At this point, I think Mr. Auster has demonstrated beyond any doubt that he is the one who has the racial axe to grind. Exposing the logical blunders of an NRO writer might be good sport, but there is more than sport driving Mr. Auster’s relentless zeal in pursuit of racial issues.

So Blacks, taken aggregated as Blacks, have a lower average IQ than Whites, and the blacker the Blacks, the lower the average IQ. Very good.

We can group people by race, by religion, by region, by vocation, and by virtually any criteria you can name, and some groups will come out with lower average IQs. But averages, of course, are meaningless apart from other things. The average of 2 and 22 is 12, as is the average of 11 and 13: the distribution is more significant than the mean. The distribution of something like racial intelligence quotients is easily skewed by things like abortion, infant mortality, and death rates due to war and disease. Students of Western intellectual history, for instance, will recognize that a disproportionate number of great thinkers, composers, and writers suffered from frail and precarious health — the kind of men who would not survive adolescence in many a “third world” society.

Furthermore, a certain amount of disparity between races will, in fact, be explained by culture, by malnutrition, and by other non-genetic factors. The remaining disparity in averages that can be honestly attributed to racial, genetic, or biological factors (not easily isolated in the first place) is liklely to be more characteristic of smaller units (e.g., families or tribes) within the group, is liklely to be fluid across the generations, and is still an “average” without a distribution.

Anyway, Mr. Auster begs the question: What should be done with this information, exactly?

Is Black intelligence permanently and uniformly inferior? Is Black culture permanently and uniformly anti-intellectual? To what extent should individual Blacks be treated, in private life and public policy, as members of a race with low average intelligence? To what extent should races with high average intelligence avoid intermarriage with races with lower average intelligence? To what extent should American immigration and social policy restrict members of races with low average intelligence? Where does intelligence rank on the scale of desirable social goods? Are there other kinds of intelligence than is measured by IQ tests, and if so, how are they significant?

With these complexities in mind, it would seem that racial intelligence disparities — however one chooses to define race — are little more than fodder for a new game of Trivial Pursuit. And formulating any kind of public policy based on these aggregated differences strikes me as both foolish and unjust.

I found it interesting that Mark Goldblatt should ultimately defend his views on the basis that he is “emotionally predisposed to think … that the intellectual, moral and spiritual capacities of individuals are not limited by the geographic origins of their ancestors.”

At the core of liberalism is a belief that an individual should be created by his own will and reason, rather than by factors outside of individual control such as race and sex.

Hence Mark Goldblatt’s concern with the apparent correlation between race and IQ which directly challenges the liberal ideal.

There are intrusive public policies that presume that all racial differences in outcome reflect unjust treatment of racial minorities. Does Mr. Culbreath believe that the question of innate differences in average intelligence has no legitimate bearing on such policies?

Well … there are racial differences, and then there are “innate” racial differences. I’m not at all convinced that IQ differences are “innate” in racial groupings — and even if they were, these specific groupings are not “innate” to the human race. Therefore, the problem remains of what to do with the kind of information Mr. Auster presents in a practical way.

I recall reading not long ago that the president of Singapore had some theory about the inferior intelligence of Catholic populations. Because the brightest Catholic young men are sent off to be priests, and because Catholic priests are celibate and do not contribute to the gene pool, he argues that Catholic populations are “dumbed down” and of inferior average intelligence. (Interestingly, Singapore’s own Catholic population is predominantly Eurasian — of mixed European and Chinese descent — and largely keeps to itself.) If true, would this lower average intelligence be “innate” to Roman Catholics?

Racial differences do, of course, have legitimate bearing on instrusive government and corporate policies, but only because these policies are obsessed with measuring such differences in order to eradicate them. Whether they really exist, or are really innate, is not the issue. The real question concerns the contexts in which racial classifications are useful or helpful (say, bone marrow trasnplants), and the contexts in which racial classifications are destructive (such as apartheid or affirmative action).

