Dobbs runs from IQ

A. Zarkov writes (April 5):

I sometimes listen to Lou Dobbs on my car radio. Generally he seems somewhat sensible, and he has given a lot of exposure to illegal immigration issue on his programs. But today I heard him go into a tirade when a caller suggested that part of the black-white school performance gap could be attributed to a difference in IQ. He refused to engage, labeling the caller “ignorant” and went off into a rant about San Francisco (the caller was identified as from San Francisco). Normally he treats the callers politely, but not in this case. The interchange took place about 50 minutes into the first hour of his three-hour radio broadcast. His broadcast can be downloaded.

I suspect Dobbs was acting out of fear that his program would get called racist if he calmly discussed the subject. He’s already been called a racist for opposing illegal immigration. Every day I see more and more sanity flow away from public discourse in the U.S. It becomes depressing at times.

LA replies:

This suggests that he is not acquainted with the issue at all. But how is that possible? Does he not know that the New York Times for many years quites openly discusses the black academic gap all the time, the Thernstroms have books on it that are widely discussed, Thomas Sowell discusses it, etc. Yes, these parties deny that the cause is IQ, but they don’t demonize the belief that it is IQ. The discussion, while still evasive, has become a lot more subtle than in the past. He could have handled it some other way, like saying we don’t know what the cause is or something. But for him to attack a person for raising the issue does not speak well of him.

A. Zarkov replies:

Absolutely. He could simply have said, “that issue is too complex to discuss as a call in question,” and left it at that. I’m going to send Dobbs a critical email over this and pretty much tune him out in the future.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 28, 2008 01:42 PM | Send