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Why Race Matters: Race Differences and What They Mean
Author: Michael Levin
Westport, CT.: Praeger, 1997. Pp. X + 415.
Book Review
The Western Journal of Black Studies
by L. Keita
Although the question of race has been an important sociological issue ever
since the development of anthropology as a study of different human groups,
contemporary philosophy has had relatively little to say about the topic.
Interestingly enough though, three of the luminaries of Western philosophy did write
about race as if those human groups that distinguished themselves both
geographically and phenotypically constituted natural kinds in terms of temperament
and intellect.
This amounted to the view held by Hume, Kant, and Hegel that the different
branches of humanity were distinguishable not only phenotypically but also
temperamentally and intellectually. Kant and Hume associated the dark pigmentation
of persons of African origin with cognitive deficiencies, and Hegel wrote
disparagingly of the natural temperament of Africans as explanatory of their
cultures. And even long before Kant's time the Greek philosopher Aristotle argued
about race along essentialist lines. Aristotle inferred in a priori fashion
that the dark pigmentation of the Africans of ancient Egypt and Nubia as signaled
cowardice. (Aristotle, "Physiognomics", 812a).
Discussions on the important issue of race, though ignored by contemporary
philosophers for the most part, have been an integral part of social science
discussion. The main debate centers on whether "race" is some sort of natural
kind or is a mere social construction. If race were just social construction then
essentialist arguments associating phenotypical characteristics with behavior
or cognitive dispositions would have no ontological grounds to stand on. On
the other hand, if races could be established scientifically, that is, as
natural kinds, then possible inferences about dispositional and behavioral
characteristics could be drawn about the members of the different racial groups. This
has been one of the more popular approaches to the issue of race within the
general context of Western quantitative psychology and physical anthropology.
The interesting point about Michael Levin's Why Race Matters (the title
suggesting a play on the 1993 text Race Matters authored by social theorist Cornel
West) is that it is written by a philosopher and that it seeks to extend the
tenure of the old essentialist argument on race. Levin's thesis is that
empirically observable phenotypical traits that differentiate the so-called races
macroscopically are casually connected with dispositional traits such as
intelligence and temperament. Of course, this thesis is hardly novel given its
long-standing tenure in the research paradigms of orthodox Western quantitative
psychology. Perhaps the best known of these efforts is that of A. Shuey (1996) who
reported that the average measured IQ gap between "blacks" and "whites" in
American society is approximately 15 points, or in the parlance of quantitative
psychology, one standard deviation. It was claimed that the average score of
persons of European extraction is set at 100 points, while those of African
ancestry approximated 85 points. While some geneticists, biologists, and
psychometricians explain this average difference as due primarily or exclusively to
environmental causes, nativists such as Levin offer a mainly biological
explanation.
But merely to state this supposed fact would not satisfy epistemologically.
Further explanations are needed and this is what Levin suggests: "speculation
has long focused on the different pressures exerted by African and Eurasian
climates. Survival in the colder climates of Europe and Northern Asia requires
technologies unnecessary in Africa: clothing has to be fabricated, fires
sustained, food hunted and stored....
Planning is less adaptive in warmer climates where food is easier to get and
spoils when stored" (p. 136). Consider too: "Like the cheetah's supple spine
and the horse's hoof, the levels of intelligence of the different races were
responses to environmental pressures--as were the values embraced by different
groups" (p. 177).
Levin's reasoning here is causally essentialist and cannot be supported by
the facts. First of all the climatic argument is patently fallacious for the
following reasons. Neanderthal man, the European representative of Homo erectus,
though resident in Europe and other colder regions for at least 300,000 years
(the archaeological claim is made that the Neanderthals became extinct
approximately 40,000 years ago), was not as cognitively evolved as those members of
Homo sapiens, who migrated from Africa to Europe and Central Asia 30-40,000
years ago.
