Customer Reviews

Why Race Matters: Race Differences and What They Mean (Human Evolution, Behavior, and Intelligence)

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

The true virtue of this book, besides its candor, is its careful analysis of all aspects of racial difference. Some books focus solely on the facts regarding racial differences in intelligence without presenting evidence detailing the effects these differences have on lived social reality. The fact that blacks do not on average possess the same level of intelligence as whites or Asians is so well established by extensive documentation in statistical analysis, recorded social phenomena, and the empirical witness of experience that the burden of proof clearly rests on egalitarians. Levin wisely does not reinvent the wheel, but instead provides a masterly summary of the evidence and moves on to a much more controversial, but equally well-grounded conclusion: that intelligence does not just predict test scores, academic grades and career attainment, but it also has important implications for personality traits and moral codes. Our moral choices, and the standards of morality in our culture, are dictated by many factors which depend upon intelligence. As Levin argues, intelligence has a clear relationship with the ability to make abstract plans for the future. Such traits as honesty, which are central to our cultural norms of morality, are directly correlated with our ability to plan. Everyone knows that in every interpersonal exchange which involves trust, such as the sale of goods and the provision of services, the person who acts dishonestly can usually achieve a short term advantage through deception or violence. Intelligent persons, who have a correspondingly abstract and longer-term grasp of social interaction, will normally choose honesty - a response which will facilitate continued interactions, and thus mutually beneficial transactions. A less intelligent person will be more inclined to assault, steal, rob or kill because they have a correspondingly shorter-term conception of the relationship between effort and reward. All the social programs in the world, except perhaps negative reinforcement utilizing physical sanctions, will never extend the internal time-horizon of the less intelligent and therefore will never significantly alter their behavior. Levin further argues that if attenuated intelligence contributes largely to economic failure and antisocial behavior, it is unjust, dishonest and immoral to blame those of higher intelligence, to redistribute their life opportunities to others unqualified to undertake them, and to submit more intelligent groups to exorbitant financial sacrifice and moral opprobrium. This is where Levin departs from the dry scientism of Jensen and the minimalist social analysis of Herrnstein and Murray - it is also where his work provides its most important contribution. The expensive and oppressive web of lies, lawsuits, disabilities, animosity and guilt perpetuated by the advocates of the egalitarian fairy-tale are logically and irrefutably exposed here as irrational and immoral. Every one of the objections raised against Prof. Levin's thesis, on this website or elsewhere, is addressed and refuted in this remarkable volume. Buy it, read it, and ask yourself why our government, our media and our universities are afraid to answer his arguments except by insult and evasion.

The subject of race, the role of intelligence, and the differences that exist between racial groups in their intellectual capacity have been a major source of friction for most of America's national history.

Levin may not be politically popular in some circles, but his book proves the old adage tht "There is nothing as immovable nor as powerful as the truth." Even when the truth may be unpleasant.

While much of this book is taken up with statistical tables and analysis therof, it illustrates the painstaking care that Levin has gone to in an effort to establish his major thesis.

In a nutshell (to borrow a cliche), Levin's thesis is that America is not a land of racists and white supremacists who have colluded to suppress other groups or deny them equal opportunity. Rather, Americans have not faced up to the fact that in a nation and era when one's ability to prosper is increasingly tied to intelligence and mental abilities, the mental differnces between racial groups are major determinants of well being (to no less an extent than physical abilities are in atheletics).

Levin concludes, with a huge amount of scientific data to back hjim up, that black failure is almost entirely due to genetic factors tht cause blacks to be less intelligent than whites. Moreover, he notes that whites are in danger of being displaced by Chinese and other Asians if they persist in dysgenic breeding (where the most educated and inelligent whites have children at below reproduction rates, while the breeding of less intelligent ones is heavily subsidized by government programs).

Levin makes a very forceful case against affirmative action and other racial preference programs, noting that they are immoral (they give some people benefits which others must earn), and they distort society economically, and in other ways as well. He further notes that those most hurt are blacks who come to believe that they are all victims of a huge whiche racial conspiracy, and therefore have false hopes rased by politicians who promise to advance them by creating special preference programs. Levin shows that blacks fail in America because of their genetics, not white attitudes.

