James Watson’s Ordeal

By Dr. Kevin MacDonald

James Watson’s embrace of racial differences in intelligence once again shows the undiminished power of the left to control public discourse on critical issues related to diversity and multiculturalism. When Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray published The Bell Curve in 1994, it was greeted with a great sense of anticipation in some circles that at last issues related to race and IQ could be discussed openly and honestly. Finally, a book had been published by a mainstream publisher that dared to argue that not only were there racial differences in intelligence, but also that it was reasonable to suppose that these differences were partly due to inheritance.

But it never happened. One has to look long and hard to find mainstream media accounts of race differences in academic success that even propose genetic differences as a reasonable hypothesis. For example, recent state reports on school success have emphasized that economic differences do not explain the racial gap in school success. One would think that the failure of the favorite explanation of the cultural left would prompt reasonable people to at least suggest at least the possibility that genetic differences are involved. But that explanation is utterly taboo in the mainstream media.

Below the surface, however, in the labyrinths of academia, The Bell Curve has had an impact. Many new researchers are now studying general intelligence. Even the US military and much work in industrial-organizational psychology is taking the importance of “g,” the general factor of mental ability, into account. (more…)