March 15, 2014

2008 SAT scores by race by income

From the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education:
Racial Scoring Gap 
For both blacks and whites, family income is one of the best predictors of a student’s SAT score. Students from families with high incomes tend to score higher. Students from low-income families on average have low SAT scores. Because the median black family income in the United States is about 60 percent of the median family income of whites, one would immediately seize upon this economic statistic to explain the average 200-point gap between blacks and whites on the standard SAT scoring curve. 

This is on the once and future 1600 point scale, not 2400 points. The test was renormed in 1995 with the intention of having a mean of 1000 and a standard deviation of 200, although the standard deviation has usually been higher than that.
But income differences explain only part of the racial gap in SAT scores. For black and white students from families with incomes of more than $200,000 in 2008, there still remains a huge 149-point gap in SAT scores. Even more startling is the fact that in 2008 black students from families with incomes of more than $200,000 scored lower on the SAT test than did students from white families with incomes between $20,000 and $40,000. 
But the fact is that even when family income levels are similar, we are still comparing black and white students who are as different as apples and oranges in terms of educational sophistication, family educational heritage, family wealth, and access to educational tools and resources. The average white family in the same income group is far better equipped than the average black family to prepare their children for success on the SAT test.

On the other hand, some data suggests that black and white students with the same family net worth score about the same on the SAT. The concept of "regression toward the mean" may help explain these two findings.
   

90 comments:

Felix said...

People are so stupid. Kids of families making $200,000+ a year average 550 per section? That's pathetic.

Anonymous said...

Steve,

Where is the data relating these gaps to net worth? I think the black vs white gaps by income are somewhat misleading, if you take the genetic view as I do, because many of these higher income blacks do not really have the cognitive abilities to match due to affirmative action hiring in the corporate world and career sorting (what proportion of those backs at 100K+ are in, say, sales, back office positions, etc vs professional careers, science, technology, etc?) Career sorting probably plays a similar role for the white-asian gap too, i.e., relatively more of them are in science and engineering at that income level.... [which is not to say that I dispute the IQ differences, just that income does not necessarily map to occupational choices identically for all groups]

Simon in London said...

"black and white students with the same family net worth score about the same on the SAT"

Looking at the figures, that would indicate that blacks with income over $200,000 have similar net worth to whites with incomes under $20,000? Since the SAT scores are similar.

ckp said...

I've read before that a common criticism of comparing race/IQ/income is that similar-income whites and blacks often have vastly different levels of /wealth/, and that this might explain more of the gap. I'm glad that it's been brought up here, do you have any citations?

Anonymous said...

How does "The concept of "regression toward the mean" may help explain these two findings."?

Art Deco said...

Why 'mean' and not 'median'?

Just taking a cursory look at matters, it would suggest that the relationship between test scores and earning power is not so straightforward as Charles Murray has suggested if you have blacks and whites in the same earnings class but with scores differing by 3/4 of a standard deviation. It is difficult to believe that the dispensations encoded in 'affirmative action' could account for this bar among those employed in educational or social work administration. How many black school administrators are there in this country? (My guess would be about 70,000, out of more than 15 million working blacks).

Anonymous said...

On the other hand, some data suggests that black and white students with the same family net worth score about the same on the SAT.

If a black family and white family share the same net worth the white family most likely: has a lower annual income, less education, and less prestigious career, but a much higher savings rate.

Anonymous said...

"How does "The concept of "regression toward the mean" may help explain these two findings."?"

As discussed above, net worth is a better indicator of intelligence than annual income. Hence black families with high incomes may not necessarily suggest high intelligence since income can be skewed pretty dramatically by (i) affirmative action and (ii) public sector employment.

What one does with income once received (i.e., creation of net worth) has much less opportunity to be skewed by public policy designed to help blacks.

"Looking at the figures, that would indicate that blacks with income over $200,000 have similar net worth to whites with incomes under $20,000?"

Probably.

Eric Rasmusen said...

This data is useful for thinking about the size of the black-white gap. The average SAT gap between blacks and whites is about the same as the average SAT gap between people with incomes of $30,000 and $200,000.

Son of Brock Landers said...

So what the table tells us is that the Waltons would have scored the same as the Huxtables?

Anonymous said...

The average white family in the same income group is far better equipped than the average black family to prepare their children for success on the SAT test.


It seems that the average white family in the under $20,000/yr bracket is as well equipped to prepare their children for success on the SAT as is the average black family in the over $200,000/yr bracket.

Mike Steinberg said...

Affirmative action might also help explain the disparity?

Dave Pinsen said...

A previous version of that panel by the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education had whites in the lowest income group (under $10k family income in the old version) scoring higher than blacks from families in the highest income group (over $100k in the old version). One difference with the more recent data is that blacks from the highest income families now outperform whites from the lowest income families.

Anonymous said...

1130 is bizarrely atrocious. I don't think I had a single friend in high school who did anywhere near that bad (and that was before the re-calibration). Is it successful real estate agents, car dealership owners, and local TV news anchors dragging down the average?

Anonymous said...

data is that blacks from the highest income families now outperform whites from the lowest income families.

They don't. 978 and 981 differ by 0.3%. There is no way that the binned numbers have standard deviations below 0.3%. Statistically, these are the same numbers. In other words, this is replication of the data from 20 years ago - poorest whites have the same mean IQ as the richest blacks.

