The Army Tests and Ethnic Differences
Unfortunately, the Army test results were sometimes
used to substantiate prejudices about various
racial and ethnic groups rather than to dispassionately
investigate the causes of group differences.
For example, in his influential book A Study of
American Intelligence, Brigham (1923) undertook
a massive analysis of Alpha and Beta scores for
Nordic, Mediterranean, and Alpine immigrants.
The text is stuffed with ostensibly objective tables
and charts comparing racial and ethnic groups. For
example, one curious figure in his book depicts the
proportion of each immigration sample at or below
the average of the African American draft. Brigham
concluded that African Americans, Mediterranean
immigrants, and Alpine immigrants were intellectually
inferior. He sounded a dire warning that
racial intermixture would inevitably cause a deterioration
of American intelligence. For example, the
caption to one graph reads, in part:
The distributions of the intelligence scores of the
entire Nordic group, the combined Mediterranean
and Alpine groups, and the negro draft. The
process of racial intermixture cannot result in anything
but an average of these elements, with the resulting
deterioration of American intelligence.
(Brigham, 1923)
Seven years later, Brigham (1930) forthrightly
disavowed his earlier views. He cited cultural and
language differences as the likely cause of ethnic
and racial disparities on the Army tests. He asserted
that comparative studies of national and racial
groups could not be made with existing tests and
concluded that his earlier findings were “without
foundation” (Brigham, 1930).