The Black-White IQ Gap
by James R. Flynn
November 20th, 2007
We aren’t the only ones discussing IQ right now. Over at Slate, William Saletan argues that the black-white IQ gap should not be a taboo subject and should be judged on the evidence. In this, he is entirely correct and I will be debating this issue with Charles Murray at the Manhattan Institute in New York City on the last Wednesday in November. However, he presents (lucidly) only the evidence for a genetic component. In my recent book, What is Intelligence? (see amazon.com), I note that blacks have cut the gap by one-third over the last 30 years. Also that black IQ (with white set at 100) declines with age from parity in infancy to a few points at age 4, to almost 17 points at age 24. In New York, I will show that we can give good environmental reasons for that decline with age.
