Chapter
Two
|
 Professor Hans Eysenck |
THE NEW boost to race-science was to come from psychologists investigating racial differences in intelligence by means of IQ tests. This line of research is by no means recent. The first IQ tests were devised in the early years of this century. These were tests which were designed to measure the general intelligence of children and to express their intellectual capabilities in a single score (or Intelligence Quotient).
Since then, intelligence tests have been widely used by psychologists throughout the world. The IQ test became an easy and cheap method of labelling children as intelligent or unintelligent. Also, throughout its history, the IQ test has been used to justify racist and elitist political philosophies.
Early American IQ testers noted that immigrants to the USA and American blacks tended to score less highly than native born white Anglo-Saxon protestants. These findings were quickly interpreted by politicians, and by the psychologists themselves, to support anti-immigration legislation. Also the involvement of these psychologists with the American eugenicist movement (which aimed to introduce laws to prevent the 'feeble-minded', and very poor, from breeding) has been well documented.(22)
Most of the early IQ testers interpreted their results in terms of genetics. It was assumed that if the poor had lower IQs than the rich, this was because the lower classes were constitutionally less intelligent than the upper classes. Similarly, the testers reasoned that blacks and immigrants must be of 'inferior stock' if the objective IQ tests revealed lower intelligence levels than those of white Anglo-Saxon protestants.
After World War Two these racist and elitist explanations lost favour amongst psychologists. It became generally accepted that cultural and social factors affected IQ scores. Some of the implausibilities of the early IQ theorists became transparent. Thus one of the earliest American IQ testers, Henry Goddard, had asserted on the basis of his research that 83 per cent of Jewish immigrants to the USA were 'feeble-minded'.(23) Goddard had forgotten that unfamiliarity with the English language made it difficult for his immigrant subjects to perform adequately on the IQ tests.
In the same vein, later psychologists interpreted differences between black and white Americans' IQ scores in terms of social factors. The discrimination and deprivation suffered by American blacks for years seemed sufficient explanation for differences in IQ scores.
The new climate had obvious educational implications. No longer was it accepted that the poor and the black would inevitably perform badly at school. The post-war climate favoured raising IQ levels by improving the educational opportunities for the disadvantaged. In the United States 'compensatory educational' programmes were introduced to rectify years of educational deprivation.
It was against this background that Professor Arthur R. Jensen, Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of California unleashed his bomb-shell in 1969. An article published by Jensen in The Harvard Educational Review, entitled 'How much can we boost IQ and scholastic achievement?', attracted immediate and world-wide attention.
Jensen's article represented a reversal of post-war trends in psychological theory. He argued that intelligence was largely (about 80 per cent) determined by genetics and that IQ differences represented genetic differences. Moreover, he specifically addressed the problem of compensatory education: since intelligence was largely determined genetically, Jensen argued that efforts to raise the intelligence of low IQ scorers by intensive educational efforts were mostly wasted.
In particular, Jensen focused on racial differences in IQ scores and offered a genetic explanation: according to Jensen's argument, blacks on average do not possess the same innate intellectual qualifies as whites. And what is more, it is unproductive to lavish time and money on attempts to educate intellectual inferiors beyond their station.
It is easy to see why such arguments should have appealed to Right-wing politicians and to those who favour cutting educational budgets. As well as finding political allies, Jensen also quickly found himself with support from within the scientific establishment. For instance, Professor H.J. Eysenck, Professor of Psychology at the Institute of Psychiatry in London, and undoubtedly Britain's most influential psychologist,(24) soon published a book defending Jensen's viewpoint: Race, Intelligence and Education.(25)
Within a few years, Jensen's article had become one of the most widely cited studies in psychology.(26) Not all academics, however, were as impressed by Jensen's work as Eysenck was.
