My Views on Race and Intelligence

My Views on Race and Intelligence

The question of race and intelligence having come up from time to time at VFR, I thought our readers might be interested in this previously unpublished draft, written in 1995, in which I recounted the development up to that time of my own ideas on this vitally important subject. I hope the document will be read in the exploratory spirit in which I wrote it. The worst thing about the present racial situation is the silencing of needed discussion, and, even if my ideas are wrong or overstated on some points, one must start somewhere.

The Evolution of One Person’s Views
on Racial Differences in Intelligence

Lawrence Auster
February 1995

With the publication of The Bell Curve, we see the fascinating phenomenon of mainstream journalists and intellectuals wrestling, most of them for the first time, with the uncomfortable facts about race differences in intelligence. While this is a historic event, it can also seem rather disappointing. Apart from the writers who demonize the book’s co-authors, Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein, which was to be expected, even those more thoughtful liberals and conservatives who (grudgingly) admit the subject of race and intelligence into discourse hedge it around with so many qualifications as to make it almost meaningless. Thus William Buckley acknowledged the reality of the racial IQ difference, but then quoted Murray and Herrnstein to the effect that it’s not important. Scott McConnell in the New York Post said that IQ can be changed. Jacob Weisberg of New York magazine, a true liberal die-hard, threw even more fences and evasions and escape hatches around the subject. Unfortunately, Murray and Herrnstein had already set the stage for this intellectually unserious treatment of their work by downplaying the idea of race differences even as they promoted it. Murray, in his many appearances on television, has been appallingly evasive about the true content and purport of his ideas. (Here is a letter I wrote to Murray about this.)

As disappointing as this hedging is, we need to recognize that it is a natural and predictable stage in an unfolding of thought that will take some time to reach clarity. It does not happen all at once, but necessarily goes through several stages. This is because the question of race and intelligence does not consist, as people seem to imagine, of just one idea, it consists of a constellation of ideas, which must be grasped one at a time until the larger scene comes into view. To illustrate this, I would like to tell the story of the involvement of one non-specialist—namely myself—with these ideas. The experience as I’ve lived through it can be compared to looking at the world through slightly out-of-focus lenses, then slowly sharpening the focus until what was hazy becomes clear. Or it is like something in the background of one’s field of vision slowly moving into the foreground.

In this process, rationalizations and evasions slip away, sometimes gradually, sometimes through startling insights that revolutionize one’s whole way of thinking. In telling about my own experience of these ideas as they came to me, one by one, I can perhaps give the reader a more comprehensive, if non- systematic, approach to understanding this subject.

IQ and Intelligence

1. In the mid 1980s, New York magazine had a cover story on the growing tensions between blacks and Jews. The article gave figures on black SAT scores that were absolutely stunning, for example, that in the entire U.S. only about 100 blacks in any given year scored over 700 in the verbal SATs. What this meant to me was that the number of blacks at the top level of academic abilities was virtually non-existent. So it was no longer a surprise that there were so few blacks in the intellectual professions.

However, at this time I did not draw any deeper conclusions from this with regard to black intelligence. The data did not suggest to me that differences in SAT scores related to something I would call “intelligence” or that such differences were permanent, but only that, as blacks were at this point, it was unrealistic to expect proportional equality in all professions, and in particular there was this shocking absence of blacks at the higher levels of verbal and logical ability.

2. In 1990, I met Michael Levin when he hosted a National Association of Scholars meeting at his apartment in Manhattan, around the time that he was first being attacked for his statements on black intelligence. I acquired a copy of Professor Levin’s controversial article in the Australian quarterly Proceedings which contained the sentence, “The average black is significantly less intelligent than the average white.” After reading it and also hearing him interviewed on a radio program, I wrote a letter to Levin in which, perhaps contradictorily, I expressed both admiration for his courage and concern that he was being too blunt; specifically, I suggested that instead of saying “blacks on average are less intelligent” he might say “blacks on average are less capable in the intellectual skills measured in I.Q. tests”—wording, I argued, that would be more precise and less demeaning to blacks.

At the same time, however, I conceded to Levin that blunt language might be the only way to get at these forbidden ideas. Experience in later years proved this to be correct. I came to feel that Levin, by stating the forbidden truth in plain English rather than in technical terms or euphemisms, had been a pioneer. The reason for this is that without that horrifying word “intelligence,” as in “blacks are on average less intelligent than whites,” the difficult truth of this matter does not get through to our minds. We can always evade the truth by imagining that the thing at issue is something secondary, like “the ability to take tests.”

3. Then there was the question of whether IQ tests measure something real. While this is amply demonstrated in the literature and I don’t want to go into it much here, a key finding that proved to my satisfaction the validity of IQ is its predictability—a point well established by Murray and Herrnstein in The Bell Curve. You can make all kinds of metaphysical arguments that IQ is just the “ability to take IQ tests,” or that it “does not measure creativity,” and so on. But as Murray and Herrnstein demonstrate in exhaustive detail based on the data from National Longitudinal Study of Youth, if you give a large sampling of fourteen year olds an IQ test, while controlling for socioeconomic background, ten or twenty years later their life achievement will correlate very strongly with the results of those tests. This, I think, is the definitive argument for the validity of IQ. [Note: A couple of years after this was written, Murray demonstrated that siblings with different IQs—who of course share exactly the same socioeconomic status and home environment—differ markedly in their later success and income. This was absolute proof of the reality and importance of IQ.]

4. In 1991, when the New York Post condemned Levin as a racist, I wrote a letter to the Post defending Levin’s ideas. It was the first time I had addressed the issue in print.

In that letter, I saw the significance of the IQ difference in that it meant blacks could not be expected to have equal intellectual achievement with whites, and that lower black representation in the professions was not due to racism. However, I still thought that the lower black achievement might be due to “cultural” factors and therefore could potentially be raised up to equal that of whites. The main point for me was that, as blacks are now, they could not be expected to achieve equally with whites, and that affirmative action was therefore based on wrong premises. I was not particularly interested in the great debate over “environment versus genetics,” since the topic seemed metaphysical to me. I was, and am, also offended by the constant references to “genes” as causal in human life, which I think is a materialistic, reductionist concept. I felt we should stay with the things we know, such as the concrete fact that black do perform differently, without worrying ourselves to death over the hidden ultimate causes that we cannot know.

5. However, the problem with the above view is that it leaves open a huge escape hatch for the supporters of affirmative action. They can concede that blacks are less intelligent now, but still insist that if we push blacks artificially into higher socioeconomic levels through massive affirmative action, then black intelligence will be equalized with that of whites. Or, if it’s too late for this generation of blacks to improve, then their children will grow up with a better environment (created through affirmative action) and will be more intelligent. Liberals are constantly looking for ways to keep the egalitarian social engineering project alive; and as long as that project is alive, any failure by society to achieve complete racial equality of outcomes will continue to be falsely blamed on “white racism,” with all the divisive, demoralizing, and destructive effects that charge has on society. For these reasons, it’s not enough to know about the existence of racial differences in intelligence without also grasping the fact that these differences are not amenable to elimination by any known means. Of course, black intellectual performance could be improved, perhaps significantly in some cases, if society brought back real standards and discipline and if black illegitimacy were reduced. But that’s not the same as eliminating the racial gap, which is the aim and demand of our ruling ideology.

6. Richard Lynn’s and Michael Levin’s articles on the Scarr-Weinberg cross-racial adoption study in the March 1994 American Renaissance settled these questions for me. The adoption study, which followed until adulthood black children adopted as babies by college educated whites, showed that even with a totally “white” upper middle-class environment and upbringing, the large black-white IQ gap remained; at best it was slightly narrowed. As Levin pointed out, this was a definitive demonstration of a hereditary racial difference in IQ.

7. Then there was the assertion of cultural bias in mental tests, meaning that blacks did worse on IQ tests because the tests emphasized “white” cultural knowledge. Jared Taylor’s interview with Arthur Jensen, published in the August and September 1992 American Renaissance (and even more, the unabridged, 36-page typescript of this interview) blew that notion out of the water. Jensen made the point that in test questions that involved no cultural background at all, such as the ability to see similarities in geometric shapes, blacks actually did worse than in questions that used “white” cultural references.

Differences in Style of Thought

8. So far, I’ve been speaking of intelligence as something that can be measured scientifically by a number. But in recent years I’ve also come to believe there are differences in black and white styles of thinking. Race differences are not limited to numerical differences on a single scale like IQ (which itself is an aggregate of several different abilities). Race differences also take in different types of mentality, which we can see more readily by commonsense observation than by scientific tests.

Personal observation is of course subjective and may be erroneous and unfair. Nonetheless, it is a necessary part of understanding the world in which we live. Further, I am attempting to describe the whole journey of my change of attitude regarding race, a journey that has included (possibly unfair) generalizations from personal experience as well as the cognition of more objective facts. In the next few paragraphs, therefore, I will state my subjective impressions and conclusions as such, without claiming objective validity for them and without attempting to document or prove them beyond telling the experiences that led to them.

Following the arguments and actions of black leaders, listening to black callers on talk radio, led me over several years to an increasingly bleak view of black thinking styles. For one thing, it seemed to me that many blacks have a marked tendency to pick up some slogan and then just use it without much logical connection to the subject at hand. I also became increasingly aware of the “hustle,” the way many blacks at all levels—from street people and politicians to celebrated “intellectuals” like Cornel West—did not use ideas as ideas, but as a hustle, as a way of manipulating people’s feelings. Suggestibility and the substitution of rhetoric for reason are general human weaknesses, but it seemed to me that these failings were noticeably more pronounced among blacks. Of course there are many blacks who are rational and logical and intellectually competent. But the proponderance of irrationality among the black population is hard to ignore.

9. I was also impressed by Gedalia Braun’s fascinating manuscript, Racism, Guilt and Self-Deceit, based on his many years of close personal observation of blacks in Africa, an excellent review of which appeared in American Renaissance in 1993.

According to Braun, African blacks have a wholly different kind of mentality from whites. He pointed to Africans’ inability to understand cause-and-effect relationships, as seen in the magical mode of thinking observed among Pacific Islanders and known as the “cargo cult” syndrome, and which Braun also saw evidenced among black Africans. For example, as Braun described it, Africans seem to see Western development aid as a magical process that will automatically make all the appurtenances of a modern society appear. This way of thinking leads African blacks to see whites as magical beings who could, if they wanted, do everything for blacks. To the extent that this attitude carries over to blacks outside of Africa, it would explain their belief in (white) government as the answer to all their needs, and their growing rage at whites for not giving blacks the vast range of goodies that blacks believe is within whites’ (magical) power to give.

Another of Braun’s provocative observations was that African blacks (at least those who have not come under the influence of Western liberalism) have no hang-ups about the notion that whites are smarter. In fact, they take it for granted and, he pointed out, are eager to talk about the subject with him because it’s so rare for them to find a white who will speak honestly about race. They prefer such honesty to the racial guilt, the pious lies about equality, and the hypocrisy that they normally get from whites. These observations suggest that white liberal attitudes have done more to harm race relations than any other factor.

10. I also began to think about differences in black and white attitudes and outlook on the world, particularly in relation to the capacity for objectivity. Through numerous experiences and observations, I started to have the sense that blacks are more “non-objective,” they understand things in a much more personal, subjective way than whites. They seem to have much less interest in knowledge or beauty for its own sake. For example, I repeatedly had the following experience. Whenever I would turn on C-SPAN and the conference being broadcast consisted of black people, literally five seconds would not pass before the speaker would say the word “black.” In other words, blackness itself was the topic of the conference. When whites get together at an academic or other type of meeting, it’s to talk about some objective area of shared interest, whether science or literature or history or politics. But, at least as far as one can judge from C-SPAN, when blacks get together to talk in a formal public setting it’s almost always to talk about themselves.

Many blacks believe that there is such a difference of intellectual orientation between blacks and whites. Black multiculturalists say that whites are more interested in “things” (or, as the multiculturalists charmingly put it, whites are more interested in “manipulating” things), while blacks are more interested in “relationships.” Of course, the multiculturalists put this in such a way as to make whites look cold and mean, blacks warm and empathetic. In any case, the multiculturalists do not seem to realize that to the extent such a difference in orientation toward external reality does exist, it means that blacks are in fact less endowed with the qualities that make civilization possible, particularly Western civilization. What distinguishes Western from non-Western cultures is the capacity for objectivity, the ability to recognize a truth beyond one’s own immediate impulses or family and tribal loyalties.

11. A corollary of this lack of orientation toward objective facts and ideas is the relative intellectual and moral passivity of blacks. While there are many decent, upright black people, there is a notable failure on the part of blacks effectively to resist the bad people in their communities. The result is that the bad people—the orators, the hustlers, the corrupt, the despots—always seem to rise to the top. That is why black countries, and black-run cities in America, are the way they are. There are good people living in those places, but for the most part they are only good in their private, familial sphere. They are not actively good in the social and political sense and thus rarely take leadership or succeed in creating a civilized political order. The number of morally courageous and principled blacks who actively resist the corruption and racialist conformism around them is very limited; in fact, such upright and intelligent blacks often separate themselves from the black community when they recognize how unwelcome they are in it.

The only time when there was a relatively high quality black leadership in America was when America was under the influence of a white bourgeois Christian elite who set decent standards for the whole society including whites and blacks. Black communities and churches (just like white ethnic minority communities) tended to replicate the authoritative moral standards of the larger society. Thus the upright black leaders of the mid-twentieth century were themselves indirect products of a virtuous white majority culture. But as blacks have thrown off white influence and cultural standards (and as whites have cast off their own standards), black public society, as everyone is painfully aware, has become radically cruder and less ethical.

12. What really convinced me of an inherent, dangerous weakness in black ways of thought, however, was their widespread belief in Afrocentrism and the notion that whites were committing “genocide” against blacks. In September 1989, ABC News did a program on the condition of blacks in America, followed by a special edition of “Nightline” with a panel consisting of several of ABC’s black correspondents and other noted blacks. With the exception of Professor Shelby Steele, these accomplished, successful blacks all endorsed the notion of a white conspiracy to commit “genocide” against blacks. The discovery that it was not just ignorant street people, but successful, articulate black professionals who believed these insane and wicked conspiracy theories, made a devastating impression on me. Indeed, with the exception of the 1992 Los Angeles riots, I was more traumatized by this program than by any other public event in recent history. It shook my former belief that blacks and whites could more or less get along in the same society. (I wrote an article about this program, saying the same things I’ve said in the present paragraph, which New York Newsday rejected because, as the editor put it, it showed an “odd lack of compassion.”)

