Averages are brought in places like Alabama because the high percentage of minorities, as well as the makeup of those minorities. Alabama is is 26% black and that brings down average educational achievement, income, average scores on achievement tests. Amazingly, Alabama is still 68.5% white.
These days California is perhaps the dumbest state and most welfare-dependent state, a distinction once held by the Deep South. In California Hispanics now outnumber non-Hispanic whites (although many Hispanics list their race as white but their ethnic makeup would not be majority European.) California is 35.4% non-Hispanic white, but including Hispanics who claim to be white (36.8%) the state is “magically” 72.1% white.
Measuring the California’s average intellgence (in spite of Silicon Valley) I’m sure would show and vastly different picture, when more than a third of the population is made up of people from Mexico and Central America, a population not known for creating geniuses. The educational system can boast of lots of people getting more education, but it is increasingly not education but propaganda they are taught.
The state’s brown population is really the largest part of the population. If you travel the state you can see that more and more of it looks like racial and cultural equivalent of Mexico and Central America.
Try Stockton, for example. Try the rising number of Southern California neighborhoods that look like Mexico or Central America with all the poverty and violence that goes with it.
These Hispanic populations do not necessarily event speak good Spanish. Most do not speak good English. How do you count their multilingual capabilities? Certainly not like the small European nations which live near other populations with different languages and where knowing many languages is more important.
Ask any random stranger in any country on Earth what should they learn as a second language.
That’s easy, English, duh! It is the language of international commerce, of technology, of entertainment.
Unless they are already a native English speaker, then you get a blank stare. What other language gives you access to so much of the world? Mandarin? You can’t even speak to all Chinese in Mandarin! Spanish maybe? Self-fossilized French? Russian? Handy for space travel, maybe?