RACISM AND
RIGHT-WING CHRISTIANITY

INTRODUCTION

As we indicated in our article, "Culture Wars And Civilization Conflict," the Bible speaks of ethnic conflict as one of the most pointed and distressing signs of those events leading up to the "Beginning of Sorrows" (i.e., the first half of the Tribulation and the appearance of the Antichrist as a messianic savior). Paul Hockenos, in his book Free to Hate: the Rise of the Right in Post-Communist Eastern Europe, describes the term "ethnic," and distinguishes between ethnos (i.e., "tribe") and what we as Americans understand as "nation." He writes:

"In the lively academic discourse that has grown around nationalism, scholars distinguish two general concepts of the nation: (1) the civic or democratic, and (2) the ethnic. The civic definition, with its roots in the French Revolution, uses "nation" to refer to a body of citizens whose collective sovereignty constitutes a state. In other words, it is "nation" as the term is commonly applied in ... (the United States by multiculturalists and liberals). In German, the term is Rechtsstaat ...

"The ethnic nation, on the other hand, is a folkish community, bound ... by descent, language, customs ... (religion), and history [what the Germans call a Volksstaat or Volksgemeinschaft - meaning ethnic nation (or community) - a nation (community) based on ethnicity and "group rights" over and against "individual rights") ...] What defines membership in this kind of nation is ethnicity ...

"The ethnic nation is at odds with the premises of ... (the civic) nation ... and presents a ... recipe for conflict in the combustible multinational (world of today) ...

"Where extreme ... (ethnicists) take the logic of the ethnic nation to its ... conclusion, as in the former Yugoslavia, the result is the forging of an all-inclusive, homogeneous ethnic nation-state. The price (of course) ... is war, complete with forcible mass expulsions, concentration camps, and genocide. In other cases, such as the Baltics, the Caucasus, Slovakia, Romania, or Bulgaria, where significant national minorities live, the majorities have tightened the screws on their co-inhabitants through cultural repression and restrictive citizenship laws. Under fire, the minorities react with nationalisms of their own, which often take the form of separatist ambitions. In response, the dominant nationalities crack down all the harder on the "disloyal" minorities. The heightened tension can bring in the minorities' mother states, usually all too willing to come to the rescue of their national kin, in regions they often consider their own anyway. The action-reaction spiral of nationalism plays itself out wherever ethnic nationalism is the order of the day."

THE "ACTION-REACTION SPIRAL"

As we suggested in our article, "Culture Wars And Civilization Conflict," this is precisely the kind of conflict the Bible has reference to! - what Hockenos calls the "action-reaction spiral" of one ethnic group "raging" against another; it is exactly this kind of pathology which produces fascism; and it's out of the fascist nexus that Antichrist will emerge - and it's not just in the Caucasus, the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, etc. that this "action-reaction spiral" has taken root. The fact of the matter is, it's happening right here in our own backyard. Take California, for instance. When Hockenos speaks of majority cultures (i.e. ethnic groups) "tightening the screws" on "significant minorities" in their midst which seem to be challenging their dominance, he could just as easily be speaking about majority whites (i.e., "Anglos") tightening the screws [through measures like Proposition 187 (the 1994 California anti-immigrant initiative)] on Mexican immigrants (legal and illegal) who are threatening to displace them as the preeminent ethnic group in California. And when he speaks of minorities reacting to what the majority is doing by appealing to their "mother country," isn't that exactly what's happening when Mexican immigrants appeal to officials in their homeland just across the border (who, as Hockenos explains, are "... usually all too willing to come to the rescue of their national kin, in regions they often consider their own anyway ...") for protection against what majority Anglos are doing in "tightening the screws" against them.

Finally when Hockenos talks about "minorities reacting with nationalisms of their own," and when they begin harboring their own "separatist" ambitions, isn't that also what's happening when Mexican immigrants retort, "we didn't cross the border, the border crossed us" and begin waving Mexican flags at their rallies in downtown L.A. and San Diego - and you can be assured that the "action-reaction cycle" is already far advanced when Anglos then angrily react by calling them (i.e., the immigrants) "disloyal" for doing so. By using the term "disloyal," Anglos - whether they are prepared to admit it or not - are preparing the way for their (i.e., the immigrants) eventual expulsion.

This is exactly the kind of "action-reaction cycle" that Hockenos is talking about - the kind which ultimately produces what's going on in the former Yugoslavia, the Caucasus and in Rwanda - and it's occurring not just in some far-off land, but right here in our own country. Majority whites in America are no more immune to this pathology than are the members of any other cultural group - and they have altogether too high an estimation of themselves to think otherwise. This is what the Bible is talking about when it speaks of "nations (ethnic groups) rising up against nations (ethnic groups) - and, as we just indicated, the social pathology which produces this kind of conflict (i.e., the "action-reaction spiral" of ethnic conflict) is already far advanced in this country.

Indeed, it is precisely this pathology which was at the root of the impeachment fight in Congress during most of last year - an impeachment fight which found the entire black and Latino caucases (as well as all those beholden in any way to the "gay and lesbian" community, the Jewish community, and the feminist community) in both the Senate and the House in lockstep with the President without any real regard to the actual facts of the matter. The truth is, these communities felt compelled to rally to the President's defense out of a very genuine fear of what their adversaries in the so-called "Religious Right" would do to them if they won - and "to hell with the truth of the matter."

KULTUR KAMPF (THE CULTURE WAR) The fact is, there is a Kultur Kampf (Culture War) raging in this country, and there is little that can be done to "compromise" the differences between the two sides involved (please see our article on "Irreconsilable Differences"). On one side - as we just suggested - is arrayed the so-called "majority culture" [consisting largely of white, Europeans who claim Christianity as their religion (about 70 percent of the population), and on the other side is a minority culture consisting largely of blacks, Latinos, Asians (and it doesn't seem to matter to most whites that many, if not most, in these communities claim Christianity as their religion as well - such is the cultural arrogance of most whites) and Jews; it also includes a smattering of white "radical feminists" and what is now referred to as the "gay and lesbian community" (about 30 percent of the population)]. This is not to say that all those in either community have yet been "radicalized" or that they at present feel themselves to be directly involved in this struggle (only about a third of the larger white community is so far involved; perhaps about a half of the minority community; for the most part, those not involved claim to be "moderates" or "centrists"). But sooner or later, most of them will become involved - such is the sad reality created by the "action-reaction spiral" that Paul Hockenos describes [again, please see our article on this subject] - a "spiral" which - as a "natural" part of its "pathology" - has a way of undermining and eventually wrecking the "middle."

WHAT THIS ARTICLE IS ALL ABOUT

This is what this article is all about. Together with our article, "Culture Wars And Civilization Conflict," this article will lay the basis for many of the articles which will follow. We urge you to study this article carefully. Unless you do, you will be unprepared for our upcoming examination of the "Civilization Conflicts" which are presently taking hold on the world. The sad reality of the matter is, there are already preparations being made "in the name of God" by partisans of America's "Majority Culture" for an attack on America's Minority Culture. This is what the Bell Curve by Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray is all about. The Bell Curve lays the intellectual foundation for just such an attack.

As Christians, we need to be very careful to stay clear of this kind of conflict. There is no room for racism in the Kingdom of God. As evangelical Christians, we desperately need to come to the realization that we are no longer citizens of this earth (or of any of this earth's civilizations, nations or ethnic groupings - regardless of the perceived facts of the matter), but we are now citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven, "whose builder and maker is God." (Heb. 11:10) And this isn't "make believe" or simply a "doctrinal matter" without any practical outcome: the fact is unless we begin walking in this reality, we will inevitably get swept up in the civilization wars that are already beginning throughout the world. In these "latter days," we need to -

"... put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him: Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all. (Col. 3:10-11)]

ECONOMIC STRATIFICATION BY I.Q.

In their controversial book on intelligence and American society, The Bell Curve, Richard J. Herrnstein[1] and Charles Murray[2] contend that the key to explaining much of this country's inequality - and most of the social problems that result from it - is economic stratification by a unitary entity called intelligence or "cognitive ability" - as measured by I.Q.

