Concerned MIM Theory readers have no doubt read and discussed the publication of The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life.(1) This following review stresses those points that only MIM and other genuine communists bring to bear. But first, on the book's factual conclusions.

Factual points

1. We don't believe there is a single measurable thing called "intelligence"; we don't believe that any cognitive ability is fixed at birth or determined "genetically." We reject the arbitrary division between some skills and abilities on the one hand and some supposedly underlying "intelligence" on the other. We believe that the either/or dichotomy between genetics and environment is an undialectical, misleading construction. Genetics contribute to many aspects of development, but in social human beings genetics never act alone. Every genetic influence acts in an environmental context. To pick an obvious but often overlooked example, if researchers think they have found a gene that contributes to alcoholism, that obviously would not lead to alcoholism in a society with no alcohol. The same is true of the search for a "fat gene," something which is only relevant in a society where overeating is possible. Evolution itself reflects nothing more than the dialectic of environment and genetics.

We do, however, believe that the conditions of poverty and oppression cause untold damage to their victims, including damages to their physical and mental development and overall health. We reject a relativistic concept of development that says all children are OK and equal, when in fact most children in the world, who are oppressed, are definitely not OK. Ending oppression will mean healthier conditions for all children and adults.

Most critics of the reactionary Bell Curvethesis reject the "genetic" causal explanation because they think it exonerates white people and the U.S. government from blame for the oppression of Blacks, or they think it means such inequality is inevitable in the future. But from a communist point of view, with regard to the past there would be no excuse for perpetuating inequality even if one group of people were genetically inferior; and with regard to the future, even if there were "genetic" inequality, that would not mean society is helpless to change it.

For all we know, genetic engineering may one day help humanity, but there is no reason to pursue that when vast human inequalities exist and we have the social means to eliminate them -- revolution. In a nutshell, this means revolutionaries see the importance of ending lead poisoning and malnutrition, for example, but condemn eugenics and other genocidal attempts to control the lives and reproduction of oppressed people. This argument has to take place within the framework of political economy.

2. We believe that IQ tests, as well as SAT/ACT tests (college admission tests) and so on, reflect a narrow, learned ability (including the ability to take such tests). These skills correspond with the skills needed to succeed in schools in the U.S. Empire. At the same time, the oppressive factors which restrict oppressed children's development of these skills also restricts their success in school, so a correlation develops between test performance and school performance. These tests therefore serve the imperialist education system and culture well.

3. We do not believe human "races" exist as distinct genetic or biological groups. The so-called races are socially created, with membership determined by cultural, not biological, forces which change rapidly over time compared to genes.

Theoretical and political points

1. The theory of white supremacy, to which the Bell Curveopenly subscribes, aims to unite the white nation, to strengthen Amerika against its Black, Aztlan, First Nation and other oppressed-nation enemies. By insisting on white supremacy independent of class and gender, this theory serves to keep working-class and biologically-female whites tied to the system of Amerikan imperialism and white domination. This population is in general very willing to subscribe to the theory. The book and its hype are a powerful ideological attack on the oppressed nations within Amerika.

2. True Liberalism believes that a moral society is a "meritocracy," that people achieve wealth and power by virtue of their "merit," however defined. Bell Curve authors Herrnstein and Murray are ideologically true to this tradition in all of its cynical history -- even if they falsify the evidence in their work -- and to refute them only by claiming they misrepresent the causes, or measurement, of people's "merit" is to engage the debate on such Liberal terms. While we refute their facts where they are wrong, we do not argue for a system that "truly" measures and rewards merit.

Alternatively, communists struggle for a system in which mutual cooperation brings collective benefits. We do not strive to determine a better way of measuring intelligence for purposes of doling out material rewards. We don't want a system where rewards are proportionate to ability, however those abilities are attained. In the socialist system -- transitional to communism -- people should gain material rewards according to the social value of the work performed, as determined by the average amount of time needed to perform the task under current conditions. In that system, which replaces the system of capitalist and imperialist exploitation, someone who works faster or harder may make more money than others. Through a long period of political and ideological struggle -- the continuing revolution -- we hope to see such individual incentives completely replaced by cooperation as the guiding principle and social incentive. Thus, we reject arguments against the Bell Curvethat say, "we want to be judged as individuals, not as a group."

3. The publication and hype of the Bell Curveteaches an important lesson about the need for independent revolutionary media of all forms, including books. This book reflects a capital investment in ideological hegemony by the right wing of the imperialist class. It came out over the objections of establishment academia. Then the bourgeois media took over the debate, ensuring the widespread propagation of its reactionary ideas. Without our own ability to independently build public opinion, we will not win the ideological struggles that fuel revolution. So this article will also pay some attention to who supports this work and what that means for revolutionaries.

