Jennifer Rubin, who scribes the pro-immigration "Right Turn" column in the Washington Post, denounces Jason Richwine for the high crime of Noticing Things:
Heritage stumbles, again and again
Posted by Jennifer Rubin on May 8, 2013 at 4:23 pm
It’s been a tough go of it for Heritage ever since it released its study asserting immigration reform would cost trillions. It was roundly criticized by both liberal and conservative analysts. Then today the dam really broke.
The Post reports that the dissertation of the study’s co-author, Jason Richwine, asserted, “The average IQ of immigrants in the United States is substantially lower than that of the white native population, and the difference is likely to persist over several generations. The consequences are a lack of socioeconomic assimilation among low-IQ immigrant groups, more underclass behavior, less social trust, and an increase in the proportion of unskilled workers in the American labor market.” No wonder he came up with such a study; his dissertation adviser was George Borjas, a Harvard professor infamous for his crusade against immigration (legal or not).
Jennifer Korn, executive director of the pro-immigration-reform conservative Hispanic Leadership Network, responds: “If you start with the off-base premise that Hispanic immigrants have a lower IQ, it’s no surprise how they came up with such a flawed study.” She continued: “Richwine’s comments are bigoted and ignorant. America is a nation of immigrants; to impugn the intelligence of immigrants is to offend each and every American and the foundation of our country. The American Hispanic community is entrepreneurial, and we strive to better our lives through hard work and determination. This is not a community hampered by low intelligence but a community consistently moving forward to better themselves and our country.”
Heritage scrambled to distance itself from the author’s IQ views, with a spokesperson insisting that they did not relate to the viability of its study. But for the reasons Korn gives it most certainly does. No wonder the study postulates that legalized immigrants will be poor and become a drain on society.
Moreover, that Heritage engaged such a person to author its immigration study suggests that the “fix” was in from the get-go. It also raises the question of whether Heritage is now hiring fringe characters to generate its partisan studies of questionable scholarship. I expect that will be about all we hear from Heritage on the study for a while.
It certainly undermines the cause of all immigration opponents to have their prized work authored by such a character. It’s an unpleasant reminder that sincere opponents of reform should distance themselves from the collection of extremists and bigots who populate certain anti-immigrant groups. One can certainly be anti-immigration-reform and not be anti-Hispanic, but it doesn’t help to be rallying around a report by someone convinced that “the totality of the evidence suggests a genetic component to group differences in IQ.”
The facts won't calm Ms. Rubin down, because, obviously, the facts are hatestats, but here's a meta-analysis of the enormous amount of data available on the subject:
Roth, P. L., Bevier, C. A., Bobko, P., Switzer III, F. S. & Tyler, P. (2001) "Ethnic group differences in cognitive ability in employment and educational settings: a meta-analysis." Personnel Psychology 54, 297–330.
As I wrote in 2005:
This 2001 meta-analysis of 39 studies covering a total 5,696,519 individuals in America (aged 14 and above) came up with an overall difference of 0.72 standard deviations in g (the "general factor" in cognitive ability) between "Anglo" whites and Hispanics. The 95% confidence range of the studies ran from .60 to .88 standard deviations, so there's not a huge amount of disagreement among the studies.
One standard deviation equals 15 IQ points, so that's a gap of 10.8 IQ points, or an IQ of 89 on the Lynn-Vanhanen scale where white Americans equal 100. That would imply the average Hispanic would fall at the 24th percentile of the white IQ distribution. This inequality gets worse at higher IQs Assuming a normal distribution, 4.8% of whites would fall above 125 IQ versus only 0.9% of Hispanics, which explains why Hispanics are given ethnic preferences in prestige college admissions.
In contrast, 105 studies of 6,246,729 individuals found an overall white-black gap of 1.10 standard deviations, or 16.5 points. (I typically round this down to 1.0 standard deviation and 15 points). So, the white-Hispanic gap appears to be about 65% as large as the notoriously depressing white-black gap. (Warning: this 65% number does not come from a perfect apples to apples comparison because more studies are used in calculating the white-black difference than the white-Hispanic difference.)
For screen shots of data tables from Roth et al, click here.
For screen shots of data tables from Roth et al, click here.
