Race and IQ

The debate explodes again with James Watson's public statements about differences between Africans and Europeans. Saletan comments here:

Never be afraid to consider testable claims about your sex or ethnicity.

No one disputes that the raw data overwhelmingly show clear bell-curve differences between racial groups on IQ. That applies just as much to bell-curve variations between Asians and Caucasians as between Africans and Caucasians. No one disputes either that the IQ variations within ethnic and racial groupings exceed any differences between them. What's disputed is the relative influence of genes and environment - and their interaction - on these results. One thing Watson undoubtedly gets right: before too long, we will know a great deal more. The advances in genetic understanding and neuroscience could begin to resolve this question as an empirical matter. Then, of course, there's this (PDF file):

The United States, which is home to just 4% of the global population aged 5 to 25 years, accounts for more than one-quarter of the global public education budget.  It spends as much as all governments in six global regions combined: the Arab States, Central and Eastern Europe, Central Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, South and West Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa.

The American government spends 28% of the world’s public expenditure on education, a proportion that exceeds its share of global wealth – which represents 21% of global GDP.  Similar cases are seen in France, Germany and the United Kingdom, where their shares of education spending outweigh their individual proportions of the world’s school-age population and global wealth.