Some readers might remember that in 2009 there was some coverage in the British media about a TV special on race and intelligence. I just found the videos online.
The host is the Somali-British Rageh Omaar and the poor fellow seems genuinely hurt by the suggestion that blacks are less intelligent. The most unintentionally funny part of the show is when he goes to take an IQ test and is stumped. It doesn’t stop him from concluding at the end that scoring well on intelligence tests is all about having adopted middle class values.
He has a teacher tell him that there’s a one to one correspondence between parental involvement and academic success. What that shows is intelligent and conscientious parents have intelligent and conscientious children, not that parental involvement makes people smart. And the host actually mentions cross adoption studies in the first half of the show but then forgets them during the second half when he comes to the conclusion that it’s all about culture.
J. Philippe Rushton, Richard Lynn and Richard Nisbett all make appearances. While Omaar comes to the “right” conclusion in the end I don’t think the intelligent and open minded viewer will find his “discrediting” of the hereditarian hypothesis, which consists of him telling us that Asian parents encourage their kids to study, to be that convincing. I’m sure LeBron James practices basketball a lot more than I do; it doesn’t mean that if I got equal training I’d be just as good.
