Inconvenient Truths

IQ by Nation (Source)

A different compilation of National IQ's (Source)

The cultural war is currently focused on what is termed critical race theory (CRT). There is quite a bit of obfuscation of what is CRT and whether it is being taught in K-12. The basic premise of critical race theory, according to the magazine EdWeek, "race is a social construct, and that racism is not merely the product of individual bias or prejudice, but also something embedded in legal systems and policies." According to the article:

A good example is when, in the 1930s, government officials literally drew lines around areas deemed poor financial risks, often explicitly due to the racial composition of inhabitants. Banks subsequently refused to offer mortgages to Black people in those areas.

Of course, such practices have long been illegal. The Fair Housing Act (FHA), as well as a plethora of other anti-discrimination laws, regulations, and whole federal and state bureaucracies exist to prevent such practices. In fact, there is a whole industry of not-for-profit organizations that make their money by constantly trying to find businesses that violate anti-discrimination laws--even tricking them into technical violations--and sue them. Discrimination has become the exception, not the rule.

    But that is where CRT interjects itself. It is not enough, per CRT, to stop acts of discrimination. Rather, the EdWeek article explains, "CRT puts an emphasis on outcomes, not merely on individuals’ own beliefs, and it calls on these outcomes to be examined and rectified." The article also helpfully observes that "Critical race theory emerged out of postmodernist thought, which tends to be skeptical of the idea of universal values, objective knowledge, individual merit, Enlightenment rationalism, and liberalism—tenets that conservatives tend to hold dear." 

    The confusion over whether it is being taught in schools, the article continues, is that critics confuse CRT with "culturally relevant teaching." 

Critical race theory is not a synonym for culturally relevant teaching, which emerged in the 1990s. This teaching approach seeks to affirm students’ ethnic and racial backgrounds and is intellectually rigorous. But it’s related in that one of its aims is to help students identify and critique the causes of social inequality in their own lives.

And by inequality, they mean an unequal outcome (see the discussion on CRT above).  And, per CRT, if there is an unequal outcome, why is that? Because of invisible biases that exist in the system, or in the people. Thus the reason we hear from many intellectuals that whites are inherently racist, inherently oppressors, and blacks are the victims, and that it is not enough to simply not be racist, but that we must be anti-racist: tearing down the supposedly racist systems, beliefs, organizations, etc., that supposedly hold back blacks. 

    The public face of antiracism is Ibram X. Kendi. In a recent NPR piece about Kendi, it related Kendi's dismay on the push back against CRT or culturally relevant teaching, or whatever you want to call it.

"It's been tragic for me to watch," Kendi says. "Because we unfortunately live in a society where there's racial inequity, and our kids are trying to figure out why. They see, you know, let's say darker people who are more likely to be homeless or incarcerated or impoverished, and they're trying to figure out why is that the case? And if we're not actively teaching them it's because of racism, then what are they going to conclude?"

Well, they might conclude that there are other factors at play. Factors which can't be changed by throwing more money at "anti-racist" programs and institutions (and enriching people like Kendi). 

    And it certainly won't help to continue with lies. And that is what Kendi and others are doing--lying. That is the real reason that CRT rejects reason, objective knowledge, and universal truths. And there is a lot of information on why, to quote Kendi, "darker people ... are more likely to be homeless or incarcerated or impoverished."

    Let's start with intelligence. IQ Research has compiled IQ scores from around the world, and even a cursory look at those statistics shows that average or mean IQ's in Sub-Saharan Africa (and certain of the black Caribbean nations) are significantly lower than many other areas of the world, especially Europe and North-East Asia. (Of course, the "mean" or "average" is just that, and doesn't necessarily describe the individual with whom you may be dealing or interacting--in fact, it is dangerous and a mistake to assume that an individual matches the "average" or "mean" for the aggregate as, by definition, 1/2 of the group will be above that number, and 1/2 below).

     What we see are that almost all Sub-Saharan nations have populations where the mean IQ is 70, and a considerable number have mean IQs that 65 or lower. James Thompson discussed last year a comprehensive study into IQ in Nigeria that showed a mean IQ of 70. Turning to an individual country, the United States of America, we see a similar divide, although not quite as dramatic. "When IQ is scaled so that the white mean is 100 and the [standard deviation] is 15, the black mean is about 85 and the black SD slightly less than 15." [1] "Currently, the 1.1 standard deviation difference in average IQ between Blacks and Whites in the United States is not in itself a matter of empirical dispute." [2]

      Under a normal distribution curve, 68% of the population will fall within 1 SD above or below the mean--that is, 34.1% fall within the first SD below the mean. In addition, 13.6% of the population will fall within the second SD below the mean. For American blacks, that means that 34.1% will have an IQ between just over 70 to 85. 13.6% will have an IQ of about 55 to 70.

