Thomas Sowell on IQ and Race
In the thread below, "Derbyshire Speaks," Ricochet member Mark Wilson provides a link to an item I believe deserves everyone's attention: Thomas Sowell on IQ and race. When Charles Murray and the late Richard Herrnstein published the The Bell Curve almost ten years ago, Dr. Sowell wrote a review in the American Spectator.
What did Thomas Sowell make of the book? He took it apart.
If you can spare ten minutes for close argument, be sure to read the entire review. But--with thanks once again to Mark Wilson--here's a hefty, and, to my mind, utterly compelling, excerpt:
[Herrnstein and Murray] seem to conclude... that... biological inheritance of IQ... among members of the general society may also explain IQ differences between different racial and ethnic groups.... Such a conclusion goes... much beyond what the facts will support....
[T]he greatest black-white differences are not on the questions which presuppose middle-class vocabulary or experiences, but on abstract questions such as spatial perceptual ability.... [Herrnstein and Murray's] conclusion that this "phenomenon seems peculiarly concentrated in comparisons of ethnic groups" is simply wrong. When European immigrant groups in the United States scored below the national average on mental tests, they scored lowest on the abstract parts of those tests. So did white mountaineer children in the United States tested back in the early 1930s. So did canal boat children in Britain, and so did rural British children compared to their urban counterparts, at a time before Britain had any significant non-white population. So did Gaelic-speaking children as compared to English-speaking children in the Hebrides Islands. This is neither a racial nor an ethnic peculiarity. It is a characteristic found among low-scoring groups of European as well as African ancestry.
In short, groups outside the cultural mainstream of contemporary Western society tend to do their worst on abstract questions, whatever their race might be....
Perhaps the strongest evidence against a genetic basis for intergroup differences in IQ is that the average level of mental test performance has changed very significantly for whole populations over time and, moreover, particular ethnic groups within the population have changed their relative positions during a period when there was very little intermarriage to change the genetic makeup of these groups....
Perhaps the most dramatic changes were those in the mental test performances of Jews in the United States. The results of World War I mental tests conducted among American soldiers born in Russia--the great majority of whom were Jews--showed such low scores as to cause Carl Brigham, creator of the Scholastic Aptitude Test, to declare that these results "disprove the popular belief that the Jew is highly intelligent." Within a decade, however, Jews in the United States were scoring above the national average on mental tests, and the data in The Bell Curveindicate that they are now far above the national average in IQ.
Strangely, Herrnstein and Murray refer to "folklore" that "Jews and other immigrant groups were thought to be below average in intelligence. " It was neither folklore nor anything as subjective as thoughts. It was based on hard data, as hard as any data in The Bell Curve. These groups repeatedly tested below average on the mental tests of the World War I era, both in the army and in civilian life. For Jews, it is clear that later tests showed radically different results--during an era when there was very little intermarriage to change the genetic makeup of American Jews....
Herrnstein and Murray openly acknowledge such rises in IQ....But they seem not to see how crucially it undermines the case for a genetic explanation of interracial IQ differences. They say:
"The national averages have in fact changed by amounts that are comparable to the fifteen or so IQ points separating blacks and whites in America. To put it another way, on the average, whites today differ from whites, say, two generations ago as much as whites today differ from blacks today. Given their size and speed, the shifts in time necessarily have been due more to changes in the environment than to changes in the genes."
While this open presentation of evidence against the genetic basis of interracial IQ differences is admirable, the failure to draw the logical inference seems puzzling. Blacks today are just as racially different from whites of two generations ago as they are from whites today. Yet the data suggest that the number of questions that blacks answer correctly on IQ tests today is very similar to the number answered correctly by past generations of whites. If race A differs from race B in IQ, and two generations of race A differ from each other by the same amount, where is the logic in suggesting that the IQ differences are even partly racial?
Where indeed is the logic--the word bears repeating: the logic--in suggesting that IQ differences are even partly racial?
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Comments:
Oct '11
Re: Thomas Sowell on IQ and Race
Hey, just an FYI, but while the linked review by Thomas Sowell is from 2003, The Bell Curve was actually published in 1994. It's understandable that Peter got confused because the link has "2003" in the address. Although, during the most recent Uncommon Knowledge (taped when Peter was in D.C.), Charles Murray brought up The Bell Curve and said that it had been published 18 years ago. Peter replied, "Really? I would have said 10." :-)
Jun '10
Re: Thomas Sowell on IQ and Race
It would be great if every American classroom was an independent shop, and you could do that if American teachers were professionals, but they're not. In most cases they're like union factory workers, and resigned to being union factory workers, with about as much freedom as the the guy in a Chrysler plant that bolts on car doors.
Mar '11
Re: Thomas Sowell on IQ and Race
The post was from 2003. The review was originally published in American Spectator in 1995.
