Godheval

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But when we look at needs as they apply to groups, they do correspond to a qualitative hierarchy – the socioeconomic stratum. Generally speaking, those at the bottom of the stratum are struggling to fulfill the basic needs. This is not universal, and I do not mean to suggest that self-actualization is not possible for those in poverty. Afterall, how we define poverty varies from place to place. The people of Bhutan – in South Asia – have a per capita income of around $1300, which places them in abject poverty by U.S. standards. Yet the people of Bhutan, who hold a measurement of “national happiness” higher than economic wealth, are mostly happy. Happiness, where it is a regular characteristic of a person rather than circumstantial, is closely correlated to self-actualization.

In the United States, the hierarchy of needs is superimposed by a second hierarchy – of want. The difference between wants and needs is that needs are dictated by the bodies and minds of people and mostly on a subconscious level. Maslow’s model does not state that people knowingly act on their needs, but that needs function on a more subversive level. Wants and needs can and do align where a person becomes conscious of what they need and how to acquire it. However, all too often, wants displace needs – filler instead of fulfillment. Wants are like empty calories – food that fills your stomach and satisfies the immediate hunger need, but not the underlying nutrition need. A child may want candy, but needs vegetables.

Wants, unlike needs, are dictated not by individuals themselves, but by the external environment, from peers to the greater society. The United States economy is under-girded by people’s willingness to spend money. It is not enough to spend only on those things we need, but also on the things we want. In fact, the economy would be starved if we only purchased according to our needs. What we have is a culture of consumerism, where value is ascribed not only to goods, but to people according to their ability to purchase goods – material wealth.

The pursuit of wealth is not only a sidetrack from climbing the hierarchy of needs, but displaces it with the hierarchy of want. The hierarchy of needs leads to self-actualization – where a person is no longer acting on subconscious needs, but making regular conscious movements towards limitless personal growth. The hierarchy of wants does not ever lead to fulfillment of any sort, and in fact only leads to more and increasingly difficult to attain wants.

Individuals at the helms of the government and industries of the United States and other capitalist economies understand this dynamic well – and in fact, their positions in the socioeconomic stratum depend on it. That is not to say that people in high government positions and at the tops of corporate ladders are removed from the hierarchy of wants. They may actually be the most entrenched. As they fulfill higher and higher wants (meaning rarer or more expensive), they eventually come to a point where the goal is to attain greater ability to fulfill wants. Material wealth becomes the end in itself rather than any means to an end. This stage of the hierarchy of wants leaves people stuck within the hierarchy of needs, most often the esteem needs. The phrase “keeping up with the Joneses” invokes the need for the esteem of one’s peers, or self-esteem based upon one’s status in relation to one’s peers. People stuck in the hierarchy of wants fail to recognize that wants are endless and that satisfaction can only come through fulfilling one’s needs.

With that background laid out, we can get to the real meat of the essay. I have little interest in the vices of of the materially wealthy, only in how they affect everyone else. Just like the people on the top of the socioeconomic stratum, those at the middle and bottom are also mired in a hierarchy of wants. In creating and sustaining an economy based on consumerism, we have created a veritable culture of want. This ailment of society is particularly chronic and systemic within the lower class, much to their detriment. The idea of competing with the Joneses is patently absurd when one has yet to fulfill the most basic needs.

Our era of mass communication has only compounded the problem. Whereas it should be – and at its best is – a system for educating more people and faster, it is also a medium for spreading the memes of want. Before television and the internet, the economic classes were vastly divided by both material wealth and wealth of information. The poor could not even conceive of the pleasures of the wealthy and in a way it was to their benefit. Climbing the hierarchy of needs is possible even in poverty – as the example of Bhutan indicates. Once exposed to the prospect of wealth, but without any sustainable means of acquiring it, the poor can become mired in the hierarchy of wants as well. An interesting side note is that the people of Bhutan were amongst the last to have television, as it was banned from the country until 1999. This is probably not unrelated to their ability to achieve happiness in conditions that we in the “first world” would consider poverty.

