It's the culture, stupid.
We talk about IQ gaps, but we don't talk about the cultural influences that can undo even the smartest kids.
Bear with me because this isn’t going where you may at first assume it’s going.
In prelude, and with all due respect to the likes of my Twitter-pal Tyrone Williams (@immunehack), whom I admire enormously, I dislike talk of racial IQ differences. That whole dialog strikes me as slippery and arbitrary. I’m not sure we can reach a satisfying consensus on whether IQ correlates with intelligence per se. I’m not even 100% sure what intelligence is. I do know that in studies, intelligence (as measured by IQ) seems correlated with both success and happiness (also here and here), though these are complex areas of inquiry that can devolve into chicken/egg paradoxes. Surprisingly, intelligence also is correlated with altruism or basic “goodness,” albeit a tad less convincingly. (See here as well.) I’m just not persuaded that we’re measuring what we think we’re measuring when we test IQ.
Let me also point out that there is no positive correlation between IQ and social skills, and there’s even some evidence of an inverse correlation—as you may already suspect if you’ve ever been around physicists and mathematicians, owners of the highest mean IQs. I find it very difficult to buy the idea that you can be all that happy or even a very nice human being if you lack social skills and empathy, which, anecdotally, and with just one exception, has been the case with every premier hard-science type I’ve ever met or known about. The one exception: Neil deGrasse Tyson, who seems like a really affable fellow. Dawkins and Taleb are total irredeemable pricks, and Feynman, for all his meditations on the link between science and the human condition, seemed insufferably condescending and disconnected from, well, humanity.
Are such types simply happy within themselves? I suppose.
Even if IQ does = intellect, and even if some modest group differences exist, that has little bearing on how we should appraise/treat any given individual. It’s like saying that white people in general are taller than Asians. Fine. So what does that imply about some as-yet-unseen Asian kid waiting to try out for his high school basketball team? Are we within our rights to assume anything about the kid before meeting him?
No. These group tendencies that we talk about may have some stochastic meaning but have little or no real-world applicability to individuals, which is what society is made up of. I’m not sure there’s an equitable way of using the data, even if it’s statistically valid.
There is, however, a variable that worries me far more than the distribution of smarts.
I see black culture as a far larger factor in the documented performance skews between groups. In some ways, the deconstruction of black culture is even more of a wokey third rail than talk of IQ gaps. But we cannot, in my view, ignore it, as I believe its effects are unambiguously pernicious for the vast majority of children of color. For while each young person has a singular intellectual aptitude, all young people are affected to some degree by the culture that envelopes (and defines?) them.
No matter how smart or grounded you are, cultural influences can mess with your head.
In my 2005 book SHAM I showed how the self-help movement was provably, spectacularly successful for just one group of people—the self-anointed gurus writing the books and holding the seminars. Self-help made Tony Robbins and Dr. Phil fabulously wealthy, but we cannot demonstrate that their teachings have had any level of benefit for the masses. In the same way, celebration of black culture has been spectacularly successful for the artists, athletes and other icons putting out the “message of blackness,” if you will. It worked for Dre, Snoop, Spike, LeBron, and so forth. But I would argue that far too often that message has been (and continues to be) an unmitigated disaster for its principal consumers.
Think about the inescapable tenets and tropes of black culture, as depicted in black cinema, black music, black literature*, other forms of black media, and even when the culture’s luminaries speak to the topic:
You’re a victim of a society that basically hates you. Racism is everywhere.
Blackness as a form of essentialism is a kind of fulminating congenital disease in which you’re always just one traffic stop away from becoming George Floyd, no matter what you try.
There are only two legitimate ways out: music and sports. Hip-hop and hoops rule.
Applying yourself in school is uncool, if not a betrayal [click and scroll down] of the cause. (There are well-known epithets for such perceived race-traitors, but I cannot stand them and will not use them here.) And a scholarly mindset would be futile anyway, because the system is racist and will trample on your best efforts.
Single-motherhood is arduous work, but not to be denigrated. Actually, it merits being romanticized (as it typically is in black film and literature, and politics as well): These are strong women showing the rest of us how to “get it done” against all odds; they deserve our respect and understanding. See here too.
Crime is cool. Dangerous, yeah, but cool. To be fair, this is a theme throughout American culture, notable also in depictions of Italian life, which we’ll get to in a moment. But for today’s young black men especially, the message is this: Crime is a fast track to some portion of the wealth that white people unfairly accumulate (or themselves “steal”) through privilege. In a society that is forever inequitable and rigged, you do what you must to get by. It’s the code of the street (the linked material is a bit older but relevant and well worth looking at).
