The Objectivist
Affirmative Action Unmasked
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
May 25, 2009
This past April, the Supreme Court case heard Ricci v. DeStefano. This case is interesting because it highlights the tradeoffs involved in affirmative action and, outside of education, likely signals its slow death.
In 2003, the City of New Haven, Connecticut took steps to fill the captain and lieutenant positions in its fire department. New Haven’s law and regulations required that hiring and promotions be based solely on merit as determined by a competitive exam. New Haven hired a firm that specialized in employment-related tests, particularly ones relating to public safety. The test was approved by independent experts. 118 people took the test, including 27 black candidates. None of the black candidates did well enough to qualify for the 15 promotions, although one or two Hispanics did. On a side note, New Haven had already tried to mitigate the effects of the exam by giving the written exam get 60% of the weight to get promoted and the oral exam get 40%.
After the exam, the Civil Service Board would normally certify the list of those eligible for promotion. However, a local minister with close ties to the mayor made it clear that because of the racial disparity, he opposed certification. City officials tried to impugn the exam, but the firm that designed it stood by it and offered to perform a post-exam study that would have validated the test. The city blocked the study, almost undoubtedly because they knew the test would have been validated. They did so even though their contract with the firm required them to pay for it.
New Haven then refused to certify the exam on the basis that it would face lawsuits relating to Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Some of the firefighters denied promotion sued the city and several individuals on the basis that it violated their rights under Title VII and the Equal Protection Clause. The Equal Protection Clause prevents state agencies from denying people equal protection under the law. Title VII prohibits employers from discriminating in hiring or employment conditions on the basis of race, ethnicity, sex, etc The District Court and the Second Circuit ruled against the firefighters. It held that New Haven’s concern about being sued was reason enough to throw out the test results.
As George Will points out, the lead plaintiff, Ricci, presents an appearance problem for New Haven. To prepare for the exam, Will points out, he quit his second job, bought more than $1,000 worth of books the city recommended, paid to have them put on audiotapes (he is dyslexic), and took practice tests and interviews. He studied hard, sometimes as much as 13 hours a day, and got the 6th highest score.
New Haven was concerned with part of the law that bans employment tests and practices that have an adverse impact on members of one race. In fact, the federal government (specifically, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) has guidelines that hold that evidence of adverse impact occurs when the selection or promotion rate for one group is less than 80% of the group with the highest rate. As Steve Sailor points out, this means that if 50% of whites pass a test, then 40% of more of the minority groups must pass the test. If this doesn’t happen, then unless it can validate the test, the employer will be found to have discriminated. If the employer validates the test, then it will not be found to have discriminated unless those suing can show that there was an equally valid and less discriminatory test.
The Supreme Court should have an easy time with this case. The Individual Rights Foundation, Cato Institute, and others point out that the city blocked the post-validation study because it would likely validate the test. The evidence that there was an alternative, less-discriminatory test is laughable. In oral argument before the Supreme Court, New Haven had to admit that their evidence for such a less discriminatory test rested on the claim made by a competitor firm who hadn’t even seen the test New Haven actually gave.
As a policy matter, the argument against affirmative action, and against blocking such exams, is straightforward. Such policies severely harm people and this harm is probably not outweighed by the policy’s benefits.
Psychology professor Kevin Murphy of Pennsylvania State University points out that general intelligence is the single best predictor of job performance, but also the one most likely to have a substantial adverse impact on several minority groups. Murphy and others further point out that once general intelligence has been measured, the testing of more specific abilities may well add little in predicting who will perform well.
To see this, consider the following insights from Steve Sailor. Sailor, points out that as a group, black students on average score at the 18th percentile of white students on the graduate admissions test and at 20% on the medical admissions test. To admit large number of black students, standards are dropped, which then produces frustrating results. Using 2004 data from Richard Sanders of UCLA Law School, Sailor points out that 53% of black law students who enter law school fail to become lawyers versus 24% of whites. 40% of black law school graduates never pass the bar versus 15% for whites. Similarly, a 1994 study of medical boards published it The Journal of American Medical Association found that only 44% of blacks passed the medical boards for the first time, versus 84% for whites and 79% for Asians. Note that none of these observations depends on whether the differences are genetic.
Hiring less meritorious people harms people. In one study by economist John Lott, between 1987 and 1990, various policies, including affirmative action, decreased white male officers by 6% (6,912) and increased the number of Black male officers by 950 (5%) in the 189 cities Lott studied. He concluded that these policies produced 1,145 more murders and 30 more rapes. Similarly, a 1998 study in The Journal of the American Medical Association, 71% of newly licensed physicians prescribed potentially inappropriate medication and inappropriate medication is the 6th leading cause of death in the U.S. Admitting less able medical students likely exacerbates this problem. A similar pattern is likely true of firefighters. When you hire less talented people in life-and-death jobs, some people who would otherwise escape injury, get hurt and killed.
University of Maryland law professor Sherrilyn Ifill points out that New Haven has a history of discriminating in its fire department. She points out that black firefighters have repeatedly sued the city for discrimination in hiring and promotion and won, most recently in 2004. However, New Haven didn’t even try to defend its policy in terms of compensating for past discrimination because it knew that one cannot compensate one person for what was done to another. Nor did it rest its argument on the value of diversity, a common justification in educational contexts. So it is not clear what reason it thought outweighed the increased risk to its citizens of hiring less competent firefighters. However, even if could have cited one, it is unlikely to outweigh the greater risks to its citizens.
New Haven’s weak legal argument and even weaker policy argument will likely result in the Supreme Court reinstating the test results. The case highlights the real tradeoffs in death and injury that results from affirmative action.
There is an important addendum to this case. The Obama administration backed New Haven. President Obama then nominated Sonia Sotomayor to be a Supreme Court Justice. She served on the appellate court that summarily dismissed the firefighters’ claim. Obama and Sotomayer will act to preserve race preferences no matter how shaky the case and in so doing are pitting some racial groups against others. Wherefore by their fruits, ye shall know them.
Showing posts with label Race. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Race. Show all posts
27 May 2009
12 November 2008
Against Diversity
The Objectivist
DIVERSITY: A GOOD THING?
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
November 10, 2008
The left often asserts that diversity is good for the U.S. The notion that diversity is good for the U.S. is an empirical claim and there is surprisingly little evidence for it. This is disturbing given that few slogans are more repeated in politics than “diversity is our strength” and given that schools and businesses spend large amounts of money and regularly sacrifice merit to promote diversity.
The argument against diversity is that when we look at ethnic, racial, and religious diversity, we find that it does not correlate with wealth, happiness, peace, or other indicators of human flourishing. As a result, even if diversity generates benefits, it is unclear whether they outweigh its costs.
Internationally, some of the richest countries have less diversity than their competitors. Examples of countries with less diversity include (in parentheses is their ranking in terms of per capita income): Norway (2), Ireland (4), Denmark (5), and Sweden (7). The same is true of two of the four richest Asian Countries: Japan (20) and South Korea (28). In more subjective terms, less diverse countries such as Denmark, Ireland, Sweden, and Norway have very happy people compared to the rest of the world (they are the 3rd, 5th, 9th, and 12th happiest respectively). This is measured in terms of life satisfaction, although genetic factors might explain a large part of the data. In terms of wealth and happiness, the U.S. has high numbers (10th in income and 11th in happiness). So while diversity does not appear to be necessary for wealth or happiness, it is not incompatible with it. My guess is that the U.S.’s wealth is probably due in large part to its free market.
Internationally, racial and ethnic diversity is a major source of violence. Jared Taylor, editor of the highly controversial American Renaissance, notes that a study by the United Nations found that between 1989 and 1992, there were 82 conflicts that had resulted in at least 1,000 deaths. Of these conflicts 96% (79) were ethnic or religious conflicts that took place within the borders of recognized states and only 3 were cross-border conflicts. Another researcher, Tatu Vanhanen of Finland, found a strong positive correlation between ethnic diversity and conflict. Intergroup violence in places like Yugoslavia and Iraq quickly spiraled out of control once the heavy hand that kept violence contained was lifted.
In the United States, diversity appears to have troubling results. For example, in 2007 Harvard professor Robert Putnam found that as racial diversity increase, levels of happiness decrease as does trust both within members of the same ethnic group and between members of different ones. Also, with the increase in diversity, people increasingly withdraw from community life. In short, Putnam found that as diversity increases people have less friends, less trust, and are less altruistic. When it comes to universities, the effects of diversity are also not obviously good. For example, a 2003 study by Stanley Rothman and fellow researchers found that there was an inverse relationship between the number of minorities on campus and how favorably students viewed their education.
Politically, the different races are worlds apart. In last week’s Presidential election, the Washington Post reported that 95% of blacks voted for Sen. Obama. The 95% support is not explained by political preference because plenty of blacks have economic and social views that are closer those of John McCain. For example, a majority of blacks in California supported Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage. Rather, the preference is explained by racial identification and this was not limited to blacks. Nearly 20% of all voters said that the candidates’ race was a factor in their vote, although most said it was not the most important factor. A number of the most high-profile conservative blacks backed Obama, including former Secretary of State Colin Powell, Manhattan Institute member John McWhorter, and conservative radio host Armstrong Williams. It is hard to imagine that they would have supported Hillary Clinton had she won the nomination. This is not to say that such racial identification among voters is such a bad thing, but merely that it plays a more important role with a diverse population.
A clear example of racial identification in another context is the fact that until the 1994 Multiethnic Placement Act, the Association of Black Social Workers did what it could to reduce the adoption of black children by white families. In 1972, they publicly labeled the practice “cultural genocide.”
Patrick Buchanan points out that we are all familiar with some immigrants’ high profile acts of violence. He points out that the 1993 bombers of the World Trade Center and the 9-11 bombers were immigrants. The same is true of Colin Ferguson (the Jamaican who killed six and wounded eleven people on the Long Island Railroad), John Lee Malvo (the Caribbean immigrant who was the Beltway Sniper), and Chai Vang (the Hmong immigrant who shot six hunters to death in Wisconsin when they asked him to vacate their deer stand). And these are just the famous cases. Now, there are many benefits too to having a diverse population. Also, we all know people whose lives are immeasurably benefitted by particular immigrants (particularly spouses). Also, one thinks of Indian- and Chinese-Americans’ many contributions to high-tech industries and the medical field. All these stories point out is that anecdotes cut in both directions and do not constitute a strong reason to view diversity as either good or bad.
If we look at how people behave, they by and large avoid diversity. When given a chance, whether in church, school lunch tables, or prison yards, Americans appear to show a preference for their own kind and against diversity. To the extent that they know what is in their interest, there is at least some reason to wonder whether diversity is a good thing.
Now it may be that in a country as diverse as the U.S. is now, we have no choice but to learn how to make the best of it. However, to celebrate diversity and endlessly repeat that it is the greatest thing since sliced bread is, as far as I can tell, pure sentimentality.
DIVERSITY: A GOOD THING?
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
November 10, 2008
The left often asserts that diversity is good for the U.S. The notion that diversity is good for the U.S. is an empirical claim and there is surprisingly little evidence for it. This is disturbing given that few slogans are more repeated in politics than “diversity is our strength” and given that schools and businesses spend large amounts of money and regularly sacrifice merit to promote diversity.
The argument against diversity is that when we look at ethnic, racial, and religious diversity, we find that it does not correlate with wealth, happiness, peace, or other indicators of human flourishing. As a result, even if diversity generates benefits, it is unclear whether they outweigh its costs.
Internationally, some of the richest countries have less diversity than their competitors. Examples of countries with less diversity include (in parentheses is their ranking in terms of per capita income): Norway (2), Ireland (4), Denmark (5), and Sweden (7). The same is true of two of the four richest Asian Countries: Japan (20) and South Korea (28). In more subjective terms, less diverse countries such as Denmark, Ireland, Sweden, and Norway have very happy people compared to the rest of the world (they are the 3rd, 5th, 9th, and 12th happiest respectively). This is measured in terms of life satisfaction, although genetic factors might explain a large part of the data. In terms of wealth and happiness, the U.S. has high numbers (10th in income and 11th in happiness). So while diversity does not appear to be necessary for wealth or happiness, it is not incompatible with it. My guess is that the U.S.’s wealth is probably due in large part to its free market.
Internationally, racial and ethnic diversity is a major source of violence. Jared Taylor, editor of the highly controversial American Renaissance, notes that a study by the United Nations found that between 1989 and 1992, there were 82 conflicts that had resulted in at least 1,000 deaths. Of these conflicts 96% (79) were ethnic or religious conflicts that took place within the borders of recognized states and only 3 were cross-border conflicts. Another researcher, Tatu Vanhanen of Finland, found a strong positive correlation between ethnic diversity and conflict. Intergroup violence in places like Yugoslavia and Iraq quickly spiraled out of control once the heavy hand that kept violence contained was lifted.
In the United States, diversity appears to have troubling results. For example, in 2007 Harvard professor Robert Putnam found that as racial diversity increase, levels of happiness decrease as does trust both within members of the same ethnic group and between members of different ones. Also, with the increase in diversity, people increasingly withdraw from community life. In short, Putnam found that as diversity increases people have less friends, less trust, and are less altruistic. When it comes to universities, the effects of diversity are also not obviously good. For example, a 2003 study by Stanley Rothman and fellow researchers found that there was an inverse relationship between the number of minorities on campus and how favorably students viewed their education.
Politically, the different races are worlds apart. In last week’s Presidential election, the Washington Post reported that 95% of blacks voted for Sen. Obama. The 95% support is not explained by political preference because plenty of blacks have economic and social views that are closer those of John McCain. For example, a majority of blacks in California supported Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage. Rather, the preference is explained by racial identification and this was not limited to blacks. Nearly 20% of all voters said that the candidates’ race was a factor in their vote, although most said it was not the most important factor. A number of the most high-profile conservative blacks backed Obama, including former Secretary of State Colin Powell, Manhattan Institute member John McWhorter, and conservative radio host Armstrong Williams. It is hard to imagine that they would have supported Hillary Clinton had she won the nomination. This is not to say that such racial identification among voters is such a bad thing, but merely that it plays a more important role with a diverse population.
A clear example of racial identification in another context is the fact that until the 1994 Multiethnic Placement Act, the Association of Black Social Workers did what it could to reduce the adoption of black children by white families. In 1972, they publicly labeled the practice “cultural genocide.”
Patrick Buchanan points out that we are all familiar with some immigrants’ high profile acts of violence. He points out that the 1993 bombers of the World Trade Center and the 9-11 bombers were immigrants. The same is true of Colin Ferguson (the Jamaican who killed six and wounded eleven people on the Long Island Railroad), John Lee Malvo (the Caribbean immigrant who was the Beltway Sniper), and Chai Vang (the Hmong immigrant who shot six hunters to death in Wisconsin when they asked him to vacate their deer stand). And these are just the famous cases. Now, there are many benefits too to having a diverse population. Also, we all know people whose lives are immeasurably benefitted by particular immigrants (particularly spouses). Also, one thinks of Indian- and Chinese-Americans’ many contributions to high-tech industries and the medical field. All these stories point out is that anecdotes cut in both directions and do not constitute a strong reason to view diversity as either good or bad.
If we look at how people behave, they by and large avoid diversity. When given a chance, whether in church, school lunch tables, or prison yards, Americans appear to show a preference for their own kind and against diversity. To the extent that they know what is in their interest, there is at least some reason to wonder whether diversity is a good thing.
Now it may be that in a country as diverse as the U.S. is now, we have no choice but to learn how to make the best of it. However, to celebrate diversity and endlessly repeat that it is the greatest thing since sliced bread is, as far as I can tell, pure sentimentality.
01 October 2008
Election #2: Trumpeting One's Own Virtue
The Objectivist
JOHN MCCAIN: WAR HEROES AND THE PRESIDENCY
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
September 7, 2008
John McCain and his supporters think that his war-hero status provides a strong reason for voters to choose him to be President. This argument is repeated by his many supporters. In McCain’s acceptance speech, six paragraphs at the culmination of his speech focused on his wartime service. Similar emphasis at the Republican nominating convention was given by former New York City Mayor Rudolf Giuliani and Vice Presidential nominee, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.
In 1967, on his 23rd bombing mission in Vietnam, McCain was shot down by a missile over Hanoi. The crash fractured both arms and a leg. When the North Vietnamese captured him, they crushed his shoulder with a rifle and bayoneted him. He was beaten and interrogated, but later given medical care when the North Vietnamese learned who his father was. He was then kept a prisoner from 1967 to 1973. In 1968, McCain’s father became the commander of all U.S. forces in the Vietnam theater. For propaganda purposes, the North Vietnamese offered McCain early release. He refused the offer of release, insisting that he could accept it only if all the persons captured before him were released first. In 1968, his captors tortured McCain, subjecting him to beatings and rope bindings. During this time, he also suffered dysentery. He attempted suicide, but was stopped by the Vietnamese prison guards. The North Vietnamese eventually broke him and he gave a meaningless propaganda “confession” that said "I am a black criminal and I have performed the deeds of an air pirate. I almost died and the Vietnamese people saved my life, thanks to the doctors."
Being broken was common among the tortured POWs. Besides flying bombing missions, something shared by other Vietnam-era pilots, McCain’s claim to hero status apparently rests on his refusing early release and not cooperating with his captors.
One reason the war-hero argument is unsound is that there is no correlation between being a war hero and being a good President. The standard left-wing list of great Presidents includes people like Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, none of whom saw combat. Lincoln was in the military but did not see action. For those who think the government should leave its citizens alone, Presidents Calvin Coolidge and Ronald Reagan also didn’t see combat and were arguably excellent.
Recent Presidents who were in the military include such mediocrities as George H. W. Bush (who squandered Reagan’s legacy) and terrible Presidents like Richard Nixon (corruption) and Jimmy Carter (an abject failure on both economic and foreign-policy fronts). Our recent history, then, suggests that military service does not provide a good indication of whether a candidate will be a successful President.
The second reason to think that McCain’s war-hero status is irrelevant is that it is probably relevant only as an indicator of integrity or courage. However, here there is more direct evidence on McCain’s integrity and it is not good. In 1989, the Senate Ethics Committee found that McCain exercised poor judgment when he interfered with the Federal Home Loan Bank Board (FHLBB) in their investigation of failed Lincoln Savings and Loan Association and its chairman, Charles Keating. In 1987, McCain and four other Senators pressured the federal regulators to ease up on the bank. In 1989, the FHLBB seized control of Lincoln and more than 21,000 investors, mostly elderly, lost their life savings. When it seized Lincoln, the federal government also had to assume $2 billion in debt. It is not clear how much, if any, of these losses could have been avoided if the Senators had not pressured regulators. Not only did McCain get over $100,000 in campaign contributions from Keating, but his wife and father-in-law invested in a Keating business, and McCain and his family took nine trips at Keating’s expense, including vacations to Keating’s Bahamas retreat. Unlike McCain and a fellow tarnished hero, former astronaut John Glenn (D-OH), the other members of the Keating Five had the decency not to run again.
