Don't shut up about race and IQ

In a world of equalitarian delusions and mendacities, speaking the truth is crucial.

Written by Bo Winegard

Despite diligent efforts to equalize races in the West, stubborn disparities remain. The best explanation for the apparent intransigence of these disparities is that they are caused by underlying differences in traits, e.g., cognitive ability, whose origin is partially and possibly substantially genetic. Therefore, racial inequality is inevitable in any tolerably free society.

And the left’s claim that pervasive white supremacy is the culprit of black and Hispanic underperformance is not just false—it is a calumny. For only a brutally authoritarian government could possibly equalize the races and only by thwarting the natural advantages of currently successful groups. Race disparities are not a symptom of some systemic social disease. They are the natural and inescapable outcome of liberty.

As far as I can tell, Richard Hanania agrees with these claims. Yet, he also believes that we should “shut up” about race and IQ. How did he arrive at the counterintuitive conclusion that we should shut up about something that is both true and socially important?

I confess that after reading his essay, I still don’t have an answer. For although it accuses people who think we should talk candidly about race and IQ (I’ll call these people “race realists”) of strategic errors and unsavory motivations (e.g., thinking other races are “icky”), it sedulously ignores their best arguments and does not wrestle with the many challenges faced by an advocate of silence. (To be fair, Hanania notes that he’s not advocating that people should lie or avoid the topic in all contexts.)

Throughout the piece, Hanania attributes implausible beliefs to race realists like me (and Nathan Cofnas and Noah Carl) who believe we should be honest about race and IQ. For example, Hanania writes that race realists believe that:

“The left blames racial disparities on past and present discrimination. If you show that biology has something to do with group outcomes, then their entire worldview must implode.”

And then criticizes this belief by noting that it misunderstands the emotional and intuitive nature of political and moral commitments:

“Rather, [the Left] begin [s] with a dislike of inequality and then adopt [s] whatever scientific theories make them feel good, mostly as an afterthought.

I know many race realists, but I don’t know anyone who believes that the leftist narrative will implode like a devastated edifice after being detonated by the truth of race realism. In fact, many race realists share Hanania’s view of ideology; and race realists are certainly not dedicated to the implausible idea that people assess ideologies rationally, dispassionately examining and tallying truths and falsehoods like a cloistered scholar.

What race realists believe is that the truth can be a constant irritant, a splinter in the eye of an ideology that eventually causes such discomfort that people (especially intellectuals) reluctantly change their minds. Of course, as Hanania correctly notes, people will often do this in the most (small c) conservative way possible, trimming an idea here and finessing an idea there, so that the overall web of beliefs is preserved. Nobody should expect the truth to turn egalitarians into proselytes of traditional hierarchies or Christian nationalism. But that’s not the goal. The goal is to reduce the viability of the pernicious every disparity is caused by white supremacy narrative.

And it's hard to imagine that race and IQ is unimportant here.

To this point, it’s notable that progressives are terrified of race realism, which they condemn with the moral fury of a Savonarola denouncing Satan. Race realism is the enemy that must be defeated. And the reason it must be defeated is not because it is a false scientific hypothesis, but because it is an existential threat to racial egalitarianism.

After all, if race realists are correct, the hope, the goal, the promise of racial equality is chimerical. And, as Hanania observes in a different context in the very same essay that admonished people to shut up about race and IQ, “reality has a way of intruding on false beliefs.”

It sure does. And this is why leftists strive to terrify into silence people who might utter the horrible heresy, “Races are not the same. They have different traits. They will never have equal outcomes.”

This truth is waiting to intrude—but for now it has been fought off by zealous elites who use moral opprobrium and threats of firing as substitutes for the arguments they do not have. When the truth is not on your side, your options are limited.

Political debates are not like scholarly philosophical debates. They are not dispassionate. They are not rational. And they are not motivated by an impartial love for truth. Instead, they are messy and emotional, motivated by many existential needs and desires. A person does not calmly choose an ideology after carefully studying the scientific literature. And a person will not part with an ideology simply because one of its underlying premises is shown to be false or implausible.

But the truth is not irrelevant either. As Donald Sutherland’s character says in Oliver Stone’s JFK, “Fundamentally, people are suckers for the truth—and the truth is on your side bubba.” Perhaps he was too optimistic. Perhaps one might say not that people are suckers for truth, but that they are afraid of public error. Whatever the case, though, the truth matters. And an ideology that requires the defense of falsehoods will remain forever fragile.

But the case for being a race realist is even stronger than this.

Hanania exhorts race realists to shut up about race and IQ, but even if they deferred to his wish, progressives certainly would not shut up about race. Race disparities fuel their engine of rage and resentment. They obsess over them and discuss them incessantly. They use them to foment hatred of the West, to promote anti-white racism, to eradicate meritocratic principles, to undermine academic freedom, and to rail against the criminal justice system. The damage caused by this locomotive of lies and discontent is nearly impossible to calculate, but undeniably immense, as documented by books such as Charles Murray’s Facing Reality and Heather Mac Donald’s When Race Trumps Merit.

