This isn't me challenging or opposing you. I'm just curious-
Do you also think that dividing people by sex and determining which sex on average has a higher propensity towards something is sexist? What about stats on sex and IQ? Sexist?
The idea is that there was a reason for the IQ tests and that the intention behind them was not strictly scientific. So let's leave out if the tests favor one group over another because of something in their design. That is something that would have to be dealt with but it's not the point.
Historically these sorts of tests were given to natives of a land that was being colonized or made part of the empire of a different nation with a different culture and usually different ethnicity. They were used to scientifically determine that the natives were inferior to the people who were invading and colonizing. There is clear bias here, because if I want all of your resources and I can "prove" that you don't know what to do with it anyway, then I am justified in taking it for the greater good.
Men and women don't have a situation that is equivalent. There is no country of women that was colonized by a country of men.
But that isn't really the point either. It's that you can't consider something scientific if it is biased from the start.
I do think that if a woman was judged by a group of men she would not score as highly as if she was judged by a group of women, and the opposite is also true.
The "propensity for something" would have to be defined. We do know that women tend to live longer and men tend to have more heart attacks. Those are not sexist observations. They seem to be true, and there are real world applications for these observations that are for the benefit of all. Why do women live longer? How does that affect society and how can we plan for the future using this information?
It's not being used against anyone.
And IQ tests don't have to be racist either. It depends on how they are looked at. If we say that one group scores lower on the tests so they are by nature less intelligent than the group that scores higher, and we use this information to justify racist attitudes and policies then that is racist.
But if we look at the tests not as a judgement on the groups but more as a diagnostic, then we can try to work on tests that are more accurate, by removing whatever cultural factors there are. And we can look at what is different about the groups apart from skin color. and work out if these other factors make a difference.
In other words the tests are not 100% scientific and accurate. Other tests will get other results. And you would have to have an accurate test and do a very long term study to determine that one "race" has a higher IQ than another. Then you would have to look at what that might mean.
If women do score higher on the test. or lower, then we would have to look at what that means. You can't say it means women are smarter since the beginning of time and always will be. You can only show that this test, under these conditions, given to this group gave this result.
