. Surely mass intelligence would ensure that the lemming type of self-destruction would not be allowed to happen by the people? No one seems to be able to explain but when some one tries with a seemingly credible explanation for us to consider, they are shouted down by the left-liberals who do not live in Africa even and thus are really showing no interest in solving the problems there. It makes me wonder who the real racists are here.

[Steve]

Well this is a rather touchy subject , the sad part is I don't think we can have an actual debate on the matter without someone losing his/her job, or being branded a racist.

Even if a scientist did believe the notion that whites on average were more intelligent, I doubt he/she would ever make that claim in public, to do so is simply suicide.

[Joseph]

Both black and white people's IQs will cover a wide range, just as men's and women's IQs cover a wide range. We should look at individual people and not racial or sexual groups. We don't deal with or employ an 'average' we deal with a specific person and his or her IQ is what matters -- if it does matter!

[Markos]

I have read several people in this debate denying the validity of IQ testing and the existence of race. IQ is not a complete picture of intelligence, but it is well-established that it is highly heritable and correlates strongly and meaningfully with academic success, job performance, income, criminality etc. Race is not about skin pigmentation, it is 40,000 years of genetic evolution between human populations that lived in different geographical environments and cultures. The fact that it is difficult to define does not mean it is a meaningless concept. Around the world, the average IQ for East Asians centers around 106; for Whites, about 100; and for Blacks about 85 in the U.S. and 70 in sub-Saharan Africa. It's the right of any scientist to explain this free from such extreme social/political pressure that James Watson suffered.

[eliXelx]

Nobody, but nobody, questions the genetic athletic prowess, or the innate rhythm that african people overwhelmingly and obviously have over caucasians; yet these same people simply will not admit that there may indeed be genetic factors affecting intelligence, and that here caucasians may well have it over africans!
How can you decide what to do about a problem if its parameters remain undefined, indeed unspoken?
Why are african children entering KINDERGARTEN already intellectually behind their caucasian, chinese or indian counterparts?
Is it the environmental or the genetic factor? It must be one or the other, there is no other possibility; but if we are not allowed to examine or debate or mention either, because that is too politically sensitive, what possible remedy can be offered?

[Bob]

That is only true if you believe that history has ended and the "winners" have "won". 3,000 years ago presumably Kimbal Johnson would have pointed to the pyramids and Great Wall to champion the racial superiority of the Chinese and Egyptians?

Errr, the Great Wall was started about 1600 years ago. That clears that up, and Kimbal could surely trace the Egyptians' decline to Islam and still hold his position! Worked for Hegel.

[James]

"Johnson would have pointed to the pyramids and Great Wall to champion the racial superiority of the Chinese and Egyptians?
No, thought not."

Actually the Slate article does say that the Asians are intellectually superior to Europeans. The Ancient Egyptians who built the pyramids are long since gone so probably hard to test their intelligence.

[Bob]

"We don't know whether there are racial inherited difference in innate intelligence (either blacks being more innately intelligent than whites or vice versa) because we haven't a measure that can tell us."

If Daniel is right about this then by a similar token we should not assume they are the same either.

[adam]

Exliex - you said "Nobody, but nobody, questions the genetic athletic prowess, or the innate rhythm that african people overwhelmingly and obviously have over caucasians"

I'd like to question both. Do you have any links to peer-reviewed scientific studies that support your assertions?

[Dominic Pearson]

I am European and am happy to concede that I believe Asians are, on average more intelligent than Europeans.

I take this as no insult. It says nothing of my own intelligence. I am quite comfortable about my talents, skills, my strengths, my weaknesses, and my ability to capitalise on those strengths, and account for those weaknesses.

If anyone proved this to be scientific fact, or indeed expounded a theory, I wouldn't feel the need to howl and moan, play the victim card, or claim that I was the victim of some sort of racism. Racism is a subjective indiscretion. Scientific analysis, by definition, is objective. Therefore the person espouseing a theory or proof is merely acting as the voice or messenger of how nature discriminates

Different races have diffirent physical characteristics. It would be extremely unlikely, as the PC brigade on the left seem to pretend, that we don't have similar mental characteristics. In fact, the difference between mental and physical is only a notional human division, nature makes no such distinction.

[Michele]

there is no scientific way to define races, modern biology and antropology say that, so the debate is unusefull!

[will]

errr... the great wall was strung together out of smaller fortifications by Qin Shihuang. he was ruling in 220BC which is more than 1600 years ago and less than 3000 years ago. Whatever race you belong to has got to be the least innately intelligent. There, the debate has been settled by me.

[PeckerWood]

I am in the Unitd States.My government has never let blacks compete on an equal level.We will probably never know until welfare is abolished,like slavery was.

Competitiom equally will reveal the answer to IQ's.

[Morakinyo]

I am a Nigerian studying in UK at the moment however, results from class assignments thus far have shown the Asians in my class to be far behind the class average. This does not prove anything as I am of the belief that other factors might have inhibited thier performance.

I have met many non-blacks as i have met blacks who cannot fathom simple tests.The non-blacks (many in the majority) hide behind the success of the nations of the Western world, while the non-whites are unfortunately badly reported by the biased non-black world.

[Cali]

James Watson may be a little off, but he has a point. It wouldn't be a waste of time to really look into the connection between race and intelligence. Blacks and whites actually did evolve in different parts of the world, in very different environments. So then, why is it so abominable to think that one could have evolved faster, and we should do research to know for sure? Is it only because it offends the people whos ancestors evolved in the regions at question? Probably.

[aud]

We may not be able to determine with scientific precision the distribution of 'intelligence' among 'races' just as we cannot determine with scientific precision the theory of evolution or even that smoking causes cancer, but if you were to bet money on East Asian track stars you would soon be bankrupt and the same is true for black mathematicians.

