Six Reasons Why Race-and-IQ Scholarship is an Intellectual and Moral Dead End
In his post today on the Jason Richwine race-and-IQ controversy, Andrew Sullivan begins by acknowledging that Richwine’s recent study of ethnicity and immigration for the Heritage Foundation is worthless as a work of scholarship or public policy . He goes on to acknowledge that Richwine himself has a habit of consorting with white supremacists — his phrase, not mine.
So far so good.
But Sullivan goes on to argue that despite all that — despite the fact that Richwine is a hack, that he’s chummy with racists, and that his contemporary advocacy work is pernicious nonsense — Richwine himself deserves to be taken seriously as a scholar. Why? Because “the premise behind almost all the attacks – that there is no empirical evidence of IQ differences between broad racial categories – is not true.”
That’s not the premise behind the attacks, however. Here’s the premise behind the attacks:
First, as Sullivan notes, there’s the weaknesss of the claim that America’s “broad racial categories” can be used
So far so good.
But Sullivan goes on to argue that despite all that — despite the fact that Richwine is a hack, that he’s chummy with racists, and that his contemporary advocacy work is pernicious nonsense — Richwine himself deserves to be taken seriously as a scholar. Why? Because “the premise behind almost all the attacks – that there is no empirical evidence of IQ differences between broad racial categories – is not true.”
That’s not the premise behind the attacks, however. Here’s the premise behind the attacks:
First, as Sullivan notes, there’s the weaknesss of the claim that America’s “broad racial categories” can be used