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An Emerging Theory on Blacks' I.Q. Scores

An Emerging Theory on Blacks' I.Q. Scores
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April 10, 1988, Section 12, Page 22Buy Reprints
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MOST social scientists know - though few publicly discuss it - that there has been a puzzling gap of about 15 points in I.Q. test scores, on average, between blacks and whites in America ever since the tests were first widely used more than 70 years ago. After long debate over why blacks score lower, and what it means, a fresh theory is putting the discussion into perspective.

That theory challenges earlier views that had laid the blame on a defect in heredity or home life, and points instead to the social and psychological toll taken by broad social inequities that stand in the way of academic success for many blacks.

To be sure, the gap does not apply to all blacks, but is based on the averages of millions of test scores. There are blacks among the brightest 1 percent on I.Q. tests, just as there are whites among those with the lowest scores. But on the whole, the difference in I.Q. points between the groups is quite significant. It means that the top sixth of blacks score only as well on I.Q. tests as do the top half of whites.

That gap exists not only between blacks and whites, but also, to a lesser degree, between whites and certain other underprivileged minorities, notably Mexican-Americans, native Hawaiians and American Indians.

The question why children in these minorities, but not others, so often fall below their peers in I.Q. scores and school achievement is as much political as academic. While hotly debated in the 1960's and 1970's, the issue is rarely discussed in public by social scientists these days. In private, many of them tacitly seemed to cede the argument to those who claimed that the disparity was traceable to some deficiency, such as in genetic endowment or in the home.

One of the more startling new theories holds that most blacks in America are in a social position strikingly similar to other ''castelike'' minorities around the world, such as the Harijans, or untouchables, of India, the Maoris of New Zealand and the Burakumi in Japan. The gap between blacks' and whites' I.Q. scores is similar to that between the privileged and deprived groups in each of these other cultures, education experts say. Where tests have been given, the children of these underprivileged groups score an average 10 to 15 points below children in their country's dominant group. (On the other hand, one study shows that Burakumi children in America, where they are treated as any other Japanese, they do as well on I.Q. tests and in school as other Japanese.) This ''caste'' point of view is receiving an increasingly wider and more influential hearing since John Ogbu, a Nigerian anthropologist at the University of California, first proposed it close to a decade ago. Next month, he will address a gathering of state superintendents of education on this subject at the Johns Hopkins University. And the newspaper Education Week recently surveyed black educators on their opinions of Dr. Ogbu's theory, particularly his conclusion that one effect of the ''lower caste'' view of themselves on many young blacks is to see working hard in school as an actual betrayal of their roots. A large number of the educators were put off by the theory, seeing it as overly pessimistic.

''There is a general agreement among anthropologists and sociologists of education that social status is so highly correlated with I.Q. that it casts suspicion on I.Q. scores as reflecting intelligence rather than socioeconomic status,'' Frederick Erickson, professor of education at the University of Pennsylvania, said in an interview. ''It suggests there's something wrong with our society, not our poor people.''

Dr. Ogbu is one of many to note that the black-white I.Q. debate is not a uniquely American issue. The same gap prevails, Dr. Ogbu contends, wherever castelike divisions exist in society. And according to Ulric Neisser, a cognitive psychologist at Emory University, ''All over the world, lower-caste children do less well in school than upper-caste children, have lower test scores, and don't stay in school as long.'' Dr. Neisser is editor of ''The School Achievement of Minority Children,'' published by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, in which Dr. Ogbu makes his case.

While ''caste'' conjures up images of India, similar social divisions prevail in many countries, from Britain and Israel to Japan and New Zealand. Such distinctions are not necessarily based on race. In many nations they are based on tribe or sect, such as Shiite Moslems in pre-civil-war Lebanon.

In Israel, the Jews of North Africa fall heir to the role of undesirable caste; in Britain, the most downtrodden group is West Indians. In Japan the Burakumi, who were emancipated only in 1871 from pariah status that resulted from their work as tanners, are still largely treated as outcasts.

Not all American minorities have a castelike social status. Mormons and Jews, for instance, are numerical minorities, and may be victims of prejudice, but by and large they are not subordinated politically or economically.

Recent immigrant groups, too, are free of such status. While Southeast Asians, Chinese or Filipinos who have come to America may hold menial jobs, they have immigrated to upgrade their status. And, Dr. Ogbu observes, they tend to compare themselves not with dominant groups in America so much as their peers back home. Thus, even in their menial jobs they tend to feel better off than before.

