SARICH SAYS 70IQ BLACKS ARE NORMAL EXCEPT IQ VS 70IQ WHITES
Date sent:      	Sun, 7 Feb 1999 21:46:03 -0800 (PST)
From:           	sarich@qal.berkeley.edu (Vincent Sarich)


Dear all:


I noted the following from Jim Flynn (via Steve) with some interest:


<<<(3)  I have never claimed that the causes of the black-white IQ gap are
the
  same as the causes of IQ gains over time (tho they might be); and the
  significance of gains for debate about the gap is in no way dependent on
  such a claim.  The significance is simple:  blacks match white
  performance on g loaded tests after a 50-year lag.  Therefore, an
  environmental hypothesis about the racial IQ gap need posit only that
  average black environmental quality for IQ (whatever that involves) at a
  given time matches white environmental quality 50 years before that
  time.'


  Yours - Jim Flynn>>>


For me, and some of my by now older students, this is deja vu all over
again. I made precisely the same argument in my Berkeley classes starting
back around 1970 or so, summing it up with the comment that "American
blacks were to American whites as parents were to their children; that is,
a generation behind". I remember once being taken to task for this by a
black student (because she heard "black" and "children" in the same
sentence, and took it to mean that I was saying that blacks were like
children), and a black colleague (who said I, in effect, that I should be
more careful with respect to the possible implications of what I was

saying) -- ah well, you can't win them all.


And Steve asked me to post something I wrote a while ago on African IQs,
which I now do, even though some of you have seen it already.


  Then to the real substance of this note, which has been inspired, if
  that be the term, by an article of Richard Lynn's that you (I think)
  sent me. In any case, it is about native African intelligence and
  appeared in a book edited by (again, I think, as some of my files are
  still somewhere in the Pacific) Nyborg.   .......


  I refer specifically to Lynn's claim that the average IQ of Africans in
  Africa is around 70.  Rushton has also referred to such data, as had
  Herrnstein and Murray in The Bell Curve, and Gottfredson seems to take
  it seriously as well.  I start my response with (1) the claim is absurd
  on its face, and (2) it doesn't do "our side" any good to be seen as
  accepting it without some very serious qualifications.  I started
  thinking about this when The Bell Curve had just been published, and
  called Art Jensen for his take on the situation.  His answer took us
  back to his experiences working with, and testing, what we used to call
  in California "educable mentally retarded" (EMR). He observed that
  "white" kids with an IQ of 70 tended to have serious problems beyond
  just the low IQ -- they were socially inept and typically had physical
  deficiencies as well -- while the IQ 70 black kids were socially and
  physically perfectly normal, their only deficiency being the low IQ. In
  other words, the relationship between their IQ test scores and what
  might be called functional intelligences was markedly different in
  California blacks and whites.  I then go one step further along these
  lines.  A couple of years ago my daughter and I spent some time in Kenya
  (purely as tourists) and lived in Nanyuki (a little town at the base of
  Mount Kenya) for about a week.  We were practically the only "whites"
  there.  Anyhow, we had a chance to interact with many Africans in
  various roles from mountaineering guides to hotel cleaning ladies and
  never had the feeling that we were dealing with anything other than the
  normal cognitive range of human beings  -- dark-skinned, yes, but still
  normal human beings.  These were not IQ 70 people, or at least they
  weren't like IQ 70 whites I have known.  My daughter, who is far more to
  the left politically, and I, were in total agreement on this one.


  Finally, if one considers the implications of an IQ 70 population
  average .....  Well, at one end it would have a fair proportion of the
  population in the high 50s and low 60s, and that is serious mental
  retardation by anyone's standards.  At the other, it would mean that
  there were virtually no Africans with the IQ of an average European, and
  that is simply untrue empirically.  So the multitudes of functionally
  mentally retarded just
 aren't there, and there is no shortage of Africans quite a bit brighter
  than the average "white"  in various universities all over the world.


  At this point I am reminded of the Flynn effect, which practically
  everyone seems to find mysterious (see, for example, Neisser's article
  in a recent American Scientist).  The problem (or at least one of them)
  is that if one projects recent trends back in time, it doesn't take very
  long to get to negative IQs.  Yet if one thinks about it a bit, there is
  the fact that, recently, in most of the industrialized world, people
  have been both getting bigger and getting bigger quicker, so that the
  development of today's American 14-year-old might be comparable to that
  of a 16-year-old of, say, 60 years ago.  So why not speeded up mental
  development as well? The IQ equivalent in my example would be about 115
  (that is, 16/14).  I tried this out on Art Jensen, and he seemed to
  think that it made a good deal of sense.


