Race, Rushton, And Us: Getting Used To What We Can't Change

One marvels that a creed widely doubted in private, unsupported by evidence, and manifestly incorrect, can become compulsory in a society, shape its policy, and arouse furious support. Radical egalitarianism is such a creed -- the notion that people, both individually and in groups, are born equal and, preferably, identical. It would then follow that all differences arise from nurture. What if they don't?

As a matter of daily experience we observe that some individuals are bigger, smarter, better athletes, superior artists, better singers. It isn't all nurture: Raise me as Michael Jordan was raised, and I would still be short and slow. We also observe that some groups consistently excel others. We pretend otherwise because the penalties for not pretending are severe. Most of us know we are pretending.

There is at the University of Ontario a scholar named J. Philippe Rushton, much in disrepute among the clergy of nurturism. He is a sociobiologist, a member of an outcast class holding that much of behavior is biologically shaped. His book, Race, Evolution, and Behavior, is intensely reviled among the keepers of proper thought.* It purports to describe and explain differences in intelligence and behavior among races. This we must never, ever do.

I don't give it blanket endorsement, but its central thrust is sufficiently in accord with daily experience as to be worth pondering. In outline:

The IQ of East Asians (Koreans, Chinese, Japanese) is about 106, of Eurowhites 100, "blacks" in America 85, blacks in Africa 70. He does not in the book deal with Jews, but Ashkenazi Jews average 115. The East Asians have a particular advantage in mathematics.

The moment one recites the statistics, frantic counterarguments arise. Race doesn't exist or, contradictorily, isn't important. Intelligence doesn't exist, can't be defined, or can't be measured. Tests are biased. In short, anything that gives an undesired answer undergoes summary rejection.

Now, readers may reach such conclusions as they think best. But allow me two questions and an assertion. The first question: Do you not know some people who are unquestionably smarter than some others? The second question: Given that races demonstrably differ in appearance, size, bodily proportions, biochemistry, brain size, and a thousand other things, is there any obvious reason why they should not vary in intelligence? In behavior?

The assertion: The people who devise tests of intelligence, as anyone may discover by reading, are neither fools, nor bigots, nor unaware of the problems of testing. Dismiss them only after much reading and careful thought.

The thesis of the sociobiologists is as follows: Men evolved about 200,000 years ago in Africa. Some migrated to Europe about 100,000 years ago and, then being in genetic isolation from Africa, evolved into the Caucasian race. Roughly 40,000 years ago some of the Caucasians migrated to Asia and, in genetic isolation, evolved into East Asians.

Life in northern Europe, runs the argument, was far more difficult than it had been in Africa because of, if nothing else, harsh winters. Survival required not just the intelligence to keep warm but also cooperation, forethought, planning, and cohesion. The people who would become East Asians, living in still more difficult conditions, needed more of these qualities. Those who survived had them.

This may be true. It may not. In evolutionary circles, plausibility trades as evidence. Yet it fits.

Says Rushton, on the basis of many years of research, there exists a clear gradient in many things from yellow to white to black. Asians have somewhat larger brains than whites who have substantially larger brains than blacks. Measured aggressiveness follows the same pattern of a small gap between yellow and white and a larger gap between white and black. The pattern applies for other characteristics: East Asians are lowest in testosterone levels, latest in entering puberty, lowest in size of genitals, degree of criminality, sex drive, rates of fertility, rates of divorce and promiscuity. Blacks are at the other extreme, with whites falling between.

Rushton is no fool. He knows that some of these things are influenced by variables other than the innate. He knows the pitfalls in cross-cultural measurement. Yet, he asserts, the pattern remains. In the United States, for example, crime is very low among East Asians, academic performance very high, divorce rare, families small.

In short, his thesis is that while environment obviously matters in determining outcomes, our capacities and behavior are very much influenced by genetics. The idea is not new, merely forbidden. Rushton et al however make a careful evidentiary case that is not easily ignored, unless you have determined in advance to ignore it.

