Race and IQ

There was a bit of a fracas a couple of weeks ago when a scholar for the Heritage Foundation, a Harvard PhD named Jason Richwine, was fired resigned from his post when the subject of his doctoral dissertation—the effect of low-IQ immigration on the U.S. economy—became the target of a PC witch hunt. Richwine had just published a related report with the Heritage imprimatur about the high cost of lax immigration policy. Unable to refute the numbers he projected, Richwine’s opponents went into his past and found that he said some very non-diversity supporting things and therefore the sociological data he had amassed must be false. Because we all know that people who believe things counter to the progressive agenda are not just bad people but probably terrible at their jobs as well.

As can be easily gleaned from the opening paragraph, I am sympathetic to the plight of Richwine. I think he got a pretty unfair shake and it is lamentable that people do not really care whether or not what he wrote was true or false, only that it denied a modern shibboleth: the facemelting awesomeness of diversity. As someone who often gleefully denies modern shibboleths, I find myself inclined to agree with Richwine and his supporters.

But as I was running this morning and thinking about what Richwine had researched and the way studies of race and IQ are handled, I realized that my support for such studies ought not to exist. In fact, it probably emanates from a pretty nasty place in my heart. Here is what I mean:

Let’s grant for a moment that the people who publish reports about the intellectual inferiority of certain minority groups are correct in their data-gathering and analysis (and this is granting a lot, see here, here, and here). Say that IQ is innate and not culturally conditioned. Say that we can definitively prove that one race is intellectually superior to another. What then? What have we proven? What do we hope to do with this information? In other words, for whom other than a racist is this good news? How do we enact policy based on this? Do we want to enact policy based on this if it were true? What kind of policies would those be? As I confronted these questions, I realized that implicitly my support for and defense of these studies was colored by racism, by my desire to view my own self as dominant. How incredibly ugly.

As a Christian, this is the question I face: if each of us, individually, is made in the image of God, what does IQ matter? Since Darwin and the rise of capitalist economics (funny how intertwined those things are) we have been obsessed with determining the fittest so that we may be sure they, usually we, survive. Whether our methods are sociological, like eugenics and abortion, or economic, like cutthroat business practices and outsourcing, we seem hellbent on breeding out the weaker from amongst the thronging masses. (As I wrote this I was reminded of Chesterton’s great quip which I only paraphrase: “When we say survival of the fittest all that we really mean are those that survived.”) And nothing could be further from Christian truth and practice, which tells us that we all have the same Father and are therefore all brothers.

Another issue this raises for me is that of the limit of knowledge. I wonder if in our desire to know all things we tread on ground best left undisturbed. There is a recurring scene in the conversation between Adam and Raphael in Paradise Lost where Raphael warns Adam of overstepping the boundaries God has erected in his zeal for knowledge.

Of knowledge within bounds; beyond abstain [ 120 ]

To ask, nor let thine own inventions hope

Things not reveal'd, which th' invisible King,

Onely Omniscient hath supprest in Night,

To none communicable in Earth or Heaven.  (7.120-124)

be lowlie wise:

Think onely what concernes thee and thy being;

Dream not of other Worlds, what Creatures there [ 175 ]

Live, in what state, condition or degree,

Contented that thus farr hath been reveal'd

Not of Earth onely but of highest Heav'n. (8.173-178)

Raphael is warning Adam, because it is a very human tendency to want to know more than we really ought to know. Knowledge of some things is best left untouched. In our current zeal to explain everything by a combination of chemical imbalance, societal conditioning, and evolutionary prerogative I think we can overreach the proper bounds of human knowledge. And that knowledge can lead to dehumanization.

On questions like that of race and IQ, a question burdened with no upside, I defer not to truth or falsehood but to decorum, trusting that in some matters the truth will not set us free.

Bloodlines Review

The issue of race is easily one of the single most difficult things to talk about in our culture. Sadly, any wishful thinking that the election of a black president would wipe the slate clean for future generations has proved entirely wrong. As a country we are still mired in issues of race, from the pop culture debate surrounding Quentin Tarantino's latest revengeploitation film, Django Unchained, to last years killing of Trayvon Martin and the subsequent social media campaigns, to idiots at anti-Obama rallies with signs saying "Keep the White in the White House," to the impulse of some on the left to credit any dissent from Obama as bigotry, to the more recent idiotic statement of (former) ESPN talking head Rob Parker about quarterback Robert Griffin III's who qualifies as only "kinda black" for such grievous sins as being a Republican and engaged to a white woman. It is safe to say we have failed to move on.

