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Most psychologists have now abandoned the notion that intelligence can be accurately tested; it is difficult even to define the terms. Einstein once confessed to Anthropologist Ashley Montagu that in the Australian Aborigine's society, he would rightfully be regarded as an intellectual idiot who could neither track a wallaby nor throw a boomerang. As Anthropologist Stanley Garn has dryly noted, if the Aborigine drafted an IQ test, all of Western civilization would presumably flunk it. "It is possible that some of the behavioral differences between human groups may be genetically determined," says University of Michigan Anthropologist Ernst Goldschmidt. "These may include differences in intelligence, but such differences may equally be due to cultural determinants. The question simply remains open." Harvard Psychologist Thomas Pettigrew points out that "while the intelligence test means of the two races are still divergent, the range of performance—from the most retarded idiot to the most brilliant genius—is much the same in the two groups. Some Negro children achieve IQs into the gifted range (130 or over) and right up to the testable limit of 200." For three years running, the highest scholastic achievement among Australian state schools was registered by one composed exclusively of Aboriginal children.
Those who resist making value comparisons among groups do so on two grounds. The first is that science as yet lacks valid tools to sort mankind into biological races. The second is that even if science possessed such tools, the racial divisions could not conceivably be used to grade human worth. So meager is man's understanding of the complicated biochemistry of evolution and of the nonhereditary influences of cultural environment that no one can confidently assign that portion of intelligence with which man was born and that part he acquired. If heredity bestows his capacity to learn, culture decides what he will learn—in some cases, how much he will be permitted to learn. The handicaps under which the U.S. Negro has existed since he arrived in chains are cruelly reflected in his group achievement.
Environment & Culture
Physical differences are variations on the universal human theme. All men are different. But all men are also alike; the similarities outnumber the differences, says Morton Fried, on the order of 95 to 5. During man's nomadic residence on earth, a continuum reaching back 2,000,000 years, he has indiscriminately mingled with his own kind, thoroughly scrambling his genes. It may be possible one day to unscramble the human genetic omelet. Until then, group distinctions decreeing one race's superiority over another must necessarily be made on nonbiological lines. With only a few dissenting votes, the world of anthropology has swung in this direction. "The peoples of the world today," concluded delegates to a world meeting of ethnologists and anthropologists in 1964, "appear to possess equal biological potentialities for attaining any civilizational level. Differences in the achievements of different peoples must be attributed solely to their cultural history."