Mentioning The "Unmentionable" Crime - Genetics - Race - Intelligence - Immigration Prof Richard Lynn Born February 1930. Professor of Psychology, University of Ulster, 1972-1995. Lecturer in Psychology, University of Exeter, 1956-67. Winner of US Mensa Award for Excellence, 1985 and 1988, for work on intelligence.

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THE ISSUES of ethnicity, race and immigration constitute the hottest of hot potatoes in today's politics: issues that generate more heat than light. To try to ascertain some hard facts on the subject Right NOW! went to Professor RICHARD LYNN, Director of the Ulster Institute for Social Research, recognised as one of Britain's leading scientific authorities on ethnicity.

His controversial answers are bound to shock and offend many people, but Right NOW! believes the issue to be of such compelling importance that it is now necessary to talk openly about formerly ‘taboo’ subjects.

Could you begin by telling us a little about yourself, your family and how you became interested in psychology, intelligence and genetics ?

Both my father and my maternal grandfather were biologists and plant breeders who had a good knowledge of genetics, so I was brought up with the idea that heredity is important. However, as a schoolboy at the Bristol Grammar School I was not greatly interested in biology. The subject that interested me most was history. I was fascinated by the struggles for power between individuals - the ambition to get ‘‘to the top of the slippery pole”, as Disraeli put it; between social classes and religious sects that erupted in the English Civil War and the French Revolution; in the incessant warfare between nations, and the rise and fall of empires. I also came to realise the shortcomings of the analyses of great historical events offered by historians. At the age of 16 I concluded that the explanation for these events must lie in human psychology, and decided that this was the subject I would take up at university. I set my sights on Cambridge as the leading scientific university, took the scholarship examinations and was awarded a scholarship by King’s College.

And how did your interests in psychology develop at Cambridge ?

I found psychology at Cambridge a bit disappointing. The interests of the department were narrowly experimental. However, I read widely and soon discovered the work on intelligence that had been done at University College in London by Charles Spearman and Cyril Burt, and the work on personality that Hans Eysenck was doing at the Institute of Psychiatry. I knew immediately that this was where my true interests lay, and although I stayed on at Cambridge to do my PhD, by the time I graduated I was a committed member of the London school.

How and why did you begin your studies on human intelligence ?

I spent the first few years of my academic career at the University of Exeter, where I worked on Eysenck’s theory of personality. Although I was interested in intelligence, I did not carry out research on it until the 1970s. In 1967 I moved to Dublin to a professorship at the Irish Economic and Social Research Institute. I became interested in the problem of national differences in economic growth. The miracle economy of the post world war years was Japan, and I wondered what could be the secret of the Japanese economic success. I read the work of economists on the question of national differences in rates of economic growth and I soon discovered that they hadn’t the slightest idea why economic growth rates differed - any more than historians had any idea of the real causes of group conflict, warfare orthe rise and fall of empires, as I had discovered as a school boy. In the 1970s it was well known in psychology that intelligence is a major determinant of social mobility and economic success among individuals, so I began to wonder whether intelligence might not also be a factor in the economic success of nations. Noone had ever attempted to measure the intelligence in different nations, so there was no way of tackling this question. However, I was thinking about the issue and, as Louis Pasteur observed, “chance favours the prepared mind”. Through chance I discovered that several American intelligence tests had been administered and standardised in Japan. I hired a translator to have the test manuals translated into English and from these I was able to calculate the average Japanese IQ. It came out at 106, 6 IQ points higher than the average of American whites. I published this result in 1977, noted that this was the highest IQ ever recorded for a population and argued that it probably reflected genetic superiority.

And how was the initial paper received ?

It was noted by people working on intelligence and was soon recorded in the standard textbooks, such as those by Hans Eysenck and Philip Vernon which appeared in 1979, and in subsequent textbooks.

Have you done any further work on the intelligence of Orientals ?

Yes, I have made this my specialism and have collected and calculated the IQs for a number of Oriental peoples including those in Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, China, and Korea. I have found that these peoples invariably have average IQs a little higher than whites in the United States, Britain and Continental Europe. Thelr overall average is about 105. My work also stimulated Philip Vernon to make a study of the IQ of ethnic Japanese and Chinese in the United States, and he came to the same conclusion that their intelligence is about 5 IQ points higher than that of whites.

How have the environmentalists reacted to this work ?

The high IQ of Orientals is an irritant for them because they have argued that intelligence tests are craftily constructed by white middle class males to ensure that they score best on the tests, or alternatively that the tests simply reflect environmental advantages. As some of the Japanese who scored higher than whites had been born and brought up during the privations of World War Two and its aftermath, these explanations were obviously not credible. So some environmentalists have tried to nit-pick my results, but their criticisms do not stand up.

And how does the 5 IQ point advantage of Orientals compare with the intelligence level of blacks ?

My work on this question has consisted of examining the IQs of blacks in Africa. Hundreds of studies have been done of blacks in the United States, where their average IQ comes out at about 85. A few studies have been done of blacks in Britain, where their IQ is a little higher at around 89. This is probably because the more intelligent blacks migrated to Britain. But no-one had ever looked systematically at the intelligence level of African blacks. So in the late 1980s I made a search for all the studies that had been done on this question, most of them published in very obscure publications. I found 11 studies on representative samples and estimated that the average IQ of African blacks is approximately 70.

Isn’t this very low ?

Yes, those with IQs of below 70 are considered in Western countries as mentally retarded.

Does this not argue rather poorly for the potential of black Africans for democracy and economic development ?

It does. The negative economic growth of recent years in much of sub-Saharan Africa is likely to continue.

Why should there be this difference between blacks in Africa and in the United States ?

