Black IQ Gains in the US

These scores are taken from this paper, and indicate varying scores for IQ tests and semi-IQ tests taken over about 30 years. As you move down in each individual row, you move into revised versions of the tests in more recent years. Standard deviation is not all that relevant to me, but may make sense to someone else.

As you can see, White adult IQ (age 25+) in the US is now 102.9 or 103 rounded off. Black adult IQ (age 25+) has increased in recent years to 89.1. There remains a 13.8 point gap between Blacks and Whites.

Ok, let us take a look at Black and White IQ's in the US.

These scores above are over roughly 30 years or so, and all tests are standardized as more or less IQ tests, though there is a lot of controversy over whether or not the AFQT is really an IQ test, since it mostly just questions what you learned in high school, and if you did not learn much in high school, which I suspect is the case with a lot of Black students, your score is going to be low on that test.

It is true that Murray and Herrnstein in The Bell Curve treat AFQT as an IQ test, but that is really their problem. A casual glance at this chart indicates that Blacks seem to have made some definite gains on White in the IQ department over the past 30 years. This is something no one wants to talk about, since all talk about this whole subject is just completely banned.

On the Stanford-Binet, the B-W gap shrunk from 13.6 pts to 10.8 pts, a gain of 2.8 pts for Blacks. White scores actually declined by .7 pt, and Black scores went up by 2.1 pts. The S-B is probably given to both adults and children.

The WISC is the children's IQ tests. It is here that Blacks have shown the most massive gains of all. Blacks gain 5.3 pts, while Whites gain .9 pt, and the B-W gap declined from 15.9 pts to 11.5 pts, a gain of 4.5 pts for Blacks. Black adults gained 2.3 pts on the WAIS and White adults gained 1.2 points. There is not much difference.

The WAIS is given to adults of all ages and is now normed even for older adults, I believe. The B-W gap declines from 14.6 pts to 13.5 pts, a .9 pt improvement. I realize that this is not much of an improvement, but US Black adults have shaved the B-W IQ gap by about 1 pt over 30 years.

Considering claims that the gap is set in stone for all time, this does count as very real progress. Even more important that according to the WAIS, Black adults can no longer be said to have IQ's of 85!, as the White Nationalists scream and scream.

WAIS puts Black IQ at 89.1. That is definitely getting up towards the level of some European White groups. For instance, Serbs and Croats both have IQ's of 90. 89.1 is not all that different from 90.

For the WAIS under age 25, the scores are a bit better. Blacks shrunk the gap from 14.2 points to 11.7 points. That's a really significant reduction. Blacks raised scores by 3.9 points, while Whites only went up by 1.4 pts.

On the AFQT, which I am not even really counting, the gap declined from 18 points to 14.4 points. It is here that we are really getting into the hardcore achievement gap stuff, but as you can see in the real IQ scores above, the huge gap does not have to do so much with raw brains as with failure to learn much in high school.

The median gap between Black and White adults, young and all adults conflated, is now 12.6 IQ points, not 15 IQ points.

The median gap between Black and White kids, with some adults conflated, is now 11.1 points, not 15 IQ points.

The median gap between mixed Black and White kids and adults is now 11.6 points, not 15 IQ points.

Blacks of all ages conflated have gained a median 3.1 IQ points over 30 years on average, and Black children have gained 5.3 pts. Whites of all ages conflated achieved an average 1.1 IQ points gain over that period, with White children showing no special gains relative to adults.

The median reduction in the B-W gap for both Black adults and children combined over 30 years has been on the order of 2.7 IQ points . Black kids reduced the gap by 4.5 points. Philippine Rushton and Charles Murray have actually acknowledged that Blacks have closed the gap by "a couple of points". Jensen and Gottfredson will probably never come around.

The median Black IQ for both Black adults and children conflated is now 91.3, not 85. For Black children, it is 91.7, not 85. For Black adults under 25, it is 90.9, not 85. For Black adults of all ages, it is 89.1, not 85.

There are those on the other side who like to pull up plenty of modern studies that, compared to the above, show little or no gains in Black IQ. That is interesting, but we should at least point out that there are a number of IQ tests out there that are showing significant Black gains and Black reduction of the famous 1 standard deviation IQ gap.

Those who charge that US Blacks "have an IQ of 85!" (implying they are idiots) need to be seriously challenged, at least to hedge their responses, as there is good evidence that it is now 91.3, not 85. The continuous refrains of the 15 pt B-W IQ gap in the US also need to be seriously challenged, as it appears that on many tests the gap is now on the order of 11.6 points for Blacks of all ages, not 15 pts.

Debaters ought to adjust their talking points in light of these new realities. Any refusal to do so borders on hate propaganda against Black folks, as if they don't have enough problems as it is.

References

Dickens, William T. & Flynn, James R. October 2006. Black Americans Reduce the Racial IQ Gap: Evidence from Standardization Samples. Psychological Science.

Dickens, William T. & Flynn, James R. Common ground and differences
Forthcoming: Psychological Science

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