It was suggested on tips that the idea that different cultural groups
(immigrants) in the US had differing levels of intelligence based IQ
tests was never a popular idea but was an "academic legend." I hope I
said this right (if in a horribly long sentence). I accidently deleted
the message.
In any case I offer the following as evidence against the legend
interpretation:
The Nordics are... rulers, organizers, and aristocrats... The Alpine
race is always and everywhere a race of peasants... The Alpine is the
perfect slave, the ideal serf... the unstable temperament and the lack
of coordination and reasoning power so often found among the Irish...
our army sample of immigrants from Russia is at least one half Jewish...
Our figures, then, would rather tend to disprove the popular belief that
the Jew is intelligent... We must face a possibility of racial
admixture here that is infinitely worse than that faced by any European
country today, for we are incorporating the negro into our racial stock
... The decline of American intelligence will be more rapid than the
decline of the intelligence of European national groups, owing to the
presence here of the negro.
-Assistant Professor Carl Brigham of Princeton University in A Study
of American Intelligence.
The thesis is carefully worked up to by a logical and careful analysis
of the results of the army tests... we shall certainly be in hearty
agreement with him when he demands a more selective policy for future
immigration and a more vigorous method of dealing with the defective
strains already in this country.
-1923 Journal of Educational Psychology's review of Brigham's
landmark book
The following is a web site that has the graph that Brigham used to
support his ideas that different immigrants had differing levels of
intelligence:
http://www.wisc.edu/history/404tja/graph.html
Jeff Nagelbush
Ferris State University
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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