Intellectuals and Race

by Thomas Sowell

  20. Ian Ayres, Super Crunchers: Why Thinking-by-Numbers Is the New Way to Be Smart (New York: Bantam Books, 2007), pp. 2–3, 6; Mark Strauss, “The Grapes of Math,” Discover, January 1991, pp. 50–51; Jay Palmer, “Grape Expectations,” Barron’s, December 30, 1996, pp. 17–19.

  21. Robert Klitgaard, Choosing Elites, pp. 161–165.

  22. Robert Klitgaard, Elitism and Meritocracy in Developing Countries: Selection Policies for Higher Education (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), pp. 77–84.

  23. Ibid., pp. 124, 147.

  24. Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2008), pp. 74, 112.

  25. Richard H. Sander and Stuart Taylor, Jr., Mismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It’s Intended to Help, and Why Universities Won’t Admit It (New York: Basic Books, 2012), pp. 34, 59, 90–91, 146–147, 148, 150, 152, 154, 162, 231; Thomas Sowell, Affirmative Action Around the World: An Empirical Study (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), pp. 154–156.

  26. Arthur Hu, “Minorities Need More Support,” The Tech (M.I.T.), March 17, 1987, pp. 4, 6.

  27. Richard H. Sander and Stuart Taylor, Jr., Mismatch, pp. 34–36.

  28. Robin Wilson, “Article Critical of Black Students’ Qualifications Roils Georgetown U. Law Center,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, April 24, 1991, pp. A33, A35.

  29. Richard H. Sander and Stuart Taylor, Jr., Mismatch, pp. 55–56, 231.

  30. Philip E. Vernon, Intelligence and Cultural Environment (London: Methuen & Co., Ltd., 1969), p. 145.

  31. Ibid., pp. 157–158.

  32. Ibid., p. 168.

  33. Mandel Sherman and Cora B. Key, “The Intelligence of Isolated Mountain Children,” Child Development, Vol. 3, No. 4 (December 1932), p. 284.

  34. Philip E. Vernon, Intelligence and Cultural Environment, p. 104.

  35. Ibid., p. 101.

  36. Ibid., p. 155.

  37. Robert M. Yerkes, Psychological Examining in the United States Army, Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1921), Vol. 15, p. 705.

  38. Arthur R. Jensen, “How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement?” Harvard Educational Review, Winter 1969, p. 81.

  39. H.H. Goddard, “The Binet Tests in Relation to Immigration,” Journal of Psycho-Asthenics, Vol. 18, No. 2 (December 1913), p. 110.

  40. William G. Bowen and Derek Bok, The Shape of the River: Long-Term Consequences of Considering Race in College and University Admissions (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), p. 61. See also p. 259.

  41. Bob Zelnick, Backfire: A Reporter’s Look at Affirmative Action (Washington: Regnery Publishing, 1996), p. 132.

  42. Robert Lerner and Althea K. Nagai, “Racial Preferences in Colorado Higher Education,” Center for Equal Opportunity, pp. 6, 11.

  43. William G. Bowen and Derek Bok, The Shape of the River, p. 21.

  44. Stephan Thernstrom and Abigail Thernstrom, “Reflections on The Shape of the River,” UCLA Law Review, Vol. 46, No. 5 (June 1999), p. 1589.

  45. Arthur R. Jensen, “How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement?” Harvard Educational Review, Winter 1969, p. 78.

  46. Charles Murray, Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950 (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), p. 282.

  47. Paul A. Witty and Martin D. Jenkins, “The Educational Achievement of a Group of Gifted Negro Children,” Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol. 25, Issue 8 (November 1934), p. 593; Paul Witty and Viola Theman, “A Follow-up Study of Educational Attainment of Gifted Negroes,” Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol. 34, Issue 1 (January 1943), pp. 35–47; Edelbert G. Rodgers, The Relationship of Certain Measurable Factors in the Personal and Educational Backgrounds of Two Groups of Baltimore Negroes, Identified as Superior and Average in Intelligence as Fourth Grade Children, to their Educational, Social and Economic Achievement in Adulthood (Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation, New York University, 1956), University Microfilms, unpaged introduction and pp. 75–94.

  48. Otto Klineberg, “Mental Testing of Racial and National Groups,” Scientific Aspects of the Race Problem, edited by H.S. Jennings, et al (Washington: Catholic University Press, 1941), p. 282.

  49. Rudolf Pintner, Intelligence Testing: Methods and Results (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1923), p. 352; Clifford Kirkpatrick, Intelligence and Immigration (Baltimore: The Williams & Wilkins Company, 1926), pp. 24, 31, 34.

