The state of Florida plans to lower IQ requirements for gifted programs (free reg. req.) in government schools from 130 to 120 in an effort to include more “minority” students.
But it won’t work.
In “‘Holistic Review’ Just Another Disguise for Race Preferences,” I wrote a mini review of a highly-recommended book, Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950, by Charles Murray. I won’t rehash the post; you can read it for yourselves.
Murray (of The Bell Curve fame) states the obvious: Most scientific and artistic accomplishments from 800 B.C. to 1950 were achieved by white European males. He argues that contrary to paranoid belief, Europeans did not conspire to downplay or ignore the accomplishments of non-European nations. He advises revisionists, multicultural exaggerators, and other naysayers to consider a couple of points:
- White Europeans get the credit for finding and publicizing scientific and artistic accomplishments of non-European countries, not non-European countries or individuals complaining about “western bias” in recognition.
- If naysayers want to expand the list of significant figures in the arts and sciences to include more non-European figures, their efforts will backfire. If they “dumb down” requirements for the inclusion of great scientists, sculptors, musicians, painters, etc. (which they must do), vastly more Europeans would qualify for the lists, knocking non-European figures even further down those lists.
Government bureaucrats who create programs ostensibly designed to include or admit black students by lowering standards and/or playing up “life experiences” (like holistic review) face a similar problem. Lowering standards generally would benefit more white and Asian students. But such policies typically don’t apply to white and Asian students. If they did, more whites and Asians would be included, admitted, etc., than blacks, frustrating the entire race preference strategy.
Back to Florida. Lowering the IQ standard for gifted programs from 130 to 120 would increase the number of white students in gifted programs. Even someone with the most tenuous grasp of statistics (like me!) understands that. Whatever you think IQ is or isn’t, it measures something, and the IQ difference between whites and blacks is about one standard deviation, or 15 points.
Considering there are more whites than blacks in the United States and whites on average have higher IQs, there will be more white students testing into gifted programs under the proposed lower requirement. It matters little whether whites average 115 and blacks 100, or whites 100 and blacks 85.
Of course, the bureaucrats know this, so they tried a workaround, which, as I said, turned out to be illegal: An excerpt of the article (free reg. req. – Did you spot the grammar mistake in the article’s title?):
Florida was forced to discontinue a policy allowing schools to drop the IQ requirement to 120 for low-income and minority students.
By allowing access to all students who score an IQ of 120, the new rule does away with those affirmative action policies. Some experts worry that will actually make the programs more exclusive by giving access to more white students.
“Generally, gifted education classes are comprised of upper-middle-class white kids,” said Elizabeth Shaunessy, a coordinator for the Florida Association for the Gifted. “My concern is the new policies don’t address increasing those under-represented groups.”
Lowering standards only for black students and not others violates all kind of laws. Cursed Civil Rights Act!
Strictly going by the numbers (IQ, test scores, grades) will not achieve the rainbow effect bureaucrats claim to covet. (I use claim because I have a hunch many of these same people send their kids to private schools with low black enrollment and live in “lily white” neighborhoods. Diversity for thee, but not for me!)
Why do I write about these things? Mainly to highlight the absurdity of such policies and call attention to what’s really going on. It is obvious what dropping IQ requirements is supposed to accomplish, but it can’t work…unless you have a separate standard for black students and judge them only against each other.
If schools want more black kids in gifted classrooms, they’ll have to lower the bar for black students. Not only would this treat people unequally, it’s unfair to students who meet the requirement. Unless schools lower the bar for all, without regard to race, the scheme is illegal. If they lower the bar for all, they may as well do away with the concept of gifted altogether. It’s a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma!
There just aren’t enough blacks testing at 130 IQ and above to fill gifted classrooms to the satisfaction of white liberals…
…who send their kids elsewhere. 
Related posts:
- Montgomery County Dumbs Down “Gifted” Programs
- Intelligence: The Last Taboo
- Intelligence: Some Research
- New Spin on Old “Stereotype Threat” Theory
Sources:
- Liberty & Learning: Milton Friedman’s Voucher Idea At Fifty
- The Black-White IQ Gap: Is It Closing? Will It Ever Go Away? — Discussion at the American Enterprise Institute, with video, audio, and links
- Scholars Debate Outlook for Closing Black-White Gap in IQ
- Educational Achievement and Black-White Inequality
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*blink* The race hustlers in Florida have absolutely no idea of what “giftedness” actually means. You can’t auto-magically make a kid function at a higher level (mathematically, verbally, emotionally, athletically, etc) by redefining “high functioning kid”–they’re still going to be constrained by their actual abilities. But they’re not trying to make kids achieve to the best of their abilities at all, are they?
In elementary/jr. high I was in a “gifted” program with a lot of kids who weren’t unusually gifted–they ended up putting about 25% of the school in the program! They used “peer selection” so a lot of kids were merely popular kids who did homework. It ended up being totally worthless for both the high-level kids, who had to wait for everyone else to catch up (just like always), and the lesser-gifted kids, who dropped out of the program and decided they were actually “dumb.”