Anonymous said...

>>Art Deco claimed:
"""It is difficult to believe that the dispensations encoded in 'affirmative action' could account for this bar among those employed in educational or social work administration.""""



And why is that? Do you honestly have any real concept of just how embedded the entire affirmative action jurisprudence of nearly half an entire century is in this country?

In other words, it is the responsibility of the skeptics to clearly beyond a doubt that there no connection between and affirmative action for blacks exists whatseover. And you can't.

ALWAYS KEEP IN MIND: Social Work and/or Education is directly (or nearly always so) reliant on the Government, where federal standards of affirmative action come directly into play. Since most blacks who are in the middle class and above work in some form of government job this means that affirmative action government policies will nearly always directly benefit them. The question would be: Do a break down and separate blacks who work in non-government private sector jobs at the top levels.

Of course even then, most times affirmative action government policies of hiring to begin with will nearly always come into play as well but at least there is a semblance of yes, "Perhaps" there are individual blacks who did "qualify" on their own without affirmative action but even then these examples will be far, far, rare in actual numbers as well as percentage of the total.

A more conservative estimate would be to state: That over 85% of the "talented tenth" or the roughly 7% of blacks with IQs over 107IQ still owe their careers and livelihoods to some DIRECT form of Affirmative Action.

Two cases in Point: NFLer Richard Sherman. His IQ may in fact reside between 105-108 BUT that would not qualify him for Stanford. The second example is FIrst Lady Michelle Obama. Her IQ resides around 115. That is above average and very good but it definitely would NOT qualify her for a university such as Princeton.

Therefore in these and literally thousands upon thousands of cases nationwide every single year, affirmative action is directly responsible for having helped those blacks who are 'not quite up to par' with a white counterpart who would definitely be qualified based on their equivalent (a full standard deviation of IQ).

Bottom line: EVEN in these types of examples for the talented tenth of blacks, the real and in most cases clearly demonstrable fact of affirmative action benefitting them can still be observed.

A level where blacks would not need affirmative action to directly benefit them in career and/or education would most likely be around IQ of 120 and above. Only then can we definitely be certain that affirmative action is not directly being employed to aid them in some concrete way.

Anonymous said...

>>Art Deco continued:

"""How many black school administrators are there in this country?""""



AGAIN: School Administration falls under Education and since most education is conducted at public (government) schools, affirmative action policies in hiring and promotions directly come into play.

The irony: The few areas where blacks can benefit with little or no direct help of affirmative action is in Sports and Entertainment. However, since the majority of blacks who succeeded in both these fields did so regardless of IQ, the vast majority of course will not be in the top 10% of IQ for blacks as a whole and thus this would account for why the top income levels of blacks still lag behind the poorest level of whites from an IQ perspective.

They've had over half a century now to attempt to collectively raise their IQs to the level of whites and it simply isn't happening.

From this perspective, Charles Murray's main thesis in the Bell Curve was quite accurate and demonstrably correct and the burden of proof now rests upon such anti IQ = genes theorists to present their evidence in a peer-reviewed and scientific way.

We're still awaiting this evidence and it has been some 20 yrs since Murray's Bell Curve was first published.

Anonymous said...

>>Dave Pinsen said:

"""One difference with the more recent data is that blacks from the highest income families now outperform whites from the lowest income families."""


Yes, by a score of 981-978 or three whole points so technically you're correct.

The most accurate way to measure IQ of course is to compare among equal economic levels and in this blacks fail miserably. Blacks at the highest income levels lag nearly 150 points behind whites at the same income level.

That doesn't sound very encouraging. For all the affirmative action government policies the best that the top 7% of blacks can do after nearly half a century is to beat (from an IQ perspective) the lowest income level of whites and even by about 3 pts.

That's really.......quite pathetic, actually.

Ed said...

A couple reasons for the low performance of high income Black kids:

1. John Ogbu did research on some the academic performance of middle class Black kids and found many simply didn't do the activities required to get good grades. They also viewed doing well as "acting White".

2. There are a relatively high proportion of athletes, entertainers and others that earn high incomes in fields that aren't intellectually demanding.

Anonymous said...

Am I the only one thinking that the results need to be normalized against the percentage of white ancestry blacks in the study have? This is not insignificant in many cases and from my anecdotal observations, is not a neutral factor in "black" performance.

Anonymous said...

A previous version of that panel by the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education had whites in the lowest income group (under $10k family income in the old version) scoring higher than blacks from families in the highest income group (over $100k in the old version). One difference with the more recent data is that blacks from the highest income families now outperform whites from the lowest income families.

That was always an extremely gross and sound-bite worthy hate-fact cited by Cathedral opponents. You just know that in no way would that be allowed to happen this time around.

Kaz said...

Where can we get the raw data for this? I'd rather not use that site as a source..

Puggg said...

I noticed that the gap in the lowest income bracket was the widest, while the gap between highest income whites minus lowest income whites is smaller than the gap between highest income blacks minus lowest income blacks.

The only thing I can figure that means is that dumb blacks are really dumb, like box of rocks dumb.

Mr. Rational said...

Affirmative action might also help explain the disparity?

Paul Kersey of SBPDL maintains that the bulk of the Black middle class only has its SES because of Affirmative Action and their lock on many government jobs.  If they had to win their jobs on merit, their average income would be far lower, and their children's SAT scores would be counted in lower-income bins.  That would certainly "shrink the income/SAT gap".

