Multiculturalism is a subject that we're still trying to understand. The term multiculturalism refers to "a body of thought in political philosophy about the proper way to respond to cultural and religious diversity. Mere toleration of group difference is said to fall short of treating members of minority groups as equal citizens; recognition and positive accommodation of group differences are required through 'group-differentiated rights'" (Song, 2010). What seems clear through an analysis of these studies is that concepts of race, ethnicity, and culture support Gardner's concepts of multiple intelligences and refuse Spearman's ideas of general intelligence.
In "Paradigm Lost: Race, Ethnicity, and the Search for a New Population Taxonomy" (2001), Oppenheimer suggests that while race is an important means of understanding cultural differences, it is not enough. Unlike race, "ethnicity encapsulates those cultural, behavioral, and environmental factors that, among other outcomes, increase the rate of disease" (1050). These factors can include any number of things that have nothing to do with biological diversity such as attitudes, diet, and socioeconomic status. However, race cannot be eliminated from study because it is an abstract concept burned indelibly on the American society psyche. He operationalizes this concept through a series of definitions and examples that show the limited diversity of the racial question that eventually worked itself into a question of Black or White as compared to an ethnic question of a shifting number of variables such as those listed above. Measurement takes place both within the historical discussion of these issues as well as in common contemporary use, concluding that "race, if not a biological fact, is a social fact" and "unlike race, 'ethnic group' is more obviously a social construct" which permits "an appreciation of the range of cultural and behavioral attitudes, beliefs, lifestyle patterns, diets, environmental living conditions, and other factors" (1053). Explaining his conclusions, Oppenheimer suggests both race and ethnicity, both carefully defined, are required within studies of human populations for adequate expression of the associations formed between individuals, groups, institutions and power.
Ana Mari Cauce argues many of the same points in "Parenting, Culture, and Context: Reflections on Excavating Culture" (2008). Her hypothesis is that parenting strongly influences culture and culture strongly influences parenting decisions, yet within this discussion she also indicates that culture is influenced by a variety of variables with race being only one element. In attempting to define this concept, she suggests it is an impossible task to pull apart and disentangle the influences of the key factors that influence parenting decisions. "When it comes to understanding culture, the need to understand sources of influence is crucial when differences are found between ethnic groups, the source of difference is attributed to culture, and other sources of variation are either totally ignored or glossed over" (228). The results of the studies collected within her work include factors such as socioeconomic status, economic stress, life events, psychiatric risk, and neighborhood factors as being important in identifying the family and individual culture that may contribute to parental decision-making and the preservation or elimination of traditional cultural elements. While Oppenheimer only touches on the concept that culture and ethnicity may shift over time, Cauce makes this concept of change over time and through generations a major element of her argument. Like Oppenheimer, though, she makes it clear that much more care must be taken in the selection and description of study samples with terms such as race, ethnicity, and culture receiving much more detailed explanation and definition.
With similarities and differences between these two articles defined, it is possible to look at what these findings mean for intelligence theories and their application to specific cultural groups. As Oppenheimer's history of cultural studies shows, there has been a long-term assumption that ethnicities differed in degree of possible intelligence, an idea that is in keeping with Spearman's concepts of general intelligence. According to Spearman's theory, people who perform well on one cognitive test will tend to score high on other tests. At the same time, people who performed poorly on a cognitive test tended to perform poorly on other tests (Spearman, 1904). Since the g factor seemed to remain relatively constant across tests for each individual, Spearman concluded that cognition or intellectual ability could be easily measured and numerically expressed (Spearman, 1904). Because people in poor areas and within minority groups tended to score poorly on these types of tests, it was widely concluded that these groups were intellectually inferior to the dominant White group with no consideration for differences in social experiences, education, or language changes among other things. Cauce suggests much the same thing when she discusses why some cultural behaviors such as abuse or spanking might be continued or discontinued from one generation to the next.
While both articles tend to reject the concepts brought forward by Spearman, they seem to support the ideas of Robert Gardner and his theory of multiple intelligences. According to Gardner, each person has a variety of different intelligences and he identified eight major components of intelligence. These include bodily/kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, linguistic, logical-mathematical, musical, naturalistic, and spatial intelligence (Gardner, 1983). While neither article specifically addresses these ideas, they both support this theory's implication that intelligence can be improved in any given area through the use of proper training. Oppenheimer discusses how the lifestyle and experiences of one group of people, regardless of family background or racial affiliation, can lead to similar understandings of life such as those grouped under the classification of the culture of poverty. This is a culture "marked by, among other things, low or no wages, unstable or female-oriented households, minimal social organization outside the family, fear, low aspiration, feelings of inferiority, present-time orientation, fatalism, and lack of impulse control" (1052). Cauce says "culture is, in part, shaped by socioeconomic status and other neighborhood and contextual factors" (227). Thus, both articles suggest intelligence changes with experience and background.
References
Cauce, A.M. (2008). "Parenting, Culture, and Context: Reflections on Excavating Culture." Applied Developmental Science. 12(4): 227-29.
Gardner, H. (1983). Frames of Mind: The theory of multiple intelligences. New York: Basic Books.
Oppenheimer, G.M. (July 2001). "Paradigm Lost: Race, Ethnicity, and the Search for a New Population Taxonomy." American Journal of Public Health. 91(7): 1049-55.
Song, S. (2010). "Multiculturalism." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved from http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/multiculturalism/
Spearman, C. (1904). "General Intelligence: Objectively determined and measured." American Journal of Psychology. 15: 201-93.
