Explaining Low IQ Scores in Africa, South Asia

[Chinese-Dragon]

I think it's completely wrong to link Race and IQ.

Education systems are more important. If you take a child from Mozambique to my home city of Hong Kong, I'm sure they will do as well as others, so it's not about "racial background" at all.

Also, East Asian "culture" prioritises memory and mathematics, so that may explain why the scores are skewed in this way.

IQ tests don't measure creativity, or many other important factors. Using IQ solely to assess intelligence is a flawed concept.

 

[Ras]

My personal believe is that ancient Arab/muslims might have about the same IQ as the whites. Since a significant portion of them have inter-married with Dravidians, central asian tribals, Africans, mogols, as the time move on, their average IQ has been deluted to mid 80s as per today's. It sounds at least logical.

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Pakistanis are not Arabs nor are they Dravidian's...and BTW the Arabs have the same IQ.

Can't insult the "dumb" Indians without insulting the Pakistanis can you?

BTW Lynn's work had a significant IQ difference between West and East Germans...about 10 points. Explain that from a racial superiority perspective.

 

[Kyusuibu Honbu]

Myth: Some ethnic groups have genetically inferior IQ's.

Fact: Poverty creates large IQ differences even between groups of the same ethnicity.

Myth: Some ethnic groups have genetically inferior IQ's.

Fact: Poverty creates large IQ differences even between groups of the same ethnicity.



Summary

There are too many examples of discriminated minorities even within ethnic groups that score worse on IQ tests to believe the myth that the differences are genetic.



Argument

On average, African-Americans score 7 to 15 points lower than European-Americans on IQ tests. Many conservatives believe this is because blacks are genetically inferior to whites. But liberals believe that the IQ gap is the result of nearly three centuries of slavery and yet another 130 years of segregation and institutionalized racism. Even the Civil Rights Act and affirmative action have not eliminated discrimination against blacks -- they've merely reduced it somewhat. The result of this discrimination is that a disproportionate percentage of blacks work at lower-paying jobs, live in poverty and squalor, lack health care and child care, and do not receive the quality of education and personal development available to richer members of society. All these deprivations work to suppress IQ and educational achievement in children during their critical developmental years.

Which viewpoint is correct? The answer becomes obvious when you compare the lower IQ results of other discriminated minorities around the world, many of whom are of the same genetic stock.

Perhaps the most dramatic example is the Northern Irish. Even though they come from the same ethnic group, Catholics (the discriminated minority) score 15 points lower on IQ tests than Protestants.

In the U.S., both Korean and Japanese students score above average in IQ tests; many scholars agree that, genetically, they are about as close as two ethnic groups can get. But the Korean minority living in Japan scores much lower on IQ tests than the Japanese. Why? The Japanese are extremely racist towards Koreans; they view them as stupid and violent, and employ them only in the dirtiest and lowest-paying jobs. Tensions are so great between the two groups that violence often erupts in the form of riots.

In the U.S., Polish Jews arriving before 1910 were also perceived as stupid (for no other reason than they were accustomed to a different culture and spoke another language). So many "Pollock" jokes arose that Americans still tell them to this day, even if no one remembers why. The Polish Jews suffered heavy job discrimination and suspicion of criminality; not surprisingly, their children suffered low grades and IQ test scores. Today, of course, many Americans hold the opposite prejudice; Jews are viewed as the most brilliant of ethnic groups.

Russian-born Jews who became American soldiers in World War I also scored low on IQ tests. So low, in fact, that Carl Brigham, the creator of the Scholastic Aptitude Test, declared that the results "disprove the popular belief that the Jew is highly intelligent."

