Take that, Detroit

While I have a fairly clear mental map of the geography of white intelligence, socio-political, and cultural distributions in the US, I tend to think of black populations--at least concentrated black populations--as, well, black populations. If you've listened to one local hip hop station, you've listened to them all.

Steve Sailer periodically snaps me out of that lazy thinking by noting the especially poor performance of contemporary blacks in the Upper Midwest, with Milwaukee and its history through the 20th century as a prime case study.

As luck would have it, NAEP results are available for 21 metro areas in the US, including Milwaukee. The following table shows estimated average IQ among black 8th graders taking the NAEP math and reading assessments in 2013 by jurisdiction. The scores for both tests are on a 500 point scale, with a standard deviation of 37 on the math assessment and 34 on the reading assessment. In the subsequent table, these are converted into IQ estimates with a mean of 98--corresponding to the national average NAEP scores of 283.62 for math and 266.02 for reading--and a standard deviation of 15. The math and reading scores are weighted equally. The data are insufficient for Albuquerque, but the other 20 cities the NAEP sampled are all included:

Jurisdiction	BlackIQ
1. Charlotte	92.6
2. Boston	91.2
3. New York City	90.9
4. Hillsborough County (FL)	90.9
5. Houston	90.8
6. Austin	90.0
7. Atlanta	89.7
8. Dallas	89.0
9. Baltimore	88.8
10. Miami-Dade	88.4
11. San Diego	88.4
12. Chicago	88.2
13. Philadelphia	87.9
14. Jefferson County (KY)	87.5
15. Los Angeles	86.7
16. District of Columbia	85.4
17. Cleveland	84.1
18. Fresno	84.0
19. Milwaukee	83.1
20. Detroit	83.0

Milwaukee can be thankful for Detroit. Detroit, in turn, might be thankful for, uh, East St. Louis, though the last bit is just speculation on my part. Cleveland, another Upper Midwestern city, also fares poorly. The birthplace of the Crips and the Bloods outperforms all of them. Chicago is the best the region is able to boast, and it's still in the bottom half of the jurisdictions considered.

Steve's perspicacity can hardly be overstated. Generous welfare programs are going to, ceteris paribus, attract welfare recipients. The tactics to 'gentrify' a jurisdiction include restricting the amount of land available for certain kinds of development (whether it be through zoning or merely the physical terrain), instituting municipal and county minimum wages significantly higher than the national minimum wage, and curtailing welfare program payouts as aggressively as possible. Because the last two are each generally supported by different political factions, there is currently an opportunity for either red state or blue state America to gentrify on a systematic, nationwide scale by, in the case of red staters, dropping their opposition to increasing legal minimum wage rates and in the case of blue staters, dropping their opposition to curtailing welfare benefits. While it seems like a tough sell to red state America, it's an even more difficult sale to close with blue staters.

This game of hot potato is, nationally, a zero-sum endeavor, but the cracks in the national foundation are increasing in number and intensity by the day, just as the dead weight costs that the underclasses impose increases. The stakes are getting higher.

IQ by race and parental educational attainment

One of the most salient statistics regarding education is the tendency for poor white teenagers to perform as well as rich black teenagers do on college entrance exams. When sharing as much with educational romanticists, I'll often get the response that it isn't money that determines whether or not an environment is intellectually stimulating, it's the household's embrace of education and learning that does.

Well, the NAEP online data explorer allows for cross-tabs to be created using several variables, including race and parental education level*. The following table and graph show estimated average IQ by race and the parental education level among 8th graders taking the NAEP math and reading assessments in 2013. The scores for both tests are on a 500 point scale, with a standard deviation of 37 on the math assessment and 34 on the reading assessment. In the proceeding table and graph, these are converted into IQ estimates with a mean of 98--corresponding to the national average NAEP scores of 283.62 for math and 266.02 for reading--and a standard deviation of 15. The math and reading scores are weighted equally:

IQ by parent ed and race	Less than HS	HS grad	Some college	College grad
White	93.0	95.8	101.7	105.7
Black	86.1	86.3	93.5	92.8
Hispanic	91.1	91.5	96.8	97.7
Asian/PI	96.1	99.0	102.3	110.1
American Indian	89.0	88.3	95.3	96.4

White kids from the homes of high school dropouts do about as well as do black kids whose parents are college attendees and graduates (marginally worse and marginally better, respectively). At every level of parental educational attainment, the racial ordering is the same--Asians on top, followed by whites, then Hispanics, then American Indians, and finally blacks. These things are, as Steve Sailer might say, drearily predictable.

