Charles Murray Responds To Allegations Of Racism Following Paul Ryan Remarks

[DonViejo]

CAITLIN MACNEAL – MARCH 18, 2014, 10:48 AM EDT

Charles Murray, the social scientist cited by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) last week in his comments about the inner city "culture problem" of men not wanting to work, on Monday responded to allegations that he has drawn racist conclusions in his works about poverty in America.

Murray defended his book "The Bell Curve," the piece many criticize as racist for suggesting that African-Americans are less intelligent than white Americans due to genetic differences.

"Our sin was to openly discuss the issue, not to advocate a position. But for the last forty years, that’s been sin enough," Murray wrote in a piece published by the American Enterprise Institute. Murray argues that in "The Bell Curve," he and co-author Richard Herrnstein merely deliberated whether genetics had anything to do with racial differences without drawing a conclusion. Murray cites this passage from the book:

If the reader is now convinced that either the genetic or environmental explanation has won out to the exclusion of the other, we have not done a sufficiently good job of presenting one side or the other. It seems highly likely to us that both genes and the environment have something to do with racial differences. What might the mix be? We are resolutely agnostic on that issue; as far as we can determine, the evidence does not justify an estimate.

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http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/paul-ryan-charles-murray-racist-inner-city

[sharp_stick]

1. I can't believe that in 2014

we're still talking about that piece of shit book.

It's been torn apart by actual scientists pretty much since the day that racist asshole put pen to paper 20 years ago.

Now we have Paul Ryan, someone actually in the running to be President of the United States, citing Murrays bullshit as evidence.

Fucking pathetic. On the plus side, if Paul Ryan wins the GOP nomination it will confirm they're in a death spiral they'll never recover from.

The GOP base can't die off soon enough for my liking.

[antigone382]

2. No, your sin was using a fallacious and scientifically invalid concept of race.

"Race" is an arbitrary social category based on crude classifications of observable physical characteristics. There are no biological races, because race is a concept that humans made up. Therefore, there is no possibility of genetic IQ differences between races. That's not ideology; it's basic genetic reality. Presenting such differences as scientifically possible inherently misrepresents science and biology, and is therefore unscientific to its core.

Granted, at the time of "The Bell Curve," we hadn't mapped the entire human genome. You could argue that at the time we didn't have the solid genetic evidence that race was nothing more than a concept. But you have never acknowledged or openly refuted the idea that you can examine genetic differences on the basis of race, so you cling to an outdated and unscientific outlook despite irrefutable evidence to the contrary. Because you do not honestly look at the evidence available to you to draw conclusions, you are not to be taken seriously.

[C_U_L8R]

3. It's not hard to find the uneducated and less intelligent

just turn on Fox News.