Jefferson Fish has edited a book entitled Race and Intelligence: Separating Science from Myth (2002). He has taken on a huge task! The title of the first chapter in the book provides an understanding of the dilemma: A Scientific Approach to Understanding Race and Intelligence. How can there be a scientific approach to the highly unscientific concept of race, let alone, the dubious -- and much debated -- notion of fixed intelligence?
Actually, the book would more accurately be titled, Debunking the Bell Curve (Herrnstein and Murray, 1994), because that is the focus of most of the chapters.
And this is much of the book's problem. While J. Fish makes a clear case in his two chapters that race, in fact, does not exist as a scientific entity, saying, "I hope (the book) will help readers to understand why it is that races do not exist....."(5), many of the chapters -- such as the one by Ogbu (discussed later) rely on the concept of race to make their arguments. The dilemma, of course, is how to attack the conclusions of the Bell Curve -- that race and IQ are, in fact, correlated, without resorting to racial group labels? The other problem is that, in continually attacking the Bell Curve, the book gives the Bell Curve more credibility, which it does not deserve. (I must admit I have not read the Bell Curve; I read it's predecessor, the IQ controversy, and decided the whole debate regarding race and IQ is much like debating the number of angels that will fit on the head of a pin).
In discussing the lack of scientific evidence for the concept of race in chapter 1, A Scientific Approach to Understanding Race and Intelligence, J. Fish calls the common notion of race a folk category, or folk taxonomy, "....the classification of people into biological races has long been known by anthropologists to be scientifically inaccurate, but reflective instead of folk beliefs...." (3) He goes on to argue that psychologists and other social scientists have, "seen the world through the filters of current American (US) folk categories .."(2). While this is an incredible indictment of the lack of professionalism, academic rigor and perspicacity -- and something I have always accused multiracial educators of doing, I believe this phenomena if far more than just sloppy science. When I interviewed A. P. Poussaint (Harvard psychiatrist and Cosby Show consultant) some years ago for a magazine article, I asked him why he had changed his view of biracial children from confused, messed-up people to potentially very successful individuals. He replied that his graduate studies in psychiatry had taught him biracial children are psychologically and physically abnormal. Thus, academic institutions teach that race -- and culture -- are immutable truths that must be perpetuated to maintain people's mental health, among other things. After all, the deplorable label of "marginal man" to describe people of multiracial heritage was coined by an academic.
The other question, of course, is why would our government (U.S. Census Bureau) adopt a folk approach? Most of the time the government if bent on telling us folk that we are wrong, and that they know the real truth! Often they do -- especially when it comes to things like medicine, safety and nutrition. So why did our government not follow the (scientifically correct) anthropologists, instead of the folk categories (under the guise of science)?
Fish then takes the next logical step in his discussion of the nonscientific notion of race, claiming, "...one of the key reasons that cultural misunderstandings and mutual ignorance between psychologists and anthropologists are problematic is that they permit psychologists to take seriously statistically intelligible but otherwise absurd research..."(2).... "When they (psychologists) assume that human races exist, and categorize their experimental participants by their physical appearance or self-designation, they unwittingly create much mischief."(3) This is one of the main reasons why so many academics are opposed to a multiracial category, because it would foul up "this mischief" -- and is exactly the reason why I want one!
While Dr. Ogbu does not convince me of his theory, he also violates the thesis of this book, by comparing various racial and ethnic groups to whites -- as if these groups are rationally and scientifically constructed. However, the chapter by Michael Hout (Test Scores, Education, and Poverty), both refutes Ogbu's need to categorize people by race, and challenges the basic results of the Bell Curve without resorting to racial categories. The basic treatise of the Bell Curve is that IQ is based on hereditary (not environment), and, therefore, the reason more minorities than whites are unsuccessful in this country is because they have lower IQs. Further, if this is in fact true then government programs designed to increase the success for minorities (through improving environments -- schools, Head Start, etc.) are a waste of time and money.
Hout shows quite convincingly that lack of success in this society is, in fact, based on critical environmental factors, such as growing up in a single, female headed household, not graduating from high school, attending poor quality public schools, living in bad neighborhoods, marrying people who are unsuccessful, and being imprisoned. While minorities are disproportionately represented in these categories, as Hout so rightly points out, this does not mean race is a predictor of lack of success. In fact, the data he presents indicates that students who are labeled as African American benefit more from graduating from high school than students labeled as white.
This argument, of course, also suggests we should redirect affirmative action and other race-tied programs to needs-based programs.
Hout's chapter also contains one of the more amusing statements in the book -- lite relief from all the statistics and tables: "The results ....mean that few people from middle class origins are poor." (duh)
Hout's well articulated piece further reinforces my overall disagreement with the book: namely, we don't need more books arguing the pluses or minus of race and IQ; we need books that show us how to use these critical indicators of success to increase the probability of more American citizens reaching their full potentials. An article in the March 6th edition of Rocky Mountain News described that 49% of Hispanic babies (of any race) in Colorado are born to mothers who didn't graduate from school. According to Hout, this is a huge indicator that these children -- and others whose parents don't graduate -- will not be successful.
