What the average black man is capable of learning is not subject to opinion. The book The Bell Curve documents that the central norm for black IQ is at 85, which is one. Standard Deviation below that of whites, which establish the overall norm of 100.
What Lincoln would have seen in the examples of black men showing knowledge on par with whites is the effect of inner breeding, where sometimes, white genes are expressed and predominate in some of the offspring. Obama, with a white mother, being a case in point, (or a case to not prove the point).
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The Bell Curve is a huge pile of stinking dogshit that has been rejected by just about every Department of Education, Sociology or Statistics in every reputable university and college in the United States and Europe.
Even better, the book suggests that the real winners in the IQ race are the Asians, not the Caucasions.
Of course, it's all horse manure. There has not been one definitive study showing one racial group is more intelligent than any others.
All non White Anglo Saxon Protestants are inherently inferior. They reject God and follow false dogmas like Catholicism, Islam, Marxism, Atheism, Buddhism, and Hinduism, and are thus cursed with lesser intellect. This is a scientifically proven fact taken straight from the Bible.
the central norm for black IQ is at 85
Studies show the economic "level" of a family makes most of the difference... in that if you are raised in a poor family, you won't do so well AND you're a lot less likely to avoid being poor as an adult.
Ever wonder why that difference isn't showing up in places where being black isn't an automatic "kick them back down"? Now you know...
@Sangfroid - The Bell Curve was largely correct in that (at the time) the black national average was 85 and the white national average was 100. The problem was the book used shoddy methodology and outright dishonest techniques (like discarding data that contradicted the conclusion the authors wanted to draw) to arrive at a flawed and presumptuous answer as to what is causing the gap. They suggested a Hereditarian answer - an conclusion that is contradicted by the majority of modern scientific evidence and makes many assertions that can just as easily, often better, be explained by other (environmental) factors.
The problems with the Bell Curve and Hereditarians in general:
1) The white American average is ALWAYS 100. That's because IQ scores are averaged and the average of the largest group of scores (obviously white Americans, since they're the majority population) are scored as "100". Even as the IQ test material and "g"-loading changes over time the white average is re-marked again as "100", even though what would be "100" on a previous version of the IQ tests would be a different score on a later version. The white American IQ average in the 1920s would be in the low 80s on a modern IQ test, but was still scored as "100" back then.
2) The gap is really just a slide rule measure of how other demographics do compared to the white average. "85" is also a sliding score that doesn't mean the same on every version of the IQ test.
(cont'd)
3) A whole host of environmental factors like income, childhood nutrition, upbringing (1-parent households bring down scores in all races), difficulty of school courseloads, blood chemistry, etc. come into play. Minorities, except for middle class Asian-Americans and Jewish Americans, tend to have higher malnutrition, lower income, higher single parent household rates and less challenging coursework than whites. They also tend to have less educated parents on average. The education of your parents affects how well they can help you in your education. Education level DOES effect IQ scores.
4) IQ averages for populations change over time (The Flynn Effect). The Flynn Effect is the most damning piece of evidence against the Hereditarian position since if IQ were primarily genetically-determined it wouldn't change much over time if certain other factors are held in equilibrium. The rapid change in group averages suggests something environmental is changing, unless people today are just significantly smarter than people 100 years ago.
5) "Genetic" doesn't mean set in stone. Genetics can be negatively impacted by environmental factors. Prior to the last 100 years most men were well below 5'10 even though the genes for so many men to be that tall and above has always existed among Homo sapiens. The reason it's far more commonplace now than in the 1800s and before is that widespread/common malnutrition and poor healthcare stunted most men's growth. Men are taller on average today due to better quality food and healthcare. A similar thing can be going on with non-white Americans and IQ. They don't live in an equal environment to the average white American, so any genetic components of IQ may not be fully expressed.
6) Over time the IQ gap seems to be closing. The data from the Bell Curve is mostly from the 1950s to early 1980s. It's mad old now. Much more recent studies show the black national average IQ since then has gone up to 90-93:
http://www.brookings.edu/views/papers/dickens/20060619_iq.pdf
The black average was about 78 back in the 1940s and 50s and has gone up to 90-93 as of the early 2000s. The black-white gap has narrowed from about 18 points to 7-10 points over time. Even infamous hereditarians Rushton, Jensen and Lynn have admitted the black average in the US has (at least) gone up to about 87-89.
It's also possible for the Flynn Effect to work BACKWARDS. In the past 15 years IQ averages have gone down in some European and East Asian countries. Could be environmental or they could be reaching a Statistical Ceiling Effect.
7) Most scientists agree that IQ is not a direct measure of intelligence. "Intelligence" is likely a multifaceted phenomena of the mind that has many aspect that can't be measured. IQ tests don't measure creativity, inventiveness, improvisation, street skills, emotional perception, social intelligence, knowledge, wisdom or common sense. It mostly just measures a few aspects of capacity to remember or store rote knowledge and pattern recognition skills and speed. IQ is also not the most important factor about a person as it accounts for less than 20% of variance of financial success in life and says NOTHING about what kind of person someone is or how good at their job they'll be.
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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