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Myth: Some ethnic groups have genetically inferior IQ's.
Fact: Poverty creates large IQ differences even between groups of the same ethnicity.
Summary
There are too many examples of discriminated minorities even within ethnic groups that score worse on IQ tests to believe the myth that the differences are genetic.
Argument
On average, African-Americans score 7 to 15 points lower than European-Americans on IQ tests. Many conservatives believe this is because blacks are genetically inferior to whites. But liberals believe that the IQ gap is the result of nearly three centuries of slavery and yet another 130 years of segregation and institutionalized racism. Even the Civil Rights Act and affirmative action have not eliminated discrimination against blacks -- they've merely reduced it somewhat. The result of this discrimination is that a disproportionate percentage of blacks work at lower-paying jobs, live in poverty and squalor, lack health care and child care, and do not receive the quality of education and personal development available to richer members of society. All these deprivations work to suppress IQ and educational achievement in children during their critical developmental years.
Which viewpoint is correct? The answer becomes obvious when you compare the lower IQ results of other discriminated minorities around the world, many of whom are of the same genetic stock.
Perhaps the most dramatic example is the Northern Irish. Even though they come from the same ethnic group, Catholics (the discriminated minority) score 15 points lower on IQ tests than Protestants.
In the U.S., both Korean and Japanese students score above average in IQ tests; many scholars agree that, genetically, they are about as close as two ethnic groups can get. But the Korean minority living in Japan scores much lower on IQ tests than the Japanese. Why? The Japanese are extremely racist towards Koreans; they view them as stupid and violent, and employ them only in the dirtiest and lowest-paying jobs. Tensions are so great between the two groups that violence often erupts in the form of riots.
In the U.S., Polish Jews arriving before 1910 were also perceived as stupid (for no other reason than they were accustomed to a different culture and spoke another language). So many "Pollock" jokes arose that Americans still tell them to this day, even if no one remembers why. The Polish Jews suffered heavy job discrimination and suspicion of criminality; not surprisingly, their children suffered low grades and IQ test scores. Today, of course, many Americans hold the opposite prejudice; Jews are viewed as the most brilliant of ethnic groups.
Russian-born Jews who became American soldiers in World War I also scored low on IQ tests. So low, in fact, that Carl Brigham, the creator of the Scholastic Aptitude Test, declared that the results "disprove the popular belief that the Jew is highly intelligent."
There are countless examples around the world where the dominant ethnic group scores higher on IQ tests than the discriminated minority, even when the two groups are of the same ethnic stock. Here is a partial list:
Group Differences Around the World (1)
Code:
High IQ/grades, Low IQ/grades,
Country Dominant class Discriminated class
----------------------------------------------------------
Australia Whites Aborigines
Belgium French Flemish
Czechoslovakia Slovaks Gypsies
Great Britain English Irish, Scottish
India Nontribals Tribal people
High caste Low caste
Israel Jews Arabs
Western Jews Eastern Jews
Brahmin Harijan
Japan Non-Burakumin Burakumin
Japanese origin Korean origin
New Zealand Whites Maoris
Northern Ireland Protestants Catholics
South Africa English Afrikaaners (Dutch)
United States Whites Blacks
Whites Latinos
Whites American Indians
Proportions of Americans who have completed college by self-identified ancestries (2)
Code:
French-Canadian 16.7 percent Dutch 18.5 Italian 21.0 Irish 21.2 German 22.0 Finnish 24.2 Norwegian 26.0 Danish 27.4 Swedish 27.4 Scotch-Irish 28.2 English 28.4 Welsh 31.8 Scottish 33.6 Russian 49.0
Most geneticists agree that there is far more genetic variation within groups than between groups. According to one commonly cited study, 85% of all human genetic variation is intra-population, 7% intra-race and only 8% inter-racial. (3)
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