PunkAssBlog.com

(drumroll, please!)

William Saletan of Slate, on race and IQ.

Five months ago, I wrote a series on race, genes, and intelligence.

You sure did. I remember it well. It inspired one of my very first blog posts ever.

Everything about it hurt: the research, the writing, the reactions, the regrets.

I agree that your research and writing hurt. Pulling the crown jewel out of that morass of misunderstood moronity:

But the thing that has upset me most concerns a co-author of one of the articles I cited. In researching this subject, I focused on published data and relied on peer review and rebuttals to expose any relevant issue. As a result, I missed something I could have picked up from a simple glance at Wikipedia. For the past five years, J. Philippe Rushton has been president of the Pioneer Fund, an organization dedicated to “the scientific study of heredity and human differences.” During this time, the fund has awarded at least $70,000 to the New Century Foundation. To get a flavor of what New Century stands for, check out its publications on crime (”Everyone knows that blacks are dangerous”) and heresy (”Unless whites shake off the teachings of racial orthodoxy they will cease to be a distinct people”). New Century publishes a magazine called American Renaissance, which preaches segregation. Rushton routinely speaks at its conferences.

I was negligent in failing to research and report this. I’m sorry. I owe you better than that.

Uh, ya think? You based the MAJORITY OF YOUR FOUR-DAY-LONG ARTICLE on that guy’s “research!”

But anyway. Back to Lord Saletan’s NEW article on the subject–

I’ve been struggling to reconcile two feelings that won’t go away: that what I wrote was socially harmful and that I can’t honestly renounce the evidence I presented.

Wow. That statement arouses in me two feelings that won’t go away: that you possibly have a wee bit of an exaggerated picture about how big an impact what you write has on society as a whole and that today is not “Opposite Day,” cause you already did renounce it. Hello?

When you find yourself in a dilemma this difficult, sometimes the best thing to do is let it sit in your head until you find a way to make sense of it within your value system.

That’s a good description of how “Intelligent Design” must have arisen in the heads of its, er, creators when they were faced with the dilemma of “Evolution.” No pun intended, of course.

In last fall’s series, I asked myself why I was writing about such an ugly topic.

Because you’re lame?

“Because the truth isn’t as bad as our ignorant, half-formed fears and suspicions about it,” I concluded. “And because you can’t solve a problem till you understand it.”

Just because you personally have ignorant, half-formed fears and suspicions about the role race plays in intelligence really, really does not mean that nobody else has figured out what the truth is, dear. And I somehow don’t see you personally running out to solve anything.

I wrote my commitment on a piece of paper and leaned it against my computer monitor: The truth doesn’t care what you want.

That you had to actually go and do that says a lot. Most of us can keep an easy yet firm grip on that concept without having to burn it into our retinas on an hourly basis.

In a similar way, policy prescriptions based on race are social malpractice. Not because you can’t find patterns on tests, but because any biological theory that starts with observed racial patterns has to end with genetic differences that cross racial lines. Race is the stone age of genetics. If you’re a researcher looking for effects of heredity on medical or educational outcomes, race is the closest thing you presently have to genetic information about most people. And as a proxy measure, it sucks.

Oh, my God. Did you actually just state unequivocable facts, without prevarications? No, no! I wasn’t planning on respecting anything you had to say here!

The question I set out to explore last fall was how to be an egalitarian in an age of genetic differences. That’s still an important project. We’re going to find many more genetic and trait differences among populations. You can’t meaningfully denounce every such finding or theory as racist. Racism has to mean something else. I think it should mean looking and settling for racial analysis when some other combination of categories—economics, culture, genetics—more accurately fits the data.

In the age of genetics, egalitarianism doesn’t mean you have to deny differences in racial averages. It means you have to beware the injustice this kind of grouping and averaging does to individuals.

Much better. So pleased to see you returning to soft-pedaling racism.

Last week, Rev. Jeremiah Wright told the NAACP that “European and European-American children have a left-brained, cognitive, object-oriented learning style” whereas “African and African-American children … are right-brained, subject-oriented in their learning style.”

Translation: Lookie look! Black people say racist stuff too! Isn’t that even MORE racist than anything I’VE said in this article??

…oh wait…he’s not actually talking about genetic differences resulting in the inferiority of one race versus another, is he…DAMN…yeah, but a black guy is CLEARLY shown here saying SOMETHING based on RACE!!!

Drawing a line against racial analysis doesn’t solve all the problems I raised about inequality.

Dude, the only problems you raised are your incompetence at basic research and your inability to comprehend the research of others.

In fact, it creates new problems.

Oh? God, I cannot WAIT to be enlightened…

On the right, it leaves the question of whether genetic generalization and determinism are wrong.

Um, that problem was already there. You even say so in the statement. How is this a creation of new…

On the left, it raises the question of whether any policy, including affirmative action, should be based on race.

OH oh oh, I get it! It isn’t that it creates new problems for EVERYBODY, it’s that, as USUAL, the left needs to pull it’s head out of its bleeding heart and stop trying to answer the problem of how much impact environment has versus genetics on people of different racial backgrounds by attempting to legislate some environmental equality between the races! Yes, that might be a problem, Will. For you.

I don’t know where those questions will lead. But I’m pretty sure drawing this line is the right first step.

Yeah, maybe you should write that on a piece of paper and tape it to your computer too.