42. Intelligence Tests
If this is true as regards the sense faculties, it might be expected to hold to a greater degree of those higher mental faculties which we call intelligence; and such is the case. Intelligence tests have been gradually evolved and improved, the best known being the Binet-Simon series. These are arranged to determine the mental age of the subject. Their most important function accordingly has been the detection of defective adults or backward children. During the World War, psychological examinations were introduced on a scale unheard of before. The purpose of these examinations was to assign men to the tasks best commensurate with their true abilities; especially to prevent the unfit from being entrusted with responsibility under which they would break down and bring failure on larger undertakings. Men subject to dizziness were to be kept from flying; those unable to understand orders, out of active line service. The tests throughout were practical. They tried to decide whether a given man was fit or unfit. They did not pretend to go into the causes of his fitness or unfitness. This is an important point. Whatever illumination the army intelligence tests shed on the problem of race intelligence is therefore indirect. Different racial or national groups represented in the examinations attain different capacity ratings, but there is nothing in the results themselves to show whether they are due to racial or environmental factors. Evidence on this point, if it can be derived at all from the tests, has to be “analyzed out.”
In general, examinees in the United States were rated by being assigned, on the basis of their scores, to grades which were lettered from A to E, with plus and minus subgrades. The most comprehensive presentation of results is to express the percentage of individuals in each group that made the middle grade C, better than C, and worse than C. On this basis we find:
| Group and Number of Individuals | Below C | C | Above C |
|---|---|---|---|
| Englishmen, 411 | 9 | 71 | 20 |
| White draft generally, 93,973 | 24 | 64 | 12 |
| Italians, 4,007 | 63 | 36 | 1 |
| Poles, 382 | 70 | 30 | (.5) |
| Negroes generally, 18,891 | 79 | 20 | 1 |
These figures at face value seem to show deep group differences in intelligence; and these face values have been widely accepted. The reason is that they flatter national and race egotism. To be sure, the Englishmen in the American draft make a better showing than the drafted men at large; but this has been complacently explained by saying that the English represent in comparative purity the Anglo-Saxon or Nordic stock which is also the dominant strain among Americans, but which has been somewhat contaminated in their case by the immigration of Latins and Slavs, who rate much lower, as shown by the Italians and Poles tested. Lowest of all, as might be expected, is the Negro. So runs the superficial but satisfying interpretation of the figures—satisfying if one happens to be of North European ancestry.
But there is one feature that raises suspicion. The Italians and the Poles are too close to the Negroes. They stand much nearer to them in intelligence, according to these figures, than they do to the white Americans. Can this be so—at least, can it have racial significance? Are these Mediterraneans, descendants of the Romans, and these Alpines, so large a strain of whose blood flows in the veins of many white Americans, only a shade superior to the Negro? Scarcely. “Something must be wrong” with the figures: that is, they contain another factor besides race.
A little dissection of the lump results reveals this factor. The northern Negro far surpasses the southern in his showing. He gets ten times as high a proportion of individuals into the above-average grades, only half as many into the below-average. Evidently the difference is due to increased schooling, improved earning capacity, larger opportunity and incentive: social environment, in short. So strong is the influence of the environment that the northern Negro easily surpasses the Italian in America.
| Negroes, 5 northern states, 4,705 | 46 | 51 | 3 |
| Italians, 4,007 | 63 | 36 | 1 |
| Negroes, 4 southern states, 6,846 | 86 | 14 | (.3) |
Evidently the psychological tests are more a gauge of educational and social opportunity than of race, since the Italian, although brunet, is of course a pure Caucasian.
This conclusion is reinforced by another consideration. The type of test first used in the army had been built up for reasonably literate people, speaking English. Among such people it discriminated successfully between the more and the less fit. But the illiterate and the foreigner knowing no English failed completely—not because their intelligence was zero, but because the test involved the use of non-congenital abilities which they had not acquired. A second set of tests, known as Beta, was evolved for those who were obviously ineligible, or proved themselves so, for the old style of test, which was designated as Alpha. The illiteracy of the subjects given the Beta test was in most cases not an absolute one. Men who could not write an intelligible letter or read the newspaper or who had had only half or less of the ordinary grammar school education, together with aliens whose comprehension of English remained imperfect, were put in the group of “illiterates” or badly educated. Separating now the literates from the illiterates among a number of racial, national, or sectional groups, we find:
| Alpha Test: Literates | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Englishmen, 374 | 5 | 74 | 21 |
| White draft generally, 72,618 | 16 | 69 | 15 |
| Alabama whites, 697 | 19 | 72 | 9 |
| New York negroes, 1,021 | 21 | 72 | 7 |
| Italians, 575 | 33 | 64 | 3 |
| Negroes generally, 5,681 | 54 | 44 | 2 |
| Alabama negroes, 262 | 56 | 44 | (.4) |
| Beta Test: Illiterates | |||
| White draft generally, 26,012 | 58 | 41 | 1 |
| Italians, 2,888 | 64 | 35 | 1 |
| New York negroes, 440 | 72 | 28 | 0 |
| Poles, 263 | 76 | 24 | (.4) |
| Alabama whites, 384 | 80 | 20 | 0 |
| Negroes generally, 11,633 | 91 | 9 | (.2) |
| Alabama Negroes, 1,043 | 97 | 3 | (.1) |
It must be borne in mind that the two groups were not set apart as the result of tests, but that the two tests were devised to meet the problem of treating the two groups with reasonable uniformity. The point was to find the excellent man, and the unfit man, with the same degree of accuracy whether he was literate or illiterate. When found, he was assigned to the same grade, such as A, or D—, whether his examination had been Alpha or Beta.
Now let us observe some of the figures. The New York negro is nearly on a par with the Alabama white, among literates, and a bit ahead of him among illiterates. Approximately the two groups come out the same; which means that bringing up in a certain part of the country has as much to do with intelligence, even in the rough, as has Caucasian or colored parentage.
The literate negroes of the draft, irrespective of section, slightly surpass the illiterate whites.
In every case the literate members of a race or nationality make a far better showing than the illiterate.
It is now clear also that the important factor of education enters so heavily into the first figures cited that they can mean little if anything as to inherent capacity. Of the Englishmen tested, nine-tenths fell in the literate group; of the Poles, a fifth; of the Italians, a seventh. In the draft generally, nearly three-fourths of the whites were literate; of the negroes, less than a third.
In short, in spite of the fact that the Beta test was intended to equalize conditions for the illiterate and semi-illiterate, the outstanding conclusion of the army examinations seems to be that education—cultural advantage—enormously develops faculty.
Is there anything left that can positively be assigned to race causation? It may be alleged that within the same section the white recruits regularly surpass the colored. Alabama whites may rate disappointingly, but they do better than Alabama negroes; New York negroes show surprisingly well, but they are inferior to New York whites; illiterate whites from the whole country definitely surpass illiterate negroes; and still more so among literates. But is this residuum of difference surely racial? As long as the color-line remains drawn, a differential factor of cultural advantage is included; and how strong this is there is no present means of knowing. It is possible that some of the difference between sectionally and educationally equalized groups of whites and negroes is really innate and racial. But it is also possible that most or all of it is environmental. Neither possibility can be demonstrated from the unrefined data at present available.