Race Differences, Immigration, And The Twilight of the European Peoples

By Richard Lynn

05/20/2009

I want to examine the changing nature of Britishness resulting from the immigration non-Europeans, particularly in the light of IQ differences between immigrants and the native white population. My approach differs from current debates about immigration which are normally concentrated on whether it is good or bad for Britain, and whether we need more of it or less, and not on the quality of the immigrants or their racial identity.

Race And IQ

In my recent review of the research on race differences in intelligence that has been carried out over the last eighty years I have set the British IQ at 100 and shown that other Europeans have the same average IQ, except in the Balkans where it drops to around 93. Outside of Europe, the East Asians (Chinese, Japanese and Koreans) have the highest mean IQ at 105. The South Asians and North Africans have an average IQ of 84, the Caribbeans an IQ of 71, and the blacks of sub-Saharan African an IQ of 67.

These racial IQs appear to be about fifty per cent genetically determined and about fifty per cent environmentally determined. This means that when these peoples migrate to Britain they enter a much better environment, particularly as regards nutrition, health care and education, so their IQs increase by about fifty per cent. Thus the IQs of South Asians and North Africans increase to around 92, while the IQs of Caribbeans and African blacks increase to around 86.

The low IQ of blacks was been understood from everyday observation long before it became established by intelligence tests. For instance, in the eighteenth century David Hume wrote that "I am apt to suspect that Negroes are naturally inferior to whites. There is no ingenious manufacture amongst them, no arts, no sciences". The first explorers of Africa reached the same conclusion. Mungo Park, who visited west Africa in 1795 and made his way up the Gambia and Niger rivers, noted that the African peoples had no written language and little that could be described as civilisation. He described the Africans as living in "small and incommodious hovels: a circular mud wall about four feet high, upon which is placed a conical roof, composed of bamboo cane, and thatched with grass, forms alike the palace of the king and the hovel of the slave".

The explanation for these race differences in intelligence that has become widely accepted is that humans evolved in equatorial East Africa. About 100,000 years ago some groups migrated northwards into North Africa and then into Asia and Europe. These groups encountered a more challenging environment in which there were no plant or insect foods for much of the year, so they had to hunt large animals like mammoths to obtain their food. They also had to keep warm and for this they needed to make clothes and shelters. These problems became much greater in the last ice age that began about 28,000 years ago and lasted until about 11,000 years ago. All these challenges required higher intelligence. Only the more intelligent were able to survive in these harsh environments while the less intelligent perished. One result of this was that the brain size of the European and East Asian peoples increased to accommodate the greater intelligence required to overcome these problems.

These racial differences in intelligence are one of the most important reasons for the differences in the wealth and poverty of nations that are present throughout the world (the other main reason being the presence of a market economy or of some form of socialism or communism). Intelligence is a major determinant of competence and earning capacity, so inevitably the European and Far Eastern peoples whose populations are intelligent achieve higher standards of living than other peoples who are less intelligent.

This is often called the North-South divide, consisting of the rich north of Europe, North America and Japan, and the poor south consisting of South Asian, Africa and Latin America, but this is just a euphemism for the rich European and Far Eastern peoples who happen to live mainly in the northern hemisphere and the poor South Asians, Africans and Latin Americans who live in the south. These differences in wealth are largely caused by racial differences in intelligence.

Because of this the idea that they can be eliminated and that we can "make poverty history" by writing off debts and providing more aid is doomed to failure.

When non-European peoples migrate to Europe and North America their lower IQs make it difficult for them to cope in economically developed societies. The effect of race differences in IQ on the ability to cope was shown for the United States by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray in their book The Bell Curve. Here they showed that blacks with an average IQ of 85 perform poorly in education and earnings, while they have high rates of crime, welfare dependency and unemployment. Hispanics with a somewhat higher average IQ (typically found to be about 89) do somewhat better, while whites and Asians ("the model minority") do best.

