Possible Environmental Factors in the Black IQ

Johan Mayer writes:

Have you tried correlating the IQ scores with local lead poisoning? The main gains from the Flynn effect ended by the late 1970s (birth years), suggesting that fuel lead didn’t play a role (as both whites and blacks would experience higher intelligence, thus raising the intelligence that 100 represents—rather, it was probably the elimination of malnutrition), and that some of the remaining gap should arise from differential lead paint. The calculation might look as follows: Deficit = sum(over n) Distribution of lead level(n) x IQ_deficit_from_lead(n)for each neighborhood. Add the deficit to the mean IQ calculated from the composition of the neighborhood, then re-estimate the (before lead) IQ of each group, fitting to composition and reevaluated IQ; re-normalize the black IQ to the white (raised) IQ. Elevated black blood lead (much more common than elevated white blood lead) suggests that at least another 3 IQ points can be gained for blacks on that count, using Detroit data. I did a similar calculation for national IQ and malnutrition (using 1991 data), on the basis that malnutrition knocks off about a standard deviation of IQ (15 points, although I also found a source that claimed 11), multiplying by the malnourished proportion of the population. This pushes sub-Saharan African National IQ to the range upper 60’s to upper 70’s. Black African skin bleaching tends to be between 30 and 7 African leaded fuel use will also greatly harm urban populations (who will dominate National IQ estimates), although they were phased out by 2006; the time to affect primary schools is about nine years, although the IQ estimates are based on the the 90’s. South Africa should suffer 7 points, and Nigeria probably the same. Thus the pre-environmental expected IQ of blacks is well within a standard deviation of whites. East Asian cities are often near coasts, and historically held much smaller portions of their respective countries’ populations, as elsewhere. Thus their early (for the third world) industrialization would tend to have a lower impact on IQ. Lead has been studied, and childhood lead is substantially lower than adult lead, which may account for much of the national IQ achievement of Chinese versus other societies; child rearing practices that avoid putting unknown objects in the mouth might play a role, but then again, given the relatively small family sizes and involvement of grandparents, more supervision might also play a role. As to the topic of your post, another possible cause for the lack of black achievement considering IQ is racism.

The author makes a strong case that US Black IQ’s can increase 3 points and African Black IQ’s can increase 10 points due to environmental interventions. This is certainly plausible. I have no problems with any of these environmental efforts. All the power to them. A gain of even 3 IQ points for Detroit Blacks would be a fantastic thing indeed. A 10-point IQ gain for African Blacks would be a great thing for them and for Africa as a whole. Many of Africa’s most serious problems would surely ameliorate with a 10-point IQ gain. An IQ in the upper 70’s would put Africa on a par with the IQ’s of some Gulf states such as Qatar that have created highly evolved civilizations. However, even US Blacks with IQ’s a full 9 points higher than the Qataris fail miserably at creating the highly evolved society that the Qataris created. One argument is that Qatar only exists in its current form due to oil wealth. Give Black people oil wealth, and they will create a Qatar. However, this has not happened in Africa. Nigeria has tremendous oil wealth, and it is one of the evil and diabolically failed states on Earth. Nearly all of the wealth has been stolen by a tiny elite and the rest of the population flounders in monstrous poverty. Gabon is a much better case, and oil wealth has allowed them to have a $20,000 per capita income. Gabon is  basically a middle income country. However, almost all of the wealth has been stolen by a tiny elite, ~5 Give a Black society money, and the most cruel and sociopathic Blacks will steal almost all of it for a small elite group, leaving the vast majority of the population to suffer in terrible poverty (the African model). Alternatively, give another Black society money, and income will be much better distributed, but the most cruel and sociopathic Blacks will create in monstrous violent crime rate, destabilizing a prosperous society. The African wealth distribution style is also seen in Haiti and was seen until the 1960’s in the Dominican Republic. The rest of the Caribbean has a much more equitable distribution system. Trinidad and Tobago has a PCI or $20,000/yr due to oil wealth, but they have one of the highest violent crime and homicide rates on Earth. A Trinidadian woman I spoke to said it was because local young men had imported gang culture from the US, and it was now spread all through the country. Still, a country with a $20,000 PCI and that high of a homicide rate nearly qualifies as something like a failed state right there, at least on that one variable. Although we have shown that Blacks can create wealthy societies (at least in the case of oil), those societies show significant problems either in democratization or extremely high violent crime. In the African model, a tiny elite will steal all the oil wealth and leave most of the people scrounging for scraps. In the Caribbean model, wealth will be distributed much better, but society will still be saddled with a horrific violent crime rate. As the comparison with Qatar and the US shows, there is a lot more holding Black people back than just a low IQ. With an IQ of ~83, the Arabs can create Dubai, along with a highly civilized state with a shockingly low crime rate. With an IQ of 87, US Blacks still cannot create anything like Dubai even with an IQ advantage. So obviously the problems of Black people extend beyond IQ, and a rising Black IQ is not a cure-all. What these problems are is unknown, but there appear to be genetic factors predisposing Blacks to greater crime and antisociality. What these factors are is unknown, but I am convinced that they exist. Antisociality will create thieving elites in Africa and Caribbean societies with better income distribution but extremely high violent crime rates. Getting a handle around Black problems involves not only raising Black IQ but dealing conclusively with whatever it is that is crimogenic or psychopathogenic in Black biology or Black genes. Once IQ is high enough though, whatever Black criminogenic issues are involved tend to wash out. I have read that setting Black IQ at ~113, the Black and White crime rates are equal. High intelligence often washes out criminal tendencies due to greater forward thinking, possibly greater empathy, guilt and worry and lessened impulsiveness. As IQ rises in any race of humans, empathy, guilt and worry tend to rise and impulsiveness tends to decline. I do not agree that racism affects Black IQ scores very much. Instead, moving from a non-racist country (Jamaica) to a racist country (the UK) results in a gain of up to 14  IQ points in the second generation. Blacks living in “highly racist” White societies typically have IQ’s ~13-18 points higher than Blacks living in non-racist societies such as the Caribbean and Africa. Skin bleaching products sold in the US probably do not have much mercury in them.