But these African members of Homo sapiens were themselves evolutionary
descendants of African varieties of Homo erectus. If the colder climates of Europe
and northern Asia were more evolutionarily challenging than the warmer climates
of Africa then one would have expected Homo sapiens to emerge in those
environments and not in the tropical ecologies of Africa. Furthermore, if the
northern ecologies and climates of the world were more challenging and
evolutionarily selective then one would have expected that the European and north Asian
descendants of resident Homo erectus (Neanderthal and others) would have been the
colonizing migrants into Africa and other tropical regions of the globe. But
the reverse has occurred.
Again, the argument that the colder climates of Europe and northern Asia
produced more cognitively evolved branches of humanity than those derivative from
the wanner climates cannot be sustained given that the world's first
civilizations (on the assumption of the Eurocentric definition of civilization) emerged
in tropical and sub-tropical regions. And we have no proof that the
originators of such civilizations migrated from the colder climates of the Eurasian
landmass into tropical and subtropical regions. The African civilizations of
ancient Nubia and ancient Egypt developed in tropical and subtropical regions, so
too the civilizations of Mesopotamia and Harappan (the Indian sub-continent).
The only possible exception to this trend is the civilization of China. But
even here the site of origin of this civilization is not fully in the temperate
zone.
Levin also errs in his explanatory thesis in that there are regions of Africa
where Africans have lived for several thousand years where the climatic
conditions are very clearly subtropical and even temperate at certain times of the
year. The climates of southern Africa extend beyond the tropic of Capricorn
and approximate the climates of European and west Asian territories such as
Greece, Turkey, and Iran. Thus if cold climatic conditions constitute the
necessary conditions for environmental challenge - the ultimate
leitmotiv of human evolutionary change -
then one would have to argue that some members of the African
branch of humanity were also subjected to climatic conditions similar to
those of Europe and temperate-zone Asia. Levin expresses an ignorance of geography
when he fails to recognize that there are parts of Africa within the tropical
zone where the temperatures are quite temperate on account of
altitude. One refers, for example, to the highlands of Kenya, Ethiopia and the plateau
regions of West Africa.
Putting aside for the moment questions about the nature of intelligence and
whether IQ tests do measure intelligence, I want to demonstrate now that
Levin's claim that there is a strict causal connection between IQ and
race - as defined by Levin--is false. Levin puts it as follows: "When
`race' is operationalized geographically, generalizations about races acquire clear empirical
meaning.... To say the mean intelligence of whites exceeds that of blacks is to say
that the mean intelligence of people of European descent exceeds that of people
of African descent. Every such generalization may be false, but they are
uniformly meaningful" (pg. 21). For Levin "intelligence" is determined by
quantitative scores on IQ tests regardless of the environmental or genetic components
of such scores. This is curious given that most of the discussion on IQ
testing is concerned with examining the basis for interracial or interethnic
differences in reported scores. Levin writes: "should the black and white
intelligence polygene turn out to be identical, and there is a mean difference in
intelligence due entirely to environmental factors, all that would follow is that
blacks would be on average as intelligent as whites if both were raised
identically.... It would not follow that blacks are as intelligent" (pg. 38). In fact
this approach to the question of intelligence as a phenotypical trait is
tantamount to equating "intelligence" with "education" or "training." Yet most of
Levin's text is concerned to argue in favor of "intelligence" not only as
phenotype but as phenotype linked causally to genotype. There is a world of
difference between these two positions.
But I return to my original counter claim against Levin: race and intelligence are not causally connected. I refer to international comparisons of IQ
scores as reported by psychometric testing. According to arch-nativist Richard Lynn
(1978) the IQ scores of southern Europeans is a full standard deviation lower
than that of the average score of northern Europeans. According to Lynn the
reported average IQ of Spaniards in Spain is 87. We are also informed that in
Yugoslavia and Greece respectably some tested school children scored 89 in both
instances. Lynn also reports that Italian immigrants to the United States
scored 84 while their Swedish counterparts scored 102. To compound the
north-south IQ gap in Europe we are informed again that Portuguese immigrants to the
United States scored 83, a score lower than that registered by African Americans
in general. Of similar interest too is the fact that when children of northern
and southern European immigrants were tested with non-language tests along
with other children of European ancestry the IQ gap remained the
same. Children of northern European descent scored 97, those of southern European descent
scored 85, while those of less recent European ancestry scored 98.
