Thoughts on Catholicism

Americans obviously have changed their opinions of Catholics and their popes over the past 50 or 60 years. When I was growing up in Southern Humboldt County our Catholic neighbors were some of our best friends; however my parents would not have voted for a catholic, they despised the papacy. Those of us who are long in the tooth will recall that JFKs biggest impediment to becoming president resulted from the fact that he was a Catholic and many feared that his catholic beliefs might influence the way he governed. My earliest years were spent in the Seventh Day Adventist Colony in Eel Rock California. The colony was comprised primarily of elderly retirees who had moved to the colony to await the second coming of Christ which their leader, the false profit Sister Ellen White, assured them was imminent. These elderly SDAs believed, and rightly so, that the Catholic Church was an evil institution and that the church's popes were among the most wicked men to ever walk the face of the earth. These people knew full well that tens of thousands of innocent people were slaughtered by Catholic popes during the Medieval and Spanish Inquisitions. Most of these innocents were Jews who were murdered for their money. I am sure that it would come as no surprise to these elderly SDSs to learn that many catholic priests were later discovered to be pedophiles. My first experience with Catholicism occurred when I was around eight years old. Our good friends the Salazar's ( MR Salazar was the railroad section foremen at Eel Rock at the time) had a daughter named Hope and twin boys around four to five years old. I do not recall their names. Tragically, both of the twins drowned in the Eel river after entering a row boat that turned over while they were playing in it. Freddy Nunnemaker, Billy Gallagher and I were pallbearers at their funeral mass in the Fortuna Catholic church a few days later. I recall thinking that it was, with its holy water, incense burners and lighting of candles and mumbling Latin homily, the most bizarre and ludicrous event I had ever attended. But the absurdity of the Catholic mass is not the reason for writing about this tragic event; rather, it was the episode that preceded the mass that drew my attention. The Salazar's went to the Catholic Cemetery in Eureka to chose a final resting place for their boys. Mrs. Salazar was appalled at the appearance of the weed infested place and refused to have her sons buried there. She ultimately chose to have the twins buried at the nondenominational Ocean Side Cemetery next door. But, unbelievable as it may sound, the Catholic Priest at Fortuna refused to set foot in the Ocean Side Cemetery and, thus, refused to mumble his unintelligible words or sprinkle holy water over the boys before they were laid to rest. Mrs. Salazar was devastated by the refusal of the church to assist in the proper burial her boys. When we visited the family some ten years later in San Rafael, it was clear that she had never recovered from the unseemly way her boys were treated by unholy father of the Fortuna Catholic Church. For my part, I have never set foot in a Catholic Church since the day I participated in that ludicrous funeral mass some 70 years ago and will not do so in the future. It is clear that the public's view of Catholicism has changed drastically since the Salazar twins drowned in the Eel River and JFK was elected president, probably because the last three popes, especially Frances, have seemed more likable and humble than the churches previous leaders. Whether this perception is a reflection of meaningful change in this evil establishment's hierarchy remains to be seen. I, for one, am skeptical.

Chapter 15- The demography of Intelligence

When people die they are not replaced one for one by babies who have identical IQs. If the next generation of babies grows up with systematically higher or lower IQs, the national distribution of IQ changes. The evidence indicates that demographic trends are exerting downward pressure on the distribution of cognitive ability and that these pressures are strong enough to have significant social consequences. Throughout the western world modernization has brought falling birth rates. More importantly, the birth rates are falling faster for educated women than the uneducated. Furthermore, education leads women to have their babies later, which also produces additional dysgenic pressures.

