“Race, Culture and Intelligence” – Richardson and Spears (ed)

I bought this book at a sale for 50 cent, mainly because of its title and the fact that it was published in 1972. I was hoping for some shocking opinions rife with racism so that I could write about them here and possibly ridicule them. But unfortunately (for me, but fortunately for the 70s as a decade,) it is a fairly enlightened collection of essays by a bunch of sensible scientists, social and real (kidding), that are putting up solid arguments against the followers of Galton-like racism masked as science.

These essays are drawn from three areas concerning intelligence research; psychology, biology and sociology, and the conclusions drawn by the 15 writers all seem to agree that a) an IQ score is a terrible way to measure something as complex and manifold as intelligence and b) it is likely going to be impossible to separate any potential genetic influence from the environmental factors involved in shaping the mind of a human being.

One contributor, John Hambley, points out that insisting on genetic variability to be dismissed (for any trait) gives the “very dangerous impression that recognition of any genetic difference among members of the human species necessarily implies inevitable distinctions, that are judged on an axis of superiority-inferiority.” Instead “variability is a biological resource to be valued”.

I still found some leftovers of 70s vernacular; amazing how unacceptable expressions like “Negroes” and “mongol subnormals” have become. I particularly enjoyed the outdated references to the expected size of the human genome, then shrouded in mystery – it “may consist of as many as five to ten million genes”.