Thus it would seem that the IQ gap is not based on race after all, but on
something more akin to exposure to levels of modern technology and
education. According to convention all Europeans are classified as belonging to the
so-called Caucasoid race, yet there are significant differences between the scores
obtained from northern Europe and those from southern Europe. The main difference
observable between northern and southern Europe is not race but rather level
of industrialization and modernization in the technical sense.
Lynn's article not only deals with the IQ scores of Europeans but also with
those of Asians and Africans. For example, Lynn states that "In India, there is
a considerable literature on intelligence testing.... All the mean IQs lay in
the range from 81 to 94, the overall mean being about 86" (p. 269). Yet "a
small sample of 25 postgraduate students at the University of Calcutta, who took
Raven's Test produced an incredibly low mean IQ of 75" (pg. 269). Curiously
enough the inhabitants of India are considered "caucasoid." For persons of
African origin Lynn reports that the scores range from 75 (Ghana, Jamaica) to 88
(Uganda, Tanzania.) One might want to compare such scores with those of West
Asians: Iraq (80) and Iran (low 80's) (Lynn, p. 269).
The scores form East Asia are to be somewhat qualified given that no scores
are reported from mainland China where the vast majority of East Asians live.
As Lynn put it: "Little is known about the intelligence levels of Mongoloids in
their homelands. The majority of studies have been made on Chinese and
Japanese immigrants to the United States" (pg. 272). Lynn reports a score of 99 for
Chinese ethnics from Hawaii and scores of 107 and 114 for Chinese and Japanese
subjects in Vancouver respectively. But there is the current belief among
some psychometricians (Murray, Rushton, et al.) that East Asians are naturally
more intelligent that Africans and Caucasoids. But I have pointed out that the
vast majority of East Asians have not been subjected to IQ tests.
Furthermore, the Eskimos who are considered members of the same racial complex as east
Asians score between the ranges of 70 and 85. This is hardly proof of Mongoloid
intellectual superiority.
There are two other well-discussed aspects of the IQ controversy that Levin
discusses with little epistemological care. These two topics are the "Flynn
effect" and "identical twin testing." The Flynn effect (1987) is based on the
research conducted by James Flynn which states that there have been great
intergenerational increases in IQ reported over the recent years. For example, Flynn
noted that between 1949 and 1974 the IQ scores of French persons increased 21
points. Similar kinds of increases were noted for Japan, Germany, and
Austria. In fact, Flynn remarked on the same phenomenon for fourteen nations.
Clearly, genetic factors could not be at work here. We can attribute the increases in
IQ purely to environmental changes (schooling and other kinds of cognitive
exposures).
Levin does recognize the Flynn effect (pg. 128) but dismisses an environmental explanation for the "black-white IQ gap" with the unproven claim that since
"black" and "white" environments have been converging the racial IQ gap may
well be genetic. But Levin has not proven that the sociological environments of
blacks and whites have been converging. Levin even argues that if the IQ gap
does not change over time for both blacks and whites this difference means
"that the race gap is due to genes" (p. 129). It is difficult to follow Levin's
reasoning here. What is at stake here in the discussion is the impact of the
environment in determining IQ scores. The explanation offered for intergenerational differences in IQ scores is necessarily environmental, that is, over time
environments change for the same racial group. But then Levin illogically
rejects this possible explanation for the black-white IQ gap by claiming that there
are no environmental differences between the sociologies of blacks and
whites.
But we know that there are evident environmental and sociological differences
between blacks and whites in the United States and elsewhere. In fact the
only way in which possible cognitive differences between blacks and whites could
be properly evaluated is for sufficiently large samples of black and white
monozygotic (identical) twins to be randomly adopted by black and white
households across all socioeconomic levels. Thus each pair of black and white twins
will be adopted at birth individually by one randomly chosen black family and one
randomly chosen white family. But again, even if such an experiment were
possible, what guarantees do we have that the identical twins have all been
randomly distributed throughout society?
