May 9, 2013

NYT: Dr. Richwine guilty of not being oblivious to the obvious

From the New York Times:
Paper on Immigrant I.Q. Dogs Critic of Overhaul

Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times

WASHINGTON — The revelation that a co-author of a Heritage Foundation study critical of the Senate’s bipartisan immigration proposal had recently argued that Hispanic immigrants are less intelligent than white Americans touched off a furor on Wednesday, undercutting the conservative foundation’s attempt to become a major force in the immigration debate.
In a 2009 dissertation for a public-policy doctorate at Harvard University, Jason Richwine, the co-author, wrote that Hispanic immigrants generally had an I.Q. that was “substantially lower than that of the white native population” — and that the lower intelligence of immigrants should be considered when drafting immigration policy. 
“Immigrants living in the U.S. today do not have the same level of cognitive ability as natives,” wrote Dr. Richwine, who is a senior policy analyst at Heritage. “No one knows whether Hispanics will ever reach I.Q. parity with whites, but the prediction that new Hispanic immigrants will have low-I.Q. children and grandchildren is difficult to argue against.” ...

In response, the New York Times counter-argued: "... [cough] ... [cricket chirp]." Oh, well, I guess it is difficult to argue against. But it's easy to point-and-sputter:
“Whether you agree or disagree with the Heritage study, what their co-author believes is downright insulting and shameful,” said Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, a group that has mobilized support for the bill. “Heritage has really become an outlier. The rest of the country is having a 21st-century conversation about immigration reform, and Heritage is caught in 1800. I really think their entire credibility is in question.”
The disclosure of the dissertation written by Dr. Richwine, who could not be reached for comment, threatened to undermine Heritage’s push for influence even as the foundation distanced itself from Dr. Richwine’s outside writing.

You can read Dr. Richwine's Harvard Ph.D. dissertation, IQ and Immigration Policy, for yourself. Here's the title page:
The three Harvard scholars who signed off on it are

- George Borjas is the leading immigration economist. His Harvard Kennedy school bio reads:
George J. Borjas is the Robert W. Scrivner Professor of Economics and Social Policy. He received his PhD in economics from Columbia. His teaching and research interests focus on the impact of government regulations on labor markets, with an emphasis on the economic impact of immigration. He is the author of Wage Policy in the Federal Bureaucracy; Friends or Strangers: The Impact of Immigrants on the U.S. Economy; Heaven’s Door: Immigration Policy and the American Economy; and the textbook Labor Economics. He also edited Immigration and the Work Force; Issues in the Economics of Immigration; and Poverty, International Migration and Asylum. 

- Richard J. Zeckhauser, whose Kennedy School of Government bio reads:
Richard Zeckhauser is the Frank P. Ramsey Professor of Political Economy. Much of his conceptual research examines possibilities for democratic, decentralized allocation procedures. ... He has been elected as a fellow of the Econometric Society and the American Academy of Sciences and as a member of the Institute of Medicine (National Academy of Sciences). ... He serves as a Trustee for The Commonwealth School and as a member of NBER, the Russell Sage Roundtable in Behavioral Economics, the Academic Advisory Committee, American Enterprise Institute, and the OECD High Level Advisory Board on Large-Scale Catastrophes. ...  He holds a BA (summa cum laude) and a PhD in economics from Harvard University.

- Christopher Jencks, who has been perhaps the leading left-of-center social scientist of his era. My first published work was a letter-to-the-editor that appeared in National Review over 40 years ago making a joke about Jencks' meta-analysis of the Coleman Report, his 1972 book Inequality: A Reassessment of the Effect of Family and Schooling in America. Jencks characterized himself in that books as a "socialist." Jencks has contributed two dozen pieces to the New York Review of Books since 1964. Jencks' book The Black-White Test Score Gap was the most scholarly left-of-center response to The Bell Curve.

In other words, these three guys are social science heavyweights. Jencks, for example, knows vastly more about IQ than everybody screaming at Richwine put together.

This is an example of how the Gang of Eight's amnesty bill is a trap for all but the most politically correct, for anybody with a sense of realism. When Dave Leonhardt of the New York Times, who is really a pretty good guy (he publicized the Hoxby-Avery study, for example), writes about "Hispanics, the New Italians," he's probably not being intentionally disingenuous, he's just being East Coast ignorant. From his bio:
Mr. Leonhardt studied applied mathematics at Yale.  He is a third-generation native of New York.

What does a third-generation native of New York who studied applied math at Yale know from Mexican-Americans? Nothing.

