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Add to FavoritesThrough decades of research, scientists have proved that if the rest of the world blew up today leaving only Africa, the majority of the world's DNA traits would be preserved. There is little genetic difference from "Race" to "Race," although adverse conditions and limited opportunity create circumstances that may minimize educational advancement for some "Races" and make it appear that way.
The true question is why does man expend so much energy trying to subjugate, eliminate prospects for and dominate others, including women, then fall back on theories of superior intelligence to rationalize their actions?
The Science of "Race"-
According to scientific data presented by "Race, Are We So Different?" a traveling museum exhibit presented by the American Anthropological Association, we are all genetic descendants of Africa, with outer appearances only skin deep. (Exactly what your mother said about beauty) Scientists understand the skin color you see when you look at your fellow man is a mere adaptation to the sun and has nothing to do with intelligence.
Melanocytes produce melanin to darken and protect skin from UV Radiation in tropical climates. Ranges of skin color exist to balance Folic Acid and Vitamin D, with pale skin allowing more Vitamin D absorption and darker skins allowing less.
This would be made clear by a theoretical walk from a tropical climate, such as Africa, to a point North, such as Sweden. On your journey you would witness a gradual transition of dark to paler skinned indigenous populations. Skin color is a visible illustration of the DNA migration from Africa to Asia and Europe that carried with it a maximum 7% DNA variation.
Most common DNA variables are carried by every human and not allocated by "Race."
What's "Race" Got To Do With Anything?
"Race" is a tool created for dominance. It's used similarly to the psychological tools used in training an animal, perhaps one you fear, like a pitt-bull. Before your bold commands, rules of behavior and physical restraint to reinforce your ideas, you must first believe yourself superior, the boss. You must never let the animal have the upper hand or believe he is your equal or your struggle to dominate may be in vain.
You create a sense of superiority. You have the food, the water, the ability to punish. You are in charge. If these things don't work, you have a choke-chain. Once you've established your superiority, you may assert your dominance. You will be the boss, your animal will "sit," "stay" or "heel" on command; and you will do whatever you can to keep it that way.
That's why "Race," with its inherent stereotypes and assumptions that one culture is inferior to another, has remained so divisive to this day. It was a concept invented to facilitate a system of single "Race" dominance and privilege like one would have over a family pet; and those who put the system into place, those who maintain it, will do whatever they can to keep it that way.
Racial Superiority - A Legislated Concept-
The concept of "Race" we know today has nothing to do with genes or inherent intelligence. During man's early history, the concept of "Race" did not exist. Early human divisions were based solely on religious -vs- pagan beliefs, with the first racial distinctions made in 1492 when Jews were expelled from Spain. Racial concepts were further defined by ongoing traditions and legislation:
-1500- The concept of the "European Chain of Being" laid a framework for sorting people into "Races."
-1525- A German engraver created fear and curiosity by depicting Caribbean natives as dog-headed cannibals.
-1640- 3 White and 1 Negro indentured servants escaped, only the Negro was sentenced to permanent servitude, creating the first lifetime slave.
-1662- Colonial Slave Laws defined who was a slave. If your mother was a slave then her children would be slaves. If she was free, her children would be free.
-1669- Colonial law declared killing a slave a non felony.
-1679- A law forbade free Negroes and Indians from owning Christian servants.
-1692- A Law forbade Negroes from owning horses.
1705- Negroes, Mulattos and Indians were declared real estate.
1758- Linneaeus, a Swedish Naturalist, presented 4 human racial classifications plus a Monster and Feral category (Wild)
-1784- Thomas Jefferson declared "Race" as an obstacle to equality
Through these and many other laws and court cases, "Race" was fashioned into a system of legislated privilege with distinctions and restrictions, including those related to education, designed to disenfranchise Native Americans, who lost 95% of their land because of it and Mexicans, who lost land holdings in California which shut them out of lucrative Gold mining and other opportunities.
Interred Japanese citizens lost everything. Chinese were adjudicated as non-white to prevent immigration and African Americans became the only "Race" downgraded from indentured servitude to the lifetime slavery that provided free labor to help build America.
So Why Does One "Race" Appear More Intelligent?
