User talk:Ccbeasl2

The Controversy of Race Influencing Intelligence
The Wikipedia article I have chosen to write about is titled Race and Intelligence. The premise of this article states that race has a strong correlation with intelligence. There are statements throughout the introduction explaining that not everyone agrees with this assessment and those who oppose race having anything to do with intelligence believe there is a correlation with genetics or environment that could affect intelligence. I will be discussing how the article could be found controversial and other factors that would hinder the credibility of the article such as bias and strong viewpoints.

I found the most controversy derives from the idea that race, skin color and social science, has to do with intelligence. The earliest history of this debate, according to the article, dates back to the 1920’s when little was known about genetics and the racial divide in America was prominent between the whites and blacks. In modern days the racial divide has weakened, in my opinion, from what it was in the 1920’s. There is more scientific evidence demonstrating that environment and genes are influential factors to intelligence, and other Wikipedians tend to agree. There appears to be a lot of information added to the article about genetics and environment being a factor to intelligence and explains how stereotyping could influence a race’s view of another's intelligence capabilities.

According to the amount of information on the topic and overall concept of the article, I believe that the side of genetics and environment having to do with intelligence has the upper hand on this topic. A majority of the article explains biological and genetic influences that could affect someone’s intelligence. For instance, the section Environmental influences on group differences in IQ has five subsections explaining and discussing how stereotypes and IQ test bias, to name a few, could demonstrate an effect on someone’s intelligence according to their environment. Another section titled Research into the possible genetic influences on test score differences asserts, under subsections as well, biological factors, such as mental chronometry and brain size, could be components in determining someone’s intelligence. Even in the sections titled History of the Debate, Validity of race and IQ, and Group differences, sections I believed would be pro-race and intelligence, contains research disputing race as means of intelligence. This proves that enough people appear to agree that race does not determine nor characterize another's intelligence.

The most shocking thing I found in this article is the subsection titled IQ Test Bias. The subsection explains that there is a possibility of bias from IQ tests in the sense that “some test items systematically give White test takers an unfair advantage because of the way the test has been elaborated is no longer considered a likely cause of the test score gap”. Though the author or editor of this subsection explains it as a possibility, there are references to scholars Nicholas Mackintosh and Earl B. Hunt who argue that the bias might be in society that causes one group to perform to their full potential on tests. Nevertheless, the scholars admit they have no evidence of bias towards Black test takers. Although there is no evidence to prove IQ Test Bias, it does assert the idea that society might be an influence on another’s intelligence and I found this idea disturbing, but it made me question whether this was a real issue.

Ccbeasl2 (talk) 20:06, 23 July 2017 (UTC)

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