enlightenupper

The race and IQ discourse is so frustrating and intractable because almost everyone is innumerate. It is a wildly inaccurate claim to say “whites are smarter than blacks.” Each individual is a point on the graph. If you draw a curve to describe the set of people who identify as white and the people who identify as black, the median white has an IQ that is about 10-15 points higher than the median black. This does not mean that “whites have higher IQs than blacks.” It means that most whites will have a higher IQs than most blacks, but that between around 17 and 30 percent of blacks (depending on how big the gap is) will have a higher IQ than most whites. The existence of the curve describing the group doesn’t have any impact on any individual. If you take an IQ test and you have an IQ score that describes you individually, the curve describing your group doesn’t provide more information about you. Among a set of individuals, the curve does not preclude a black person from having the highest IQs or a white person from having the lowest. The only thing the group curves do is indicate how many of each group are likely to be selected by a fair, identity-blind meritocratic selection — the IQ curve provides an explanation other than discrimination or “white supremacy” for the underrepresentation of blacks in various spaces that screen for IQ or correlated traits and achievements. This is why progressive activists have fought so hard to eliminate standardized testing.