The wide acceptance of Afrocentrism had a similar effect on my views of blacks. I was appalled when I heard commentator Tony Brown, a reasonable and intelligent black (who moreover had just joined the Republican Party), say in a speech to the Heritage Foundation that, given the fact that mankind began in Africa, “all civilizations are African.” More than anything else, Afrocentrism, with its claims that European civilization was “stolen” from Africa and that people like Hannibal and Cleopatra were black because they lived on the African continent, confirmed my growing conviction that blacks were often incapable of distinguishing their wishes, feelings and resentments from objective reality. There is also the growing “black Bible” movement, which teaches that the main figures in the Bible, including Abraham, Moses, Mary, Jesus and Paul, were black—a truth which (naturally) those tricky whites have systematically hidden from blacks so as to maintain their dominance over them. As far as I can see, the blackness of the people in the Bible constitutes the sole teaching of this sect. Their interest in the Bible is exclusively racialist. (Once again, the fact that a large number of blacks do not believe in Afrocentrism does not change the fact that a large number of them do, and are acting on it and spreading it and institutionalizing it through the whole society.)

The most extreme form of black conspiracy thinking is the Nation of Islam claim that whites are demons who were created by a mad scientist 5,000 years ago, and who ever since then have robbed blacks of their birthright. Whether blacks believe in that myth, or are just fixated in a general feeling of historic grievance, the notion of their historic victimhood tends to justify in their minds every crime and injustice that they might now commit against whites. Over and over, polls and statements reveal that blacks feel they should not be held to moral standards for the crimes of blacks against whites, because blacks have been the victims of this vast and still unacknowledged evil by whites for several thousands of years. Blacks thus tend to see every issue in purely racialist terms—as we can see when black juries excuse black killers of whites, or when a great majority of blacks say that O.J. Simpson is innocent, or when a high percentage of blacks agree that Colin Ferguson’s mass murder on the Long Island Rail Road was a justified act of rage against white racism. The above attitudes all increasingly suggest that blacks and whites cannot truly live as equal co-citizens in the same society.

It is hard to forget Jefferson’s chilling premonitions in this regard:

Why not retain and incorporate the blacks into the State, and thus save the expense of supplying by importation of white settlers, the vacancies they will leave? Deep-rooted prejudices entertained by the whites; ten thousand recollections, by the blacks, of the injuries they have sustained; new provocations; the real distinctions which nature has made; and many other circumstances, will divide us into parties, and produce convulsions, which will probably never end but in the extermination of the one or the other race. [Italics added]. [Notes on Virginia, Query XIV, 1782].

Of course, blacks have suffered real historic crimes at the hands of whites. But that does not explain the contemporary, intensifying sense of black grievance, which finds its most flagrant expression in fantasies of white devils and 5,000-year-old conspiracies. Most importantly, the fact that the black feeling of grievance is augmenting, rather than diminishing, as slavery and legal discrimination recede into the distant past, suggests that the grievance has little to do with any actual crimes committed by whites. As I suggested in my American Renaissance speech, even in the complete absence of any racial oppression, blacks with their lower abilities will still tend to end up at the bottom of any biracial or multiracial society, a condition blacks and white liberals can only explain by saying that whites are keeping the blacks down. In other words, so long as the truth of racial differences is not recognized, whites will always end up being blamed—by both blacks and whites—for a black inferiority that is not whites’ fault.

The “Optical Illusion”

13. But there was still a major objection in my mind to the idea of an intractable racial difference in intelligence or civilizational capacities. It was the thought that, after all, most blacks seem normally intelligent, so how could there be so big a racial difference in overall intellectual abilities? It didn’t make sense. I then realized that this confusion stemmed from the mistaken assumption that intelligence is a single ability measured along a single continuum. In fact, intelligence consists of a set of several different abilities at different levels. People who may be equal to each other at one level may be vastly unequal at another level. As I was reading Daniel Seligman’s useful book, A Question of Intelligence, published in 1992, the following occurred to me, based on an experience that many people have probably had:

You’re speaking to an intelligent skilled worker, say a carpenter who is doing renovations on your house. He can speak about the job with great knowledgeability and intelligence. But the moment the conversation strays to an abstract or conceptual subject, he is uncomprehending. At one level of intelligence two people may be more or less equal, but at a higher level of intelligence there may be significant difference between them.

The carpenter idea helped me conceptualize the group difference between blacks and whites. For example, blacks do virtually as well as whites in reciting a list of numbers from memory, but they do much worse than whites when the test calls for them to recite a list backwards. In other words, at the level of ordinary abilities, the racial difference is small, but at a higher order of abilities, the difference is large.

This insight explained for me the “optical illusion” of racial equality. I realized that the reason whites do not automatically become aware of the large differences in average intellectual ability between whites and blacks is that whites often deal with blacks on a superficial level where only the ordinary levels of intelligence are brought into play.

In the fall of 1993 I had a kind of epiphany in which all these thoughts crystallized into a new paradigm concerning racial differences. It happened like this. I recalled an uncle of mine, one of my father’s brothers, who died about 10 years ago. He was a tall, handsome man, a natty dresser, a golfer, socially popular, a tough guy with an authoritative air, a bit irascible at times but not unkind. It never occurred to me in my youth there was anything wrong with him. It wasn’t until I grew older that I realized his entire conversation was limited to saying things like “Not too bad,” or “How about that,” or “You don’t say.” That’s an exaggeration, but not by much. My uncle, a year older than my father, worked with him in their business, in which they were partners, but I gradually realized my uncle did little except answer the phone and take in receipts. It was my father who actually ran the business and who had basically supported my uncle through his entire life, all the while keeping up the amiable front that my uncle was a partner in fact as well as in name. My mother told me that before she married my father, he told her that he would always have to take care of his brother. In fact, my uncle was of very limited intelligence, perhaps even borderline retarded, but it wasn’t something you automatically noticed because of the way he carried himself, his almost kingly manner and leonine appearance.

As I thought about my uncle in this light, I began to see through the “optical illusion” of racial equality. I realized how in ordinary interactions and behavior blacks seem on the whole like ourselves, indeed, often more vital than ourselves, with warm and vivid personalities, so we assume that any intellectual differences must be insignificant. It is only when we go beyond superficial contact and get to know them better, or when we observe them in a position requiring intelligence, that we see that, much more often than whites or Asians, they are unable to deal with more rigorous tasks. In undemanding, routine affairs they are, more or less, intellectually equal to whites. In more demanding settings they are not.

It was this insight that, by revealing and removing the “optical illusion,” brought all my ideas into a new pattern and gave me the conviction that there is a substantial, real difference in intelligence between blacks and whites, and that the difference is not just quantitative, but qualitative.

The optical illusion applies to political morality as well as to intelligence. I discussed earlier the question of passive and private goodness versus active and social goodness. Now, since we experience many blacks as good people, we naturally assume that blacks are equal to whites in the larger sense of being able to maintain a decent, humane, lawful society. But this is an illusion. The personal decency, goodness, and humanity of individual blacks does not translate into the ability to resist public evil, the aspiration to enforce social order. Those things require a degree of moral will, intelligence, and organizing energy that blacks, collectively, do not seem to possess. In any black-run society we can think of, from Washington, D.C. to Haiti to the Congo, good people end up suffering under the rule of despots, crooks, and incompetents.

It was all the above thoughts that led me to conclude, in my speech at the 1994 American Renaissance conference, that “the large and enduring differences in average intelligence between blacks and whites mean … that blacks on their own” cannot be expected in the foreseeable future “to be able to maintain a modern, civilized, democratic society.” That may sound needlessly harsh, but I think all the evidence points, tragically, to its truth. Here, once again, the thought will crop up that many blacks in America perform quite well in modern civilized institutions, that there are many individual blacks who are smarter and more competent and have better characters than many whites, and that some blacks have made distinguished contribution at a very high level, all of which would seem to disprove what I’ve just said about an overall black deficiency. But that is another example of the optical illusion. Such competent or even highly talented blacks are functioning within a white-majority society in which there are expectations and standards and a general level of skills and wealth created and maintained by whites. In a society without whites, the small number of intelligent blacks combined with the very large number of unintelligent blacks would make a high or even middling level of civilization impossible. The question, once again, is not one of individual blacks, many of whom are as capable as whites; the question is one of the civilizational character of the whole black community.

The above also means that to the extent blacks gain power in an institution or community, that institution will begin to undergo a decline, in some cases, a catastrophic decline. This is the unspoken argument against affirmative action. The spoken argument against affirmative action is that it’s unjust, which is of course true. The unspoken—and far graver—concern is that by bringing blacks on a racially proportional basis into occupations for which many of them are not qualified, we are dragging down every institution and profession, with incompetent teachers, incompetent doctors and nurses, incompetent airline pilots, incompetent and corrupt police officers and office holders and all the rest of it.

Even more alarming, the more blacks advance, the more—not less—they resent whites. The more America does to overcome its “racism,” the more “racist” America appears. The reason for this is built into the dynamics of human nature. Very simply, the more equal blacks become with whites, the more unbearable and unjust seem the remaining differences. Thus what started as a demand for basic civil rights mutated into a demand to overturn the whole society, along with its traditions and norms, its standards and laws, its history and heroes, since in all these things blacks are still not “equal.”

An example of what happens when blacks gain power can be seen in the current imbroglio at Rutgers University, where President Francis Lawrence, through his own affirmative action policies, created the very student body that is now trying to destroy him. When blacks gain numbers and power, they inevitably subject whites to intimidation and tyranny, just as they do to their own people.

Summing up

The insights that came to me on this personal journey of discovery accumulated through several distinct stages.

First I learned that blacks on average score much less well on achievement tests, which explained why there were so few blacks in intellectual professions, but I didn’t associate these facts with a black deficit in “intelligence” as such.

Then that pioneer Michael Levin came along and tactlessly used the forbidden word “intelligence” to describe the quality in which blacks differ from whites. I was disturbed by this, wishing he would speak of a “difference in test-taking ability” rather than of a difference in intelligence. Yet at the same time I seemed to recognize that intelligence was, in fact, the issue at hand.

Then I came to understand that the quality measured by intelligence tests is something real, as proved by the fact that the results of IQ tests performed in childhood correlate highly with achievement in later life.

At this point, however, I still accepted the conventional view that group deficits in intelligence, even if real, were to a large degree determined by inferior cultural circumstances, and therefore could be eliminated by improvements in behavioral standards, socio-economic status, home environment, and so on. My inchoate belief in environmentalism was decisively refuted by the Scarr-Weinberg study showing that black children raised from infancy by white middle-class parents still were about 15 IQ points behind whites. This proved that IQ was determined by heredity, not culture.

But even if IQ itself was not cultural but genetic, there was the objection that the IQ tests themselves were culturally biased. This was thrown out by the discovery that blacks did worse in questions involving pure cognitive ability than in questions using white cultural references.

Then there was the growing awareness of the markedly different styles of thought between the races including blacks’ much greater suggestibility and reliance on rhetoric and emotional manipulation; their relative lack of ability to think in objective, cause-and-effect terms, their noticeably lesser orientation toward objective things and ideas outside the self; and their demonstrably lesser orientation toward the common political good and a moral and stable social order. There was, finally, the pronounced orientation of many blacks toward paranoid conspiracy theories, their tendency to see every issue in terms of race and to blame all their problems on whites.

And finally, drawing all these thoughts together into a new paradigm, there was the discovery of the “optical illusion” of racial sameness. This experience convinced me that the intellectual differences between blacks and whites are both substantive and qualitative—in short, that there are instrinsic racial differences in civilizational abilities.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 10, 2003 12:02 PM | Send

Comments

I do not hesitate to affirm that God could have created the races with distinctively different qualities of mind; for, being made in the image an likeness of god does not exclude differing incarnations of this image and likeness along racial lines. Our God is a God of true diversity.

However, it does seem that racial differences would have to be of accidental qualities (temperament, appearance, disposition, personality, etc.) not of essential qualities (intelligence, the will, the heart, the spirit) so that these differences do not serve to attenuate each man’s and each race’s conformation to the image and likeness of God. Intelligence, if anything, is an essential quality of man and is, along with our free will, precisely that quality or power of man that reflects God’s image and likeness. Therefore, it is difficult to argue that the balck race has less intelligence without suggesting that it is, as a whole, less human in some way.

Then again, perhaps the quality of abstract reasoning that seems to be more advances in asians and Europeans is not directly related to being human; for, then, one might say that women were less human in virtue of their genius for intuition and the judgment of particulars, as opposed to abstract reasoning.
Would you make the same arguments about women as you would about blacks? I am just curious as to where you might come down on that one; after all, woman, as a whole, do not seem capable of statecraft in democratic socities. but the reason, I would argue, has nothing to do with inferiority to men. It has to do with their differing but eqally valuable vocations. The virgin Mary was not the visible leader of the early Church, but she was the greates human who ever lived.

Now, with grace, even a less intelligent human can surpass an Einstein in his value, since the love of God is really what God values in us, and such love comes through the grace of God working upon even the weakest of instruments (the Virgin Mary was not, perhaps, a virtuoso in abstract reasoning). Nevertheless, the more God has to work with (St. Thomas Aquinas), the more, all things being equal, grace can be given and received to the increased sanctification of the soul. So, your arguments may also lead one to think that blacks are less capable of holiness in virtue of their lesser intelligence; the latter would make grace less fruitful, perhaps, in their souls. Of course, the will can not be lesser or greater in a man or a race, and since it is the will, not the intellect, which directly affects one’s salvation and sanctification, perhaps the intellect/grace problem is not really a problem.

Just some thoughts for you. Thanks for your very courageous post and for bringing up an issue that needs to be discussed and articulating it very intelligently.

Posted by: TK on January 12, 2003 8:11 AM

TK, I believe, makes the mistake here of treating theological questions which, though indeed raised indirectly by this subject, aren’t within the scope of Mr. Auster’s article. Nevertheless, I wish to comment a bit on TK’s post.

TK writes, “I do not hesitate to affirm that God could have created the races with distinctively different qualities of mind; for, being made in the image and likeness of God does not exclude differing incarnations of this image and likeness along racial lines. Our God is a God of true diversity.”