Current immigration policies provide the other major source of dysgenic pressure. The mean IQ of immigrants in the 1980s was about 95. This in itself may not be much of a problem; in the past, immigrants have shown large increases in such measures after a few generations. But the evidence indicates that the self-selection process that used to attract the classical American immigrant- brave, hard working, imaginative, self-starting and often high IQ- has been changing and with it the nature of the immigrant population. Putting the pieces together, something worrying is happening to the cognitive capital of the country. Whatever good things we can accomplish with changes in the environment would be much more effective if they did not have to fight these demographic head winds. As the population replenishes itself from generation to generation by birth and immigration, the people who pass from the scene are not going to be replaced, one for one, by people with the same IQ scores. This is what the authors mean by the demography of intelligence. The question is not whether the demographic processes themselves can have an impact on the distribution of intelligence, that much is for certain, but what and how big the impact is. Mounting evidence indicates that that these demographic changes in the mean national IQ are exerting downward pressures that are significant enough to have major negative social and economic consequences. The authors refer to this downward pressure as dysgenesis. Children resemble their parents, for whatever reason, in IQ and immigrants with low IQs and their decedents will not duplicate America's resident cognitive ability distribution. If women with low scores are producing more rapidly that women with higher scores the mean IQ of our nation will decline irrespective of whether the women with low scores come by them by nature or nurture. The author's exploration of this all important issue proceeds in three stages. First, they describe the state of knowledge as to when and why dysgenesis occurs. Next they look at the present state of affairs regarding differential birth rates, the effects of differences in the age of childbearing and lastly the effects of immigration. Finally, they speculate on the shape of the future and describe the magnitude of the stakes involved. Hold your hat, we are in for a bumpy and disquieting ride! In pre-modern times, privileged young women were better nourished, better rested and had better medical care than the underprivileged. They married earlier and suffered fewer disruptions. As a result they ended up with more surviving children. As modernization proceeded these advantages narrowed. Modern societies provide greater opportunities for privileged women to be something other than house wives. On average modern women spend more of their reproductive years in school. The cost of raising a child is another reason privileged women bear fewer children and postpone the ones they do bear. Meanwhile, children impose few opportunity costs for poor women because a "career" usually is not seen as a viable option. Children, on the other hand, continue to have the same attractions that have always led young women to find motherhood intrinsically rewarding. Finally, in most countries in the contemporary west a baby is free or even profitable depending on the welfare system in her country. For all these reasons reproductive rates are correlated with income and educational levels, which in turn are correlated with intelligence. What is the evidence that this type of dysgenesis is actually happening? In the 1930s the eminent psychometrician Raymond Cattell was predicting a loss of 1.0 to 1.5 IQ points per generation. Another predicted that "If this trend continued for another century England and America would be well on the way to becoming nations of near half-wits." Their pessimism was based on the fact that the average IQ in large families was lower than in smaller families. However, during the 1960s a number of studies seemed to show that the IQ of the nation was almost stable, or perhaps rising slowly, despite the lower average IQs in larger families. This optimism proved to be ephemeral because the studies were of nearly all white populations in the upper Midwest and, as such, were not representative of the national population. In 1982 demographer Daniel Vining showed that when birth rates were high, people with higher intelligence tended to have more children than those who had lower cognitive ability while in times of falling birth rates the opposite was true. The American fertility rate has been falling since the late 1950s and so have the birth rates of educated white women. Since the flawed studies in the 1960s and 1970s, all the news has been bad. A 1980s study of a nearly all-white sample of people in Wisconsin found a dysgenic effect of 0.8 IQ points a generation. Several other studies have suggested that the 0.8 figure underestimates the actual decrease in IQ that is occurring with each generation. When considering the dysgenic pressures in America there are three major factors to take into account: the numbers of children born to women of various IQ levels, the age at which they have them and, most importantly the cognitive ability of immigrants. First, let's consider the cognitive level of the women who are having children. Demographers take a fertility rate of 2.1 as a dividing line between having enough children to replenish the parent generation and having to few. Overall, women who were college graduates had 1.56 children, one child less than the lower IQ women without even a high school diploma. this means that high school dropouts had 71 percent more children than women who had graduated from college. The overall IQ of American mothers in 1992 was a little less than 98 which suggests a decline in IQ of about 0.8 points per generation. Population growth depends not just on the total number of children women have but on how old they are when they have them. The effect is dysgenic when a low-IQ group has babies at a younger age than the high-IQ group, even if the number born in each group eventually is the same. Suppose that over several generations low and high IQ mothers have the same number of children but the low IQ mothers always have their first baby on their twentieth birthday and all the high IQ mothers have their first baby on their thirtieth birthday. The low IQ mothers will produce three generations of children to every two produced by the high IQ mothers. Studies of fertility rates among ethnic groups tells a similar story. In a 1992 analysis of American fertility women ages 35 to 44 had given birth to an average of 1.94 children; 1.89 for white women,2.23 for black women, and 2.47 for Latino women. More disturbing is the fact that, in all three groups, the more educated the women were the lower were their fertility rates. We cannot conclude, however, that whites, blacks and Latinos are on the same downward slope because each ethnic