Race against Mind?

Is there any justification behind the idea that some races are just more intelligent than others?

The topic of race and intelligence is one of the most tabooed topics of discussion amongst biologists and psychologists. However, it is one of the most hotly debated ideas behind the closed doors of many of the most learned individuals of our time. The idea that one particular race or skin colour is genetically smarter than another race has been accused of being akin to intellectual racism. Many have used these ideas of racial intellectual inferiority to justify atrocities ranging from slavery to the Holocaust. And yet, what makes this discussion ever weightier is that many of the individuals who propagate these ideas, have been held as the smartest minds in their field, until they proposed such a claim.

The idea of their being a correlation between race and intelligence goes back to Darwinian times. Darwin himself declared that there may be a case for arguing that those of a Sub-Saharan ethnicity could be less evolved than the rest of the human species, and thus less intelligence. Indeed, one can identify this as being a cause for legitimising slavery, which as we all know was rife at the time of Darwin. But the idea still remains to this day, mainly supported by IQ tests from America that show that on average African Americans score significantly lower than White Americans, who in turn score lower than Asian Americans. Further tests on populations around the world identify that East Asians as having the highest average IQs, followed by Europeans, then South East Asians, Native Americans, South Asians, North Africans, sub-Saharan Africans and finally Aborigines and Bushmen. Scientists have been quick to point out that there are Aborigines at the upper echelons of the IQ chart, whilst simultaneously there are East Asians at the lower spectrum, but the statistics do show a startling story.

However, on reflection, what precisely is this story? To a casual reader, it will simply state that some races are on average smarter than others (which it does show), and thus the basic inference is that some races are smarter. However, readers of these blogs and of the HPD magazine will be quick to realise that there is always more to this than meets the eye. Firstly, what is the IQ test, and what is it used to identify? A simple answer is a test of your verbal and mental skills, though this of course is a complete simplification, and one urges the reader to delve a little further into the matter. But for argument sake, let’s use this basic definition. These skills that are tested were decided upon by William Stern, based upon intelligence tests created by leading psychologists such as Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon. Note that the creators were all of European descent. A new and leading argument is that the test, whilst it does measure intelligence, is biased towards the skills of a particular race. But do these skills have any relevance in the Australian outback where I doubt the Europeans would survive and adapt as well as Aboriginal Bushmen.

Another leading criticism of the results of IQ tests is that it does not take into account other factors which may turn up in a particular race, but does not reflect a genetic trend. Rather, social and environmental circumstances lead to discrepancies in the results. One could easily correlate between economic backgrounds and intelligence and show that by having a higher income, one could have a higher IQ result. Of course, once these arguments are laid out in front of us, we can then begin to appreciate why links with race appear. It is a well known fact that in most western, multi-cultural societies, those with African ancestry tend to come from poorer backgrounds, and this in turn can mean fewer opportunities to raise their income, regardless of their intellectual ability.

This blog is merely food for thought; one cannot hope to answer the question or get to the bottom of the entire issue in less than 800 words. But we can begin to identify how to understand the issue beyond its veneer, right down to the influences from unobvious factors. This debate will rage on for many years, but with enough intelligent thinkers (researchers, scientists and of course HPD readers!), this topic can be explored and discussed with open thinking, as opposed to polarised debates, where ideas come second to argumentative abilities. I hope the new blog formats create as much thinking as possible, and we look forward to your thoughts.

Vinay Trivedi