There is a well known IQ gap between Blacks and Whites in the US. One attempt of well meaning liberals to explain this gap is to say that Blacks were bred for brawn and not brains. A recent commenter posted just that argument. I did not disagree with him on that as I did not want to start a fight and also I was feeling lazy anyway, but one of my commenters already did.
If American Blacks were bred for stupidity, why are their average IQ’s higher than those of African Blacks?
Their ancestors from Africa went through two evolutionary selection events just coming to America. The first was in being selected as trade goods rather than being kept as slaves there. I suspect that the smarter of the slaves the African kings had available were selected for shipment since they would be more troublesome.
The second was surviving the trip. This has left them with a greater tendency to heart disease as a trade-off for living through confinement in a hot hold.
Yes, that argument of his is just wrong, but I hear it all the time.
Also Blacks underwent a big 7.5 point absolute rise in IQ in the past century or so. Charles Murray even admits this and in fact wrote a journal about it. And from the late 1800’s to now, Blacks underwent severe selection pressure for more progressive phenotypes versus more archaic ones such that Blacks now look more like we do than they look like their pre-Revolutionary ancestors!
The reasons for selection are unknown, but perhaps now Blacks had more choice about who to marry. Blacks now had money, and with money comes selection pressure. Females attempt to select the males with more money, power and prestige versus those with less. In a money oriented society, males with more power, prestige and money tend to be more intelligent, leaving aside exceptions like Robert Lindsay. Males attempt to breed with the best looking females, who often have more progressive phenotypes because progressive phenotypes are more attractive than archaic ones. Progressive phenotypes tend to be more intelligent than archaic ones for unknown reasons, or perhaps that’s just evolution in progress.
So both male and female Blacks started selecting a lot more for success and beauty, both of which are tied in with intelligence. This intense move towards a more progressive phenotype in 150 years seems to have coincided with major IQ gains in Blacks, both Flynn gains and more pure gains that actually reduced racial gaps.