Anonymous said...

because many of these higher income blacks do not really have the cognitive abilities to match due to affirmative action

It's not affirmative action per se, but the belief that there's no such thing as an actual dumb black person. The assumption is that within every black American there's a wellspring of talent and intelligence that's been stifled by the daily onslaught of white privilege, structural racism, micro-aggressions, and hate stares.

The result is that we don't make the distinction often enough between black people who have what it takes and black people who are egregiously unqualified.

It's a bone-headed way of looking at things, and black people themselves have drunk gallons of this koolaid. I would imagine that this is one of the principal reasons that black run municipal governments go down hill so quickly.

Anonymous said...

The result is that we don't make the distinction often enough between black people who have what it takes and black people who are egregiously unqualified.

Anonymous said...

From the latest Real Time with Bill Maher:

AMY CHUA: You have to remember that Putin invaded Georgia in 2008 under George W. Bush.

MAHER: Yes.

Anonymous said...

OT: Diversity before Diversity

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abram_Petrovich_Gannibal

Anonymous said...

It's possible that high income blacks and whites earn their monies in different ways. The progeny (let's be real, progenies) of a rap mogul will enjoy his high income but this black child is not going to be surrounded by the same type of people that surrounds high income white kids.

Sal Paradise said...

Public sector employment.

Anonymous said...

So affirmative action gives an instantaneous boost to their income but...

Gordo

Anononymous said...

A white with SAT score of 978 makes under 20k, while a black with a similar score of 981 makes more than 200k, over ten times as much.

What if we took the same data and replotted it?

SAT score --- White income --- Black Income
980 ----------- $20,000 ----------- $200,000

Anonymous said...

Affirmative action in government employment explains away most of this. Two members of the Talented Tenth with middle manager jobs in government have nowhere near the cognitive ability of their white/Asian peers at the same levels, but they sure get paid like they do.

Art Deco said...

And why is that? Do you honestly have any real concept of just how embedded the entire affirmative action jurisprudence of nearly half an entire century is in this country?

No matter how 'embedded' is 'affirmative action jurisprudence', you are proposing that commercial companies make a habit of promoting black dolts to handsomely paid positions. I have little doubt there are a mass of credentialed dolts (of all colors) in employments with weak operational measures of competence. The thing is, there's a definite ceiling to the salaries you find in educational administration and social work and only a rare few are much into the six figures. You might bring up Michelle Obama, who had a succession of well-paid sinecures; pace the moderator, there is not much indication she suffers from general intellectual deficits and very few people have the kind of connections she did; as Diplomad 2.0 says, the job of the 1st Lady is to launder the bribes.

Stop and think about what this 'data' purport to show: that the children of black doctors, black engineers, and black corporation executives have test scores on a par with the children of whites working in food service. Non ci credo. Either the data is junk or the tests they took have some problems with validity.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous Ed said..."A couple reasons for the low performance of high income Black kids:

1. John Ogbu did research on some the academic performance of middle class Black kids and found many simply didn't do the activities required to get good grades. They also viewed doing well as "acting White"."

This illustrates why blacks are virtually hopeless. They're almost quite literally bound and determined to be stupid.

Anonymous said...

OT but not all the way OT:

It Was Right To Dumb Down The SAT
http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=11787

Anonymous said...

It's interesting that this data about average SAT score by race and income only leaks out once every few years. And why did the ETS give it to the JBHE and apparently not to other outfits?

Is the income data they have reliable? How did they get it?

I'm pretty sure that the children of >$200K blacks are actually smarter (with smartness measured by SAT performance), on average, than the children of <$20K whites. Rich blacks will try to send almost all of their children to college, regardless of how stupid those children may be. And regardless of how stupid those children are, there will be an HBCU that will accept them. So, a very high fraction of rich black children will take the SAT. Among poor whites, the dumb ones will be far less likely to take the SAT, and so the comparison here is probably between all rich blacks kids and the relatively smart poor white kids.

Anonymous said...

The only thing I can figure that means is that dumb blacks are really dumb, like box of rocks dumb.

All y'all SWPL hipster big-city types, who live in the toniest elite whiteopia Blue areas, co-mingling with a tiny handful of the best and brightest pre-selected and pre-approved for your viewing pleasure Afro-Americans, have no earthly idea how bad it is down around the center of the Afro-American bell curve, much less how horrifying it becomes as you move off to the left-of-center.

Which, if you're statistically minded, would get you to wondering, "Okay, just what are the actual distributions of these salary figures?"

What percentage of all whites are at or below $20,000?

And what percentage of all blacks are at or below $20,000?

I am acquainted with folks in the Deep South who have tried and tried and tried to train middle-of-the-bell-curve blacks into semi-skilled private sector jobs, but who gave up in frustration because each day the blacks would come back to the job with literally no memory whatsoever of what they were supposed to have learned the previous day.

I know one fellow, in the Deep South, who says of it, "With blacks, every day is a New day."

Of course, at the other extreme, I also know folks in the elite research institutions, who, if they trust you, will openly admit that all of their black graduate students and black medical students are completely untrainable.

Which I guess is what you ought to expect, when you try to turn what otherwise might have been reasonably competent semi-skilled workers into MDs or PhDs.

candid_observer said...