Nov '10
Re: Thomas Sowell on IQ and Race
The one piece that is missing from all of this discussion is recent changes in our understanding of the inheritance of acquired characteristics. Once entirely dismissed as Lamarckian nonsense, this idea has been revived in light of the concept of epigenetics, which states that there are heritable traits that are not transmitted in DNA, but rather in modifications of which genes are expressed. In some cases, heritability of acquired characteristics can be demonstrated. In humans, this has been seen in objectively measurable phenomena such as a tendency toward obesity in children and grandchildren of famine survivors. It seems possible, however, that this could also be expressed in IQ and behavior.
To me this suggests that there may be biological differences between racial groups in the US at a particular point in time, which might change dramatically over a generation or two. This, it seems to me, fits with Dr. Sowell's observations of different IQ distributions in different ethnic groups at different times. Unfortunately, as other commenters have noted here, the black underclass in our society has been produced by the environment of the welfare state, and I think you have to change the environment to produce downstream epigenetic change.
Jun '10
Re: Thomas Sowell on IQ and Race
There's a glaring error to the various postulates about race and IQ that no one has so far mentioned. The fact is that American blacks are a hybrid race - by and large a mixture of European and African blood lines. You simply can't treat "blacks" as a monolithic gene pool when they are admixed to varying degrees with other races. The problem here is that nobody wants to return to the color codes of yesteryear when racial terms like octoroon or quadroon were acceptable. Yet, if you accept that race and IQ are related, then you are obliged to examine the genetic lineage of your subjects individually and in detail. Doing so will likely reveal new complexities. My suspicion is that when you mate two subjects of different races, you don't get the sum of A + B. Such a coupling might very well produce the end product C, an individual with entirely new potentials. We have the human genome now documented. Let's hear from science.
Jun '10
Re: Thomas Sowell on IQ and Race
Yes. This is the point I was trying to make above.
Apr '11
Re: Thomas Sowell on IQ and Race
Some of Thomas Sowell's facts are wrong. Apparently he read Stephen Jay Gould's Mismeasure of Man, which seems to be where he got the misinformation about immigrant Jews scoring lower on IQ tests. He also seems to be referring later to The Flynn Effect, which does not mean what he seems to think it means.
Jan '11
Re: Thomas Sowell on IQ and Race
An interesting concept to consider is "prejudice" vs "racism". Let's just once and for all say we're all members of the human race, and that's that. However, I think we all harbour certain prejudices, and if we say we don't we are perhaps not being quite honest. If we see a guy in a suit with a briefcase collapsed on the sidewalk, we are more inclined to intervene as we may think he had a stroke or some other calamitous event (prejudgement). If we see a disheveled guy with tattered clothing collapsed on the sidewalk beside a shopping cart, we are more likely to walk by thinking he is impaired, mentally ill, etc and perhaps not in need of acute intervention (prejudgement). And so it goes with other situations. Context is everything, as it is with other fields of life.
Apr '11
Re: Thomas Sowell on IQ and Race
Leslie Katz: ... My understanding though is that tests that are not racial suggest that IQ is in very large part hereditary.
· 7 hours ago
So is religion. Which if you look at the statistics is highly correlated to ones ancestry, probably even more so than IQ. Yet clearly it would be nonsense to claim that peoples religious convictions are genetically derived. That is because religious convictions are a learned trait, and what people learn is what their parents/community teaches them. IQ can also be viewed as a learned trait. We know specifically that for people to be smart and do well on IQ tests they actually have to be educated. Thus you will have a hard time separating out peoples environment from their actual genetics. Remember for something to be truly hereditary means its cause is not environmental, like hair color or blood type.
Apr '11
Re: Thomas Sowell on IQ and Race
Funny you should mention this. But there are studies from mice showing that the ability to solve a maze can be passed down to the next generation. Thus a mouse that learned to solve the maze produced children that could solve the maze more effectively on a first try. The only catch was that the 2nd generation mice quickly lost this ability compared to other mice. There is also no evidence to show that these acquired traits can persist past one or two generations.
Apr '11
Re: Thomas Sowell on IQ and Race
Valiuth
So is religion. Which if you look at the statistics is highly correlated to ones ancestry, probably even more so than IQ. Yet clearly it would be nonsense to claim that peoples religious convictions are genetically derived. That is because religious convictions are a learned trait, and what people learn is what their parents/community teaches them. IQ can also be viewed as a learned trait. We know specifically that for people to be smart and do well on IQ tests they actually have to be educated. Thus you will have a hard time separating out peoples environment from their actual genetics. Remember for something to be truly hereditary means its cause is not environmental, like hair color or blood type. · 11 minutes ago
Studies of identical twins raised apart try to get at some of these points you raise, and generally find that almost every personality trait has a very strong genetic basis, and IQ more than most. In your example, specific religious convictions are learned, but "religiosity" is highly heritable/genetic.
Jan '11
Re: Thomas Sowell on IQ and Race
Where indeed is the logic--the word bears repeating: the logic--in suggesting that IQ differences are even partly racial?
Does it then follow that IQ differences can not be racial?
Apr '11
Re: Thomas Sowell on IQ and Race
wmartin
Valiuth
So is religion. Which if you look at the statistics is highly correlated to ones ancestry, probably even more so than IQ. Yet clearly it would be nonsense to claim that peoples religious convictions are genetically derived.
