if you want credit for endorsing something unpopular you better actually endorse what it says

I'll take Ta-Nehisi Coates's lead and bring my thoughts on race and IQ to a close. I'll do it with a simple observation.

Perhaps what aggravates me the most about the position of Andrew Sullivan is how he, and others who endorse the Bell Curve argument, express that endorsement by essentially lying about what the argument says. To read Sullivan, or the myriad people who have popped up in my comments, one might think that these arguments offer minor distinctions between the intelligence of the black population and the intelligence of the white population, that we're talking nickels and dimes here. This is flatly untrue.   Both the Bell Curve and the larger suite of arguments about race and IQ that Sullivan and others are endorsing say that the black population is significantly less intelligent than the white population. The Bell Curve argues that the average white person has an IQ that is more than a standard deviation higher than the average black person. Since the publication of that book, Charles Murray and those like him have endorsed the view that sub-Saharan Africans have an average IQ better than two standard deviations lower than the average white American. (See, for example, the notorious Rushton-Jensen article, co-authored by the president of the explicitly racist and eugenicist Pioneer Society.) In other words, they believe that the difference in intelligence between the average white American and the average sub-Saharan African is the same as or larger than the difference in intelligence between the average sub-Saharan African and someone who suffers from Down Syndrome. These are not fine distinctions.

Sullivan wrote "No one is arguing that 'that black people are dumber than white,' just that the distribution of IQ is slightly different among different racial populations." If you take nothing else away from me, ever, take this: this is wrong. To say that a standard deviation of difference represents a "slight" difference is simply untrue. To say that the two full standard deviations separating sub-Saharan Africans from white Americans, asserted by the race science crowd, is merely a slightly different distribution is to engage in some truly mendacious wordplay, or to betray a lack of even elementary statistical education.

Does accepting these premises equate with arguing that black people are dumber than white people? I would suggest that it does. As I said in a previous post, I don't doubt that people are accurately reporting IQ data for different populations. What I doubt is that intelligence is a quantifiable phenomenon; that IQ is a meaningful proxy for it; that IQ tests are free of systematic bias and data corruption; and that these differences can be responsibly asserted to be the product of heredity and not environmental and other factors. But if you do accept these premises, I can't see how there is any meaningful way you can deny that statement. After all, the Bell Curve's central argument is precisely that intelligence is real, measurable, accurately quantified with IQ and IQ testing, largely heritable, and that black people have low IQs.

(How long ago did Sullivan read the Bell Curve? I have it sitting in front of me. The data is right there. I can't understand how Sullivan can believe that he's arguing the same thing as the book and yet still call these slight differences in distribution.)

This divide, between the pride with which people assert their independence and honesty on this issue, and the way in which they relate the arguments of race science in the most anodyne and minimized way-- that's what bothers me the most. It's the hypocrisy in patting yourself on the back for facing "harsh truths" and then failing to accurately reflect what those "truths" you're endorsing actually say.

In the post I linked to above, Coates talks about his community.

I have lived in the black community virtually my entire life. I went to black public schools. I went to a black university. I have spent a third of my life with a black woman. When I wake up in the morning, black people are the first thing I see. My black mother and father hurled books at me. My black Howard professors shot down my dumb theories. My black book editor parses through my long unwieldy thoughts. My black wife reads my first drafts. In very literal terms, what you read here everyday is representation of the collective brain-power of a black community.

If I know the rhythms of blogging, this episode will soon draw to a close and everyone will part as friends. I must insist on pointing this out: if the argument of the Bell Curve and attendant views is correct, the majority of the people Coates has described here are likely of significantly below average intelligence. That's what the argument says, that a significant majority of black people have below average IQs and that these IQs accurately reflect their intelligence. Sure, some race science types might say that Coates is likely to run with an above-average crowd. But if you expand the ranks of people far enough, and statistics are true, and the Bell Curve is true, we're talking about a group of people-- the people this man loves and admires-- who are largely made up of the unintelligent. That's what the book says. And you, reading at home, the black people you know and work with and socialize with? The Bell Curve says that you can expect a significant majority of them to be significantly below average intelligence. That's the text of the book. It's right there, in black and white.

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no, I'm not an IQ guy myself

Since some have asked, in response to my recent post on IQ and race-- no, I'm not a booster of IQ. You can read far smarter and more qualified people than I describing why a measure like IQ (or g) is deeply insufficient to approximate intelligence, or indeed why even "intelligence" as a static, comprehensive, or meaningful term is deeply problematic. (Although there are of course those who will insist that these perspectives are merely the product of well-intentioned sentimentality.)

