Kieran Healy

Smart Bomb

Kevin Drum sets off an intellectual WMD on his blog, writing about IQ and race. Sit back and watch the fallout spread across the blogosphere, with lots of posts of varying degrees of anger, tortuousness and smugness, depending. I could write a lot about this topic, but I’ll limit myself to two points. Kevin is begging the question, and he is equivocating between two senses of the word ‘intelligence’ in a way that makes his argument seem much more controversial than it really is.

First, the question begging. For Kevin, intelligence is like smut:

[I]ntelligence is a useful, everyday umbrella term that has genuine meaning. It is, roughly, the ability to deal with analytic complexity, and let’s face it: we all know it when we see it… In fact, the main reason that intelligence is such a hot button is that it so obviously is important. In a complex society, high intelligence is an extremely valuable commodity, and this makes the politics of intelligence both contentious and ideological.

He goes on to say:

Although the origins and effects of racism are long and complex, there’s little question that lower average intelligence is one of the big reasons that blacks do poorly in American society. The fact is that the black-white gap does exist, and it’s not merely a cultural artifact or the result of bias on standardized tests. It’s a very real thing and it needs to be attacked head on.

Kevin hasn’t really made his case. Instead, he’s assumed that it’s true and argued from there. He goes in one breath from “lower than average intelligence is one of the reasons that blacks do poorly in American society” to “The fact is that the black-white test score gap does exist, and it’s not merely a cultural artifact or the result of bias on standardized tests.” Kevin’s right that the black-white gap on test scores is something we can robustly measure. What that tells us about the usefulness of “intelligence” as an explanation for the gap is exactly what’s at issue in this debate. To simply assert that “there’s little question that lower than average intelligence” is what explains the gap is to assume precisely what needs to be proven. Rather than giving us a workable definition of intelligence, he just says “we all know it when we see it”.

Second, the equivocation. In the course of his post, Kevin discusses The Bell Curve. He thinks Herrnstein and Murray show convincingly that intelligence is a real trait and that it’s socially important. Then

there’s Part 3, in which the authors argue that the 15-point IQ difference between blacks and whites is primarily caused by genetic differences. And suddenly the quality of their arguments falls off a cliff… they vastly underestimate the power of environmental factors. Sure, intelligence is 50% hereditary, but that means it’s also 50% environmental. And that 50% is more than enough to account for a 15-point difference — but only if you take seriously the wretched conditions that blacks at all socioeconomic levels face in this country.

In other words, the gap between blacks and whites on the only thing we can measure that might be related to underlying intelligence washes out when we take environmental factors into account! So where, exactly, is the controversy? I reject Kevin’s straw man: no-one is arguing that there’s no such thing as smart people in the “know it when I see it” sense he talks about. Things only get controversial (and racist) if you think there’s a persistent, measurable between-group difference on this trait between blacks and whites that can’t be eradicated by equalizing environments. But Kevin plainly does not think this is so, because he has just told us that the only measurable group-level test-score differences are explained by environmental factors! Which leaves us with the harmless proposition that the genetic component of intelligence is variably distributed across the population, but not in the basically racist way that Herrnstein and Murray insinuate.

Which leaves us with the question of why Kevin would post something that just cries out to be misinterpreted. The last four paragraphs of his post are taken up with ‘Do Not Shy From Harsh Truths, My Liberal Friends’ and ‘Face the Truth Head On’ stuff. That’s a seductive rhetoric for embattled liberals. You’re on the side of truth. You are being realistic. The conservatives like you. I’m all in favor of facing unpleasant truths, being a social scientist and all. But what’s so unpleasant about what seems to be the truth here?

But what’s so unpleasant about what seems to be the truth here?

I see you haven’t spent very much time around white people in your life.

Perhaps Malcolm X was right about the Irish.

OK, OK. I meant, unpleasant for the liberal political project.

When this sort of discussion come up (not just in an American context), I think of Jared Diamond’s book on human development, “Guns, Germs and Steel”. He is very much of the opinion that environment has a huge impact on how races develop, and he argues his case very persuasively. (his analysis is in a global context). Have you read it ?

Cheers,
John

How about this: if a definition of intelligence includes the ability to deal with complexity, THEN surely the ability of black people to survive in the racist complexity of the U.S. argues for the SUPERIOR intelligence of those who have survived up to now. Living in two worlds at the same time is not the easiest thing on earth to do.

Not arguing about intelligence here, but perspective.—Larry C.

The problem with obsessing about intelligence and its genetic-or-not determination is that it wastes vast amounts of time on something that is out of our control (at least for now). By focussing on genetics, people thereby ignore cultural issues, and the result is the kind of anodyne “All cultures are equally valid” pablum we see so much of nowdays.

The bottom line is that some societies are healthy and wealthy, and some are dysfunctional, poor and getting poorer. The differences can presumably be because of genetic endowment, or culture, or the physical landscape in which the society lives. Jarod Diamond makes a big song-and-dance about the landscape, but he’s ultimately answering a different question—- “why did history go the way it did?”—- not “how important is the land to wealth?”. Looking at the landscape in a non-scientific, but “intuitive” manner, to me it seems clear that by far the most important salient differences are cultural. If one accepts that, then the corollary is that certain cultures need to be persuaded to change their ways, and if they refuse, have only themselves to blame for the consequences. This seems a pretty harsh statement, but one that flows naturally from the argument; and I think we’d all be better off pondering the truth of it and its consequences. For example and immediate question is, do we know anything about how to change culture? What sort of things change naturally, and what sort of change can be imposed? What sorts of timescales are involved?

Certainly all this would be a heck of a lot more fruitful than yet another round of “intelligence is genetic; is not; is too; is not; is too; I know you are but what am I”.