I've also read that some studies have found that controlling for net worth almost eliminates the racial gap on SAT.

It's certainly a curious finding. Obviously, it implies that blacks of the same income as whites have far less net worth than those whites, otherwise controlling for income would also eliminate the gap, which emphatically it doesn't.

But what does it mean that blacks with the same income as certain whites have far less net worth?

Since about 50% of the net worth of Americans is in their homes on average, I'm guessing that one major component is lower black homeownership, and that the homes blacks do own are in areas with far lower values.

Quite possibly as well, blacks aren't nearly as good as whites at putting aside money on average.

But it's hard to see how these issues, which don't seem to redound to the credit of blacks, can suggest that the SAT gap might just go away if can correct the wealth gap. If anything, they would suggest that the SAT gap is here to stay, and, still worse, the problem of economic disparities is probably only more intractable, because it comprehends traits beyond the purely cognitive.

It would, though, be very useful to see a breakdown of how it is that blacks of the same income as certain whites don't achieve the same net worth.

Anonymous said...

As discussed above, net worth is a better indicator of intelligence than annual income.


It isn't, really. Your net worth is a better indicator of your ancestors wealth, and indirectly of your ancestors intelligence. By far the most common way of having a good net worth is to have parents with a good net worth.

There is a much better indicator of individual intelligence than either net worth or annual income. It's called the SAT score. There's basically no evidence to suggest that the possession of money can make dumb people (or their children) any smarter.

Anonymous said...

The average is that low...

This is an "if i'm so smart, why aren't I rich" moment.

FML

ben tillman said...

They don't. 978 and 981 differ by 0.3%. There is no way that the binned numbers have standard deviations below 0.3%. Statistically, these are the same numbers.

No. They are different numbers, and -- despite the likelihood of sampling error -- the thing measured at 981 is still PROBABLY greater than the thing measured at 978. That is not the same as being the same.

Anonymous said...

"How does "The concept of "regression toward the mean" may help explain these two findings."?" - the parents with an income of 200k+ are obviously on the right end of the tailcurve, while their children are regressing back to the center of said bell curve. The black and white means are separated by about that 150 points that is consistent at all levels.

ben tillman said...

Of course even then, most times affirmative action government policies of hiring to begin with will nearly always come into play as well but at least there is a semblance of yes, "Perhaps" there are individual blacks who did "qualify" on their own without affirmative action but even then these examples will be far, far, rare in actual numbers as well as percentage of the total.

Right, it's possible but extremely rare because affirmative action means that every Black is eligible for positions that pay more than the positions he is actually qualified for.

Anonymous said...

"some data suggests that black and white students with the same family net worth score about the same on the SAT."

That is interesting: do you have a source for this data?

Anonymous said...

On the other hand, some data suggests that black and white students with the same family net worth score about the same on the SAT.

I suspect that blacks with a high net worth are a far more elite group than comparable whites, and a far smaller percentage of the black population, so it wouldn't be surprising if this were true.

The problem is that people want to see the arrow of causation as going the other way, i.e., they want to believe that high net worth causes high scores. This isn't too surprising really, since people tend to look at income figures the same way: of course parents who make more money are "better equipped ... to prepare their children for success" than parents who make less! It's not a crazy argument either; it's just not the slam-dunk a lot of people seem to think it is.

In any case, if adjusting for income is not sufficient to "explain" the black/white difference, but adjusting for wealth is, then it's hardly surprising if people who know what conclusion they want to reach are going to run with the argument that seems to get them there.

M said...

Using parental education, there's not as much of a gap.

Parental education is closer to IQ, while income is sort of separate (it has like a wimpy 0.4 - 0.5 correlation and explains a small part of variance, IIRC).

The IQ of Black parents with $200,000 family income is only modestly above the Whites of $20,000.

This is because IQ only plays a small part in economic success.

Blacks with $200,000 net worth would tend to be "special" compared to other Blacks (and probably Whites) on a bunch of traits, but not particularly outstanding on IQ compared to the average White.

So then about half of IQ they do have goes due to regression. Not surprising their kids are only modest on intelligence (for all that these kiddies may exceed low income Whites on moxie, creativity, looks, social abilities, etc.)

Gringo said...

Also from the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education:
In 2005, 153,132 African Americans took the SAT test.... we find that in the entire country 244 blacks scored 750 or above on the math SAT and 363 black students scored 750 or above on the verbal portion of the test.

In my high school class of ~160, most of whom took the SAT, I knew of at least 8 who got 750 or above on the Math SAT. There were probably 10 or more who did so. Compare this with 244 out of 150,000 blacks who took the SAT in 2005.

Whatever spin you give on those numbers- not taking enough AP courses, genetics, culture not supportive of study habits, poorer educational opportunities- this is not an encouraging comparison.

ben tillman said...


A level where blacks would not need affirmative action to directly benefit them in career and/or education would most likely be around IQ of 120 and above. Only then can we definitely be certain that affirmative action is not directly being employed to aid them in some concrete way.

No, absolutely not. That would be true only if there were no positions for which an IQ above 120 would be valuable. Blacks with IQs of 120 get jobs that would go to Whites with higher IQs, and as the right tails of the bell curves are approached the ratio of qualified Whites to qualified Blacks becomes greater, and the gap between the Whites and Blacks in the same position will increase. Blacks with IQs of 120+ are going to be in much further over their heads than are Blacks with IQs of 90.

