Comments on: Racism and IQ (Again)

By: Phil

Phil — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 19:11:42 +0000

I have researched the history of different sciences going back a couple of thousand years.
All of the people I found who created the sciences, mathmatics and most all inventions were white.
All major industries in the world today were created by white people.
If all races are equally intelligent why is this true?
What difference does it make if all
people are declared to be equal
if they aren’t.

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By: Jessie

Jessie — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 16:46:08 +0000

And thank you, Tripp, for making me aware that Gould had been canonized, I hadn’t realized. More seriously, I don’t know what you object to in the writings of Stephen Gould, but I suspect that it’s actually his politics that you disagree with. As for Goddard, there’s ample evidence that he was part of a cultural milieu that used the pseudo-science of intelligence-testing to attribute lower intelligence to immigrants. If I can get an e-copy of the 1917 article (just requested from NYPL), I’ll post portions of it here.

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By: Tripp

Tripp — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 12:51:18 +0000

Thank you, James T. Smith, for debunking the lies about Goddard (granted, Gould’s original misstatement may have been an honest mistake, but having been corrected on it and continuing to put it in subsequent versions of his manifesto, it has become a lie).

And thank you, Jessie, for adding another name to the list of people who repeat Gould’s lies. The scary thing is how many sites on the web actually reference the 1917 Journal of Delinquency article as if they had read it. (Do a google search with that article citation, and see how many people claim that the Goddard study was about immigrants in general. It is appalling.) Presumably they prefer, like the rest of the American left, to read (and uncritically cite) the works of St. Stephen of Cambridge.

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By: James T. Smith

James T. Smith — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 22:26:08 +0000

Races are gentically distinct, which is why scientists can racially group DNA samples. Yes, calling Jews a race isn’t technically precise, because race is a broad term, but that doesn’t mean it’s something rational people should object to Whether Goddard was a eugenecist or not isn’t relevant. The fact is Plucker, Gould, etc. are misrepresenting what he did to discredit intelligence testing. If IQ tests were invalid they would not have to lie like that.

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By: Jessie

Jessie — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 20:26:50 +0000

The article you link to here makes the case that “Ashkenazi Jews” are a “genetically distinct group,” which is a different thing than saying “Jews are a race.” Take as just one example the case of Ethiopian Jews. It seems clear that as a group, they would be “genetically distinct” from Ashkenazi Jews. Thus, the statement that “Jews” are “a race” is too broad to be accurate.

If you read the original text of Goddard (not filtered through Gould or anyone else), it seems clear that he saw intelligence testing through the lens of the eugenics movement. It’s available here:
http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Goddard/

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By: James T. Smith

James T. Smith — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 18:49:33 +0000

It’s not nit picking. Gould wilfully misrepresented Goddard’s work leading people, like you and Plucker, to draw incorrect conclusions. If intelligence testing really is bogus, then there’s no need to fabricate examples of that.

Another thing you say “I hope they would take issue with the notion of a Jewish “race.” But Jews are a genetically distinct group. See also this:

http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=458389

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By: Jessie

Jessie — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 13:19:41 +0000

While Goddard may have realized his was not a scientifically random sample, and thus not generalizable to a wider population, this seems a relatively small nit to pick in the broader scheme of so-called “IQ” testing (referred to as “mental testing” at the time) and racist, restrictive immigration policies. The fact is, Goddard and others engaged in “mental testing” in the U.S. in the 1920s framed their research through the conceptual lens of the eugenics movement. “The historical record clearly documents that mental testing played a part in the national immigration debate between 1921 and 1924…With the support of Terman, Goddard, Brigham, and Yerkes, as well as many other scientific authorities, the supposed biological, (including mental) inferiority of southern and eastern European immigrants came to be widely accepted as a scientific fact.” from: Steven A. Gelb, Garland E. Allen, Andrew Futterman and Barry A. Mehler, “Rewriting Mental Testing History: The View from the American Psychologist,” in Sage Race Relations Abstracts 11 #2 (May 1986) pp. 18-31.

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By: James T. Smith

James T. Smith — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 06:42:21 +0000

Plucker’s wrong, probably because he’s basing his statements on lies propagated by S.J. Gould. As Rushton pointed out in his review of Mismeasure of Man:

“Goddard wanted to find out if the Binet test was as effective at identifying ‘high-grade defectives’ (the term then used for those with mental ages between eight and twelve) among immigrants as it was among native-born Americans. By 1913, Goddard had translated the Binet test into English and arranged, over a two-and-a-half-month period, for it to be given to a subset of Jewish, Hungarian, Italian, and Russian immigrants “preselected as being neither ‘obviously feeble-minded’ nor ‘obviously normal’” (Goddard, 1917, p. 244, emphasis added).

Among this “unrepresentative” group (178 subjects in all), the tests successfully categorized 83% of the Jews, 80% of the Hungarians, 79% of the Italians, and 87% of the Russians. Goddard (1917) explicitly did not assert that 80% of Russians, Jews, or any immigrant group in general were feeble minded nor that the figures were representative of all immigrants from those nations. Nor did he claim that the feeblemindedness he was measuring was due to heredity. The vast majority of the many immigrants going through Ellis Island were never given mental tests. Nor was a random sample of any national group of immigrants ever tested. The only study by Goddard involving the testing of immigrants begins with the following sentence: ‘This is not a study of immigrants in general but of six small highly selected groups.“

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