Christopher Caldwell, reporting in The American Spectator, a conservative magazine popular with politically motivated Christian evangelicals, writes, "The central argument of The Bell Curve is that intelligence is important to success, and emerging technologies and global trade make brain power more important than ever. Society's institutions - universities, businesses, governments - are selecting the brain-workers they need with increasing accuracy, and compensating them with increasing largesse. The probable result: a growing identification of native intelligence with socioeconomic standing, a widening gap between rich and poor, and a stratification of America into intellectual castes, with a few hi-tech communications wizards living in privately policed suburbs and a horde of unskilled Calibans trapped in rotting cities and rural areas."[3]

THE RACIAL DIMENSION IN THE BELL CURVE

Caldwell reports, however, that these conclusions are not really new - that liberals like former Labor Secretary Robert Reich (The Work of Nations) and Mickey Kaus (The End of Equality) have been saying essentially the same thing for years.

What's new is that Herrnstein and Murray introduce race into the equation [essentially in two of the book's twenty-two chapters (chapters thirteen and fourteen), although the subject pops up again in Part IV (chapters seventeen through twenty-two)].

Caldwell writes, "Why was what was okay for Reich and Kaus to say an outrage for Herrnstein and Murray? The answer, as anyone who has followed the controversy knows, is a second conclusion of The Bell Curve: that the (growing) intellectual stratification ... has a racial dimension."

Caldwell continues, "There are measurable intelligence differences between the races that education can narrow only slightly, if at all. The lumpen class the authors envision will be disproportionately black (and Latino), while there will be ... (a disproportionate share of) whites ... among the symbolic analysts." [4]

MAJOR PROPOSITIONS

Herrnstein and Murray start with some general propositions about intelligence: (1) that the liberal journalistic consensus that I.Q. describes nothing real or important is diametrically opposed to the "hard-nosed" consensus of the scientific world; (2) that g or "general intelligence" can be measured accurately by I.Q. tests, and that they are not biased against ethnic groups; and (3) that I.Q. is largely hereditary and is passed on from parents to children.

In addition, the authors make what they think is an important concession which they believe goes a long way in mitigating any charges of racism by "liberal authorities:" intelligence is not an all-determining factor governing the success or failure of any one given individual - that other factors (like ambition, drive, hard work, environment, etc.) play important roles. Nonetheless, they contend that predictable behavioral patterns do emerge when one studies I.Q. across large population groups.

Such a group has been made available by the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), a federally funded study of 12,686 students who were age 14 to 22 in 1979, and have been followed ever since. The authors rely heavily on this study, which records I.Q., socioeconomic status, occupation, income level, criminal behavior, and other traits - and they cross-reference dozens of other studies done this century.[5]

THE BELL CURVE

When one charts people along an axis by intelligence, the resulting distribution is a "bell curve" - a statistical curve which gives its name to the book - with the vast majority of people stacking up in the middle range, and the remainder on two slopes at each end of the curve - one with significantly dumber individuals (the left slope), and one with significantly smarter people (the right slope). Using "standard deviation" - a measurement of probability - Murray and Herrnstein separate this curve into five groups, determined by I.Q. percentile: very dull (0 to 5th percentile), dull (6th to 25th percentile), normal (26th to 75th percentile), bright (76th to 95th percentile), and very bright (96th to 100th percentile). It is among the very few people who inhabit the respective ends of the curve that the "predictive power of I.Q." becomes problematic for policy.

Herrnstein and Murray believe that I.Q. has momentous implications for human behavior. For example, starting at the smart end, they supply statistical ammunition to the Kaus thesis that American society is being pulled centrifugally into castes by intellect. This sorting, they contend, begins initially in the elementary and secondary school systems and continues through the university system where the dullards are gradually (and mercilessly) weeded out; then it carries on into the job market where the bright are directed into a narrow range of high-intellect professions, where I.Q. averages 117. At the other end of the bell curve - at the stupid end - are bunched in disproportionate numbers the poor, the violent, the dishonest, and the irresponsible.[6]

TWO SOCIETIES IN ONE NATION

This data, the authors suggest, leads one to the inevitable conclusion that America is gradually developing two societies - one which is full of bright, high-achievers; the other full of the dull, the violent, and the economically dependent [and one that has been made that way largely as the result of their inherited intelligence (I.Q.)] - an underclass which has a substantial and relatively independent role in creating its own, very dangerous pathology. Indeed, Herrnstein and Murray write, "The underclass (i.e., those on the left side of the bell curve) will become even more concentrated spatially than it is today. The expanded network of day care centers, homeless shelters, public housing, and other services will always be located in the poorest part of the inner city, which means that anyone who wants access to them will have to live there. Political support for such measures as relocation of people from the inner city to the suburbs, never strong to begin with, will wither altogether. The gaping cultural gap between the habits of the underclass and the habits of the rest of society ... will make it increasingly difficult for children who have grown up in the inner city to function in the larger society even when they want to."[7]

CLASS (RACE) WARFARE

Herrnstein and Murray warn that if the conditions which are dividing the country into cognitive caste systems are not alleviated, an explosion is sure to result - an explosion which will most likely manifest itself in race warfare - and that this will occur largely because people have fixated on the perceived racial dimension of the underclass; that is, because it's largely black and Latino[8]. They write, "Racism will reemerge in a new and more virulent form. The tension between what the white elite is supposed to think and what it is actually thinking about race will reach something close to a breaking point. This pessimistic prognosis must be contemplated: when the break comes, the result, as so often happens when cognitive dissonance is resolved, will be an overreaction in the other direction. Instead of the candor and realism about race that is so urgently needed, the nation will be faced with racial divisiveness and hostility that is as great as, or greater, than America experienced before the civil rights movement."[9 ]

The authors continue, "We realize how outlandish it (may) seem to predict that educated and influential (white) Americans, who have been so puritanical about racial conversation, will openly revert to racism, (nonetheless, we believe it is worth worrying about) ... (We think that) it is more than just possible. [please see "The End of Multiculturalism," pg. 4] If it were to happen, (a custodial state would develop) ... which would be more unpleasant - more vicious - than anyone can now imagine ... by 'custodial state' we have in mind a high-tech and more lavish version of the Indian reservation for some substantial minority of the nation's population, while the rest of America tries to go about its business ... Extrapolating from current trends, we project that the policies of custodialism will be not only tolerated but actively supported by a consensus of the cognitive elite. To some extent, we are not even really projecting, but reporting. The main difference between the position of the cognitive elite that we portray here and the one that exists today is to some extent nothing more than the distinction between tacit (understandings) and explicit (understandings)."[10 ]

Moreover, Herrnstein and Murray caution that the problem dividing the underclass from the cognitive elite is growing; they warn, "During the 1980s, (liberal) scholars (thought they had) found evidence that the underclass was no longer expanding. But even as they wrote, the welfare rolls, which had moved within a narrow range since the late 1970s began to surge again"[11] - and it has not stopped "surging" since, bringing with it all the attendant problems associated with underclass dysfunction: illegitimacy, teen pregnancy, criminality, joblessness, welfare, etc.

As if to punctuate the truth of Herrnstein and Murray's predictions, Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) has already labeled the effort by the new Republican majorities in the House and Senate to remove the social programs supporting the underclass as "class" and "race" warfarez[12] - an assault on one "culture" [the "dullards" - or those who inhabit the lower end (the left side) of the bell curve] by another [those that occupy the high end (the right side) of the bell curve - the "cognitive elite."] Of course, Rangel wouldn't put it in those terms, but these are certainly the terms Herrnstein and Murray would use. There is, thus, some truth to Rangel's assertion - and the fact that he has expressed it in racial terms lends credence to Herrnstein and Murray's warning that unless something is done - and done quickly - the battle between the underclass and the cognitive elite will soon begin in earnest, and that it will express itself in racial terms.

DYSGENESIS

This, at last, brings us to the matter of dysgenesis - defined as the social process that leads to a decline in the genetic quality of a society; according to Caldwell, the authors' most depressing observation is this: Americans - taken as a whole - are getting stupider, since lower-intellect individuals - of all races - are having babies earlier and more frequently than their more intelligent contemporaries. Caldwell writes, "As this book went to press, the average I.Q. of mothers in the NLSY was 95.7. The authors speculate ... that immigrants now coming to the U.S. may (also) have lower I.Q.s than the norm ... To warn of the dangers of even minor dysgenesis, the authors show the hypothetical behavioral fallout of a 3-point drop in the mean of the NLSY: an 11 percent increase in the poverty rate, an 8 percent rise in children born out of wedlock, a 13 percent rise in jailings. They describe the results as 'worth worrying about and worth trying to do something about'."[13 ]

Caldwell continues, "It certainly is worth worrying about. As for doing something about it, however, one can go back to the status quo ante of the Great Society - reducing, or even eliminating, AFDC to take away the incentive for (the production of) a raft of low-I.Q. babies - but what if that is not sufficient to bring the gene pool up to snuff? There will surely be some to argue, Why stop there? Doesn't sterilization of criminals, with their average I.Q. of 84, provide the chance to kill two birds with one stone?"[14 ]

He continues, "It's here that we suddenly find ourselves in the territory of classical eugenics."[15] However, even Caldwell, a secular conservative given to anthropological discourse, recoils at the thought; he warns that "... all the known solutions (of classical eugenics) have typically been worse than the problem itself."[16]

EUGENICS: IS A FAIR DISCUSSION POSSIBLE?

