Michael Levin's Why Race Matters

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Thought Killing Clichés

"It is well to scout at the outset two common errors about group differences, each the overestimation of a statistical cliché. One cliché ruins that group differences permit overlap - that, for example, not all blacks are less intelligent than all whites. This is of course, so; mean differences allow exceptions, and decree nothing about specific individuals. However, mean group differences do support conclusions about the aggregate characteristics of groups, and the likely characteristics of individuals. That women are on average a half-foot shorter than men allows some women to be taller than most men, but it rules out an all female NBA team, and makes it rational to bet that the next woman you meet will be shorter than the next man.

A second oversold cliché is that variation within groups typically far exceeds the difference between their means. Again this is indisputable; the gap between the brightest and dullest white is much greater than that between the average white and average black. But once again this does not vitiate between-group differences. Within-sex variation in height is about 4', an order of magnitude greater than the 6" difference between the average man and the average woman, yet this 6" difference still explains why tall women are extremely rare. Likewise, that the 15-point gap mean difference in IQ between blacks and whites is less than the 100-point spread between the brightest and dullest whites still permits the 15-point gap to carry important characteristics, such as the relative scarcity of black scientists. For the same reason, the fact that there is more genetic diversity among Africans than between Africans and non-Africans does not render a comparison of African to non-African means "senseless" (Gould 1995: 13). There is much more diversity of height among dogs than among giraffes, but it is quite sensible to observe that dogs are typically shorter than giraffes."

Michael Levin, Why Race Matters: Race Differences and What They Mean (Westport: Praeger, 1997) p.11

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Race Ignorance on the Right and Left

"Left and Right tend to share four premises. One, of course, is that racial differences are caused by forces external to the races themselves — racism for the Left, government intrusion for the Right. A second is impatience with quantitative reasoning. Prior to inquiry, it is natural to ascribe the black/white attainment gap to a number of causes, including genes, environmental correlates of genes, discrimination, and historical accidents. The substantive issue is how much each factor contributes. Yet both sides cast the debate in all-or-nothing terms — it is all oppression or all welfare, with nothing between. Some single factor or cluster of factors may well explain the entire race gap (intelligence and temperment loom large in chapter 8), but the question whether one factor dominates must be asked before it can be answered. Incidentally, the all-or-nothing mindset can coexist with extensive use of descriptive statistics. Hacker (1992), for instance, presents pages of reproductive trends and academic success, but goes on, without any causal analysis, to attribute these differences entirely to white racism. Fischer et al. (1996) make more sophisticated use of regression analysis to isolate causes, but when in the crunch they must explain why blacks persistently fall short on objective tests, they offer only vague qualitative conjectures.

Third, a preoccupation with blame leads both the Left and the Right to conflate questions of cause with questions of fault. The causal question is, simply, "Why do the races differ?" The complex fault question is, "What malice or folly created these differences?" For the Left it is malicious racism, for the Right it is foolish welfare, with both sides ignoring the possibility that human action has nothing to do with it. The upshot is scolding and lecturing, as the Left scolds whites for "racism" of which they may be innocent, the Right (e.g., Mead 1990; Yates 1991; Magnet 1993; D'Souza 1995) lectures everyone about a work ethic blacks may be unable to follow, and the Left scolds the Right right back for "blaming the victim."

Finally, both Left and Right see the failure of blacks to live like whites as a problem. Certainly, blacks are less prosperous than whites. But this relative shortfall does not imply that blacks are deprived in any absolute sense; a black with a TV set and a flush toilet has treasures undreamed of by the Pharoahs. Should the black/white discrepancy be an expression of more basic biological differences, it is not clear why anything must be done about it. After all, it is not a problem that owls live in trees while gophers dwell underground, except perhaps for an owl confined to a burrow. Consider the black/white difference in infant mortality, cited by Jaynes and Williams (1989: 401) as a paradigm consequence of preventable social conditions. Should this difference be a biological phenomena, as recent research suggests, it is no more a social evil than is the susceptibility of Jews to Tay-Sachs. Humanitarian reasons would remain for trying to save more black babies, but the majority could no longer be held responsible for causing black infant morality, or negligent in permitting it. To be sure, biological differences can create problems — compare the underground owl. Behavior evolved in Africa may be maladaptive in urban societies created by Caucasians (but see Chapter 6), making life in white society a problem for blacks and the frequent conflict between black behavior and white norms a problem for everyone. But sheer differences in prosperity are not in themselves bad."