"So what does it mean to have a score 70 or below? In the past, an IQ score below 70 was considered a benchmark for mental retardation, an intellectual disability characterized by significant cognitive impairments.

Even today, according to the same source, an IQ of 70-79 represents borderline mental disability, while an IQ 55-69 is considered a mild mental disability.

      A common refrain is that IQ is somehow driven by environment. Unfortunately, its appearance seems to be due to "nature" rather than "nurture." For instance, IQ Research claims that the differences in IQ are because of wealth: that is, greater wealth results in a higher IQ. However, the gap in intelligence has persisted for a long time. "This difference was first observed among Army recruits during World War I, and has remained fairly constant." [3] And while I don't want to be diverted into a side discussion on this issue, Michael Levin, in his book cited below, and the paper cited below by Rushton and Jensen, establish that not only do IQ and similar aptitude tests accurately measure cognitive ability, but research shows that IQ differences are inheritable rather than a product of the environment. Steven Pinker has also noted this in his book, The Better Angels of Our Nature. [4] In fact, the failure of many, many government programs, including Head Start, demonstrate that environment is of minimal and only temporary effect.

       Research also shows that low IQ corresponds to several negative social traits. There is a direct correlation between high IQ and altruism and honesty. [5] Intelligent is also positively correlated to self-control (high IQ people generally have greater self-control) [6], crime (low IQ people have a higher propensity to commit crimes) [7], and openness to new ideas [8]. Rushton and Jensen note that blacks exhibit more aggressiveness, impulsivity, and higher self-concept (pride) than whites or east Asians. [9]. They also that blacks report higher rates of sexual intercourse, and more permissive attitudes towards sex, than whites or east Asians. [10] This results in higher rates of sexually transmitted diseases, lower marital stability and lower law abidingness. [11].

      In Richard J. Herrnstein's and Charles Murray's book, The Bell Curve, the authors noted that low IQ correlated with poverty; dropping out of school; unemployment, idleness and injury; higher rates of divorce, lower marriage rates, and increased out-of-wedlock births; increased welfare dependency; low birth rates and poor parenting; less civility or interest in voting; and a higher risk of crime.

     In fact, it is a truism that blacks are involved in violent crime at rates far above that of whites or Asians. In April 2016, I cited to the then recently released "Color of Crime" report by Edwin S. Rubenstein which analyzed crime statistics in the United States based on race. Rubenstein offered a summary of his analysis which included the following points:

• There are dramatic race differences in crime rates. Asians have the lowest rates, followed by whites, and then Hispanics. Blacks have notably high crime rates. This pattern holds true for virtually all crime categories and for virtually all age groups.
• In 2013, a black was six times more likely than a non-black to commit murder, and 12 times more likely to murder someone of another race than to be murdered by someone of another race.
• In 2013, of the approximately 660,000 crimes of interracial violence that involved blacks and whites, blacks were the perpetrators 85 percent of the time. This meant a black person was 27 times more likely to attack a white person than vice versa. A Hispanic was eight times more likely to attack a white person than vice versa.
• In 2014 in New York City, a black was 31 times more likely than a white to be arrested for murder, and a Hispanic was 12.4 times more likely. For the crime of “shooting” — defined as firing a bullet that hits someone — a black was 98.4 times more likely than a white to be arrested, and a Hispanic was 23.6 times more likely.
• If New York City were all white, the murder rate would drop by 91 percent, the robbery rate by 81 percent, and the shootings rate by 97 percent.
• In an all-white Chicago, murder would decline 90 percent, rape by 81 percent, and robbery by 90 percent.

Paul Kersey also took a look at crime in America's largest cities and found the same dichotomy between black violence and that of other races. For instance, he notes in relation to New York City:

Despite being only about 22 percent of the city’s population, the report found blacks comprised a majority—52.4 percent—of murder and non-negligent manslaughter arrests. Hispanics also exceeded their population share, accounting for 35.9 percent of arrests for these crimes. Despite being almost a third of the city’s population, white suspects accounted for less than seven percent of the share. The report noted the arrest population for these offenses “is similarly distributed.”

Similarly, looking at 2015 report from Philadelphia that included information on the race of offenders on "cleared" murder cases for that year, Kersey noted:

From the 133 cases so designated, 105 offenders are identified in the report. Eighty-six (81.9 percent of the total) were black, 18 (17.1 percent) were white, and one (one percent) was Asian. Of this group of 105, ten were of “Hispanic ethnicity.” Given a choice between “black” and “white,” Hispanics are almost always classified as “white,” so possibly all ten of the Hispanic murderers were included in the “white” figure. If that’s the case, whites may comprise only 7.6 percent of identified homicide offenders. 

