Do you recommend the other book by Charles Murray (and Richard Herrnstein) - The Bell Curve? The book with this lovely quotation about how it isn’t hard work that makes one get ahead: “Putting it all together, success and failure in the American economy, and all that goes with it, are increasingly a matter of the genes that people inherit.” The book that claimed that African Americans and Hispanics were more likely to be poor because they allegedly have lower IQs due to genetics.
There are certain issues that I should discuss sparingly and the content of that book is one of those issues. The information in that book disgusted me.
The book is very well-sourced and often miscategorized as a result.
Study after study confirms that IQ does not move significantly over time, and that it is a better predictor of economic success than race, social background, etc.
Unfortunately, people unfamiliar with statistics demagogued the heck out of that book, and missed important public policy information.
One must understand that simply because a population mean is lower for a certain group does not mean that any particular individual within it doesn’t possess a much higher mean. The repulsion to the one chapter on race and IQ is largely due to those who either fear that it would promote racism (an odd conclusion given that it found people of Asian descent to have a higher mean IQ than those of Caucasian descent) or who don’t want to contemplate the notion that increased spending and education will not likely improve economic success in an information economy.
Murray’s point, as someone who’s spent his life working in the social policy arena particularly trying to help people out of poverty, was that we cannot expect to move significant numbers of people out of poverty if they have a low IQ in our increasingly complex and technological society through education or entitlement programs. He was particularly concerned over the dearth of opportunity in the skilled trades which previously allowed hardworking people to advance without having to attain high levels of education.
I do hope that people give “The Bell Curve” a fresh read now that the furor’s died down, and consider that Herrnstein and Murray’s research actually lends credence to the notion that poverty isn’t necessarily a character issue. I think most Catholics would agree with this, and also would suggest, as you do, that such issues must be discussed carefully, lest people misinterpret the evidence.
Such concerns are of course valid, given the evils of Social Darwinism, eugenics, etc. If we really want to see our brothers and sisters liberated from poverty, however, we need to stop doing things which don’t work and figure out alternatives.
And lest anyone misinterpret my post, I remain somewhat skeptical that IQ is the best predictor of economic success, having known too many people who have risen to astonishing levels through the good ol’ Protestant work ethic Americans are rightly renowned for despite less-than-average IQ.
And I know quite a few highly-intelligent slackers, too.
