Media portrayal of race and intelligence

Media portrayal of race and intelligence in various mediums, such as films, books, and newspapers, characterize people of various races to be more or less intelligent. Likewise, reporting on research into race and intelligence has been criticized: either for giving scientific theories of race too much credit, or for rejecting the theories of some researchers in the name of racial harmony.

Examples
Critics of contemporary media have highlighted portrayals of minorities as less intelligent (or in the case of Asians, on occasion more intelligent ) in films and movies.

Early stereotypes


Early minstrel shows lampooned the supposed stupidity of Blacks, movies such as Birth of a Nation questioned whether or not Black people were fit to run for governmental offices or vote. Secretary of State John C. Calhoun arguing for the extension of slavery in 1844 said "Here (scientific confirmation) is proof of the necessity of slavery. The African is incapable of self-care and sinks into lunacy under the burden of freedom. It is a mercy to give him the guardianship and protection from mental death."

Even after slavery ended the intellectual capacity of Black people was still frequently questioned. Lewis Terman wrote in The measurement of intelligence in 1916 "'(Black and other ethnic minority children) are uneducable beyond the nearest rudiments of training. No amount of school instruction will ever make them intelligent voters or capable citizens in the sense of the world…their dullness seems to be racial, or at least inherent in the family stock from which they come…Children of this group should be segregated in special classes and be given instruction which is concrete and practical. They cannot master abstractions, but they can be made efficient workers…There is no possibility at present of convincing society that they should not be allowed to reproduce, although from a eugenic point of view they constitute a grave problem because of their unusual prolific breeding.'"

Modern stereotypes


Patricia J. Williams, writer for The Nation, said this of Jar Jar Binks, a character from the 2002 Star Wars film: "...intentionally or not, Jar Jar's pratfalls and high jinks borrow heavily from the genre of minstrelsy. Despite the amphibian get-up, his relentless, panicky, manchild-like idiocy is imported directly from the days of Amos 'N' Andy." Many aspects of Jar Jar's character are believed to be highly reminiscent of the archetypes portrayed in blackface minstrelsy.Patricia J. Williams:

According to Robert M. Entman an Andrew Rojecki, authors of the The Black Image in the White Mind, in television and film Black characters are less likely to be the "the intellectual drivers of its problem solving." Entman and Rojeki assert that media images of Blacks may have profound effects on the perceptions by both Blacks and Whites about black intellectual potential.

Contemporary sports commentators have questioned whether blacks are intelligent enough to hold "strategic" positions or coach games such as football. In another example, a study of the portrayal of race, ethnicity and nationality in televised sporting events by journalist Derrick Jackson in 1989 showed that blacks were more likely than Whites to be described in demeaning intellectual terms. Political activist and one-time presidential candidate Rev. Jesse Jackson said in 1985 that the news media portray blacks as less intelligent than we are. Film director Spike Lee explains that these images have negative impacts. "In my neighborhood, we looked up to athletes, guys who got the ladies, and intelligent people," said Lee. "[Now] If you're intelligent, you're called a white guy or girl."

Even so-called positive images of Black people can lead to stereotypes about intelligence. In Darwin's Athletes: how sport has damaged Black America and preserved the myth of race, John Hoberman writes that the prominence of African-American athletes encourages a de-emphasis on academic achievement in black communities. In a 1997 study on racial stereotypes in sports, participants were shown a photograph of a white or a black basketball player. They then listened to a recorded radio broadcast of a basketball game. White photographs were rated as exhibiting significantly more intelligence in the way they played the game, even though the radio broadcast and target player represented by the photograph were the same throughout the trial. Several other authors have said that sports coverage that highlights 'natural black athleticism' has the effect of suggesting white superiority in other areas, such as intelligence.

East Asian intelligence stereotypes
Asians have generally been portrayed in the media as intelligent but unsociable. The early 20th century fictional character Fu Manchu was one startling example of this kind of media portrayal:

Imagine a person, tall, lean and feline, high-shouldered, with a brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan, a close-shaven skull, and long, magnetic eyes of the true cat-green. Invest him with all the cruel cunning of an entire Eastern race, accumulated in one giant intellect, with all the resources of science past and present... Imagine that awful being, and you have a mental picture of Dr. Fu-Manchu, the yellow peril incarnate in one man. –The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu

White intelligence stereotypes


The social definition of "White" has changed over the years, and several White groups have at times been portrayed by the media as unintelligent. This includes ethnic groups such as the British, Irish, and Slavs.

