If there's any evidence that you shouldn't send a boy to do a man's job, it's the doo doo sticking to the feet of Slate's William Saletan.
On Wednesday, Mr. Saletan posted a fourth article labeled “Regrets,” confessing that he had not realized that J. Philippe Rushton, a researcher on whom he had heavily relied, is the president of an organization that has financed a segregationist group. He also amended his previous position, stating that it was too early to come to any firm conclusions about the causes of racial differences in intelligence.
“If I had to do it again, I would have been much more circumspect about judging” the evidence, Mr. Saletan said in an interview. He later added that he should have written about inequality and left race completely out of it.
Nulan reports:
Part of me is rather weary of playing race man. It's a blunder of the first order for Saletan or anyone who wishes to be taken seriously would not have any idea of who Rushton is. He's not the first talking head to find himself in over his head.
This is something of a classic liberal / progressive error. There are some folks who believe that society can always be perfected 'if we only understood' something better. The problem is that some things are not so very understandable. Not only that, the presumption that a solution exists for every social problem.. well isn't that the very definition of scientific socialism? At the back of every eugenecist's head is such socially palatable palaver. There's a good history of Margaret Sanger that people don't really want to pay sufficient attention.
America's obsession with racial equality has found ample play in this relatively shallow playground. That is why the majority of Americans probably view racial equality with some liberal or progressive agenda. I'm not so sure that racial equality should be about perfection of society. I'm tending to think the agenda is somewhere else. I'm not suggesting that conservatives understand it, but I am coming to understand some of the fundamental difficulties with attempting to combat racism with a progressive mindset. Basically I would say 'black power' is probably a more realistic and attainable way. So it's on me to show how progressive, perfecting-of-society thought is not black power and never could be. Hmmm
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