The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life

by Richard J. Herrnstein

  The most plausible explanation for the large gap toward the top of the table is that employers are using dual standards for black and white job applicants. Moreover, we venture the hypothesis that employers are using dual standards at least in part because someone or something (the government or an aversion to harmful publicity) is making them do so—hence our conclusion that affirmative action is probably having a more substantial impact on hiring practices than the standard analyses indicate.

  This also leads to a reinterpretation of the graph on page 485 for clerical and professional and technical jobs. We pointed out that the trendlines for black employees did not get steeper, with the single exception of clerical jobs, after the Civil Rights Act was passed. Now we are suggesting an alternative perspective: The fact that the trendlines continued to go up as long as they did is in itself evidence of the impact of affirmative action. Without affirmative action, the trendlines would have leveled off sooner, perhaps at the point at which blacks and whites of equal IQ had equal chances of employment in high-status jobs. In the next figure, we adjust the hiring proportions for the known difference in IQ between whites and blacks.11 For professional and technical jobs, the assumption is that employees are normally drawn from people with IQs of 98 or higher; for clerical jobs, the assumption is that they are drawn from within the range of 86 to 123.12 The results are shown in the figure below.

  A revised view of equal employment opportunity after correcting for ethnic differences in the IQ distributions

  Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics 1983, 1989; U.S. Department of Labor 1991.

  a The ratio represents blacks employed in a given occupational grouping expressed as a percentage of eligible blacks, divided by the whites employed in the same occupational grouping expressed as a percentage of eligible whites. The number of eligibles is determined by the size of the working-age population in that race who fall within the IQ range for that occupation, as calculated from a table of normal probabilities. The assumptions for computing the ratio are: (1) the IQ range for professional and technical jobs is 98 and higher; (2) the IQ range for clerical jobs is 86-123; (3) IQ is normally distributed with a mean of 85 for blacks and 1OO for nonblacks, with a standard deviation of 15 for both groups.

  What “should” the lines look like? If the assumptions in drawing them were accurate, then both lines should have risen to 1 (to signify that blacks and whites in the same IQ range are hired at the same rate) after the antidiscrimination laws were passed and then hovered near 1 thereafter. Anything above 1.0 signifies a higher likelihood for blacks of being hired, once IQ is held constant; below 1.0, the opposite is true. The proportion of blacks in professional and technical jobs rose above 1 in the early 1960s, flattened after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, took another steep jump after Griggs, and then settled into a gradual rise through the late 1980s. For clerical jobs, progress after 1964 led to parity in the late 1960s. The relative proportion of blacks in clerical jobs then continued to increase at a slower but more nearly linear pace since then. In both categories of employment, blacks have been hired at higher rates than whites of equal IQ since the late 1960s, and the upward trend lasted at least until the late 1980s.

  Since these job categories do not have precisely defined IQ ranges, it may be asked what would happen if the assumptions were changed. Some of the alternatives we tried are described in the note to this paragraph. The short answer is that the picture stays essentially the same within any reasonable range of assumptions. The overall conclusion is that blacks have for some years had more people working in both clerical jobs and professional and technical jobs than would ordinarily be expected, given the IQ range from which those jobs are usually filled.13

  The figure above uses broad guidelines about the IQ range from which certain jobs are held and applies them to national data about occupations. For a narrower focus, the NLSY supplies data about specific individuals, their occupations, and IQs.14 In 1990, using the same definition of “professional and technical occupations,” and after controlling for IQ (set at 113, the mean IQ for whites in such occupations), the proportion of blacks in the NLSY employed in professional and technical occupations was 1.5 times the proportion for whites, compared to the ratio of 1.7 shown for 1990 in the graph. For clerical jobs, after controlling for age and IQ (with IQ set at 103, the mean value for whites holding clerical jobs), a black in the NLSY was 1.9 times more likely than a white to be employed in a clerical job, compared to the figure of 1.6 for 1990 as shown in the graph.15 The conclusion drawn from national statistics is thus confirmed by the individual data in the NLSY.

  Several points may be drawn from this exercise. First, it highlights the reality and magnitude of the discrimination suffered by blacks prior to the civil rights movement. As recently as 1959, the employment of blacks in clerical and professional and technical jobs was only half the proportion that would have been expected from recruitment to those jobs based on IQ alone. Decennial census data (not to mention living memory) tell us that this underrepresentation was still more severe in the 1950s and 1940s.16 There was a clear and large racial deficit to be made up.

  Second, the exercise shows how rapidly changes were made in the 1960s and early 1970s. If cognitive ability is taken into account, the underrepresentation of blacks in professional and technical jobs was gone by 1964, prior to the Civil Rights Act. This closing of the occupational gap between blacks and whites, obscured by trendlines that do not compensate for IQ differences, argues that something besides antidiscrimination legislation was already afoot in America, making the job market less stacked against blacks.

