Racial Gap in IQ Scores Narrows

by Liberty and Power

An article in Science News reports the following:

A statistical analysis of four national intelligence tests indicates that the difference in scores between blacks and whites decreased by about a third between 1972 and 2002. The findings challenge a century-old argument that the racial gap in performance on IQ tests is primarily genetic and therefore invulnerable to social change, say the researchers who performed the new study.
They examined data that have only recently become available to researchers, says William Dickens of the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. Using test results from a random distribution of people in the United States, he and James R. Flynn of the University of Otago in New Zealand tallied the increases in IQ scores of blacks and whites over 3 decades. Each of the four tests analyzed included two or three groups of people that took the test at different times.

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Jason Kuznicki - 8/11/2006

Err, sister. Pardon me. Old habits and all.

Jason Kuznicki - 8/11/2006

Amen, brother. I'm right there with you, word for word.

Aster Francesca - 8/9/2006

I'm just *disgusted* at the popularity of neo-racist theories among libertarians. If you think that blacks are on average inferior to whites, have to fucking guts to stand up and call yourself a racist.

Rant warning: I refuse to be even remotely polite here. Libertarians wonder why they are dismissed by the left as privileged reactionaries. Well, I have news for you- if you haven't caught up with the Civil Rights Movement you are distinctly behind the learning curve of history. Go down to the marketplace and buy yourself a clue.

Libertarians should be ashamed at the presence of a Charles Murray or a Hans Hermann Hoppe among our ranks. And it's not just a couple of intellectuals- I have had many occasions when white libertarians, young activists and old stalwarts alike, have confided racist beliefs to me under the assumption that any sensible white person shares their beliefs in black (or whatever) inferiority. The only bright spot in all this is that many other libertarians have privately expressed deep troubles about the racism that does exist in our movement. But either way no one wants to talk about it and there is a conspiracy of silence kept about the issue.

And it's not practical, people. The last National Libertarian Party convention was 95% white and 0.00% black (it was also 80% male). This is not the way to grow a succesful movement that supposedly stands for a value common to all humanity. A great number of libertarians think of liberty as an ideology for red-blooded natural aristocrats and have an unstated belief that women and non-whites are not inclined to value freedom by nature. I think it's more like women and people of colour are repulsed by the clueless and callous attitude radiated by established libertarian culture. What does it say, gentleman, when African Americans and women got up and fought two respective social revolutions in the last century and yet don't see any reason to join yours?

If the main message libertarians have for people of colour is 'your situation is the result of natural inequality and white people aren't responsible', then don't be surprised if they tell you to fuck off. You idiots. Why don't you just join welfare statism's central recruiting office? Because that is what you are doing when you say racial disparities are a result of a free market and non-whites had better get used to it. Or maybe it never occurs that you should care what people of colour think of you?

Calming down a bit, my thanks to David T. Beito for posting this. I appreciate that Liberty and Power is one of the few libertarian forums where issues of oppression do recieve a serious hearing. I merely wish there was not such a long, long way to go for the libertarian movement as a whole.

My regards,

Lady Aster

Steve Jackson - 8/8/2006

That Kohls might be growing at a faster rate than Walmart doesn't mean it's going to catch up to Walmart.

I don't worship at the alter of the almighty gene, but the evidence for racial differences in IQ is fairly stong, such as adoption studies.

Jason T. Kuznicki - 8/7/2006

If you insist.

Mark Brady - 8/7/2006

So what are we to conclude? That affirmative action works?