Still, the authors feel compelled to broach the subject. They write, "Of all the uncomfortable topics we have explored ... (one) of the most uncomfortable ones ... (is) that a society with a higher mean I.Q. is also likely to be a society with fewer social ills and brighter economic prospects, and that the most efficient way to raise the I.Q. of a society is for smarter women to have higher birth rates. Instead, America is going in the opposite direction (i.e., dumber women are having babies in disproportionate numbers), and the implication is a future America with more social ills and gloomier economic prospects. These conclusions follow directly from the evidence we have presented at such length, and yet we have so far been silent on what to do about it."[17 ]

Why? - in a sense, the authors have already explained - ten pages earlier; they write, "... the existence of (any) differences (between individuals) must be discussed gingerly, when they are human differences. (But when) ... the differences are associated with membership in a group, censorship arises. In this book we have trod on one of those most sensitive areas by talking about ethnic (racial) differences ... The permissible answers, often even the permissible questions, are sharply circumscribed. The moral outlook that has become associated with equality has spawned a vocabulary of its own. Discrimination, once a useful word with a praiseworthy meaning, is now almost always used in a pejorative sense. Racism, sexism, ageism, elitism - all are in common parlance, and their meanings continue to spread, blotting out more and more semantic territory ... Mainstream political figures have found that their allegiance to the rhetoric of equality must expand very far indeed, for a single careless remark can irretrievably damage or even end a public career. In everyday life, the ideology of equality censors and straitjackets everything from pedagogy to humor. The ideology of equality has stunted the range of moral dialogue to triviality. In daily life - conversations, the lessons taught in public schools, the kinds of screenplays or newspaper feature stories that people choose to write - the moral ascendancy of equality has made it difficult to use concepts such as virtue, excellence, beauty and - above all - truth."[18]

And there's more! - there is something greater and more ominous lurking behind Herrnstein and Murray's apparent anxiety. They explain, "We are silent here ... (also) because we are as apprehensive as most other people about what might happen when a government decides to social-engineer who has babies and who doesn't."[19 ]

What exactly are Herrnstein and Murray talking about here? - clearly, they're talking about eugenics[20 ]- defined as "a political strategy" denoting some sort of social control - or "social-engineering," as they call it - over human reproduction; specifically, the effort to "improve" the hereditary substrata of a given population through the promotion of public policies designed to encourage the reproduction of genetically superior groups ("positive eugenics"), and the concomitant effort to fabricate methods designed to prevent genetically inferior groups from having children ("negative eugenics")."[21 ]Clearly, Caldwell was right in his assessment as to the direction Herrnstein and Murray were tending.

Eugenics! - It took Herrnstein and Murray 548 pages to reach the point (4 pages from the end), but there it is! And should we be surprised? - after all, what should one expect from a book which promulgates the thought that most of the ills of the nation can be solved if only the country had a better "gene pool" - or, as Herrnstein and Murray have explained: "... a society with a higher mean I.Q. is also likely to be a society with fewer social ills and brighter economic prospects ..."[22]

GIVING THE GAME AWAY

But, after quickly broaching the subject - and tantalizing and titillating the readers - Herrnstein and Murray beat a hasty retreat. Essentially, they seem to agree with Caldwell about the dangers associated with the subject. They write, "We can imagine no recommendation for using the government to manipulate fertility that does not have dangers."23 They've come so far, and one can't help but feel that they would have preferred to go further - but the times, being what they are, they couldn't go on.

Instead, they feel compelled to limit their suggestions to ending programs which they believe aid the "over production" of low-I.Q. babies. They write, "... this highlights the problem: the United States already has policies that inadvertently social-engineer who has babies (through programs like the Food Stamp program, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, etc.), and it is encouraging the wrong women." They continue "... if the United States did as much to encourage high-I.Q. women to have babies as it now does to encourage low-I.Q. women, it would rightly be described as engaging in aggressive manipulation."[24 ]

It's precisely here, however, that Herrnstein and Murray discreetly give their game away - and they do so by revealing their perception of these programs (i.e., AFDC, food stamps, etc.). What some people see as aid to the poor - and nothing more - Herrnstein and Murray see as a program of "reverse eugenics" - aiding low-I.Q. women to have high birth rates, thereby lowering the quality of America's overall "gene pool." To Herrnstein and Murray, it's a matter of genes, not aid to the poor.

Obviously, they feel stymied in proposing an actual eugenics policy - or anything that could possibly be construed as such - to aid in the production of high-I.Q. babies by high I.Q. women, but they do feel compelled to call for policies which would at least establish a neutral eugenics policy - one that at least doesn't encourage low-I.Q. women to have a disproportionate number of babies, babies Herrnstein and Murray believe they wouldn't ordinarily have. They write, "The technically precise description of America's fertility policy (i.e., its "reverse eugenics" policy) is that it subsidizes births among poor women, who are also disproportionately at the low end of the intelligence distribution. We urge generally that these policies, represented by the extensive network of cash and services for low-income women who have babies, be ended. The government should stop subsidizing births to anyone, rich or poor (as if the rich need to be subsidized; obviously they mean the poor - editor). The other generic recommendation, as close to harmless (i.e., acceptable in today's political climate) as any government program we can imagine, is to make it easy for women to make good on their prior decision not to get pregnant by making available birth control mechanisms [by which, as both have stated on previous occasions - they mean abortion (at least as one of several alternatives, hardly a program, we suppose, that Christians would wish to endorse)] that are increasingly flexible, foolproof, inexpensive, and safe."[25]

CHRISTIAN EVANGELICALS & A CONSERVATIVE
ANALYSIS OF THE BELL CURVE

In assessing the book, Caldwell writes, "... The Bell Curve is a comprehensive, responsible treatment of its subject, never mean-spirited or gloating ... Its crucial data are supplied in appendices for the reader's independent examination. Its science is never fuzzy or self-contradictory. Among the dozens of hostile articles that have thus far appeared on the book, none has successfully refuted any of its science ... The fact that it has been written is a profile in courage."[26]

Many evangelicals - while deploring some of the book's potentially racist implications - have enthusiastically embraced its findings. They see in its conclusions an easy (and reasonable) explanation for the seeming under achievement of many of the nation's minority communities - an under achievement which thirty years of liberal social tinkering, affirmative action, and "Great Society" programs have done little to alleviate. And here one probably should not blame white evangelicals from making the jump from applying the results of The Bell Curve from individuals to racial groups: in a world where everyone is judged as an individual, such a jump would, of course, be patently absurd; after all, a black physicist with an I.Q. of 140 is still a black physicist with an I.Q. of 140. But over the last thirty years, society has been increasingly organized to favor racial (or group) rights over individual rights, and countless numbers of Americans now automatically think in those terms. To ask them now to suddenly stop is not only inappropriate, it's too much to ask. In a world where most Americans have been taught to think in terms of group rights, group entitlements, and group achievements, the fact that blacks and Latinos are grouped disproportionately at the left side of the bell curve is a fact which cannot possibly go unnoticed by whites.

