Race and Intelligence: Separating Science From Myth

by Fish, Jefferson M.

• ISBN13: 9780805837575
• ISBN10: 0805837574
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-08-01
• Publisher: Lawrence Erlbau

Summary

In recent years, reported racial disparities in IQ scores have been the subject of raging debates in the behavioral and social sciences and education. What can be made of these test results in the context of current scientific knowledge about human evolution and cognition? Unfortunately, discussion of these issues has tended to generate more heat than light. Now, the distinguished authors of this book offer powerful new illumination. Representing a range of disciplines--psychology, anthropology, biology, economics, history, philosophy, sociology, and statistics--the authors review the concept of race and then the concept of intelligence. Presenting a wide range of findings, they put the experience of the United States--so frequently the only focus of attention--in global perspective. They also show that the human species has no "races" in the biological sense (though cultures have a variety of folk concepts of "race"), that there is no single form of intelligence, and that formal education helps individuals to develop a variety of cognitive abilities. Race and Intelligence offers the most comprehensive and definitive response thus far to claims of innate differences in intelligence among races.

Table of Contents

Preface	xi
Contributors	xvii
A Scientific Approach to Understanding Race and Intelligence	1	(30)
Jefferson M. Fish
Part I
Homo sapiens has no extant subspecies: There are no biological races. Human physical appearance varies gradually around the planet, with the most geographically distant peoples generally appearing the most different from one another. The concept of human biological races is a construction socially and historically localized to 17th and 18th-century European thought. Over time, different cultures have developed different sets (folk taxonomies) of socially defined ``races.''
The Genetic and Evolutionary Significance of Human Races	31	(26)
Alan R. Templeton
The Misuse of Life History Theory: J. P. Rushton and the Pseudoscience of Racial Hierarchy	57	(38)
Joseph L. Graves, Jr.
Folk Heredity	95	(18)
Jonathan Marks
The Myth of Race	113	(32)
Jefferson M. Fish
Part II
Racial categories are developed to serve social ends, including the justification and perpetuation of inequality. IQ testing has been a part of this process of stratifying groups.
Science and the Idea of Race: A Brief History	145	(32)
Audrey Smedley
The Bell Curve and the Politics of Negrophobia	177	(24)
Kimberly C. Welch
Part III
Cultural content, values, and assumptions are an inherent part of IQ tests. Formal schooling teaches people new ways of thinking, which are then measured by the tests. Access to schools, school quality, modes of instruction, attitudes toward formal education, and educational values vary cross-culturally.
An Anthropologist Looks at ``Race'' and IQ Testing	201	(24)
Mark Nathan Cohen
African Inputs to the IQ Controversy, or why Two-Legged Animals Can't Sit Gracefully	225	(16)
Eugenia Shanklin
Cultural Amplifiers of Intelligence: IQ and Minority Status in Cross-cultural Perspective	241	(40)
John U. Ogbu
Part IV
Biological-sounding concepts, especially heritability, have been misused to imply a genetic basis for group differences in IQ scores. There are many cognitive abilities---a single general factor of intelligence is inadequate to account for current knowledge in psychological measurement or cognitive science.
How Heritability Misleads About Race	281	(16)
Ned Block
Selections of Evidence, Misleading Assumptions, and Oversimplifications: The Political Message of The Bell Curve	297	(32)
John L. Horn
Part V
A wide variety of data, including reanalyses of data presented in The Bell Curve, imply that group differences in IQ are social in origin and can change as the result of changing social circumstances or social interventions.
Test Scores, Education, and Poverty	329	(26)
Michael Hout
Intelligence and Success: Is it All in the Genes?	355	(14)
Bernie Devlin
Stephen E. Fienberg
Daniel P. Resnick
Kathryn Roeder
Compensatory Preschool Education, Cognitive Development, and ``Race''	369	(38)
W. Steven Barnett
Gregory Camilli
Author Index	407	(14)
Subject Index	421