This is perfectly true. Also, who says our ability to morally (not scientifically) appreciate or evaluate or judge the ULTIMATE significance of what God has created is adequate? It’s not adequate. We don’t pretend to judge, but are doing something wholly different in this inquiry. In dealing scientifically with this subject matter we are not undertaking ultimate moral judgements on what God has created. God’s whys and wherefores, so to speak, remain creation’s ultimate mystery, a mystery answerable only through faith — faith that good exists (as God has given us the ability in our heart to distinguish good from evil, and — where we lack — the, humility, wisdom, and sense to listen to those less lacking than we), and so on. What we conclude about the world through application of the scientific method is subject to all moral strictures and is in no way “above” any moral strictures, any more than were, say, man’s discovery of the knowledge that led to the bow-and-arrow or the atomic bomb.

TK writes, ” … Intelligence … is an essential quality of man and … reflects God’s image and likeness. … [Therefore] it is difficult to argue that the black race has less intelligence without suggesting that it is … less human in some way.”

Aside from seeming to contradict TK’s observation that, ” … God could have created the races with distinctively different qualities of mind … ,” isn’t this begging the question? TK seems to be saying that intelligence determines humanity because intelligence determines humanity. Hasn’t he set up a tautology for himself? (Who has stipulated that intelligence determines humanity? It appears TK did. No one else seems to have.)

TK writes, “Then again, perhaps the quality of abstract reasoning that seems to be more advanced in Asians and Europeans is not directly related to being human; for, then, one might say that women [etc.]”

The inquiry which Mr. Auster’s article embarks upon does not, as I see it, venture into moral or theological questions of whether or not inherited differences in what is called “intelligence” or “abstract reasoning” reflect different degrees of humanness. Those questions are entirely different ones. Though different, they are extremely important too, partly because this particular subject matter may easily be misused by demagogic (or other) individuals lacking in morality. These other questions may perhaps be dealt with in separate articles, by the same author or by other authors. As far as I know, every religion on the planet (certainly including Christianity) would say such inherited differences can have no bearing on one’s humanness, one way or the other.

TK writes, ” … [W]ith grace, even a less intelligent human can surpass an Einstein in … value, since the love of God is … what God values in us … . Nevertheless, the more God has to work with (St. Thomas Aquinas), the more, all things being equal, grace can be given and received to the increased sanctification of the soul. So, your arguments may also lead one to think that blacks are less capable of holiness [because] their lesser intelligence … would make grace less fruitful, perhaps, in their souls.”

Here, TK answers his own query with a comment on how “will” can level the playing field. However, without introducing the concept of human “will,” doesn’t our religion teach that God is already more than satisfied if we all simply do what we can with what we were given?:

St. Mark wrote, “And Jesus sitting against the treasury, beheld how the people cast money into the treasury; and many rich men cast many things. But when a poor widow was come, she cast two mites, that is, a farthing. And he called together his disciples, and said to them, ‘Truly I say to you, that this poor widow cast more than all, that cast into the treasury. For all cast of that thing that they had plenty of; but this of her poverty cast all things that she had, all her livelihood.’ ”

(St. Mark 12, 41-44 [John Wycliffe’s translation, from the year 1380, http://wesley.nnu.edu/wycliffe/Mar.txt ] )

Posted by: Unadorned on January 12, 2003 1:31 PM

Well, if rationality, the ability to pursue abstract thought, and public morality are signs of the superior intelligence of whites over blacks, then we can construct a hierarchy of both cognition and race, with blacks on the bottom, the Indians and Chinese on top, and whites somewhere in the middle.
The lower forms of thought, expression, and morality are vibrantly demonstrated by blacks, while whites show a profound ability to master logic, social organization, and public restraint - all nice examples of mid-level human thought and activity.
However, the higher forms of ‘thought’, namely a profound understanding of consciousness itself and the ultimate nature of reality - well here the Indians in particular and East Asians in general have shown the best mastery. Certainly nothing in the West can compare to the amazing understanding of mind and thought shown in the various doctrines and philosophies of India. For example, Nagarjuna demonstrates, with an unrivaled dialectical mastery, the limitations of logic and conventional thought in directly understanding reality as it is, and the nature of the relative and the absolute. As well, the various meditation, yoga, and martial arts techniques all demonstrate a similar mastery (by Indians and Asians) in the realms of conciousness, energy, and force respectively. Still today, masters in these techniques are found quite often in such places as India and Tibet, and are the source of much Western learning in these areas. In terms of Goodness, Truth, and Beauty, the Indians and Asians have understood and explored the highest form of these (ultimate) in much more depth and profundity than either their European, Arab or African brethren.
Hence the most intelligent race, in terms of mastering the highest forms of cognition and activity - is most certainly the Indian and perhaps East Asian.
(Please note, these thoughts are in some ways hypothetical, I have a feeling that all races have the capacity for all levels of cognition and activity in some degree or another.)

Posted by: RD on January 12, 2003 3:15 PM

I’ve never heard it suggested before that Eastern spirituality with its profound understanding of the workings of the human psyche could be related to higher Asian IQ. It’s a fascinating idea.

Posted by: Lawrence Auster on January 12, 2003 3:47 PM

TK’s post leads me to think he is
approching the subject from a Catholic perspective, in which case “incarnation is used improperly.

Without getting into the other issues, men per se are not incarnations of the image of God. Unless of course one accepts pantheism.

Secondly, the Catholic teaching is that, the humanness of men, comes from their form, i.e. the immortal soul, which forms the flesh causing it to be human.

Posted by: F. Salzer on January 12, 2003 4:36 PM

I work for a major corporation. We have a lot of complex mechanical and electronic equipment. If these machines are broken, we cannot function. In over twenty years, the only repairmen I have ever seen work on these machines are white men. I have never seen any blacks repairing complex machinery or electronic equipment where I work. Our corporation trumpets all the “diversity” cliches, but they don’t lower standards in this area.

Blacks don’t seem to complain about this. I have never heard of “civil rights leaders” demanding a quota of black electronic specialists. Also, the highest-ranking engineers I have seen are invariably white men.

Posted by: Anonymous on January 12, 2003 4:48 PM

“Anonymous” makes an excellent point. I have noticed the exact same thing in various locales, situations,and contexts. I dare say most of us have. Hasn’t someone also commented on what apparently is an extreme dearth — even total absence — of Negro law clerks on the staffs of the most liberal U.S. Supreme Court Justices? You really have to wonder what game is being played — being played at the expense of everybody, including at the expense of the integrity and self-respect (connections Ward Connerly often makes) of the African-American Community itself.

Posted by: Unadorned on January 12, 2003 5:11 PM

On TK’s points: the differences in average measured intelligence among the races are (as I understand it) about as big as you normally find among brothers. So I don’t think there’s an issue with regard to the notion that all men are in some basic way brothers.

On RJ’s comments: somehow the differences between Eastern and Western thought always seemed to me to reflect more of a difference in style of thought than absolute intelligence. One point is that there’s no “oriental race” that includes both the Chinese and the Indians, so to the extent “Eastern thought” includes both Chinese and Indian thought it’s not a racial thing.

Posted by: Jim Kalb on January 12, 2003 6:05 PM

“The differences in average measured intelligence among the races are (as I understand it) about as big as you normally find among brothers.”

This kind of statement has often been used and construed in such a way as to downplay the significance of racial differences in intelligence. Since people in the same family are obviously equal and assimilated members of the same civilization, shouldn’t the same be true of blacks vis à vis whites? In fact, the group differences are much more profound than the comparison to the sibling differential would suggest.

Using rough figures, blacks in the U.S. have an average IQ of 85, which is 15 points, or one standard deviation, below the average white IQ of 100. By the definition of a standard deviation, the black mean IQ is at the 16th percentile for whites. At first, this may not like such a big deal because it also means that 16 percent of blacks are at or above the average white IQ of 100. In other words, 16 percent of blacks are as smart as, or smarter than, half the white population. However, when we look at somewhat higher levels of IQ (and it’s at the higher levels that the demand for proportional racial representation is most insistent), the true nature of the problem becomes clearer. Consider the range above 115. 115 is considered the minimum IQ needed for studying for and working successfully in the intellectual professions. 16 percent of whites are above IQ 115, but only 2.5 percent of blacks are above 115. Moreover, the blacks are not distributed in the 115-plus range the same as the whites are, but are bunched near the bottom of it. Further, when we look at high IQ people, with IQ’s above 130, 2.5 percent of whites are above 130, and 0.4 percent of blacks are above 130. This tiny proportion corresponds with the virtual non-existence of blacks who scored over 700 on the verbal SATS prior to the SATS being re-normed in the mid 1990s.

This is the explanation for the paucity of blacks in intellectually demanding professions, and for the dearth of blacks in those fields with truly outstanding abilities. I’m sure there is room for all kinds of improvements in black performance, and improvements that are possible and practicable, rather than utopian, ought to be pursued. But we must be realistic about the fact that, barring divine intervention, blacks are always going to be vastly underrepresented in the intellectual leadership classes of society. The effort to force racial proportionality on society can therefore only be pursued through totalitarian-style measures, and can only lead to catastrophic results.

Posted by: Lawrence Auster on January 12, 2003 6:56 PM

I just found an article that states that IQ scores have risen by 20 points in the U.S. (for both black and white) over the past few decades, hence weakening the link between genetics (race) and IQ scores, as the generational difference in IQ among members of the same race is greater than inter-racial IQ differences. Go to this address to check it out:

Posted by: RD on January 12, 2003 9:00 PM

That address is www.washtimes.com/commentary/20021002-5949712.htm

Posted by: RD on January 12, 2003 9:02 PM

RD is referring to the so-called Flynn effect, of a rise of IQ of the whole population by a few points each generation. If the Flynn effect were true, it would mean that, say, 100 years ago the average white American would have been almost retarded, which was obviously not the case. I’m not an expert on this, but everything I’ve read suggests that the Flynn effect is an ambiguous statistical artifact and cannot be considered dispositive on the IQ issue.

Posted by: Lawrence Auster on January 12, 2003 9:18 PM

I may be too late on this thread but would like to make a few comments. Firstly, I really enjoyed reading Mr. Auster’s article. The comments about higher IQ amongst East Asian, around 106, miss the fact that the distribution of their IQ is narrower, a standard deviation of around 12.5 as opposed to 15 or 16 in whites. At average Nobel Prize level IQ, around 144 there are more whites at this level, and higher up the level of expected Asians would decrease proportionately compared to whites. This is augmented greatly when one considers Ashkenazi Jews, with an average 115, are highly represented at the highest intelligent levels. At 2 or 3 percent of the population in the US, 30% of Supreme Court Law Clerks are Jews, and they make up 27% of American Nobel Prize winners. East Asians have a much higher visuo-spatial IQ which corresponds with mathematical ability, whereas Ash. Jews have a verbal IQ of around 127, as such are prevalent in the arts and law, but not engineering. It would be only at the very highest levels (approx 175+)that whites might supercede the Asian visuo-spatial IQ. This difference in distribution may partially explain why Whites have tended to be the creators, while Asians have copied and improved on things. (Although historically Asians have many inventions to their credit and it seems only since 1500 they have dropped behind Europe, shackled by a centralized economy lacking the dynamism on the many states in Europe.)
On the questions of India, it is a very ethnically and caste-divided sub-continent. The Brahmin caste, formed from the original white Indo-Europeans and native Indian upper-class probably has as high or higher IQ than whites. Going by IQ results from India, it seems the lower castes and different ethnic groups score much lower, partially due to environmental effects.

I would agree with Mr. Auster’s comments on the Flynn affect, I understand it to be only apparent on some tests, may be largely a result of advances in obstetrics and health improvements, largely apparent in a gain only on the left hand side of the Bell Curve, and possibly a result of people being able to answer IQ tests better not an intelligence gain as such. I would actually argue that the opposite is occurring - a decrease of real intelligence, one which is happening even faster amongst minority groups causing an increased racial gap, because of far higher fertility rates and quicker generational cycles amongst the less intelligent. The 12000 person NLSY from which the Bell Curve was based shows exactly this, with the children of the original mothers scoring several points lower on average and the racial gap increasing.

On the question of American black IQ it is more likely to be around 82, although it is often optimistically and conveniently rounded off to 85, or one standard deviation. Sub-Saharan African IQ has been calculated by Lynn and others at around 69 or 70. The difference is blacks in America are around 17-18% white, although the distribution is as Steve Sailer points out at least bi-modal, with many blacks with far more and less white genes. Environmental reasons largely account for the remaining difference. Other aboriginal races, full blood Australian aborigines, and perhaps the Bushman, may have a lower IQ still (63 approx)and have corresponding smaller brain sizes, which through advanced Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI )have a 0.4 correlation with IQ. Blacks, like East Asians have an narrower IQ distribution,(11-14 SD) which means corresponding fewer will be more intelligent (and duller) than it would be otherwise.

With an IQ of 70, standard deviation of 12, assuming a Gaussian distribution, at 2.5 SD from their mean, only 1 out of 100 black sub-Saharan Africans have an IQ of over 100, the white average. At six SD from their mean, only one out of one million has an IQ of over 130, the average of a CEO or University Professor. This difference is vast. Lynn & Vanhanen in their recent book IQ and the Wealth of Nations, presents the thesis that IQ difference is the main factor in the differing socio-economic status of nations, followed by Economic System (capitalist or communist), then possession of natural resources like oil.

With such a vast average IQ difference races, 45 points between Ashkenazi Jews and Sub-Saharan Africans, perhaps more than 50 or more between Jews and Aborigines, the difference between races cannot be compared to the difference between siblings. Interestingly, regression to the mean amongst siblings show that across large samples of children with an IQ of 120, whites siblings regress to around 110, blacks around 100, each half way to their respective population means. This incidentally, is perhaps the best of many arguments in support of a genetic difference between races, as no imaginable environmental factor could cause this phenomenon.

I think it is possible to see mankind as spiritually equal and unique, but not in all other respects. I believe this was the consensus until recently. On average all races of man have cognitive skills that greatly outmatches apes or other animals. So in this sense there is a vast average cognitive difference too. Of course there are severely retarded amongst all races at a lower cognitive level than even primates and other higher animals. And in other areas, athletic skills like running and basketball, blacks have a massive advantage, which for a minority can translate into high economic and social status. Additionally, while I’m not sure what research has been done into smaller aboriginal tribes, even in pure black Africans the range of intelligence is such that there will some, even if a exceedingly small minority, who should have an IQ of above 120, 130 or even 140 - well into the gifted region, and well above the average of any racial group.

