the way that they do? Additionally, these researchers stated that at least some of the differences in intelligence that exist between urban and rural children or Blacks and Whites are due not to genuine differences in ability, but in their abilities to profit from their environments. Many different empirical studies on this issue, while come together on their end result, have correlation and causation statistics, which vary quite largely. Additional findings suggest that cultural values influence the salience of objects in the environment, and therefore tests are never assessing underlying intelligence per se, for performance is always influenced by the content of the item. While this maynot be empirical evidence, which has been statistically recorded, formulated and hypothesized, I do feel that this argument does present an alternative reason for the known difference in IQ scores between races. As seen, IQ tests seem to measure rather than account for differences these differences. If certain groups of people score poorly on tests because of inadequate environments, it is not the test that is unfair, but the social order that permits individuals to develop under these inferior conditions. Each individual should be considered on a case by case basis – society as a whole should judging and dealing with individuals on their own merits instead of on their membership in any “racial,” ethnic, religious, sexual, or other group.. At the present time, biological intellectual capacity cannot be measured directly. Such a measure would require assessment of the genetic component of performance, the genotype. In The Fallacy of I.Q., Senna explains that from conception on, the genotype is modified by environmental factors. Thus, an individual’s genetic potential is always being expressed though behavior acquired in a social and cultural setting, his phenotype. A person’s performance on an “intelligence” te...
