Andrew Sullivan is back at it again, kindly reminding us that despite his support of Obama, who he really is never lurks far from the surface. Yep, he's defending The Bell Curve again, relying on the same tricks---mainly leaning on the assumption that the audience doesn't have time to do the background research, which is true enough and a reason why journalists really shouldn't promote pseudo-science---and Ta-Nehisis Coates is pushing back, albeit in a way that far more generous than I could ever feel towards Sullivan's intentions. It's really upsetting to see these redonkulous theories of race and IQ continue to be trotted out 30 years after biologist Stephen Jay Gould published The Mismeasure of Man, neatly outlining the history of these kinds of studies, the arguments for what kind of scientific proof would actually be required (hint: much higher than need-to-believe sorts like Sullivan accept), and the real-life results of putting a faux scientific veneer on old-fashioned racist and classist arguments about how oppressed people aren't oppressed but simply inferior. (Forced sterilization is a direct example, but basically all continued institutional racist oppression is rationalized by the "it's not the oppression, it's that they're not good enough" argument). There was even a 1996 reprint that kindly put to bed The Bell Curve's attempts to update the hoary old IQ studies of old. Ta-Nehisi addresses the ahistorical aspects of Sullivan's.....I hate to call the "arguments", so I'm going to say evidence-free whinings about the P.C. police preventing scientists from demonstrating what he clearly thinks they could, which is that black people are inferior as a group.