Through television and the internet (radio to a lesser extent since it lacks the crucial visual component), the middle and lower classes were delivered images of seeming wealth and prosperity that are based on the hierarchy of wants. False associations were made between material possessions, social status, and happiness – again a displacement of needs by wants.

In rare instances, a member of the lower class may see a near instant teleportation to the top of the socioeconomic stratum, foregoing the natural and healthy progression of climbing the hiearchy of needs, and taking a shortcut through the hierarchy of wants. As a result, many of the needs remain, and like the already wealthy, they remain trapped in the esteem needs. The hierarchy of wants continuously changes the status quo for esteem needs – bigger and more expensive houses, faster and fancier cars, ever gaudier jewelry.

Worse yet, these individuals become an exemplar for other members of the lower class, who identify with them on the basis of their once-shared socioeconomic status. As mentioned before, the sudden leap from the bottom to top is exceedingly rare, but as the mass media constantly inundates our society with accounts of the materially wealthy, their stories seem more prevalent than they actually are. In fact, the prospect of skyrocketing from bottom to top overnight is mostly a delusion, and it is in pursuit of this impossible goal that leads many individuals and groups towards self-destruction.

Although the terms “culture of want” and “hierarchy of want” have so far been used interchangeably, but it should be understood that the hierarchy is merely the foundation for the culture. The culture of want is a memetic cancer that has extended into every sector of human life. The best way to understand it is to examine the different instances where wants displace needs and continue to inhibit personal growth. As mentioned earlier, at the base of the hierarchy of needs are the physiological needs such as nourishment. The body needs certain substances – like proteins, vitamins, minerals – which can be fulfilled by eating the right kinds of foods. Originally human beings collected their food directly from the surrounding environment, but today we rely on a food industry.

The trouble, however, is that the food industry, in seeking to increase its wealth by expanding and speeding up production, has taken numerous shortcuts. If you recall the distinction I made earlier between wants and needs, it was that wants are dictated by the external environment. That is the case here, as the food industry – through massive advertising campaigns – tell people what they want. Fast food in particular satisfies our immediate hunger – a want impulse – but falls short in providing nutrition – a need. Worse than that, these products are often detrimental to our health. Those at the helm of the food industry decided that it was more important to fulfill their want for more wealth than to continue to supply us with what we need. This wants-over-needs initiative is amplified in poor communities, where fast food outlets are disproportionately allocated.

Another example of the culture of want phenomenon can be observed amongst lower class African-Americans. The causes behind the chronic poverty amongst African-Americans are numerous and beyond the scope of this essay, but I would like to highlight an important shift in how many perceive their plight and envision the way out of it. During the so-called Reconstruction era, in the aftermath of slavery, African-Americans – both newly emancipated, and the freemen of the north, conspired to elevate the status of what then was an African-American community of mutual plight and aspiration. Education was the cornerstone of a movement towards personal and community growth. One product of this movement was the foundation of institutions today known as “historically black colleges and universities” or HBCUs.

However, due to the prevailing blight of racism, which maintained a distinct separation between the races in terms of access to resources and influence, a glass ceiling was set that placed severe limitations on just how high most African-Americans could aspire. This barrier was not only physical and social, but emotional. It was not only that African-Americans observed and lived within very real limitations, but that they also internalized those limitations. These emotional limitations remained even after the physical and social limitations were no longer imposed by law.

Compounding upon this emotional limitation is the ideal of the “American Dream”, where anyone can achieve anything if they work hard enough. Except that the American Dream was not inclusive of African-Americans, and completely ignores any concept of inequality. An added consequence to the rosy American Dream “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” ideology is that when one does work hard, but due to the very real social inequalities does NOT make it, it results in a psychological backlash in which the person blames him/herself for their inability. After all, they are told that it’s all a matter of “personal responsibility”. The idea becomes that if you didn’t make it, you just didn’t work hard enough, or to hear some tell it, you just weren’t “smart enough”.

