Posted on 12/16/2020 7:53:32 AM PST by karpov
This cruelest of years has claimed the life of another consequential scholar whose passing warrants some reflection.
James Flynn, who died last week at 86, was an American social scientist born in Washington and educated at the University of Chicago. He spent most of his academic career on the other side of the planet, at the University of Otago in southern New Zealand. Flynn specialized in the study of mental tests and human intelligence, and he distinguished himself by bringing far more light than heat to this fraught debate.
Many earlier researchers of group differences in mental performance were convinced that intelligence was mostly inherited. In 1969 the psychologist Arthur Jensen published an academic article in the Harvard Educational Review that said blacks had lower IQs than whites due mainly to genetics and that compensatory education programs intended to close the learning gap among children—Head Start, for example—would have little success.
The article caused an uproar that never entirely died down. Jensen, who died in 2012, was roundly denounced as a racist by those who said that environmental factors rather than genes explained racial disparities in test scores. For a time, he received death threats and needed bodyguards when he appeared in public forums. Calls for ending the use of IQ tests became commonplace. More than 50 years later, racial differences in SAT results are still cited as a reason to stop using the exam in college admissions. In May the University of California system announced it was scrapping its SAT requirement.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
It’s not useful in any regard to pursue quantifying an IQ to race relationship.
The best approach is a meritocracy. Meet the qualifications, get the rewards. No extra credit for race, gender, or whatever imaginary conditions people dream up.
Not with my liberal daughter, its not.
Discussing anything to do that requires objectivity, scientific methods, and race...is impossible in most places in America.
“We are all equal.”
“Every human is built the same.”
“Its all about access to schools.”
Blah, blah, blah.
Some of the difference is genetic. Some is the culture that is passed down from parent to child: Whitey is out to get you, hate Whitey, studying hard makes you act White, you can blame your failures on Whitey, so why bother to work hard?
The article then goes on to say how anyone who, decades ago, pointed out the differences among races was widely attacked. And how now, those researchers have all died.
So no, an intelligent discussion about race and IQ is NOT possible.
In fact, race and leftist race politics are America’s cancer. And it will eventually kill the nation
The Flynn effect is strange. How over time all peoples and races were getting higher IQs. Yet if you take it to the extreme, all ancient people were intellectual morons.
The problem is that if it assumed that all groups have the same average IQ, racial differences in education and in professions are assumed to be due to racism.
“ Meet the qualifications, get the rewards”
But this produces huge differences in outcomes, which has over the past 60 years become unacceptable to many people, by now surely a majority.
Why is it needed?
It is an article of faith among the Left that there is NO genetic basis to IQ or any other indicator of ability.
It therefore follows that ANY "disparate impact" MUST be due to racism. which then MUST be remedied.
It therefore follows that ANY attempt at meritocracy will be denounced as racist if it results in any disparate impact against a "protected group". To the Left, any talk of race-blind meritocracy is racist.
Examples:
“The problem is that if it assumed that all groups have the same average IQ, racial differences in education and in professions are assumed to be due to racism.”
I didn’t consider the depths of stupidity among the left. It’s a problem when racial/gender whatever is measured in different professions, and racism/sexism/xenophobia is ALWAYS the reason for disparities.
In a real meritocracy, it’s achievement that matters. I’m old, my way of thinking is dangerous.
CRANIAL MASS.
Send her away with those words and see if anything happens.
“It therefore follows that ANY attempt at meritocracy will be denounced as racist”
Everything is racist to the left. And that view is insanity.
“It is an article of faith among the Left that there is NO genetic basis to IQ or any other indicator of ability.”
Yet they insist that sexual preferences are genetic.
L
“It’s not useful in any regard to pursue quantifying an IQ to race relationship.”
I agree. Conservatives believe in individual rights, opportunities, freedom, liberty, etc.
The solution to unacceptable income inequality is always merely theft.
So you can work toward acceptance (”better results for everyone”), or get ready for the head cracking.
Except trannies switching BACK. Then it’s a one-way ratchet.
Article behind a pay wall, but I can answer one thing:
RE: why there are whites with low IQs.
IQ among races generally form a bell curve. A white average of 100 doesn’t mean all whites have an IQ of 100.
Re: adopted black kids allegedly having average IQs equivalent to whites.
Would need to see such studies. On the studies I have seen involving twins, twins will have nearly identical IQs, even interests and hobbies, regardless of the economic status of their parents or differences in their education. IQ isn’t all genetic, but it mostly is.
I also recall studies showing black adoptees having higher IQs for their age as children then later dropping behind their white siblings as adults and often in line with their averages too. Again, IQ isn’t all genetic, but it mostly is.
But success isn’t limited by intelligence, only hard work.
I posted a link to the full article.
Conservatives can uphold all those things and still understand that though we are all equal in terms of rights, we are not all equal in terms of intelligence, ability or temperament. The Founders explicitly understood this.
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