There are countless examples around the world where the dominant ethnic group scores higher on IQ tests than the discriminated minority, even when the two groups are of the same ethnic stock. Here is a partial list:


Many conservatives argue that people who are smarter tend to go on to college more, and because whites are more intelligent than blacks, there are more whites in college. But regardless of the reason why this is so, it cannot be because of a genetic edge in intelligence. Consider the following information from the U.S. Census on the breakdown of white students who have graduated with a B.A. from college:

Proportions of Americans who have completed college by self-identified ancestries (2)

French-Canadian 16.7 percent
Dutch 18.5
Italian 21.0
Irish 21.2
German 22.0
Finnish 24.2
Norwegian 26.0
Danish 27.4
Swedish 27.4
Scotch-Irish 28.2
English 28.4
Welsh 31.8
Scottish 33.6
Russian 49.0

All the above are at least third-generation Americans, which would give them sufficient time to join the college caste. Is it really reasonable to blame the above differences on genetics? Notice that the Scottish have nearly twice the college attendance as the Dutch, even though their ancestors lived right across the Channel…

Most geneticists agree that there is far more genetic variation within groups than between groups. According to one commonly cited study, 85% of all human genetic variation is intra-population, 7% intra-race and only 8% inter-racial. (3)

Source:Some ethnic groups have genetically inferior IQ’s

However,for ppl like Speeder 2 who enjoy to mimic their British Imperialist masters in mentality,the opposite of the above article is true.

Like i said before,Chinese by race British by trace

 

[H2O3C4Nitrogen]

IQ can only be judged by a local entity, plus the context of the examination should comprise of local things. . !!!

 

[CardSharp]

I knew this discussion would go too far. Discussions like this evitably turn personal, so I’ll throw in some caveats with regards to race and IQ.

IQ distrubtions like many things in nature follows a Gaussian distribution and the IQ number quoted is the just a mean (average) of the curve. This number says nothing about the range or how IQ’s are distrubuted about the mean.

When comparing IQ’s between groups of people, it is important to remember even with significant difference in average IQ ie a 20 point difference there is still a very very large overlap.

What this means is, IQ of races is almost a worthless indicator of job performance, societal status, and wealth, given that other factors can affect these to a much greater extent (things like socioeconomics status at birth, access to higher education, pushy parents that expect a lot, how hard an individual works, etc.)

BUT this is not to mean that the things listed above (nurture) will increase Raw IQ (it just doesn’t). Evolution is what determines intelligence. Intelligence is what makes us humans and race difference is just tiny compared to evolutionary intelligence difference from great apes to tool using pre-humans to modern humans.

Evolution of human intelligence - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

(in fact you can often judge fossiles of prehumans and where they fall on the evolutionary chain by measuring cranium volume)

Lastly, I want to state that examples like how many scientists are chinese, or how many doctors are indians in America are invalid evidence for supporting IQ and race. These are heavily distorted by selection bias.

selection bias - The Skeptic's Dictionary - Skepdic.com

The people who often travel abroad are often a self-selecting group with a higher percentage of professionals. This phenomonon actually has a name, Model minority. One example would be Canadians assume all chinese people are good at math (not true, I hate math) but it is a stereotype that does get carried by people.

Model minority - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

So really it is worthless to say anything about how many patents chinese scientists hold or how many Indians work at the JPL, they are a self selecting group and god knows the talent pool for both China and India is HUGE due to population size. (it would be a travesty if our peoples didn't succeed aboard given the number of people we have)

 

[Speeder 2]

as many as 12% scientists and 38% doctors in the US are Indians, and in NASA, 36% or almost 4 out of 10 scientists are Indians.

If that's not proof enough of Indian scientific and corporate prowess, digest this: 34% employees at Microsoft, 28% at IBM, 17% at Intel and 13% at Xerox are Indians.

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go take a hike, carrying your Indian tabloid propaganda paper with you.

 

[CardSharp]

Speeder2 you are especially out of line. There’s several things wrong with what you’ve said.

I
This should be easy to understand, for if environment is anything close to significant, why Blacks living in N America and Europe (the UK) for 100s for years - the same environment as whites, still have significant low IQ?

This neither proves nor disproves, environment’s effect on intelligence. They may have occupied the same country but they were hardly treated equally or given the same opportunities were they?

IIn the pre-historic times, were the smart people the ones who have choosen to avoid places with high level of deseases to settle, and lived together in groups (later called "city") to have higher chance of survival? ; or in the pre-historic time, cities and education ( built by Martians must be?) made these people smarter later on? The answers seem obvious, don't they?

I’m surprised that if you can see ptldM3’s mistake in cause and effect that you would go and make one yourself. Did smart populations choose the regions that promoted the evolution of higher intelligence or did those regions that promote the evolution of smart population?