Of course people are not animals; but you may have seen on talk shows or documentaries what treating a human child like an animal can do to their ability to learn. One little White girl had been chained and locked in her family's basement for years by parents who couldn't explain why they did it. That chained child, just like a trained pet, had been conditioned to a life of limited education and socialization. Restricted living arrangements produced a child who, long after her release into a normal world, couldn't read or write or perform basic childhood skills. Children like her may never achieve society's norm, much less excel.
And what about when she grows up/ How will she do on IQ tests? Will anything she does ever make up for lost early development years? Will she graduate from high school or go to college? Will she qualify only for low wage jobs? What knowledge will she pass along to her offspring? It might take generations for children enslaved like her to produce a genius in her family tree and "Race" has nothing to do with it.
Educational "Tracking"-
Did you know there is a tradition of holding minority children to low achievement levels; it's so ingrained in our school systems nationwide it has a name? "Tracking" is where minority children, regardless of testing, regardless of IQ or potential, are held to low level classes because of their "Race." It's the educational equivalent of keeping a student chained in the closet until someone figures it out and demands they be set free.
Overcoming-
Regardless of legislation, decree, assumption or stereotype, no one "Race" has a monopoly on intelligence. Despite having to overcome centuries of legislated dominance, second class treatment, relegation to reservations, interment camps, slave quarters, persecution, poor job prospects, lynching, poverty, denial of even a basic education and Tracking, families of all "Races" have bounced back to produce geniuses.
No there is no difference in intelligence between "Races". There is only a difference in opportunity.
Learn more about this author, Carol Rucker.
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Yes
by Cyd Madsen
Suggesting there are differences in intelligence between races can be misunderstood as racism, rather than a misunderstanding of intelligence. It is also a gross misunderstanding of what "race" is or means.
First to tackle the concept of "race." Nobody really knows what race, as it applies to humans, means. We do know that certain people look different, come from different cultures, and that the differences in humanity are closely tied to which part of the world their ancestors came from. People with pale skin and eyes, thinner hair, and less excitable temperaments tend to come from colder climates. All of their features, and much of their temperament, are adaptations to environment for the purposes of survival. People with ancestry closer to the equator, where the sun is stronger and stays in the sky for a longer duration, tend to have darker skin and eyes, hair that is more dense and wiry to protect their scalp from the sun, and broader noses that do not need to warm the air before it reaches their lungs. These are just two examples of how race may be defined. They're also two of the most common groupings of physical characteristics that we're familiar with in our contemporary word. But do these characteristics define race? According to the experts, those whose knowledge and research is extensive, the answer is, "No." Why? Because race based on physical characteristics is a modern concept. It has only been during the past few hundred years that "race" has moved from being defined through wealth, power, and status to physical characteristics. If something is possible of changing its meaning, then it has no intrinsic meaning and cannot be absolutely defined by modern, and often arbitrary, criteria.
Race may not exist as an absolute, but our modern culture has established criteria for defining race, and we do place value on the different races. One of those value systems is intelligence. And here we go again with a Big Question: What is intelligence? Ask 50 experts what intelligence is, then brace yourself for a mind-numbing, theory-clashing, hot-headed debate on what it actually is. Experts achieve the crown of Expert by researching what already exists, and then putting it together in a way new enough to attract attention. If any two "experts" agreed on anything, one of them would be redundant. We can't rely on any one definition of intelligence.
However, we can, and do, adopt certain definitions of intelligence in our school and workplace environments. We just can't resist measuring people and putting them into little boxes. The definition of intelligence generally adopted by schools are those theories that have orderly tests attached to them that measure the theory and make it easier for schools to label children and move them through the system. At the beginning of standardized school testing, the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Quotient Test was the most commonly used test. It was terribly discriminatory in its use of language, and did not take into consideration the wide range of non-racial temperaments that allows one child to excel at taking tests, while causing a "brighter" child to choke up when faced with a test they could ace while half asleep. In short, it was useless, showed false differences in intelligence between different races, and damaged the self-perception of millions of children. But it did serve its purpose. It brought a small, but unjust, amount of order out of chaos.
