Ron Unz has talked about how labile national IQ is, and how Mexican Americans are all going to be watching reruns of Don Adams and Barbara Feldon real soon now.
Here are the National Merit Semifinalists out of the Albuquerque Public School System for the past three years. FYI, the population of the school system is 67% Hispanic.
2015
from Albuquerque High: Joel Frazier, Nik Hildebrandt and Tobias Oliver;
From the Early College Academy: Masha Ford;
From Eldorado High: Andrew Johns, Jake Lesher, and Elizabeth Rivenbark;
From La Cueva High: Steven Aque, Naomi Brandt, Hyesun Choi, Deanna Garcia, Madison Hazard, Emily Hong, Priyanka Jain, Daniel Kavelman, Amy Lee, Insun Yoon, Randy Zhang, and Hanna Zumwalt;
From Manzano High: Karl Eickhoff;
From Volcano Vista:– Jacob Pankratz.
2014
Albuquerque High: Ivan Aidun, Francesca Jarrett, Sarah Mellin and Adam Wood;
From Del Norte High: Talon Cox;
From Eldorado High: Erica Holswade and Suzanne White;
From La Cueva High: Nicole Chapdelaine, Priyanka Chellappa, Eli Echt-Wilson, Serena Fang, Jonathan Haase, Julia Nakhleh, John O’Brien, Justin Porter, Sarah Salinger-Mullen, Samuel Zhu and Albert Zuo;
From Manzano High: James Donnelly;
From Sandia High: Paige Nielson, Amy Swahlan and Ryan Taylor;
From Valley High: Cole Burge.
2013
Del Norte High: Cochran, Roderick D.
Eldorado High: Anderson, Nicholas W.; Depoy, Jessica M.; Erikson, James W.; Hinojos, Jacob A.; Niver, Anastasia J.; Qaseem, Yaqoob; and Schmittle, Christopher A.
Homeschool: Hughes, Sage E.
La Cueva High: Anderson, Kelley K.; Anthony, Ashley N.; Dai, Shelley M.; Kelly, Maria; Lee, Christy T.; Pedersen, Ryan R.; and Yan, Phillip W.
Manzano High: Chael, Nathan S.
West Hunter 
Talon Cox is a great name. Madison Hazard is good too.
Rod Cochran is a good name too.
don’t forget the D.
I’m sure Roderick would find you amusingly juvenile if he were writing this comment.
Does Madison go by “Mad Hazard”?
Seems it will be a while before the Hispanic contingents Get Smart.
Huh, I get it!
Unz also thinks they commit crimes at a rate lower than non-Hispanic whites. The man is a moron on this subject or a liar. Whichever.
Unz is currently running for senator in the state of California which is 38% hispanic. He can support Unz review which has plenty of HBDers but he can’t come anywhere close to supporting such arguments when they ever so slightly insult hispanics. Anyone seriously running for public office has to be a liar, and if they are not then they are a fool.
It probably helps if you’re a natural liar.
he runs unz.com, which is a good thing. else, he seems to be, say, difficult–a mote in thy brother’s eye ye might want not to judge too harshly. no offense.
I wonder how difficult it would be to make a test for natural liars. It might be as simple as asking the question “are you a natural liar?” Everyone who quickly answers “No! I am not!” Is a natural liar. Everyone who thinks a while before answering isn’t a natural born liar.
Revise your criterion.
Anyone who says “yes, I am a liar” is, .. honest but understands that at times one has to lie.
The wisdom of George Costanza:
“Jerry, just remember. It’s not a lie… if you believe it…”
Don’t they have their own program? Called “National Hispanic Recognition Program”? Do all Hispanic students get assessed for both programs? If not then it would make more sense to just apply for the Hispanic one if it is less competitive. Perhaps that is why they are so under-represented?
You apply for both, and normally take the regular one if you pass. So no.