On the other hand, if you are from L.A., like me, it's hard not to notice that there is, on average, an IQ gap and that it doesn't go away, and that has all sorts of implications for education, real estate, immigration, mortgages, and so forth and so on.

One of the goals the Democrats have in inviting in more illegal immigrants by amnestying the ones already here is to rub the noses of more white people in the facts of diversity, so that they have to choose between being Evil or being Complicit.

And nobody hates us Evil folks like the Complicit.

For data from Generations of Exclusion on Hispanic educational attainment through five generations of assimilation within families, click here.

For data from Roth et al on test score gaps between whites and Hispanics, click here.

59 comments:

Anonymous said...

I wonder if Richwine can keep his job. From now on, whatever he says will be deemed racist which will reflect on Heritage, too. I've long considered his public floating of HBD ideas foolhardy, and it may be that he has just reached the limits of how much someone who is not famous and well-connected like Charles Murray can say and still work for a conservative think tank.

Car 54 said...

"he's probably not being intentionally disingenuous, he's just being East Coast ignorant."

Steve, you hit that nail on the head. My experience has been that many New Yorkers really don't know a damn thing about how the world works west of the Hudson, and most don't care. For many, their first real experience with that world is a Florida retirement, and it can be a shock.

Calling all cars!! Calling all cars!! Immigration isn't a New York issue anymore, it's a west of the Hudson issue!! Ellis Island and Emma Lazarus are so yesterday, so get your head in the game.

Anonymous said...

Steve - You are almost all alone in commentators in noticing that the gigantic East Coast bias in the Cathedral is really the root cause of them not understanding Mexico, Mexicans and Mexican-Americans.

One of the silver linings in the massive wave of legal and illegal immigration from Mexico is that it has now burst the unofficial dam around the American Southwest and Mexicans are becoming much, much more common almost everywhere, though New York, as always, remains a bit of an outlier in this.

I don't expect this experience will teach them anything, but it will enable us to make common cause with working class European-Americans in New England and elsewhere.

Not to mention the immense pleasure I will get when Boston schools become total holes and no one jogs in Boston Common anymore because of all the trash and discarded used Pampers.....

garyinfh said...

Richwine can keep his job if his thesis committee at Harvard – the trio of Borjas, Zeckhauser and Jencks – defend him vigorously, and publicly. What can Harvard do to these three? They all have named chairs at their respective schools, and are sufficiently prominent to enable them to swat away criticism with the aplomb of tenured, chaired Harvard professors. What else, after all, is tenure for, if not to facilitate the spirit of free inquiry, and to protect potentially unpopular ideas from being squashed by the mediocrity of the masses?

So what about it, gentlemen? Are you going to cut and run, like former Harvard president Larry Summers when pressed even slightly by some dingbat woman who took umbrage at something perfectly innocuous, or are you going to stand up for a graduate student whom you – in effect – welcomed to the community of scholars by approving his dissertation as being “worthy of acceptance” for the Ph.D. degree?

If these guys are the “social science heavyweights” Steve says they are, they should have no problem in defending Jason Richwine and his scholarly work. Right?

rightsaidfred said...

Why do the Stalinists of the world seem to enjoy so much success?

This type of NYT's writer can be found in his habitat preening and bragging about his own intelligence while putting down his political opponents as "stupid" etc. while getting strokes from his colleagues for being so smart.

SFG said...

Can I resign from the Jewish race?

Anonymous said...

I've long considered his public floating of HBD ideas foolhardy,

So you think this plan might work:

1. Never make the mistake of publicly discussing facts the HBD denialist left considers off limits, and do nothing as the bar is moved ever farther left.

2. ?

3. HBDers win!

Just a nobody said...

Therefore, in order that this opinion may not insinuate itself any further to the prejudice of Liberal Truth, the New York Times has decreed that the said Dr. Richwine, for IQ and Immigration Policy, be criticised until they recant; but that the Heritgate Foundation be altogether condemned, and that all other works likewise, in which the same is taught, be prohibited, as by this present decree it prohibits, condemns, and suspends them all respectively. In witness whereof the present decree has been signed and sealed with the hands and with the seal of the most eminent and Reverend News Authority, by ASHLEY PARKER and JULIA PRESTON on May 8 of 2013.

Anonymous said...

The media storm and response of a think tank is one thing. They exist in the twilight world where what is true and what is believed by journalists is one and the same.

But the thesis-length Half Sigma post signed off by Harvard in 2009? This is gold.

Unknown said...

