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In 1969, Arthur Jensen published a bombshell article in the Harvard Educational Review titled How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement? in which he argued that compensatory education has failed (e.g., Headstart) and it, therefore, should be abandoned. Jensen was a big proponent against school integration due to his research on IQ (Tucker, 2002). Tucker (1998) also argued, “that the supposed significance of the genetic influence on IQ has invariably reflected a particular ideological view of the purpose of education and its relation to the state that is rooted in conservative political thought.” Such ideological leanings of the IQ-ists have been well-noted (Tucker, 2002; Saini, 2019).(Though it should be noted that school integration didn’t cause any negative effects for whites and had many positive effects for blacks, see Nazaryan and Johnson, 2019). Note how the revival of “racial differences in intelligence” in the mainstream occurred after the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Such ideological leanings have been incipient in ‘intelligence’ testing since its inception.

IQ-ists

In any case, what was the ultimate goal of such research into racial/class differences in “intelligence”? The original application of what eventually became tests of “intelligence” were to (1) identify those with learning disabilities and (2) shoe-horn people into jobs “for” them—what Binet called his “ideal city.” When IQ tests were brought to America and translated from French to English by Henry Goddard in 1911 and then again by Lewis Terman in 1916. Goddard was hesitant to force sterilization, but he did believe that those his tests designated as “feeble-minded” should not be allowed to bear children.

Proponents of IQ emphatically state that it’s not a “measure of superiority” and that it’s only the critics who believe that, with no evidence for the claim. However, if one reads Jensen’s earliest writings on IQ, they would see that Jensen did, in fact, believe that heritability could estimate one’s “genetic standing” (Jensen, 1970) and that if we continue our welfare policy that we would lead a group toward “genetic enslavement” (Jensen, 1969). Jensen ran with racists, so there is a possibility that he himself held similar types of views to the people he ran with. The following quotes show Jensen’s eugenic thinking:

“Is there a danger that current welfare policies, unaided by eugenic foresight, could lead to the genetic enslavement of a substantial segment of our population?” – Jensen, 1969: 95, How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement?

“What the evidence on heritability tells us is that we can, in fact, estimate a person’s genetic standing on intelligence from his score on an IQ test.” – Jensen, 1970, Can We and Should We Study Race Difference?

“… the best thing the black community could do would be to limit the birth-rate among the least-able members, which of course is a eugenic proposal.” – A Conversation with Arthur Jensen, American Reinnasance, 1992

In a review of Raymond Cattell’s Beyondism, Richard Lynn stated:

“What is called for here is not genocide, the killing off of the populations of incompetent cultures. But we do need to think realistically in terms of “phasing out” of such peoples.”

I don’t see how he’s not calling for genocide—genocide is the systemic killing of a specific group of people. Eugenic methods are one way to accomplish this. Richard Lynn’s father was a eugenicist, signing his name to a manifesto which asked the question of how the genetic constitution of the world could be improved, per Lynn (see Interview with a pioneer, American Reinassance). Lynn continues:

My father’s interests did give me an early appreciation of the importance of genetics, although I think I would have adopted this position anyway since the evidence is irrefutable for a strong genetic determination of intelligence and educational attainment and a moderate genetic determination of personality. More importantly, my father served as a role model for scientific achievement and has given me the confidence to advance theories that have sometimes been controversial.

Lynn stated that he is “very pessimistic” about the future of the West, due to the immigration of individuals from low IQ countries who have a higher birthrate than Westerners along with the supposed dysgenic fertility that American white women are facing. (See Lynn, 1996, 2001 for a discussion and look into these views.) In Dysgenics, Lynn (1996: 2) writes that he hopes “To make the case that in the repudiation of eugenics an important truth has been lost, and to rehabilitate the argument that genetic deterioration is occurring in Western populations and in most of the developed world.”

Raymond Cattell was also one who believed that certain people should (voluntarily) be sterilized. He created a religion called “Beyondism” in an attempt to accomplish this goal, his research, in fact, served his eugenic and political beliefs (Tucker, 2009). Compassion was seen as evil to Cattell, which is one major way it strays from other religions. Presumably, one is compassionate to those less fortunate and, therefore, the compassion would help one who Cattell deems “genetically inferior” and so compassion is evil since it leads to the propagation of those Cattell deems less fit. Cattell also stated that, from the perspective of Beyondism, the propagation of ‘genetic failures’ is “positively evil” (Tucker, 2009: 136). He also coined the term ‘genthanasia’ which was “phasing out” a “moribund culture … by educational and birth measures, without a single member dying before his time” (Cattell, quoted in Tucker, 2009: 146).