Also, McCain is a known adulterer, who has admitted that he treated his first wife poorly. Normally this would not be the voters’ business, but McCain raised the issue when he repeatedly trumpeting his virtue on the basis of what he did in his early 30s (he is now 72).
Third, voting for candidates who run on their biography sets a bad precedent. A heroic biography is no substitute for clear guidelines on what a candidate hopes to accomplish once in office. McCain is running on his biography rather than issues. He previously opposed Bush’s tax cuts, but now supports them. He flip flopped on offshore drilling and still opposes drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Preserve (ANWR). Why the U.S. should allow drilling offshore but not ANWR remains a mystery. He previously supported amnesty for 12-20 million largely poor and unskilled illegal aliens, but now doesn’t discuss it. He claims to support Supreme Court Justices similar to Scalia and Thomas, yet helped protect the Democrats’ ability to block such judicial candidates. It is widely reported that his advisors had a hard time talking him out of selecting Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-CT) to be his running mate, despite the fact that Lieberman is a tax-and-spend liberal. For example, in 2007 the National Taxpayers Union gave Lieberman an 11% rating, that is, an F. This leads the voter to wonder whether he is for or against tax cuts, off-shore and ANWR drilling, amnesty for illegal aliens, smaller government, and doing what it takes to appoint conservative justices.
The war-hero argument raises a separate issue, which is whether citizens should be extraordinarily grateful to those who fight foreign enemies. This country no longer makes people work in the military if they don’t want to. Like teachers, farmers, or police officers, military jobs come with a package of benefits and risks. Compared to most jobs, it is more exciting, allows for travel, job security, and exercise, and, on some accounts, improves dating and marriage prospects. Persons who enter the military via the academies get paid to receive a world-class education and often have a bright future with the military. The downside of the job is that it carries the risk that war will come and they will have to fight. Do the benefits outweigh the risks? The answer depends on the individual. If someone takes the deal because he judges it to be better than other jobs, it is hard to see why we should be grateful to him. If someone didn’t like the mix of benefits and risks, he could have done something else or held out for a better deal. The notion of overwhelming national gratitude accompanies the McCain war-hero argument, just as it did four years ago when John Kerry trumpeted his war-hero status.
John McCain is running heavily on what he did more than thirty years ago in Vietnam. History provides little evidence that being a war hero correlates with being a good President. If it is offered as evidence for McCain’s integrity, we have more direct evidence and it does not bode well for him. Voting for McCain also encourages biography-based campaigns. Even the separate claim that we should be grateful to McCain or other veterans is unclear. Sadly, despite the war-hero focus and the lack of clarity about what he will do, McCain is still a far better choice than Obama.
JOHN MCCAIN: WAR HEROES AND THE PRESIDENCY
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
September 7, 2008
John McCain and his supporters think that his war-hero status provides a strong reason for voters to choose him to be President. This argument is repeated by his many supporters. In McCain’s acceptance speech, six paragraphs at the culmination of his speech focused on his wartime service. Similar emphasis at the Republican nominating convention was given by former New York City Mayor Rudolf Giuliani and Vice Presidential nominee, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.
In 1967, on his 23rd bombing mission in Vietnam, McCain was shot down by a missile over Hanoi. The crash fractured both arms and a leg. When the North Vietnamese captured him, they crushed his shoulder with a rifle and bayoneted him. He was beaten and interrogated, but later given medical care when the North Vietnamese learned who his father was. He was then kept a prisoner from 1967 to 1973. In 1968, McCain’s father became the commander of all U.S. forces in the Vietnam theater. For propaganda purposes, the North Vietnamese offered McCain early release. He refused the offer of release, insisting that he could accept it only if all the persons captured before him were released first. In 1968, his captors tortured McCain, subjecting him to beatings and rope bindings. During this time, he also suffered dysentery. He attempted suicide, but was stopped by the Vietnamese prison guards. The North Vietnamese eventually broke him and he gave a meaningless propaganda “confession” that said "I am a black criminal and I have performed the deeds of an air pirate. I almost died and the Vietnamese people saved my life, thanks to the doctors."
Being broken was common among the tortured POWs. Besides flying bombing missions, something shared by other Vietnam-era pilots, McCain’s claim to hero status apparently rests on his refusing early release and not cooperating with his captors.
One reason the war-hero argument is unsound is that there is no correlation between being a war hero and being a good President. The standard left-wing list of great Presidents includes people like Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, none of whom saw combat. Lincoln was in the military but did not see action. For those who think the government should leave its citizens alone, Presidents Calvin Coolidge and Ronald Reagan also didn’t see combat and were arguably excellent.
Recent Presidents who were in the military include such mediocrities as George H. W. Bush (who squandered Reagan’s legacy) and terrible Presidents like Richard Nixon (corruption) and Jimmy Carter (an abject failure on both economic and foreign-policy fronts). Our recent history, then, suggests that military service does not provide a good indication of whether a candidate will be a successful President.
The second reason to think that McCain’s war-hero status is irrelevant is that it is probably relevant only as an indicator of integrity or courage. However, here there is more direct evidence on McCain’s integrity and it is not good. In 1989, the Senate Ethics Committee found that McCain exercised poor judgment when he interfered with the Federal Home Loan Bank Board (FHLBB) in their investigation of failed Lincoln Savings and Loan Association and its chairman, Charles Keating. In 1987, McCain and four other Senators pressured the federal regulators to ease up on the bank. In 1989, the FHLBB seized control of Lincoln and more than 21,000 investors, mostly elderly, lost their life savings. When it seized Lincoln, the federal government also had to assume $2 billion in debt. It is not clear how much, if any, of these losses could have been avoided if the Senators had not pressured regulators. Not only did McCain get over $100,000 in campaign contributions from Keating, but his wife and father-in-law invested in a Keating business, and McCain and his family took nine trips at Keating’s expense, including vacations to Keating’s Bahamas retreat. Unlike McCain and a fellow tarnished hero, former astronaut John Glenn (D-OH), the other members of the Keating Five had the decency not to run again.
Also, McCain is a known adulterer, who has admitted that he treated his first wife poorly. Normally this would not be the voters’ business, but McCain raised the issue when he repeatedly trumpeting his virtue on the basis of what he did in his early 30s (he is now 72).
Third, voting for candidates who run on their biography sets a bad precedent. A heroic biography is no substitute for clear guidelines on what a candidate hopes to accomplish once in office. McCain is running on his biography rather than issues. He previously opposed Bush’s tax cuts, but now supports them. He flip flopped on offshore drilling and still opposes drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Preserve (ANWR). Why the U.S. should allow drilling offshore but not ANWR remains a mystery. He previously supported amnesty for 12-20 million largely poor and unskilled illegal aliens, but now doesn’t discuss it. He claims to support Supreme Court Justices similar to Scalia and Thomas, yet helped protect the Democrats’ ability to block such judicial candidates. It is widely reported that his advisors had a hard time talking him out of selecting Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-CT) to be his running mate, despite the fact that Lieberman is a tax-and-spend liberal. For example, in 2007 the National Taxpayers Union gave Lieberman an 11% rating, that is, an F. This leads the voter to wonder whether he is for or against tax cuts, off-shore and ANWR drilling, amnesty for illegal aliens, smaller government, and doing what it takes to appoint conservative justices.
The war-hero argument raises a separate issue, which is whether citizens should be extraordinarily grateful to those who fight foreign enemies. This country no longer makes people work in the military if they don’t want to. Like teachers, farmers, or police officers, military jobs come with a package of benefits and risks. Compared to most jobs, it is more exciting, allows for travel, job security, and exercise, and, on some accounts, improves dating and marriage prospects. Persons who enter the military via the academies get paid to receive a world-class education and often have a bright future with the military. The downside of the job is that it carries the risk that war will come and they will have to fight. Do the benefits outweigh the risks? The answer depends on the individual. If someone takes the deal because he judges it to be better than other jobs, it is hard to see why we should be grateful to him. If someone didn’t like the mix of benefits and risks, he could have done something else or held out for a better deal. The notion of overwhelming national gratitude accompanies the McCain war-hero argument, just as it did four years ago when John Kerry trumpeted his war-hero status.
John McCain is running heavily on what he did more than thirty years ago in Vietnam. History provides little evidence that being a war hero correlates with being a good President. If it is offered as evidence for McCain’s integrity, we have more direct evidence and it does not bode well for him. Voting for McCain also encourages biography-based campaigns. Even the separate claim that we should be grateful to McCain or other veterans is unclear. Sadly, despite the war-hero focus and the lack of clarity about what he will do, McCain is still a far better choice than Obama.
04 June 2008
Fredonia and Dunkirk Statistics
The Objectivist
FREDONIA AND DUNKIRK BY THE NUMBERS
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
May 24, 2008
Dunkirk and Fredonia are inextricably linked. It is interesting to see how they compare to each other. In this column, we look at some of the numbers.
Demographically, the towns are similar in some important respects. The following data comes from the 2000 Census. The two are about the same size: Fredonia (14,690) and Dunkirk (16,097). Dunkirk has a more stable population (60% have lived in the same house for five or more years) as compared to Fredonia (49%).
Dunkirk residents are older. Dunkirk residents average 39.6 years versus 25.9 for Fredonia. 7.3% of Dunkirk residents are 80 or older versus 3.1% of Fredonia. They have roughly the same percentage of young people. People 19 or younger comprise 29.7% of Fredonia and 26.5% of Dunkirk. It is not clear to what role the college plays in this.
There appears to be an income difference. Fredonia is less poor than Dunkirk (the 2000 median household income was $37,010 for Fredonia and $29,310 for Dunkirk). Both are not great. U.S. households averaged $47,599 in 2000, when the Census was last taken. In 2000, 6.4% of Fredonia households made more than $100,000 versus 3.8% for Dunkirk. Dunkirk has more rich households. In 2000, it had more people who make more than $200,000 (209 versus 118).
Fredonia has a higher education level. In 2000, 28.4% of Fredonia had a Bachelors degree or higher versus 13.4% for Dunkirk. The former is roughly the current national average. In 2006, for example, 28% of the U.S. population had a Bachelors or higher. On the other end, 12% of Fredonia didn’t graduate from high school versus 25.9% for Dunkirk.
Dunkirk has a much higher percentage of minorities, but both are whiter than the rest of the country. In 2000, 22.4% of Dunkirk consisted of minorities (16.8% Hispanic and 3.9% black). In contrast, only 6.2% of Fredonia consisted of minorities (2.4% Hispanic and 2% black). In the current U.S. (2006 figures), 35% were minorities or of mixed heritage (15% were Hispanic alone and 13% were black alone). Neither town has many Asians (0.3% of Dunkirk and 0.8% of Fredonia) versus 4% of the current U.S. population.
Using 2005-2006 data from the New York State District Report Card, we find that the schools differ significantly. More Dunkirk students are poor. 56% qualify for free lunch versus 18% for Fredonia. Dunkirk also has more discipline problems. It suspends more of its students than Fredonia (8% versus 2%). In addition, more of its students drop out of high school and less plan to go on to a four-year college (38% versus 56%). It should be noted that some of those who don’t complete high school later enter GED programs, so it is unclear whether these numbers should trouble us. None of these differences appear to result from the number of students with disabilities because both have roughly the same percentage as each other and the rest of the state. The two school systems also differ greatly in race and ethnicity. 6% of Fredonia students are black or Hispanic versus 45% of Dunkirk.
The analogous statewide numbers fall in between those of the two school systems. 37% of statewide students qualify for free lunch, 5% of the students are suspended, and 40% are black or Hispanic.
The students also perform at different levels. In terms of 2005-2006 Regents examination among high-performing high school students, Fredonia significantly outperforms Dunkirk. Here are a few of the percentages of students with the highest scores (85-100) on the Regents Exams, with Dunkirk in parentheses: Comprehensive English 31% (25%), Math B 34% (5%), U.S. History and Government 49% (40%), Living Environment 29% (10%), and Physics 39% (6%). It is an interesting question as to what produces the different levels of performance. It is not due to differences in expenditures, class size, or the number of administrators and staff.
The performance differential begins early on. Consider the 2005-2006 numbers. 55% of Dunkirk fourth graders are at level 1 or 2 in math. Level 1 indicates that the students have serious academic deficiencies and level 2 indicates that students need extra help to meet the standards and pass the Regents examination. In contrast, this is true for 22% of fourth graders across New York and the same percentage of Fredonia fourth graders. Similar problems occur with regard to English scores, with 50% of Dunkirk students at levels 1 or 2. Fredonia (34%) scores about the same as the rest of the state (31%).
Dunkirk’s math problems intensify in middle school with level 1 and 2 scores in math and English scores coming in at 74% and 82%. It should be noted, though, that the statewide scores are nothing to write home about at 46% and 51%. Oddly, Fredonia does well at math (26%) but not at English (52%).
It should be noted that in the eighth grade, Fredonia is nothing special when considering high-end scores. It has an average percentage of Level 4 scores (these students exceed the standards are moving toward high performance on the Regents examination) that tie the state average in math (10%) and are 2% lower in English. By high school (using the 2002 cohort), Fredonia students outpace the rest of the state with 20% more level 4 scorers than statewide student population in English and 25% more in math. It is an interesting question as to what explains this gain. Dunkirk’s results are mixed with 16% fewer high scorers in English and 4% more in math. Dropout rates for this 2002 cohort fit the general pattern. When compared with statewide numbers, 18% more of Fredonia students graduate than the statewide average. In Dunkirk, 1% fewer do.
In terms of spending, both school systems spend a lot. For example, from Fall 2002 to the recently passed budgets, Fredonia has increased its spending by 33% to $15,807 per student per year (using 2005-2006 enrollment). Dunkirk has increased its spending by 23% to $17,457 per student per year. The latter is a case study in which irresponsible spending occurs when someone else picks up the bill. Dunkirk residents only pay 28% of the bill ($4,821 per pupil). The overspending is predictable. If restaurant patrons knew that the state was going to pick up 72% of their bill, you can bet they would be more likely to order steak for themselves and fancy deserts for their children.
Overall the numbers are mixed. The area appears to be poorer than the rest of the country in terms of household income. The numbers also show that the towns differ significantly in income, age, race and ethnicity, and school performance.
FREDONIA AND DUNKIRK BY THE NUMBERS
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
May 24, 2008
Dunkirk and Fredonia are inextricably linked. It is interesting to see how they compare to each other. In this column, we look at some of the numbers.
Demographically, the towns are similar in some important respects. The following data comes from the 2000 Census. The two are about the same size: Fredonia (14,690) and Dunkirk (16,097). Dunkirk has a more stable population (60% have lived in the same house for five or more years) as compared to Fredonia (49%).
Dunkirk residents are older. Dunkirk residents average 39.6 years versus 25.9 for Fredonia. 7.3% of Dunkirk residents are 80 or older versus 3.1% of Fredonia. They have roughly the same percentage of young people. People 19 or younger comprise 29.7% of Fredonia and 26.5% of Dunkirk. It is not clear to what role the college plays in this.
There appears to be an income difference. Fredonia is less poor than Dunkirk (the 2000 median household income was $37,010 for Fredonia and $29,310 for Dunkirk). Both are not great. U.S. households averaged $47,599 in 2000, when the Census was last taken. In 2000, 6.4% of Fredonia households made more than $100,000 versus 3.8% for Dunkirk. Dunkirk has more rich households. In 2000, it had more people who make more than $200,000 (209 versus 118).
Fredonia has a higher education level. In 2000, 28.4% of Fredonia had a Bachelors degree or higher versus 13.4% for Dunkirk. The former is roughly the current national average. In 2006, for example, 28% of the U.S. population had a Bachelors or higher. On the other end, 12% of Fredonia didn’t graduate from high school versus 25.9% for Dunkirk.
Dunkirk has a much higher percentage of minorities, but both are whiter than the rest of the country. In 2000, 22.4% of Dunkirk consisted of minorities (16.8% Hispanic and 3.9% black). In contrast, only 6.2% of Fredonia consisted of minorities (2.4% Hispanic and 2% black). In the current U.S. (2006 figures), 35% were minorities or of mixed heritage (15% were Hispanic alone and 13% were black alone). Neither town has many Asians (0.3% of Dunkirk and 0.8% of Fredonia) versus 4% of the current U.S. population.
Using 2005-2006 data from the New York State District Report Card, we find that the schools differ significantly. More Dunkirk students are poor. 56% qualify for free lunch versus 18% for Fredonia. Dunkirk also has more discipline problems. It suspends more of its students than Fredonia (8% versus 2%). In addition, more of its students drop out of high school and less plan to go on to a four-year college (38% versus 56%). It should be noted that some of those who don’t complete high school later enter GED programs, so it is unclear whether these numbers should trouble us. None of these differences appear to result from the number of students with disabilities because both have roughly the same percentage as each other and the rest of the state. The two school systems also differ greatly in race and ethnicity. 6% of Fredonia students are black or Hispanic versus 45% of Dunkirk.
The analogous statewide numbers fall in between those of the two school systems. 37% of statewide students qualify for free lunch, 5% of the students are suspended, and 40% are black or Hispanic.
The students also perform at different levels. In terms of 2005-2006 Regents examination among high-performing high school students, Fredonia significantly outperforms Dunkirk. Here are a few of the percentages of students with the highest scores (85-100) on the Regents Exams, with Dunkirk in parentheses: Comprehensive English 31% (25%), Math B 34% (5%), U.S. History and Government 49% (40%), Living Environment 29% (10%), and Physics 39% (6%). It is an interesting question as to what produces the different levels of performance. It is not due to differences in expenditures, class size, or the number of administrators and staff.
The performance differential begins early on. Consider the 2005-2006 numbers. 55% of Dunkirk fourth graders are at level 1 or 2 in math. Level 1 indicates that the students have serious academic deficiencies and level 2 indicates that students need extra help to meet the standards and pass the Regents examination. In contrast, this is true for 22% of fourth graders across New York and the same percentage of Fredonia fourth graders. Similar problems occur with regard to English scores, with 50% of Dunkirk students at levels 1 or 2. Fredonia (34%) scores about the same as the rest of the state (31%).
Dunkirk’s math problems intensify in middle school with level 1 and 2 scores in math and English scores coming in at 74% and 82%. It should be noted, though, that the statewide scores are nothing to write home about at 46% and 51%. Oddly, Fredonia does well at math (26%) but not at English (52%).
