Liking classical music: Is it a racial or an IQ thing?

It gives me hope that every time I turn the dial to a rock 'n' roll station, my boys complain and insist I put on some classical music.  I tell them Led Zeppelin IS classical music, but they'll have none of it.

What predicts best a fondness for classical music: race or intelligence?

The General Social Survey (GSS) asked people how much they like classical music with answer-choices ranging from "like very much" to "dislike very much." With race and IQ as predictors, I used ordinary least squares (OLS) regression to generate estimates.  Here are the standardized coefficients (sample size = 916):

Standardized OLS coefficients
IQ   0.31***
Black   0.02
Other non-whites   0.02

***p < .001

The only predictor that matters is IQ:  smart people are much more likely to enjoy classical music than dull ones.  Blacks tend to not like this type of music (results not shown here), but once you adjust for IQ, the race effect disappears.  In other words, the reason why fewer blacks are classic music fans is completely due to lower intelligence.  Other races do not differ from whites (results not shown), even before you adjust for IQ.

So, taste in music is more an IQ than a race thing.  This might be true of many preferences among Americans.

 UPDATE: Immigration and dysgenic trends in fertility are gradually lowering the mean IQ in the United States, so at this rate, we will see falling interest in great music. Bring on the Ranchera!

IQ and Classical Music: I like to listen to Yahoo's internet radio, but am bothered by the fact that they offer 316 stations, only one of which is a classical station. I can get Tupac Radio, Booty Time, Uber Indie, Outlaw Country, Gay Club Mix, Klezmer, and Salsa Cien Por Ciento, but the greatest artists in the history of the world only rate one station? Tupac gets a whole one for himself: where's my "Beethoven 24/7"?

The country is just not smart enough for Vivaldi. I looked at the General Social Survey, and the IQ threshold seems to be about 125: any lower than this, and not even one-quarter of people really enjoy listening to classical music. Now you might suspect that it's simply a matter of taste and background and that intelligence doesn't have much to do with it. According to the data, the correlation between IQ and liking this kind of music is .30--a noteworthy connection.