Indeed, The Bell Curve has been so widely acclaimed in conservative Christian circles - if only in hushed whisperings - as an explanation for black and Latino under achievement that the editorial staff at Christianity Today found it necessary to warn its readers to be careful about doing so - to resist, as it were, the temptation of applying its conclusions to groups rather than to individuals. The warning appeared in an editorial in the December 12th (1994) issue entitled "For Whom the Bell Curves." The editorial reads, "The authors' (Herrnstein and Murray's) conservatism may give The Bell Curve a stronger than usual hearing among ... evangelicals, but ... the implications of their findings ought to raise serious concern ... (Christians may) use The Bell Curve to reinforce stereotypes of blacks (and Latinos) ..."[27]

Nonetheless, the evangelical community's secular right-wing allies have been urging evangelicals to ignore such warnings as "fuzzy-headed:"[28] facts are facts, they say, and if blacks, Latinos and other minorities are not the intellectual equals of whites, we'll just have to learn to live with it. After all, God is sovereign, and possibly - just possibly - we, as white Christians, made a big mistake when - under the impress of "foreign, Marxist ideologies" - we accepted the silly and somewhat inane notion that all men are equal, thereby relinquishing our burden to be our less well-endowed brother's keeper - the "White Man's Burden," as the great British statesman, Cecil Rhodes put it. Herrnstein and Murray apparently agree; they write, "The Founders wrote frankly about the inequality of men. For Thomas Jefferson, it was obvious that ... (people) were especially unequal in virtue and intelligence. He was thankful for a 'natural aristocracy' that could counterbalance the deficiencies of the others, an 'aristocracy of virtue and talent, which Nature has wisely provided for the direction of the interests of society ..."

Herrnstein and Murray continue, "The other founders, including Madison, Hamilton, and Washington - ruminated in the same vein (as Jefferson) about the inequality of men and the political implications of that inequality ... The perversions ... (implicit) in the egalitarian ideal that began with the French Revolution and have been so plentiful in the twentieth century are not accidents of history ... Egalitarian tyrannies, whether of the Jacobite or the Leninist variety, are worse than inhumane. They are inhuman."[29]

CHRISTIANS HAD BETTER BE CAREFUL

But before white evangelicals adopt wholesale the paternalistic attitudes toward the minorities which are purveyed in The Bell Curve [because that, after all, is the way The Bell Curve is being translated by most Americans - evangelicals being no exception, an attitude which is sure to divide white evangelicals from these communities] - there are a number of reasons why we should pause.[30]

GROUPS HAVE IMPROVED
THEIR OVERALL GROUP I.Q.

First, Herrnstein and Murray appear to be greatly mistaken in their claim that "racial groups" cannot improve their overall I.Q. test scores - for example, Jews and certain Asian populations which score high today, scored near the bottom of the "Bell Curve" at the turn of the century (please see the November issues of The Nation and New Republic). [Please also see David Perkins, Learnable Intelligence: Breaking the I.Q. Barrier, which appears in the same Free Press catalogue as The Bell Curve, and Robert Sternberg, Beyond I.Q.][31]

PREMISE OF THE BELL CURVE
RESTS ON EVOLUTIONISM

Second, Christians, especially those who call themselves "Creationists," have other reasons to doubt the conclusions of The Bell Curve. The plain fact of the matter is, the scientific premise of psychometry[32] (i.e., intelligence testing) - and ipso facto, The Bell Curve - is predicated, in the end, on evolutionism. That alone should be reason enough for any evangelical to question the underlying "science" on which Herrnstein and Murray rely. And this is no presumption on our part: both Herrnstein and Murray acknowledge the link between psychometry and evolutionism throughout the book. For example, in describing the history of psychometry, they write - on page 1, no less - "Variation in intelligence became the subject of productive scientific study in the last half of the nineteenth century, stimulated, like so many other intellectual developments of that era, by Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. Darwin had asserted that the transmission of inherited intelligence was a key step in human evolution, driving our simian ancestors apart from the other apes."

ARE CHRISTIANS PREPARED TO ADMIT
THAT LOW I.Q. & SIN EQUATE?

Third, and more telling still, is the link that Herrnstein and Murray make between criminality and I.Q. The authors write, "The statistical association between crime and cognitive ability has been known since intelligence testing (i.e., psychometry) began in earnest. The British physician Charles Goring mentioned a lack of intelligence as one of the distinguishing traits of the prison population that he described in a landmark contribution to modern criminology early in the century."[ 33]

Herrnstein and Murray continue, "How big is the difference between criminals and the rest of us? Taking the literature as a whole, incarcerated offenders average an I.Q. of about 92.8 points ... The population of nonoffenders averages more than 100 points; an informed guess puts the gap between offenders and nonoffenders at about 10 points. More serious or more chronic offenders generally have lower scores than more casual offenders ... Not only is there a gap in I.Q. between offenders and nonoffenders, but a disproportionately large fraction of all crime is committed by people toward the (low) end of the scale of intelligence."[34]

In other words, sin (i.e., criminality) - to a certain degree - is the result of low I.Q. And Christians need to fully understand that this is exactly the point Herrnstein and Murray are making - they are not being "woolly" about it: they believe that there is a clear correlation between low-I.Q. and sin. As if to emphasize the point, Herrnstein and Murray continue, "Some critics ... argue that offenders whose I.Q. we know are unrepresentative of the true criminal population; the smart ones presumably slipped through the net ... But how much of a bias does this introduce into the data? Is there a population of uncaught offenders with high I.Q.s committing large numbers of crimes? The answer seems to be no ... There is no evidence for any other large population of offenders, and barely enough crime left unaccounted for to permit such a population's existence ..."[35] Using data obtained from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY),[36] the authors push on, "In the ... data available, the I.Q.s of uncaught offenders are not measurably different from the ones who get caught. Among those who have criminal records, there is still a significant negative correlation between I.Q. and frequency of offending. Both of these kinds of evidence imply that differential arrests of people with varying I.Q.s, assuming they exist (at all), are a minor factor in the aggregate data."[37 ]

CONTRADICTS THE BIBLE

To say the least, Christians had better be careful here! - what Herrnstein and Murray are clearly implying plainly contradicts the teaching of the Bible - that "All have sinned and come short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23); that sin (i.e., "criminality") has nothing to do with I.Q., but is contingent upon man's "fallen nature;" that the propensity to sin is resident in all humans - and in equal amounts, regardless of intelligence. Or perhaps, there was no need (or less of a need) for Christ to hang on a cross for those with high I.Q.s, only for those with low "cognitive abilities?" [And one should not make the mistake that Herrnstein and Murray have made some kind of distinction between sin and "criminality" - that perhaps there is more violence associated with "criminality" than there is with sin - and that is what the authors are really talking about. Nonsense! Herrnstein and Murray make no such distinction! and neither does the Bible.]

At the very least, it would appear - if one subscribes to the findings of Herrnstein and Murray - that the "protective power of elevated intelligence"[38] is a shield against man's disposition towards sin. But this is patently absurd from a Biblical perspective! - and extremely dangerous from a sociological standpoint; it's this kind of perspective that produced the first "mercy killings" of "substandard" human beings in Germany in 1936, and to say that this couldn't happen in this country if this type of thinking really takes hold is extremely naive.

THE EUGENIC ROOTS OF
THE BELL CURVE

Fourth, and finally, despite the authors' Herculean attempts to disconnect The Bell Curve from the sordid history of the Eugenics Movement, the attempts must be judged as failures.

Even the well-respected conservative magazine American Spectator sees the connection. Clearly Caldwell saw it[39] - and one cannot help but excuse the panic all this has, as a result, produced in the black and Latino population - the protestations of Herrnstein and Murray notwithstanding. To members of both communities, the scholarly - and, therefore, rather tepid - racist disclaimers by Herrnstein and Murray "... smack (more like) a white Southerner's claims that the original Ku Klux Klan consisted (merely) of pranksters whose high jinks sometimes got out of hand - more like the DKEs (a college fraternity) of the Reconstruction era - (than anything else)."[40]

Moreover, the references that both men cite in The Bell Curve do little to alleviate the fear the book has engendered in the minority communities. For example, they approvingly allude to the works of men and women like William Shockley,[41] Arthur Jensen,[42] Linda Gottfredson,[43] and J. Philippe Rushton[44] - scholars whose research, they contend, has been maligned by ideologically motivated "environmentalists," "egalitarians," and "politically correct" liberals. The authors strenuously contend that Shockley, Jensen, Gottfredson, Rushton, etc. are nothing more than tough-minded scientists who are courageously pursuing the truth in the face of great personal danger and academic ostracism.

But a little investigation into the "research" of these people might cause one to consider that minority communities have something to fear after all - that more than just an irrational paranoia is driving the minority communities' response to the publication of The Bell Curve.

BLACK AND LATINO PARANOIA?