This reaction against Dr. Richwine's IQ data is a near perfect piece of evidence that we live in a degenerated technocracy. Our elected officials, media and the public still defer to the technocrats and consider them the only legitimate sources of authority but when the data is unwelcome the the pop-technocrats gang up on the real technocrat delivering unwelcome news. Whether immigration policy should be influenced by IQ scores or not is beside the point: either we're guided by the various "-ologists" or we're not. Either these think tanks and academics are what they claim to be or they're not. They can't claim US immigration policy is made based on the recommendations of science, ie. technocrats from the social sciences, and then feign fainting spells and call for the smelling salts when the data gets rude.

If our governing classes won't live up to the minimum requirements of a technocracy maybe they'll have to prove their legitimacy to govern based on older standards? Will they start proving themselves in battle?

Anonymous said...

If there were actual reporting in the world, someone would have asked the dissertation approvers what they thought of the controversy.

Maybe someone on teh Internets will email them and ask

Anonymous said...

Semi-related, but here's another piece of gene denialist nonsense from someone claiming that HBDers suffer from some fallacy or disorder called "The Biology Bias"

http://postmasculine.com/the-biology-bias

He argues that because of hurt feelings HBD causes, the current PC policy is the better way to go regarding race and IQ.

Anonymous said...

I used to have the attitude about gay marriage that I didn't care, it wasn't an important issue, hardly any gays will marry because (a) its not their culture and (b) tax-wise single filing is better for them.

What turned me was the attack on opponents as "bigots." Calling names is a vile tactic, the tactic of a bully. Mainstream media went whole hog bully and the result is indoctrination of the young, politicians intimidated and vain religious "leaders" intimidated. St. Peter was crucified upside down; the current generation can't withstand scolding from verbal bullies.

There are opponents of gay marriage who donate blood, who are organ donors, who register with the bone marrow registry, even have donated stem cells to total strangers. Good people. There are supporters of gay marriage who weasel away from anything selfless.

The bullying tactic is the MO for everything in our public discourse. They are such stinkers, probably up to absolute evil. Whats the overlap, gay marriage proponets (over 30, the under 30s are just indoctrinated) and immigration proponents? They probably really do want to see adolescent boys recruited for homosexual sex. Why give them any benefit of good faith when they are so vicious? The proponents of immigration want to destroy neighborhoods with Hispanic immigrants living 12 people in a 3 bedroom house and destroy schools with kids who drag everyone else down. They want to get rid of Social Security and Medicare for anyone with savings or a decent pension by loading up the welfare rolls with Mexicans, Guatemalans, Somalians, etc.

Dhinda said...

I grew up in a neighborhood that had a lot of Mexicans and a lot of Appalachians. Everybody knew that both generally had lower IQs than average. You are allowed to say that about the Appalachians but not the Mexicans.

Porter said...

Jennifer Ruben Montoya: Mr. White, who do you see before you?

Mr. White: Morris? Haha. It's a housecat.

Jennifer Ruben Montoya: O.M.G. We'll ignore that--once. This is screen legend John Barrymore.

Mr. White: huh?

Jennifer Ruben Montoya: If you start with the off-base premise that domesticated felines are not dead actors, it's no surprise you would come to such a flawed conclusion. Your beliefs are bigoted and ignorant. America is a nation of immigrants...America is a nation of immigrants. Sorry that's my Bush family ringtone; I'll call P back later. As I was saying, to impugn the character of this film icon is to offend us all and the dignity of life itself.

Mr. White: WTF are you babbling about?

Jennifer Ruben Montoya: Mr. Barrymore has strived to hone his craft and better the lives of all around him through hard work and determination. He does not poop in a litter box. Your hate and prejudice has blinded you. One can certainly avoid early movies without being so reprehensibly repugnant. No one will rally around an extremist who claims "two legs good, four legs bad." And by the way, your employer and child protective services agree: you are not a fit father or professional.

Mr. White: It's a cat, you psychopath!

Jennifer Ruben Montoya: Is there anything else you'd like to say? (sound of a pistol slide action)

Mr. White: Hey John, loved you in Svengali!

Anonymous said...

Lack of rigor in the courses or lack of intelligence in the students?

Anonymous said...

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/09/opinion/blow-terms-of-art.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130509

Most blacks are on the 'left' but they must be doing something wrong in alienating every group--even most non-black liberals--and driving them away from black or blackening areas. Why is it that in every 'blue city', the races are so divided? Chicago, NY, Philadelphia, etc. Most liberal whites would prefer to live next to conservative whites than alongside 'liberal' blacks. Blacks have a great talent of offending and driving away diverse groups of people. Blow is deluded if he think most white 'leftists' really love blacks so much that the wanna live next to lots of them. White liberals like the idea of loving blacks than the actuality of loving blacks. Indeed, white liberals and even white conservatives often prefer 'diversity' as a means to create a buffer between themselves and blacks, i.e. they'd rather hire and work with Hispanics and Asians--who are either more skilled or docile and certainly less threatening--than with blacks who are often too loud, wild, and aggressive.