group has different proportions of women at different IQ levels. For example, black and white women with IQs of 90 or below have similar birth rates but only 15 percent of white women fall in the 90s and below range compared to 52 percent of black women. As of 1992, 69 percent of all black children were born to mothers with IQs of 90 or lower. The figure was 19 percent for whites and 64 percent for Latino mothers with low IQs. Immigration is an even older trip wire for impassioned debate than differential fertility. American has more people flowing into it than any other country. About half of the world's immigrants are coming to America. The nation's political ground rules have yet to accept that the intelligence of immigrants is a legitimate topic for policymakers to consider. To the contrary, politicians on both sides of the isle seem to believe that the IQs of illegal immigrants from Mexico and south America are similar, if not identical, to those of the population already living here. To begin the discussion the authors assume that immigrants to America have similar mean IQs to those living in the countries from which they came. (This is an absurd assumption considering that well educated Mexicans are not among the hordes of illegal's crossing our southern border each day.) Using this rational the average IQ of immigrants in the 1980s was 95- essentially unchanged from the 1950s and 1960s. With respect to ethnic groups, white immigrants have slightly higher mean IQs than the native-born American population, although somewhat lower than native-born American whites. For reasons not known, foreign born black immigrants have IQs five points higher than American born blacks. Finally, Latino immigrants have mean scores more than seven points below native-born Latinos. With respect to IQ, there is no reliable information on the large immigrant population from East Asia and Vietnam, who might be significantly boosting the immigration mean IQ. The United States maybe expected to draw high-ability workers from countries that have more extensive welfare states and less income inequality than we do and will draw low-ability workers from countries that have less extensive welfare states and higher income inequality (such as the poorer countries in the third world). Borjus used the census figures from 1970 and 1980 to examine the experience of immigrants from 41 countries. In the 1960s and 1970s the United states became much more of a welfare state. During this period of time, the earning potential of Latino immigrants fell substantially from 1955 to 1980. Among the non-European countries, the steepest declines in earning potential were among immigrant groups from Columbia, the Dominican Republic and Mexico. Only the immigrant groups from Cuba, Brazil and Panama had improving potential in America, by Borjas's measure. When all is said and done, just how important is dysgenic pressure? The higher fertility rate and faster generational cycle among the less intelligent native born Americans and the immigration population, that is somewhat below the national average, suggests that something worrisome is happening to the cognitive capital of the country. Just how big is this effect? Using the usual metrics for such analysis it would be nearly impossible to make the total fall in the nations cognitive ability less than one IQ point a generation and it might be twice that. But, so what if the nations mean IQ is falling a point or two each generation? One obvious reason is that the drop may be increasing ethnic difference in cognitive ability at a time when the nation badly needs narrowing differences. Another reason to be concerned is that when the mean IQ of the nation shifts a little, the size of the tails of the distribution (the tails of the bell curve for intelligence) change a lot. For example, a three point drop in the mean IQ would reduce the proportion of the population with IQs over 120 to 31 percent and the proportion with IQs above 135 by 41 percent. Similarly the proportion of the population with IQs below 65 (the very dull) would rise by 68 percent. Changes this large would profoundly alter most aspects of American life, none the authors can think of that are good. Even a fall in mean IQ of only three points will have a profound effect on our society. The overall poverty rate will increase by 11 percent and the proportion of children living in poverty will rise by 13 percent. The proportion of children born to single mothers will rise by 8 percent and the numbers of males in jail will increase by 13 percent. The proportion of children living with non-parental custodians, of women forever on welfare, and the number of high school dropouts will all increase by 14 percent. A cascade of secondary effects, all of which were ignored in this analysis, may make social conditions worse than the authors suggest or perhaps not as bad. But the overall point is irrefutable, that relatively minor shifts in the nations mean IQ can produce profound social consequences. So what would happen if the mean IQ of Americans went up three IQ points? For starters, the poverty rate would fall by 25 percent as would the numbers of males in prison. The high school dropout rate would fall by 28 percent. Children living without their parents would decrease by 20 percent and the numbers on welfare would drop by 18 percent. It is easy to understand the historical, social and political reasons why no one wants to talk about the demographics of intelligence. The authors purpose was to point out that the stakes are large (I think huge) and that continuing to pretend that "there is nothing worth thinking about" is as feckless as it is foolish. Comment: The Bell Curve was first published in 1995. During the intervening 20 years the socioeconomic problems have become significantly worse. Seventy two percent of all young black males are either in prison or on parole. The illegitimacy rate is 72 percent for blacks and a whopping 40.7 overall. Over 90 million Americans are out of work. Undoubtedly, these grime statistics are due, at least in part, to the fact that Americans, as a whole, have become increasing dumber with the passage of time, just as the authors predicted. Things could have been done to change the situation, but for political reasons were not. We should have build the damned wall 20 years ago, but did not. We should have reversed course after The Bell Curve was published two decades ago and started paying welfare mothers not to have babies rather than paying them to have babies, but we did not. We should have stopped shipping jobs that low IQ people could perform overseas years ago, but we have not. In short, there are many things we could do to improve the economy and decrease the social problems we are facing in the twenty-first century, but as long as the cabal of big business, who want cheap labor, and liberal democrats, who want a consistent source of low IQ voters, nothing will be done. You can take that to the bank!