Similar racial differences have been found in Britain. The Chinese East Asians perform best in educational attainment and have the lowest percentage of school exclusions and crime. The native British come next, followed by the South Asians from the Indian sub-Continent, while the blacks perform worst. We see this for educational attainment in A levels in Table 1 (the scores are calculated by counting A grades as 10, B grades as 8, etc. and are published by the Department for Education and Skills). [Vdare.com note: A Levels are the British equivalent of American Advanced Placement courses.]

It will be noted that the Indians do better than the Pakistanis and Bangladeshis. The main reasons for this are that the Indians have been longer established in Britain while the Pakistanis and Bangladeshis are more recent immigrants, and that the Indians are a more selected group.

Both groups of Blacks from the Caribbean and Africa do much the worst.

Table 1. A level scores , 1996-2000

Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray’s demonstration in The Bell Curve that in the United States racial IQs are related to crime rates is equally true in Britain. Table 2 shows the U.K. Home Office figures for the crime rates whites, Chinese, South Asians and Blacks. These statistics are for men in prison in relation to their numbers in the population and are expressed as odds ratios in which the white rate is set at 1.0 and the rates of the other groups are expressed as multiples of this. Thus the Chinese rate is 0.7 of the white rate, while the South Asian rate is 1.3 times the white rate, and the Black rate is 8.1 times the white rate.

These race differences in crime are well known to authorities in this field. For instance, Professor Sir Michael Rutter writes that "there are substantial differences in the rates of crime among ethnic groups", although he goes on to say that "these differences are exaggerated by small (but cumulative) biases in the ways in which judicial processing takes place…" .

This implies that racial prejudice in the police and judicial system are partly responsible, although Sir Michael does not offer any explanation for why the South Asian crime rate is only marginally higher than the white, or for the much lower crime rate of the Chinese.

Table 2. Crime rates (Men)

[Home Office. Statistics on Race and the Criminal Justice System. London: Home, 1998 PDF]

Blacks also have much higher crime rates than Whites in the United States, and also in the Caribbean and South Africa. High rates of crime seem to be a universal characteristic of Blacks.

There appear to be three reasons why racial IQs are related to crime rates.

• First, those with low IQs are less able to understand the adverse cost of being caught and punished.
  
• Second, boys with low IQs do badly at school and typically live with others who also do badly at school. As a result the whole subculture becomes alienated from school and society and sees little prospect of earning a good living by gainful employment. Crime seems to offer an attractive alternative. Alienation from school leads to disruptive behaviour that eventually leads to expulsion or exclusion.

Thus the race differences in school exclusions published by the Department for Education and Skills are similar to those in IQ, educational attainment and crime. Figures for recent years are shown in Table 3. We see here that Chinese are only excluded at one-fifth the rate of whites. The South Asian exclusion rate is about the same, while the Black rate is 4.4 times greater.

Table 3. School exclusions

• A third reason for the high rates of crime and school exclusions of Blacks seems to be that, in addition to their low IQ, Blacks have short time horizons such that they do not look ahead at the likely future consequences of their actions.

This characteristic has frequently been noted. For instance, John Speke who explored East Africa in the 1860s and discovered the source of the Nile, described the typical African as "a creature of impulse — a grown child".

At about the same time Anthony Trollope, the British novelist, visited the Caribbean and wrote up his impressions in his book The West Indies and the Spanish Main. Here he described the characteristics of the Blacks, Whites, Chinese, Indians and Mulattos, and wrote of the Blacks that "they have no care for tomorrow, but they delight in being gaudy for today. Their crimes are those of momentary impulse".

Immigration Into The White World

The numbers of non-Europeans in Britain have been growing steadily since the British Nationality Act of 1948 conferred the right of citizenship and abode on all members of the British Commonwealth and Empire.

This trend is shown in Table 4 taken from the census returns of 1951, 1961, 1971 and 2001, and projected forward in time to 2031 and 2061. We see that the non-European population increased around ten fold from 1961 to 2001, and about 4.5 fold from 1971 to 2001. The projections extrapolate the 4.5 fold increase over the 30 year period from 1971 to 2001 forward to 2031 and again to 2061. We see that the numbers of non-Europeans are projected to reach around 15.5 million by 2031 and 70 mi1lion in 2061.

