Albert's

Racial Intelligence

I was reading a controversial news article about the war in Iraq. The reporter tried to justifiy the mistakes we made so far in the war by saying US is superior and more capable than Iraqi to guide Iraq into a nation of freedom. Nevermind the hidden prison camps, the un-found WMD, the white phrospheous chemical weapon, the toture of prisoners, and for taking their oil as payment of rebuilding their nation - after we have bombed it. I was a bit shocked at the reporter's reference to racial superiority, because it sounds vaguely like speeches from Germany around the 1920s. It really disturbed me so I did a little more research on the validity of the statment.

Well, the surprise doesn't seem to end. I found an article about "Racial Intelligence" on Wikipedia. I was always taught "All man are created equal". I know equal here infers to equal in rights of freedom, equal in rights to education, equal in the right to basic ammendities of life. Yet more than that, I thought on the grand scheme of things, like the average moleculer energy balances out, human being are truely equal when viewed in large numbers. I even wrote a piece "All My Colors" which had a line,
If a person is kind and good, does it matter if he is of a different skin? If I treat you like a friend, a brother long lost, a child in need, does it matter I am of a different God?
So I was really skeptical when I see this giant graph on Wikipedia.

Studies comparing races and ethnic groups with IQ among U.S. test subjects show differences in average test scores, though the distributions overlap, as seen in this graph based on Reynolds et al. 1987
The modern controversy surrounding intelligence and race focuses on the results of IQ studies conducted during the second half of the 20th century, mainly in the United States and some other industrialized nations. In almost every testing situation where tests were administered and evaluated correctly, a difference of approximately one standard deviation was observed in the US between the mean IQ score of Blacks and Whites. Attempted world-wide compilations of average IQ by race generally place Ashkenazi Jews at the top, followed by East Asians, Whites, Arabs, other Asians, Indians, Blacks and Australian Aborigines.
Now those are just graphs, and anyone can make up a graph. What really hit me are the real worl examples given.
In the United States, Jews, Japanese, and Chinese earn incomes 1.72, 1.32, and 1.12 times the American average, respectively (Sowell, 1981, p. 5). Jews and East Asians have higher rates of college attendance, greater educational attainment, and are many times overrepresented in the Ivy League and many of the United States' most prestigious schools (Sowell, pp. 7, 93)[20], even though affirmative action discriminates against East Asians in the admissions process (relative to Whites as well as to other minorities). At Harvard, for example, Asian American and Jewish students together make up 51% of the student body, though only constituting roughly 6% of the US population.[21]
51% of student in Harvard came from 6% of the US racial population? That seems a pretty valid evidence for racial intelligence. However, what really made me re-think is the stastics on Nobel Price Winners. Yes, the most prestigious award of mankind. Do you know which race, which is only 0.25% of world population, but made up for 20~30% of of all Nobel Price winners in physics, chemistry, and medicine?
Achievement in science, a high-complexity occupation in which practitioners tend to have IQs well above average, also appears consistent with some group IQ disparity. Only 0.25% of the world population is Jewish, but Jews make up 20–30% of all Nobel prize winners in physics, chemistry, and medicine.[22] A significant decline in the number of Nobel prizes awarded to Europeans, and a corresponding increase in the number of prizes awarded to US citizens, occurred at the same time as Nazi persecutions of Jews during the 1930s and the Holocaust during the 1940s.[23]
Wow, it really made me wonder why Jewish people are not very well liked historically. Imagine what they can do if they comprise of 0.5% of world population. I have only known one Jewish person in my life and she seems really nice. There are certain food she wouldn't eat like meat, but then again I wouldn't eat tomato so I don't see the big deal. Why are Jewish people not well liked? Is it simply jealosy and envy? Or is it the religous difference?

Well, racial intelligence seems to have validity. Still, I don't think that means we [US] are better suited to guide Iraqi government. I cite Vietnam as an example that we should leave other country alone. Also so far this war on terror didn't seem to have made the country safer, instead US became more of a target. I still don't like the way the reporter wrote his article and his tone of racial superiority, but I suppose I don't have to worry too much about a repeat in history, since Bush will be out of office in a couple more years. That is one good thing about US, we change leaders regularly and air out the laundry every 4 years.

Cumulative IQ gaps by race or ethnicity based on 1981 U.S. distributions. According to these findings, WAIS IQs for Whites (mean = 101.4, SD = 14.7) were higher than Blacks (mean = 86.9, SD = 13.0); distributions for Hispanics (mean = 91) and Asians (mean = 106) are less precise because of overlap and small sample size.

1 Comments:

At 11/20/2005 11:15 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

hello!:) we've been viewing each other's blogs, i thought i might as well drop a note.

 

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