This fits well with lots of other data. For example, Hispanics generally do almost as badly on the National Assessment of Educational Progress school achievement tests as blacks, but that average is dragged down by immigrant kids who have problems adjusting to English. The last time the NAEP asked about where the child was born was 1992, and Dr. Stefan Thernstrom of Harvard kindly provided me with the data from that examination. For foreign-born Hispanics, the typical gap versus non-Hispanic whites was 1.14 times as large as the black-white gap. But for American-born Hispanics, the gap between non-Hispanic whites and American-born Hispanics was 0.67 times as large as the gap between non-Hispanic whites and blacks, very similar to the 0.65 difference seen in the meta-analysis of IQs.
For more on Mexican-American educational attainment, see the landmark "Generations of Exclusion" study by Telles & Ortiz.
For more on Mexican-American educational attainment, see the landmark "Generations of Exclusion" study by Telles & Ortiz.
Did everybody just forget that Richard Posner, maybe the most respected living American jurist, casually acknowledged group differences in IQ a few months ago? I vaguely remember the blog post being ripped down but I don't recall him being excoriated as a fringe loony.
ReplyDeleteNotice how anti-intellectual the comments are at the Washington Post article. It's name-calling and point-and-sputter, no engaging of the facts.
ReplyDelete"Richwine’s comments are bigoted and ignorant. America is a nation of immigrants; to impugn the intelligence of immigrants is to offend each and every American and the foundation of our country."
ReplyDeleteWell, that settles it, then.
Jennifer Korn is described as the executive director of "Hispanic Leadership Network."
Jennifer Korn?
Here's (pdf) what I could find.
Surprise, she was a Dubya official.
Mr. Richwine should consider himself lucky and maybe think about getting out of town.
ReplyDelete5-10 years from now, having that kind of writing in your background is likely to result in being sent to a camp, if not a bullet in the base of your skull.
These hysterical denunciators such as the "columnist" in this case are commissars plain and simple and using the most extreme weaponry at their disposal. Now, it is causing job loss, shunning, etc. But when they get the authority, and theirs is growing daily, they will not hesitate to liquidate the likes of Richwine and other enemies of the people.
The 20th century is one big example of "been there, done that" with totalitarian, atheistic, leftist regimes.
What could go wrong here?
If you start with the off-base premise that Hispanic immigrants have a lower IQ...
ReplyDeleteThen why does Mexico, etc. suck? I anxiously await a well grounded explanation. (And no, colonialism doesn't count; Hong Kong was a colony up until a few years ago).
Just one more example of why a temporary moratorium on immigration from all countries is the most defensible reform: it patently does not discriminate and puts the focus on the question that matters most: is immigration necessary?
ReplyDeleteEvil Sandmich:"Then why does Mexico, etc. suck? "
ReplyDeleteMr. Evil Sandmich, as my grandfather told me four decades ago, "The only problem with Mexico is that it's full of Mexicans."
Then why does Mexico, etc. suck?
ReplyDeleteThey were unfortunate enough to get the side of the border with the poor roads, bad schools, corrupt government, and so forth.
Really, we are just lucky that we got the good side...
Left wing thinking begins with excuse making. None of the victim groups are responsible for their actions. The only non victim group is white males, maybe some asians. It's a religion, and left wing Christians have welded that thinking to their Christianity, mostly women. I see it all the time in my Austin exurb.
ReplyDelete"America is a nation of immigrants; to impugn the intelligence of immigrants is to offend each and every American and the foundation of our country" - Well it doesn't offend me, but then perhaps I don't meet the definition of American here.
ReplyDeleteEx-Sub Officer,
ReplyDelete"5-10 years from now, having that kind of writing in your background is likely to result in being sent to a camp, if not a bullet in the base of your skull."
Maybe if you live in the Northeast, but I've never imagined 'fly over America' letting itself being passively herded into camps like a bunch of lemmings.
By that point, I imagine that the Effete Liberal Elite will be looking for the helicopters to get them out of the country while the modern day "Roundheads" kick down doors as the pendulum swings back rather violently.
Just one more example of why a temporary moratorium on immigration from all countries is the most defensible reform: it patently does not discriminate and puts the focus on the question that matters most: is immigration necessary?
ReplyDeleteWhy is being defensive necessary? Why not aggressively discriminate? The Rubins and Korns didn't get where they are by playing defense and not discriminating.
I didn't know Korn was a precious metal.
ReplyDeleteWe've had this discussion back in 1991 when Yuji Aida wrote in the Chicago Tribune that:
ReplyDeleteDo blacks and Hispanics, for instance, have the skills and knowledge to run an advanced industrial economy? If the answer is yes, America will maintain its vitality through the next century and beyond. But I`m skeptical. Consider black Africa, for example. Struggling against outside pressures to forge independent nation-states from different tribal cultures, the region is plagued by poverty, political instability and other serious problems. Former Spanish and Portuguese colonies in Latin America have also failed to create viable high-tech societies. Iberian and African cultural traits seem to impede industrialization.