William Shockley “reasoned” that if the problems that blacks face in America are hereditary, then by attempting to halt the reproduction of blacks, there would be less racism against them. Well if there are few people to be racist against, then there would be less racism against those people. Shocking. Further, Shockley wanted to enstate what he called a “Voluntary Sterilization Bonus Plan” where individuals with IQs below 100 would, with each single point below 100, be given $1000—although the plan was never implemented (Hilliard, 2012: 50). He also wanted to institute a sperm bank of ‘geniuses’ (whatever that means) but, he was never told, women did not want the sperm of Shockley’s short, balding self (he was 5’6” weighing 150 pounds)—although he had a ‘high IQ’ (he was rejected as being one of Terman’s Termites)—they wanted the sperm of taller, good-looking men, regardless of their IQ (Hilliard, 2012: 20).

It is worth noting that Shockley precedes Jensen’s thinking on race and IQ—Jensen was in the audience of one of Shockley’s talks in the late ’60s hearing him talk about racial differences in IQ. Psychology was Jensen’s second choice; his first was to be a symphony conductor. Hilliard (2012: 51) describes this:

“When Shockley addressed a meeting of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford in the late 1960s, one member of the audience drawn to his discourse was Arthur R. Jensen, a psychologist who taught at the University of California–Berkeley. Jensen, who had described himself as a “frustrated symphony conductor,” may have had his own reasons for reverencing Shockley’s every word. The younger psychologist had been forced to abandon a career in music because his own considerable talents in that area nevertheless lacked “soul,” or the emotional intensity needed to succeed in so competitive a profession. He decided on psychology as a second choice, carrying along with him a grudge against those American subcultures perceived as being “more expressive” than the white culture from which he sprang. Jensen received his bachelor’s degree in that field from the University of California– Berkeley in 1945.”

Shockley even disowned his son for dating a Costa Rican woman since it would “deteriorate their white gene pool” while describing his children as a “considerable regression”, even though they had advanced degrees. He blamed this ‘genetic misfortune’ on his wife who did not have as high educational attainment as he did (Hilliard, 2012: 49). This man greatly influenced Jensen—and it seems to show in his first writings on IQ—what eventually kicked off the ‘IQ debate’ (which is frivolous) back in the late 1960s. (James Thompson has said that Shockley wouldn’t talk to anyone if he didn’t know their IQ—presumably, because he did not want to talk to anyone ‘lower’ than he. The idiotic ‘thinking’ of eugenic IQ-ists.

Shockley was involved in a car accident, and received a head injury, with colleagues noting that his views on race and eugenics came about after his car accident (Hilliard, 2012: 48). So, it can rightly be argued that if Shockley would never have gotten into a car accident then he would have never had the views he did on race and IQ, meaning that he would not be speaking for Jensen to be in the audience to then eventually write his infamous 1969 paper. So, the current revival of the race-and-IQ debate can be said to be due to Shockly’s influence on Jensen, which is due (in some way) to head injuries sustained during a car accident.

IQ-ists speak of a “genetic deterioration”, what is termed “dysgenics” (the opposite of eugenics). Professor Seymour Itzkoff published The Decline of Intelligence in America (Itzkoff, 1994), arguing that the decline in our country’s “intelligence” is the cause of our economic and political woes. And, while he does not outright discuss eugenics in the book, he states that higher IQ people are not having children and so the national IQ is decreasing—a dysgenic effect. He is also a recipient of funding from the Pioneer Fund, published in Mankind Quarterly, and was one of the 52 signatories of Mainstream Science on Intelligence (Gottfredson, 1997).

The Decline of Intelligence in America was The Bell Curve before The Bell Curve. Itzkoff argued policy proscriptions, including encouraging certain people to breed and certain people not to breed (eugenics without calling it eugenics). Itzkoff stated that welfare policy is one reason why our “intelligence”—as a nation—has declined (see also Jensen, 1969; Lynn, 2001). Itzkoff (1994: 195) states that “Those at the bottom should be humanely persuaded, with generous gifts if deemed appropriate but for one generation only to refrain from conceiving and having children.” So his views are a mixture of Jensen’s, Shockley’s and others. Itzkoff advocates for both positive and negative eugenics for black Americans. I have not seen any IQ-ist discuss Itzkoff’s writings; I will do so in the future.

