Posted on 08/22/2021 4:38:32 AM PDT by MtnClimber
As you may be aware, Charles Murray is out with a new book, “Facing Reality: Two Truths About Race In America.” I picked up a copy today. It’s not a long book, and I am already much of the way through it.
For those curious about how I got the book, I bought it at my local independent bookstore, Three Lives on West 10th Street in Greenwich Village. Of course, they did not have it in stock. But they took my order, and after a couple of weeks, the book arrived, and I went over and bought it. (This is in contrast to Abigail Shrier’s “Irreversible Damage” which, although I ordered it about two months ago, somehow has still not arrived; and to Ryan Anderson’s “When Harry Became Sally,” as to which, the clerk informed me, after studying his computer screen intently for several minutes, “we can’t get that.”)
The gist of Murray’s book is not complicated to summarize. The “two truths about race” that Murray refers to are, in the words of the Table of Contents, “race differences in cognitive ability,” and “race differences in violent crime.” Murray’s point is that it is impossible to have an intelligent discussion about race in America without recognizing the truths about the large differences between and among races on these two metrics.
Even as I was making my way through Murray’s book, I came across today, via Maggie’s Farm, a recent review of it at Quillette by a guy named Razib Khan. The guy who posted the link at Maggie’s to Khan’s piece, who goes by the name “The Barrister,” calls it “a thoughtful review.” But then Barrister says, “it seems unfair to expect Murray to offer solutions.” What Barrister refers to is this excerpt, which is the heart of Khan’s review:
Murray’s narrative suffers from a similar failing—it identifies problems, but leaves the vexing elaboration of innovative policy solutions to others. It drops the data at our feet like a ticking time-bomb, but the prescriptions to defuse the device are like an instruction without a manual.
Well, it’s a lot worse than just that it “seems unfair” to expect Murray to offer solutions. Can we just state here what should be obvious to everyone? — THERE DOES NOT EXIST ANY “INNOVATIVE POLICY SOLUTION” THAT IS GOING TO SOMEHOW “SOLVE” OR “FIX” THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN AND AMONG RACES IN COGNITIVE ABILITY OR VIOLENT CRIME. Nor does there exist any “policy solution” (“innovative” or otherwise) that is going to solve or fix any time soon the differences in life outcomes between and among racial groups that flow from the two underlying truths that Murray identifies.
It just seems to be nearly universally accepted among our progressive elites that all human problems are subject to being promptly solved or fixed by having the government hire some group of self-proclaimed experts who will devise some “innovative policy solutions” and, with the added magic of infinite government resources, voila!, the problems will be solved. If somehow the first trillion dollars or ten trillion or a hundred trillion hasn’t fixed the problem, it must therefore be an issue of not having tried quite the right solution, or of not having been given enough funding.
As bad as is the progressive failure and refusal to recognize or even allow mention of Murray’s “two truths,” just as bad or worse in my opinion is the failure and refusal to acknowledge the abject failure of essentially all progressive “solutions” to major societal problems in the form of “policies” of government programs and spending. Name any area touched by this delusion — poverty, homelessness, housing, education, health care, “food insecurity” — and you find the exact same thing: more and more spending, bigger and bigger bureaucracies, and the problem as defined never gets better and indeed gets worse. No amount of failure of this model seems able to make the slightest dent in the blind faith that it is going to work next time.
Now we’ve just come off a year and a half where somehow the “experts” sold the politicians (or at least the Democratic ones) on the idea that they could “solve” the problem of a new highly infectious virus. The experts gave us mask mandates and lockdowns and business and school closures and stay-at-home orders, all at enormous cost to the economy and human well-being and with no measurable benefit in terms of reduction in illness or death. The only thing of measurable benefit has been the vaccines, which have been almost entirely an effort of the private sector (except to the extent that the government contributed by expediting regulatory approvals and otherwise getting out of the way).
Our world is so far from perfect, and not remotely perfectible. For life outcomes, the best we can hope for is that the large majority of people, all those who are not severely disabled in some way, can lead independent and fulfilling lives according to their own desires and preferences and willingness to work. Our own country has made far more progress toward this goal than any other society in world history. But that progress has mostly been made through allowing a freedom-based economic order to operate, not through government programs and spending and redistributions. Equality of outcome? Our government programs can’t even make a meaningful dent in “poverty” after many decades and tens of trillions of dollars.