The tragedy for black Africa is that there is not enough intelligent people to go around to operate a technological economy and compete with the rest of the world, while there is too many at a very low level. Black Americans as black South Africans and Rhodesians earlier, are able to achieve greater health, education and job opportunities only because a higher IQ minority developed and largely operates the institutions of state and society and provides economic wealth to fuel the system.

Posted by: Dan on January 13, 2003 10:36 PM

Lawrence Auster’s thinking on this subject evolved very similarly to mine. At a certain point, a conservative begins to realize that while culture can explain a lot, it can’t explain it all. Heredity plays a big part in average racial differences, and this should not come as a complete shock. It is not, pace TK, incompatible with a belief in God. Or a belief that God created groups of people differently. Father James Thornton notes that the historic church would never consider all groups of people equally capable of sustaining high Christian civilization. Was the historic church wrong in this belief?

Posted by: BobV on January 14, 2003 12:36 AM

Thanks much to Dan for providing the greater detail on IQ studies.

Posted by: Lawrence Auster on January 14, 2003 12:38 AM

I think Dan’s calculation is incorrect that only one out of one million sub-Saharan black Africans would have an IQ over 130. While I don’t know the mathematics of standard deviations, I can make a reasonably approximate calculation, based on the rule that 16 percent of any population represented in a bell curve are at or above one SD above the mean, and 16 percent of that first figure are at or above a point one SD above the first point, and so on. Thus the number of people at or above two SD above the mean would be 16 percent of 16 percent, or 2.56 percent. So, for example, if the white population has a mean IQ of 100, with an SD of 15, then 2.56 percent of whites would have an IQ at or above 130.

Dan assumed a mean IQ of 70 for sub-Saharan Africans with a standard deviation of 12. That means that 16 percent, or one of 6.25 individuals, in that population would have an IQ of 82 or over.

Similarly, 2.56 percent, or one of 39 people, would have an IQ of 94 or over.

.41 percent, or one of 244 people, would have an IQ of 106 or over.

.066 percent, or one of 1,515 people, would have an IQ of 118 or over.

And .01 percent, or one out of ten thousand people (not one out of one million people), would have an IQ of 130 or over.

While one out of ten thousand people being high-IQ people is not as dire as Dan’s estimate of one out of a million, it is still very dire. Also, I’m not endorsing these conclusions, which (with apologies to Richard Lynn, since he’s been speaking for years of an average black African IQ of 70) remain hard for me to believe. I’m just working with the mean IQ and SD figures Dan provided.

Posted by: Lawrence Auster on February 21, 2003 2:02 AM

Mr. Auster presumes a linear distribution, whereas IQ follows a Gaussian or Normal distribution, hence the name Bell Curve

http://www.eskimo.com/~miyaguch/combnorm.html

This link illustrates the distribution of IQ, assuming a Standard Deviation (SD) or Sigma of 16, (SD of white IQ is normally taken as either15 or 16) to IQ 202 or 6.38 SD from the white mean of 100 IQ. As can be seen the difference in rarity from the mean of 100 (one in 2 rarity) and one SD from the mean, 116, (one in 6.3 rarity) is a multiple of 3.15. However the difference in rarity between the first and second SD, 116 and 132, is 6.98; 132 and 148 15.91; 148 and 164 42.86; 164 and 180 116.67; 180 and 196 285.71.

I did make a small typo in my Jan 13 comment: I obviously meant five (2x2.5) not “six SD from the mean, only one out of one million (black Africans) has an IQ of over 130, the average of a CEO or University Professor.”

The 12 IQ point SD figure is taken from p.353 of the G Factor (Jensen 1997), “the black SD of IQ is approximately 12, ranging in most samples from 11 to 14.” I used 12 as my estimate, not having seen any large sample data on the SD of black African IQ. However, the varying degree of white ancestry amongst US blacks implies greater IQ differentiation, which would suggest that the SD of Black African IQ might be 11 or less. Other factors would mitigate or augment this effect.

On page 350 of the G Factor, Arthur Jensen, perhaps the most authoritative and respected figure in psychometric psychology and the IQ debate, states “Blacks in sub-saharan Africa score about two standard deviations (approximately thirty points below the mean of whites on nonverbal tests.)” Research from other leading experts including Lynn and Rushton supports this position; others including black Zimbabwean psychologist Fred Zindi have come up with similar results. Below is a very recent study and review of Black African IQ that demonstrates the black-white difference is primarily attributable to a difference in general intelligence or g rather than any other psychometric factor.

http://www.ssc.uwo.ca/psychology/faculty/rushtonpdfs/Rushton-Jensen2003PAID.pdf

Below is a less technical article also worth seeing.

http://www.ssc.uwo.ca/psychology/faculty/rushtonpdfs/APADiv1Newsletter.pdf

A large caveat to the above equations is that IQ (at least amongst whites) closely follows a Gaussian distribution only up to two SD from the mean. After all, the Gaussian distribution is only a mathematical model that most closely represents, in this case, a natural phenomenon. Above 130 there is a much higher incidence of higher IQ than would be expected and a higher, although not by so much incidence of lower IQ (under 70). To correct this overrepresentation, deviation IQ was developed, which could be used in conjunction with the Ration IQ (Gaussian distribution).

http://www.geocities.com/ultrahiiq/Deviation_IQs.html

Still in most instances, IQ distributions are generally shown in a Gassian or ratio distribution. The deviation equivalent of the ratio IQ of 180 is 162.5, roughly one out of 22000 people. So if we use deviation IQ to measure black African IQ then Mr. Auster is only out by a factor of 2.2 whereas I was in error by a multiple of 45.45! However, I am unaware of research on the IQ of black sub-Saharan Africans (or US or UK blacks) at levels above 2 SD from the mean. It would be interesting to see whether black IQ deviates similarly from the normal distribution. The European class structure that promoted assorted breeding, people of the same IQ level having children, perhaps was partly responsible in causing this excess of high IQ; other reasons may also play a part. It also must be noted that American Blacks with over 130 IQ would almost always be at least half white. Given the lack of research I should have been more circumspect in my Jan 13 comment.

On the veracity of a Black African IQ of 70, it does seem to many difficult to accept. However it is only twice the gap Ashkenazi Jews have over white gentiles. Although an average adult sub-saharan African may have a mental age of just under 11, he is emotionally an adult (African), and has the life experience of an adult. He just lacks higher abstract reasoning power, but in his own world adjusts to a life that will not require such computations. He is not retarded in the sense that he has the intelligence that nature has given his type, just like a normal 10 or 11-year-old white child is not retarded. A 11 year old white child with an IQ of 70 is retarded – this is abnormal - and half of whites an IQ of 70 have what is call “Organic retardation”, a result of “clear biological defects”, as opposed to 12.5% of blacks with IQ 70, who mostly have “familial retardation”, otherwise normal but just unlucky to have poor intelligence genes.

In no way am I comparing blacks with dogs, but I always marvel at how guide dogs take care of their owners, navigating through busy streets. Yet in pure IQ terms a dog is far duller than any human racial average. Yet the dog excels within the parameters of its own nature utilizing its strengths. It has adult, albeit canine, maturity, unlike a puppy or child of any race. It uses its superior sense of smell and vision, and has been bred to live amongst humans to the extent that even puppies can intuitively understand human commands better than smarter chimpanzees. The dog has greater survival skills than the retarded white; although the latter is strictly more intelligent, he lacks the capability given to most of his type. No smarter than the retarded white, the black also adapts to his natural environment, commensurate with his mental and physical attributes. This environment reflects the average intellect and other capabilities of the group. There are intelligent blacks in Africa retarded by their backward environment just as many whites in the West are constrained by mediocrity.

Remember the low sub-Saharan African IQ is partly due to environmental reasons (maybe 7 points or so), just as the mainland China IQ of 100 is 5 to 7 points lower than ethnically similar Hong Kong and Taiwan, and the India IQ of 81-85 is lower than one would perhaps expect. It cannot be assumed, however, that this environmental effect can be completely or even largely eradicated because it is primarily a product of the cognitive deficiencies of the population group; significant environmental improvement could only be achieved if a higher IQ group took charge of the economic and governmental leadership – Colonialism. In a material sense this may be desirable for the less capable group, but not psychologically, and history has shown that such overlordship inevitably destroys the dominant partner.

Posted by: Dan on February 22, 2003 10:04 AM

Thanks to Dan for the further information. Clearly I was not familiar with the formula for arriving at a Gaussian distribution, but simply applied the “16 percent” rule in a linear fashion; even so, as Dan acknowledges, my result for the number of African blacks above IQ 130 was still far closer to the correct answer than his one-out-of-a million estimate. In fact, when I was writing the earlier comment I was aware that my figure of 2.56 percent for the percentage of whites above IQ 130, derived by multiplying .16 by .16, did not square with the figure of 2.3 percent that I remembered from earlier reading. Now I see that the difference is due to the difference between a linear and a Gaussian distribution. However, I still don’t understand the rule by which one could calculate how much of a population would be above X SD from the mean given an SD of Y.

Dan’s comparison of a putatively normal, 70 IQ, black African adult to a normal, 100 IQ, eleven year old white child (instead of to a retarded white adult with a 70 IQ) helps make more plausible the idea of a 70 average IQ among African blacks.

Posted by: Lawrence Auster on February 22, 2003 11:20 AM

To answer Mr. Auster’s precise question, the Gaussian function with mean m and standard deviation s is defined in as:

f(x) = 1/(s+sqrt(2*PI)) * pow( e, (-1/2)*(x-m)/s)*(x-m)/s) );

To find the total normalized population under the curve from a point x to infinity (to calculate the entire “greater than X standard deviations” population) one would have to use integral calculus: that is, take the integral from x to infinity of the above f(x).

No, there isn’t a simpler way to do it precisely.

The whole discussion breaks down in the outlier tails of the distribution, though, because the assumptions no longer hold. If you want to use this sort of math to predict how many parts per million are going to fail an electrical test during manufacturing it works pretty well. On the other hand, if you have two manufacturing lines and you want to use this to predict the ratio of rejects from one line to the next, the accuracy of your prediction plummets; and this latter is what is being attempted here with IQ. Any manufacturing engineer who tried to build a predictable product line based on five-sigma outliers would lose his job the next day.

Posted by: Matt on February 22, 2003 1:03 PM

I should clarify the implications of my last post:

1) The IQ bell curve discussion works fine when talking about the bulk of the main population.

2) That utility doesn’t extend to predicting the relative number of five-sigma geniuses in each population. Here you are just kidding yourselves.

Posted by: Matt on February 22, 2003 1:07 PM

Here’s a note I sent to Richard Lynn, the leading scholar in global IQ studies and proponent of the idea that the average IQ of sub Saharan Africans is 70.

Dear Richard,

I just wanted to let you know that I, always slow on these things, and not keeping up with the literature in recent years, finally “got” that it’s possible (which I had always resisted before) that African blacks have an average IQ of 70, as you can see in the below discussion. It was the comparison to a 10 or 11 year old child that did it. This makes sense, intuitively. Think of an average 10 year old. He’s mentally and physically normal, and competent in many things, but he’s still a child, there are many mental capacities he lacks. Confronted with adult-type intellectual situations, he will be passive, because they’re beyond him.

Of course, the average black African adult with a 70 IQ is emotionally and developmentally an adult, which the 10 year old white child with a 100 IQ is not. So we’re speaking of a population of people who are functioning, normal adults within their culture, but whose average mental ability is that of a 10 or 11 year old child with a 100 IQ.

Posted by: Lawrence Auster on February 22, 2003 4:11 PM

Dear Larry,

What are the implications (of these views) for Inter-racial relationships/marriages entered into consensually between free individuals in a free soicety and therefore (consequently), what are the implications for such freedom (bordering on licence) that characterize the west?

Posted by: Peter Phillips on June 7, 2003 8:27 AM

Peter Phillips asks, “What are the implications of these views for inter-racial relationships/marriages … ?”

The views in question imply no potential justification for governmental involvement in individual inter-racial relationships or marriages: none whatsoever (just as they imply none in regard to inTRA-racial relationships or marriages, or any other variety of relationship or marriage).

A few of the things they have bearing on are:

1) Inter-racial differences in achievement cannot continue to be blamed on white racism the way they have been hitherto. There may be a component of white racism at work — that’s legitimately debatable. But the left has tended to blame these differences solely on “white racism,” lock, stock, and barrel, and that’s flatly unacceptible according to these views taken together with everything else we know about what’s been going on. A corrollary of this is the lack of a solid basis for affirmative action as it is now practiced. (I agree with affirmative action in its originally-advertised sense of aggressively seeking out FULLY-QUALIFIED members of underrepresented groups. The facts under discussion make it that proportional inter-group parity cannot be achieved by this standard, something which ought to be accepted politically, but the left refuses.);

2) These views have implications for the left’s tendency to just “throw government money at problems” without analysing them rationally first. In interviews I’ve seen, Charles Murray has spoken about the possibility that his and Prof. Herrnstein’s book, “The Bell Curve,” might be used for the purpose of rationalizing the educational methods used for Negro-Americans in order to make them conform better to that group’s particular strengths and weaknesses, so as to maximize their learning. If a group’s particular gifts call for an educational approach different from that recommended for other groups, why not consider this? My own feeling in this regard is (in addition to recommendations Murray has made) to let Negro-Americans start school a few years later than everyone now does — I have a suspicion they do better when a little older, and IF they do, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that — that’s just the way they’re made (according to this as-yet undemonstrated scenario, that is). This wouldn’t change their ultimate rates of societal achievement, but at least they might get more out of their elementary and high-school educations — that is, they might actually GET elementary and high-school educations, something which too many aren’t getting at present (a shocking fact which, by the way, liberals and leftists absolutely couldn’t care less about — because if they DID care, they’d take steps to rectify it instead of making up lie after lie, including lies that not only don’t solve the problem, but actually make it FAR WORSE!).

Something these views DON’T have bearing on:

The right of a nation to limit racially, ethnically, or culturally incompatible immigration which is excessive in volume is NOT dependent on the matters under discussion: a nation has the moral right to preserve its traditional ethno-culture character, period. That means, among other things, that it has the right to preserve its racial make-up or traditional “ethnic mix.” It also has the right to preserve its traditional mix of religions from alteration through excessive immigration. It has such rights regardless of statistical demonstrations of specific inborn differences among races or ethnic groups.

