Aboriginals do poorly on all indicators of well-being compared to other Australians and since 2008 there has been a coordinated campaign to reduce their general dysfunction, the campaign being called “Closing the Gap”. Specifically, Aboriginals lag well behind first world standards in:
- birth weight
- childhood mortality
- life expectancy
- childhood retardation
- pre-school enrolment
- school attendance
- finishing high school
- getting a degree
- literacy & numeracy skill
- having a job
- accommodation quality
- being in jail
- being in youth detention
- being fostered out
- violence against women and children
- suicide rate
Vast sums of money have been thrown at these problems, and endless pages of “reports” written. The problems stubbornly remain.
If we are talking about actual Aboriginals, meaning, above all, full blooded Aborigines, or at the least those with a high level of Aboriginal ancestry, and not white ones, then we are going to need to talk about intelligence, or IQ, because IQ is heavily correlated with general success in life, and also with “health outcomes” such as average life expectancy. IQ plays an important role in most of the other factors listed above.
A lot of studies of Aboriginal IQ were done many decades ago, and the median value of these tests is around 63 (depends on which overview you look at), which in technical terms, for an adult, is retardation; it corresponds to the mental age of an 11 year old European. For those of mixed Aboriginal and European blood, average IQ appears to be around 78. Average IQ for Australians as a whole is 98, in comparison.
There are no recent studies, for obvious reasons: any researcher looking into this area would be committing professional suicide. We might be able to assume that the average has increased somewhat, due to better schooling and nutrition (perhaps), hopefully, but it is unlikely to be by a significant amount. Aboriginal brain size has been measured fairly recently, 1990, as about 10% smaller than that of Europeans, and as IQ is well correlated to brain size, this makes it unlikely that there could be any substantial increase in overall IQ in only some decades time.
Aboriginals obviously belong in Australia, they have no other home, and we are responsible for them, but if we sincerely wish to help them then the reality of their mental condition must be accepted. Once it is, then real world, practical solutions which are likely to have to be heavily paternalistic with a big helping of a firm hand, may bring some improvement to their lives. The “gap” will not be fully closed, ever, but we will at least be able to know what we are doing is the best, most humane thing for them.
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