XDA

Credit is due to local law professor and Tuesday RMN columnist, Paul Campos, for his courage to talk about race today. It is not a common subject for political writers because they fear being called racist. I know I stay away from it. A case in point was the book, The Bell Curve, a decade or so ago which told the truth about black IQ scores in America and got the authors branded as racists.

But Campos alludes to an explanation for the lower scores for African-Americans. He says: "psychologists have documented how African-American students tend to do significantly worse on a test if they're told it's designed to measure intelligence than they do on exactly the same test if they aren't told this."

I am perfectly willing to believe this and indeed I would rather believe this than think (but never say) that blacks have lower IQs, on average, than white Americans. Wish he had given the details. Perhaps I can google it. But what is the explanation for such test choking just in one race? I have got to read these phychologists.

Campos, however, gets a little fuzzy later on. He first sets up a scale of opinions:

Consider a scale from one to five that represents the following positions: race should never be taken into account when distributing social goods; race should only be used as a tiebreaker between substantially identical candidates; race should give a black candidate (for example) a small advantage; race should give the candidate a big advantage; social goods should be handed out on the basis of racial quotas.

Notice how this scale moves from race neutral to racist (but in a benevolent way for blacks). And what the heck are "social goods"? I have to guess because I've never heard that term before.

Then, after noting affirmative action supporters won't be honest about where they fall on the scale, Campos says:

As for affirmative action opponents, they all naturally claim to adhere to the first position, when in fact quite a few behave as if being black (for example) should be considered a negative factor when evaluating candidates. This is hardly surprising: It's extremely difficult to grow up in America without absorbing some racist beliefs.

Hold on there, kitty cat. Who considers being black a negative factor? The Aryan Nation? How is this behavior shown in people who sincerely believe all actions should be race neutral? Really needed more here. But it's the next sentence that is just flat out wrong. There is no doubt that hold-overs from America's clearly racist past (pre-1964) still exist, but a lot of us who received our education (in and out of class) after that date have done a good job not to harbor an invidious racial animus. Does Campos have children? I ask, because I don't believe there is any general racism among the current generation of high schoolers and college students. Indeed, it is difficult to grow up in America now and to absorb racist beliefs. The kids just don't care what color you are. The only people under 50 who care what color you are are the supporters and implementers of affirmative action, which is at best beneficent racism.

To say those who oppose taking race into accourt are the racists is to say black is white; and to say America is still generally racist defames the current generation and the real progress that has taken place over the past 50 years. Paul Campos started off laudable but couldn't keep it up for the entire piece and resorted to his default, hate America, position.