There are probably two reasons. The first is that the great majority of American blacks have some white ancestry and this raises thelr intelligence. The second is that American blacks enjoy a high standard of living, and this has given an environmental boost to their intelligence.

Have you explored the reasons for these racial differences in intelligence ?

I began to think about this question in the mid-1980s. I concluded that the higher intelligence of the Oriental and Caucasian peoples was probably an evolutionary adaptation to the problems of survival in cold northern environments. Human beings first evolved in tropical Africa where survival was relatively easy. Then some of them migrated northwards into Eurasia and they found life wasn’t nearly so simple. They had to survive through long cold winters, build shelters, make clothing and fires, and hunt animals in order to survive. They had to become more intelligent to deal with these problems, or they would have died out. The climatic conditions were a bit more severe for the Oriental peoples in north east Asia than they were in Europe, so that is why Orientals evolved slightly higher intelligence.

What are the grounds on which you believe that IQ is genetically determined ?

It has been known since the 1930s from twin studies that intelligence is mainly under genetic control. In addition, the blackwhite difference in intelligence has been found universally, in the United States, Britain, the Caribbean and in Africa. There is also solid evidence that, on average, blacks have smaller brains than whites.

What do you see as the principal social problems caused by low intelligence levels ?

Poor educational attainment, poor vocational skills, high unemployment, high rates of crime and single motherhood. Low intelligence is a major causal factor in all these social pathologies.

And how serious are these problems ?

They are very serious. All these problems have been identified for some time in the United States and have been well reviewed by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray in The Bell Curve. They have also appeared in Britain. For instance, official government figures have shown that in 1995 62 per cent of young black males are unemployed, as compared with about 18 per cent of whites. Black crime in Britain is about three times higher than white. The 1991 census showed that slngle motherhood among blacks was 51 per cent, about double that of whites.

Why should lower intelligence cause more crime ?

Most crimes are committed by people with low intelligence. This is partly because the unintelligent have less to lose by being caught because they generally have poor jobs, or are unemployed, and partly because they can’t figure out so well the likelihood and consequences of being caught.

Isn’t there something more to the race differences in crime ? Don’t blacks commit crime more than whites even when they have the same IQ ?

Yes, this is true. It may be that the explanation for this is that blacks are led into crime through peer pressure. In addition one of the things Rushton has shown (Race, Evolution and Behaviour, J Philippe Rushton, Transaction Press, New Brunswick, 1994) is that blacks have high levels of testosterone, the male sex hormone that makes males aggressive, and this probably contributes to their high crime rate.

In The Bell Curve, ( Ed: see RN, issue 7 ) Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray estimated that the average IQ in the United States would decline to about 95 by the middle of the 21st century because of the growth in numbers of a low IQ non-European populatlon.

Do you agree ?

Yes. Immigration into the United States is running at about 1.4 million annually. The great majority of these are Hispanics, most of whom are of mixed Spanish and American-Indian ancestry. Their average IQ is 92. There are also substantial numbers of blacks entering the United States from the Caribbean and Africa. They probably number about 150,000 a year. In the next century Hispanics and blacks will form an increasing percentage of the population and will become a majority in about 50 years’ time. This will inevitably reduce the overall American IQ, as Herrnstein and Murray predict.

So what future do you see for the United States ?

It is impossible not to be pessimistic. It looks set to become like many of the Latin American countries where whites live in their own fortified housing estates while Hispanics hybridised with American Indians and blacks live in lawless shanty towns.

Do you think anything could be done to prevent this ?

It is probably too late. Theoretically all immigration into the United States could be stopped as from today, but the political problems of doing this are enormous. And there would still be a large amount of illegal immigration.

Is there nothing that can be done about the decline of the United States to Latin American status ?

I think the only solution lies in the breakup of the United States. Blacks and Hispanics are concentrated in the Southwest, the Southeast and the East, but the Northwest and the far Northeast, Maine, Vermont and upstate New York have a large predominance of whites. I believe these predominantly white states should declare independence and secede from the Union. They would then enforce strict border controls and provide minimum welfare, which would be limited to citizens. If this were done, white civilisation would survive within this handful of states.

Do you think this would be feasible ?

Not yet. Both the political will and the understanding of the seriousness of the problem are lacking. Things will have to get a good deal worse before they can get better.

What are your views about immigration into Britain ?

Britain has the same problem of a significant black minority with high fertility and the continuing immigration of illegals and bogus refugees. The numbers are much fewer than in the United States, but will grow in the years that lie ahead. There is the same problem in mainland Europe. The immigration of Third World peoples should be much more tightly controlled.

What about the immigration of Indians and Pakistanis into Britain ? These peoples have about the same intelligence level as whites, as would be expected because they are Caucasians. They are not a genetic problem. What is your general view of the future of Western civilisation ? It will become increasingly torn apart by crime and racial conflict. World leadership will pass to the Far East, to Japan, Korea and, in due course, to China. These countries will remain racially homogenous and hence free of racial conflict, and their high intelligence levels will secure them world domination. About Richard Lynn . . . http://www.rlynn.co.uk Born February 1930. Professor of Psychology, University of Ulster. 1972-1995. Lecturer in Psychology, University of Exeter, 1956-67. Winner of US Mensa Award for Excellence, 1985 and 1988, for work on intelligence. Published works - 1966 Attention, Arousal and the Orientation Reaction 1969 The Irish Braindrain 1969 The Universities and the Business Community 1971 Personality and National Character 1972 An Introduction to the Study of Personality 1974 The Entrepreneur 1981 Dimensions of Personality 1987 Educational Achievement in Japan 1991 The Secret of the Miracle Economy Numerous articles on personality, intelligence and social psychology