The Perils of Race Science with Charles Murray [S2 Ep.21]

Welcome to another episode of Conversations with Coleman.

My guest today requires a longer than normal preamble. I'm speaking with Charles Murray, who is a Political Scientist, Writer, and W.H. Brady scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

Murray has been a controversial figure throughout his whole career, but especially since the publication of "The Bell Curve" in the '90s. The most controversial claim in that book was that the mean IQ gap between black and white Americans is partly genetic in origin, meaning it cannot be fully closed by changing the environment in which black kids grow up. As you'll hear in the podcast, I suspect Murray is wrong about this and that huge cognitive changes are possible in the long run for black America by means of environmental interventions.

I did not have Murray on to rehash the empirical claims he made in The Bell Curve. I had him on to discuss his new book, "Facing Reality: Two Truths about Race in America". This book has a slightly different emphasis than The Bell Curve. In facing reality, Murray argues that we have to face two truths about race in America, or else the American experiment is doomed. These two truths, according to Murray, are that different races have different mean levels of cognitive ability and that different races have different crime rates. Murray believes that the only way to fight back against the idea that America is a racist nation and to fight against the proliferation of race-based public policy is to bring his empirical claims from The Bell Curve into the mainstream. Now, I strongly disagree with Murray about this, as you'll hear....

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[emmang]

I love how Asians who were part of Murray's analysis, are LITERALLY NEVER BROUGHT UP. This topic is a magnet for specifically black people

[jeffreykennedy]

If our politicians could speak to each other like this we would be on a better path but I’m not holding my breath

[DustyfootPhilosopher]

Coleman, this conversation took a lot of courage and you handled it expertly and with immense empathy. Great job, brother. I don’t comment much on YouTube unless something moves me. I’m so grateful to have discovered this conversation. Having difficult conversations with fellow humans will allow our species to move forward from dogma and ignorance. Great job!

[ethanarnett]

First let me say thank you for this podcast,

I researched this issue a few months back and was immediately struck by the fact Google was censoring my results assuming my intent was racist, returning only articles on why these "empirical" facts( as referred to by both) were wrong and from a by gone era of racists. Charles Murray was included. After much effort I was able to track down one poorly sourced article on the race IQ gap that failed to discuss the issue with any nuance and forced me to continue looking into this matter over multiple days to reach any kind of scientific conclusion.

My point being Coleman makes good points about a fear of the laymen interpretation, however Charles argument for nearing a tipping point of no return is sadly exemplified by the Google censorship.

[nateofthesouth]

I admire your interview stance. No attacks, no gotcha's. Just honest conversation even when there's disagreement.

[JB-Mon]

I’d be interested to know what percentage of black, Latino, Asian, etc people object to marrying outside their race. I would hypotheses a small percentage of all races have that belief and that is more a human thing than a “white” thing.

[robertryan]

This is by far the most thoughtful interview I've ever seen of Charles Murray. I think Coleman is worth listening to on any subject he chooses to speak on.

[derekstevens]

This is one of the crazy conversations where I can actually understand and agree with both people even though they disagree

[searose]

I am a black woman. Just let me get that out of the way.
It seems quite apparent to me that there is no sensible reason that human beings would evolve and adapt to their various environments physically, but have that evolution and adaptation stop at the neck. It strikes me as obvious that some particular intellectual abilities would have been more beneficial in some environments and less so in others. The evolutionary pressure on the populations living in the places where analytical thinking was a huge advantage, for instance, would have that pressure result in heritable changes to cognition that improved analytical thinking.
Long term memory may have been more advantageous in a different environment and may have become a prominent trait for people groups living there.
This seems both obvious and not particularly controversial.
As those people's descendents began to live in societies that were designed around the strengths of the people who set them up, they will naturally find it difficult to compete with the population that has created the culture based on their own adaptations.
My point, in brief, is culture is downstream from genetics which is downstream from the evolutionary pressures of environment. You can hardly expect a person whonis optimized to one environment (and therefore one set of heritable characteristics and therefore cultural expectations) to thrive when plopped down in a completely different environment surrounded by people who have created a culture optimized to ensure their characteristics are utilized to best advantage.
I think the data on fluid intelligence vs crystallized intelligence and distance from the equator as well as the invention of writing in a society is quite illustrative of this. There is some solid research showing cultures without writing (historically) have far higher levels of crystallized intelligence and greater capacity for detailed long term memory (crucial if you communicate important information over generations via oral history) vs cultures that developed writing systems (thereby offloading some need for crystallized intelligence) who's fluid intelligence is higher (crucial when you live in an environment that frequently shifts or has strong differences seasonally)

[brettg]

It’s going to be difficult no matter what we do. What Murray is saying is, do we want it to be difficult because we’re living a lie, or because we’re facing truth?