In high school, when I went to a nationally-recognized summer program for gifted kids at Iowa State and met kids from around the country who were TRULY gifted, I was the lesser-functioning kid, and it knocked me for a loop for a few years. Took me awhile to realize I wasn’t really stupid.
Anyway. I don’t have a fancy-schmancy Edjumacation Degree, which is probably why I can see that these jokers in Florida don’t care at all about giving the best appropriate education to any of the children they’re manipulating to make themselves feel warm and fuzzy. Grrrr.
La Shawn:
All 4 of my children attended the magnet program at Lubbock HS in Lubbock TX.
There were only a few minorities in the class; some bright Black and Mexican children said so – they qualified, but felt “uncomfortable” being the only minority in the class.
This is a function of parental support – if their parents “made them” attend the magnet classes, they would. Parents need to be “in charge’.
My wife and I never asked our children if they wanted to attend the magnet school; they wanted to, but if they did not, we would have “made them”. After all, we were “in charge”.
PS – Lubbock HS eliminated many of the “perks” in the magnet program (trips to Smithsonian, etc) because “the rich White kids got too good a deal”. But support for football stayed the same.
In truth, the “rich White kids” still went to the Smithsonian and elsewhere – they just did it without the blessing of the School.
More minority children could get into magnet programs if their parents “made them” study.
Schools should ideally challenge every child that walks through the door. The clamor to get children into gifted rograms when they are not truly gifted is a sad reflection on the inability of schools to meet the needs of bright children. With such an inordinate percentage of the funding going to failing children in failing schools, bright children are not having their needs met. I think that one of the tragedies of no child left behind is the skewed focus on the bottom. Meanwhile, our best and brightest are performing in a mediocre fashion relative to their abilitites. Further, we simply do not have nearly enough gifted teachers who can really engage bright/extraordinarily bright students.
To put things in perspective…
Imagine the Olympic Games, in an effort to include more white sprinters, and considering that NO white sprinter has EVER run 100 meters in less than 10 seconds…RAISED the qualifying time ONLY for white sprinters.
So in the actual 100-meter event…featuring a WONDERFULLY DIVERSE field of faster black sprinters and slower white sprinters…
Ummm…who do ya think is gonna win??
LaShawn,
What racial goup is responsible for the creation of reading and writing?
The better question is, who harnessed the power of the written word and created the wonderful but far from perfect western civilization, whose off-shoot, the United States, is where everyone wants to be? – Admin
I was in gifted programs for most of K-12. My father was a grocery store manager and my mom sold shoes at JC Penneys- does that make me upper-middle class?
The unspoken thing here is that many gifted programs are as half-assed and uninstructive as regular school classes. Except for advanced math and maybe science classes. I believe that most such programs are in place solely to placate parents who are school district shopping before they buy a home. The problem is that the gifted programs are still part of the “progressive education” disease that has steadliy eroded American schools for the better part of the last 50 years, at least.
When this dumbing down passes and is instituted you can bet that the results will mirror those of regular classes: teacher time will be absorbed with help ing the bottom third catch up and the middle third tread water while the upper, gifted third will get bored and wind up hating school as much as everyone else!
This is a slippery slope I am afraid… There are brilliant individuals in ALL races, opportunity is the key…
“What racial goup is responsible for the creation of reading and writing?”
Depends on the meaning of reading and writing.
The various pictograms carved into the buidlings of Meso America were a form of writing that developed independently from the early forms developed in the Middle East (what “race” were the Sumerians?) or in China. An ancient from of wtiting called ogham was used by the Celts. So there are at least four races, and probably many more.
LaShawn,
I can’t keep up with all the flim-flam schemes that bureaucrats who do everything in their power to socially engineer equality of results, instead of equality of opportunity.
I read a few books on it years ago and gave it up. Thomas Sowell and John Mchorter cover this area thoroughly, among others.
John
So are we saying that white people are smarter than blacks because of biology or experience. I tend to find that white parents expose their children to more and better opportunities than blacks.
Rural whites tend to be on the same level as inner city blacks.
If any black person succeeds is it only because of Affirmative Action and they don’t deserve it or are they just a statistical anomaly?
Nobody ever likes to talk about the gene pool, do they?
To paint with a broad brush, the average street kid of any race is not likely to go forth and multiply with the cultured segment of the society.
We know that avoiding poverty involves completing high school, postponing children until after marriage and having a “can-do” attitude.
Folks with no real stability and an over blown sense of entitlement and who breed young are usually re-populating the shallow end of the gene pool.
There is no doubt in my mind that we will see greater and greater numbers of brilliant blacks in the years to come. This is because desegregation of the society and attention to basic civil rights have worked very well. Generally speaking, the 130 IQ black student is not likely to go fishing in the shallow end of the gene pool for a mate. And more and more blacks have escaped the restricting “black community” and set their own life goals based on the opportunities open to them.
If you want to speed the process up, I suggest we follow the models of third world nations where education dollars are very scarce. Typically, they find their best and brightest early on and concentrate on that small group.
If Florida has a mission to kick-start its bright black students, the state should establish a segregated prep school that replicates the New England schools that the moneyed white guys have attended for generations.
Obviously, the state can not do this. But there is no reason why a private entity can not.
On the other hand, there is much positive movement upward for blacks without anyone needing to fiddle the numbers.