Take Rushton, a developmental psychologist at the University of Western Ontario, for example. Herrnstein and Murray claim that "Rushton's work is not that of a crackpot or a bigot, as many of his critics are given to charging ... his work is plainly science ... He is ... (merely) seeking an evolutionary explanation of the observed differences between the races"[45] - all this about a man who presents racial rankings[46] on a "Criteria for Civilization" (only "Caucasoids," naturally, consistently meet all twenty-one items on his checklist) and Personality and Temperament Traits," in addition to erect penis size (by length and circumference, no less), as well as the rest of the stock-in-trade of Nazi era "scientific racism," and who computes an "Interbreeding Depression Score" to help clarify his statistical findings?"[47] And that's not all! There's more! Rushton also claims that:

• Africans are at a lower evolutionary scale.[48 ]
• People of African origin have evolved "r-selected reproductive strategies" like those of some of the lower primates.[49 ]
• Blacks are more sexually active than are other races.[50]
• Blacks are sexually active at a younger age.[51 ]
• Blacks and their descendants have larger genitalia.[52 ]
• Blacks have less stable family structures.[53]
• Blacks have less emotional control and therefore greater criminality.[54 ]
• Blacks and their descendants have children younger and their life spans are shorter.[55 ]
• The greater sexuality of blacks makes them more vulnerable to AIDS.[56 ]
• Blacks have better rhythm.[57 ]

And lest anyone does not fully "get" what Rushton is talking about here, Stefan Kuhl, a German sociologist, explains: "Due to their (the blacks) lack of intelligence and social skills, Rushton ... argues, blacks can only compete with whites ... in the evolutionary process by maintaining a higher level of sexual activity. This could be proved, he (Rushton) asserts, by the fact that the penises and vaginas of blacks are larger on average, and that blacks have a higher premarital, marital, and extramarital intercourse frequency. The higher percentage of AIDS infections among blacks is therefore presented as the result of their genetically preeminent sexual behavior."[58 ]

When Herrnstein and Murray defend people like Rushton, what are blacks to think? And one shouldn't make the mistake that Herrnstein and Murray are not aware of what Rushton is all about. For example, they write concerning the "reproductive strategies" of blacks - as described by Rushton: "To reach his conclusion (on black "reproductive strategies"), Rushton starts with the well-established observation in biology that species vary in their reproductive strategies. Some species produce many offspring (per parent) of which only a small fraction survive; others produce small numbers of offspring with relatively high survival rates. The involvement of parents in their offsprings' health and development (which biologists call 'parental investment' - Herrnstein and Murray) tends to be high for species having few offspring and high survival rates (i.e., whites) and low for those employing the other strategy ("many offspring and low survival rates," i.e., blacks) ... Rushton's thesis is that this standard biological principle may be applied within our own specie ... the average Negroid is ... (genetically predisposed) towards (the principle of "many offspring, low survival")."[ 59 ]

In other words, because of their lower evolutionary development, blacks are sexually permissive and not very responsible as parents.

Herrnstein and Murray do acknowledge the fact that Rushton's theories on race are "... a long way from confirmation," but they add that "... Rushton has responded to his critics with increasingly detailed and convincing empirical reports ... (and) he has strengthened the case for consistently ordered race differences."[60]

And exactly what are the differences that Herrnstein and Murray find so convincing?- that Africans (blacks) are at a lower evolutionary scale? That people of African origin have evolved "r-selected reproductive strategies" like those of some of the lower primates? That blacks and their descendants have larger genitalia? that blacks have less emotional control and therefore greater criminality? That blacks have better "rhythm?" - all these differences among the descendants of Adam? - a man the Bible claims lived a mere 6,000 years ago, a span of time hardly worth the blink of an eye in the evolutionist's scheme of things. And be clear here, Rushton is taking the stance that the differences between blacks and whites borders on being a difference between "species" and not just a difference one would find between different "gene pools." [After all, "gene pool" differences which continue over extended lengths of time eventually become differences in species - or so evolutionists posit.]

WHITE EVANGELICALS CAN'T HAVE IT BOTH WAYS

Evangelicals (Biblical literalists) can't have it both ways. Either the Bible's account of Creation is true or it isn't! - and if it's true, then the entire premise of The Bell Curve fails, even if the statistics hold! After all, what's more important? Where should we put our faith? - in Herrnstein and Murray's math and "rock solid" statistical analysis or the Bible? in the mysteries of regression analysis and "standard deviation" or Genesis? in the NLSY Study or the Bible's account of Creation?

Either blacks and Latinos are our brothers and sisters in Adam or they're not! And if they are, then a mere 6,000 years cannot account for Rushton's racial differences (differences which he maintains are based on heredity, not on environmental factors) and which Herrnstein and Murray find so "strong" and "convincing" and upon which so much of the underlying assumptions of the book (it's evolutionary premise) rest.

A DILEMMA? IT'S NOT
THE FIRST TIME FOR EVANGELICALS

So here we are as Christians - caught in a dilemma. Should we choose science (so-called) or should we choose the Bible? This isn't the first time that Christians have been forced to choose between the two! - between "rock solid science" and faith!

Whether we can show it or not, whether we can prove it or not, there's something wrong with a body of literature which suggests - even subtly and tangentially - that blacks and other minorities are not the equal of whites! - and deny as Herrnstein and Murray will, this is the underlying direction the conclusions of The Bell Curve are tending! They may claim otherwise, that The Bell Curve is not about race, but about individuals and the development of a new "cognitive elite" - and what all this might mean for American society; but long after all references to a "cognitive elite" are forgotten, chapters 13 and 14 will be remembered. The fact of the matter is, Herrnstein and Murray may claim that the book has nothing to do with race (and Murray has often repeated this claim in his soft-spoken, carefully measured tones on newschat shows); that "intelligence is a noun, not an accolade;" that every person is an individual and should be treated as one, not as a member of a group (racial or otherwise) - but the entire tone of the book says otherwise, and readers have interpreted it as saying so! - and who can blame them?

As sociologist Dr. Adolph Reed, Jr. points out, "... in addition to the infamous Chapter Thirteen, 'Ethnic Differences in Cognitive Ability', three others center on arguments about black (and, to varying degrees, Latino - Reed) inferiority. The very next chapter, 'Ethnic Inequalities in Relation to I.Q.' is a direct attempt to explain existing racial stratification along socioeconomic lines as the reflection of differences in group intelligence. The other two chapters in Part III seek to pull together claims about racial differences in group intelligence and behavior. Those four chapters set the stage for the book's only two explicitly policy- driven chapters, 'Affirmative Action in Higher Education' and 'Affirmative Action in the Workplace', both of which are about initiatives directed toward blacks, and both slide into stoking white populist racism with 'thought experiments' positing poor or working-class whites shunted aside in favor of under qualified, well-off blacks."[61]

THE PIONEER FUND

The fact is, as Reed suggests, The Bell Curve is embedded in the intellectual apparatus of the crypto-fascist right. The central authorities on whom Herrnstein and Murray rely for their claims about I.Q., race, and heredity are nearly all associated with the Pioneer Fund, an ultrarightist foundation that was formed in the 1930s - in coordination with German eugenicists - to advance an eugenicist agenda in the United States.

The Fund boasts of having been almost entirely responsible for funding I.Q. and race and heredity research in the United States in the past twenty years, and much of it worldwide.

Rushton, along with nearly all those who are similarly engaged, is a major recipient of Pioneer grants. This includes Arthur Jensen, William Schockley, Linda Gottfredson, Thomas Bouchard (of the Minnesota twins study), as well as Richard Lynn, on whom Herrnstein and Murray draw extensively, describing him as "a leading scholar of racial and ethnic differences."[62 ]

Bouchard should be of particular interest to evangelicals - and Christians in general. On the basis of his identical twin studies, he has concluded that even man's tendency towards religion is an inherited trait;63 that is, one's relationship with Christ as savior is more a product of one's genes than it is of "free will" - so much for the work of evangelists!

And one shouldn't think that such idiocy has compelled Christians to back away from their connections to the Fund - and there are many Christians so connected. Take, for example, Tom Ellis.

