In an investigation of racial differences on an "intelligence" test containing items specific to the Black environment, black subjects had a higher mean score than white subjects and there was no positive correlation between the Black Intelligence Test and the Shipley Institute of Living Scale, a traditional intelligence test. Thus, racial…

The controversy over the causes of intelligence--genetic or environmental--is reviewed. More specifically, the subject of the consistently lower intelligence scores for blacks is analyzed. Much attention is devoted to Jensen and his monograph published in the "Harvard Educational Review," entitled "How much can we boost IQ and scholastic…

Trotman (EJ 168 902) indicated that Black and White families of similar socioeconomic status differ widely in intellectual home environment, and suggested the nonutility of socioeconomic status as a control in racial comparisons of IQ. The validity of Trotman's conclusions is questioned, both for methodology and results. (Author/BH)

Seeing intelligence as neither strongly hereditary nor necessarily stable over time, and accepting the notion that it is a significant determinant of future occupational status, liberal psychologists and educators rely on the intervention of social institutions, primarily the school. The liberal view toward testing and intelligence is discussed.…

Briefly reviews the content and impact of Arthur R. Jensen's 1969 Harvard Educational Review (HER) article How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement, noting that "the reaction stirred by this article" in the subsequent issues of HER "was sharp." Among the critics were J. M. V. Hunt, Jerome Kagan, David Elkind, while Carl Bereiter, James…

Cognitive deficits in Black and other minority children have been assumed, described, and explained. This article presents an overview of this "conversation" and its implication, discusses relevant but often overlooked research, provides additional references and suggests directions for research. (Author)

One hundred eighty one sets of black twins and 223 sets of white twins provided responses to four 12-item subtests of the Raven's Progressive Matrices Test, Standard Version. The children were in elementary school and their item response patterns were analyzed with the use of revised ordering-theoretic methods to search for best-fitting…

Charles Spearman originally suggested in 1927 that the varying magnitudes of the mean differences between whites and blacks in standardized scores on a variety of mental tests are directly related to the size of the tests' loadings on g, the general factor common to all complex tests of mental ability. Several independent large-scale studies…

IQ tests and intelligence were discussed from an evolutionary perspective and implications concerning legal decisions and social policy were presented. It was concluded that disproportionate social and economic benefits need not result from the use of IQ tests in the selection of educational and occupational elites. (RD)

Presents a brief, quick-reference check list of methodological errors, fallacies, mistakes, and instances of out-and-out trickery that are found in recent well-known studies of IQ, IQ heritability, and race differences, focusing primarily upon the works of psychologist Jensen, Herrnstein, Eysenck, including selected works of William Shockley and…

Until the 1970s, there were few signs of change in the historic difference of one standard deviation between average ability or achievement test scores of black and white students. From 1970 to the mid-to-late 1980s, there was a substantial convergence of the average achievement test scores of blacks and whites. From the mid-to-late 1980s to 1992,…

Critically reviews the current combined writing of Moynihan, Glazer, Herrnstein, Armor, Banfield, Jensen and others, discussing historical perspectives on inequality, the idea of equality, access to schooling as a means toward equality, unequal economic opportunity, and misrepresentations of the adequacies of the Black family. (JM)