http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2010\11\17\story_17-11-2010_pg3_5
Wednesday, November 17, 2010 VIEW: Racial intelligence -Ralph Shaw Critics charge that intelligence tests have been used in the US for racist purposes. They argue that white elites have used such tests to justify white privilege and black exploitation. By portraying blacks as congenitally less intelligent through use of culturally-loaded intelligence tests, racists have tried to find moral justification for prejudice and discrimination Contemporary social wisdom holds that claims to intellectual or moral superiority based on race are rooted in myth. Even though racists contend that differences in intelligence, morals and behaviour between population groups are rooted in genetics and inheritance, most sociologists denounce such claims as bogus self-serving attempts at perpetuating social inequalities by dominant groups. Not too long ago such notions often shaped government policy and were upheld by the highest courts in some countries. A government sponsored policy of anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany and segregated schools and work places in the US, well into the 20th century, are obvious cases in point. Considerable research has been done on the issue of racial intelligence in the west, particularly in the US, but the jury is still out on this issue. Proponents of white intellectual superiority over the blacks point to IQ tests, the Coleman Report (1966) that tested 605,000 students and 60,000 teachers and other similar research in support of their claim, and opponents challenge the validity of the tests by pointing out that it is impossible to design tests that are culturally and socially neutral. They argue that the tests, especially their verbal content, have an Anglocentric bias. That race as a biological construct itself is a discredited idea works in favour of opposing assertions. French psychologist Alfred Binet, presumably, quantified intelligence by developing tests (1905) that measured innate intelligence. These tests, known today as the IQ tests, supposedly measure intelligence free of cultural influences. In various IQ studies conducted in the US, black children consistently scored less than white children and so did Native Americans, Mexicans, Italians and Poles. Test results of the Chinese and Japanese, on the other hand, were comparable to those of white Americans as were those of immigrants from Great Britain, Germany, Holland and Scandinavia. The US Congress-mandated 1964 survey of educational opportunities in the US resulted in the administering of achievement tests to students and teachers in 4,000 schools with special focus on six racial and ethnic groups. Coleman and his fellow researchers identified population groups such as blacks, whites, etc., not in the genetic sense but rather as social definitions for identification and categorisation. Their results corroborated the results of IQ testing earlier in the 20th century. These and similar studies seem to suggest that race (in the social sense) and ethnicity do have a bearing upon intellectual ability; some very well known scholars such as the Nobel laureate William Shockley have based their claims of white intellectual superiority on such testing and research. Other equally respectable scholars, however, contend that test results are prone to social and cultural influences. What an individual learns or fails to learn is strongly influenced by the society and culture that surround him. For example, the answer to whether or not pin drop silence should be observed in a place of worship is strongly influenced by one's religious experience. Psychologists in the opposing camp note that IQ tests are Anglocentric and are based on the experiences of white Anglo-Saxon Americans. The more Anglicised a child is, the more likely he is to perform well on the tests. They also point to the fact that in psychological tests administered to almost a million WWI recruits, southern blacks, who faced lack of economic and educational opportunities in the south, consistently underperformed northern blacks but interestingly enough many northern blacks scored better than southern whites who, same as the southern blacks, came from economically and educationally depressed backgrounds. Some racial sceptics posited that the cause was selective migration, i.e. ancestors of the northern blacks were more energetic and of superior intelligence, and had left the south leaving behind intellectually challenged blacks. However, these claims do not stand up to scrutiny and research with the result that the balance seems to tilt towards environmental factors. This is further reinforced by research that demonstrates that IQ scores of black migrants to New York City tend to correlate positively with how long the migrants have resided in the city. It has also been conclusively shown that some Native American groups, such as the Osage Indians who had access to educational opportunities because of oil wealth, scored, on average, the same as whites. Even more compelling is the fact that there is virtually no IQ difference between white and black children who are adopted as infants by white parents. In truth, the issue of 'racial' intelligence has its roots in the old nature vs nurture controversy. Whether intelligence is genetically inherited or is acquired through early social experiences is hard to say. The interaction between genetics and environment is a complex one with neurobiological research in the past few decades suggesting that compartmentalising the causes into nature and nurture may itself be error-prone. The research shows that the molecular structure of the brain may, in fact, be influenced by social experiences. Critics charge that intelligence tests have been used in the US for racist purposes. They argue that white elites have used such tests to justify white privilege and black exploitation. By portraying blacks as congenitally less intelligent and inferior through use of culturally-loaded intelligence tests, racists have tried to find moral justification for prejudice and discrimination. According to critics, the racist argument is that if intelligence is largely inherited, then education is unlikely to bridge the gap between white and black abilities. As such, the inherited inequalities of one group and inherited privileges of the other are justifiably natural and permanent. The writer is a freelance columnist. He can be reached at [email protected] [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ Post message: [email protected] Subscribe : [email protected] Unsubscribe : [email protected] List owner : [email protected] Homepage : http://proletar.8m.com/Yahoo! 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