Ellis is an avowed conservative Christian who is intimately associated with both Pat Robertson and Tim LaHaye, having succeeded LaHaye as president of the Council on National Policy (CNP) in 1982 and who then held the office until he was succeeded by Robertson in 1985 [the council is the leading evangelical organization bringing conservative Christians together with conservative businessmen and politicians to effect conservative and moral (Biblical) change in the country]. Ellis was a director of the Pioneer Fund.[64] And it isn't that Ellis hasn't been influenced by his connection to the Fund: for example, he once said, "The eventual goal of ... (racial integration) is racial intermarriage," by which he meant the melding of the black and white races into one[65] - clearly, Ellis is as concerned about "dysgenesis" as is Rushton and all the rest.

As for Lynn, the works he has published read like an index out of some Nazi eugenics handbook; for example: "The Intelligence of the Mongoloids," Personality and Individual Differences (1987); "Further Evidence for the Existence of Race and Sex Differences in Cranial Capacity," Social Behavior and Personality (1993); and "Positive Correlations Between Head Size and I.Q.," British Journal of Educational Psychology (1989), etc. It all sounds like reading material one would expect to find in the waiting room of Dr. Josef Mengele.

In addition, Lynn is editor of Mankind Quarterly, the Pioneer Fund's flagship journal. (Readers interested in the history and current projects of the Pioneer Fund should consult Dr. Reed's article in the December 1994 issue of The Progressive; Ruth Conniff's article, "The War on Aliens" in the October 1993 Progressive; Stefan Kuhl's book, The Nazi Connection; and John Sedgwick's "The Mentality Bunker" in the November 1994 issue of GQ.]

WHERE IT'S ALL TENDING

What's so dangerous about all this is that, "... it may presage," as Reed suggests, "the return of an updated version of the Lamarckian race theory[66] popular a century ago. As 'culture' (and ethnicity) has increasingly become a euphemism for 'race' - an expression of inherent traits - it is only a short step to characterizations of group differences more overtly inflected toward biology, yet avoiding what remains, for the moment anyway, the stigma of biological determinism."[67 ]

Susan Sperling, a biological anthropologist at the University of California, San Francisco, goes further. She warns that "A (new form) of biological determinism - a kind of genetic fundamentalism related to nineteenth-century ... racism - is having a surprising ... (resurgence) in both popular and academic settings ... Robert Wright, a science writer and senior editor at The New Republic, has foraged through popular sociobiology to fashion what he calls 'the new Darwinian paradigm', which might be aptly subtitled: 'Men (i.e., blacks, Latinos, etc) who run with the apes' ..."[68 ]

She continues that this kind of biological determinism "... drags the whole dusty display of nineteenth-century race libels [a time, incidentally, when Jews and Asians - as independent "racial groups" scored well below whites on I.Q. tests (now they score the same - so much for Herrnstein and Murray's hypothesis that group I.Q. scores don't appreciably improve)] down from the colonial ethnographic museum shelf. If they weren't so dangerous they would be quaint: the effects of stagnant air in the tropics, erotic exotics with rhythm, etc. ... It is clear that these ideas still compel many in our society ... (and their renewed popularity indicates) how far right the country has gone in recent years."[69]

Stefan Kuhl, a German sociologist and historian at the University of Bielefeld (Germany), agrees. He writes, "The late 1980s (has) witnessed a revival of public interest in scientific racism on North American campuses. The media gave broad coverage to research by scholars in the United States and Canada that attempted to establish a scientific basis for classifying into 'superior' and 'inferior' genetic groups ... In 1991, anthropologist Roger Pearson [70] jumped into the fray with what was probably the most comprehensive defense of scientific racism in the United States since 1945. In Race, Intelligence and Bias in Academe, Pearson denounced 'the strong opposition by Marxists and other Leftists' against research with racial implications. He attacked both academia and the media as bastions of politically motivated opposition to the pursuit of 'objective science'."[71]

ROGER PEARSON

Stefan Kuhl's identification of Roger Pearson as a "key player" in the effort to re-legitimize eugenics (heredity) as a useful sociological tool is particularly revealing; it goes a long way in distinguishing the somewhat shadowy forces which are behind this movement - especially those forces associated with the Pioneer Fund - the very fund responsible for providing the financial "where-with-all" behind the Minnesota twins studies, The Bell Curve, Proposition 187, etc. Kuhl - who's no friend of Pearson's - describes Pearson as essentially an academician (an anthropologist) who has taught school (college) in North Carolina, Mississippi and Montana. But there's much more to Pearson than just that.

Roger Pearson - who also has received extensive funding from the Pioneer Fund and is known as being intimately involved in setting its goals and objectives[72] - is widely known in Europe's racist networks where he was a writer and organizer for the Northern League before coming to this country. The Northern League, which is peppered with veterans of the Third Reich, is a bizarre Nazi group active in many of the countries of northern Europe. In the early 1960s, a man named Willis Carto[73] invited Pearson to the United States. Carto arranged for the visit through his journal, Right Magazine. The magazine is an unabashed endorser of Nazi ideology. For example, Right comments, "Their critics (i.e., the critics of the Nazis) should consider that at this late date, only a hard-core group of fanatically-determined young men can possibly save the White Race."[74 ]

Right calls Pearson "the world's foremost spokesman for the scientific and forward looking view of nationalism. He is held in renown by white nationalists the world over."[75] And - for a man who once wrote, "If a nation with a more advanced, more specialized, or in any way superior set of genes mingles with, instead of exterminating, an inferior tribe, then it commits racial suicide"[76 ] - it's not particularly difficult to understand why.

Carto - Pearson's sponsor during his early years in this country - is the founder of the Liberty Lobby. Carto was born on July 19, 1926 in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He served as a director of the far-right "Congress of Freedom" for a time and was briefly connected to the John Birch Society as an early organizer.

In 1961, Carto founded the Liberty Lobby as a political lobby offering testimony before congressional committees. Carto is a virulent hate-monger and conspiracist who also helped launch the Institute for Historical Review (IHR). The IHR, which is located in Costa Mesa, California, denies the Nazi Holocaust against the Jews and other targeted groups ever took place; it is known to have sponsored conferences where notorious anti-Semites and racists were the featured speakers. Carto's Liberty Lobby maintains offices just a few blocks from the Capitol in Washington D.C. where it produces its weekly magazine, the Spotlight, a newspaper which celebrates neo-Nazis, skinheads, the Waffen SS, armed anti-Semites, and other anti-democratic forces.

Carto's links to Nazi sympathizers and collaborationists is inextricably bound up with Francis Parker Yockey. Yockey was an unabashed admirer of Adolf Hitler. In 1948, just three years after the end of the Second World War, Yockey published a ponderous 600 page book, Imperium, which was a re-phrasing of Nazi dogma and which warned of a dire threat to Western Civilization by the Jews. In 1949, Yockey also wrote the "Proclamation of London" which openly called for the re-establishment of Nazism and the expulsion of the Jews from Europe.

In 1960 Yockey committed suicide in San Francisco. Since then, Carto has sought to keep the Yockey flame alive. In 1963, Carto's Noontide Press published Yockey's Imperium with a dedication to Adolf Hitler. Carto also made the "Proclamation of London" available through his distribution network which includes Noontide Press, American Mercury, the Spotlight, and Washington Observer Newsletter. Under oath during proceedings connected with a Liberty Lobby lawsuit in the late 1970s, Carto stated that he was an unabashed follower of Yockey and ipso facto a Nazi sympathizer.

In 1965 - at the invitation of Carto - Pearson relocated permanently to the United States and merged his magazine, Northern World, with Carto's publication, Western Destiny, which Pearson edited for a short time. The magazine had over two dozen racists and anti-Semites on its masthead, including Austin App. App, a pro-Nazi activist, is the author of the Six Million Swindle, which asserts that the Nazi extermination of the Jews didn't happen. He has been particularly active in the IHR and has worked with Roger Pearson as a co-laborer on Western Destiny. The extent to which App is an apologist for the Nazis is made abundantly clear in his writings; for example, as early as 1946 - only one year after the end of World War II (hardly enough time for the graves of American GIs killed in the fight against Nazism to settle properly) - App wrote that "... the German armies (were) the most decent armies of the war." Again, in his 1974 pamphlet, A Straight Look at the Third Reich and National Socialism, How Right? How Wrong," App wrote, "The truth is that in World War II the Third Reich fought for justice, and the Allies fought to prevent justice."[77] In 1977 the Washington Post ran an expose of Pearson's Nazi connections; the expose coincided with a conference Pearson was hosting in Washington for the World Anti-Communist League (WACL), a "Moonie Front" which has been labeled an "... international network including fascists and followers of the authoritarian Korean cult-leader Rev. Sun Myung Moon, and neo-Nazis."[78] It is out of this dark, sinister and foreboding intellectual mélange that The Bell Curve has emerged.