Additionally, "race" and "black" have never been defined to my satisfaction in these discussions. Again, this is the kind of stance that is commonly dismissed as politically correct or romantic, but I find it simply a sensible consideration of the facts. When we're talking about ancestry and heredity we're talking about complex genealogical lines that are particularly tangled when you're talking about black Americans. Using terms like "of African ancestry" is deeply problematic when talking about black Americans, who represent a totally unique group and who have a genetic heritage loaded with the influence of other groups such as white Americans and Native Americans. It seems to me, from a common sense (read: inexpert) position, that "black" can't mean much if it includes both a first-generation Somalian who now lives in Los Angeles and can trace his lineage to the same town going back hundreds of years, and also someone whose family in Cleveland came by way of Alabama via Haiti via being captured as a slave from what is now Liberia, and whose lineage includes a Greek grandfather and a Cherokee great-grandmother and the slaveholders who raped their way into his background. I'm willing to be educated on why the term is still useful despite this lack of common background, but I keep not hearing that argument.

I engage on this issue using those terms and those assumptions because I want to critique the arguments that flow from their assumptions. And even accepting their assumptions that intelligence is one quantity that can be distilled down to individual numerical scores, and that broad designations of race and ethnicity are meaningful categories for making informed assumptions, their arguments strike me as a comprehensive failure. Again, show me the actual mechanism at work here. Point to the genes, the chromosomes, the alleles, demonstrate how those affect gestation, and prove that they lead to the phenotypical outcomes of lower IQ.

I'll show my cards and say that I don't think that will happen, because I don't believe intelligence, whatever that means, is like having lobed ears or blue eyes. Even if it were, I don't think it can be boiled down to a measure like g. But even if I did, I'd need to see the mechanism. Call me a stickler.

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narrative is distorting/the mechanism is what matters

Via Ta-Nehisi Coates, I see that Andrew Sullivan is lamenting a purported blackout of research regarding the race-IQ connection. This is not new territory for Andrew; he helped bring the issue into the public consciousness back during his tenure as editor at The New Republic.

Now: the first issue here is the claim that such a blackout exists. As Coates points out, the evidence for such a blackout that is presented amounts to the complaint of a single researcher, Dennis Garlick. The researcher is someone who could reasonably claim expertise on the issue, and he appears from my limited vantage to have an impressive resume. His claim, though, seems disturbingly unsupported. Whether or not research into IQ and heredity is being squashed is an empirical question. Coates links to a blogger who attempts to answer that question empirically, and while we couldn't call it scientific, I find it a sober and constructive attempt to find out the truth. The results seem to speak for themselves, but I can't know what goes on behind the scenes. I'm unqualified to say if Garlick is right, but as a consumer of research I also don't find his case compelling.

The fact that empirical inquiry cuts against the grain of what Sullivan and Garlick are claiming is resonant in the context of the race-IQ question. The "race realist" movement has always pushed a narrative where politics corrupts empiricism, but the movement's failures have primarily been empirical failures. When you strip away the endless paranoid conspiracy theorizing and the relentless flogging of the narrative, you get down to a robust set of data demonstrating differences in performance on IQ tests, then some fairly wild speculation about genetic causes. Over and over again, assertions about the genetic undesirability of black people involve making massive leaps from an observed phenomenon to a particular mechanism to explain that phenomenon, with dubious or nonexistent evidence to support those leaps.

It's true: a broad swath of research demonstrates that black Americans tend to perform less well on standardized tests of intelligence. This racial achievement gap is not adequately explained merely by controlling for socioeconomic status, as is commonly assumed, although adjusting for poverty does shrink it. There's no need to hide from that data, as those positing genetic determinism constantly accuse others of doing. If a connection between heredity and IQ can be discovered, it should be. (Measure what is measurable, etc.) But what empiricism requires-- not political correctness, not bleeding heart compassion, not even basic human decorum and civility, but cold-blooded rational inquiry-- is far more than the racial determinists have show us. The narrative they present is seductive, which is precisely why their insistence on narrative over the complicated and limited claims of science is disturbing. From my perspective, most people who assert racial genetic deficiencies seem remarkably disinterested in identifying specific mechanisms for the observed phenomenon. They instead seem primarily interested in flogging crude and reductive visions of our society and what ails it.