Limiting immigration in reasonable ways aimed at preventing the undoing of a nation’s traditional make-up is something which has no bearing on individual mixed marriages or relationships. This should be clear. I suspect immigration is the territory Mr. Phillips is getting into in his question,

” … and therefore (consequently), what are the implications for such freedom (bordering on licence) that characterize the west?”

Reasonable nation-preserving immigration policies have no implications on the level of individual relationships, except in the indirect sense that massive demography-altering importations of “replacement ethnicities” will run counter to immigration law, exactly as they ought to.

Posted by: Unadorned on June 7, 2003 10:28 AM

I’m not sure I agree with Unadorned in supporting affirmative action “in its originally-advertised sense of aggressively seeking out FULLY-QUALIFIED members of underrepresented groups.” I think the very act of “affirmatively seeking out” members of some group to be students in a school, or employees in a company, or members of an organization, is a mistake because it sets things up on an artificial basis.

Here’s an example. At a bi-annual conference of writers interested in immigration reform that I used to attend, invariably at every one of these meetings one of members would stand up and say “We’ve got to get some blacks to come to these conferences, we can’t be an all-white group.”

On one of these occasions I said something like this: “What’s wrong with this suggestion is the same thing that’s wrong with affirmative action. Each one of us is here because we had a common interest in this problem. That’s what drew us together. None of us is here because our organizer said, “Hey, I’ve got to invite a Catholic,” or “I’ve got to invite a Jew.” The meeting is a voluntary association of people who are interested in the same subject. If there was a black who was involved in the same issue, he would be drawn into the same circle of contacts, and he would end up here too. But what you’re suggesting is that we go out and deliberately look for blacks to come to this meeting, just because they’re black. Thus they would be here on an artificial basis right from the start. They wouldn’t be here on the same grounds that the rest of us are here.”

That, in a nutshell, is what is wrong even with the non-quota, “affirmatively seeking out” type of affirmative action. It puts everyone in a false position. It violates the natural process by which human associations get formed and maintain themselves.

Posted by: Lawrence Auster on June 7, 2003 2:58 PM

Mr. Auster makes an excellent point and I agree with it completely. I guess what one can say in reply to it is artificial situations can exist on both sides of the question: a student who gets accepted at a top college, or an individual who lands a top job, who is there more because he was aggressively recruited than as the result of his having aggressively struggled tooth and nail to wind up there, is indeed in a fundamentally different situation from the others who are there alongside him. But the original spirit behind affirmative action involved (correct me if I’m wrong) the idea that some among our countrymen faced obstacles or disadvantages at the outset which the rest of us didn’t have to face, obstacles which themselves, because they did not beset all competitors, made for sort of an artificial situation right from the start.

One of the main “take-home points” of Mr. Auster’s comment is, to me at least, that we can all agree that the current system of recruiting for college or for hiring, or for awarding government construction, business, or consulting contracts, etc., on the basis of race or ethnicity (black, hispanic, etc.) or sex, without regard to educational qualifications, competitive testing scores, C-V’s, lowest bids, etc., is wrong and unacceptible. At least the original version of AA insisted that standards wouldn’t ever be lowered. We all know how faithfully that original understanding has been followed.

AA as it is now practiced in this country is completely wrong and (as with all things which are completely wrong) cannot survive but is bound ultimately give way and crumble to dust, as we saw happen with the swastika in 1945, the Soviet-Russian Communist Party between 1989 and 1991, the Berlin Wall along with those heroic statues of Stalin throughout enslaved Eastern Europe, and, just recently, those heroic statues of Saddam Hussein throughout Iraq.

The wheel revolves: Castro’s turn will come, Kim Jong-Il’s turn will come, the Tranzis’ turn will come, and so will affirmative action’s turn, as it is currently practiced by the moral cripples who impose it on us.

Posted by: Unadorned on June 7, 2003 4:38 PM

But another reason it’s necessary to reject the “good,” “original” affirmative action is that it is still used by some people (not Unadorned) as a way refusing to grapple with what AA actually is. They can always say, “Oh, I believe in the GOOD affirmative action,” and thus they refuse to face the actual affirmative action or to take a stand on it.

Posted by: Lawrence Auster on June 7, 2003 4:50 PM

Also, I like Unadorned’s distinction, in his reply to Peter Phillips’s question about interracial marriage, that a nation’s right to preserve its ethnocultural identity does not impinge on the rights of individuals of various races. Those are two distinct issues.

While I would not legislate in this area (at least vis à vis our current society), I disapprove of interracial marriage, for too many reasons to go into here. I think public opinion should oppose interracial marriage, instead of, as now, celebrating it—which, especially from the point of view of whites, is like celebrating your own disappearance. That’s why preventing extremely diverse immigration is necessary in the first place, particularly in the modern conditions of total individual freedom. If you have a free society which is also very diverse, intermarriage will inevitably take place.

After the return from the Exile in Babylon, the Jews almost went out of existence due to intermarriage. Ezra required them to stop that practice. The Jews became a much more socially exclusive people, which had its negative side, but it also meant that the Jews continued to exist as a people. Here’s one irony. Christianity is thought to stand for some kind of universal inclusiveness. But if the Jews had not rejected intermarriage and become an exclusive people, there wouldn’t have been a Jewish people for Jesus to be born into.

Without a degree of exclusiveness, there can be no sustained existence of a people.

At some point I’ll address the question of intermarriage at greater length.

Posted by: Lawrence Auster on June 7, 2003 6:25 PM

On the subject of inter-racial marriages or relationships, to say that public opinion should be against it while maintaining that there be no legislation against it is irrational. Public Opinion and the Legislative process cannot be divorced from one another to the extent necessary to achieve this. The anti-miscegenation laws of the pre 1960s era were a product of public opinion. They werent clearly conceived in a vaccuum

If Public Opinion were to miraculously change against it now and conform to the views of a bye-gone era, I see little stopping legislation from re-appearing. This brings us to the central problem with modern day libertarian thinking which is to follow the abstract principles of liberalism without the problems that arise due to affiliations of blood. The central problem is one of the combustible nature of multi-racial societies. They are inherently stable. The only way they can function is if one race or people assume a completely dominant position and take control (as in the America of old). Saving that, you would plunge yourselves into bitter and endless ethnic conflict and the liberal principles (beginning with Individual freedom and political equality) vanish with it.

The fundamental point Im trying to make is that no one has a satisfactory answer for the mess that the United States and several other western nations have gotten themselves into (due to past injustices such as slavery or modern follies like Immigration) and there seem to be few constructive ideas on resustication of the nations and avoiding absolute destruction. Limiting immigration is merely slowing the process of death. What would you do about millions of immigrants already here and their seething hatred at the majority white population for barring their cousins from getting themselves on to American soil? These questions have far greater bearing on the future than it would first seem. No gain saying that they ought not have been let into these countries in the first place. Thats a no-brainer.

Posted by: Peter Phillips on June 8, 2003 12:56 PM

Inherently unstable is what I meant

Posted by: Peter Phillips on June 8, 2003 1:15 PM

I agree with Mr. Phillips that there is nothing inherent in a liberal democracy that prevents (when it is wise to do so) social disapproval from becoming legal prohibition. This lack weakens both the law itself and social disapproval, each an indispensable component of any functioning society. Add one more reason to the long list of reasons why liberal democracy, far from representing the end of history, will ultimately be viewed as a brutal, murderous, unstable abberation.

Posted by: Matt on June 8, 2003 1:31 PM

I attempt to answer Mr. Phillip’s question about the ethnic fate of America in my comment following a new entry about Muslim illegals begin deported:

http://www.counterrevolution.net/vfr/archives/001498.html#6050

Posted by: Lawrence Auster on June 8, 2003 1:47 PM

“On the subject of inter-racial marriages or relationships, to say that public opinion should be against them while maintaining that there be no legislation against themI is irrational.” — Peter Phillips

I don’t see the question AT ALL as whether or not the public be against inter-racial marriages or relationships, things which at the individual level are none of the public’s business: the broad public has no legitimate interest in whom some particular young man or woman connects with romantically (nor, CERTAINLY, has government, at any level!).

But public opinion already IS (or originally WAS, at any rate) against, and perfectly legitimately so, what is in a way the equivalent of, or at least the precursor to, a community and indeed a whole state and country effacing itself by literally changing into another racial group. Contrary to the question of “who is going out with whom,” this issue IS a legitimate public concern of any community on the planet: massive racially/culturally-incompatible immigration (together with the infinite ways the government then submerges the original host population in order that the tender immigrants won’t feel uncomfortable, intimidated, or discriminated-against — can’t have that in THIS country, can we, since if they go back home, industry owners might have to employ an American at a living wage, not to mention how disappointed white-Christian-haters like Ben Wattenberg would be!).

That this legitimate concern happens to dovetail with the question of a high rate of individual inter-racial marriages is logically inevitable but morally irrelevant.

Public opinion is and certainly was against having its race changed into something else, as it is and was against the various ways in which foolish government has attempted over the past few decades to, in effect, submerge the white race, such as school bussing (the New York Times always spelled that word with one S, but I suspect it needs two). That same public’s own government, together with its own captains of industry (the latter motivated almost solely by the high profits brought about by docile immigrants’ slave wages, the rest of their motivation being to get government off their backs in regard to race) colluded in undertaking to quash this instinctive public opposition in myriad ways, from TV commercials exhorting against “racism,” to mandatory “sensitivity-training sessions” in the workplace, to brainwashing at the elementary-school through high-school levels and really massively at university, to things like the London Metro Police Diversity Directorate for those who may still not have gotten the message that opposition to this whole race-replacement scheme simply is not going to be permitted.

So, the public’s instinctive opposition to all this has been steadily eroded and weakened, something which the government (and industry) never had any business doing in the first place. Needless to say, these organs with heavy-handed power to influence the public and, where influence fails, to coerce, ought never to have used their power in this way and should stop, in order to let the public’s natural instincts emerge and determine what needs to be done next.

“If Public Opinion were to miraculously change against it now and conform to the views of a bygone era, I see little stopping [deeply ugly and profoundly offensive and unacceptible anti-miscegenation] legislation from re-appearing.” — Peter Phillips

What need is there for such legislation or danger that it could rear its ugly head where immigration is controlled in reasonable ways?

“The fundamental point Im trying to make is that no one has a satisfactory answer for the mess that the United States and several other western nations have gotten themselves into … and there seem to be few constructive ideas on resustication of the [Ancient Euro-] nations [of Europe and North America,] and avoiding [their] absolute destruction. [Stopping racially- or culturally-incompatible immigration completely would] merely [slow] the process of death. What would you do about millions of immigrants already here and their seething hatred at the majority white population for barring their cousins from getting themselves on to American soil?” — Peter Phillips

Where there’s a will, there’s a way. It wasn’t the nay-sayers who created this nation in the first place, or who brought about Israel’s re-birth in Palestine after two thousand years, or who overthrew centuries of Turkish enslavement of Greece, to cite but a few examples of why the nay-sayers and defeatists shouldn’t be listened to.

Mr. Auster answers this question (above) in his new blog entry, cited.

One could make many points here. Read all the relevant writing at this web-site, which is some of the best I’ve seen anywhere on these issues. Please see also, incidentally, the second of Peter Brimelow’s “five main pointers to the Europeans,” here:

http://www.vdare.com/pb/opendem.htm

This whole problem is of course a very multi-faceted one but one facet is the point Brimelow alludes to — does it make sense to, in effect, pay immigrants to stay who don’t like it here and half of whom would, but for government subsidies forced out of the pockets of other Americans, go back home?

I’ll add to this that government ought NEVER to pay for immigrants’ having their babies here when there are a huge number of American couples who would like to have babies or have more of them, but for budget reasons decide they simply can’t afford more than zero, one, or two — American couples who, were they taxed less-heavily at the federal and/or state level, might decide otherwise, the taxes in question going to pay for FOREIGN couples in our midst, often of incompatible race, religion, or culture, to have THEIR babies instead, and then to care for them and, later, to school them, etc. Talk about a moral outrage! If ANYTHING is it, THAT is! Then to top it off, a complete Euro-American-loathing and probably Christian-loathing imbecile the likes of Ben Wattenberg goes around saying whites in this country aren’t reproducing themselves, as he privately has orgasms over whites’ transformation, via immigration and having their tax money confiscated to pay for the birth and education of someone else’s child instead of the one they wanted to have but couldn’t afford, into a minority in their own states and nation.

This problem is easily solved the same way government does every day when someone doesn’t pay his taxes: the government acts (try not paying your taxes and see how fast and how forcefully they can act). Expel all illegals for starters, and not just the Arabs and Muslims they seem to have decided to act against, but Mexicans and all other illegals as well. Simultaneously, there should be a complete moratorium on incompatible immigration — zero. Then the government can give financial inducements, as Giscard d’Estaing’s government did some years ago, to incompatibles willing to accept that as compensation for returning home. If only few accept, increase the amount until lots accept.

Obviously, one could go on here. Bottom line: DON’T LET THE OTHER SIDE WIN! This is NOT a force of nature but is being done deliberately and is easily reversible. The whole outrageous immigration thing has to be stopped — by decent folk rising up against Leviathan who is doing it to them.

And, foaming-at-the-mouth white-Euro-Christian haters like Ben Wattenberg be damned!

Posted by: Unadorned on June 8, 2003 6:44 PM

I replied to Mr. Phillips here without realizing there was a whole thread on this conversation (I’d read the new blog entry but not looked at its comments thread yet):

http://www.counterrevolution.net/vfr/archives/001498.html#6050

I’ve just read that comments thread and agree one hundred percent with every word in it by Mr. Auster, by Carl, and in large part by Mr. Phillips.

Posted by: Unadorned on June 8, 2003 7:12 PM

speaking of genetics and crime, this dandy article points us to a solution of the real problem

http://freedom.orlingrabbe.com/lfetimes/grenade_grandma.htm

Posted by: abby on July 1, 2003 4:07 PM

I found Mr. Auster’s piece excellent, and would like to offer a comment. The different thinking styles to which he refers may really be no more than the manifestation of lower IQ. For example, a tendency to accept crude paranoid explanations of things, and an inability to deal with complex causation is probably characteristic of all people operating in the lowest decile of IQ. In addition, we should always keep in mind that we are dealing with a distribution - i.e., there will be blacks who are more intelligent than most whites, just fewer of them. To us conservatives, group average differences are no slur against any particular individual. But to leftists, that see people only as representatives of groups, as ideological icons, any notion of group difference is intolerable as it threatens to undermine their assumptions of absolute egalitarianism.

