Paradox: "My modest 135 IQ, while nothing to sneer at overall, makes me a freakin Einstein among âmy fellow hispanicsâ..."
libertylover: "I wonder if IQ tests perhaps measure problem solving of a particular sort and that perhaps the variations in results are really because people of different races solve problems in different ways."
First of all, nobody should expose their own IQ's in public, any more than you'd expose your private parts -- it's indecent.
Keep it properly clothed, then if you truly do have some IQ, people will quickly surmise that from your words and actions.
Second, in today's world, "average IQ" is a function of previous social structures.
In ancient lands ruled for millenniums by a small, capable aristocracy, where the vast majority of humans were mere beasts of burden -- valued far more for their brawn than brain -- among them you will find a few geniuses, but much lower average IQs.
Amongst other groups whose very survival depended on their mental agility, where stupidity was effectively a death sentence, there you will find the average IQs much higher.
And, of course, from all those lands most Americans are self-selected immigrants, selected for their ambition, courage and, yes, intelligence to improve their lives in a new land of opportunity.
So Americans generally score higher than their fellow countrymen who stayed home in their native lands.
Finally it's been noted that in the past 100+ years average IQs slowly increased, even amongst, or especially amongst, those groups which score lowest.
And that is a HUGE problem for Democrats, because any people eventually reach the point where they begin to grasp that Democrat political-economic diagnoses are false and their nostrums quack, intended only to maintain their class dependence on Democrat Big Government.
Such people begin to seek more uplifting ideas less committed to Democrat politics.
It's why Democrats constantly bombard us with not just high quality new immigrants, but more to their purposes, the worst of the worst, future Democrat voters.
Without them, Democrats as a national party would slowly fade away.
It also explains why liberals have taken control of the educational system, to keep hidden the paucity of their ideas and the tyrannical, deceitful methods by which they are advanced.
When did I do that?
Thanks for a thoughtful response. I still wonder though, since if you compare say, blacks to whites, blacks have or tend to have different noses, different lips, different hair, etc. so it seems possible, perhaps probable, that their brains work a little differently too.
I haven’t read “The Bell Curve” and I wonder if they tried to vary the testing methods in order to overcome what could be an unintended bias.
Your last two paragraphs seem illogical. You say that as the Democrats aid lower classes and immigrants the result is that they become Republicans as they seek more uplifting ideas. Then you draw the strange conclusion that they are bombarding us with HIGH quality new immigrants and their purpose is to have them as future Democrat voters, and that without them the D party would fade away.
How few know the triumphs of Booker T. Washington or George Washington Carver, but almost all know the travails of Rosa Parks.
Regardless of IQ, keeping the victimhood myth alive is a useful tool, based on kernels of truth but embellished and continually stroked to produce an entire class of people who certainly could have improved their lot had they not been convinced they deserved handouts and freebies on the backs of people who never oppressed them.
In keeping with international socialist dogma, those being imported illegally are similarly convinced they have a "right" to what they did not build, in spite of our laws.
The Democrat Party was hijacked by Socialists and Communists pretty thoroughly by the end of the Vietnam War, and the people they are importing from elsewhere have either a pretty thorough indoctrination from their native banana republic, or are Muslim tools being used to cause the sort of chaos and mayhem the totalitarians desperately need in order to complete their seizure of power.