The answers seems obvious don’t they?

"indian IT" one of the top 5 in the world? In what measure top 5 or even anything remotely close to top 5?, may I ask? total number of innovations? total # of IT patents? # of patents per cap? The size of India IT software market? or the size of India's IT hardwre market? The size of IT-related Stock market? Or the number of IT-related high tech gargets India invent or made...? or what? You've been brainwashed by Inida's own propanganda into believing India's IT is a "giant". India's IT is a gaint of outsourcing only- which is mostly decided by labour cost. Without US and UK's outsourcing call centers, you'll see almost nothing significant there.

Refer to the end of my last post on selection bias and model minorities.

My personal believe is that ancient Arab/muslims might have about the same IQ as the whites. Since a significant portion of them have inter-married with Dravidians, central asian tribals, Africans, mogols, as the time move on, their average IQ has been deluted to mid 80s as per today's. It sounds at least logical.

This is racial crackpot theories. Like the prof. I quoted said we don’t know or understand what genes are responsible for intelligence nor are we likely to find out. Though it can almost be certain that intelligence is a complex polygenic trait and distant Intermarriage doesn’t mean equivalence in mental capacity.

You can’t DILUTE intelligence like a cocktail.

Even adults can stimulate their brains.
Take a look at this:The Human Brain - Exercise

Yes you can prevent age related mental deterioration with mental exercises and the Franklin institute is encouraging mental health. But it doesn’t mean you exercise your brain like a muscle.

 

[Speeder 2]

CardSharp:

A suggestion: when you quote sources saying words like "Asians" , it's better state clearly the origin of the source, the US or the UK, to avoid confusion.

It's because -->

in the US mainstream ( as your above source), "Asians " mean Chinese, Japanese and Korean exclusively; Indians and Pakistanis are addressed seperately.

In Hawaii though, Asians may include also some southeast Asian nationals, i.e.Vietnamese, Philipinos etc;

In all UK sources, "Asians" mean nationals from India subcontinent exclusively ( India,Bangladesh,Pakistan mainly), while Chinese, Japanese and Koreans are addressed seperately.


In European continent however, the name "Asians" could mean anyone in Asia, incluing Arabs, etc.

In all IQ-related topics, 105 average IQ is targeted only at Han Chinese, Japanese and Koreans, even Mongolians and Vietnamese are mostly outside this category.

 

[Speeder 2]

Speeder2 you are especially out of line. There’s several things wrong with what you’ve said.

I don't think so.

This neither proves nor disproves, environment’s effect on intelligence. They may have occupied the same country but they were hardly treated equally or given the same opportunities were they?

google up famous trans-cultural and trans racial twin adoption studies in the US and in Belgium.

I’m surprised that if you can see ptldM3’s mistake in cause and effect that you would go and make one yourself. Did smart populations choose the regions that promoted the evolution of higher intelligence or did those regions that promote the evolution of smart population?

The answers seems obvious don’t they?

either i wasn't very clear by skipping some detailed explainations or you confused several concepts by simply assuming "out of Africa" which is merely a hypothesis, not inclusively proven yet. An equally important hypothesis, "multi origin", has been systematically ignored and decriminated by the mainstream PC media and research.

Furthermore, even if "out of Africa" was valid, no inclusive conclusion could be made yet on "whether all human races were identical before some went out of Africa". So-called "we all came from black Africans" is also a PC slogan used by liberals, without inclusive scientific evidences thus far.

So excuse me that I have put rather generally in my previous post. Chicken-egg at the beginning regarding those hypotheses, one might say, at this stage.

However, let me put this clearer:

A popular and generally plausible hypothesis among non-PC scientists is that cold enviroment by and large helped shaping the IQ of Easy Asians and Europeans ( in this sense, environment forced changes in their genes pre-historically for them to survive in the far North regions );

However, aforementioned "environment" is a different concept all together from the "environment" that Indians and others are arguing about, which is more of short-tenure, by which as if a short space of hundreds of years even decades of the same "environment" could help improving one's IQ dramatically, which is highly unlikely in eyes of science. Under the later context, this "environment" factor is much less significant than ones' innate genetic inputs according to existing modern research.

