The American Spectator

Reader Mail

Mind Your Manners

10.31.07 @ 12:01AM

DELICATE MANNERS
Re: Jackie Mason & Raoul Felder's Race and Intelligence:

Jackie Mason and Raoul Felder miss a point: race-intelligent discussions (gender-intelligence stuff if you want to include Larry Summers in the mix along with James Watson and Arthur Jensen) belongs not in the arena of scientific debate, but in the constructions of Miss Manners. Private musings on the subject are constitutionally protected, of course, but any public expression is just plain rude.
-- Ty Knoy
Ann Arbor, Michigan

Science and political correctness are mutually antagonistic. Unless you are a communist. Or fascist. Or leftist. In which case, political correctness trumps science. PC: it's the new McCarthyism. Stalin and Mao, sit up and take notice!
-- Wolf Terner
Fair Lawn, New Jersey

I read Mr. Mason and Mr. Felder's article offering up their commentary and analysis of some comment or another made by Nobel laureate James Watson and shook my head in dismay. Theirs is the kind of illogic we see offered up by so much leftist pseudo-science. They begin with the truth they "know" is true, must be true, and then proceed to discredit the research and observations of a very credible scientist. Please do not misunderstand me. I do not defend racists and/or racism.

At the same time, what if the data led to the inescapable conclusion that one people group was "smarter" than another? Let's not get sidetracked talking about how one defines or measure intelligence or whether we are talking about different intelligences.) I think of that Harvard notable who dared suggest men were, on average, better at math than woman. I think of the global warming "debate." At every major turn of science, there has always been an establishment who thought for certain that the new theories were crazy until the evidence overwhelmed them. Thomas Kuhn's book on the subject makes for a good corrective on the common myths of how science is really done. And that is mainstream science. What if we freight the debate with the word "racism." What do you think is the likelihood that an open and honest debate of the subject might happen in an environment free from hysteria and name calling? I remember the book published in the late nineties called The Bell Curve and the furor that created.

Leftists are all good with science as long as it is upholding and justifying their basic core beliefs. Beliefs like: "There is no God" must find a "scientific" explanation for how the universe was created and life was formed. Evolution was a belief in search of evidentiary "proof;" not the other way around. Much of the social engineering that has taken place in the 20th and 21st centuries is rooted more in liberal belief systems than it is in hard science. Feminism and socialism with all their snobbish experts and high sounding language about equality have given us divorce, promiscuous female sexuality, abortion, the welfare mother, and a host of other ills as ideology is pursued with the supposed imprimatur of "scientific" attached to it. At the heart of so much of it is the mistaken belief that we are all born equal. Everyone, man, woman, people of differing races would all be equally fulfilled if we could somehow just throw off the institutional factors of discrimination that disadvantage and victimize people and prevent them from all enjoying the same success as every other person. After all, we are all equal, the like of thinking goes. If we all had the same shot at success we would all succeed.

But the truth is that we are not all equal. Some of us are smarter than others. Some of us are details people. Some of us are big picture people. Some of us are creative. Others of us are conscientious and mindful of the rules. Some of us are good at math. Some of us are good at reading people. Others of us are empathetic. Some of us are disciplined and motivated. Some of us are men. Some are women. And all of these things are without counting the unfortunate factors of bad parenting, divorce, and socio-economic disadvantage. It is likely that these factors will create a wide degree of difference among people.

If these differences exist in individuals, even discounting negative socio-economic factors, it is not that hard to take the next step and see that it is likely that differences among groups of people who share similar gender, cultures, geography, climate, history, and yes race will develop differently than others and will exhibit some generalized differences. It might be as well that when someone shares uncommon characteristics when compared to one's social and ethnic group that one will not really fit in among one's own people. There are always exceptions to the general rule.

And it is true that a brilliant physician is a brilliant physician no matter their skin color, religion or socio-economic upbringing. The same could be said of artists, teachers, mechanics, firefighters and even mathematicians. Yet I am not somehow shocked when most teachers and social workers today are women and most mechanics and mathematicians are men.

Why are we so terrified to examine the questions of racial differences? I will tell you why...our basic liberalized 21st century template is terrified that there might actually be some truth to it. We are also terrified of the specter of hyper-nationalism as in Nazi Germany and the evil that brought to the world. Six million murdered Jews seem like a good enough reason to never ask questions of racial and cultural difference.

But we will never know whether there is evidence of racial differences in areas like intelligence, at least not in today's social and intellectual climate because like global warming, our template will not allow any evidence to contradict what we already know: that all people and all peoples are equal. All cultures are equal. All races are equal. People who object to the notion that the earth is unnaturally warming and that human beings are the primary cause are called "deniers," and dismissed. In the same way people who suggest that there might be differing gifts, characteristics and abilities among differing ethnic or racial groups are labeled "racist" and dismissed.

Who needs a science that rigorously studies the world as it is alongside of an open and reasoned pursuit of the truth when we already know the right answer anyways? Throwing out the word "denier" and "racist" is easier than actually debating a truth we might not want to face. Who knows, perhaps an scientific debate will discover that we are all more or less the same as cultures and races and that all differences are personal. In today's intellectual climate, there is little hope we might find out one way or another.
-- Steve Baarda
London, Ontario

Nice try, Jackie. We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are, but the search for truth does not always result in pleasantness.

It matters very much. When the IQ of a continent is 70, there is no chance whatever that continent will ever join the eighteenth century. Raising questions about tests is only going to distract us away from any improvement in their situations. No test exists that does not show a substantial deficit in intelligence. My brother, who is married to a West African and has substantial experience there, unhappily confirms the truth of this.

I believe there is some passage in the New and Improved-Testament about the meek inheriting. You can certainly make a good case that we smart boys are going to wipe each other out. Nobody is going to be nuking Africa. I don't know if that represents an improvement for their station or not. Hard to say.
-- James Wilson

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