Chapter 14- Ethnic Inequalities in Relation to IQ

Ethnic differences in education, occupation, poverty, unemployment, illegitimacy, crime, and other signs of inequality have preoccupied scholars and thoughtful citizens for hundreds of years. In this chapter the authors examine the differences after cognitive ability is taken into account.

Herrnstein and Murray found that Latinos and whites of similar cognitive ability have similar social behavior and economic outcomes. For blacks and whites, the story was more complicated. For the two most vital indicators of success, educational attainment and entry into a prestigious occupation, the black/white discrepancy reverses. After controlling for IQ, larger numbers of blacks than whites graduate from college and enter a profession. On the other hand, the B/W gap in annual income or in persons below the poverty line narrows after controlling for IQ but still remains sizable. Similarly, differences in unemployment, labor force participation, marriage and illegitimacy get smaller but remain significant after extracting the effect of IQ. These inequalities must be explained by other factors in American life. The role of cognitive ability has seldom been considered in past studies of the various inequalities that exist in American culture. The authors believe that doing so in future research could clarify issues and focus attention on the factors that produce the most troubling inequalities. America's social problems are most often expressed in ethnic terms. For example, in the 1992 recession white unemployment was under seven percent, but it was fourteen percent for blacks. Similarly, the poverty rate at that time was twelve percent for whites and thirty-three percent for blacks. Such statistics, and the deliberation over what they should mean for policy have been hotly debated in the press and political circles since the early 1960's. Today, as Latinos have become an increasing larger percentage of the population, the discussion has centered on similar disparities between Latinos and whites. This chapter examines the question of what happens to these ethnic differences in economic and social behavior when intelligence is held constant. The primary goal is to broaden the search for answers after three decades during which scholars have ignored the contribution of IQ to ethnic differences in the main social outcomes of everyday life. First the authors look at the indicators of success that were the focus of Part 1, then the indicators of problems that were the focus of Part 11. They begin with what should be considered one of Americas great success stories. Ethnic differences in higher education, occupations and wages largely disappear after controlling for IQ, often they vanish. In this sense, America has equalized these central indicators of social success. In 1990, 84 percent of whites had achieved a high school diploma as compared to 73 percent of blacks and 65 percent of Latinos. But these percentages are based on everybody, at all levels of intelligence. What are the odds of blacks and Latinos with average IQs of 103 (the mean IQ of all high school graduates at the time) completing high school? The answer may surprise you, it did me. The odds of graduation from high school were 93 percent for blacks, 91 percent for Latinos compared to 89 percent for whites, assuming again that they all had IQs of 103. The statistics were similar for college graduates. Overall, before controlling for IQ, the probability of achieving a bachelor's degree was 27 percent for whites, 11 percent for blacks and 10 percent for Latinos. But for persons with mean IQs of 114 ( the average IQ of college graduates) the graduation rates for whites was 50 percent, 68 percent for blacks and 49 percent for Latinos. The authors discuss the black advantage in Chapter 19. One of the positive findings about ethnic differences has been that education pays off in occupational status for minorities roughly the same as it does for whites. Holding education constant, similar proportions of blacks, Latinos and whites are found in the various occupational categories. However, as with education, after accounting for intelligence blacks and Latinos are overrepresented in high-status occupations like medicine, engineering and teaching. The probability of being in a high-IQ occupation, for those with an average IQ of 117, was 10 percent for whites, 26 percent for blacks and 16 percent for Latinos. The story was the same for wages. In 1989 white workers made an average of $27,373, blacks $20,994 and Latinos $23,409; however, people of average IQ made roughly the same, around $25,000. With the exceptions of managers/administrators and unskilled laborers where blacks earned about 16 percent less than whites, the job market rewards blacks and whites of equivalent cognitive ability nearly equally in all nine job categories studied. Turning now to poverty the narrative does not change, controlling for age but not IQ, the poverty rate was 7 percent for whites, 26 percent for blacks and 18 percent for Latinos. But for a persons of average age and mean IQs of 100, the poverty rare stayed the same for whites (6 percent) but dropped to 11 percent for blacks and 9 percent for Latinos. But, even after controlling for IQ the black poverty rate remained almost twice as high as the rate in whites. Why does this gap persist