Historical IQ Tests on Immigrants

What a 1922 IQ test of immigrants to America tells us about intelligence, race and prejudice.

Erik Engheim

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Immigrants to the US on Ellis Island

Digging through some old documents, I came across this old study from 1922, which I had forgotten about. It tells an interesting story about race, IQ and prejudice. The study is enlightening to anybody who wants to push back against the resurgent “scientific racism.”

Being a racist is no longer acceptable in polite society. Hence modern day racists are calling themselves “race realists,” and prefer to hint at racial inferiority and superiority through pointing to IQ tests of different populations. They are only presenting the science, they claim. It is all very innocent, you see. Don’t call them racists; they are just championing “science.”

In such cases, knowing history is often crucial to putting the science in proper context. We must be aware of how science has historically been abused to promote and push racism. People unaware of the history of scientific racism easily fall prey to it.

Therefore I want to call attention to this study by Kimball Young in 1922. It compares the IQ score of different immigrant groups.

The Fear of Racially Inferior Groups

The sentiment back in 1922 was not all that different from what Trump echoed, when in January 2018 he said:

“Haiti? Why do we want people from Haiti here?” Then they got Africa. “Why do we want these people from all these shithole countries here? We should have more people from places like Norway.”

If you have spent any time talking to people on the political right, you will soon learn of a certain worry about America and Europe seeing a decline due to import of inferior people. When I have tried to sell conservative Americans on the Nordic model, they have frequently dismissed the outcome of this model as not being about policies at all but rather about having a “homogenous population.” Dig a bit further and it is clear that what they really mean is that Nordic countries don’t have a lot of Blacks, hispanics and other “undesirables.”

This is nothing new. It is just who gets labeled undesirable that changes. Back in 1922, the worry was…

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Erik Engheim

Geek dad, living in Oslo, Norway with passion for UX, Julia programming, science, teaching, reading and writing.