A Tale of Two Races

by David Sims

THE IQ distribution of American Whites is 103±16.4, and that of US-resident Blacks is 85.0±12.4. The averages in those distributions comes from Rushton and Jensen (2005).¹ The standard deviations in the distributions comes from a 1963 study by Kennedy, Van De Riet, and White. See also Touliatos, Lindholm, Rich (2000)² and Jensen (1969).³

To generate percentages of a race that will have IQs above a specified figure, you must integrate the “bell curve” for that race’s IQ distribution from the specified minimum to positive infinity. However, in practice you can stop integrating at IQ 300 because there are practically no humans with IQs higher than that.

Let’s imagine that there is a certain job for which a specified minimum IQ (μ) was necessary for adequate performance.

The equation used to find the “high end” area under a normal distribution having average x̄ and standard deviation σ from a minimum ordinate value of μ on up is

f(μ) = [σ√(2π)]⁻¹ ∫(μ,∞) exp{ −[(x−x̄)/σ]²/2 } dx

The fraction of US-resident whites having IQs greater than μ is

W(μ) = [16.4√(2π)]⁻¹ ∫(μ,∞) exp{ −[(x−103)/16.4]²/2 } dx

The fraction of US-resident blacks having IQs greater than μ is

B(μ) = [12.4√(2π)]⁻¹ ∫(μ,∞) exp{ −[(x−85)/12.4]²/2 } dx

About one in 20 US-resident Whites will qualify for the job if the IQ minimum is 130. However, only one in 7030 US-resident Blacks would qualify. Given equal numbers of American Whites and US-resident Blacks (in a large, randomly selected group of job applicants), there would be 350 times more qualified Whites than qualified Blacks. Since Whites outnumber Blacks in the US population by a factor of about 5.5, an employer in a demographically average part of the United States, seeking to hire persons with IQs of 130 or higher, he will, if he is perfectly fair about whom he hires, hire only one Black for each 1925 whites he hires. If among his hirelings (for that kind of work) the ratio of Whites to Blacks is found to be less than 1925, then the employer has been “racist” in favor of Blacks — though he might have been forced into it by Affirmative Action laws.

To follow is a chart showing the White-to-Black Qualified Job Applicant Ratio for qualifying minimum IQs ranging from 100 to 140. Again, it is assumed that there are equal numbers of applicants from both races.

