Dangerous Territory: Race, IQ, and Power
BY SONYA SCHOENBERGER
In the 19th century, whites anxious to preserve societal order and hierarchy fought to entrench racial distinctions not just in social institutions but in the very the laws of nature. Theories of the day claimed that people of African blood were not simply biologically inferior—they were of an entirely distinct species, more proximate to primate forebears than to their fair-skinned contemporaries. Whites calmed their fears about the confusion of racial distinctions with biological speculation: as separate species, some argued, whites and blacks could not produce completely fertile offspring. Mixed-race lineages would fade over time as the result of attenuated fertility and physiological confusion; nature itself would militate against miscegenation. These theories of rigid racial distinctions were accompanied by assertions of intellectual superiority. In his Notes on the State of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson wrote that African Americans “could scarcely be found capable of tracing and comprehending the investigations of Euclid.”
The United States has come a long way since the days of human chattel and canings on the Senate floor. But theories of intellectual differences between the races, and the Western practice of defining intelligence according to Western standards and methodologies, persist. In a 2007 paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Intelligence, Satoshi Kanazawa, a evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics, argues that the IQ of an indigenous population is directly proportional to its latitudinal coordinates and inversely proportional to local temperature. Essentially, Kanazawa reasons that early humans who migrated further and adapted to increasingly novel conditions got smart, while the cognitive development of those who stayed behind in Africa stagnated. Kanazawa bases his theory on statistics about national IQs around the world—he cites 69 as the average quotient in Sub-Saharan Africa—and he extrapolates from this data that “general intelligence was never that important in the ancestral environment.”
While Kanazawa has been criticized by many, including a sizable cohort of sociobiologists who fear his extremism debases the legitimacy of their profession, some academics and the London School of Economics have rallied to his side. Political correctness, this latter group argues, should not stand in the way of good science.
One has to wonder, though, if a study that purports to have empirically determined 69 as the average IQ of people in a broad African region can be considered “good science.” The IQ test itself is a decidedly Western contrivance, and its administration to the peoples of the world cannot be divorced from its link to the Western cultural psyche. The implication ofKanazawa’s entire argument—that the plight of those trapped in extreme poverty is the result not of external exploitation but of fundamentally inferior DNA—is dangerous, and the value of his contribution to scientific knowledge questionable. The publication and reception of Kanazawa’s article raise important questions about the ethical bounds of modern science and the distinction between productive scientific inquiry and the abuse of scientific methodologies to reinforce racial power structures.
Measurements of intelligence, even more so than descriptions of physiological distinctions, are by nature relative, and therefore founded upon cultural biases. Historically, Western cultures have used scientific theories to serve colonialist and xenophobic agendas, and to formalize hierarchical divisions within society. It is therefore important to recognize the political agendas underlying modern scientific power, and to acknowledge the ways in which the racist theories of yore continue to pervade the popular and political consciousness of the 21st century. Because of the subjective nature of the IQ test, quantifying “intelligence” across the world numerically is problematic and, ultimately, unproductive.
The disagreggation of individuals into nucleotide sequences and skull topographies has an enduring history, but the days of racist theorists like Satoshi Kanazawa may be numbered. Theories of biological superiority thrive when a society’s dominant racial group also holds sway over its academic and research institutions. According to the Census Bureau’s projections, the demographic makeup of the United States is poised to shift dramatically over the course of the 21st century. By 2050, thanks to immigration and robust birth rates within minority populations, America will have no racial majority. While this shouldn’t be a cause for complacency about racism, it bodes well for the movement away from clearly bounded definitions of race. Amidst the changing demographics of American and European societies, scientific racism may find itself doomed by pluralism itself, and by increased intermarriage and the gradual breakdown of rigid racial distinctions.