‘Bell Curve’ Controversy
Your Oct. 23 editorial, “IQ and Social Justice,” was right, we didn’t need it, but with the publication of “The Bell Curve” we got an unfortunate focus on racism.
Column Left by Jesse Jackson and Column Right by Charles Krauthammer (Oct. 23) make valid points. Krauthammer has hit upon the point that it is not in our genes but in our cultural mores and environment that our behavior is largely determined. He and conservatives are correct in asserting that government welfare payments per se are not a solution to the problems of the otherwise destitute. Jackson is right that we cannot abandon the poor, the “wretched.”
As a start, welfare must be converted to “workfare.” Among the most successful programs of President Roosevelt’s New Deal were the WPA, the CCC and the PWA, all of which required recipients to perform useful tasks. It is not terribly important whether one racial group presently achieves higher IQ scores than another. What is very important are cultural values that promote the importance of education, job skills and ethics and that these are made available to all regardless of race, creed or color.
LOU SCHMID
Laguna Niguel
* Krauthammer’s commentary is a blatant attempt to undo years of progress for all minorities in our country. Krauthammer resents that data is constantly being gathered to determine the “ethnic representation” in what he calls “every conceivable activity.” His real objection seems to be aimed at affirmative action plans.
For most of the history of this country, white men have been determining who will work and what compensation will be received for that work. Affirmative action programs are finally allowing minorities, including women and older workers, to gain some ground in the employment world. Unless forced to evaluate all types of job applicants, many men would continue to hire only clones of themselves, perpetuating their disproportionate representation in the higher status jobs and higher salaries.
To abandon affirmative action plans as a response to Charles Murray’s black-white IQ issue would be a huge win for racism and all other forms of prejudice.
CATHY ACRET
Orange
* Bravo to Krauthammer. I don’t know about the rest of the world, but the people I meet every day in my life are not averages, or typical representatives of ethnic groups, or walking group-averaged IQ scores. They are individuals. To view them in any other manner is the purest form of prejudice--to judge on the basis of extremely limited or irrelevant considerations. The science of Murray’s and Richard Herrnstein’s “The Bell Curve” is at best debatable, but the philosophy they derive from their dubious conclusions is pernicious.
In the end, though, “The Bell Curve” may have done us a favor. As Krauthammer observes, the previously liberal tendency to see the world in group terms has now been stood on its head. Perhaps social-liberal philosophy can now return to Martin Luther King Jr.’s ideal. If this debate can yield a return to the unity of the ideal of the irrelevance of race with the social-activist political view, then it will have done us all a great service.
FRANK LOWTHER JR.
Los Angeles