Intelligence

Several academic scientists have published critiques of the Bell Curve, which are largely correct in specific criticisms even if we disagree with their ideological premises. One of the best of the these was Stephen Jay Gould's review in the New Yorker.(2)

At the outset, Gould explains that the Bell Curve, "with its claims and supposed documentation that race and class differences are largely caused by genetic factors and are therefore essentially immutable, contains no new arguments and presents no compelling data to support its anachronistic social Darwinism." This argument is based on four essential premises: "intelligence, in their formulation, must be depictable as a single number, capable of ranking people in linear order, genetically based, and effectively immutable." All of these are unproved.

One source of confusion is that IQ scores, regardless of what they measure or don't, are somewhat heritable -- that is, children's IQ scores are likely to be close to their parents', other things being equal. This is not at all the same as genetic, and can be caused by anything. However, as Gould explains, "The central fallacy in using the substantial heritability of within-group IQ (among whites, for example) as an explanation of average differences between groups (whites versus blacks, for example)" may be illustrated by using height. Take for example measuring height in a poor village where there is a lot of malnutrition. Suppose the average height is 5-feet-six-inches, and

"Heritability within the village is high, which is to say that tall fathers ... tend to have tall sons. But this high heritability within the village does not mean that better nutrition might not raise average height ... within a few generations. Similarly, the well-documented fifteen-point average difference in IQ between blacks and whites in America, with substantial heritability of IQ in family lines within each group, permits no automatic conclusion that truly equal opportunity might not raise the black average enough to equal or surpass the white mean."

Although MIM has objections to this liberal formulation as we outlined above, the scientific point refuting the Bell Curveis clear.

There is strong counter-evidence to the genetic claims of the book, and Gould cites a few: Poor Black children adopted into rich white homes have IQs closer to white children's (despite racism against them); many whole countries increased IQ averages 15 points when they increased general education after WWII (during which time their genes could not have changed much); and there are no differences between children fathered by Black and white U.S. soldiers in Germany and raised as Germans.

IQ tests are supposed to measure g, for general intelligence. This was identified by correlating test scores on different kinds of questions using factor analysis. Taking any set of variables and finding their correlation can produce a new single variable. For example, correlating hits, runs, and runs batted in for baseball players, you could produce one number and say it represents general excellence in batting (call it b). But, as Gould points out, the same intelligence data, using factor analysis intended to find different strands can just as adequately prove multiple types of intelligence with no g. That is, if you are looking for two dimensions -- say, hitting power and hitting consistency -- you could use the same data to prove that there are really two kinds of hitting skill. So the concept of g as the general level of intelligence is a construction used to serve the interests of IQ test developers. This argument has been bolstered by the research of Howard Gardner, who claims seven types of "intelligence," and who argues that IQ measures principally verbal and mathematical intelligences.(3)

Still, IQ tests do test something, and IQ scores are correlated with success in school. Some of what they test may be good skills to learn, such as math and language abilities or strategies for thinking. Reuven Feuerstein and Alex Kozulin wrote that "The fact that some manifestations of intelligence can be measured does not imply that intelligence itself is a stable substance." IQ tests include measures of vocabulary, for example, that are obviously learned. Even the more basic math and memory test items can be learned by practice. They add, "To present intelligence in this reified way -- as a concrete, stable quantity -- is a scientific anachronism."(4) And yet a majority of psychologists in a major poll said they believe in the concept of g.(5)

Again, preconceived ideas or ideological agendas interfere with understanding. A Newsweek writer wrote, "Throughout the developed world, raw IQ scores have risen by about 3 points every decade ... meaning that a performance that drew a score of 100 in the 1930s would rate only 85 today. Unfortunately, no one has discovered a regimen for raising g at will."

The supposed-mystery is answered in the sentence itself: economic advancement and years of general education appear to be "a regimen for raising g at will." Likewise, people cite correlations between the IQ scores of identical twins raised apart as evidence that IQ is genetic.(5) These studies fail to take into account that identical twins are genetically identical in every way -- including all visible traits -- that also affect the way people are raised and treated. If one is tall, has a deep voice, etc., so does the other, and their interactions with society are correspondingly similar as a result. This small example illustrates the problem with trying to treat the social world as a controlled experiment. Dialectical materialism does recognize that society is an arena for experimentation. But we do this by studying whole societies, classes and movements -- and engaging in and learning from revolutionary practice -- not by trying to identify causes for individual traits in individual people.

The Bell Curve mythology also goes against a new strain of research that shows the brain developing at early stages of life in response to interaction with the world. This research has the positive effect of breaking down the arbitrary distinction between physical and mental. And it shows that "intelligence" cannot be fixed at birth or conception.(6) Even Alfred Binet, who devised early intelligence tests, said they didn't identify something innate or permanent.(7)

Some people are so ready to jump to genetic conclusions that their arguments are laughable. For example, Leslie Lenkowsky wrote that because some scientists think they have found a gene connected to dyslexia, this "powerfully supports" the idea that "much of intelligence is inherited."(8) This is like saying that a muscular dystrophy gene would prove athletic ability is genetic. It is also contradicted by cases in which people who can't learn to read because of dyslexia have average IQ scores.(9)

In their argument that intelligence determines the outcome of people's lives -- that is, that U.S. society is a "meritocracy" -- the Bell Curveauthors try to show that IQ can be used to predict life outcomes better than other variables, such as parental income. But they conceal the fact that the relationships they found are very weak. The number that tells you the strength of the relationship, called the R-square (R2), is in an appendix instead of on the graphs. The authors wrote (in the appendix): "In the text, we do not refer to the usual measure of goodness of fit for multiple regressions, R2. ... we ... consider the regression coefficients themselves ... to suit our analytic purposes better than R2, and that is why those are the ones we relied on in the text."(10) Gould concludes: "Indeed, almost all their relationships are weak: very little of the variation in social factors is explained by either independent variable [IQ or poverty]." There is a small effect, which they exaggerate.

