Why can’t we talk about IQ?, Jason Richwine asks:
The American Psychological Association (APA) tried to set the record straight in 1996 with a report written by a committee of experts. Among the specific conclusions drawn by the APA were that IQ tests reliably measure a real human trait, that ethnic differences in average IQ exist, that good tests of IQ are not culturally biased against minority groups, and that IQ is a product of both genetic inheritance and early childhood environment. Another report signed by 52 experts, entitled “Mainstream Science on Intelligence,” stated similar facts and was printed in the Wall Street Journal.
“These may be harbingers of a shift in the media’s treatment of intelligence,” an optimistic Charles Murray wrote at the time. “There is now a real chance that the press will begin to discover that it has been missing the story.”
He was wrong. The APA report fell down the memory hole, and the media’s understanding of IQ again fell back to that state of comfortable misinformation that Snyderman and Rothman had observed years earlier.
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But it’s difficult to have a mature policy conversation when other journalists are doing little more than name-calling. It’s like convening a scientific conference on the causes of autism, only to have the participants drowned out by anti-vaccine protesters.
For too many people confronted with IQ issues, emotion trumps reason. Some are even angry that I never apologized for my work. I find that sentiment baffling. Apologize for stating empirical facts relevant to public policy? I could never be so craven. And apologize to whom — people who don’t like those facts? The demands for an apology illustrate the emotionalism that often governs our political discourse.
The idea that there are ANY objective characteristics like IQ that can be accurately assigned to groups (like ethnic groups or genders) is extremely threatening to women, blacks and Hispanics. If ANY statement contrary to the ‘all persons are created equal’ doctrine is left standing, the entire feminist and affirmative action program is threatened. Since women/blacks/Hispanics constitute about 65 percent of the population, no company, publisher, university or government agency will ever acknowledge such characteristics.
Amusingly, the affirmative action program actually depends upon the idea that women, blacks and Hispanics DO share an ‘objective characteristic’: they are victims! And this characteristic gets them out of any problems caused by any other deficiencies that they might have.