NAEP variables used: PARED, SDRACE

* Defined as the highest level of educational attainment achieved by either of a student's parents and broken down into four categories: Did not graduate high school, graduated high school but didn't go to college, went to college but didn't get a bachelor's degree, and graduated with a BA or higher

State IQ estimates, Hispanics only (2013)

Similar methodology to what was employed previously, with an important exception. Instead of equally weighting math and reading scores, I relied entirely on the former. The math and reading scores of whites by state correlate at a comfortable .90 (p-value = 1.36E-19), but among Hispanics math and reading scores correlate at a less robust .62 (p-value = .0000006). English language proficiency is an obvious potentially confounding variable here. The NAEP data explorer site does allow for results to be sorted by reported English language proficiency level, but that probably excludes an excessive number of Hispanic test takers who may be handicapped when it comes to English reading comprehension but not when it comes to math. Consequently I've elected to rely on the universal language instead.

Mean IQ estimates by state among Hispanics using 2013 NAEP 8th grade mathematics assessment data follow. There are no estimates for Maine, North Dakota, Vermont, or West Virginia due to insufficient sample sizes in those states:

State	IQ
DoDEA	97.9
1. New Jersey	97.7
2. Montana	97.3
3. Texas	97.1
4. Maryland	96.4
5. Hawaii	96.4
6. Virginia	96.2
7. Mississippi	96.2
8. North Carolina	96.1
9. Indiana	95.9
10. Wyoming	95.6
11. Massachusetts	95.5
12. Louisiana	95.4
13. Ohio	95.3
14. Alaska	95.2
15. Delaware	94.9
16. Georgia	94.9
17. Missouri	94.8
18. Kansas	94.8
19. South Dakota	94.3
20. Florida	94.3
21. Arkansas	93.9
20. Washington	93.8
21. Minnesota	93.8
22. Colorado	93.6
23. Wisconsin	93.6
24. Illinois	93.4
25. South Carolina	93.4
26. Tennessee	92.6
27. New Hampshire	92.6
28. Arizona	92.1
29. Kentucky	92.1
30. Nevada	91.7
31. New Mexico	91.6
32. Idaho	91.5
33. Nebraska	91.2
34. Oregon	90.8
35. Iowa	90.6
36. New York	90.5
37. District of Columbia	90.5
38. Oklahoma	90.4
39. Pennsylvania	90.2
40. California	89.7
41. Rhode Island	89.6
42. Michigan	88.9
43. Utah	87.6
44. Connecticut	87.5
45. Alabama	87.2

And a corresponding map. The darker the shading, the higher the state's estimated Hispanic IQ. The darker a state's shading, the higher its Hispanic IQ. Yellow indicates insufficient data:

The children of military NAMs outperform the NAMs of every state in the country. Joining the military isn't often an act of desperation for those without any other options. To the contrary, the armed forces pull mostly from the right side of the bell curve, especially when race is controlled for.

The putative Floridian advantage from having lots of professional Cuban emigres of mostly European ancestry doesn't show up much here. Cubans no longer constitute a majority of Florida's Hispanics--barely one-quarter of the state's Hispanics, in fact--and the diminution is even more acute among younger generations.

The California vs. Texas match up is always an interesting one to look at. Personally, dwelling on the two most populous states in the country leaves me feeling like we're all destined to lose, but when it comes to scholastic results, Texas appears to come out on top. It might well be because the state has adopted the motto of the most famous Hispanic athlete in American history to pull it off, but there you go!

So mothers, be bad to your daughters

Today I got into a discussion about the runaway success of Fifty Shades of Grey with a self-described feminist who argued that the book and movie are popular because they undercut the idea that women like to be dominated by men. She reasoned that because, apparently, the guy ends up committing to the female protagonist,it illustrates that in fact gender is little more than a social construction.

