Customer Reviews

The Bell Curve Wars: Race, Intelligence, & the Future of America

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1 star:		(2)

 

 

I find it dissapointing when scientists and intellectuals take to the rhetoric when they see an idea they don't agree with or that disturbs them. I really wanted to see some research results, but the best this book seems to offer is citations of other authors who do not agree with Herrnstein & Murray and opinions on possible reinterpretations of some of the Bell Curve data. Some authors don't seem like they really read the book thoroughly, or at least are overstating H&M's argument. There is the standard sort of politically correct pretentiousness here:

1) Claim the writers have a bias (no need to prove you don't) 2) Talk about how statistics can be used selectively (no need to prove they were) 3) Talk about how racism has been cloaked as science before (no matter that these references are not to the Bell Curve) 4) Remind people that correlation does not equal causation (the only useful point in the book, but they don't offer much besides this cautionary statement) 5) Remind people that intelligence is composed of more than one part (even if true, that doesn't mean that generalizations can't be made about *overall* intelligence) 6) Insist intelligence cannot be adequately measured (Gould's favorite theme, joined with #5 above, which is more of an opinion than a fact. Intuitively, we all have met people that we characterize as 'smarter' or 'dumber' than average. Gould would have us believe that this opinion could never be put in numbers)

I wouldn't waste my money or time on this book, unless you're a liberal and you want to hear some left-leaning messages to make you feel better.

"The Bell Curve Wars" (BCW) is a collection of short essays that argue against Murray and Herrnstein's controversial book "The Bell Curve" (TBC). I think that if you read TBC you should read some of the criticism, and BCW has contributions from mostly eminent people. BCW makes several good points, though if you read TBC carefully Murray and Herrnstein conceded many of those points too. BCW also makes some unfair accusations. I particularly did NOT like the accusation that TBC was hateful and racist. This is not only inaccurate but dishonest since it amounts to using scare tactics to argue a point. There is also a somewhat absurd argument that intelligence is unmeasureable. Well, we measure it all the time. I've sat on committees to hire people in high-tech jobs, and we can normally arrive at a consensus of the relative IQs of the applicants, though this isn't always the decisive factor.

While TBC was only partially about race, this is the hot button issue and the focal point of criticism. BCW makes the good point that we cannot tell for sure what causes the observed average IQ differences, so environment might cause most of it. It is also plausible that hundreds of years of slavery and subsequent discrimination has some residual effect. Therefore it is reasonable to seek cost-effective methods to correct this. This is ultimately a political judgement and the gamble is acceptably small if the programs are sufficiently cheap.

With all the discussion in TBC and BCW, the main outcome has to be: What do we do about social problems ? What are the appropriate government policies and social lessons ? At least TBC presents some ideas, some of which are pretty good, e.g. fathers should stay home with their children until they are grown up. That is a cultural problem, and solving it will make a big impact. The most disappointing aspect of BCW is that it proposes hardly any new ideas of its own. It is basically anti-TBC, hence nothing new and not very interesting.

I read about half of it. Very few of the chapters are interesting, most are unscientific. Read the volume that criticizes Arthur Jensen's theories, with Jensen's replies. It is one of the few books of this type that gives 2-perspectives.

This is really just a summary of short, newspaper-length articles. The criticisms are therefore varied and interesting, but it's frustrating if you want a meaty discussion of the Bell Curve. <P>I recommend instead Devlin's compilation of scientific arguments, "Intelligence, Genes, & Success", or "Measured Lies."

The Bell Curve sparked an outpouring of liberal/leftwing anguish, and it was valuable for doing such- especially in exposing the hypocritical and deceptive assumptions that
have held sway in black education, especially the farce of
"affirmative action". Much of the sound and fury deals with
"racism" for pointing out the obvious-sub par black educational performance. The torrent of liberal anguish also may have helped to bolster conservative racism. After all with the liberals so upset, there must be something to it-"methinks they doth protest too much...."

Conservative economist Thomas Sowell's analysis pronounces a pox on both houses. He welcomes the exposure of the hypocrisy surrounding Race and IQ, and notes that many critics are long on shrill emotion and short on hard analysis.

H&R he asserts, are quite accurate in their analysis and presentation of the stats. Speculative conclusions are another matter. The authors claim that the higher incidences of incarceration in black populations and their higher illegitimacy rate is largely explainable by their lower overall IQ. But this does not stand up to the record of history. Whites of similar IQ have similar anti-social patterns, but also to be remembered is the fact that there are white ethnic groups in the US that have long had a pattern of high incarceration, high out of wedlock births, high levels of crime and violence, and a general disinclination towards education and learning. These folks are conveniently forgotten in the haste of many to point the finger at blacks.

