BOOKS: Return of the IQ Argument
BRUSSELS, Nov 15 (IPS) - A new book about class, race and intelligence has sparked a loud and angry debate in the United States - the kind on which Americans seem to thrive.
'The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life' has pitted white conservatives against a broad-based group of opponents including white liberals and African-Americans. The book has received intense media coverage in both the United States and Europe.
Written by social scientist Charles Murray and the late Harvard psychologist Richard Herrnstein (who died two months ago), the book implies that intelligence is inherited and that ethnic and class differences in IQ scores are due to genes.
Therfore, the authors suggest, if one group finds itself at the bottom of the social barrel, it is not because of an inequitable environment, but because these people are just naturally inferior and government programmes to help them are a waste of resources. They would like to abolish the welfare system.
According to Murray and Herrnstein, East Asians ("Japanese and Chinese and perhaps also Koreans") have a higher IQ than whites, and white Americans in turn have higher IQ's than African- Americans. This difference, they say, owes little to environment and more to genes. And they present a barrage of dubious and contradictory data to bolster their argument.
"It's actually a political debate rather than a scientific one," says Britain-based social-psychologist Marie Stewart.
"If you take the history of this debate you'll see it flares up at various times such as during the civil rights movement in the Sixties, during the Nazi period and as far back as during the abolishment of slavery. It occurs when one group wants to find reasons for suppressing or continuing to suppress other groups."
"In scientific terms it's a non-argument to say there's a genetic component in such a complex structure as intelligence because of course genes are involved but they are only a small part of the whole story," Stewart told IPS.
"Performance on intelligence tests is influenced by environment," she added. "Indeed, IQ itself is a culturally defined phenomenon. Some societies value other skills that are not deemed worthy of attention in U.S. or European societies."
While Murray and Herrnstein produced figures aimed primarily at proving the genetic factor, they paradoxically urged readers not to judge individuals by group scores. (MORE)
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