There are a thousand ways to take this down, and I employed several of them, but approach 1,001 came to mind during the conversation. It feels like if I'm not unknowingly plagiarizing Heartiste here, I'm surely just restating what someone or several other people have already pointed out. Still, the articulation at least is novel to me.

If women, who are putatively by their very natures are as gender-neutral as young boys are, become acclimated by society over time to accept male-preferred sex roles, shouldn't there be a dynamic of young, naive daughters falling for sweet, gentle, doting guys against their mothers' wishes? In a society free of patrimony, these mothers would encourage their daughters to follow their passions and stay with these nice guys. Their mothers warn them against the nice guys though, because, as middle-aged women steeped in decades of patriarchal mind control, they've been inculcated to the point of reflexively pleading with their daughters to forget the nice guys and instead start chasing the pump-and-dump rebels who play by their own rules. Sure, the mothers' efforts usually fall on the deaf ears of the poor girls who are indifferent to the bad boys and hopelessly enraptured by the nice guys, but a mother still has to try, doesn't she?

The exact opposite scenario characterizes the real world, of course. In reality, middle class American parents try to mitigate and temper the natural desires of their children with the wisdom and practical understanding they've picked up over the courses of their own lives. Society tries its best to artificially move towards something approaching gender neutrality--not entirely without success--but in so doing is fighting against that tenacious bitch, biology.   

State IQ estimates, blacks only (2013)

IQ estimates similarly arrived at through the utilization of 2013 NAEP results in math and reading among black 8th graders follow. The scores for both tests are on a 500 point scale, with a presumed standard deviation of 40. In the proceeding table, these are converted into IQ estimates with a mean of 98--corresponding to the national average NAEP scores of 283.62 for math and 266.02 for reading--and a standard deviation of 15. The math and reading scores are given equal weighting, except in the cases of Hawaii, Maine, and South Dakota, for which only reading, math, and reading scores are available, respectively. There are no estimates for Idaho, Montana, New Hampshire, Oregon, Utah, or Wyoming due to insufficient sample sizes in those states.

I dispense with the tradition of color-coding states in the table based on how their populations under consideration voted, for reasons made clear here:

State	IQ
DoDEA	96.6
1. New Jersey	94.7
2. Hawaii	94.5
3. Massachusetts	94.2
4. Maine	93.6
5. Maryland	93.5
6. Washington	93.1
7. North Dakota	93.1
8. Texas	92.8
9. Alaska	92.4
10. South Dakota	92.1
11. North Carolina	91.5
12. West Virginia	91.5
13. Florida	91.3
14. Delaware	91.2
15. Connecticut	91.2
16. Vermont	90.9
17. Virginia	90.9
18. Georgia	90.7
19. Arizona	90.4
20. New York	90.4
21. Ohio	90.4
22. Rhode Island	90.1
23. Pennsylvania	90.0
24. Kansas	89.9
25. Indiana	89.9
26. Nevada	89.8
27. Minnesota	89.2
28. South Carolina	89.1
29. Tennessee	89.1
30. Kentucky	89.1
31. Colorado	89.1
32. Illinois	89.0
33. Missouri	88.6
34. California	88.6
35. Louisiana	88.5
36. District of Columbia	88.3
37. New Mexico	88.3
38. Iowa	88.2
39. Nebraska	87.9
40. Oklahoma	87.8
41. Arkansas	87.3
42. Michigan	86.9
43. Mississippi	86.2
44. Alabama	85.8
45. Wisconsin	85.3

A map of the same. The darker a state's shading, the higher its black IQ. Yellow indicates insufficient data:

Racial relations in the US military are generally regarded as being better than they are in the civilian world. This is potentially an important reason why that is the case. Hawaii's strong showing is more evidence of just how authentically black Barack Obama is!

The relatively high scores will jump out immediately to those who are familiar with the history of differences in results on IQ tests by race. The estimated national average IQ estimate for black Americans using the methodology described above is 90.1. Traditionally, US blacks have consistently scored around 85, and the gap between whites and blacks has held tenaciously at one standard deviation, so these estimates appear rather high. A few possibilities as to why:

- The black/white IQ gap may be narrowing. Flynn and Dickens argue that blacks have gained five or six points on whites over the last three decades, presumably spurred in part by better access to nutrition and healthcare. If accurate, that would put contemporary average African American IQ at 90 or 91, just as my estimates did.