Ibid., pp.13-14

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"Race is Arbitrary"

"One might object (as does Diamond [1994]) that the race concept is nonetheless arbitrary, it being possible to group people in many ways other than ancestry — by the presence of a designated gene, say, or the ability to digest milk, or fingerprint whorls. Still, given a classificatory criterion, it becomes a matter of empirical fact, not human choice, whether that criterion correlates with further, independently specified traits. There is no objectively "right" way to classify land areas, which may be grouped by latitude, rainfall, height above sea level, or fauna, but once a principle of grouping is adopted — rainfall, say — the correlation of this variable with others, such as crop yield, does become a completely objective question. Nor does the greater genetic diversity of Negroids (defined geographically) compared to all other populations make talk of Caucasoid/Negroid differences "senseless" (Gould 1995). Once again, there is more genetic diversity among dogs than giraffes, yet it makes perfect sense to say that giraffes are taller than dogs. It remains possible that certain patterns hold across all populations of African ancestry.

Genetics Says We Are All The Same

"In rather reverse direction, it has been argued (by, e.g., Hoffmann 1994) that, since the races as defined by ancestry differ in genetic material by only .0012%, their differences must be insignificant. This figure is misleading, to begin with, for, after all, humans and chimpanzees share 98.8% of their genes (Caccone and Powell 1989; Gibbons 1995) — because humans and chimps agree in having arms, legs, lungs, and other large gene-built structures. More important, subtle genetic differences can have very large "non-linear" effects. The nervous system of a virtuoso pianist differs very little in number of shared genes from that of an average person. The consequences of an .0012% difference in genetic material between ancestral lines is an empirical question that cannot be answered by a priori numerical considerations.

To anyone bent on denying come what may that race is a useful concept, I surrender the word "race." Such an individual may read what follows not as a discussion of race differences at all, but of differences between descendents of Africans and Eurasians. Nothing is lost but a word."

Ibid., pp.22-23

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Absence of Evidence

"One must also bear in mind the idea of "second-order" evidence. Sometimes, the absence of evidence of a hypothesis is just that: no evidence has been observed, leaving our estimate of the hypothesis unchanged. Other times, however, absence of evidence for a hypothesis amounts to evidence against it for, were the hypothesis true, some evidence favoring it would have been observed. We disbelieve in Santa Claus not only because his exploits defy known natural laws, but because if there were a Santa Claus, he would have been spotted by now. The very fact that there is no (first-order) evidence for his existence — that no one has ever seen him — is evidence that he does not exist. Arguably, if the races are equal in intelligence there should be a good deal of evidence that they are; absence of such evidence is itself evidence that the races are not equal."

Ibid., p.29

The Burden of Proof

"A natural starting point for discussing variations in intelligence and temperment is the psychometric literature. This literature does indeed reveal large group differences, and I will soon turn to it, but to begin there creates a false impression — that the scientific results are surprising, contrary to appearances, or involve a special, technical sense of the word "intelligence." In reality, the races appear to differ apart from any tests. Black children do not perform in school as if they are as able and motivated as white and Asian children. Black adults do not succeed in science, art, commerce, or the professions as if they were as able and motivated as white or Asian adults. On the whole, blacks encountered in everyday life, in the press, and on television news broadcasts do not behave like whites and Asians. Moreover, evidence of the equal intelligence of the races would presumably exist were the races in fact equal, and be prominantly cited by the many social scientists who passionately believe they are. Yet this does not happen. Authors like Gould and Kamin tirelessly criticize studies that show black intelligence to be lower than white, but cite no black performances that indicate high mean intelligence. This is one of those cases in which absence of evidence constitutes evidence against it. Everyday observation, together with the failure of egalitarians to produce evidence that the races are equal, disconfirms racial parity."

Ibid., p.29

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Stereotypes

"Cross-culturally robust stereotypes are unlikely to manifest identitical psychological needs. Generally speaking, the best explanation of a belief held by numerous noncolluding observers is that the belief is correct: should ten motorists report seeing a cow in a meadow, it would be a remarkable coincidence if all ten needed to see a cow. The hypothesis that they all had similar bovine visual experiences, which experiences were caused by something bovine, assumes the fewest coincidences. Likewise, the simplest explanation of robust stereotypes is that they report reliable observation.

Stereotypes about blacks in particular have shown great constancy. Pieterse (1992) records the agreement of all European cultures that blacks are unintelligent, brutal, and highly sexed, a view of blacks usually associated with pre-civil rights era America. Medieval Arab slave traders regarded blacks as rhythmic, highly sexed, unintelligent, and prone to "merriment" (Lewis 1990); also Rushton 1995b). Given their cultural achievements, Arabs would hardly have "needed" to feel superior to anyone. They may have been influenced by the servile status of the blacks they knew, but they did not regard their slaves from other groups as unintelligent. (Romans prized Greek and Jewish slaves for their intelligence.) The best explanation of this cross-cultural concordance is that the blacks observed by Europeans, Americans, and Arabs displayed the traits in question."