Guns are way cool, if not even a necessary accoutrement of urban life. Listen to Gang Starr’s anti-gun anthem, “Tons o Guns,” if you haven’t. It’s old school, and you’ll hear some odious uses of the n-word, but it surely applies in some contemporary settings.
Overall, black culture, in its most visible conception, celebrates a kind of separatist, outlier worldview and a rejection of “white paths” to success. Here’s an intriguing historical perspective on a few aspects of the debate.
Though all Americans consume what we can identify as black culture in some form, its concepts resonate chiefly with those whose life experiences it purports to reflect, and for whom it purports to “speak.” Indeed, when black people themselves write on black culture, one senses a strong desire to embrace a proprietary ethos and a tradition of cultural self-determination quite apart from whiteness. This applies even if aspects of that culture are unambiguously counterproductive and can become tragic self-fulfilling prophecies.
Though I am not black (nor do I define as white), I can speak to the issue of culture and its damage. I was subject to analogous messaging when I was a kid, in the heyday of the Mob. In my Italian corner of Brooklyn it was important to be tough, to be uncouth, to be the local BMOC—and I mean that metaphorically; college wasn’t on anyone’s radar. And yes, you were quite specifically expected to be uncouth. Good diction, good vocabulary, and especially an aversion to profanity were very much frowned upon. You’d end up friendless at best, a chronic punching bag at worst. And pity the poor kid who got caught reading (a) material that wasn’t formally assigned or, (b) poetry, God help you.
The guys in the neighborhood acted out, bullying the weaker (and non-Italian) kids, disrespecting teachers, and treating girls like shit, frankly. I came of age in one of the most misogynistic milieus imaginable, leaving aside early hip-hop. These kids may not have grown up to be Joe Pesci in Goodfellas, but it was clear by the time my family moved into a nicer neighborhood (Jewish) that many of them were failing at school and at life. I think also of that scene in A Bronx Tale where this teenaged group of imbecilic Mafia wannabes is clustered around a table full of guns. Though Sonny manages to save young C from disaster, the rest of the crew end up being incinerated in a car after the tragic unraveling of their plot to throw Molotov cocktails through the window of a black social club.
I fear that black culture does the same to those who grow up in its thrall. It denigrates virtually everything that enhances one’s odds of mainstream success.
And one final point that cannot be overlooked, as it may be the most disconcerting aspect of all: As depicted in black culture, black life is about struggle:
Struggle and heartache and despair and hopelessness are portrayed as so inextricably interwoven into the ongoing black experience that you’d almost think they’re encoded in the DNA along with melanin. In this conception, black people suffer from a total lack of agency.
How terribly sad and out of touch with contemporary reality. (Even if you don’t read the whole piece linked here, please look at the carefully researched stats in the second half.)
So let’s end on a note of hope. Intelligence is baked-in; it’s either on-board or it isn’t. Culture is bolt-on, and can be stripped off. So it should be with the elements described herein. They should be repudiated, not habitually reinforced by so-called role models and walled off from criticism by the rest of us.
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* Could there possibly be a more depressing, paranoid, fatalistic book than Ta-Nehisi Coates’ much-awarded Between the World and Me?
Steve, I didn't know you were on Substack, glad I found you. In my new Substack page, one that you encouraged me to write, sharing my stories of life, I in so many ways speak to what you have written here but in a different way. Sharing my stories. In the predominately black community I grew-up in through the 60s and 70s, my life was so very different than what is often portrayed now as a typical "black community." When I speak of the "black community" I generally use quotes. Why, I grew up in a what I call a real black community, instead of what I see now are neighborhoods.
In my Kindle book, Men of Color - Men of Honor, that I'm not actively promoting because I have major updates that I have apply to it, I speak of many of the things you've shared in this article. I'm not an outlier, I believe the majority of black people hold values and ideals that are universally similar to most groups who seek success, accountability and a better life for themselves and their children. If I may steal the title of Wilfred Reilly's book "Taboo" there are some things you're not suppose to talk about. In my book and in Adam Coldman's book "Black Victim to Black Victor," we do talk about these things. There are so many other books, YouTube channels, and articles that speak to "Taboo" issues. As I said, in my Substack stories, I'll be speaking to many, not all issues like this. Great article, Kevin.