The Bell Curve RevisitedI put up a post last week about the differences in IQ between men and women; Charles Murray
takes another look at that as well as the always-contentious differences between whites and blacks.
Evolutionary biologists have some theories that feed into an explanation for the disparity. In primitive societies, men did the hunting, which often took them far from home. Males with the ability to recognize landscapes from different orientations and thereby find their way back had a survival advantage. Men who could process trajectories in three dimensions—the trajectory, say, of a spear thrown at an edible mammal—also had a survival advantage. Women did the gathering. Those who could distinguish among complex arrays of vegetation, remembering which were the poisonous plants and which the nourishing ones, also had a survival advantage. Thus the logic for explaining why men should have developed elevated three-dimensional visuospatial skills and women an elevated ability to remember objects and their relative locations—differences that show up in specialized tests today.On the racial issue:
In the reading test, the comparable gaps for ages nine, thirteen, and seventeen as of the first NAEP test in 1971 were 1.12, 1.17, and 1.25 standard deviations. Those gaps had shrunk by .38, .62, and .68 standard deviations respectively at their lowest points in 1988. They have since remained effectively unchanged.His point here appears to be that while some of the black/white gap of the past can be attributed to social causes, there remains a portion of it that appears genetic.
Such differences do seem to violate our general standards of fairness. I remember my mother explaining to me as a small boy that the reason my penmanship was so atrocious was that abilities are spread out among people; if one person had good writing skills, he might be worse at math, for example. She wasn't attempting to be scientific, but rather to reassure me that things were "fair". And to a certain degree I have internalized that notion of fairness in other areas. The mean kid on the block who had the ten-speed bicycle and other cool items probably had a miserable family life.
But when it comes to IQ in this meritocracy, it is a small consolation to highlight group advantages in other areas. Point out that blacks seem disproportionately represented in the NBA, for example, and you will be assured that it's just socialization. But even within sports, there is a fairly substantial segregation by position.
In football, attention has been focused on the relative lack of black quarterbacks compared to their dominance at other positions, although their percentages have been on a fairly steady upward climb. In the NFL last year, only 5 of the top 30 QBs in passing yards were black. Contrast that with, say, running back, where all of the top 30 rushers were gentlemen of color.
You can see a similar pattern in baseball, where there are comparatively few great black pitchers compared to, say, great black outfielders. Although blacks have played in baseball for fewer than 60 years, they already hold 5 of the top 10 spots in home runs. Contrast that with the pitcher's glamour category, strikeouts. None of the top 10 for a career are black (Fergie Jenkins is #11). I chose K's over wins there because the wins leaderboard includes a lot of pitchers who pitched before the color line was broken.
I've wandered a bit from the IQ story, so to bring it back, I think Murray is dead on the money when he points out that the differences in IQ between the genders and the races need to be examined honestly:
Good social policy can be based on premises that have nothing to do with scientific truth. The premise that is supposed to undergird all of our social policy, the founders’ assertion of an unalienable right to liberty, is not a falsifiable hypothesis. But specific policies based on premises that conflict with scientific truths about human beings tend not to work. Often they do harm.