Philosopher and IQ-ist Jonathon Anomaly (see Winegard, Winegard, and Anomaly, 2020) has a paper in which he ‘defends eugenics’, even stating what we ‘should’ (cautiously) do about public policy in relation to eugenic ideas. He speaks of “undesirable genetic endowment“, while couching his “moral obligation to produce children with the best chance of the best life” (Anomaly, 2018) “through mechanisms of prenatal screening, enshrined in the principle of procreative beneficence and our responsibility to not pass along an “undesirable genetic endowment” (Love, 2018: 4). (See my arguments to discourage such research here and here.) Presumably, like Itzkoff (1994), such policies will be concentrated on the lower classes, of which minority populations are the majority. Robert Wilson (2019), author of The Eugenic Mind Project writes that Anomaly (2018) fails to argue for eugenics, mischaracterizes eugenics, mischaracterizes the scientific consensus, simplifies and misleads on the history, is careless about race and IQ, appealing for moral principles, and no substance linking demography, eugenics and policy recommendations. Anomaly could hardly contain his negative eugenist views; his views being akin to more traditional, negative forms of eugenics” (Wilson, 2019: 74).

In any case, IQ tests were used as a vehicle for sterilization and barring immigrants into America in the 1920s (Swanson, 1995; Gould, 1996; Wilson, 2017; Dolmage, 2018). In his book The Eugenic Mind Project, Wilson (2017) discusses standpoint eugenics—how eugenic policies affected people and their own personal experiences with eugenic policies. In the book, Wilson argues that, to the eugenicists, there are different ‘sorts’ of people that can be distinguished from others. Wilson (2017: 48) writes:

This was not, however, the way of human betterment favored by the applied science of eugenics and that continues to forms [sic] a key part of The Eugenic Mind. Instead, historically eugenicists typically followed Galton in emphasizing that quality was not equally distributed in the kinds of human populations that are regulated by governmental policies and jurisdictional legislation. More specifically, they thought of such populations as being composed of fundamentally distinct kinds of people, with some kinds being of higher quality than others. Some of these sorts of people were to be improved through eugenic policies that encouraged their own reproduction; others were to be eliminated over generational time. The goal of intergenerational human improvement within the eugenics movement was thus achieved by increasing the proportion of higher-quality people in future generations, and this could be achieved in two ways under eugenic logic. Thus, eugenicists historically advocated ideas, laws, policies, and practices either that aimed to maximize the reproduction of higher-quality people—positive eugenics—or that aimed to minimalize the reproduction of lower-quality people. Or both.

A hallmark of The Eugenic Mind, says Wilson, is the distinction between the ‘fit’ and ‘unfit’. Thus, those deemed ‘unfit’ would be sterilized as they are different ‘kinds’ of people. Eugenics is seen as an applied science and so, it attempts to achieve certain goals—the propagation of the ‘fit’ and elimination of the ‘unfit.’ The first IQ tests were constructed with class, so that the test scores mirrored current racial/class divisions, justifying the social hierarchy (Mensh and Mensh, 1991). Thus, using the ‘science of IQ’, we could then identify ‘feeble-minds’ and therefore select them out of the gene pool. What really would be going on here is not selecting out ‘low IQ people’ but selecting out those of lower classes—one of the main reasons these types of views sprang up. A trait was ‘eugenic’ if it fit “folk knowledge characteristic of people” (Wilson, 2017: 70).

Criminology

Eugenic-type thinking also had its beginnings in criminality, right when the first IQ tests were being constructed by Binet in 1905 (Kuhar and Fatović-Ferenčić, 2012). Lombroso’s thesis of hereditary criminality also gave American eugenicists the platform for sterilization of criminals (Applegate, 2018: 438). But early eugenicists were more concerned over white female ‘morons’ and white lower-status, promiscuous white women being coerced and segregated in order to prevent them from breeding, it even being suggested by “one or two scientists” that the women should live on a farm performing menial tasks and should be sterilized; the eugenicists wanted state control of heredity (Applegate, 2018: 439). Mexican-American men and women were even sterilized in the 1900s (Lira, 2015). Such beliefs seem to be baked-in from political and social prejudices; not any basis in ‘science.’

