To the Editor:
Charles Murray recommends that we renounce current taboos and forthrightly begin to discuss group characteristics [“The Inequality Taboo,” September]. This would be a beginning step, he believes, toward developing more appropriate social policies, one of which would be an end to affirmative action in university admissions.
It is hard to imagine that Mr. Murray is unaware that the world he would like to see today actually existed a century ago. Then, political leaders, university professors, businessmen, writers, and cartoonists were (by modern standards) thoroughly uninhibited about discussing and portraying the presumed group characteristics of women, blacks, American Indians, Jews, the Irish, Italian immigrants, etc. Most of the portrayals tended to be somewhat negative, reflecting the racism, anti-Semitism, and (to a lesser degree) anti-Catholicism of those in influential positions.
Over the course of the 20th century, the children and grandchildren of these bigoted elites learned better manners and acquired better and fairer attitudes toward their fellow citizens, helping to create the United States of today, where open expressions of racial and ethnic prejudice are largely absent from public discourse. This was a good thing, in fact a triumph of the American democratic ideal.
I, for one, want to preserve that gain in civility and social decency, and in order to do so would gladly continue to forgo the dubious pleasures of discussing the relative “vivacity” of Scots and Italians (to borrow one of Mr. Murray’s examples) or the other less anodyne group comparisons that have done so much harm in human history.
Peter M. Connolly
Washington, D.C.
To the Editor:
Charles Murray states that since the 1970’s there has been a steady convergence in the mean scores of black and white takers of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) academic achievement tests in mathematics and verbal skills—not yet complete convergence, but respectable gains nevertheless, with the prospect of further gains in the future. With respect to IQ tests measuring the “general mental factor” (g), however, there has been virtually no significant improvement since the tests first began to be given in the early years of the 20th century. Mr. Murray cites in particular the “backward digit span” test, which measures the test-taker’s ability to repeat correctly in reverse order a random sequence of one-digit numbers.
But this raises a big question. If blacks, on average, possess knowledge at roughly equivalent levels to whites, and can perform tasks at such levels as measured by achievement and aptitude tests, what difference does it make that they cannot repeat numbers backward, or do any of the other things g-loaded tests measure, as well as whites can?
Barton L. Ingraham
Santa Fe, New Mexico
To the Editor:
I applaud Charles Murray’s call for free debate on race and gender, and for a lifting of the taboos of political correctness. But when dealing with such emotionally charged words as “race,” “gender,” and “intelligence,” one must adhere to scientific correctness by working with clear, operational definitions. For the most part, Mr. Murray has made a sincere effort to do so, but I have a few objections.
At the beginning of his essay, he places the issues of gender and race differences side-by-side, implying that they are identical. But while gender can be attributed to an XX or XY set of chromosomes, race cannot be operationally defined in such a way. Scientific studies of brain development or endocrinology can test hypotheses about the two biological gender groups. Where is the comparable biological underpinning for race? Mr. Murray alludes briefly to statistical “cluster[s] of genetic markers,” but what do these really consist of?
Even if the theory of race as a purely social construct is not valid, that would not establish race as a valid biological entity analogous to gender. When Mr. Murray notes that “the average American black is thought to be about 20-percent white” and then says that “to the extent that genes play a role, IQ will vary by racial admixture,” it seems that he is assuming some kind of essential biologic “blackness” and “whiteness.”
As for intelligence, I do not think Mr. Murray would claim that it is one solitary, operationally definable property. He himself writes that it “really does manifest itself in different ways and with different profiles.” There are various cognitive, as well as social and interpersonal, capacities that combine in myriad ways to produce human intelligence. Mr. Murray is correct that some of these, like the “general mental factor” (g), have been operationally defined and shown to be heavily influenced by genes. What is less clear is the real-life importance of g to success in life. How relevant is George W. Bush’s or Bill Clinton’s “backward digit span” to either man’s capacity to lead the free world?
The fact that neither race nor intelligence can be operationally defined does not mean that they should not be discussed; quite the contrary. Mr. Murray has made an important contribution to the debate, particularly in emphasizing data over blind prejudice. Yet when it comes to statements about the relationship between race and intelligence, I suspect he would admit that we still have much to learn.
Peter Heiman
Bronx, New York
To the Editor:
Charles Murray is certainly correct that taboos concerning biogenetic factors in group differences have stifled serious discussion of these matters and helped create an intellectual climate dominated by lies, evasions, and doubletalk. Still, he does not distinguish in his article between biological factors that are genetic in origin and those that have an environmental basis. The reader is left with the impression that all biological differences between races must be genetic in origin.
But we know that human brain development can be greatly influenced by, say, a child’s early nutritional environment, both intrauterine and extrauterine, and by the effects of pathogenic diseases. The fact that researchers have found a persistent black-white group difference in things like “backward digit span” tests, brain pH levels, brain glucose metabolism, nerve-conduction velocity, and reaction times certainly establishes the existence of some kinds of black-white brain differences. But one cannot conclude from this research alone the degree to which the differences are the result of genes or environment.