"In short, their own data indicate that IQ is not a major factor in determining variation in nearly all the social behaviors they study.... the vast majority of the conventional measures of R2, excluded from the main body of the text, are less than 0.1. These very low values of R2 expose the true weakness, in any meaningful vernacular sense, of nearly all the relationships that form the meat of the Bell Curve."

MIM's quick calculations show that in the 59 different regressions in the appendix, the median R2 value is .0744, and 71% of them are under 0.1. In English, this is generally taken to mean that the equation predicts 7.44% of the variation in the dependent variable (in this case, for example, divorce). That means that the vast majority of variation in divorce rate, for example, are not explained by IQ, poverty, or the other independent variables in the equation. Despite this, and the quick and comprehensive critiques by a series of academics, Murray -- playing martyr to p.c. -- said, "I know I am in for another rough year [best sellers are hard to live with, aren't they? -MC12], but ... we are dealing with big, fat, robust results."(11)

Interestingly, the authors tried to prove the importance of IQ by showing how much IQ determined the outcomes of white people's lives. This was ostensibly to show that there weren't racist. But it also furthers the fallacy of their claim for IQ differences between groups, because it only explores IQ as a within-group influence. MIM wouldn't be surprised if IQ scores were more determinant in white Amerikan society than among members of the oppressed nations, because whites do live in more of a meritocracy that non-whites, for what that whole line of thinking is worth.

The bourgeois media used the Bell Curvedebate as an attempt to further mystify science to the masses, as in Newsweek: "Social scientists traffic in correlations, and these are strong ones."(5) That's not true, but the fetishization of scientific language allowed the myth to spread. Gould is correct to challenge people to understand these debates. He says of the book: "The blatant errors and inadequacies ... could be picked up by lay reviewers if they only would not let themselves by frightened by numbers." The Bell Curve fostered these fears by breaking the book up into sections designed for readers at different "levels." At "the simplest level" it's only 30 pages long -- that is just reading misleading chapter summaries with no demonstrated evidence. The "next level ... is accessible to anyone who enjoys reading, for example, the science section of the news magazines."(12) And so on. The authors stop just short of specifying the IQ required for each section (something they might like to see for all books in the future)!

Unsubstantiated claims always work better when planted in fertile soil. In this case, white nation public opinion provided that. A 1990 National Opinion Research Center survey found 53% of people who weren't Black said Blacks were less intelligent than whites.(13) Since the the publication and hype of the Bell Curve, that number is likely rising. Without acknowledging the scientific critiques, Peter Brimelow, writing in Forbes, called the book "massive, meticulous, minutely detailed, clear," and said it is being "seriously compared" with The Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin, even though the book contains no original research or ideas, but rather tinkering with the numbers from other research.(14)

That feature also makes it harder to judge, because a lot of the research is two steps away from the reader. For example, to back up their claims, the authors say that "ethnic differences in measured cognitive ability have been found since intelligence tests were invented."(15) Readers who are familiar with works such as Gould's The Mismeasure of Man know that the original intelligence tests were largely created and used by eugenicists who were attempting to prove white superiority, and designed their tests accordingly. The Bell Curve authors survey 156 studies on average Black-white differences on IQ tests, and then compare those studies to a smaller set of 24 done outside the South and after 1960 -- with the same result. To them, this is a vindication of the usefulness of these tests, because their assumption is that after 1960 and outside the South there is no basis for complaining about the legitimacy of the tests.(16) For MIM, that is good to see, because, knowing how racist the early tests obviously were, we can now see that the later tests are no better despite surface appearances. But this requires background knowledge of the earlier tests, obviously not reported in the Bell Curve.