It should be noted that in the eighth grade, Fredonia is nothing special when considering high-end scores. It has an average percentage of Level 4 scores (these students exceed the standards are moving toward high performance on the Regents examination) that tie the state average in math (10%) and are 2% lower in English. By high school (using the 2002 cohort), Fredonia students outpace the rest of the state with 20% more level 4 scorers than statewide student population in English and 25% more in math. It is an interesting question as to what explains this gain. Dunkirk’s results are mixed with 16% fewer high scorers in English and 4% more in math. Dropout rates for this 2002 cohort fit the general pattern. When compared with statewide numbers, 18% more of Fredonia students graduate than the statewide average. In Dunkirk, 1% fewer do.
In terms of spending, both school systems spend a lot. For example, from Fall 2002 to the recently passed budgets, Fredonia has increased its spending by 33% to $15,807 per student per year (using 2005-2006 enrollment). Dunkirk has increased its spending by 23% to $17,457 per student per year. The latter is a case study in which irresponsible spending occurs when someone else picks up the bill. Dunkirk residents only pay 28% of the bill ($4,821 per pupil). The overspending is predictable. If restaurant patrons knew that the state was going to pick up 72% of their bill, you can bet they would be more likely to order steak for themselves and fancy deserts for their children.
Overall the numbers are mixed. The area appears to be poorer than the rest of the country in terms of household income. The numbers also show that the towns differ significantly in income, age, race and ethnicity, and school performance.
21 May 2008
National Disgrace #1: Massive Incarceration
The Objectivist
MEN IN CAGES: A NATIONAL DISGRACE
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
May 12, 2008
The biggest issue facing the United States is not confiscatory tax rates, looming social security-Medicare insolvency, global warming, or exiting Iraq. It’s the ocean of people that our government incarcerates. A major part of the problem is drug prohibition which is producing a torrent of prisoners.
According to the Adam Liptak of the New York Times, roughly 1 in 100 adults in this country are locked up (about 2.3 million people). For example, if you went to a school that had 1,000 people in it, 10 would be imprisoned at any one time and far more would be imprisoned sometime during their lifetime. In comparison to our international brethren, the United States clearly loves locking its people in cages. The United States has less than 5% of the world’s population but about 25% of its prisoners. We have 700,000 more people imprisoned than China despite its having four times more people. We incarcerate people at roughly 5 times the rate of Great Britain, 8 ½ times the rate of Germany, and 12 times the rate of Japan. In fact, the U.S. imprisons people nearly 6 times more often than do other nations.
This is only in part due to a greater rate of crimes with victims. While the U.S. does have a higher murder rate than many nations (about four times the rate of Western Europe), it has lower rates of non-violent crimes with victims. For example, it has a lower burglary and robbery rate than Australia, Canada, and England. In addition, the explosion in incarceration has occurred in part over the last thirty years during which time violent crime has declined. The increase is in part due to the longer sentences that are given to American prisoners. For example, Marc Mauer of the Sentencing Project notes that burglars get sentences that are more than twice as long as some of our peers (16 months in the U.S. versus 7 months in England and 5 months in Canada).
Among minorities, the U.S. criminal justice system is like an occupying military force. At any one time, it incarcerates 1 in 9 black men and 1 in 36 Hispanic men, and a much higher rate over their lifetime. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, roughly 3% of all Americans in 2005 (7 million people out of 230 million adults) were under the control of the criminal justice system in that they were incarcerated or on probation or parole.
One of driving forces behind this national lockdown is drug prohibition. Today there are almost 500,000 people incarcerated for drug crimes. These sentences are also harsh. Drug offenders average sentences of almost 7 years. The sentences are lengthier than that given out for assault (3.7 years) and larceny (2.6 years).
The massive drug crackdown is also a recent phenomenon. As recent as 1975, the incarceration rate was 15% of what it is today (in per capita terms). Even as late as 1980, there were only 40,000 people incarcerated for drugs.
In terms of arrests, in 2006, there were 1.89 million drug arrests (compared to 581,000 in 1980). More than 80% were for mere possession. Marijuana is worthy of special attention. More than 40% of the 1.89 million drug arrests were for marijuana possession. In 2006, there were 829,000 marijuana arrests and roughly 90% of those were for mere possession. Those arrested are simply unlucky given that nearly 80 million Americans have used marijuana and 20 million have done so in the last year. Now there are a number of reasons to legalize marijuana. One is that reputable sources like the prestigious European medical journal The Lancet has stated that it is reasonable to judge it less of a threat than alcohol or tobacco. Second, it endangers no one beside the user. One recent set of academics (Movig et al. in Accident Analysis and Prevention) found no increased risk for road trauma for drivers exposed to cannabis. Even if one doesn’t believe this, driving while on marijuana can be prosecuted without prohibiting marijuana in the same way we prosecute drunk drivers without prohibiting alcohol. Protecting citizens against themselves is about as American as locking up political prisoners or having an official state church.
In addition, the police state that supports the national lockdown is prohibitively expensive. For example, in the state of New York, the average working couple pays $3,040 in taxes to support the criminal justice system. This includes police protection, judicial and legal costs, and corrections. Here I am assuming that only one in two residents pays more taxes than they get in benefits and this includes children.
Such a police state includes an army of people to lock up and oversee locked up Americans. In 2005, there were 1.13 million people on police payrolls and 755,000 people on correction payrolls. Together they cost $7.5 billion. This massive number of people and dollars is troublesome for two reasons. First, it creates entrenched organizations that have an incentive to maintain the national lockdown as a way of ensuring job security and union revenue. This is similar to the way in which teachers’ unions fight tooth and nail to keep the spigot open and flooding the public schools with money.
Second, with dropping rates of violent and non-violent crimes with victims, police have to justify their salaries. One concern is that they will spend their time targeting activities like drugs, prostitution, speeding, and seatbelt use. A related concern is that because these are consensual activities, they often occur in people’s houses or other private property. As a result, the police will trample on civil liberties in order to get at them. The recent history of the Fourth Amendment’s protection against search and seizure shows that this is not an idle threat.
The general point is that locking up so many people is troublesome. The costs of doing so for victimless crimes like drugs, prostitution, gambling, etc. take the form of lives irreparably damaged, liberty lost, and money spent. Unless there is clear evidence that the benefits of doing so outweigh the costs, the prudent thing to do is to leave people alone. When this country places 3% of its population under the direct control of the criminal justice system, it is no longer the land of the free. And when a country so fears its citizens that it locks them up in droves, it is no longer the land of the brave.
MEN IN CAGES: A NATIONAL DISGRACE
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
May 12, 2008
The biggest issue facing the United States is not confiscatory tax rates, looming social security-Medicare insolvency, global warming, or exiting Iraq. It’s the ocean of people that our government incarcerates. A major part of the problem is drug prohibition which is producing a torrent of prisoners.
According to the Adam Liptak of the New York Times, roughly 1 in 100 adults in this country are locked up (about 2.3 million people). For example, if you went to a school that had 1,000 people in it, 10 would be imprisoned at any one time and far more would be imprisoned sometime during their lifetime. In comparison to our international brethren, the United States clearly loves locking its people in cages. The United States has less than 5% of the world’s population but about 25% of its prisoners. We have 700,000 more people imprisoned than China despite its having four times more people. We incarcerate people at roughly 5 times the rate of Great Britain, 8 ½ times the rate of Germany, and 12 times the rate of Japan. In fact, the U.S. imprisons people nearly 6 times more often than do other nations.
This is only in part due to a greater rate of crimes with victims. While the U.S. does have a higher murder rate than many nations (about four times the rate of Western Europe), it has lower rates of non-violent crimes with victims. For example, it has a lower burglary and robbery rate than Australia, Canada, and England. In addition, the explosion in incarceration has occurred in part over the last thirty years during which time violent crime has declined. The increase is in part due to the longer sentences that are given to American prisoners. For example, Marc Mauer of the Sentencing Project notes that burglars get sentences that are more than twice as long as some of our peers (16 months in the U.S. versus 7 months in England and 5 months in Canada).
Among minorities, the U.S. criminal justice system is like an occupying military force. At any one time, it incarcerates 1 in 9 black men and 1 in 36 Hispanic men, and a much higher rate over their lifetime. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, roughly 3% of all Americans in 2005 (7 million people out of 230 million adults) were under the control of the criminal justice system in that they were incarcerated or on probation or parole.
One of driving forces behind this national lockdown is drug prohibition. Today there are almost 500,000 people incarcerated for drug crimes. These sentences are also harsh. Drug offenders average sentences of almost 7 years. The sentences are lengthier than that given out for assault (3.7 years) and larceny (2.6 years).
The massive drug crackdown is also a recent phenomenon. As recent as 1975, the incarceration rate was 15% of what it is today (in per capita terms). Even as late as 1980, there were only 40,000 people incarcerated for drugs.
In terms of arrests, in 2006, there were 1.89 million drug arrests (compared to 581,000 in 1980). More than 80% were for mere possession. Marijuana is worthy of special attention. More than 40% of the 1.89 million drug arrests were for marijuana possession. In 2006, there were 829,000 marijuana arrests and roughly 90% of those were for mere possession. Those arrested are simply unlucky given that nearly 80 million Americans have used marijuana and 20 million have done so in the last year. Now there are a number of reasons to legalize marijuana. One is that reputable sources like the prestigious European medical journal The Lancet has stated that it is reasonable to judge it less of a threat than alcohol or tobacco. Second, it endangers no one beside the user. One recent set of academics (Movig et al. in Accident Analysis and Prevention) found no increased risk for road trauma for drivers exposed to cannabis. Even if one doesn’t believe this, driving while on marijuana can be prosecuted without prohibiting marijuana in the same way we prosecute drunk drivers without prohibiting alcohol. Protecting citizens against themselves is about as American as locking up political prisoners or having an official state church.
In addition, the police state that supports the national lockdown is prohibitively expensive. For example, in the state of New York, the average working couple pays $3,040 in taxes to support the criminal justice system. This includes police protection, judicial and legal costs, and corrections. Here I am assuming that only one in two residents pays more taxes than they get in benefits and this includes children.
Such a police state includes an army of people to lock up and oversee locked up Americans. In 2005, there were 1.13 million people on police payrolls and 755,000 people on correction payrolls. Together they cost $7.5 billion. This massive number of people and dollars is troublesome for two reasons. First, it creates entrenched organizations that have an incentive to maintain the national lockdown as a way of ensuring job security and union revenue. This is similar to the way in which teachers’ unions fight tooth and nail to keep the spigot open and flooding the public schools with money.
Second, with dropping rates of violent and non-violent crimes with victims, police have to justify their salaries. One concern is that they will spend their time targeting activities like drugs, prostitution, speeding, and seatbelt use. A related concern is that because these are consensual activities, they often occur in people’s houses or other private property. As a result, the police will trample on civil liberties in order to get at them. The recent history of the Fourth Amendment’s protection against search and seizure shows that this is not an idle threat.
The general point is that locking up so many people is troublesome. The costs of doing so for victimless crimes like drugs, prostitution, gambling, etc. take the form of lives irreparably damaged, liberty lost, and money spent. Unless there is clear evidence that the benefits of doing so outweigh the costs, the prudent thing to do is to leave people alone. When this country places 3% of its population under the direct control of the criminal justice system, it is no longer the land of the free. And when a country so fears its citizens that it locks them up in droves, it is no longer the land of the brave.
12 March 2008
Political Correctness at SUNY Buffalo
The Objectivist
THE MICHAEL LEVIN CASE: POLITICAL CORRECTNESS AT SUNY BUFFALO
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
March 1, 2008
Recently, there has been an uproar over the presence of a philosopher, Michael Levin, who spoke at a philosophy conference in Buffalo. The history to the fight and the behavior of the SUNY Buffalo philosophy department is a window into political correctness in academia. I should note that I have worked closely with two of the persons involved in the case: Michael Levin and Randall Dipert.
Michael Levin is a well-known and extremely accomplished philosopher who teaches at the City College of New York (CCNY). His publishing record exceeds that of any philosopher in Western New York, although others such as the SUNY Buffalo’s Randy Dipert and SUNY Fredonia’s Raymond Belliotti also have impressive records. Levin has a sea of publications, including a significant number in the best philosophy journals in the world (for example, Journal of Philosophy and Philosophy and Public Affairs) and a book with Oxford University Press, the field’s best.
Michael McDonald of the Center for Individual Rights, between 1987 and 1990 recounted how Levin wrote three non-scholarly articles in the New York Times, Quadrant (an Australian journal), and the American Philosophical Association Proceedings arguing that (1) white store owners may take rational steps to avoid being victimized by black criminals and (2) that there is evidence in support of the claim that racial groups differ in IQ. In the 22 years in which he taught at CCNY, McDonald pointed out, Levin had taught more than 3,000 students. No one had ever complained to the university authorities that his speech, conduct, or grading patterns were discriminatory. In addition, his teaching evaluations were strong.
Mcdonald described how over the objections of its own Faculty Senate and many academic organizations, the College formed a committee to determine whether to revoke Levin’s tenure (protected status given to veteran faculty). In 1990, the Dean (Paul Sherwin) created an alternative section to Levin’s introductory class for students who did not want to take his class. This had never been done before at CCNY. The department chairperson (Charles Evans) protested the creation of this shadow class on the grounds that it was immoral, unethical, and an unwarranted interference with his powers as a department chairperson. The District Court enjoined both policies because they infringed on Levin’s First Amendment rights. This case received nationwide attention because it was a clear instance how the politically correct in academia were trampling on free speech. As a side note, campus speech codes (including the one at Fredonia) are another indication of this problem.
McDonald pointed out that the case was made even more absurd by the college’s refusal to go after Dr. Leonard Jeffries, the chairman of the Afro-American Studies Department at CCNY. In class, McDonald noted, Jeffries gave out booklets arguing that the skin pigment melanin gives blacks intellectual superiority over whites. He also taught his students that white persons are “ice people,” who are greedy and materialistic, while black people are “sun people” who are loving and communal. Outside of class, he argued that the Jews financed the slave trade and in Hollywood had teamed up with the Italian mafia to portray blacks in a degrading manner in the movies.
Levin was invited to participate in the October 2007 Philosophy of Biology Conference that was held at the Center for Inquiry in Buffalo. On Friday, September 28, 2007, three SUNY Buffalo graduate students (Bethany Delecki-Earns, Christopher Buckman, and William D’Alessandro) wrote a letter to the SUNY Buffalo paper, Spectrum, saying of Levin’s position that it is “immoral, philosophically and scientifically without value, and aims directly to underwrite the unhappiness of countless human beings.” They further claimed that Levin’s books “do not swell the sea of honest scholarship by a drop” and that “he did not deserve an invitation to speak.” That day, Professors Dipert and Smith were worried enough about protests enough to hire Amherst police officers to monitor the conference. Their fears were not without warrant. During the CCNY uproar, the district court found that people disrupted Levin’s class with intimidating and bullying behavior. The conference took place the day after the letter appeared in the paper.
Three days later (October 2, 2007), the philosophy department chair at the SUNY-Buffalo, John Kearns weighed in. He said, “[Levin’s] demeaning and inflammatory remarks don’t represent scientific knowledge or sound scholarship, and constitute a sufficient reason for leaving him out. I am entirely in sympathy with the letter published in last Friday’s Spectrum …” Jorge Gracia, the Samuel P. Capen Chair and SUNY Distinguished Professor, at SUNY Buffalo also noted that “[G]iven Mr. Levin’s history, it should not have been surprising to them that objections to the invitation were voiced.” On one account, the philosophy department divided on the issue of whether Levin deserved an invitation. Against his presence were some of the tenured faculty and four graduate students (including the three who wrote the letter). For his presence were Dipert, Smith, Baumer, some of the untenured faculty, and some of the other graduate students. The difference between the older and newer faculty is an interesting one, although I’m not clear what explains it.
The position of the opposed graduate students and tenured faculty was poorly thought out. First, regardless of whether one agrees with his conclusions, Levin’s work on race and gender is unquestionably excellent and some of the most interesting philosophical work on this topic in the last thirty years. It is probably the best philosophical discussion of the claims that racial differences are in part genetic, that the well-documented differences in IQ are at least in part genetic, and that this has implications for policy and behavior. Some graduate students might lack the sophistication to follow Levin’s arguments but more is expected of senior faculty at a large research university.
Second, the notion that organizers of a conference on the philosophy of biology who invite a speaker endorse all the speaker’s views is silly. In philosophy, it is standard operating procedure for faculty to invite speakers to present arguments with which they disagree.
Third, the graduate students’ letter was weak. In addition, to underestimating Levin’s work, they pointed out that his proposed talk on innateness gives arguments for “ontogenetic fixity” of major human traits. They then noted that “at great reduction,” this is “used to explain the supposed inferiority of women and non-whites …” It is hard to follow their points because “ontogenetic fixity” just refers to genetic inheritability and this is a common notion in biology (for example, this is why some persons have blue eyes). Because it is not clear if Levin is alleged to have committed the sins of reduction or explaining inferiority, the graduate students manage to defame Levin while still having wriggle room. In any case, Levin’s talk was well done and interesting (I heard it).
This pattern is a common one in academia. The radical left who dominate the faculty and administration at many state universities use an array of techniques, including discrimination in hiring, promotion, and speaking-invitations, to silence opposing views. To sort this mess out, the SUNY-Buffalo faculty and administration should have a public debate between Levin and a senior SUNY-Buffalo philosopher on whether genetics plays a role in explaining the physical or mental differences between races. I am sure that that it would be both informative and good theater. Let’s see whose ideas survive robust debate.
THE MICHAEL LEVIN CASE: POLITICAL CORRECTNESS AT SUNY BUFFALO
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
March 1, 2008
Recently, there has been an uproar over the presence of a philosopher, Michael Levin, who spoke at a philosophy conference in Buffalo. The history to the fight and the behavior of the SUNY Buffalo philosophy department is a window into political correctness in academia. I should note that I have worked closely with two of the persons involved in the case: Michael Levin and Randall Dipert.
Michael Levin is a well-known and extremely accomplished philosopher who teaches at the City College of New York (CCNY). His publishing record exceeds that of any philosopher in Western New York, although others such as the SUNY Buffalo’s Randy Dipert and SUNY Fredonia’s Raymond Belliotti also have impressive records. Levin has a sea of publications, including a significant number in the best philosophy journals in the world (for example, Journal of Philosophy and Philosophy and Public Affairs) and a book with Oxford University Press, the field’s best.