Maybe Unz wants to believe that every mestizo is just waiting to unleash their inner IQ 100 Spaniard because, if they aren’t, we’re going to need that wall. The implications of IQ and the Wealth of Nations were pretty clear.
In your earlier article you discussed the possibility that America will get fed up with everything and go possibly even to full on genocide, but we can all hope that we’d fight smart instead of hard. Make ID a requirement for welfare, track down and arrest anybody who hires illegals, and they’ll deport themselves. Then there’s the possibility of introducing an IQ quota for who gets into the US from then on. Why not Make America Smart Again? Let’s say nobody with an IQ below 100 gets in: for Mestizos, that means you only take the top 23% of their population; the immigrants’ average IQ would be around 108 if my integration estimate is correct and regress to around 100.
We could bottleneck these guys into a first world population within a single generation, if we had a need to do so. And if we needed more laborers still, Eastern Europe probably has some people who would like to come over here.
“Let’s say nobody with an IQ below 100 gets in: for Mestizos, that means you only take the top 23% of their population; the immigrants’ average IQ would be around 108 if my integration estimate is correct and regress to around 100.”
Assuming random representation over 100, still affected by population mean and sd. I get 111 for (100,15) and 106 for (85,13).
Nice, my number can’t be too far off then.
Imagine if we imported such people! Instead of 55 million people with an IQ averaging 89 or so, we could let in the top half of Poland and other former Soviet countries. 55 million people with an average IQ that regressed back to 106! Couple that with not letting in a bunch of Haitians and Somalians and I’ll bet that our entire nation would be 3 IQ points smarter on average.
Even if it weren’t a case of random representation, we could partiallh compensate by engaging in aggressive brain drain.
Speaking of the merit exam this election season, remember that Hillary Clinton was a Merit finalist and Obama wasn’t. Only a few years ago the word was that all Republicans were dunces and all Democrats were gifted. Bush was held to be a moron but the liberals kept quiet about Cheney. Now they keep quiet about Cruz.
Somehow Al Gore, a divinity student, is treated as if he were a scientist. Politics and IQ estimates mix badly. The person most consistently lauded for their brains in my life time was probably Jill Saint John – a Bond girl who looked very good in a Bikini.
Cheney failed out of Yale 2 times. He was way worse than Bush.
The sad thing is that people are dumb enough to think that intelligence has to do with skin color. The reality is Mexican Immigrant come here looking for a better life and unfortunately most have little to no education (like my father). I’m an Educator at APS so I know that children need parents who can help them with their homework. I’ve learned that the studying a child does at home vastly improved their IQ. So if a child is from a home where the parents can’t understand or help them with their homework the child suffers. Also the schools mentioned are in the heights where there is a large population of wealthyer Caucasians that can buy their kids an education (tutor). Also working at APS I’ve learned that we are not allowed the right to an equal education. Kids in the valley are lucky if they get a Xerox copy from a book to take home. The school that I worked at had one set of beat up science books, one set history books that had to be shared by five different classes. While in the heights kids get their own books. The sad thing is that ignorance breeds ignorance and ignorance often doesn’t come from the uneducated but instead well educated people who think they know it all. To bad they don’t have classes on commonsense. My college Professor once said “wisest person I ever met didn’t even have a high education”.
The world does not look as it should under your theory. Not even close.
It’s not the money. Money doesn’t make much difference. North Dakota, before the oil boom, spent exactly the same amount per pupil as New Mexico – OK, one dollar more. $5001 per pupil vs $5000 in New Mexico. They had the highest test 8th grade test scores in the country. We were near the bottom. as we are today.
My kids go to Del Norte, not La Cueva, but they do fine.
There are rich school districts that have substantial numbers of minority kids: the kids still do poorly. So much so that there’s a consortium of such schools that searching for the mysterious reasons that this happens. Places like Evanston, Illinois : Shaker Heights, Ohio: Berkeley, California. Cheltenham, PA. Amherst, MA. Suburbs of Washington DC, full of government workers and awash with money.
