Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!news.mathworks.com!europa.eng.gtefsd.com!howland.reston.ans.net!spool.mu.edu!caen!hearst.acc.Virginia.EDU!murdoch!darwin.clas.Virginia.EDU!dcs2e
From: dcs2e@darwin.clas.Virginia.EDU (David Christopher Swanson)
Subject: RACE and IQ
Message-ID: <CxyBt9.B78@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>
Sender: usenet@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU
Organization: uva
Date: Thu, 20 Oct 1994 03:17:33 GMT
Lines: 53

In the Oct. 31st, 1994 The New Republic, one finds an
incredibly sloppy 
article, printed perhaps out of sheer frustration with
political correctness, 
maintaining that the IQ difference between black and white
Americans is 
probably largely due to genetic differences.  The article is
preceded by a 
dozen angry responses to it, some of which are right on.  The
authors dismiss 
the idea that environment could have a large share in
intelligence, by rather 
ridiculously worrying about whether this just amounts to
showing that parents 
with low IQs produce children with low IQs and so is no
different from 
genetics.  Surely a parent of whatever IQ can give a young
child a better or 
worse education!
Then these heroic thinkers suggest that it doesn't matter
anyway, that blacks 
can be given some magical aid for stupidity as a near-sighted
person is given 
glasses, and that blacks are bound not to worry about it in any
case.  They 
suggest that intelligence can be improved environmentally, but
that whites' is 
bound to go on improving as fast as blacks'.  There is no
necessity about this. 
  Black children can be specially aided if we see fit to do
so.  And genetics 
does make a difference if one imagines that all this
intelligence may reach a 
plateau and the whites be above the blacks unalterably.
More important, these guys argue for individualism and group
pride 
simultaneously.  I'm willing to cheer for individualism and all
that goes with 
it, including intermarriage and the continued blurring of all
these ethnic 
distinctions.  But black pride in athleticism and
spirituality???  
It may be that individuals whose failures make life hard to
bear do well to 
rely on group pride, but one cannot take individual pride in
one's successes 
and group pride in one's failures and remain as serene and
content as these 
writers imply.

Comments?

David