while the differences in educational achievement, occupations and wages did not? The search for the answer to this question takes us further from things that IQ can explain into ethnic differences with less well understood roots. Black unemployment has been higher than white unemployment for as long as records have been kept. In 1992, 21 percent of blacks were unemployed, more than twice the rate of whites (10 percent). The unemployment rate for Latinos was 14 percent. Controlling for cognitive ability reduces this difference for Latinos but not for blacks. Fifteen percent of blacks with average IQs of 100 were unemployed in 1998 as compared to 11 percent for whites. The unemployment rate of Latinos with mean IQs of 100 was 11 percent identical to that of whites. With respect to blacks, there are ethnic differences other than IQ which explain their inability to do well in the work force. The authors do not speculate further along these lines. Historically, the black-white difference in marriage rates was small until the 1960s and then widened. By 1991 only 38 percent of black women ages 15 to 44 were married, compared to 58 percent of white women. Only 8 percent of the black-white marriage gap disappears after controlling for IQ. A black women with a mean IQ of 100 has a 58 percent chance of being married by age 30 compared to a 79 percent of a white women with the same IQ. The difference between black and white rates of illegitimacy goes back at least to the beginning of the nineteenth century. In 1960, 24 percent of black children were illegitimate as compared to only 2 percent of white children, a huge proportional difference. By 1990 68 percent of all black babies were illegitimate as compared to 39 percent for Latinos and 18 percent for whites. This disparity cannot be explained away no matter what variables are entered into the equation, including controlling for IQ. In this respect, the illegitimacy rate for women with average IQs of 100 was 10 percent for whites, 17 percent for Latinos and 51 percent for blacks. Welfare, in 1991 about 21 percent of black women ages 15 to 44 were on AFDC as compared to 12 percent for of Latino and four percent of white women. At that time 49 percent of black women, 30 percent of Latino women and 13 percent of white women had been on welfare at some time in their life time. After controlling for IQ, 12 percent of white women with mean IQs of 100 were on welfare as compared to 30 percent of blacks and 15 percent of Latino women with average IQs. Children living in poverty. In 1992, 47 percent of black children under the age of 18 were living in poverty. This extraordinarily high figure was nearly as bad for Latino children, with 40 percent under the poverty line. For non-Latino whites the proportion was 14 percent. In women with average IQs of 100, 6 percent of white children were living in poverty while 14 percent of black and 10 percent of Latino children born to women with average IQs were living below the poverty line. The story was much the same for the intellectual development of children in the different ethnic groups. Seven percent of children born to white mothers scored in the lower decile on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary test while 55 percent of black children and 54 percent of Latino children did so. Controlling for IQ, reduced the ethnic disparities considerably but there still was a 20 point gap between white children and both black and Latino children born to mothers with average IQs. Finally crime, blacks are 3.8 times as likely to be arrested, relative to their numbers in the population, than whites or Latinos. Sociologist Robert Gordon analyzed black-white differences in juvenile delinquency and found that the difference in the prevalence of black and white delinquency is explained by differences in the IQs of the delinquents, independent of the effect of socioeconomic status. The relationship of cognitive ability to adult criminal behavior among whites and blacks is similar. Before controlling for IQ the chances of a white being incarcerated for a crime is 2 percent for whites, 13 percent for blacks and 6 percent for Latinos. After correcting for IQ the ethnic criminality gap is two percent for whites, five percent for blacks and three percent for Latinos. If one of Americas goals is to rid itself of racism and discrimination we should welcome the finding that a Latino and white of equal cognitive ability have the same chances of getting a college education and working in a white-collar job. A black with similar cognitive abilities has even a higher chance of having those good things happen. We also should rejoice at the fact that Latinos, blacks and whites of similar cognitive ability earn annual salaries within a few hundred dollars of each other. On the other hand, the evidence presented in this chapter should give those who write about ethnic inequalities reason to avoid flamboyant rhetoric about ethnic oppression. Racial and ethnic differences in this country are seen in a different light when cognitive ability is added to the equation. Awareness of these complex relationships is an essential first step in our everlasting attempt to create an equitable America. Comment: This chapter will be a difficult pill to swallow for liberal academics who believe, despite all evidence to the contrary, that we are all born equal except, of course, for obvious differences such as skin color and athletic ability. The refusal of the genetic inheritance deniers to accept the fact that a large part of our innate intelligence is inherited from our parents has led to a much of the social unrest in America since the inception of Johnson's great society political blunders in the 1960s. These programs including school bussing, affirmative action and head start, to name only three of the worst offenders, have been a total waste of time and money. In fact, they have destroyed the black family, increased the rate of poverty, crime and illegitimacy while bankrupting the country. As my mother used to say "you can't make a silk purse out of a sows ear, no matter how hard you might try."

