>
>There are lies, damn lies and statistics. WE live under the tyranny of
>statistical majority, when the statistical properties of the group are seen
>as a norm, and emprically observed cases as deviations from that norm.
Wojtek, we also live under the tyranny of the normal as unimodal or Gaussian distribution, as I noted in a previous post. So if income distribution becomes skewed, that becomes occassion to resolve that curve into two or more 'normally' distributed populations. That is, increasingly skewed income distribution curve really can serve as a racially classificatory argument.
This is the move that Adolphe Bertillon and then Karl Pearson made in their demographic analyses as brilliantly discussed by Alain Desrosieres, The Politics of Large Numbers: A History of Statistical REasoning (harvard, 1999).
Murray and Herrnstein's book was not about *the* bell curve but about four such normal curves--the asian, caucasian, mexican and black. And it's about the latter two not only reproducing faster than the first two but also about their owns means being shifted to the left due to dysgenics within their populations. A double dysgenic whammy. The threat of the growing white underclass is subordinate in the argument, and bound to be checked by some regression to the mean (that very difficult concept) even if there is assortative mating.
What has been interesting to me is the denial by supporters and critics alike that the book is really about race.
Yours, Rakesh