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Are there differences in intelligence between races?

Results so far:

No
68% 413 votes Total: 606 votes
Yes
32% 193 votes

The use of IQ as a measure of "intelligence" offers many advantages. Among these advantages are the facts that it is a quantified, objective, and reproducible measure, and that it is correlated with many behaviors such as academic performance, criminality, single parenthood, teenage pregnancy, etc. To ignore the value of using IQ as a measure of intelligence is to ignore many careful scientific studies, which have been conducted at many Universities around the world.

One common misconception of IQ is that it is usually good for predicting academic success of individuals. But, any psychometrician would tell you that if one person has an IQ of 110, and another person has an IQ of 125, there is not much we can predict about the academic performance of these two people. But, if we have one classroom of 30 students with IQ 110 and another with IQ 125, we can predict a great deal about the difference in academic performance between these two groups of people.

Another common misconception is that racial differences in IQ are stagnant. As argued in this article, however, it appears that societal influences could dramatically alter the IQ differences across races.

Because IQ is quite useful for predicting differences in various behaviors between large groups of people, and racial differences in IQ are quite large, it is necessary that we address the issue of racial IQ differences if we are serious about improving the various behaviors and the academic performance of some races relative to others. This is the reason that this article defines "intelligence" in terms of IQ. For simplicity, I restrict this article to consideration of the Black-White IQ difference as observed in the USA.

IQ has been found to be fairly strongly hereditary. Currently, it appears that social programs encourage stupid Black parents to have larger families than smart Black parents have. This might be one cause of the difference in IQ between Whites and Blacks. One way to solve this problem might be to somehow encourage intelligent Black parents to have large families and stupid Black parents to have small families. Because IQ is fairly strongly inherited, and it is primarily genetic, this might result in a significant upward shift in Black IQ's. One might argue that the phenomenon known as regression to the mean would prevent this desirable state of affairs from taking place. But it is doubtful that this problem would arise because as long as we keep maintaining the same strategy


Below are the top articles rated and ranked by Helium members on:

Are there differences in intelligence between races?

Yes
  • 1 of 22

    by Cyd Madsen

    Suggesting there are differences in intelligence between races can be misunderstood as racism, rather than a misunder...read more

  • 2 of 22

    by Isaac Madengu Mangatu

    They are those who will read this article and curse me because they disagree with my views and what I am going to say...read more

No
  • 1 of 44

    by Ernest Capraro

    There are differences in intelligence between individuals. A myriad of factors go into determining a person's intell...read more

  • 2 of 44

    by Rixta Francis

    Humans are humans and there are intelligent and not intelligent humans. Race has nothing to do with that whatsoever. ...read more

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