Anonymous said...

Steve,

A minor correction. You wrote, "- George Borjas is the leasing immigration economist." It should be leading.

Speaking of George Jesus Borjas, I noticed that he himself is Hispanic, a white Hispanic to be exact. But unlike the other white Hispanics, this guy seems to not want to recreate Latin America in North America. I find it interesting that at the bottom of his wikipedia entry under categories, he is listed under 'Cuban emigrants to the United States', but he is not listed under the Hispanic or Latino category.

FYI, Cameron Diaz is listed under the 'Hispanic and Latino Actresses' category.

So I wonder if he lost his Hispanic status because he is on the wrong side of the immigration debate?

Anonymous said...

DOJ in the business of enforcing equal outcomes

David said...

> [This undercuts Heritage’s] attempt to become a major force in the immigration debate.<

> I really think their entire credibility is in question.<

> Heritage has really become an outlier.<

> The rest of the country is having a 21st-century conversation about immigration reform.<

I love the smell of desperation in the morning.

They're telling us how they want it to be. It's transparent wishing thinking.

It resembles those Hollywood ad campaigns for movies that haven't premiered yet: "MOST POPULAR MOVIE IN AMERICA".

Sure, that's what they would like people to think. They're praying to Mammon that it will be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

>"Whether you agree or disagree with the Heritage study, what their co-author believes is downright insulting and shameful,” said Ali Noorani<

1. Even if x is correct, believing x is shameful. Folks, that is panic.

2. Ali Noorani. 'Nuff said.

Anon. frets:

>I've long considered [the] public floating of HBD ideas foolhardy[....] I wonder if Richwine can keep his job. From now on, whatever he says will be deemed racist which will reflect on Heritage, too<

Nonsense. People are scared to death when they shouldn't be. You have to wonder why. Heritage shouldn't be, Richwine shouldn't, George J. Borjas shouldn't, Richard J. Zeckhauser shouldn't, Christopher Jencks shouldn't.

At a certain point, a movement needs a Rosa Parks moment.

Our enemies are weakening.

Sit in the front of the bus.

Procopius said...

Not to point out anything that isn't blindingly obvious, but this little gambit takes the politics of personal destruction to new depths of egregiousness. Since when does one respond to a private-sector policy analyst's work by scouring his four-year-old dissertation for impure thoughts? This sort of thing happens all the time to people who are on track for public office (see, e.g., the skirt clutching over the Concerned Alumni of Princeton during Samuel Alito's confirmation hearings), but I'm not aware that it's ever occurred in quite this context before. That somebody plainly gave the instruction to dig into Richwine's past is bad enough; that the results are being trumpeted far and wide as a reason to ignore the man's actual work, without any discussion of the merits of that work, is nauseating. Our nation may once have had an intellectual climate conducive to responsible self-government. It sure doesn't have one now.

Anonymous said...

"What does a third-generation native of New York who studied applied math at Yale know from Mexican-Americans? Nothing."

There have been lots of Puerto-Ricans in NYC since the 1950s. They haven't moved up. There have always been some blacks in New York. Their number increased after WWII. Obviously they haven't moved up, only partially out. If a native New Yorker wanted to come up with examples of groups that have stayed at the bottom of society for generations, he'd have no trouble doing it.

As the history of religion shows, the real world never had much bearing on humanity's conscious beliefs. Modern mass media + leftism simply replaced older, beneficial unrealistic beliefs with newer, harmful ones. But our conscious beliefs never had much to do with reality. Fortunately many of the resulting mistakes are corrected at the subconscious level. People who consciously believe in a pleasant afterlife fear death as much as atheists. Conscious race-deniers make as many efforts to avoid NAM neighborhoods as race-realists.

Anonymous said...

http://lewrockwell.com/williams-w/w-williams168.html

Anonymous said...

"leasing immigration economist"

???

NZT said...

That NYT article is a splendid example of what Moldbug calls speaking power to truth. What is the message? "This scoundrel is guilty of doubleplusungood thoughtcrime! Best disregard everything he and his colleagues has ever said or will say, comrades!" Not even the barest whiff of an attempt to prove Richwine was wrong then or now, just bald assertion that his statements are beyond the pale and he must be cast into the outer darkness forevermore.

x said...