EUGENICS: A USEFUL SOCIOLOGICAL TOOL?

What has surfaced so far indicates that the "new science" appears to be a kinder, gentler version of the biological determinism that the Nazis practiced. It is, nonetheless, one that is clearly related to that kind of thinking.

Those who are promoting it - while admitting to its past perversions - believe that the new biological determinism they are promulgating does not necessarily have to presage a return to reactionary racial agendas, but can be used to support enlightened social policy. This is evidently what Herrnstein and Murray also believe. But history seems to indicate that the torrent of such thinking is simply too swift and too powerful to be fought against; once one enters into the current of such thinking, he is inevitably forced to embrace ever more radical political agendas - the logic of it seems to demand it. After all, if one really subscribes to this kind of thinking, one cannot sit idly by and watch the "American gene pool" polluted by intellectually inferior groups - which, according to the Pioneer Fund - is exactly what's happening as a result of illegal immigration, higher birth rates for blacks and Latinos, etc. - and this is pretty much what Herrnstein and Murray are warning about. [79] In the light of all this, a "eugenics imperative" may become irresistible; there is a very real and growing anxiety by whites that they (along with their Euro-centered, Christian-based culture) are being swamped, an apprehension which is clearly directed against blacks and Latinos. And the results of the 1994 anti-immigration initiative in California (Proposition 187) - which the Pioneer Fund financially supported - and the hysteria behind the effort to stem the flow of the Haitian boat people into Florida clearly demonstrate this point.

All this has produced an increasing number of whites - including many evangelicals - who are now predisposed to see eugenics as a viable and practical bulwark against being "over run" by "lesser peoples" and "inferior cultures;" a defense against the "miscegenation" and dysgenesis which, they claim, so clearly seems to be at work in the American gene pool - a pathology from which, they suppose, many of the ills of the country now flow.

As Ivan Hannaford suggests in the Wilson Quarterly[80], to those who buy into the arguments of dysgenesis, "race management" may seem the only viable alternative to the problems afflicting the country - and whites are more and more being reinforced in this thinking by a growing number of reputable scientists (connected to schools like the University of California, Stanford, Harvard, Yale, etc.) - scientists who are not without some influence on public policy.

The actual implementation of a governmentally sponsored program of eugenics, of course, is not at all what Herrnstein and Murray are proposing; but it certainly is what their backers in the Pioneer Fund are suggesting.

THE PASSING OF THE GREAT RACE

What's been lacking up to this point for the Eugenics Movement to really take off is a book like Madison Grant's, The Passing of the Great Race, (meaning, of course, the demise of the "white race") a work which so inflamed the American population in the early 1900s - a population which, incidentally, was openly and very overtly a Christian one - that it seemed only natural that the government should embrace eugenics as a national policy. Could it possibly be that The Bell Curve is that book for the 1990s? - one shouldn't be too sure that it isn't, or at least the first of such books, all calculated to play the same role the Passing of the Great Race did at the turn of the century.

The Passing of the Great Race was printed in 1916 and almost immediately became a "best seller;" it warned in dire terms that if Americans (i.e., white Christians) did not wake up promptly to what was happening to them genetically (and culturally), they would soon be swamped by a host of "lesser peoples." Grant argued that the influence of environment on history was only fleeting. Heredity (race) was everything. He wrote, "Race implies heredity, and heredity implies all the moral, social, and intellectual characteristics and traits which are the springs of politics and government"81 - which is, we should again point out, pretty much what Thomas Bouchard of the Minnesota twins study is saying - though he would probably substitute "heredity" for "race."

Grant believed that the correct scientific approach to the ills of society was to treat history as heredity writ large - which, again, parallels what Rushton, Jensen, Schockley, and - at least to some degree - Murray and Herrnstein are saying. Henry Fairfield Osborn, a zoologist and president of the American Museum of Natural History agreed with Grant - as did most other academicians and scientists of the time (and just as many reputable scientists are doing today) - men like Charles W. Eliot, president of Harvard University; David Starr Jordan, president of Stanford University, Alexander Graham Bell, etc. Surprisingly, most Christians saw little or no inconsistency between what Grant was saying and the imperative of their faith.

As such, the Eugenics Movement was not at all a fringe phenomenon in the United States; by the end of World War I it had become a part of the nation's progressive-minded "CW" or "conventional wisdom." H. G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw quickly (and enthusiastically) embraced Grant's book and popularized its message in innumerable ways. Roughly half the American states passed eugenics laws of one sort or another, allowing state prisons and "other institutions" to sterilize people who were judged in one way or another to be "abnormal" or "inferior" - a policy which grew to almost pandemic proportions by the mid-1930s. For example, in the thirteen years from 1907 to the beginning of 1920, 3,233 persons were sterilized, while in the four years from 1921 to 1924, 2,689 persons were sterilized - almost a 300 percent increase. By 1930, the rate of sterilizations had increased another 600 percent to an average of about 4,000 a year[82] - and in all of this, a disproportionate number of the sterilizations fell on blacks.

IT'S DÉJÀ VU ALL OVER AGAIN

Now - some seventy years later - these concepts are surfacing again as an answer to the ills of society. We suspect that The Bell Curve is only the opening shot in a new and massive onslaught by forces which see eugenics as the key to the social problems afflicting the country - and, as before, Christians, even evangelicals, are buying into these solutions without, apparently, seeing any inconsistency between what they are doing and the imperative of their faith - unless Christians are really prepared to believe that low-I.Q. is actually synonymous with a proclivity toward sin. They seem blind to what happened sixty years ago in Germany, blind to how eugenics perverted the faith of millions of otherwise well-meaning German Christians, blind to what is happening in the name of "cultural" and "religious" purity in the former Yugoslavia, in the Caucasus, and in Rwanda - or, at the very least, they seem unable to make the connection to themselves, to what's happening in this country as white evangelicals (and Catholics) - all in the name of God - move to organize politically to "take the country back for Christ and the Church" (and, of course, white America).

Donald Horowitz, in his massive Ethnic Groups in Conflict (1985) and Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY), in his aptly titled Pandemonium (1993), have noted with evident dismay the forces of "cultural" and "religious" purity which are currently tearing the country apart, and not only this country, but the whole world. Everywhere there is a fever for the coterminous arrangement of state and culture, state and religion, state and race; and wherever this fever strikes, death and destruction seem quick to follow.

The irony of race-theories - of eugenics - is that they (it) arise(s) almost invariably from a desire by some to mold the action of others toward the good, toward an uplifted future. Nonetheless, it is a matter of pure fact that from Tacitus to Gobineau, from Osborn to Rushton, from Grant to Herrnstein and Murray, the great racial ideas have come from disappointed men - men who feel that they (and their class, or their group, or their religion) are being thwarted from their legitimate destiny(ies) by lesser peoples (races, religious groups, cultures, etc). In Germany, where race-thinking became official doctrine for more than a decade, the surrender of the German people - even German Christians - to the appeal of eugenics originated in despair - a despair born of defeat and the belief that they were in danger of being overrun by lesser people, particularly people from the east (just as today white Americans feel threatened by "brown" Latinos streaming up from the south, black Haitians washing ashore on the beaches of Florida, and "affirmative action" programs designed to push them aside in favor of less mentally equipped minorities). Put simply, racism is an alternative to madness for educated men who feel balked in what they consider their legitimate ambitions. It is a faith rooted in the consciousness of a thwarted self-worth and confirmed by the Tertullian principle of Certum est quia impossible.

We urge you to bear in mind that "building unity" between whites, blacks, Latinos, etc. in the Body of Christ is not a matter of "compromising" our differences: it's a matter of a new life - Christ's life in us. It's a matter of "abiding in Christ." It's a matter of a new citizenship having nothing to do with our old citizenships, ethnicities, and group loyalites.

"For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.

"For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.