Playing to white preconceptions allows the authors to get away with more. For example, they defend the SAT test against charges of anti-Black bias by referring to studies that show the SAT predicts Black college performance as well as it does white college performance.(17) We know, however, that college and the SAT tests exist in the same social world, with the same factors working against Black success, including not only racial discrimination but also economic factors, and so on. The logical fallacy is simple, but it goes unchallenged. They can only get away with this because, contrary to their constant protestations to being oppressed by political correctness, they are not under strict scrutiny. For example, after the New York Times parroted this justification for the SAT without comment, a letter writer called it "an astonishingly blatant reasoning error," which it was -- but the damage was already done.(18)

The low level of scrutiny also allows them to contradict themselves without shame. After describing a declining trend in SAT scores among whites, they write:

"The SAT score decline does underscore a frustrating, perverse reality: However hard it may be to raise IQ among the less talented with discrete interventions ... it may be within the capability of an educational system -- probably with complicity of broader social trends -- to put a ceiling on, or actually dampen, the realized intelligence of those with high potential."(19)

And yet when people have suggested that lower Black performance on standardized tests reflect the effects of "an educational system -- probably with complicity of broader social trends," they rebuff the argument and fall back on genetics!(20)

The authors briefly dismiss research challenging the genetic conception of IQ heritability. For example, comparing whites and non-whites of equal socioeconomic status reduces the IQ gap between them. Going further, they cite one study that, statistically "holding constant" a wide range of environmental variables -- including not just education, occupation and income, but also home ownership, family structure, mother's attitudes toward achievement, etc. -- reduced the IQ gap to "near zero."(21) They dismiss this research, however, because they believe that all those differences in environment were caused by genetic differences in intelligence in the first place, so they say all those statistical controls are really doing is matching up whites and nonwhites with the same IQs, and determining that they have the same IQs. This is a logical tautology -- no argument or evidence can penetrate its circular defenses.

Their reliance on secondary sources allows the Bell Curve authors to spread and legitimize the lies told by a whole group of openly racist intelligence researchers whose work has already been discredited by liberals. One of these, J. Phillipe Rushton, has argued that everything from "altruism" and "law abidingness" to brain size, penis size, and ejaculation distance all prove that differences between the "races" reflect an "ordering" of the races from lower to higher. Herrnstein and Murray brush off Rushton's critics, writing, "Rushton's work is not that of a crackpot or a bigot" (22), but elsewhere Rushton has claimed: "Even if you take things like athletic ability or sexuality -- not to reinforce stereotypes -- but it's a trade-off; more brain or more penis. You can't have everything."(23)

Still, the Bell Curve does not rely as much on Rushton's work as it does on the racist drivel of Richard Lynn. Leon Kamin says Lynn is "widely known among academics to be an associate editor of the racist journal 'Mankind Quarterly' and a major recipient of financial support from the nativist, eugenically oriented Pioneer Fund" (More on the Pioneer Fund below). They use Lynn's work to compare Africans to Blacks in North America. Their argument is that if low IQ scores reflect "discrimination" against Blacks, then Africans will score higher on IQ tests, because obviously there is no discrimination against racially-defined Blacks in Africa, they say. When Lynn tells them that Africans in fact have lower IQs, that is proof of a genetic inferiority. While this argument is almost comically ridiculous -- as if Africa has not faced oppression greater than the "discrimination" experienced by Blacks -- the research is also blatantly shoddy. Lynn concocted his "IQ" scores from standard deviations on other tests, not IQ tests. The tests he adapted don't produce bell-curve shaped results and are therefore not at all comparable. And these tests were more biased then even here, as they assumed the subjects were familiar with Western cultural forms, and they didn't account for the poor English skills of the African pupils tested.(24)

The Bell Curve is at the top of a pyramid of genocidal pseudo-scientists. At the bottom are the open eugenicists and ground-level research fabricators. They publish their results in disreputable journals like Mankind Quarterly. But these results are cited even as their methods are concealed -- as in Lynn's case, when he claimed to study previous studies -- until finally the research is fully laundered in a mainstream publication like the Bell Curve.

The book rides along with an underlying denial of widespread inequality (except in intelligence) and oppression. Nowhere is this worse than in the discussion of "crime," in which they conclude, among other things, that people with low IQ scores are more often convicted because "it may be ... that they are less competent in getting favorable treatment from the criminal justice system."(25) How much does intelligence help against the justice system? Was Mumia Abu-Jamal railroaded and sentenced to death for murder because he was unintelligent? Or could it have to do with the active frame-up by the police, the unwilling court-appointed lawyer, the genocidally-racist judge, the Blacks excluded from the jury, etc., etc. In Bell Curve land, these are all minor influence compared to the overwhelming importance of naturally-endowed intelligence.

This flies in the face of their own evidence. Murray and Herrnstein concede that white IQs today are as high above the whites of two generations ago as they are above the Black scores of today.(21) This is widely believed to be the result of more general education and better living conditions. In other words, this trend alone could shoot down any genetic theory. And yet in Bell Curve land, Blacks and whites live in equal conditions today, so any difference between them reflects different innate characteristics, not different social conditions. In fact, many studies have shown a gradual convergence of Black and white scores, probably reflecting the advancement of some Blacks after the Civil Rights Movement. Murray and Herrnstein note this, but simply say it's too soon to judge its causes.(26)

Race

To return to the subject of "race" for a moment, Murray and Herrnstein use the U.S. government's definition of "race." They decided to "classify people according to the way they classify themselves." This is the only way to assign racial classifications -- socially -- and it undermines any attempt to make them genetic categories.(27)