In response to the above editorial, Irma Claudio wrote an op-ed for the Chicago Tribune a week later and countered Mr. Aida with this:
Contrary to his skepticism about the emerging minority workforce`s ability to keep America afloat, we firmly believe that Hispanics and other minorities are advancing excellence in the American workplace.
Our heightening preparation and skills and our consistent hard work are helping America meet the challenge of sustaining its competitive advantage in the world market. We are helping America build a world-class workforce.
Now these op-eds were written twenty-two years ago and we already have enough evidence to suggest the Japanese guy was correct. So we have just spent 22 years keeping the spigot flowing even though it was correctly predicted that Latin and African immigration would not be conducive for a first world workforce.
Now instead of admitting we were wrong, we are about to enable the mother of all amnesties and double down on the immigrant flow of the past 3 decades despite the evidence that it's a losing proposition.
God help us.
Ms. Rubin finds the assertion that white Americans may have higher average IQs than Hispanics to be a fringe idea that's off-the-charts in its racism and bigotry, but would she object to the now-widely acknowledged fact that Jews have higher IQs than whites?
ReplyDeleteWould she deny the data which shows that Jews have higher average IQs than every other non East Asian group (including Hispanics)?
I'd bet my left testicle that the ever-ethnocentrically chauvinistic (if you're familiar with her writing, you know that she specializes in waging charges of "anti-Semitism" against her political foes) Ms. Rubin would have no problem acknowledging Jewish IQ superiority to other ethnic groups -- including Hispanics.
Now to be precise, Jennifer Rubin is Sephardic, and technically, it's the Ashkenazim who top the IQ charts. But on the whole, it's generally acknowledged that Jews, as a generic group (encompassing Ashkenazi, Spehardic and Mizrahi Jews), are smarter than non Jews.
And although she apparently hasn't written about Jewish IQ superiority (even though she writes for Commentary), can there be any doubt that she acknowledges it?
By the way, Ms. Rubin took tons of flak (including being called a "racist" and a "bigot" by much of the left) a couple years ago when she retweeted a verrry controversial blog post by a spunky Weekly Standard writer named Rachel Abrams.
I love how anyone who comes to a debated on race armed with facts is immediately (and angrily) charged with being "ignorant."
ReplyDelete"Knowledge Is Ignorance" is the credo of these times.
@ Jack Hanson 7:14 p.m.;
ReplyDeleteIt is my understanding that the freedom loving border Scots-English, that later became known as Ulster Scots or Scots-Irish, generally fought on the side of the Cavaliers.
I assumed this was because they considered the Roundheads a greater threat to their way of life. Please correct me if I'm in error.
Neil Templeton
Jennifer Korn, executive director of the pro-immigration-reform conservative Hispanic Leadership Network
ReplyDeleteAll the Korn's I have known have been Scots Irish.
"Richard Posner, maybe the most respected living American jurist, casually acknowledged group differences in IQ a few months ago?"
ReplyDeleteWonder if some techie could find that post even after it was ripped down.
Maybe if you live in the Northeast, but I've never imagined 'fly over America' letting itself being passively herded into camps like a bunch of lemmings.
ReplyDeleteI'd really like to believe that, honestly, I would, but every time the screws are tightened, we/they grumble and go along with it.
I'm betting the kulaks, Ukrainians, and sundry others from the many millions of peaceful, sturdy peoples massacred by amoral, left wing despotry in the 20th century had going to camp/extrajudicial execution in their plans either.
Not only can it happen here, it is happening here. That isn't to say that there is a central conspiracy consciously doing this. However, this pathway we are on here is a depressingly familiar pattern and when the levers of power to do such heinous things are in place, Ms. Rubin et al will quite happily pull them.
Who knows, maybe it will be different this time. I sure hope so, but I'm not betting my family on it.
Linda Gottfredson (sp?) says here that Hispanics score at 80 on IQ tests here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdti5Rr8rhs
ReplyDeleteat 23:10
Don't know what her source is.