Please follow and like us:
error3
fb-share-icon20
Tweet 20
fb-share-icon20

31 thoughts on “Possible Environmental Factors in the Black IQ”

  1. Thanks for the reply; as I’m still up, I’ll respond.
    A quick search for mercury legislation in the US brings up this site:
    http://www.newmoa.org/prevention/mercury/imerc/banphaseout.cfm
    which suggests a mercury ban on cosmetics in most states circa 2008. While I wasn’t clear, I had in mind in particular the black IQs around 1990, especially as my superficial reading suggests that the Flynn effect had largely stalled before (correct me, please).
    As to violence, could you point me to studies that state that after accounting for neighbourhood and ses, that the white/black violent crime rate continues?

    1. Well West Virginia is the poorest state in the US and it has the second lowest crime rate in the country. It’s almost 100% White. Poor Whites don’t necessarily commit lots of violating crimes. Very low property and violent crime rate in West Virginia. Most crimes are drug offenses, drunk driving, etc.

      1. http://www.city-data.com/crime/crime-Charleston-West-Virginia.html
        Note that some years, the town is comparable with South Africa.
        But the issue with SES is not the (marxist/aristocrat) notion that poverty causes crime or vice versa, but that higher SES can avoid lead that is present, and thus I wanted same SES and community.
        http://www.cdc.gov/nceh/lead/data/state/wvdata.htm
        Notice that many of the high lead counties have tiny populations. By way of comparison, many census tracts in Detroit had 25% or more kids with more than 10ug/dl (Wirt county WV has the highest in WV, at 4%).

  2. And another matter raises its head: If black inclination toward violence is to blame, why did Argentina go from a murder rate of 8-9ish (1990) to the present rate, while Haiti is around 7 at present (and Jamaica around 40, similar to South African whites around 1990—I’m of that set, fwim)?
    Stated another way, why is the African war death toll of the last fifty odd years around 25-30M? Fifty years before, Europe achieved a higher number with around half the final African population.

    1. What is Argentina’s present rate?
      Black crime rates are variable but they tend to have high crime and especially violent crime rates anywhere on Earth that they congregate. It is even true in my city. We have only 4% Blacks here, but they commit an unbelievable amount of crime for such a small population. They also commit way more crime than the Hispanics. And both groups commit way more crime than the Whites. In my neighborhood, everyone is low income, at about the same income level, and the Blacks act worst, then the Mexicans and last the Whites. It is so obvious that you would have to be blind not to see it.
      No non-Black person with a lick of sense wants to live around large numbers of Black people.

      1. No black person wants to live around large numbers of Black people, if you think black people like living around each other you’re crazy.

      2. Argentina’s murder rate in 1997 (sorry, I remembered wrongly) was 9.1 and 9.2 in 2002; it is now 3.4. Haiti stands at 6.9.
        In your city, what are the average over 10ug/dl Pb counts in black areas? And are a substantial number of black woman exceptionally light-skinned? I ask as that would indicate that the children were likely exposed to mercury.
        For other crimes, even allowing that the black crime rate is substantially higher, the incompleteness of the records and differential prosecution (e.g. The Rich Get Richer, The Poor Prison, ch3, eighth ed) would make me a bit careful with extrapolation. But I should ask, what is the conviction rate of blacks in your city by major crimes (auto theft, murder, rape, drugs)?

