[lbo-talk] Slate magazine's cheap trick

[Miles Jackson]

Sandy Harris wrote:
> There was some work years ago measuring latency of brain response to
> flashes of light. American blacks and whites had roughly the same
> distribution on that measure, and within either group it correlated well
> with IQ score. The suggestion was that this gave an objective measure
> of intelligence without culture bias and that on this measure, blacks
> and whites were equal.
> 
> That was in 1970s, and was controversial at the time. Anyone know
> the current status? Googling "reaction time intelligence" gives a
> couple of million hits and evidence of continuing controversy.
> 

If you arbitrarily define intelligence as latency of brain responses to 
flashes of light, then sure, you can say that there are no racial 
differences in intelligence.  We're back to Woj's "so what" question. 
What difference does response latency make in problem solving in 
everyday social situations?

Miles