[Marxism] Heated reaction to racism at Slate.com

[Louis Proyect]

NY Times, December 1, 2007
I.Q. Debate Adds a Chapter Online
By PATRICIA COHEN

Ever since the Nobel prize winner James D. Watson asserted six weeks ago 
that Africans have innately lower intelligence, fervid debates about 
race, genes and I.Q. have sprung up on the Web, in publications and in 
conference rooms.

But in recent days, along with long-simmering arguments over evidence, 
have come others about whether the topic is even worth studying, or 
whether it can be discussed openly without spurring charges of racism.

“It’s a subject that almost dare not speak its name,” said Howard Husock 
of the Manhattan Institute, a conservative research group, as he 
introduced a debate Wednesday night between James R. Flynn, the author 
of a new book “What Is Intelligence?” (Cambridge University Press), and 
Charles Murray, a co-author of “The Bell Curve,” the controversial 1994 
book about intelligence that set off a previous free-for-all on race, 
genes and I.Q.

The risk of giving ammunition to racists or undercutting principles of 
equality hovers over such conversations like an uninvited dinner guest. 
That unwelcome visitor has been loitering at the online magazine Slate 
since last week, when it ran a three-part series arguing that hard 
science is showing that blacks’ I.Q. scores are lower than those of 
whites — and whites’ scores are lower than those of Asians — because of 
genetically based differences in intelligence.

Appearing on a site with a liberal bent and written by its generally 
liberal science and technology columnist, William Saletan, the articles 
drew particular attention — and particular scorn. “William Saletan and 
the Editors of Slate Demonstrate That They Are Not Members of the 
Genetic Elite” was the headline on the Web site of the economist Brad 
DeLong (delong.typepad.com). On his popular political Web site, 
talkingpointsmemo.com, Joshua Micah Marshall referred to it as “Will 
Saletan’s nauseating foray into black genetic ‘pseudo-science.’”

Mr. Flynn and Richard Nisbett, two noted researchers on intelligence, 
also criticized the Slate series as grossly one-sided. Mr. Flynn said he 
was most persuaded by evidence that the environment causes I.Q. 
differences, but added that certainty on either side is misplaced given 
that the research is still in its infancy.

On Wednesday, Mr. Saletan posted a fourth article labeled “Regrets,” 
confessing that he had not realized that J. Philippe Rushton, a 
researcher on whom he had heavily relied, is the president of an 
organization that has financed a segregationist group. He also amended 
his previous position, stating that it was too early to come to any firm 
conclusions about the causes of racial differences in intelligence.

“If I had to do it again, I would have been much more circumspect about 
judging” the evidence, Mr. Saletan said in an interview. He later added 
that he should have written about inequality and left race completely 
out of it.

Jacob Weisberg, the editor of Slate, said that since Mr. Saletan is a 
senior writer, his posts went up without anyone there reading them. 
“Given the sensitivity of the subject, Will’s commentary should have 
been carefully edited in advance of publication, and it wasn’t,” he 
wrote in an e-mail message.

Mr. Weisberg said he was disturbed by the casual “what if” thought 
experiment and some of the sources Mr. Saletan cited. “I wouldn’t have 
stopped Will from writing on this subject, but I would have challenged 
him on these and other issues,” he wrote.

He added that a rejoinder by another Slate writer, Stephen Metcalf, was 
scheduled to be posted Monday.

Mr. Saletan said he was completely unprepared for the voluminous and 
vehement reaction. “I did not mean to start a wildfire.”

A subject as sensitive and complicated as this deserves to have a higher 
level of proof, he said, adding that he erred in treating it like any 
other topic.

“I don’t agree that it’s best not to discuss it,” he said, but “you have 
to do it in a responsible way and always with a constructive purpose.” 
Judging from his own experience, he said, the Internet is not a place 
where that can be done at the moment.

“I’m a little disappointed in myself,” he added.

Linda S. Gottfredson, a sociologist at the University of Delaware, 
insists that Mr. Saletan has nothing to apologize for. Ms. Gottfredson, 
who along with Mr. Flynn had been participating in a separate monthlong 
online debate about intelligence sponsored by the libertarian Cato 
Institute, wrote that Mr. Saletan “may be the first journalist to so 
directly acknowledge the scientific evidence” supporting a genetic 
explanation for racial differences in I.Q. “and to be allowed to publish 
his views.”

She calls the fierce response generated by the Slate articles evidence 
of “moral panic.” Ever since the 1970s, Ms. Gottfredson said in an 
interview, most researchers have steered clear of the subject altogether 
(Mr. Murray aside). “No one wants to stick their neck out and say what 
they really think for fear that they’ll get shot down like Watson or 
criticized,” she said. “People are in hiding.”

Amid the controversy over his comments last month, Dr. Watson, 79, 
apologized for his remarks and resigned as chancellor of Cold Spring 
Harbor Laboratory on Long Island.

Ms. Gottfredson says the cause of the black-white achievement gap is one 
of the most pressing social science questions, and the refusal to 
consider genetic causes means either blaming white racism or black 
culture, making it someone’s fault and placing the issue “in the moral 
realm.”

“We’re ginning up more tensions by denying it,” she contended.

To Eric Turkheimer, a psychology professor at the University of Virginia 
who specializes in behavior genetics, the research itself is morally 
weighted. Given the complex interaction between genes and the 
environment, Mr. Turkheimer said, “the question is fundamentally 
impossible to settle scientifically because we can never take people out 
of their environment.”

That doesn’t mean research into genetic differences in intelligence 
should be banned, he said, but it should be judged. “What troubled me 
about posts at Cato” — an exchange Mr. Turkheimer participated in — “and 
the tone of Saletan’s blog is the assumption that because these papers 
are labeled as science, they are value-neutral and they’re as deserving 
of respect as any other scientific hypothesis,” he said of genetic 
racial theories.

“But you can’t get away from what these people are trying to prove, 
which is exactly the basis of the stereotypical beliefs that informed 
segregation here for 200 years.”

If the Internet, as Mr. Saletan says, is not the place for civil 
discourse about race and I.Q., the Harvard Club clearly is. That is 
where the Manhattan Institute held its debate this week. “Not one single 
person has run out of the room screaming,” Mr. Murray said at the 
evening’s end to the 70 or so guests, a handful of them black. This 
issue has “festered in the American psyche,” he added. “Everybody 
pretends it doesn’t exist.”

Mr. Flynn, who said he had been attacked by both conservatives (for 
playing down the significance of genes) and by liberals (for arguing 
that black culture is at the root of the I.Q. gap), told the group, “I 
want to say how deeply I believe in this sort of discussion.” He later 
explained that his own desire to disprove the genetic arguments is what 
spurred his research.

“If at any time we had cut off scientific examination of race in the 
past,” he said, “we would have more racial prejudice than we do now.”