If we were to encourage east asian children to devout their lives to a career in professional american basketball that child would come to just as bad an end as if we encouraged a black child to pursue a carreer in higher mathematics.

You can argue against the existence of racial differences in 'intelligence' and you can even argue against the existence of 'race', but the people who bet money on it are already bankrupt, adding more evidence at least to the theory of evolution.

[Dr Stuart Russell]

"What is race?" asks Alison - living organisms reproducing amongst themselves in isolation tend to accumulate characteristics aiding survival, and passed on to succesive generations. Other living organisms, even though starting out the same (as with homo sapiens said to have originated in sub saharan Africa, some migrating out to NEurope and E Asia)) but evolving (ie reproducing) separately and in different environments need not turn out identical. Indeed, they should not - this "variation" gives rise to sub species known as races. Jews claim not to be a "race" but a people, however Jewish marital conventions will create such a sub species, just as Blacks are different in many important physiological and psychological ways. Races are real, race matters.

[Danielukes]

We should not allow political correctness blind us from the search of the truth, just because it sounds fair and correct to say that dispite varying racial physical charecteristics, there are no mental ones, it does not make it so, and saying that all races are equal, just better in their own areas, does not make it so either. To label a race as superior is impossible however as it would be purely down to opinion.

We must approach topics such as these with a neutral and open mind.

[Herbert Thornton]

The idea that all Celts are identical in every characteristic, including intelligence is obviously absurd - just as it's absurd to believe that all Chinese are absolutely identical in every respect.

For 'Celts' or 'Chinese', substitute any race you like - the same is still true.

It should be just as obvious that to think that every racial group is identical in all of its characteristics to every other racial group is equally absurd.

I'm entirely with Dominic Pearson on this one.

The only thing that needs adding is that some of the more stupid groups in the world are composed of people whose brains are incapable of recognising the extreme absurdities of most religions, and those who so easily swallow the foolishness of political correctness.

[Karen]

Blah, blah, blah. There may be a difference between the blacks in Africa and the Western blacks. Western blacks, as a group have genes of the white slave owner. (There is the horrible truth that white slave owners sold their own children into slavery, because they were not pure white.)

And if you are a black person from the Caribbean or South America and even North America, then you will likely also have the genes of the Native American or Carib Indian.

It is a titillating subject, its, maybe I could be more intelligent than the next guy, or that my children are automatically smarter than theirs, but when you bring people to the table and you whip away the restrictions of social context, then the whole argument falls apart. The fact is any kid has the capacity to learn anything, including, sadly - how not to be smart.

[Lila Joseph]

I wonder why this subject is always being debated by people who consider themselves the intelligent superiour to all others? Do they need confirmation of their premise? I know that I am intelligent because I survive in a hostile environment.

[Michael Weaver]

Everyone knows that Whites score higher than blacks on a plethora of tests,it might not be politically correct to say this,but it is true nonetheless.Read the Bell Curve or other books about Race and IQ at www.natvanbooks.com

[lourenco]

Lets not speak to much, ever single individual independently to be white, black, Asian and Latin American who lives is this planet has the ability and intelligence if he or she his given the opportunity to explore their potential, which unfortunately some people don’t get it.
This is the history and keeps repeating over the century’s.

[Vierotchka]

There is only one race, the human race.

That environmental conditions can influence intelligence is a given - if one grows up in great poverty and has had insufficient food while growing up, it can of course diminish one's intelligence, since the brain would not have received sufficient nutrients to develop normally. The same applies for the whole body. This, however, has nothing to do with "race". With regard to black people, a quick google with the key phrase "great Black American inventors" will quickly dispel the illusion that black people are less intelligent than white people.

[Roger C]

AUD wrote

"If we were to encourage east asian children to devout their lives to a career in professional american basketball that child would come to just as bad an end as if we encouraged a black child to pursue a carreer in higher mathematics."

Extract from a May 2005 news report...
"By the time you read this, Yao Ming and his Houston Rockets team will either be on summer vacation or still competing for the championship of the National Basketball Association.The towering 7-foot-6, basketball star, who recently finished his third regular NBA season, led his team to a fine 51-31 record and a slot in the playoffs."

Kinda blows that theory about E. Asian kids out of the water, doeasn't it? Oh, and while we're at it, one of my colleagues - from Nigeria - is pretty damn good at math - I'm prepared to bet, better than AUD.

Let's remember that James Watson himself isn't short of African DNA - he has maybe as much as a great grandfather's worth....

Oh, one more thing; no-one in his or her right mind would recommend anyone of less than truly exceptional talent to aim for an NBA career, since the odds of making it are so ridiculously small....

[Don Fox]

Even if we could, with confidence, answer the question as to whether there are significant differences in average innate intelligence between races, it is doubtful if the answer would be of much use in developing public policy. Surely the more important fact is that there is wide variation between individuals within the population, whether of the same or different races, in any measure of human performance that you care to nominate? The general policy conclusion that I draw from this observation is that we should ensure that all individuals enjoy social conditions which develop their abilities - eqality of opportunity. However, provided we do achieve equality of opportunity, we should be unconcerned if racial or gender ineqaulity of representation results.

[nawara]

raising such a debate and asking such a stupid question tells us how low iq scientists have. We r all human beings

[Bruce]

A topic I've always viewed with interest and a chuckle. I'm black with 5 brothers (all also black !). Eldest brother is a pediatric cardiologist, 2nd brother is an internal medicine specialist with a Ph.D, from the University of London. Myself (3 GCE A'Levels - all A's) and my remaining 3 brothers have 3 Masters degrees and 4 bachelors degrees between us - we all studied in the UK as well. It's the environment - go figure.