Symposium

0 Comments | Insight on the News, May 28, 2001 | by J. Philippe Rushton, | Joseph L. Jr Graves

Q: Is there a biological basis for race and racial differences?

Yes: Differences between the races are shown to be real by growing scientific evidence.

For the last 20 years my research has focused on differences between the three major races, commonly termed Orientals (East Asians/Negroids), whites (Europeans/Caucasoids) and blacks (Africans/Negroids). Roughly speaking, Orientals are those who have most of their ancestors from East Asia. Whites have most of their ancestors from Europe. And blacks have most of their ancestors from sub-Saharan Africa. In the main, I have not addressed the many other groups and subgroups.

What I've found is that in brain size, intelligence, temperament, sexual behavior, fertility, growth rate, life span, crime and family stability, Orientals fall at one end of the spectrum, blacks fall at the other end and whites fall in between. On average, Orientals are slower to mature, less fertile and less sexually active, and have larger brains and higher IQ scores. Blacks are at the opposite end in each of these areas. Whites fall in the middle, often close to Orientals.

Of course, these three-way racial differences are averages. Individuals are individuals. However, I've found that this three-way pattern is true over time and across nations. That the same three-way racial pattern occurs repeatedly on some 60 different biological and behavioral variables is profoundly interesting and shows that race is more than "just skin deep." The international data come from the Word Health Organization, the United Nations and Interpol. Recently, I even traveled to South Africa to collect new IQ data.

Let's start with the biological differences in sports, which is something almost everyone observes. Jon Entine's recent book, Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We Are Afraid to Talk About It, addresses the old cliche that "white men can't jump" (and the new one that Oriental men jump even less well). Entine shows that in sports black men and women have a genetic advantage. Compared to whites, blacks have narrower hips, wider shoulders, less body fat and more muscle.

Blacks also have from 3 to 19 percent more of the sex hormone testosterone than whites or Orientals. This translates into more explosive energy, which gives blacks the edge in sports such as boxing, basketball, football and sprinting.

Why is it taboo to say that blacks are on average better at sports? Because the next question is, "why do whites and East Asians have wider hips -- proportional to their body size -- than blacks, and so make poorer runners?" The answer is that they give birth to larger-brained babies. During evolution, as the head size of newborns increased, women had to have a wider pelvis.

The hormones that give blacks the edge in sports also make them more masculine in general. They are physically more active in school, and this can get them into trouble and even lead to their being diagnosed as hyperactive.

Race differences show up early in life. Black babies are born a week earlier than white babies, yet they mature faster as measured by bone development. By age 5 or 6, black children excel in the dash, the long jump and the high jump, all of which require a short burst of power. By the teen-age years, blacks have faster reflexes, as in the famous knee-jerk response.

The biological factors underlying race differences in sports have consequences for educational achievement, crime and sexual behavior. In educational achievement and occupational success, Orientals average slightly ahead of whites, who average substantially ahead of blacks. On standardized IQ tests, hundreds of studies show this three-way pattern. Most IQ tests have an average score of 100, with a "normal" range from 85 to 115. Whites average from 100 to 103. Orientals in Asia and the United States tend to have higher scores, about 106, even though IQ tests were made for the European-American culture. Blacks in the United States, the Caribbean, Britain and Africa average lower IQs -- about 85. The lowest average IQs are found for sub-Saharan Africans -- from 70 to 75.

The relation between brain size and intelligence has been shown by dozens of studies, including state-of-the-art magnetic resonance imaging. Orientals average 1 cubic inch more brain matter than whites, and whites average a very large 5 cubic inches more than blacks. Since one cubic inch of brain matter contains millions of brain cells and hundreds of millions of nerve connections, brain-size differences help to explain why the races differ in IQ.

Racial differences in brain size show up early in life as well. The U.S. Collaborative Perinatal Project followed more than 50,000 children from birth to age 7. In the 1997 issue of the journal Intelligence, I showed that the Orientals in the study had larger brains than whites at birth, four months, one year and seven years; the whites had larger brains than blacks at all ages.

In the United States, Orientals are seen as a "model minority." They have fewer divorces, out-of-wedlock births and reports of child abuse than whites. More Orientals graduate from college and fewer go to prison. Blacks, on the other hand, are 12 percent of the U.S. population but make up 50 percent of the prison population.