Charles Murray sure does rile a lot of people up. Especially those who “hold these truths to be self evident: that we are endowed by our government with certain basic entitlements and among these are guaranteed success, a high standard of living and an enforced respect.”
By rural I don’t simply mean living in the “country”. I am speaking of impoverished like in some Appalachian counties.
I am not calling those in all rural areas uneducated.
I fought hard to get my son in a gifted program. He tested well, but his grades didn’t reflect his intelligence. Turned out to be a mistake – the program was set up for students who were self-motivated, and THAT he was not. It didn’t benefit him one iota. My older son completed the program, but honestly, I think the whole thing is a waste of time and money.
On a side note La Shawn, I don’t know if you’ve read this yet, but I highly recommend it -
The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success by Rodney Stark
#11 Heather in MD asks about the statistical anomaly when blacks achieve.
I have experience helping black students negotiate their college years at a highly respected state university.
Mostly, blacks from outside the country have no problems focusing on their reason for attending the university and they blend very well with the overall student body.
Among the blacks from across the United States, there is a respectable group who are not unlike the blacks from outside the country. But there is always a large and challenging group of what I have come to call the “grievance blacks.” They are the ones who require a black student union, special attention to their “racial needs” and constant “dialog” so that others can reform and come to “understand” them.
Unfortunately, the “grievance blacks” get a lot of loud mouth professors and deans who help carry their water.
I suggest that you can not stick to business of get the best possible education for yourself if you are busy running around counting nicks and bruises and whining about it. (Be assured that any real concern over racial claims is examined promptly and thoroughly. The university fully understands the sting of charges of racism.)
I have a large circle of black friends who a very, very bright and capable thinkers. We really don’t discuss race much at all and when we do, it seems to focus on the “knuckleheads.”
These black friends have smart kids who are off making good livings and being strong citizens in their communities. Hopefully, they are driving the “anomaly statistics” down.
This Floridian ‘dumbing down’ is just another example of how Liberals cope with reality:not very well.
“It’s ‘unfair’ that Jimmy is kept out of the high IQ group! Sarah would have tested better, but the sun was in her eyes. You can’t have a level playing field until everyone gets a medal.”
I am average in just about every way. I would never be in the high IQ group and you know what? I’m fine.
I listen to an artist like Gabriela Montero and part of the joy of listening comes from admiring someone gifted at the piano, more talented than I would ever be with my ten thumbs.
We should appreciate talent, high IQ, special abilities, whatever, instead of trying to lower the standards so that everyone is special-that notion defeats itself.
Nobody is against a discussion of genetics in regards to intelligence, athleticism, etc. But, the question remains: Why? What are the solutions to the IQ gap? Improve the schools? How? Make the kids pray in an officially proscribed pre-school gathering? Go back to separate-but-equal nonsense? What does everyone want to see happen?
Will we have the “Brave New World” of Aldous Huxley where Alphas and Betas are categorized for certain careers based on genetic profiles? The main problem I have with this type of discussion is it doesn’t allow for the individual. All the research is based on the cohort. There are really bright black kids out there. I know because I was one of them.
Graduated from Boston Latin Academy in 1986, one of our city’s exam schools. Classical education. No feel-good, squishy filler in the curriculum. Six years of Latin which not only examined the language, but also the culture and government of Ancient Rome.
Public education worked for a long time. I think there were two factors in the decline. Lack of parental involvement and lack of societal interest. Educating the masses should be the goal of a noble society. What we have now is competition in which those with the most money benefit.
What I would like to see are private academies in urban centers that raise their own funds through appeals to citizens and industry. Their interaction with the local education appartus would be minimal (making sure they meet necessary requirement) allowing them to set their own curruculae, etc.
A little disjointed, but you get the idea.
If we really want to see change, if we really want more children to thrive academically, we have to take responsibility for our children’s education. I don’t mean everyone must pull out their children and home school them (full disclosure – I home school), but make it your responsibility to educate them, not someone else’s. Consider any school as your subcontractor. Do not turn your children unquestioningly over to the public school system. Too many times I’ve heard people say “I’m leaving their education to the experts.” Excuse me? You’d never turn your car over for servicing without finding something out about the mechanics qualifications and their service ratings! Ditto if you were remodeling your kitchen! Determine what your child needs, and then find the best resources to fill those needs! For starters, look at the school they’re currently in. What are your children studying? How are their subjects being approached? What happens if your child is having trouble with a concept? How seriously does the school treat your opinions and input? (And by this, I don’t mean “I think Jimmy deserved an A on this project, not a B-…,” rather, if a controversial issue is being presented in a one-sided way, does the school allow for respectful disagreement, and a presentation of other opinions?)You are in charge, with whatever you teach at home, and whatever you outsource to public schools, private schools, tutoring services and/or enrichment activities.
Obviously, this is a lot of work. Tiring, often exhausting work. But when we take schooling seriously, our children take it seriously.
Enough ranting, thanks for the opportunity to vent.
Helio said: “They are the ones who require a black student union, special attention to their ‘racial needs’ and constant “dialog†so that others can reform and come to “understand†them.”