The rush to find genetic origins for any and all human phenomena has become so popular, particularly with the press, that the standards of evidence have eroded everywhere. Genetic or evolutionary speculation has become an obsession of our media, frequently undertaken without a shred of scientific credibility, and defined by faddishness and imprecision. Take homosexuality and genetics. I find it remarkable the number of educated people who I meet who assume, quite confidently, the homosexuality (in both men and women) is purely and straightforwardly the product of genetic predisposition. This is a politically palatable idea-- one might call it PC-- but it can't yet be proven, even conditionally. There are complications, such as the (controversial) older brothers hypothesis, which is important because it posits a mechanism that is non-genetic and yet nonetheless physiological in origin (and thus not "chosen"), as well as other evidence contrary to the assumed genetic origins of homosexuality.

But as it became politically important for people to insist that homosexuality is genetic, that insistence became more and more prevalent. Never mind that the dichotomy between "homosexuality is purely genetic" and "homosexuality is a choice" is flagrantly false, or that "they can't help it" is not a stirring cry for equality. Politics made the genetic origin necessary, so people believed in it. Indeed, it's hard for me to imagine a scenario where politics has more directly corrupted popular understandings of empirical questions than the widespread belief that we know for a fact that homosexuality is genetic. Yet curiously, I don't find Andrew railing against that assumption, or insisting on the supremacy of disinterested research, or leading the battle for more open-mindedness in the attempt to explain the origins of homosexuality. Perhaps we will identify specific alleles that determine sexual orientation; I wouldn't be remotely surprised. But jumping from observed phenomenon to the assumption of genetic origins of that phenomenon with limited direct evidence of a specific mechanism is unhelpful.

Compare these speculative genetic causes of low IQ or homosexuality to, say, genetics and sickle cell anemia. We don't have the presence of a human condition and vague talk such as "it's genetic." We have identified the particular gene, in a particular chromosome, that causes the condition. We know how the mutation changes protein structure, which leads directly to specific consequences in gestation that cause the negative health effects we see in people with sickle cell anemia. We identified the alleles responsible for specific phenotypic traits and demonstrated the connection scientifically. At every step, we have gone beyond "it's genetic," in regards to sickle cell anemia, specifically and constructively. We have identified the mechanism which causes the condition. That's the job of those who are dedicated to racial determinism: find the mechanism. Do your work. Show me the data. Nobody is going to feel sorry for you when you fail to prove your assertions.

My question for Andrew and others is whether my dissatisfaction with the assumption of genetic origins for the racial achievement gap is necessarily "PC," particularly when placed in context with our knowledge about genetic phenomena like sickle cell. Is the narrative so powerful that we couldn't merely be unpersuaded by the evidence?

Speaking as someone who is involved, for 14+ hours out of a typical day, in reading, researching, and learning about education and pedagogy, let me engage in understatement and point out that education and intelligence are remarkably mulitivariate phenomena. My continuing frustration with the ed reform crowd is how relentlessly reductive they are in discussing the origins of poor educational performance. Saying "it's those damned unions!" and accusing any dissenters of obstruction isn't just politically unfair. It's an incredible failure to soberly assess the depth of our problems and the complexities of their origins. Trying to isolate specific variables in education and intelligence research is incredibly hard. That's not politics. It's reality. To ascribe genetic origins without greater explanation of mechanism or the exploration of environmental factors which shape IQ is to engage in wild-ass speculation.

My own wild-ass speculation? The question of race and IQ will be answered in a way that is complex, rather dull, and totally useless for providing headline fodder for sensationalist publications like The New Republic or Slate. I wouldn't be surprised if a whole slew of factors, including poverty, exposure to lead, poor diets, parent educational background, the idiom tests are written in, neonatal health care, learning disorders, dyslexia and dyscalculia, lack of exposure to educational toys and games, low childhood reading loads, the persistence of syntactic immaturity due to parental modeling (my own academic obsession), and other environmental factors played a role. That doesn't even begin to untangle the web of what "black" means in terms of specific linear heritage, particularly since we are talking about a truly unique genetic history that has been conditioned by the rape and forced breeding programs that are common to chattel slavery. If I'm right and the origins of the racial achievement gap are revealed to be a stew of competing factors, it will make our job of closing the gap harder, but it will also hopefully blunt the words of those who ascribe vast social problems to the supposed inherent inferiority of our most oppressed group.

I chose the example of sickle cell anemia purposefully, of course. It's a condition that is generally found in those with sub-Saharan African lineage. What does that mean for American blackness? Is sickle cell anemia "inherent" in black people? Is there something essential about the disorder in black people? They're absurd questions. Yet they are of exactly the same character as claims routinely made about black people and intelligence. As I said, my unsupported speculation is that a large number of factors contribute to the racial achievement gap. It's possible that one of them is a genetic predisposition. If so, we'll need to know what genes are actually producing this trait, and how. Then what? If we find such a predisposition, does that make low intelligence "inherent" to blackness? Does it mean we send black people off on a barge? Is this somehow an insurmountable challenge to liberalism, or to our social policies?