BUT THE EXPERIENCE of castelike minorities is far different. Their status in American society is a quirk of history, not their choice. The first blacks, of course, were brought here against their will; American Indians and native Hawaiians are descendants of groups who were conquered by a white majority. And later immigrants from Mexico have been treated as as those early Mexicans who were displaced from power by whites.

The distinctive social marks of belonging to a castelike minority include prejudice - for example, being regarded as less desirable neighbors, employees and schoolmates by the dominant group - and a lack of political and economic power.

Being born into a castelike minority, Dr. Ogbu observes, too often leads one to grow up with the conviction that life will be restricted to a small and unrewarding set of options. The consequences for I.Q. test scores and school performance are the same worldwide: children in the lower ''caste'' suffer.

The lower I.Q. scores of children in these minorities, Dr. Ogbu and others propose, spring from factors such as prejudice, either blatant or subtle. In one pernicious form, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy growing out of teachers' expecting less of black children, and so tacitly treating them in ways that make that expectation come true. ''Too many educators underestimate the potential and ability of poor kids generally, and castelike minorities in particular,'' said Dr. Erickson of the University of Pennsylvania. ''One of the most powerful influences on a black child is the beliefs of his teachers about his academic potential.''

Another factor is the grinding poverty in the lives of many blacks and other minority children. The poor child is vulnerable to many stresses from which his better-off classmates are protected; when something goes wrong in the family, the poor child is more likely to carry such problems into his school life.

Perhaps most demoralizing - and with greatest consequences for I.Q. and school achievement - is that blacks and other minority members face a job ceiling. Consistent pressures and obstacles relegate them to jobs of low status and income, while whites compete far more successfully for jobs above that ceiling. They see that others in their group hold menial jobs, that relatively few attain outstanding career success, and that even those who do attain middle-class jobs still often feel discrimination.

The net result for many black children, Dr. Ogbu believes, is that they become convinced that it is difficult if not impossible for them to advance in the mainstream by doing well in school.

One consequence is that many black children turn their backs entirely on school as an avenue to a brighter future. In a recent article in The Urban Review, Dr. Ogbu reported on a study of two groups of equally bright black high school students, one doing well and one failing in school. Those who fared poorly, he found, saw being studious as betraying their racial identity -by ''acting white,'' in the students' words.

''It's not that the black children can't do the work, but that they don't make the effort,'' Dr. Ogbu said in an interview. ''The underlying issue for them is one of racial identity. They see doing well in school and getting a high-status job as selling out. You see the same dynamic among Mexican-American children: they identify achievement with betraying their roots.''

Another major blow to the argument that the difference between black and white I.Q. scores points to a deficit in the racial gene pool is a series of recent findings by a New Zealander, James R. Flynn, a political scientist at the University of Otago in New Zealand. In a recent issue of The Psychological Bulletin of the American Psychological Association, Dr. Flynn reports data from 14 nations revealing large I.Q. gains - from 5 to 25 points - in a single generation. In the Netherlands, for instance, I.Q. scores between 1952 and 1982 rose 21 points as measured by a test given by the Dutch Army to virtually all Dutch men when they reached 18. Dr. Flynn found similar gains in every country for which he could obtain data, from France and Norway to Australia and Japan.

The data from the United States are most telling in terms of the current difference between black and white I.Q. scores. In an earlier study in The Psychological Bulletin, Dr. Flynn reported that a comparison of the scores on I.Q. tests of Americans between 1932 and 1978 revealed a steady rise in performance over the half-century.

His research examined results of more than 73 studies involving close to 7,500 people ranging in age from 2 to 48. The comparison was made possible because I.Q. tests are regularly updated. As part of the process of finding norms for interpreting test scores on the new form of the test, psychologists give both the old and new versions to the same group of people. Thus, for example, the same children's scores were obtained both on the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children from 1948 and the new form introduced in 1972.

FROM SUCH STUDIES, Dr. Flynn got a surprising result: without exception, those taking the I.Q. tests get higher scores on the earlier forms of the test. Tests made up in the 1950's yield higher I.Q.'s than those from the 1960's, and so forth.