I had two thoughts when I read this (beyond my inner smile at “so that others can reform and come to ‘understand’ them.”)
One) Tiffany once wrote how disgusted she was when a “thoughtless” woman who worked with her ran up to her after a vacation and exclaimed excitedly that her skin tone now matched Tiffany’s. Tiffany was outraged by the lack of sensitivity and used this to demonstrate how whites fail to understand the tender black psyche. Nowhere in Tiffany’s commentary (ever) was there any notion that she might make an effort to understand where this woman was coming from. (Having two children with white skin that they hate-it burns at the drop of a hat and shows every blemish known to man, I empathized with the woman, though I could see where Tiffany was coming from (because I tried hard))
Two) While we are continually being told that crime is a function of background and therefore one should never condemn lower income criminals, that ideology was never extended to the young men on the Duke lacross team. If folks truly buy their theory that a person is merely a reflection of their environment, why didn’t they immediately go into sympathy mode for the lacross players?
Liberal politicians are masters of the upside-down-backwards-inside-out maneuver. Instead of trying to ensure equal opportunity for all kids entering school (true fairness), they start with trying to control equality of outcome at graduation. Ridiculous. Tail wagging dog. Cart before horse.
La Shawn,
I suspect you test at 130, and the administrators who came up with this stupid (and fruitless) plan test at 85. The low-IQ people must gravitate into administrative positions at schools everywhere.
Let us not play dodge ball here.
Chinese writing is traced back to the SHANG Dynasty, a NEGROE people.
Writing in Meso-America as well as pyramid building is coincident with the arrival of the OLMEC, a NEGROE people.
Sumeria, the Biblical NIMROD, a NEGROE people.
According to Herodotus, the Greeks learned to read and write from the Ethiop (meaning black skinned). Herodotus describes the Egyptians as Black, thick lipped, and woolly haired. Our script is traced back to the Romans, who learned to read and write from the Greeks, who learned to read and write from the Canaanites a.k.a. the Phoenicians, who learned to read and write from the Egyptians; pre-hieroglyphics and proto-hieroglyphics are traced back to east central African.
The NEGROE taught the world to read and write.
That is why we get such dodge ball and obfuscative responses as in #6 and in #9.
Another weird one. Spouting nonsense:
http://lashawnbarber.com/archives/2004/06/10/brafrocentrism-on-black-kings-and-queens/ – Admin
#11 Heather in MD says, “Rural whites tend to be on the same level as inner city blacks.”
I haven’t seen any cites to studies so my response to that is purely anecdotal.
As a former ‘rural white’, I will say that the public school system I attended was and continues to be lagging in opportunity and quality instruction. However, at home, my mother insisted we engage in extra learning experiences — summer reading program at the library was nice, but my mother required book reports on all books read, etc.
Those of us who broke out of the ‘rural white’ label probably share quite a bit with the black inner city kids who do the same…someone cared enough to fill the gaps in our experiences & challenge us to reach beyond our classrooms. Relying on not-so-great public school instruction was something my mother was unwilling to do.
Humans have a tendency to meet the expectations set for them. Continually dumbing things down fails to push people to push themselves.
Angel: I have thought of something similar to your private academies. My idea was for a good but no-frills type of school that would probably not have a whole lot in the way of varsity sports programs or high-end arts or the like, but it would provide a good basic education and enough exposure to advanced concepts that most of its graduated would be able to gain admission to state colleges if they so choose. It would actually be a perfect application for school vouchers. If parents could take their share of their child’s education money and use it to pay tuition for a private school, then the need for outside funding is greatly reduced. In fact, I sat down and ran some numbers on it once, and figuring an average class size of 22 students, and minimal administrative overhead, then the school would be very close to an operating profit on voucher tuition alone. (Capital expenses would admittedly be a problem, but it’s easier to raise funds for that.)
As for the IQ discussion: That’s obviously a contentious subject, as we don’t really have any way to measure “inherent” intelligence. What we can do is mesure how well and how much intelligence a person can apply to a given set of problems. One can argue over whether the current means of IQ testing actually accomplishes that, but we do know that there is a pretty good correlation between test scores and success in life in general, and in the end that’s what really maters. So as another poster said, those numbers do mean something, and pretending otherwise doesn’t help the cause.
So the question remains: Where does IQ come from? Maybe part of it is genetic. Personally, if it is, I think the genetic contribution (ignoring the relatively rare cases of obvious learning disability) is fairly small. My own theory is that it has a lot to do with early childhood experience, how the parents interact with the young child, and the surroundings. So to try to answer you and LaShawn’s question, the answer to getting more minority children into gifted programs is to raise and educate them! The thing that might be the fly in the ointment here is how early is “early childhood”. It may be that the traits and characterists that will become IQ are already set by the time the child is 4 or 5 (or earlier), in which case there is not much the schools can do; at that point it’s all up to the parents. But it could also be that those characterists are not fixed until the age of 8 or 9, in which case good schooling might be able to “recover” a significant number of those who did not receive proper parenting as toddlers.