It makes sense to me that the author of the Tribune letter is the same Aida Yuji listed in wikipedia as a conservative professor in Japan. His theory of western warfare is interesting:
ReplyDeleteAida is best remembered for the theory that the 'rationality' of Western civilization was consequential upon the practice of raising and killing livestock. This hypothesis, called the "livestock rearing theory" (家畜飼育説 kachiku shiikusetsu?),[2] was set forth in his 1966 book Rationalism (Gōrishugi). He associated the slaughter of domestic animals, which had been hitherto reared with great care, with the nonchalant belligerence of Western soldiers. In his view, Westerners are free from the kind of hysteria Japanese soldiers would often show at the sight of bloodshed. Aida blamed this very hysteria for the excessive acts of cruelty that the Japanese were accused of during the Second World War. Westerners, on the other hand, have so long been accustomed to calmly butchering animals that they developed a rational approach to slaughter, which they extended to human conflict. The Japanese hardly had any contact with livestock owing to the Buddhist taboo of eating meat and were too emotive to master the Western sort of nonchalance.
The immediate strategy of the Big Business/Cultural Marxist alliance is to create a 'fact on the ground' with respect to massive nonwhite immigration into the West.
ReplyDeleteThis is why Tony Blair let in millions of them while he could, and why the Gang of Eight is trying so desperately now,in the USA, to do the same, before Obama/Hillary is impeached,over Benghazi.
Anon.
Maybe Mickey Kaus can ask Rubin on this in his next Blogging Heads session with her.
ReplyDeleteNotice how anti-intellectual the comments are at the Washington Post article. It's name-calling and point-and-sputter, no engaging of the facts.
ReplyDeleteThey don't need facts, they won the election, as far as they are concerned winning the election means they get what they want, only losers would object.
Neil,
ReplyDeleteYou're right, but I think an excess of libertine ways and hedonistic excess is what ills us more as a society. I always sided more with the Ironsides who tried to keep their king in spite of his foreign loving/ free spending ways and finally just decided that something had to be done.
Ex-Sub Officer,
If it cheers you, no one looked at Fort Sumter as 'the thing' that kicked off the Civil War Until well after things had settled. I'm sure in the face of Uncle Tom's Cabin and John Brown's Raid there was a sentiment as well that they were sliding towards tyranny, until things swung back the other way forcefully and violently.
Left wing thinking begins with excuse making. None of the victim groups are responsible for their actions. The only non victim group is white "gentile" males, maybe some asians. It's a religion, and left wing Christians have welded that thinking to their Christianity, mostly women. I see it all the time in my Austin exurb.
ReplyDeleteFTFY.
I didn't know Korn was a precious metal.
Thousand bucks says it's a variant of Cohen.
Would she deny the data which shows that Jews have higher average IQs than every other non East Asian group (including Hispanics)?
Ashkenazi Jews (non-Ashkenazi Jews are nothing special) have a higher mean IQ than east Asians, too (note that "east" isn't capitalized). But not Episcopalians.
Now to be precise, Jennifer Rubin is Sephardic, and technically, it's the Ashkenazim who top the IQ charts. But on the whole, it's generally acknowledged that Jews, as a generic group (encompassing Ashkenazi, Spehardic and Mizrahi Jews), are smarter than non Jews.
Like I said, non-Ashkenazi Jews are nothing special in the IQ department.
It's Stephan Thernstrom, not Stefan.
ReplyDeletehttp://lewrockwell.com/williams-w/w-williams161.html
ReplyDeleteAre the IQ tests given in Spanish? I'm curious if any research has been done as to the effect of taking a test in a second language. I did pretty well on IQ tests, and took Spanish for 5 years in school, but never tried to live in a Spanish speaking country or anything like that to really learn it. I assume if given a Spanish IQ test, I'd be a retard, and if given a test in Chinese, I'd score the same as a tree.
ReplyDeleteOf course Jason Richwine is an ignorant crimethinker. After all, he got his doctorate from Harvard.
ReplyDeleteNow I know Harvard is kind of an obscure 'school', but those of us who have heard of Harvard know that it is a fringe institution which specialises in far-right bigotry.
Harvard is a hotbed of pseudo-scientific hatred, and anyone associated with such an obscure fringe outfit should automatically be disqualified from having opinions about public policy.
I mean, seriously... Harvard? You gotta be joking!
Does anyone else notice how badly Jennifer Rubin writes? Clunky, ugly prose tumbles awkwardly off her pen.
ReplyDeleteIt seems like an odd characteristic for a leading columnist to have, no?
Rubin's background is entertainment industry "labor lawyer" so rather I'd say that prose style comports with the source pretty closely. She wasn't an agent for talent (who may have JDs but don't waste their time on CourtCalls)--however, it's pretty much the same table-pounding skill set.