Min Whites Blacks W/B

IQ passing passing ratio

100 0.57257228 0.11320135 5.1

101 0.54853117 0.09846934 5.6

102 0.52431068 0.08519251 6.2

103 0.50000000 0.07330463 6.8

104 0.47568932 0.06272938 7.6

105 0.45146883 0.05338277 8.5

106 0.42742772 0.04517557 9.5

107 0.40365319 0.03801557 10.6

108 0.38022952 0.03180963 12.0

109 0.35723714 0.02646547 13.5

110 0.33475184 0.02189324 15.3

111 0.31284403 0.01800678 17.4

112 0.29157805 0.01472465 19.8

113 0.27101169 0.01197082 22.6

114 0.25119573 0.00967523 26.0

115 0.23217361 0.00777403 29.9

116 0.21398129 0.00620967 34.5

117 0.19664711 0.00493079 39.9

118 0.18019186 0.00389209 46.3

119 0.16462894 0.00305392 53.9

120 0.14996457 0.00238194 63.0

121 0.13619812 0.00184670 73.8

122 0.12332257 0.00142313 86.7

123 0.11132493 0.00109011 102.1

124 0.10018682 0.00082998 120.7

125 0.08988502 0.00062809 143.1

126 0.08039209 0.00047243 170.2

127 0.07167698 0.00035318 202.9

128 0.06370563 0.00026243 242.8

129 0.05644162 0.00019380 291.2

130 0.04984674 0.00014224 350.4

131 0.04388157 0.00010376 422.9

132 0.03850599 0.00007523 511.9

133 0.03367971 0.00005420 621.4

134 0.02936267 0.00003881 756.5

135 0.02551547 0.00002762 923.7

136 0.02209969 0.00001954 1131.2

137 0.01907820 0.00001373 1389.4

138 0.01641540 0.00000959 1711.4

139 0.01407743 0.00000666 2114.3

140 0.01203226 0.00000459 2619.5

Because the White standard deviation in IQ is greater than the Black standard deviation in IQ, there is a cross-over point in the very lowest IQ ranges, at about IQ 26. The fraction of all Whites having IQs under 26 is 0.000001332, and the fraction of all Blacks having IQs under 26 is 0.000000997. The W/B ratio for jobs requiring a maximum IQ of 26 is 1.363. However, it’s rather easy to be overqualified for jobs of that kind (i.e., disqualified for being too smart).

A published essay by a Black psychologist, who attempts to make a mountain out of the mole-hill of the small W/B ratio throughout the very low IQ range, can be found in The Journal of Black Psychology, Vol. 14, No. 1, 25-34 (1987) under the title “Intelligence at the Low End of the Curve: Where Are the Racial Differences?” The author, Henry Jefferson Grubb, notes the low-end approach to convergence of the White and Black IQ distribution curves and then tries to make it seem as if racial gaps in intelligence do not exist in general. This is sheer misdirection. The answer to the question in his title is “The Racial Differences are on the High End of the Curve, Mr. Grubb,” if someone wants to bother writing the paper and submitting it to The Journal of Black Psychology.

It is true that Whites and Blacks are idiots at approximately equal per capita rates. However, it is certainly not true that Whites and Blacks qualify at equal per capita rates for jobs requiring near-genius intellect, nor even average intellect. Only one US-resident Black in nine has an IQ over 100. For any job that can’t be done by a retard, there will be a higher percentage of Whites than of Blacks who will meet or exceed the mental requirements.⁵

Everything said previously in this article about the W/B ratio assumes that there are equal numbers of Whites and Blacks in the population of interest. On the other hand, in the United States generally, there are six times more White Americans than US-resident Blacks, and therefore the W/B “qualified applicant” ratio will be, in the United States, on the average, six times greater than is shown in the right-most column of the table.

Further Reading

(1) “Thirty Years of Research on Race Differences in Cognitive Ability” (PDF), by J. Philippe Rushton and Arthur R. Jensen, published in Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 2005, Vol. 11, No. 2, pp. 235-294.

(2) “Interaction of race with other variables on achievement in school,” by John Touliatos, Byron W. Lindholm, and Amy Rich; Psychology in the Schools, Volume 14 Issue 3, 2000, pp. 360-363. Abstract: “This study was concerned with academic performance in black and white children and the interactions of race with other variables on school achievement. Subjects were 334 blacks and 637 whites in grades three to six. Data consisted of general background information and grade equivalent scores on the California Achievement Tests. They were analyzed using multiple regression analysis of variance. Results indicated that blacks scored lower than whites and fell farther behind as they progressed from grade to grade. Significant interactions were revealed for sex, social class, family structure, and teachers. Means for black children were generally less variable than for white children.”

(3) “How much can we boost IQ and scholastic achievement?” (PDF), by Arthur R. Jensen,Harvard Educational Review, 1969, Vol. 39, pp 1-123.

(4) Diane Ravitch, “No Child Left Behind”, And The Racial Achievement Gap’s Kryptonite Cause by Steve Sailer, 28 March 2010, VDARE.

(5) If the resources needed for raising every person to their highest potential were available, I’d have no problem with a policy of trying to do it. However, resources are becoming scarce. And when resources are scarce, you should use them to maximize the return per unit of expenditure. Since some people are more intelligent than others are, it makes little sense to divert career opportunities from more talented ones to those who are less talented, as Affirmative Action programs do. It makes little sense to spend money to educate less intelligent groups at the expense of sacrificing educational opportunities for the more intelligent groups, as the “No Child Left Behind” programs do.⁴ Rather, common sense would suggest we should spend the money on advancing and educating the more intelligent people, who can learn more, learn faster, go farther, and return more benefit to society per dollar spent on their educations than the the underachievers ever could.