The Bell Curve Part 111 Chapter 13- Ethnic Differences in Cognitive Ability

In Part 11 the authors addressed social behaviors one at a time and restricted their analysis to whiles. In part 111 they turn to the national scene which means considering all races and ethnic groups. The material is extremely controversial because it deals with the effects of fertility patterns on intelligence and the relationship of low cognitive ability to what has become known as the underclass.

It may surprise the reader to learn that, despite the forbidding air that envelops the topic, the ethnic differences in cognitive ability are neither surprising nor in doubt. Large human populations differ in many ways, both cultural and biological and it should come as a surprise that they might differ in their cognitive characteristics. One message of the present chapter is that such differences in native cognitive ability are real and have consequences. East Asians whether in America or in Asia typically score higher on intelligence achievement tests than white Americans; estimates range from 3 to 10 points. The difference in intelligence between black and whiles in America is approximately one standard deviation or a whopping IQ points. This means that the average white person tests higher than 84 percent of blacks and that the average black person tests higher than 16 percent of the white population. The average black and white differ in IQ at every level of socioeconomic status (SES), but the difference is more pronounced at high levels of SES than at low levels. Attempts to explain these differences in terms of test bias have uniformly failed. In the past few decades the IQ gap between white and blacks has narrowed by approximately three points. The narrowing appears to have been caused by a shrinking number of very low scores in the black population rather than an increase in the number of high scores in the blacks. The debate as to whether the differences in IQ between the races is due to environmental factors or inherited genes remains in dispute but, as we will see, the preponderance of the evidence suggests that the differences in intelligence between the races is primarily a result of inherited genetic factors and not environmental influences. The authors begin this chapter by emphasizing that the IQ differences between individuals of a race are far greater than the IQ differences between ethnic groups. They argue that, even if all the ethnic differences evaporated overnight, most of the intellectual variation in America would endure. The remaining differences in cognitive ability would still strain the political process. In this respect, the authors point out that differences in cognitive ability are a problem even in ethnically homogeneous societies. They assert that the chapters in Part 11, which looked only at whites, should have made this abundantly clear. Following this introduction, the authors provide answers to the most commonly asked questions about the ethnic differences in intelligence beginning with the basics and moving into more complex issues. Because of the recent success of the Pacific rim nations and the success of Asian immigrant children in our schools they begin the discussion by addressing the following question. Do Asians have higher IQs than whites? The answer is yes if we are referring to Japanese, Chinese and Koreans. A 1991 review of the literature reveals that native Chinese have a mean IQ of 110 (the mean IQ of white Americans at that time was 101). The mean IQ of Japanese living in Japan is 103, the same as the mean IQs of Koreans living in North America. What about the differences in IQ between blacks and whites? The answer is one standard deviation. Whites have a mean IQ of 101 while the average IQ of blacks is 85. A review of 156 IQ studies comparing the IQs of blacks and whites in the twentieth century revealed a white/black difference of 1.08 standard deviations, or about 16 IQ points. To get a better understanding of the size of the IQ gap between whites and blacks consider this statistic. A black person with a mean black IQ of 85 would be in the lower 11th percentile of a white distribution and a white person with an average IQ of 101 would be in the top 91st percentile of a black distribution, if they were black. This does not mean, of course. that there are not many extremely smart blacks. In the early 1990s, when The Bell Curve was written, the black population numbered over 30,000,000 about 100,000 of whom had IQs that were in the highest cognitive class ( very bright) with IQs of 125 or greater. One hundred thousand is a lot of people and