Posted by: Thucydides on August 18, 2003 7:08 PM

I would bring a fact to your attention. Black people, while scoring low on most intelligence tests, do have an ability over whites and others, that of “multithreading”, i.e., on handling many processes in the same time. They are good in situtations where many demands originating from many directions are put to their attention, in several fields of reality at the same time (customer polite attention, minor thchnological bugs, accounting considerations). That is the case in many telephone and commerce related jobs, especially when it comes to selling cell phones. This is an ability in demand, and generally resulting in a high-paying job. Even with a low g-factor, the Black man can benefit enormously from tests measuring several forms of mental ability. Even with a low g-factor, the Black man’s situation is not so desperate, provided the PC discourse is jettisoned, for it is reality denial.

More distressing than a low mean IQ is the visible fact that wherever Black men congregate in organisations similar to the Whites’, dishonesty tend to rule. In our cities, one can find black neighbourhoods that are well-functioning, but not cities under Black mayors. Black mayors, when elected by Black majorities, always behave as African potentates as can be found in Kinshasa or Harare. It might sound as a prejudice, but Blacks can function politically well only in tribes, or in confederation of tribes. In our cities, the equivalent tribes can be black-majority neighbourhoods with day-care-centers, greenery-grooming and other community services. In black countries, small thriving communities can be found that develop original ways of life, but whenever they are forced into states designed after European model, only scoundrels tend to ascend socially. Like it or not, abstract republican principles are a white man’s thing.

Posted by: Miville on December 29, 2003 11:13 AM

I attended a nearly all-black high school in New York (Charles Evans Hughes, 18th Street between 7th and 8th avenues). It was during the 1960s, when black society was only just starting to go completely to hell, which is why I was not killed.

In English class we were assigned to write haikus; these were afterwards collected and distributed in mimeograph. I noticed that of all the dozens of haikus, only two contained imagery; the rest described sensations or situations. Those two were penned by your correspondent - the only white kid in the class.

From this and other circumstances I have always assumed that blacks lack the imaging abilities of whites. I know of no black painter who has even been able to represent the world in a realistic way. And although I had a great deal to do with blacks in my yute, I can think of only one instance where I saw a black take an interest in the visual world - an elderly woman exclaiming over some colorful flowers. No sunset gazers amongst the African peoples. When blacks are intellectually successful, it is in some non-visual discipline such as economics or sociology.

I also believe that even though Asians may have higher IQs, they are handicapped relative to whites in also having less imaging ability - though more than blacks. Again, look at their art.

This may be why nearly all scientific achievement, to say nothing of artistic achievement, has come and must always come from the European peoples.

Posted by: Shrewsbury on January 16, 2004 9:28 PM

Did you see you are being praised here?
http://www.badonicus.blogspot.com/

Posted by: Lucy on January 17, 2004 6:06 AM

Intelligence is that spark of intellect belonging to all genes; an inbred gift bestowed by the Creator of all races. Given the opportunity to express itself in any environment, we can see the fruits of this claim. Limitations are due to circumstances that temporarily restrict growth. But that divine ‘spark’ is inherent in all peoples.

Posted by: Edwin Vogt on February 13, 2004 5:07 PM

Sure, just like in Haiti, Zimbabwe, and the Congo.

Posted by: Badonicus on March 4, 2004 6:20 PM

“For example, a tendency to accept crude paranoid explanations of things, and an inability to deal with complex causation is probably characteristic of all people operating in the lowest decile of IQ.”

I wondered about this when someone in another thread, a few months ago, made a passing references to Arabs having low IQs. I don’t know whether they do or not, but they delight in paranoid conspiracy theories.

A test of this idea would be to look at the writings from the Arab world over the centuries. For that matter, we have writings from blacks in the USA over the last century, and it has always seemed to me that the paranoid style (e.g. “HIV was invented by the CIA to kill off all blacks”) is a fairly recent thing, brought on by modern race hustlers who can only play the victim card in all situations. Does anyone have any documentation of non-recent paranoia predominating in black or Arab societies? Does the paranoid style predominate today in black Africa?

Posted by: Clark Coleman on March 4, 2004 6:51 PM

Interesting question from Mr. Coleman. I suggest he direct it to some of the writers on race differences, Lynn, Rushton, Levin, and so on.

However, my offhand guess would be that the paranoid style is mainly a product of modernity and leftism, as it has something to do with enormous powerful social structures, and the anomic individual having no place or power in this structure, and so the resentment that is normal to humans takes on a paranoid cast.

However, some elements of the paranoid thinking would have always been there, such as the voodoo idea that everything bad that happens is controlled by some evil entity. Group conflict and the accompanyng paranoia have existed through history. But I’m guessing that something like modern alienation is needed before you have the kind of paranoid conspiracy theories that are so familiar to us today.

Posted by: Lawrence Auster on March 4, 2004 6:54 PM

Documentation no. But two examples from my personal experience. An arab acquaintance from Sudan once took upon himself to inform me of the “Masonic” peoples’ (freemasons’) manipulation of the US government into supporting Isreal. And a black South African similarly informed me that the condom promotion campaign of western NGOs is a plot to dominate the Africans by limiting their numbers (this one wasn’t as well thought out as the first). Of course, I’ve heard crazier things from white middle class Chomskyite undergrads and the tenured radicals that teach them.

Posted by: Damon on March 4, 2004 9:28 PM

I knew a person with a 140 IQ who believed that the real killer of Nicole Brown Simpson was detective Furman.

Posted by: Lawrence Auster on March 4, 2004 9:36 PM

Very high intelligence can often be as debilitating as stupidity. After all, it gives you the power to override common sense.

Posted by: Reg Cæsar on March 5, 2004 3:02 AM

I think people with low IQs are more apt to believe other’s conspiracy thepories. people with high IQs usually prefer to come up with their own conspiracy theories.

Posted by: Michael Jose on March 5, 2004 4:48 AM

I’d like to conduct a study to determine the correlation between IQ, scientific understanding, and belief in the supernatural; and perhaps define a loose threshold for atheism and IQ. Clearly, the most intelligent among us reject mythology and superstition as a means to reach true enlightenment- as is revealed in a survey of leading scientists from the National Academy of Sciences that showed only 7% believed in a personal god (like the one in the Christian myth.)

Also, I wonder if the Black physical superiority observed in America is due to artificial selection by white slaveowners during the years of slavery for blacks that were big and strong. Does the average well-fed Black in Africa demonstrate the same superiority over the average White?

Posted by: Phillip of Austin on March 5, 2004 11:25 AM

I wonder what Phillip of Austin thinks the IQ was of the man who said, “Render under Caesar what is Caesar’s, and render unto God what is God’s.”

Posted by: Lawrence Auster on March 5, 2004 11:30 AM

If it were a man named Jesus, who lived 2000 years ago, his thoughts are irrelevant. For he did live long before the sciences came into being; and his ignorance, therefore, is understandable.

I had respect for you until now, Mr. Auster. Are you ignorant of the scientific method of reasoning? Or are you simply pandering to your readership of reactionary troglodytes?

Posted by: Phillip of Austin on March 5, 2004 11:42 AM

Phillip of Austin is evidently not speaking in good faith. He says he had respect for me, up until the moment he read my reply to him. But how could he have had respect for someone whose main readership consists of reactionary troglodytes? Also, if he had had respect for me, would he have instantly accused me of “pandering” the moment I said something that was not perfectly to his liking?

This website is for citizens of Western civilization, not for atheists with a chip on their shoulder.

Posted by: Lawrence Auster on March 5, 2004 11:55 AM

I have only read this page by you- article and comments. I have not seen the rest of this website, nor read any of your other writings.

I accused you of pandering because it does appear to me that you are too cowardly to be intellectually honest and admit that there is indeed no good reason or evidence to assert the existence of gods or ghouls- except to kowtow to ‘tradition’. Of course, this is what conservatives are best at.

Propagating mythologies that hinder objective understanding of the world is not admirable.

Posted by: Phillip of Austin on March 5, 2004 12:20 PM

If Phillip of Austin is interested in keeping a record of human intelligence vis-a-vis believers in God, he is going to have to include on the side of the troglodytes and nitwits a number of interesting men who go by names like: Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Newton, Galileo, Pascal. When he has finished with his purge from the ranks of Exulted Intellects such infamous idiots as these and others, we will happily leave him with the remainder; and bid him farewell with his paragons or true enlightenment.

Posted by: Paul Cella on March 5, 2004 12:37 PM

“Propagating mythologies that hinder objective understanding of the world is not admirable.”

Indeed; particularly dogmatic, fundamentalist mythologies responsible for the murders of tens to hundreds of millions of people in the twentieth century alone; mythologies such as materialism and scientism.

Posted by: Matt on March 5, 2004 12:49 PM

I’m not sure those men had the beliefs you claim. Each one lived hundreds, if not thousands, of years in the past. Brilliant as these men were, they were ignorant of the scientific knowledge that we have today (thanks in part to them.) This scientific knowledge provides for an explanation of the universe based on observable facts and reason.

Given today’s knowledge, I have little doubt that those men would be ‘scientific materialists’ as all great thinkers of today are.

Posted by: Phillip of Austin on March 5, 2004 1:20 PM

The basic metaphysical demonstration of God’s existence has not changed from Plato’s day to our own: and it does not depend on some new mass of empirical fact, but on common sense and logic.

I did not claim any specific beliefs for the men mentioned. Plato and Aristotle, pagan men, were opposed in their philosophy in profound and world-shaping ways. Aquinas was an Aristotelian; Newton an Arian; Pascal a near-Puritan. What I do claim is that these men all acknowledged God’s existence.

Reason can demonstrate that He exists; but we need Revelation to tell us about His character.

Posted by: Paul Cella on March 5, 2004 2:08 PM

“This scientific knowledge provides for an explanation of the universe based on observable facts and reason.” I am curious about this statement. Either something has existed eternally, or nothing has existed eternally. If God has existed eternally, and is defined to be infinite in power, then there is no logical problem in proposing that he created the universe. On the other hand, if matter and energy have existed eternally, then we should have reached maximum entropy in the universe by now. Alternately, if matter and energy did not exist prior to the Big Bang, and God did not exist either, then matter and energy are effects without causes.

So, to believe in a purely material universe, do we not need to choose which fundamental principle of physics to contradict: the principle of cause and effect, or the second law of thermodynamics?

Posted by: Clark Coleman on March 5, 2004 4:03 PM

Most of the athiestic scientists I’ve known came to athiesm very early, in their pre-teen and teenage years, and invariably they did so not as the result of inquiring deeply into religious matters, but because they assumed that athiesm was one of the accoutrements of superior minds. Having reached that conclusion, they never revisited it, and so there’s no particular reason to respect their athiesm; it’s the athiesm of fifteen-year-olds, worth about as much as the political opinions of fifteen-year-olds. Who do you think has done more serious thinking about religion, the 93% of NAS members who are athiests or the 7% who aren’t?

Posted by: paul on March 5, 2004 6:06 PM

Paul’s portrait of contemporary atheists has the ring of truth to me. I decided I was an atheist shortly after my 13th birthday, and proudly declared it to my parents. However, unlike most of these contemporary atheists, who seem never to have had a second thought, my own atheism only lasted a year or two.

Posted by: Lawrence Auster on March 5, 2004 7:00 PM

I’d like to add a few names to Mr. Cella’s list for the benefit of Mr. of Austin. The following men not only believed in God, but had great respect for the authority of the Bible:

Joseph Lister (Antiseptic Surgery)
Johann Kepler (Physical Astronomy, Celestial Mechanics)
Robert Boyle (Chemistry)
Georges Cuvier (Vertebrate Paleontology, Comparative Anatomy)
Charles Babbage (Computer Science)
Lord Rayleigh (Model Analysis, Dimensional Analysis)
John Ambrose Flemming (Electronics)
James Clerk Maxwell (Statistical Thermodynamics, Electrodynamics)
Michael Faraday (Electromagnetics)
Lord Kelvin (Thermodynamics, Energetics)
Henri Fabre (Entomology)
George Stokes (Fluid Mechanics)
William Herschel (Galactic Astronomy)
Robert Boyle (Gas Dynamics)
Gregor Mendel (Genetics)
Louis Agassiz (Ichtyology, Glacial Geology)
Matthew Maury (Oceanography, Hydrography)
William Ramsey (Isotopic Chemistry)
John Ray (Natural History)
Bernhard Riemann (Non-Euclidean Geometry)
David Brewster (Optical Minerology)
Rudolph Virchow (Pathology)
James Joule (Reversible Thermodynamics)
Nicholas Steno (Stratigraphy)
Carolus Linnaeus (Systematic Biology)
Humphrey Davy (Thermokinetics)

These men are historically the pioneers of their respective scientific fields. They established modern scientific study. Yet Mr. of Austin claims they were an impediment to science due to their acceptance of God’s existence. How does one even respond to such an accusation?

I’ll let Francis Bacon, who established the modern Scientific Method of investigation have the last word: “There are two books laid before us to study, to prevent our falling into error; first the volume of the Scriptures, which reveal the will of God; then the volume of the Creatures, which express His power.” (From his book “The Advancement of Learning,” 1605).

Posted by: Joel LeFevre on March 6, 2004 12:58 AM

I almost pity poor Phillip of Austin: he never had a chance.

Posted by: Paul Cella on March 6, 2004 8:48 AM

What’s remarkable about the new brand of atheists today is not only their aggressiveness, but their notion that no other reasonable or intelligent view even exists. Everyone who is not an atheist is simply an idiot. Meaning that all civilizations that have existed, and all human beings that have ever lived, except for the atheists themselves, have been living in a pathetic delusion, because they can’t face the “real” truth of how meaningless everything is. For example, see this comment at Front Page:

http://www.frontpagemag.com/GoPostal/commentdetail.asp?ID=12480&commentID=272762

Another thing I didn’t pick up on before: according to Phillip, if Jesus (who Phillip admits must have had a high IQ) returned to the earth today, he’d be an atheist.