"There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:26-28)

God bless all of you

S.R. Shearer

1. Herrnstein , who died in the summer of 1994, received his Ph.D. in psychology at Harvard where he had taught since 1958. Before he died, he held the Edgar Pierce Chair in Psychology.
2. Charles Murray is a graduate of Harvard who received his Ph.D. in Political Science from MIT. He is the author of Losing Ground: American Social Policy 1950-1980. He is currently a Bradley Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI).
3. Christopher Caldwell, "Charles Murray's Alarm Bell," in American Spectator, January, 1995, pg. 62.
4. Ibid., pg. 62.
5. Ibid., pg. 63.
6. Ibid., pg. 63.
7. Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Bell Curve (New York: The Free Press, 1994), pg. 524.
8. One of the most startling discoveries of The Bell Curve, however, is that the white underclass is now expanding at a faster rate than either the black and Latino components.
9. Ibid., pg. 525-526.
10. Ibid., pg. 526.
11. Ibid., pg. 524.
12. It's interesting to note in this connection, that even conservatives like Christopher Caldwell and magazines like American Spectator agree with the proposition that the effort to dismantle many of the "Great Society" programs amounts to nothing less than a form of class warfare (please see "Alarm Bell" in the January, 1995 issue of American Spectator, pg. 67.
13. The opposite of eugenics is dysgenics (or dysgenesis). It is defined by Raymond Pearl as the study of social processes that lead to a decline in the genetic quality of humankind [Raymond Pearl in "Breeding Better Men," World's Work, 15 (1908): 9819].
14. Op. Cit., Caldwell, pg. 64.
15. Ibid., pg. 64.
16. Ibid., pg. 64.
17. Op. Cit., Herrnstein and Murray, pg. 548.
18. Ibid., pg. 533-534.
19. Ibid., pg. 548.
20. Sheila F. Weiss defines eugenics as "a political strategy denoting some sort of social control over reproduction. In the interest of 'improving' the hereditary substrata of a given population, eugenics seeks to regulate human procreation by encouraging the fecundity of the genetically superior groups ('positive eugenics') and prohibiting inferior types from having children ('negative eugenics')." [Weiss, Race Hygiene, 1.]
21. Please see Raymond Pearl in "Breeding Better Men," World's Work, 15 (1908): 9819.
22. Op. Cit., Herrnstein and Murray, pg. 548.
23. Ibid., pg. 548.
24. Ibid., pg. 548.
25. Ibid., pg. 548-549.
26. Op. Cit., Caldwell, pg. 67.
27. Mark and Lisa Graham McMinn, "For Whom the Bell Curves," Christianity Today, December 12, 1994, pg. 19.
28. Please see Roger Pearson, Race, Intelligence and Bias in Academe, intro. Hans J. Eysenick (Washington: Scott-Townsend, 1991): 13. Pearson denounces "the strong opposition by 'Marxists', and 'other Leftists' against research with racial implications. He attacks both academia and the media as bastions of politically motivated opponents to the pursuit of 'objective' science.
29. Op. Cit., Herrnstein and Murray, pg. 531.
30. Reasons beyond the authors' unstated support for abortion as a means of stemming low-I.Q. births; and it should be noted that the failure to mention the authors' attitude towards abortion is no accident - the book was clearly aimed at a conservative audience, more than half of which is made up of evangelicals and Catholics who oppose abortion.
31. There have, of course, been many learned articles and papers published in rebuttal to The Bell Curve (please see the November issues of The Nation and New Republic for an exhaustive listing).
32. The measurement of I.Q.s
33. Op. Cit., Herrnstein and Murray, pg. 241.
34. Ibid., pg. 242.
35. Ibid., pg. 242.
36. The NLSY is a very large (originally 12,686 persons) nationally representative sample of American youths who were aged 14 to 22 in 1979 (now 30 to 38), when the study began, and have been followed ever since.
37. Op. Cit., Herrnstein and Murray, pg. 242.
38. Ibid., pg. 244.
39. Op. Cit., Caldwell, pg. 64.
40. Adolph Reed, Jr., "Looking Backward," in The Nation, November 28, 1994, pg. 654.
41. William Shockley is a Nobel Prize winner in physics at Harvard.
42. Arthur Jensen is an educational psychologist and expert in I.Q. testing at the University of California at Berkeley.
43. Linda Gottfredson teaches educational psychology at the University of Delaware.
44. J. Philippe Rushton, a Guggenheim recipient, teaches developmental psychology at the University of Western Ontario in Canada.
45. Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Bell Curve (New York: The Free Press, 1994), pg. 643.
46. Jacques Barzun believes that all efforts to group human beings into statistically viable groupings can only fail in the end.
47. Adolph Reed, Jr., "Looking Backward," in The Nation, November 28, 1994, pg. 654.
48. Susan Sperling, "Beating a Dead Monkey," in The Nation, November 28, 1994, pg. 664.
49. Ibid., pg. 664.
50. Ibid., pg. 664.
51. Ibid., pg. 664.
52. Ibid., pg. 664.
53. Ibid., pg. 664.
54. Ibid., pg. 664.
55. Ibid., pg. 664.
56. Ibid., pg. 664.
57. Ibid., pg. 664.
58. Please see J. Philippe Rushton and Anthony F. Bogaert, "Population Differences in Susceptibility to AIDS: An Evolutionary Analysis," Social Science and Medicine, 28 (1989): 1211-20. See also: Rushton, "Race Differences in Sexuality and Their Correlates: Another Look and Physiological Models," Journal of Research in Personality, 23 (1989): 35-54. Taken from Stefan Kuhl, The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism, and German National Socialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), pg. 7-8.
59. Op., Cit., Herrnstein and Murray, pg. 642.
60. Op. Cit., Reed, pg. 643.
61. Ibid., pg. 659.
62. Ibid., pg. 662.
63. Please see Stefan Kuhl, The Nazi Connection, Eugenics, American Racism, and German National Socialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), pg. 9.
64. CNP Quarterly Membership Meeting Program, Orlando, Florida, Feb. 3-4, 1989; Thomas B. Edsall and David Vise, "CBS Fights a Litmus Test for Conservatives," Washington Post, March 31, 1985, pg. A-1; Thomas B. Edsall and David Vise, "Battle for CBS Takes On Air of Mudslinging Contest," Washington Post, March 31, 1985, pg. A-16.
65. Ibid, pg. A-1, pg. A-16.
66. Propenents believe that those changes produced in individuals as the result of responses to the environment are always transmitted to his/her offspring and thus lead eventually to the appearance of a new species. Adherents claimed that whites were - in reality - nothing less than a new and higher species of man than blacks.
67. Op. Cit., Reed, pg. 662.
68. Op. Cit., Sperling, pg. 662.
69. Ibid., pg. 665.
70. Pearson has written several anthropological textbooks, including An Introduction to Anthropology (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1974) An Anthropological Glossary (Malabar: Krieger Publishing, 1985). In the 1960s, he taught at Queens College in Charlotte, North Carolina, and at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg before becoming dean of academic affairs at Montana College in Butte.
71. Stefan Kuhl, The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism, and German National Socialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), pg. 3.
72. Please see Russ Bellant, Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Republican Party (Boston: South End Press, 1991); please also see Roger Pearson, Eugenics and Race (London: Claire Press, 1966).
73. Please see C.H. Simonds, "The Strange Case of Willis Carto," National Review, Sept. 10, 1971, pp. 978-989; Wall Street Journal, Sept 28, 1984, p. 46; Searchlight (not the Spotlight), June 1984, p. 9; Searchlight, Sept. 1984, p. 2.
74. Right, Sept. 1960, p. 5.
75. "Roger Pearson to Tour the United States," Right, June 1959, p. 1; please also see Russ Bellant, Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Republican Party, p. 60, Endnote, p. 103.
76. Roger Pearson, Eugenics and Race (London: Clair Press, 1966). p. 26; please also see Bellant, Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Republican Party, p. 61.
77. Please see Foster and Epstein, p. 229, No Time for Silence: Pleas for a Just Peace Over Four Decades (Costa Mesa, California: Institute for Historical Review, 1987), p. 62; Austin J. App, Ravishing the Conquered Women of Europe, as cited by John Roy Carlson in The Plotters (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1946, pp. 160-61.
78. Please see Scott Anderson and Jon Lee Anderson, Inside the League (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1986), pp. 92-97; Russ Bellant, Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Republican Party, pg. 61; Washington Post, May 28, 1978, p. C1. From time to time retired Major General John "Jack" Singlaub has figured prominently as a WACL speaker.
79. Op Cit., pg. 64.
80. Ivan Hannaford, "The Idiocy of Race" in the Wilson Quarterly, Spring 1994, pg. 19.
81. Ibid., pg. 31.
82. Op. Cit., Kuhl, pg. 24.