Intelligence Explains So Much; US Blacks Are Not Intellectually Equal

Academic intelligence is not everything but it has an exaggerated importance in modern society. Yes, we are all born equal in the eyes of the Lord, but black Americans score significantly lower in IQ and other standardized academic tests. Remember, we are talking about academic intelligence here and nothing else.

From the book "The Bell Curve" and other sources, the African Americans median IQ score is 85 with a standard deviation of 13. This data is confirmed by SAT, GMAT and every other standardized test. (Incidentally, no one argued about the raw data in this book, only the interpretation of the data.)  Yes, the scores vary by family income and socioeconomic status, but the 1.2 standard deviation "gap" persists even there and for all the data and the various tests.  The 1.2 standard deviation gap has also persisted and held steady even after 40 years of affirmative action for African Americans.  It's entirely possible that over 100s or 1000s of years it can change, so nothing is 'etched in stone.'

In the meantime, everyone has a talent and it's up to every individual to find their "gift" and pursue that.  But we shouldn't try to create false expectations or expect equal outcomes for persons with significantly lower average intelligence quotients.

What does a population with an IQ median of 85 and a standard deviation of 13 mean?

You would not expect persons below 85 IQ to graduate from High School.  One half of US blacks are below 85 (the definition of median). This means that you would NOT expect that 1/2 of the black population to graduate high school.  And the data confirm that about 50% of US blacks do not complete high school.  But the relevant point is that, for blacks, the 50% who do not graduate high school, about 35% of those people are in jail.   ( I wonder how many don't finish high because they are in prison?)   So, what do we do about that?

89.5% of blacks score lower than the white average median IQ of 100. That's nearly 90%. This is not opinion, only the math of statistics. 

An IQ of 75 is considered borderline 'mentally retarded'  You would expect persons with IQs less than 75 to be qualified for only menial or unskilled jobs. These folks would have difficulty surviving independently.  But 22% of US blacks fall into this category compared to only 4.8% of whites.  Why do you think so many US black males are in prison?  As a society, we are not dealing with these facts realistically. For example, we should be creating vocational high schools to teach trades and skills for the kids who are not able to graduate high school.  Kids with IQs less than 80 should probably be routed to a vocational high school if they want it.

An IQ score below 70 is actually considered a disability.  12.5% of US blacks have an IQ below 70 and are therefore mentally "disabled."  About 2.2% of whites are mentally disabled by this definition. So, out of the US black population of 38.8 million, 4.8 million US blacks would be considered mentally disabled or about.  For whites, it's also works out to about 4.8 millon persons.  So, what are we going to do about it, huh?  I don't exactly know, but don't you think it's important to understand the facts and discuss this?  I'm trying to be constructive.  Should be guarantee a minimum income for these persons?  There is something to that idea. The vocational high school idea is a good one.

Are we to continue to pretend that everyone is intellectually equal??

Persons with an IQ above 130 are "Gifted" and would be expected to attend the top US Graduate Professional Schools.  But only 0.027% of US black population would have this IQ  whereas 2.3% of whites would be gifted.   There are very few gifted blacks. For example, in Texas there are about 1.8 million persons of college age (aged 20 to 24) and about 13% of those are black.  Therefore about 234,000 persons in TX are black and of college age.  But only 63 blacks of college age in Texas would have a gifted IQ.  Extrapolating this data for the entire US means that only 693 blacks youths (aged 20 to 24) would be considered gifted.  In contrast, there are about 1.27 million white kids of college age in Texas and 34,500 would be considered gifted.  Texas is about 1/10th of the US population. You can quickly see that, based on IQ only, there is no room for ANY black kid in the top professional schools.  There are only so many slots available at the Princeton's and Harvard's.  

Most people, understandably, want to discount this information but it goes a long way in explaining the achievement, income, drop-out rate and even probability of criminal activity that we see in the US African American community.   IQ explains nearly everything even though it's a measure of academic intelligence.

The real questions are what to do about it: do we guarantee a minium income for intellectually disabled?  Can we better deal with those high school aged persons in a vocational high school?