[lbo-talk] Slate magazine's cheap trick

[Miles Jackson]

abu hartal wrote:
> Once controls for racial inequalities in parents' wealth (blacks have
> a little more than 1/10th as whites), the correlated inequalities in
> school quality, differences in parents' educational attainment,
> differences in teachers' subconscious expectations, the effect of
> racist peer expectation in segregated schools, differences in peer
> groups which result from the post WWII  residential segregation (most
> so called middle class black kids attending segregated schools in
> which there is a heavy concentration of poor kids and children of
> functionally illiterate parents--again the result of a few hundred
> years of racism),  internalized racism and self doubt--once all this
> is taken into account--blacks clearly outperform whites on so called
> intellectual tests. 

Honestly, I wish this were true.  I know of no reputable scientific 
evidence that supports this claim.  The sociostructural factors explain 
a lot of the interracial gap in IQ scores, but not all of it.  Again 
though, I want to reiterate Woj's point: so what?  IQ tests measure some 
rarified academic skills, not intelligence or success in real-life contexts.

Miles