Opposition to the line of Jensen and Eysenck came from a variety of quarters. Criticisms were made of the data on which they based their arguments. In one well-publicised case, evidence was brought forward to suggest that some of the classic data of Sir Cyril Burt, on which Jensen and Eysenck relied heavily, had actually been fabricated.(27)
As well as psychologists stressing environmental factors as affecting intelligence, opposition also came from geneticists. Notable geneticists, like Richard Lewontin and Walter Bodmer, claimed there were serious flaws in the arguments of Eysenck and Jensen. For instance it has been argued that the interaction between genetics and environment is so complex that it cannot be assessed by such a crude measure as an IQ score.(28)
Sir Peter Medawar, a biologist and Nobel Laureate, has taken this position, suggesting that 'intelligence' cannot be summarised by a single IQ score: human capabilities and potentialities are far too diverse for this type of simplification. Thus, according to Medawar, IQ tests, and the scores derived from them, are too insensitive to support weighty conclusions about racial differences in intelligence:
"The really important question . . . is whether or not it is possible to attach exact percentage figures to the contributions of nature and nurture (Shakespeare's terminology) to differences in intellectual capacity. In my opinion it is not possible to do so for reasons that seem to be beyond the comprehension of IQ psychologists."(29)
However, the effect of Jensen's work on fascist groups throughout the world was immediate and electric. The fine details of the various arguments were irrelevant to their purposes: what mattered was the chance to make race-science respectable once again. According to Martin Webster, the National Activities Organiser of the National Front: "The most important factor in the build-up of self-confidence amongst 'racists', and the collapse of morale among multi-racialists was the publication in 1969 by Professor Arthur Jensen in the Harvard Educational Review" (Spearhead, April 1973).
Fascists saw Jensen and Eysenck as vindicating their basic racist assumptions. For instance, the National Party, a break-away group from the National Front, demonstrated the over-riding importance of race-science in its ideology and interpretation of politics:
"Nationalists believe that intelligence is mainly genetically determined, and so the differences in intelligence and other mental abilities between the races are inborn and hereditary. Therefore we believe that the World intellectual leadership shown by the White Race is due to our unique genetic heritage, whose dilution by mixing with alien stock would be an irreversible catastrophe for all mankind . . . If it can be proved that intelligence (and other aspects of human nature) is inherited, then Marxism loses its whole reason for existing while the ideology of Racial Nationalism receives firm scientific support" (Britain First, January 1977).
It is no wonder, then, that Eysenck's popular books, like Race, Intelligence and Education and The Inequality of Man, are on the booklists of fascist groups like the National Front. Nor is it any surprise that their propaganda makes constant reference to Jensen and Eysenck's work.
The reaction of Jensen and Eysenck is that they are merely scientists who are attempting in good faith to present scientific facts. For example, Eysenck at the start of Race, Intelligence and Education claims that there is a distinction between the scientific 'facts' about race and racist attitudes. On the one hand, he claims, the facts do not logically lead to race prejudice. On the other hand:
"A benevolent attitude towards non-whites, coupled with admiration for their many outstanding qualities, and deep sympathy for their suffering, should not blind one towards such evidence as may exist to indicate that with respect to certain qualities there may be genetic differences favouring one race (or ethnic subgroup) as against another" (p.11).(30)
Critics of Eysenck and Jensen have claimed that it is not so easy to separate their scientific research from political considerations. Whereas Eysenck and Jensen might like to claim that the scientific facts can be separated from political considerations, critics like Leon Kamin have suggested that research involving IQ testing is inherently political. His book, The Science and Politics of IQ, argues:
"with respect to IQ testing, psychology long ago surrendered its political virginity. The interpretation of IQ data has always taken place, as it must, in a social and political context, and the validity of the data cannot be fully assessed without reference to that context" (p. 16).
However, it is hoped to show that the issue goes somewhat deeper than this. It is not merely that the IQ research reflects in itself political assumptions, but that the research has been deliberately politicised. This politicisation is not just the work of fascist and racist groups who might have taken up Jensen and Eysenck's conclusions for their own ends. Academics are centrally involved in the process.
The attempt to revive race-science also aims to create an intellectual climate in which a racist culture can flourish, as it did in Germany before the last war. However, the distinction between scientific detachment and racism must inevitably be blurred if it can be shown that the 'detached' psychologists are themselves involved in the attempts to create cultural racism.
For example, Eysenck may claim that his critics are politically motivated and that he is the dispassionate seeker of truth. Writing about the "plethora of books" seeking to refute his and Jensen's position, Eysenck maintains: "Practically all of these books have been factually misleading, politically motivated, and useless from the point of view of the disinterested scientist eager to discover the facts" (The Mankind Quarterly, 1976, Vol. 17, p. 149).
Whatever the truth about Eysenck's claim that his opponents are 'politically motivated', it is hard to sustain the image that Eysenck's science is far removed from the political arena, when he writes in a magazine like The Mankind Quarterly: an explicitly racialist publication, whose tendencies take it towards the race-science of the Northern League.