There is a certain percentage of the population, maybe 10%, who are born with both average-or-better inherent intelligence and very high self-motivation. Those kids will always do well no matter what kind of circumstances they grow up in. I’ve seen it; I have a nephew who grew up in about the worst circumstances possible. He more or less raised himself, studied hard, and now he’s an air traffic controller in the Air Force. But not all kids are so fortunate as to be born with that kind of self-motivation. Most kids have to have it instilled into them by their parents, and to a lesser extent, the schools. After, a slacker with an IQ of 150 is still a slacker.
So that’s where I think IQ comes from. I have a hard time believing that the racial gap is genetic, because over the last several centuries there has been too much intermarriage for a gentic racial trait, if one ever existed, to remain that well isolated. I firmly believe that it has to do with so many black children being raised in a corrosive culture that damages them in early childhood, in a way that is very difficult to recover from once the child passes the age of 10 or so.
Melinda: Interesting note. I live in an area that’s close to some of the farthest-flung backwoods of Appalachia. My aforementioned nephew grew up in just such an area. And, from my own observations, I think the backwoods does have a lot of the same problems as the ghetto: poverty, welfare dependency, rampant drug use (a rural county near where I live in north Alabama is one of the U.S. capitals of meth production), single parenting, illiteracy, irresponsibility, scofflaws, mental illness, and just downright disrepect for humanity in general.
I will say that one thing they do not have in common with the ghetto is a victim mentality. That’s probably because, being mostly white and all rural, the victimology organizations will not cater to them. And that’s just as well.
Colophon, let’s assume that every one of your assertions is correct. Please explain how that has any relevance to the topic at hand.
Troll alert! – Admin
RedBeard, assuming that Colophon is correct, it’s all relevant because there’s a vast white-wing conspiracy to steal from the NEGROE and that this is another attempt to steal again. Get it?
Don’t you just love those Afro-centrists? If I didn’t know better, I’d have thoughtt these proponents have been working with felt hats too long, as opposed to the tin-foil variety.
In a way, Colophon’s more right than he realizes on the latter point only. This is an cynical attempt by limousine liberals (not dead white men) to steal the Black’s dignity in order to score personal points in their brand of faith — secular humanism.
College is now the great mecca to which we all must bow and pray. If we can just send our kids off to their ivy halls with high school diplomas in hand and decent GPAs in their pockets, all will be well with the world.
People with college degrees make more money and live longer and happier lives, right? But what if your kid wants to join the Army right out of high school? Well, as long as it’s merely a way to pay for college. What if he wants to become a carpenter? Maybe he can do that for a few years, save up enough money for college, then use his carpentry skills to become an engineer.
The kid who can’t dissect a Wordsworth poem to save his life but can rebuild an engine with his eyes closed is vastly undermined (and undervalued) by a system so tyrannically focused on contrived academic achievement.
Instead of expending our energy reducing standards in academia, why not invest in de-marginalizing the world of blue collar opportunities?
I’m aware of the various cans of worms such a proposal opens, especially in light of our discussions on poor parental involvement, but I’m going to stop here anyway. After all, it’s La Shawn’s blog, not mine.
#17 Angel: There have always been high IQ blacks and there are many more to come. One of the dirty little secrets about high IQ people is that you find them in disproportionately high concentrations in prisons and mental institutions.
I don’t think it is worth any much effort at all to work at building a high IQ. But I darn sure know that there is much to be avoided in ending up with a low IQ.
Understand that developmentally speaking, the brain is rather stubborn about overcoming retarded development. If you short out some part of the development stage, you are creating a permanent problem. There are no “smart pills” and there really is a condition of being “stuck on stupid.”
Proper diet and health care leading up to and during pregnancy is critical to the IQ of the child. Equally as critical is the nutrition and stimulation of the infant in the first six months. But wait, there is more! There are important mental development mileposts every six months through the first seven or eight years of life. It takes a lot of thoughtful attention and determination to get a child started on the right path to a productive and fulfilling future. (Stunting his mind with poor nutrition such as a diet of chips and soda would not be one of them.)
I see too many little guys who are sassy and good at giving the “high five” and are also fairly dead in the head.
The National Geographic is full of pictures of critters that drop cute little offspring. And, I am sure that Crystal, of Duke rape fame has also downloaded some adorable little bundles. But here the story diverges. The average lioness raises her cubs with all her might. What do you think the chances are that Crystal will show up anywhere on the list of ” average attentive moms of the year”?
Raising a child to use his gifts and talents is all we expect of anyone. But we must first give the child the health care and nurture to give him the best chance.
Our society is not run by 130 IQ types. It is the 110-120 IQ that is commonly in positions of leadership.
If an intelligent and savvy black woman marries an intelligent and savvy black man and they tend to business in raising their children…………
There is always the clinker as well as the exception that proves the rule. But all things being equal, genetics is not a complicated science.
And, if the local market has a scarcity of same race mates, it is time to examine the options.
Well, there are obvious racial differences. Some are openly discussable, others are wrapped in heavy PC and “bigotry” defenses. There are distinct differences in ethnicities within racial groups. Also existing in you can talk about it/not talk about it criteria.