This brings me to the very issue of research done on identical twins reared
apart as a way of determining the effect of the environment on IQ
scores. Levin does refer to the different studies done on monozygotic twins reared apart
(p. 97) but does not shed much analytical light on the issue. The most extensive
of these tests (as cited by Levin) are those carried out by Pedersen (1992),
Burt (1966) and Bouchard (1990). The average estimate of [h.sup.2] for these
studies is .80 with the average difference between IQ scores being put at 7
points.
All this is interesting but it does not shed much light on the questions
concerning race and IQ. After all, if monozygotic twins reared apart are reared in
environments that are sociologically similar then the significance of
reported IQ differences loses explanatory importance. What is significant though
about monozygotic twin studies are the reported individual ranges between tested
twins. I argue that if there are a significant numbers of monozygotic twin IQ
scores that demonstrate tested gaps of approximately 15 points -- the
approximate black-white gap in the United States and some parts of Africa, then the
hereditarian thesis is cast in doubt.
Psychometrician Arthur Jensen (1972) offers some data on this in the paper
"IQs of Identical Twins Reared Apart". Jensen offers details on 4 twin studies.
One of the studies discussed is that of Burt's (1966), but this research has
been mired in controversy so I shall not use it in my analysis. Of the
sixty-nine (69) pairs of twins tested by Shields (38), Newman et al. (19) and
Juel-Nielsen (12), ten (10) pairs of the sixty-nine (69) had gap differences of at
least 15 points. This number amounts to approximately 14 percent of the total.
This is significant. If one restricts the analysis to Shields and Newman the
percentage increases to 18 percent approximately. We note that the Juel-Nielson
study was carried out in Denmark where social equality is an ideal aimed at.
This explains why in this study the largest IQ gap registered is 12 points.
Levin's thesis, though mainly about the issue of intelligence and race is not
exclusively so. He extends his racial thesis to the question of values and
human behavior. Levin puts it thus: "The races simply differ in abilities,
behavior, and standards of evaluation" (p. 163). Levin's sociobiological approach
to human decision making is once again evident when he writes: "The separate
evolution of blacks and whites, which appears to have produced cognitive and
temperamental differences, makes it possible, indeed likely, that behaviors and
norms pathological for whites are not pathological for blacks, and that
identical behaviors and norms have different functional significance for the two
races" (p. 186).
In the section on values Levin seeks to expound on this thesis with
references to interracial differences in criminality and cultural attitudes. The goal
here is to argue once again for an essentialist theory of race not only in
terms of cognitive abilities but also in terms of values. But again Levin, though
avowedly empiricist in orientation, fails to be exhaustive in his analysis.
Obvious proof of my claim here is that there are societies of persons of African
origin where crime and acts of violence are extremely rare. The crime rate is
extremely low in rural communities of persons of African ancestry in Africa
and the Americas. It is the sociological argument that explains why the
descendants of peaceful rural African Americans are often involved with the law in
the urban, high unemployment areas of North America.
In the discussion on values Levin once again appeals to the environment to
explain "the strong individual dominance drive" among Africans (p. 140) and a
supposedly cooperative and democratic European temperament. Levin writes,
"Recall the hypothesis that conditions in northern Eurasia strongly favored
cooperation" (p. 168). In fact Levin's analysis is totally erroneous: it is African
society that has been criticized, as being incompatible with the individualism
required of market economies. It is in Africa and other areas of the African
world rather than in Europe that the idea of the extended family, with its
concomitant principles of cooperation and altruistic obligation, is held to be
widespread. But I do not make an essentialist argument here. Human social
relations are determined maximally by the principle of sociological contingency:
individualism and anomie are rampant in large urban areas while cooperation and
altruism are more common in the rural areas of whatever continent. So again,
Levin's thesis fails for lack of persuasiveness in terms of empirical evidence and
analysis. In this regard Levin's speculations on the supposed differences in
free will capacity between "blacks" and "whites" cannot be supported either
scientifically or theoretically.