English intelligence stereotypes
The English people are stereotyped as inordinately proper, prudish, and stiff and as having bad teeth. Characters in historical movies often have English accents even when the setting has nothing to do with England. Upper-class characters are also often given English accents. In more recent times, many movie villains, including Jafar from Aladdin, Scar from The Lion King, Hans Gruber from Die Hard, and Hannibal Lecter from The Silence of the Lambs, have all been portrayed by British actors or given English accents.

Notably, in Disney films from the 1990s onward, English accents are generally employed to serve one of two purposes: slapstick comedy or evil genius. Examples include Aladdin (the Sultan and Jafar, respectively), The Lion King (Zazu and Scar, respectively), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Victor the Gargoyle and Frollo, respectively), and Pocahontas (Wiggins and Ratcliffe, respectively, both of whom happen to be played by the same actor, American David Ogden Stiers).

These two stereotypes are compounded in a scene in Pocahontas, in which Ratcliffe menacingly mentions giving the savages a "proper English greeting", in response to which Wiggins holds up two gift baskets.

Irish intelligence stereotypes
Although the Irish, Germans, French, etc are considered ethnic groups today, the common term in the 19th century was "race". Much was made of Celtic versus Anglo-Saxon racial characteristics, regarding historic identity and behavior patterns. An analysis of nineteenth-century British attitudes by Mary J. Hickman and Bronwen Walter wrote that the 'Irish Catholic' was one viewed as an "other," or a different race in the construction of the British nationalist myth. Likewise the Irish considered the English "other" and fought hard to break away and create their own homeland, which they finally did in the 1920s.

One 19th century British cartoonist even depicted Irish immigrants as ape-like and as racially different. One American doctor in the 1850s James Redfield, argued that "facial angle" was a sign of intelligence and character. He likened the facial characteristics of the human races to animals. Thus Irishmen resembled dogs, Yankees were like bears, Germans like lions, Negroes like elephants, Englishmen like bulls, Turks like turkeys, Persians like peacocks, Greeks like sheep, Hindus like swans, Jews like goats, and Frenchmen like frogs. In the 20th century physical stereotypes survived in the comic books until the 1950s, with Irish characters like Mutt and Jeff, and Jiggs and Maggie appearing daily in hundreds of newspapers.

Jewish intelligence stereotypes
Modern European antisemitism has its origin in 19th century theories—now mostly considered as pseudo-scientific—that said that the Semitic peoples, including the Jews, are entirely different from the Aryan, or Indo-European, populations, and that they can never be amalgamated with them. In this view, Jews are not opposed on account of their religion, but on account of their supposed hereditary or genetic racial characteristics including: greed, a special aptitude for money-making and low cunning.

In early films such as Cohen's Advertising Scheme (1904, silent) stereotyped Jews as "scheming merchants"

To this day Jewish people are sometimes stereotyped in media as being intellectually gifted.

The Bell Curve


The Bell Curve is a controversial, best-selling 1994 book by Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray exploring the role of intelligence in American life. The book became widely read and debated due to its discussion of race and intelligence in Chapters 13 and 14.

Press coverage has given considerable positive attention to theories of genetic racial differences in intelligence even though there is no consensus among researchers regarding their validity. Upon publication, The Bell Curve received a great deal of positive publicity, including cover stories in Newsweek ("the science behind [it] is overwhelmingly mainstream"), early publication (under protest by other writers and editors) by The New Republic by its editor-in-chief at the time Andrew Sullivan, and The New York Times Book Review (which suggested critics disliked its "appeal to sweet reason" and are "inclined to hang the defendants without a trial"). Early articles and editorials appeared in Time, The New York Times ("makes a strong case"), The New York Times Magazine, Forbes, the Wall Street Journal, and National Review. It received a respectful airing on such shows as Nightline, the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, the McLaughlin Group, Think Tank, PrimeTime Live, and All Things Considered. 

