Vive la difference
Sir: It's a sorry day when Kenan Malik is using your columns CRace towards censorship', 11 May) to rehearse the well- known foxy ploys of liberals who pretend that genetics and intelligence are not relat- ed, and that intelligence is an undefined concept and does not vary genetically between races. Of course intelligence is well-defined: an ability to educe and manipulate generalities from data. The 'g factor' is a measure of such an ability found to underlie a range of specific per- formance tasks (hence 'g' which stands for `general). It is inherited like height — i.e.
shows inter-generational regression towards the mean, so that we as a matter of routine are as unlikely to produce a grow- ing population of giants as of geniuses. Dull, impoverished parents do not produce more and more stupid children; nor do rich and advantaged ones sire only bright little replicas of themselves — which is why test- ing for all classes and groups is a step towards equality of treatment, not away from it. As for the black-white difference, the apparent exception found in blacks migrating north by the US Army Test showed that migrants are self-selected for intelligence; and anyway, if my memory is right, the much-trumpeted 'exception' for black intelligence on that test-result involved some four persons migrating to Ohio! Of course black people are not uni- formly unintelligent — though only about a sixth exceed the white average — they are intelligent but less commonly so. This has little to do with culture since the gap is smaller on culture-related than on culture- reduced tests like Raven's matrices. Of course the genetic variation between groups is less than that within them unless blacks are about to develop tails or two heads or something! All these crummy liberal ploys to pretend that the findings somehow can be 'explained' are too well- known and so often exploded that it really is a shame to see them rehearsed by Malik yet again.
But what is really sorry is his assumption that we should somehow rejoice to find that black people are 'really like us' under- neath. It is as prejudiced and patronising as the wretched poet William Blake's remark to the effect that 'though I am black my soul is white.' It insults the virtues and val- ues of black culture and genetics. Surely even so ethnocentric a fraud as your mod- ern liberal can concede that, for a virtuous, happy and fecund existence, a charming and adept African lady might be much pre- ferred as a life-partner? Certainly when compared say, to her white, sharp-tongued, albeit occasionally slightly brighter feminist counterpart. And it is the difference that makes for the gain.
Michael Parsons
86 St Leonard's Road, Newton Abbot, Devon
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