Maybe the lack of any government-directed solutions to such problems should have been Murray’s third truth.
There may not be 56 genders, but there are more than 56 ways to be successful in our society. Violence and crime are not on the list. Why not teach that in school instead of the CRT hate lessons?
The only “solution” that comes to mind is too terrible to contemplate.
But in the meantime, I think bending over backwards to constantly declare that all aspects of black culture are good, and admirable, and praiseworthy is perhaps not advisable.
Likewise, making a big effort to reject white western civilization and declaring it to the root of all of our problem is also not advisable.
We cannot really change people. But we can focus on aspects of culture which lead to success and not failure.
Already read it.
The facts are irrefutable, but when did politics rely on facts?
The country has already been led down the garden path. Return to the principles of its’ founding will engender violence from the privileged minorities we sought in vain to help. Can we (will we) face up to it?
Read the book when it came out. No sugar-coating. Surprised this guy has survived at Harvard.
It will likely end up being forced down the crapper hole the exact same way “The Bell Curve” was years ago.
Bkmrk
I highly recommend his book “coming apart”.
The gospel of Christ and the working mother-father home are the only hope for each family. Everything else is just witchcraft.
Murray is wrong. It is not “race” it is culture, and the culture that produces so much crime is not embraced or supported all “blacks”. It is not “race” but culture - the culture of out-of-wedlock births and single-parent unmarried female-head-of-household from which both crime and low education achievements arise. AND that culture is not a culture embraced by all “blacks”.
The great Conservative economist, Thomas Sowell, studied education achievement in the segregated schools of Washington D.C. in the 1950s. The 1950s was also a time before the “great leap” in out-of-wedlock births and unmarried single-parent female-head-of-household situations. His study was to pose a question as to whether or not “integrated” schools were a prerequisite for “black” academic achievement. What Sowell found was that in the 1950s, in the segregated schools in Washington D.C., “blacks” had academic achievement levels above the national average.
What changed from the 1950s is not about “race”. It was about culture.
Chicago had the same change from the 1950s to the 1960s. In the 1950s Chicago had a thriving middle class “black” community, with solid families, two-parent households on average, fathers and mothers in every profession, and a strong local business community. Then in the 1960s came the single-male poorly educated young “black” men pouring into northern cities looking for work and not always finding it.
THEN you got the ghettos and a lot of the solid middle class “blacks” moved out.
It is not “race”. It is culture. It comes not from your genes but from how you are raised, what you are taught, and what your upbringing gives, or fails to give, to your character.
Pretty much. But Murray did this in the “Bell Curve,” offering no solutions-—cuz probably there aren’t any.
Ultimately, you cannot find one black-run city in any country, nor any major country, regardless of how long it has been independent, that is anywhere close to being well-run.
The most damning of Murray’s stats that contradict your position is that of many studies of identical twins, raised by totally different families.
No difference in cognitive ability.
“cognitive ability” is a low level measure.
It does not predict character or values and with character and values comes the different degrees of dedication or sloth, diligence or carelessness, ect., ect., ect., ect. and all the qualities, regardless of “cognitive ability” that help make the individual as successful as possible. Those qualities don’t come with nor are denied by “cognitive ability”. They arise from culture, from the family outward.
The term as “successful as possible” does not pretend everyone can be a “top” whatever. It means rising to the best that is possible for the individual and it requires the individual applying the dedication and diligence to do that.
This calls into question whether or not cognitive ability of a large population is immutable.
I think much of the African low IQ problem is attributed to tribal inbreeding and childhood malnutrition. Those issues should cease to exist in the USA.
The beasts, they hunger, and eat, and die;
And so do we, and the world ‘s a sty;
Hush, fellow-swine: why nuzzle and cry?
Swinehood hath no remedy
— Sidney Lanier,
The net effect of welfare is it allows women to breed with exciting, violent thugs, instead of boring guys with decent jobs
Group IQ of that segment of society will continue to decline as long as that remains true.
Ben Carson - brain surgeon, and one of only 3,700 in the whole country.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Carson
His culture is what he got from the way he was raised.
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