Quote:
Originally Posted by MrWookie
I mean, this is utter nonsense. Total, absolute nonsense. Pretty much everyone knows today that race and IQ stuff is garbage, surely including many people peddling that idea, and racism has nothing to do with IQ. Race and IQ stuff is just ex post facto argle bargle to justify the system that's been set up. Certainly racism doesn't just magically disappear when white people realize that Black people are a little bit smarter than they thought previously.
Racism is an entrenched system of advantage and disadvantage, and there are a whole lot of white people who are not willing to give that up even if they know full well that Black people are people just like them. Thomas Jefferson knew full well that slavery was wrong and that his slaves were people, but that didn't stop him from owning and raping them. That attitude is what is still alive today.
I don't totally disagree with your point. I think the ethos or perspective you identify does exist in significant force and it won't be terribly bothered by more in-depth education about the superficiality of race. Charles Murray himself, for example, would be someone who doesn't believe his own BS. He can't, and has even made some concessions, because he is confronted in arenas where the issue is actually discussed and he has to maintain some pretense of being serious scholar.
You fail to identify a concomitant perspective, the true believers in cognitive explanations for disparate racial outcomes. I think that's actually the dominant racist or prejudicial perspective as well as the perspective of the younger alt Right spectrum. Think about it this way. The racists you identify can't communicate that hey, shhhsh, this is all BS but we have to have some kind of scientific sheen on our pretext to get it into the public discourse. They are in a pitched battle and have to construct some kind of appeal to draw in more people which they think will actually change people's minds and garner their support. What is that if not The Bell Curve?
We are essentially differing about what people really believe and in what proportions. That's a difficult thing to ascertain, not an occasion to use language like "Total absolute nonsense" to describe the opposing opinion.
We've both argued with our share of libertarians and other species of casual and not so casual racists. You think they don't believe a word they say, but I think quite a few of them do believe a lot of it. And I think quite a few of them might be helped by an actual confrontation of their actual beliefs. When you constantly refuse to do that it makes it look like you have no real confidence in your position. That, in turn, makes them think you secretly believe what they believe but are more dedicated to your ideology than what they see as scientific truth- to them you are ducking. I think your assumption can actually do harm in that way.
What I suggested is not a cure for racism, but simply an answer to the question of what should be taught at secondary education. The issue should be engaged competently but simply instead of sending kids out totally vulnerable to what can be very appealing racial stories to a White population increasingly degraded by the ravages of economic inequality. When you are recruiting someone into a movement seen as extreme you don't start with something immoral and bizarre sounding. You build on what people can already concede, like Black kids not doing well in school. It seems worthwhile to inoculate some kids against that recruitment approach.