WHile this book is politically incorrect, the facts make it essential reading, and show why three decades of black preference programs have done nothing to elevate black people.

Michael Levin here refutes egalitarian/environmentalist dogma by showing unequivocally that the black/white IQ gap(Blacks in America have an IQ of 85 versus 100 for Whites) is mostly genetic in origin.He mention 7 arguments for a genetic cause of the black/white difference:

1)the high interindividual heritability of IQ and personality 2)the early appearance of race differences in IQ 3)The physiological racedifferences(in for exampel brain size) 4) Transracial adoptionstudies (which shows little IQgain for adopted black children in prosperous white homes) 5) Failure of Intervention to raise black IQ 6)That many other minorities who have been "discriminated" (such as jews and chinese)have in fact higher( not lower) IQ than non-jewish whites 7) the VERY low IQ of african blacks and their non-existent cultural achievements.

Adding it all together Levin makes a very strong case for a genetic cause of black/white IQdifferences.

Even though Why Race Matters alone makes a very persuasive case for a genetic explanation of the Black/White IQ gap it should be complemented with Philippe Rushton's Race, Evolution and Behaviour who gives a very persuasive evolutionary explanation of why genetic racedifferences in IQ(and other things) have arisen.

Differences and What They Mean by Michael Levin, is one of those rare books that will be slow to catch on because it will be ignored by the press due to its explosive treatment of intelligence and affirmative action. The book, part of the Praeger Press series Human Evolution, Behavior, and Intelligence (edited by Seymour Itzkoff) is in my estimation the most thorough treatment of race and intelligence I have come across to date. Even while anxiously awaiting my copy of The g Factor by Arthur Jensen, this book, unlike Jensen's psychometric analysis of race differences, is an all encompassing conflation of science and moral philosophy asking 'what do we, as Americans, owe those who blame us for their own failure?' His unequivocal answer is 'nothing.' If anything, whites are owed for all they have done for blacks. From the Civil War where whites died to free blacks, to the current enormous sums of money whites pump into the failing black community, whites have given more than anyone could expect and have received little in return but condemnation from those we have tried to help. This condemnation, or charge of racism, and its treatment by Levin is enough in itself to make this book a must read for anyone interested in racial justice. Genetic vs. environmental reasons for failure In 1995 the American Psychological Association, in response to The Bell Curve, published the report "Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns." They report that blacks indeed do score below whites on IQ tests and these tests are unbiased and correlate strongly with social outcomes But the APA was unwilling to speculate why the difference is so constant and repeatable over time and by test method. Levin does not suffer from the same timidity. He goes into detail, outlining how and why it must be mostly genetic rather than environmental. Levin elegantly dismembers the arguments for an environmental cause such as malnutrition, institutional racism, test biss, etc. He thoroughly covers all of the stale and easily disposed of arguments put forth by the left. Levin cogently states, "The claim that racism harms black mental development rests on two premises: that subtle forms of racism are omnipresent, penetrating even intervention and transracial adoption, and that racism of this sort retards intelligence. Environmentalists have generally assumed the second without argument, but the superior performance of minority groups that have been less advantaged socially than blacks suggests that it is untrue".[132] And then he makes the case that not only are blacks less intelligent, but they vary on a number of traits. According to Levin, " In theory, white women could bear illegitimate children at the black rate and raise them on welfare until society went bankrupt, yet this has not happened. Despite the rise in white illegitimacy over the last half-century, most white children are still born to married parents, most white women still insist that the fathers of their children work to support them, most white men regard unemployment as hameful, and most whites of both sexes despise men who live off women. Differential rates of teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases indicate that promiscuity is more prevalent among black adolescent emales than white. Whether whites think of their aversion to welfare as 'pride' or the desire to lve a better life than welfare provides, from a behavioral point of view, blacks find welfare more attractive; welfare incentives affect the races differently. Current black illegitimacy rates may be unnatural, since they reflect subsidies not found in African ancestral environments, but, snce this environmental factor has been the same for blacks and whites, the race difference in response to the introduction of this factor indicates genetic variation. The hypothesis that blacks are more ready to devote effort to reproduction than child-care predicts a more rapid decline in pair-bonding among blacks than whites when others offer to support their children..&qot;[349] Finally he asks the simple question that is obvious to anyone following the IQ debate, where is the evidence that intelligence for blacks i just waiting to be discovered? Levin states, "Authors like Gould and Kamin tirelessly criticize studies that show black intelligence to be lower than white, but cite no black performances that indicate high mean intelligence. This is one of those cases in which absence of evidence for a hypothesis constitutes evidence against it. Everyday observation, together with the failure of egalitarians to produce evidence that the races are equal, disconfirms racial parity."[31]