"the rest of the country is having a 21st century conversation on immigration reform" - code for "we're talking about when we're going to pass amnesty and why we need to and why you're a racist if you disagree"

Anonymous said...


The "educated elite": "We are outraged! How can anyone think such a ridiculous thought? We all know educational and economic achievements are the result of nurture, not nature."

HBDers: We know that selection pressures have resulted in differences in intelligence just as they've resulted in differences in all systems and organs of the body. After all, the brain is just another organ that evolved from those pressures, pressures which vary from population group to population group.

The "educated elite": What's selection pressure?

Pat Boyle said...

The question about then IQs of Hispanics is linked with the question of the IQs of blacks and European immigrants.

The argument has been best formulated by Thomas Sowell even though it's now quite clear that he is wrong.

Sowell has written that it is true that blacks have an average IQ of 85. But he says the Irish, Italians and Jews also had IQs of around 85 when they first came to this country. But being in America has improved them. All these groups now have IQs of at least 100.

His statistics on Jewish IQ are disputed but the Irish and Italian cases are clear. They were both groups with high unemployment and high crime rates. But today both groups are well behaved and smart.

The black IQ problem he says is one in which this group for some other reason failed to follow the normal pattern of social and mental improvement following their immigration.

Sowell thinks the reason that blacks haven't advanced is because they have been the target of liberal social welfare programs. He cites lots of evidence that blacks had less illegitimacy and less crime before the Civil Rights revolution of the mid last century.

Much as I admire Sowell I think he's clearly wrong. The Irish for example were clearly oppressed. Frederick Douglas commented that Irish tenants in Ireland had far worse living conditions than did black slaves in America. The Irish were not allowed to be schooled.

In America the Irish slowly but steadily advanced generation after generation until today they are the equal of the English and German heritage Americans. On the Mississippi the Irish competed against the blacks for the stevedore jobs. Old Man River should be sung by an Irishman. Actually those jobs went largely to Poles by the period of the musical.

Blacks, as is well known, have not closed the IQ gap in a century. The Irish were denied education but blacks have been given every educational advantage possible. When the Irish were allowed even a taste of opportunity they blossomed as a people. They did so even without a 'Head Start'.

Blacks did not improve in America and every effort to help them improve has been a failure. So if you imagine that the Hispanic peasants that we are ingesting are such a prodigious rate will perform like the Irish then there is no problem. Those low Hispanic IQs will start to climb soon enough. But if they are like the African-Americans they will not improve. They will remain a retarded and dependent population.

Albertosaurus

FirkinRidiculous said...

How stupid would you have to be to live with a person imprisoning three women in the same house and not notice anything?

Auntie Analogue said...


Richwine and his ilk are heretics against the Orthodoxy! Burn them! Burn them! BURN THEM!

Continue importing scores of millions more Third Worlders for our own good! And if you don't like it, the full weight of the present form of Inquisition will be brought to bear down upon you too!

"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act." - George Orwell

Anonymous said...

Richwine rhymes with Thought Crime. All of his PhD's and those of his eminent thesis advisors will avail him not, any more than the Red Guards were impressed by the credentials of the professors that they sent to the countryside. All of your fancy education doesn't mean a thing if it does not Serve the People. Dr. Richwine better start writing his self-criticism now.

Anonymous said...

Somewhat OT, but you need to read Daniel Henninger's column on jobs and immigration in today's WSJ. The cognitive dissonance is unbelievable. It reads like an article in The Onion

Anonymous said...

Liberalism and leftism used to be centered around the ideal of economic equality, but as urban ‘liberal’ and ‘leftist’ types find themselves getting ever richer and richer and ‘more equal than others’ in the globalist order, they’ve revised the idea of ‘equality’ in terms of ‘culture war’ issues, and so, the new ‘equality’ is obsessed with the idea of ‘marriage equality’ for homos.

But of course, it’s really a form of ‘marriage privilege’ for homos since their deviant concept of marriage is being favored and promoted while other deviant proposals — such as multi-marriage and incest marriage — go unaddressed. If ‘liberals’ really believe in ‘marriage equality’ for all, why is the homo kind promoted while other kinds are not?

So, you see, it’s really about homo privilege packaged and sold as ‘equality’. Since homos and Jews are rich and getting richer, they can no longer convincingly sell the ideal of economic equality; and so, ‘equality’ has been turned into a gimmick where masses of less intelligent and less fortunate liberals have been duped into believing that they are fighting for equality by serving the narrow privileged interests of Jews and homos. Liberal masses are as dumb as conservative ones, but then, the masses throughout history have always been sheep regardless of ideology, nationality, or religion.

candid_observer said...

