Are all races equally intelligent?

There certainly are apparent genetic differences, so there could be differences in intelligence as well. But, of course, how you measure intelligence affects the results quite a bit. I do think it's silly and likely racist to pursue this line of reasoning. What would be the point? I can only see discrimination as a result.

I think there are so many different kinds of intelligence (verbal, mathematical, physical, musical, and I'm sure a host of others) that it's impossible to test it without imposing your own values on which of those intelligences qualify as valid. For myself, I believe all people are equally intelligent in whatever way their culture values and enables them to be.

Ah yes, good old Dr. Rushton. I was at UWO shortly after that blow-up
happened, and no one really wanted to talk about the guy.

I think the biggest argument against this is that each society measures intelligence in terms of what it takes to succeed in that society. Until people can agree on a set of measurements that apply across all possible societies, this kind of study will always be easily discounted by the people who are not favored by it. Of course the only way to get everyone to agree on a set of measurements is to have a set of measurements which shows that everyone is of exactly equal intelligence.

That said, I think that such a set of measurements exists, and I think if we could identify it, the measurement would show a direct correlation between average brain size and average intelligence.

I think that this type of research has to include many sociological factors, such as economic status. It has been shown in some researchers that different races have different economic status. Many of the races living in lower economic status go to lower status schools which does have an affect on intelligence levels.

i have not seen the data but i think that one of the big possiblilities for the results seen are that the testing itself is bias. much of our standardized testing done in schools, i thought was found to be bias, particularly against blacks taught in the inner city. anyway, i have trouble with any sweeping generalization with out the proof in front of me.

Nurture, not nature.

drdt, do you know *anything* about neurophysiology?

jettles, in both instances above, you meant "biased."

bill, are you aware that there is greater genetic variation between members of the same race (e.g, Swedes) than there is between races?

Once again, I highly recommend that everyone read Steven Pinker's _How the Mind Works_ for a good overview of recent research in these areas.

Gutsy survey, I don't know if I would have the nerve to make one like this.

I'd want to see what kinds of measures were used to determine intelligence, and I'd want to know how intelligence was being defined before I considered the idea.

**bill..I think you are absolutely right about it being detrimental. Even if it was true, what good would that knowledge do? Just cause problems.

I find the who concept interesting. I personally don't believe it solely based on the findings of Dr.Rushton, but I think that he has a right to at least attempt to try and prove his hypothesis. I found the whole outrage over his work to be disturbing; are we saying as a society that we will not allow investigation into such possibilities because they might lead us to conclusions nobody would like? Again, I don't believe it because I find it difficult to define intelligence let alone measure it, but I don't think such proposals should be attacked solely for what they suggest. Sometimes the truth is scary;
and because we don't like it doesn't make it not true.

I don't think it is possible to filter out all the other factors - gender, economic, geographic, education, health, etc. what is the point of trying? All it will create is distrust, bad feelings and worse.

hunter: not a whit and I'm not too interested either. My limited understanding of natural history depicts people's brains getting larger as they evolved and some vague correlation between the brain sizes of various animals and their relative capacity for learning.

On the other hand, I do notice that again people (Ophelia, jettles) are mistaking 'intelligence' for 'education'. I am, in fact, more educated than a certain friend of mine who was unable to attend more than a two-year community college, but I would bow to his brain power in an instant if asked.

drdt, the variation between species may be relevant, because of increasing numbers and complexity of brain structures, but within species, it's not a conclusive predictor, from what I understand. For example, male and female humans have the same brain structures, but men's brains tend to be somewhat larger, on average, than women's. However, women's brains seem to have more connections between neurons than men's brains do. (steve, Dave, please correct me if I'm wrong on this.) So, it would seem that within a species, brain size takes a back seat to more subtle factors in predicting intelligence.

I think my biggest problem with all of this, aside from the difficulty in testing raw "intelligence" and the fuzziness of "race," is that aggregate data, when applied to individuals tends to become meaningless. Suppose it were proven fact that, on average, "orientals" are smarter than "whites." Now what do we know? If I am denied opportunities to learn because "everyone knows whites are stupid and not worth educating," regardless of my personal intelligence and other talents which enable me to leverage that intelligence usefully, I'm being discriminated against on the basis of race, something outside my control, and not necessarily relevant to the decision. What about people of mixed-race heritage? How about Jews, who look white, but have a very specific and limited genetic pool? I'd like to know, first of all, what this guy actually thinks he's proving. (I'd like to add here that any story like this, I either look for more info or ignore it...the media is *SO* bad about reporting science, usually simplifying things to the point that what they're saying is wrong.)

If you're working from things like standardized test scores, income levels, quality of life measurements, etc. then you're automatically introducing a bias that can't really be accounted for.

it's 'truth' at any given time is based on the dominant social paradigms.

I think that people who don't receive much education are denied certain opportunities, and that the easiest way to remedy this is to encourage them to get more education. Since there are identifiable educational trends among ethnic (note I did not say racial) groups, I think that careful research into differences in cultural attitudes towards education is needed. I'm not familiar with the research cited here but from the terms used ('race' for 'ethnicity', 'oriental' for 'Asian', and so forth) I suspect that it does not address the important question and may actually make the climate for such research more difficult.

i'm always startled, though i suppose i shouldn't be, when alleged scientists use "race" as a meaningful analytic category. there are no biologically meaningful races; human variation is too broad, patterned too randomly and in a continuous fashion to fit into discrete categories. one must examine the social if one wants to discuss race.

sam, I believe that is the single most intelligent comment I have ever heard on this topic.

steve: thanks. pet peeve of mine, i'm afraid -- happens to be my line of work.