Posted by: Lawrence Auster on March 6, 2004 11:33 AM

The scientistic kind of atheism can be very crude. David Attenborough, for instance, once replied to the question of whether he believed in the human soul with a response along the lines of “How could I? I’ve never seen one.” I cringed with embarrassment for Attenborough when I read this, but I suppose it’s the attitude you get when you try to limit knowledge to “observable facts”.

Posted by: Mark Richardson on March 6, 2004 6:40 PM

Regarding the Ash. Jews have a verbal IQ of around 127, what is the source for this? I would guess certain Sephardic Jewish communities such as the several of the Haredi groups have verbal IQs in this area as well.

And of the East Asian IQ standard deviation of around 12.5 as opposed to 15 or 16 in whites?

Posted by: Henry on April 23, 2004 6:58 AM

Sorry, I meant does anyone have the source for the figures on the s.d. of East Asian IQs?

Posted by: Henry on April 23, 2004 7:00 AM

The initial wave of the third generation of affirmative action cases is today applying to schools. If environment were of any great influence for this comparison, they would not need the same edge as their grandparents, thirty-odd years ago, had received. The institutions are frantic to keep affirmative action, and not least because three generations are not enough to break a cycle, or break the ice, for these criminally over-priveleged minorities. Courts have found it necessary to use a permanent excuse for the racial preferences which are given; the diversity value-premise. They use this to exclude low-income, but high scoring echelons for racial reasons. If the environment were of notable importance for this differential, there would be no danger of other groups taking over the reserved affirmative action places, if the policy were to be changed to a socio-economic basis. It is so extreme that the top percentiles of income are said to yield a worse environment for one racial group than low-income status yields for the majority, or should I say; such is the implication.

Posted by: john s bolton on April 25, 2004 3:37 AM

Asians having a lower sd than whites is a complete myth. There was this one website that even had a graph. But it wasn’t even based on any facts but was just that author’s guessing based on nothing more but his gut feeling and he also specifically states so.

The fact is there have been absolutely no evidence to show that asians have a lower standard deviation and if anything have been shown to have a higher one. This can be shown by SAT scores where the average gap is asians/pacific islander scoring about 10 points above whites. But asians also had a higher standard deviation at 123 compared to whites at 100. So when you took at the 99th percentile of both groups, which is people scoring about 1500 or so, the gap increases to about 100 points asians over whites. So it seems that not only do asians have a higher mean average but also have more intelligent people on the far end of the spectrum. It is also to note that the College Board groups Asians and Pacific Islanders together which would likely lower the average than rather if it was just Asians.

Here is the source. Go to table 4-1.
http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/about/
news_info/cbsenior/yr2003/pdf/2003_TOTALGRP_PRD.pdf

Posted by: Knight on May 16, 2004 2:47 PM

This is very interesting. This would explain the long-standing puzzle: if Asian SD is smaller, then why is there all this outstanding Asian academic performance we keep hearing about? The answer suggested by Knight is that the premise was wrong: the Asian SD is not smaller but larger. I will look at the tables when I get a chance.

Posted by: Lawrence Auster on May 16, 2004 2:54 PM

More detailed information.

2003 AVERAGE SAT SCORES:

Ethnic Group:

Asian/Pacific Islander Math: 565 Verbal:499 Total: 1064
White (Non Hispanic): Math: 530 Verbal: 528 Total: 1058
American Indian: Math: 481 Verbal: 482 Total: 963
Mexican American: Math: 460 Verbal: 453 Total: 913
Black American: Math: 426 Verbal: 434 Total: 860

Gender:

Female: Math: 500 Verbal: 502 Total: 1002
Male: Math: 534 Verbal: 507 Total: 1041

ALL TEST-TAKERS Math: 516 Verbal: 504 Total: 1020

Asians/Pacific Islander scoring at or above (math):(verbal)

:800: 2% :800: 1%
:750: 6% :750: 3%
:700: 16% :700: 6%
:650: 28% :650: 13%
:600: 42% :600: 23%
:550: 57% :550: 35%
:500: 70% :500: 51%

Whites (Non Hispanic) scoring at or above (math):(verbal)

:800: less than 1% :800: less than 1%
:750: 2% :750: 2%
:700: 6% :700: 5%
:650: 14% :650: 13%
:600: 27% :600: 25%
:550: 44% :550: 42%
:500: 62% :500: 62%

American Indian scoring at or above (math):(verbal)

:800: less than 1% :800: less than 1%
:750: 1% :750: 1%
:700: 3% :700: 2%
:650: 7% :650: 6%
:600: 15% :600: 15%
:550: 27% :550: 27%
:500: 43% :500: 45%

Mexican Americans scoring at or above (math):(verbal)

:800: less than 1% :800: less than 1%
:750: less than 1% :750: less than 1%
:700: 1% :700: 1%
:650: 4% :650: 3%
:600: 9% :600: 8%
:550: 19% :550: 18%
:500: 34% :500: 32%

Black Americans scoring at or above (math):(verbal)

:800: less than 1% :800: less than 1%
:750: less than 1% :750: less than 1%
:700: 1% :700: 1%
:650: 2% :650: 2%
:600: 5% :600: 6%
:550: 12% :550: 13%
:500: 23% :500: 25%

Source: College Board

Posted by: Knight on May 16, 2004 3:06 PM

What is absolutely astonishing is that 1 out of 50 asians are scoring a perfect 800 in math on the SAT

Posted by: Knight on May 16, 2004 3:09 PM

We’re comparing apples with kumquats and quinces here.

First, Asian-Americans are not necessarily reflective of the Asian population. We could very likely be drawing from both the bottom (welfare recipients) and top (grad school material), and not so much from the middle, thus increasing the “Asian” SD in the U.S. well beyond what it is in any of the homogeneous nations in Asia.

Second, East Asia is racially, if not facially, diverse. The Han/Yamato/Korean axis up north is quite intellectually distinct from the Philippine and other Malay populations, and hill tribesmen, down south, even if they all look the same to us. Tossing them together naturally increases the SD.

Some of these Asian studies include India and her neighbors, and you can imagine how wide the subcontinental SD would be.

Posted by: Reg Cæsar on May 16, 2004 3:36 PM

If the standard deviation is much the same for these populations, another explanation of the differences would seem to be called for. People also create their own environment, as has been noted. In the last few generations, hundreds of millions of Asians have been sent to college, but the non-whites have only received around five percent of the Nobel prizes in science and medicine. This is a ratio of about a hundred-to-one in favor of the caucasians. At the other end of the spectrum; has there ever been a theologian of world importance, who wasn’t European? But suppose this number were five percent; how could it be a hundred times harder for a non-white to become a theologian of this rank? It is not as if religion has only recently arrived in those parts of the world. It is also a hundred-to-one in favor of the caucasians in Murray’s science and technology rankings of eminence, which sets out a new standard of objectivity (much to the chagrin of academic relativists and pomo-nihilists). Similarly with scientific publications per million; the ratio in favor of caucasians is at least dozens-to-one. In intellectual undertakings, the indisputably eminent figures are at least dozens, and often hundreds of times, more likely to be white than any other sort. From this one might conclude that the verbal IQ is the relevant one, and that the Asian average is lower, as the tests indicate. Does this also explain the rage of an envious professoriate and officialdom to destroy the white race, and their relative indifference to what becomes of asian populations? Envy directs its malice against those who really have more, and especially when it is believed to be permanent advantage.

Posted by: John S Bolton on May 16, 2004 7:57 PM

>>>>First, Asian-Americans are not necessarily reflective of the Asian population. We could very likely be drawing from both the bottom (welfare recipients) and top (grad school material),>>>>

And the same can’t be said about whites? There are quite A LOT of trailor trash whites that you can hardly consider intelligent. This wouldn’t create a big standard deviation?

>>>Second, East Asia is racially, if not facially, diverse. The Han/Yamato/Korean axis up north is quite intellectually distinct from the Philippine and other Malay populations, and hill tribesmen, down south, even if they all look the same to us. Tossing them together naturally increases the SD.>>>

And even WITH this grouping together, there STILL is a higher percentage of asians scoring over 800, over 750, over 700 in both math AND verbal. If they’re not grouped together, the gap would obviously be even larger up there in the 700+ mark.

Posted by: Knight on May 16, 2004 10:25 PM

>>>>.If the standard deviation is much the same for these populations, another explanation of the differences would seem to be called for. People also create their own environment, as has been noted. In the last few generations, hundreds of millions of Asians have been sent to college, but the non-whites have only received around five percent of the Nobel prizes in science and medicine. This is a ratio of about a hundred-to-one in favor of the caucasians. At the other end of the spectrum; has there ever been a theologian of world importance, who wasn’t European? But suppose this number were five percent; how could it be a hundred times harder for a non-white to become a theologian of this rank? It is not as if religion has only recently arrived in those parts of the world. It is also a hundred-to-one in favor of the caucasians in Murray’s science and technology rankings of eminence, which sets out a new standard of objectivity (much to the chagrin of academic relativists and pomo-nihilists). Similarly with scientific publications per million; the ratio in favor of caucasians is at least dozens-to-one. In intellectual undertakings, the indisputably eminent figures are at least dozens, and often hundreds of times, more likely to be white than any other sort. From this one might conclude that the verbal IQ is the relevant one, and that the Asian average is lower, as the tests indicate. Does this also explain the rage of an envious professoriate and officialdom to destroy the white race, and their relative indifference to what becomes of asian populations? Envy directs its malice against those who really have more, and especially when it is believed to be permanent advantage.<<<<

The thing about innovation and inventions, etc. Whites only pulled ahead of asians 400 years ago. Before this time, white and asians were very close in their ability to advance in technology, etc. Asians had quite a lot of inventions before this time such as paper, gunpower, and the compass. Also keep in mind that East Asia consists of pretty much only 3 countries. With the vast majority, over 90% being in China. Well what happened with China? Before 400 years ago, they were considered the most advanced civilization on earth. It was actually the envy of the western world. But things completely fell apart from there. Political turmoil, inner conflicts, and bad leadership. All the way up to the 20th century with turning to communism which just made things worst. Korea finally were able to become a country after WWII and have progressed very nicely. Japan’s actually been the only East Asian country to even have a chance to majorly contribute to science and technology in the past century and they have so. They rank #8 or so in the most nobel prize by countries won.

But China has been slowly moving away from communism. They currently have the fastest growing economy in the world with an annual growth of about 8-10%. Still very much a 3rd world country yes, but experts are predicting they will reach 1st world status within 25-50 years. One of the fastest 3rd world to 1st world transformation. Until they move out of 3rd world status, their ability to produce something Nobel Prize worthy is probably not there. As it takes quite a lot of money and funding for studies that end up being Nobel Prize. But once you see China become a 1st world country, a country that holds 90% of the east asian population, I believe you will see a drastic change in their ability to innovative and move technology forward. Much like the China pre 400 years ago.

Posted by: Knight on May 16, 2004 10:41 PM

Countries like China send a great many of their brightest students here because they want tradesmen and millhands for the upbuilding of communist power, not liberal arts scholars who are believed to threaten a cultural counter-revolution. Even the Koreans and Taiwanese are like that, in that they want material advancement, not a re-flowering of oriental culture. Aggression is used to force such nations in this direction; therefore America and other countries should subvert such materialism with trade policies and financial (central bank) strictures.

Posted by: John S Bolton on May 16, 2004 11:45 PM

Every large and isolated culture has had some practices which might be taken by others, but this does not indicate any equality between them. China was still using massive numbers of people as draft animals in the twentieth century; while Europe had animals for those functions for a thousand or more years prior. It should be added that the espionage and damaging technology transfer that they do, is assisted by those who praise students from there. If we are loyal to America, and like the Chinese people at all, the aggrandizement of the communist power there is not to be supported or propagandized for.

Posted by: John S Bolton on May 17, 2004 1:20 AM

>>>I’d like to add a few names to Mr. Cella’s list for the benefit of Mr. of Austin. The following men not only believed in God, but had great respect for the authority of the Bible:>>>

Finding a mere less than handful of “scientists” that believed in a god is absolutely nothing. It does nothing to change the fact that 95% of scientists do not believe in a god. Not only that, high IQ professions not even related to science have low rate belief in a god. Only 16% of university professors believe in a god. And 35% of Ivy League students profess a belief in a god. Intelligence is certainly a factor in whether one will believe in a god or not. The more intelligence a person has, the less superstitious they tend to be become.

Posted by: Knight on May 23, 2004 6:33 AM

When Knight writes that “95% of scientists do not believe in a god,” and that “Only 16% of university professors believe in a god,” his very expression, “believe in a god,” rather than “believe in God,” makes him sound like someone so ignorant of or alienated from the Judeo-Christian background of our society that he doesn’t even know the common language that we use in our society to speak about God and belief in God. When he describes believers as “superstitious,” he expresses contempt for both religion and religious believers.

I want to make my position clear. If people want to argue for an atheist position at this site, they may do so. What they may not do is speak of religion or Christianity as a “superstition” that only stupid or ignorant or weird people would believe in. The fact is that all historic peoples and civilizations have been based on an experience of and belief in the divine; and that it is only in our own civilization that a significant number of people not only do not believe in God, but have hostility and contempt for the very idea of God, and it’s only in the last few years that atheism (which in the past had to show deference to religion) has come completely out in the open and expresses itself with a total lack of respect for religion.

This is a _traditionalist_ website, meaning among other things that it has a Christian orientation and honors the Judeo-Christian framework of our civilization. Unlike the general society, where anti-Christianity is increasingly the default position and Christians are a minority who must walk around on tiptoes, at this site it is Christianity that is the default position and atheists who are the minority. I’m not requiring anyone to walk around on tiptoes, but I am saying that if anyone at this site wants to disagree with belief in God or with Christianity, he must do so respectfully.

There is a big difference between, on one hand, saying, “I don’t believe in God and here are my reasons,” and, on the other hand, treating the very idea of God as some weird superstition that only ignorant or defective people would believe in. The former statement shows deference to religion even as it expresses a different view; the latter does not show deference but contempt, and that will not be allowed at this site.

Posted by: Lawrence Auster on May 23, 2004 9:16 AM

Part of the problem may be that a religious atheism is unsustainable for most people without a high degree of personal arrogance and a contempt for your fellow man. Those psychological factors unfortunately do often go along with a high degree of education and professional advancement in a specific technical area. Belief systems sustained by pathological psychological factors require a trump card of contempt because they cannot stand on their own merits. Contempt is the inverse of merited self-confidence, not its culmination. Unlike merited self-confidence, contempt is not interested in the actual position of its opposition, or is interested only in suppressing it and dismissing it rather than understanding it and engaging it.

