Jason Richwine is Wrong about Mexican Americans

A recent immigration study by the Heritage Foundation brought to light a controversial dissertation by one its writers, Jason Richwine.  This dissertation essentially concluded that Hispanics (and blacks as well) have naturally lower IQs than their native Caucasian  counterparts, and that this is not a disparity that goes away within 2 generations and may in fact, simply not go away.  In other words, Latin Americans are essentially less intelligent than their native counterparts ( native as in American-born Caucasians, not Native Americans).  He correlates with the low national IQ of Mexico and other Latin American countries and concludes that this is simply an ingrained (probably genetic) trait.  While he does casually address racism and other natural disadvantages Hispanics generally face, he writes them off with sloppily connected correlations.  I will address those disadvantages in a more in depth manner than the straw man version he glossed over.  But first I’d like to address what I believe holds us Mexican Americans (and Hispanics in general—and I’m sure many black Americans will recognize this scenario).

I am a second generation Mexican American.  Since I’ve been old enough to understand that I was different and darker than my light-skinned friends, I have lived with a nagging inferiority complex that has never gone away.  I grew up with countless stereotypes, whether it was the notion that I was like a really fast mouse with a thick and stereotypically Mexican accent, or a thug.  Whatever I was, I was not like my white counterparts and certainly not like the Asians who we all grew up knowing as smart and extremely good at math.  Not too place too much blame on outside stereotypes, many of the negative (and probably most damaging) influences have come from other Mexican Americans.

Whether it was a Mexican American generation who both reinforced the idea that Mexicans are thugs (and compared to their Asian counterparts, do very little to push their children to excel scholastically) or my Mexican American peers at school who often hung out in groups and made fun of people like me for “acting white” and being a “school boy,” there was no real pressure for me to excel scholastically (my own parents were ‘strict’ by Mexican American standards, but they were satisfied so long as I kept a B average, and so that’s what I did).  On the other hand, there existed all the peer pressure in the world to disengage from being this Mexican American kid who had more in common with his white schoolmates than with his fellow Mexican Americans whose ‘approval’ I wanted.

This is what Richwine gets wrong.  He believes the Mexican American disengagement from academic excellence is the result of some inability to compete with their Caucasian counterparts.  But his theoretical framework is far removed from reality.  This disengagement begins before we even know whether we can compete without white peers. What’s more, it’s been shown that IQ is overwhelmingly (if not entirely) determined by economic factors, and familiarity to culture and environment.

I must add, that this inferiority complex, while having never fully having gone away, has resurfaced since reading Richwine’s dissertation.  Through years of praise by friends of all ethnicity as ‘being smart’ I’d largely forgotten the feelings of inadequacy I grew up with.  No matter how sloppy Richwine’s correlations may be, I am once again worried how widespread these beliefs are.  When I’m conducting interviews for new hires for our department, are interviewees dissuaded by the thought of working for a Hispanic?  If I put my resume out there, does my last name inspire employers to overlook me due to the assumption that I am probably less intelligent than the Smiths, Guptas and Kims (there is strong evidence that blacks deal with such a bias)?  This is the sort of insecurity that’s haunted me for most of my life.  And I am once again reminded of it.

In any case, I have laid out the reasons I believe Richwine’s conclusions are in fact, quite sloppy.

• Hispanic children face numerous stereotypes, which aren’t helped by lax parents who don’t push them the way their Asian counterparts do
• National IQs are mostly predicted by factors like the prevalence of infectious diseases/parasites and income inequality
• Evolution-wise a divergence of intelligence among humans dispersing across the globe doesn’t make sense

Evolution of Mexicans

Mexicans are Essentially Eurasians

Richwine correctly notes that Mexicans are essentially a mix of Spanish and “Amerindians.”  And who are these Amerindians?  They are people who migrated over the Bering Strait 10,000+ years ago from Asia (most likely Mongolia or Siberia).  According to the data Richwine uses (Richard Lynn’s national IQ scores, which have in fact been hotly contested (if not outright refuted, but I will address the data with the assumption that it is correct), the national IQs of Spain and Mongolia countries are well within European/Asian averages.  So the fact that Mexicans score lower than Spain and Mongolia suggests more environmental/economic reasons for a lower national IQ than a genetic one.

