So, first, to be honest, I posted a comment with a link to this blog in a thread that Steve Sailer was participating in at Matt Yglesias's blog, just to gently nudge him in this direction. He responded at some length in the comments section of my post "Doing the Sailer Dance". You should click over and read his comment, it's interesting.
It's a bit too late at night to really respond to it, but I do have to say, first, that yes, it is always disturbing to find yourself agreeing so often with someone whose general worldview you disagree with strongly. I don't think I ever called Sailer a Nazi; I do wonder sometimes at the disconnect between his rhetoric and his policy prescriptions. But I should, of course, avoid making assumptions about what he "really thinks" and shouldn't cast aspersions based on my own imaginings about what his secret policy positions are. In return, though, I think he should respect that I honestly don't believe that black people are predisposed to low intelligence or criminality. (I owe you all a substantive post on hereditarianism soon.)
Here's the thing: I genuinely believe that it's easy for Steve to reconcile having those kinds of beliefs with not having personal animus towards black people. I do think though that he should be a little more aware of how weird that is, and I believe he is too credulous to the idea that his compatriots in the hereditarian movement aren't filled with anti-black anger. It is unusual to be able to so thoroughly separate the political from the personal. But then I wrote a pretty nasty post about Steve (which I largely stand by) and yet he was able to both respond back (rather nastily himself) and then turn around and leave several other generous and thoughtful comments on my blog. That's a rare thing. It doesn't excuse what I find to be flatly noxious thinking on his part, but I think it definitely helps to explain why he is able to maintain his beliefs about race without having, or at least demonstrating, emotional racism.
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Sailer is a smart guy with an unfortunate fixation on race and IQ. He has a nose for sniffing out bullshit -- the example he gave in his comment of education policy is a good one, since our "national conversation" about education policy is filled with such bullshit from top to bottom. (Requiring all CA high school grads to pass Algebra II -- terrible idea.) But after calling out the bullshit, his explanations for why it's bullshit are far too simple and tend to absurdly discount environment in favor of hereditarianism. For instance, Sailer thinks the Algebra II requirement is a terrible idea because lots of people are just born too dumb to pass Algebra II. If this policy is adopted, and fewer kids end up passing high school, Sailer will claim, "Ah ha, I'm right."
Bob Somerby is another very smart blogger with a fantastic nose for sniffing about bullshit. He also taught in inner-city Baltimore public schools for many years. He would agree with Steve, and Freddie, and me that requiring all high school grads to pass Algebra II is a foolish policy. This is what he thinks are the problems with low-income schools (link here): "1) Low-income kids are way “behind” on the day they first enter school. 2) At those schools, instructional programs and materials are designed for a different population. 3) For forty years, the Roses, the Kopps and the Time magazines have churned an unhelpful discussion."
Sailer would not disagree with any of these. But, in his view, the main factor explaining #1 and #2 is that low-income (black) kids just have worse genes. He can't accept that these kids are affected by their experiences and their environment for years before they're old enough to take IQ tests -- and before they enter schools. Yes, the "genes mean nothing" argument is bullshit and deserves to be debunked. But Sailer's too happy with his own "genes mean almost everything" alternative to sniff out the obvious bullshit in that argument as well.
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