In 1973, the American Association on Mental Retardation changed the IQ cutoff for diagnosing mental retardation from below 85 to below 70 because more than half of African Americans scored below 85.
NOT BSTOTAL BS
MOSTLY BS — Verdict: Mostly False
Verified by Lenz ·
The Short Version
The historical record supports the threshold change, but not the claimed racial motive. Reliable sources show the 1973 revision returned to a two-standard-deviation cutoff, removed the borderline category, and was associated with concerns about overidentifying minority students. No authoritative source shows the organization changed the standard specifically because more than half of African Americans scored below 85.
Caveats
The claim mixes a real historical change with an unsupported specific explanation for why it happened.
General concern about minority overidentification does not prove the specific causal claim about African Americans scoring below 85.
The organization in 1973 was the American Association on Mental Deficiency; later naming can obscure the historical record.