I chose ‘other’ because I’m not sure of the relationship between culture/values and genetics. I’d lean towards genetics for the obvious things: one group is predisposed to sickle-cell anemia, another hemophilia, etc. But I think that nurture plays a very large role which can affect the surveys themselves and heavily influence the results.

Jim,

The latest poll at VFR reads as follows: “Are there material differences among races in average intelligence and other behavioral tendencies?”

First of all, what do you mean by material? Significant? Relevant? Each time I look at the question I get a little thrown by that word.

I see other problems in the question as well. Which races are you talking about? Maybe you felt it was less inflammatory not to mention blacks. But since I gather that’s what’s really on your mind, that’s what you should have said.

Also, you left out the issue of whether such differences are intrinsic to the races or are perhaps environmental or cultural and therefore can possibly be eliminated. It’s simply a matter of fact that blacks consistently score lower than whites on IQ—so that’s not a matter of opinion or controversy, and therefore not an appropriate subject for a poll question.

Accordingly, I would suggest that the question be re-phrased as follows:

“Are there significant, intrinsic differences between blacks and whites in average intelligence and other behavioral tendencies?”

This way you have a specific, meaty question. Some people might feel there are significant differences, but that they’re not intrinsic, and so vote no. Some people might feel there are differences in intelligence, but not in other behaviors, and so vote no. A yes vote would thus become more significant. A person who said yes to my question would really be saying something. But it’s not clear to me that a person saying yes to the present question is saying much of anything.

Larry

I should have said “innate.” The omission was an oversight. It seems a bit late to fix the question though since most likely half the people who are going to answer it have already done so.

On the other points I prefer it as it stands. A “material” difference is one that matters, that makes a difference. I prefer the word to “significant.” Perhaps because of my background in the law, it seems more exact to me. And I didn’t mean to restrict the question to blacks and whites. Probably I should have said “racial groups” instead of “races” to include comparisons among racial subgroups (e.g., Ashkenazi Jews and other white groups).

What do you mean by intelligence? One could include mechanical, musical, spiritual, rational, intuitive etc. If you mean an overall intelligence that includes all of these things, how would you possibly determine which race has an overall higher score? Certainly not by an IQ test which arguably does not measure much more than one’s ability to take IQ tests.

I would argue that each race has its own ‘genius’ or intelligence, which is its very reason for existing in the first place.

As I understand it, the scholarly reason for thinking there’s such a thing as general intelligence is that you can derive a number through testing that’s stable for individuals and shows strong correlations in a very broad range of settings (e.g., among people of different social class, education, ethnicity etc.) to a variety of things that evidence what we think of as intelligence—ability to solve problems and puzzles of various sorts, success in school and career, etc. In daily life of course we speak of intelligence and stupidity all the time and find the concepts useful in understanding the world around us, which for most of us is a stronger reason for thinking intelligence is real.

If it’s real though I don’t see a problem in principle in determining whether people from one group are usually smarter or dumber than people from another group. There might be complications in practice of course but that doesn’t seem to be Mr. Dickson’s point. If he thinks each race has its own intelligence he must think comparisons are possible.

I found Dan Seligman’s A Question of Intelligence: The IQ Debate in America a useful basic guide to measurement of intelligence. If anyone’s interested in the issues he can get a used copy for a couple of dollars. For something free and more scholarly (that I haven’t read) one might download Chris Brand’s The g Factor - General Intelligence and its Implications at http://www.douance.org/qi/brandtgf.htm . The latter book was published by Wiley in 1996 and got good reviews but then got depublished because it wasn’t PC—which is why you can now get a free copy online.

The “different types of intelligence” argument is an attempt to escape from the problem of intelligence differences. Even if we accepted for the sake of argument that there are different types of intelligence,—mechanical intelligence, “people” intelligence, dancing intelligence, and so on—and even if we also accepted Mr. Dickson’s hopeful idea that each race is gifted with its own type of intelligence (which I personally would like to believe is true), it would nevertheless remain the case that blacks on average would be far behind in verbal/logical and mathematical/spatial intelligence. And it is precisely that sort of intelligence that’s required to perform well in academic work, to work in intellectual professions and so on.

So the different types of intelligence argument changes nothing. Blacks are significantly less intelligent in the kinds of intelligence measured in IQ tests, which is also the kind of intelligence which is highly correlated with personal success and income level in modern society. Blacks are significantly behind whites, not because of the racial oppression of blacks, but because of blacks own limited intellectual abilities.

The one factor that absolutely establishes the reality and importance of intelligence differences is the predictive character of IQ tests. The massive longitudinal study of youth that Murray and Herrnstein draw on extensively in The Bell Curve conclusively showed that people with low IQ when they were ten years old had lower incomes (and all kinds of other lower indicia) as adults, and people with high IQ at age ten had higher income (and all kinds of other higher indicia) as adults; and furthermore, that of all factors including socio-economic background, low IQ as measured in childhood had the highest correlation with a whole slew of negative adult behaviors ranging from marital instability to accident proneness.

IQ is both measurable and predictive. The things it measures are therefore not just “the ability to take IQ tests,” but real abilities that correlate highly with the ability to perform in real life.

I agree with Mr. Kalb that the Seligman book is useful. Needless to say, The Bell Curve is also must reading.