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In 1839 Samuel George Morton published his 'Crania Americana' in which he categorized the human race into four distinct subgroups, concluding that that the white, caucasian race is the most intelligent due to there larger cranial capacity. His research has since been discredited, though the argument has not moved on, while contemporary advocates for a difference in intelligence between races use evidence gathered from IQ testing, their argument rests on the same two basic principles; that intelligence is inherited, and that race is a concise classification of mankind.

The fundamental basis for this modern debate is the average fifteen point variation in IQ score between black and white people. It was Jensen (1960), 'How much can we boost IQ and scholastic achievement?' who first found this difference and this exact same disparity was found by Shuey (1966). For both researchers, and others, the reason for the fifteen point difference is a matter of genetics, part of the biological make up of white people somehow makes them more intelligent than black.

It is no surprise that this genetic determinist stance has been criticized, notably by a biologist, Bodmer (1971), with his eloquent seed analogy. The basis being that it is unwise to rely upon the results of IQ tests given the economic and cultural advantages generally afforded to white people. To highlight this quandary Dove (1968), devised the Chitling Test, drawing heavily from the language of black culture to parody the white bias in mainstream IQ testing. Unsurprisingly black participants scored the best.

The Chitling Test cannot be considered definitive proof that there is no difference in intelligence between races. The test is not standardized and does not have predictive validity; however it does serve as a good example that the fifteen point variation demonstrated by Jensen and Shuey is anything but clear cut. The ambiguous ground of the nature/nurutre debate in relation to IQ is indicative of the fundamental error made by those who claim any race is intellectually superior.

Not only is intelligence a concept not wholly determined by genetic makeup but it is highly unlikely that any measure of race as we define it, skin color, eye-color, etc. a related characteristic. Deferring to geneticist Steven Rose, "The consensus view among population geneticists and biological anthropologists is that the concept of 'race' to indicate analytically distinct subgroups of human race is biologically meaningless".

The genetic variation between any two humans is 0.1% from this figure 85% of the variation is found within any given race, 7% between different populations of the same race and only 8% between races. The minute difference between racial populations is accounted for by the superficial variations, with which we define race, but fundamentally human beings are the same, and more importantly, there is no scientific basis to any claim that any race is more intelligent than the other.

The fact that this debate inevitably leads to a black/white divide is perhaps indicative of the underlying prejudice of those who wish to perpetuate the myth. The real shame here is that if you tried to claim that tall people are more intelligent, or those with a size ten shoe and you be rightfully denounced; propose that white people are more intelligent than black and people are willing to listen.

References

Paul Gross: Pyschologhy The Science of Mind and Behaviour, Hodder and Stoughton, 1996
Paul Taylor et al: Sociology in Focus, Causeway Press, 1997
Larry Orcutt: What Race Where the Ancient Egyptians: Catchpenny Mysteries, 2000

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