Blacks don't need affirmative action to get 13% of the jobs at IQ-level 85, because they are more than 13% of all Americans who are at that level. As the IQ-level of the job increases, the mismatch between the Blacks hired and the actual qualifications also increases, with the mismatch the greatest at the highest levels.

Anonymous said...

http://www.fandor.com/keyframe/the-zweig-stuff-wes-andersons-muse

neo-boho-aristocratism.

What would have happened if the world had avoided WWI?

Anonymous said...

Net worth vs income.

I guess those with solid net worth have intelligence of keeping the money. Smart blacks don't just earn but keep.

Anonymous said...

I'm thinking some of the higher income Negroes are mulattos.

AmericanGoy said...

World War G:

http://www.chicagonewsreport.com/2014/03/gays-force-wendy-williams-to-remove.html

In case you missed it, on March 13, 2014, Williams and a panel of three guests, broached the topic of Chloie Jönsson's 2.5 million dollar lawsuit against Rebox CrossFit.

Here's the Tea:

Jönsson, who was born a man, wants to force Rebox CrossFit to allow him to compete against real women.

While Wendy Williams never uttered a disparaging word against Jönsson, the talk show host did express her opinion; which she is entitled to.

Anonymous said...

"A white with SAT score of 978 makes under 20k, while a black with a similar score of 981 makes more than 200k, over ten times as much."

That is not what the data says.

"[Among blacks of $200k+ income there is] a relatively high proportion of athletes, entertainers[...]"

The higher proportion is probably true, but the number of children by rich athletes/entertainers is still so relatively small as to scarcely move the needle.

What does move the needle is the higher proportion of white ancestry among those rich "blacks." I wonder how many of those kids are half-white but self-identify as black. Just look at Obama or Debo Adegbile. They identify as black, yet were raised solely by their white mothers (or her family).

I'm confident that if you compare the gap b/w rich blacks and poor blacks of today vs. that which existed 30 years ago, the gap will have widened non-trivially. I'd posit that this is due more to an increase in number of biracial kids than all other factors (increased assortative mating, societal trends, etc) combined.

Anonymous said...

No. They are different numbers, and -- despite the likelihood of sampling error -- the thing measured at 981 is still PROBABLY greater than the thing measured at 978. That is not the same as being the same.

Right. With a probability of about 1%. Because a coin that gave 499 heads in 1000 trials is "probably different" from another coin that gave 501/1000 heads (0.4% difference). Sheesh ... some people.

ben tillman said...

A white with SAT score of 978 makes under 20k, while a black with a similar score of 981 makes more than 200k, over ten times as much."

The income figures are for the PARENTS of the test-takers.

AnotherDad said...

Some folks here do not seem to grasp that there's a big *selection effect* going on here, with respect to these comparisons across income buckets. The SAT is not a universal test (like some state exams).

Anon at 6:17:
It seems that the average white family in the under $20,000/yr bracket is as well equipped to prepare their children for success on the SAT as is the average black family in the over $200,000/yr bracket.
--> Not correct.

Anon at 7:44:
In other words, this is replication of the data from 20 years ago - poorest whites have the same mean IQ as the richest blacks.
--> Not correct.

Pretty much all the black kids from families making 200K+ are going to take the SAT. Whereas only a small fraction of white kids from families making <20K--that's basically saying their single mom can't even hold a steady job at Walmart--are taking the SAT, especially boys.

These results are dramatic enough as is ... and show what a debacle it is to have had slavery, to have mass immigration, to live have a multiracial society. No need to make claims that are not quite true.

Anonymous said...

"Pretty much all the black kids from families making 200K+ are going to take the SAT. Whereas only a small fraction of white kids from families making <20K--that's basically saying their single mom can't even hold a steady job at Walmart--are taking the SAT, especially boys."

But suppose we compare the SAT scores of all whites at 200,000 income level with the SAT scores of blacks at 20,000 income level.

Anonymous said...

"The IQ of Black parents with $200,000 family income is only modestly above the Whites of $20,000."

Many could be working for government or some bogus occupation. What was that position that Michelle held in Chicago hospital? Diversity something or the other?

Anonymous said...

Judging from my income level I must have a depressingly-low IQ. In fact, I must be retarded and people haven't had the heart to break it to me. This confirms my suspicions about my abilities. And here I was hoping to turn things around with Murray's airport book.

Mr. Rational said...

Pretty much all the black kids from families making 200K+ are going to take the SAT. Whereas only a small fraction of white kids from families making <20K

Worse than that.  The fraction of White kids from sub-20K income families taking the SAT is going to be much higher than the Blacks, so their scores reflect a reach much further down into the White talent pool than the Black one.  The true gap is almost certainly much greater than 180 points at the $20k level.

The income figures are for the PARENTS of the test-takers.

I suppose it's too much to ask for these SAT/income comparisons to have any corresponding figures for IQ, either parent or child.  If the SAT scores by IQ are roughly the same between White and Black, it's just regression to the mean doing its thing.

But IQ and SAT both be rayciss.

Bottledwater said...

I've also read that some studies have found that controlling for net worth almost eliminates the racial gap on SAT.

It's certainly a curious finding. Obviously, it implies that blacks of the same income as whites have far less net worth than those whites, otherwise controlling for income would also eliminate the gap, which emphatically it doesn't.


