Posted on 05/21/2013 10:04:09 AM PDT by servo1969
As is often the case with my brain, I need to mull over things sometimes to decide what I think about them. Such is the case with Jason Richwine, the Heritage Foundation scholar who was driven out when it was discovered that his thesis (which passed inspection at Harvard) reached the following conclusions:
So what is actually in the dissertation? The dissertation shows that recent immigrants score lower than U.S.-born whites on many different types of IQ tests. Using statistical analysis, it suggests that the test-score differential is due primarily to a real cognitive gap rather than to culture or language bias. It analyzes how this cognitive gap could affect socioeconomic assimilation, and it concludes by exploring how IQ selection might be incorporated, as one factor among many, into immigration policy.
I have a few anecdotes plus a theory.
1. Back in the late 1980s, before political correctness wrapped its smothering embrace around free speech, I ran into old family friends whom I hadn’t seen in years. They were a Hispanic couple in their 60s, and very wealthy. What were they doing with themselves since they retired, I asked. Retired!? No way. They had founded an outreach program to work with poor Hispanic families. Their specific focus was school drop-out rates. The problem, they told me, was that immigrant Hispanic families resented that their children had to go to school. They came from an agrarian society and saw only backbreaking labor as the path to survival. While the news was talking about the gang culture turning Hispanics away from education, this couple told me that the problem was the parents.
2. In the mid-1980s, one of the girls at my law school informed us that she was the first woman in her family, not only to go to college, but to go on to graduate school Her Hispanic family was not proud of her, considering that she was a fool for wasting her time instead of getting a clerical job, getting married, and having babies.
3. In the early 1980s, I met a nice gal at Berkeley. She considered going to Berkeley a major triumph because her Hispanic family had done everything possible to stop her. Education, they said, was a waste of time. With Berkeley, they might have been right, of course, but having the degree alone definitely gave her probably higher life-time earnings than her siblings.
My takeaway: American Hispanic culture was highly anti-intellectual. Not everyone, of course, but the majority of immigrant parents worked ferociously hard as physical laborers and saw that as the only way to get ahead. Education was a time waster. Kids who went to school were not contributing to the family welfare and needed to be made to see that they should work in Dad’s autobody shop or Uncle’s gardening business. In this way, Hispanic culture was very different from the Jewish and Asian culture surrounding my youth, which was completely focused on educational achievement.
So my thought has always been this one: If your culture is distinguished by a pervasive anti-intellectualism, will that fact reveal itself in your academic performances and tests? I’ve always assumed the answer is “yes.” If you think something is a stupid waste of time, you’ll almost certainly do badly. I think the IQ test results reflect this fact. They measure a specific culture — and not a culture of poverty as the Left says, or a culture of pervasive discrimination against Hispanics, as the Left also says, but an agrarian culture that both consciously and unconsciously can’t be bothered.
Put another way, observing an objective trend on IQ tests is not wrong or racist. It’s a fact. Richwine makes that point too:
Why did I discuss differences between Hispanics and non-Hispanic whites at all? Because the largest portion of the post-1965 immigration wave has come from Latin America. Studies of Hispanic IQ are naturally useful in estimating overall immigrant IQ and its intergenerational transmission.
That last point bears elaborating: There is absolutely no racial or ethnic agenda in my dissertation. Nothing in it suggests that any groups are “inferior” to any others, nor is there any call to base immigration policy on ethnicity. In fact, I argue for individual IQ selection as a way to identify bright people who do not have access to a university education in their home countries.
We can pretend that nothing is going on, consigning further generations of Hispanic Americans to manual labor, even as Asian or other immigrant groups that value education move ahead of them. Or we can acknowledge the need to convince legal Hispanic immigrants that, in an information-rich age, the one who cracks the books is the one who gets ahead.
Anybody remember the book, The Bell Curve?
Reality and time has vindicated it, but it was flagged as hopelessly racist at the time.
The Italian kids I grew up with were like this - about half of them did not go to college in a town where everyone else went to college - they were expected to join the family business. A generation before that none of them went to college. Now the great majority do.
Side note: the Italian-American club in town, probably dating back to the 1920s, has a sign on the wall: “Proudly Italian, 100% American.”
Another side note: there’s something wrong with a society that expects everyone to go to college, and expects people not to make a decent living if they don’t.
IMHO, there is no genetic inferiority of hispanics, rather, one needs to focus on the mainly illegal hispanics that come to America.
Mexico is a highly classist, and racist society, made further stratified and corrupted by decades of statism and socialism.
Mexico’s social-welfare policy simply is to encourage its poorest, least educated, members to go to the United States, to have Uncle Sam take care of them. Therefore, one has to look at the specifics of the group that is arriving.
Imagine if the USA’s policy was to encourage the poorest, least educated residents from our inner cities or poor countryside to go to Mexico?
