Why Jewish Mothers Are Smart: More Study Needed

On my first day at Loyola Law School in L.A., I was sitting in the cafeteria with a group of other first day students. We were chatting about our backgrounds. One guy said he had decided not to attend U.C.L.A. because "there are too many Jews". This was disconcerting to me, a Jew on his first day at a Jesuit run law school, amidst a group of strangers, seemingly a confirmation of my worst nightmare. Somehow, I found the courage to speak up, maybe sensing that I might as well get the pain over with. "What’s wrong with Jews?" I asked.

The guy (who later became an Orange County prosecutor), said "Jews are too smart, I couldn’t compete with them."

I let that ride, opting to accept a stereotype that seemed to be a compliment.

Now I find that he may have been right.

The L.A. Times today reports in a lengthy article that two genetic researchers (Cochran & Harpending) have come up with a highly inflammable theory that Ashkenazi Jews are genetically superior in intelligence to the average population.

They base their theory on findings related to genetic diseases that disproportionately affect Jewish populations, such as Tay-Sachs, Canavan, and Niemann-Pick Type A diseases. These diseases affect the processing by the brain of sphingolipids, the fat molecules that transmit nerve signals. They hypothesize that having one copy of this gene is advantageous, while having two (where both parents have the gene) produces disaster.

Science has a name for this phenomenon: heterozygote advantage. Sickle cell anemia, which is prevalent in African genes is an example. One "bad" copy of the hemoglobin B gene yields a favorable result: protection from malaria, but two deformed genes leads to cells that are too deformed (sickle cells) to carry oxygen, thus are amemic.

A 1970 study of a group of Ashkenazi Jewish children suffering from torsion dystonia, a debilitating muscle disorder revealed that those with the disease had higher I.Q.’s than a control group.

The scientists explain the variance with Darwinian logic. Jews who settled in Europe during the Middle Ages couldn’t and didn’t intermarry, which narrowed their gene pool. Periodic persecution kept the population from growing. Social restrictions forced the population into small communities, in businesses that didn’t require land ownership, but gave opportunities for gaining wealth through trade and finance.

[Here’s where the theory begins to get into trouble.]

According to the Times, they theorize that "the smartest individuals made the most money [not always true], and the wealthiest families had the most surviving children. [I’m not sure that is true; large families were common in poor households to insure a pool of workers.] The genes of the most intelligent Jews spread most, slowly raising the average IQ of the group. Over 40 generations - about 1,000 years - an increase in just .3 points per generation would have added up to a cumulative advantage of 12 points. Some models project a gain of 16 to 20 points."

Again, according to the article, "psychologists and educational researchers have pegged their (Ashkenazi Jews) average IQ at 107.5 to 115. That’s only modestly higher than the overall European average of 100, but the gap is large enough to produce a huge difference in the proportion of geniuses."

"Though Jews make up less than 3% of the U.S. population, they have won more than 25% of the Nobel Prizes awarded to American scientists since 1950, account for 20% of this country’s chief executives and make up 22% of Ivy League students."

Cochran & Harpending (neither Jewish, by the way) have plenty of detractors among colleagues in the scientific community. Some reject the theory as crackpot junk science, another direputable racial theory. Others are intrigued, but demand proof by further study. One said the theory could be tested by comparing the IQ’s of a group with the Tay-Sachs gene with those of their non-carrier siblings.

Well!
Clearly, this kind of theory is dangerous. It smacks of Hitler’s Eugenics, and carries implications that we as a society have rejected. For example, if there are IQ genes than it means that some without them are "inferior". Our science doesn’t permit linking behavior to genetics, or does it? Criminal genes? Addict genes?

Oddly, I ran across another out there hypothesis that seeks to explain the prevalence of "dumb blondes" in our population. Long ago, the scientific team of Fenster & Humperdink sought the answer, in a study probably funded by college fraternities and Hugh Hefner. Significantly, they were unable to definitively prove the correlation of intelligence to blondeness, but to their amazement, did find a match between breast size (unenhanced) and I.Q., a finding which their supporters found equally acceptable.

They too relied on Darwinian theory to explain the phenomenon.

The theory went like this. Early women needed to attract mates to reproduce. The most attractive females were able to do so with little effort. The less attractive females needed to devise clever strategies to make up for lesser physical attributes. Thus, most of the less attractive, less intelligent females died off. Evolution preferred the smarter ugly gals. However, more of the most attractive females survived, whether possessing higher intelligence or not. Ergo, there are more stupid women with large breasts than with small ones.

Now, don’t get angry with me. I’m only the messenger. And I don’t fully subscribe to either theory. I can see the flaws in both (like, for instance, some males find prominent bootie more attractive than large boobs) and what about the Ashenazi Jewish women?

My Days In Court

I spent the last two days in and around courtrooms ... waiting. That’s mostly what you do in court. It gives me time to think about stuff. Here’s some of it.

Yesterday I did a pro bono day in Van Nuys, represented a girl (born in 1989) charged with the felony of possessing an access card, which she says belonged to her stepfather. Her mother supports her, says she’s doing well in rehab, no longer seeing her meth selling boyfriend. Another girl (born 1987) is charged with possession of heroin, which she says she was holding for her boyfriend. She wants drug rehab.

... What would it be like to be a public defender in Iran?

Imagine bargaining with the prosecutor:
"Fifty lashes? It’s a first offense. How about 20 lashes."
"Okay, 20 lashes ... and her left hand."

In our country, that could never happen...

Uh oh... What’s this in the L.A. Times?
An 18 year old boy with a 47 I.Q. sexually assaulted a 7 year old boy. The appointed defense attorney pled his client and sought probation. The jury sentenced him to 100 years in prison.

Oh, wait, that was not in this country ... it was in Texas.

Today, I was supposed to start a three day preliminary hearing in San Fernando.

The case stems from a turf dispute between gang members and residents of a drug rehab house in the neighborhood. The gang members had received complaints from their drug buyers that they had been robbed of the drugs by the druggies loitering around their rehab center.

After some negotiations between the parties, somebody got shot five times and ended up in a wheelchair.

I represent one of the three gang members charged ... the innocent one.

We had been ordered to appear in court this morning at 9 a.m. ready to go. Yesterday afternoon, I was informed that one of the lawyers wouldn’t be there until late in the morning or 1:30. So, there was no need for me to rush this morning. At 8:30, I called the court clerk. He told me I’d better get there at nine, because the judge was on the warpath.

I rushed, got there at 9. By 11 a.m, the third lawyer still hadn’t arrived. But the D.A. wasn’t ready either. Her "victim" failed to show up. She didn’t know where he was, hoped she could get him there tomorrow.