These differences sometimes translate out into wealth and power. Especially when you consider the very, very best are rewarded and all human genetic attributes, not just IQ, follow a Bell Curve. When you look at some pro sports, which only a miniscule number of people get in and flourish at – you see gene pools contributing. One black clan has a distinct gift of strength, extraordinary speed, and size where some 12 out of 37 men in 25 years have made it to the pros as NFL players, 2 as NBA players, and 29 of 37 attained athletic scholarships. A white clan has had some 40 out of 66 become artists and writers, several noted.
America can tolerate differences in ability as long as we have some way where all wealth and power does not concentrate in to some new aristocracy based on pure genetic merit of the very, very far end of whatever Bell Curves are currently being rewarded.
For that reason, I believe that pure meritocracy and pure libertarianism is dangerous and unsustainable. Society must have some equitable distribution of wealth and power to remain democratic and cohesive.
We do not want a society where Ruling Elites of greatly disproportionate wealth and power end up having utter sway over the standard of living and the day to day lives of the “lesser” 99.5% of people.
Such a society is inherently unstable and eventually susceptable to violent revolution by masses denied the wealth and power they see in the hands of a very few separated from them by a Vast Gulf and who eventually evolve into a separate society of different language, culture, mannerisms, and way of life.
On the topic of “gifted” I think people should not be held back and should reach full potential..but when the difference between an IQ of 129 and 132 marks a sharp social line between someone that is to be tracked into a life of splendid elite status and the other a mundane supportive role making 8 times less money and in turn working with people of IQs of 100 making 8 times less than they do…it’s not a sustainable society.
One of the “semi-forbidden” topics is disproportionate Jewish power and wealth – which does appear to have a genetic basis. Now some say that can be “celebrated” on a good for them! don’t be jealous of some multibillionaire with 42 Senators on his blackberry who will take a call and work on the Moguls requests for favorable laws, social policy, and government pork. Others though, can be critical of undue influence and the rich getting richer and not buy at all into the “Rising Tide Lifts all Boats” refrain the working poor with no health care have gotten the last 45 years from the Elites.
A Jewish and Gentile Elite has formed in America. Part genetic, part meritocratic, part on generational ability to afford elite educations, part on inherited wealth. And nepotic connections of upper crust schools and social networks predicate much of the “success” that Hollywood “players”, the courtiers of power in Washington DC, Wall Street, academia, and executive echelons attain. The good old boy networks are more powerful in 2007 America than in 1957 America and that is not a good thing.
To keep America viable..we don’t per se need quotas and rampant discrimination to achieve equity in professions..but we cannot survive Social Darwinism and vast gulfs between the existence of societal sectors. We must have power diffused in all people in America to allow them control in shaping their lives and culture and not allow it to be dictated downwards by the top 0.5% who now lobby pretty well to negate the voting power of the masses. We must have the dignity of work where we don’t end up with a nation of 3,000 multibillionaire families controlling 300 million people and most of the nation’s wealth – while the bulk of Americans devolve into a servile, wage-earner paycheck to paycheck existence.
#23 Colophon tells us that: “Chinese writing is traced back to the SHANG Dynasty, a NEGROE people.”
Yep. And those clever little black people also invented molecular transmigration and beamed themselves right down to Antarctica where they reemerged as emperor penguins and developed a style of dance known wide and far as “Happy Feet.”
A colophon is a little distinguishing marker at the end of a book. Modern science has become alert to distinguishing markers in the colon that can metastasize and spread causing great damage to the poop shoot.
In fact, rectal/cranial inversion has led many physicians to recommend a colophonoscopy as a precautionary procedure to keeps ones ears and eyes free from e.coli infections.
You can look it up.
To be honest La Shawn I am an agnostic when it comes to IQ tests and their use in general. Trying to tie intelligence to a certain number seems to me to be a fool’s errand. Might as well try to come up with a scientific measurement of romantic love a person has!
But I agree with your larger point concerning their use in the case. As long as there are educrats who are convinced that there are racists under each and every bed, you will see scheming like this continue.
La Shawn,
You’ve really touched upon a sore spot for me with this post. About 10 years ago my husband and I decided to move away from the state of WV where we had lived for the previous 3 years in part to give our children a better public education (there were other reasons).
After a year of playing catch up, my youngest son began to do well until 4th grade. He suddenly began having a lot of problems and I had numerous conferences with the teacher. I suspected that perhaps he was Attention deficit (both my brothers and my older son had been diagnosed. I also have suspected that I was an undiagnosed case.) For several reasons I wasn’t comfortable with the schools testing him for this, so my husband and I took him to the psychiatrist who was treating our other son for ADD. The doctor felt that the initial evaluations weren’t conclusive and recommended further testing. So at great expense we allowed him to have a full battery of testing and imagine our surprise when his IQ test came back well over 130! The consensus of the doctors was that he was gifted and bored in his class. This occurred over the summer so I met with the principal to discuss his placement for 5th grade.
I shared with the principal all of the test results and his response was that if a parent and teacher were in agreement, the child could be placed in the Talented and Gifted program. After a few weeks into the school year, I got a call from the assistant principal and basically since his teacher ‘didn’t see him as gifted’ he would have to go through their testing process. I gave permission for this because after having met with the clinical psychologists, I was confident that there would be no problems.