Philosopher Michael Levin has delivered one of the most authoritative and incisive treatises on the importance of race ever written. Why Race Matters is must reading for anyone interested in the debates on race, IQ, crime, welfare, affirmative action, and multiculturalism. Levin cross-examines the stockpiles of statistical data, psychological test scores, and behavioral genetic analyses to brilliantly illuminate the logical pitfalls and stumbling blocks in so much of what has been written on the subject. His powerful logic digs deep and his courageous inferences vault forward. With panache and the occasional snort of humor, Levin seems to be always bang on target. I especially recommend this book in conjunction with my own Race, Evolution, and Behavior.

Michael Levin provides a rather interesting book on race. Though dismissed by egalitarians and the Leftist intelligentsia, this is certainly no rant from a Neo-Nazi (Levin is a Jew). He is not afraid to explore, in great detail, such incendiary issues ranging from racial differences in intelligence (he argues the difference is genetic in origin) to the moral implications of such differences. Perhaps the most interesting chapter is the one in which Levin outlines his argument for the compatibility of individualism and racial identity. Exhaustivly researched, Why Race Matters will stand as one of the best books on race ever written. You will ponder its implications for hours - Highly recommended.

This book was nothing less than a masterful polemic against every conceivable egalatarian doctrine that permeates public policy, academia, the media, and all other vestiges of modern society. With characteristic boldness, Levin throws down the gauntlet and declares fourthrightly: the problems that ail the black community are singularly due to genetic factors, and not the popular (and unsupported) notion that black impoverishment is the result of their uniquely oppresive history in the United States. In supporting this thesis Levin draws on a broad range of fields to expose, to borrow a phrase, the nonsense on stilts that underlay modern egalatarian assumptions. As has been said elsewhere the racial differences in IQ, crime, illegitimacy, life-expectancy and a host of other factors are empirically proven and persist stubbornly over time. For those who make hay over the questionable merits of IQ tests in actually measuring a true biological quality (g), Levin shows this to be a complete non-sequitur. Even if IQ tests did not exist, we can still rank racial differences by looking at the various cultural achievements the respective races have managed to produce, and what this suggest about inherited racial differences. Levin notes that one of the key flaws in egalatarian assumptions is that it exclusively focuses on the United States and its history, and does not take a global pespective on racial differences. For the egalatarian it is essential to keep the debate on the United States and its history of slavery because it offers, at minimum, a plausible explanation on why whites are wealthier and more intelligent than blacks. However, when the lens of analysis moves away from the United States egalatarian dogma begins to start looking like the Flat-Earth theory. For instance how can egalatarian dogma explain the fact that Europeans (whites) were able to build a complex society, develop advanced mathematics (Newton and Leibniz), discover the motions of the planets, build huge cathedrals and decorative castles, chart the seas, use abstract philosophic concepts (Natual law, apriori knowledge), and triumphantly leave a footprint on the moon, while blacks never invented the wheel, had no written language, routinely practiced slavery, and could build nothing more than a simple mud hut for shelter. Since there was such a profound difference in civilizational achievement between the races when they lived in geographic isolation of each other, why should we expect the differences to vanish when they share the same geography? This book also delves into meticulous philosophic disputation when dealing with the issue of slavery and what, if anything, whites owe blacks as compensation. After a lengthy inquiry Levin concludes that whites owe nothing to blacks on the grounds that thousands of whites died in the civil war to free blacks, that whites have pumped huge sums of money into floundering black communities, and controversially suggests that since whites have suffered huge criminal activity (murder, thievery) at the hands of blacks nothing is justifiably owed. After devoting numerous pages to slavery and its periphereal issues he misses the most clinching argument against the Afro-centrists who demand compensation. For instance, Julian Malveux, a famous black syndicated columnist, argues that although whites today are not personally responsible for slavery, they have nevertheless benefited from it, and thusly owe blacks compensation. The most effective rebuke to this line of reasoning would be to simply acknowledge the historical record and note that EVERY single group in history has practiced slavery in some form or another. Blacks enslaved other blacks in Africa, Native Americans enslaved each other as well as other blacks. If a group necessarily benefits from slavery why didn't those tribes in Africa that practiced slavery achieve the greatness of Europe? Why are Europeans the only ones accused of benefiting from slavery? The point is that whites would have achieved greatness whether or not they practiced slavery, and no matter how many centuries Africans enslaved other Africans they would never benefit from slavery. Actually, the only group that can be empirically shown to have benefited from slavery are the descendents of blacks who were brought to the Americas during the slave trade. In a chapter dealing with crime Levin busts the old saw that crime is due to poverty. The evidence is almost just the opposite -- crime declined during the Great Depression, but started to go out of control in the 1960's -- an age of relative prosperity. It would be impossible to cover all the points that Levin so brilliantly makes, but anyone who still clings devotely to egalatarian dogma needs to ask himself which theory, racial oppression (sociology)or genetics (evolution), best fits the accumulated global and historical evidence of chronic and significant differences in the human races?

