Review: Charles Murray’s Facing Reality
Review of Facing Reality: Two Truths about Race in America
Murray has spent three decades not saying plainly what he tries to demonstrate with copious social science research and carefully arranged statistics in this book: that on average blacks are dumber than whites, their genes make them this way, and in a society based on merit — which is largely predicated on cognitive ability — blacks, as a group, will always represent an underclass of under-achievers.
In short, no matter how racially equitable America becomes, they will never truly catch up.
Murray, of course, has soft peddled this message each step of the way, but one can see its evolution from Losing Ground (which establishes the underclass), The Bell Curve (which examines its causes), and Facing Reality (which calls for a reckoning with its fact).
Hence, it is somewhat refreshing to see this message finally stated adversarially, even defiantly in Facing Reality: Two Truths about Race in America.
For instance, in the past, Murray has stressed that lower cognitive ability (which is not inferiority) is not a cause for concern because America is an individualistic society, and we treat — or at least we should treat — each other as individuals, not as members of groups.
So, group differences between blacks and whites shouldn’t color our appreciation of one another, even if we are, irrevocably, members of a group, and these differences separate groups, however much we might wish it otherwise.
He’s also judiciously noted that genes only make up part of this cognitive deficiency; that the environment plays a role too. He’s claimed “agnosticism” on the exact mix of genes versus environment causing the racial difference, even as he compels us, in this book, to face the reality he’s previously laid out, but soft-peddled: to wit, that blacks are less intelligent in part — perhaps a large part, but at least, irrevocably, some part — because of their genes, and this deficiency — which, again, is not an inferiority — is immutable.
So, it’s in their nature to be dumber; we just don’t know “how much” in their nature.
Either way, given the lack of change since Losing Ground, it’s time we realized there is simply nothing we can do about this.
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To make the implications of this idea clear — which again, Murray cloaks in circumspection, even as we’re asked to face it — one need only link low cognitive ability to absent fatherhood, unemployment, and single-parenthood…or as The Bell Curve does, to poverty, employment, family, schooling, welfare dependency, parenting, crime, and civility/citizenship. From there, the picture becomes clear: low educational attainment based on lower cognitive ability explains virtually all current racial disparities.
For if — as The Bell Curve asserts — cognitive ability subtends success and well-being, blacks will always, as a group, be disproportionately unsuccessful and worse off — whether in school, work, family, and eventually, citizenship. Since cognitive ability is the lynch pin of all these things, they will be irrevocably deficient.
Facing Reality needs to be read in light of this plain statement of what Murray has devoted a significant part of his career to establishing. For in the book, two realities — racial difference in cognitive ability and racial difference in criminality — are brought together to the forefront for the first time.
But which reality is it we are meant to face: the unassailability of these two facts, or the social implications they entail?
For Murray, it’s both, for these two facts — as unavoidable as they are — have unavoidable social implications. Plainly spoken — but accurate of Murray’s intent — blacks are both dumber and more violent than whites; we have to face this reality; and as we do we have to ask ourselves: what are the limits to what we can do about it, and what in terms of social equality can be realistically expected, versus what is otherwise wishful thinking?
On this question Murray is typically circumspect, but first on the wishful thinking list is expecting proportional representation in education, employment and civic status for blacks on par with their proportion of the population. Given their lower cognitive ability, this proportionality will never be achieved; because of lower cognitive ability, blacks are doomed to under-represent in schools and most professions, save those of low cognitive demand, where they will over-represent.
Second on the list is incarceration proportional to population. Given greater criminality, blacks will inevitably over-represent in prisons. Murray only flirts with a genetic cause of this propensity for crime, obliquely, once; nothing like the chapters devoted to it with respect to intelligence in The Bell Curve. But given that estimates put the heritability of criminality well within the range Murray establishes for IQ, one wonders how blacks are not more frequently criminal, just as they are more frequently dumb, because of their genes.
So, “facing reality” means facing up to a black over-class in prisons and a black under-class among the well-adjusted, the well-educated, and the well-off in society. But remember, this is not troubling because we are to think in terms of individuals, not in terms of groups, even as, apparently, the group disparities are the reality we are meant to face. Not knowing who might be who — as opposed to the underlying reality —apparently shelters us from the otherwise horrifying implications.
This reviewer offers no stand on whether Murray is right about the reality and/or the implications of racial differences in IQ and crime. He is content to note the inconsistency of calling attention to a reality — i.e. the deviance of a group — then turning attention away from this reality and towards individuals, who are, irrevocably, members of this group.
Also, the main point of this review is to articulate the reality as Murray describes it, and the implications he obliquely draws, in their unadulterated nudity — in other words, absent the caveats and circumspection otherwise packaging it for polite conversation. And that reality is that blacks are dumber and more violent than whites, and at the end of the day, there is nothing we can do about this because it’s in their nature to be both.
This plain statement is necessary because Facing Reality: Two Truths about Race in America is so well-written, so well-documented, and so well-framed in the garb of neutral circumspection that it ultimately conceals the reality Murray intends to illuminate in its pages — i.e., the culmination of an argument developed over a entire career: that because of their nature blacks will never catch up, but this does not mean they are inferior.
The Anus will leave it to readers to split that butt hair…