A few weeks later we got the letter saying that he had not qualified for the TAG program in his testing and when I investigated further I found out that our state used an achievement test to test for placement- they are not concerned with IQs. They also use personality and behavior evaluations by the teacher which explains why so many children referred are over-achieving white girls that express a high need to please the teacher. In a later conference I told his teacher that frankly she did not have the right initials after her name to make an assessment on him being gifted.
My son was devastated by the school’s decision and I began to regret the entire process. His self-confidence in his abilities plummeted. He is now a senior in high school and only in recent years has he healed from the scars. He never had the enrichments offered through the schools by the TAG program; we have had to take care of that as parents. Of course being a parent means that you will have regrets in your life, but the ultimate irony to me was that the state of WV at that time used a strict IQ test for placement ( they may still I don’t know). 130 you are in, 129 you’re not. Had we remained in WV instead of moving to a state with ‘better’ schools, he would have received all of the benefits accorded gifted children.
I guess the point to this long ramble is that the only fair way to determine who is placed in these programs is IQ. As long as ‘personality’ and ‘behavior’ are used to screen gifted children you are going to have unfair situations like that my son experienced.
I thought the WUTANG CLAN taught us all how to read.
Anyway, Ethiopians and Egyptians are not negroid.
http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:1L6h7oxHKrQJ:orvillejenkins.com/peoples/raceandethnicity.html+origin+ethiopian+race&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=9
As far as black kids in regards to biology v. environment all I know is the kids who go to my church (which is predominantly black) are good to great students. They have not been spared the rod nor have their parents ignored them. Education and responsibility are STRESSED. I don’t believe that the parents care that much about self-esteem:) Most of the kids are not allowed to date either. Good old fashioned values, once again, seem to be the answer. You don’t need money to turn off the tv, quit playing, and sit down to read and think.
Geez…
No one sees a problem with a public school system performing an “IQ test” whose score will stay with the student for the duration of the student’s time in school and may “travel” with that student afterwards?
The same public school systems that hires pedophiles, promotes “whole word” learning, pushes drugging of kids, especially boys, who are “hyperactive”, etc?
Darkstar,
When I was a child public schools routinely tested the IQ of all children. Then around high school age, there was a big push to open up ‘permanent records’ so that students could find out what was in them. I’m not sure why they stopped doing it routinely unless it was cost.
I don’t have a problem with the schools doing the testing as long as they have qualified people doing the testing and measuring the results, ie. the right initials after their name. However a better result might come from schools accepting the results from professionals who are qualified to make that determination. The whole hoop we had to jump through simply because my son’s teacher didn’t think he ‘acted’ like a gifted child is ridiculous.
On the other hand when gifted programs are as meaningless as this, what difference does it make what IQ is used as a threshold? Lowering it to 120 for black or minority students isn’t much different than favoring well behaved perfection seeking little girls over more normal behaved boys.
Anyway, Ethiopians and Egyptians are not negroid.
“Negroid” is an outdated term from the outdated science of physical anthropology. This science has been replaced by genetic anthropology. Thus, races are no longer distinguished by cranial structure, but by genetic similarity.
When I was a child public schools routinely tested the IQ of all children. Then around high school age, there was a big push to open up ‘permanent records’ so that students could find out what was in them. I’m not sure why they stopped doing it routinely unless it was cost.
A few of my cousins were IQ tested when they were younger. They were told they have an IQ to do nothing more than manual labor. One retired as an engineer another obtained a masters in education and a masters in theology.
A younger cousin was tested by the system, said to be “border line retarded” and was going to be placed in “special education.” His parents, my cousins, had him undergo a full battery of tests and he scored way up there on IQ. They gave the results to the school and they wouldn’t accept the results. They placed him in a private school until his emotional ability caught up to his intellectual ability. He was put back into the school system where they didn’t want him in the AP course. His parents fought it by going to the school with their degrees in hand: both have masters, one was working on a PhD. They got him in despite the system. Today, he has a BS and a Masters and is doing gaming software, but his public school record shows his “borderline retarded” label.
Open up the G&T program. If the students fail out, then let them fail out.
That whole anti-European thing is so annoying–I’m so glad I’m barely in academia.
Like someone else said, ideally all students would be challenged in their education- not just the gifted ones.
Having gone through the Florida Gifted program, I can say it’s not really that great. For example, a popular English class topic of discussion is symbolic meaning in literature: “What does the river in ‘Huckleberry Finn’ symbolize?” or “What does Phoebe’s red hat in ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ represent?”. Do your kids a favor and homeschool them instead. They’ll learn more than in “Gifted” class, trust me.
I like this: “What does the river in ‘Huckleberry Finn’ symbolize?†Er, water?
Nobody Important: re: “An ancient from of wtiting called ogham was used by the Celts. So there are at least four races, and probably many more.”
You are 100% correct. In fact, the Incas are considered a unique civilization for being the only advanced, city-dwelling civilization that never invented or absorbed someone else’s method of writing. They kept their accounts, maps, etc on a device called a quipu, a rack of leather thongs with coded beads to mark incidentals. For instance, one string with three green beads and one blue bead might mean, “walk overland for three days until you reach a river” and thus serve as a map of sorts. Or strings of beads in different colors might mark numbers of livestock or produce of different types. It was very clever
. It was also odd in that it showed how isolated they were from the Mayas that they never absorbed Maya writing ideas.