I’ve said since I was in high school (early 70’s) that I am not a racist, but I am a culturist. This article never slams any particular race. Rather, it slams a culture. A culture that righteously deserves it.
The two major goals of the AMS club were (1)helping Italian immigrantsn find jobs and (2)getting them to learn English.
Let's see if any Freeper can tell us what AMS stands for. I'll give the answer if it isn't here after about 20 posts.
I know what AMF stand for LMAO.
Same can be said for blacks. HOWEVER, we just take other people’s earnings, and hand them to Hispanics after the coming Amensty, and we’ll have another voterbase living off others with the “Blessing” of the Democrats/Progressives/Socialists, and the cheap labor force seekers (Businesses) that’s pushing the Agenda.
Reality and time has vindicated it, but it was flagged as hopelessly racist at the time.
Speaking the truth about any "protected" class is always considered racist, or sexist, or homophobic, or bigoted.
The authors conclusively demonstrated statistically significant differences in average intelligence between races, the ultimate in political incorrectness. Not everyone is above average - unforgivable!
The examples of students of hispanic background who resisted pressure to not pursue academic courses, and persisted to do well, probably reflected those who had the better genetic academic potential to begin with. In all population groups there is a fairly wide range of aptitude levels.
To illustrate the significance of this factor, consider the personality types--other than those being transported involuntarily--of those who braved the ocean, wilderness & whatever was unknown to settle the original Colonies. These people were not completely typical to their various human stocks. They tended to be exceptional in the ways that the culture they created proved to be exceptional. American values have always reflected that exceptionalism.
The Left wants to pretend that people are interchangeable. If you look more closely at the Academics who would deny the realities of human difference--of the uniqueness of the different peoples of the earth--you will find that most of those who push the denial seek some form of World Government; for the destruction of the very concept of the traditional nation.
Of course the pretense that people are simple products of their environment also fits neatly into the Communist theory that the rich only succeed by exploiting the poor, etc..
The Heritage Foundation has made not only a moral error in turning their back on Dr. Richwine. They have made a ridiculous logical error in turning their back on an honest effort to study the characteristics of human societies--the varied characteristics of human societies, which is pretty much what "heritage" is all about. The only people who should be offended by the study are those who are ashamed of heritage. (There is nothing wrong with being different or unique.)
William Flax
It's not 100%. I knew seriously smart Mexican guys in Engineering school, and they were not necessarily from the white Mexican upper class (although most were).
But even they had the defensive edge on them - they had to act out to prove their manhood to some extent or else be called names for being good students ("vendido", or sellout...meaning sellout to whitey).
You have to define Hispanics. I would put Cubans up against any group
I'd gladly make the swap; hard working Mexicans for an equal number of criminally inclined, layabout hoodrats.
Some are advocating we send our retirees to S. America and Asia, I'm sure some would agree.
'Why America should swap its retirees, patients, and students for skilled immigrant labor'
Americanization Mutual Society?
Well, with now the current scandals of Obama shedding the BET superioristic Michael Moore’s Stupid white men, black are stupid and incompetent, it was bound to be that hispanics would have a try at protecting PC a bit further...
I posted this before, but it seems fitting to add it in here.
Retired, with time on my hands, I volunteered to be a reading tutor at a Nevada middle school. I figured the majority would be Hispanics with an English problem.
That turned out to be correct, with a few whites that had attitude problems. The Hispanic kids were all eager learners and I mentioned that to the teachers. They told me the kids were bright, but the biggest hurdle was their fathers, who wouldn’t let them speak - or read - English at home. “Spanish is your heritage.” they were told. So much for assimilation.
I mentioned this to a teacher from Iowa, who said, “Oh, I DON’T believe that!” - end of discussion. I was too polite, but should have told her that denial was not just a river in Africa.
We had a limited choice of reading material, but I made it a point to emphasize our history and what a great country this was. Hopefully, some of it took root.
Ex-cobol programmer here. Six figures. No college.
I have three daughters, aged 30, 27 and 24. One has a masters in Civil Engineering and works for an insurance company analyzing buildings to determine insurability. She travels all over the country and as a single girl in her early 20’s is living a dream. The second graduated Summa Cum Laude and is now a CPA. She is more socially challenged, personality wise, and this significantly improves her ability to continue to make a good income.
The third (and oldest) is a Business Analyst with a GED. She is naturally smart and gegarious and she has parleyed that, coupled with the non-college training necessary to do the job, into a very promising career. She has catipulted up the career ladder in just a few short years. She is also the highest paid of the three - so far.
College doesn’t hurt, but it is not necessary - especially if you have personality and intelligence talents that you can bring to the table.
It’s an exageration, but I tend to jokingly put it this way: College is for those who can’t do it by themselves. The exceptions are the “hard” knowledge areas: Engineering, medicine, science, etc.
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