In the genetic argument, the easiest reason to debunk genetic human races is by pointing out that there is greater variation among races than between them. For example, blood types cross "race" lines, so that defining races by blood type would be more valid than skin color or other visible trait. The vast majority of genetic variation among humans occurs within races, and the genes that control such visible traits as skin color are independent of more underlying traits. However, "most anthropologists" now say that "races are mostly arbitrary categories invented by people to fit a misunderstanding about how human beings evolved."(28)

The agenda

The political purpose of the Bell Curve is older than Amerikan slavery, as Henry Louis Gates Jr., pointed out when he quoted Frederick Douglass:

"When men oppress their fellow-men, the oppressor ever finds, in the character of the oppressed, a full justification for his oppression. Ignorance, depravity, and the inability to rise from degradation to civilization and respectability, are the most usual allegations against the oppressed. The evils most fostered by slavery and oppression are precisely those which slave-holders and oppressors would transfer from their system to the inherent character of their victims. Thus the very crimes of slavery become slavery's best defense."(29)

The Bell Curve authors and their investors promote a eugenicist outlook veiled by backhanded multiculturalism. On the ideological level it promotes white supremacy; on the practical political level it promotes social policies: principally eliminating affirmative action and privatizing education.

Eugenics, a term coined by Charles Darwin's cousin Francis Galton in 1883, referred to the attempt to

"improve the human species by affording 'the more suitable races or strains of blood a better chance of prevailing speedily over the less suitable.' ... Galton was thoroughly familiar with the impressive effects of careful breeding as a means of bettering crops and domestic animals alike. 'Could not the race of men be similarly improved? ... Could not the undesirables be got rid of and the desirables multiplied?'"(30)

New York Times science writer Malcolm Browne tried to distance the Bell Curve from eugenics, since eugenics led to the practices of genocide by Nazi Germany (with extermination of "races" in concentration camps) and Amerika, with sterilization of those deemed criminal or mentally retarded. But Browne even tries to save eugenics a little, by saying eugenicists' "ideas were appropriated and perverted by the Nazis as the rationale for the Holocaust."(31) MIM argues, rather, that the Holocaust was a predictable outcome of the racist eugenicist theory.

While not suggesting traditional eugenics policies, Murray and Herrnstein express their belief that the future of inequality "depends on which women in which group have how many babies at what ages."(21) And the perceptive Browne says "it is hard to believe that these writers would oppose a eugenically motivated program designed to influence patterns of reproduction." The idea sounds good to Browne, who then asks, "Is it wrong to regard a hereditary predisposition to lower intelligence as a kind of genetic disease and to find ways to cure it?"(31)

Imperialist science is laying the groundwork for a new, more sophisticated eugenics. The Bell Curve provides important ideological and political support to this movement. The medical angle is being federally funded at the National Institutes of Health, which spent $58 million in 1994 to study the "genetic" causes of violence.(32)

In text that could be straight out of Brave New World, Murray and Herrnstein say they want different ethnic groups to come to appreciate their natural limitations, and not feel bad if they're not "smart." They relate a conversation they supposedly had with a Thai: "Americans have technology and capabilities that the Thais do not have, he said, just as the elephant is stronger than the human. 'But,' he said, 'who wants to be an Elephant?'"(New Republic 10/31/95, by Murray and Herrnstein.) They claim to seek a "wise ethnocentrism, in which, "Given a chance, each clan will add up its accomplishments using its own weighting system, will encounter the world with confidence in its own worth and, most importantly, will be unconcerned about comparing its accomplishments line-by-line with those of any other clan."

Avoiding "line-by-line" comparisons serves the interests of the white nation, which has certain bottom line inequalities it fears: reparations for slavery, returning stolen land, and genocidal wars around the world. The bottom line is, Amerika has to pay up.

Liberalism

Murray claims the tradition of Liberalism, saying, "My political aspiration is the restoration of the Jeffersonian republic."(33) And he is in that tradition. In England, for example, IQ tests were used as part of "a revolt against patronage and particularism and a plea for individual justice." Poor kids who scored well were supposed to be able to advance.(34) This was an important part of labor-aristocracy advancement -- that is, working class English whites being able to break out of their class and move up. The English imperialists didn't give anything up for this, of course. If their kids had any trouble with the tests, they could always buy a top education anyway.

If a "pure" capitalist system with no imperialism and no national oppression could exist, and where everyone got an equal education, this form of Liberalism would mean that the ranks of oppressors were relatively more open to members of the proletariat. In actual imperialism, such Liberalism has never existed beyond the ranks of the oppressor nations, or even completely within them; those in the oppressed nations had no such opportunity at all. Therefore, this Liberalism does nothing more than improve the conditions for some labor aristocrats, and further strengthen their ideological attachment to imperialism.

One Liberal Bell Curve critic called the book "grossly deterministic and grossly materialistic," because it considers people as part of groups instead of as individuals with the ability to affect their destinies. "I am repulsed ... because I would like to believe that what I will achieve in my life will be owed to myself and not to my group."(35) This Liberalism is anti-communist, and is nothing better than the Bell Curve.