Under NCLB, when kids attend schools with poor scholastic records, they have a right to be transferred to schools with better ones. Many have taken advantage of this, but on average, their scores do not improve. It’s not the schools.
Nor is there anything particularly wrong with APS teachers. There was one that pissed me off quite a bit, but he’s dead now.
“There was one that pissed me off quite a bit, but he’s dead now.”
Note to self: don’t piss Greg off.
You are assuming cause and effect …
There was a guy that used to beat me up occasionally in high school. I wished hard for bad things to happen to him: he lost control while trying to make a turn at 120 mph and was burnt to a crisp. Two brothers had the same bad habit: their mother, while running off with someone, tried to beat a train at the crossing and failed miserably.
There’s more.
Still skeptical about cause and effect …
Can you cite a controlled study?
I understand where you are coming from, but I’ve known plenty of poor Asian kids whose parents (or grandparents, who are often the ones taking care of them after school) hardly speak English, some who spend their spare time doing homework behind the counter at their family’s restaurant, etc., and they do very well, academically. My brothers attended a highschool that only had xeroxed math worksheets, no textbooks, had parents holding down three jobs, and still did well.
I do think that intensive prep, having a family of native English speakers, studying in peace and quiet, etc., affects things like grades and SAT scores. But these factors can’t be the whole story.
“I’ve known plenty of poor Asian kids whose parents (or grandparents, who are often the ones taking care of them after school) hardly speak English, some who spend their spare time doing homework behind the counter at their family’s restaurant, etc., and they do very well, academically.”
I think I made the answer obvious…
He was making the same point “…and they do very well, academically.”
If Hispanics weighed in at average of 91 upon arrival (I suspect recently that would be worse), and made up half of the difference in two generations it would still depress their National Merit numbers, which I think usually means 140+ (though it varies state-to-state, and private schools have a higher cutoff). I’m not sure the 3rd-generation number actually is 95, however. Even if there is improvement, it may be approaching an asymptote rather than representative of any continuing gains relative to the rest of the population.
@ Patrick Boyle – FWIW, Steve Sailer has estimated Bush and Kerry as essentially the same, edge Bush, 126-125, mostly on the basis of OCS scores.My own reading of the tea leaves is that Obama’s verbal scores were fine though not spectacular, but his quantitative/math abilities are average. I say that reminding you what the national average of mathematical ability seems to be.
A goodly fraction of the Hispanics in this state have been US citizens since 1848.
Learning English makes a difference, but afterwards things don’t change much. why should they?
I was afraid of that. 91 is still the number, then, making 140+ even less common.
It is what it is. By the way, most people in Latin America know Spanish or Portuguese, but their PISA scores are not very high either. Apparently the more Indians or African admixture, the worse the score. So Bolivia does poorly.
Pace Ron Unz, I can think of no ethnic group that did poorly in its homeland but magically transformed upon reaching the US. Nor can I think of one that substantially changed over a short time interval, say a few generations or less. Millennia, could be.
Mexico and the Nobel prize. According to WIKIPEDIA, three people of Mexican origins have won a Nobel:
Alfonso García Robles: With Alva Myrdal, got the Peace Prize in 1982. For what it’s worth, he looks very White in his WIKIPEDIA photo.
Mario J. Molina: Along with Paul J. Crutzen and F. Sherwood Rowland, he got the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for studying the threat posed to the ozone layer by CFCs. Looks pretty White in his WIKIPEDIA photo.
Octavio Paz: 1990 Nobel in Lit. Based on the WIKIPEDIA photo, he might have some Amerind ancestry (or he might not).
So, Three prizes. Total. As compared to 10 for Scotland, 15 for Australia, 23 for Canada, 74 for England , 306 for the USA, …..
Now, all of these figures are from WIKIPEDIA, so I’m sure that one could argue about the margins…but the overall portrait of Mexican achievement is pretty dire.