ReplyDeleteBill said: Does anyone else notice how badly Jennifer Rubin writes?
ReplyDeleteHunsdon asked: So how long have you been a Nazi, Bill?
Hunsdon, with great emphasis: This is satire.
Good grief Greta. Smarter than everyone, etc. etc. Ashkenazium.
ReplyDeleteWhy isn't "east" capitalized, may I ask?
ReplyDeleteRules of grammar, old boy.
"Aida is best remembered for the theory that the 'rationality' of Western civilization was consequential upon the practice of raising and killing livestock. This hypothesis, called the "livestock rearing theory" (家畜飼育説 kachiku shiikusetsu?),[2] was set forth in his 1966 book Rationalism (Gōrishugi). He associated the slaughter of domestic animals, which had been hitherto reared with great care, with the nonchalant belligerence of Western soldiers. In his view, Westerners are free from the kind of hysteria Japanese soldiers would often show at the sight of bloodshed. Aida blamed this very hysteria for the excessive acts of cruelty that the Japanese were accused of during the Second World War. Westerners, on the other hand, have so long been accustomed to calmly butchering animals that they developed a rational approach to slaughter, which they extended to human conflict. The Japanese hardly had any contact with livestock owing to the Buddhist taboo of eating meat and were too emotive to master the Western sort of nonchalance.
ReplyDeleteTHere may be a connection, but again why is he citing only Europeans. Herding, which is far more focussed on raising and killing animals than is general farming, is a middle-eastern and north/easern African cultural reality Animal slaughter was common throughout the middle east, for eating and--in the old days, for sacrifice. It's part of their culture. Also, the Chinese and Mongolians. There are accounts of little girls' feet being held the cut open stomachs of sheep or chickens, to soften them before starting foot binding. Imagine the terror of the child and the pain of the animal...
As for the faint hearted Japanese--I don't think so.
See Men Behind the Sun, a surreal film about the 731, the Japanese deathcamp. About 6 people came out alive from millions.
"Anonymous said...
ReplyDeleteAre the IQ tests given in Spanish? I'm curious if any research has been done as to the effect of taking a test in a second language. I did pretty well on IQ tests, and took Spanish for 5 years in school, but never tried to live in a Spanish speaking country or anything like that to really learn it. I assume if given a Spanish IQ test, I'd be a retard, and if given a test in Chinese, I'd score the same as a tree.
"
I don't mean to be unkind, but what is your IQ? The Stanford Binet IQ test has been in existence for going on 100 years, and has been a standard IQ test in all western school systems. Spanish is hardly an obscure language. Yes, Virginia. There are IQ tests in Spanish.
Those who have studied intelligence and methods of measurement naturally take into account cultural differences.
One factor that does affect IQ is exposure to mental stimulation, i.e. literacy mainly. Most immigrants in the 1900s were of skethy education. Their offspring raised speaking English just showed their native ability. Just as Mexicans born and raised here do. The schools in the slums of 1900 were horrendous, yet their students had higher IQs than "hispanics" and blacks in pleasant suburban schools with all the amenities. I should know; I live in PG County Maryland, where lives half of El Salvador and much of black D.C.'s government workers. It was a very pleasant county until the 80s, and still has a few pleasant areas now (mostly white, with the U. of MD). Yet even my well educated Bolivian born co-worker, who has white and black membres in her family, could not remain in her neighborhood after it became heavily black. She & her husband finally admitted defeat and sold.
On the same Wash Post site's Ezra Klein blog (oddly few of these posts seem to be from Klein himself) was a good summary/translation of the Richwine paper that made equally pointed use without resorting to the IQ minefield (it went the more middlebrow-friendly "credentials-conceal-a-multitude-of-virtues" road). Basically a wave of immigrants who typically lack HS diplomae aren't ever going to be promoted far regardless, therefore are unlikely to afford sending their offspring to this or that select college, therefore the offspring aren't likely to accrue much benefit from the higher-ed grail if they even deign to chase it--or to stray too much upward in other words. This is how the degree-perfumed set colludes to dilute the solidified underclass, except with *all* drop-outs feeling the burn whether they have Mexican IQs or not. Simple demographic-actuarial logic, same conclusion...
ReplyDelete> Did everybody just forget that Richard Posner, maybe the most
ReplyDelete> respected living American jurist, casually acknowledged group
> differences in IQ a few months ago? I vaguely remember the blog post
> being ripped dow
http://isteve.blogspot.com/2012/10/judge-richard-posner-on-iq-by-race-and.html