They are called the white Irish, and the patterns noted above were seen not just in America but also over in Ireland and among Irish immigrants in Britain. In Sowell's "Ethnic America" for example, he points out that the illegitimacy rates among the Irish in sections of New York in the 1800s rivaled that found among urban blacks in the late 20th century. And as for levels of violence, just one of the many Irish riots back then killed more that all the people that died during the black riots of the sixties. Phrases such as "paddywagon" or "donnybrook" "fighting Irish" are based on historical realities like these. And let's not get into historically high levels of substance abuse (alcohol) among the white Irish... Over time the Irish improved their lot and behavior over time. Blacks are no different provided they are left alone to get on with the job.

Others have used the Bell Curve stats stats to argue that black intelligence is declining- hence the high rates of illegitimacy and incarceration. None of these speculations stands up to the record of history.

In fact the intelligence scores of blacks (along with other initially low IQ whites) have been rising for decades. As Thomas Sowell points out, it is the "norming" of IQ tests from their earlier baselines so that increases are reshuffled to yield a "normal average" of 100, that has concealed black

progress. When progress is measured from the original baselines, in fact, whole nations have experienced rising IQs. This change over time does some damage to H&R conclusions. It should be noted as well that Jewish soldiers scored rather low on Army mental tests given in WWI, leading some Anglo experts to cast doubt on the mental capacity of Jews- but who's laughing now?

Nor are Jews unique as to the moving pattern of IQ scores. As far back as the First World War, black soldiers from northern states, places like New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Ohio scored higher on mental tests than white soldiers from southern regions like Georgia, Arkansas, Kentucky, and Mississippi.

Some patronizing white liberals argue that blacks need special "help" and preferences to register improvement- hence the farce of affirmative action. But history shows nothing of the sort. Back in the Jim Crow era, when blacks were blatantly and systematically denied opportunities open to whites, blacks were making progress without any "special" help or "preferences" from whites. All they needed was an equal chance. And when they did, all black PUBLIC schools like Dunbar High in Washington DC, along with many others for example, consistently produced test scores for decades ABOVE the white average.

Sowell exhaustively documents the above in books like "Black Education", 'Ethnic America", "Race Ind IQ" and "Inside American Education".

Although galitarianism is a noble goal, its been perverted by the so-called supporters in the left wing to such a point that any research that indicates people as a group are different at all must be racist. So they all gather round in grand condemnation of a book most didn't read because it upsets the sensibilities.

Most of the book has very little to do with race. The book, to put it simply, is about how intelligence is the primary criteria for "success" (economic and otherwise) and explores a lot of related corollary/possible causitive factors. Sure, a lot of us have met the genius posing as a janitor and the dimwit executive. Its a funny anecdote that in corporate America, you promote the idiots to positions where they can do the least amount of harm. Reality is though, most executives are pretty bright. Most janitors aren't. Most geniuses aren't content being janitors. Discussions along this line, by far, constitute the bulk of the book.

Now...on to race. The primary thesis of the authors dealing with race is that when you normalize comparisons based on age and IQ, that racial differences almost completely disappear. That is, a US black male, 29, with an IQ of 115 has essentially the same chance of good or bad things happening to him as a US white male, 29, with an IQ of 115. That people in the lower quartile of IQ have a disproportionate probability of being in some stage of the justice system or having a child out of wedlock. The authors get into PC trouble when they assert that the higher incidences of incarceration in black populations and their higher illegitimacy rate is largely explainable by their 1-standard deviation from the norm IQ. When you compare whites with low IQ's, they have similar rates of incarceration and illegitamacy. If they had said institutional racism, they would've been ok.

People are lying to themselves if they think there isn't a problem or if they think the problem is only racism (which undoubtedly exists). The authors contend that unless we take corrective action as a society to raise the baseline IQ for blacks, that all other corrective actions such as Affirmative Action will continue to fail, and the problems we have in the racial divide will continue to get worse.

This is actually an interesting reaction to the findings of the Bell Curve and I enjoyed reading the articles to see how they would attack the foundations of Hernstein and Murray's thinking. I think it's good to read several viewpoints on a subject and then make up an informed opinion from there. The arguments presented against The Bell Curve's conclusions will have to be answered by more scientific testing. I do agree that none of these people who disagree with the book are running their own scientific tests and coming up with factual conclusions that contradict The Bell Curve findings. --Who has the pseudo-science? Only time will tell.