Many African Americans, who as a group are disproportionately lower class, subscribe to the overall American standard of high-materialism and excess – the culture of want – in spite of the fact that they do not have the means to sustain such a lifestyle. Because education – once recognized by forward-thinking African-Americans as essential to personal growth – is so inadequate in many poor areas where African-Americans are the majority, it does not appear to offer a viable path towards success.

This is particularly relevant to young people in the lower class, regardless of ethnicity. Students who stay in school all the way through – and this is a particularly daunting challenge in poor communities – are not seeing opportunities that are much better than those of the people around them who didn’t finish. They see drug dealers, athletes, musicians, or even people who quit school and work hard at an honest job making money, more of it, and much sooner. And in a culture of want, money is the ultimate prize,  the ultimate measure of self worth. Why toil through school when there is no apparent guarantee that it will give you any greater advantage, and while the local drug dealers and big name rappers are getting what they want right now? Ideals such as self-actualization are not only obscured, but inconceivable.

Due to the quality of education in poor areas, students are not even given an idea of the possibilities outside the culture of want. They are given the standard subjects of reading, math, and science, but there are slim pickings when it comes to art, technology, and higher liberal arts. By contrast, public schools in high-income areas feature state of the art technology, up-to-date educational materials, and a greater spectrum of classes.

The result is always another generation of kids who are not only under-educated and unmotivated, but also disinterested in the school’s meager offerings. They see no way to connect the dots between an inadequate school and a successful life.

The fairytale lifestyles seen on the television and internet, especially when compared to the reality in their own neighborhoods, are simply more appealing than what school has to offer. Compound upon all of that a lack of mentorship, such as teachers working for a paycheck without any mental or emotional investment in the success of the children. At best they’ll fail to motivate and inspire, and at worse, they’ll add to the problem. They may even be the most recent products of the same system.

In poor communities, you often have a bunch of under-educated people with the wrong values and bad priorities, disillusioned with life, hopeless, and perhaps even angry. Material comforts – from clothing to technology to drugs – and status comfort appears to be a solution to one’s grievances.

The result is a culture where people spend beyond their means to compensate for feelings of inadequacy and hopelessness, and because they were never shown a viable alternative. But these same people, in spite of their financial, educational, and even spiritual poverty, still manage to contribute to the economy in a big way. Therefore it is not in the interests of those at the head of government or industry to promote the personal growth of those at the bottom of the stratum. Worse yet, they see it as being in their best interests to keep the poor spending beyond their means, as we witnessed during the subprime mortgage crisis. Poor and uneducated people continue to stimulate the economy without ever elevating their station. They remain trapped within the culture of want, at the expense of making any progress in climbing the hierarchy of needs.

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The same survey also shows that this percentage has decreased from 86% in 1990, while the percentage of people who do not identify with any religious group, or simply refused to answer the question, increased by 6% and 3% respectively. Is America becoming less Christian? That is one conclusion, but another even more likely possibility is that many Americans are becoming more wary of wearing their religiosity on their sleeves. Stephen Carter, in his book The Culture of Disbelief, tells a similar story. He says that although surveys show that most people in America are quite religious, and that it has much to do with their daily decision-making and general ethical framework, people are becoming more disinclined to reveal that fact in public discourse.

In the American mainstream…those who believe in God are encouraged to keep it a secret, and often a shameful one at that. Aside from the ritual appeals to God that are expected of our politicians, for Americans to take their religions seriously, to treat them as ordained rather than chosen, is to risk assignment to the lunatic fringe.

The reasons for this are not difficult to grasp. In the 1980s, 1990s, and perhaps even more so in the current decade, there was a resurgence of the religious right. On top of that, there has been a marked increase in terrorist activity with an underlying religious motivation. Both of these groups – the overt religious right, and religiously-motivated terrorists – make it obvious that their actions are driven by faith. Out of fear of being classified alongside them, and further justified by repeat citations of the Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses of the First Amendment, Americans have become wary of religion in the public square. As a result, we have – at least publicly – styled ourselves as a secular nation, even though the actuality of our religiosity hasn’t changed much at all.

