If you are focussed upon chapter thirteen of The Bell Curve by Herrnstein and Murray you may stop reading right now. The book is not racist, period. If you disagree, read the book first rather than pretending you know what it says without reading it.
What we now have to deal with is the end of the last remnant of stratification in our society. Up until the 1960s we pretended to an egalitarian society. Although we headed towards it in fits and starts it did not occur until then.
We eliminated titles of nobility. We said a jury of one's peers meant everyone. We did not eliminate real remnants of social stratification that was mainly race but also based upon social strata based. Now it is gone. Anyone can mutter over the lingering racism or whatever but noting is perfect. Society has changed because it is gone.
Thirty years ago we had a society in three strata, the upper, the middle class, and "them." Of the three the upper was the least stable as they came and went with what they brought to the market place. The middle was rather stable as folks were happy to talk about upper middle, middle middle, and lower middle and it was hard to fall out of that. The lower was always the lower and of course they could be kept there by race, more specifically by their non-white status.
What we have now, and perhaps this is the fastest change in any social structure, a total conversion to a meritocracy. The objection to the book is that merit can be predicted by the results of an intelligence quotient test. There is no question as to what might or might not be native intelligence. No matter what that is, the results of the test are what matters. That is expressed as the IQ and that is all that matters for this discussion.
Thirty years ago we were clearly dealing with finding a way to raise the lower class. That was clearly black at the time. You think you remember it? The man who started it, Lyndon Baines Johnson called them "naygras" not blacks. And that was only thirty years ago.
A solution was applied but the solution forever changed our society. It was not the first step in that direction. The response to Russia putting the first satellite in orbit lead to educational loans for those who could qualify for college whether or not they could afford it. Nor was it the last in that the quota system that lasted for nearly twenty five of these thirty years dug deep into racial minorities to give them the best chance possible.
The reality is that now it is over. As long as it does not revert there is nothing more to do. And we have another society with a different stratification. That stratification is based upon ability.
Ability is all we have now. There are certainly loose ends to tie up to make us a perfect meritocracy but they are in the noise and the trend counsels only a few more years of patience for completion.
It is not relevant that the results of an IQ test are the best predictor of success in a meritocracy. It is rather most important that we have a meritocracy and that a best guess is with the results of such a test.
This issue before the country is rather a recounting of the failure of social engineering. The original intention was to end poverty as announced by LBJ. The practice was something entirely different, the creation of a true meritocracy. And now, given that we have a meritocracy rather than a racial and ethnically stratified society, how do we modify our social policy?
The Libertarians among us have a very simple answer, end it all. However that results is simply freezing society as it is today. Those who got ahead by merit in the last few years will be the only ones who can educate their children and so on. And then their children and grandchildren will regress toward the mean and not be the continuing most bright. Thus the meritocracy will fail and we will revert to the pre-1960s in another thirty years.
No more than the authors offer a few weak suggestions in the last four chapters neither do I pretend to offer more than places to start in thinking about the society we have today and what we are going to do about it. So lets start with what we have.
Educational benefits based upon merit and best measured by the results of an IQ test for teenagers who have yet to be able to prove merit should continue. For centuries we have had scholarships under various guieses. Loans are a zero loss to society replacement in that only the government guarantees the loan and thus the lowest possible rate can be offered.
Of course to minimize the risk merit must be a criteria for granting such a loan for the risk of default. The problem with the risk of default is that not only must merit, measured by IQ because it is proven to work, but also the degree field. Consider in this country a political science degree is problematic but a certain Rhodes Scholar who never spoke for his studies managed to become president. That indicates the contribution of degree field is very soft while again the IQ is very strong.
On the other hand, as the authors suggest, we now have a society where the smart may not get smarter but they are the only ones who can deal with the other smart folks in their field. But now the least smart, the dumbest to be frank, are also against the smartest who are not trying to stop them but simply asking them to do what the smartest think is simple. To the dumbest, it is not simple.
But we can no longer do a racial, ethnic or conversely bigoted cut to describe what is happening. A black applicant for a license is as statistically likely to meet a black bureaucrat as is a white or hispanic or asian to meet his own. The difference is race and ethnicity makes no difference in the least as to whether they get the license. The bureaucrat is only interested in meeting the criteria the high IQ bureaucrat has established.
It is the same in business save that business is regulated by an equally intelligent bureaucracy. The "who can beat who" game is in full force whether that is open confrontation or covert cooperation does not matter. It is the relationship of the highest IQ people is established on more or less equal terms while the low IQ people on all levels are being left behind in the noise.
Before we had a noblese oblige attitude of the average upper classes to the average lower classes. We no longer have that. We have the end of classes in that sense. We have the best of all of the old classes dealing with the worst all the old classes. To give the devil his due, this was even the goal of Marx but the marxists did not envision the end result.
Of course those who have nothing better to offer but shout "racism" are quick to claim those of us who agree with this observation are advocating killing off the stupid. That is a failing to understand the real bell curve which is the namesake of the book. Killing off everyone below 100 would only shift the normal point to a new 100, society would adjust and there would be no long range change in the basic problem.
That basic problem is, how do we adjust to a classless meritocracy? Are there any volunteers for answers?