      3. Also, note that the mercury rate of 20 years before is a causal agent in the current crime rate. I haven’t been able to find much sales data, and one document seems to go for $4k.

  3. Please, Robert, don’t compare Qatar with Nigeria. Qatar has 1 million inhabitants and Nigeria 150 million. If Peter and Paul both leave an estate of 1.5 million dollar but Peter has only 1 heir while Paul has 150, then the inheritance can make Peter’s heir well off while Paul’s heir will only receive 10,000. Sorry, it is a completely flawed comparison.
    Regards. James

    1. Is sad and heartbreaking the big racism of Mexican TV, Mexicans are for the most part a race of Amerindian Mongoloids, (at least 55% Amerindian) yet their TV is controled by whites ,the most common race you see in Mexican TV is White, absurd. Poor Amerindian Latin America (Mexico, Peru, Ecuador, Guatemala, Bolivia, Paraguay) they lag much compared to Caucasian Latin America (Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Venezuela, Uruguay) the truth about racism in Mexico.
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwPSdocG5xw

  4. Angola at independence had exactly one university graduate, and 30-40% of the adult population were released from chattel slavery (1975), followed by a superpower conflict (USA/China vs Russia). While Gabon and EG probably had stats a few orders of magnitude better, the weak state of the local population would have inhibited much development.

    1. Gabon and EG are very rich countries. They have plenty enough money to do whatever they want. But they have fallen into the typical African pattern of a small elite stealing almost all the money and leaving the rest to wallow in poverty. It’s the African way!

      1. EG’s Gini is high, Gabon’s is mid-range. Nigeria is between the two. EG’s and Gabon’s malnutrition are around 15%; Nigeria’s double. Both EG’s and Gabon’s income increased greatly in the mid-2000s, so we should expect the results around 2030 crime-wise; Gabon’s income went from 10k in 1990 to 15k now, while EG’s went up from 450 in 1990 to 18k in mid 2000s, and Nigeria’s went from 1k (1990) to 2k. Nigeria’s malnutrition had slowly been dropping from ~33% in 1990 to about 24%, so based on GDP, I’d estimate EG’s 1990 malnutrition around 60%. All countries banned lead in fuel around 2005. Nigeria’s and Gabon’s murder rates are 12 and 14, though EG is about 21. Many Asian countries have much higher Ginis.
        But we’ll see how much or little they’ve been spending on their populations by the IQ and murder consequences, as elsewhere.

  5. “One argument is that Qatar only exists in its current form due to oil wealth. Give Black people oil wealth, and they will create a Qatar.
    However, this has not happened in Africa. Nigeria has tremendous oil wealth, and it is one of the evil and diabolically failed states on Earth. Nearly all of the wealth has been stolen by a tiny elite and the rest of the population flounders in monstrous poverty.”
    You can’t really compare Qatar(or any Gulf Arab state) to Nigeria, because first of all Qatar has a population of less than 2 million and most Gulf Arab states have populations under 3 million, whereas Nigeria has a population of 160 million(8th largest in the world), countries with big populations tend to have big problems, another important factor in the success of the Gulf Arab states is that they are ethnically/religiously homogeneous, almost all of the Gulf Arab states are 100% Arab and 100% Muslim, whereas Nigeria is one of the most diverse countries in the world, home to over 500 ethnic groups and Nigeria is 50% Christian and 50% Muslim, so there is a lot of ethnic and religious tensions in Nigeria, which keeps Nigeria fragmented.
    Homogeneous countries tend to be more developed and have less problems.
    Gabon and Angola are good examples of sub-saharan African countries that can do well with Oil, in fact Angola’s economy is doing so well many White Portuguese people are migrating to Angola:
    http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/sep/16/portuguese-exodus-angola-el-dorado
    Portuguese are also migrating to Mozambique and Brazil:
    http://edition.cnn.com/2012/08/15/business/mozambique-portugal-economy
    “Blacks living in “highly racist” White societies typically have IQ’s ~13-18 points higher than Blacks living in non-racist societies such as the Caribbean and Africa.”
    Most immigrants are a highly selective group, so it’s usually the brightest people that immigrate for better pay, their children follow their foot steps and do well to.
    The reason children of immigrants do well, is mainly because the British school system is one of the best and also because children of immigrants are pushed to succeed by their parents.