And it is still a difficult topic to discuss. A lot of confusion stems from people, especially white people, being unsure of exactly how they can contribute to a conversation about race without said conversation being a) white people being told how bad they are, or b) being criticized for their participation in this conversation, no matter how careful and thoughtful they are. Last year I taught freshman in college how to write, and as we all know, integral to one's success in writing is the ability to fully understand white privilege. Or so the curriculum seems to think. I brought in an article to class one day about the Madden 2012 football video game which had just been released. The author of the article was (self) righteously indignant about the color scheme the Madden engineers had chosen for the customizable player option. If you are a quarterback, default is white; running back, you're black; lineman, white; and so on. How in this day, the author asked, could we be so backwards as to buy into all of these old stereotypes about white quarterbacks and speedy black athletes? One of my white students threw up his hands in despair and asked, "How do we win?" At the heart of his anguished plea was this question: what could the gamemakers have done that would not have elicited a negative response? Make all players black? That would be furthering the stereotype that blacks are only good at sports. Make them all white? Oh, boy. In other words, if you're looking for racism under every stone, you can easily stretch yourself to find it. And my students wanted to know how it was possible to navigate that landscape without someone taking a shot at you; wasn't it easier to just not try?

And into this mess comes John Piper and his book Bloodlines: Race, the Cross, and the Christian. Cognizant of the current situation regarding race, Piper is super aware of the reality that if you speak about race you will be criticized. For some you will go too far; for some not far enough. For some your recommendations will seem too extreme, for others too mild. To some you will sound apologetic for the racism of the past, to others you will sound too harsh on people who lived in different times. It is enough to make one throw one's hands up and quit. But, gladly, Piper didn't do that.

He begins by recounting his youth in South Carolina, where he imbibed the racial prejudices of the culture around him. For example, his childhood church voted in 1965 to not allow blacks to become members. His defiant mother proudly escorted an African American family the Pipers were friends with into the church when her daughter was married, but the culture around him was violently anti-black. South Carolina held out until the 90s before recognizing interracial marriages. So that was his situation and it took awhile for him to see how profoundly it affected the way he viewed races.

Piper's background is important because it sets the stage for what becomes the guiding thesis for his book: he was rebuked for his racism, repented, and taught to live another way by his acceptance of the Reformed theology of the Christian faith. The answer, then, for fighting racism is not some airy liberal do-goodism, the motivation for which is quite usually baseless, but acceptance of hard, yet liberating Christian truth. What white people need and what black people need isn't more conversation about grievances, important as it is to be aware of the very real grievances black Americans have historically and still currently suffer from white Americans, but to come to Jesus.

This is not exactly a surprising answer, given Piper's theological convictions, but it is a convincing answer. The Church is/has been/will be complicit in any number of shortcomings, and historically racism looms large. In many ways, most churches are still functionally segregated. Piper's response to this is that the racial situation of the church, past and present, is largely a failure of application and not doctrine. Lest this seem like a convenient copout--Christianity is great, except for all the Christians!--Piper backs it up with his customary deep exegesis. 

The exegesis is based on an explication of the five traditional doctrines of the Reformed faith, the infamous TULIP acronym. Piper goes chapter by chapter showing how adherence to these doctrines (formed as they are on the testimony of scripture) undoes the ability to view other races as inferior or somehow less beloved of God. What first attracted me to Reformed/Calvinist doctrine, apart from the fact that its expositors didn't seem afraid to confront the whole Bible, was the way that it leveled the playing field for all men. That T up there in the acronym stands for total depravity, which is not a great way of putting it, but essentially means that we are all equally dead in sin and therefore all equally unworthy of God's grace. Everything we have is unmerited favor. You can brag about unmerited favor, but you come off sounding pretty lousy, like the parodied Republican in this year's 30 Rock that complained about how unfair taxation on the rich was because he "earned my trust find by always being polite to grandfather."

In other words, Reformed theology systematically undercuts everything that we use to puff ourselves up: high birth, accomplishment, etc. Instead what we have is all due to and emanates from God's free grace. I cannot look down on anyone, because I in no way deserve or earned what I have been given. Racism is founded on the idea of superiority, that of one racial group over another. Christianity undermines the very idea of superiority, putting us all on the same level.

Christ came to break down the barriers we have erected through sin, both the barriers that keep us from God and those that keep us from one another. In Paul's great chapter on love, which Piper doesn't have space to treat here, he speaks about how he now sees in a glass dimly and that one day he shall behold face to face and know even as he is fully known. It by no means stretches the text to apply its future vision to other people as much as self-knowledge of knowledge of God. That is restoration, or true sight, to fully see one another in our God-bestowed glory.

Some no doubt will complain that Piper's solution is unnecessary. The idea is now ubiquitous in our culture that we can be good without God, that even requiring some spiritual motivation to love others and seek racial harmony shows weakness. All that I can say to that is those people have little idea how much they are leaning on the Christian ethical tradition to make the self-evident claims they want to make. There are precious few cultures in the world not based on a Christian worldview in which racial harmony, freedom of religion, or equality of the sexes are even broad cultural goals. We didn't arise out of the primordial muck loving one another and seeking justice.

Piper shows how wonderfully and completely the love for others inherent in Reformed theology applies across races. How integral to the vision of Jesus and the mission of his Church is racial harmony. This is another key point in the book: Christ's mission was to desegregate a heavily segregated world. He shows favor to Gentile and Samaritans and women. In the final words to his disciples he tells him that they will be his witnesses all over the world--to Jew and Gentile alike. In St John's apocalyptic vision in the book of Revelation he sees a stream of people from every tribe, tongue, nation, and people in procession to worship the glorified Christ. Christ's mission is for his followers to go the world; its fulfillment is that people from every ethnic group on this planet will one day praise his name.