In order for the intelligence of these Asian immigrants to diverge from those who stayed in Asia, those who stayed in Asia would have to find themselves in situations where having an IQ of say, 80 would not be sufficient to survive long enough to pass their genes on.  It is unlikely that life in Europe or Eastern Asia somehow required a beyond-average level of intelligence in order to survive and pass their genes on.  Nor is it likely that life in Meso America somehow required a lower IQ in order to pass one’s genes on.  And the large, complex societies Mesoamericans created without having any access to metals or beasts of burden should suggest a certain level of intelligence.

East Asia vs Southeast Asia

According to Lynn’s data, we see divergence in National IQs between East Asian and South East Asian countries.  Why?  It’s generally agreed that the settlers of South East Asian countries in fact came from mainland China.  Did something happen in North East Asia where only those with higher-than-average intelligence could pass their genes on, or where those with lower-than-average intelligence could pass their genes on in SE Asia?  Given that Singapore (108) is a complete outlier in SE Asia, and equal to the highest IQ in East Asia (Hong Kong), one might conclude that economic factors affect IQ test scores.  Both of these are small, highly urbanized and commercially-important countries.  Note the huge disparity between Singapore (108) and the neighboring Malaysia (91).

Hispanics in America

Hispanic parents are not overly strict

Richwine proposes this hypothetical situation: “Hispanic immigrants and their children have a low average IQ, which prevents the second generation from reaching equality with the native majority.  Parental expectations for their children are not met, because they cannot be, given the level of intelligence present in the community.  The average Hispanic child inevitably lags behind the average white in high school achievement, in college admissions, and in job selection.  The failure to achieve parity with natives then triggers a natural human response, which is to downplay the importance of things that one is not good at.” P. 94

The problem is his assumption that there are such high expectations for the second generation.  Hispanic parents (for better and/or for worse) are generally not demanding and expectant of academic success compared to say, East Asians, where in many (most?) cases, mediocrity is not an option.  Hence, the Tiger Mom article, or the High Expectations Asian Father meme.

Living down to expectations

But there is another factor at work here.  We Hispanics tend to grow up with the notion that we are simply not as smart as our native peers and in many cases (certainly in mine), this results in a serious inferiority complex.  Whether it’s cartoons or movies, every day condescension from white peers, or worst of all; pressure from other Hispanics not to conform.  In fact, some of the most damaging influences come from within the Hispanic community. Wanting to “belong” among fellow Mexican Americans in many cases means joining a gang (or at least a group that somewhat resembles one).

Selection

Richwine mentions the potential that immigrants from Mexico may be low IQ simply because those with higher intelligence are already in advantageous places in life and have no need to leave Mexico.  Those who migrate to the US are the lower IQ portions of the population and hence, the lower IQ scores of second and third generation Mexican-Americans.  Whether or not this is the case, Richwine believes that correlating this with Mexico’s National IQ score if 88 provides support for a genetic reason for these lower scores.  The problem here is that national IQ scores appear to correlate with a myriad of other things, and this is apparent when you compare across nations with similar ethnic makeup but different economic situations.

National IQ

National IQs tend to correlate with many other factors.  For example, even Richard Flynn (the source of Richwine’s national IQ stats) concludes that

One might conclude that the average national IQ is simply a measure of the size of a country’s educated middle class, and the size of that middle class is a consequence of industrial development

Whatever the genetic component in human intelligence, it is clear that intelligence, if IQ tests really measure it, is also a function of environmental factors like epidemiology, health care (including pre-natal and natal and childhood health care), nutrition, diet, culture and education.

We can expect the IQ gap between the developing nations and the developed nations to close in the course of this century, as the Flynn effect most probably hits a wall in the developed world and the third world catches up. That will require a wide range of good policies to address all the factors that effect IQ.

In regards to national IQ correlating with size of middle class, there does seem to exist a rough inverse correlation between the IQ outcomes and wealth disparity across nations.

In fact, a study by Christopher Hassall suggests that levels of infectious and parasitic diseases is probably the main (if not only) predictor of national IQ.

The point of all of this:  Richwine’s use of national IQ scores to ‘negate’ the ‘selection’ explanation is flawed.  National IQ outcomes have their own independent explanation.