Dr. Fish, how did this absurdity get past you?
The very reason many of us advocate for a mixed-race category is because, while we are very aware -- probably more so than Dr. Smedley -- that race is not a scientific concept, we are most assuredly aware of the reality of race in our society -- and thus require a more accurate category that will greatly increase people's understanding of the racial and ethnic diversity, and give us and our children a place in that very society.
The indictment of our position hidden within 425 pages of scientific argument, tables, graphs and statistics, is one of the reasons I so strongly distrust the academic community. Even a book that claims to deconstruct race, and a racial-IQ correlation, is opposed to those of us who advocate a proudly multiracial label. If race is, in fact, a political -- not scientific -- construct, then, politically we deserve to be recognized. This opposition to our cause suggests to me that these authors 'protest too much' and don't fully understand the issues.
Some of the other chapters in the book include, Folk Heredity; The Bell Curve and the Politics of Negrophobia; How Heritability Misleads about Race; the Genetic and Evolutionary Significance of Human Races; and African Inputs to the IQ Controversy, or Why Two-Legged Animals Can't Sit Gracefully
.
However, a few of the chapters would only be interesting to those very few people who really love to read complex statistics.
I highly recommend the book to college students -- especially graduate students, and students who have professors who still believe in the scientific validity of racial categories (according to Dr. Fish, that's almost all social science professors -- not to mention education instructors). Further, this book provides a refreshing international discussion on the issue of race, sorely (and, quite frankly, disturbingly) absent from most academic writings. I have always maintained that only by seeing how different countries classify the same people differently, does the whole stupidity of race as a scientific construct become clear. And Race and Intelligence supplies ample ammunition to expose the idea that academics really know anything about race. Finally, the book provides wonderful justification for those of us who believe in providing effective programs for people who are less successful, but who have come to the conclusion that race-specific programs simply don't work, for a whole variety of reasons.
*Francis Wardle, Ph.D., executive director of the Center for the Study of Biracial Children, and author of Tomorrow's Children (CSBC), just finished writing an early childhood college textbook for Allyn & Bacon, and is currently writing a textbook for Allyn & Bacon about multiracial and multiethnic children.
I first became familiar with Jefferson Fish when I read an article in Psychology Today about his biracial daughter's visit to Brazil. The article described how his daughter was considered black when she left the US; but considered mixed, or morena, when she stepped off the plane in Brazil. Thus a plane ride can change your race. This absurdity was reinforced for me when my biracial son, Kealan, visited Brazil, and was assumed by everyone he met to be Brazilian -- since most Brazilians are of mixed heritage, and identify themselves that way.The Problem with Race: Dr. Ogbu's Dilemma
In his contribution, Cultural Amplifiers and Intelligence: IQ and Minority Status in Cross Cultural Perspective, John U. Ogbu reiterates the theory that has made him famous: justifying the success of voluntary immigrates (such as Asians, Irish, and Italians) and the lack of success of involuntary minorities (such as Blacks, Native Americans and some Hispanics). In a nutshell he postulates that people who voluntarily come to this country will be successful; those who were either forced here, or had America forced on them, will not. His theory is quite popular, and has been used by some of my graduate students to justify the victim mentality of some African Americans.Value of Preschool
In chapter 15, Compensatory Preschool Education, Cognitive Development, and "Race", Barnett and Camilli do a nice job of synthesizing data on preschool programs such as Head Start, where they state, "none of the studies reviewed found that program effects on cognitive development and school success differed across ethnic groups" (391). Given the importance of education to success, as demonstrated by the Hout's piece, not only is this good news, but it reinforces my belief that we should target government money to programs that work for all children. (It just so happens that I was a Head Start director for 10 years, and my specialty is early childhood education).Race Doesn't Exist, So Mixed-Race Shouldn't?
Other than J. Fish's contributions and a few other pieces that deconstruct race, little in this book is of specific interest to the multiracial community. However, in her chapter, Science and the Idea of Race: A Brief History, A. Smedley deems it necessary to lecture... "spokespersons of the (multiracial) movement..."... "To advocate for a mixed race category on the census forms further advances the myth that distinct races are biological realities and have behavioral concomitants." (174) "..........The very phrase, mixed race, conjures up the idea that pure race once existed, a myth that has long been contracted by modern science." (174) Finally, she proclaims advocating a mixed-race category, "complicates our understanding of the reality of race in our society."Recommendations
Obviously this book is not the kind you would read on a casual, sunny Sunday morning, or a plane flight across the Atlantic. It's more of a resource -- something to use to support an idea, develop arguments and find good references for academic papers. In fact, I have found myself already using it for a book I am writing.
Book published by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, NJ.
Then there's...
A growing multiracial movement struggles to redefine race
An IV interview from the pre-Internet days
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