Michael McDonald of the Center for Individual Rights, between 1987 and 1990 recounted how Levin wrote three non-scholarly articles in the New York Times, Quadrant (an Australian journal), and the American Philosophical Association Proceedings arguing that (1) white store owners may take rational steps to avoid being victimized by black criminals and (2) that there is evidence in support of the claim that racial groups differ in IQ. In the 22 years in which he taught at CCNY, McDonald pointed out, Levin had taught more than 3,000 students. No one had ever complained to the university authorities that his speech, conduct, or grading patterns were discriminatory. In addition, his teaching evaluations were strong.
Mcdonald described how over the objections of its own Faculty Senate and many academic organizations, the College formed a committee to determine whether to revoke Levin’s tenure (protected status given to veteran faculty). In 1990, the Dean (Paul Sherwin) created an alternative section to Levin’s introductory class for students who did not want to take his class. This had never been done before at CCNY. The department chairperson (Charles Evans) protested the creation of this shadow class on the grounds that it was immoral, unethical, and an unwarranted interference with his powers as a department chairperson. The District Court enjoined both policies because they infringed on Levin’s First Amendment rights. This case received nationwide attention because it was a clear instance how the politically correct in academia were trampling on free speech. As a side note, campus speech codes (including the one at Fredonia) are another indication of this problem.
McDonald pointed out that the case was made even more absurd by the college’s refusal to go after Dr. Leonard Jeffries, the chairman of the Afro-American Studies Department at CCNY. In class, McDonald noted, Jeffries gave out booklets arguing that the skin pigment melanin gives blacks intellectual superiority over whites. He also taught his students that white persons are “ice people,” who are greedy and materialistic, while black people are “sun people” who are loving and communal. Outside of class, he argued that the Jews financed the slave trade and in Hollywood had teamed up with the Italian mafia to portray blacks in a degrading manner in the movies.
Levin was invited to participate in the October 2007 Philosophy of Biology Conference that was held at the Center for Inquiry in Buffalo. On Friday, September 28, 2007, three SUNY Buffalo graduate students (Bethany Delecki-Earns, Christopher Buckman, and William D’Alessandro) wrote a letter to the SUNY Buffalo paper, Spectrum, saying of Levin’s position that it is “immoral, philosophically and scientifically without value, and aims directly to underwrite the unhappiness of countless human beings.” They further claimed that Levin’s books “do not swell the sea of honest scholarship by a drop” and that “he did not deserve an invitation to speak.” That day, Professors Dipert and Smith were worried enough about protests enough to hire Amherst police officers to monitor the conference. Their fears were not without warrant. During the CCNY uproar, the district court found that people disrupted Levin’s class with intimidating and bullying behavior. The conference took place the day after the letter appeared in the paper.
Three days later (October 2, 2007), the philosophy department chair at the SUNY-Buffalo, John Kearns weighed in. He said, “[Levin’s] demeaning and inflammatory remarks don’t represent scientific knowledge or sound scholarship, and constitute a sufficient reason for leaving him out. I am entirely in sympathy with the letter published in last Friday’s Spectrum …” Jorge Gracia, the Samuel P. Capen Chair and SUNY Distinguished Professor, at SUNY Buffalo also noted that “[G]iven Mr. Levin’s history, it should not have been surprising to them that objections to the invitation were voiced.” On one account, the philosophy department divided on the issue of whether Levin deserved an invitation. Against his presence were some of the tenured faculty and four graduate students (including the three who wrote the letter). For his presence were Dipert, Smith, Baumer, some of the untenured faculty, and some of the other graduate students. The difference between the older and newer faculty is an interesting one, although I’m not clear what explains it.
The position of the opposed graduate students and tenured faculty was poorly thought out. First, regardless of whether one agrees with his conclusions, Levin’s work on race and gender is unquestionably excellent and some of the most interesting philosophical work on this topic in the last thirty years. It is probably the best philosophical discussion of the claims that racial differences are in part genetic, that the well-documented differences in IQ are at least in part genetic, and that this has implications for policy and behavior. Some graduate students might lack the sophistication to follow Levin’s arguments but more is expected of senior faculty at a large research university.
Second, the notion that organizers of a conference on the philosophy of biology who invite a speaker endorse all the speaker’s views is silly. In philosophy, it is standard operating procedure for faculty to invite speakers to present arguments with which they disagree.
Third, the graduate students’ letter was weak. In addition, to underestimating Levin’s work, they pointed out that his proposed talk on innateness gives arguments for “ontogenetic fixity” of major human traits. They then noted that “at great reduction,” this is “used to explain the supposed inferiority of women and non-whites …” It is hard to follow their points because “ontogenetic fixity” just refers to genetic inheritability and this is a common notion in biology (for example, this is why some persons have blue eyes). Because it is not clear if Levin is alleged to have committed the sins of reduction or explaining inferiority, the graduate students manage to defame Levin while still having wriggle room. In any case, Levin’s talk was well done and interesting (I heard it).
This pattern is a common one in academia. The radical left who dominate the faculty and administration at many state universities use an array of techniques, including discrimination in hiring, promotion, and speaking-invitations, to silence opposing views. To sort this mess out, the SUNY-Buffalo faculty and administration should have a public debate between Levin and a senior SUNY-Buffalo philosopher on whether genetics plays a role in explaining the physical or mental differences between races. I am sure that that it would be both informative and good theater. Let’s see whose ideas survive robust debate.
13 October 2007
Democratic Politicians and Black Children
The Objectivist
DEMOCRATS AND BLACKS: AN UNHOLY ALLIANCE
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
October 7, 2007
America’s two foremost race-hustlers have in effect labeled Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) an Uncle Tom. Reverend Al Sharpton, in a thinly veiled reference, said of Obama “just because you’re our color doesn’t make you our kind.” Reverend Jesse Jackson said of Obama that he was "acting like he's white.” Now it’s hard to know what the hustlers mean, but their comments inadvertently point out an ugly truth which is that when it comes to education, the Democratic Party sells out blacks. Despite this fact, blacks continue to vote in droves for Democratic candidates. This is a case study in self-destruction.
While there are many talented black students, as a group they do poorly. A standard measure of academic performance is the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which was created by Congress in 1969 in order to assess how well American students perform in the fourth, eighth, and twelfth grades. Performance is grouped under four categories: below basic, basic, proficient, and advanced. “Basic” means that the students lack “[even] partial mastery of prerequisite knowledge and skills that are fundamental for proficient work” at their grade level. “Proficient” means that students display “solid academic performance” and demonstrate “competency over challenging subject matter.”
In No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning (2003), Manhattan Institute member Abigail Thernstrom and her husband Stephan, a Harvard professor, point out that NAEP assessment of black performance (1998-2001) is alarming. Except for reading and writing, more than half of black students were below basic on every category: math, science, U.S. history, civics, and geography. This includes a painfully bad level of performance in math and science. Almost 70% are below basic in math and almost 80% in science. Even reading and writing are disappointing with more than a third below basic. On the high end of achievement, the results are also abysmal. Less than 5% of black students are proficient or advanced in math, science, and geography, and only slightly more than 5% are in history. White and Asian performance is not great, but nothing like this complete meltdown.
The race differences are stark. Using 1998-2001 NAEP data, the Thernstroms point out that the average black high school graduate performs a little worse than white eighth-graders in reading and U.S. history and a lot worse in math and geography. In those topics, they know no more than whites in the seventh grade. As a side note, Asian performance is roughly the same as whites.
When it comes to graduation rates, the pattern repeats itself. In a 2002 study, Jay Greene of the Manhattan Institute argues that the 1998 national high-school graduation rate for white students was 78% and for black students was 56%. The numbers are controversial. The Economic Policy Institute reports that 74% of blacks get a regular diploma (for example, not a GED). However, even if the latter number is true, this is nothing to write home about.
These test results matter. The Thernstroms point out that in the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 eighth-graders an identical number of whites and blacks have gone on to some form of college (76.5%) and yet there was a significant difference in graduation rates. Roughly, 36% of whites and 16% of blacks end up with a four-year degree. In college, the poor level of public education wrecks havoc on what courses these students take. At the California State University system, which is designed for students who were in the top third of the state’s high school classes, more than 50% of black students had to take a remedial course in English and more than 78% had to do so in math.
The test results are also likely reflected in income. Whites at every level of education make more money on graduation and this is likely due to differences in ability rather than discrimination. This can be seen in that two researchers, George Farkas and Keven Vicknair, report that when incomes were adjusted for test scores in reading and mathematics, blacks earn more.
These K-12 differences might explain why at Fredonia State the black-white difference in graduation rates and grade-point average is significant. The yearly average of the six-year graduation rate from 1994-2000 is 38% for blacks and 61% for whites. There also was a significant difference in grade-point average. As of February 2006, the average undergraduate GPA for blacks at Fredonia was 2.3 (C-) and for white students 2.9 (C+).
The differences cannot be accounted for by the usual liberal bogeymen. The spending difference between those districts with more minority students and those without is small ($286 in 1989-1990 when adjustments were made for price-levels and students with special needs). Nor can they be accounted for by differences in class size or self-esteem. There is some debate as to whether having a same-race teacher affects performance, but even if there is such an effect it’s probably swamped by the fact that on average, black teachers have worse academic skills than do whites.
The Thernstroms argue that cultural effects and teacher quality make a significant difference. That there are strong cultural effects can be seen in that roughly two-thirds of the black-white performance gap remains even after researchers control for poverty, parental education, and urban residence. There seem to be cultural differences in factors such as low birth-weight, single-parent households, birth to a young mother, and differences in parenting practices (intellectual stimulation and emotional support). Teacher quality also has an effect. A number of studies on the other hand have found that teachers who attended more selective or prestigious colleges improve the scores of their students. The Thernstroms claim that a famous federal study (the 1966 Coleman report) and subsequent studies indicate that teachers with the strongest academic skills are better.
This is different from how teacher quality is ordinarily rewarded, which is on the basis of experience and having a graduate degree. In a 1990-1996 NAEP study, experience beyond the first two years and degrees beyond a bachelor’s showed no effect on teaching effectiveness. This is also interesting given that individuals and schools spend nearly $2 billion a year on master’s degrees in education.
The teachers’ unions own Democratic candidates. For example, a large percentage of Democratic delegates come from the teachers’ unions (for example, 11% in 1996) and the latter lavishes money on the party. The unions oppose reforms that will likely increase student performance, especially among black students. In particular, they can be counted on to oppose market-based competition such as vouchers, merit-based hiring and pay, standardized testing that spotlights problems, and a district’s ability to fire poor teachers. Not only do the Democratic candidates fail to back these reforms, they also are largely silent on the destructive aspects of black culture. Given the unions’ political clout, we know why Democratic candidates chose entrenched and well-funded educators over black children. Why blacks reward this choice is harder to explain.
DEMOCRATS AND BLACKS: AN UNHOLY ALLIANCE
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
October 7, 2007
America’s two foremost race-hustlers have in effect labeled Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) an Uncle Tom. Reverend Al Sharpton, in a thinly veiled reference, said of Obama “just because you’re our color doesn’t make you our kind.” Reverend Jesse Jackson said of Obama that he was "acting like he's white.” Now it’s hard to know what the hustlers mean, but their comments inadvertently point out an ugly truth which is that when it comes to education, the Democratic Party sells out blacks. Despite this fact, blacks continue to vote in droves for Democratic candidates. This is a case study in self-destruction.
While there are many talented black students, as a group they do poorly. A standard measure of academic performance is the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which was created by Congress in 1969 in order to assess how well American students perform in the fourth, eighth, and twelfth grades. Performance is grouped under four categories: below basic, basic, proficient, and advanced. “Basic” means that the students lack “[even] partial mastery of prerequisite knowledge and skills that are fundamental for proficient work” at their grade level. “Proficient” means that students display “solid academic performance” and demonstrate “competency over challenging subject matter.”
In No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning (2003), Manhattan Institute member Abigail Thernstrom and her husband Stephan, a Harvard professor, point out that NAEP assessment of black performance (1998-2001) is alarming. Except for reading and writing, more than half of black students were below basic on every category: math, science, U.S. history, civics, and geography. This includes a painfully bad level of performance in math and science. Almost 70% are below basic in math and almost 80% in science. Even reading and writing are disappointing with more than a third below basic. On the high end of achievement, the results are also abysmal. Less than 5% of black students are proficient or advanced in math, science, and geography, and only slightly more than 5% are in history. White and Asian performance is not great, but nothing like this complete meltdown.
The race differences are stark. Using 1998-2001 NAEP data, the Thernstroms point out that the average black high school graduate performs a little worse than white eighth-graders in reading and U.S. history and a lot worse in math and geography. In those topics, they know no more than whites in the seventh grade. As a side note, Asian performance is roughly the same as whites.
When it comes to graduation rates, the pattern repeats itself. In a 2002 study, Jay Greene of the Manhattan Institute argues that the 1998 national high-school graduation rate for white students was 78% and for black students was 56%. The numbers are controversial. The Economic Policy Institute reports that 74% of blacks get a regular diploma (for example, not a GED). However, even if the latter number is true, this is nothing to write home about.
These test results matter. The Thernstroms point out that in the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 eighth-graders an identical number of whites and blacks have gone on to some form of college (76.5%) and yet there was a significant difference in graduation rates. Roughly, 36% of whites and 16% of blacks end up with a four-year degree. In college, the poor level of public education wrecks havoc on what courses these students take. At the California State University system, which is designed for students who were in the top third of the state’s high school classes, more than 50% of black students had to take a remedial course in English and more than 78% had to do so in math.
The test results are also likely reflected in income. Whites at every level of education make more money on graduation and this is likely due to differences in ability rather than discrimination. This can be seen in that two researchers, George Farkas and Keven Vicknair, report that when incomes were adjusted for test scores in reading and mathematics, blacks earn more.
These K-12 differences might explain why at Fredonia State the black-white difference in graduation rates and grade-point average is significant. The yearly average of the six-year graduation rate from 1994-2000 is 38% for blacks and 61% for whites. There also was a significant difference in grade-point average. As of February 2006, the average undergraduate GPA for blacks at Fredonia was 2.3 (C-) and for white students 2.9 (C+).
The differences cannot be accounted for by the usual liberal bogeymen. The spending difference between those districts with more minority students and those without is small ($286 in 1989-1990 when adjustments were made for price-levels and students with special needs). Nor can they be accounted for by differences in class size or self-esteem. There is some debate as to whether having a same-race teacher affects performance, but even if there is such an effect it’s probably swamped by the fact that on average, black teachers have worse academic skills than do whites.
The Thernstroms argue that cultural effects and teacher quality make a significant difference. That there are strong cultural effects can be seen in that roughly two-thirds of the black-white performance gap remains even after researchers control for poverty, parental education, and urban residence. There seem to be cultural differences in factors such as low birth-weight, single-parent households, birth to a young mother, and differences in parenting practices (intellectual stimulation and emotional support). Teacher quality also has an effect. A number of studies on the other hand have found that teachers who attended more selective or prestigious colleges improve the scores of their students. The Thernstroms claim that a famous federal study (the 1966 Coleman report) and subsequent studies indicate that teachers with the strongest academic skills are better.
This is different from how teacher quality is ordinarily rewarded, which is on the basis of experience and having a graduate degree. In a 1990-1996 NAEP study, experience beyond the first two years and degrees beyond a bachelor’s showed no effect on teaching effectiveness. This is also interesting given that individuals and schools spend nearly $2 billion a year on master’s degrees in education.
The teachers’ unions own Democratic candidates. For example, a large percentage of Democratic delegates come from the teachers’ unions (for example, 11% in 1996) and the latter lavishes money on the party. The unions oppose reforms that will likely increase student performance, especially among black students. In particular, they can be counted on to oppose market-based competition such as vouchers, merit-based hiring and pay, standardized testing that spotlights problems, and a district’s ability to fire poor teachers. Not only do the Democratic candidates fail to back these reforms, they also are largely silent on the destructive aspects of black culture. Given the unions’ political clout, we know why Democratic candidates chose entrenched and well-funded educators over black children. Why blacks reward this choice is harder to explain.
24 May 2007
Steroids #1: Barry Bonds
The Objectivist
BARRY BONDS: BEST IN SHOW
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
May 13, 2007
Barry Bonds deserves recognition for being one of the best players in the history of baseball. The hysteria and hypocrisy accompanying Bonds is simply unbelievable.
Barry Bonds took performance-enhancing drugs. Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, authors of Game of Shadows provide a strong case in support of the claim that Bonds took a wide array of drugs, including human growth hormone, designer and run-of-the-mill steroids, a women’s infertility drug that helps a steroid user produce testosterone again after taking steroids, insulin, and a stimulant. The persons who supplied him and others with the drugs, BALCO owner Vic Conte and Vice President James Valente, and trainer Greg Anderson were all convicted. Conte got four months in prison and four months of home confinement. Anderson was found guilty of steroid distribution and money laundering and got three months prison and three months of home confinement. Valente was found guilty of steroid distribution and got probation. After taking the drugs in 1998 and pumping iron, Bonds went from hitting one home run every 16.1 at bats in his career to one every 8.5 at bats (through 2005).
Bond is also a bad guy. He is described as a menacing bully and invariably foul-tempered. For example, in 2003 his mistress Kimberly Bell claimed that he put his hand on her throat, pushed her against the wall, and threatened to kill her. He is also disliked by his teammates, a tax cheat, an adulterer, and subject to fits of rage. Even if these are private matters, the overall pattern is not pretty.
Bonds is also one of the greatest players ever. As an offensive player he is by far the best offensive player of the recent era. He won seven (count `em, seven) MVPs. He won three home-run titles (and was second five times), two National League batting titles, and twelve Silver Sluggers (the best offensive player in his position). Perhaps the best measure of offensive production is OPS (On-Base Percentage + Slugging Percentage adjusted for park and league variables) and according to BaseballReference.com, Bonds was the OPS leader an incredible ten times (and second an additional three times). He also led the league in walks 12 times (and was second four times) and was a potent base stealer (second among active players). To top it off, he is a hall-of-fame defensive player with eight Golden Gloves (the award given to the best fielder in his position).
Nor was this merely the result of steroids. He won three MVP Awards, four OPS crowns, seven Silver Sluggers, eight Golden Gloves, one home-run title, and six base-on-ball titles before he used drugs.
