ABSTRACT
In the late 1960s, the different average group scores of African-American and European-American children on intelligence tests (i.e., scores that reflected the computation of an “intelligence quotient” or IQ) became a point of major public concern. The mean (i.e., the arithmetic average) difference between these two groups is often reported to be as high as 15 IQ points (e.g., Jensen, 1980; Rushton, 1999; Scarr-Salapatek, 1971a, 1971b) in favor of the European-American children. That is, on standardized intelligence tests, European-American children as a group typically score higher than do African-American children as a group. However, this does not mean that African Americans always do worse on IQ tests than do European Americans. In fact, as Jensen (1973) pointed out:
Until the late 1960s, psychologists in the United States interpreted these group differences in IQ scores as being environmentally based. That is, stress was placed on the cultural disadvantages of African Americans; and the leading hypothesis was that a complex of environmental factors associated with poverty-a complex as yet largely undefined-
prevents a child from achieving optimum development (Scarr-Salapatek, 1971a, 1971b). Such environmental disadvantage, it was argued, accounts for the inferior performance of African American children on standardized IQ tests. In essence it was hypothesized that it is not African-American children but their environments that are deficient.
