Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, October 25, 1994 TAG: 9410250058
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ELLEN GOODMAN
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Now it's fall and the script has changed. Today Forrest Gump's special classmates have been relegated to the ranks of the poor and the criminal. And, oh yes, more of them are likely to be black.
Gump's mama said, ``Life is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you're gonna get.'' But the authors of a new and controversial book, ``The Bell Curve,'' think life is more like a gene pool. And your IQ predicts what goodies you'll get.
Charles Murray and the late Richard Herrnstein present themselves as two men brave enough to break taboos and speak the unspeakable. In the most intriguing chapters, they posit that the country is ruled by a ``cognitive elite.'' They even claim to be deeply concerned by the division of the country into those who have and have-not gray matter.
But it's clear that they are most uneasy about the problems at the dull end of the bell curve. In mind-numbing detail, they set out to prove that poverty, welfare, illegitimacy and crime are the privy of an intellectual underclass.
They then show that blacks are some 10 to 15 points lower on the IQ scale than whites, and Asians some four to five points higher. And into this volatile mix of ideas, they toss the notion that intelligence is substantially inherited.
I don't know if this daring duo are better arsonists or contortionists. They throw incendiary bombs and offer sprinkles of water to douse the bonfires.
They go to great lengths to define the different intelligence of ethnic and racial groups. Then they say demurely that it shouldn't affect the way we look at individuals in those groups. On what planet?
They say that blacks as a race aren't as smart as whites. Then they suggest that intellectually inferior ``clans'' can base their pride on other attributes. Like, say, rhythm?
I will leave it to their peers to debate the charts and curves about the emergence of a ``cognitive elite.'' But on the subjects of race, IQ and genes, the authors seem less like beleaguered Galileos than like pseudoscientific Creationists. They define blacks as people who call themselves black, hardly a scientific description in a mixed-racial society. Plowing through research, they dismiss many who disagree, and applaud those -including some dubious characters - who agree.
The idea that racial differences in IQ are a matter of genes as well as environment rests on grounds so shaky that I suspect they raised the whole matter in order to break the ``taboo'' against fanning racist sentiments.
The discussion about nature and nurture is hardly a new one. You don't have to be a member of a cognitive middle class to believe that we are products of our genes and our environment.
But with all the attention to ``The Bell Curve,'' I can feel the emphasis shifting again to nature. And that's not a coincidence. For one thing, genetic discoveries are on the front pages every day. We are predisposed to believe such things as the preposterous statement Herrnstein made before his death: ``If you accept the correlation between crime and IQ, then some people are genetically disposed to break the law.''
More importantly, we're becoming politically predisposed to accept the idea that some of our social problems are encoded in the DNA. It's all rather convenient.
In optimistic times, Americans believe in change, including the ability to change lives. We set about changing circumstances, opportunities, environments.
In pessimistic times like these, when we are dubious about change itself and more dubious about social programs, we're much more likely to adopt the stance that human nature is immutable. It not only feeds off our gloom, it lets us off the hook.
Charles Murray is the cheerful king of the pessimists. Last year, he blamed our problems on illegitimacy. This year, he blames them on stupidity. Is there an echo of eugenics?
The ideas fit neatly into the vogue for other Murray favorites like doing away with welfare. And next maybe universal education. As he pronounces: ``For many people there is nothing they can learn that will repay the cost of the teaching.''
This is one ``Bell'' that rings with despair. It's a treatise from the dark side of conservatism, a place that fuels not only racism, but fatalism. It was quite enough to make this reader nostalgic for even the featherweight sentiments of Forrest Gump and his park-bench optimism.
The Boston Globe
by CNB