There is a precarious balance struck here in America between freedom of religion and the avoidance of religious dominance in public policy. It often seems as though the two ideals are irreconcilable. If someone is criticized or ostracized the moment they speak religious rhetoric in public discourse, then that would seem to be the very opposite of freedom of religion. For this reason, Carter – who claims to be a firm believer in the separation of church and state – questions the taboo on public religious expression. Yet, as is the case with many ethical quandaries and issues of proper etiquette, politicians are held to a different standard than the average person. Actually, it is not that they are held to a different standard, but that their adherence (or failure to adhere) to the general standards is always under the public microscope.

Many others have written on this issue, and some of them suggest that there is a danger in restricting religion from the public discourse. They argue that if religion is the foundation for our ethical framework, then suppressing our religious identity may cause us to stray from our moral ideals. Despite America being a fundamentally Christian nation (not to be confused with a fundamentalist Christian nation), there is a great diversity of people and ideals that must be represented by our public policy. In order to accommodate that diversity, it is not prudent, nor is it even polite, for people to overtly espouse their religious views in the public square.

It seems to me to be a simple matter for people to adjust their discourse without compromising their ideals. As political discourse in particular is mostly rhetoric anyway, there is no reason not to structure our language as to be more universally applicable to the people at large. Still, in any case, in spite of any secular tone, it is no secret that the moral choices Americans make are shaped by religious values. This is true even of atheists, because whether or not they wish to acknowledge it, the whole of western society has been irrevocably shaped by Christianity, and therefore so has the entire context of American identity. To suggest that such decisions are made with complete disregard to religion would be a complete misrepresentation of the facts. As Richard John Neuhaus states in his book, The Naked Public Square:

Without such an engagement of religion [a public ethic] cannot be reestablished in a way that would be viewed as democratically legitimate. The reason for this is that, in sociological fact, the values of the American people are deeply rooted in religion.

Under the pretext of separation of church and state, we disregard religion’s continued role in public policy, which allows it to operate subversively in influencing the socio-political sphere. The danger of “secularism” is not – as religious pundits declare – that is compromises moral values, nor is it – as Carter argues – that it leads to any suppression of religious expression. The real danger is that if we, as a secular society, pretend that religion is irrelevant, we ignore the very real ways that it affects us. It is much the same as the difference between the overt racism of an organization like the Ku Klux Klan and racism of the more subtle and institutionalized variety. Give me the former over the latter anytime, because at least I can see it coming, and can prepare myself to deal with it.

Now perhaps I am not giving the American public enough credit, and indeed my assertion that we take the role of religion in the public ethic for granted is mostly based on conjecture. The reason for this is that many grievous wrongs have been and continue to be committed in the name of religion, or with a religious motivation. While many of these actions are carried out by, or on behalf of the religious right, the rest of us seem to stand idle and complacent, which in a democratic society also makes us complicit. If I am to have any faith in Americans as a whole, then, I must assume that they are simply unaware of what’s happening right under their noses.

For example, let us consider the issue of school vouchers. School vouchers are financial grants given to families by the government, under the pretext of providing their children with more educational options – namely, making private schools more affordable. The whole idea seems to be based on the assumption that if people are presented with a choice of either sending their children to public schools – havens for liberal depravity to hear the religious right speak of them – or a private school, then of course they’ll choose the latter. What is the real motivation here?

It seems to be a curious coincidence that the program finds strong support from the religious right, and that the majority of private schools are parochial. This being the case means that federal money is indirectly being used to support religious institutions, which goes completely against the constitutional mandate of church and state separation. And is it just another coincidence that the money for these vouchers is drawn from the general education budget, the same one that is supposed to fund the renovation of the public school system? The motivation behind the school voucher program – at least for the purposes of the religious right – is the complete destruction of the public school system. Never was the goal stated so explicitly as by Robert Thoburn in The Children Trap:

Our goal is not to make the schools better…the goal is to hamper them, so they cannot grow…Our goal as God-fearing, uncompromised Christians is to shut down the public schools…step by step, school by school, district by district.

There seems to be a similar motivation behind the “No Child Left Behind” program (NCLB), an act whose name represents the kind of lofty rhetoric that keeps the goals of the Christian Right and the administration they advocate afloat. The general terms of NCLB are that students will be given aptitude tests, and where scoring is the highest, federal funding will be provided. Schools that score low will be punished by a withdrawal or withholding of funding. The logic here is as spurious as only providing overweight people with food because they have the appetites to accommodate it, while withholding food from the malnourished because they cannot eat as much, and therefore would only waste it.

To hear supporters tell it, NCLB will encourage teachers and administrators to push their students harder, to make sure they perform admirably on these tests. Surely, they think, that can only be better for the children. That point of view, of course, is contingent upon the false pretext of all things being equal, which simply is not the case. Many children in public schools, which are under- funded and under-managed, do not have access to the best education, and therefore are ill-equipped to meet the arbitrary standards set by NCLB. No matter how much teachers pressure their kids, it is likely that the schools that already have the best resources, i.e. those with the most money, will score highly while those with meager resources (urban) will score lower. Is it too difficult to see the glaring flaw in this plan? It is actually quite possible that this is a provision of the act, rather than a flaw, although its creators would never say as much explicitly.

The result is that many of these under-funded institutions will be forced to shut down altogether – as has already been seen with the closing of several public schools. It is not difficult to make the connection between the public school sabotage agenda of the Christian Right and No Child Left Behind. Perhaps it is not clear why the religious right would want to destroy public schools. If private schools are predominantly parochial, then children attending them are bound to be indoctrinated with religion – and that, above all else – is the goal. It is a plan based on the assumption that the public school system cannot be “saved”, in spite of countless attempts by the religious zealotry, such as mandating the teaching of creationism alongside evolution or school prayer.

For those who are unaware of this kind of subversive maneuvering, it is easy to simply observe any given political agenda superficially, and fail to recognize the underlying religious motivations. After all, we live in a secular society. Another example of hidden religious motivation can be found in America’s foreign policy. By now, even the President himself has admitted to making a mistake in committing so many lives, so much money, and so much time, to the Iraq war, which is far removed from the original stated objective of protecting America from terrorism. Given the fact that there is anti-American sentiment all across the globe, why did America turn to Iraq? Meanwhile, North Korea continued to present a more deliberate threat to the safety of America and its allies, plainly admitting to the development of nuclear weapons, and even testing them in the sea near Japan. Yet we seemed more concerned with Iran’s nuclear program, in spite of their government’s claim that they are developing nuclear power only as a resource. So the question must then be why is America so preoccupied with the Middle East?

The answer is simple: because the Middle East is a stronghold for Islamic belief, which ever since the Middle Ages means it is a threat to Christendom. And lest we forget, America is a Christian nation, and for some believers, the head of the spear in Christianity’s fight against all other faiths. But we are nearly a millennium removed from the Crusades, and since then, Christendom has learned to fight the battle more subversively. However, it still retains the nasty practice of sending children needlessly to their deaths.

That underlying the other conflicts is a fundamentally religious one becomes obvious in the case of Iran. In 1979 the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who had come into power due in no small part to financial support from the United States, was dethroned and exiled. The leader of the revolution which deposed him, and his successor, was Ayatollah Khomeini, recognized by the people of Iran as both a political and religious leader (an imam). It is an essential characteristic of Islamic culture for politics and religion to blend together. There is often not a clear delineation between religious and political leaders, or religious and political decisions. The Qur’an is recognized as the foundation for the laws of many Muslim states.

One of the main differences between Islamic states and America is that the fusion of religion and politics in the former is obvious. It is not taken for granted nor denied, Muslims take pride in a system built upon the Qur’an. Today, Iran is governed by a democratically elected president, who for the most part conducts public policy, but the people – including the president – also defer to the “Supreme Leader”, or Ayatollah, who is also the religious leader. Despite our delusions to the contrary, America is also a religious state, and so it is not Iran’s religious character in itself that is a problem, but that the religion in question is not Christianity. If viewing Iran not from the perspective of American safety, but from a need to protect the sovereignty of Christendom, it is easy to see how their nuclear program would be seen as a greater threat than the boastful performance by North Korea.

To go on a brief tangent, I would like to state my opinion that were Iran to fully develop its nuclear program uninhibited, and were to as it claims, use it only for power, then it would establish itself as a viable Islamic power in the world. A strong economic foundation in the Middle East could presumably bring prosperity for the people living there, which would in turn make the harvesting fields for terrorism less fertile. In the long term, this would seem to be a better strategy against terrorism than America’s seeming desire to undermine all attempts for political and economic growth in the region. If this is true, then it again becomes clear that the religious motivations of U.S. Christendom supersede even the safety of its citizens.

The Iraq situation, on the other hand, has been one disaster after another. Here is another case which begins with the United States intervening in foreign affairs where perhaps it was best to stay out. The chief fear during the Cold War was countries “succumbing” to the promises made through Communist ideology. It was primarily by that motivation that the U.S. supported Saddam Hussein’s rise to power. Hussein, in spite of being a self-identified Sunni Muslim, led Iraq as a mostly secular state. That a secular state was almost entirely ill-representative of his constituency is a topic for another paper, but in any case it is easy to see the underlying Christian motive behind America’s choice of Hussein. In the name of “secularism” – a term which here most importantly signified “not Muslim” – the United States was willing to ignore decades of human rights violations, terrorism, and genocide committed by Hussein against his own people.

That was until President Bush – on the basis of absolutely no information, and in fact a wealth of information to the contrary, connected Hussein to Osama bin Laden, a well-known religious zealot and terrorist. This non-fact alone was enough to stir up fears of an Iraqi alliance with the massive and ephemeral entity known as “terrorism”, which is at war with America. This non-fact, not his countless other crimes, was enough of a reason for the United States to depose a leader they had helped into power in the first place. Bin Laden is somewhat unique amongst those who engage in terrorist activities, because his actions are not out of desperation, although he recruits those who are themselves desperate. Bin Laden’s goal is nothing less than the establishment of a new Islamic Caliphate – a Muslim balance to the Christian America. Saddam Hussein knew this, and it was because such a thing would not benefit the rich circumstances he had already established for himself under a secular pretext that he rejected bin Laden, and why the two were ideological enemies.

In a recent speech, President Bush made a call for the principles of secular humanism to be exercised worldwide. This would seem to be a complete contradiction to the views of the religious right with which Bush has so clearly aligned himself. If we take his words at face value, one could say that perhaps the president is changing his tune. However, if we look deeper, perhaps we will uncover more of the subversive maneuvering that I have been discussing so far. The prevailing context of the speech – as the president can hardly say a word on foreign policy without mentioning it – was the Iraq war. Is it really any compromise in his position, then, to call for secularism anywhere in the predominantly Islamic Middle East? Absolutely not. He has said many times that it is America’s goal to instill within Iraq the values of freedom and democracy. Like Neuhaus said, those values – by American standards – simply do not exist independently of the values of Christianity. So the real plan, it would seem, is to diminish the role of Islam in fashioning the new Iraqi state, under the guise of “secular humanism”, while introducing Christian values, encoded as they may be within non-religious rhetoric.

It would be well beyond the scope of this paper, and perhaps even an impossible task to fully document all of the hidden religious motivation behind American public policy. The purpose here was simply to bring to light some of these agendas, and to demonstrate just how subversive religion can be in shaping the American socio-political climate, both domestically and abroad. In our “secular” American society, we assume that the decisions made which affect us are made without respect to religion. This in turn makes us ignorant to the fact that many politicians, business leaders, and lobbyists conceal very religious agendas with secular rhetoric. As would-be participants in the most powerful democratic republic in the world, one that not only determines how we live, but is also playing a large part in the lives of people around the world, it is our duty as Americans to be well -informed as to the motivations and agendas behind our politics.

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Furthermore, if race is qualified by self-identification, then this suggests something other than a biological correlation to intelligence. It suggests that something about self-identification itself – which is a reflection of one’s surrounding culture – is the correlate to intelligence. What is it, then, about self-identifying as “black” that decreases one’s performance? Could it be awareness of low expectations for one’s race, leading to a self-fulfilling prophecy? Could it be that all people who self-identify as black necessarily experience the hardships of discrimination, manifest at least in diminished access to the same resources as people from other groups?