it should come as no surprise to see blacks functioning at high levels in every intellectually challenging field. Critics of IQ test argue that the tests are loaded culturally in favor of whites. For example, in a SAT test this analogy item has become famous as an example of cultural bias. Runner: Marathon (A) envoy: embassy (B) martyr: massacre (C) oarsman: regatta (D) Referee: tournament (E) horse: stable The answer is pretty obvious but how likely is it that black youngster from an inner city slum would ever have heard of a regatta? If not, the answers to questions like this would be little more than guesswork. The fact is, however, that the studies of possible test cultural bias have lead the authors to the opposite conclusion because the findings indicate that the white/black differences are wider on items that appear to be culturally neutral than on items that seem to be culturally loaded. In any case, there is no longer a technical debate over the conclusion that the cultural content of test items is not the cause of group differences in test scores. However, just because the tests are not rigged to favor whites does not mean that cultural differences in the white and black communities do not give whites a leg up when it come testing for intelligence. Maybe blacks do not perform well on such tests because they lack the motivation to do so, after all education is thought to be "a white man's thing" in large segments of the black community. Two tests dispel this myth. the first involves the forward digital span test in which the subject is asked to repeat a series of numbers in the order read to him; the second is the backward digital span test in which the subject tries to repeat a series of numbers backward. The test is not culturally biased because it uses numbers that are familiar to everyone and calls on no cultural information besides knowing numbers. The backward form is twice as g-loaded (general intelligence) as the forward form. The reason is that reversing the numbers is more mentally demanding than simply repeating them as heard. In most of these studies the black/white difference is about twice as great on the backward digits as on the forward digits. This observation is of upmost importance because how can lack of motivation, willingness to take the test, or any other plausible explanations explain the difference in performance on the two parts of the same sub-test? Obviously they can't! Similar questions arise from work on reaction time Arthur Jensen postulates that neurologic processing speeds, akin to the speed of a microprocessor on a computer is a indicator of general intelligence- g. The smarter the subject is the faster is his reaction time to simple tasks such as turning off of a console with a series of lights. One such device has a home central home button surrounded by 8 lights. The subject starts the test by hitting the central button to turn on one of the 8 surrounding lights and ends the test by hitting a second button closest to the light that has been turned on. There are more complicated versions of this test but none require much thought and primarily measure reaction time. We see a variation of this test everyday at street stop lights. There is a reason some people take forever to get their cars moving after the light turns from red to green (my observation not the authors). In any case, reaction times have been correlated with tests measuring general intelligence. The consistent result of such studies is that white reaction time is faster, on average, than black reaction time. Other kinds of bias include the possibility that blacks have less access to coaching than whites, less experience with tests, poorer understanding of standard English and are subject to the bias of white examiners. Each of these hypotheses have been investigated for many years, under many conditions, but none have been found to have merit. Having put to rest the possibility that tests designed to measure racial differences in intelligence are biased, the authors tackle and even larger question. Are differences in overall black and white test scores attributable to differences in socioeconomic status? This question has two different answers depending on how the question is understood, and confusion is rampant. Many people suggest that what appears to be a racial difference in IQ scores actually is a socioeconomic difference. In a regression equation in which includes both race and socioeconomic status, the differences between whites and blacks shrinks to .76 standard deviation. Such studies would suggest that the 37 percent of the original B/W intelligence gap is a result of socioeconomic influences and not genetically inherited factors. The problem with this line of reasoning is that socioeconomic status, in its self, is a result of cognitive ability since people of high and low intelligence have correspondently high and low places on the socioeconomic ladder. Because of these complex relationships, "controlling" for socioeconomic status in racial comparisons is guaranteed to reduce the IQ differences in the same way that choosing black and white samples from a school for intellectually gifted children is guaranteed to reduce IQ differences (assuming race-blind admission standards. Looking at it from another angle, suppose we attempting to determine whether blacks were faster sprinters than whites