Maybe it's because blacks have to be especially smart to get as rich as rich whites because unlike whites, blacks seldom inherit money and lack the connections that help in business; they have to earn all that money themselves and keep it.

Anonymous said...

OT, but it can't be good for Nicholas Wade that the two earliest reviews of his book Troublesome Inheritance are from VDare and AmRen. All the prestige-press reviewers are going to see them when they do some Googling and it might close their minds to Wade's arguments.

I would be annoyed if I were Wade.

AmRen's undeniable hatred for blacks and latinos should be an embarrassment to who argue HBD need not be a threat to a broadly liberal society.

Anonymous said...

Dark enlightenment better called Dork enlightenment?

They're mostly dorks.

DPG said...

http://www.salon.com/2014/03/15/how_did_irish_americans_get_so_disgusting/

As someone half-Irish by descent, I'd be glad to write my grad school admissions essay about the depraved history of Irish-Americans if it meant I were eligible for affirmative action. Until then, I'll wallow in the white privelege that was earned by generations of Irishmen behaving well enough to be accepted into polite society.

Anonymous said...

>>Art Deco said...
"""No matter how 'embedded' is 'affirmative action jurisprudence', you are proposing that commercial companies make a habit of promoting black dolts to handsomely paid positions.""""


Actually, NO I WAS NOT. Not in the least. I was saying the the chief main reason as to blacks economic success, like Mr Kersey, is mainly due to Affirmative Action policies which are deeply embedded and written into US law.

I was not agreeing with the policy but merely observing that it appeared that YOU did not concede or were aware of this actual fact re: black's economic success; namely, that it is mainly (ca. 85% or higher) directly do to the policies of Affirmative Action.

If you were to remove these government policies roughly 85% of blacks economic success would disappear overnight, in some cases, quite literally.




"""I have little doubt there are a mass of credentialed dolts (of all colors) in employments with weak operational measures of competence."""

Yes, but AGAIN....due to the fact of governmental policies surrounding affirmative action, IF a inc has few visible minorites (read: blacks) at their inc. in various levels of the inc, those particular incs could face legal action by the government.

Facts are facts are facts.

Anonymous said...

>>Art Deco said:
"""The thing is, there's a definite ceiling to the salaries you find in educational administration and social work and only a rare few are much into the six figures."""


Yes, but for the talented tenth, roughly 85% reside within the $50,000-100,000 scale. This is more than enough to put them into the upper middle class level. Another 12-14% of the black talented tenth earn roughly $100,000-199,000 which again, is more than enough to qualify them for the upper middle class level of US taxpayers.





"""You might bring up Michelle Obama, who had a succession of well-paid sinecures;""""

And so did NFLer Vince Young. In fact he outearned in sheer income numbers Michelle Obama's total salaries for her entire professional career up to the time she became first lady.





"""pace the moderator, there is not much indication she suffers from general intellectual deficits""""

Her calculated IQ is around 115. And 115 does not equal Princeton by a long sight. It would equal Stanford (barely).

And Steve has remarked before on Michelle Obama's educational difficulties at Princeton and her not so subtle blaming or using the race card to shift responsibility onto the white man power structure at large.




"""and very few people have the kind of connections she did""""

Non-sequitor. So what? We can say the same of Kobe Bryant, Puff Diddy, Kanye, etc. Few people have their connections either but having connections does not automatically mean that one has a high IQ in and of itself.




""""Stop and think about what this 'data' purport to show: that the children of black doctors, black engineers, and black corporation executives have test scores on a par with the children of whites working in food service.""""

You sound surprised, why is that? I'm not and neither should any rational clear thinking individual who uses the common sense and powers of observation a la....lets say Jerry Seinfeld, and it would go something along these lines:


Ya ever notice how few blacks are seen at the Ivies or the top academic schools? Ever notice how few blacks actually are in the realm of science or engineering? I mean, you never see their faces in a science lab yet you constantly see them well represented on TV during the evening news.
Wonder why that is?


Anonymous said...

Ben Tillman said:
"""Right, it's possible but extremely rare because affirmative action means that every Black is eligible for positions that pay more than the positions he is actually qualified for."""

And that is where you see the mismatched unqualified persons at various positions.
Affirmative Action is written into law primarily for blacks. In all economic rungs on the ladder, affirmative action comes into play IF individual blacks decide for themsleves (or others for them) decide that they have been directly discriminated against. It is irrelevant whether the job they are working at is WalMart or Boeing. IF they determine for themselves that they have indeed been discriminated vs they can file a claim with the EEOC and/or other various goverment agencies and they will then determine the legitimacy of the claims.

Anonymous said...

AmRen's undeniable hatred for blacks and latinos should be an embarrassment to who argue HBD need not be a threat to a broadly liberal society.

C'mon, dude, this is The Dark Enlightenment.

The presence of too many folks - whose IQs necessitate that they be silly putty in the hands of The Frankfurt School - their presence will simply overwhelm and destroy any possible "broadly liberal society".

Which is to say - if you look at the historical record, "narrowly liberal societies" are about the only ones which have ever worked - and even they only work every now and again.

Most people, at most points in history, have lived in viciously illiberal societies.

Which is precisely what The Frankfurt School envisions for the future of the USA and for [what had been] Western Civilization.

Viciously illiberal.

ben tillman said...


