Posted on 02/06/2004 1:30:19 PM PST by presidio9
AMERICAN academic Charles Murray is a real trooper. It doesn't matter how many people call him a racist, Nazi-esque brain-weigher.
He keeps churning out books that aren't afraid to call a spade a spade and a nigger a nigger.
Oh, I'm sorry. Did I just say nigger? How scientifically incorrect of me. What I meant to say was "biologically inferior".
This was the thesis of The Bell Curve, which was co-written by Murray in 1994. In it he scientifically "proved" that African Americans were dumber than whites or Asians for genetic reasons.
So what if the IQ testing he used to measure intrinsic intelligence included questions on trigonometry? Knowing about computational geometry is something you're either born with or you aren't. It has absolutely nothing to do with your level of education. In fact the word on the street is that Murray's first words as a little white infant were "cosine ratio".
Back in 1984, meanwhile, the academic shock jock caused a similar outcry with Losing Ground, in which he argued that the US government should abolish social security payments to poor adults because it encouraged intellectually inferior single mothers to reproduce.
Welfare schmelfare. Let them eat crack.
Chuck's new book, catchily entitled Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800BC to 1950, unites his low opinion of women and non-whites into a single mighty raspberry.
In it, he proves – once again completely scientifically – that the only people to have ever achieved anything of significant artistic and scientific worth are dead white males.
While it's a bold (and no doubt unit moving) thesis, critics who have accused Murray of repeatedly parading ugly old prejudices in pseudo-scientific drag will have a field day with this one. Human Accomplishment relies on a geriatric 19th century statistical method known as historiometry, which involves counting words in reference books to see who gets the most mentions.
As a result, 97 per cent of Murray's Top 4002 are male Europeans and North Americans.
What he refuses to acknowledge is that history tends to be written by the victors: as long as deadish white males rule the world, their lives will be over-recorded at the expense of their underlings.
An SBS documentary on the clitoris that screened last Friday night offered a fascinating insight into the political exclusion of the clitoris from medical and scientific manuals right up until 1948 when it was excised from Gray's Anatomy, the surgeon's bible.
Anyone for a textual clitorectomy? Given our combined interest in competitive events and extreme prejudice, it's not surprising people are pitting genders and races against each other in order to make a quick buck.
But even the tackiest reality TV programs offer a level-ish playing field. In Bumfights, for instance, desperate hobos are only filmed fighting other desperate hobos.
Murray, however, doesn't care that some sectors of society might have had trouble curing diseases, inventing polyphonic music or writing Macbeth because they weren't allowed out of their kitchens or their leg-irons.
White men are the winners, he trumpets, followed closely by a cackled "na na na na na naa".
It's telling that his survey stops at 1950 – just before feminism and civil rights gave non-dead, white males more room to flex their scientific and creative muscle.
Also intriguing is the notion that coverage automatically equals accomplishment.
While coverage might mean you are genuinely accomplished, it could also mean you have a good spin merchant, own the publishing company or happen to be Kylie Minogue's bum. As Iraq's gigantic stockpile of WMD shows, column inches are not necessarily the best indicator of substance.
Now, if you will excuse me, I'm off to use historiometry to prove that Charles Murray doesn't exist. I'm only going to use resource material written by Pakistani separatist lesbians, but I will make sure they're all familiar with the sine rule.
Fallacious thinking. The fact that different groups from the same species can interbreed says nothing about their equality with regards to specific abilities and talents. According to your "logic," all groups' mental and physical capabilities are identical. And don't use weasel words like "within societal and historical circumscribed limits," to back out of saying anything meaningful.
Are American blacks better athletes than American whites on the average? Yes. Why? The conditions of slavery, the Middle Passage and selection of slaves themselves were factors conducive to the survivla of physically stronger individuals.
Nonsense. Blacks are built differently than whites, in ways that give them, on average, greater strength and stamina. It's genetic.
Do American Whites on the average, perform better than American blacks on many performance tests? Yes they do. Why? The average American white and the average American black come from different cultural backgrounds. In most white societies, education and learning are valued skills. In many black environments in America they are not, and the average black kid is not exposed to the same educational opportunities as white kids.
You beg the question -- why do whites tend to value education, while blacks tend not to? One tends to value what one is good at, more than what one is not terribly good at.
Take a young white kid, move him into such an environment, and he'll preform like a black kid from such an environment, and vice-versa.
Not necessarily.
HOWEVER. these stereotypic behaviors are changing in America - QUICKLY.
False. As John Ogbu's research has shown, rather than the achievement culture of the old black bourgeoisie dripping down the social order, wealthy young blacks have embraced the anti-intellectual, anti-work ethic identified with the underclass.
More blacks are rising through the cirporate and social ladders and these individuals are indistinguishable, in performance from their white colleagues.
Again false. The performance of those blacks rising up the social ladder tends to be an embarrassment, compared to that of their white colleagues. The reason: they got the gig through affirmative action. And that is why well-to-do black kids no longer apply themselves -- they know they don't have to, in order to get admitted to Ivy League schools, or to later get hired by Fortune 500 corporations.
(1) Attack the motivation of the investigator, and try to make him appear to be driven by irrational prejudice.
(2) Heap scorn on any particular study, by attacking the perspective of that study, as well as the methodology, while carefully avoiding mention of any other studies from other perspectives, employing varying methodology, which may confirm the study under attack.
(3) Try to inject as much insult and nasty emotional diatribes into the discussion, to make it so ugly that no one will even want to explore the possibility that the investigator whom you are trying to smear and discredit, has a point.
Of course, Murray is dealing with realities. I do not know how he phrases those realities, or the precise method that he used in the work under attack; but I know that his general result is in conformity with all of the investigations, using a wide variety of perspectives and methodologies, over several generations. If the essayist had any interest in finding out what is true--any interest in objectively criticizing Murray, as opposed to trying to discredit him, without admitting that what he has apparently done here is simply add another perspective to a mountain of evidence that already existed--he could not have taken this stupid tack.
Why does it matter--other than for Murray to get fair treatment? It matters because a mountain of legislation, regulation and Leftist political hysteria, is all based upon denial of the truth that everyone is different; with different aptitudes and personality traits. It matters, because the whole philosophical and ideological structure of the Modern Leftist view of politics and society, will collapse like a house of cards, if their fallacious view of mankind and human sameness becomes generally recognized as the ultimate Big Lie. (See Racial Denial In America.)
The reality is that all races of men on this earth are being hurt by the nonsense that the Left has preached as a compulsive value for the past 70 years, because that Big Lie leads to endless recriminations and antagonisms, rather than the alternative of trying actually to better understand one another, for the purpose of encouraging respect, positive progress, etc.. It is that Big Lie, which today polarizes American Society, makes Congress unable to formulate a clear vision on any social issue, and keeps most of the media and Academia in the Socialist camp.
William Flax
Jesus is a Jew. I think he also is the first Christian.
His liniage is given in the Bible. It is not a mystery.
Since the case of the Tuskegee Airmen is utterly irrelevant to my post #101, why did you bring it up?
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