Comment

Heritage Immigration Study Co-Author Resigns Over White Nationalist Connections

22
iossarian5/10/2013 1:38:26 pm PDT

re: #10 klys

Yes.

You can spare yourself the headache.

That’s great - could you do me a huge favor and let me know whether I’ve got the gist of it right below? It seems, from what I’ve heard, that Richwine constructed the following argument:

A) He provided statistical evidence that certain racial/ethnic groups in the US have differing IQ levels, and that these differences persist across generations post-immigration. This is not, in itself, particularly surprising. It’s pretty obvious that these measures are correlated to some extent with income and education, and the US is still pretty segregated on those variables.

B) He made the policy claim that it’s better to have a high-IQ population than a low-IQ population. I think this is questionable but I don’t think this is the really controversial part.

C) He extrapolated from A and B that it would be good to implement an IQ test on immigration. This is where the main controversy starts for me, because from a policy point of view you’re treating a symptom (certain racial/ethnic groups demonstrate low IQ test scores in the US) rather than the cause (US society is segregated by race/class, and this is reflected in the test scores).

D) Even beyond C) he then seems to be saying that admitting certain racial/ethnic groups is a bad idea given their group’s low average IQ scores. This is much worse, since it completely ignores the probable social reasons for the different scores in each US group, and instead assumes that they’re caused by non-US genetic factors.

Is that about it? Again, I’m not attempting to defend Richwine’s policy recommendations in any way, shape or form. But I think that defeating those recommendations depends in part on understanding how he was attempting to justify them.