  50. Philip E. Vernon, Intelligence and Cultural Environment, p. 155; Lester R. Wheeler, “A Comparative Study of the Intelligence of East Tennessee Mountain Children,” The Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol. XXXIII, No. 5 (May 1942), pp. 322, 324.

  51. Philip E. Vernon, Intelligence and Cultural Environment, p. 104.

  52. Carl C. Brigham, A Study of American Intelligence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1923), p. xx.

  53. Ibid., p. 110.

  54. Carl C. Brigham, “Intelligence Tests of Immigrant Groups,” Psychological Review, Vol. 37, Issue 2 (March 1930), p. 165.

  55. Carl C. Brigham, A Study of American Intelligence, p. 29.

  56. James R. Flynn, “The Mean IQ of Americans: Massive Gains 1932 to 1978,” Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 95, No. 1, pp. 29–51; James R. Flynn, “Massive IQ Gains in 14 Nations: What IQ Tests Really Measure,” Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 101, No. 2, pp. 171–191.

  57. James R. Flynn, Where Have All the Liberals Gone?: Race, Class, and Ideals in America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 72–73, 87.

  58. Ibid., pp. 110–111.

  59. Ibid., pp. 89, 90.

  60. Eric A. Hanushek, et al., “New Evidence About Brown v. Board of Education: The Complex Effects of School Racial Composition on Achievement,” National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper 8741 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2002), Abstract.

  61. See, for example, Paul Brest, “Some Comments on Grutter v. Bollinger,” Drake Law Review, Vol. 51, p. 691; Gabriel J. Chin, “Bakke to the Wall: The Crisis of Bakkean Diversity,” William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal, Vol. 4, No. 3 (1995–1996), pp. 888, 921–923; Hopwood v. Texas Litigation Documents, Part I, Volume 3, compiled by Kumar Percy (Buffalo, N.Y.: William S. Hein & Co., Inc., 2002), Document No. 57, “Deposition of Dean Paul Brest,” pp. 32, 33–34, 35, 36, 38–39; Hopwood v. Texas Litigation Documents, Part I, Volume 3, compiled by Kumar Percy, Document No. 58, “Deposition of Lee Carroll Bollinger,” pp. 35–36, 38–39; Hopwood v. Texas Litigation Documents, Part I, Volume 3, compiled by Kumar Percy, Document No. 60, “Oral Deposition of Judith Wegner,” pp. 14–15.

  62. Ellis B. Page and Timothy Z. Keith, “The Elephant in the Classroom: Ability Grouping and the Gifted,” Intellectual Talent: Psychometric and Social Issues, edited by Camilla Persson Benbow and David Lubinski (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), p. 208.

  63. Edelbert G. Rodgers, The Relationship of Certain Measurable Factors in the Personal and Educational Backgrounds of Two Groups of Baltimore Negroes, Identified as Superior and Average in Intelligence as Fourth Grade Children, to their Educational, Social and Economic Achievement in Adulthood (Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation, New York University, 1956), University Microfilms, p. 50.

  64. Stuart Buck, Acting White: The Ironic Legacy of Desegregation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), pp. 11–17.

  65. Theodore Dalrymple, Life at the Bottom: The Worldview that Makes the Underclass (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2001), p. 69.

  66. See Mary Gibson Hundley, The Dunbar Story (1870–1955) (New York: Vantage Press, 1965), p. 75.

  67. Jervis Anderson, “A Very Special Monument,” The New Yorker, March 20, 1978, p. 105.

  68. Otto Klineberg, “Mental Testing of Racial and National Groups,” Scientific Aspects of the Race Problem, edited by H.S. Jennings, et al., p. 280.

  69. Arthur R. Jensen, “How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement?” Harvard Educational Rev
iew, Winter 1969, pp. 86–87.

  70. Clifford Kirkpatrick, Intelligence and Immigration, p. 31; Lester R. Wheeler, “A Comparative Study of the Intelligence of East Tennessee Mountain Children,” The Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol. XXXIII, No. 5 (May 1942), pp. 326–327.

  71. H.J. Butcher, Human Intelligence: Its Nature and Assessment (New York: Harper & Row, 1968), p. 252.

  72. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1966), Vol. I, p. 365; Frederick Law Olmsted, The Cotton Kingdom: A Traveller’s Observations on Cotton and Slavery in the American Slave States, edited by Arthur M. Schlesinger (New York: Modern Library, 1969), pp. 476n, 614–622; Hinton Rowan Helper, The Impending Crisis of the South: How to Meet It, enlarged edition (New York: A. B. Burdick, 1860), p. 34; Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1944), p. 70n.