  Third, by the end of the 1960s, the job market had pressed beyond the point of parity for blacks and whites, again after cognitive ability is taken into account. One might argue that this merely proves that IQ is not so important for job productivity after all—except that a large literature, already summarized, demonstrates beyond much doubt that IQ is as predictive of job performance for blacks as for whites.17 We can only surmise that the reason for attaining such high levels of black representation, particularly in the occupations that most strongly correlate with IQ, includes the impact of affirmative action policies. To that extent, if these affirmative action policies were changed, black employment in these occupations would fall. Would this be a return to unfairness? We will return to this hard question after considering the costs of affirmative action for job performance.

  THE COSTS OF AFFIRMATIVE ACTION: JOB PERFORMANCE

  Inasmuch as cognitive ability is related to job performance and as minority workers are entering professions with lower ability distributions than whites, is there evidence of lower average performance for minority workers than for whites? Of all the many kinds of double-speak associated with affirmative action, this question points to one of the most egregious. Private complaints about the incompetent affirmative-action hiree are much more common than scholarly examination of the issue. We may nonetheless present several cases bearing on job performance, all telling similar stories for different occupations, using different kinds of data.

  Teacher Competency Examinations

  The nationwide enthusiasm for teacher competency examinations in the 1980s resulted in teacher testing programs in virtually all states by the end of the decade.18 These competency tests are seldom job performance tests as such, but rather a test of basic knowledge of reading, writing, and mathematics. Even so, teachers who score higher on the tests have greater success with their students.19 The competency exams seem to have had some generally beneficial effects, though the cutoffs are low by the usual standards of what we expect teachers to know.20 The pass rates for whites typically exceed 80 percent and sometimes 90 percent. Whatever your profession may be, think about the meaning of a test that would “pass” aspirants to the profession who perform in the bottom 20 percent. But having so low a cutoff for whites sharpens the evidence of the disparity in black and white qualifications, as shown in the following table.

  Typical Results of State Te
acher Competency Examinations

  Pass Rate

  Whites Blacks Implied Difference in SDsa

  Sources: H. Collins, “Minority groups are still lagging on teacher exam,” Philadelphia Inquirer, Aug. 5, 1989, p. B1; T. Spofford, “Teacher test called biased,” Albany Times Union, Nov. 20, 1987, p. A1; B. Davila, “State’s teacher test biased against minorities, lawsuit contends,” Sacramento Bee, Sept. 24, 1992, p. B8; “Minority teachers,” Richmond News Leader, May 16, 1989, p. A14.

  aAssumes a normal distribution and equal standard deviations in both groups.

  California, 1983-1991 80% 35% 1.2

  Pennsylvania, 1989 93 68 1.0

  New York, 1987 83 36 1.3

  Georgia, 1978-1986 87 40 1.4

  These are not cognitive ability scores or scores that are being used to select people for further education but competency scores achieved by people who are heading into the nation’s classrooms. According to the institutions that have graduated these applicants for teacher certification (in some cases, the scores are for teachers already on the job), all of them have met the requirements for a college degree, and they presumably can read, write, and do basic math. The scores are on tests that make no pretense to seek excellence but to weed out the most obviously unsuited.21 With differences ranging upwards of 1 standard deviation, the inescapable conclusion is that a large gap separates black and white teachers in basic skills.22

  The Compensating Skills Fallacy

  One of the most common arguments about the current practice of affirmative action might be called the compensating skills fallacy. It is commonly applied to any profession under discussion, but teachers provide an especially good example. The argument goes like this:

  There are many skills and qualities that go into being a good teacher besides test scores. The ability to inspire confidence, to create an eagerness to learn, to listen to children are all part of the wide repertoire of skills that go into being a good teacher that have nothing to do with the traits measured by a cognitive ability or academic skills test.

  The statement itself is correct. Most professions involve a number of important nonintellectual attributes. The fallacy lies in assuming that people who have lower cognitive test scores will, on average, be better endowed in these other areas than people with higher scores.

  Suppose that the teacher competency exams consisted of several parts, each of which measured one of these nonintellectual skills. It would be possible to defend hiring teachers with marginal grades on the intellectual skills if these teachers were hired from the top of the list on the tests of the other qualities. But the way affirmative action programs actually work, these other qualities are not tested or compared. The minority candidate with the best score on the test of intellectual qualities is selected. As for the other qualities, not measured by the test, there is no reason to assume that they are any higher than average.23

  A Journalst’s Account of the Washington, D.C., Police Force

  Because affirmative action has been practiced most aggressively in public employment—police, firefighters, social welfare agencies, departments of motor vehicles, and the like—they are logical places to look if indeed job performance has been compromised.24 The Washington, D.C., Police Department is a case in point, as described by journalist Tucker Carlson.25

