Have you ever wondered what your IQ really measures? "IQ" stands for "intelligence quotient." A person's IQ is supposed to be a measure of that person's intelligence: the higher the IQ number, the greater the intelligence. This is inaccurate, however, since it assumes that there is only one kind of intelligence. Most people recognize that there are some people with fantastic memories, some with mechanical expertise, some with musical genius, some with good vocabularies, etc., etc. An IQ test, therefore, should not be considered a measure of a person's intelligence. Rather, it is just a measure of the person's IQ. Although there has not been any correlation between race and intelligence, there have been many arguments that race and IQ have a significant correlation. Works such as The Bell Curve have been used to support the notion that some races are inferior to others. Once it is determined that race and IQ have a relationship, the question then becomes where race fits into the nature/nurture debate of on the influences of genetic versus environment for IQ scores. The problem with nature and nurture is to decide which -inheritance or environment- is primary, for the IQ, is exclusively the result of neither one alone. .
However, the term "race" is more problematic than the term intelligence. While we are all members of the human race, few deny that there are many races or that there are obvious physical and cultural differences among different ethnic groups. There is no such thing as a racial gene or set of race genes any more than there is such as an intelligence gene or set of intelligence genes. This does not mean, of course, that a person's genetic makeup is not a significant factor in individual intelligence in particular areas.
To some people, intelligence tests are not culturally biased against American blacks or other native-born, English speaking peoples in the United States.