Here is a principle for recognizing greatness. When a player does what his competitors were doing, does not harm anyone else, and is light-years ahead of his competition, his accomplishments should be recognized. Bonds’s competitors were also on steroids. Former MVP Ken Caminiti told Sports Illustrated that more than 50% of players were on steroids (he later reduced his estimate to 15%). Former star Jose Conseco estimated that 85% were. In addition, large numbers of players took speed to improve their defensive game. It is reputed that speed was so common that pitchers used to get mad at players who didn’t take it. Other players took drugs that were legal and permitted by baseball but functioned just like steroids. For example, Mark McGwire took a testosterone precursor. Even if steroids are dangerous when properly used, and this is controversial, they only endanger the user. They are thus like Botox or liposuction.
Bonds followed the established rules of the time and we shouldn’t expect standards among athletes that bear no relation to how we would behave in their shoes and how the rest of society behaves. Would you go into a boxing match without supplements when your opponent was likely on both steroids and speed? Of course not. As a defense lawyer, would you aggressively try to keep out legitimate evidence if the police were lying in to get it in? Yes. How many of you puff up accomplishments on resumes or in interviews, overstate the abilities of those you recommend, illegally download software, or pay workers in cash to avoid paperwork or taxes? The shoe fits.
Some critics claim that Bonds’s steroid use gives him a leg up on his historical competitors and hence his records should receive an asterisk. Babe Ruth didn’t face black competition. Any guess as to whether they would have made him less productive? Hank Aaron competed before the league was awash with talented Latin American players. Think that he would have done so well against today’s crop of Hispanic aces? Comparison across eras is guesswork and controlling for one factor (steroids) while ignoring others (Hispanic pitchers) is intellectually bankrupt.
Many of Bonds’s critics have a double standard that amounts to blinding hypocrisy. When it comes to politics, they celebrate campaign- and election-cheats like John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Baines Johnson, and Bill Clinton. Clinton, for example, knowingly took big bucks from illegal Chinese donors (the conduits were all convicted of this--don’t believe me? look it up). In schools and on Presidents’ Day, we celebrate adulterers (Woodrow Wilson, Warren G. Harding, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Kennedy, and Clinton) and piss-poor Presidents (Herbert Hoover, Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Jimmy Carter). Other Bonds critics enthusiastically support a dirty politician like Hilary Clinton (she collected $100,000 from highly suspicious cattle-future trades, conveniently lost records with regard to shaky real-estate deals, and was probably in on the pardons-for-dollars scandal).
When it comes to sports, fans lionize alcoholics (Babe Ruth and Mickey Mantle) and adulterers, drug addicts, and rapists (see Michael Jordon, Lawrence Taylor, and Mike Tyson respectively). Given this, why all the venom directed at Bonds? Dayne Perry of Reason Magazine points out that given the hatred of Bonds, it is odd that little was said when Gaylord Perry was inducted to the Hall of Fame despite being well known for relying on an illegal spitball pitch.
We don’t have a duty to celebrate anyone. Celebrating someone is up to the celebrator’s discretion. Americans fasten on to some personalities and not others. For example, fans love Mickey Mantle more than Ted Williams, even though the latter was a better player. What is behind the hatred of Barry Bonds is probably in part his personality and in part the schoolmarms’ campaign against drugs. Neither should stop us from acknowledging the fact that Bonds is the greatest baseball player of our era.
BARRY BONDS: BEST IN SHOW
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
May 13, 2007
Barry Bonds deserves recognition for being one of the best players in the history of baseball. The hysteria and hypocrisy accompanying Bonds is simply unbelievable.
Barry Bonds took performance-enhancing drugs. Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, authors of Game of Shadows provide a strong case in support of the claim that Bonds took a wide array of drugs, including human growth hormone, designer and run-of-the-mill steroids, a women’s infertility drug that helps a steroid user produce testosterone again after taking steroids, insulin, and a stimulant. The persons who supplied him and others with the drugs, BALCO owner Vic Conte and Vice President James Valente, and trainer Greg Anderson were all convicted. Conte got four months in prison and four months of home confinement. Anderson was found guilty of steroid distribution and money laundering and got three months prison and three months of home confinement. Valente was found guilty of steroid distribution and got probation. After taking the drugs in 1998 and pumping iron, Bonds went from hitting one home run every 16.1 at bats in his career to one every 8.5 at bats (through 2005).
Bond is also a bad guy. He is described as a menacing bully and invariably foul-tempered. For example, in 2003 his mistress Kimberly Bell claimed that he put his hand on her throat, pushed her against the wall, and threatened to kill her. He is also disliked by his teammates, a tax cheat, an adulterer, and subject to fits of rage. Even if these are private matters, the overall pattern is not pretty.
Bonds is also one of the greatest players ever. As an offensive player he is by far the best offensive player of the recent era. He won seven (count `em, seven) MVPs. He won three home-run titles (and was second five times), two National League batting titles, and twelve Silver Sluggers (the best offensive player in his position). Perhaps the best measure of offensive production is OPS (On-Base Percentage + Slugging Percentage adjusted for park and league variables) and according to BaseballReference.com, Bonds was the OPS leader an incredible ten times (and second an additional three times). He also led the league in walks 12 times (and was second four times) and was a potent base stealer (second among active players). To top it off, he is a hall-of-fame defensive player with eight Golden Gloves (the award given to the best fielder in his position).
Nor was this merely the result of steroids. He won three MVP Awards, four OPS crowns, seven Silver Sluggers, eight Golden Gloves, one home-run title, and six base-on-ball titles before he used drugs.
Here is a principle for recognizing greatness. When a player does what his competitors were doing, does not harm anyone else, and is light-years ahead of his competition, his accomplishments should be recognized. Bonds’s competitors were also on steroids. Former MVP Ken Caminiti told Sports Illustrated that more than 50% of players were on steroids (he later reduced his estimate to 15%). Former star Jose Conseco estimated that 85% were. In addition, large numbers of players took speed to improve their defensive game. It is reputed that speed was so common that pitchers used to get mad at players who didn’t take it. Other players took drugs that were legal and permitted by baseball but functioned just like steroids. For example, Mark McGwire took a testosterone precursor. Even if steroids are dangerous when properly used, and this is controversial, they only endanger the user. They are thus like Botox or liposuction.
Bonds followed the established rules of the time and we shouldn’t expect standards among athletes that bear no relation to how we would behave in their shoes and how the rest of society behaves. Would you go into a boxing match without supplements when your opponent was likely on both steroids and speed? Of course not. As a defense lawyer, would you aggressively try to keep out legitimate evidence if the police were lying in to get it in? Yes. How many of you puff up accomplishments on resumes or in interviews, overstate the abilities of those you recommend, illegally download software, or pay workers in cash to avoid paperwork or taxes? The shoe fits.
Some critics claim that Bonds’s steroid use gives him a leg up on his historical competitors and hence his records should receive an asterisk. Babe Ruth didn’t face black competition. Any guess as to whether they would have made him less productive? Hank Aaron competed before the league was awash with talented Latin American players. Think that he would have done so well against today’s crop of Hispanic aces? Comparison across eras is guesswork and controlling for one factor (steroids) while ignoring others (Hispanic pitchers) is intellectually bankrupt.
Many of Bonds’s critics have a double standard that amounts to blinding hypocrisy. When it comes to politics, they celebrate campaign- and election-cheats like John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Baines Johnson, and Bill Clinton. Clinton, for example, knowingly took big bucks from illegal Chinese donors (the conduits were all convicted of this--don’t believe me? look it up). In schools and on Presidents’ Day, we celebrate adulterers (Woodrow Wilson, Warren G. Harding, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Kennedy, and Clinton) and piss-poor Presidents (Herbert Hoover, Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Jimmy Carter). Other Bonds critics enthusiastically support a dirty politician like Hilary Clinton (she collected $100,000 from highly suspicious cattle-future trades, conveniently lost records with regard to shaky real-estate deals, and was probably in on the pardons-for-dollars scandal).
When it comes to sports, fans lionize alcoholics (Babe Ruth and Mickey Mantle) and adulterers, drug addicts, and rapists (see Michael Jordon, Lawrence Taylor, and Mike Tyson respectively). Given this, why all the venom directed at Bonds? Dayne Perry of Reason Magazine points out that given the hatred of Bonds, it is odd that little was said when Gaylord Perry was inducted to the Hall of Fame despite being well known for relying on an illegal spitball pitch.
We don’t have a duty to celebrate anyone. Celebrating someone is up to the celebrator’s discretion. Americans fasten on to some personalities and not others. For example, fans love Mickey Mantle more than Ted Williams, even though the latter was a better player. What is behind the hatred of Barry Bonds is probably in part his personality and in part the schoolmarms’ campaign against drugs. Neither should stop us from acknowledging the fact that Bonds is the greatest baseball player of our era.
25 April 2007
IMUS AND THE RACE HUSTLERS
The Objectivist
RACE-HUSTLING FOR FUN AND PROFIT
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
Monday, April 17, 2007
In American politics, the recent firestorm over comments by Senator Joseph Biden (D-Del.) and radio host Imus show how low the public discussion of race has sunk. In contrast to their minimal comments, the forceful presence of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are a thumb in the eye to race relations.
Reverend Al Sharpton is a disgusting presence on the political scene and a clear indication of how low the Democratic Party will sink to get black votes. Jay Nordlinger of the National Review does a nice job of summarizing Sharpton’s greatest hits.
In 1987, teenager Tawana Brawley, after staying home for a few days, smeared herself in dog feces, scrawled racial epithets on her body, and put a garbage bag over herself. She then claimed that six white men raped her. Sharpton jumped at the chance to turn this troubled teen’s false charges into ground zero of race hatred. Sharpton, along with attorneys Alton Maddox and C. Vernon Mason, very publicly accused a number of people, including assistant district attorney Steven Pagones even after Pagones was cleared. After suffering death threats and illnesses, Pagones sued Sharpton, Maddox, and Mason for defamation and won $345,000. Maddox and Mason were later disbarred over the incident.
In 1989, after the Central Park “wilding” in which there was a brutal rape and horrific beating of a young white woman, Al Sharpton burst onto the scene. He and his group charged that the jogger’s boyfriend had raped and beaten her. He and his supporters publicly chanted this ridiculous charge, denounced the victim as a “whore,” and suggested that a psychiatrist should examine her. In addition, they screamed her name over and over again because most publications refused to do so. His behavior became farcical when he brought Tawana Brawley to the trial to show the difference between white and black justice and had her meet the jogger’s alleged attackers (which she did in a friendly manner).
In 1991, a car driven by a Hasidic Jew struck and killed a 7 year old black child. Sharpton rushed forward to help whip the crowd into a frenzy. An example of his Jew-baiting comments included the following, “If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house.” The “Crown Height” riots then broke out and a rabbinical student, Yankel Rosenbaum, was stabbed to death and over a hundred others were injured.
In 1995 in Harlem, a Jewish store owner (who owned Freddy’s Fashion Mart) was alleged to have driven a black sore owner out of business. Reverend Al held many rallies designed to scare the Jewish owner away. He made comments such as “[W]e will not stand by and allow them to move this brother so that some white interloper can expand his business.” Three months later one of the protesters stormed Freddy’s, ordered all blacks out, and fired a pistol and burned the place down. Eight people died.
Baptist Minister Jesse Jackson is slicker and less obvious than Sharpton, but also corrupt and vicious. Kenneth Timmerman in Shakedown does a nice job of exposing his race-hustling innovations.
Jackson had a business of threatening boycotts of major U.S. corporations if they did not adopt quotas across a wide range of corporate activities. In response this threat, the companies then gave distributorships and other valuable contracts to black business owners who in turn kicked money back to Jackson’s organization. His brother also received a number of these distributorships. Among the corporations he shook down in the 1980’s were Coca-Cola, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and 7-Eleven. His scam in part involved black organizations paying annual dues to his nonprofit in return for being put on a list of minority subcontractors that he provided to his shakedown targets. His boycott of Coors got the company to donate $600,000 to boycotting parties, including, of course, Jackson’s non-profit (Operation PUSH). In addition, according to Judicial Watch, he lobbied the Federal Communications Commission to block companies seeking government approval to merge with the goal of forcing them to donate money to his nonprofit.
Reverend Jackson treats his nonprofit as his personal piggy bank. As Timmerman points out, Jackson repeatedly and illegally diverted funds from his nonprofits to pay for personal and political expenses. He also used nonprofit funds to pay some of the expenses related to his out-of-wedlock child he had as a result of a four-year affair. Oddly, his mistress was pregnant when he was very publicly counseling President Bill Clinton on his affair with intern Monica Lewinsky.
The enlightened Sharpton refused to criticize Nation of Islam member Khalid Abdul Muhammad with whom Sharpton appeared in Harlem and who is famous for his anti-Semitic rants (e.g., “Who’s pimping the world? The hairy hands of the Zionist in the world.”). The hyper-sensitive Jackson in a 1984 interview with a black Washington Post reporter in which he said he wanted to “talk black talk” called New York City “Hymietown” (a derogatory term for Jews) and refused to distance himself from Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who was making campaign appearances and raising money for Jackson. Farrakhan is famous for anti-Semitic diatribes (for example, calling Adolph Hitler “a great man”).
Senator Joseph Biden caused an uproar when he said the following to a reporter about Senator Barack Obama to the New York Observer, “I mean, you’ve got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a story book, man.” He effusively and repeatedly apologized for his comments. In recent times, there were two obscure black candidates (Shirley Chisholm in 1972 and Carol Moseley Braun in 2004) who didn’t attract much attention and probably weren’t who Biden had in mind. Instead, he was thinking of Sharpton and Jackson. While Reverends Sharpton and Jackson are articulate and Jackson was arguably nice-looking when he was younger, Biden is right that Obama provides a clear contrast to these dirty and mean-spirited men.
Imus was trying to make light of the Rutgers Women’s basketball team’s rough appearance (for example, tattoos) and their gritty defensive style of play. His comments clearly indicate this (he first called them “rough girls from Rutgers” and noted “they’ve got tattoos” before being prompted to joke that they were “nappy-headed hos”). People can argue over whether Imus’s comments were funny, but the notion that his show should be cancelled and he should be publicly scorned by major politicians and nearly every public commentator, while the media carried Jackson’s comments and CBS executives met with Sharpton hours before firing Imus is a case study of absurdity. And it’s not just the executives who pander to such con men. In recent years, Democratic Presidential candidates Bill Bradley, Al Gore, and Hilary Clinton also made pilgrimages to Al Sharpton in a pathetic show of deference.
Race hustling has arrived.
RACE-HUSTLING FOR FUN AND PROFIT
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
Monday, April 17, 2007
In American politics, the recent firestorm over comments by Senator Joseph Biden (D-Del.) and radio host Imus show how low the public discussion of race has sunk. In contrast to their minimal comments, the forceful presence of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are a thumb in the eye to race relations.
Reverend Al Sharpton is a disgusting presence on the political scene and a clear indication of how low the Democratic Party will sink to get black votes. Jay Nordlinger of the National Review does a nice job of summarizing Sharpton’s greatest hits.
In 1987, teenager Tawana Brawley, after staying home for a few days, smeared herself in dog feces, scrawled racial epithets on her body, and put a garbage bag over herself. She then claimed that six white men raped her. Sharpton jumped at the chance to turn this troubled teen’s false charges into ground zero of race hatred. Sharpton, along with attorneys Alton Maddox and C. Vernon Mason, very publicly accused a number of people, including assistant district attorney Steven Pagones even after Pagones was cleared. After suffering death threats and illnesses, Pagones sued Sharpton, Maddox, and Mason for defamation and won $345,000. Maddox and Mason were later disbarred over the incident.
In 1989, after the Central Park “wilding” in which there was a brutal rape and horrific beating of a young white woman, Al Sharpton burst onto the scene. He and his group charged that the jogger’s boyfriend had raped and beaten her. He and his supporters publicly chanted this ridiculous charge, denounced the victim as a “whore,” and suggested that a psychiatrist should examine her. In addition, they screamed her name over and over again because most publications refused to do so. His behavior became farcical when he brought Tawana Brawley to the trial to show the difference between white and black justice and had her meet the jogger’s alleged attackers (which she did in a friendly manner).
In 1991, a car driven by a Hasidic Jew struck and killed a 7 year old black child. Sharpton rushed forward to help whip the crowd into a frenzy. An example of his Jew-baiting comments included the following, “If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house.” The “Crown Height” riots then broke out and a rabbinical student, Yankel Rosenbaum, was stabbed to death and over a hundred others were injured.
In 1995 in Harlem, a Jewish store owner (who owned Freddy’s Fashion Mart) was alleged to have driven a black sore owner out of business. Reverend Al held many rallies designed to scare the Jewish owner away. He made comments such as “[W]e will not stand by and allow them to move this brother so that some white interloper can expand his business.” Three months later one of the protesters stormed Freddy’s, ordered all blacks out, and fired a pistol and burned the place down. Eight people died.
Baptist Minister Jesse Jackson is slicker and less obvious than Sharpton, but also corrupt and vicious. Kenneth Timmerman in Shakedown does a nice job of exposing his race-hustling innovations.
Jackson had a business of threatening boycotts of major U.S. corporations if they did not adopt quotas across a wide range of corporate activities. In response this threat, the companies then gave distributorships and other valuable contracts to black business owners who in turn kicked money back to Jackson’s organization. His brother also received a number of these distributorships. Among the corporations he shook down in the 1980’s were Coca-Cola, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and 7-Eleven. His scam in part involved black organizations paying annual dues to his nonprofit in return for being put on a list of minority subcontractors that he provided to his shakedown targets. His boycott of Coors got the company to donate $600,000 to boycotting parties, including, of course, Jackson’s non-profit (Operation PUSH). In addition, according to Judicial Watch, he lobbied the Federal Communications Commission to block companies seeking government approval to merge with the goal of forcing them to donate money to his nonprofit.
Reverend Jackson treats his nonprofit as his personal piggy bank. As Timmerman points out, Jackson repeatedly and illegally diverted funds from his nonprofits to pay for personal and political expenses. He also used nonprofit funds to pay some of the expenses related to his out-of-wedlock child he had as a result of a four-year affair. Oddly, his mistress was pregnant when he was very publicly counseling President Bill Clinton on his affair with intern Monica Lewinsky.
The enlightened Sharpton refused to criticize Nation of Islam member Khalid Abdul Muhammad with whom Sharpton appeared in Harlem and who is famous for his anti-Semitic rants (e.g., “Who’s pimping the world? The hairy hands of the Zionist in the world.”). The hyper-sensitive Jackson in a 1984 interview with a black Washington Post reporter in which he said he wanted to “talk black talk” called New York City “Hymietown” (a derogatory term for Jews) and refused to distance himself from Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who was making campaign appearances and raising money for Jackson. Farrakhan is famous for anti-Semitic diatribes (for example, calling Adolph Hitler “a great man”).