If a significant portion of the racial differences are due to environmental factors, they may be subject to environmental intervention, and hence (contrary to what Mr. Murray suggests) are at least partially tractable. The distinguished British IQ researcher Hans Eysenck, who for many years believed that the black-white IQ difference was mainly genetic, later came to the conclusion that vitamin and nutritional differences probably accounted for much more than he had previously thought. Other researchers, including Roger Masters of Dartmouth, have stressed the harmful effects on brain development of high ambient levels of lead, cadmium, and other heavy metals, and shown racial differences in exposure to such toxins. Even something as seemingly innocuous as the decision to breast-feed or bottle-feed a baby seems to have a significant effect on brain and IQ development, and there are probably racial differences here, too. There is a whole lot in the area of biological makeup that we still do not know.
Russell Nieli
Princeton University
Princeton, New Jersey
To the Editor:
Kudos to Charles Murray for exclaiming that the emperor of equality wears no clothes. Those who define and police our cultural dogma deny this truth because they have lost sight of the reality and primacy of the spiritual. Only in that realm are we equal with one another. The ability to solve differential equations or to dunk a basketball is not identically distributed among individuals, or across groups. But everyone is equally created in the image of God, and every mortal of normal mind has equal freedom and responsibility to make moral choices.
Daniel Love Glazer
Northbrook, Illinois
To the Editor:
Charles Murray writes that “specific policies based on premises that conflict with scientific truths tend not to work. Often they do harm.” If the leaders of the Democratic party had recognized this 40 years ago, they might have avoided the mistakes that have resulted in the present Republican dominance.
In the 60’s and 70’s, the Democrats tried to eliminate poverty and racial inequality in the United States. Their efforts were well intended. Unfortunately, they were based on two assumptions that Mr. Murray has disproved: that the poor are the same as everyone else, only less fortunate; and that the problems of blacks are ultimately caused by white racism.
Increasingly, capitalism restricts the rewards of economic growth to the very brightest. This is a Democratic issue. But if efforts to alleviate the income gap are to be successful, they will need at least tacitly to acknowledge the reality of genetic inequality and the relationship between intelligence and income. As long as Democrats pretend that genes do not matter, Republicans will get away with the pretense that the only thing that does matter is moral character.
John Engelman
Wilmington, Deleware
To the Editor:
Charles Murray writes that “talking about group differences does not require any of us to change our politics.” But he belies this statement when he notes that establishing social policies genuinely blind to gender and race “will require us to jettison an apparatus of laws, regulations, and bureaucracies that has been 40 years in the making,” by which he means, at the very least, affirmative action in education and employment.
Nor is it clear why Mr. Murray considers the concept of superiority inappropriate in discussing inequalities among groups. True superiority is every bit as real, observable, and measurable as group differences. History has determined the relative importance of various human traits and abilities. As a result, the natural inequality of nations, leveraged by their size and power, has made some superior to others for protracted periods. There is thus a sociobiological foundation for such historical phenomena as colonialism, relations between the West and the Muslim world, the rise-fall-rise cycle of Germany and Japan in the 20th century, and the steep ascent of China and India in the last two decades.
Leonid Hanin
Idaho State University
Pocatello, Idaho
To the Editor:
On average, Americans are taller than Chinese. Notwithstanding this statistical truth, Yao Ming is 7-foot-5 and averages eighteen points a game for the NBA’s Houston Rockets. This example should be kept in mind by those tempted to take umbrage at Charles Murray’s statements about group differences in IQ. Mr. Murray propounds no outlandish theory but merely analyzes available data. Factual statements on this topic ought not be more controversial than statements about differences in height between Americans and Chinese.
There would be no need for Mr. Murray or anyone else to make a public issue of this sort of aggregated data were it not for the ceaseless agitation of radical egalitarians who insist that every inequality is an injustice. Until they relent in their advocacy of perverse policies of preference, Charles Murray must continue to speak about the inconvenient facts.
Robert Stacy McCain
Hagerstown, Maryland
To the Editor:
I commend Charles Murray for thinking clearly about the subject of inequality. In reading his essay, I was reminded of Emerson’s observation that “In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.” Well done, Mr. Murray, for having the intellectual conscience to publish this article.
Timothy Mitchell
San Clemente, California
Charles Murray writes:
The thoughtful letters sent to Commentary accord with others I received after publication of “The Inequality Taboo”—some agreeing, some disagreeing, but none hyperventilating. Perhaps this is relevant to Peter M. Connolly’s worries about what would happen if it were once more acceptable to talk openly about group differences. In my personal experience, we seem to be doing this better than we did eleven years ago when The Bell Curve appeared.