Hmm, I am stuck on wondering just what Malcom X said about the Irish. I am guessing it hit on a fundamental crankiness, but I’d love to know.

Kevin may have been tweaking some straw liberal but I don’t think he’s an ideologue of even that close to the right of center. His posts are usually rather critical of the right.

I think, however the issue of intelligence and race is not the main issue facing us today.

The main issue is intelligence and Republicanism: can they co-exists and if so, how long until we can point to an unequivocal example?

But what’s so unpleasant about what seems to be the truth here?

Nothing, you would think. But here’s how Douglas Massey began his review of TBC in AJS:

“The discipline of sociology has a lot to answer for, and one of the things I lay at its feet is The Bell Curve. If sociologists had been more forthright in studying human intelligence over the past two decades, Herrnstein and Murray might never have written this book, or at least they would have produced a very different sort of work.”

He mentions Oscar Lewis and DP Moynihan as examples of what happens to people studying ethnic differences; I could give Bereiter and Engelmann as another. Massey ends his review thus:

“Herrnstein and Murray have thrown down the gauntlet. Does the field of sociology have the will and the courage to accept the challenge?”

You know what upsets me about all of this? (BTW, I’m a Jewish guy with an Ivy League BA and a fancy schmancy law degree who has sort of found himself a perpetual journeyman in the work force, as factors seemingly entirely beyond my control seem to govern almost every important development in my career; hell, I even had the good fortune of having an office one block NOrth of the World Trade Center on the morning of 11 September 2001).

Why did I put in that parenthetical? Because not only is KEVIN begging the question: KIERAN is begging the quesiton as well.

What we REALLY want to get to is not who fills out the best tests with their number two pencils—so that we can measure “intelligence” as a score in the 1400’s (my SAT score) makes me “more intelligent” than on in the 1200’s (the President of the United States’ score—bet you didn’t think he got that high a score!).

What we want is to explain SOCIETAL SUCCESS (which, of course, we being a money-obsessed society—with all the good and bad that represents—defining “success” as “money”).

Thus, consideration of this cockamamie “intelligence” measure is based on a RIDICULOUS, RIDICULOUS (did I mention RIDICULOUS) assumption that success is a directly correlated result of “intelligence” in the first place! Thus—go ahead and make all the racially charged arguments that somehow the African American brain is intrinsically “less intelligent” than the all powerful Caucasian brain. SO WHAT It doesn’t explain differentials in societal (i.e., economic) success more than a little.

Guess what. Intelligence is “a” factor. A SMALL factor. Compared to raw ambition (and willingness to break rules to win at all costs), greed, LUCK, and HEREDITY, what the &^%$ does “intelligence” have to do with success? Not much. I mean that. I have find a correlation—but a small one. Its about ambition, connections, and luck. It was Coolidge who said the world was full of “educated derelicts”. It is.

African Americans and Latinos, alas, have fewer people in place to hand them the “connections”, and affirmative action has been a poor substitute. Single parent families (disproportionate in these communities) hurt some more on this front, and on the next—luck.

Luck, I suppose, is distributed randomly (although African Americans and Latinos tend to be less likely to have the “luck” of inheriting tremendous sums of money—something the Bush Administration insists a right to be done tax free.)

Ambition? Well—endless societal discrimination (and it hasn’t ended) has a way of helping to stifle or limit ambition. And we’re talking about groups much MORE likely to be God-fearing churchgoing groups—i.e., PEOPLE WHO PLAY BY THE RULES. Problematically, we happen not to be a society that, in general, REWARDS people who play by the rules (especially these days). In general, we &^{%$% such people. (Maybe avoiding this being *&}%ed DOES come back to intelligence, but that’s not necessarily the message we want to be sending.)

So—thanks to the above, we rely on tests whose DESIGNERS tell us they are correlated to family income, and THEN say—aha! The Black people [with lower family income] are “less intelligent”.

Its all maddening. It explains why I move further left with each passing year: the societal distribution of goodies by our so-called free market system (which INCLUDES “intelligence” as we measure it) is by no measure “fair” or “just”. So—the presumption of the Bell Curve—that “intelligence” is distributed by God or nature—and the implicit assumption that this correlates to success—is as offensive as it is nonsensical.

It doesn’t explain differentials in societal (i.e., economic) success more than a little.

Controlling for test scores eliminates most of the earnings gap between black and white men (see http://brookings.nap.edu/books/0815746091/html/480.html ), and all of it for women (and Hispanics).

If test scores are influenced by prior environmental factors, on a population basis
(i.e., family wealth, neighborhood, schooling, etc.), then a gap disappearing once ‘controlled’ for test scores doesn’t indicate that much.

I think what Kevin is getting at, is that we have to work with whatever evidence there is. It is theoreticaly conceivable that there really could be a genetic difference in intelligence between ethnic groups. If evidence came out that supported that conclusion the proper response is to evaluate the evidence, not to say that’s racist and you do not believe in racism on first principle, therefore the evidence simply must be wrong. That may be obvious, but I think it can fairly be charged that some critics took the latter approach.
Given the relatively small amount of time between racial separation, and the expected selection for intelligence being much more equal across distinct groups compared with skin pigmentation, the bar should be set very high for this type of evidence, but we should always be on the side of good science (likewise good economics).
Additionally, the policy implications of a true genetic intelligence difference for groups, but irrelevant for comparing individuals from different groups would be to create policies that tends to limit the tendency of conflating group characteristics to individuals, right?

THE BELL CURVE & the blogsphere

I’ve been working & dealing with the fact that my laptop fried this weekend (getting used to working my clunky