We’re on the same side here. Let’s get rid of affirmative action, and let’s get rid of “antiracism” as an ideology. In fact, Mr. Goldblatt comes to the same policy conclusions. But Mr. Auster, who has written wistfully of the “racial hierarchy” that would return in the absence of such programs, seems to want more.

As a practical matter, “innate” means “stubborn, not to managed out of existence by government interventions.” In responding to the modern egalitarian state I think it’s necessary to make the point that it won’t succeed in its goals. “Innateness” is therefore important.

As to hierarchies, if there are differences in average abilities between racial groups, and race correlates with other consequences of long life in common, like culture, then it seems to me that an end to interventionist government would mean (i) there will be evident differences between racial groups in average attainments, (ii) some particular cultural standards will become the ones that people rely on in public life, and (iii) those standards will be very heavily influenced by the ones found among the largest and most successful racial group (if there is one). In other words, you will end up with a situation that antiracists would refer to as racial hierarchy—some will be more at the top, some more at the bottom, and in public life some will find it easier to fit in than others.

Mr. Culbreath writes: “We’re on the same side here. Let’s get rid of affirmative action, and let’s get rid of ‘antiracism’ as an ideology. In fact, Mr. Goldblatt comes to the same policy conclusions. But Mr. Auster, who has written wistfully of the ‘racial hierarchy’ that would return in the absence of such programs, seems to want more.”

Mr. Culbreath’s assumption is that the neoconservatives and (what shall I call us?) the NON-neoconservatives are on the same side on racial issues, against both affirmative action and the ideology of antiracism.

This is quite incorrect. It is true that neoconservatives oppose (or make a show of opposing) affirmative action. But they oppose it not just because they think it’s unjust and socially divisive, but because they think it stands in the way of the attainment of true racial equality. Most neoconservatives who write on these subjects continue to insist that blacks’ and Hispanics’ innate abilities are the same as those of whites and Asians, and that it is only affirmative action—or rather the entire system of having easier standards for minorities—that is responsible for the actual racial inequalities. Give everyone the same standards, say the neocons, and all groups will soon be performing at the same level. Thus the bottom-line for the neocons is still the liberal dream of actual, substantive human equality among all groups. (The significance of this will be made clear in a moment.)

Second, the neocons are most decidedly not against antiracism as an ideology. Consider Mark Goldblatt’s article that I initially linked. Mr. Goldblatt writes that REAL racism is to believe that some racial groups (or, as he would have it, groups of common geographical descent) have lower innate abilities than others. In other words, he believes that that there are no instrinsic racial differences in civilizational abilities, and, furthermore, if you believe there are such differences, then you are a racist.

As a result of these beliefs, the neocons can never allow the real reason for continued racial inequality of outcomes to be stated openly. Let’s say that they succeeded somehow in getting rid of affirmative action, with the expectation that this would lead to racial equality. But when, despite some improvements, the elimination of AA and double racial standards fails to lead to complete racial equality, what can the neocons say? They have already forbidden—as “racist”—any mention of the REAL cause of the continued racial inequality, which is the inherent racial differences in ability. Therefore they will have no basis on which stand against the renewed demands of liberals for various intrusive social programs to raise the level of minorities.

The point is that the ONLY way to discredit the racial-engineering agenda of modern society is to refute the false premise on which it is based—the egalitarian fiction that the races all have the same inherent abilities.

“Mr. Culbreath’s assumption is that the neoconservatives and (what shall I call us?) the NON-neoconservatives are on the same side on racial issues, against both affirmative action and the ideology of antiracism.”

Actually, I don’t pay much attention to who is a neocon and who isn’t. But most mainstream conservatives are against using racism as the standard explanation for group differences.

“This is quite incorrect. It is true that neoconservatives oppose (or make a show of opposing) affirmative action. But they oppose it not just because they think it’s unjust and socially divisive, but because they think it stands in the way of the attainment of true racial equality.”

