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Intelligence or IQ tests are among the most controversial topics in social science. There are several reasons for this fact. One reason is that they have been used repeatedly to argue for the innate inferiority of racial minorities. Another reason is because there is disagreement among the specialists over the definition and measure of intelligence.
The racist IQ argument usually rests on claims that IQ tests measure individuals’ genetic endowments primarily and since these endowments are genetic they cannot be changed by social interventions. Average racial group differences are then used to argue for the superiority of one racial group over another.
The sign that an elitist is more interested in race than intelligence is the move from the individual to the racial group in his arguments of superiority. If one were simply an IQ elitist then race doesn’t matter. People with IQ scores above 130, for example, would be the 2.5 percent IQ elite of the population—regardless of their race—and everyone else would be inferior—irrespective of their race. Whites’ IQs cover the entire spread of the IQ distribution, so to be a true white IQ elitist one has to regard the majority of the white population as inferior. The same, of course, goes for IQ elitists of any racial group. Thus, it is really impossible to be an IQ elitist and a racial supremacist at the same time. Racial supremacists only use IQ to try to mask their racism.
Because of this history of misuse of intelligence tests and because of legitimate concerns about racial inequality, it is useful to have an understanding of issues of race and intelligence. First, IQ tests measure nurture at least as much as nature. Scores on IQ tests have been increasing across the globe. In the U.S., one sees an average increase of about 3 points each decade. The tests have to be re-adjusted every decade or so to compensate for this increase. If IQ tests were simply capturing people’s genetic endowment there could not be such a quick and steady rise in scores. Only environmental changes could produce this type of growth.
While it is clear that scores are rising, it is not clear what has caused this increase. Better nutrition is a strong candidate. More and better education is another. One test that is used as an intelligence test, the Armed Forces Qualifying Test , in part, measures the amount and quality of schooling one has had (Hout 2002: 333-339). People who receive more and better schooling tend to score better on IQ tests.
Until recently researchers have argued that the IQ gap between blacks and whites was about 15 points in the 1930s. Between the 1930s and the 1980s, they observed that black IQ scores increased by about 15 points. The 15-point gap remained because white scores also increased by about 15 points over the same period. The encouraging point here is that it is possible to produce what are very big increases in IQ scores in a relatively short period of time. There is no reason for anyone to assume that blacks cannot increase their score to equal the white score given this history of big rises.
The even better news is that this IQ score convergence has already begun. William T. Dickens and James R. Flynn (“Black Americans Reduce the Racial IQ Gap: Evidence from Standardization Samples”) have access to IQ data that provide better quality measurements of black and white IQ scores over time. Dickens and Flynn show that in 1972, the black-white average IQ difference was 16.5 points. They also show, like the prior research, that white IQ scores have been increasing at an average rate of 0.311 points a year since 1972 or about 3 points a decade. Since 1972, however, the black average score has been increasing at 0.45 points a year or about 4.5 points a decade. In 2002, the IQ gap had declined from 16.5 points to 11.8 points.
People who do not bother to examine black standardized test scores routinely claim that blacks are doing worse educationally. The truth is to the contrary. These critics of blacks not only fail to see black improvement, they also fail to realize that achievement gaps require significant amounts of time or significant investments in resources (i.e., large and rapid improvements in black health, nutrition and schooling) to eliminate. The problem is not that blacks are not improving but rather that whites are improving also. If white IQ scores remained at their 1930’s level, blacks IQ scores would be higher than whites' today. If white IQ scores remained at their 1972 level, the IQ gap would be 3 points instead of four times as much. (See Algernon Austin, Getting It Wrong: How Black Public Intellectuals Are Failing Black America for a discussion of black and white trends on three other standardized tests.)
The good news is that blacks are reducing the IQ gap. The bad news is that, assuming past trends continue, it will still take a while to eliminate it completely.
Next week: Wait a Minute! Do IQ Tests Measure Intelligence?
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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.
Additional References
Hout, Michael. 2002. “Test Scores, Education, and Poverty.” Pp. 329-354 in Race and Intelligence: Separating Science From Myth, ed. Jefferson M. Fish. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Neisser, Ulric, ed. 1998. The Rising Curve: Long-Term Gains in IQ and Related Measures. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.
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