The Two Missing Letters in the Brown Debate: IQ
On the 50th anniversary of the
Supreme Court`s Brown v. Board of Education
school desegregation decision, the press is
full of
articles on the surprising
frustrations in the quest for equal education.
Whites (and, although unmentioned
in the press, Asians) still
flee public schools once the percentage of black
(and, to a slightly lesser extent, Hispanic) students
reaches a critical mass. And even
integrated middle class black students still lag
far behind white and Asian test scores on average.
What you won`t find in the media is
any mention of the simplest explanation for these vexing
phenomena: IQ.
On Saturday morning, I searched
Google News for press coverage of
"Brown v. Board of Education" and turned up 1,610
recent articles.
Yet, when I added the dread letters
"IQ" to the search, all Google News could come up
with is
one column by that national resource
Thomas Sowell.
As the 10th anniversary of Richard
Herrnstein`s and
Charles Murray`s bestseller
The Bell Curve approaches, the entire concept of
IQ has become the great unmentionable in writing about
education.
On the other hand, secretly IQ
remains a vital subject in nice liberal neighborhoods,
where upper middle class parents strive desperately to
get their kids into public school
gifted programs that have extremely exclusive IQ
requirements (and thus few black or Hispanic students).
Four years ago, I wrote a five-part
VDARE.COM series on how to help the left half of the IQ
bell curve. In my first article, "IQ
and Why We`re Afraid to Talk About It," I noted:
"Honest
talk about IQ would expose some deeply personal
inconsistencies among our most influential thinkers.
Although the typical white intellectual claims he wants
to censor discussion of IQ to shield
black self-esteem, his
sometimes-berserk reactions reveal that he finds it
a peril to his own self-image. The typical white
intellectual considers himself superior to ordinary
white people for two contradictory reasons: First, he
constantly proclaims his belief in human equality, but
they don`t. Second, he has a high IQ, but they don`t."
So, which is it, liberals?
A. IQ tests are
meaningless, racist, and the spawn of the devil.
B. IQ tests prove that
liberals are superior to conservatives.
Because IQ remains wildly popular
among Democrats for the purpose of asserting mental
superiority over Republicans. Look at this table headed
"So Democrats really are smarter." The
prestigious magazine The Economist (with which
we`ve had to criticize
before) picked it up from one of the
hundreds of liberal blogs that gleefully circulated
it earlier this month.

The Economist, May 15, 2004,
p. 26
Among many ironies, The
Economist falsely attributed this table to
"
IQ and the Wealth of Nations by
Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen (2002)." That
landmark book, with its
fascinating table of average IQs for 81 countries,
is about nations, not states.
In March,
J. Philippe Rushton, the Canadian social
psychologist,
wrote in VDARE.com:
"The
book`s thesis—that a country`s prosperity is closely
related to the average IQ of its population—should have
made the cover of The Economist because of its
devastatingly important implications. But, although some
academics took notice, it was ignored by the mainstream
media."
As far as I can tell, this phony
table is the first time The Economist has deigned
to mention Lynn and Vanhanen`s two-year-old book.
But the table printed in The
Economist is a HOAX. (Click
here for all the evidence of its bogosity on my
www.iSteve.blogspot.com blog.) The counterfeit IQ numbers are
self-evidently spurious. That mostly white states like
Montana and South Dakota would score 23 points below
Connecticut is ridiculous. You`d expect to see a
15-point gap only between an all-white state and an
all-black state.
Which party is smarter: Republican
or Democrats?
I don`t know of any legitimate IQ
data by state, although they may well exist. As a rough
proxy, however, we can use the 2003
National Assessment of Educational Progress
achievement test scores for public school eighth
graders.
Combining the Math and Reading
scores, we get the following table. (You`ll note that
rock-ribbed Republican Montana and South Dakota, which
The Economist claims are over 1.5 standard
deviations stupider than liberal Connecticut, actually
outscored that New England state on the NAEP!)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
1 |
|
Gore |
560 |
|
41 |
Arizona |
Bush |
526 |
|
2 |
Minnesota |
Gore |
559 |
|
41 |
Tennessee |
Bush |
526 |
|
3 |
New |
Bush |
557 |
|
43 |
Arkansas |
Bush |
524 |
|
3 |
North |
Bush |
557 |
|
44 |
Nevada |
Bush |
520 |
|
3 |
Vermont |
Gore |
557 |
|
45 |
Louisiana |
Bush |
519 |
|
6 |
Montana |
Bush |
556 |
|
46 |
California |
Gore |
518 |
|
7 |
South |
Bush |
555 |
|
47 |
Hawaii |
Gore |
517 |
|
8 |
Iowa |
Gore |
552 |
|
48 |
Mississippi |
Bush |
516 |
|
9 |
Colorado |
Bush |
551 |
|
49 |
Alabama |
Bush |
515 |
|
9 |
|
Gore |
551 |
|
49 |
New Mexico |
Gore |
515 |
|
9 |
Wyoming |
Bush |
551 |
|
51 |
D.C. |
Gore |
477 |
Overall, the averages (not weighted
by population): Gore States 539.6; Bush States 538.7.
That`s less than a single point difference on a scale
that ranges 83 points from liberal Massachusetts down to
the ultra-liberal District of Columbia.
A simpler
and perhaps better approach is to look at the
educational attainments of Gore and Bush voters
according to the
2000 VNS exit poll:
|
Vote by Education |
% of All Voters |
Gore |
Bush |
|
No H.S. Degree |
5% |
59% |
39% |
|
High School Graduate |
21% |
48% |
49% |
|
Some College |
32% |
45% |
51% |
|
College Graduate |
24% |
45% |
51% |
|
Post-Graduate Degree |
18% |
52% |
44% |
If you
weight this data on a 1 to 5 scale, with the high school
dropouts as 1, then the two candidates are almost
exactly equal once again. Bush edges out Gore by the
meaninglessly tiny margin of 3.29 to 3.28. This means
the average Bush and Gore voters both fall between
"Some College" (3.0) and "College Graduate”
(4.0).
Gore did
better among those claiming post-grad degrees, but many
of the Democrat voters were schoolteachers holding
degrees in Education. Also, in the 2002 House races,
according to the long-delayed VNS exit poll data that
was finally released in 2003, "Republicans
won for the first time in decades among those
claiming to have post-graduate degrees. They even
captured a majority of women with college or
post-graduate degrees."
So I`d call
this dispute over which party is smarter a dead-even
toss-up. And silly.
It`s a
tragedy that the issue of IQ is thus alternately taboo
and trivialized. On this 50th anniversary of Brown,
it`s very much worth thinking about what can be
done to improve the lot of lower IQ Americans.
My
concluding article back in 2000 still makes a lot of
sense. The first requirement is that we publicly admit
that we don`t live in Lake Wobegon, where all the
children are above average. We need to discuss seriously
what is in the best interest of our fellow citizens with
two-digit IQs.
For example,
let`s stop admitting
unskilled immigrants to compete with our own
unskilled Americans.
Another
promising approach: try to raise the IQs of
future Americans. David J. Armor, a professor at
George Mason U., has written
Maximizing Intelligence, which offers
sensible advice to future parents on how to help
their offspring get the maximum out of their
intellectual potential.
For example,
promoting breastfeeding looks highly promising.
The Associated Press reported:


