Blaming Genes to Excuse Social Inaction : Theory: Unable to prove that IQ is hereditary, two conservatives won’t concede that environment does matter.

In “Losing Ground,” the 1984 book that made his name, Charles Murray pooh-poohed the role of race in America’s social pathology. Instead, Murray blamed liberal welfare programs that harmed black and white alike.

“Focusing on blacks cripples progress,” he declared in 1986, “because explanations of the special problems facing blacks nearly all begin with the assumption that blacks are different from everyone else, whether because of racism (as the apologists argue) or because of inherent traits (as the racists argue).”

But that was then. Now, it turns out that Murray indeed thinks blacks face problems “because of inherent traits (as the racists argue)”--or, at any rate, because of immutable traits. In a new book, “The Bell Curve,” Murray and his co-author, the late Richard Herrnstein, argue that blacks have, on average, significantly lower “cognitive ability” than whites. Murray connects this disability with all sorts of pathologies, including poverty, crime and lack of “middle-class values.”

Just because many people (myself included) resist Murray’s vision as alien and repellent doesn’t mean he’s wrong. It’s possible that some ethnic groups have, on average, higher mental abilities than others (it would be odd if every group came out the same). But Murray’s dishonest book shows that he is not a reliable guide to exploring this possibility.

To make their pessimistic “ethnic difference” argument, Murray and Herrnstein must demonstrate three things: (1) that there is a single, general measure of mental ability, IQ; (2) that IQ tests, on which blacks score roughly 15 points lower than whites, aren’t culturally biased, and (3) that IQ is fixed across generations--classically, that it’s “in the genes.”

As a lay reader of “The Bell Curve,” I am unable to judge the first two claims. But it’s pretty obvious that Murray and Herrnstein run into big trouble on step three, because they spend a lot of time trying to undermine a near-avalanche of evidence that the black-white difference in IQ is a function of “environment” rather than heredity. There is, for example, the convergence of black and white test scores over the past 20 years, which Murray admits has been so fast it is “likely” due to “environmental changes.” There is the phenomenon of rapidly rising test scores worldwide. French researchers have boosted IQ 12 points by placing poor children in affluent homes. American researchers produced an eight-point gain by offering intensive day care.

This is all disastrously good news for Murray. What’s an apocalyptic social critic to do? Here, Murray has a bold, even brilliant, idea. Having failed to show that race differences in IQ are genetic, he simply declares “it matters little”! After all, what counts isn’t the source of IQ differences, but how hard they are to change. And there is a “statistical tendency” for bad learning environments to be passed down from parent to child.

With this one dramatic move, Murray achieves two seemingly contradictory ends. He preserves his scary extrapolations--the prediction that the black-white gap will persist more or less indefinitely. And he defuses the charge that he believes in genetic inferiority. Just as by denying of the role of race in “Losing Ground” Murray made himself seem a reasonable, race-neutral scholar, so by denying the importance of heredity in “The Bell Curve” he seems a nice, non-racist fellow.

The only problem with the assertion that “it matters little whether the genes are involved” is that it’s crazy. It matters a lot if the black-white difference is genetic, because genetic differences in mental ability are almost certainly much harder to alter. Yes, there are simple cures for some hereditary conditions, like baldness. But as yet there is no Rogaine for the brain.

At a recent symposium on his book, Murray delivered a sweeping pronouncement about the irrelevance to policy of whether black-white differences are genetic or environmental. What about affirmative action? someone asked. Isn’t the argument that if blacks are artificially vaulted into the middle class it will change the environment in which the next generation is raised? Doesn’t it matter for that argument if environment is the key? Gee, Murray responded. He hadn’t thought of that.

There are other, equally obvious policies that might change the black “environment” and therefore black IQ scores. Murray himself has proposed one of the more dramatic alterations: abolition of cash welfare, which he says would produce more responsible parents (which in turn might affect even prenatal nutrition).

If ethnic IQ differences are not genetic, there is a good chance that if we improve the awful environment in which many black children now grow up, the black and white average IQ scores will continue to move closer together--close enough for Americans to live comfortably by emphasizing common values (work, family) rather than what Murray once denounced as “the assumption that blacks are different from everyone else.”