What game is Charles Murray playing? Whatever it is, it doesn’t frighten me. Nor does it particularly annoy me. Then again all I had to listen to was a couple minutes excerpted from an interview with Tucker Carlson, and given this mincemeat meal there’s not much to chew on. Nevertheless, there’s something to say because he’s Charles Murray.
Q: Is Charles Murray’s comment denounceable?
A: Sure, why not?
Obligatory Seriousness
Still, I think I don’t know enough context from that clip, and I’m not going to listen to the entire thing. I understand that Murray does go on about race, and I know his science has been called pseudo-science, and I have heard claims that he was supposedly one softening up the racist right to make such a pseudo-scientific case for black unemployment. But I don’t think that final thing ever materialized and it is certainly not anything I have heard in the current debate on race. Nobody is talking IQ anywhere. Whatever IQ may or may not be, my nickel says Murray at least understand that the genetic components are more complex than what is commonly held. So to go after Murray you have to go after genetics, in other words against the basis of his conclusions. I tend to believe he is working somewhere else than most of his detractors believe.
Murray, for one, was one of the first people to seriously propose, several years ago now, the idea of Basic Income. So to the extent to which a large number of social commentators actually want to enact any legislation that will have a disproportionate benefit on any racial or ethnic group, Murray is playing the exact same game for different reasons known perhaps only to himself. I am against social engineering in general and I think Basic in a liberal democracy is a dangerous step away from individual liberty. I’m not sure if it is the final step to lock the Welfare State in place or something more sinister, a Servile State.
As a civil libertarian, I resist the categorization of ‘communities’. I am not only anti-racist, I am anti-race. I think it is a pernicious reduction of humanity to demographic terms which are always abused because these are tools of marketing casually used and reinforced in the public mind. The terms of marketing are indeed social constructions, and anyone who accepts these social constructions as true and useful will just as easily accept them for selling cheeseburgers as describing workforces or defining castes. Thats how collectivism works. They talk up the group, they talk down the individual. The socially constructed terms are the same and they are used for political ends, which in a democracy means they may eventually carry the force of law. I see this process as a clear and present threat to non-discrimination law and individuality. To borrow from Hayek, we remain on the brink of redefining tolerance, because we are so close to accepting social constructions in our politics and governance.
I see you staring at me sideways, but I’m telling you race is not the only thing that works this way.
The only proven method of rescuing us from the wishy washy and amorphous arbitrary categorizations of ‘communities’ is the rigor of the scientific process. And the only way the scientific process can work is with open debate and criticism. If there is a scientific theory of race that stands up to the rigorous tests of experiment, falsification etc, then we are obligated to honor that process and to treat its practitioners with the indifference owed. I understand Murray is a pariah, but his conjectures do serve the purposes of problem solving in an open society dedicated to the scientific process. He is also a proponent of social engineering which I oppose. I think there are a number of criticisms of Murray that should limit his influence and perhaps even demonstrate his aim to be a racist. However, to the extent we know that he is dabbling in genetics it is irresponsible to call him a racist of the same sort we associate with white supremacy and anti-black hatred.
It is certainly reasonable to understand that there are greater and lesser racists who pose greater and lesser threats to our open society and principles of equality before the law, but to understand this rationality forces us to recognize how many people are playing the angles to have their theories of race twist those principles of equality in favor of a different term, namely ‘equity’. I repeat that I am anti-race and against social engineering. I am for tolerance of individual rights and individualism. I am for open scientific inquiry. I think Murray requires greater scrutiny than the average activist and this scrutiny must take into account our obligations to make distinctions between genetic research and speculation about the nature of intelligence and the business of public policy. Murray crossed that line in The Bell Curve as are many racial theorists and their ideological toadies today.
From the context of a 3 minute video, I cannot single him out for anything specific beyond the typical racial blather that passes muster for the reasons of ‘good intentions’ or ‘realism’. My take on Murray is that he must be subjected to criticism of the sort which is not fueled by the politics of outrage or of anti-racist activism, but of the scientific process. But I caution anyone who considers him to be unredeemable to remember his implicit association with the candidacy of Andrew Yang and of Americans' general impulse to take wild populist ideas to be panaceas. We are not saved by dismissing Murray and we need to see his commentary in the context of Americans’ desires to do something with race. I say that the more we do with race, the worse off we are for it. Talking about the IQ of nurses by ethnicity is hardly worth much in and of itself. It’s not the sort of thing that made America shoot at Candidate or President Obama, though so many were sure that was inevitable in the evil world Murray created with The Bell Curve.
I would add that the very reason Free Black Thought exists and needs support in America is because of the doings of race. What race has done is circumscribed the ‘proper’ thinking of those ascribed to be black, which is yet another constructed ‘community’. Many of the civilizational problems we are facing in our nation come from such demographics flattening of our complex humanity and our growing inflexibility with regard to the sanctity and necessity of individual freedom and thought. Let us tread carefully, and always continue the open debate respectfully.
I was an undergrad when the Bell Curve dropped, and Murray came to my alma mater on his speaking tour, where he was skewered, and this was in the late 90s.
I read the Bell Curve cover to cover. Murray and the late Herrnstein spent most of the book looking at historic data of IQ tests and standardized tests like the military ASVAB or the SAT which they correlated back to IQ tests. They did this for white people only. Then they compared outcomes in income, health, etc. Their conclusion is lower IQ whites do worse in life in general.