“As long as alleged racism remains the only allowable explanation for racial differences, we will continue tearing down excellence and putting lives, as well as civilizational achievement, at risk.”

The problem, of course, is that racial disparities are used as incontrovertible evidence of anti-black and anti-Hispanic racism. And egalitarians, pointing to this supposedly irrefutable racism, then assail the society that creates it. And in an effort to inject some fairness into this vast system of injustice, they explicitly favor the putative victims, the blacks and Hispanics who are stifled by the prejudices of privileged whites.

The results are ugly.

Affirmative action has eroded meritocratic norms, rewarding undeserving blacks and Hispanics with coveted college positions and degrees, leading ultimately to enormous disparities in talent and ability in a variety of professions, including those entrusted with life and death decisions (e.g., medicine). For some of these professions systematic data are hard to find, but what data we have are compelling (and disturbing). For example, using data from the 1972 cohort of the National Longitudinal Study and the 1979 and 1997 cohorts of the National Longitudinal Study of Youth, Charles Murray found consistent race differences in IQ among accountants, K-12 teachers, registered nurses, social workers, childcare workers, secretaries, mechanics, janitors, and more. The direction of the differences was consistent: Whites on top, Hispanics in the middle, and Blacks on the bottom.

Data from Charles Murray’s Facing Reality

Two meta-analyses found reliable race differences in job performance such that blacks scored lower than whites on both on subjective and objective measures, which should not be surprising since IQ and job performance are positively related. These results support the notion that the job market is racist—but against whites, not against blacks!

The consequences of these performance disparities are not entirely clear and unfortunately—but unsurprisingly—few have attempted to study them. (Undoubtably such research would result in obloquy and probable termination. And thus many scholars have indeed shut up about race and IQ, to our detriment.) But Facing Reality includes some depressing data in its appendix. For example, in California, a larger proportion of black attorneys received a complaint than white attorneys, Hispanic attorneys, or Asians attorneys. A larger proportion were also put on probation. Similar patterns held for physicians.

Data from Charles Murray’s Facing Reality

Meanwhile, progressives attack instruments that measure the quality of potential candidates because those instruments almost invariably reveal large race differences that favor whites and Asians. The perverse logic is that if a stopwatch clocks a racial difference, then the stopwatch is racist and therefore must be destroyed. Thus, many universities have eschewed mandatory standardized testing since such tests evince large race differences. Similar attacks have been brought against almost every test or indicator of performance such as K-12 grades, college grades, GREs, ACTs, bar exams, police exams, and much more. The goal, it seems, is to destroy our ability to discern merit so that favored races can receive benefits without leaving a trail of embarrassing evidence.

Nor do the corrosive effects of racial egalitarianism end here. Hollywood, the arts, the humanities, national orchestras, national theatres have all been attacked for racism and have capitulated to (or willingly accepted) the ideology of diversity, equity, and inclusion. The result is a debasement of culture as the great authors, philosophers, and directors of the Western canon are ridiculed for being white men and replaced by a more diverse but less deserving pantheon. Excellence, it seems, is not enough to atone for the sin of whiteness.

And in the face of this sustained war on meritocracy with its celebration of mediocrity and its endless scorn for once revered heroes of the West, Hanania recommends shutting up about race and IQ, which is a bit like advising an army to holster its swords while marauders destroy the land. How can one rebut the endless stream of lies from elites about the supposedly pervasive racism that plagues the US without discussing race and IQ? How can one explain to a curious citizen that blacks will never be as successful as whites in a meritocratic society without discussing race and IQ? How can one explain to a curious citizen why progressives are wrong about white supremacy without discussing race and IQ?

Perhaps Hanania would respond that we should forward cultural explanations for persistent gaps in socioeconomic outcomes. The reason blacks are less successful than whites and Asians in any field or activity that depends at least partially upon cognitive ability is because they inhabit an unpropitious culture. But even if one believed that cultural explanations are safer, less unseemly, and more effective than genetic explanations, one would still have to talk about race and IQ since one would have to explain disparities in success. Listening to Ice Cube and watching Tyler Perry movies does not magically make a person score lower on the GRE. It must do so by reducing his or her cognitive ability. Thus one must still talk about race and IQ to address the legitimate questions of a curious person.

Furthermore, the inevitable causal question would arise: Why do blacks live in and perpetuate such an unpropitious culture? Perhaps one could claim that this was mere historical accident. Blacks just happened to create a culture that stifles intelligence and encourages crime. But that is not very satisfying. And any observant interlocutor would then ask, “But why do they persist in the stifling culture if they can easily borrow from the more successful cultures around them?” The easiest way out of the conundrum without violating prevailing taboos is to blame the culture on past racism (perhaps it is a legacy of slavery). But this endorses the white supremacy lie, if an attenuated version of it, because it still blames current racial disparities on white people. Thus, culture does not provide a satisfying explanation for racial disparities.

