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I think the issue is that IQ is measuring how intelligent one has managed to become. But racists like to use it to determine what one is capable of becoming. There was a very interesting case of the Dan Everett and the Piraha amazonian tribe (I can't find the article now, I believe it was in the Times or similar but it was more than a decade ago). He claimed that the tribe had no numbers in their language (only "many", "few") etc. and were completely incapable of learning to count.... if they learned after about 16 years of age. If they learned before then they could count just fine.
Of course there is much more evidence than this about forming connections before a certain age, etc. My point is that even if Africa truly has "naturally" low IQs, this is almost certainly do to with education and if that were fixed the IQs would rise. So again, the issue is that certain people try to look at IQ and point at something genetic but that's not remotely implied by IQ unless you could ensure the study group had the exact same education as the higher groups.
It can't have been much more than a decade ago. I'm failing to find it too, but I did find a 2005 paper where Everett still says "if I am correct that the Piraha˜ cannot count (something that will require much more experimentation to determine)".
He also recounts his wife attempting to teach counting to eager Piraha students over eight months of daily classes without success. If it turns out that their adults are so hopelessly innumerate but their children can learn then that's got to be one of the most amazing facts (whether about brain plasticity or Sapir-Whorf, either way) I've ever heard.
These days, we prefer the name "linguistic relativity hypothesis". Sapir-Whorf has some ugly ties to the Nazi's: they incorrectly used the theory as evidence for Aryan superiority (which is silly if you know German and some other language). Their usage was ridiculous but, like pedophiles, just the mention of their name taints the subject, hence the name change (and, of course, it more accurately states what the theory is about).
I should do a better job of keeping various articles that discuss the theory as it's kind of a pet favourite of mine. In my own life I've noticed Swiss-german native speakers tend to have a problem distinguishing smell and taste. They use the same word for both.
... and the plan is to ameliorate that with a damnatio memoriae on an ethnically Jewish scientist?
I'm not trying to shoot the messenger, thank you for the information ... but I do really hate it every time I see a bit of evidence for the conspiracy theory that modern anti-racism is hopelessly infiltrated by 4chan trolls.
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