Michael Sylvester writes:
> I have already referred to her book on testing.
> Please note,that one can be an implicit racist by collaborating with ideas
> that only enhances a racist differential outlook on the basis of
> individual differences.
> U.S immigration policy was once based on the ideas of the psychometricians
> who believed in the intellectual inferiority of non-WASP people
> including Italians and Kosovo -Albanians.
While it may be true many of the early experts believed individual and racial
differences had a genetic origin, the same can be said today for many
psychologists today. It is common knowledge that heritability is substantial
for IQ scores, and on the racial issue, many writers prefer to pass on that
question due to lack of research (or, fear they'd be misunderstood).
The claim that immigrants were mislabeled by IQ testers who didn't understand
the relationship between culture, langauge, and IQ is another "academic myth"
(or, to be kind, an exaggerated claim based on a germ of a fact taken out of
context). In some texts it says "80%" of the non-WASP immigrants were labeled
as mentally defective, and this is simply wrong. I quote from Cohen et al.
_Psych Testing and Assessment_ (Mayfield Publishing, 1996, Third Ed.) p. 54.
"Soon after Alfred Binet introduced intelligence testing in France, the
United States Public Health Service began using such tests to measure the
intelligence of people seeking to immigrate to the Uninted States. Henry
Goddard (1913), the chief researcher assigned to the project and a specialist
in the field of mental retardation, early raised (and studied) questions about
how meaningful such tests are when used with people from various cultural and
language backgrounds. Goddard used interpreters in test administration,
employed a bilingual psychologist, and administered mental tests to selected
immigrants who appeared mentally defective to trained observers (Goddard,
1917). This last point is the basis of the false (though widely circulated)
claim that Goddard estimated over 80% of all immigrants to be mentally
retarded. Goddard states accurately that his research could not make such an
estimate about immigrants in general because _his subjects were selected_ for
low mental ability." (emphasis mine).
--
* John W. Kulig, Department of Psychology ************************
* Plymouth State College Plymouth NH 03264 *
* [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://oz.plymouth.edu/~kulig *
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* "Eat bread and salt and speak the truth" Russian proverb *
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