Hanania writes that:

“A person who is motivated by a vision of human flourishing or futurism will, as many libertarians and rationalists do, accept what science and common sense tell us about group differences and then move on, making the case for free markets and technological progress, with a clear understanding that threats to this vision come from both ends of the political spectrum. But talking about group differences is useful if one doesn’t want to simply move beyond woke, but defeat it in an argument so we can replace one race obsessed outlook for another, whether explicit white nationalism or the implicit form of it that uses borders as a close enough proxy for race.”

But the case for free markets is constantly undermined by the unequal racial outcomes those free markets inevitably produce. And providing an answer to the race-obsessed lies from the left is trading one “race obsessed outlook for another” only in the way that returning gun fire at an invading army is trading one “war obsessed outlook for another.” So long as progressives and other egalitarians denigrate the country and the West more broadly, so long as they erode meritocratic principles and suppress science, so long as they replace classes on Shakespeare with classes on obscure indigenous writers, so long as they degrade the culture and attack excellence, we should refute their mendacities with the truth. And the truth is that large gaps in IQ explain most of the disparities they decry.

One last point. Throughout his essay, Hanania contends that the real motivation for discussing race and IQ is not the science or a sincere desire to defend the West from constant calumnies, but an unseemly dislike of foreigners and other races:

“People who get really into group differences and put it at the center of their politics don’t actually care all that much about the science. I think for the most part they just think foreigners and other races are icky. They therefore latch on to group differences as a way to justify what they want for tribal or aesthetic reasons.”

If I reconstruct Hanania’s logic correctly, he believes this because he believes that (1) people’s underlying tribal motives are stronger than their desire for the truth; and (2) people use science or whatever rationalization they can find to defend their underlying tribal motives. Therefore, the other motives come first, and the science of group differences comes second. Race and IQ is a veneer for racism and xenophobia.

Hanania’s hypothesis of the cause of interest in race and IQ

This is a plausible hypothesis, though I would replace the polemical language “just think foreigners and other races are icky” with something less tendentious such as “have a preference for homogeneity and slow cultural change.”

But even if this hypothesis were 100% true, I’d ask, is the science of group differences that race realists “latch on to” true? Does it have important consequences? Does the underlying motivation matter? Don’t these questions matter more than the underlying motives of the race realists?

As it happens, I don’t think the hypothesis is 100% true. In fact, it’s almost certainly false for many of the most vocal people who care about race differences.

Consider a different example. Suppose I wrote an article entitled, “Shut up About the Economic Benefits of Immigration” that contained this polemical claim:

“People who get into the economic benefits of open borders and put it at the center of their politics don’t actually care all that much about the data. I think for the most part they just like foreigners and want to hasten the demographic decline of white people. They therefore latch on to economics as a way to justify what they want for tribal or aesthetic reasons.”

Presumably most educated people who advocate for generous immigration policies would be annoyed by this account of their position and would respond that in fact it was the economic literature that motivated their policy preferences. Some would even note that they had changed their minds because of the literature. Having begun with restrictionist views, they were enlightened by powerful and persuasive arguments and eventually came to embrace liberalism at the border. If their interlocutor insisted that they were actually just trying to justify some underlying predisposition or another, they might retort, “So what. Are my claims true or not?”

The same is true of race differences. People may begin as bien pensant liberals, convinced that the West is racist and that immigration restrictionism is motivated by irrational xenophobia before encountering the literature on race differences. They might then begin to revise their views. After all, if there are widespread race differences in IQ and if IQ predicts a variety of important social outcomes both within and among countries, why would one not consider that carefully when thinking about immigration?

Potential causal direct of race and IQ interests and politics

Hanania writes that:

“I think that a lot of the people who think we should talk about group differences have a false model of how ideas change over time. Certain individuals love to talk about race and IQ, in addition to talking about talking about race and IQ, and talking about talking about talking about race and IQ. The implied model of historical change here is that we’re all in a kind of debating club, with change occurring when one set of ideas directly defeats another.”

Since the links are to my article and my podcast conversation with Noah Carl, I assume that Hanania is imputing this “false model of how ideas change” to me and Noah. And I can respond: I do not think history is a kind of debating club; I do not think rationally adjudicated ideas are the dominant drivers of history; and I do not think that culture changes when one set of ideas defeats another set in direct combat. I am not, in other words, a political idealist.

But I do think, as Hanania wrote in the very essay that accuses race realists of holding a debate club theory of historical change, that “reality has a way of intruding on false beliefs.” For now, elites have mostly succeeded in hiding the truth about race differences, which is why articles in mainstream papers that discuss racial disparities in outcomes almost invariably fail to mention racial differences in underlying traits, especially differences in IQ. They have shuttered the windows to keep us in the dark. Our goal should be to let a little light in.

Bo Winegard is the Executive Editor of Aporia.

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