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:
Aug '10
Re: Thomas Sowell on IQ and Race
"Perhaps the strongest evidence against a genetic basis for intergroup differences in I.Q. 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."
Are we sure we don't want to carefully read what Mr Sowell has to say before we continue writing with such--er--conviction? He might offer some examples of the above.
Edited on April 11, 2012 at 9:17pmFeb '12
Re: Thomas Sowell on IQ and Race
Give Me Liberty
Eric Rasmusen: The logic is really simple:
1. People with high IQ parents have higher IQ's than those with low-IQ parents, on average, and we have been unable to find any other variable that also predicts IQ (except for year of birth---the Flynn Effect, and things like brain damage). · 1 minute ago
This is how Derbyshire got into a fix. All you say is true but as a conservative I am concerned with individuals, individual freedom, and their pursuit of happiness.
Statisticians deal in averages and things like outliers but when focusing on people then those outliers are people, and averages are made up by a myriad of people with incalculable differences sharing only a limited commonality.
. · 37 minutes ago
As some commenter said,The Bell Curve wasn't a book about race. Whether IQ is heritable *is* a big deal for government policy; group features are less important. Murray's latest book purposely leaves blacks and hispanics out oft he analysis so as to avoid the obsessive mania everybody gets into when you mention race.
Mar '11
Re: Thomas Sowell on IQ and Race
Eric Rasmusen: The logic is really simple:
1. People with high IQ parents have higher IQ's than those with low-IQ parents, on average, and we have been unable to find any other variable that also predicts IQ...
This is not proof of the heritability of IQ in the least.
First, the fact that children of high IQ parents also have IQ shows correlation but not causation. Even studies using identical twins separated at birth, which have methodical limitations of their own, show only linkage, not causation.
Second, as mentioned previously in this thread, the idea of heritability as being permanently fixed has been called into question for many traits. It is now clear that many behavioral characteristics can be passed down like genes from one generation to the next, but can be altered over several generations by environmental changes.
Finally, just because parental IQ is the strongest predictor we know of does not mean it is the strongest predictor. The other factors which determine intelligence are still too numerous and intertwined for modern science to deconvolute.
If the logic of a question of behavioral heredity is "really simple," then that logic is probably grievously incomplete.
May '11
Re: Thomas Sowell on IQ and Race
Peter:
If the equlity of black Americans is yoru goal, this is not a very good argument to make. Remember what von Hayek said on this subject:
“To rest the case for equal treatment of national or racial minorities on the assertion that they do not differ from other men is implicitely to admit that factual inequalities would justify unequal treatment; and the proof that some differences do, in fact, exist would not be long in forthcoming. It is of the essence of the demand for equality before the law that people should be treated alike in spite of the fact that they are different.”
Feb '12
Re: Thomas Sowell on IQ and Race
Mendel
This is not proof of the heritability of IQ in the least.
First, the fact that children of high IQ parents also have IQ shows correlation but not causation. Even studies using identical twins separated at birth, which have methodical limitations of their own, show only linkage, not causation.
Would you say, then, that the logic behind the heritability of skin color is weak? If not, what is the difference?
Mar '11
Re: Thomas Sowell on IQ and Race
Eric Rasmusen
Mendel
Would you say, then, that the logic behind the heritability of skin color is weak? If not, what is the difference?
Based on our current knowledge of skin color, its heritability certainly makes sense. Several hundred years ago, it may have also been more controversial.
But several key distinctions between the traits of skin color and intelligence are:
- skin color correlates with familial background much more strongly than intelligence: children often have different intelligence from each other and their parents; much less so with skin color
- intelligence can be changed to a certain extent after birth, skin color cannot: this suggests that intelligence is not entirely biologically predetermined
- intelligence can change within a reproductively isolated population over several (i.e., <20) generations, skin color cannot
- only a few (<10) genetic loci appear responsible for most of skin color, while the latest (unconfirmed) research suggests that at least 100s of loci affect intelligence, yet even these genes apparently explain no more than 51% of differences in intelligence.