This is racial crackpot theories. Like the prof. I quoted said we don’t know or understand what genes are responsible for intelligence nor are we likely to find out. Though it can almost be certain that intelligence is a complex polygenic trait and distant Intermarriage doesn’t mean equivalence in mental capacity.

Chill out, mate. this Arabs IQ stuff is only my personal belief , an opinion, in other words, not proven and without sufficient evidences.

You can’t DILUTE intelligence like a cocktail.

well, it seems that you can. Look up mixed-racial IQ studies ( e.g. some on mixed black americans, while others on Brasilians). The concept is also intuitively sound.

 

[CardSharp]

Wow just wow... I can see you already have your "non-PC" racial theory firmly set in mind so I'll leave that alone. Anyone want to bring some sane responses up for discussion?

 

[Chinese-Dragon]

Speeder2 you are especially out of line. There’s several things wrong with what you’ve said.

You're right.

I have no interest in "racial supremacy", or other such ideas like the ones given in this quote:

For if envionment is anything close to significant, why Blacks living in N America and Europe (the UK) for 100s for years - the same enviroment as whites, still have significant low IQ?

This implies that there is something with Black DNA that causes black people to have lower IQ. You can say it's non-PC, but it seems more like stereotyping.

Clearly, blacks living in the West do NOT have the same environmental factors that others have. Look at the income and education levels to see why they are at a "disadvantage" in terms of environmental factors. It has more to do with social exclusion and socio-economics than it does with their DNA.

 

[RiazHaq]

I think it has more to do with the culture than race.Children of Indians and living in usa seems much more intelligent and industrious and have more chance to be a scientist or doctor than indian kids living in home country,while being the same race.

The immigrants in the West, particularly the US, are not necessarily representative samples of the overall populations in Africa or South Asia.

I wrote a post "Are People of Color Less Intelligent" which shows a chart with a broader spread of IQ scores for south Asians than other races. There is a distinct smaller cluster between 90 and 100 and another bigger cluster between 80 and 90. But then there are a bunch of scores that go as low as 75 which bring down the average to 84.

I think it has to do with nurture and Flynn effect that impact IQ scores depending on access to education and health care.

Haq's Musings: Are people of color less intelligent?

 

[Chinese-Dragon]

I wrote a post "Are People of Color Less Intelligent" which shows a chart with a broader spread of IQ scores for south Asians than other races. There is a distinct smaller cluster between 90 and 100 and another bigger cluster between 80 and 90. But then there are a bunch of scores that go as low as 75 which bring down the average to 84.

What does "people of colour" mean though?

East Asians are "yellow" so are also people of "colour" I think?

(Not literally yellow though).

 

[Kyusuibu Honbu]

Wow just wow... I can see you already have your "non-PC" racial theory firmly set in mind so I'll leave that alone. Anyone want to bring some sane responses up for discussion?

SUGGESTED I.Q. PECKING ORDER
I.Q.

Jew (European, American). . . . . 115
Asian (in the U.S.) . . . . . . 108
East Indian (from India, in the U.S.) 108
U.S. White (Northern European, Urban) 105
U.S. White (Southern European). . . 100
U.S. White (Rural, South) . . . . 95
U.S. Black (North and West). . . . 90
Hispanic-American . . . . . . . 90
U.S. Black (Rural, South) . . . . 85
Hispanic, Illegal Immigrant . . . 80
American Indian . . . . . . . 80
Laplander . . . . . . . . . 75
Australian Aborigine (full-blooded) . 70
Equatorial Guinea . . . . . . . 59

Gene Pool

Since Indians in America along with Asian in America have the same average IQ.

So it is health,environment that are the main factors.

Also the discrimination causes one to show poorer performance.This is a fact which we all have experienced ourselves in our lives.Like i"ve given proof in my above post discrimination causes lower IQ.

 

[Kyusuibu Honbu]

The immigrants in the West, particularly the US, are not necessarily representative samples of the overall populations in Africa or South Asia.

Its true that immigrant are not the representative of entire ethnic group,but i think it does show the potential of that ethnic group,given the right atmosphere and access to facilities such as education etc.

by the way,did you read these books?

IQ and the Wealth of Nations

IQ and Global Inequality