Bourgeois backing

In the "free market of ideas," imperialists have the most money to buy the market. MIM argues that we can't beat the imperialists on their media turf; instead, we work to build an independent media to represent the international proletariat and the oppressed peoples of the world. In the marketplace of ideas, the imperialists don't fight fair, and no one expects them to.

Murray got $1 million from the Milwaukee-based Bradley Foundation to write the book while he was at the American Enterprise Institute. The Foundation supports "school choice," with public funds for private and religious schools. It has assets of more than $400 million.(36) In that capacity, Murray took advantage of the work of academics on the payroll of the Pioneer Fund, which spends about $1 million per year to support white supremacists. They fund tenured professors at Smith College, Johns Hopkins University, the University of Pennsylvania, and other state universities.(23)

The Fund was founded in 1937 by Wickliffe Draper, a textile magnate. The first president, Harry Laughlin, was a renowned eugenicist who was granted an honorary degree from Nazi Germany, given him by the Nazi's "scientific advisor for the extermination of the handicapped." This was for his work creating the 1922 Model Eugenical Sterilization Law, "which was adopted in one form or another by 30 states and resulted in the forced sterilization of tens of thousands of people in the United States." Thomas Ellis, an advisor to Jesse Helms, served on the Pioneer Fund board; Arthur Jensen received more than $1 million from Pioneer, and Phillipe Rushton got their money as well. The Pioneer Fund also subsidizes the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), which crusades for immigration restrictions. (23)

War on oppressed-nation children

The Bell Curve's ideological assault comes in the context of a material war on Black children as well. Now that this article has dispensed with notions of inherent of genetic inferiority, we want to point to some of the effects of poverty and oppression on members of the U.S. Empire's oppressed internal colonies. These effects make it harder for oppressed-nation children to grow up, or survive, healthy in mind and body.

One basic measure of wealth is household net worth, or the value of everything a family owns minus the size of its debts. The Census Bureau reports that in 1988, white household net worth was 9.6-times greater than Black household net worth: $44,408 compared to $5,345.(37) This means that even when measures such as income are closer between Blacks and whites, inequality in the underlying economic security is much greater.

In March 1994, Black children were officially 3.4-times more likely to be in poverty than "non-Hispanic" whites, or 46.1% compared to 13.6%. Of children living with one or both parents in 1993, 64% of Black children lived in rental housing, compared to 27% of white children. Education is especially hard for children living with stressed-out, overworked or very poor parents, and single parents in these conditions have it even worse. More than half (54%) of Black children live with their mother only, compared to 18% of whites. That makes for hard economics, as Black female householders with no spouse present have a median income of $11,905, which is 55% of the $21,649 median earned by non-Hispanic white women in the same situation.(38) Misogynist imperialist ideology blames the single parents for this situation; MIM blames imperialism itself.

Early childhood development is generally thought to be hindered by low birth-weight as well, which results from poverty and its various manifestations. Black children, taken as a nation, rank 71st in the world compared to other countries in rates of low birth-weight.(39) And by the time schooling starts, the advantages of health and wealth are compounded by unequal education. In 1993, 66% of white kids in nursery school were in private schools, compared to 26% of Blacks. In elementary school, 10% of whites compared to 5% of Blacks are in private schools.(38)

Many Black and other oppressed-nation children also suffer from lead poisoning, a virtual plague that has negatively affected the development of millions of children. It is a good example of how combined effects of poverty and oppression pile up on children of the oppressed.

Lead in the bloodstream causes a variety of developmental problems, including basic problems in visual motor abilities, which lead to reading, writing and math problems. Hurting fine motor skills, lead can also make it harder to take tests, and harder to concentrate. Equal exposure to lead can lead to different blood levels in different children, depending on other factors such as a low calcium or iron diet. By one estimate, one-third of Black children age 1-5 in large cities with poor parents have hazardous levels of lead in their blood.(40) The Alliance to End Childhood Lead Poisoning estimates that up to 50% of children in poor Black urban areas suffer from lead poisoning.(41)

While leaded gasoline, lead solder in soda cans, and new lead paint have all been cut down, other sources of lead persist in urban areas, include old buildings, industrial emissions, old schools and public housing projects, and soil. Lead paint in old housing remains the biggest source for lead poisoning. While there have been large decreases overall, there is still a huge disparity between Black and white children. The U.S. Government says that the white rate of what is now considered lead poisoning fell from 85% to 5.5% of children, and the Black rate fell from 98% to 21%, from 1980 to 1990. In large central cities, Black children had a 37% rate, compared to 6% for whites in the same areas.(42)

With the blood of so many Black children literally poisoned by the industries that represent wealth and progress to imperialism and the white nation, it is obscene to talk about any real or imagined cognitive differences between Black and white children without eliminating the basic sources of poverty and oppression.

Education

But instead of working to eliminate these effects, imperialism and its minions work to increase them. In the education system, IQ tests are rampantly used against oppressed children. The Bell Curve authors complain that "for thirty years, IQ has been out of fashion among American educators."(43) But the truth is that three-quarters of school districts still use IQ tests, and almost half of those kids in "gifted and talented" programs came from the top quartile of IQ test scores.(44) So IQ testing is used to help determine the future of millions of children.