Then they are just as mixed up as you are. Neither racial equality, nor racial inequality, have any intrinsic merit.

“Most neoconservatives who write on these subjects continue to insist that blacks’ and Hispanics’ innate abilities are the same as those of whites and Asians …”

Really? I must not get out much, for I have never heard this nonsense except from liberals. OTOH, it is true that most conservatives remain skeptical of claims that differences in average intelligence or achievment between racial groups must reflect their “innate” abilities. As long as members of the group exist, or potentially exist, that deviate significantly from the average, there is nothing “innate” in the group preventing this.

(To Mr. Kalb: My Webster’s offers the following definitions for “innate”: 1) existing in, belonging to, or determined by factors present in an individual from birth; 2) belonging to the essential nature of something. It follows that attaching “innate” to an aggregated number of individuals, however classified, is not the best use of the term.)

“… and that it is only affirmative action—or rather the entire system of having easier standards for minorities—that is responsible for the actual racial inequalities. Give everyone the same standards, say the neocons, and all groups will soon be performing at the same level.”

Once again, I seldom hear this except from liberals.

“Second, the neocons are most decidedly not against antiracism as an ideology. Consider Mark Goldblatt’s article that I initially linked. Mr. Goldblatt writes that REAL racism is to believe that some racial groups (or, as he would have it, groups of common geographical descent) have lower innate abilities than others. In other words, he believes that that there are no instrinsic racial differences in civilizational abilities, and, furthermore, if you believe there are such differences, then you are a racist.”

Now this gets interesting. Remove the words “innate” and “intrinsic”, and I think we might be close to agreement. But somehow I think “innate” and “intrinsic” are essential to your own ideology of racial determinism.

“As a result of these beliefs, the neocons can never allow the real reason for continued racial inequality of outcomes to be stated openly.”

Then such people can’t get past thinking about race in the standard Marxian way: power, class, and inequality. The same seems to be true of the racialists on the Right.

“The point is that the ONLY way to discredit the racial-engineering agenda of modern society is to refute the false premise on which it is based—the egalitarian fiction that the races all have the same inherent abilities.”

No, that is not the only way: in fact, that is capitulation to liberal categories and Marxist language. The only legitimate way to discredit the racial engineering agenda of the Left is with the Catholic truth about God and man. Here is the best discussion of the subject I have seen thus far:

http://www.catholictradition.org/cfn-race1.htm

http://www.catholictradition.org/cfn-race1.htm

A question for Mr. Auster: Does such a thing as racism exist, in your opinion? If so, how would you define it? And is it a good thing or a bad thing?

The article linked above proposes a Catholic definition that should help move the conversation forward:

“According to the Dictionary of Moral Theology:
Racism is a doctrine which asserts that race is the essential and initial factor in man’s refinement and in the historical and cultural evolution of all peoples.”

Do you agree with this?

By mistake, I posted the same link twice in a previous post. The second article is found here:

http://www.catholictradition.org/cfn-race2.htm

It’s been suggested to me before by more than one person that it’s not worth replying to Mr. Culbreath. While I resisted that thought, his latest batch of comments tends to confirm it. His woeful misconstrual of the basic issues, his arrows-flying-in-every-direction comments, and his continuing suggestion of bad faith or bad motives on my part (which nothing I can say is going to alleviate, since that seems to be his main reason for posting), when all added together, make it a waste of time and energy to try to converse with him.

In other words, addressing my comments directly, and in public, would take Mr. Auster away from his comfort zone.

Yet I would think that even his allies might like to know if he agrees with the definition of racism just presented.

I don’t purport to speak for Mr. Auster, but I think the definition of “racism” you cite is nonsense. I would bet that few reasonable, right-thinking people take the position that race (or whatever you want to call it) all by itself is the primary determinant of man’s worth. From a Catholic point of view, such a belief clearly would be sinful.