Racial determinists say that they want rationality and then engage in hysteria. The first step in assessing these issues is getting to the truth of the matter, and their dogged insistence about what we know exceeds their evidence and thus hinders that pursuit of truth. They then dig deeper, insisting on a slew of negative social conditions that stem from these supposed genetic deficiencies. It isn't surprising where the conversation next turns, although those who embrace these ideas continue to feign shock when they find racists involved in race science. (I want to loathe Stephen Metcalf, but his prudence, intelligence, and fairness in this piece makes it impossible, I'm afraid. Seriously, read it.)

I find the case for racial determinism currently unpersuasive. I find the notion of a research blackout unsupported. I find the discussion of racial lineage and genetic diversity reductive. I find the description of a specific genetic mechanism nonexistent. I find the idea of essentialized blackness offensive. I find the suggested consequences unsupportable and the supposed policy responses laughable. And I find the case for egalitarianism, equal protection before the law, and the assumption of equivalent human dignity totally unchallenged, whatever the reality about the racial achievement gap.

Of course, I'm not without considerable biases, and I couldn't tell you that I have inhabited a space of pure rationality when confronting this question. But this narrative of a refusal to learn the truth due to political correctness, so self-aggrandizing to those who push it, is not credible and does not serve the cause of empiricism. The pursuit of the controversial for its own ends is as distorting as the avoidance of it, and nowhere is that more true than here. Many people have attempted to marshal the evidence for the race-IQ connection for quite some time. Rather than evidence, they keep bringing us the narrative. Remember that.

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the racialized subject

One thing that I really wish more people understood (to be more direct, what I wish more white people understood) is that for racial minorities, the sense of being racialized is nearly constant, and often uncomfortable even when it isn't direct, explicit, or expressed in behavior.

Here's what I mean.

I think most anyone who has gone through any level of higher education has had a particular day of class when race was discussed in a way that was uncomfortable for at least some in the classroom. A particular form of this discomfort often comes when white students feel that they are being personally indicted by discussions of white racism, whether contemporary or historical. It's a phenomenon I've observed over and over again, and I'm always discouraged by it. For a lot of people, any discussion of race appears to be close to a personal accusation; palpable tension fills the air. The more the conversation turns away from a historical perspective, where the distance of history provides a buffer, and towards contemporary racism, the more charged the atmosphere becomes. And god forbid someone actually say that someone is being racially insensitive. Then things get really unhappy.

I am not insensitive to the feelings of white students in this situation, nor can I claim that I have never felt this way myself. The righteous notion that racial issues are of deep meaning and great consequence naturally makes these issues charged for everyone. And as accusations of racism are something of a nuclear bomb in discourse, being sensitive to them is inevitable. But that discomfort, I think, is also pedagogically invaluable. Being challenged in this way is precisely what higher education should be about. It's also yet another example of why protections like tenure and seniority are so important. As the university plunges along towards a service model, we need to preserve the ability of instructors to challenge their students in ways those students don't like-- often precisely because the students don't like it. Being made to feel like a racialized subject happens to white people very rarely and should be cultivated in college, comfortable or not.

What I would like for more white people to understand is that this feeling that they feel in those moments-- that they have been racialized, made to feel like an avatar for their entire broadly-defined ethnic or racial group-- is a feeling that many non-white people feel all the time.

To be clear, I don't contend that this feeling is always uncomfortable. I'm sure that many wear it with pride. There are of course times when members of racial minority groups seek out this stance, as a matter of pride, community, and the declaration of principles. But it is important to point out that it is often unchosen, and that being racially signified in that way is something that my fellow white people and I can't fully understand.

So imagine that you're the only black person at an otherwise all-white party, a fairly common occurrence, particularly at college. Somebody says something racially insensitive. It doesn't have to be out-and-out racism, and it likely isn't intended to cause offense. It's just stupid, and indicative of quietly ugly attitudes, and the kind of statement that is expressed so banally that it seeks to implicate others in its assumptions. The stupid statement is made and there's a brief window to respond to it or not.

So: what do you do? Maybe you don't know the people you're with very well. Maybe you're not willing to deal with the social consequences of objecting, particularly because those consequences are likely to occur behind your back. Maybe you're just tired and don't want to deal with this shit. And as I can tell you from personal experience, the chance for an actual productive exchange is low. But then again, racism should be challenged. People usually take silence as assent. Worse, if you're black and someone says something stupid and you don't challenge it, there's a tendency for the speaker to take that as evidence that what he or she said couldn't possibly be racist or unacceptable. "Hey, I said that around this black guy, and even he thought it was funny!" All of this goes right back to W.E.B. Du Bois; black people in America have always been forced to exist as a kind of double, the particular and the general black subject.