More recently the WISC (Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children) has been introduced as a more accurate way of testing intelligence in children. We still can't come up with a definitive definition of intelligence, but what the heck, let's go ahead and test it anyway. And this time, let's use WISC because, if given in its entirety, it covers roughly 20 different areas we hope will help us better categorize and file away our children, and make our task of public education manageable. Generally, only the ten verbal and performance portions of the WISC are given in public schools. These do tend to have less of a racial bias because, as explained to me by an educational therapist, the most heavily weighted section of the WISC to define intelligence is the ability to memorize random words and symbols. Not problem solving, just memorizing gibberish. Yep, that pretty much sounds like public education. At least it lessens the possibility of racial bias.
At its best, "intelligence" can, and should, be defined as human potential and the realization of that potential. Potential is endless, and in 1983 Dr. Howard Gardner published a book entitled "Frames of Mind" that outlined multiple intelligences (or potentials) that exist in human beings. They are:
-Logical-Mathema tical Intelligence
-Linguis tic Intelligence
-Bodily- Kinesthetic Intelligence
-Musical Intelligence
-Interpe rsonal Intelligence
-Intra-p ersonal Intelligence
-Spacial Intelligence
In the 20th anniversary edition of "Frames of Mind" Gardner proposed a possible eighth intelligence-spiritu al intelligence. Whether or not there are seven or seventy different types of intelligence, it's fairly easy to see that there are many ways that individuals can be gifted with potential that enriches their lives, expands the quality of life for them and those around them, and makes a contribution to the world. Many educators embrace Gardner's vision of intelligence, but it still remains too broad, too liberating, and too hard to narrow down into a tidy test to begin actually educating our children to help them realize their unique potential.
Now, to bring this back to my contention that there are differences in intelligence between races, we have to go back and refresh our memories on how our modern world defines race-the geography of our ancestors, which in turn shapes our outward appearance. If the geography of our ancestors shapes the architecture of our bones, the color and density of our skin, and the color of our eyes, it stands to reason that the same geography has helped shape our cognitive abilities. One example would be any race with ancestry from arctic regions. With that much blinding snow in all directions, the mind has to form finely tuned spacial relations on a minimum of sensory clues, or they're going to freeze where they stand. Another example would be a person with geographical ancestry that comes from a crowded island environment with a somewhat harsh climate. People in that environment, along with their long noses to warm air before it hits the lungs, would probably adapt their intelligence/cogniti on/psychometric abilities in the direction of logistics and mathematics. It takes a little logic and math to keep order in a crowd.
No discussion of the differences of intelligences in races would be complete without at least some mention of Michael Jordan. With his broad, flat nose, long and slender body, dark skin, and physical strength, it's safe (in several different ways) to say that he's of African decent. It's also fairly safe to say that his ancestors came from a region of Africa with wide open spaces that were arid, and the people relied on the fruits of the hunt for survival. This would require a great deal of bodily-kinesthetic intelligence-an awareness of where one's body is in space, judgment of how and when and how hard to throw a spear, and infinite unconscious mathematical computations happening simultaneously to know when to move in closer and when to run. His performance on the basketball court is a scorecard in motion of his superior bodily-kinesthetic intelligence. But his intelligence doesn't stop there. Neither his, nor any person's, degrees of intelligence in the seven different areas Gardner has identified is limited. Jordan was a horrible basketball player in high school and was kicked off the team. That didn't stop him, and that requires a tremendous amount of intra-personal intelligence. His charisma is testimony to his off-the-charts interpersonal intelligence, and his adaptation to a successful post-basketball career suggests a whole lot of logical-mathematical intelligence going on.
Superior intelligence of a specific type, mostly determined by what we define as race, is not a limitation or a value judgment. As our world becomes more complex and competitive, we all need to build on our natural gifts of intelligence, nurture our dominant intelligence, have the smarts to delegate our weaknesses to the next guy who excels in that area, and get over our emotional-cultural fixation on the concepts of "race" and "intelligence."
Yes, there are differences in intelligence between races, but there are enough different intelligences to go around, and enough ambiguity about race to make both non-issues. Don't impose value judgments on others because of who their ancestors were, and you'll open the floodgates of your own potential. Honor and respect intelligence in all its different forms, and you take the first step to realizing all the potential that time and place have given to you. Don't wish you were anybody but yourself, then be yourself all the way. It's the best road to appreciating others, with the clearest sign posts, you'll ever travel.
Learn more about this author, Cyd Madsen.
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