To see what can happen when liberals make unworkable policies based on their foolish humanitarian views, read this article in East Bay Express, a California newspaper, which reports that Berkeley High School will cut off funding for science labs, beginning in 2010, and used the money instead for remedial education. The only trick in the leftist repertoire which has even slightly reduced racial gaps in academic achievement is dumbing down the curriculum so that less effort is needed to pass what remains. Science lab facilities are used primarily by White students, whereas remedial education is for low-scoring students, who are predominantly Blacks and Hispanics. And when that doesn’t work, those liberals will sacrifice some other worthwhile thing; this will repeat until either there is no education left in the school or until the leftists are ousted from their policy-making roles. Whichever comes first.

Here’s another example from the News Observer, a North Carolina newspaper. The NAACP in North Carolina is opposing an increase in the funding to honors courses in the state’s public schools because it “won’t narrow [the racial] grade gaps.” Of course it won’t, since the only way to eliminate the racial gaps in test scores is to omit from the tests any examination of the students’ knowledge of the subject matter. When you give tests that ask challenging questions, the more intelligent students will usually be able to handle the challenge, while the less intelligent students will find that the challenge was too much for them, and they will fail. That is, in fact, how things ought to be. Blacks are in general not as intelligent as Whites. That’s the truth which won’t go away. Denying it might make someone feel good, but the denial is false. Racial differences in intelligence are real, and they’re going to stay real, no matter what laws are passed by federal and state legislatures. They might as well try to adjust the value of π or regulate the trajectory of baseballs.

“We’re asking our school system not to put one dime behind these new honors courses until you can assure us that all children will be challenged,” said Michelle Cotton Laws, president of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro chapter of the NAACP.

Do you notice how people in politics sometimes use stealthy language? If Michelle Cotton Laws were honest, she’d be saying “The courses are too difficult for the Blacks. We want them made much easier, so more Blacks can pass the tests. In fact, we’d appreciate it very much if you simply skipped the testing and just gave everyone a perfect 100% grade.” Don’t expect that much honesty from any politician, especially a minority one. The problem for Black students is that the course material is already too much “challenge” for them. What the NAACP wants is less challenge for Blacks, not more. The coursework that White students can do handily most often overwhelms the mind of the usually less intelligent Black student. The NAACP does not want to acknowledge any Black inferiority, so they construct sneaky language that literally means the opposite of what every politician will immediately understand to be intended.

Until the liberals have been ripped out of their administration positions in education, expect to hear excuses from them every time one of their programs doesn’t deliver what it promised. Liberals continually insist, as each of their programs in succession fails, fails, fails…, that the reason is that they weren’t “aimed” just right, and that if they would “focus” a bit better there suddenly would be miraculous results. You’d think that 50 years of failure would have corrected this nonsense, but apparently liberals are not instructed by experience. They forever promise that their next big program will get the job done, and everyone whose paycheck depends on being politically correct pretends to believe them.

If the goal were to save a burning house, liberals would hold the opinion that gasoline made an effective dousing agent. Every time a bucket of gasoline, tossed on the fire, only made the problem worse, the liberals would give us excuses about how the gasoline was being carried, or about the attitude of the people doing the carrying, and so on, and they’d promise that the next bucket of gasoline would surely put out the fire, if only we first paint the bucket a different color.

Society in general has been overly tolerant of liberals. Anyone else’s programs would be judged by their results. Deliver or be terminated! Liberalism’s programs, however, are sheathed in political correctness regarding race, and for that reason they are judged by their avowed intentions, by their ostensible aims, by their promises. And no matter how poorly liberals fare with respect to delivering on those promises, they never seem to get their credit cut off.

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Source: David Sims