They then took this framework and applied it to other "race". They found that blacks in America and Africa score less (about 1 standard deviation less than people of European ancestry on average), and this correlates with their income levels, health, etc. They found East Asians (Chinese, Japanese, Koreans) score about half a standard deviation higher than people of European ancestry, and this is why they perform better in Asia, as adoptee children in the U.S., and as immigrants in the U.S., and per income level they live longer.
Hispanics (being mixed race) were higher than African Americans, but lower than whites and Asians. The Hispanics were of Mexican, I believe, not Caribbean Latinos or South Americans.
So, he found the white average IQ was about 100 in the U.S., Asians was about 105, Latinos (Mexicans) was 90, African Americans 85.
The entire premise of the book is a person’s IQ is predictive of various life outcomes, and if we look at a group-based level IQ explained most (not all) of the outcomes we see in society. They did not discount racism entirely, but they believe IQ had FAR more impact than racism on black and Latino outcomes. They also pointed out that Asians are not white, but do better than whites, despite whatever racism they experience.
Murray took this frame and then said, we know, even with whites, that by default, half of white Americans are below average IQ, and if your IQ is below 85 or so you will have trouble graduating from high school, let alone every finished a university degree. So that is why he proposed a minimum standard income. He believes strongly as the society moves from a agricultural and manufacturing base into an information based economy it is going to be harder for lower IQ people to be competitive, and this will lead to social instability. He states many times these people aren’t not "immoral or lazy" they are just "cognitively inferior", and so "can't help it", and if we want a just and stable society, we should compensate them for this.
Since he believes that IQ is between 50-75% heritable, he believes there are some things we can do to maximize IQ, but nothing we can do to make Latino and blacks equal to whites or Asians (on average). Since this is an immutable characteristic that you are born with people should not be punished for it in a fair society.
In a sense it is a type of affirmative action.
So his focus on recent years is not on ethnic minorities, it is more on blue collar whites and social stability - and he was talking about this long before Trump was elected.
I honestly don't think Murray is a racist per se, not really. I think that is a function of his cognitive elitist ideology. He has stated clearly that he is talking about averages, and so there are black people who have high IQs and even genius IQ levels, but there are just far less of them than whites or Asians. So he believes we should be IQ testing everyone, and then we can tell which blacks and Latinos are smart, and give them more resources to strive.
That is not "racist" per se, it is more like some type of cognitive classicism, however you can't really explain that distinction to the "woke masses" as it is just unacceptable on race, class, fairness, etc.
Cobb, I'm so glad you wrote this entry. I've always thought that the smartest thing the left ever did was to jettison all the racial/eugenics/IQ nonsense in the decade before WWII. I've always thought that the dumbest thing the right ever did was to pick it up and run with it sometime in the post war era (1950s?). Yes, IQ tests cull for math ability with high accuracy. But to define 'intelligence' within the narrow confines of an IQ test is a joke. Especially in America. As Eric Hoffer said, you don't get to know the American workingman by putting him in front of a paper with a #2 pencil; you get to know him by working along side him for a week. To define "intelligence" by an 8 or 10 page test is ridiculous; what about cunning, stealth, humor, patience, lying, joking, instinct; intelligence is bound up with all these or it is nothing. I hate seeing interviews with Charles Murray when he sighs, and admits, sigh, that yes, sadly, the black IQ is a standard deviation below that of whites, sigh. And yes, sigh, there's nothing we can do about it, sigh. Bullshit! We are talking about the whole life of humankind here. That blacks survived - no thrived - for hundreds of years in a political & cultural system designed to chew them up and spit them out, speaks to me of something more than 'intelligence'. They possessed an indominable (a William Faulkner word) force of life, an overcoming force that stands as one of humanity's outstanding achievements (even 'achievement’ seems a bit watery-weak for what I am trying to say). IQ, as measured by the IQ test, must somehow be linked to human, or brain, evolution. When the Romans pulled out of Britain circa 400 A.D. -- if you had told them that the isle they were abandoning would one day rule the world by strength of their navy, etc., those Romans would have laughed in your face? "What? These savages who paint themselves blue and barely grasp the good things of civilization that we have brought them. You're nuts." Now what? The British IQ evolved up two or three deviations over 1000 years? Really? Is human life just brain matter then? Asians measure on or near the top of IQ tests, and the world agrees, they are smart. But in all of human history, with all their brains, an Asian man or woman has never done anything so simple, so basic as cast a free vote for the leadership candidate of his or her free choice (except when brought into Western ways via defeat in war). Mao killed 50 or 80 million of his own people in a twenty years bloodfest. Butbutbut their IQ scores ... ! Cambodia's Khmer Rouge slaughtered millions ... butbutbut you cry out, IQ! Next slide please. What about our super-high IQ scoring Germans? They score very well on IQ tests; before 1933 Germans could factually lay claim to undisputed excellence in every aspect of human endeavor. They also punched their ticket for generating the most massive bloodletting in human history. Ah, but, IQ tests show ... the standard deviation .... hrumph ... hurumph ... What in the hell is Charles Murray talking about? He has no evidence that there is a gene for intelligence - according to his definition of intelligence. The genes for skin color, hair texture, are among the easiest to find on the genome map. But what geneticist has found the gene-link between skin color and intelligence? It won't be found because it doesn't exist. As a result, Murray is arguing backwards and asserting things about which he has no evidence. Need to find a skilled mathematician? Fine, send out the IQ tests. Need to discover the mysterious key to all human existence? Read study pray talk think- live... skip the test ...