  In the mid-1970s, the Washington, D.C., Police Department installed a residency requirement for police. Washington’s white population is densely concentrated among white-collar and professional groups, with no significant white working-class neighborhoods. The residency requirement thereby severely restricted the pool of potential white applicants. By 1982, 40 percent of the candidates who took the police admissions test failed it, and the department was having a hard time filling positions. A new test was introduced in 1985, normed to favor minority applicants. Standards in the police academy were lowered to the point at which not one student flunked out of the training course in 1983 (despite the lower cognitive ability of the candidates being admitted). In 1988, the academy abolished its final comprehensive pencil-and-paper examination after 40 percent of graduating recruits failed it. The former head of the Fraternal Order of Police and a veteran of twenty-two years on the force reported that, at about that time, he began hearing “about people at the academy who could not read or write.”26 A former academy instructor says that “I saw people who were practically illiterate. I’ve seen people diagnosed as borderline retarded graduate from the police academy.”27

  This degradation of intellectual requirements translates into police performance on the street. For example, the paperwork that follows an arrest has been a bane of police everywhere for many years, but when police can do the work, it is mainly an inconvenience, not a barrier. An officer who cannot do the paperwork or who finds that it pushes the limits of his abilities may forgo making arrests in marginal cases. The arrests that are made are often botched. Between 1986 and 1990, about a third of all the murder cases brought to the U.S. attorney’s office in the District were dismissed, historically an unusually high rate, often because the prosecutors were unable to make sense of the arrest reports.

  The basic features of Carlson’s account are confirmed by a variety of other journalistic accounts, most conspicuously a 1993 investigative series by the Washington Post on police performance.28 Two facts about the Washington Police Department seem clear: Recruitment and training standards deteriorated markedly in recent decades, and the performance of the department, once considered a national model, has also deteriorated badly.

  Washington is not unique. In Miami in 1985, the police department was rocked by the discovery and seizure of hundreds of pounds of cocaine hidden by police officers working in cahoots with smugglers. We have the results of the intense self-examination that resulted. The main conclusion was that this crime, as well as the many others that were straining community-police relations at the time, could be traced in part to the relaxation of hiring standards mandated by affirmative action regulations. Almost 90 percent of the officers who were dismissed or suspended within a few years of the initiation of aggressive affirmative action policies at the beginning of the 1980s were officers with marginal qualifications, hired because of those policies.29

  Such stories are common among people who have worked in, or been a client of, organizations that practice aggressive affirmative action, and the link they ascribe to affirmative action is usually explicit and emphatic.30 There is a great deal of smoke emanating from such accounts. We urge that people start checking out whether there is any fire.

  A Scholarly Analysis of an Affirmative Action Program for Blue-Collar Jobs

  Economist Eugene Silberberg systematically compared the experience of blacks who were admitted to craft unions (electricians, plumbers, and pipefitters) in Seattle at the end of the 1970s under a court order and whites who were admitted under ordinary selection procedures at the same time.31 Silberberg assembled data on performance in apprentice school, on-the-job ratings, and educational background, then was given access to a variety of job performance measures over an eighteen-month follow-up period: hours worked, number of employees who quit, jobs turned down, failures to respond to a dispatch, and being listed by an employer as not eligible for rehire. The table below shows the combined differences, expressed in standard deviations, for the pipefitters and plumbers.

  Job Performance of Black Affirmative Action Plumbers and Pipefitters Compared to White Regular Hirees

  Black-White Difference in SDs

  Source: Silberberg 1985, Table 2.

  Note: The table combines data on apprentices and journeyman for both crafts using weighted standard deviations.

  Job performance measures

  Quits or no rehire +.6

  Termination for cause +.5

  Nonresponse to job call +.6

  Hours worked −.9

  IQ-related measures

  GPA in apprentice school −1.3

  GPA in on-the-job training −8

  Comparing t
he blacks admitted under the court order with whites admitted under the ordinary procedures at the same time, the blacks quit at more than six times the rate for whites, were terminated for cause at more than three times the rate for whites, and did not respond to a job dispatch at more than six times the rate for whites. Similar results were obtained for the electricians. The results track closely with the larger literature on IQ and job productivity. The differences in the job performance measures are what might be expected from the discussion in Chapter 3. Furthermore, the size of the difference in job performance is economically important. Silberberg discusses the possibility that the differences are themselves a result of bias among the dispatchers and supervisors. Given the procedures for assigning jobs in the Seattle unions, he concludes that it is extremely difficult to explain away the differences in such terms.32

  Having reviewed the less than plentiful data at hand about ethnic differences in job performance, we are reminded of a passage by Andrew Hacker, one of the stoutly “pro” voices in the affirmative action debate:

  A favorite question of affirmative action’s opponents is whether you would want to be operated on by a surgeon who had been admitted to medical school under a racial dispensation. As it happens, few posing this kind of question have any knowledge of what makes for surgical skill. In fact, there are no known correlations between good grades or high scores and subsequent success with a scalpel. If we mean to debate this subject seriously, we should rely on hard data rather than scare tactics.33