during the Progressive Era one of the strongest arguments Advanced for eugenics was that the tendency of people with lower IQs to have larger families would over time lead to a decline in the National IQ but the later research of Professor James R Flynn showed that in more than a dozen countries around the world the average performance on IQ tests Rose substantially by one standard deviation or more in a generation or two only the fact that IQ tests are repeatedly rored in order to keep the average IQ at its definitional level of 100 as the average number of questions answered correctly increased has concealed this rise and only the fact that Professor Flynn went back to the original raw scores revealed the facts which the renorming had concealed much has been made of the fact that the average IQ among blacks has remained at about 8 5 over the generations suggesting that the tests are measuring an unchanging genetic potential but the apparent permanence of the performance of black Americans on IQ tests is an artifact of the renorming of those tests the average number of questions answered correctly on IQ tests by blacks in 2002 would have given them an average IQ of 104 by the Norms used in 1947 through 1948 which is to say slightly higher than the average perform performance of Americans in general during the earlier period in short the performances of blacks on IQ tests have risen significantly over time just as the performances of other people in the United States and in other countries have even though the renorming of those tests concealed these changes while the Persistence of a gap between blacks and whites in America on IQ tests leads some to conclude that genetic differences are the reason the large changes in IQ test performance by both black and white Americans as well as by the populations of other whole Nations around the world undermine the notion that IQ tests measure an unchanging genetic potential the fervor and Persistence of the racial IQ debate cannot be assumed to be a measure of its practical implications as distinguished from its ideological importance for competing social Visions anyone with experience teaching in American schools or colleges May well question whether either the average black or white student is working so close to his or her ultimate mental capacity as to make that ultimate capacity a matter of practical concern as already noted even the leading advocate of genetic theories of IQ differences Professor Arthur R Jensen has seen Scholastic achievement as amable to different teaching methods and has treated IQ differences as an overestimate of differences in intelligence between children from lower socioeconomic classes and others since concrete capab abilities matter much more in the real world than do abstract potentialities educational outcomes are the practical issue however much this practical issue has been overshadowed by ideological issues the leading scholar in the opposing environmentalist school of thought Professor James R Flynn expressed the narrowness of the Practical issues in 2008 the race and IQ debate has raged for almost 40 years I have been entangled in it for 30 years it has been a constant and unwelcome companion rather like living with an uncongenial spouse from an arranged marriage it has occupied the time of Legions of Scholars and laid waste Acres of trees will we ever see the end of it at least the debate is entering a new and more sophisticated stage given the relatively High values for black IQ in infancy and Age 4 the focus should now be on whatever causes the decline of black IQ compared to white with age if that can be settled the main event will be over Professor Flynn has argued that the culture in which most black Americans grow up has had a negative effect on their intellectual development he pointed out that The Offspring of black and white American soldiers who fed children with German women during the American occupation of Germany after the second world war had no such IQ differences as that among black and white children in the United States Professor Flynn concluded that the reason for results being different in Germany was that The Offspring of black soldiers in Germany grew up in a nation with no black subculture there is other evidence that the black subculture has a negative effect on intellectual achievement an empirical study published by the National Bureau of economic research found that a higher percentage of black schoolmates has a strong adverse effect on achievement of blacks and moreover that the effect are highly concentrated in the upper half of the ability distribution in other words brighter black students do not perform as well in settings where there are many other black students around them contrary to the theory that what is needed in educational institutions is some larger critical mass of black students in order to make them feel socially comfortable and thus able to do their best work academically yet the unsubstantiated critical mass theory has flourished from academic Journal to Supreme Court briefs another study focusing on the effect of ability grouping on the performances of students in general mentioned among its conclusions schooling in a homogeneous group of students appears to have a positive effect on high ability students achievements and even stronger effects on the achievements of high ability minority youth in other words High ability minority youngsters do better in classes that are intellectually homogeneous rather than