Intelligence at the Low End of the Curve: Where Are the Racial Differences?

Abstract

Countless studies have pointed to the fact that Black- Americans score approximately one standard deviation be low White-Americans, as groups, on standardized tests of intelligence. Certain interpretations of this oft recorded dif ference suggest that the Black race is inherently inferior, genetically, on this dimension of human performance. If this argument were correct, we could expect to see proportion ately more Blacks identified as mentally retarded than Whites (in relation to their total population). This study analyzed data on Black and White population figures for (1) total populations in three Western states and (2) mentally retarded populations in those same states. The results do not uphold the genetic-based assumptions. There was (1) no significant difference between the percentage of Blacks in the total population and the percentage of Blacks in the mentally retarded sample; (2) no difference between the percentage of Whites in the total population and the percen tage of Whites in the mentally retarded sample; and (3) no

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