In closing I will mention briefly why Piper named the book what he did, for I find it to be quite beautiful. Worldly bloodlines have caused a lot of harm in this world. People can be either too proud or too humiliated over their ancestors and their history. What Christ does is abolish our worldly bloodlines and establish a new bloodline: one that starts at the cross and flows freely in every person under the sun who bows at the name of Jesus, our Savior and Uniter. To God's unquenchable glory.

Race and the Election

This election is far closer than I ever imagined it would be. It really is incredible what that first debate did for the Romney campaign. The cynic in me says that we vote for the candidate we perceive to be more presidential, regardless of experience or other more accurate qualifiers. This is surely how Obama was elected. I like the guy, but no one who voted for him could honestly make the claim that he won because of his vast experience in government or the private sector. People voted for him for a variety of reasons, but surely two big ones loom: we enjoyed the narrative power of electing the first black president in a nation whose first politicians owned black people, and he just seemed more presidential than John McCain (and certainly more so than Sarah Palin). And, Mitt Romney, in that first debate, seemed more presidential. And it did wonders for his campaign.

But alas, that narrative is too unsatisfying to many on the left who in this zero hour of the campaign are thinking of ways to spin a potential Obama defeat. The current answer: race. Now, don't misunderstand me, it is 100%, incontrovertible fact that there are people in our nation who will not vote for Barack Obama because he is black. Working in a blue collar industry in Tulsa this past summer I received direct confirmation of this truth. My boss there, a staunch Republican, lamented that honest, hardworking Republicans like him, unmotivated by prejudice (there were, after all, Republicans before 2008) are made to look like racist idiots by some of the things we heard people say in our store. There are racist Republicans, as, surely, there are racist Democrats. But you know what? They all voted against Obama four years ago. In other words, it is not like they were egalitarian left-leaning vegans before the 2008 election and then became the frothing at the mouth racist Republicans who are trying to unseat the Nefarious Kenyan this year. So it is not like Obama has lost the racist support this year; he couldn't, because he never had it. He is losing support among other voters dissatisfied with what they see as four more years of stagnation in the economy.

Andrew Sullivan, one of my favorite voices in politics who has become increasingly unhinged over the last few years (you should read his posts about his recent move to New York City; he makes it sound like a third world country because his internet speed is slightly slower than he is used to, not to mention the way he went absolutely apoplectic over Sarah Palin, even to this day refusing to acknowledge the excess she drove him to), is one of the principal figures spinning thisnarrative. (Here is a great takedown of Sullivan in the Dartmouth Review, exposing his utterly uncomprehending grasp of U.S. history). And it is surely a comforting narrative for those on the left to try and sell. We were not defeated because our ideas were bad or our policies failed, but because this country is still filled with a  bunch of backwards rednecks. 

These folks cite a recent AP Survey on race to justify their claims. I have perused this survey and I didn't find this dramatic uptick in racial prejudice. The favorability numbers for whites and blacks are largely the same as they were two years ago and consistent between the two races as well. And the survey also features frustrating questions like the following: "It’s really a matter of some people just not trying hard enough; if blacks would only try harder, they could just be as well off as whites." You are then asked whether or not you agree with this statement.

Now, how do you answer that question? Think carefully. Say that you respond, "no." You say this because you are aware of the crippling effects of generations of slavery and 100 years of Jim Crow on the psyche of a people. But you know what that sounds like to me, the cynic? You don't think black people can work hard enough to succeed. So say that you answer, "yes", because you believe in the ideals of the American Dream, that through hard work and perseverance we can all become successful.  Now, the cynic in me sees you as a blatant racist who believes the age old trope that blacks just don't work as hard as whites. How can you answer that question without your response being spun as racist? You do what slightly over a third of the respondents did: you say neither agree nor disagree. Really, what else can you do?

Again, I am not saying America is healed of its racist past. Show me a place that is. The Enlightened Europe we like to look to as an example for everything right is either entirely homogenous in its composition or filled with racists (or both), as was readily evident in the Euro Cup soccer tournament last summer, the great French resentment of the growing Muslim population, and on and on. My point is simply that it is too easy, yet all too predictable, that any Obama loss will be sold to the believers on the left as ample evidence of the rise of racism in this country. The AP poll is providing the fodder for that narrative. But it is not true. Obama won four years ago on the backs of independents who liked his hopey changey message. If he loses this year, which I seriously doubt he will, it will not be because those same people all of a sudden became racists, but because they do not like the direction he has taken this country in his term of office. 

On a side note, I am well aware that if Romney loses the narrative on the right will be that this is all due to the refusal of the lamestream media to hold Obama to account for his mistakes in office. If Bush would have tried to spin Benghazi like Obama has the media would have crucified him (which is probably true), if growth was this slow under a Republican there would be widespread calls by the media for something to change in Washington, etc. And it will surely be comforting for them to hear.

Gary Johnson, 2012.