Studies of identical twins raised apart try to get at some of these points you raise, and generally find that almost every personality trait has a very strong genetic basis, and IQ more than most. In your example, specific religious convictions are learned, but "religiosity" is highly heritable/genetic. · 13 minutes ago
I would take all such genetic association studies with a big grain of salt. Especially considering the complicated and even subjective nature of the trait people are proposing to study. The broader and more general the phenotype (IQ or religiosity) the less faith I have in the findings because they can't really be confirmed in any model organism. Genetic association analysis is really a correlation study it doesn't prove anything in and of itself.
I wouldn't say there aren't genetic components to all of these things I just think natural phenotypic plasticity may be a bigger factor.
Aug '10
Re: Thomas Sowell on IQ and Race
Re comment 16 : Does Murray's book have --not just the same take on I.Q. and race, but also the same tone as Derbyshire's article? (I haven't read Murray's book.)No privately funded publication owes anyone a forum. Right?To me, Derbyshire's article doesn't just criticize behavior, and say this behavior is currently more prevalent in Americans who are black. Hence, white Americans are justified viewing black Americans with suspicion, and interacting with them more cautiously than with other whites. He doesn't just sound indignant. (I'd be o.k. with that.) He sounds contemptuous, dismissive and sneering. Click on the second link Katievs provides in her first comment on the post "Derbyshire Speaks". Listen to Gloria Purvis and tell me you're not shamed by the thought of her reading what Drebyshire wrote. I am.
Edited on April 11, 2012 at 5:51pmApr '11
Re: Thomas Sowell on IQ and Race
Just to through another wrench into all these theories of intelligence. How does the concept of multiple intelligences from Howard Gardner play out here?
Sep '10
Re: Thomas Sowell on IQ and Race
I read the Bell curve years ago and can remember being blow away by its arguments as presented. I can also remember that there is only one chapter on IQ and race and that chapter does not focus exclusively on white vs. black.
I think the fact (as I see it) that this small portion of the book is generally presented (including in this blog post) as the primary thesis of the book is telling.
My recollection of the book's central thesis, a decade after reading it, is that IQ is substantially heritable, and that "fact" has substantial implications on policy. So read the book or listen to it and decide, or don't! But don't take this blog post or even the great Dr. Sowell's criticism as being what the book is about.
Jun '10
Re: Thomas Sowell on IQ and Race
Utter nonsense. His work is part of the leftist attempt to sew their phony notions of equality. A person can be "emotionally intelligent." Well, no, such a person is perhaps naturally empathetic. A person can be "kinetically intelligent." No again, such a person is a born athlete. A person can be "spatially intelligent." Not! There is no correlation between spatial ability and intelligence. Good chess players frequently exhibit no better than average IQ's.
Apr '12
Re: Thomas Sowell on IQ and Race
Someone should study the effects of "listening to 'Reverend' Al Sharpton" on intelligence. I would expect it has significant deleterious effects.
I know after I listen to him, all notions of civilization, justice, and truth go out the window. I'm reduced to the mind of a 2 year old toddler - all I see is color.
Mar '11
Re: Thomas Sowell on IQ and Race
Lucy Pevensie:
To me this suggests that there may be biological differences between racial groups in the US at a particular point in time, which might change dramatically over a generation or two. This, it seems to me, fits with Dr. Sowell's observations of different IQ distributions in different ethnic groups at different times. Unfortunately, as other commenters have noted here, the black underclass in our society has been produced by the environment of the welfare state, and I think you have to change the environment to produce downstream epigenetic change.
Epigenetics has fundamentally changed the nature v. nurture debate, and it would not surprise me in the least to discover that intelligence is affected in large measure by epigenetic changes.
Unfortunately, we should not hold our breath waiting for science to give an answer. Finding the genetic determinants of intelligence has always been a near fruitless task, given the innumerable factors invovled. Consider that epigenetics is essentially a three-dimensional version of classical genetics, and it will be a long time until we have convincing proof of anything.
Mar '12
Re: Thomas Sowell on IQ and Race
Where indeed is the logic--the word bears repeating: the logic--in suggesting that IQ differences are even partly racial?
The logic is based in observation, and I submit two cases: (1) The logic in the theory that the sun orbits the earth is based on the observation of the sun's rise and set and apparent movement across the sky daily. The observation can be explained logically, without detailed analysis, by the sun orbiting the earth. (2) In the end, part of intelligence is physical, an issue of chemistry and biology. The brain is a collection of cells that fire impulses across synapses and some people's brains do this better than others - better memory, better grasp of abstract concepts, etc. There are clearly physical differences between races - different skin color, different eye color, different shapes of eyes, noses, different athletic abilities. So given intelligence is at least partly physical and that there are physical differences between races, it is entirely logical to assume there are corresponding differences in intelligence.
Going back to the sun and earth, we can see that logical conclusions based on extrapolation from observation can be wrong, but the discussion/research must continue.