Recent impressive scores on testing that can be seen as either an achievement test or an IQ test by Blacks in Bermuda has brightened the picture for those opposed to hard hereditarianism. In 2003, Bermudian Blacks matched Bermudian Whites at the equivalent of 100 IQ on the test. Bermudan IQ was 91.5 in 1978 and 1980, so the 2003 score represents a complete closure of the Black-White IQ gap in Bermuda along with a Flynn gain of at least 8.5 points. This is very impressive.
However, the question is raised whether Bermudian Blacks are very Black. I am only aware of two genetic tests done on Bermudians. One tested Bermudian “Indians.” It turns out that “Indian” is a nonsensical category in Bermuda as the “Indians” are only 1% Indian. The “Indians” are 50% Black, 49% White and 1% Indian. This is nearly identical to Bermudian “Blacks.”
The other tested Bermudians who identified as “mixed.” Mixed is a new category. Previously all of the people now identifying as “mixed” were called “Blacks.” Prior to that, all those now called “Blacks” were called “colored” due to their extremely mixed race heritage. As we shall see below, “mixed” is a completely arbitrary category and the “mixed” group are simply part of the “Black” group who have arbitrarily identified themselves as “mixed” for no reason other than identity. All evidence shows that the “mixed” group and the “Black” group are one and the same. For that matter, the “Indians” are the same as the “mixed” and the “Black.”
A recent study showed that Bermudian “mixed” people were 51% Black, 45% White and 4% Indian. Compare this to the “Indian” group at 50% Black, 49% White and 1% Indian. As you can see, the “Indian” group and the “mixed” group are essentially the same, except that the “Indians” are even Whiter than the “mixed” group!
If Bermudian Blacks really are mixed race people with ~50-50 White -Black ancestry, the 91.5 score on the IQ test in 1980 is to be expected and is in line with hard HBD theory which suggests that such a group would score ~92 on an IQ test based on their ancestry.
However, the excellent news is that the recent testing seems to drive a stake into the heart of Hard HBD theory which states that due to their 50% Black genes, Bermudian Blacks would never be able to score about 92 IQ average and would never close the 8 point gap between Blacks and Whites in Bermuda.
The great news is that a half-Black population completely closed the B-W IQ gap, which is highly unexpected and completely contradicts hard HBD theory which says this is impossible. All in all, this is good news for the Nurture side of the debate and also for soft HBD, which seems more sensible than hard HBD as soft HBD gives a lot more room for environment to drive IQ.
US Blacks have a 15 point gap to close between Blacks and Whites. That is quite a bit more than the 8 points that separated Bermudian Blacks and Whites. However, if Bermudians could close the gap by 8 points, perhaps it is not beyond the capability of US Blacks to close the gap by a similar amount. US Blacks would certainly function a lot better at 93 IQ than at 85 IQ.
Bottom line is the news out of Bermuda is very hopeful for Black people.
Below I will prove that Bermudian Blacks are 50-50 White-Black.
All the blocked text below is from Wikipedia. My comments follow.
Deeper ancestral demographics of Bermuda’s population have been obscured by the ethnic homogenisation of the last four centuries. There is effectively no ethnic distinction between black and white Bermudians, other than those characterising recent immigrant communities.
Black and White Bermudians are basically the same people except for a label.
Despite the banning of the importation of Irish, and the repeated attempts to force free blacks to emigrate and the owners of black slaves to export them, the merging of the various minority groups, along with some of the white English, had resulted in a new demographic group, “coloured” (which term, in Bermuda, referred to anyone not wholly of European ancestry) Bermudians, gaining a slight majority…
Colored a majority by the 1800’s.
Any child born before or since then to one coloured and one white parent has been added to the coloured statistic. Most of those historically described as “coloured” are today described as “black”, or “of African heritage”, which obscures their non-African heritage
Nearly all Bermudians described today as “Black,” were historically called “colored.” These were Black-White mixed people who arbitrarily changed their ethnonym from colored to Black only recently.
The ancestry of Bermuda’s black population is distinguished from that of the British West Indian black population in two ways: firstly, the higher degree of European and Native American admixture; secondly, the source of the African ancestry.
Bermudian Blacks are different from all other Caribbean Blacks in that they have much more White ancestry.
The racial makeup of Bermuda as recorded by the 2010 census, was 54% black, 31% white, 8% multiracial, 4% Asian, and 4% other races, although these numbers are based on self-identification, and the majority of those who answered “black” have any mixture of black, white and indigenous American ancestry…
The term “Black” has no meaning in Bermuda. A “Black” person may be any mixture of Black, White and Amerindian.
During the course of the 18th century, Bermuda’s population was boiled down to two demographic groups: White and Coloured.
As early as the 1700’s, there was no such thing as a “Black” in Jamaica. There were only two groups – White and “colored.” Colored meant mixed race.
This included the multi-racial descendants of the previous minority demographic groups (Black, Irish and Native American)…
In the 1700’s, there were no “Blacks.” The “colored” population were described as multiracial Black – Irish – Amerindian mixes.
It was largely by this method (mixed-race Bermudians being added to the number of Blacks, rather than added to the number of Whites or being defined as a separate demographic group) that Coloured (subsequently redefined in the twentieth century as Black) Bermudians came to outnumber White Bermudians by the end of the 19th century.
Black Bermudians only appeared in the 20th Century. They were the same people as used to be called “colored” except they changed their name from “colored” to “Black” in the 20th Century.
In the twentieth century, those with any degree of sub-Saharan African ancestry (which was virtually everyone who had been defined as coloured) were redefined as Black, with Asian and other non-White Bermudians defined by separate racial groups…
A “Black” Bermudian in the 20th Century referred to anyone with any degree of Black ancestry at all.
On Census returns, only in recent years have Bermudians been given the option to define themselves by more than one race, although there was considerable opposition to this from many Black leaders who discouraged Black Bermudians from doing so.
Only very recently have Bermudians been able to mark themselves as mixed. Black Bermudians oppose this because all Black Bermudians are mixed anyway and this will arbitrarily divide the Black community for no reason.
Most academic books on the subject emphasize the characteristic multi-racialism of Bermuda’s Black population.
Slavery in Bermuda, by James E. Smith. Vantage Press (1976).
All scholars agree that Bermudian Blacks are heavily mixed.
…and it has been pointed out in other publications that, if those Black Bermudians who have White ancestry were numbered instead with the White population, the Black population of Bermuda would be negligible.
The number of relatively pure Blacks in Bermuda is essentially zero.
…and the global economic downturn, all of which many Black Bermudians perceive as hitting them hardest, there is little sentiment today amongst people who have long been obliged to think of themselves as Black, in opposition to being White, to identify even partly with their European ancestry.
Black Bermudians do not wish to identify with their considerable White ancestry.
Despite these concerns, small numbers of Black Bermudians have chosen to describe themselves on census returns as mixed-racial, and the Native American demographic, which had disappeared for centuries, is slowly re-emerging, as more Bermudians – especially on St. David’s Island – choose to identify to some degree, if not exclusively, with their Native American ancestry…
That Bermudian “Indians” are only 1% Indian shows the nonsensical nature of Bermudian ethnic categories.
There is similar pressure on Black Bermudians (most of whom are multi-racial) not to self-identify as mixed race as there is in Blacks in the USA where President Barack Obama, raised by his single, white mother, sparked debate when he identified himself on the census as black, rather than mixed race.
Almost all Bermudian Blacks are better described as multiracial. Bermudian Blacks are compared with Barack Obama. Barack Obama is 50% White. The suggestion is that Bermudian Blacks are like Obama racially.
