Barriers to Understanding Racial Differences in Intelligence: Commentary on Hunt and Carlson (2007)

Hunt and Carlson (2007), (this issue) present sensible guidelines for the conduct of research on group differences in intelligence. In this response, I want to indicate why I believe that their call for more research is not likely, in the near term, to lead to a clarification of the reasons for racial differences in performance on tests of intelligence. There are three barriers to progress in this field that I will consider. First, there are gaps in knowledge that render the interpretation of research problematic (see Brody, 2003, for a discussion of the indeterminate nature of research alleged to support a genetic basis for racial differences in intelligence). Second, structural inequalities in social arrangements may lead to problematic outcomes for many studies of racial differences in intelligence. Third, conceptual confusions derived from the consideration of race as a category and not as a continuum render group comparisons suspect.