We Don’t Talk About This
Coleman Hughes has a YouTube channel which presents his hour-plus interviews on a variety of social topics. One episode was a discussion with Charles Murray on intelligence and the social consequences of different average IQs of the different races.
Hughes repeatedly said that it would poison the social climate if we came out and acknowledged that blacks are less intelligent than whites.
It should be noted that while Coleman Hughes comes off as intelligent, better informed than most on the issues he discusses (admittedly a low bar), and willing to listen to contrary opinions, in every interview he brings up his experience as a black man in America and his concerns for blacks as a group. He seldom brings up what’s best for the US and Americans as a whole; I don’t recall him doing so at all but may simply have missed it.
So, he claims that it would “poison the social climate” to admit that blacks (and hispanics) are on average less intelligent than Whites and East Asians. He doesn’t deny that it’s true. He simply thinks that it should not be talked about.
The delta has many real-world consequences, from income levels to incarceration rates. These have been discussed in many places, including many of Murray’s books. He thoroughly documents his research and his method for coming up with the statistics on which he bases his conclusions. You can reasonably question the validity of the social sciences and their use of statistics, but to the extent that you accept them, Murray’s work is solid.
Rather than rehash the work and the numbers, let’s simply state that the typical black man in America is less intelligent than average. He has less education on his record, is less likely to have gotten education or training which leads to a well-paying job, has a lower income than average, is more likely to be involved in violent crime, and is more likely to have spent time in jail or prison. Murray claims that most of the discrepancy in outcomes derives from his lower intelligence.
Coleman Hughes doesn’t want the lower average intelligence to be discussed because it would poison the social climate.
But that’s exactly what we’re getting when we refuse to talk about it. There are big differences between the races in the social outcomes listed above. If it’s not because of intelligence (or we can’t admit that it’s because of intelligence) then there has to be some other cause.
In the absence of any other (acceptable) explanation, our society has settled on systemic racism as the cause.
No matter what hiring quotas and black-only scholarships and all the other special set-asides, blacks don’t do as well educationally or economically. That’s why, no matter how far society bends over to compensate for the dread Systemic Racism, it’s never enough. (One of the reasons. The other is that it’s a very profitable grift and the leeches will never voluntarily let go.)
Rather than hush up the regrettable difference in population intelligence, we need to acknowledge it, face it head-on, and work out ways for society to give the best opportunity for everyone to work with what they have. Ending the idiocy of pushing all teens into college and instead providing vocational training for those not suited for college is an obvious step. This will have a disparate effect on blacks (and hispanics) but who cares? We can set someone up to succeed as an auto mechanic rather than fail as a college graduate with a useless degree and a pile of college loans.
It won’t happen, of course. Facing the truth might hurt feelings (and cut off the gravy train). Instead, we’ll keep on as we are, building resentment on both sides because we won’t address the elephant in the room.
Reality is the thing which won’t go away, even when you refuse to talk about it.
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