  73. David Hackett Fischer, Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 31–36, 72–77, 89–90, 120–121, 130–134, 233, 236–240, 252, 256–261, 284–285, 298, 303, 344–349, 368, 618–639, 674–675, 680–681, 703–708, 721–723. See also Grady McWhiney, Cracker Culture: Celtic Ways in the Old South (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1988), pp. 16–18.

  74. Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma, p. 70n.

  75. Paul A. Witty and Martin D. Jenkins, “The Educational Achievement of a Group of Gifted Negro Children,” Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol. 25, Issue 8 (November 1934), p. 593; Paul Witty and Viola Theman, “A Follow-up Study of Educational Attainment of Gifted Negroes,” Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol. 34, Issue 1 (January 1943), p. 43; Edelbert G. Rodgers, The Relationship of Certain Measurable Factors in the Personal and Educational Backgrounds of Two Groups of Baltimore Negroes, Identified as Superior and Average in Intelligence as Fourth Grade Children, to their Educational, Social and Economic Achievement in Adulthood (Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation, New York University, 1956), University Microfilms, unpaged introduction and pp. 75–94.

  76. Sandra Scarr and Richard A. Weinberg, “IQ Test Performance of Black Children Adopted by White Families,” American Psychologist, October 1976, p. 731.

  77. See, for example, Leonard Covello, The Social Background of the Italo-American School Child (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1972), pp. 241–261; Charles Murray, Human Accomplishment, p. 291; Richard Gambino, Blood of My Blood: The Dilemma of the Italian-Americans (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1974), p. 225.

  78. Thomas Sowell, “Assumptions versus History in Ethnic Education,” Teachers College Record, Volume 83, Number 1 (Fall 1981), pp. 43–45.

  79. Ibid., p. 45.

  80. Kathryn G. Caird, “A Note on the Progress of Preference Students in First Year Accounting Courses,” internal memorandum, University of Auckland (undated but probably 1989).

  81. Patricia Cohen, “‘Culture of Poverty’ Makes a Comeback,” New York Times, October 18, 2010, pp. A1 ff.

  82. Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Bell Curve, p. 298.

  83. Daniel Schwekendiek, “Height and Weight Differences Between North and South Korea,” Journal of Biosocial Science, Vol. 41, No. 1 (January 2009), pp. 51–55. The Economist reported that North Koreans were “on average three inches shorter” than South Koreans. “We Need to Talk About Kim,” The Economist, December 31, 2011, p. 8.

  84. Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Bell Curve, p. 309.

  85. Ibid., p. 304.

  86. Ibid., p. 311.

  87. Ibid., p. 310.

  88. Ibid., p. 314.

  89. John B. Judis, “Hearts of Darkness,” The Bell Curve Wars: Race, Intelligence, and the Future of America, edited by Steven Fraser (New York: Basic Books, 1995), pp. 126–127, 128.

  90. Michael Lind, “Brave New Right,” Ibid., pp. 172, 174.

  91. Steven Fraser, “Introduction,” Ibid., p. 1.

  92. Randall Kennedy, “The Phony War,” Ibid., p. 182.

  93. Stephen Jay Gould, “Curveball,” Ibid., pp. 11, 20.

  94. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., “Why Now?” Ibid., pp. 95–96. As a matter of fact, The Bell Curve does not say that environment plays no role. Moreover, the word “dismissal” implies not simply a rejection but a rejection without consideration. Nevertheless, even when a proposition is rejected after extensive examination and consideration, the word “dismissal” is often used by those more interested in its propaganda effect than with its accuracy.

  95. Nathan Glazer, “Scientific Truth and the American Dilemma,” Ibid., p. 141.

  96. Ibid., p. 147.

  Chapter 6: Liberalism and Multiculturalism

  1. Paul Hollander, Anti-Americanism: Critiques at Home and Abroad 1965–1990 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 455.

  2. See, for example, Richard Lynn, “The Intelligence of American Jews,” Personality and Individual Differences, Vol. 36, No. 1 (January 2004), p. 204; Richard Lynn and David Longley, “On the High Intelligence and Cognitive Achievements of Jews in Britain,” Intelligence, Vol. 34, No. 6 (November-December 2006), p. 542.

  3. Matthew Pratt Guterl, The Color of Race in America 1900–1940 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001), p. 67.

  4. “The Passing of the Nordic Myth,” The Christian Century, June 16, 1937, p. 765.

  5. Franz Samelson, “From ‘Race Psychology’ to ‘Studies in Prejudice’: Some Observations on the Thematic Reversal in Social Psychology,” Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, Vol. 14 (1978), p. 268.

  6. Otto Klineberg, “Mental Testing of Racial and National Groups,” Scientific Aspects of the Race Problem, edited by H.S. Jennings, et al (Washington: Catholic University Press, 1941), p. 284.