"I've long considered [the] public floating of HBD ideas foolhardy..."

It is and it isn't. Yes, doing so in the context of arguing against immigration is likely to undermine, to an extent, that argument in the eye of the public.

On the other hand, every time still another person with some authority (e.g., a Ph.D. from Harvard, with a dissertation on the very subject approved by distinguished faculty) asserts that IQ differences across groups is both real and quite possibly based on genetics, some portion of the public will start to wonder about the blank slate dogma. If it's just an absurd idea based only on prejudice, how'd it get any foothold in a place like Harvard--which would seem like the very last place where such an illiberal idea might find any tolerance?

I certainly believe that Richwine is young enough that he will see his ideas -- and the courage it requires to espouse them -- vindicated in his lifetime.

Anonymous said...

@KevinV

We never have had and still don't have a significant Mexican population up here in East Mass but we've got Haitians and Brazilians and we've had 'em for a while.

just wondering said...

Maybe I'm out of the loop but I don't see how demonstrating past study of the subject can "dog" someone now claiming to have studied the subject. Isn't that an inversion of the normal denotations of the journalese being employed here? It isn't as if he was recorded drunkenly praised Hitler in a Parisian bistro.

Example 2: some Persian quoted from the National Immigration Forum, which I'd never heard hide nor hair of till now, says of Heritage--denounced by national Democrats for 3+ decades now--their "credibility is in question." How did the press's workaday efforts at gossip/news/PR morph so abruptly into an episode of "The West Wing?"

Anonymous said...

Can I resign from the Jewish race?


Quite easily. The "Jewish race" has always been a fiction, one created by critics of Jews but then embraced by Jews themselves. This happens surprisingly often - for instance, the term "Tory" was originally a term of abuse meaning an Irish outlaw, and ended up being worn with pride by the royalist faction in Britain.

Dave Pinsen said...

Check out the comments on the Huffington Post article on the revelation of Richwine's thesis.

Anonymous said...

It isn't as if he was recorded drunkenly praised Hitler in a Parisian bistro.


It's not like he is a convicted former terrorist or something, like Bill Ayers, who has the ear of the President.

Anonymous said...

The rest of the country is having a 21st-century conversation about immigration reform


If "the rest of the country" consists of few dozen New York "intellectuals" and writers and a few dozen people in Congress, sure it is.

Anonymous said...

I've long considered his public floating of HBD ideas foolhardy


I've long considered the typical American to be astonishingly gutless and suffering from an acute case of Stockholm Syndrome.

"Stop doing that, you fool, you'll make the guards angry at us!"

Land of the free and home of the brave, my ass.

Anonymous said...

Bearing group IQ differences in mind, the following has huge implications for admissions-rigging in the university. The linked article finds that 2012 Latino high-school graduates enrolled in college (2- or 4-year) in higher numbers than their white counterparts.

http://nbclatino.com/2013/05/09/latino-high-school-graduates-surpass-whites-in-college-enrollment-rate/

Dave Pinsen said...

"In America the Irish slowly but steadily advanced generation after generation until today they are the equal of the English and German heritage Americans."

Pat,

Sowell's theory may be wrong, but it's not entirely implausible. The Irish, as Steve has noted, never sufferered the sort of racism in the US that blacks did. And the elimination of institutional racism against blacks in the 1960s coincided with the Great Society programs, which had such ill effects on the black community. So right when economic opportunities were opening up for blacks, along came welfare programs which subsidized the perpetuation of poverty.

At the same time, Detroit and American manufacturing were sliding from their post-war peaks. And the post-1965 mass immigration was kicking in.

A key difference between blacks and white immigrant ethnic groups such as Irish and Jews is that the white minority groups had largely climbed out of poverty before the Great Society. But what if the Great Society had happened 50 years earlier? It's possible the Irish and Jewish underclasses would have persisted longer than they did.

Anonymous said...

"And the elimination of institutional racism against blacks in the 1960s coincided with the Great Society programs, which had such ill effects on the black community. So right when economic opportunities were opening up for blacks, along came welfare programs which subsidized the perpetuation of poverty."

Scandinavians have lived with socialism for many decades. How come Swedes don't behave like inner city US blacks? Great Society didn't require blacks to start idling about. It just gave them an opportunity to be idle. I think Scandies have had that opportunity since the 1930s.

I don't think that black dysfunction can be honestly blamed either on socialism or on capitalism.

sunbeam said...

We are never going to know, but I wonder what things would be like if the 60's boom had been normal.