Of interest too are Levin's attempts to justify his arguments about the
cognitive abilities of individuals of African ancestry by claiming that there is no
evidence of creative, intellectual production from such persons in
history. Levin writes that "the absence from Africa of advanced material culture is more
than an accident is confirmed by the failure of post-colonial Africa to
sustain the technology left by whites" (p. 120). Levin is wrong in his claims about
"the absence of material culture in Africa" and the fact that there are
problems with technology transfers in Africa cannot be attributed to genetic
causes. There are places in Europe where there are serious problems with technology
transfers and maintenance as in countries such as Greece, Albania, and
Bulgaria. And there are countries in the African world where basic technologies such
as electricity, telecommunications, roads and so on are efficiently
maintained. Ready examples are Kenya, Senegal, Barbados and Botswana.
The problems of technology facing the African world have nothing to do with
genetics but with the complex of relations between the industrialized nations
and their ex-colonies within the context of the capitalist world order. Levin's
ignorance of the history of civilizations is again evident when he writes "no
important discovery, invention or world leader emerged from Africa. The art,
music, architecture, literature, and political history of Eurasia owe
virtually nothing to Africans" (p. 194). In response to those who would claim that the
architectural, cultural, and technological influences of ancient Egypt and
Nubia, as African civilizations, on the Eurasian world easily refute the above
assertion, Levin states without any elaboration and with reference only to some
obscure pseudo-anthropologist (Baker, 1974) that "the Egyptians were not
black" (p. 194).
But the originators of the world's first qualitatively path-breaking and
influential technological civilizations were the ancient Nubians and
Egyptians, both of African racial origin. Levin also fails to recognize that the Moorish
architecture of southern Spain is of African origin, and that the originating
and creative impulses for contemporary Euro-American music and art are also of
African origin.
But I want to elaborate further on Levin's lack of knowledge of Africa's
anthropological and historical past with respect to the ancient Egyptians and
Nubians. Levin's illogical reasoning on this issue goes something like this:
Persons of African origin are incapable of producing any form of genuine
civilization. The ancient Egyptians produced forms of genuine civilization. Ergo, the
ancient Egyptians were not persons of African origin. The problem with this
unsound argument is that Levin's first premise is empirically false.
The Greek historian Herodotus specifically refers to the ancient Egyptians as
"black-skinned and woolly haired" both sufficient phenotypical
characteristics for membership in the African race. Other Greek writers such as Aristotle
also make reference to the physical characteristics of the ancient Egyptians and
Nubians, contrary to Levin's assertions. Levin writes: "Africanists cite
scattered reference to blacks in Herodotus to support a Nubian origin of Greek
religion, but ignore Aristotle's silence about Africa. Why should Aristotle have
lied, but not Herodotus?" (p. 195). Despite the strangeness of this
proposition, Aristotle did not lie for we find in his "Physiognomics" the following:
"Too black a hue marks the coward as witness Egyptians and Ethiopians and so does
also too white a complexion as you may see from women" (Vol. VI, 812a). In
Book XIV of Problems Aristotle makes reference to the hair form of Egyptians and
Ethiopians: "Why are the Ethiopians and Egyptians bandy-legged? Is it because
the bodies of living creatures become distorted by heat, like logs of wood
when they become dry? The condition of their hair supports this theory; for it
is curlier than that of other nations, and curliness is as it were crookedness
of the hair." (Book XIV, p. 317)
What Levin fails to recognize is that just as there are no reasons why
eyesight and hearing capacities might differ on average between individuals of the
different geographical racial groups, so too with the human cognitive
faculties. Once the biological threshold of Homo sapiens was reached in Africa there
was no further need for evolutionary pressures to yield groups of individuals
with significantly differing cognitive capacities wherever they migrated on
earth. The cognitive capacities of Homo sapiens Africanus were adequate enough to
ensure survival not only in tropical Africa but also in temperate Eurasia and
the frigid Arctic. I repeat the proof of this thesis that I established above:
Homo sapiens Africanus was in no way cognitively disadvantaged with respect
to the Neanderthal human types that had been resident in the cold climates of
Eurasia for at least 300,000 years -- a time span much longer than the entire
period for which Homo sapiens has existed.