Similarly, the term “Latino” is almost exclusively a United States classification, meaning that the subjects of the Bell Curve study focused on people who speak Spanish or come from Spanish-speaking families or cultures in the United States. It is a given that second only perhaps to physical appearance and gender, a person’s language becomes justification for those in the majority culture to discriminate against them – the assumption being that an inability to communicate signifies some intelligence deficiency, rather than the obvious truth of there being a language barrier. Because there are people of many nationalities and ethnic backgrounds who upon assimilation into North American culture took on the “Latino” classification, we must assume that any correlation between Latino and intelligence has to do with the conditions of that assimilation and not any common biological traits.

Conversely, does self-identification as “Asian” force upon one the stereotype that they should excel academically, or sacrifice all else for the approval of the family? Does self-identification as Asian create for people some sort of obligation – implicit or explicit – that they should perform at a high level?

Finally, does self-identification as “white” leave one in a sort of untethered middle ground, a place of privilege where no expectations are placed on one for their race or their culture, but only on one’s individual merit? So-called “white people” have countless advantages, to do with their position as the dominant culture – in the United States, Europe, and in current and former states once colonized by people from Europe. Invariably, white people – by default – have greater access to education, wealth, and political power. Not to mention the simple benefit of being a constituent of the cultural “mainstream”, placing them in a position to be well-informed of those aspects of the mainstream culture that are likely to be featured in “standardized” (i.e. based on a white standard) tests.

All of these things should have been considered by Herrnstein and Murray, in order for us to even consider the legitimacy of any correlation between how they classified race (as self-identified) and intelligence. Least of all should the discussion have turned towards biological reasons for the achievement gap.

With regards to that biological argument, it is never mentioned which genes correspond to intelligence, probably because the authors (like myself) simply do not know. If that connection was made, then they would have to show how those genes differ between ethnicities so as to manifest as differing intelligences. They would also have to show that these genotypical differences are exclusive of the phenotypical differences, which are either the results of environmental influence (e.g. mutation) or random manifestation. The authors never bother to explore the issue in such depth, yet are quick to draw the line between genetics and intelligence, basing their thesis on equally superficial data. Were they to go so far as I’ve suggested they must, the question of “Why?” emerges. What will it mean if it was determined that the differences in intelligence between one “race” or another is based on the random selection of biochemical configurations? This is a moot point, however, since the authors can’t seem to be bothered with actual science.

Once again, it needs to be noted that there are often greater genetic differences amongst people who identify themselves as “black” than there are between people identifying themselves as different “races”. The question of “what determines blackness” needs to be asked, and yet it isn’t. If “blackness” were defined as “of African ancestry”, then there are a number of people who do not identify themselves as black, but who have this in common – amongst them the “Dalit” of India and Sicilians. In dealing only with “self-identified” black people, the authors are removing a vast number of people from the study who share those genetic characteristics that one may use to identify a person as “black”. Therefore the study is misrepresentative of the whole continuum of so-called “black people”, if “black” is defined by genetics.

I could also mention how everyone on earth is of African ancestry, and yet at some point during the prehistoric diaspora all of these so-called differences emerged. These differences came about due to the varying selection pressures placed on people by the different environments to which they migrated. Are not, then, all of these supposed differences the result of environmental factors? At what point, then do we regard these differences as inherent? Upon the institutionalization of racism.

The Bell Curve also glosses over some of the strongest cases for non-biological factors in determining intelligence.

“Other kinds of bias discussed in Appendix 5 include the possibility that blacks have less access to coaching than whites, less experiences with tests (less “testwiseness”), poorer understanding of standard English, and that their performance is affected by white examiners. Each of these hypotheses has been investigated, for many tests, under many conditions. None has been sustained.” (p. 285)

These three factors – less access to education, poorer understanding of English, and less experience with tests are of great importance in determining the validity of these intelligence tests, yet only a paragraph is devoted to them, regarding them as negligible. More interesting is that the book is heavy on citations everywhere, but in this paragraph, there are no works cited, and the reader is expected to accept this conclusion at face value. MANY tests, under MANY conditions, and yet not one citation? Strange, isn’t it?

