> At 07:27 PM 5/31/98 -0400, Justin Schwartz wrote:
> >
> >I'm not in favor of intelligence testing, although I think IQ tests might
> >be useful for Binet's original remedial purposes for individuals. I think
>
> No disagreement on the remedial use of Binet's tests. However, the unique
> contribution of the American Academia to racism was using paper and pencil
> test to claim genetic differences between people of different skin colour.
> In other words, Terman/Murray and Co. purported that their paper and
> pencil tests measure something more than behavioral differences -- they
> claimed they measure genetically inherited differences in congnitve
> capacities.
Quite right, and this of course was ideology. But it hasb't do with papere and pencil tests. It has to do with lots of mistakes, including supposing g was a real quantity and that it makes sense to attempt to measure differwences in the average g across raxcial groupos which themselves don't exist, biologically speaking.
I once debated Michael Levin, who has defending hereditarian racism. I challenged him to define who was in the "Black" group about which he was making his claim. He said, those Americand 80% of whose ancesters were from sub-Saharan Africa 30 generations back. I said, how much of the US Black population, as defined by the census, fits taht bill? He said hedidn't know, but when pressed he admitted it might be as little as 1% and probably wasn't greater than 10%. That is, of the census-defined Blacks.
--jks