Statistical evidence of racial disparities is automatically taken as evidence of racism. “Racial disparity is caused by racism”. End of story. In this article I’ll suggest a different reason for at least some observed racial disparities.
But first, don’t believe me, look for yourself! I propose a small experiment…use “african american intelligence” as a search string on the top three search engines: Google, Bing, and Yahoo. In the next couple paragraphs I’ll summarize the results I get on July 23, 2023
First, note there are no ads on the results pages! Apparently there are no commercial or marketing opportunities relating to this search string. I laugh!
Next, all three search engines – Google, Bing and Yahoo – pop up a knowledge panel at the top of the page that informs us “minorities, such as the African American minority of the United States, generally perform worse in the educational system and in intelligence tests than the majority groups”. This phrase is a quote from the Wikipedia article titled “Race and intelligence”. I suggest you take a look at the article as a good example of the embarrassed hand-waving the intelligentsia use to obscure the topic of race and intelligence.
Further, all three results pages point to a Brookings Institute article, linked below, as either their second or third-ranked result. Google and Yahoo place it second, Bing puts it in third.
The Black-White Test Score Gap: Why It Persists and What Can Be Done
Bing’s #2 result is an article on black unemployment, followed by the Brookings article at #3.
Google’s #3 result is an NYT article, which looks like it might be a book review, linked below.
The Black-White Test Score Gap
Yahoo’s #3 result is a Wikipedia article on the history of the “race and intelligence controversy”.
There is a common recognition of what the numbers are, accompanied by a lot of discussion about why the numbers might be invalid or not meaningful. My response: it doesn’t matter how you define your terms. Modern intelligence tests are the best available metric for mental ability that correlates with success in life. It seems there is a consensus on what the numbers are. If you accept that, then follow the science. Let’s move on!
A couple of caveats:
- * I acknowledge that racism exists today, and is a part of our history.
- * The difference in an average score between two populations doesn’t tell us much if anything about individuals. Asians ‘on average’ score higher than Caucasians on intelligence. This doesn’t tell us whether I score higher or lower than any individual Asian I meet on the street or sit next to at work. I can’t make any assumptions about the relative intelligence of any Black person I meet. The studies report average numbers across populations.
God is a Racist
For years we’ve assumed that socioeconomic disparities were the result of racism (the environment). Science tells us that we should consider whether intelligence (inheritance) is a cause of these disparities. Is it 50/50 environment vs inheritance? 60/40? 70/30? Does the impact vary by type of disparity? Do hiring disparities, criminal justice disparities, or educational disparities vary in their response to environment versus inheritance? These questions deserve debate and study.
The role of inheritance is a buried topic in the discussion around race. When presented with outcomes that differ by race – whether in income, educational success, or in arrests, why do we immediately point to racism as the cause? Aren’t racial differences just another arena for the environment versus inheritance discussion? Why not consider inheritance as a factor in racial disparity?
If racial disparities are caused largely by inheritance, what does this tell us of the likely success of the tactics we’re using to combat these differences, like DEI initiatives, affirmative action, and income subsidies? Does it explain why these tactics are unsuccessful at ending disparities?
Sandra Day O’Connor famously wrote in a 2003 court opinion regarding affirmative action, the “Court expects that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary”. She apparently expected that if we tweaked the environment, disparities would disappear. So, why is affirmative action still necessary? Is it because the cause is inheritance rather than the environment?
It is dishonest or ignorant to continually point to racism, when a very likely cause is actually inherited differences in intelligence.