Is exploring the idea that Jews are somehow more intelligent (if it's decided Jews constitute their own race) than other races similar to James Watson's commentary missteps?

I am not 100% familiar w/ the controversial case, and for all I know he is a racist. However, Watson did, at one point, bring up points about IQ tests and how whites scored versus blacks. Now, his claims are easily dismissed (better education may help brains think better, and black people have been economically disadvantage = bad schooling), but people were outraged at the mere fact that a person would try and wade into such waters and try to examine if there are intelligence differences b/w the races.

While it may not be "politically correct" to say "Jews are the smartest"** or "Black people aren't as smart as white people"** it seems odd that people aren't open to the mere idea that differences may exist. And here, there is a whole article and some people are uncomfortable with the ideas but they aren't denying them. People are accepting the facts presented in this article and that's fine and good - and yet other racially-related intelligence data is rejected outright b/c people feel it's wrong to "go there."

**Please note that I don't actually uphold a view on this topic in one way or another, as I do not have the empirical data to develop an informed and fair opinion. I'm just throwing out some controversial (?) ideas to provoke discussion.**

Again, I don't know everything Watson said and perhaps his statements were, in fact, racist. But afterwards he brought up an idea in a feeble attempt to defend himself which I found interesting: why can't we even discuss the merely possibility that there may be genetic factors creating intelligence differences b/w groups? If there are differences there is a huge possibility that, at least in the westernized world, the differences are culturally related (it's not that some people are less intelligent, it's that they were denied the same education as other groups...socio economic oppression is the culprit, not mother nature...). I just think it's worth exploring - and I'm not Jewish, so such an exploration might not necessarily benefit me (as I may be found to be of inferior natural intelligence. Oh the horror. I am what I am!).

Ok, let it rip!

I think one of the main differences is that Watson was talking about a huge group, (black people), that are not genetically distinct at all. Ashkenazi Jews are small in number and have a pretty high degree of genetic distinctiveness. What Waston said was absurdly broad, and not based on anything scientific. So there's nothing wrong with talking about whether or not intelligence has a genetic component. (I think it's quite clear that it does. Intelligent people tend to have intelligent children, and everyone can see that). But when you go beyond that to stereotype a huge, non-distinct percentage of the world population based on skin color.. you bet that's racist.

Great post!

"What Waston said was absurdly broad, and not based on anything scientific."

...just to play the devil's advocate a little: he had some data, but certainly not 1) good enough data 2) enough data to draw legitimate conclusions.

Do you know if he was discussing "black people" in general, black people in Americas or Africans? I think he was making general statements about Africans...

No, I don't know exactly what he meant. But of course, even if he had meant only African Americans and not all people of African descent, it still would be over-broad and ridiculous. There is so much variation among these groups that I bet the standard deviation of these measurements would be so great as to make the average meaningless. Actually, I think regardless of what data might say about the IQ of black people, we all know that there are a thousand factors that could confound those measurements. I don't think I could be convinced by anyone, no matter how much of a science legend they are and what data they cited, that any scientific generalization can realistically be drawn about such a huge, diverse group of people. We have to recognize the limits of genetics as a scientific tool. European Jews are somewhat more measurable I think because they are small in number and fairly insular as an ethnic group.

The speculations in this article are indeed similar to Watson's speculations in that netiher relies on facts or evidence to reach conclusions. As I've noted in another post, Saletan is presenting assumptions and conjectures as facts, when the evidence to support them is either non-existent or specious.

I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with discussing these issues, but I do think that any such discussion must acknowledge how little we can relally be sure of and how tenuous any conclusions must necessarily be.

Thanks for replying, Tom. I feel that there are many factors which influence a person's intelligence. While some of it (all of it?) may be genetic there may also be environmental factors which affect brain development - thus allowing "intelligence" to be maximized, minimized or whatever in b/w.

...this is why I think basing conclusions about intelligence solely upon genetics (and consequently race) is inadequate and doesn't make a lot of sense. So, I do find similarities b/w this article and Watson's comments. I also find it may be worthy of study to see how race and genetics may affect intelligence - but not without acknowledging the endless other factors at play.

So I guess we're on a similar plane, here.

Two things: one, I thought I read somewhere that the intermarriage rate of American Jews was over 50%--I don't know where Will got his statistics from--and two, I thought Asians were supposed to be the most intelligent group. Isn't it true that at most highly selective colleges and universities, Asians need to score better on the SATs than anyone else, including Jews? In fact, some call the recent immigrants from Asian countries "the new Jews". Could it be that much of what passes as intelligence in certain groups is, in fact, a certain attitude toward education and learning? Maybe what makes an intelligent individual is a combination of culture, family, and opportunity.