The positive reception of The Bell Curve in media such as newspapers and television talk shows was troubling to critics such as economist Edward S. Herman and evolutionary biologist Joseph L. Graves who felt that it indicated a troubling acceptance of what Herman calls deterministic racist doctrines. Dennis M. Rutledge suggests that through soundbites of works like Jensen's famous study on the achievement gap, and Herrnstein and Murray's book The Bell Curve, the media "paints a picture of Blacks and other people of color as collective biological illiterates — as not only intellectually unfit but evil and criminal as well," thus providing, he says "the logic and justification for those who would further disenfranchise and exclude racial and ethnic minorities."

APA response
In response to the controversy surrounding The Bell Curve, the American Psychological Association's Board of Scientific Affairs in 1995 established a special task force to publish an investigative report on the research presented in the book. Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns. Regarding genetic causes, they judged that there is not much direct evidence on this point, but what little there is fails to support the genetic hypothesis. The January 1997 issue of American Psychologist included eleven critical responses to the APA report, most of which criticized the report's failure to examine all of the evidence for or against the partly-genetic interpretation of racial differences in IQ.

Stereotype threat
Stereotype threat is the fear that one's behavior will confirm an existing stereotype of a group with which one identifies. This fear may in turn lead to an impairment of performance (Aronson, Wilson, & Akert, 2005). Stereotype threat was first articulated and documented by the social psychologists Claude Steele, Joshua Aronson, and Steven Spencer, who have conducted several studies on this topic.

While Stereotype threat has not received as much media attention as The Bell Curve much of the media coverage has been positive. The Atlantic Monthly ran a feature article on the topic authored by psychologist Claude M. Steele in August 1999. Still one conservative researcher feels that the coverage has been inaccurate. In a 2004 study Sackett said he found indications of widespread and systematic research misinterpretation regarding one of the more popular explanations for the IQ gap. Introducing stereotype threat to a test-taking environment has been shown to increase the existing gap between Blacks or Whites in relation to Whites or Asians respectively, and has thus been offered as a potential contributor to the gap. However Sackett said 88% of accounts in the popular media, 91% in scientific journals, and 67% in psychology textbooks had misinterpreted the findings as that eliminating the introduced stereotype threat eliminated the Black-White gap, when in fact the students had already been matched according to prior scores. Sackett suggests the appeal of the misinterpreted findings may have been a factor, and that such research results in general may in this way be systemically more readily accepted.

Snyderman and Rothman
The Snyderman and Rothman study accused the media of liberal bias in reporting on race and intelligence. Mark Snyderman and Stanley Rothman argued in their joint paper in 1988 that media coverage of intelligence-related research is often inaccurate and misleading. They surveyed the opinions of journalists and science editors and intelligence experts (not necessarily with knowledge about race), including scholars in the subfields of psychology, sociology, cognitive science, education, and genetics. They argue that media coverage of intelligence related topics was overall inaccurate and misleading. They say the media has misreported the views of the scientific community, especially about the role of genetic and environmental factors in explaining individual and group differences in IQ.

In their 1987 survey, they wrote: "Forty-five percent believe the difference to be a product of both genetic and environmental variation, compared to only 15% who feel the difference is entirely due to environmental variation. Twenty-four percent of experts do not believe there are sufficient data to support any reasonable opinion, and 14% did not respond to the question. Eight experts (1%) indicate a belief in an entirely genetic determination."

No poll option was provided to indicate "predominantly (but not entirely) environmental.

They found that the media regularly presented the views of Stephen Jay Gould and Leon Kamin as representative of mainstream opinion among experts, whereas those who stress that individual and group differences may be substantially genetic (e.g., Arthur Jensen) are characterized as a minority. According to Synderman and Rothman, their survey of expert opinion found that the opposite is true, however proportion of experts supporting these hypotheses today is unknown.

Surveys of academic opinion
A survey was conducted in 1987 of a broad sample of 1,020 scholars in specialties that would give them reason to be knowledgeable about IQ (but not necessarily about race). The survey was given to members of the American Education Research Association, National Council on Measurement in Education, American Psychological Association, American Sociological Association, Behavior Genetics Association, and Cognitive Science Society. According to the report, regarding the question "The source of black-white difference in IQ":

"This is perhaps the central question in the IQ controversy. Respondents were asked to express their opinion of the role of genetic differences in the black-white IQ differential. Forty-five percent believe the difference to be a product of both genetic and environmental variation, compared to only 15% who feel the difference is entirely due to environmental variation. Twenty-four percent of experts do not believe there are sufficient data to support any reasonable opinion, and 14% did not respond to the question. Eight experts (1%) indicate a belief in an entirely genetic determination."