By that I mean that this country actually had FULL employment, not the gamed version of it now.

If there was a job for anyone with a warm pulse that was willing to work, and paid enough to live...

I've done a little reading on the 60's. San Francisco in the 60's was a town where you could wash dishes part time, and shack up with some roommates and actually live in the city.

That is all gone now. But if it had continued, if the jobs were there and the way you went about living continued as it had been since WWII...

I just wonder whether we would have all this dysfunction now. I'm an outsider to the black community but I've noticed a change even in my life. When I was a child it just wasn't this way. Now it is a total mess.

Just have to wonder if the jobs were actually there, if you could go down to the steel mill or refinery and get a real job if things would be the way they are now.

Dave Pinsen said...

Heritage VP Mike Gonzalez got raked over the coals on an English-language Hispanic radio show. A like to his excoriation, and the Star Trek scene it reminded me of, are in this tweet.

Anonymous said...

"...elimination of institutional racism against blacks..."

Have you ever wondered how institutionalized racism came about? If blacks were not dangerous to be around from the very beginning, no shunning of them, private or institutionalized, would have ever been necessary. Don't you see that what you call "institutionalized racism" was just a set of defensive reactions? Reactions against interracial rape and other sorts of violence, against one's kids ending up in horrible schools, against theft in stores, etc.

You use the phrase "institutionalized racism" as if it came out of a vacuum, as if it was motivated by inexplicable, primordial evil, instead of the love of one's children or the dislike of being stolen from.

The fact that institutionalized racism ever came about, the fact that many different groups of people on several continents and in several centuries (most recently Chinese businessmen in Africa) felt the need to invent it from scratch, tells us that black dysfunction predates non-blacks' attempts to deal with it. The dysfunction was not caused by outsiders' attempts to protect themselves from it. It (the dysfunction) came first. In other news, if bees didn't bite, beekeepers wouldn't need those face masks either.

24AheadDotCom said...

I don't know about Leonhardt being a good guy, since he led a smear of Dobbs (back when Dobbs was OK).

In case anyone wants to pushback, help out this conversation I'm having with a WaPo hack who's opposed the Heritage study. vDare and Peri came up, with the WaPo hack calling the first "racist". Get on Twitter and carry on the conversation with the goal of discrediting him.

(Note: the hack has since replied to one other tweet, but if you don't see it that's because the list hasn't updated yet.)

Anonymous said...

So you think this plan might work:

1. Never make the mistake of publicly discussing facts the HBD denialist left considers off limits, and do nothing as the bar is moved ever farther left.

2. ?

3. HBDers win!


I meant that it's foolhardy for Richwine personally and career-wise. Of course I greatly appreciate the fact that he has publicly discussed HBD.

Anonymous said...

Here's the White-Hispanic Nicolás Gómez Dávila on Democracy & Equality


http://don-colacho.blogspot.com/2010/01/democracy-equality.html


Men are less equal than they say and more equal than they think. (#778)

-------


The contemporary anthropologist, under democrats' severe gaze, skips quickly over ethnic differences like over hot coals. (#780)

By means of the notion of “cultural evolution,” the democratic anthropologist tries to avoid questions of biology. (#2,026)

Untouchable topics abound in democratic times. Race, illnesses, climate, end up being caustic substances there. Unspeakable there is anything that might imply that humanity is not causa sui. (#1,656)

The democrat changes his method in the social sciences when some conclusion makes him uncomfortable. (#2,577)

-------

Where equality allows freedom to enter, inequality slips in. (#2,724)


Anonymous said...

"We are never going to know, but I wonder what things would be like if the 60's boom had been normal.

By that I mean that this country actually had FULL employment, not the gamed version of it now.

If there was a job for anyone with a warm pulse that was willing to work, and paid enough to live...

I've done a little reading on the 60's. San Francisco in the 60's was a town where you could wash dishes part time, and shack up with some roommates and actually live in the city."

Reading Kerouac's "On the Road" it was like this after WWII also.
Robert Hume

Anonymous said...

Holy crap, the Nat'l Immig Forum (also called "The Forum")has been around since '82, i.e. almost as long as Heritage. They shoulda picked a punchier name... something that doesn't sound like a campus newsletter (The Fordham Forum)

Anonymous said...

Anon 1:12, those ain't Haitians and Brazilians cluttering up Chelsea and Lynn. They're from the DR and PR.

As if the People's Commonwealth didn't get enough bad press for the Borat Bros. being on the cuff, we just had a case of a drug bust of an illegal by Dedham police, and the lead detective contacted the state welfare department about the live-in girlfriend and their 2 demon spawn, also illegal, having welfare documents in plain sight. Five weeks went by with no contact from the Department of "Transitional" Assistance. They really don't care.

