Yes, I would like to receive periodic updates and information via e-mail from Commentary.

Recipient Addresses:

Separate each address with a comma.

Your E-mail Address: Message:

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.

---

---

© 2009 Commentary Inc.