Letters to and from the Editor

LETTERS TO AND FROM THE EDITOR Dear Sir: In a recent editorial [i] Dr. Ingle renewed his standing invitation to social scientists to debate the need to study biological differences among human racial groups. This need itselfI do not debate. I am still bothered, however, by the implication in some ofDr. Ingle's writing that the inferior performance ofAmerican Negroes on intelligence tests, grades in school,and cultural achievement as compared with that ofwhites ismore likely thannot to be due in significant part to a lower average biological potential for participation in modern urban life. The qualification about "modem urban life" is important; I have little doubt that during the many millennia ofhunting and gathering subsistence conditions in which the human races reached their greatest differentiation the biological differences existing between races did function to help each group live most efficiently in its ancestral environment. But these environments have now been radically transformed without a corresponding radical genetic adjustment. The most common argument which social scientists offer against the existence ofsignificant biological differences in "cultural potential" between races is that the observed Negro deficiencies in our society in intelligence tests, cultural achievement, etc., are generally comparable in degree to those which are found in socially disadvantaged but racially homogeneous groups in other societies, such as the Eta ofJapan or the serfs of medieval Europe. Again, Negro deficiencies in these measures are comparable to those ofan identical twin raised from birth in a severely disadvantaged environment as compared with his sibling raised in a favorable environment. Admittedly, other immigrant ethnic groups have overcome slum environments in a generation or two while the Negroes have not. But we must consider whether Negroes in our society are greatly disadvantaged compared to other immigrant ethnic minorities, disadvantaged enough to produce such a difference. The answer seems to me clearly to be that they are so disadvantaged. Unlike all other ethnic minorities, Negroes were imported as slaves and were largely kept in this status by force until the end ofthe Civil War, whereupon they were suddenly freed in a hostile society without adequate training or economic resources. Unlike most other ethnic minorities, they were different enough visibly so that theirsocialidentity as Negro remained regardless ofwhatthey did to improvethemselves. Unlike all other immigrant minorities, the period of slavery stripped the Negroes of practically all ties with their ancestral cultures and of the sense of identity and security which this might have provided during their adaptation to American life. To be sure, in terms ofincome, level ofeducation, etc., small groups ofNegroes have in recent years experienced a relatively favorable environment, and even so have done less well than whites with an apparently similar environment. But if one measures performance in terms ofIQ scores,job achievement, etc., it will not do to take a few easily quantified measures ofincome and education and assume that one has controlled the rele325 vant environmental factors. The fullest intellectual and social achievement is impossible without free participation in society, both formally and informally. This so far has been impossible for the Negroes in our society. Incidentally, there is one otherracial group in our societywhich has on the average even greater deficiencies than the Negro in intelligence tests, crime rates, disease rates, etc. This is the American Indian, as Omer Stewart has pointed out [2]. The social situation ofthe Indian can be argued to be worse than the Negro: The Indians are still in their own land, and many retainenough oftheirancestral culture to give them a sense ofidentity, but their resources have been largely taken away from them and they are hopelessly outnumbered. They have much reason to resent and resist American culture, but they no longer have the resources or political power to make their own cultures work. The American Negro, at least, hasno realisticalternative butto try insomefashionto live interms ofmodernAmerican culture; the American Indian is socially doomed to live in terms ofa no longer viable culture. It is further instructive that while this general picture ofthe American Indian is statistically correct there are striking differences from tribe to tribe, and these correlate rather well with what one might expect from tribal history and current economic resources . A further powerful argument for...