But the Incas are considered unique for never acquiring writing during their Golden Age. They’re the only known advanced civilization who did NOT write.
LaShawn sez: “Did you spot the grammar mistake in the article’s title?”
Title: “Who’s gifted? Criteria in flux”
If they are talking about lowering the IQ requirement, that is a single criterion. Is that what you’re talking about?
“This is a slippery slope I am afraid… There are brilliant individuals in ALL races, opportunity is the key…” (TexasFred)
That’s absolutely true, but the problem today is that “disparate impact” has been codified into something it isn’t – proof of discriminatory practice.
Every given exam will have some degree of “disparate impact” as groups don’t always perform according to their numbers taking that exam.
In NYC the City is looking to make the physical portion of the entrance exam a pass/fail, ostensibly to admit more women, while the Vulcan society has fought against the written portion of the exam claiming that “written exams discriminate against blacks,” due to what Claude Steele (Shelby’s brother) calls, “test anxiety.”
For over 70 of its 142 years the FDNY has hired its membership via the Civil Service Merit System, a system that was put in place to eradicate the nepotism, cronyism and patronage (actual discriminatory practices) that existed in New York City prior to that under Tammany Hall.
Since 1970 that system has been challenged by various groups – women have challenged the physical requirements and blacks have challenged the written portion of the exam.
Ironically enough, one of the few people ever to hold the ranks of both Chief of Department (via written promotion exam) and later, Fire Commissioner (political appointment) was a black man named Augustus Beekman who was raised in an orphanage and went on to score at the top of every Civil Service exam he ever took, from the entrance exam he took in the early 1950s, to the Chief-of-Department exam.
If Gus Beekman could succeed when the standards were even more rigorous than they are today (today’s written entrance exam is very watered down), why can’t the blacks of today?
The answer is, some certainly can.
The travesty is all this “counting by race,” and using a false indicator, “disparate impact,” as proof of something that it’s no proof of at all.
The standards for College entrance, Civil Service Exams and Gifted Programs should be kept high without counting by race, gender or ethnicity at all.
On that issue, there are a lot of whites who are hypocrites on that issue, they support high standards when they perceive their in the best interests of their kids, but when many of these programs and the Freshmen class of MIT, Cal Tech and Stanford start to get over 60% Asian, they’re not as enthused.
To eradicate the current plague of race/gender preferences, we need to eardicate the other preferences that undermine merit, from alumni, to geographic to donor preferences, as they’re all part of the same problem. If we let the standards be and just stopped all the bean counting, we’d be a lot better off.
Chang, Kwang-chih,
The Archaeology of Ancient China,
Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, and London
ISBN: 0300014589
And again, that “black Chinese” theory, true or not, has absolutely nothing whatever to do with the topic at hand. Zip. Zero. Nada.
I have a friend who has been a fireman for 18 years. He told me that volunteer fire department service was counted as “extra points” when identifying people to hire for the department.
That had the effect of giving geographic preference to people who lived in mostly white counties. The areas that had most Blacks had municipal fire departments.
The volunteer fire department experience extra points was removed.
I’m puzzled by that one, DS. Seems logical that experience gained as a volunteer would make the candidate more valuable to a municipal FD. Ok, I’m not really puzzled at all.
Once again, I run into the idiocy that I.Q. is almost exclusively genetic (hereditary.) Anyone who has any analytical ability and studies what causes people to have varying IQs can easily conclude that IQ is probably over 80% environmental, maybe over 90%. Then why do people with higher IQs generally have children with higher IQs? Simple you idiot! The parents interact with the children and give them a better environment than children of parents with lower IQs. Lower IQ mothers tend to ingest IQ lowering substances (food and other) into themselves while pregnant, thereby lowering the IQs of their children. If IQ were mainly genetic, there would be no explaining how a genius sometimes comes from a family of average or, even, lower than average people. The reason white people have an average higher IQ higher than black people is not genetic, it is environmental. When black children are subjected to virtually the same environmental factors as white children, the differences in average IQ will disappear.
I once heard that Abe Lincoln use to like to pose a riddle: How many legs does a dog have, if you call the tail a leg?
Answer: 4 (not 5). Calling the tail a leg doesn’t make it one. Defining “gifted” down won’t make those kids any better off…in fact it may set them up for major disappointments.
That being said, he also makes great points about how and why people behave the way they do. Sailer also hold great insight into contemporary political and cultural issues.
His problem is that he does not quite understand that the development of individuals is a complex subject tied to the psychology of identity and the experiences of childhood.
It is absurd to me that a person born in the 1950’s or 1960’s fancies themselves on the same level intelligence-wise as such individuals as Leonardo da Vinci and Galileo, just because they have have similar skin colors or ancestries.
This kind of racial egoism is the height of pathological narcissism.
For goodness sakes, human beings still have not found a cure for cancer but can send men to the moon. Scientific development, believe it or not, has much more to do with LUCK and massive resources and time being poured into research than anything else. Any person of any race can be a researcher, and any person of any race can be the one to finally articulate those secrets of science that humanity has still not been able to unsheathe.
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