Further, the education system seeks out testing more on Blacks than on whites, to excuse the poor education they get. One study found that Black children have a higher mental retardation rate than whites, but not before the age of 6, when they enter school. Carolyn Drews, the epidemiologist who did the study, "said the study supported findings that teachers were more likely to seek IQ testing and special classes for minority children, and the minority children from poor backgrounds might lack the skills needed for traditional IQ tests."(45) So white children having trouble in school might be carried along till they catch up, while Black children are quickly separated out and given IQ tests to pin them down in low success tracks.

To feed the current white frenzy against supposed "reverse discrimination," Murray and Herrnstein help convince whites that the government is working against them in its education policies. "At present, there is an overwhelming tilt toward enriching the education of children from the low end of the cognitive ability distribution," they write. But this conclusion is completely wrong. They say that in fiscal year 1993, of $8.6 billion spent by the Federal Government, 92% went to programs for the "disadvantaged," compared to just .1% for the "gifted."(43) They act as if this is the whole education system. In fact, private schools alone spent more than $20 billion in 1993. In 1991, federal education spending was 5.7% of the total spent on elementary and secondary education, state was 43.6%, and local was 40.6% (46). So, a majority of some "special" money may go to the "disadvantaged," but the vast majority of education resources go into the mundane education of children in a system that maintains the national oppression of internal colonies by white Amerika.

And it's not getting any better. In the name of stopping "violence," Amerikan schools are cracking down on oppressed-nation youth and their parents. An influential 1995 Heritage Foundation study recommends: increases in school security personnel, removing "disruptive" students from regular classrooms and creating special programs for them, using breathalyzer tests in school, and holding parents legally accountable for children's behavior.(47)

More and more schools have metal detectors, security guards, random locker searches, and restricted access to school buildings.(48) Twenty years ago the courts ordered New York City to end a system of separate schools for "violent" children, calling them "dumping grounds" mostly for nonwhites. Now they want to start the separate schools up again, this time stressing "behavior modification" and "family therapy" to improve their image.(49)

Psychiatry

In the oppressor white nation, the greatest contradiction is between children and adults. White youth have the greatest potential to rebel against their privilege and choose a course of opposing oppression. Psychiatry is one tool for stopping that rebellion. (It is also used against oppressed-nation children, of course.)

The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry recommends that parents seek "professional help" if certain behaviors persist, including "violent actions, rebellious behavior or running away," or even "persistent boredom"!(50) They also call "refusal to go to school" a "serious illness" for older children and adolescents, which "often requires more intensive treatment."(51) Resisting the Amerikan education system is one definition of mental "illness," according to psychiatry.

Parental abuse and alienation in a parasitic society causes a lot of suicide among whites. While suicides are hard to measure, or even define -- shooting cops is suicidal, but when the cops shoot you back it doesn't get counted as a suicide -- but by official measures white youth have the highest rates. Official teen suicide rates in the U.S. Empire have been increasing rapidly, more than doubling since 1980. The suicide rate for all 10- to 14-year-olds went from 0.8 to 1.7 per 100,000 from 1980 to 1992. For 15- to 19-year-olds it increased from 8.5 to 10.9 per 100,000. For young Black males, the overall rate increased 20%, but it increased four-times for Black males 10 to 14.(52)

Children of the oppressed nations in North America are attacked from all sides. The Bell Curve is an ideological attack that strengthens their white oppressors, and it rides along on an oppressive material reality that causes death and suffering of great proportions. Even white children are restricted and repressed by the imperialist education system; if they don't play by strict rules they can be incarcerated or drugged as "mentally ill," or kicked out of school, or put in prison. When the oppressed nations settle up with Amerika, the reparations must include payment for the ongoing oppression of children.

Notes:
1. The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life, Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray. Free Press: New York, 1994. Page or chapter numbers in the text refer to this edition. Herrnstein was a disciple of B.F. Skinner and later a Harvard professor. At Harvard in the 1970s, his classes were often disrupted by student protestors. Obituary, New York Times 9/16/94, p. B8.

2. "Curveball," Stephen Jay Gould, New Yorker 11/28/95. Gould's progressive anti-racist work goes back to his 1981 book The Mismeasure of Man and beyond. We're glad to use this work and will save our criticisms of him for another day. "Two books and no fewer than four conferences on the book's assertions are scheduled" for 1995 (Washington Post 1/16/95, p. A3).

3. Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. New York: Basic Books, 1983. See, more recently, Outsmarting I.Q.: The Emerging Science of Learnable Intelligence, by David Perkins. Free Press: New York, 1995.

4. "The Bell Curve: Getting the Facts Straight," Educational Leadership 4/95.

