THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

RACE: DON'T GET OBSESSED WITH IQ | 2001-11-24

By now almost everybody, including many Jews, have been labeled naziswhowanttokillsixmillionjews.

One of the Jews who was labeled anaziwhowantstokillsixmilionjews was the co-author of The Bell Curve, Harvard professor Richard Herrnstein. The Bell Curve talks about the importance of innate racial IQ differences so liberals said it was just part of an Evil Racist Plot to get money.

This is unlikely in Herrnstein's case.

Herrnstein was at Harvard, where talking about inborn IQ differences between races is pure heresy. All The Bell Curve could get him was fired.

Worse, Herrnstein was dying of cancer while the book was written. A person with a terminal illness is seldom an Evil Opportunist.

So we are left with three choices, 1) Herrnstein was just doing the book to get paid by the right-wing conspiracy, 2) he, a Jew, was anaziwhowantedtokillsixmillionjrews or 3) he was an honest man making an honest point.

Liberals insist on 1) or 2).

To deal with The Bell Curve, liberal psychologists are called in to disparage IQ tests and say that they mean nothing when applied to race. This sounds good because everybody knows IQ tests are psychological tests and it makes the psychologists sound like they're being modest.

That's not the point. IQ tests may be as bad as liberal psychologists get paid to say they are. But even a poor dumb psychologist's test can tell whether a person is smart or dull.

IQ tests are not all that good but basic intelligence is too obvious to miss when you are dealing with large numbers of people. It is not demonstrated on the tests because the tests are good but because, if you go into the real details of the test, consistent results are simply undeniable.

That is what Herrnstein used hundreds of pages to demonstrate -- again. It is what his fellow Harvard professor Arthur Jensen has demonstrated repeatedly.

But while liberals have tried to say IQ tests are too rough to be valid, those on the side of Jensen and Herrnstein have gone overboard in the opposite direction. They have erected IQ into something very like a god, a piece of perfection which tells the whole truth.