![]() ![]() Supporters of eugenic ideologies in the 1900s used IQ tests to identify "idiots", "imbeciles", and the "feebleminded." These were people, eugenicists argued, who threatened to dilute the White Anglo-Saxon genetic stock of America.Īs a result of such eugenic arguments, many American citizens were later sterilized. This critique continues today, with many researchers resistant to and alarmed by research that is still being conducted on race and IQ.īut in their darkest moments, IQ tests became a powerful way to exclude and control marginalized communities using empirical and scientific language. There has been considerable work from both hard and social scientists refuting arguments such as Brigham's and Terman's that racial differences in IQ scores are influenced by biology.Ĭritiques of such "hereditarian" hypotheses - arguments that genetics can powerfully explain human character traits and even human social and political problems - cite a lack of evidence and weak statistical analyses. Their dullness seems to be racial, or at least inherent in the family stocks from which they come … Children of this group should be segregated into separate classes … They cannot master abstractions but they can often be made into efficient workers … from a eugenic point of view they constitute a grave problem because of their unusually prolific breeding. High-grade or border-line deficiency … is very, very common among Spanish-Indian and Mexican families of the Southwest and also among Negroes. It often indicates a user profile.Ī few years before, American psychologist and education researcher Lewis Terman had drawn connections between intellectual ability and race. Many other social, environmental and economic factors may also influence IQ testing, which is why IQ should not be seen as a sole way of evaluating intelligence or mental processes.Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders. ![]()
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