A Brief History Of Locking Up Understanding That Offends The Woke
A Brief History Of Locking Up Understanding That Offends The Woke
Forbidden Knowledge - Race And Intelligence
Forbidden Knowledge - Race And Intelligence
“Equality of rights is a moral axiom: It does not follow from any set of scientific data.”
-Arthur Jensen
In the early years of the 20th century, English psychologist Charles Spearman, noticed that the performance of school children, across seemingly disconnected academic subjects, was positively correlated. This he reasoned is due to an underlying general mental ability, and suggested all mental abilities can be conceptualized in terms of a single general ability factor; g-factor.
G-factor is a summary variable characterizing the correlations between all the different aspects of cognitive ability. IQ and other varieties of cognitive ability tests are used to provide reasonably accurate estimates of g-factor in individuals.
Behavioral geneticists have established that g is highly heritable. It correlates to biological characteristics like brain size and has been shown to be a significant predictor of individual differences in socioeconomic outcomes (like employment and education).
Around the same time Charles Spearman was working out g-factor, Lewis Terman was the first to do an english translation of the original intelligence test (developed in France by Alfred Binet between the years 1905 to 1908).
It was a bad sign of things to come in 1916 when, in reference to IQ test results, Terman wrote “Mexican-Americans, African-Americans, and Native Americans have a mental "dullness [that] seems to be racial, or at least inherent in the family stocks from which they come."
When academics began comparing IQ test results among racial groups, initially after IQ exams given to men entering the United States Army in World War I, assumptions about differences being genetic were regrettably made.
What followed is an ugly history of racial segregation and eugenics laws. One such law being Virginia's 1924 Racial Integrity Act, establishing the one-drop rule of “racial purity,” which stated that people with a single black ancestor (“one drop of black blood”) were to be considered black. Racial segregation was imposed and interracial marriage prohibited.
These ideas were not contained to the United States. American eugenics is the source of inspiration behind the self-proclaimed racial superiority of the Nazi’s during the holocaust. To make a proper account of the history and full extent of the racism, hate, violence and misery that these ugly assumptions caused, is beyond the scope of this book. But it is worth noting that there exists a deeply painful history within the entanglements of race and intelligence. It is no surprise that the entire field of intelligence remains contentious and misunderstood.
By the mid-1930s, many psychologists in the US, still interested in studying the source of disparities in general intelligence and socioeconomic outcomes between racial groups, had adopted the view that environmental and cultural factors played a dominant role in IQ. Notably psychologist Carl Brigham repudiated his own earlier arguments, explaining that he had come to realize that the tests were not a measure of innate intelligence.
Their intentions mattered little though. In many cases these academics inadvertently created controversy and inspired accusations of racism.
An interesting case in 1987 illustrated the good-natured scholarly pursuit many of these intelligence researchers considered they were on. Arthur Jensen, the controversial psychologist who wrote the infamous 1969 article “How Much Can We Boost IQ And Scholastic Achievement,” suggesting poor educational performance in African American children was genetic, is widely credited as the source of much of today’s debate around race and IQ, praised criticism of his own work in a chapter summarizing an academic book about his research on human intelligence:
“Now and then I am asked by colleagues, students, and journalists: who, in my opinion, are the most respectable critics of my position on the race-IQ issue? The name James R. Flynn is by far the first that comes to mind. His book, Race, IQ and Jensen (1980), is a distinguished contribution to the literature on this topic, and, among the critiques I have seen of my position, is virtually in a class by itself for objectivity, thoroughness, and scholarly integrity.” - Arthur Jensen
James Flynn, a New Zealand intelligence researcher, was also accused of racism when he suggested that disparities in IQ between groups may be due to differences in subcultures. He contrasted, pointing out different values in the respective subcultures, Asian & Jewish parents who more strictly enforce disciplined study habits and emphasize intellectual activities than do black parents.
From Race, IQ and Jensen:
“The racist not only asserts a connection between race and colour and personal traits; he also asserts the connection is genetic rather than environmental and he associates a genetic connection with something that is necessary and permanent…The racist does “not want to allow for the possibility of redemption and he fears that environmentalism will offer the ‘inferior’ individual a chance of such.” - James Flynn
The Flynn Effect, a term coined by Murray & Herrnstein in The Bell Curve, is based on the observations found in James Flynn’s books showing the substantial and long-sustained increase in IQ test scores that were measured in many parts of the world over the 20th century. A separate phenomenon shows a gradual shrinking of the IQ gap over time. A 2006 study by William Dickens and James Flynn estimated that the difference between mean scores of blacks and whites closed by about 5 or 6 IQ points between 1972 and 2002.
You would think this would earn Flynn some points with the woke crowd, but unfortunately, as is the case with many researchers and the study of intelligence itself, the stigma of this forbidden taboo subject is firmly entrenched.
Before his death in 2020, and regardless of his advocacy for social democracy, James Flynn was “canceled by the left.” His publisher Emerald Press agreed to publish, but then changed their minds, his book “In Defense Of Free Speech: The University As Censor.” Flynn changed the title to “A Book Too Risky To Publish: Free Speech And Universities” and published through Academica Press in 2019.
To summarize briefly, here are the well established facts about IQ:
IQ is valid & reliable. It does predict future outcomes
IQ is heritable (genetic)
There are group differences in average IQ
In a 1996 American Psychological Association Task Force paper called “Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns” by “father of cognitive psychology” Ulri Neisser et al, largely in response to a controversial book “The Bell Curve: Intelligence And Class Structure In American Life,” made the following observations:
We don’t know why there are differences between groups, but it's not necessarily genetic.
There can be genetic differences within groups, while that may not be the reason for differences between groups.
In the Bell Curve, the emergence of a “cognitive elite,” centered around the growing disparity between those with high and low IQs is the main concern. However, the books controversy is solely around the race-IQ issue.
Authors Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein are careful to qualify the utility of the Bell Curve by stating that the best way to operate is to treat others as individuals. Because the mean IQ averages between groups overlap there is no way to know someone's IQ by their race or gender. This also means that any person from any group could be the smartest person on the planet.
Richard Hernstein passed away before the publication of the Bell Curve. Charles Murray, left to bear the brunt of the opprobrium, insists that genes could possibly be a factor in average differences between the races. Like Arthur Jensen and others before him, this view earns castigation of racist, nazi, white supremecist and eugenicist.
This is the seventh installment of “The Woke West: The Identity Politics, Cancel Culture, Radical Activism And Forbidden Knowledge Dividing The West...And What You Can Do About It!” - A book by James Pew, published serially to The Turn Substack.
Thanks for reading! Students The Closed Minds Of The Woke: Charles Murray Shouted Down At Middlebury College.