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| Are white people smarter than blacks? November, 2007 |
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| Are Blacks less Intelligent than Whites? |
Scientific Racism and Eugenics; Ideas that were thrown on history's trash heap.
Are blacks less intelligent than whites? Some people think so. Part 2
Click here for page 1.
Shockley's shocking behavior.
Watson is not alone in his racist views, other well known white scientists have publicly shared such views. Co-inventor of the transistor, William Shockley said that blacks were inferior to whites. Time Magazine in its top 100 scientists of the 20th century said this about Shockley, “Although he had no formal training in genetics or psychology, he began to formulate a theory of what he called dysgenics. Using data from the U.S. Army's crude pre-induction IQ tests, he concluded that African Americans were inherently less intelligent than Caucasians — an analysis that stirred wide controversy among laymen and experts in the field alike.
Nonetheless, Shockley pursued his inflammatory ideas in a series of articles and speeches. Regularly interrupted by boos and catcalls, he argued that remedial educational programs were a waste of time. He suggested that individuals with IQs below 100 be paid to undergo voluntary sterilization. He donated openly and repeatedly to a so-called Nobel sperm bank designed to pass on the genes of geniuses. He filed a $1.25 million libel suit against the Atlanta Constitution, which had compared his ideas to Nazi genetic experiments; the jury awarded him $1 in damages.”
Shockley also proposed that individuals with IQs below 100 be paid to undergo voluntary sterilization.
In an interview with U.S. News & World Report he fell into the trap of discussing race. He pointed out that African Americans as a group scored 15 points lower on IQ tests, and suggested the cause was hereditary.
Shockley found himself -- not unhappily -- in a swirl of controversy. Biologists and geneticists blasted his theories, pointing out that eugenics was a rationale used by the Nazis during World War II, and was an idea that had a weak scientific foundation. Shockley was attacked in print, on television, and in scientific journals.
Although the press scourged Shockley, others maintained the never ending beat of blacks being less intelligent than whites.
Charles Murray and the Bell Curve.
During the 1990’s the controversy around studies of intellect and race erupted when the book, “The Bell curve” hit store shelves. It sold over 400,000 copies.
According to the website, http://www.indiana.edu/~intell/bellcurve.shtml, the book claimed that an intellectual elite was forming. It said the best and brightest tend to hang together and that people with lower I.Q’s were destined for a life as the underclass.
The book also said that low I.Q’s were responsible for poverty, school dropouts, unemployment, laziness, divorce rates, welfare dependency, poor health, unwanted pregnancies, crime and a lack of interest in civic participation.
It was also reported that the book claimed that East Asians scored higher on I.Q. test than white Americans. However, the focus on whites’ superiority over blacks took center stage. The book also said that low IQ women were having more babies than white high IQ women. To fix the problem, “The authors recommend that children born to single mothers with low cognitive ability be voluntarily given up for adoption.”
The book suggested that America would become a society based on intelligence with the high IQ’s on top and the Low IQ’s on the bottom.
The problem with these periodic outburst of Racial Science is that they might take hold and become the basis for a new era of eugenics.
Watson’s remarks should not be easily dismissed. Under the right social/economic conditions blacks could find themselves forced to go to “genetic correction centers” where they are sterilized and where their children taken away from them. That last statement is pure hyperbole, I cannot deny it. (But history has shown us that unthinkable social policies can be implemented. Genocide, ethnic cleansing can and has happened in the United States. Go ask a Native American if you don’t believe me.)
The site offers critiques and comments about the book’s authors. It says, “Perhaps the most troubling aspect of the book is its rhetorical stance. This is one of the most stylistically divisive books that I have ever read. Despite occasional avowals of regret and the few utopian pages at the end, Herrnstein and Murray set up an us/them dichotomy that eventually culminates in an us-against-them opposition.” (pg 70)
“Who are ‘we’ ? Well, we are the people who went to Harvard (as the jacket credits both of the authors) or attended similar colleges and read books like this. We are the smart, the rich, the powerful, the worriers.” (pg 70)
“Why is this so singularly off-putting? I would have thought it unnecessary to say, but if people as psychometrically smart as Messrs. Herrnstein and Murray did not "get it," it is safer to be explicit. High IQ doesn't make a person one whit better than anybody else. And if we are to have any chance of a civil and humane society, we had better avoid the smug self-satisfaction of an elite that reeks of arrogance and condescension.” (pg 71)
Click here for page 3.
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