  What might be critical here, then, is not the relative mental ages of
  children, which is what the vast majority of IQ data refer to, and which
  seem to be quite labile over time (from generation to generation), but
  those of adults.  I don't know that anyone has shown a "Flynn effect"
  for adults, nor are there, as far as I am aware, any substantial
  arguments, or even any anecdotal "evidence", for the proposition that
  today's adults of, say, 30, are noticeably smarter than 30-year-olds of
  60 years ago.  They may know more, simply because there is more to be
  known, but I can't see that they can do more with what they know. What I
  am suggesting, then, is that perhaps our intellectual potentials haven't
  really changed, nor have the degrees to which we, on the average,
  approach them, but that we approach them more quickly.


  In any case, it seems to me that we could well stand some significant
  efforts in the area of adult IQs, both within and between populations. 
  We need to know whether or not there is a "Flynn effect" for adults
  within populations, and we need to know whether the huge differences
  claimed by Lynn and others between African children and those of the
  industrialized world remain functionally consequential among educated
  adults of the areas. And, with respect to Africa, I would very much like
  to see a study involving children receiving some semblance of the sort
  of educational experience that characterizes those populations that have
  experienced the Flynn effect.


   ......  Finally, I do appreciate that all this might seem strange
   coming
  from someone who is perfectly willing to accept that there is a 1SD
  difference in the American black and white means along that genetic
  dimension which determines the possibility of success in particular
  physical endeavors, but .....


  part of my correspondent's  reply:



  I was interested in your observations about the Africans in Kenya. I
  have been out in the African "bush" (mainly in Kenya, Botswana, Namibia,
  and South Africa) seven or eight times hunting with my son or my wife,
  and (as a non-scientist) had about the same overall reaction as you did.
  In some cases these Africans had their wives and children in camp, and
  these seems to fit the same pattern.


  ----------------------------------


  A final thought then on the stature-IQ analogy:


  The widespread secular gain in stature is, for the affected individual,
  permanent -- or at least until old age starts shrinking you. But the
  "Flynn effect"? Is there, as I noted in the above, any indication that
  today's 30-year-olds are a standard deviation smarter than their parents
  (or
 grandparents) were 50 years ago? Don't we need some good data on
 grown-ups?


  Vince




arthur




I'll throw this at the entire list, but I clipped an article that
said that Koko the signing gorilla scores 85-90IQ on a IQ tests they
had trained her to take.  It's hard to get a population based on a
sample of one, but that means that average gorillas, similarly
trained could be expected to do as well as average black Americans
and below average non-retarded whites.


Now when is the last time you saw a gorilla perform ANY  task that
a human is paid to do, let alone be a fighter pilot or major general?


What is IQ when you can score 70 and be a perfectly normal human, and
score 90 and not be able to do anything a human can do?




>   when The Bell Curve had just been published, and called Art Jensen for his
>   take on the situation.  His answer took us back to his experiences working
>   with, and testing, what we used to call in California "educable mentally
>   retarded" (EMR). He observed that "white" kids with an IQ of 70 tended to
>   have serious problems beyond just the low IQ -- they were socially inept
>   and typically had physical deficiencies as well -- while the IQ 70 black
>   kids were socially and physically perfectly normal, their only deficiency
>   being the low IQ. In other words, the relationship between their IQ test
>   scores and what might be called functional intelligences was markedly
>   different in California blacks and whites.  I then go one step further
>   along these lines.  A couple of years ago my daughter and I spent some time
>   in Kenya (purely as tourists) and lived in Nanyuki (a little town at the
>   base of Mount Kenya) for about a week.  We were practically the only
>   "whites" there.  Anyhow, we had a chance to interact with many Africans in
>   various roles from mountaineering guides to hotel cleaning ladies and never
>   had the feeling that we were dealing with anything other than the normal
>   cognitive range of human beings  -- dark-skinned, yes, but still normal
>   human beings.  These were not IQ 70 people, or at least they weren't like
>   IQ 70 whites I have known.  My daughter, who is far more to the left
>   politically, and I, were in total agreement on this one.
>