  7. Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1944), p. li. Within the main body of the book itself, this premise was explicitly repeated— “The Negro problem is primarily a white man’s problem” (p. 669)— as well as being implicit in the whole approach taken.

  8. Ibid., p. xlvii.

  9. David W. Southern, Gunnar Myrdal and Black-White Relations (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1987), p. 74.

  10. Alfred W. Blumrosen, Black Employment and the Law (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1971), p. vii.

  11. James Baldwin, “Fifth Avenue, Uptown,” Esquire, July 1960, pp. 73, 76.

  12. Theodore Dalrymple, Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2001), p. 150.

  13. Whitney M. Young, “The High Cost of Discrimination,” Ebony, August 1965, p. 51.

  14. Paul Johnson, Enemies of Society (New York: Atheneum, 1977), p. 237.

  15. Kenneth Clark, “Behind the Harlem Riots— Two Views,” New York Herald Tribune, July 20, 1964, pp. 1, 7.

  16. Newton Garver, “What Violence Is,” The Nation, June 24, 1968, pp. 821, 822.

  17. National Committee of Negro Churchmen, “‘Black Power,’” New York Times, July 31, 1966, p. E5.

  18. Louis Harris, “U.S. Riots: Negroes, Whites Offer Views,” Los Angeles Times, August 14, 1967, p. A5.

  19. Frank Clifford and David Farrell, “L.A. Strongly Condemns King Verdicts, Riots,” Los Angeles Times, May 6, 1992, pp. A1, A4.

  20. “The Hard-Core Ghetto Mood,” Newsweek, August 21, 1967, pp. 20, 21.

  21. Ibid., p. 20.

  22. Stephan Thernstrom and Abigail Thernstrom, America in Black and White: One Nation, Indivisible (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997), p. 162.

  23. Donald L. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), pp. 170–181; Robert A. Wilson and Bill Hosokawa, East to America: A History of the Japanese in the United States (New York: William Morrow, 1980), p. 123.

  24. Mahathir bin Mohamad, The Malay Dilemma (Singapore: Asia Pacific Press, 1970), p. 25.

  25. Myron Weiner, Sons of the Soil: Migration and Ethnic Conflict in India (Princeton: Princeton Univers
ity Press, 1978), p. 250.

  26. John A. A. Ayoade, “Ethnic Management of the 1979 Nigerian Constitution,” Canadian Review of Studies in Nationalism, Spring 1987, p. 127.

  27. “America Can’t Be Colorblind Yet,” New York Times, June 10, 1981, p. A30.

  28. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1957 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1960), p. 72.

  29. Richard Vedder and Lowell Galloway, “Declining Black Employment,” Society, July-August 1993, p. 57.

  30. Walter Williams, Race & Economics: How Much Can Be Blamed on Discrimination? (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 2011), p. 42.

  31. Ibid.

  32. Ibid., pp. 33–34.

  33. Charles H. Young and Helen R.Y. Reid, The Japanese Canadians (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1938), p. 49; Merle Lipton, Capitalism and Apartheid: South Africa, 1910–84 (Totowa, New Jersey: Rowman & Allanheld, 1985), pp. 19–20; George M. Fredrickson, White Supremacy: A Comparative Study in American and South African History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), p. 233.

  34. “A Divided Self: A Survey of France,” The Economist, November 16, 2002, p. 11; Holman W. Jenkins, Jr., “Shall We Eat Our Young?” Wall Street Journal, January 19, 2005, p. A13; Nelson D. Schwartz, “Young, Down and Out in Europe,” New York Times, January 1, 2010, pp. B1, B4.

  35. See, for example, Gilbert Osofsky, Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto (New York: Harper and Row, 1966), p. 12; David Katzman, Before the Ghetto: Black Detroit in the Nineteenth Century (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1973), pp. 35, 37, 102, 138, 139, 160; W.E.B. Du Bois, The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study (New York: Schocken Books, 1967), p. 7; Constance McLaughlin Green, The Secret City: A History of Race Relations in the Nation’s Capital (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967), p. 127; St. Clair Drake and Horace R. Cayton, Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), Vol. I, pp. 44–45, 176n; Allan H. Spear, Black Chicago: The Making of a Negro Ghetto, 1890–1920 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), Chapter 1; Reynolds Farley, et al., Detroit Divided (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2000), pp. 145–146; Oliver Zunz, The Changing Face of Inequality: Urbanization, Industrial Development, and Immigrants in Detroit, 1880–1920 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), p. 353; Willard B. Gatewood, Aristocrats of Color: The Black Elite, 1880–1920 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), pp. 119, 125.