Senator Joseph Biden caused an uproar when he said the following to a reporter about Senator Barack Obama to the New York Observer, “I mean, you’ve got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a story book, man.” He effusively and repeatedly apologized for his comments. In recent times, there were two obscure black candidates (Shirley Chisholm in 1972 and Carol Moseley Braun in 2004) who didn’t attract much attention and probably weren’t who Biden had in mind. Instead, he was thinking of Sharpton and Jackson. While Reverends Sharpton and Jackson are articulate and Jackson was arguably nice-looking when he was younger, Biden is right that Obama provides a clear contrast to these dirty and mean-spirited men.
Imus was trying to make light of the Rutgers Women’s basketball team’s rough appearance (for example, tattoos) and their gritty defensive style of play. His comments clearly indicate this (he first called them “rough girls from Rutgers” and noted “they’ve got tattoos” before being prompted to joke that they were “nappy-headed hos”). People can argue over whether Imus’s comments were funny, but the notion that his show should be cancelled and he should be publicly scorned by major politicians and nearly every public commentator, while the media carried Jackson’s comments and CBS executives met with Sharpton hours before firing Imus is a case study of absurdity. And it’s not just the executives who pander to such con men. In recent years, Democratic Presidential candidates Bill Bradley, Al Gore, and Hilary Clinton also made pilgrimages to Al Sharpton in a pathetic show of deference.
Race hustling has arrived.
26 July 2006
On Reparations
The Objectivist
REPARATIONS: DESERVEDLY MARGINALIZED
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
7/19/06
The movement for reparations for slavery has failed so far. It has led to an unsuccessful lawsuit against such corporations as JP Morgan, RJ Reynolds Tobacco, Union Pacific, and Aetna Insurance. The initial suit, filed in 2002, was for $1.4 trillion. Since 1989, Representative John Conyers (D-MI) has tried unsuccessfully to pass a bill that establishes a commission to study reparation proposals. More ominously, however, some cities (for example, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Detroit) require firms contracting with the city to disclose whether they or their predecessor profited from slavery. It doesn’t take too much imagination to see this as a first step toward reparations.
Reparations are owed to persons who were enslaved. Unfortunately they are dead. However, slavery didn’t harm the slaves’ descendants. A practice harms an individual if it makes him worse off than he otherwise would be. For example, the progressive-tax system harms a high-income taxpayer since he would pay less were it not in place. Thus, we can judge that a practice harmed a person only if we can compare how well he does with and without the practice. However, this can’t be done in the context of slavery since the descendants wouldn’t have existed but for slavery. This is because a person’s parents are an essential feature of him and slavery affected who parented with whom. That is, had slavery not occurred, the reproductive patterns would have been very different and current descendants would never have been born. Since descendants wouldn’t have been better off had they never been born, slavery didn’t harm them.
In contrast, some other cases of justified reparations are a good idea since they are given to actual victims. Consider, for example, the $20,000 paid to each Japanese-American interned by the U.S. and the $5.2 billion fund to compensate persons who were forced to work in Germany during WWII. As a side note, Michael Levin points out that were the approximately 40 million American blacks to be given the same $20,000, the cost would be $800 billion plus administrative costs, roughly the amount that the U.S. government spent in 2005 on social security and medicare.
Some proponents of reparations argue that it is owed for things other than slavery, such as discrimination or Jim Crow laws. The problem with this claim is that the amount of compensation is mere guesswork. The white-black differences don’t provide a useful guideline since there are a number of other factors that explain at least some of the differences. For example, blacks engage in a number of behaviors that put them behind the eight ball such as having children out of wedlock (over two-thirds of black children born in 2003 were born out of wedlock, 76% in Louisiana), criminality (blacks were more than half of the murderers and robbers in 2002), and poor performance in school (the black dropout rate is 11% versus 7% for whites and 4% for Asians). These behaviors are the sort of things that persons are responsible for doing and that can’t be placed on the doorstep of slave-owners and Jim Crow laws. In addition, as previously noted in this column, some of the differences might be due to genetics. If this is correct, then the black-white difference will not be a useful measure of the effects of past injustice.
Other proponents argue that reparations are owed because U.S. citizens received vast benefits from slavery. This is a mistake since an individual doesn’t owe reparations for merely having benefited from injustice unless he was in some way responsible for it. For example, if a tennis player (e.g., Steffi Graf) wins more tournaments and earns more money as a result of a crazed fan stabbing her rival, she doesn’t owe her rival money, even though she benefited from the stabbing. What’s true of an individual is also true of U.S. citizens in general.
What is particularly disconcerting about the claim to reparations is that blacks are richer and freer in the U.S. than anywhere else. Nor are U.S. taxpayers stingy with regard to the poor black community. As Levin points out in Why Race Matters, given the overrepresentation of blacks among welfare recipients and the progressive nature of state and federal income taxes, an enormous amount of money is transferred from non-black taxpayers to American blacks every year. In the late ’80s and early ’90s, the taxpayers gave an amount equal to a Marshall Plan to blacks every three years and this doesn’t take into account the valuable benefits of preferential treatment in education and hiring.
Reparations are owed, but unfortunately, the persons owed them are dead. It is a sad fact of the world that some injustices can’t be repaired.
The Constructivist
7/26/06
I've stopped contributing to our "Taking Sides" column, as preparations for my Fulbright year have been intense this month. For the next year, I'll be teaching and writing in Japan, so will only respond informally on this blog to The Objectivist's columns when he hasn't been able to line up guest columnists.
In terms of reparations, I agree that the standard versions of corrective or restorative justice that underlie most successful reparations claims (such as to survivors of Nazi forced labor/death camps or American internment camps) make the case for reparations to African Americans for slavery and de jure segregation difficult to sustain. These standard versions require there to be clear ways of identifying surviving victims and calculating what is owed to them, along with clear lines of state and/or corporate responsibility. Generally, even claims that meet these criteria are denied or delayed until most survivors have perished of other causes; payouts, when low, seem to insult the magnitude of the pain and suffering of the victims, yet when they are high, they invite charges of corruption in administration. Consider the controversies over Edwin Black’s IBM and the Holocaust, which may be interpreted to provide warrant for reparations being owed by IBM, and Norman Finkelstein’s The Holocaust Industry, which is a vigorous condemnation of lawyers and organizations that have profited by prosecuting reparations claims for Jewish victims.
Still, there are points in The Objectivist's argument that bear contesting. Whereas Michael Levin's Why Race Matters argues that welfare state benefits to African Americans are as good as reparations, not only is this a form of distributive rather than restorative justice, but as Ira Katznelson documents in When Affirmative Action Was White, Southern national and state legislators colluded in excluding African Americans from much of the New Deal and limiting their benefits when exclusion proved impossible. Indeed, as George Lipsitz shows in The Possessive Investment in Whiteness, even as the system of de jure segregation was being dismantled during and after the World War II years, practices such as red-lining ensured that the suburbs would be overwhelmingly white. Much of the wealth gap between African Americans and white Americans documented in such studies as Melvin Oliver's and Thomas Shapiro's Black Wealth/White Wealth, Dalton Conley's Being Black, Living in the Red, and Michael Brown et al.'s Whitewashing Race can be attributed to the disparity in home ownership rates post-WWII as white veterans and workers were offered easy credit and new housing in the suburbs that were not made available to African Americans. There are plenty of surviving victims of these social policies who could make strong cases against banks and local, state, and federal governments. State and corporate malfeasance and negligence could provide grounds for some kind of benefits to Africans Americans as a class for the cumulative effect of these relatively recent discriminations. If the government can calculate what is owed to the families of the victims of 9/11, it can certainly undertake a Truth and Reconciliation-style inquiry into the fiscal impact of systematic racial discrimination and oppression from the New Deal to the Great Society.
For further reading on these and related issues, I recommend consulting University of Dayton law professor Vernellia Randall's Apology and Reparations for Slavery page and University of Maryland professor Robert Fullinwider's The Case for Reparations.
REPARATIONS: DESERVEDLY MARGINALIZED
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
7/19/06
The movement for reparations for slavery has failed so far. It has led to an unsuccessful lawsuit against such corporations as JP Morgan, RJ Reynolds Tobacco, Union Pacific, and Aetna Insurance. The initial suit, filed in 2002, was for $1.4 trillion. Since 1989, Representative John Conyers (D-MI) has tried unsuccessfully to pass a bill that establishes a commission to study reparation proposals. More ominously, however, some cities (for example, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Detroit) require firms contracting with the city to disclose whether they or their predecessor profited from slavery. It doesn’t take too much imagination to see this as a first step toward reparations.
Reparations are owed to persons who were enslaved. Unfortunately they are dead. However, slavery didn’t harm the slaves’ descendants. A practice harms an individual if it makes him worse off than he otherwise would be. For example, the progressive-tax system harms a high-income taxpayer since he would pay less were it not in place. Thus, we can judge that a practice harmed a person only if we can compare how well he does with and without the practice. However, this can’t be done in the context of slavery since the descendants wouldn’t have existed but for slavery. This is because a person’s parents are an essential feature of him and slavery affected who parented with whom. That is, had slavery not occurred, the reproductive patterns would have been very different and current descendants would never have been born. Since descendants wouldn’t have been better off had they never been born, slavery didn’t harm them.
In contrast, some other cases of justified reparations are a good idea since they are given to actual victims. Consider, for example, the $20,000 paid to each Japanese-American interned by the U.S. and the $5.2 billion fund to compensate persons who were forced to work in Germany during WWII. As a side note, Michael Levin points out that were the approximately 40 million American blacks to be given the same $20,000, the cost would be $800 billion plus administrative costs, roughly the amount that the U.S. government spent in 2005 on social security and medicare.
Some proponents of reparations argue that it is owed for things other than slavery, such as discrimination or Jim Crow laws. The problem with this claim is that the amount of compensation is mere guesswork. The white-black differences don’t provide a useful guideline since there are a number of other factors that explain at least some of the differences. For example, blacks engage in a number of behaviors that put them behind the eight ball such as having children out of wedlock (over two-thirds of black children born in 2003 were born out of wedlock, 76% in Louisiana), criminality (blacks were more than half of the murderers and robbers in 2002), and poor performance in school (the black dropout rate is 11% versus 7% for whites and 4% for Asians). These behaviors are the sort of things that persons are responsible for doing and that can’t be placed on the doorstep of slave-owners and Jim Crow laws. In addition, as previously noted in this column, some of the differences might be due to genetics. If this is correct, then the black-white difference will not be a useful measure of the effects of past injustice.
Other proponents argue that reparations are owed because U.S. citizens received vast benefits from slavery. This is a mistake since an individual doesn’t owe reparations for merely having benefited from injustice unless he was in some way responsible for it. For example, if a tennis player (e.g., Steffi Graf) wins more tournaments and earns more money as a result of a crazed fan stabbing her rival, she doesn’t owe her rival money, even though she benefited from the stabbing. What’s true of an individual is also true of U.S. citizens in general.
What is particularly disconcerting about the claim to reparations is that blacks are richer and freer in the U.S. than anywhere else. Nor are U.S. taxpayers stingy with regard to the poor black community. As Levin points out in Why Race Matters, given the overrepresentation of blacks among welfare recipients and the progressive nature of state and federal income taxes, an enormous amount of money is transferred from non-black taxpayers to American blacks every year. In the late ’80s and early ’90s, the taxpayers gave an amount equal to a Marshall Plan to blacks every three years and this doesn’t take into account the valuable benefits of preferential treatment in education and hiring.
Reparations are owed, but unfortunately, the persons owed them are dead. It is a sad fact of the world that some injustices can’t be repaired.
The Constructivist
7/26/06
I've stopped contributing to our "Taking Sides" column, as preparations for my Fulbright year have been intense this month. For the next year, I'll be teaching and writing in Japan, so will only respond informally on this blog to The Objectivist's columns when he hasn't been able to line up guest columnists.
In terms of reparations, I agree that the standard versions of corrective or restorative justice that underlie most successful reparations claims (such as to survivors of Nazi forced labor/death camps or American internment camps) make the case for reparations to African Americans for slavery and de jure segregation difficult to sustain. These standard versions require there to be clear ways of identifying surviving victims and calculating what is owed to them, along with clear lines of state and/or corporate responsibility. Generally, even claims that meet these criteria are denied or delayed until most survivors have perished of other causes; payouts, when low, seem to insult the magnitude of the pain and suffering of the victims, yet when they are high, they invite charges of corruption in administration. Consider the controversies over Edwin Black’s IBM and the Holocaust, which may be interpreted to provide warrant for reparations being owed by IBM, and Norman Finkelstein’s The Holocaust Industry, which is a vigorous condemnation of lawyers and organizations that have profited by prosecuting reparations claims for Jewish victims.
Still, there are points in The Objectivist's argument that bear contesting. Whereas Michael Levin's Why Race Matters argues that welfare state benefits to African Americans are as good as reparations, not only is this a form of distributive rather than restorative justice, but as Ira Katznelson documents in When Affirmative Action Was White, Southern national and state legislators colluded in excluding African Americans from much of the New Deal and limiting their benefits when exclusion proved impossible. Indeed, as George Lipsitz shows in The Possessive Investment in Whiteness, even as the system of de jure segregation was being dismantled during and after the World War II years, practices such as red-lining ensured that the suburbs would be overwhelmingly white. Much of the wealth gap between African Americans and white Americans documented in such studies as Melvin Oliver's and Thomas Shapiro's Black Wealth/White Wealth, Dalton Conley's Being Black, Living in the Red, and Michael Brown et al.'s Whitewashing Race can be attributed to the disparity in home ownership rates post-WWII as white veterans and workers were offered easy credit and new housing in the suburbs that were not made available to African Americans. There are plenty of surviving victims of these social policies who could make strong cases against banks and local, state, and federal governments. State and corporate malfeasance and negligence could provide grounds for some kind of benefits to Africans Americans as a class for the cumulative effect of these relatively recent discriminations. If the government can calculate what is owed to the families of the victims of 9/11, it can certainly undertake a Truth and Reconciliation-style inquiry into the fiscal impact of systematic racial discrimination and oppression from the New Deal to the Great Society.
For further reading on these and related issues, I recommend consulting University of Dayton law professor Vernellia Randall's Apology and Reparations for Slavery page and University of Maryland professor Robert Fullinwider's The Case for Reparations.
08 June 2006
Debating the Senate Immigration Reform Bill
The Objectivist
THE COSTS AND BENEFITS OF THE SENATE IMMIGRATION BILL
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
6/7/06
Even for the Senate, the current immigration bill (the Hagel-Martinez immigration bill) is terrible. It includes a guest worker provision, an amnesty for many illegal aliens, and a large increase in legal immigration. A quick cost-benefit analysis shows why it shafts the citizenry.
Since 57% percent of illegal immigrants are from Mexico, it is worth considering their effects (as a side note, 80-85% of Mexican immigrants are illegal and 1 in 10 persons born in Mexico live in the U.S.). The following information in this section comes from a 2001 study from the Center for Immigration Studies and relies on data from the Census Bureau. As a group, Mexican immigrants suck up welfare benefits like a Hoover vacuum. While approximately 15% of natives used a major welfare program, Mexican immigrants use it at more than twice that rate (31%). One study by the National Academy of Sciences estimates that the average adult Mexican immigrant imposes a net loss of $55,200 on the U.S. (taxes paid minus services cost).
This tendency persists over time since 30% of Mexican immigrants who have been here for more than twenty years use welfare benefits. Even third-generation Mexican-Americans are more than twice as likely as natives to use welfare and almost twice as likely to be in poverty or near the poverty level. Thus, Mexican immigrants and their descendants continue to suck up tax dollars.
This study underestimates the danger since as medical costs spiral upward, the costs of these immigrants will likely explode. Since 53% of Mexican immigrants don’t have medical insurance, compared to 14% of natives, these costs threaten to break our ability to bail out Medicare and Social Security. Even legal Mexican immigrants who have been in the U.S. for more than 20 years are disproportionably uninsured (more than 33% don’t have medical insurance).
Nor can we reasonably expect this pattern to change over successive generations. Education is an important indicator of how a group will affect others’ pocketbooks and Mexican immigrants as a group do poorly in school. While 9% of natives drop out of high school, a whopping 65% of Mexican immigrants do. Again this pattern is multi-generational. Third-generation Mexican-Americans are almost three times likely as natives to drop out from high school and less than half as likely to graduate from college.
Culturally, Mexican immigrants drag down standards. According to one study that used Bureau of Justice statistics, Hispanics are three times more likely than whites to commit violent crimes and three times more likely to be incarcerated. They also have a comparatively weak family structure in that 36% of Hispanic births in the U.S. are out of wedlock. The kicker is that large numbers don’t identify with the U.S. or even want to become citizens. In 1997, only 15% of Mexicans qualified for naturalization did so, versus 53% from Europe and 44% from Asia.
What benefits outweigh these costs? Some Senate apologists claim that the amnesty is necessary to keep costs down. However, the Center for Immigration Studies suggests that Mexican immigration in the ’90s reduced prices between 0.08% and 0.2%. This is because unskilled labor accounts for a very small portion of economic output. Other Senate clowns claim that immigrants do jobs that natives won’t do. This is patently false since many of these jobs were done in the 1970s by non-immigrants. In 1970, for example, there were fewer than 800,000 Mexican immigrants in the country. Even if these benefits were real, they likely wouldn’t come close to outweighing the costs.
In addition, we still need to consider opportunity costs. Instead of amnestying millions of illegal aliens and letting in their families (the Congressional Budget Offices estimates that the Senate bill will increase the population by 8 million over the next 10 years), imagine we took in immigrants based on wealth, skills, and education. No one who isn’t a senator from Massachusetts could argue with a straight face that taking in largely uneducated Mexican immigrants is better for this country than taking in wealthy Chinese entrepreneurs, Pakistani doctors, and Indian engineers. The Senate is like the owner of an NFL team who uses its first round draft pick to take a player who couldn’t play for a college team. They must think we’re pretty dumb.
***
The Constructivist
FOR TRULY COMPREHENSIVE IMMIGRATION REFORM
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
6/7/06
Over the next few weeks and probably months a conference committee made up of selected members of the Senate and the House will attempt to reconcile the Hagel-Martinez Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006 (S. 2611) and the Sensenbrenner Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005 (H.R. 4437). Americans should hope the cheap labor corporatists and nativist populists of the Republican-controlled Congress fail to reach a compromise. Otherwise, they will have locked us into a fundamentally flawed version of “comprehensive immigration reform” and missed another opportunity to develop a truly efficient, effective, fair, and just way of managing regional and global labor flows for the benefit of everyone in the Americas.
