APPENDIX B The Case for a Purely Environmental Basis for Black/White Differences in IQ IN THIS APPENDIX | review and dispute the evidence that the IQ gap between blacks and whites is substantially genetic in origin. The case for genetics is presented in the chapter on race and intel- ligence in The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray (1994) and in the recent review article by Phillipe Rush- ton and Arthur Jensen (2005). But many other scientists would also endorse at least some of the contentions below about genetic determination. 1. The heritability of IQ within the white population is high. Hence, it is probable that a very large fraction of the black/ white gap is also genetic in origin. 2. The gap is not due to possible cultural differences because it is greater for allegedly culture-fair tests, such as those involving analysis of the relationship between geometric shapes, than it is for culture-loaded items, such as finding the analogy between cotillion and square dance. 3. Blacks from sub-Saharan Africa have even lower IQs (75 according to Herrnstein and Murray, 1994; 70 according to Rushton and Jensen, 2005) than African Americans. The reason 209210 APPENDIX B for the superiority of African Americans (with a putative IQ of 85) is that the gene pool of African Americans is about 20 per- cent European. . Blacks do relatively worse on items with high loadings on the S so-called g factor (for general intelligence), and high g-loading items are more influenced by genetics than are low g-loading items. . Inbreeding depression (the detrimental results for IQ for the a offspring of close relatives) affects performance on some items on IQ tests more than others. These items show the greatest difference between black and white scores, thus indicating that the most genetically influenced parts of the test show the biggest black/white differences. 6. Cranial capacity—brain size—is correlated with IQ within the white population and within the black population, and whites have greater cranial capacity than blacks. 7. Reaction time—in a setup in which people place their finger on a button and then move to touch a lighted bulb as quickly as possible—is lower for people with higher IQs and for whites than for blacks. (Low reaction time means high speed of reaction.) 8. Because black IQ is lower on average than white IQ for genetic reasons, the 1Q in children of black parents with high IQs should regress to a lower mean than the IQ of children of white parents having the same IQs as the black parents. And in fact it does. g. In a racial ancestry study examining black, white, and mixed- race children who were adopted by mostly middle- and upper- middle-class whites, the IQs of the black children differed little from those of the black population at large, and the IQs of the mixed-race children were in between those of the black children and the white children (Scarr and Weinberg, 1976, 1983). Let’s examine these contentions in order.Appendix B 211 Heritability of IQ The Bell Curve presents an argument that seems to settle the race and IQ debate in a simple and elegant manner. Those who think that blacks and whites are genetically identical, at least as far as intelligence goes, must believe that blacks can be treated as if they were simply a sample of whites selected for poor cognitive envi- ronment. Now if that is true, we want a measure of how strongly environment affects IQ, which is to say we want a correlation. Studies on twins supply a correlation. Herrnstein and Murray assume a value that they believe to be a minimum probable influ- ence of environment on IQ; that is, they assume that 60 percent of IQ variance is due to genetic differences between individuals, and 40 percent is due to environment. To get a correlation between environment and IQ, we have to take the square root of the per- centage of IQ variance it explains. The square root of .40 is .63, so that is the correlation we want. Now we can calculate how far the environment of the average black would have to be below the environment of the average white to explain the IQ gap of 1 SD that separates the races: 1 SD divided by .63 gives us 1.59 SDs as the necessary environmental difference between the races. In sum, it takes that kind of environmental handicap to explain the racial IQ gap! How large this is can be appreciated by looking at a table of percentages under the mean of a normal curve. Once you reach 1.59 SDs below the mean, only 6 percent of the popu- lation is left—which is to say that the average black environment would have to be so bad that the environment for only 6 percent of American whites fell below it. To Herrnstein and Murray, that was implausible, but worse was yet to come. Jensen (1998) gave a more up-to-date analysis of the twin studies. It shows that at adulthood, only 25 percent of IQ variance is due to environment. The square root of .25 is .50, and 1 SD (of IQ difference) divided by .50 is 2 SDs. So now we have to posit the average black environment as 2 SDs below the average white environment, which means that the environment212 APPENDIX B for only 2.27 percent of American whites would fall below the average black environment. That is truly implausible. The flaw in this argument is that it assumes that the environ- mental factors operating within groups are identical to those oper- ating between groups. Geneticist Richard Lewontin illustrated this flaw. Imagine dividing a sack of seeds randomly into two groups, which means that while there will be plenty of genetic variation within each group, there will be no average genetic difference between the groups. You put all of the seeds of Group A into the same ideal potting mix, and you put all of the seeds of Group B into the same potting mix except for each plant in Group B you leave out one favorable ingredient. Clearly, within each group, height differences in plants at maturity are due to genetics—after all, there are zero environmental differences within the groups. But between the groups, the average difference in height is solely due to an environmental factor, namely, the fact that one group is missing a favorable ingredient in its potting mix. So now we seem to have proved that twin studies within groups (you have no twin pairs of which one is black and the other white) have no implications for the potency of environ- mental factors between groups. But there is a problem. Can we imagine anything in the real world analogous to the missing ingredient in Group B’s environment? It would have to be some- thing disadvantageous that affected every member of Group B equally and not one person in Group A. Even the effects of rac- ism could not do that. Some blacks would suffer from poverty and other disadvantages much less than others, and some whites certainly suffer from these things more than others. Lewontin’s ingredient was given the name “factor X” to dramatize its mys- terious character and imply that no one could think of anything that could play its role. Dickens and Flynn (2001) proposed a formal model that solved the problem. They showed that two groups could be separated by an environmental factor of great potency that did not affect each member of the groups equally. They illustratedAppendix B 213 the point with the effects that TV had on the escalation of bas- ketball-playing ability. The new popularity of the game meant that young people played much more and developed new techni- cal skills, such as passing and shooting with both right and left hands. When graduates came back to play their old high school teams, they were soundly defeated even though they suffered no genetic disadvantage (they were just as tall and quick). Obvi- ously, the new basketball environment did not separate the two groups neatly; some had practiced a lot even before TV. And every member within each group was not affected to the same degree. Within an age group, those with genes that made them taller and quicker would be more likely to take to basketball and get the advantage of team play and coaching than those who were short and stout. Indeed, that is the reason why twin stud- ies are deceptive. With their identical genes and identical height and quickness, identical twins were likely to have common bas- ketball histories—and since genes and powerful environmental factors went together, genes would get the credit for the whole package. It is now easy to imagine a variety of environmental factors that are potent and that separate black and white Americans. Different child-rearing practices, different youth cultures, and so forth could have a powerful effect on how much each group does “mental exercise” and on the cognitive problem-solving skills they each develop. And none of these things has to behave like the implausible factor X. In Chapter 6, I detailed the powerful environmental factors that differ greatly between blacks and whites on average. It can no longer be denied that such differences are capable in principle of accounting for the race difference in IQ. The fact that the dif- ference between blacks and whites now stands at two-thirds of a standard deviation instead of at one standard deviation gives us still further reason to believe that the differences are environmen- tally produced. Certainly the reduction in the difference has noth- ing to do with genetics.