Ibid., pp.32-33

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Racial Differences in Temperment and Motivation

Hernstein and Murray (1972) tend to describe blacks as if they were simply a less inteligeent subpopulation of whites. These authors are aware that intelligence is not the whole story, nothing that the races continue to differ in marital habits, illegitimacy, welfare dependency, and incarceration after IQ is controlled for (329-338), but they ignore possible noncognitive race differences as causes. Such differences do appear to exist.

Many observers, including a number ready to attribute all black difficulties to racism, agree that there is a distinctive black behavioral style. Kochman (1983: 18) describes the white approach to argument as "low-keyed: dispassionate, impersonal and non-challenging . . . cool, quiet and without affect," while the black approach is "high-keyed: animated, interpersonal, and confrontational . . . heated [and] loud . . . Blacks do not simply debate an idea [the white mode]: they debate the person debating the idea" (21-34).

Kochman observes that whites find the black style "dysfunctional" and often retreat into silence before it, although he considers the black approach more consonant with Mill's ideal of free speech. Hacker, citing several black psychologists, remarks that "Black children are more attuned to their body and physical needs," so "need more leeway for moving around the classroom" (1992: 171). Kochman likewise mentions black "animation," "vitality," and "intense and spontaneous emotional behavior," and comments that the black "rhythmic style of walking" is "a response to impulses coming from within" (106-110). Boykin (1986: 61-65) describes the black personality as displaying "verve," "affect," "expressive individualism," and a "social time perspective, an orientation in which time is treated as passing through a social space." He goes on to contrast the value placed by blacks on "a personal orientation toward objects" with the tendency of whites to "place reason above all else," white "possessive individualism and egalitarian conformity," and "an impersonal (objective) orientation toward people."

Caucasoid classical music, emphasizing harmony and regularity, is patently unlike Negroid jazz, rhythm and blues, and rap, which feature improvisation and syncopation — to judge by films made by anthropologists, traits common to African music and the musical games of black children in the United States. Negroid dancing involves pelvic thrusting and other mimicry of intercourse absent from Caucasoid dancing. Nelson George (1992) generalizes these differences to a distinctive black "athletic aesthetic" common to activities as disparate as jazz, basketball and "sermonizing," involving improvisation, aggression, intimidation, arrogance, and the will to humiliate an opponent. (George concedes that this behavior can appear "untutored, undisciplined and immature," see 1992: xviii.) Jones and Hochner (1973) agree that the black athletic approach involves "an individualistic dimension . . . black athletes place greater emphasis on the stylistic component of play [and] the expressive character of the performance." Majors and Billson, in their book Cool Pose (1992) write that the physical "posturing" or "styling" of black males is intended to "deliver a single, critical message: pride, strength and control."

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The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory is a widely used personality test, race differences on which are described for a number of populations in Dahlstrom, Lachar, and Dahlstrom's MMPI Patterns of American Minorities (1986). Overall, blacks achieve higher average scores than whites on the Psychopathy, Schizophrenia, and Hyperactivity scales (Dahlstrom, Lachar, and Dahlstrom 1986: 29-31, 34, 36, 39, 41, 47, 95, 135), findings normally interpreted to show "estrangement and impulse-ridden fantasies . . unusual thought patterns and aspiration-reality conflict" (Gynther 1968). Dreger and Miller (1960) also report higher black male scores on the Hypomania scale, taken to indicate "outgoing, sociable, and overly energetic patterns; tendencies to act impulsively and with poor judgment" (Dahlstrom, Lachar, and Dahlstrom 1986: 218). Black males tend to score higher on precisely the MMPI scales on which the prison population deviates from the population mean (Hernstein and Wilson 1985: 189); elevated MMPI are equally predictive of criminal behavior for blacks and whites (Elion and Megargee 1975). It is striking, and surprised the investigators, that, while black males always exceed white males in Psychopathic Deviance and Hypomania, blacks who have attended integrated schools attain more deviant scores than those who have attended segregated schools (Dahlstrom, Lachar, and Dahlstrom 1986: 125-26, 245 Table D-11) — contrary to the hypothesis that segregation distorted the black personality. Shuey (1978) and others have also found that integration adversely affects the self-conception of black schoolchildren.

That black self-esteem is low is a virtual axiom of popular sociology (see, e.g., Schoenfield 1988). In Brown v. Board of Education (1954) the Supreme Court cited damage to self-concept caused by segregation, supposedly shown by an experiment in which black children from segregated schools preferred white dolls, as proof that "separate is inherently unequal." The willingness of young black males to rob and kill for fashionable sneakers is attributed to a desperate need for peer approval as a source of self-respect. Fischer et al. (1996) state it as fact that de facto segregation "lower[s black] youths' self-esteem and ultimately lower[s] their test scores" (197; also see 180). But, as in the MMPI study, black self-esteem is typically found to exceed white. According to Shuey,