There is certainly a component of intelligence which is genetically determined, but we have little evidence that this portion is significant, nor that it differs meaningfully between races.
Nov '10
Re: Thomas Sowell on IQ and Race
Eric Rasmusen
Mendel
This is not proof of the heritability of IQ in the least.
First, the fact that children of high IQ parents also have IQ shows correlation but not causation. Even studies using identical twins separated at birth, which have methodical limitations of their own, show only linkage, not causation.
Would you say, then, that the logic behind the heritability of skin color is weak? If not, what is the difference? · 51 minutes ago
Or what about height? Height is considered to be one of the most strongly inherited traits, and yet based on nutritional and other environmental differences, population heights will vary drastically over a few generations in essentially genetically identical groups (look at the height difference between North and South Koreans). Intelligence is obviously a much more complex quality, and obviously prone to modification by many more factors.
Sep '11
Re: Thomas Sowell on IQ and Race
Sowell's essay "Black Rednecks" is also very good. West African slaves (often the losers of tribal and clan conflicts sold by the winners) adopted wholesale --down to the preaching style of their clergy-- the cultural patterns of "crackers" from the Scottish Border country, also the unstable site of raiding and clan conflict. White rednecks had to leave much of their culture behind to succeed - and climb the IQ ladder as Sowell describes.
Sep '11
Re: Thomas Sowell on IQ and Race
Tenther
Palaeologus
Tenther
No sooner had blacks rid themselves of segregation than America dreamed up "the War on Drugs" and used it as an excuse to constantly harass and incarcerate young black men for victimless crimes--this even though illegal drug usage rates are essentially the same in white and black communities.
Do you happen to have any evidence to support these claims? · 22 minutes ago
Not handy. I'll post something later. · 9 hours ago
Drug usage rates:
http://www.samhsa.gov/data/NSDUH/2k10NSDUH/2k10Results.htm#2.7
10.7% of blacks and 9.1% of whites over 12 use illegal drugs.
Arrest rates for drug offences:
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2010/crime-in-the-u.s.-2010/tables/table-43/10tbl43a.xls
66% of drug arrests are of whites. 33% are of blacks.
Whites constitute 72% of the US population, black 13%.
It's hard to see that the war on drugs is being prosecuted fairly.
May '10
Re: Thomas Sowell on IQ and Race
Canadian Cincinnatus: Peter:
If the equality of black Americans is your goal, this is not a very good argument to make. Remember what von Hayek said on this subject:
“To rest the case for equal treatment of national or racial minorities on the assertion that they do not differ from other men is implicitly to admit that factual inequalities would justify unequal treatment; and the proof that some differences do, in fact, exist would not be long in forthcoming. It is of the essence of the demand for equality before the law that people should be treated alike in spite of the fact that they are different.” · 4 hours ago
IMHO, this is the most important comment in the whole discussion. Kudos.
I must admit to having found the discussion ironic. Blessed with high IQ, I was a one-time member of Mensa. Overall, I found it an incredibly boring and self-absorbed group. Personal discipline, a good work ethic, high moral and ethical values, well developed social skills, and concern for the well-being of others are all vastly more important to success in life than high intelligence: Nice to have but neither necessary nor sufficient.
May '10
Re: Thomas Sowell on IQ and Race
Give Me Liberty
Well, I wasn't trying to refute an argument because I didn't want to make an argument; I wanted to promote a discussion. To take sides in an argument would suggest that believed I had the correct answer. · 7 hours ago
I was responding to ~Paules, who had quoted you, then expressed an opinion himself.
Apr '11
Re: Thomas Sowell on IQ and Race
Fredösphere
Give Me Liberty
Well, I wasn't trying to refute an argument because I didn't want to make an argument; I wanted to promote a discussion. To take sides in an argument would suggest that believed I had the correct answer. · 7 hours ago
I was responding to ~Paules, who had quoted you, then expressed an opinion himself. · 16 minutes ago
Sorry, my bad.