These poor achievement numbers in math and science are due to a variety of issues, but absolutely are not due to lack of ability or any problem with or differences in innate intelligence. Many of the brightest people I’ve every known or worked with happen to be black. IMHO, the problem is with culture and what we are emphasizing to our children in our pop culture, and it’s not just affecting blacks. We’ve seen test scores drop in general over the past several decades (e.g. SAT scores). Actually, SAT scores actually track household income, and this is probably due to a greater emphasis on academic achievement in those households.
IQ is also a product of culture and what you are exposed to as a child, as it is very difficult to design IQ tests that don’t in some way reflect what you already know and/or have been exposed to, even if they purport to be designed to do that.
We believe with no resistance that certain mental illnesses, for example are hereditary; yet the evidence for that is far weaker than the evidence for heritability of intelligence. The default position of "it's all cultural" is not based on scientific data but on politics.
These poor achievement numbers in math and science are due to a variety of issues, but absolutely are not due to lack of ability or any problem with or differences in innate intelligence.”
The above is a statement needing citations, lest it be dismissed as mere ideology. Worse yet, your statement might be used as an example of who one is ill advised to draw a vast conclusion from a half vast data sample.
>> IQ is also a product of culture and what you are exposed to as a child
Nonsense.
I agree, however, that intellect/IQ is not the reason for the low levels of involvement. It’s simply a matter of making bad choices.
Fine (despite disagreements above), but IQ in a wider sense which includes the desire to achieve. By itself, this IQ myth that's worshipped by the culture, measured precisely by Scientologists, is nothing more than an ability to solve puzzles and a talent for performing well on tests. It's well known that people with fast intelligence get easily bored, and some I've know failed to complete these stupid tests out of sheer impatience.
Excuse all you want, but the IQ Test that counts is the one that leads to a good higher education.
The IQ to sell street dope or escape from hungry lions is and will get any culture nowhere, as we are seeing.
That is exactly the crux of the The Bell Curve" by Herrnstein and Murray, 1994. As I recall, it was 800+ pages of statistics, studies, footnotes and references. In fact its subtitle was, "Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life." (Emphasis mine)
Unfortunately, the book was unofficially banned, for one page in the book that was considered 'racist' even though based on overwhelming research, and the facts, it was not.
I must be one of a few hundred people in the entire country who actually read the entire book (in 1994) and realize why the book simply doesn't exist.
The summary? Middle class financially, with a middle class family (!) attitude towards manners, knowledge, effort and respect, for others and for intellectual excellence allowed American Blacks to achieve excellence like most other subcultures do.
SAT scores track household income. High SAT parents tend to have high income, and their genes get passed down to their kids.
One exception, in The Bell Curve, was that even high-income black parents had kids with SAT scores below white average, indicating the role played by affirmative action on black income.