Why Race Matters may be the most important and definitive book about race that has been or will ever be written. It is relentlessly uncompromising. Professor Levin has sifted through mountains of empirical data (over 900 cited works) and patiently and meticulously used that data and his formidable reasoning skills to decimate each and every conventional and foggy-minded belief about race differences and their causes. The reader who is skeptical about the existence or significance of race differences (yet intelligent and reasonably open-minded) cannot come away from Levin's book without a substantial change in belief. The reader who already believes in the existence and relevance of profound race differences has a moral obligation to purchase this book and support its author and publisher. For reporting truths, Levin has sustained death threats, arson and an attempt to revoke his tenure. It is a testament to his integrity and passionate disinterest that he briefly mentions these abuses in a footnote and is done with it. Had any one of these abuses befallen any one of his prototypical detractors it would undoubtedly become the basis of an entire book, protest or CNN expose.

It is the very easiest thing to write in tune with mainstream opinion. It is harder to dissent if one is not in a position to lose much. But to be a professor at an american college, to be directly exposed to often violent critique, and not to be subdued, is something to be highly respected. To go even further, to write a book, in which not only to shatter several mainstream myths, directly tackle nearly every taboo concerning race and race relation, moreover endeavour to propose the necessary consequences is truly admirable. This is a direct attack on the contemporary construction of the American dream. Independently of the political position the reader takes, he will be lead along paths of thought which he would most probably not have taken on his own. Levins argumentation is over wide stretches outstanding, in other places less perfect but this is something to be forgiven in the light of his remarkable courageousness. His style of writing appears sometimes too detailed, but this is perhaps necessary to evade unnecessary counterarguments. A book well worth reading, treating the subject of race truly in-depth.

Like Professor Levin's earlier works including, "Why Homosexuality is abnormal" and "Feminism and Freedom", he brings his outstanding scholarship and errudition to the subject of the Race problem. His views are so politically incorrect, that I would bet that even his Conservative allies in such publications as National Review or The American Spectator will refuse to review his book. But anyone interested in the Race problem should read it. Levin's main skill, in my opinion as someone with an M.A. in Philosophy, is to show how useful the logical skills one picks up in this discipline can be used to analyze moral and social problems.