What cops found found:
2 SUVs registered to the woman's alias, the DMV having become a mercado of registrations and licenses sold to illegals by the bilingual compadres working there.
2 Phony Puerto Rican birth certificates.
1 Venezuelan passport.
1 Boston Housing Authority. Certificate of Homelessness (for the Section 8 voucher).
A collection of Social Security cards with various aliases.
$65,225 US
40 grams cocaine
52 grams heroin
Mass Electronic Cash Benefits card, Mass housing voucher, Mass WIC card, all in one of the girlfriend's aliases.

We really don't need the Mexicans. We have enough of their co-linguals sucking up our hard-earned tax money.

Anonymous said...

Dave Pinsen mentioned a HuffPo thread on this story. The usual sick making display of righteous,liberal anger. Vile. Ive made a few comments.

Anonymous said...

The media storm and response of a think tank is one thing. They exist in the twilight world where what is true and what is believed by journalists is one and the same.

But the thesis-length Half Sigma post signed off by Harvard in 2009? This is gold.

Amen

I am reading it as we write - just what the Dr ordered!

youngalexander

Steve Sailer said...

rob writes:

Weiss, Brooks, and others are gloating already. 'Gotta legalize the X million squatters, or the Republican party is toast.' The team-player instinct is strong in conservative sorts. What should we care if no politician in the coming dystopia has an R after his name? The fragile part of the plan is after the very white baby boom generation dies. Voter demographics will be closer to the "New America" without Brooks' retirement home of white gentiles. The working-age population will be even worse, with more unemployed and unemployable people. The actually-working population who will a combo of less-educated and less-skilled or 'educated' beyond it's ability will make life worse for even well-off whites. Today's AA hires will be tomorrow's upper echelon. Even decent school districts will fill up with dumb teachers.

rob said...

Complicity is a big goal of the Gaggle of Eightballs. The Democrat's don't want to share the glory. The elite want to spread the blame. If enough of the Republicants (Yes, we can't!) are on board then Democrats won't get all the blame, and Americans can't punish either party at the polls. The 2^3 crew position has had R&D elite consensus for years. The huge majority of Republicans AND Democrats want the squatters deported. Reagan got an amnesty through because conservatives liked him., but both parties are the bad guys. If enough candidates of either party took a pro-American position, that party would win elections.

Trying to trick various constituencies into 'Reform' takes a lot of forked tongues.

'Hey social cons, Messican's hate los homos. Well, When they aren't bfing dudes who don't like it. Imagine: someone who likes what only the weak tolerate. Don't you hate homos, too? Nothing would stick it to the homos like a bunch of primitives.'

'Hey liberals, don't you hate rednecks? You know who rednecks hate? Messicans. Boy, wouldn't it be fun to turn the US into Mexico and watch the rednecks seethe!'

Even in the Stevosphere lots of people hate SWPLs. Lots of R-tards despise women so much that they can't even shut up about sluts and 'legitimate rape' in an election year. They want to appeal to latino bottom-hate. aren't even smart enough to try to appeal to white women. Think about having a real party: would you rather have white chicks or a bunch of latinos? Who would you rather have in your country, white women or sqaut peasants? The obvious value of bringing in white women is why someone like Whiskey constantly tries to blame them for everything wrong.

Do we really want a government so small Kermit can drown it a bathtub? Lots of conservatives say they want a small government, but I'd rather have an any-sized government that does not hate me I want a government on our side. Tax Zuckerburg! Is Sheldon Adelson's gambling revenue so sacred? The Koch brothers are a pair of cocks. The elasticity of taxing returns to capital is pretty small. People might stop working at the margins from income taxes, but no one's going to stop cashing checks from his broker. Support a thirty percent dividend and capital gains tax rate and watch Democrats switch positions! A starving beast can't protect Israel. All us social cons love Israel too much to risk that. The media tells us we do all the time.

I'm sure people older than me can remember more than 'bipartisan consensus' issues where the consensus was wrong. The minority home ownership push is the only one I can think of offhand.

rob said...

Steve Sailer said...
rob writes:


Yeah, uncomfortably far down the rabbit hole.

Timerty said...

The American Dream is Already Dead: How Jason Richwine is Actually Right in His US Immigration Policy that Disfavours Races with Lower Average IQ

http://thethinktankguideforsmarterliving.blogspot.sg/2014/04/the-american-dream-is-already-dead-how.html