IN THE FIRST half of the 19th century, one of America’s most

prominent scientists was a doctor named Samuel Morton. Morton

lived in Philadelphia, and he collected skulls.

He wasn’t choosy about his suppliers. He accepted skulls

scavenged from battlefields and snatched from catacombs. One of
his most famous craniums belonged to an Irishman who’d been
sent as a convict to Tasmania (and ultimately hanged for killing
and eating other convicts). With each skull Morton performed the
same procedure: He stuffed it with pepper seeds—later he
switched to lead shot—which he then decanted to ascertain the
volume of the braincase.

Morton believed that people could be divided into five races and
that these represented separate acts of creation. The races had
distinct characters, which corresponded to their place in a divinely
determined hierarchy. Morton’s “craniometry” showed, he
claimed, that whites, or “Caucasians,” were the most intelligent of
the races. East Asians—Morton used the term “Mongolian”—
though “ingenious” and “susceptible of cultivation,” were one step
down. Next came Southeast Asians, followed by Native Americans.
Blacks, or “Ethiopians,” were at the bottom. In the decades before
the Civil War, Morton’s ideas were quickly taken up by the
defenders of slavery.

re Whites More Intelligent than Blacks?

YES, say many people. Whites, as a race, have inherited more intelligence than blacks.

William Shockley, a Nobel laureate in physics, strongly asserts that this is so. He says:
“My research leads me inescapably to the opinion that the major cause of American
Negroes’ intellectual and social deficits is . . . racially genetic in origin.”

Professor Arthur R. Jensen of the University of California in Berkeley is a leading

exponent of the view that in intelligence whites are biologically superior to blacks. He
declares: “The number of intelligence genes seems to be lower, overall, in the black
population than in the white.”

What is the basis for such claims?

Basis tor Claims

Inheritance, many will point out, has a lot to do with racial differences. Blacks have
inherited dark skin, thick lips and kinky hair, and whites have inherited strikingly different
features. So, if whole groups of people have inherited such different physical
characteristics, it is only reasonable, some will argue, that the races would inherit
different degrees of intelligence. But do they? Why is it claimed that blacks, as a race,
have inherited less intelligence than whites?

The reason is principally due to results from Intelligence Quotient (IQ) tests. In these
tests blacks score, on the average, about 15 points lower than whites. Even when whites
and blacks of a similar social and economic status are tested, the scores of whites
average significantly higher than do the scores of blacks. So Jensen concludes from
such evidence “that something between one-half and three-fourths of the average IQ
difference between American Negroes and whites is attributable to genetic factors.”

The results from IQ tests, coupled with conclusions based on the evolution theory, have
reinforced the opinion of many that blacks are mentally inferior. Some scientists have
argued that the races evolved, to a large extent, independently over hundreds of
thousands of years. Blacks, it is claimed, crossed the evolutionary threshold into the
category of Homo sapiens later than whites.

Since IQ tests today are the principal basis for the claim that blacks are inherently less
intelligent than whites, let us look at those tests.

frican Americans score lower than European Americans on vocabulary, reading, and
math tests, as well as on tests that claim to measure scholastic aptitude and
intelligence. The gap appears before children enter kindergarten and it persists into
adulthood. It has narrowed since 1970, but the typical American black still scores
below 75 percent of American whites on almost every standardized test.

The popular classifications of race are based chiefly on skin

color, with other relevant features including height, eyes, and
hair.
Race, brain size, and intelligence: another reply to Cernovsky.
Rushton JP1.
Author information
Abstract
Five sets of observations require explanation. Firstly, within both black and white populations
there is a small positive correlation between IQ and brain size whether or not there is control
for body size. Secondly, racial differences in average brain size occur such that Mongoloids
greater than Caucasoids greater than Negroids especially with control for body size. Thirdly,
mammals with larger brains relative to their bodies perform better on learning tasks than
mammals with smaller brains relative to their bodies. Fourthly, average racial differences on
measures of cognitive performance parallel the differences in average brain size. Fifthly,
average racial differences on numerous other traits parallel the differences in intelligence
and brain size. It is incumbent on scientists to explain these facts.

Statistics Show IQ Disparities

Between Races. Here's What That
Really Means
race is defined primarily by skin color. Since that's a genetic trait, the
logic goes, race itself must be genetic, and there must be differences
that are more than skin deep.

In several articles, J. Phillipe Rushton, a psychologist at the University of Western

Ontario, raised an uproar by claiming that different races have different brain and penis
sizes. As brain size decreases, he maintained, penis size increases. He concluded that
races with larger brains are more intelligent but also more sexually inhibited, while
those with smaller brains are not quite as bright but mate like bunny rabbits. Last year,
in a new study, he repeated his ideas about brain size with an added twist--within each
race, he said, women have smaller brains than men. C. Davison Ankney, a Canadian
colleague of Rushton’s, joined in with a reexamination of data, taken from more than
1,200 corpses in Cleveland, that had shown no significant difference in brain size
between men and women. Ankney claimed the analysis was simply faulty. Done
properly, he said, size differences became apparent--and meaningful. Women’s brains
were smaller.

To determine which race recruits belonged to, Rushton used the recruits’ self-
descriptions. But that raises another problem, not just for Rushton but for any work
involving race. First, enormous differences exist among the peoples designated as
Asian, Caucasian, or black. Compare the tall, fair Nordic to the short, dark Italian. Or the
tiny Pygmy to the giant Watusi. The variability of outward appearances is mirrored at
the level of the gene, where there is almost as much variation within racial groups as
between them. Furthermore, there has been a lot of mixing between peoples who were
once geographically isolated from one another. One need only look at a cross section of
U.S. citizens whom we call black to see the problem. My black friends range from
people who are dark brown to people nearly as white as me (a Jew whose ancestors
come from Central Europe). They all identify themselves as black for historical and
political reasons, but a quick glance shows that the name cannot denote biological
unity. In fact, Harvard geneticist Richard Lewontin concludes that broad racial
classifications have no real biological meaning. If he is right, then Rushton’s
interpretation of the Army data becomes mere illusion.

Among other details, he listed the internal volume, what he called the “cranial
capacity,” of each of the skulls. To measure this, he (or his assistant) had filled each
skull with white pepper seeds, and then transferred the seeds into another vessel to
find the volume.

Somewhere near the end of Crania Americana — almost as an afterthought, a

researcher later would point out — Morton reported the average cranial capacities of
four other races in comparison with the Native Americans. Caucasian skulls were
largest, followed by Mongolian, Malay, Native American, and finally African skulls.

races differ in brain size. Larger brains contain more neurons and process
information more efficiently. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) shows that
brain size correlates with IQ within race about 0.40. One study followed
50,000 children from birth to age 7. The East Asian Americans in the
sample averaged a larger head circumference at birth, 4 months, 1 year,
and 7 years than White children who averaged a larger head
circumference than Black children. By age 7, East Asian American children
average an IQ of 110, Whites averaged 102, and Blacks averaged 90.
These findings on race differences in brain size are highly reliable and
have been confirmed using four independent procedures — MRI,
endocranial volume from empty skulls, wet brain weight at autopsy, and
external head size. Despite Nisbett’s half-suggestion to the contrary
(wisely short of a full claim), Black, White, and East Asian twins show
equal heritabilities. And IQ differences between all three are more
pronounced on the more heritable items. The totality of the evidence can
no longer be explained away in terms of old ideas based on pure
environmentalism.