Eugenicists wished for state control over the “propagation of the mentally incompetent,” whether through mental illness or disability. Ultimately, these beliefs would lead not only to forced detention and isolation, but also to regular affronts to human life and dignity. (Applegate, 2018: 442)

But Dr. Sullivan, the medical officer of Holloway Prison in The Eugenics Review stated that “Criminals, looked at from the eugenic standpoint, cannot be put into any single category; some of them, probably most of them, are of average stock, and become criminal under the influence of their milieu; they do not directly interest the eugenist” (Sullivan, 1909: 119-120). The “hyperincarceration of blacks” is also argued to be eugenic in nature (Oleson, 2016; Jones and Seabrook, 2017). Such race-based segregation, argues Oleson, significantly depresses the birthrate of affected groups—racialized minorities (socialgroups taken to be races, e.g., ‘Hispanics‘ and blacks). So since minority populations are overrepresented in prison and they are less likely to procreate, it then follows that such arguments like Oleson’s (2016) has some weight to it. So this then would have eugenic effects over generational time. Even today, America is still sterilizing prisoners, so, it seems, the legacy of the 20th century has yet to let up.

… the penal code is a eugenic instrument, although until today, it has been without consciousness of this function. And following the results of eugenic science, it can tomorrow widen or narrow the circle of crimes in the end of conducing to the physical and psychic improvement of the race. (Battaglini, 1914)

Hitler, noticing the American sterilization laws and the Immigration Act of 1924, instituted eugenic policies on this basis—yes, the Nazi eugenic movement was largely taken from the then-existing social policy in America at the time. Pioneer Fund president Henry Laughlin, who used data from IQ tests in front of Congress to bar certain immigrants from the United States (Swanson, 1995; Dolmage, 2018). The Nazis and Americans had extensive contact with each other, while Germany modeled their sterilization law after Henry Laughlin’s laws for sterilization in US states (Cornwell, 2001; Black, 2003; see Allen, 2004; Lelliot, 2004; and Weikart, 2006 for reviews; Wittmann, 2004). But it is worth noting that Hitler was not a Darwinian (Richards, 2012, 2013). Hitler’s laws in the early 1930s on eugenics “may have had some resemblance to the most extreme of American state’s laws” (Wittmann, 2004: 19), since he was observing the eugenic programs implemented by certain states (eugenic laws were never federally mandated).

Conclusion

The IQ-ist thinking that IQ tests ‘measure’ intelligence led to eugenic policies and the sterilization of criminals and those with low IQs. Jensen and Shockley were the forefronts of bringing IQ-ism back into the picture, and they both had eugenic views (Shockley being way more radical than Jensen, but it is clear that Shockley was his influence here and that, without Shockley, IQ-ism may not have had the sway it does today. The IQ-ist ideology that has led to eugenic thinking and social policies, race and ‘intelligence’ has been there since its inception and it is clear that it still exists today (Chitty, 2007). Most of the big-name IQ-ists have, either explicitly or implicitly, stated things that can be construed in a eugenic way, and thusly, the main goal of the IQ-ist program is revealed: limit the birthrates of the lower classes, which are mostly minorities.

The eugenics movement in America—which then influenced Nazi policy—was not built on science, nor was it political (even though it aimed to be “applied science”; Wilson, 2017), it was a political movement which was erected to control social groups thought to be inferior to the higher-ups (Quigley, 1995). The link between eugenic thinking and IQ-ism in its history go hand-in-hand and some IQ-ists, even today, still advocate for such social policy based on the results from IQ tests (Herrnstein and Murray, 1994; Itzkoff, 1994).

Such prescriptions from IQ-ists for what ‘should be’ done with low IQ people speak to their bias in the matter. One of the great IQ-ists, so revered, Arthur Jensen was very implicit in his views in the late 1960s and early 70s about what should be done for the black population in America. His predecessors, too, had the same type of eugenic beliefs which then influenced their thoughts and values on crime and ‘intelligence.’ This game that IQ-ists have been playing has been going on for over 100 years; and with the advent of new genetic technology, the IQ-ists can continue their eugenic games, attempting to prevent ‘certain people’ from having children.

These tests, originally devised to correlate group’s places on the social hierarchy, cannot be ‘used for good’, as the point of its inception was to justify current class hierarchies as ‘genetic and immutable.’ These psychologists and criminologists leave their fields of inquiry and then attempt to influence public policy using clearly biased tests, as the history of the field has shown since its inception in the early 1900s. These are yet more reasons why IQ testing should be banned, as no good can come from believing that a group or individual is ‘less intelligent’ than another. The eugenic thinking of IQ-ists and criminologists feed off each other, with the IQ-ist ideas being the catalyst for the eugenic policies that followed.