For 40 years scientist Arthur Jensen argued that the black-white IQ gap in the U.S. was about 15 points.  On a scale where the white mean was set at 100, the black mean was 85 & it had been that way since as long as tests existed (about a century)

But in the age of political correctness, liberal critics began insisting that the gap had shrunk to maybe 10 points.  But Jensen & his collegue J.P. Rushton said “no”; when you look at the totality of evidence, the U.S. black/white IQ gap remains about 15 points.

But a few years before they died, they briefly argued that it might not be 15 points after all  & may never have been.  The true gap might actually have been 22 points, not 15 points, which meant African Americans have an average IQ of 78, not 85.  This must have come as a shock to scholars like James Flynn who were arguing the gap had shrunk from 15 points to maybe only 10. Because Jensen & Rushton were saying, not only has the gap not shrunk, but it’s 50% bigger than has been reported over the past 100 years!!!

How is this possible?  The theory was that there’s been an invisible black underclass hidden in the rural South & the most dysfunctional regions of inner city where no psychologist would dare to give IQ tests, but if this underclass had been included in norms over the last century, they would have scored so low they would have dragged the African American IQ down from 85 to 78

Sadly, these two brilliant scholars did not live long enough to test this theory & in the age of political correctness, it may never be tested

But when I saw the poignant movie “Precious” i thought that character (who could hardly read) would be an example of this invisible underclass