Those of us who have had highly educated people working for us for extended periods of time probably appreciate this more than others. Scientists particularly, the more brilliant they are in their technical area, become more and more incompetent outside of their area. There are few things more pathetic in my experience than a brilliant but un-self-aware scientist trying to play marketer, salesman, philosopher or theologian. The problem though is that most of them are not self-aware enough to appreciate that. So executives like myself end up managing them very much as you would manage a pack of unruly know-it-all teenagers — talented unruly know-it-all tennagers, but unruly know-it-all teenagers nonetheless.

That, at least, is my personal experience.

Posted by: Matt on May 23, 2004 9:46 AM

I have created a new blog entry where we can continue this discussion on atheism, so that it won’t get mixed up with the topic of the current thread.

http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/002315.html

Posted by: Lawrence Auster on May 23, 2004 10:13 AM

I’d like a little better classification of who is “black” for starters, before going after IQ differences between races.

How many granules of melanin per square cm is necessary? Perhaps you could address other pigmented molecules as well: beta carotene, hemosiderin, etc. Or perhaps a wavelength range of reflected light off the skin? Since this may not be enough to separate blacks from other equatorial peoples, a discussion of other classification methods may be in order: facial features (nose, eyes, bone structure, etc), hair components, etc (in cm, angles, position, etc). Perhaps a genetic linkage to each of these features would help (collagen, homeoboxes, etc), in order to rule out environmental causes. Then, how many features from each category makes it sufficient to be called “black”.

A further discussion on how to separate asian, native americans, hispanics, non-hispanic whites, etc, based on these criteria would be appreciated.

Posted by: Temujim on May 27, 2004 2:31 PM

You can try to laugh it off; but when the government and its scholars are pushing relentlessly for race war, your humor will not save anyone, but serious observation might do so . One could observe that schools have, during the period of the present anti-merit society, prosecuted applicants for racial fraud. Government agencies have done likewise. If race is as undefinable as you suggest, how could these events have occurred? No one has suggested that affirmative action is ‘void for vagueness’. No scientists, in the pay of official discretion, have dared to tell the supreme court that the courts are establishing religion when they pursue their current racial policies, have they?

Posted by: John S Bolton on June 8, 2004 9:08 PM

RACE AND SUPERIOR BODIES, HOLISTIC APPROACH
Racial Superiority = Intelligence Advantage + Body (health) Advantage?????

Though this forum is primarily for discussing race and intelligence, I am wondering how everyone feels about race and health? We often define our ideal conditions in terms of the goodness of both our MINDS and BODIES, the two major categories of goal-directed continuous self-improvement (though they are one and the same, for discussion purposes will assume the dichotomy).

It seems that everyone in these race-intelligence forums knows and endlessly repeats the following facts:
-Ashkenazi Jews highest IQ, though skewed towards verbal
-East Asian IQ second highest, though skewed towards math
-Followed by whites, hispanics, blacks

Considering a more wholesome view of genetic endowments, while controlling for genetically derived culturally subjective personality advantages and beauty standards (which include everything from skin tone, lip size, facial bone structure, tone of voice)…WE MAY RANK DIFFERENT RACES IN TERMS OF BODY PERFORMANCE(measured by longevity, fraction of lives without crippling diseases) from a purely functional perspective. (Only this perspective - longevity and disease free - will be considered functional, though personality and beauty standards derived genetically always has a functional advantage in the real world but only because of the cultural environment, so that once the person with the personality/beauty advantages moves outside of that environment, the same advantages will act as disadvantages…whereas intelligence and longevity of life are always advantageous…and even factors like muscle strength and speed in running will be considered culturally/environmentally subjective since different regions of the world require different amounts of these endowments for survival, and in advanced civilisations, are not a survival factor or a factor that will move you up the social ladder).

Interesting facts to consider:
———-Very high incidence of genetic diseases among Ashkenazi Jews
———-Moderately high to average incidence of genetic diseases in Africans and Europeans
———-Very low incidence of genetic diseases among East Asians (Korean, Han Chinese, Japanese)
———-Light-colored eyes as a functional disadvantage (higher chances of eye-diseases such as glaucoma and blindness)
———-Controlling for diet and income, highest life expectancy in East Asians, followed by Whites, then Blacks
———-Slower bodily deterioration in East Asians, confirmed at least for skin (the largest human organ) as East Asian skin wrinkles slower.

It would seem to me, as a semi-educated guess, that in terms of body/health, the ranking would look:
1) East Asians
2) Whites
3) Blacks
4) Ashkenazi Jews

And by adding together mental abilities with non-subjective body health factors, depending on the weightings for mental-to-health…would rank for the superior race in the world:
1) East Asians
2) Whites
3) Ashkenazi Jews
4) Blacks

Posted by: Perry on June 11, 2004 11:48 AM

I question Perry’s thesis. First, he doesn’t make any convincing case that East Asians are overall healthier than whites. Second, he doesn’t present enough data to conclude an overall greater incidence of disease among Jews. Jews are known for having greater susceptibility to certain forms of cancer, but there is no evidence suggesting that that translates into greater disease or shorter healthy life-span overall.

On a more basic level, the subject of my article is not average racial health or average racial life-span, but the more limited topic of the racial civilizational ability of blacks. I never used such terms as “superior” or “inferior” races. I’m also (though it’s not the subject of my article) concerned about the racial/ethnic/cultural compatibility of various groups with OUR civilization. Perry’s analysis, by contrast, though he calls it holistic, is really reductive. In a mechanistic way, he adds average racial IQ and average racial health (for which he presents no real evidence), and arrives at an average that yields a scale of racial “superiority” and “inferiority.” I wonder what useful purpose is served by this. For example, if we conclude that East Asians are “superior” to whites, what in any practical sense does that mean?

Posted by: Lawrence Auster on June 11, 2004 12:54 PM

I’m obviously way behind calenderally in this discussion, which is one of the most fascinating and nail-biting that I have witnessed at VFR. I thank Mr. Auster for bringing up the subject and for Dan, in particular, for getting into the statistical details. I should have stayed longer in college and learned more about The Bell Curve and SDs.

I believe, as wonderfully passionate as Unadorned is in his June 8 6:44 PM post and other posts of his on this thread, that there is NO such thing as —“reasonable ways” being another way of saying “being more selective as to who we allow to immigrate”. I believe strongly that, although birth rates among whites are supposedly at near all-time lows in our nation’s history, that this is no reason to bring in other nation’s peoples to become Americans. While he is certainly no “guru” of mine, Pat Buchanan had it right in the ‘92 campaign when he spoke of “halting immigration completely, with a four or five-year moratoreum”—after deporting all illegals here already. Talk show host Michael Savage has long championed those same views, as have I. There is no “reasonable” way to halt the madness of the past and current invasion of the U.S. along our Soouthern Border. While many talk boldly of “enforcement of laws already on the books” to force employers not to hire illegals, knowingly or unknowingly, the simple fact is many millions are here and deportation is the first step along with closing the border—or at least making it less easy for illegals to slip into our country. The word “reasonable” to me to me is the buzzword of neocons and liberals. There is nothing “reasonable” about what this invasion has done to and is doing to our country.

In Peter Phillips’ June 8 12:56 PM post, he states that and that I totally disagree with this assertion. Lots of good people have many brilliant ideas on what to do. It is our elected officials who aren’t doing and haven’t done what they need to do to halt “the slow process of death” as Mr. Phillips calls it. Only very recently has the Bush Admin. attempted to put technology (drone aircraft-to-be) and resources (more Border Patrol personnel) on the Southern Border. It’s an obvious attempt, while keeping the borders open to Mexican trucks and people, to placate the base which is serverely split on this issue. Anyway, the point is, many people have solutions that will work for our “mess”, just not the stones or political will to end it. For the economic conservatives, deportation of all illegals is a fate worse than death. They see hotels and restaurants and other businesses failing. But as Carl or Clark Coleman pointed out to me in another thread recently on illegal immigration/deportation, these businesses would find “intuitively” new and affordable ways to stay in business, should deportations begin o0n a large scale. This “mess” can be cleaned up, and Mr. Auster has an excellent multi-point plan which I and others here expanded upon—but I can’t recall that great thread’s url.

Posted by: David Levin on June 11, 2004 11:40 PM

I apologize to Peter Phillips for somehow failing to insert the following into the top of the above second paragraph. The following <> was one of his points in his June 8 12:56 PM post, which I then answered with my second paragraph:

Posted by: David Levin on June 12, 2004 12:17 AM

It (my computer/keyboard?) did it again, leaving out Peter Phillips’ following line in his June 8 12:56 post:

“…no one has a satisfactory answer for the mess that the United States and several other western nations have gotten themselves into”

Hopefully, THIS time it will post! Grrrr!

Posted by: David Levin on June 12, 2004 12:20 AM

You have to be careful about the use of < and > signs in your posts because HTML strippers will often peel anything between them out (I had to use secret sauce to get them to print properly in this post). The “Preview” feature is also helpful here.

Posted by: Matt on June 12, 2004 8:53 AM

La Griffe du Lion(sitename)has brought out a new theory which replaces overall-IQ with verbal ability, and finds that this brings the correlation between intelligence and production up to exceedingly high levels. This comparison of conceptual ability, gives first place to the Europeans, but not to the Northeast Asians. The curve delineated is not arbitrary; it is bounded by a natural lower limit (zero new production), and a plausible upper bound, where diminishing returns to higher intelligence in the populations would intensify. Production of the highest cultural values is doubtless even more important, and it would be good to have a theory which could explain the lasting disproportion in favor of the Europeans, at this end also. A theory which stresses the verbal component of intelligence, accomplishes this. That the enemies of civilization , truth and absolute values, militate against the Caucasians, but not against the Chinese and Japanese, should tell us something, too. Regarding the blacks in Africa and elsewhere, an improvement of the correlation may follow from setting the lower bound at the minimum production needed for survival, which is where those countries cluster on the above-mentioned curve.

Posted by: John S Bolton on June 16, 2004 11:21 PM

Here’s the link to the article that Mr. Bolton mentioned. It looks interesting. It says:

“A nation’s per capita GDP is directly proportional to the fraction of its population with verbal IQ equal to or greater than 106.”

http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/sft2.htm

Posted by: Lawrence Auster on June 16, 2004 11:46 PM

Here’s an e-mail I sent to Griffe du Lion:

I just read (or rather skimmed over the math parts) your article on Smart Fraction Theory II. This is fascinating. You’ve tentatively answered a bunch of irritating questions that have been out there for a while. One of them is: if Asians are only slightly smarter than whites, and if their SD is shorter, as everyone has been telling us for years, then how can there be this extraordinary over-representation of Asians in higher education? Your answer: the overrepresentation is solely in sciences and math. I had not gotten the _extent_ of the Asian verbal-math bifurcation prior to this. It is extraordinary. They are substantially higher than whites in visuo-spatial, and substantially lower than whites (half an SD!) in verbal.

I know less about the national wealth/national IQ issue, so I won’t comment on that, except to say that it intuitively makes sense. Here’s the way I would construct what’s happened here. In other races besides the NE Asians, the differential in the importance of math versus verbal doesn’t become a focus of attention, because the two tend to be correlated, so therefore it was assumed that the two were of equal importance. But with the NE Asians, the huge bifurcation between the math and the verbal brings out a fact that apparently hadn’t occurred to anyone before you: namely, that verbal is the one that really counts when it comes to making a society work.

Thanks for your original contribution to this important subject. I feel the racial profile of mankind has just become a bit clearer.

P.S. How do the Japanese fit into your theory? They are a highly productive society, are they not? According to your theory, how can this be, assuming their verbal IQ is eight points lower than whites?

Posted by: Lawrence Auster on June 17, 2004 12:36 AM

It looks as if that theory would predict that , if the Japanese are lower on verbal by 6.5 points, this need not much hamper their manufacturing; but we will not likely see a theoretical breakthrough of the first rank from there. The great works may also often depend on the reception from a portion of the population, being likewise above some threshold. We need founders, but also lawyers. Japan is known for its consensus society, which can work very harmoniously with a new structure imposed on it; but the violent part of that process must end abruptly, and leave them to cooperate peacefully for some time. Japan ,with a population a bit over ten percent of the Caucasian total, has 1-2% of the Nobel science prizes, and 0-3% of mentions in Murray’s combined sciences listings( Human Accomplishment p.284 ). Those kind of numbers would seem to fit the assumptions of SFT2. One might predict that there will appear significant Japanese composers every generation or two, on such a theory.

Posted by: John S Bolton on June 17, 2004 2:01 AM

Things like “theoretical breakthroughs”, “great works”, and especially “significant composers” require something more than mere intelligence, namely imagination. The two most talked-about Japanese executives of the 20th century, Akio Morita and Soichiro Honda, had a very American turn of mind, whatever their intelligence level. They were no friends of MITI, the “industrial democracy” some goo-goos wanted to impose here.

Competition is much fiercer in Japan than in the U.S.— e.g., nine automakers rather than 2.5. So a breakthrough may be rare, but it will be copied more intensely and spread faster when it does come. That could narrow the innovation gap with the West somewhat.

Posted by: Reg Cæsar on June 17, 2004 3:03 AM

One could say that a population which is less able to visualize, would sometimes be pushed towards both conceptual representation and making visual representations, like paintings, if these were more useful to them than to others. Or, if the conceptual and the external representations are an area of strength for one population more than others, these areas of greater success may be preferentially built up. Looking at Japanese figures of eminence, an increase can be seen from philosophy, where they scarcely register, to medicine at 2%(Murray), and on to mathematics, with 5% of the Fields medals showing Japanese names.

Posted by: John S Bolton on June 17, 2004 5:06 AM

Imagine a world in which generations were to go by, without an important painting, sculpture or musical composition, which has won recognition as such, on a large scale. Likewise, one in which there is no important novel or play written, and no great theoretical breakthrough which may win general acceptance by the professoriate. Unfortunately, this is the cultural setting of America in the last forty years. Project this trend out indefinitely; now you have the expected result of the official and academic program of trying to annihilate the distinctness of the Europeans. At the time of the tenuring of the anti-culture, we were told to expect a flowering of cross-bred tropical cultures in the house of the rich in the north. Instead, we have been given hybrid sterility and hybrid torpor.

Posted by: John S Bolton on June 26, 2004 4:54 AM