Nurturists disagree with the sociobiologists. Behavior that seems racial, they argue, is in fact determined by culture. The question is tricky. Culture may itself be to a considerable extent the expression of biology. If East Asians are by nature less aggressive than whites, perhaps because of lower levels of testosterone, one would expect the lack of aggressiveness to be embodied in the culture. That is, naturally quiet people will raise their children to be quiet and be inclined to value courtesy. The nurturist can then say, "Aha! Just as I thought. Socially ingrained." Maybe. Maybe not.

A shift in the intellectual climate seems to be in the offing. Increasingly we see a clash between the compulsory view that we are all identical at birth, which would happily allow the eradication of various inequalities and of crime; and the quietly held but growing recognition that if we are inherently different, as seems to be the case, we will unavoidably have different results.

The question cannot easily be studied. The nurturists are politically in the saddle, and so research into racial differences is verboten. One may ask, of course: Why do the correct fear investigation, unless they know, or suspect, that they are wrong? It is assuredly true that, in the past, theories of racial superiority have often emanated from virulent nationalists who have sought to place their own stock at the top of the heap. The inevitable comparison is with Hitler, a dark squatty little thing convinced of the superiority of blonde Aryan supermen.

In Rushton's case we are dealing with something else. A white Canadian who believes in yellow supremacy is hardly aggrandizing himself. I am myself a purebred Euro-mongrel without known trace of Asian or Jewish ancestry. I'd like to regard Scots/English/Huguenot cocktails as the pinnacle of civilization, and those in cowboy hats as the better of the best. I don't see the evidence. Rushton's gradient accords with my observations whether I like it or not. Perhaps we had better get used to Chinese mathematicians.

A long time ago, I e-mailed Fred about a column that could be politely called controversial and inflammatory. He wrote back blaming it on tequila and writing at 0300. Although I don't think that's the case here, he is fast becoming a very serious and thoughtful pundit. Sort of like George Will with moxie.

All comments welcome.

This nature vs. nurture debate is neverending. Proponents of each side can produce valid, empirically sound research confirming their point of view.

I still think it needs to be said that while individuals are not equal in abilities and intelligence, no person's life (and by that I don't mean what they do, but the mere fact of their existence) is worth less than anyone else's.

University of Ontario

Should be "University of Western Ontario"

My alma mater...

Even if true, it doesn't explain the technological and military backwardness of East Asian societies compared to the West - guess that leaves culture or nurture as the reason.

I disagree, yes, we were technologically and tactically superior to the Vietnamese, but we let them gain the strategic advantage by allowing them to fight the war they were most capable of fighting. Even the War Colleges admit that.

he is fast becoming a very serious and thoughtful pundit

Fred's columns appear occasionally in the Washington Times. Here's the latest

Major problem with using "IQ" - we don't know what it is, other than test scores. I know a guy who used to belong to Mensa. He learned that maybe 1 in 25 "card-carrying" (active member) Mensans is within one standard deviation of being worth hanging out with. Test scores have little to do with being a good or great person. If Asians are so IQ smart, how do you explain the horror that much (most?) of Asia is?

I don't see your disagreement yet. The North Vietnamese didn't disdain to use hi-tech weapons when they could, but they had to get them from the West. Assuming our lower average intelligence, I would have to attribute our technology and science advantage to a "smarter" culture.

The Vietnamese had two sources for weapons, the Soviet Union and the Chinese. The Soviets could be called the West (they would disagree), the Chinese were definitely East. The Viets employed a lot of low tech solutions to move their logistics forward to the battlefield (bicycles, Ho Chi Minh trail, tunnels) and were able to overwhelm the South almost immediately after we withdrew. Like I said earlier, we were technically and tactically superior, but we fought their strategy which led to the ignomius result.

We seem to talk past one another. The East didn't have the technology, the West did, and it takes smarts to make the technology. The North Vietnamese (East) didn't decide to forgo the technology - they used it when they could and got it or copied it from the Russians (West), since they didn't have it themselves.

Russian engineers typically fall into the Caucasian group, not the East Asian group. East Asians have genetic superiority over Caucasians in the IQ department, according to Rushton. So the Russians, with their biologically inferior IQs, had to have a cultural advantage over the North Vietnamese. Or put another way, the North Vietnamese, even with their superior IQs, had such a stupid culture that dummies like Caucasians could out tech them.

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