The Debate Over Race And Intelligence

For that reason, professor Cohen also states that race does not control behavior like people say it does. He explains that race does not correlate to genes or skin color that control differences in “behavior of intelligence among human groups.” He then talks about culture and the way it works. In the article, it mentions that culture structures “our behavior, thoughts, perceptions, values, goals and cognitive processes.” Professor Cohen also says that students should be taught about significance of culture and revive the anthropological concept of “cultural relativism.” He claims that relativism means that people must look at what other people are doing and try to comprehend their behavior towards it before we judge it. The article concludes that teaching race in the form of “biological variation” results in the promotion of racism than when you teach it in the “cultural relativism” form.

“Environmental influence during the first few years of life is crucial to all later abilities, especially intellectual ones”(Lightfoot et al., 2013, p.437). In the United States many children don’t receive an excellent education due to living in neighborhoods that are economically poor, typically where many minority children grow up. Children usually learn through social enhancement, imitation and explicit instruction that are provided in their culture from their families. The children who come from low-income backgrounds are found to do poorly in subjects, as well as standardize testing. Some thoughts are whether standardized testing discriminates against ethnic minority students and students from low income backgrounds, which usually rank below from other students in other socioeconomic status.

In today’s modern world, recent scientific research has been conducted, which reveals that world-wide IQ test scores have risen, and continue to rise every year. In Alison Gopnik’s article, “Smarter Every Year? Mystery of the Rising IQs,” she discussed how these recent scientific discoveries relate to our society throughout the last century. It is evident that in our society a person’s level of intelligence is extremely important in our culture which is obsessed with being knowledgable. In her article, Gopnik addresses the historical evidence that supports the conclusion that people are getting smarter as the years go on because of today’s society. Gopnik effectively explains the fact that people’s IQs are rising every year, by using the results

Whether it’s filling out forms for the doctor, financial aid, or even job applications, the one question that we almost unconsciously answer is the question of race. Race is a prevalent and influential part of our everyday life that surprisingly many do not even understand. What is race? For years race has been used as a tool in the subjugation of human populations on the perceived notion of biological superiorities. Race by definition is a population “that develops distinct characteristics differing from other populations of the same species”, while these variations may have social and cultural implications, genetic evidence suggests race has no biological significance (Biology-online.org, 2014).

Another study concerning socioeconomic status was done by a group of researchers including Vonetta Dotson, Melissa Kitner-Triolo, Michele Evans, and Alan Zonderman. They examined test scores from low and high socioeconomic status African Americans and Whites in order to determine if socioeconomic status and/or race affect cognitive abilities. The researchers hypothesized that proficiency in literacy would be a better predictor of cognitive abilities than years of education, especially for people of low socioeconomic status and African Americans (Dotson, Kitner-Triolo, Evans, & Zonderman, 2009). In order to measure the theory, cognitive tests from participants were examined and demographic questions were asked to determine incomes and race.

For cultural factors, biased IQ test would be interconnected to substandard schools. These tests measure a student's school achievement. And if there are substandard schools, the students who are placed into the higher groups, the will do better than those who are placed in a lower group. And thus these IQ tests would lead to the deficiency theory, which suggests that 'the poor are

Also, in the early 1900’s there were different intelligence test conducted mainly to “justify racial and ethnic discrimination”. According to the understanding race website, “The results of these intelligence tests were influential in shaping U.S. immigration policy that limited immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe, and in justifying race-based segregation in public education, and U.S. conscription during World War I. Previously, the scientific debate centered largely on perceived differences in racial intelligence based on cranial size”. (Science: 1900s-1930s Race and Intelligence)

Many scholars believe that "the new science of behavioral genetics has intellectual roots in the old ideas of Eugenics" (Steen 33). Eugenics disguised a political agenda as a scientific one in an attempt to endow discrimination with credibility. Supporters of genetic determinism theories do the same. Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray defend the theory of genetic determinism in The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life, which was published ten years ago. Their book is one of the most widely referenced works regarding the theory that intelligence is inherited. The authors claim that the social order mirrors natural selection, wherein the genetically superior or more intelligent human rises to the top. Of course this means that the lower class, predominantly blacks, are represented as genetically inferior (xxi-xxiii). The authors claim that "ethnic differences in cognitive ability are neither surprising nor in doubt" (269) and attribute the inequality of life among Americans to inherent differences between races in intelligence (127). Their argument rests on the assertion that intelligence is both inheritable and immutable and is supported by intelligence test scores. The text is full of contradictions and a close analysis proves it to be lacking in evidence and smacking of social myth. Their theories are developed using speculation and are tainted by bias. There is no science involved.

According to Hannah Richardson, intelligence tests measure the ways people respond to their environment but they do not measure genetic predispositions.

The development of children can depend on many factors, one of the important ones being socioeconomic status (SES). SES can be defined as a multidimensional construct, including measures of social factors such as power, prestige and hierarchical social status, and economic resources (Hackman and Farah, 2009). Child development can be studied from multiple dimensions such as physical, mental, social, and emotional development among others. For the purposes of this study, I will be focusing on how socioeconomic status affects child cognitive development.

There is a relationship between intelligence and culture because intelligence is culturally shaped and defined and some cultures support and identify it as very vital in the context of social and ecological aspects. In the early years, there was a bias towards intelligence tests because they used English language and culture. The formation of Wesler Adult Intelligence Scale, Fourth Addition (WAIS,IV) in 2008 by David Wesler was meant to minimise the bias. According to Westen, Burton and Kowalski (2006), intelligence assists human beings to take control of their lives and it varies cross culturally because the power dynamics differ in each society and this leads to differences in behaviour and line of thinking. These authors describe intelligence as multifaceted, functional and can be defined by culture because it is universal and studying intelligence using different culture as a sample that can be used to question Western ideas about intelligence with some emphasis on the assessment of skills and abilities using culturally appropriate methods (Benson, 2003)

Sternberg, R. J., & Grigorenko, E. L. (2004). Intelligence and culture: How culture shapes what intelligence means, and the implications for a science of well–being. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences, 359(1449), 1427-1434. doi:10.1098/rstb.2004.1514

Another study done by de Wit et al. (2007) examined the association between demographics, cognitive ability, and

This psychological term relates to an action taken to explain a viewpoint surrounding racial hierarchy in intelligence. This is done by exploitation of scientific principles and techniques in order to explain the inferiority and supremacy in racial intelligence. From the results of the ‘army tests programme Yerks was aware of other compelling and rational explanations of the evidence from his research pointing in the other directions. However, he took an option to manipulate findings of his study to give evidence that scientifically supported the “racist and anti-immigration oratory which was embraced those days.

Intelligence is used by everyone to help them in everyday life. Where people get their intelligence, however, is debatable. A person is born with an amount of inherited intelligence; this intelligence is considered nature, genetic, or heredity. Then there is intelligence that comes from the ability to learn from experience; this intelligence is impacted by nurture or the environment. It is known that both genetic and environmental factors determine intelligence, but the subject is controversial among professionals. Does nature or nurture have a bigger impact on intelligence? Is it true that some people are born with high intelligence, but are limited by their environment? Given the proper tools, can a person increase their intelligence? How accurate are IQ tests?