Robert Sternberg cautioned against supposing that the survey represented anything but opinion saying, "science isn't done by majority rule". Respondents on average called themselves slightly left of center politically, but political and social opinions accounted for less than 10% of the variation in responses. Carol Swain, author of The New White Nationalism reacted with some dismay to the survey, stating:

"At least one important survey suggests that a belief in the biological inferiority of some races in regard to intelligence is more common than generally supposed. Smith College professor Stanley Rothman and Harvard researcher Mark Snyderman surveyed a sample of mostly scientific experts in the field of educational psychology in the late 1980s and found that 53 percent believed IQ differences between whites and African Americans were at least partly genetic in origin, while only 17 percent attributed the IQ differences to environmental factors alone (the remainder either believed the data was currently insufficient to decide the issue or refused to answer the question)."

According to the American Psychological Association's 1995 task force report on intelligence research:

"It is sometimes suggested that the Black/White differential in psychometric intelligence is partly due to genetic differences (Jensen, 1972). There is not much direct evidence on this point, but what little there is fails to support the genetic hypothesis."

The APA subsequently published eleven critical responses in 1997, most arguing that the report failed to examine adequately the evidence for the genetic hypothesis. Charles Murray, for instance, responded:"Actually, there is no direct evidence at all, just a wide variety of indirect evidence, almost all of which the task force chose to ignore." The report did agree with many of the non-race-based statements on intelligence made in The Bell Curve and concludes with a call for more reflection in debates on intelligence and for a "shared and sustained effort" in more research to answer the many unanswered questions that remain. Coming advances in genetics and genomics are expected to soon provide the ability to test hypotheses about group differences more rigorously than has as yet been possible.

Researchers who believe that there is no significant genetic contribution to race differences in intelligence include, , , , , , and. Some scientists who emphasize cultural explanations do not necessarily exclude a small genetic influence. suggests up to 20% genetic influence be included in the cultural explanation. Researchers who believe that there are significant genetic contributions to race differences in intelligence include, , , , , , , , , , , , , , and.

Opinions of scholars and others
A survey was conducted in 1987 of a broad sample of 1,020 scholars (65% replied) in specialties that would give them reason to be knowledgeable about IQ (but not necessarily about race; Snyderman & Rothman, 1987). The survey was given to members of the American Education Research Association, National Council on Measurement in Education, American Psychological Association, American Sociological Association, Behavior Genetics Association, and Cognitive Science Society. Political and social opinions, reported in the same survey, accounted for less than 10% of the variation in responses. (Respondents on average called themselves slightly left of center politically.) Measures of expertise or eminence accounted for little or no variation in responses.

One question was "Which of the following best characterizes your opinion of the heritability of the Black-White difference in I.Q.?" (emphasis original). The responses were divided into five categories:
 * The difference is entirely due to environmental variation: 15%.
 * The difference is entirely due to genetic variation: 1% (8 respondents).
 * The difference is a product of both genetic and environmental variation: 45%.
 * The data are insufficient to support any reasonable opinion: 24%.
 * No response (or not qualified): 14%.

The age of the survey and the anonymity of the respondents could constrain its interpretation.

In a 1988 survey, journalists, editors, and IQ experts were asked their "opinion of the source of the black-white difference in IQ"

The view of the American Psychological Association
In response to the controversy surrounding The Bell Curve, the American Psychological Association's Board of Scientific Affairs in 1995 established a special task force to publish an investigative report on the research presented in the book.

The task force agrees that there do exist large differences between the average IQ scores of blacks and whites, and that these differences cannot be attributed to biases in test construction, nor does it "simply reflect differences in socio-economic status". While they admit there is no empirical evidence supporting it, the APA task force suggests that explanations based on social status and cultural differences may be possible. Regarding genetic causes, they noted, "There is not much direct evidence on this point, but what little there is fails to support the genetic hypothesis." The January 1997 issue of American Psychologist included eleven critical responses to the APA report, most of which criticized the report's failure to examine all of the evidence for or against the genetic hypothesis of racial differences in IQ.