I believe I explicitly pointed out once or twice that I don't put much stock in IQ tests in general. Since I've never had my IQ tested, I guess I get to play both sides of the fence on the issue of whether or not cognitive ability can really be measured, and how much it matters. And by matters I mean for 80% of us, not so much for the 10% at the very top and 10% at the very bottom of the scale. Because we all know that if 80% of us want to learn something, and put a lot of effort into it, we probably can. For those other 10%, effort is much less important.
Now that preamble is necessary to contextualize the following: The guy whose work was cited during the immigration debate as proof that he's a bullshitter has responded forcefully in Politico to charges of racism. His dissertation included remarks about the intellectual inferiority of "some races"...which he defends in Politico. Basically if science did "prove" the inferiority of minority races in America this debate wouldn't be what it is. But Richwine still doesn't get it. He forgets that eugenics happened already, and the intellectuals supported it at that time on a basis other than "sound evidence" to say the least.
Suffice it to say that citing the 1996 APA report on IQ (more here) and a 25-point statement of support letter published in the WSJ at that same time is not exactly a strong argument. It's a naked appeal to authority. At the crux of it is that even if there are some racial differences on standard IQ tests, I think we all understand that this doesn't mean that some races are "inferior" to others. A big "if" by the way. The fact that some children (upper class ones of all races) are very well-prepared for such IQ testing by their highly-involved and highly-educated parents is not a surprise. And the outliers skew the average in both directions.
Is there a real, objective thing called IQ? Probably. But is it static and defined by genes (and race)? I don't think so. I think that some extent is inherited, but clearly early childhood education and parental involvement have an enormous, unfathomable impact on how highly a child will score on her or his IQ test. And the income level and education level of the parents are a good predictor there, which plays directly into questions of social inequality and social mobility...
Think about it.