5. Geoffrey Cowley, "Testing the Science of Intelligence," Newsweek 10/24/94.

6. "Scales of Inequality," Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Washington Post 11/6/94. George Johnson writes: "The genes can carry only enough information to specify the most general features of the brain -- the rough shape of this glob of neurological clay. The fine sculpting that makes us who we are comes from the experience of living. Neurons continually form new connections, called synapses, with other neurons, growing the wiring needed to navigate through life's mazes. The very essence of the brain is this malleability, and that is what makes many biologists skeptical when social scientists or psychologists claim ... that they have found evidence that intelligence is essentially inherent." "Learning Just How Little Is Known About The Brain," New York Times 10/23/94, Week in Review.

7. "Alfred Binet, who invented the first usable I.Q. test in 1905 ... said the test had one purpose: to help identify learning-disabled children who needed special schools." "The 'scientific' War On The Poor," by Brent Staples, New York Times 10/28/94, 1994 p. A30.

8. The Chronicle of Philanthropy 11/29/94

9. Sarah Glazer, "IQ Controversy; Is Intelligence Inherited?" Washington Post 6/7/94, p. Z10.

10. pp. 593-4.

11. Washington Post 1/16/95, p. A3. After all the criticism of the low R2 levels, Murray then declared in the same Post article they were "meaningless" for the type of regression equations they did. This is contradicted by what he wrote in the book: "The size of the R2 tells something about the strength of the logistic relationship between the dependent variable and the set of independent variables..." p. 594.

12. p. xix.

13. Letter to New York Times Book Review 11/13/94. A Times Mirror poll in October 1994 documents the shift in white attitudes toward Blacks and immigrants. They found that 51% of whites agreed "the United States has gone 'too far' in pushing equal rights." That is up from 42% just two years earlier. Meanwhile, the number of whites agreeing that "'every possible effort' should be made to help minorities" dropped from 29% to 25% in the same time. Also during that time, the number of people saying the U.S. government should restrict immigration increased from 76% to 84%. USA Today 11/2/94, p. A8.

14. Forbes 10/24/94.

15. p. 270.

16. pp. 276-8.

17. p. 280-1.

18. 10/16/94 New York Times Book Review; 11/13/94 New York Times Book Review.

19. p. 427.

20. Also, the Bell Curve frequently uses the SAT as a stand-in for IQ, to much consternation of Nancy Cole, president of Educational Testing Service, which makes the SAT. She said it was "scientifically invalid" and "personally abhorrent" that SATs in the Bell Curve are "misused to promote a position about inherited and immutable racial inferiority."(Education Week 1/11/95.) The SAT years ago changed their acronym from Standard "Aptitude" Test to Standard "Achievement" Test, to avoid IQ-test type controversy. Now when their test turns out better for whites, they can freely blame the public schools instead of racism in their test.

21. Murray and Herrnstein in the New Republic 10/31/95.

22. p. 642.

23. "Professors of Hate: Academia's Dirty Secret," by Adam Miller, Rolling Stone 10/20/94, p. 106-14.

24. Review by Leon Kamin, Scientific American 2/95, pp. 99-103.

25. p. 247.

26. Richard Nisbett in the New Republic 10/31/94.

27. The is illustrated by the Census Bureau report that First Nations populations rose 72% from 1970-1980, and another 38 % from 1980-1990. This is a result of more people checking the box that says "Native American," not a population increase. "You're Smart If You Know What Race You Are," Steven A. Holmes, New York Times 10/23/94, Week in Review.

28. "Forget the Old Labels: Here's a New Way to Look at Race," Washington Post 11/16/94. See Gould's The Mismeasure of Man for the best overall account of this issue. See also The Evolution of Racism: Human differences and the use and abuse of science, by Pat Shipman. Simon and Schuster: New York, 1994 (reviewed in MIM Notes 95, 12/94).

29. The New Republic 10/31/94.

30. Shipman, op cit, p. 111.

31. New York Times Book Review 10/16/94.

32. Washington Post 1/29/95, p. C1.

33. Forbes 10/24/94.

34. "How the Left Betrayed IQ," Adrian Wooldrige column 2/27/95.

35. Leon Wieseltier, the New Republic 10/31/94.

36. "Who is Backing The Bell Curve?" Barbara Miner, Educational Leadership 4/95.

37. Census Bureau press release 1/26/94.

38. The Black Population in the United States: March 1994 and 1993, by Claudette E. Bennett, U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Current Population Reports P20-480, 1995.

39. Max Weiner and Bruce Cooper, letter in Education Week 1/11/95.

40. New York Times 3/21/95, p. C3.

41. Washington Post 7/27/94, p. B1.

42. Washington Post 7/27/94, p. A2.

43. Chapter 18.

44. Washington Post 6/7/94, Health.

45. New York Times 3/31/95, p. A17.

46. 1995 Statistical Abstract, p. 151; p. 154.

47. "How State and Local Officials Can Restore Discipline and Civility to American's Public Schools," by Stephen Wallis, 1995.

48. Washington Post 1/30/95.

49. Daily Report Card 3/8/95.

50. "Teen Suicide" pamphlet, 10/92.

51. "Children Who Won't Go To School" pamphlet 10/92.

52. Chicago Tribune 5/1/95.