Would your opinion change if you were presented with evidence that blacks are lazy and Latinos are stupid? Would it then become OK to say that about blacks and Latinos?
Let me provide you with some information.
There is a distinctive American black counter-culture. That culture puts down people who put too much effort out for work and say they are "trying to be too white". To the extent that someone has internalized that culture, there will be a tendency to work less hard.
For many years now the USA has been experiencing something called the Flynn effect. Each generation grows up in a more technological environment that pushes children to learn to think better than the previous, and as a result IQ scores improve over time. The effect is so significant that a person who measured as a genius in the 1920s is likely to be considered borderline retarded today.
Many Latinos in the USA are immigrants or the children of immigrants from agricultural countries. These countries have not changed as much as the USA, so people there have not undergone the Flynn effect to the same extent as most American groups. Therefore it comes as no surprise that measurements of IQ versus ethnicity show that Latinos underperform whites on IQ tests. So by our standard measurements of intelligence, Latinos are (on average) less intelligent.
Now that I've presented you with that information, would you say it is OK to say that blacks are lazy and Latinos are stupid? Hopefully not because it is a hurtful thing to say that makes life unnecessarily more difficult for the many hard-working blacks and intelligent Latinos out there. And it is doubly hurtful because there is just enough truth in it for people to take the stereotype to heart and apply it to people who it doesn't apply to.
Let me provide you with some information.
There is a distinctive American black counter-culture. That culture puts down people who put too much effort out for work and say they are "trying to be too white". To the extent that someone has internalized that culture, there will be a tendency to work less hard.
For many years now the USA has been experiencing something called the Flynn effect. Each generation grows up in a more technological environment that pushes children to learn to think better than the previous, and as a result IQ scores improve over time. The effect is so significant that a person who measured as a genius in the 1920s is likely to be considered borderline retarded today.
Many Latinos in the USA are immigrants or the children of immigrants from agricultural countries. These countries have not changed as much as the USA, so people there have not undergone the Flynn effect to the same extent as most American groups. Therefore it comes as no surprise that measurements of IQ versus ethnicity show that Latinos underperform whites on IQ tests. So by our standard measurements of intelligence, Latinos are (on average) less intelligent.
Now that I've presented you with that information, would you say it is OK to say that blacks are lazy and Latinos are stupid? Hopefully not because it is a hurtful thing to say that makes life unnecessarily more difficult for the many hard-working blacks and intelligent Latinos out there. And it is doubly hurtful because there is just enough truth in it for people to take the stereotype to heart and apply it to people who it doesn't apply to.