Put differently, someone who got an I.Q. score of 100 in a test from the 1970's would likely get an I.Q. score several points higher on the same test in its 1950 form. Thus, in general, children today scored higher than their grandparents did on those same tests. (The downward trend, until recently, of S.A.T. scores over the previous couple of decades, Dr. Flynn argues, reflects a worsening of high school education - the I.Q. assessments reflecting basic cognitive abilities, while the S.A.T.'s measure advanced academic skills.) Indeed, Dr. Flynn found that by the 1980's the children taking the tests outperformed the 1930 groups by about 15 I.Q. points - precisely the same difference found currently between black and white children on the same sorts of tests.

Since the whites taking the test over the years were from the same gene pool, the results evidently represent some environmental force at work rather than a genetic upgrading, Mr. Flynn argues.

Indeed, the identical upward drift has occurred among black I.Q. scores. Comparisons of the scores of black United States Army draftees in World War I with black draftees during the Vietnam War shows a gain in I.Q. of about 15 points.

''There seems to be an environmental gap between blacks and whites just like that between whites today and their parents,'' Dr. Flynn said in a telephone interview from New Zealand. ''No sane person can think we're that much innately smarter than our parents or grandparents. Also, the environmental advantages whites enjoy over blacks, particularly if you throw in the impact of racism, are enough to explain the difference in I.Q. scores.''

The upward drift in I.Q. scores seems to indicate changes in environment because no genetic influence is possible in so short a time, Dr. Flynn observes. He thus discounts the argument that deficits in I.Q. scores of groups like blacks in America or Maoris in New Zealand show they are ''inherently inferior.'' ''Statements that this group or that group cannot maintain or develop a modern industrial civilization because they have a mean I.Q. of only 85 are suspect,'' Dr. Flynn wrote in The New Scientist, a British journal. ''American whites circa 1930 had a mean I.Q. of 85 scored against current norms and yet they developed the industrial civilization we have today.''

What, then, do I.Q. tests measure? They were designed to measure one thing: a child's ability to perform in school. That, education experts will agree, they do well. (I.Q. tests, however, are notoriously poor predictors of job success or of how well one does financially as an adult, for example.) Thus the fact that schoolchildren in Japan score between 4 and 11 I.Q. points higher than their American peers does not mean that Japanese are that much ''smarter'' than Americans, but rather that they have a range of academic advantages, from intense parental pressure for achievement to long hours of homework, that most American children do not.

By the same token, the disparity between black and white scores, Dr. Flynn and others argue, is because of similar disadvantages. The current worldwide disparity between privileged and deprived groups in I.Q. and school performance, they argue, is mainly a product of environmental influences - notably prejudice, low expectations, inferior schools and bad teaching.

When those factors are eliminated, new data show, the test scores of underprivileged minorities approximate those of whites. Research by George Chambers, professor of education at the University of Iowa, compared scores of Hispanic and white high school students on the American College Test, or A.C.T. The national average A.C.T. scores for Mexican-Americans is 15.2, for whites 19.6.

But when Dr. Chambers compared Hispanic and white students who were carefully matched in pairs for family income, courses taken and 11 other background factors, the differences between the groups' scores largely vanished. Among the most advantaged pairs) for instance, those with family incomes over $36,000 and who had taken advanced math and science courses) the Hispanic students scored an average 21.8, and the whites 23.4.

Perhaps the most telling bit of evidence comes from the I.Q. scores of castelike minorities who emigrate. Once they arrive in a country where they are free of any particular social discrimination, their children's I.Q. scores and school performance tend to match those of other children in the new country.

For instance, research by George DeVos, an anthropologist at the University of California at Berkeley, shows that in Japan the I.Q. gap between Burakumi and other Japanese is about as large as that between blacks and whites in America. But when the Burakumi come to this country, where they are treated as are any other Japanese, their children do as well on I.Q. tests and in school as do other Japanese.

DR. FLYNN sees his data as a direct challenge to the theories of Arthur Jensen, an educational psychologist at the University of California at Berkeley, who has calculated that 80 percent of I.Q. is traceable to genetic differences, while only 20 percent is traceable to environment. The great malleability of I.Q. scores in a single generation, however, points to environment, rather than genes, as having a much larger influence.

Dr. Neisser of Emory agrees. In his view, the low I.Q. scores and poor academic achievement of black children ''has little to do with their race or their genes: it is a consequence of the structure of society as a whole.''

Daniel Goleman covers psychology for The Times.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section 12, Page 22 of the National edition with the headline: An Emerging Theory on Blacks' I.Q. Scores. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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