The Bell Curve has been discredited into oblivion. Even the stuff they admit to in the book itself shows that they used comically bad methods to get these results.

IQ is caused by a few factors. So far, I haven't seen any evidence that racial genetics is one of them.

The median black person is significantly poorer than the median white person, and with that comes a variety of factors that can impact education and test scores.

Schools are more likely to be underfunded and overcrowded. Neighborhoods are more likely to suffer from crime, drugs, and unemployment. Children are more likely to be hungrier, more sleep-deprived, and have less access to books and computer learning time.

There's also the family environment to consider. Poverty and financial struggles makes parents more stressed, which makes them less focused and engaged with their children. Black children are also more likely to be raised by single mothers or grandparents and may not have enough quality time with adults to teach and mentor them.

Hispanics and Native Americans suffer similarly as a result of poverty.

These struggles compound over years and over generations, which would make it hard for poorer minorities to catch up. Statistically speaking, minority households face more hurdles than white households, and that spills over into children's academic success.

There is evidence of racial differences in IQ narrowing when economic conditions for black communities improved, so it's not a stretch to say that given enough improvement over time, things like IQ gaps and test scores can become negligible.

There's also evidence that IQ scores are bogus and designed to emphasize knowledge taught in segregated white schools, which would naturally put all other races at a disadvantage.

Regardless of whether there is a genetic component or not, environmental factors do play a significant role and if we value intelligence and education across all races, it would benefit society as a whole to improve the environment for underserved communities and let time tell whether or not we can help it

I have a lot of opinions on them.

Race is made up. Race theory as an invention can be dated back to the enlightenment (and conveniently, the transatlantic slave trade). Although there were absolutely concepts of people "not us" the notion of whiteness simply didn't exist. Romans didn't think that they had some magical kinship with Germanic peoples, they thought they were uncivilized brutes. The notion that someone from Senegal and someone from Zimbabwe have some magical commonality is insane those two places are -so far apart-.

I also strongly believe intelligence is a nebulous concept which you can't quantify in any real way. If you are a professor of comparative literature at in New York vs a Sentinelese tribesman - how the fuck do you actually talk about a universal concept between the two that has equal use in both contexts? If you swapped their places would either one of them be "smart"? If the Sentinelese designed an IQ test, would you and I do well at it?

So IQ is basically just a made-up test that we've ascribed some kind of magic powers to like it's this unbiased scientific measurement of individual excellence. Not only is it not that, I don't see the value in doing so in the first place.

And on a personal note, everyone I've met in MENSA is a fucking idiot. People who get high on their own IQ stop thinking critically and snap into rigid dogmatic and generally asinine views of the world.

you mean if IQ differences are real? Yes

you mean if IQ is lower with some races? No

Reason: those tests are based on notions of what skills are really skills. Its about whether we really understand our world in its unreal variety. So the tests cant be valid

As long as we already think we know what we are measuring our measurements will be subsequently meaningless

IQ has genetic components, as intelligence is heritable. External factors seem negligible to me. The only one that matters is being able to read and learn, and people who do not do enough of this can still have a high IQ. Individuals who come from dysfunctional backgrounds can have a high IQ. Our environment is not very important with regard to intelligence and what we can score in IQ tests.

We need to consider that intelligence is what makes a person read a book or calculate a sum, not vice versa. The former comes before the latter. A high IQ also does not mean that the individual will become an academic success, or success in any other regard.

That test was made for white future elitists, many IQ factors are left out, that's the dirty story of this sort of obsessional-ism.

The whiz kids regularly abused the younger kids and when they grew up they took jobs that made the world an uglier place.

The failures made the world a livable place...as much as possible. Artists never worried about their scores. Dreamers, builders, thinkers, futurists...NEVER thought that test was a real thing.

The most intelligent people SPIT on the idea that intelligence can ever be measured across diverse cultures and places.and they scorn the idea that their score means they are better than anyone else.

Ya kinda have to be there.
Many people also don't believe in racial differences but only what unites us all. And I never saw one person ever, who got the idea that life was about power up and down at all times. And many of us never belong in the hiring room ever. We just got reduced to believing it, and then got massively hurt. SHAME ON THE WHOLE CORPORATE WORLD FOR YOUR TAKE ON HUMANITY AS IF WE BASICALLY NEVER BELONGED HERE.

Hierarchy is security to some and a prison to others and unreality to everyone. It encourages human exploitation and that's a crime..MOST .such behavior WILL be found in the law books as illegal

And the most enlightened schools in America don't ever use that test to begin with.

Educational opertunity..

Makes a difference.

I truly believe that race and IQ are related, it is not pseudoscience. What is pseudoscience is to try to hide those differences or justify them under socioeconomic factors. Biology is the root of all, ideology can ignore it, but not escape it.

I think there's a socio economic factor. Poor people don't get access to the same education. The racial aspect may be that most minorities don't have access to the same education I did. I went to an almost all white school with top scores in the state in a wealthy town. It wasn't successful because we were mostly white. We had the best school system in the state, families could afford preschool. And many families had stay at home moms. My mother read and sang with me. I knew how to read before I started school. Again, not because we were white but because we had the financial capability to have a stay at home mom who was involved and a great school system.

Biases can and always do come with every test. They almost always privilege people a bit like the authors.
The biases should remain invisible, right?

Another factor is environmental lead exposure growing up. Lead poisoning is more common in inner city poor communities.

During my lifetime it has always been perceived that Southerners (US) are less intelligent than people in other parts of the country. That perception was mainly driven by the fact that the southern culture is very different than that in other parts of the country. We did and still do live a slower and more laid back lifestyle. The fact that our speech is a little slower and perhaps considered less elegant that that in other parts of the country helped lead to the conclusion that we are less intelligent. It has been proven that no region of the country is more or less intelligent than another region.

Most of the perception that blacks are less intelligent than other races has been proven to be related to culture more than anything else.

BTW it is now considered that there is only one race of people on earth. The human race.

I'm having a hard time even imagining how this question could be constructive

No.

The IQ test itself is such a goofy thing to judge people by. There's plenty of people who score high who don't have a clue about anything important and people with modest scores who are actually smart. It's even worse when people use this test to prop themselves up and think they're somehow above other groups

No, race doesn't matter. All human beings, except those with birth defects, inbreds, and Down Syndrome, have the same intellect level. It's a matter of educating our people.

Why would race matter?

IQ is a product of education. Education, unfortunately, is a product of wealth. That's been the case for centuries. Any superficial relation to race has only to do with the fact that the majority of people of certain ethnicities have not had access to education for several generations.

under estimate people at your peril. regardless of their ethnicity or background: i always assume my competition is stronger and smarter than me, and I plan and strategize accordingly