race ially homogeneous or in which there are many members of their own race the negative effects of the black subculture on intellectual development are manifested in other ways as well a study of high IQ black adults found that they described their childhoods as extremely unhappy more often than other blacks this study was done long before the current reports of academically striving black students being accused by their peers of acting white empirical studies during this later era show a negative correlation between black students academic achievement and their popularity among other black students an opposite pattern was found among white Americans and asian-americans in England lower class Whites show a pattern strikingly similar to that among American blacks who resent academically achieving classmates British physician Theodore Dal rmle reports lower class school children being beaten up so badly by their lower class classmates as to require hospital treatment simply because they are doing well in school there is other evidence against the critical mass theory in earlier times from 1892 to 1954 all black dunar high school in Washington sent 34 graduates to Amherst College usually very few at any given time and certainly nothing that could be called a critical mass 74% of those black students graduated from annhurst 28% of these graduating is spy beta kappas Dunbar did not promote a black subculture as Senator Edward Brook one of its alumni put it negro history week was observed and in American history they taught about the emancipation of the slaves and the struggle for equality and civil rights but there was no Demand by students for more no real interest in Africa and its Heritage we knew about Africa as we knew about Finland yet the critical mass Theory continues to flow ish with no evidence behind it but with a peer consensus among the intelligencia which is apparently sufficient for many the cultural explanation of black white IQ differences is also consistent with the fact that very young black American children do not lag behind very young white American children on mental tests but that the Gap begins and widens as they grow up research as far back as the 1920s found this pattern as Otto kleinberg reported in 1941 summary a study by Lacy for example showed that the average IQ of colored children dropped steadily from 99 to 87 in the first four school grades whereas the white IQ remained almost stationary Wells also noted that negro children were equal to whites at ages 6 7 and 8 only slightly inferior at ages 9 10 and 11 and showed a progressively more marketed inferiority from the ages of 12 to to 16 Professor Jensen offers an alternative genetic explanation for this pattern but a similar pattern was also found among low IQ European immigrant groups in studies in 1916 to 1920 and among white American children in isolated Mountain communities studied in 1930 and 1940 so it is not a racial peculiarity in a genetic sense Professor Flynn's explanation of this same pattern is consistent with the data cited by kleinberg but these data are completely inconsistent with the prevailing multiculturalists doctrine that all cultures are equal Flynn's cultural explanation of black white differences in IQ is also consistent with the otherwise puzzling anomaly that the mental test scores of white soldiers from various Southern States during the first world war were lower than the mental test scores of black soldiers from various northern states at that time striking differences between the regional cultures of the South and the North in times past have been noted by many including Alexis totville Frederick Law Olstead and Hinton helper in the 19 century and Gunnar miral in the 20th century moreover those differences went back for centuries when similar differences existed in different regions of Britain among people who would later settle in the American South and others who would later settle in New England some of these cultural differences have been detailed in Cracker Culture by Grady MCU and an albian seed by David hacket fiser as well as in my book Black rednecks and white liberals the fact that whites who came out of that Southern Culture scored lower on mental tests than Northern whites as well as whites from some Southern States scoring lower than blacks from some northern states is much more difficult to reconcile with genetic theories than with cultural explanations in fact neither of the two main explanations of mental test score differences by the 20th centur intelligencia genetic differences or racial discrimination can account for white Southerners scoring low on the Army mental tests in the first world war but the cultural explanation is consistent with both blacks and Southern whites scoring low on these tests at that time much has changed in the South and later generations and especially in the latter Decades of the 20th century in part as a result of interregional migrations which have changed the demographic and cultural makeup of the South perhaps more so than other regions of the country however as late as the middle of the 20th century most blacks in America had been born in the Old South even when they lived in the north so the culture of the South which Conor mdal saw as common to both blacks and whites born in that region lived on in Black ghettos across the country many features of that culture have continued to live on today often insulated from change by being regarded as a sacrif part of black culture and identity