While, I'd like to feel the same way as hunter, steve and sam -- it certainly would be convenient for "race" to be irrelevant -- I just can't dismiss the apparent, obvious physical differences. I don't buy it guys. I think your assertions may be motivated more by personal politics than science. How could it be that obvious commonalities (things that a child easily recognizes) like: color of skin, hair and eyes; shape of eyes and nose; height; etc. among races can exist, but then nothing underneath (like intelligence, physical ability, emotion) is common? If the skin is uniformly different from another race, why not other internal factors. Didn't we evolve differently, isn't that why we look different? If one race adapted to a strong sun, might they not have adapted to other environmental stimuli (different flora and fauna)?

I want a world where all races get along and have the same rights and privileges as all other races, but I don't think pretending our differences aren't there is the way to get there. I think being honest about them is the only way.

bill: outward appearance is shaped as much by social conditioning as by genetics. how one carries oneself, decorates oneself, uses facial expressions, fixes one's hair, and a thousand other small physical expressions are determined by socialization and everyday practice, not simply genetics. the problem with phenotype is that it is mediated by social practice. the problem with constructing a biological race is that when one closely examines physical characteristics one finds more variation within a breeding population than between populations, as hunter has already mentioned. the african american population in the united states is a good example; variations in facial features, skin color, and hair type alone are broad enough that a discrete biological racial type cannot be constructed. this does not even begin to address variations in blood configurations, the presence or absence of the sickle cell allele (which was used at one time to try to construct a racial category) or the thousands of other genetic bits that make human beings. the african american population has also genetically intermixed, forcibly and otherwise, with the euro american population, making it even more difficult to classify as a discrete genetic category. genetic variation is not distributed in a regular enough pattern to facilitate such categorization. australian aboriginals have skin color, some facial features, and some hair type in common with african peoples. indian peoples share skin color and some facial features in common with african peoples, yet some indians from kashmir have blue eyes, a trait that was common before european contact. _the human species_, mountain view: mayfield publishing, 1994, by biologist john relethford is a very nice discussion of these issues.

i'm certainly not arguing that races do not exist; i'm saying that they do not exist on any useful or meaningful biological level.

I once attended a lecture on environmental illnesses; frostbite, hypothermia, heat stroke, and the like. When a person gets cold their peripheral blood vessels constrict, sacrificing finger, toes, and ears to keep heat in the core. Every so often (about 20 minutes I think) the vessels open up again, this reopening diminishing over time. What you feel is your fingers get cold, hurt, go numb, then hurt again about every twenty minutes reminding you that you ought to do something to warm them up. Blacks do not have this reopening response. They get cold, their peripheral blood vessels shut down, and they don't get the painful reminder 20 minutes later to go warm up. The people who found this checked out some blacks who lived successfully in Alaska. Individual variation? No. They'd just learned to put on mittens or go inside the first time their fingers got cold. I suppose you can argue that this difference isn't meaningful, but it's real.

dab, no one is denying that there are genetic variations between individuals and between populations. The problem is that the lines are impossible to draw. Would the effect you mention be true of a Yoruba and an Australian aborigine? Is the genetic cause of it linked to the melanin-related genes such that if you're darker than, say, a Welshman, you should never forget your gloves? Is one grandparent enough to make you a member of that race, or do we just judge by your appearance? If your parents look black and you look white (happens reasonably often among the American black population because of recessive genes from white ancestors expressing), will your fingers get cold faster than mine will, or not?

See what I mean? It's not that there are no genetic trends, it's that there are no easy lines to draw, especially not according to physical appearance. That's why we're saying that race doesn't exist as a biological concept.

Hunter, you have many good questions. I wonder though, is someone who researches those questions going to be labeled a racist? After all, they're looking for genetic differences between races. If race doesn't exist as a biological concept, you really can't even ask those questions at all can you? Except I'd say that the example I gave shows that race does exist as a biological concept and all your questions then become interesting. Yes, it's complex. Racial lines are not always clear. In this case the more complexity the better I say.

dab: plenty of serious scholars are researching these questions. what they've found is that using race as analytical category doesn't allow them to collect or organize their data in a useful fashion. it has less to do with fears of being labelled racist and more to do with epistemological concerns. current researchers have been using the concept of "breeding populations" which accounts for phenotypic and other genetic differences between groups of people but also recognizes the permeability and migration of populations. no doubt there are genetic trends amongst groups of people, but how does one account for the continuous variation of certain traits in one direction while other traits vary in completely different ways?

oh dear, i've ascended my soapbox again and i promised myself that i wouldn't. shall we take this debate to email?

I'm glad to hear people are working on this sort of thing. As long as you're talking rationally, go ahead and stay on that soapbox. I'm happy to read and learn.

While you guys have been busily debating whether there's such a thing as race, and if so, how to measure it, you've ignored whether there is such a thing as intelligence, and if so, how to measure it...

We've also ignored whether there is such a thing as equality, and if so, how to measure it... (oh, and a lot of other things)

bill, thank you for picking up my argument in my absence.

Race has no bearing on intelligence .....Stupidity is rampant among all the races and it depends more on the
individual human beings potential to learn and the chance they are given to gain education...and whether or not they
can take advantage of the opportunities offered up to them....If someone is not given the correct environment to
nurture their brain growth...they will be dumber than someone who is given plenty of support and encouragement
and opportunity to learn....no matter what race they belong to