but only examined Division 1college athletes. In other words the test subjects had already been preselected for their sprinting ability. Blacks, on average, would sprint faster than whites but it would be a smaller difference than in the population at large. The simplified answer to the question of socioeconomic bias in IQ testing is this. People who live in slums are there because their ancestors, on average were dumber than the ancestors of those who live in the suburbs. The inner city blacks do not perform well on tests of IQ, not so much because they are disadvantaged, but because they are intellectually inferior, on average, to their white counterparts. This is my conclusion, not that of the authors. The authors next pose an interesting question. As blacks move up the socioeconomic ladder, do the intellectual differences with whites of similar socioeconomic status diminish as they should if variations in IQ were primarily caused by environmental factors. The rational goes like this: Blacks score lower on average because they are disadvantaged due to their environment, poverty, poor schools, bad parenting, etc. This disadvantage should most seriously handicap black children in the lower socioeconomic classes where their living conditions are the most dire. As blacks advance up the socioeconomic ladder, their children who are less exposed to these environmental defects, will do better and close the cognitive gap with white children of their class. Although reasonable, this expectation is not borne out by the data. IQ scores increase with economic status for both races, but the magnitude of the B/W difference in intelligence, about one standard deviation does not change. Indeed, it gets larger as groups of people move up the socioeconomic ladder. You may be wondering how African-Americans compare with blacks in Africa on Cognitive tests. A 1991 review of the literature reveled the mean IQ of African blacks to be 75, approximately 1.7 standard deviations below American whites and about ten IQ points lower than American blacks. The IQ of "colored" students in South Africa, of mixed racial background, has been found to similar to American blacks. The authors end the chapter on the ethnic differences in cognitive ability by asking, and answering, four pertinent questions. Are Jews really smarter than everyone else? Where do Latinos fit in? What about women versus men? Jews, especially Ashkenazi Jews of European origin, test higher than any other ethnic group( this should come as no surprise to the reader since 23 percent of all the worlds billionaires are Jews even though they constitute only 0.02 percent of the population). Jews in America and Britten have a mean IQ somewhere between a half and a full deviation above the mean. This means that the average western Jew has an IQ between 108 and 116( a third of my medical school class was Jewish and this undoubtedly was the reason). For Latinos, their mean IQs fall about half to one standard deviation below the national mean. The IQ gap between Mexican Americans and whites is .84 standard deviations or about 14 IQ points. In this respect, Latinos are only marginally smarter than blacks. When it comes to gender, males and females have nearly identical mean IQs but men have a broader distribution. The wider distribution (bell curve) for men means that there are fewer really brilliant women than men and there are more really dumb men than women. These differences, however, are small and, for practical purposes, are insignificant. Comment: This chapter on ethnic differences in cognitive ability is the longest in the book, encompassing 46 pages. The authors document in great detail the numerous studies, 157 of them, that lead to the inescapable conclusion that Jews are the smartest people to ever walk the face of the earth and blacks, whether they live in Africa or American are the dumbest. Whites fall somewhere in between and Asians are marginally smarter than whites. Herrnstein and Murray, in their never ending attempt to be politically correct, conclude that genes are responsible for about 60 percent of the racial differences in IQ and environmental factors are to blame for the remaining 40 percent of the IQ gap between the races. I conclude that the genetic influence of cognitive ability is closer the high end of the spectrum or around 80 percent. Whatever the correct figure may be, the inherited genetic influence on IQ is certainly not zero as most academics believe today. The authors also conclude, that even if all the data on cognitive racial differences is erroneous and environment factors play a major, or even singular role, in determining the measured differences in intelligence among the races, nothing can be done to chance the situation. I couldn't disagree more with this conclusion. We could start by paying low IQ women, those on welfare, to take a Norplant injection that would prevent pregnancy for five years; rather, as we do now, pay them to have more and more low IQ children. In this respect, hundreds of billions have been spent on programs such as school busing, head start and school nutritional programs, all of which are designed to level the environmental playing field and all of which have been miserable failures. These programs may improve the lives of those involved but they have had little or no effect on the cognitive ability of our nation.