I have no argument with Mr. Connolly’s characterization of the conversation a century ago. But can we not move toward greater openness without moving all the way back to the world he invokes? Let me propose a more optimistic view of history. The civil-rights legislation of the 1960’s did not pass because courageous politicians were morally ahead of their constituents, but because a sea change had already occurred in the attitudes of the white electorate. A more open conversation about race would not take us back to blackface and overt anti-Semitism for the same reason that the nation would not resegregate hotels and restaurants if the civil-rights legislation were repealed. We live in a different culture from the one of our great-grandparents, based on changed standards of behavior. We can argue about who gets credit for the change but not about whether a fundamental change has occurred.
Barton L. Ingraham asks a sensible question: who cares about black-white differences on the abstract items in g-loaded tests if the differences on real-world items in achievement tests are diminishing? The problem is that the gap in achievement-test scores is still large, and we also may not have “the prospect of further gains in the future” that Mr. Ingraham sees. Convergence effectively stopped in the mid- to late 1980’s, a plateau that is now almost two decades old.
It is hard to think of contemporaneous trends in the economic, educational, or social conditions of blacks since the mid-1980’s that can explain this plateau. Those who see a large genetic component in the black-white difference have a parsimonious explanation. Part of the black-white difference in test scores, they stipulate, is environmental in origin. The period from World War II to the 1990’s saw dramatic improvements in the environment for black children, and the environmental source of the black-white difference diminished accordingly. Progress stopped, they contend, because the capacity of environmental changes to close the gap was exhausted.
The results from highly g-loaded tests offer a way to test the consistency of this logic. Psychometric g is the most heritable component of cognitive ability and, accordingly, the least influenced by environmental changes. The implication is that convergence in highly g-loaded tests over time will be smaller than convergence in achievement tests. That implication seems to be borne out by the available data. The case isn’t closed, but such findings make me pessimistic about the likelihood and speed of future convergence.
I agree with Peter Heiman that race as a biological entity is qualitatively different from gender and also that the race variable does not consist of “essential whiteness” on one end of a continuum and “essential blackness” on the other. I think of race as a multi-dimensional continuous variable. Until now, constrained by limits on our ability to categorize race, we have been compelled to ignore subgroups and admixtures that are obvious to all. Progress in genetics has already made it possible to attach a metric to the continuous variable of race. The next step, probably still some years away, is to discover the nature of the dimensions buried in the aggregate variable (in the same sense that a measure of socioeconomic status has, buried within it, dimensions measuring income, occupation, and education). Even now, however, it is within our capability to answer many questions about the co-relationship of race, measured continuously, and IQ scores.
Mr. Heiman and I also agree that picking Presidents according to IQ score is not a good idea. But I think he underestimates how much we know about the importance of g to success in life. I recommend a reading of the first twelve chapters of The Bell Curve, and the very extensive literature reviewed there.
The short answer is that g is to real-world success as weight is to an offensive tackle in the NFL. Heaviest isn’t best, but if you do not weigh at least 250 pounds, forget about it. Similarly, the best physician, CEO, or astrophysicist is probably not the one with the highest IQ; but there is a minimum that aspirants to those jobs have to bring to the table, and the more they have, on average, the better. Psychometric g is a flexible, all-purpose tool that enhances all of one’s other abilities.
I am indebted to Russell Nieli for noting biological factors that are environmentally instead of genetically determined; it is a distinction that I should have included in the article. Their role in explaining group differences, however, is limited.
For example, nutrition is indeed important to IQ, and, worldwide, the distribution of nutrition is worse for black children than for white children. That discrepancy must explain some part of the worldwide black-white difference in IQ. But large numbers of American blacks have had good nutrition from birth. Studies of blacks and whites in upper socioeconomic brackets, where there are no major differences in such things as nutrition, exposure to lead, or pathogenic disease, consistently find that the absolute black-white difference as measured in IQ points is smaller than in the population at large, usually by 30 to 40 percent, but the relative difference measured in standard deviations remains unchanged or increases. Mr. Nieli’s comments are well-taken, but we have no reason to think that equalizing the physical environment will get rid of a large intractable component of the black-white difference.
Leonid Hanin correctly identifies an implication of intractable group differences that is associated with conservative politics: namely, that strong affirmative action is misguided and ought to be dismantled. But I think the Left also has a potentially sweeping and powerful argument for its redistributionist ambitions. It goes like this: science is demonstrating that no one deserves his IQ. If, then, IQ is important in determining economic success in life—increasingly important, as John Engelman points out in his letter—why reward lucky people with high incomes? We should not be surprised if, ten or twenty years from now, leftists seize upon the genetic origin of individual and group differences as passionately as they now deny it.
As for my observation about the irrelevance of superiority and inferiority that Mr. Hamin criticizes, it applies to individuals, not to civilizations, and I deeply believe it. My higher-IQ friends do certain things better than my lower-IQ friends. They are not superior people.
Civilizations are more amenable to superior/inferior designations than individuals, but even in those cases, disaggregation is necessary. Having lived for an extended period in a Southeast Asian culture, I am convinced that, on certain dimensions, such a culture is superior to our own. But on others, it is inferior. How one assesses a civilization’s aggregate score depends on how one values the components.