The ongoing debate between Congressional Republicans who emphasize punitive and militaristic solutions to the immigration “crisis” and Senate Republicans and Democrats who advocate comprehensive reforms to U.S. immigration policy avoids confronting the root causes of large-scale international migrations. What are these causes? First, consider “push” factors such as poverty, lack of economic opportunity, political repression, and social instability abroad that lead people to make the agonizing decision to leave their homeland. Next, consider “pull” factors such as demand by U.S. corporations for cheap and vulnerable workers, along with a higher standard of living, political freedoms, and social stability that make the U.S. an attractive destination for international migrants. Then, take into account the uneven effects of corporate globalization and the Washington Consensus on trade and development promoted by such institutions as the International Monetary Fund, World Trade Organization, and World Bank and enacted in NAFTA and CAFTA. For example, the subsidies the U.S. offers to its own multinational corporations in agribusiness contribute to the impoverishment and bankruptcy of small farmers in Mexico and Central America, which leads them and their children to migrate to cities for work and, often, on to the United States.
By focusing on a limited version of “comprehensive immigration reform”--attending only to border and interior enforcement, visa reform and backlog reduction, and work authorization and legalization of undocumented workers--Congress fails to use key tools in aid, development, labor, and trade policy to provide disincentives for illegal immigration, mitigate the factors that lead to international migration, and recruit the most promising immigrants into our economy, society, and polity. What tools should Democrats and reasonable Republicans on the Congressional conference committee advocate adding to its legislative repertoire?
Aid: Incorporate the most promising proposals from the ONE Campaign and Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs’s The End of Poverty into funding for field testing aid programs aimed at drastically reducing poverty around the world.
Development: Incorporate the most promising proposals from the World Social Forum and the International Forum on Globalization’s Alternatives to Economic Globalization into funding for field testing development projects that can help build a new Washington Consensus aimed at creating conditions for sustainable economic growth throughout the Western hemisphere.
Labor: Incorporate measures recommended by Amy Traub of the Drum Major Institute, who points out that “undocumented workers’ inability to defend their rights in the workplace contributes to a race to the bottom that hurts many Americans who aspire to a middle-class standard of living.” Recognize, with Sociologists Without Borders, that “workers who can work legally and workers who are undocumented need a living wage, safe working conditions, and pension and health benefits, and they need to be treated with respect and dignity.” Supplement funding for enforcement of laws forbidding employers from hiring and exploiting undocumented workers with recognition of workers’ right to free association and the benefits for everyone when they are free to form and join unions to improve the terms and conditions of their employment.
Trade: Turn NAFTA and CAFTA into truly cooperative programs that promote fair trade and globalization from below. Invest in transnational communications and transportation infrastructure to reduce the costs of international trade.
Given that the Republican-controlled Congress is unlikely to follow even the common-sense principles driving the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights’s Fair and Just Immigration Reform for All program, Americans should hope that it fails to pass an immigration reform bill before the mid-term elections in November. Once Congress is in more responsible hands, it can develop a truly comprehensive immigration reform bill.
THE COSTS AND BENEFITS OF THE SENATE IMMIGRATION BILL
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
6/7/06
Even for the Senate, the current immigration bill (the Hagel-Martinez immigration bill) is terrible. It includes a guest worker provision, an amnesty for many illegal aliens, and a large increase in legal immigration. A quick cost-benefit analysis shows why it shafts the citizenry.
Since 57% percent of illegal immigrants are from Mexico, it is worth considering their effects (as a side note, 80-85% of Mexican immigrants are illegal and 1 in 10 persons born in Mexico live in the U.S.). The following information in this section comes from a 2001 study from the Center for Immigration Studies and relies on data from the Census Bureau. As a group, Mexican immigrants suck up welfare benefits like a Hoover vacuum. While approximately 15% of natives used a major welfare program, Mexican immigrants use it at more than twice that rate (31%). One study by the National Academy of Sciences estimates that the average adult Mexican immigrant imposes a net loss of $55,200 on the U.S. (taxes paid minus services cost).
This tendency persists over time since 30% of Mexican immigrants who have been here for more than twenty years use welfare benefits. Even third-generation Mexican-Americans are more than twice as likely as natives to use welfare and almost twice as likely to be in poverty or near the poverty level. Thus, Mexican immigrants and their descendants continue to suck up tax dollars.
This study underestimates the danger since as medical costs spiral upward, the costs of these immigrants will likely explode. Since 53% of Mexican immigrants don’t have medical insurance, compared to 14% of natives, these costs threaten to break our ability to bail out Medicare and Social Security. Even legal Mexican immigrants who have been in the U.S. for more than 20 years are disproportionably uninsured (more than 33% don’t have medical insurance).
Nor can we reasonably expect this pattern to change over successive generations. Education is an important indicator of how a group will affect others’ pocketbooks and Mexican immigrants as a group do poorly in school. While 9% of natives drop out of high school, a whopping 65% of Mexican immigrants do. Again this pattern is multi-generational. Third-generation Mexican-Americans are almost three times likely as natives to drop out from high school and less than half as likely to graduate from college.
Culturally, Mexican immigrants drag down standards. According to one study that used Bureau of Justice statistics, Hispanics are three times more likely than whites to commit violent crimes and three times more likely to be incarcerated. They also have a comparatively weak family structure in that 36% of Hispanic births in the U.S. are out of wedlock. The kicker is that large numbers don’t identify with the U.S. or even want to become citizens. In 1997, only 15% of Mexicans qualified for naturalization did so, versus 53% from Europe and 44% from Asia.
What benefits outweigh these costs? Some Senate apologists claim that the amnesty is necessary to keep costs down. However, the Center for Immigration Studies suggests that Mexican immigration in the ’90s reduced prices between 0.08% and 0.2%. This is because unskilled labor accounts for a very small portion of economic output. Other Senate clowns claim that immigrants do jobs that natives won’t do. This is patently false since many of these jobs were done in the 1970s by non-immigrants. In 1970, for example, there were fewer than 800,000 Mexican immigrants in the country. Even if these benefits were real, they likely wouldn’t come close to outweighing the costs.
In addition, we still need to consider opportunity costs. Instead of amnestying millions of illegal aliens and letting in their families (the Congressional Budget Offices estimates that the Senate bill will increase the population by 8 million over the next 10 years), imagine we took in immigrants based on wealth, skills, and education. No one who isn’t a senator from Massachusetts could argue with a straight face that taking in largely uneducated Mexican immigrants is better for this country than taking in wealthy Chinese entrepreneurs, Pakistani doctors, and Indian engineers. The Senate is like the owner of an NFL team who uses its first round draft pick to take a player who couldn’t play for a college team. They must think we’re pretty dumb.
***
The Constructivist
FOR TRULY COMPREHENSIVE IMMIGRATION REFORM
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
6/7/06
Over the next few weeks and probably months a conference committee made up of selected members of the Senate and the House will attempt to reconcile the Hagel-Martinez Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006 (S. 2611) and the Sensenbrenner Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005 (H.R. 4437). Americans should hope the cheap labor corporatists and nativist populists of the Republican-controlled Congress fail to reach a compromise. Otherwise, they will have locked us into a fundamentally flawed version of “comprehensive immigration reform” and missed another opportunity to develop a truly efficient, effective, fair, and just way of managing regional and global labor flows for the benefit of everyone in the Americas.
The ongoing debate between Congressional Republicans who emphasize punitive and militaristic solutions to the immigration “crisis” and Senate Republicans and Democrats who advocate comprehensive reforms to U.S. immigration policy avoids confronting the root causes of large-scale international migrations. What are these causes? First, consider “push” factors such as poverty, lack of economic opportunity, political repression, and social instability abroad that lead people to make the agonizing decision to leave their homeland. Next, consider “pull” factors such as demand by U.S. corporations for cheap and vulnerable workers, along with a higher standard of living, political freedoms, and social stability that make the U.S. an attractive destination for international migrants. Then, take into account the uneven effects of corporate globalization and the Washington Consensus on trade and development promoted by such institutions as the International Monetary Fund, World Trade Organization, and World Bank and enacted in NAFTA and CAFTA. For example, the subsidies the U.S. offers to its own multinational corporations in agribusiness contribute to the impoverishment and bankruptcy of small farmers in Mexico and Central America, which leads them and their children to migrate to cities for work and, often, on to the United States.
By focusing on a limited version of “comprehensive immigration reform”--attending only to border and interior enforcement, visa reform and backlog reduction, and work authorization and legalization of undocumented workers--Congress fails to use key tools in aid, development, labor, and trade policy to provide disincentives for illegal immigration, mitigate the factors that lead to international migration, and recruit the most promising immigrants into our economy, society, and polity. What tools should Democrats and reasonable Republicans on the Congressional conference committee advocate adding to its legislative repertoire?
Aid: Incorporate the most promising proposals from the ONE Campaign and Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs’s The End of Poverty into funding for field testing aid programs aimed at drastically reducing poverty around the world.
Development: Incorporate the most promising proposals from the World Social Forum and the International Forum on Globalization’s Alternatives to Economic Globalization into funding for field testing development projects that can help build a new Washington Consensus aimed at creating conditions for sustainable economic growth throughout the Western hemisphere.
Labor: Incorporate measures recommended by Amy Traub of the Drum Major Institute, who points out that “undocumented workers’ inability to defend their rights in the workplace contributes to a race to the bottom that hurts many Americans who aspire to a middle-class standard of living.” Recognize, with Sociologists Without Borders, that “workers who can work legally and workers who are undocumented need a living wage, safe working conditions, and pension and health benefits, and they need to be treated with respect and dignity.” Supplement funding for enforcement of laws forbidding employers from hiring and exploiting undocumented workers with recognition of workers’ right to free association and the benefits for everyone when they are free to form and join unions to improve the terms and conditions of their employment.
Trade: Turn NAFTA and CAFTA into truly cooperative programs that promote fair trade and globalization from below. Invest in transnational communications and transportation infrastructure to reduce the costs of international trade.
Given that the Republican-controlled Congress is unlikely to follow even the common-sense principles driving the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights’s Fair and Just Immigration Reform for All program, Americans should hope that it fails to pass an immigration reform bill before the mid-term elections in November. Once Congress is in more responsible hands, it can develop a truly comprehensive immigration reform bill.
11 May 2006
Race v. Racialization II: IQ
The Objectivist
RACE DIFFERENCES IN INTELLIGENCE
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
5/10/06
Perhaps the most controversial issue in academia concerns the best explanation of race differences in group intelligence. Researchers such as J. Philippe Rushton, Arthur Jensen, Richard Herrnstein, and Charles Murray argue that there are race differences in intelligence and that they are in part due to genetics. IQ scores are test scores that are thought to reflect a person’s intelligence level. These researchers report that in the U.S., whites on average have a higher IQ than blacks (about 15 points higher, roughly a standard deviation). This means that the average white person tests higher than about 84% of black persons and the average black person tests higher than about 16% of whites. They also report that East Asians (e.g., Japanese and Koreans) on average have a higher IQ than whites (about 6 points higher).
There are two competing explanations of these differences: the culture-only theory (culture alone explains these differences) and the hereditarian theory (both culture and genetics explain the differences). In an article that attempts to summarize recent research on the topic, Rushton and Jensen argue that the evidence supports the hereditarian theory. One piece of evidence they cite is the clear worldwide ordering of IQ scores and related tests. Across cultures, East Asians score the best, whites in the middle, and blacks the worst. It is hard to see how the culture-only theory can explain the uniform ordering and similar scoring across cultures. The hereditarian model also explains why American blacks score much better than sub-Saharan blacks given that the former have white ancestors (on some estimates as much as 30% European genes).
A second piece of evidence they cite involves interracial adoption in Minnesota. This study found that Korean and Vietnamese children who are adopted by white families had IQs significantly higher than adopted siblings, despite the fact that as babies many were hospitalized for malnutrition. Black children adopted by white families ended up having IQs at the ordinary level for blacks (in Minnesota) and lower than that of their adopted siblings. Again, the hereditarian theory explains this in a more straightforward manner than the culturalist theory.
A third piece of evidence is that IQ tests show regression to race-specific mean. The idea of regression to the mean is that the children and siblings of persons with very high or low IQs are not as likely to have as extreme scores and the degree to which they move away from the extremes can be measured. White and black children and siblings tend to regress toward a race-specific level, as the hereditarian theory predicts.
Rushton and Jensen argue that cultural factors alone don’t explain these results. For example, socioeconomic status doesn’t account for it since two-thirds of the difference in scores remains even after this is taken into account. Nor statistically do specific factors such as differences in self-esteem, reading material, time spent on homework, parental education, father absence, etc. explain it. Culturally biased tests also don’t account for it. American blacks actually do worse on culturally fair tests than culturally loaded ones, whereas with East Asians the opposite is true.
We should also reject The Constructivist’s argument that the hereditarian theory should viewed skeptically because of the long history of racial pseudo-science and its use for abhorrent purposes. The past abuse of science casts doubt on its current use only if the latter involves similar sorts of errors and that’s what is at issue here.
To be fair, some scholars (e.g., Richard Nisbett) argue forcefully that a dispassionate reading of the evidence supports the culture-only theory and that researchers such as Rushton and Jensen have ignored and misinterpreted the most relevant data.
The good news for the left is that they need not rest their arguments for wealth redistribution, race preferences, and amnesty for illegal aliens on the culture-only theory. Arguments about equality of persons’ interests, the benefits of diversity, and the value of compassion (albeit with other people’s money) are independent of this theory. Thus, they can continue to support these programs and still avoid taking a side in this debate.
***
The Constructivist
THE RACIAL PROJECT OF RACIAL REALISM
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
5/10/06
What’s the best proof that racialization matters today? The very arguments of the “racial realists” who claim that races are real, not social constructs. In Racial Formation in the United States, Michael Omi and Howard Winant define racial formation as “the sociohistorical process by which racial categories are created, inhabited, transformed, and destroyed.” By contributing to ongoing debates over the meaning, reliability, validity, and referentiality of race, today’s racial realists are engaging in what Omi and Winant would identify as a “racial project” that “rearticulates” conventional meanings of race and thereby contributes to an ongoing process of racial formation.
When Steve Sailer or the bloggers who created Gene Expression use the term “race,” they define it quite differently than prior generations of racial scientists, who tended to privilege notions of racial purity, assign each individual to a single racial category, and place races within a rigid hierarchy. Today’s racial realists argue that advances in the study of human population genetics allow us to ground definitions of race in science, which produces methods for generating and assessing testable and falsifiable hypotheses. In offering their own hypotheses on the reality of races, they accept the claims (which many nineteenth-century racial scientists rejected) that all humans have a common ancestor, that any man and any woman can produce offspring, that human genetic differences form a patterned continuum. These patterned differences in human gene pools, they argue, arose from the effects of major barriers to human migration (such as the Sahara, the Himalayas, the Pacific, the Atlantic), which lead to migrating populations being geographically isolated from each other long enough for founders’ effects, natural selection, and genetic drift--along with cultural and social practices--to produce different races (understood as continent-scale differences in correlations of literally hundreds, perhaps thousands, of alleles) and ethnic groups (understood as sub-groups within these larger gene pools). Rather than fulminate against what was called “amalgamation” or “miscegenation,” as did many nineteenth- and twentieth-century racial scientists, today’s racial realists see all living humans as different combinations of racial mixtures. Racial realists’ definition and use of “race” is so different from prior biologistic definitions and uses that one wonders why they choose to rearticulate rather than jettison the concept.
As an English professor, I find studies in genomics deeply satisfying--what else are scientists doing when “mapping” the human genome than attempting to “read” a very complex code? Where I part company with the racial realists, however, is over the usefulness of combining the social fiction of race with the reality of human genetic differences. Take the study of intelligence, for instance. A small but vocal number of psychometricians argue that IQ tests accurately measure intelligence, that average scores for black, white, and East Asian people on these tests vary, and that these differences are largely attributable to genetic differences between these “races.” Yet by the racial realists’ own logic, those seeking to establish a race-intelligence correlation would first have to do genetic testing on a large number of people and decide on the criteria for assigning them to a “black,” “white,” or “East Asian” race; only after such assignations were made could differences among IQ scores be validly measured. And that’s assuming that IQ tests accurately measure intelligence, that a general factor for intelligence exists, and that correlations between it and “race” mean something. It’s not just that all these are deeply contested debates; it’s that they involve somewhat arbitrary decisions, including the choice to make broad racial/continental analyses rather than narrower ethnic/national analyses. Unlike nations and religions, where one’s membership in the socially-constructed group is fairly easy to establish, there is no objective way of defining a race or identifying criteria for membership in that kind of socially-constructed group.
To argue that racialization matters, that racism is real, and that scholars in the social scientists and humanities have every right to study human differences is not to dispute that genetics matters, that evolution is real, or that natural scientists have every right to study human biodiversity. To argue that awareness of past uses of racial sciences to justify imperialism, slavery, eugenics, and genocide entails the strictest of scrutiny toward current explorations of the human genome is not to call for an end to such explorations. On the contrary, just as new studies of human genetic differences can help us assess the validity of past scientific constructions of race, so, too, can historical studies of racial sciences’ past applications help us evaluate current attempts to draw inferences from the Human Genome Project or the HapMap.
RACE DIFFERENCES IN INTELLIGENCE
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
5/10/06
Perhaps the most controversial issue in academia concerns the best explanation of race differences in group intelligence. Researchers such as J. Philippe Rushton, Arthur Jensen, Richard Herrnstein, and Charles Murray argue that there are race differences in intelligence and that they are in part due to genetics. IQ scores are test scores that are thought to reflect a person’s intelligence level. These researchers report that in the U.S., whites on average have a higher IQ than blacks (about 15 points higher, roughly a standard deviation). This means that the average white person tests higher than about 84% of black persons and the average black person tests higher than about 16% of whites. They also report that East Asians (e.g., Japanese and Koreans) on average have a higher IQ than whites (about 6 points higher).
There are two competing explanations of these differences: the culture-only theory (culture alone explains these differences) and the hereditarian theory (both culture and genetics explain the differences). In an article that attempts to summarize recent research on the topic, Rushton and Jensen argue that the evidence supports the hereditarian theory. One piece of evidence they cite is the clear worldwide ordering of IQ scores and related tests. Across cultures, East Asians score the best, whites in the middle, and blacks the worst. It is hard to see how the culture-only theory can explain the uniform ordering and similar scoring across cultures. The hereditarian model also explains why American blacks score much better than sub-Saharan blacks given that the former have white ancestors (on some estimates as much as 30% European genes).