AmRen's undeniable hatred for blacks and latinos should be an embarrassment to who argue HBD need not be a threat to a broadly liberal society.

Up yours, you vile concern troll.

ben tillman said...

Pretty much all the black kids from families making 200K+ are going to take the SAT. Whereas only a small fraction of white kids from families making <20K--that's basically saying their single mom can't even hold a steady job at Walmart--are taking the SAT, especially boys.

No, it's not saying anything like that at all. The White parents with incomes below $20,000 might average an income of $150,000 between the ages of 18 and 65, but during those years they may have years in which their earnings are below $20,000. They could be in school. Their formerly or subsequently profitable business could have a bad year. They could be on sabbatical. Etc.

Anonymous said...

Barbara Bush Middle School was facing NCLB sanctions for the low TAKS test scores of African Americans. The school is located in one of the wealthiest areas in the city and without section 8. It brought the thought to mind about affirmative action as the driver for blacks to have the income to live within the school's area or did the parents have the cognitive-income correlation but their children lost it, thus scored poorly? Raises some questions about discrimination.

Anonymous said...

Frankfurt School : 2010s Neo-Reactionaries :: Leo Strauss : 2000s Liberals

Seriously, though, the HBD argument is that we can openly and socially recognize group differences without damaging the commitment to treat people as individuals rather than as representatives of groups. The iSteve comment section, however, is a continuous argument against that proposition.

Anonymous said...

"C'mon, dude, this is The Dark Enlightenment."

No, this is Sailer's blog, so it's more like Ben Franklin's Enlightenment.


Mr. Anon said...

"Anonymous said....

Seriously, though, the HBD argument is that we can openly and socially recognize group differences without damaging the commitment to treat people as individuals rather than as representatives of groups. The iSteve comment section, however, is a continuous argument against that proposition."

Who says? That may be your HBD argument, but it isn't mine. Mine is that I want an end to the official line of bullshit that we're all supposed to pretend to believe - bullshit that hurts MY people and puts them at a disadvantage.

Mr. Anon said...

"Anonymous said...

AmRen's undeniable hatred for blacks and latinos should be an embarrassment to who argue HBD need not be a threat to a broadly liberal society."

Check out who's running AmRen these days. It has no love for whites either.

Mr. Anon said...

"Anonymous said...

Many could be working for government or some bogus occupation. What was that position that Michelle held in Chicago hospital? Diversity something or the other?"

Community outrage coordinator....excuse me.....outreach coordinator. A $160,000 per year job. And her salary suddenly doubled as soon as her husband left the Illinois statehouse (where he was on the committee overseeing hospitals) for the US Senate, and then - just as miraculously - was deemed unnecessary and went unfilled as soon as Michelle quit to go to Washington. I guess she did such a bang up job that there was nothing left that needed to be done.

Peter the Shark said...

1130 is bizarrely atrocious. I don't think I had a single friend in high school who did anywhere near that bad (and that was before the re-calibration).

In the business world I've met a lot of wealthy people who would have been hard pressed to score 1130. They are mostly entrepreneurs in retail businesses, restaurant franchises, real estate, landscaping, or other endeavors where hard work and focus count toward success more than innovation or analysis. I would be surprised if Donald Trump scored more than 1200 to be honest - he is fairly typical of a certain type of businessman.

Anonymous said...

"The average is that low...

This is an "if i'm so smart, why aren't I rich" moment.

FML" - its not about what you know, its about who you know.

Anonymous said...


It Was Right To Dumb Down The SAT
http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=11787


LOL

I don't know if it is right, but it sure does make it way easier to get an 800 on math.

I keep telling my son if you get a 790, they know how smart you are, but if you get an 800, they don't. Tons of top students used to be segregated in the 700's but now they are all grouped together in the 800.

Anthony said...

Black people have, on average, better "sales" ability than whites (at least relative to IQ). Since sales ability is one of the few abilities not highly correlated with IQ which actually improves people's income all across the range (unlike athletic ability, which gets you squat until you're in the top 0.01%), blacks who are smart enough to get jobs where sales/PR skill is useful will tend to do pretty well.

Big corporations are under a lot of pressure to hire blacks into high-paying positions. But they're not stupid. So they hire blacks who managed to get through college, and put them in some sort of public-facing "sales" role, where they will probably outperform their IQ. Because these jobs are public-facing, the AA bean-counters, who are pathetically lazy, will look, see a few black guys (or gals) doing news conferences, and be happy.

Renault said...

"Anonymous said...
1130 is bizarrely atrocious. I don't think I had a single friend in high school who did anywhere near that bad (and that was before the re-calibration). Is it successful real estate agents, car dealership owners, and local TV news anchors dragging down the average?"

It's almost a standard deviation above the average. Are you being serious here?

You might not have had many friends with that score in your advanced classes (or at your small, wealthy private school), but even the best public schools in the country (LI, CT, DC, etc.) have plenty of "average" students. Hell, there are probably one or two basketball players at Harvard every year with SAT scores in that range.

Anonymous said...

"OT, but it can't be good for Nicholas Wade that the two earliest reviews of his book Troublesome Inheritance are from VDare and AmRen. All the prestige-press reviewers are going to see them when they do some Googling and it might close their minds to Wade's arguments.

I would be annoyed if I were Wade.

