Race and IQ [Hardcover]

Ashley Montagu (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 8, 1999

Ashley Montagu, who first attacked the term "race" as a usable concept in his acclaimed work, Man's Most Dangerous Myth, offers here a devastating rebuttal to those who would claim any link between race and intelligence.
In now classic essays, this thought-provoking volume critically examines the terms "race" and "IQ" and their applications in scientific discourse. The twenty-four contributors--including such eminent thinkers as Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Lewontin, Urie Bronfenbrenner, W.F. Bodmer, and Jerome Kagan--draw on fields that range from biology and genetics to psychology, anthropology, and education. What emerges in piece after piece is a deep skepticism about the scientific validity of intelligence tests, especially as applied to evaluating innate intelligence, if only because scientists still cannot distinguish between genetic and environmental contributions to the development of the human mind. Five new essays have been included that specifically address the claims made in the recent, highly controversial book, The Bell Curve.
Must reading for anyone interested in racism and education in America, Race and IQ is a brilliantly lucid exploration of the boundary line between race and intelligence.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Publication of the controversial book The Bell Curve prompted an updating of this scholarly masterpiece by distinguished anthropologist Ashley Montagu, whose work has been among the most articulate critiques of pseudoscientific racism over the past five decades. Montagu includes pieces by 20 scientists and writers, including an insightful history of biological determinism by Stephen Jay Gould ("Racist Arguments and IQ"), Jerome Kagan's deconstructive analysis "The Magical Aura of the IQ," and a comprehensive attack on The Bell Curve by Alan Ryan ("Bad Science, Worse Politics"). In his own essays, "Intelligence, IQ, and Race" and "The IQ Mythology," Montagu continues his tireless crusades against the mythologies of racial purity and the fallacies of inherent and inalterable intelligence differences among nonwhite peoples. "Intelligence is a complex function of highly complex variables," Montagu writes, "so complex, indeed, that we can hardly be said to have made a beginning in understanding any of them." --Eugene Holley Jr.

About the Author

Ashley Montagu is a distinguished anthropologist and author of over 40 books, including The Nature of Human Agression, Statement on Race, and Science and Creationism. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 496 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; Exp Sub edition (April 8, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195102207
• ISBN-13: 978-0195102208
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 1.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,043,017 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

40 of 80 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars The Marxists have been reduced to name to stop science., March 31, 2001

By 

Matt Nuenke http://eugenics.home.att.net (Chicago, Illinois United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Race and IQ (Hardcover)

When I first opened this book and started to read it, I expected the typical Marxist book that uses every deception, lie and distortion to try and turn back the massive amounts of evidence that genes do in fact determine the average intelligence in different racial or ethnic groups --- some great, some small. But reading the book, I realized some very strange deviations from other similar books.

First, there are 22 chapters with chapters 1 and 3 written by Ashley Montagu being identical with different headings. The second strange thing was that the dates of the articles and the academic affiliation of the contributors are not listed. However, the 13 articles that were written before 1974 had references to the original journal articles they came from, while the current articles did not --- you are left to guess where they were first published.

And it gets even stranger. The 13 articles included in the original publication of the book were all written between 1947 and 1974. And twelve of those articles apparently resulted as a reply to Arthur Jensen's 1969 article in the Harvard Educational Review entitled "How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement?" They all dealt with the possibility of increasing the low Black average intelligence by means of intervention programs because they asserted, humans were infinitely malleable and intelligence was equally available to everyone if we just threw enough money at the problem. Today, all these earlier predictions have been shown to be colossal failures, and the current edition does not put forth any new data to show intervention can work, aside to beg for more money because obviously, "we just did not spend enough money on the earlier program," even though one program cost $23,000 per IQ increase per child (which was lost as the child grew up and genetic IQ took over). And they even admit now that they have no idea how to permanently increase the IQ of Blacks with intervention programs.

The other eight articles, all written apparently after 1994 with the publication of The Bell Curve, take a different approach at attacking scientific empiricism. These die-hard egalitarians are now relying on hate against anyone who is looking at the evidence from a scientific perspective rather than an ideological egalitarian/Marxist ideology. They rely on trying to destroy or impugn motives, rather than looking at the evidence. So it appears that this book was thrown together as a last ditch effort to hold back the incredible progress that has been made since 1970 with regards to the pendulum swinging from radical environmentalism back to a more balanced understanding of human nature from an evolutionary perspective. And their main tool is hate. They call all empirical scientists "racists." It is the same vicious malignancy of intolerance against what evolutionists call "the other" or the out-group. The Marxists are attacking scientists because the data conflicts with their goals --- as part of their group evolutionary strategy.