You're too kind
> though I just
>can't agree that the Bell Curve represented the endpoint of a racialized
>punitivism in practice: since its publication in 1994, we got welfare
>cuts, family caps, more punitive laws towards immigrants, the crime bill,
>assault on affirmative action, etc. That is, everything Murray called
>for--except the use of IQ tests for screening job applications.
I tried to choose my words carefully in saying that the Bell Curve was the last gasp of social darwinism. What I meant was that there is a certain modality of hte race discourse which is, it seems to me, exhausted by the Bell Curve, and that is precisely the one that Murray was trying to rehabilitate: ie explicitly naturalistic accounts of racial difference.
By deriving differences in recorded IQ, and by implication Socio- Economic Status from presumed genetic diferences, Murray took a step too far for those who had been willing to indulge him until then as 'telling unpalatable truths'. It is pointed that the Bell Curve is a departure from his prior writings in that these tended towards a _cultural_ explanation of social division, the creation of an 'underclass' through the cultural inheritance of moral depravity.
A lot of one-time liberals were prepared to give some room to Murray at that point. His analysis of the underclass seemed to explain the failures of the welfare state to overcome social deprivation (they should instead have questioned the ability of hte state to transcend its material basis in social division). The underclass thesis became the preferred liberal-left evasion of the failures of welfarism. Today, for example, Tony Blair's 'social exclusion unit' operates on a modified version of Murray's underclass thesis. The underclass thesis, in a nutshell is that it is the cultural inheritance of social deprivation that keeps people in poverty.
The Bell Curve though went one step further. It said that genetic inheritance keeps people in poverty. That proved to be out of step with the times. The public debate around the Bell Curve was the event that clarified that genetic racism was a bridge too far for the establishment to adopt wholesale. Until Murray tested the waters with the Bell Curve it ws by no means established that this would be so. On the contrary, such was the speed with which liberal shibboleths were being abandoned that it seemed a good gamble on Murray's part to break the taboo over genetic racism. But I don't think you can avoid the conclusion that the gamble did not pay off.
In all seriousness, where is Murray now? In Britain he had become an important part of the debate over welfare. Today he is persona non grata here. Since the Bell Curve any right-winger who tried to promote genetic racism has been supressed in no uncertain terms. At Edinburgh university genetic psychologist Chris Brand was sacked. A book by Murray's source Richard Lynn was refused distribution.
The question of the new modalities that 'racial' difference takes in policy and society is a serious and interesting one. But I don't think it is answered by pillorying the convenient bogeyman of Charles Murray.
Rakesh quotes James Galbraith
>"While
>no serious economist would take that last leap into racist fantasy, the
>underlying structure of the economists' argument has undoubtedly help to
>legitimize before a larger public, those who promote such ideas." (p.264)
Which is a point well-made, but my answer would be, tentatively, that 'the underlying structure' in society as well as the economist's argument is necessarily one of social division, but not necessarily motivated in terms of colour.
>One other thing. As I wrote in my whiteness post at the early stages of
>this list, I also very interested in how anti racist activists and scholars
>contribute to the reification of race. When I am done with that critique, I
>fear that I will have very few friends left even if I take to using prozac
>or other feel good junk.
I look forward to that, in confidence that it will do you reputation nothing but good. -- Jim heartfield