ABSTRACT
Psychologist Richard Herrnstein, in a 1980 article that appeared in Commentary, cites an interesting study of IQ in postwar Warsaw. The tests included almost all of the children bom in Warsaw in 1963 and still living there in 1974. Naturally, given the snobbery of many intellectuals, portraying the Polish people as dumb becomes the highest form of insult, one that gained legitimacy, it seems, from the fact that until recently relatively small numbers of Poles attended college. Relations between Poles and Jews are a different story. Jews began arriving in Poland in great numbers during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries to escape persecution in Germany and Bohemia. Once a group has been stereotyped as bigoted, stupid, uneducated, and dirty, it is not surprising that it will be further defined as boorish. There is, however, no indication that this stereotype is true of Poles today.