But that is not to say that race isn’t important, or that it hasn’t played a significant role (NOTE: not THE essential role) in the development of civilization. On some level race is important. People care about race much as they care about their family and their community, though to a lesser degree. How else does one explain the multitude of racial conflicts in the world? The solution to this strife is not to pretend that race doesn’t exist or that it is unimportant — which would be to deny reality — but to put race in its proper place in the hierarchy of values.

Incidentally, I’m always amused by the Catholics (and other Christians) who are obsessed with notions of race and with attacking those they consider “racist” (invariably white people, because as we all know non-whites can NEVER be racist). I can’t help but feel that their secret solution to the problems of “race” is to encourage the world’s racial groups to intermarry, thereby gradually erasing all difference and eliminating “racism”. I chuckle at this, because both the Old and New Testaments, as well as the Catechism itself, support the concept of nation (i.e., a grouping of people who share common origins, history, language, etc.). Multiculturalism carries with it no imperative to intermarry. On the contrary, to undo the wonderful diversity of races that God created seems to me to be, well, positively un-Christian.

I am not particuarly fond of the word ‘racism’ because of the modern confusion of meanings that surrounds it. But I think it makes sense to view race and culture, in an extended and dilluted sense, as within the same geneology as family. To the extent racism means that someone is just mean-spirited and lacking in Christian charity it is obviously wrong. To the extent it implies that it is wrong for someone to have pride in and a sense of loyalty to his particular family, race, culture, and station I think it is upside-down.

This is true of any particular attribute in the geneology of types that make us up as actual, concrete individuals, though. It is categorically wrong to be mean-spirited and lacking in Christian charity toward other families, races, cultures, or whatever simply in virtue of the fact that it is categorically wrong to be mean-spirited and lacking in Christian charity in general. This becomes confused as the transition is made from more specific types to more general types because liberalism has declared stereotyping in general anathema. But the reality is, when you take most stereotypes home to meet your family, most of them are not like that. Of all the stereotypes out there, a few mean spirited and uncharitable ones tend to cast a pall over all the others, when really, most stereotypes are good things taken in themselves.

I suppose I should have said “taxonomy” rather than “geneology” above. I’d hate to be accused of mixing my congenitals with other species.

Well said. Your words echo what Steve Sailer [ http://www.isteve.com ] has been saying about the meaning of race. His definition of “race” is as follows: “Racial groups are extended families that are inbred to some degree.”

Lawrence, I presume you are a professing Christian. But how do you reconcile your assertion that there is an inherent/inate IQ difference between races with a an all-powerful God who would purposely create one of his creature strains with lower reasoning and cognitive abilities?

Any observer can see the differences in achivement between blacks and just about everyone else, in the area of financial wealth creation, self-government and cultural achivement, but is this a function of genetics or of a deficient black culture? Does genetics predispose blacks to celebrating and nurturing a decadent culture, or does the reality of decadent culture merely imply a genetic predisposition to illegitimacy and general malaise?

This is a very interesting debate and I only wish leftwingers could approach the topic objectively, shedding their presuppositions about conservatives and race.

Thanks to Jeff Brewer for the excellent, and difficult, question. In one sense, the question he asks is no different from the question why any human imperfection exists in a world created by God. Even within one race, many people are born with deficient inherited characteristics. And all kinds of terrible inherited diseases also exist in this world created by God. How can those things be justified in terms of Christianity, any more than inherited group differences in intelligence?

One answer, as Augustine puts it, is that perfect being only resides in God, and that created beings only partake partially of God’s being and attributes. See Books XI and XII of The City of God.

Another answer is that when we’re walking with God, we do sometimes have the grace of seeing people, all people, in their individual and in their group characteristics, in the light of their true and perfect being as God meant them to be. This is a glimpse, in the here and now, of our true nature and destiny beyond the here and now. But these intimations of spiritual perfection must not be mistaken for what actually exists and what is actually possible within ordinary human and political reality. That is the mistake utopians—which includes a large number of modern Westerners—make. They catch a glimpse of perfection, and then imagine that the actual, day to day world can and must be like that. So they overturn the existing world with its imperfect but substantial goods and end up creating a hell on earth.

