Facing Reality: Two Truths About Race in America

Charles Murray, Chapter One and Introduction, Cox and Murray, 2021

Herewith, some notes and commentary. Double quotation marks are used for quoting, single for sneering, mentioning, etc.

The first truth is that "cognitive ability" is differently distributed among the groups under examination: American whites, blacks, Latinos, and Asians. The second is that these groups "have different rates of violent crime." (ix)  These propositions are indeed truths. But why discuss these incendiary matters?  Because "We are engaged in a struggle for America's soul." (x)  We are indeed, and the stakes are high. 

The first chapter  is entitled "The American Creed Imperiled" and covers pp. 1-8.  

America's soul is her founding ideals, the American creed, as articulated in the Declaration of Independence.  Among the ideals: liberty, equality, democracy, individualism, human rights, the rule of law, and private property.  I would add limited government to the list and insist that private property is the foundation and sine qua non of individual liberty. One who understands this will of course oppose such totalitarian schemes as socialism and communism.

But the founding ideals were a long time in achieving.  On 28 August 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his famous 'I have a dream' speech that "evoked the American creed from start to finish." (2) The next year brought the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which was signed into law by Lyndon B. Johnson.  "The act had to be a good and necessary thing. As a college junior at the time, I certainly thought so." (3)

But the 1964 Act drove a "philosophical wedge . . . between those who wanted strict adherence to the ideal of treating people as individuals, equal before the law, and those who advocated group-based policies as a way to achieve social justice." (3-4)  But what's with the "social"?  What's wrong with plain old 'justice'? How could justice not be social?  Could old man Murray be unaware that 'social justice' is a leftist code-phrase?

The wedge was driven deeper.

Group-based policies proliferated and by the end of the 20th century 'American creed' had fallen into desuetude and the thing itself had been repudiated altogether to be replaced by intersectionality, critical race theory, and a "bastardized vision of socialism." (4)  The new ideology came to dominate "the left wing of the Democratic Party."   Question for  Murray: Is there a right wing? Who belongs to it?

The label that sums up all the newfangled Unsinn is 'identity politics.'  "The core premise of identity politics is that individuals are inescapably defined by the groups into which they were born — principally (but not exclusively) by race and sex — and that this understanding must shape our politics." (5, emphasis in original)   The American creed is thereby "turned on its head."  Treating people as individuals becomes immoral because it ignores racism and sexism. Racism is systemic and white privilege omnipresent. The power of the state not only may be used, but must be used to treat people of color preferentially.

It took him a while, but Murray came to see that left-wing identity politics is "toxic."  (6) I would add that the same goes for the identity politics of the alternative right.  Be that as it may. The topic is Murray. He finds identity politics "toxic" because "It is based on the premise that all groups are equal in the ways that shape economic, social, and political outcomes for groups and that therefore all differences in group outcomes are artificial and indefensible." (6) Murray goes on to say that the premise is "factually wrong." "Hence this book about cognitive ability and criminal behavior."

Here is the way I would present the fundamentally fallacious  leftist identity-political reasoning:

1) We are all equal in the ways Murray mentions.  We are equal in interests, aptitudes, intelligence, work habits, criminality, etc. But

2) There is no equality of outcome.

3) The only possible explanation of this is systemic racism and sexism and unearned white privilege. Therefore

4) It is morally acceptable to use the power of the state to equalize the inequalities. And individual liberties be damned.

The main problem with the argument, of course, is that (1) is provably false.  

Unfortunately, Murray backpedals out of fear of being misunderstood and, I would guess, fear of being labelled a nasty racist and white supremacist. He assures us:

I am not talking about racial superiority or inferiority, but about differences in group averages and overlapping distributions. Differences in averages do not affect the abilities of any individual. They should not affect our approach, positively or negatively, to any person we meet. (6)

No? Take the third sentence. If Murray is convinced that blacks as a group are more criminally prone than whites as a group, and he encounters a black person whom he does not know, then it would be irrational of him NOT to allow that conviction of his to affect his approach to the black person.  Suppose Murray is walking down a street and a number of sullen black youths in ‘hoodies’ are approaching him, while on the other side of the street coming in his direction are a number of fresh-faced white Mormon youths in their Sunday best. Would it not be irrational of Murray to remain on the black side of the street?

Now look at the first sentence. Obviously Murray is talking about racial superiority/inferiority if he argues that Asians as a group are better at math that blacks as a group.  "Come on, man!" as Joey B. would say.

To Murray I say: you will be called a racist and a white supremacist no matter what you say. So man up and don't try to curry favor with our political enemies.

...............................

A reader comments:

I was reading your post about Murray and thinking over your example toward the end about the group of black youths on the street.  Years back I read an example almost exactly like this in a philosophy paper, except that the author was careful not to include any racial description of the "teenagers" in the story.  (Maybe in the same way that newspapers like to call a black criminal an "area man" or "local youth".)  

According to the author, he couldn't help but cross the street on the basis of his "prejudiced" belief that a group of "scowling" teenagers dressed like gangbangers represents some kind of danger.  He later feels ashamed​ of his belief that they "pose a danger" because, after all, "I do not know them" and "they could be harmless".  The belief was "epistemically ungrounded".

Isn't that amazing?  You'd think anyone would have to agree that in this situation it's obviously rational​ to believe that a bunch of young men "pose a danger" and rational​ to act on your assessment of danger by simply crossing the street.  But NO.  Here we have a senior distinguished philosopher just asserting for no particular reason that his belief and behavior was not rational​.  And he even thinks it was immoral​ or something.  Anyway, he claims to be ashamed.

So there may be no getting through to these people.  Or maybe they know what they're saying is ridiculous but they're so desperate to appear "good" that you can't have an honest conversation with them about even the blindingly obvious.

The prospects for fruitful conversation do indeed seem dim. We are living through a period of race madness which addles the brains of many including the distinguished philosopher you mention.  White liberal guilt is probably a factor, as well as a desire to be liked and accepted, fit in, keep drawing his salary, and seem 'good' and bien-pensant. I suspect that the belief that we are all equal, not just formally, but materially and behaviorally, and in a way that would make it reasonable not to cross the street in my example, is a perverse secularization of the Christian notion that we are all equal in the eyes of God, just as the notion that we are collectively guilty for the sins of slavery is a perverse secularization of the Christian notion of original sin.

On top of that there is the widespread false belief that the only motive a Charles Murray could have for his researches is bigotry and hatred of the Other, never a genuine scientific interest. This comports well with the current assault by 'wokesters' on the concept and value of objectivity which is denigrated — if that is an acceptable word these days — as a 'white supremacist' concept and value.