the right to live in history

Andrew Sullivan: "That’s the core problem with debunking the Richwine thesis. The policy inferences are repellent to me. But the data are real."

I want to argue by analogy, here.

I've seen this blog post get passed around a few times. It's about the origins of homosexuality. The post argues that there are good reasons to doubt the straightforward genetic theory, that gay men and women possess a specific gene or genes that cause them to feel sexual and romantic attraction to members of their same sex. I possess nothing resembling the expertise to make that determination. In my own limited way, though, I'm sympathetic to questioning the purely genetic hypothesis, as it's always seemed overly simplistic, and the extremely common discordance in sexual orientation between identical twins is a major suggestion against a purely genetic cause. It's important to say: homosexuality can be physiological and unchosen and still not be genetic. Personally, I think that the perception of political necessity has caused a lot of people to assert a purely genetic cause in a way that outstrips the evidence. I understand that though "they can't help it, so let's let them have rights" may have had short-term political power, it is not a satisfying way to defend gay rights or the equal dignity and worth of gay love.

Yet when I read an argument that homosexuality is caused by a pathogen, it gives me pause. I read it with defensive skepticism. Why? Because, of course, the notion of "homosexuality as disease" is old, and has been used for a long, long time in the oppression of gay people. I read the post, and it has superficial plausibility to me. But there's no proof, yet. And when I read the comments, or find blogs that have linked to the post, my worst fears are confirmed: the commenters are repeatedly and explicitly comparing homosexuality to pedophilia, they are talking about gay sex as "wanton sex," they are using the language of deviance and disorder. The author of the blog post himself says: "Of course it’s a mental disease: a Darwinian disease, which is the only reasonable definition of disease. Curable? Who knows? Preventable? Likely." Whatever the truth of the origins of homosexuality, I want nothing to do with the people who are arguing that the origins are pathogenic.

It turns out that people who are inclined to see homosexuality as caused by a pathogen are also people who are inclined to see homosexuality as disordered, deviant, and wrong. Could any functioning human intelligence be surprised by this? And yet if I apply the kind of thinking Andrew endorses when it comes to race and IQ, I would have to ignore this connection and suspend skepticism, as though doing so is somehow in service to science.

Because this dynamic is exactly the same when it comes to race and IQ. People insist: hey, you've got to let the science be the science, you've got to look at the facts, you've got to let them make the case. And I try. I read their essays. I follow their links. I do make a good faith effort. But I do not make that effort with similar credulity or sympathy that I do when I read someone write about tweaking the Earned Income Tax credit or make an argument about alcohol licensing. Why? Because one of these arguments has been used for the perpetuation of a system of chattel slavery and racist domination. That's why. And, sure enough: whenever people pop up to tell me, "Here, check this link, read the facts," and I click and read around, and then I follow more links, inevitably, I end up at Stormfront or similar houses of explicit racism. Inevitably, the people who are arguing about inherent black and Hispanic tendency to be unintelligent are also arguing about "black aggression" or "hypersexuality" or "inherent tendency to criminality." This will apparently come as a shock to Andrew: racists love race science.

Is the correlation between belief in race science and racism 1? No. But it's a lot closer to 1 than it is to 0. Is that dispositive of the question? Of course not. If there's a racial bias towards low IQ, and if IQ is really an adequate gauge for real-world, lived intelligence, then the truth will out, just as it will if homosexuality is pathogenic. But to pretend as if people who are pushing the idea of inherent racial inferiority in IQ don't tend to be the kind of people who believe all sorts of racist things is stupid. It's moronic. It's exactly the kind of willful failure to see connections that Andrew is accusing other people of.

Take Steve Sailer. If many of the commenters who pop up here when I talk race and IQ are to be believed, Sailer is a great guy who has been wrongfully vilified by liberals. Well, setting aside the inherent moral questions of race and IQ, Sailer has also argued that Andrew's passionate style is not a part of his intellectual and moral makeup, but is a consequence of the medication Andrew is to control his HIV. Sailer has also argued that Brian Beutler was shot because he was a guilt stricken liberal who was too embarrassed to avoid the dangerous black neighborhood. (That happened in the comments at one of Matt Yglesias's blogs, and I can't find a link, so you'll have to take my word for it.) Sailer has also argued, without evidence, that Matt Yglesias's beating was a racist hate crime, black against white. This is the guy I'm suppose to see as an unfairly marginalized figure.

I am not arguing that these connections and associations prove anything. I am not arguing that we shouldn't consider these questions or these consequences. I am, however, arguing that recognizing these associations and allowing them to color how I read and interact with these arguments is not some unfortunate refusal to be appropriately scientific. It is a natural and principled way to act in a world that remains full of racism and in a country in which the cost of racial discrimination has been incalculable. What I am asking for, again, is the right to live in history. I am asking for the right to let the legacy of racism and attempts to use science as an argument for racial domination inform how I read arguments in the present. Is that really a bad thing? Is that somehow a failure of intelligence? I find it, instead, the only smart way to proceed.

When Andrew says "I don't like the policy prescriptions, but I believe in the data," he is once again acting like there is no question between the two. But it is precisely the people who want to find the ugly policy prescriptions that are most enamored of those data. We don't need to guess if Jason Richwine's opinion on the data led to policy prescriptions we find offensive! He did let his stance on the data lead to ugly policy prescriptions. Richwine wasn't criticized just because he believes that Hispanics have lower IQs. He was criticized because he believed that those lower IQs render Hispanics so undesirable that we should harshly restrict Mexican immigration into this country. That is the black letter argument in his work.

I appreciate that Andrew has, as he always does, engaged with criticism and opposing opinion on this issue. But I am frustrated by Andrew's continuing ahistorical credulity on this issue, his tendency to read the people making these arguments with the most possible charity. And he matches that with a distinct lack of charity for those resisting them, the constant invocation of liberal piety and political correctness. I would like very much for Andrew to consider whether his long history with this issue, and the attendant criticism he's received, has rendered him too ready to see those pushing the race-IQ connection as principled empiricists untouched by emotion or animus. To posit that they are sober-minded, rational minds merely pursuing the scientific truth disinterestedly while their opponents are motivated by groupthink and emotion is a pretty great way to make yourself gullible on an issue where gullibility has profoundly negative consequences.

Race is the central political question of the American experience, and racism a stain on our national character that has never wiped off, and if I and others are suspicious of arguments that elide with those of racists because of this history, then so be it. That doesn't mean I won't listen or look at the evidence. It just means that my suspicions will remain. I can live with the consequences of being too vigilant about racism far easier than I can live with the alternative.

This will have to be my last word on this, for awhile.