Hypocrisy in SDS

The racist position in the current I.Q. debate belongs to SDS--not Herrnstein. Members of SDS are the ones who seem convinced that people's races are important.

Reading SDS literature, hearing their slogans, gives one the impression that they object to Herrnstein's meritocracy because they think the lower classes will contain disproportionate numbers of a given race.

Why would this objection be held, unless SDS members thought race important?

If SDS was non-racist, it would protest the meritocracy per se. Whether the lower classes were white, yellow, black or red would not make a damn bit of difference to SDS or to anyone who is concerned about the worth of human beings instead of skin colors. The position of SDS--were it honest--would be to protest human oppression even if all the oppressed were of one race.

To take the stand SDS has made is to perpetuate racism in the name of ending it. It deserves complete condemnation. As long as people's problems are viewed as those of blacks, whites, or Chicanos, members of every race will remain prisoners of their skins. The ugliness of racism will not disappear until people refuse to consider skin color as significant of anything. In this regard, SDS has been as opposed to color-blindness as the Ku Klux Klan.

SDS might reply that it considers race important only because other people--bigots--consider it important. If individuals are losing out because of their skin color and not their abilities, SDS might ask, would not race be a legitimate concern? Indeed it would--and Herrnstein would agree.

Herrnstein's position is non-racist. He believes that if society could be counted upon to reward high I.Q. with success, regardless of one's race, then anyone with a high I.Q. would succeed. And if this relation between I.Q. and success is held to be a good one, in fact, racism becomes an evil in Herrnstein's meritocracy. It destroys, or badly disrupts, the relationship between I.Q.'s and social rewards.

It hardly needs to be pointed out, however, that American society cannot be trusted to reward high I.Q.'s in a colorblind way. The deadly politicization of our society leads, as politics always does, to the viewing of people in "groups" that must be manipulated through various "social policies." Politics amounts to nothing more than certain groups forcibly imposing regulations and distributing privileges to other groups. Until we re-think this approach, group-ism and racism will be the fruit.

Given this context, one must question Herrnstein's motives for publishing his article in as widely-read a magazine as the Atlantic. He is undoubtedly aware that his ideas will be used by bigots who desire to repress blacks collectively. Worse, the article will probably provide educational policy makers with an excuse to offer an even shoddier product to blacks and Chicanos than they do now. Offering the article to the general public at this particular time seems almost intentionally designed to assist both processes.

Two further challenges also cast doubt on Herrnstein's article. First, a system that rewards high I.Q. with success seems to be quite arbitrary. Performance, motivation and thoughtfulness are all probably more important that I.Q., and recognition of this would call for changes in society which Herrnstein ignores. Second, Herrnstein has not demonstrated satisfactorily that I.Q. is predominantly determined by genetics. Improvement of prenatal care in poor families gave an eight-point rise in I.Q. in one study, and other studies have shown I.Q. gains of 40 and 50 points after enriching the environment of poor children.

But the issue at stake does not depend on any of these questions. If individuals of any skin color tended to have disproportionately high I.Q.'s and success in a universally upward-mobile society. I believe Herrnstein would not care. The phenomena would disturb only those who accepted racism, a belief that skin colors really are important.