02/15/2018
Adapted from the latest VDARE Radio — go here to listen or subscribe to the podcast.
Where is the March for Science when you need it?
The science deniers are out in full force. And no, it’s not some evangelical Christians in flyover country trying to keep someone from talking about evolution. It’s the real threat to science these days — liberal reporters from the Left Coast.
A student at a science fair did a presentation on race and IQ. The science, as an increasing number of people are admitting, is indisputable. But perhaps for that reason, teachers, reporters and administrators want to make sure no one is allowed to discuss it.
The project that started the controversy was titled “Race and IQ.” It raised the hypothesis: “If the average IQs of blacks, Southeast Asians, and Hispanics are lower than the average IQs of non-Hispanic whites and Northeast Asians, then the racial disproportionality in (HISP) is justified.”[High school science fair project questioning African American intelligence sparks outrage, by Diana Lambert and Anita Chabria, The Sacramento Bee, February 10, 2018]
You can almost sense the frustration in the article from the reporters because they can’t call the student a Nazi or a white supremacist. He’s Asian, the group which statistically has the most realistic view of the racial IQ gap. (Chart via Audacious Epigone.)
Reporters Lambert and Chabria sternly lecture us that such ideas are not to be entertained. Lambert particularly seems to be on a bit of a crusade to get more set-asides for various groups, judging from her Twitter feed. And as Anita Chabria is a “social justice reporter,” you already know her agenda.
Incredibly, and quite dishonestly, they link human biodiversity to eugenics.
The idea of race being tied to intelligence has a long and controversial history and is considered fringe. It is associated with other ideas including eugenics — often euphemistically referred to as ‘human biodiversity’ in recent years — that attempt to tie racial superiority to science.Considered “fringe” by whom?
Human biodiversity is simply the scientific examination of human differences. That’s not eugenics. Making claims like this is not just “fake news,” it’s just blatant lying.
Human biodiversity shows different groups, on average, have different capabilities. This is simply a fact, based on the best research we have. As we are a modern society, not some primitive tribe, we look at scientific evidence to determine truth, we don’t just work backwards from our feelings and demand the world conform to our wishes.
Disagree? Show me evidence that proves me wrong. If the evidence does show there is no racial intelligence gap, then people who believe in HBD are wrong and they should change their minds. That’s how the human species progresses.
But for some reason, we don’t do that when it comes to racial differences in intelligence. We simply make claims about absolute equality based on no evidence. And when someone denies these claims, we determine “outrage” is sufficient reason to silence that person. No less lofty a personage than “Sacramento City Unified School District Superintendent” Jorge Aguilar [Email him] has made an emotional video denouncing the episode, and, subtly, promoting open borders policies.
Not surprising, considering that district’s history of turning education into leftist propaganda.
I’m not impressed. As Stefan Molyneux might say, Aguilar’s wailing is “not an argument.” (If it seems like English is a second language to him, its because while Aguilar was born in America, his parents were migrant laborers from Mexico.) He had never met any blacks or Asians before he attended Berkeley. [Buckle up, Sac City Unified parents: A reformer is about to take over, By Marcos Bretón, Sacbee.com, May 19, 2017]
One also has to ask why sparking “outrage” is sufficient reason for a scientific hypothesis to be opposed. After all, many people were “outraged” by a scientific theory which they thought denied the truth of Scripture. Many people were “outraged” by the connotation they were descended from apes and monkeys and not simply created by God in the Garden of Eden. Many people blame the introduction of theory of evolution for driving God out of the classroom and so opening the door to the immorality and vulgarity which plagues classrooms today.
Yet the feelings of such people are routinely mocked in the media, going all the way back to the 1960 film Inherit The Wind, if not before. Apparently, the feelings of some people are more important than others.
Indeed, rather than this episode forcing an objective examination about racial differences in intelligence, it’s being used as an excuse to impose more “diversity” in gifted programs. Of course, the only way to do that is by lowering standards, which removes the whole point of the gifted programs. Indeed, it’s because of the objective existence of racial differences in intelligence that we know any gifted program is going to have disproportionately large members of some groups (such as Asians) and disproportionately smaller members of others.
One would think teachers, of all people, would know that. But just as the last place you’ll discover the truth today is in a newspaper, the last place you’ll find real science today is in an American school. At least the public ones.
Email Virginia Dare.
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.