How about Fields Medalists?:
United States 12
France 10
Soviet Union (3) / Russia (6) 9
United Kingdom 7
Japan 3
Belgium 2
West Germany (1) / Germany (0) 1
Australia 1
British Hong Kong 1
Finland 1
Israel 1
Italy 1
Norway 1
New Zealand 1
Sweden 1
Vietnam 1
Iran 1
Brazil 1
(None Stateless) 1
I’ve left out Manjul Bhargava. His background is complicated.
So, Mexico has zero.Hell, all of Latin America has exactly one, which ties them with New Zealand.
I guess Jose Adem is the most famus Mexican mathematician. Looking at pictures of him on the internet he might have some Amerindian ancestry.
Ahlfors although born in Sweden was ethnically Swedish
Jose Capablanca looks like he had some Amerindian ancestry.
According to Wikipedia Paul Morphy’s mother was French Creole. Some of the photographs of him suggest a slight amount of Arican ancestry.
Adem: son of Lebanese immigrants, I think
I meant to say “although born in Finland”.
Jim:”I guess Jose Adem is the most famus Mexican mathematician. Looking at pictures of him on the internet he might have some Amerindian ancestry.”
Dunno. He looks quite European to me.
Jim:”Jose Capablanca looks like he had some Amerindian ancestry.”
Looks quite European to me.And his father was a Spanish army officer.
Jim:”According to Wikipedia Paul Morphy’s mother was French Creole. Some of the photographs of him suggest a slight amount of Arican ancestry.”
Dunno. Looks quite European to me. If he had any Black ancestry, it must be very slight.
Via Steve Sailor:
“From Philip L. Roth et al’s 2001 article Ethnic Group Differences in Cognitive Ability in Employment and Educational Settings: A Meta-Analysis (PDF), where d stands for a standard deviation (such as roughly 15 points on an IQ test or 100 points on an SAT subtest scored 200 to 800):[….]
this meta-analysis considered overall 39 studies with a combined sample size (all ethnicities) of 5,696,519 (only age 14 and above). The overall white-Hispanic gap was 0.72 standard deviations or (expressed on an IQ scale) 10.8 IQ points. This is a larger gap than Linda Gottfredson’s 1988 estimate of a 7.5 IQ point gap. ”
http://isteve.blogspot.com/2013/05/white-v-hispanic-iq-gap-across-39.html
On the US General Social Survey, educational level, job prestige, SEI and wordsum, are basically identical between US born Black Americans and US born with Mexican ethnic identity. The Blacks Americans do a little better in Wordsum and Education and the Mexicans a little better in job prestige, but compared to the gap between them and Whites, it’s small. Essentially no difference, not even one where Mexicans are intermediate Blacks and Whites… I wonder if Ron Unz knows that?
(Variables are born (as a control for born in the US), ethnic (to identify ethnic Mexicans), race (to identify Black Americans), then educ, prestg80, wordsum, SEI. Ethnic and race variables give a larger sample base than the other measure that breaks out Hispanics, racehisp).
I wonder. “PREVIOUSimmigrant groups typically saw progress with each passing generation, but Hispanic numbers have a habit of stalling or even heading backwards. American-born children of Hispanic immigrants tend to be less healthy than their parents, have higher divorce rates and go to jail more often. Jump from migrants’ children to their grandchildren, and studies have shown academic results slipping in the third generation. Conservatives fret about “downward assimilation” […]Steve Murdock of Rice University, a former boss of the US Census bureau, recently published a paper warning Texans that Hispanics are not getting enough advanced degrees and qualifications to replace highly educated whites retiring from their state’s workforce. By 2050, his study predicts, Hispanic workers will outnumber white ones in Texas by almost three to one, but without a change in education policy the state will be poorer and less competitive.”
There are obviously way to get Mexicans to do a lot worse. There might be a way to get improvement.