Egalitarians have emotional reasons for accepting the conclusions that they do. They do not want to accept a rigid determinism that would suggest that improving the environment of a group of deficient learners is futile and will not improve IQs. They do not want to accept the tag of permanent inferiority. On the other hand, determinists may have emotional reasons for accepting their conclusions; they do not want to accept the conclusions that if some group has a low IQ, it is the result of white racism that whites are guilty of.

Although egalitarians speak evil against determinists, egalitarian viewpoints on race have their own detrimental results by loading whites down with guilt and shame that may not be their fault and filling blacks with resentment against whites for problems that may be their own responsibility.

One effective argument against The Bell Curve was a mentioning ofHernstein and Murray's hasty dismissal of counter-evidence against their theories such as the testing of black and white children of white mothers in Germany that ended up with the same IQ scores. Another argument suggests that there really is no rising of a cognitive elite in America. Others give anecdotal evidence of people who did brilliantly in school but ended up in mediocre careers suggesting that high IQ does not spell success. (The Bell Curve authors agree with this conclusion.) It is also mentioned that H and M could have focused on white differences in IQ, such as white ethnic group differences in completion of college graduation, or IQ differences between southern and northern American whites. H and M are accused of not confronting these white differences as much because that would be too politically divisive.

One argument says that the H and M's conclusions are pseudo-science and that such "science" has occurred before in history, suggesting the inferiority of blacks to justify the unequal status quo and that this pseudo-science is actually hate literature. (I'm generally against defining conclusions as hate speech because it censors free inquiry. It's too easy to define heretical ideas that someone doesn't like as 'hate" and then get the government to censor them.) Hernstein and Murray are also portrayed as neo-social Darwinists in one essay; they present ideas that give credence to the belief in the survival of the fittest ethnic group and the inability to raise up a lower ethnic group to a higher level.

Another argument was that there are multiple intelligences that can't be measured by just taking a test. Some wondered what was being measured in an IQ test. What is this mysterious "G" (general intelligence) that H and M talk about? Some said that the historically bad environment that blacks have lived in has lead them to be culturally deprived and more money must be invested to improve deficient IQs. There is also some evidence the black/white gap in IQ is closing. Blacks are improving and whites are staying the same. Of course, one could argue that the whites should be improving also and something is wrong with the education system if it is not. Some of the argumentation is dauntingly technical and although a layman can get the gist of the argument, the details may go over his head.

Though I agree with the general conclusion that environment, as religion as well as things like the quality of foods have considerable over intelligence, I do not think the authors have
rendered any particular service. The high Jewish performance
reported known thoroughout history can without serious doubt be totally explained by Judaism's teaching children to visually
"see" in the mind's eye sylogistic relationships (IF--AND--THEN as the right end, center shaft and left end of a balance). Likewise certain Hindu castes put obsessive energy and time into teaching children math to a degree that in such a study such Hindu elementry school children scored double the problems solved in a given time than the average of various countries' scores, which all gave about equal score results.

Fraser has come to a conclusion which is in essence a prejudice and has attempted to "prove" it. And the product Fraser puts out has much in common with the Ashley Montegue kind of nonsense.

I do think "The Bell Curve" has some significant insufficiencies, which I address in my review of that book, but "The Bell Curve Wars" gives a good deal of poor science or poor scholarship. There are plenty of examples of racially mixed populations in the world. And race mixing has consequences: psychological, biological and social, beyond
any test.

No matter what you think about the Bell Curve Wars, it is an essential companion to the controversial Bell Curve, for it explains not only the reasoning behind it, but the motive for writing it. Several eminent intellectuals provide a panoramic perspective of the Bell Curve, and even offer some insights as to its impact on our society. Some of these BCW responses deserve special merit, like Thomas Sowell's contribution, "Ethnicity and IQ.",and "Cracking Open the IQ Box",by Howard Gardner. The book will challenge proponents and detractors of the Bell Curve alike.

The measurement of IQ itself is not as easily mathematical as what Murray and Herrnstein would have you to believe and it is with this starting assumption that the book is written.

This book was not as mathematical as Meritocracy and Economic Inequality (published years later), but did have some high points:

1. The article discussing the fact that the mean IQ for whites is merely an amalgamation of averages of different subgroups of whites.

2. The article discussing some points about how the Bell Curve made sales because it had such a large audience that WANTED to see it written.

If this book is taken in the spirit in which it was meant (which was not necessarily a series of mathematical, rigorous articles as opposed to some discussions of the social aspects of the measurement of IQ), then an intelligent reader can understand that the research into IQ is not totally disinterested and without a social component as well.

For those desiring an elegant mathematical analysis of the issue, read Meritocracy and Economic Inequality.