Racial inequality
Name(s):
Scientific racism
Inequality of human biological abilities
Inferior average intelligence of certain racial groups
Racially-determined differences in intelligence
Nature
The average intelligence of the children of certain racial groups (notably negroes in the USA and UK) has been assessed through IQ tests as being lower than that of white children, although the range of intelligence within each group is equally wide. There is some discussion as to whether genetic or environmental causes are taken to be more important. If genetic causes are taken to be more important then segregation policies might occur. If environmental causes are accepted as being stronger, then problems of improving the environment and opportunities for intellectual development are posed.
Background
The origins of modern scientific racism date from the rise of the science of biology in the 18th and 19th centuries. At that time the development of biology, especially of theories of evolution, undermined then current religious justifications for slavery and for social hierarchy in general. Apologists for inequality looked, therefore, to the new science of biology to support their social views. They first attempted to demonstrate on the basis of anatomical measures like brain size, that blacks and oppressed immigrant groups were "less evolved". By the beginning of the 20th century this approach proved fallacious and scientific racist theorists began using newly developed IQ test as their major argument for intellectual inferiority. The environmentalist school came into prominence after World War II because critical scholarship was demonstrating the IQ test to be invalid as a true measure of mental functioning.
From a genetic perspective, a 1972 study determined that most genetic differences are found within racial groups, not between them. Only 6 percent of such diffrences were traceable to race.
Claim
Equality of biological abilities between races is a chimera that no intelligent person can entertain. A 1987 survey of psychologists in the USA concerning the genetically determined basis for racial differences concluded that blacks were on average inferior to other races.
Counter-claim
The IQ tests themselves have been proved to be racially and culturally biased and hence invalid. The acceptance of this theory gives support to racial ideology and practice, since some may take it to imply that all members of a certain racial group are intellectually inferior. General acceptance of such an interpretation of the theory in educational circles, together with the belief that such inferiority is genetically determined, could lead to a public policy of discrimination and prejudice against the 'inferior' group and prolongation of existing discrimination and prejudice. Both genetic and environmentalist schools of scientific racism are based on the assumption that deficiencies in the poor are the source of their low social position and both school refuse to locate the source of inequality in the wider society's social structure.
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Type
(F) Fuzzy exceptional problems