In the next week or two, I plan to post a long, previously unpublished draft on racial differences in intelligence which will explain the evolution of my views on this subject.

I thought I might venture an answer to Mr. Brewer’s question which, as Mr. Auster implies, is really just a restatement of the classic problem of evil.

Voltaire famously ridiculed the notion that the world he lived in was the best of all possible worlds. What he failed to realize is that it in fact was the best of all possible worlds _for Voltaire himself_. No other possible world contained Voltaire as the exact particular concrete person he was, and his categorical condemnation of that world reflects a lack of gratitude and a positive desire for his own annihilation.

The same relativity principle applies to everyone universally. In no other world do I exist; therefore this is the best of all possible worlds for me. Change history by a nit and I am wiped out of existence. The butterfly effect guarantees it; God might create someone with my name and appearance, but that would not be the concrete and actual me as I actually am. Change the history of the sexual acts of my parents by a microsecond and I do not exist; change any significant historical occurrence prior to our births and none of us exist. Anything horrible about the world and its history is intrinsically something horrible about me — and just me, not God. This is my original sin and my need for redemption. The fact that God allows the abominations of the world to exist blasphemously at His feet can only be due to his profound love for me as a particular person. I am not possible as myself without these abominations: they are written into the fabric of my being as conditions for my very possibility.

The lament that God allows people who are unequal in some respects to exist at all is profoundly silly and lacking in gratitude. Even the baby in the dumpster is given his existence, and subsequent eternal paradise. To indict God for allowing the injustices of this world is to ask God for personal annihilation.

Was that helpful?

Well said. Sounds convincing, not to mention eloquently stated, to me.

Regarding Jeff Brewer’s question on how we can reconcile the existence of innate racial differences in intelligence with the existence of God, a correspondent wrote to me:

“He thinks God ought to believe in equality. Why should He?”

This seems a simpler and more direct reply to Mr. Brewer’s query than my own earlier comment. It is worth pointing this out because it shows how, without thinking about it, I (and Mr. Brewer) accepted the liberal premise that any natural inequality between human groups is the equivalent of being born with some “terrible inherited disease”—and how could God allow that? In other words, we equated the existence of natural inequality with the existence of evil, which is a different question.

Christians should not have a problem with natural human inequalities, since they believe in a spiritual order that transcends such differences. It is secular liberals who are terrified by the prospect of natural inequalities because, not believing in anything higher than man, they believe that, if there are any natural differences of inferiority or superiority between men, such differences are absolute, and therefore must lead to some men enslaving or murdering others.

Excellent, and very much to the point.

It isn’t just Christians, or theists for that matter, who ought to have a problem with the treatment of inequality as injustice that should be remedied in the here-and-now. Even an atheist should be able to see, based on straightforward evaluation of the facts and a simple thought experiment, that a cry for justice-as-equality is a cry for the annihilation of all actual humans who exist.

Suppose a strong-atheistic secular humanist were suddenly given complete omnipotent power in order to right all wrongs. He now has the ability to correct all injustice: to remake the world from the beginning so that it is perfectly just under his own definition and sense of justice. This sense of justice requires equality for all, so our actual world is completely annihilated and replaced with a new one that properly meets his sense of justice**. The net result of an omnipotent insistence on liberal justice is the annihilation of actual humanity; and in fact the more temporal power that liberalism receives, the more actual humans are annihilated. The history of the twentieth century (and the ongoing butchery of children right now) demonstrates this clearly. It shouldn’t take a theist to see something troubling here.

** In actual fact there is no such conceivable possible world at all, so the liberal cry for justice-as-equality is, as I mentioned before, to ask God to annihilate us all (including all of our previous history).