From: wchenaul@cyclone.mitre.org (William W. Chenault)
Newsgroups: rec.org.mensa
Subject: Re: T: To All MENSA Members...
Date: 28 Jul 92 14:11:55 GMT
Organization: Mitre Corporation, McLean, VA

In article <1992Jul27.214609.12298@ncsu.edu> tai@m-net.ann-arbor.mi.us writes:
>
>In article <EePr0kO00VRSMCTT95@andrew.cmu.edu>, "Stephen P. Marting" 
><sm6h+@andrew.cmu.edu> writes:
>
>|> So you're saying then that every organization should be open to
>|> everyone?  Since Mensa "discriminated" against others when they accepted
>|> me because of my SAT scores, then other organizations, say NCSU,
>|> shouldn't "discriminate" by using SAT scores?
>
>     No one can deny that minority groups in this country do poorly on
>standardized intelligence tests, particularly on the SAT and PSAT.
>Schools, universitites, and Old Guard fans everywhere use this to
>uphold their own racial stereotypes, to label minority groups as
>"ineducable."

They are NOT ineducable.
>
>     Personally, I have absolutely no doubt that blacks, Hispanics, 
>and other minorities are of equal intelligence, on average, to the 
>average white.  I do not want to accuse MENSA of racism here, but 
>how the hell do you explain these testing differences?  If you assert 
>that IQ and aptitude tests measure skills that are unrelated to 
>differences in education and social background (which is the position
>of all psychometric purists), you can come to only two logical 
>possibilities:

I have been told (by a sociology professor, who has studied these sorts of
statistics for 40+ years before just recently retiring) that IQ, or the
"ability to do well on IQ tests" is half genetic and half environmental.
(For purposes of this discussion, I will assume both parents have the same
IQ - this simplification is only to help me explain my point better.)  For
example, if parents with IQ = 110 have a child, this child will, ON AVERAGE,
have an IQ of 105 (half-way between average (= 100) and his/her parents IQ.
This is the "genetic half" of IQ, and it works both ways - if parents with
IQ = 90 have a child, then on average, this child will have an IQ of 95.

	The other "half" of IQ is due to environmental influences.  For
example, and again "on average," people with an IQ greater than that explained
by the above genetic formula tend to have better than average environments,
particularly when they are young.  Those whose IQ is less than that predicted
by the formula have, on average, a worse developmental environment.  This
doesn't mean what school they went to, or things like that.  From what I 
remember from the class, the environmental factors are mostly things like
- during the first couple of years of childhood (when you learn the most and
fastest of any period of your life, and you are growing the fastest in your
life) did you get adequate amounts of food? And was it the "right kind" or
was it a high starch diet?

	This may help account for those discrepancies between groups who
say the culture of the individual doesn't impact on IQ scores and those who
think that tests only measure the "linear distance from the bias of the test
maker."  Usually the "culture" of a group - the black awareness of past
enslavement of their people or the kind of music one likes to listen to, etc.
 - is learned later, after the IQ has been mostly "set."  Also the positive or
negative aspects of the environment apply to all races.  On the other hand, a
higher percentage of the "whites" may be able to provide the "good" environment
for their children than "blacks," perhaps causing this later group to be
somewhat under represented in the "top 2%" and lowering the average scores of
blacks on the standardized tests - thereby making the tests at least appear to
be racist.

DISCLAIMERS: I'm not a sociologist or IQ test maker, and though I do have a
pretty good memory in general, the above may contain mistakes.  Also, what
I said about percentages of blacks being able to provide the necessary "good"
environment applies to all ethnic groups; the others weren't listed to keep
this post under 10 pages in length. :-)  Also, no opinion in this post is
mine; they belong exclusively to my employers, and represent their collective
corporate mind in its entirety on all issues relevant to this post.  :-)
(SMILEY for the severely humor impaired.)

	And just for the heck of it, I have this to say about that (that is,
this thread).  I came on in the middle of this thread, when people were 
already claiming Scott A. Tai to be a liar and worse.  I don't know what he
did to deserve this label, but would appreciate it if people included facts or
quotes about what he said and what independent source that was shown to
contradict when making claims like this on the net.  And Scott, prior to a
post that showed up hear just recently in which you claimed you wanted to lead
the group in a new and better direction (or something like that), you appeared
to be just bashing MENSA for the hell of it.  If you really have something to
say, don't have a three or four day preamble of "ass-kicking" before you say
it, because it makes some of the "reasonable" people quit reading your posts
and most of the rest will have too much suspicion of you, or still be too busy
returning your at-least-heretofore-unjustified flames to be able to respond
to any real questions or ideas that you may post later.  I think others have
explained why MENSA as a group can't hold the opinions you want them to, and
that many individual members do.  I would have rather heard your points and
their counter points without having to wade through the rest of the flaming
sewage that has been posted in this thread's preamble.

	I'm not a mensian, but I have the scores to qualify and may do so when
I am able to quit moving across the country as often as I do now.

Bill