  6. The reason Gulf and Arab states have low crime rates is due to the extreme cultural conservatism that surrounds it. The laws are exceptionally harsh, and sharia law is the main stopping force for beast-like behavior. It also has extremely low rates of AIDs.
    I feel super harsh restrictions, like sharia law, puritanism, etc. are the best ways to stop low iq peoples from destroying themselves. Hell, that was the reason the Taliban got into power and people put up with it. They kept super control over low-IQ people. Like it or not, crime rate lowers drastically when a boy gets his hands chopped off for stealing a melon.
    Just an observation. It’s a sick reality that I’ve come to accept. Countries with IQs under 90 cannot function without some serious rules and control.

    1. To add on to what I wrote:
      This sort of islamic extremism is bad in this day and age because with the internet and globalization, a few radicals can wreck havoc on more civilized countries in the west. I have come to accept that fact that the gaddafis, mubaraks and husseins of the world do more good than bad from a foreign policy perspective – they are easier to control by Western countries. When it becomes a Muslim Brotherhood mess, the spillover of extremism will be disastrous.

    2. And one more thing:
      Has anyone noticed how Black Muslims in America have lower crime rates compared to others? I’m desperately trying to find statistics on this issue.

      1. you are right..American christians need to be converted to Islam.. It would be an improvement. At least the christian caste system would disappear… and then there is the risk of Sunni vs Shia caste thing going…but lets deal with that later… 😛

  7. The Arabs as Caucasian should have higher IQ’s, they are dumber compared to other Caucasians because the Arabs in the Middle East have a really bad habit of marrying their first and second cousins, many marry their first cousins in arranged marriages to this day, in the past, this was done to help conserve resources and contribute to the clan’s support and defense. Consanguinity (marriage between people that are blood relatives) has been practiced in the Middle East for over 100 generations, even before the introduction of Islam in the seventh century, and it is estimated that over 60% of Saudis marry first or second cousins, which is the highest in the world. However, the numbers are still staggering in Iraq (58 percent), Kuwait (55 percent), Jordan (50 percent) and the UAE (48 percent).”

  8. A tiny elite steals from people in many nations, not just African (or New World African) states.

  9. Yes, we should improve the environment before labeling people as chronically dependent. However, you won’t see any WNs doing that for sure.

  10. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Rates-of-violent-crimes-and-larceny-in-Norway-and-Finland-populations-aged-15-64-by_tbl1_266400120
    African crime twice that of native Norwegians, meaning it’s about that of white Americans. Also notice poor Balkan and MENA immigrants faring worse. Dividing by subpopulation is also be relevant as seen in British test scores.
    https://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/?p=5347
    Even this racist agrees!
    If anyone is fooled by his argument in the first paragraph, I’ll explain it to you. “The discussion at UNZ” is about the scholar Chisala arguing that good performance of certain African immigrant groups is not due to selection for four reasons:
    1) There is virtually no regression to the mean within the African immigrant groups, showing that the additive genomic IQ of Blacks is similar to that of Whites.
    2) Selection doesn’t increase the selected group’s amount of people at the extreme end of the distribution. For example, the two Nigerian sibling kids who were really good students and had an IQ 162.
    3) The correlation between income (and therefore education) and genomic IQ is probably not as large in Africa as in North America. So selection is probably weaker if not null.
    4) Students from the Caribbean don’t do too bad either.
    Emil says that it’s obvious that they are selected, i say:
    1) Its weird that a selected group would score close to the normal distribution when in similar (not yet equal) environments and not above average when the four points above still stand.
    2) It’s obvious that the badly scoring African refugees from Somalia and Ethiopia have trauma, yet Ethiopians are still above their MENA and Balkan “superiors” who have gotten more time to live in the countries and extract welfare.
    When discussing Africa we need to remember that Lynn is wrong:
    https://robertlindsay.wordpress.com/2015/08/01/west-africas-mean-iq-lets-talk-about-the-numbers-by-afrosapiens/
    And the median age is lower, making people act like young people do. Also, it can’t afford an sufficient police force, making repeat offenders more normal, it can’t afford healthcare, making mortality more normal (increasing homicide). And if we extend the crime we are talking about, Africa gets more normal, as homicide is only an fraction of violent crime:
    https://www.maplecroft.com/portfolio/new-analysis/2016/12/01/risk-violent-crime-highest-latin-america-afghanistan-guatemala-mexico-top-country-ranking-verisk-maplecroft/ .

  11. I posted a comment and now im mad becuase it didnt post WTF it took me like half an hour to write and now its gone ARRGHH!!

Leave a Reply to Johan Meyer Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

error

Enjoy this blog? Please spread the word :)