     Other proxies seem to also track. For instance, "The National Center for Health Statistics said that in 2015, 77.3 percent of non-immigrant black births were illegitimate." The incidence of sexually transmitted diseases is generally much higher among blacks than whites. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reports, for instance, that although African Americans only make up 14% of the population in the United States, they account for 45% of the total HIV/AIDS cases (62% of infected women), 55.4% of cases of gonorrhea that were reported, the rate of chlamydia among black women was 5.7 times that of white women, the rate of chlamydia among black men was 7.3 times that of white men, the rate of syphilis for blacks, overall, was 5.4 times that of whites, and the rates of congenital syphilis (i.e., passed from the mother to her child in vitro) was 10.3 times higher than whites.

     Astute observers will note the similarity of many of these traits to that of an r-select population as described in biology and evolutionary psychology. And, in fact, Levin notes in his book:

        Speculation has long focused on the different pressures exerted by the African and Eurasian climates. Survival in the colder climates of Europe and Northern Asia requires technologies unnecessary in Africa: clothing has to be fabricated, fires sustained, food hunted and stored. These constraints favored the ability to plan, in turn entailing ingenuity and low time preferences. Planning is less adaptive in warmer climates where food is easier to get and spoils when stored. (Lynn 1987 speculates that tracking game in snow selected for spatial ability, at which Mongoloids excel.) Hunting also selects more strongly for cooperativeness and reciprocity than does individual gathering and harvesting. 

        Rushton (1988a, 1991d, 1995b) conjecturally organizes this differentiation around two reproductive strategies. Reproductive-rate, or “r,” strategists such as fish produce numerous offspring, few of whom survive. Across species, the r strategy associates with lower intelligence, greater investment in reproduction than in postnatal care, short gestation periods, an accelerated life history,opportunistic feeding, little interindividual cooperation, lax social structure, and boom or bust population cycles. Carrying-capacity, or “K,” strategists, typically large mammals, produce a few offspring in widely spaced litters and care for them long after birth. The K strategy associates with higher intelligence, regular feeding habits, pair-bonding, cooperation, complex social structure, and longevity. Rushton argues that the greater adaptiveness of the r-strategy in Africa made Negroids more r, which would explain the lower mean black levels of intelligence, self-restraint and social organization (as evidenced by failure to form stable political units beyond the tribe, or, in the United States, the gang), and a stronger black reproductive drive as measured by illegitimacy, age of menarche, age of first intercourse, age of first pregnancy, frequency of intercourse, and marital instability. An intriguing phenomenon resistant to environmental explanation emphasized by Rushton is the race difference in litter size: there are 4 pairs of dizygotic twins per 1000 births for Mongoloids, 8 per 1000 for Caucasoids, 16 per 1000 for Negroids. Black infant mortality remains twice that of whites even when social factors are controlled for (Schoendorf et al. 1992).56 An accelerated life cycle is suggested by the greater maturity of black babies when gestation period is controlled for, their greater developmental precocity, and the constancy of the race difference in life expectancy during the twentieth century. [12]

      Even factors that you might think are cultural may very well not be. I would note that a data analysis by OK Cupid of its user data "showed that most men on the site rated black women as less attractive than women of other races and ethnicities." Women also downgraded men that were black or Asian. And an AI algorithm also generally judged white women to be more attractive than darker skinned women. But it is not just a "white thing." Africans find lighter skin to be more attractive. And who can forget the kerfuffle in 2011 when Satoshi Kanazawa (who is Japanese) published an article claiming objective proof that black women are less attractive than white or Asian women with a lower score assigned to women that had more masculine features.

    This is not meant as a catalog of reasons to hate or persecute blacks, but to refute the notion that institutional racism is the reason for disparate outcomes for blacks versus whites (or other races).

Notes:
   
[1] Michael Levin, Why Race Matters, p. 34.

[2]  J. Philippe Rushton and Arthur R. Jensen, "Thirty Years of Research on Race Differences in Cognitive Ability, Psychology, Public Policy, and Law 2005, Vol. 11, No. 2, 235–294, at 236 (PDF available here). See also this summary.

[3]  Levin,  p. 34.

[4]  Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature, p. 652 ("General intelligence, moreover, is highly heritable, and mostly unaffected by the family environment (though it may be affected by the cultural environment). [Foot note omitted] We know this because measures of g in adults are strongly correlated in identical twins separated at birth and are not at all correlated in adopted siblings who have been raised in the same family.").

[5]  Levin, p. 54

[6]  Pinker, pp. 598 and 601.

[7]  Pinker, p. 601.

[8]  Pinker, p. 643.

[9]  Rushton, p. 265.

[10]  Id.

[11]  Id.

[12]  Levin, p. 135.