Straightening the Bell Curve: How Stereotypes about Black Masculinity Drive Research on Race and Intelligence

178 Pages·2012·0.82 MB·English

by  Constance Hilliard

Straightening the Bell Curve
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Straightening
the Bell Curve
How Stereotypes about Black Masculinity
Drive Research on Race and Intelligence
Constance Hilliard
Foreword by COLIN GROVES
Copyright © 2012 by Constance Hilliard
Published in the United States by Potomac Books, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of
this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission
from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles
and reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hilliard, Constance B.
Straightening the bell curve : how stereotypes about black masculinity drive research
on race and intelligence / Constance Hilliard ; foreword by Colin Groves. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-61234-191-0 (hbk. edition)
ISBN 978-1-61234-192-7 (electronic edition)
1. Intellect. 2. Intelligence tests. 3. Race. 4. Blacks—Intelligence levels. 5. Men—
Intelligence levels. 6. Stereotypes (Social psychology) 7. Discrimination in psychology.
I. Title.
BF432.N5H55 2012
155.8’2—dc23
2012000623
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper that meets the American
National Standards Institute Z39-48 Standard.
Potomac Books
22841 Quicksilver Drive
Dulles, Virginia 20166
First Edition
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Stephen Hill
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Contents
Foreword by Colin Groves ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction xv
1 The Inverse Correlation 1
2 The Intelligence Quotient 15
3 The Regression to the Mean 27
4 Seductive Reasoning 35
5 The Common Denominator 49
6 The Eugenic Paradigm 61
7 The Asian Coefficient 69
8 The Reciprocal Function 77
9 The Phallic Equation 85
10 The New Calculus 101
Notes 113
Bibliography 137
Index 147
About the Author 151
vii
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Foreword
There lives in Australia a man who has calculated the value of pi to more
than twenty-two thousand decimal places in his head. He speaks seven
languages fluently, and he has invented his own language with entirely
consistent rules.
How brilliant is this man! How high his intelligence quotient (IQ)
must be!
Actually, he is an autistic savant. He is unable to drive a car. He does
not know his left hand from his right. The entire concept of IQ is mean-
ingless; it tells us nothing of any importance about this man.
Allan Snyder, the director the Centre for the Mind—a joint project of
the Australian National University and the University of Sydney—has
written a good deal about savants (including the man I have mentioned).
Snyder has proposed the idea of a creativity quotient (CQ). Unlike devo-
tees of the intelligence quotient (IQ), he does not look on this measure
as an unalterably fixed number, but it seems to me to tell us at least as
much about human minds as does IQ.
As Constance Hilliard recounts in this fascinating and revealing book,
Lewis Terman largely developed the IQ concept in the first quarter of
ix