Andrew Sullivan: Blacks - Not so smart

[Chascarrillo]

One of my proudest moments in journalism was publishing an expanded extract of a chapter from "The Bell Curve" in the New Republic before anyone else dared touch it. I published it along with multiple critiques (hey, I believed magazines were supposed to open rather than close debates) - but the book held up, and still holds up as one of the most insightful and careful of the last decade. The fact of human inequality and the subtle and complex differences between various manifestations of being human - gay, straight, male, female, black, Asian - is a subject worth exploring, period. Liberalism's commitment to political and moral equality for all citizens and human beings is not and should not be threatened by empirical research into human difference and varied inequality. And the fact that so many liberals are determined instead to prevent and stigmatize free research and debate on this subject is evidence ... well, that they have ceased to be liberals in the classic sense. I'm still proud to claim that label - classical liberal. And I'm proud of those with the courage to speak truth to power, as Murray and Herrnstein so painstakingly did. Pity Summers hasn't been able to match their courage. But recalling the tidal wave of intolerance, scorn and ignorance that hit me at the time, I understand why.
-Andrew Sullivan, 8/26/05
http://www.andrewsullivan.com/index.php?dish_inc=archives/2005_08_21_dish_archive.html#112507517867921518

[Rain Monkey]

Your thread is titled "Andrew Sullivan: Blacks - Not so smart." And you give a quote to consider that in no way supports you.

Now, I'll admit that I have not read "The Bell Curve." But I am familiar with the controversy that it was a part of.

It is the same controversy that resulted in protests at Edward O. Wilson's lectures when he first suggested that there may be a biological basis for social interactions. As a myrmecologist he had extrapolated from ants to people.

That theory became accepted after a biological basis was given for homosexuality. Which is to say that the same theory went from being out of favor because it derived from the same tradition that included eugenics, and later "The Bell Curve," to being accepted science.

That line of thinking suggests that a variety of traits may be more or less present in people who are more or less related. This can be applied to arrive at racist conclusions but it can also be applied to celebrate diversity.

It depends on the motive of who is applying it.

[Chascarrillo]

The quote I posted does support the thread title. I'll highlight the relevant part:

And I'm proud of those with the courage to speak truth to power, as Murray and Herrnstein so painstakingly did.

That is, the "truth" (sic) that there's a genetic difference in intelligence between races.

The arguments that the Bell Curve authors made have been demolished thoroughly. There's all sorts of information that's devastatingly critical of the book's arguments and methodology (the Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve) entry is a good place to start). And, if that doesn't settle it, I'll note that the Pioneer Fund funded most of the authors' research regarding the race/intelligence claims. Here's a bit from Wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_Fund) on that fine group:

The Pioneer Fund was incorporated in 1937 by two American scientists: Harry Laughlin, who received an honorary doctorate from Heidelberg University in 1936 in honor of his contribution to Nazi eugenics, and Frederick Osborn, who wrote in 1937 that the Nazi sterilization law was "the most exciting experiment that had ever been tried". The main benefactor of the Pioneer Fund was the soldier, philanthropist, and white supremacist Wickliffe Draper. He later made large financial contributions to efforts to oppose the civil rights movement and the racial desegregation mandated by Brown v. Board of Education, such as $215,000 to the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission in 1963.

[Rain Monkey]

I had a look at the Wikipedia link and was impressed, though I didn't take the time to read it all. Yet it doesn't convince me that Andrew Sullivan was promoting racist ideology.

As I heard the book "The Bell Curve" discussed, and read the reviews, I got the feeling that the main flaw was in treating American whites and blacks as distinct genetic groups when in fact most American blacks are pretty closely related to all the other descendants of slave owners. And that even on the world scale race is not a very scientific grouping of people where (black) !Kung, Papua New Guineans, and Namibians have less in common than Icelanders (Caucasian) do with Arabs (Semitic).

I am aware that the focus on race was the main point of discussion about the book, but I also got the idea that it was not the main point of the book. Have you read it?

[Rain Monkey]

Later: Okay, in the mean time I've been doing the reading. In the past I just didn't read his articles (Andrew Sullivan) because the topics didn't interest me. But it looks like I find very little that I would want to try to defend for him. And the book "The Bell Curve" looks worse than I thought.

So I'm going to sign off as having no dog in this fight, and also that you've made your case.