Ogbu, J. U., The Consequences of the American Caste System, In U. Neisser (Ed.), The School Achievement of Minority Children: New Perspectives, 1986

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This paper explores the various explanations surrounding IQ's of blacks and the existence of a castelike stratified society in America, espeically with blacks. It also explores the consequences of the caste system on IQ and school performance.

Explanations for IQ Differences

Genetic
Some researchers believe IQ differences are genetic, and IQ differences are handed down from generations. Jensen believes that there are two levels of intelligence. Level one is concrete learning, and is normally distributed across all income levels. Level 2 is abstract thinking, conceptual learning, and problem solving, which is mainly present in middle and upper income levels.

Hoever, there are no studies that link specific genes to intelligence levels, and the IQ differences seen can be also explained by caste factors.

Home Environment and Childrearing Practices
Others relate home enviroment to intellectual development and ultimately IQ. Socioeconomic status determines the quality and quantity of child-family interaction as well as availability of learning resources. Deficiencies in early stages of life will have long term repercussions.

These researchers feel black children don't get high quality childrearing from black mothers, and strive to teach them white mother childrearing skills. These remedial efforts haven't been very successful. This view sets up white practices as standards and doesn't acknowledge that cognitive deficiencies may be the actual cause of poorer child rearing. Finally, much of this research has been done on animals.

Cultural Differences
Others believe the IQ tests themselves are culturally biased, and try to design more culturally sensitive tests, with little success. The approach doesn't relate to the "imperative of culture" -- to the economic, political, and other institutional arrangements of American society and how the tasks within them are parcelled out to balcks and whites, tasks that require and stimulate cognitive skills."

Content vs Style in Culture
Cultural factors associated with schooling are usually more content specific, like tribes in Africa who don't have number concepts have some initial trouble learning them when they enter Western schools.

But in the US "culture factors" that are said to impair learning in Blacks are not so specific. And the cultural factors that people use to explain why blacks perform poorly don't seem to hold up when applied to other non-White cultures in America (Chinese, Korean, etc.).

Response to Change
In non-Western cultures, they learn to adapt to Western schooling practices and learning styles (ex. Chinese adapt to mathematical methodologies of US students when being here for a while. But in caste-like systems, lower caste people have some resistance to learning in the style of the dominant group.

Castelike Minority Status
The author defines three types of minority groups:

Autonomous minorities like Amish, Jews and Mormons are groups that aren't subordinate to a dominant group politically and economically.

Immigrant minorities that came to American more or less volntarily. They may be poor and work in lower paying jobs, but that fact doesn't reflect their true status in the total hierarchy, because these groups don't see themselves as low caste. They see low paying jobs as temporary and better than what they left back in their home country. They also compare themselves not with the dominant group but those they left behind. They tend to do relatively well in school, even though they don't share the same culture as the white middle class. These inclue Chinese, Filipinos, Japanese, Koreans, etc.

Castelike minorities were incorporated into the country more or less involuntarily and permanently. These include blacks, American indians, Mexicans, Native Hawaiians, Puerto Ricans. Membership is acquired at birth and retained permanently. Regarded by white majority as inferior and not desirable as neighbors or workmates. They lack political power and are economically subordinate. They face a job ceiling, and are not hired on the basis of training and skills like other minorities.

Castelike groups also reject the ideology and beliefs of the dominant group that rationalize their position. They believe their problems are due to the "system" and racism than their own inadequacies. They may develop a "collective institutional discrimination perspective". This leads them into channel efforts into collective struggle.

Castelike minoritiesare not the same as racial minorities.

Race becomes a significant variable in school performance only when the groups are stratified. Blacks have recieved status summation and a job ceiling not faced by lower class whites. Unsuccessful whites blame themselved, unsuccessful blacks blame the system. "What distinguishes blacks from lower-class whites is not that their objective material conditions are different, but rather that the way the minorities perceive, interpret, and respond to their conditions are different."

Other caste vs IQ test studies
Other castes in the world suffer similar fates. Children in caste-like groups consistently score 10 to 15 points lower than the dominant groups in their country. Interestingly, however, if low caste groups emigrate to a country where they are not a caste group, their IQ scores go up (e.g., Japanese Buraku in the US).

Castelike Minority Status and IQ
IQ tests evaluate cognitive skills, not cognitive capacities or processes. Cognitive capacities and processes are universal, cognitive skills are not. They are the product of the culture of the whole that in the past has learned to deal with social, political, economic, technological and other problems facing them in their environment. So if two groups have different cognitive skills, it may be due to cultural history differences.

IQ tests also do not test the entire cognitive range. IQ tests measure the cognitive abilities deemed important by Western people to be successful in a Western environment.

Others also claim that the white middle class has developed their cognitive abilities through jobs about the job ceiling felt by blacks. Also, black schools haven't emphasized the curriculum in white schools that stress the cognitive skills measured in IQ tests. " The job ceiling and education-related discriminatory treatment tend to disillusion blacks about the real worth of schooling."

Children respond positively to schooling if they see older people in their community getting jobs commensurate with their level of schooling.

Traditionally, black schools in the south had emphasized "industrial" skills rather than academic skills, and spending on blacks was much lower than whites. Interestingly, the unemployment gap between blacks and whites increases with amount of education, which further suggests a "job ceiling". Blacks also earn less vs whites for similar work.

Most of the recent gains in black opportunity structures since the 60's has gone to the black middle class. Lower, inner-city blacks opportunities have gotten worse.