AmRen's undeniable hatred for blacks and latinos should be an embarrassment to who argue HBD need not be a threat to a broadly liberal society."

Yes, but the first rule HBD is: You can't choose your family.

Gilbert P

neil craig said...

So you have to be in the Obama-before-he-became-president income class before a black family is going to top the scores of the poorest whites. However, won't a lot of those rich blacks be the sort of Colin Powell "blacks" Steve regularly finds whose skins are barely swarthy? So it looks like more than genetics is going on.

Anonymous said...

Did anyone note the "Black Female Nuclear Engineer" on "Survivor" this season?

"Dr. J’Tia Taylor is a nuclear engineer at Argonne National Laboratory—and on the cast for the newest season of Survivor, which premiered on February 26 at 8/7c on CBS. J’Tia received her Ph.D. in nuclear engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and was the first black female to successfully defend and receive a Ph.D. from the department. She now works at Argonne in the area of nuclear nonproliferation policy—learn more about J’Tia’s work at Argonne here."

Classic Black government employee doing nothing productive in the US and getting $$$ leaching off of the poor taxpayer.

http://ansnuclearcafe.org/2014/02/26/argonne-nuclear-engineer-on-new-season-of-survivor-premiers-tonight/

Different Anonymous said...

Anonymous said "1130 is bizarrely atrocious. I don't think I had a single friend in high school who did anywhere near that bad (and that was before the re-calibration)."

You meant badly or poorly, not "bad". Under the old 1600 point test, 1130 would have put one in the 69th percentile (i.e. scored better than 69% of test takers). I scored 1410 in 1985 (and Whiskey, I married a white woman)!

See data for 2006:

http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/highered/ra/sat/SATPercentileRanksCompositeCR_M.pdf

Today on the 2400 point test, 1130is indeed atrocious, somewhere around the 10th percentile.

Anonymous said...

Take into account the rozenthal effect

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/sats/etc/gap.html

kevin said...

I know some white people commenting above want to make their superiority God-given but come on. The ONLY takeaway from the SAT chart is for black American parents to do a better job of educating their kids (i.e., getting them in AP classes) and getting them to be better test takers.

RE: Genetics, mulattos, etc. >>>

Charles Murray had a conjecture about genetics nearly 10 years before the human genome was sequenced. Where is his follow-up now that genetic information is more available? So far his only follow-up was about poor whites taking on bad habits. By that notion, poor whites must be genetically inferior in mentality to rich whites, and whites in general must be genetically inferior in mentality to Asians and Africans who immigrate to the US.

Except for identical twins, triplets, etc. we all have different DNA so to attribute DNA as the main difference for millions of people is lazy nowadays especially with something as complex as intelligence which is largely influenced by environment.

According to 23andme my ancestral mix is 25% European, 74% Sub-Saharan African and 1% Asian. So which racial part of that DNA caused me to prefer math since 1st grade, get 670 on the math portion of the SATs and go on to get a bachelor's degree electrical engineering? Mind you individual sections of my chromosome are mapped to race so you'll need to be fairly specific in your speculation. The truth is no one knows and any guessing is pointless, says phrenology.

My dad also got an electrical engineering degree so there's probably a genetic component of temperament I got from him - he's 78% Sub-Saharan African, 17% European and 2% Asian and 0.5% Middle East and North African. Again, you'd need to be specific to point out which racial areas of his chromosomes give math a preference in my brain like it does in his.


RE: affirmative action, types of employment >>>

If the above chart was SELF income versus one's own SAT score then you might have a point about affirmative action. But just because some parents fail to do well in educating their children doesn't mean they are bad employees undeserving of their jobs.

Blacks have lots of government jobs? I dunno. For federal civilian employment in 2008, 17.6% of employees are black and that's about our average in the population. For upper income federal civilian jobs, which most people mention above, it's only 11% so we're underrepresented in higher grade levels. Of course you knew that but you feel better when demeaning people for something that's not even true. (censusDOTgov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s0501.pdf)

Whites make up 67% of the federal government though 76% of upper income positions. According to one comment above that's a terrible thing and whites are undeserving moochers. But clearly whites making up 76% of upper income positions in federal civil service would be a matter of pride not shame. I see some racial hypocrisy in the comments above.

Most higher income jobs blacks are entertainers and athletes? Really? in 2012 there were 250,000 black households over $200,000. It's hard to see half of these households with at least one an athlete or entertainer. Maybe 10%, not 50%. (censusDOTgov/hhes/www/cpstables/032013/hhinc/hinc01_000.htm)

The 50% number seems unlikely especially considering as of 2013 there were 201,000 blacks with doctorates, 186,000 blacks with professional degrees, 1.5 million blacks with master's degrees, and 3.8 million blacks with bachelor's degrees. (censusDOTgov/hhes/socdemo/education/data/cps/2013/tables.html)

Anonymous said...

Please explain why that is so? It is a standardized test that is not meant to determine stupidity, but rather to weed out people based on "perceived" intelligence using percentiles.

Anonymous said...

Steve, reading your post reminded me that I always find I have more in common and better rapport with fellow EE's that any other kind of income or race grouping. Clear thinking, clean math, no nonsense. Sure non-EE's can have those attributes, but they really cluster in the profession. The world would be a better place if only those who could do a fourier transform were allowed to raise kids, vote or post comments online. Not going to happen, but it is something to shoot for.