Race and Intelligence

UK Channel 4 to screen controversial documentary that asks whether IQ is linked to race
www.dailymail.co.uk...

Channel 4 is facing a race controversy after deciding to give a platform to scientists who claim that white people are more intelligent than those who are black. A documentary, fronted by former BBC News correspondent Rageh Omaar, will interview professors who claim brain power is linked to racial grouping.
It will include claims that the most intelligent people in the world are North-East Asians from parts of China, Japan and North and South Korea. The Australian Aborigines will be said to have the lowest average IQ.

British-born J Philippe Rushton, a psychology professor at the University of Western Ontario in Canada, is also interviewed....He says black people have smaller-sized brains than white people and are not as intelligent as white people.

Dr James Watson who formed part of the team that discovered the structure of DNA is said to have sparked controversy in 2007 after claiming in a newspaper interview that black people were less intelligent than white people.

Race and Intelligence: Science's Last Taboo, is to be shown on Channel 4, 26th October 2009.

Two things here immediately come to mind:

1. The IQ constantly comes up but unfortunately for these people is not a true measure of intelligence nor can it really be said to be accurate anyway.

2. They are making a false correlation here. Brain size is not necessarily linked to intelligence. If this were true, we would be significantly dwarfed intelligence-wise by the likes of elephants and dolphins. We might not even be around today - our close cousins, homo sapiens neandertalensis (or homo neandertalensis if you prefer) AKA Neandertal man had larger brains on average than we did. It is the complexity and structure of a brain that matters, not necessarily the size.

I can remember reading about William Shockley (coinventor of the transistor) getting involved in this sort of debate. There was, at least in his day, studies that showed certain races were testing lower on IQ scores. However, as Shockley himself pointed out, there wasn't any followup to see whether it was actually racial differences (which I don't believe) or whether it was socioeconomic differences.

For instance, being of a minority race means you are more likely to be poor, go to a crappy school, worry more about basic subsistence than education, and so on. People living in a slum probably have lower IQs on average, but it's not because they are dumber on average, it's because they have less opportunity and financial resources to develop themselves intellectually than the average person.

I don't have a problem with people studying this; it might teach us some valuable things. I do have a problem with turning it into some kind of racist crap, though, which I hope doesn't happen. As far as I'm concerned, smart and stupid don't discriminate between race, colour or creed :p

Not to mention that IQ Tests are seriously skewed along cultural lines, and are therefore not without significant criticism of their efficiency as a scientific guide to denote intelligence, or lack thereof.

There have been deviations away from standard IQ Tests such as the Stanford-Binet, to address these cultural biases, but still, they are no way to determinately gauge intelligence in a scientifically acceptable manner.

And I do agree with the other dissenting viewpoints posted in this thread...

Although size may matter in some areas, the brain is not one of those areas. Brain mass has long been disproven to be indicative of intelligence.

Likewise, even 50 years after Segregation, the economic and educational disparity between races is still prominent, which has a profound impact upon any demographic that you may draw from to base your findings.

These studies are repeats of the same racially motivated studies that have been done for the past two hundred years to justify racism. They do far more harm than they do good.

Besides, being born with intelligence doesn't ensure the proper application of intelligence...

"Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent." -- Israel Regardie

reply to post by fraterormus


That part about the cultural skewing is definitely true, and a point I forgot to make. Just as one simple example, a man I used to work with from Romania (English was his fourth language or something; he spoke like 6-7) scored 10 points lower on an IQ test he wrote in Canada than one he wrote in Romania. It's probably even bigger for cultures that have more differences.