The Mismeasure of Minds: Debating Race and Intelligence Between Brown and the Bell Curve

232 Pages·2018·2.76 MB·English

by  Michael E. Staub

The
Mismeasure
of
Minds
StudieS in Social Medicine
Allan M. Brandt, Larry R. Churchill,
and Jonathan Oberlander, editors
This series publishes books at the intersection of
medicine, health, and society that further our
understanding of how medicine and society shape
one another historically, politically, and ethically.
The series is grounded in the convictions that
medicine is a social science, that medicine is
humanistic and cultural as well as biological,
and that it should be studied as a social, political,
ethical, and economic force.
The
Mismeasure
of
Minds
Debating Race
and Intelligence
between Brown
and The Bell Curve
Michael E. Staub
The University of North Carolina Press
Chapel Hill
© 2018 The University of North Carolina Press
All rights reserved
Designed by April Leidig
Set in Warnock by Copperline Book Services
Manufactured in the United States of America
The University of North Carolina Press has been a member
of the Green Press Initiative since 2003.
Jacket illustration © iStockphoto.com/Hendra Su.
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Staub, Michael E., author.
Title: The mismeasure of minds : debating race and intelligence between
Brown and The bell curve / Michael E. Staub.
Other titles: Studies in social medicine.
Description: Chapel Hill : The University of North Carolina Press, [2018] |
Series: Studies in social medicine
Identifiers: lccn 2018016978| iSBn 9781469643595 (cloth : alk. paper) |
iSBn 9781469643601 (ebook)
Subjects: lcSH: Intellect—Social aspects—United States. | Intelligence levels—
Social aspects—United States. | Intelligence tests—Social aspects—United
States. | Racism—United States—Psychological aspects. | Intellect—Genetic
aspects. | Eugenics—United States—History. | Educational psychology—United
States. | School integration—United States. | Segregation in education—United
States. | Topeka (Kan.). Board of Education—Trials, litigation, etc. | Brown,
Oliver, 1918–1961—Trials, litigation, etc. | Herrnstein, Richard J. Bell curve.
Classification: lcc BF431.5.u6 S73 2018 | ddc 153.9089—dc23
lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018016978
A shorter version of chapter 3 appeared in Michael E. Staub, “The Other Side of the
Brain: The Politics of Split- Brain Research in the 1970s–1980s,” History of Psychology
19, no. 4 (2016): 259–73 (© 2016 American Psychological Association).
A prior version of chapter 4 appeared as Michael E. Staub, “Controlling Ourselves:
Emotional Intelligence, the Marsh-mallow Test, and the Inheritance of Race,”
American Studies 55 (Spring 2016): 59–80.
Lucy
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Contents
Introduction 1
one
Plasticity of Intelligence, Education Reform,
and the Disadvantaged Child 17
two
Minimal Brain Dysfunction, Ritalin,
and Racial Politics 49
tHree
The Politics of Cerebral Asymmetry
and Racial Difference 79
Four
A Racial History of Emotional Intelligence 109
Five
Neuroscience, Race, and Intelligence
after The Bell Curve 139
Afterword 169
Acknowledgments 173
Notes 175
Index 211
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Figures
1. Arthur R. Jensen in 1970 5
2. Richard M. Nixon with Daniel Patrick Moynihan in 1970 21
3. Ernest Chambers in 1968 51
4. Mark A. Stewart in 1967 61
5. Photomontage in the Journal of Learning Disabilities, 1970 65
6. Advertisement for Ritalin in the
American Journal of Diseases of Children, 1971 68
7. Vint Lawrence cartoon in the New Republic, 1997 76
8. Roger W. Sperry around 1970 84
9. Joseph E. Bogen in the mid- 1980s 86
10. Illustration by Bogen from 1975 87
11. New Yorker cartoon by Lee Lorenz, 1977 104
12. Advertisement for a “Don’t Eat the
Marshmallow!” coffee mug 112
13. “Human Beings Are Not Very Easy to Change
after All,” Saturday Review, 1972 125
14. From Neurons to Neighborhoods graph, 2000 154