Race and IQ: Liberalism's great exception

Many "liberal" intellectuals are all about free speech and inquiry until the topic of race differences arises.

Written by Bo Winegard.

Do not think it worth while to produce belief by concealing evidence, for the evidence is sure to come to light.
—Bertrand Russell, 1951

If we are to accept John Stuart Mill’s argument, liberalism is more than just a commitment to individualism and the rule of law. It is also a cultural embrace of free speech and free inquiry. A spirit of open debate. A rejection of anti-intellectual taboos. A part of the Enlightenment project, whose goal is to free men from both arbitrary rule and debilitating ignorance. Its chief threats are not just overweening government, lawless Presidents or overzealous policing — but also stultifying superstitions, censorious intellectuals and stifling monocultures.

By this standard, many so-called liberals, even those who have otherwise resisted or pushed back against the worst excesses of progressivism, have retreated from their own principles. They have retreated by promoting silence, or even censorship, about one of the most consequential topics in the human sciences today: race differences in IQ.

Almost certainly they believe that their advocacy of stifling scientific inquiry is a necessary compromise with human frailty. Were IQ disparities between blacks and whites widely known, they worry, pernicious stereotypes might lead to disadvantages for blacks; or worse, might ignite a recrudescence of Jim-Crow style racism. But they are wrong. And the arguments they forward to support the suppression of open inquiry are underwhelming.