In sum, Levin's text should be understood as not much more than a repetition
of the traditional arguments on the issue of "race differences" in
intellect, temperament and physiological capacities. I do not deny that the world's
environments have selected for gross human physiological traits such as
pigmentation, hair form, epicanthic eye folds and so on, but once Homo sapiens Africanus
emerged with the capacities for language (all languages necessarily derive
from the first African languages), and conceptual thought (necessary for the
first art works and Neolithic technology) the selecting influences of the world's
environments were rendered redundant with respect to human cognitive
capacities.
What this means is that Levin's argument concerning racial differences with
respect to intelligence, temperament and value choice cannot be supported. His
quasi-inductivist thesis that the present average IQ scores of some groups of
persons of African descent is explained by a supposed dearth of African
creativity over time, I have shown to be fallacious. Levin's text, in essence, is
just another instance of that persistent ideological strain in Western thought
which claims that persons of African origin are deficient in the important
intellectual characteristics that define the human species.
The reason for the persistence of this specific ideology is that it is
required to maintain the idea of the Eurocentric racial caste system established at
the dawn of the modern era to justify the economic division of labor required
by the captivity of Africans in the Americas, the captivity and colonization
of Native Americans in the Americas, and the colonization of Africans in
Africa. The forced labor of Africans in the Americas and Africa had to be justified
by an ideology that claimed that persons of African origin were less
cognitively capable than Europeans. If it were admitted that IQ scores reflect only
sociological differences between groups then the social stability of the racial
caste system invented by modern Eurocentric discourse would be seriously
undermined from an intellectual standpoint. Something similar was at work in the
European invention of the concept of the naturalness of hierarchies of ancestry
required for the stability of Europe's feudal orders: aristocrat and serf were
distinguishable ancestrally purely on the spurious concept of "blood."
The politico-economic situation of the post-Civil Rights era in the United
States and that of post-colonial Africa are highly unstable in terms of the
division of labor established at the origins of Modern Europe. The economic
"success" of modern Europe springs from the exploitation of African labor (in the
Americas and Africa) and the resources of Africa by the entrepreneurial
administration of European capitalism. The racial ideology that made the wealth and
success of Europe possible is now being challenged. It is the defense of that
racial ideology that explains the popularity and notoriety of theorists such as
Eyesenck, Jensen, Shockley, Murray, Lynn, Murray, and Levin.
I have argued above that the racial ideology emphasizing the cognitive
limitation of persons of African descent is fallacious. I established the following:
1) The idea that the colder climates of Eurasia were more challenging than
those of Africa thereby leading to a more cognitively evolved branch of Homo
sapiens is false. Neanderthal man existed in Europe for at least 300,000 years
but was no more cognitively evolved than the incoming Homo sapiens Africanus.
2) IQ test results do not establish cognitive differences based on race since
Southern Europeans, West Asians, South Asians, Eskimos, and others register
scores similar to those of persons of African descent. It is evident that IQ
scores reflect particular sociological environments than otherwise.
As a final note: the apparent seriousness of the text is marred by a
frivolous "hypothetical address by the President of the United States of America to a
Joint session of Congress and the American People" supporting Levin's theses
on racial differences in intelligence and temperament, and three nonsensical
appendices. There is also an inexcusable grammatical error in the first line of
page 147.
References
Aristotle. "Physiognomics" in Minor Works, trans. W.S. Hett. London:
Heinemann, 1963. It should be noted that the editor of Aristotle's Minor Works and
Problems expresses doubt whether these works were authored by Aristotle himself.
In any case they do reflect in this instance empirical observative the Greeks
made of the African phenotype of the Egyptians and Nubians.
Problems, trans. W.S. Hett. London: Heinemann, 1970. Flynn, J. 1987.
"Massive IQ Gains in 14 Nations: What IQ Tests Really Measure." Psychological
Bulletin 101: 171-191.
Jensen, A. 1970. "IQs of Identical Twins Reared Apart." Behavior Genetics 1.
133-148.
Lynn, R. 1978. "Ethnic and Racial Differences in Intelligence: International
Comparisons." In Human Variation: The Biopsychology of Age, Race, and Sex,
eds. R. Travis Osborne, Clyde Noble, and Nathaniel Weyl. Eds.: 261-286
Shuey, A. 1966. The Testing of Negro Intelligence, 2nd ed. New York: Social
Science Press.
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