- The rate of interracial marriage and procreation has increased over time. Richard Lynn marshals a good deal of evidence showing that racial 'hybrids' tend toward IQs that are an average of the two groups their parents represent. This should work to attenuate the gap by slightly lowering average white IQ and raising average black IQ a bit (the latter should rise more than the former falls due to sheer size).

- I built the formula for the estimates using Richard Lynn's data on international academic and IQ test results, so my equation is linear. Although Lynn believes that adjusting for attenuation yields a correlation between test scores and IQ of 1 (a perfect relationship), I'm inclined to assume that the correlations for IQ and math (.87) and IQ and science (.81), even adjusted for attenuation, are still not perfect. And because my formula is linear, moving further out from the averages if anything underestimates the magnitude of the true deviation. So depending on the true strength of the relationship, the estimates might be inflated by a couple of points (although I think this would only be on the order of a point or two).

- Differing rates of truancy by race may be artificially giving blacks a boost relative to whites. Assuming that children frequently absent from school generally come from more chaotic, less endowed households, it follows that students who are the least likely to show up on test day are among the poorest performers. And the absentee rate for black children (24%), defined as missing an average of three or more days per month, is greater than the rate for white striplings (19%).

- According to the late Philip Rushton, black adolescents develop faster than white adolescents (who in turn develop faster than Asians). Consequently, young blacks achieve greater parity with their white counterparts than they do as both groups age. Indeed, very early on black children may be more intelligent than whites and Asians due to relatively accelerated physical development. This meshes with the tentative assertion that the gap may have narrowed among children but doesn't appear to be shrinking among adults. To the extent that differing development levels affect average scores by race, IQ tests based on an average white IQ of 100 given to children will tend to underestimate the eventual cognitive capacity of Asians and overestimate it for blacks.

Parenthetically, the correlation between a state's white-black IQ gap and its propensity to vote for Romney in 2012 is .47 (p-value =  .0013). Unfairly, I can imagine Rush Limbaugh pointing this out as evidence that the Democrats benefit from keeping blacks down!

2013 IQ estimates by state, total and white only

Steve Sailer's highlighting of 2013 white IQ estimates by state led to my receiving a few useful tips on how to improve the quality of the conversions. The estimates subsequently provided and the estimates provided in the original post correlate at a almost perfect .994, so the adjustments are very marginal, but, to the extent that they've changed, presumably better*. The accompanying maps are not recreated here as they would be virtually indistinguishable from one the originals. For more on the methodology and light commentary, please see the original posts here (all) and here (whites only), and also blacks only here.

Mean IQ estimates by state using 2013 8th grade math and reading NAEP assessment data:

State	IQ
1. Massachusetts	103.9
2. New Jersey	102.8
3. New Hampshire	102.3
4. Vermont	102.2
DoDEA	101.7
5. Minnesota	101.3
6. Washington	100.6
7. Pennsylvania	100.6
8. Montana	100.4
9. Colorado	100.3
10. Maryland	100.3
11. Connecticut	100.2
12. Wyoming	100.0
13. Ohio	99.9
14. North Dakota	99.8
15. Maine	99.7
16. Idaho	99.5
17. Kansas	99.4
18. Wisconsin	99.4
19. Virginia	99.3
20. South Dakota	99.2
21. Indiana	99.1
22. Utah	99.0
23. Nebraska	99.0
24. Iowa	99.0
25. Oregon	98.5
26. Illinois	98.5
27. Texas	98.4
28. Rhode Island	98.2
29. Kentucky	98.2
30. Missouri	98.1
31. North Carolina	98.1
32. Delaware	97.7
33. New York	97.7
34. Florida	97.4
35. Michigan	97.3
36. Georgia	96.8
37. Tennessee	96.7
38. Alaska	96.5
39. South Carolina	96.2
40. Hawaii	96.2
41. Arizona	96.0
42. Nevada	96.0
43. Arkansas	95.9
44. Oklahoma	95.5
45. California	95.4
46. West Virginia	94.2
47. Louisiana	93.9
48. New Mexico	93.6
49. Alabama	93.2
50. Mississippi	92.6
51. District of Columbia	90.2

