Why is It Always the Learned, ‘Intelligent’ Racists Who Spout Nonsense About Black Intellect?

Oh, no -- not again.

It appears to be that time once more for the race and IQ debate to rear its foolish head by dint of something said or published by a person of purportedly high intelligence.

We were last here in 1994, with the release of "The Bell Curve," in which Charles Murray, a historian, and Richard Hernstein, a behavioral psychologist, argued that black people, on the whole, are of lower intelligence than whites as a whole.

A firestorm erupted, with loads of dissenters and critics on one side and loads of defenders and believers on the other. Murray swam through the turbulence, laughing all the way to the bank as the book climbed the bestseller lists. His co-conspirator in the publishing crime had died shortly before the book came out.

Now comes the chancellor of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a scientific research facility in New York, telling a British audience that he sees a dire future for Africans because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours -- whereas all the testing says not really.”

You may not have heard about this because, unlike Murray, Dr. James D. Watson has not been treated as a great white hope giving comfort to racists and inviting the slicker ones to hop onto his “science” for safe transport out of the closet, but rather, Watson has been excoriated. The board of Cold Spring Harbor suspended him and, in Britain, his book tour was cancelled, and Watson has gone silent. The kibosh has been put on this sucker -- and fast.

Now, one may ask why anyone should care that an old man has made such a demeaning -- and, I might add, widely debunked -- declaration. Even when that old man is a Nobel laureate, feted four decades ago for helping discover and unravel the genetic double helix, the twin vines of DNA, why should we care?

Besides, what about freedom of speech, some are asking.

That freedom does not guarantee immunity from all consequences, of course; only governmental ones, and we must note that Watson has not been charged, fined or arrested.

Freedom from ostracism is not a constitutional protection.

As to what does it matter, consider this: Murray and Hernstein did not stop with their vile conclusion about “inherent” intellectual inferiority; they extended it to a public policy proposal in what might be called “applied racism.” “The technically precise description of America's fertility policy is that it subsidizes births among poor women, who are also disproportionately at the low end of the intelligence distribution,” they wrote. “We urge generally that these policies, represented by the extensive network of cash and services for low-income women who have babies, be ended.”

This, mind you, was as the “welfare reform” debate was ascending.

Again, a gift to those who want validation for their prejudices and ignorance, which has real-life consequences when such people have control over jobs, housing or other opportunities.

And there’s this from the president of the Federation of American Scientists: “At a time when the scientific community is feeling threatened by political forces seeking to undermine its credibility, it is tragic that one of the icons of modern science has cast such dishonor on the profession.” Remember that, in some dim corners of science, global warming is still questioned.

In the end, it’s not what one man -- not even a learned man -- said. It’s what people with power are eager to believe and how that translates into decisions that affect us all.

The question is not whether there are IQ disparities between ethnicities, but rather, what do we do about the slack IQ’s of people who swallow this bunk?