[A]t the preschool level there seems to be some awareness of color differences and a feeling of inferiority associated with dark skin, but at the grade school level and continuing through high school and college there is no consistent evidence of lower self esteem in Negroes; if there is a difference, it would appear to be more likely that Negroes have a greater sense of personal worth, rather than the reverse. (1966: 512; also see Shuey [1978] for a review of literature concerning blacks and whites aged 3 to 8)

A survey of adolescent girls commissioned by the American Association of University Women (American Association of University Women 1991) indicated — to its sponser's apparent surprise, given a poor academic performance of black adolescents — that black females enjoy higher self-esteem than white. A study of body image found that while 90% of white females think they are too fat, only 12% of black females expressed dissatisfaction with their weight (Parker et al. 1995). Black boys do "not [allow] their achievement to affect their view of themselves":

Bruce Hare, an educational researcher, has documented this process among fifth-grade boys in several schools in Champaign, Illinois [evidently Hare 1985]. He found that although the black boys had considerably lower achievement-test scores than their white classmates, their overall self-esteem was just as high. This stunning imperviousness to poor academic performance was accomplished, he found, by their de-emphasizing school achievement as a basis for self-esteem and giving preference to peer-group relations — a domain in which their esteem prospects were better. (Steele 1992, p.74)

The doll experiment cited in Brown as duplicated with identical results for black children in integrated schools in the North (Seligman 1987), meaning that either integration harms black self-esteem as much as segregation, or that the doll test is invalid.

Ibid., pp.73-75

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Literature reviews by Porter and Washington (1979), Crocker and Major (1989) and Baumeister, Smart, and Boden (1996) agreed in finding the self-esteem of black students equal to or higher than that of white students. Tashakkori (1993) and Tashakkori and Thompson (1991), in other review articles, also report that blacks consistently value themselves more highly than whites, the gap being smaller for blacks attending integrated schools. Like Hare and Steele, Tashakkori considers it likely that blacks do not use academic success as a standard of personal worth to the extent that whites do. At the same time, blacks in integrated schools are more aware of the shortfall in their achievements, given what is considered minimum performance in their surroundings. Many commentators explain low black self-esteem in terms of feelings of powerlessness; Tashakkori (1993: 597) reports that blacks do not perceive themselves as more powerless than whites, but that this self-perception does not translate into lower self-esteem, apparently because blacks regard the self as less a locus of control. Lefcourt (1965) found that, faced with a choice between two risky situations with equal expected payoffs, one of whose outcomes depends on chance while the outcome of the other depends on agent response, blacks are more apt than whites to choose the chance alternative. Coleman et al. (1966: 289, Table 3.13.14) found black high school seniors considerably more likely than white to agree that "good luck is more important for success than hard work."

Black students estimate their own academic competance more highly than whites despite their own objective and self-reported lower academic achievement (Hare 1985: Table 3; Tashakkori 1993: 597). Black high school seniors in the Coleman study were more apt than whites to classify themselves as "among the brightest," and less likely to agree that "'Sometimes I feel I just can't learn,'" despite poorer academic performance (Coleman et al 1966: 287-288, Tables 3.13.11, 3.13.12). Remarkably, southern rural blacks, whose academic performance fell below that of all other blacks as well as all whites, were more apt than other blacks to classify themselves as bright and able to learn. All told, "aspiration/reality conflict" is prominent in this literature. (Many teachers I have spoken to comment informally on their black students' unrealistic expectations of becoming doctors or lawyers.) Anderson (1994) reports that black gang members believe they deserve to be treated as superior, which Baumeister, Smart, and Boden (1996) interpret as manifesting high self-esteem.

Certain MMPI items reliably distinguish the races. Blacks agree more frequently with the following statements (Dahlstrom, Lachar, and Dahlstrom 1986: 229-231):

I am an important person.

It wouldn't make me nervous if any members of my family got into trouble with the law.

I am entirely self-confident.

If given the chance I could make a good leader of people.

I have often had to take orders from someone who did not know as much as I did.

Deficient self-esteem does not seem indicated. In addition, blacks much more readily agree that:

Most people will use somewhat unfair means to gain profit or an advantage rather than lose it.

Most people make friends because friends are likely to be useful to them.

Most people are honest chiefly through fear of being caught.

It is not hard for me to ask help from my friends even though I cannot return the favor.

I am sure I am being talked about.

It would be better if almost all the laws were thrown away.

A person shouldn't be punished for breaking a law that he thinks is unreasonable.

These responses are interpreted to reveal greater cynicism, mistrust, conflict with authority, and "externalization of blame for one's problems" (Dahlstrom, Lachar, and Dahlstrom 1986). Race differences in MMPI scores diminish when social status, IQ and level of education are fixed, but once again this does not show MMPI differences to be status artifacts. Traits that affect scores may also affect status, as for instance friction with authority impedes advancement in hierarchies.

Ibid., pp.75-76