And the same but with only non-Hispanic white students considered:

State	IQ
1. District of Columbia	111.6
2. Massachusetts	107.0
3. New Jersey	105.8
4. Maryland	104.8
5. Colorado	104.2
6. Connecticut	104.2
7. Texas	104.1
DoDEA	104.1
8. Minnesota	103.9
9. Pennsylvania	103.5
10. Washington	103.3
11. Illinois	102.8
12. New Hampshire	102.8
13. Vermont	102.5
14. Virginia	102.4
15. New York	102.4
16. Montana	102.2
17. North Carolina	102.2
18. Alaska	101.9
19. Wisconsin	101.9
20. Rhode Island	101.9
21. Kansas	101.7
22. Ohio	101.7
23. Delaware	101.7
24. Nebraska	101.6
25. California	101.6
26. Arizona	101.5
27. Georgia	101.4
28. South Dakota	101.3
29. Florida	101.2
30. North Dakota	101.2
31. Idaho	101.1
32. Utah	101.1
33. Hawaii	101.1
34. Indiana	101.0
35. Wyoming	101.0
36. Oregon	101.0
37. South Carolina	100.7
38. Nevada	100.5
39. Missouri	100.4
40. New Mexico	100.3
41. Iowa	100.3
42. Maine	100.0
43. Michigan	99.6
44. Kentucky	99.4
45. Arkansas	99.0
46. Tennessee	98.9
47. Louisiana	98.8
48. Mississippi	98.2
49. Oklahoma	97.9
50. Alabama	97.3
51. West Virginia	94.3

* Firstly, I dispensed with the attempted private school adjustments that were a consequence of me trying to be clever by adding an unnecessary wrinkle to the scores, one that I ported from the first set of estimates I put together nearly a decade ago. The NAEP reports that it tests a representative sample of private and public school students from each state, so that's what we should go with.

Secondly, while the NAEP tests were originally designed to have a 50 point standard deviation on a 500 point scale, over the last several years the SDs have been narrower than 50. They vary slightly by year, subject, and grade, but the national sample SDs for 2013 were 37 for math and 34 for reading. As a consequence, there is more variance in estimated IQ among the top and bottom states. The relative difference between states remains essentially unchanged--this is a 'cosmetic' upgrade.

State IQ estimates, whites only (2013)

IQ estimates similarly arrived at through the utilization of 2013 NAEP results in math and reading among white 8th graders follow. The scores for both tests are on a 500 point scale, with a designed standard deviation of 50. In the proceeding table, these are converted into IQ estimates with a mean of 97.4--corresponding to the national average NAEP scores of 283.62 for math and 266.02 for reading--and a standard deviation of 15. The math and reading scores are given equal weighting.

In the spirit of the 2004 IQ hoax, states are color-coded according to how their white electorates voted in 2012. Due to insufficient exit polling data in the less competitive states, it's not possible to accurately ascertain the margins of victories among whites at the state level, so red (blue) indicates a simple Romney (Obama) win. Connecticut split evenly, 49%-49%:

State	IQ
1. District of Columbia	108.0
2. Massachusetts	104.4
3. New Jersey	103.5
4. Maryland	103.0
5. Connecticut	102.4
6. Colorado	102.3
7. Minnesota	102.2
8. Texas	102.1
9. Pennsylvania	102.1
10. Washington	101.7
DoDEA	101.7
11. Illinois	101.4
12. New Hampshire	101.4
13. New York	101.3
14. Vermont	101.1
15. Delaware	101.1
16. Virginia	101.1
17. Montana	100.9
18. Wisconsin	100.9
19. North Carolina	100.9
20. Rhode Island	100.9
21. Hawaii	100.8
22. Ohio	100.8
23. Alaska	100.7
24. Nebraska	100.7
25. Kansas	100.6
26. California	100.4
27. South Dakota	100.3
28. Georgia	100.3
29. Florida	100.3
30. Arizona	100.2
31. Indiana	100.2
32. North Dakota	100.1
33. Idaho	100.0
34. Oregon	100.0
35. Utah	99.8
36. South Carolina	99.8
37. Missouri	99.8
38. Wyoming	99.7
39. Iowa	99.6
40. New Mexico	99.5
41. Nevada	99.5
42. Maine	99.3
43. Michigan	99.1
44. Kentucky	99.0
45. Louisiana	98.9
46. Tennessee	98.7
47. Arkansas	98.4
48. Mississippi	98.2
49. Oklahoma	97.7
50. Alabama	97.5
51. West Virginia	95.1