I couldn't possibly tell you what the right thing to do here would be. I'm not black, I've never had to navigate this particular minefield, and I never will. My point is only to say that if you're a racial minority, you have to make a choice, even if that choice is inaction. Having to face that choice is in and of itself a way of being racialized that white people don't face. Sure, we've all been in positions where we have to decide whether to engage with racism or not. But as I said above, there is an implied responsibility when you are a member of the insulted group that doesn't exist for white people. And there is no not choosing, as choosing to do nothing is making a choice, and a socially loaded one at that. It's like the guy who passes you on the street and tips his hat to you. You have no choice but to respond. You can choose to do nothing, but doing nothing is itself a choice, and in context one that sends one of the loudest social messages. Now take that and multiply the importance by a thousand times.

I have myself felt some of the discomfort that I describe above in classes where we discuss race. Then I leave the class and I'm just some dude. Meanwhile a black student leaves class and operates in an environment where many white people will take him or her to be emblematic of all black people. That's a necessary context to understand race in America, and it points to the poverty of terms like "playing the race card." The race card got played a long, long time ago. You can try to ignore it but you can't put it back in the deck.

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the presumption of innocence

You know, I just feel compelled to point out-- this Jerry Sandusky situation at Penn State is precisely the kind of situation where the rubber meets the road for a belief in the presumption of innocence.

You've had a lot of liberals lamenting the collapse of the rule of law the last decade. This would appear to be a situation where the rule of law and rights of the accused are most important. It's precisely when the media and the people have already decided the guilt of the accused (and are competing to describe his evil in the most lurid hyperbole) that these principles are the most important. And yet I find silence on that presumption of innocence from most liberal commentators, or the outright abandonment of it, when it comes to this particular case.

This particular case involves disturbing admitted attitudes and behaviors and a great deal of incriminating testimony. But the presumption of innocence is the bedrock principle of our legal system, and it applies until the legal process has run its course. And it has nothing to do with belief that the accused will eventually be found not guilty, or sympathy for the accused. I can generate no such sympathy for Jerry Sandusky. But I have to point out that precisely the same liberals who beat their breast about the terrible collapse of the rule of law are now trying to outdo each other in the expression of their outrage, directly against the presumption of innocence. I don't expect any different from conservatives, who by and large believe that any accusation is true if it is voiced-- unless it's sexual harassment, rape, or police misconduct, that is. But liberals who have staked many claims on the rule of law and the principles which undergird it suddenly find that commitment unpalatable, when it has become so unpopular.

I doubt you'll find many expressing that perspective, though.

Update: mistermix made some astute points here. This is what I said in comments.

I recognize the distinction. I just think that trial by media is a poor idea, as Richard Jewel could have told you when he was alive. And while I recognize that the legal right to a fair trial is distinct from the opinions on guilt of the public, I also think that it becomes functionally impossible to get that fair trial when the public is convinced there's no chance the accused is innocent.

It's a fair point about the institution, but recognize that the same criticism holds: they are accused of crimes and deserve the presumption of innocence.

It seems likely to me that Sandusky is guilty, and thank god we don't have a legal system predicated on the opinions of those minimally informed by the media. If he is guilty, he should spend the rest of his life in jail. Just like those in Guantanamo Bay should receive appropriate punishments, if they have been proven to have committed crimes in court.

Finally, on the outrage thing-- for me, "child rapist" is enough. I don't need to dig any further into my vocabulary to find appropriately angry terms. "Child rapist" says more than any purple prose ever could. It's just like with bin Laden. Why is "terrorist responsible for 3,000 people killed on 9/11" not sufficient? When people dig so deeply into their bag of outrage, at some point it ceases to be about the victim and instead becomes about them.

Update II: The consensus is that I'm full of shit here. (Although you know how little I value consensus!)

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history lesson

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check it out

Interestingly, one of the posts that shows up in the sidebar on The New Inquiry contains a pretty forceful rebuttal of a lot of the things that I've been writing about.

Thus, to vilify or defend the Internet, or Blogs, or Facebook, or Twitter, etc., as responsible in and of themselves for the noisy meaninglessness of our cultural discourse, for the polarization of our politics, or for the history-eschewing 24-hour news-cycle, is to lose the game before you start. It would be foolish to deny the role of social media in the current Arab uprisings, for example, but it is even more foolish to ascribe responsibility or agency to the sites or media platforms themselves. 

Yet we make this latter mistake all the time.

Read the whole thing.

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