Over the same period the numbers of white can be projected to decline because whites have approximately 1.6 children per couple. The effect of this is likely to be that the numbers of whites will decline from around 55 million in 2001 to around 34 million in 2061. Hence by 2061 about two thirds of the population of Britain will be of non-European origin, while about one third will be white.

Table 4. The numbers of non-Europeans in Britain

These projections are "guesstimates" — reasonable or perhaps not so reasonable guesses about what the future may bring — and perhaps some people will say that this could not possibly happen.

But why not? There is little reason to suppose that the principal factors responsible for the growth in the numbers of non-Europeans in Britain is likely to change.

Consider the reasons for growth of non-European population.

• First, they are entering Britain as asylum seekers and this is likely to continue.

The number of asylum seekers from Africa in 1981 was 108,000. By 2001, it was 480,000, an increase of more than fourfold over a period of only 20 years. As word spreads through Africa that entry to Britain is easy and life much better than in Africa, the numbers are likely to increase further. Most asylum seekers are refused asylum, but very few are actually deported. This is because of the problems of finding them and when they are found they often refuse to disclose where they have come from, so it is not possible to deport them.

• Second, many non-Europeans enter Britain as illegal immigrants in the backs of lorries, on the Eurostar [The train through the Channel Tunnel] or hidden as stowawaysin ships.

Once they are in Britain they have little difficulty in finding somewhere to live, often provided by local authorities, and they either find work or obtain social security unemployment payments. This also is very difficult to stop.

• Third, many enter Britain legally as visitors and students, and stay on indefinitely.
  
• Fourth, many more enter Britain legally through arranged marriages.

This is especially common among the Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, more than half of whom marry spouses from their home country and bring their spouses to Britain. Other illegals simply pay someone to go through a marriage ceremony with a British national through which they acquire citizenship.

• Fifth, non-Europeans (except for the Chinese) have more children than whites.

The numbers of children of various immigrant groups found in the 2001 census are shown in Table 5. It will be seen that the white fertility rate is 1.6 children per woman, while blacks and the Indians have about 30 percent more children than whites at 2.2 and 2.3. The Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Somalis have 5.0, more than three times the number of children as whites.

The higher fertility of non-Europeans tends to decline in the second and third generations but not to the low level of whites.

All of these five causes of the growth of the growth in the numbers of non-Europeans in Britain would be very difficult to stop or even to reduce.

The problem lies in the nature of democracy. In democracies, politicians think short term. Their objective is to win an election in two, three or maybe four years' time. Politicians cannot afford to antagonize minorities with votes for the sake of long term benefits for the nation.

Immigrant minorities want more immigration of people like themselves. When the immigrant vote becomes sizable, politicians can no longer afford to antagonize it. This point has been reached in Britain, where the new compassionate Conservative Party no longer puts the control of immigration among its priorities. It has likewise been reached in Western Europe and the United States. Theoretically immigration could be stopped but the cost in terms of votes, the opposition of a largely liberal media and the likelihood of civil unrest among immigrant communities has become too great.

Hence the projections shown in Table 4 appear entirely realistic. The time scale for whites becoming a minority of the population may be longer. Alternatively, it could be shorter, if for example Turkey is admitted to the European community and 65 million Turks with their children acquire the right of abode in Britain.

Table 5. Fertility of different racial groups

The growth of the numbers of non-Europeans is not peculiar to Britain. It is taking place throughout Western Europe, in the United States, Canada and Australia. Professor David Coleman has given figures for the percentages of non-Europeans in six European countries in the year 2000 and projected figures for the year 2050. These are shown in Table 6.

Table 6. Percentages of non-European peoples in six European countries, 2000 and 2050

The figures for the percentages of non-Europeans in six European countries in the year 2000 are underestimates because they are taken from census returns which do not include third generation immigrants (these are counted as indigenous), and because a number immigrants do not fill in census forms — especially illegals, for obvious reasons. The projected figures for the year 2050 are also probably underestimates because they assume that the fertility of immigrants will soon fall to that of whites, which they may well not. Coleman has given the statistics on the fertility (Total Fertility Rates) of Europeans and non-Europea

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