For the uninitiated who feel as though they're seeing an awful lot of red in the preceding table and presume I'm in error giving vermilion hues to the likes of California, Illinois, and New Jersey, please do see here.

A map of the same. The darker a state's shading, the higher its IQ:

Texas outperforms expectations. Is it something miraculous or is something awry? Whatever the case, the state is going to sink under the weight of its increasing diversity load so that even if each of its ethnic groups continue to outperform the expectations of their respective groups, the state as a whole is going to slip into the bottom third of states in the next decade or so.

Notice that the estimates show a mean IQ value above 100 (100.7 to be precise). It's an artifact of my presumption that the national average for the US is 98, the figure given in IQ and the Wealth of Nations, published in 2002 (with national estimates based on data obviously older than that). As the US steadily becomes less white, the national average will correspondingly decline. That should already be the case in 2015, and it's detectable here. Working backwards, I'd peg the contemporary US average at 97.

Among blacks the more religious, the more Democratic

In a series of posts he is constructing on contemporary support for Barack Obama using Reuters-Ipsos opinion polling data, Hail discovered an interesting positive correlation between religiosity among blacks and increased support for Obama.

It is conventionally assumed that piety, especially of the Christian variety, tends to accompany relatively greater support for Republicans in the US. And among whites that is clearly the case. On the contrary, however, the more religious blacks are, the more likely and more strongly they are to identify as Democrats. Conversely, the less religious they are, the more likely they are to buck the wider black trend and identify as Republican.

Hail picked up on it, and the GSS affirms his insight. The following table shows black partisan affiliation by frequency of worship attendance. The higher the score, the more Democratically-inclined the group (a score of 3 represents perfect independence; anything over three indicates a Democratic leaning and anything under 3 indicates a Republican leaning). For contemporary relevance only responses from the year 2000 onward are included:

Attendance	DemID
Once a year at most	4.47
Multiple times per year but no more than monthly	4.62
Multiple times per month but not weekly	4.85
At least weekly	4.82

The differences are modest, on the order of one-quarter of one standard deviation difference between the Democratic affinities of the least frequent and most frequent black churchgoers. The more remarkable fact is that religiosity 'pushes' whites in one direction and blacks in another. This knowledge makes the Fringe Coalition look even more susceptible to fissures and fractures in the future that it did before.

GSS variables used: RACECEN1(2), YEAR(2000-2012)

The Narses Exception

Does undergoing a sex change operation constitute being true to one's self? Or does it evince an extreme inability to know and then accept thyself? What a conundrum these questions do pose.

My answers are no and yes, respectively. A sex change--self-mutilation, really--is an abomination, and an abomination that, prior to modern medical techniques, was only relegated to slaves, miscreants, and zealous ascetics. It's not something psychologically stable people voluntarily undergo.

Presumably the normalization of homosexuality would end the bizarre desire for the practice. A gay man no longer has any ostensible need to assume the anatomical visage of a woman to attract the attention of other men--there's an enormous market that caters to gay men and to lesbians and rather than being a mark of shame, flaunting one's homosexuality has now become a venerable badge of honor in the West.

If the desire can be chalked up to wanting to increase the range of potential male suitors from the ~3% of the population that is homosexual to the 97% that is heterosexual, well, in addition to being repugnantly devious, that also seems doomed to failure. Heterosexual men have an evolutionarily well-tuned ability to hone in on body proportions and detect when things are awry, with vanishing sexual interest an almost unavoidable consequence.