Thanks for the response.
I had never read the book, but was familiar with the controversy about it from 20 years ago. I didn’t read it at the time because I’m not interested in racist screeds.
Saw it about a year ago at a garage sale, and bought it just to pick apart. Much to my surprise, it wasn’t really about race at all! That was a peripheral aspect, inflated wildly out of proportion to intentionally discredit the rest of what the book had to say.
BTW, the increasing marginalization of the less capable members of our society that the book predicted unless steps were taken to prevent them has proceeded exactly as the authors said it would. If anything, it’s happening even faster than they predicted.
It’s the most important single issue of our time, and absolutely nobody is talking about it. Very sad.
I will defer to your opinion on the racial statistics issue. Don’t claim to be a statistician, never even took statistics in school.
But that there are real differences in human intelligence between individuals cannot be disputed by any reasonable person. Whether there are racial disparities is more or less irrelevant to the author’s contention. More and more, there simply is no economic demand in society for those of lower intelligence, whatever their race.
I have always been intrigued by what those who refuse to investigate the subject of differences in human intelligence between “races” are implicitly admitting.
Their reason for refusing to look is a fear of what they might find. That is we do find such differences between average intelligence of groups, those groups will be proven inferior and it would make sense to treat them as such.
This is, of course, implicitly admitting that individuals of lower intelligence, whatever their race, really are inferior and should be treated as such.
Personally, I refuse to agree that IQ, or intelligence, or whatever you want to call it, makes one human being superior or inferior to another, except in that one area.
We are all equal in the most important way. We are all children of a God who loves us. Intelligence, and any other minor differences, are from that standpoint inconsequential.
A quick thought experiment. Let’s suppose that scientific experiments conclusively show that people of Blue descent are much more aggressive, violent and less intelligent than people of Red or Green descent.
Don’t you think that upon knowing this that Reds and Greens wouldn’t, at the very least, self-discriminate against Blues in intellectual and cooperative activities? Wouldn’t they avoid Blues on the street, pull students out of schools full of Blues, move out of neighborhoods full of Blues en masse?
Do you really think the Blues would just accept the scientific conclusions, and essentially accept racism, with them on the lowest tier? It would also set the precedent for more troubling experiments characterizing intellectual, social and creative fitness.
What if then, it was then conclusively shown that people of Light Red descent were superior to those of Dark Red descent? That people of Magnenta descent were extremely likely to give birth to children who were disabled or intellectually and socially inferior?
We’ve been down this road before. It didn’t turn out too well last time.
100% agree!
Personally, I refuse to agree that IQ, or intelligence, or whatever you want to call it, makes one human being superior or inferior to another, except in that one area.
Smiling. Someone understands one of life’s deepest truths.