I don’t agree with the premise of the Derbyshire article. Having worked with rural Appalachian whites who were diagnosed as retarded - back in the day when they used that word - because they were so severely culturally deprived that they could barely speak intelligibly and lived one step above chimps, if that, I think the black problem is basically cultural. Granted, the gene pool by now may not be at its greatest, so some of the raw material isn’t good to start with (just as among the Appalachian whites, many of whom were in fact the product of multi-generational incest). But if blacks learned standard English and thus could master the concepts for math, and were expected to behave in society just like everybody else, I think you’d see the supposed IQ difference disappear in a couple of generations.
However, Derbyshire wrote an interesting article, and it could provoke a good discussion. Steyn was absolutely correct in his comments on it.
You ought to read “The Bell Curve” from cover to cover.
Whatever you think you know about IQ testing and nature vs. nurture, will be useful to your understanding, but the book goes further.
In the end, how they got the way they are, doesn’t detract from the fact they are that way. And we are stuck with it.
The book even deals with public policy recommendations for the true situation.
Hint: They don’t recommend further dumbing down high school and college, so people with IQs averaging 85 can feel good about themselves.
The inability to grasp math concepts is not dependent on learning English. Math is a language, in and of itself. The failure to grasp math concepts is a specific learning disability, where numbers have no meaning, like phonics having no meaning for a dyslexic student.
It seems to be hereditary. I’m just saying that from observing kids with the problem, I don’t have any proof to back up the hereditary component. These kids can’t even count items without touching each one as they say the number. That’s basically how you tell if the kid has dyscalculia. That’s what it is called.