<http://www.slate.com/id/2178122/fr/flyout/>
Created Equal Regrets Posted Wednesday, Nov. 28, 2007, at 10:19 AM ET
Last week, I wrote about the possibility of genetic IQ differences among races. I wanted to discuss whether egalitarianism could survive if this scenario, raised last month by James Watson, turned out to be true. I thought it was important to lay out the scenario's plausibility. In doing so, I short-circuited the conversation. Most of the reaction to what I wrote has been over whether the genetic hypothesis is true, with me as an expert witness.
I don't want this role. I'm not an expert. I think it's misleading to dismiss the scenario, as some officials have done in response to Watson. But my attempts to characterize the evidence beyond that, even with caveats such as "partial," "preliminary," and "prima facie," have backfired. I outlined the evidence primarily to illustrate the limits of the genetic hypothesis. If it turns out to be true, it will be in a less threatening form than you might imagine. As to whether it's true, you'll have to judge the evidence for yourself. Every responsible scholar I know says we should wait many years before drawing conclusions.
Many of you have criticized parts of the genetic argument as I related them. Others have pointed to alternative theories I truncated or left out. 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.
[...]
I just want to be clear I understand. Saletan's "defense" is basically, first, that he's a dilettante and doesn't know what he's talking about. Therefore, we shouldn't hold him accountable for the hoary idiocies -- a litany of the greatest hits of late Victorian race theories, even down the universally risible canard of linking head size and "intelligence" -- that he recycled.
Second, he tells us that he didn't know that Rushton is the nasty, racist ideologue that everyone with any serious connection to these debates has known him to be for more than a decade. Even then, however, what Saletan seems to be saying is that his mistake is citing Rushton, as if the problem is one of etiquette, that citing Rushton is in poor taste because he's a controversial figure. This feels like one of those cynical pro forma apologies that have become familiar from reactionaries who've taken a step too far in public, the "I didn't mean to cause anyone pain" ploy, which manages neatly to sidestep the real offense in the substance of what one has said or done. In fact, Saletan seems to be contrite for having been caught in bed Rushton, not that there's anything wrong, and wrong-headed, about being there. This is pure sophistry and only reinforces the suspicion that Saletan not only is an old-school racist -- and I never throw that charge around capriciously -- but either lacks the courage of his convictions or is himself an active agent in the ideological campaign to rehabilitate the most egregious, vicious and roundly discredited rhetorics of naturalized social hierarchy.
[-Adolph Reed]