Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!ora!ambar
From: sderby@bcm.tmc.edu (Stuart P. Derby)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: IQ tests
Summary: racially biased IQ test questions
Message-ID: <3874@gazette.bcm.tmc.edu>
Date: 26 Feb 91 19:17:49 GMT
References: <91022.185956RMG3@psuvm.psu.edu> <11119@helios.TAMU.EDU> <10468@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU>
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> [Previous poster asks how IQ tests can be racially biased]

Well, to be precise, the questions are not "racially biased", but
rather culturally biased in a way that often correlates strongly with
race, at least at some place and time. As an example, a drawing of two
people playing tennis, with rackets omitted, is presented, and the
testee is asked to select the missing item from a set of drawings. Or
similarly, a table, set with 4 tea cups, sans saucers, is presented,
and the obvious question asked.  Since these questions actually
measure cultural literacy (at least, in an untimed exam - speed might
be considered a measurement of intelligence, if set up correctly) with
a white, American/North European bias, I would loosely term the
questions racist.

If memory serves correctly, the above examples were snitched from
Stephen Jay Gould's excellent book _The Mismeasure of Man_, where I
believe they were cited as actual questions used in the intelligence
exams of prospective immigrants to the U.S., in the 1920's or so.  The
"evidence" thus accumulated was used as an argument within Congress in
debating immigration restrictions. The subsequent immigration law
favored north Europeans by setting immigration quotas to reflect the
ratios of country-of-origin of the U.S. population as of 1890 (or so).

_The Mismeasure of Man_ discusses racial issues in fair depth,
including other flawed measures of intelligence. Readers of this group
will also be interested in a story of forced sterilization here in the
good ol' U.S. of A, as approved by the Supreme Court, the Carrie Buck
case.

-Stu