Race and IQ - Again

Some high school student has injected himself (or perhaps herself) into the most radioactive issue in social science by doing a science fair project on the subject as above. The hypothesis of the project:

“If the average IQs of blacks, Southeast Asians, and Hispanics are lower than the average IQs of non-Hispanic whites and Northeast Asians, then the racial disproportionality in Humanities and International Studies Program (HISP) [the school program the student is in] is justified.”

Well, kids make bad decisions, perhaps regardless of their own IQs. But I doubt that the student in question has advanced his or her chances of getting into an elite university.

The article adds:

The student who prepared the project was of Asian descent and has a history of making racists remarks in class, reports said.

That's the article's entire characterization of the alleged perp. Fair and balanced? I report, you decide.

The article helpfully adds:

The controversial theory that race and intelligence are correlated has persisted for many years, though there has never been scientific evidence to support it.

Whatever IQ has to do with intelligence may be argued, but the correlation of self-reported race and IQ test results is documented extensively. What is controversial is the meaning of those correlations, especially the question of how much of the differences are due to heredity and how much due to environment.

There is vast literature on the subject, much of it due to ideologues with a dog in the fight. I've read a few of the books, mostly those on the liberal side, but I think that this Wikipedia article seems relatively detailed and balanced.

I expect that the whole debate will go away when it becomes clear that robots have become a lot smarter than humans.