According to a (rather hard to decipher) LA Times article, the state of California has decided that (non-Asian) minorities are underrepresented in Algebra 1. The response is to eliminate Algebra 1, and replace it with a math course that has less emphasis on algebra. As there is also an underrepresentation in AP math, they have decided to eliminate prerequisites for AP math. While this may increase minority enrollment in AP math, it’s a little hard to see how it will increase the number of minorities who pass the exam.
Since I have lost your email address, I will leave this link here, ICYMI. http://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp-content/uploads/PifferIntelligence2015.pdf
One more brick in the wall
It is not yet very convincing. Wait for more GWAS hits to be published. The next meta-analysis is already in review, but somehow stalled…
I am curious what percentage of National Merit Semifinalists become National Merit Scholars,
i.e. go to one of Universities, which give a (financial) Scholarship for that merit ?
Friends of our family, while being quite well-to-do, were seduced by such an offer from Emory U. for their daughter. Said daughter went there, but was very uncomfortable (she wanted to become a journalist).
The choice for our daughter in a similar situation was Cornell U., which gave no money.
Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology there was quite good.
15/16ths of the semifinalists become finalists. The National Merit Corporation gives a small scholarship of its own: 2,500 (out of about 15,000 total finalists) get that. About half get some kind of money (2500 from the NMSQT, 1100 corporate, 4600 college).
Thank you for the information.
After my kids finished H.S. and respective Us., and grand-kids still below elementary and live in different state, for the last 4 years I had my fun tutoring a boy.
I did that on a volunteer basis, 4 years. 1.5 hours a week, being asked by some unfamiliar to me HS teacher. I was tutoring him in Mathematics and a little of Physics. I pushed him to take AP Calculus, and he eventually got A-s (5-s ?) at College Board exams (AP-AB and AP-BC Calculus, bunch of other AP courses.) While in 12-th grade of HS, he took 1-st course of Ordinary Diff. Eqs. as Dual Enrollment student in local public University.
In Florida he got NM Semifinalist status. Was not admitted to his 1-st choice – MIT. But he was admitted and went (in Fall 2015) to UC Berkeley. He wants to study Physics there. Berkeley gave him about $20K (per year ?), just about the difference between out-of-state and in-state tuition. His parents are of rather modest means, but he is the only child.
God speed to him.
And, dear Dr. Cochran, my best wishes to Roderick D Cochran.
In today’s LA Times Steven Strauss, a visiting professor at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, writes:
“Keep in mind, a growing body of evidence shows that school punishments do long-term damage. Students who are expelled or suspended are less likely to graduate, and more likely to end up involved with the criminal justice system.”
This appears to be the classic confusion of correlation with causation. Another, commonsensical, deduction would be that students “less likely to graduate” and “more likely to end up involved with the criminal justice system” are more likely to behave in a way that gets them expelled or suspended.
But I guess we are supposed to believe that punishing misbehavior is what causes misbehavior.
There’s a growing body of evidence that assholes like Steven Strauss need have their heads handed to them. For some reason, everybody’s supposedly to be polite to fountains of nonsense. What was that reason, anyhow?
Because saying they should be punished for it is what causes them to be fountains of nonsense? At least based on their thinking …
Joking aside, reductio ad hitlerum suggests you are on to something. Much of the nonsense from the Gould and Lewontin fountains, for example, can be traced to their fear that consequences of a better scientific understanding of the foundations of human identity might be punishing for them.
By the way, isn’t it somewhat presumptuous to assume that kids with names like Hildebrandt, Rivenbark, Hong, Yoon, Zhang, Zumwalt, Cochran, and so on, aren’t Hispanic?
I’m pretty sure about one of them.
Don Adams? Sound like an elite Hispanic to me. Probably just lost a diacritical or two in translation.
@syonredux mentioned Manjul Bhargava who won the Fields Medal-, has a complicagted background He is a brahmin
“. . . going to be watching reruns of Don Adams and Barbara Feldon. . . ”
I admit I had to read that twice to figure out why it was written.