[mpo]

I'm a big Charles Murray fan and I think this was the absolute best conversation you could have had. I'm not all the way done yet, but there was nothing you said so far that was off the mark. I also saw your perspective and felt your frustration. I agree with you. There is no amount of effort that is too much for increasing cognitive health. There are so many downstream negative outcomes and the benefits of working on them are almost immeasurable. I feel this is worth working full time on for the rest of our lives.

[therenaissanceman]

This conversation requires both very high levels of maturity and strong moral principles. Which is why our society is definitely not ready to have this conversation in the public.

[GoDaveGo]

The options seem to be:
A) Tell kids that it’s no one’s fault, groups of people have different IQs, and that means some individual people get to have careers others can’t. The career is dependent on you, not on the group.
B) Tells kids that we can’t figure out why or how, but that each of us is playing a role in a system that discriminates against some groups because of how they look. As a result, you may have to do more or less to get a particular career, and that’s based on the magnitude of your moral crimes and the moral crimes you fall victim to.
C) We tell kids that you work hard, and you try to be the best you can be, and sometimes life isn’t fair. You’ll have successes and failures, and sometimes that will be your own doing, or someone else wronging you, or just by chance. But you have to do the best you can, and resenting other people will only create misery for yourself.

[dougd]

The fact that we’re looking for racial disparities is the reason we need to study the cause otherwise the attempt to achieve equity in an egalitarian state will necessarily result in laws and policies that are racially discriminatory. In other words, because we’re obsessed with disparities of outcome as opposed to equal treatment, we will only find solution that discriminate.

As an example. If I told you there was a law that resulted in 95% disproportionate accusations and conviction of a specific demographic many people today would say that law is discriminatory against the affected group. If I told you those laws were rape and sexual assault and it vastly disproportionately affects men vs women suddenly the concern over the disparity evaporates. Its not a sexist law. It’s the intention or motivation for the law that matter. The outcome disparity is not discriminatory.

[fallonstone]

Fantastic conversation! Congrats to both Coleman and Charles. Both are intelligent, enlightening, articulate, respectful of the others thoughts and allowing them to speak. No drama, no gaslighting, no interruptions or voice raising. A true pleasure to listen to no matter what side of the fence you are on. Keep up the good interviews Coleman!

[laurajaneluvsbeauty]

Race is real, it is genetic, and different races have different cognitive abilities. It just is what it is. Doesn’t mean any race is better or worse, it just is

[huskypup]

Yes, Thomas Sowell has been speaking correctly on these issues for years, and he’s been completely ignored by the media, academia and anyone else who matters. When was the last time Thomas Sowell appeared on CNN? Or had his views promoted by the NY Times?

[mohamedgoldstein]

Funny how we are up in arms when someone says there is IQ disparity but have no issue when another says there is an athletic disparity.

[mpo]

My brother couldn't get an internship, because, in the exact words of the hiring manager, "Why would I give an opportunity to a white male?" I had a friend who is as dumb as a rock (still love him) and got a full ride scholarship for being half Hispanic while I had to work many hours to pay for my Physics degree at the same university. He was the son of an immigrant who had enough money while my family was jobless and living off of church welfare. I've seen the inner workings of tech events where racial minorities were given advantages in every single aspect, even down to the raffle ticket system for prizes. I was told (for some reason) that I was almost passed up on a job offer because a Hispanic person applied right when they were about to send it. Luckily, he sucked.

It sounds like I live somewhere like California, right? Nope. Utah. 91% white, 1% black. Utah hasn't voted Democrat in like 50 years. Yet CRT is here. The liberals are teaching it to the children here in schools. It is cancer. It doesn't even apply to Utah. There were only ever like 5 slaves here in the entire history of Utah, and they were freed pretty quickly. 50% of my ancestors were in Northern Europe before the 1920's. The rest were Mormon refugees from Missouri, where it was legal to kill a Mormon, and before that most of them had recently sold everything they had in England to come to America when they converted to Mormonism. Something like 2% of my ancestors had been in America before that, and there is no record of them owning slaves, probably because they were from the North and only a tiny minority of people were ever slaveowners anyway.

You cannot commit injustices against people without stirring up a lot of anger. Right now, whites and Asians are starting to become angry. I am sensing a strong undercurrent of rage boiling up around me. It can and will get a lot worse if we don't start taking the CRT issues DEADLY seriously. I will never forget the truth that all people should be treated as individuals. It is smart and moral. But I can't speak for other people in my state. All of this is building up to something. Something unspeakably terrible.

[WhtetstoneFlunky]

There is a video on YouTube where Steven Pinker, a soft-spoken liberal, goes into scientific detail explaining how the Ashkenazi Jews evolved into a human demographic that has a greater level of the traditional form of intelligence when compared to any other demographic. There is surprising little protest concerning such a statement yet other, similar statements (and the accompanying explanations) involving other demographics are ridiculed as racist or pseudoscience. We live in a culture where certain ideas, true or not, are not acceptable.