A second piece of evidence they cite involves interracial adoption in Minnesota. This study found that Korean and Vietnamese children who are adopted by white families had IQs significantly higher than adopted siblings, despite the fact that as babies many were hospitalized for malnutrition. Black children adopted by white families ended up having IQs at the ordinary level for blacks (in Minnesota) and lower than that of their adopted siblings. Again, the hereditarian theory explains this in a more straightforward manner than the culturalist theory.
A third piece of evidence is that IQ tests show regression to race-specific mean. The idea of regression to the mean is that the children and siblings of persons with very high or low IQs are not as likely to have as extreme scores and the degree to which they move away from the extremes can be measured. White and black children and siblings tend to regress toward a race-specific level, as the hereditarian theory predicts.
Rushton and Jensen argue that cultural factors alone don’t explain these results. For example, socioeconomic status doesn’t account for it since two-thirds of the difference in scores remains even after this is taken into account. Nor statistically do specific factors such as differences in self-esteem, reading material, time spent on homework, parental education, father absence, etc. explain it. Culturally biased tests also don’t account for it. American blacks actually do worse on culturally fair tests than culturally loaded ones, whereas with East Asians the opposite is true.
We should also reject The Constructivist’s argument that the hereditarian theory should viewed skeptically because of the long history of racial pseudo-science and its use for abhorrent purposes. The past abuse of science casts doubt on its current use only if the latter involves similar sorts of errors and that’s what is at issue here.
To be fair, some scholars (e.g., Richard Nisbett) argue forcefully that a dispassionate reading of the evidence supports the culture-only theory and that researchers such as Rushton and Jensen have ignored and misinterpreted the most relevant data.
The good news for the left is that they need not rest their arguments for wealth redistribution, race preferences, and amnesty for illegal aliens on the culture-only theory. Arguments about equality of persons’ interests, the benefits of diversity, and the value of compassion (albeit with other people’s money) are independent of this theory. Thus, they can continue to support these programs and still avoid taking a side in this debate.
***
The Constructivist
THE RACIAL PROJECT OF RACIAL REALISM
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
5/10/06
What’s the best proof that racialization matters today? The very arguments of the “racial realists” who claim that races are real, not social constructs. In Racial Formation in the United States, Michael Omi and Howard Winant define racial formation as “the sociohistorical process by which racial categories are created, inhabited, transformed, and destroyed.” By contributing to ongoing debates over the meaning, reliability, validity, and referentiality of race, today’s racial realists are engaging in what Omi and Winant would identify as a “racial project” that “rearticulates” conventional meanings of race and thereby contributes to an ongoing process of racial formation.
When Steve Sailer or the bloggers who created Gene Expression use the term “race,” they define it quite differently than prior generations of racial scientists, who tended to privilege notions of racial purity, assign each individual to a single racial category, and place races within a rigid hierarchy. Today’s racial realists argue that advances in the study of human population genetics allow us to ground definitions of race in science, which produces methods for generating and assessing testable and falsifiable hypotheses. In offering their own hypotheses on the reality of races, they accept the claims (which many nineteenth-century racial scientists rejected) that all humans have a common ancestor, that any man and any woman can produce offspring, that human genetic differences form a patterned continuum. These patterned differences in human gene pools, they argue, arose from the effects of major barriers to human migration (such as the Sahara, the Himalayas, the Pacific, the Atlantic), which lead to migrating populations being geographically isolated from each other long enough for founders’ effects, natural selection, and genetic drift--along with cultural and social practices--to produce different races (understood as continent-scale differences in correlations of literally hundreds, perhaps thousands, of alleles) and ethnic groups (understood as sub-groups within these larger gene pools). Rather than fulminate against what was called “amalgamation” or “miscegenation,” as did many nineteenth- and twentieth-century racial scientists, today’s racial realists see all living humans as different combinations of racial mixtures. Racial realists’ definition and use of “race” is so different from prior biologistic definitions and uses that one wonders why they choose to rearticulate rather than jettison the concept.
As an English professor, I find studies in genomics deeply satisfying--what else are scientists doing when “mapping” the human genome than attempting to “read” a very complex code? Where I part company with the racial realists, however, is over the usefulness of combining the social fiction of race with the reality of human genetic differences. Take the study of intelligence, for instance. A small but vocal number of psychometricians argue that IQ tests accurately measure intelligence, that average scores for black, white, and East Asian people on these tests vary, and that these differences are largely attributable to genetic differences between these “races.” Yet by the racial realists’ own logic, those seeking to establish a race-intelligence correlation would first have to do genetic testing on a large number of people and decide on the criteria for assigning them to a “black,” “white,” or “East Asian” race; only after such assignations were made could differences among IQ scores be validly measured. And that’s assuming that IQ tests accurately measure intelligence, that a general factor for intelligence exists, and that correlations between it and “race” mean something. It’s not just that all these are deeply contested debates; it’s that they involve somewhat arbitrary decisions, including the choice to make broad racial/continental analyses rather than narrower ethnic/national analyses. Unlike nations and religions, where one’s membership in the socially-constructed group is fairly easy to establish, there is no objective way of defining a race or identifying criteria for membership in that kind of socially-constructed group.
To argue that racialization matters, that racism is real, and that scholars in the social scientists and humanities have every right to study human differences is not to dispute that genetics matters, that evolution is real, or that natural scientists have every right to study human biodiversity. To argue that awareness of past uses of racial sciences to justify imperialism, slavery, eugenics, and genocide entails the strictest of scrutiny toward current explorations of the human genome is not to call for an end to such explorations. On the contrary, just as new studies of human genetic differences can help us assess the validity of past scientific constructions of race, so, too, can historical studies of racial sciences’ past applications help us evaluate current attempts to draw inferences from the Human Genome Project or the HapMap.
27 April 2006
Race v. Racialization
The Objectivist
IS RACE REAL?
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
4/26/06
Racial differences are real. This claim conflicts with the widely held view that racial groupings are social constructions. Groups and attributes that are socially constructed are ones that depend on persons thinking in certain ways. For example, attributes like being married, pretty, or middle class and things like money and languages are socially constructed. Other groups and attributes are not socially constructed. Rather they track fundamental divisions in the world. For example, consider categories such as mammal and gold.
Racial groupings are real properties. Persons have different genetic patterns and these patterns cluster around four or five groups (theorists differ here). The groups include blacks, whites, East Asians, and South Asians. So widely accepted are these genetic patterns that commercial firms will tell you where your ancestors came from. All you do is swab your mouth and send it to the company along with a check. The test can even tell persons of mixed ancestry the percentage of their ancestry that comes from different regions. The explanation for these differences is that populations separated over time and space accumulated genetic differences in response to natural selection and random genetic changes. In particular, it is thought that blacks split apart from non-blacks and later whites and Asians split apart.
There are a couple of arguments against the reality of race that are unconvincing. It is sometimes argued that race can’t be real because human beings of different races are much more similar genetically than they are dissimilar. This is unconvincing. Human beings share over 98% of their genes with chimpanzees; this doesn’t show that they are the same. It is also argued that since there are racially-mixed individuals, there can’t be races. However, the possibility of interbreeding doesn’t prevent there from being different groups. For example, the fact that some dogs can be part Great Dane and part German Shepard doesn’t show that there aren’t different breeds and that the differences between breeds aren’t in part due to genetics.
The reason it’s worth noting the reality of race is that it matters. Blacks, whites, and East-Asians have different distributions of intelligence. For example, on some estimates, the average white person has a higher IQ score than 84% of the black population, whereas the average black person tests higher than 16% of the white population. East-Asians score even higher than whites. Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, authors of the widely hated The Bell Curve, argue that a substantial part of these differences is due to genetics. As evidence they note that black and Asian children adopted by white families have IQs similar to that of blacks and Asians generally. Evidence can also be seen in that in the 1981-1995 period, white students whose parents did not have more than a high school diploma had higher SATs than black students at least one of whose parents had a graduate or professional degree (e.g., Ph.D. or M.D.). A similar pattern can be seen in that the SAT scores of whites from poor families exceeded that of blacks from rich ones. Rick Reilly of Sports Illustrated notes that only 48 men have run the 100-meter dash in under 10 seconds and they’re all black. He also notes that of the last 50 All-Pro cornerbacks, only one was white.
Our society has tried to ignore these genetic differences, thereby producing painful results. For example, preferential treatment has in the past led to 66% of black medical students failing part of the medical boards and 43% of black law students being unable to graduate and pass the bar within three years. We find similar results in other areas, e.g., teacher competency exams. A lot of resources have been wasted and persons harmed because of dishonesty about race. This is shameful.
***
The Constructivist
RACIALIZATION MATTERS
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
4/26/06
“Africans are naturally fitted for slavery.” “American Indians are destined for extinction.” “Democracy works only for Anglo-Saxons.” “Immigration by inferior European races to the United States must be stopped.” “Aryans are a master race who deserve to rule the world.” If these claims strike you as ridiculous or troubling, you may be surprised to discover that they were not the ravings of crackpots but were endorsed by the leading racial scientists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
If so, you’ll probably be shocked to find that the global history of race thinking is both long (spanning the past three to eight centuries, depending on how you define it), and, for much of that time, illustrious (it lost its stranglehold on public opinion in the West only relatively recently). Scholars such as Lee Baker, Elazar Barkan, Thomas Gossett, Ivan Hannaford, Audrey Smedley, and Nancy Stepan have produced intellectual histories that reveal a shift from theological and civilizational justifications of race thinking to scientific ones in the eighteenth century and after. In fact, key scientific disciplines—anthropology, biology, medicine, psychology, sociology—began as racial sciences. While their faults have been ably dissected by Ruth Benedict, Julian Huxley, and Ashley Montagu in the World War II era and Stephen Jay Gould, Daniel Kevles, and R.C. Lewontin over the past few decades, these racial sciences shaped Western conventional wisdom for much of the preceding two centuries.
Since the 1980s, scholarship on the social fabrication of race (Ian Haney López), the politics of racial formation (Michael Omi and Howard Winant), and the racialization of human differences (Mahmood Mamdani) has evolved from these histories and critiques of race thinking. Today, explorations abound of scientific, legal, literary, media, aesthetic, and popular constructions of race; of interrelationships between gender, class, national, ethnic, and racial formations; and, for their engagements with ideologies and narratives of race, of just about everything from naturalist novels to world’s fairs, from museums to minstrel shows, from the frontier to the suburbs, from immigration and naturalization law to media representations of Los Angeles and New Orleans. These explorations have amassed an overwhelming amount of evidence that races are social fictions, not biological facts. Consider that pre-WWII racial scientists could never quite agree on the number of races they were supposedly “finding” in nature—arguments ranged from a handful to dozens to hundreds, depending on which rules of classification were selected. Consider that in any of these schemas, there is more genetic variability within any “race” than between any two “races.” Consider that laws defining “white,” “black,” and “Indian” varied from state to state in the U.S., diverge even more widely from nation to nation, and have changed radically over time.
In the wake of the Human Genome Project and other revolutions in our understanding of human genetics over the past decade, some see another opportunity to establish the reality of races. But cutting-edge genetics does little to support the reliability, validity, and referentiality of race. Population geneticists can trace certain markers to produce what one book in this growing field has called The History and Geography of Human Genes. But all such studies do is track the various migrations out of Africa and around the world by various human populations. You can “find” as many “races” as you want, depending on what kind of computer analysis you perform. Similarly, people who pay for genetic analyses will most likely get a much more vivid picture of the movements and mixtures in their family trees than they ever expected. In the realm of individual development, geneticists are finding that one’s DNA is not a fixed blueprint but that environmental influences play a huge factor in determining which genes get switched on and off when. And at the level of social policy, profiling by phenotype and publicizing individuals’ genotypes raise troubling privacy, equal protection, and due process issues.
The idea that “race determines” intelligence, character, values, and potential is as flawed and dangerous now as it’s ever been. Attempts to map pre-WWII social fictions onto the latest findings in genetics are doomed to fail. There is no good reason to characterize human genetic differences as “racial” or to posit “race” as a cause or explanation of social phenomena.
If you’re still not convinced, try the following experiment: alternate reading a chapter from The Bell Curve and a chapter from Whitewashing Race: The Myth of a Color-Blind Society until you have finished both books. Then report back here which you find more persuasive and why.
UPDATE: The debate continues.
IS RACE REAL?
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
4/26/06
Racial differences are real. This claim conflicts with the widely held view that racial groupings are social constructions. Groups and attributes that are socially constructed are ones that depend on persons thinking in certain ways. For example, attributes like being married, pretty, or middle class and things like money and languages are socially constructed. Other groups and attributes are not socially constructed. Rather they track fundamental divisions in the world. For example, consider categories such as mammal and gold.
Racial groupings are real properties. Persons have different genetic patterns and these patterns cluster around four or five groups (theorists differ here). The groups include blacks, whites, East Asians, and South Asians. So widely accepted are these genetic patterns that commercial firms will tell you where your ancestors came from. All you do is swab your mouth and send it to the company along with a check. The test can even tell persons of mixed ancestry the percentage of their ancestry that comes from different regions. The explanation for these differences is that populations separated over time and space accumulated genetic differences in response to natural selection and random genetic changes. In particular, it is thought that blacks split apart from non-blacks and later whites and Asians split apart.
There are a couple of arguments against the reality of race that are unconvincing. It is sometimes argued that race can’t be real because human beings of different races are much more similar genetically than they are dissimilar. This is unconvincing. Human beings share over 98% of their genes with chimpanzees; this doesn’t show that they are the same. It is also argued that since there are racially-mixed individuals, there can’t be races. However, the possibility of interbreeding doesn’t prevent there from being different groups. For example, the fact that some dogs can be part Great Dane and part German Shepard doesn’t show that there aren’t different breeds and that the differences between breeds aren’t in part due to genetics.
The reason it’s worth noting the reality of race is that it matters. Blacks, whites, and East-Asians have different distributions of intelligence. For example, on some estimates, the average white person has a higher IQ score than 84% of the black population, whereas the average black person tests higher than 16% of the white population. East-Asians score even higher than whites. Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, authors of the widely hated The Bell Curve, argue that a substantial part of these differences is due to genetics. As evidence they note that black and Asian children adopted by white families have IQs similar to that of blacks and Asians generally. Evidence can also be seen in that in the 1981-1995 period, white students whose parents did not have more than a high school diploma had higher SATs than black students at least one of whose parents had a graduate or professional degree (e.g., Ph.D. or M.D.). A similar pattern can be seen in that the SAT scores of whites from poor families exceeded that of blacks from rich ones. Rick Reilly of Sports Illustrated notes that only 48 men have run the 100-meter dash in under 10 seconds and they’re all black. He also notes that of the last 50 All-Pro cornerbacks, only one was white.
Our society has tried to ignore these genetic differences, thereby producing painful results. For example, preferential treatment has in the past led to 66% of black medical students failing part of the medical boards and 43% of black law students being unable to graduate and pass the bar within three years. We find similar results in other areas, e.g., teacher competency exams. A lot of resources have been wasted and persons harmed because of dishonesty about race. This is shameful.
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The Constructivist
RACIALIZATION MATTERS
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
4/26/06
“Africans are naturally fitted for slavery.” “American Indians are destined for extinction.” “Democracy works only for Anglo-Saxons.” “Immigration by inferior European races to the United States must be stopped.” “Aryans are a master race who deserve to rule the world.” If these claims strike you as ridiculous or troubling, you may be surprised to discover that they were not the ravings of crackpots but were endorsed by the leading racial scientists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
If so, you’ll probably be shocked to find that the global history of race thinking is both long (spanning the past three to eight centuries, depending on how you define it), and, for much of that time, illustrious (it lost its stranglehold on public opinion in the West only relatively recently). Scholars such as Lee Baker, Elazar Barkan, Thomas Gossett, Ivan Hannaford, Audrey Smedley, and Nancy Stepan have produced intellectual histories that reveal a shift from theological and civilizational justifications of race thinking to scientific ones in the eighteenth century and after. In fact, key scientific disciplines—anthropology, biology, medicine, psychology, sociology—began as racial sciences. While their faults have been ably dissected by Ruth Benedict, Julian Huxley, and Ashley Montagu in the World War II era and Stephen Jay Gould, Daniel Kevles, and R.C. Lewontin over the past few decades, these racial sciences shaped Western conventional wisdom for much of the preceding two centuries.
Since the 1980s, scholarship on the social fabrication of race (Ian Haney López), the politics of racial formation (Michael Omi and Howard Winant), and the racialization of human differences (Mahmood Mamdani) has evolved from these histories and critiques of race thinking. Today, explorations abound of scientific, legal, literary, media, aesthetic, and popular constructions of race; of interrelationships between gender, class, national, ethnic, and racial formations; and, for their engagements with ideologies and narratives of race, of just about everything from naturalist novels to world’s fairs, from museums to minstrel shows, from the frontier to the suburbs, from immigration and naturalization law to media representations of Los Angeles and New Orleans. These explorations have amassed an overwhelming amount of evidence that races are social fictions, not biological facts. Consider that pre-WWII racial scientists could never quite agree on the number of races they were supposedly “finding” in nature—arguments ranged from a handful to dozens to hundreds, depending on which rules of classification were selected. Consider that in any of these schemas, there is more genetic variability within any “race” than between any two “races.” Consider that laws defining “white,” “black,” and “Indian” varied from state to state in the U.S., diverge even more widely from nation to nation, and have changed radically over time.
In the wake of the Human Genome Project and other revolutions in our understanding of human genetics over the past decade, some see another opportunity to establish the reality of races. But cutting-edge genetics does little to support the reliability, validity, and referentiality of race. Population geneticists can trace certain markers to produce what one book in this growing field has called The History and Geography of Human Genes. But all such studies do is track the various migrations out of Africa and around the world by various human populations. You can “find” as many “races” as you want, depending on what kind of computer analysis you perform. Similarly, people who pay for genetic analyses will most likely get a much more vivid picture of the movements and mixtures in their family trees than they ever expected. In the realm of individual development, geneticists are finding that one’s DNA is not a fixed blueprint but that environmental influences play a huge factor in determining which genes get switched on and off when. And at the level of social policy, profiling by phenotype and publicizing individuals’ genotypes raise troubling privacy, equal protection, and due process issues.
The idea that “race determines” intelligence, character, values, and potential is as flawed and dangerous now as it’s ever been. Attempts to map pre-WWII social fictions onto the latest findings in genetics are doomed to fail. There is no good reason to characterize human genetic differences as “racial” or to posit “race” as a cause or explanation of social phenomena.
If you’re still not convinced, try the following experiment: alternate reading a chapter from The Bell Curve and a chapter from Whitewashing Race: The Myth of a Color-Blind Society until you have finished both books. Then report back here which you find more persuasive and why.
UPDATE: The debate continues.
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