Herrnstein and Murray do NO testing of their own, and rely entirely on intelligence testing statistics already performed, most of which did not occur even within ten years of the writing of the book. Also, the literature is considered valid without considering the possible bias/racism underlying the research itself.

The authors go on to make another incorrect statement:

“Everyday experience suggests that the environment confronting blacks in different sectors of American life is not uniformly hostile” (p. 286)

What do they mean by this? I take it to mean that the authors disregard the fact that American life IS inherently more difficult for black people than for white people, be it through overt racism or covert conspiratorial agendas. The general idea of this book, that black people are inherently less intelligent than whites is one prevalent throughout American culture, whether based on this kind of “research” or on related stigmas. That alone engenders a more “hostile” or disadvantaged environment for blacks people. Affirmative action wasn’t created to inconvenience white people. The Civil Rights Movement was not the end of racism. In its [racism's] submersion beneath the public radar (i.e. ever since overt expression became taboo) it has in many ways become more dangerous, because it is easier to ignore, yet still manifests in unfair practices. There is no public sphere in American life in which this is not true; that is to say that racism and disenfranchising practices exist in every sector of American life.

With regards to the role of socioeconomic status, they state:

“The trouble is that socioeconomic status is also a result of cognitive ability, as people of high and low cognitive ability move to correspondingly high and low places in the socioeconomic continuum. The reason that parents have high or low socioeconomic status is in part a function of their intelligence, an their intelligence also affects the IQ of the children via both genes and environment.”

The assumption here seems to be that socioeconomic status is based on intelligence, and intelligence is based on race, so therefore socioeconomic status is somewhat negligible in determining intelligence differences. This is the same as saying that proof that the chicken came first is because it came from an egg, and only chickens lay eggs. This is the kind of circular logic present throughout the book.

Also, there are a few important underlying points to be found in this paragraph, that the authors completely fail to recognize. Socioeconomic status, particularly amongst black people, is not a condition created in one or even two generations. Socioeconomic inequality goes at least as far back as slavery. Starting with the prohibition of education for slaves, seguing into the widespread lack of education amongst them after Reconstruction, then leading into the institutionalized racism of post-Reconstruction America up to the present, there has never been a level “playing field” for black people so as to be able identify intelligence as the primary determinant of socioeconomic status. There is no control group.

Where socioeconomic status – however such a thing is measured – is the “same” between races, they may share many common disadvantages. However, there is always a uniquely black dilemma, fostered by racism and a long history of inequality. Even if two families – one black and one white – had equal incomes, living in identical houses in the same neighborhood, with the same amount of children, the same jobs for both parents, in fact all things identical with the exception of “race”, the black family would still be at a disadvantage, not because of genetics, but because of the aforementioned dilemma. It is the very dismissal of this dilemma, the downplaying of racism’s impact, that allows it to propagate. This is not to say, however, that all disadvantages amongst the black population are the solely the result of racism, or even of socioeconomic status. There most definitely are genetic determinants of intelligence, but they exist mutually exclusive of race, which as anyone with any sense knows is a social construct, one that real science dismisses.

The authors also ask the question: “How do African-Americans compare with blacks in Africa on Cognitive tests?” Their conclusion, again based on raw statistics, is that “African blacks are, on average, substantially below African-Americans in intelligence test scores.”

Furthermore, they state:

“…the main point is that the hypothesis about the special circumstances of American blacks depressing their test scores is not substantiated by the African data.” (p. 289)

In most cases, Africans are MORE disadvantaged in terms of socioeconomic status, which includes education and access to resources (e.g. technology), which can account for the differences between them and African-Americans. If anything, this data strengthens the argument for socioeconomic status being a major determinant in intelligence differences!

The book cites work by the “controversial” Arthur Jensen, who argued that black people were intellectually inferior in terms of “g”, which stands for general intelligence, i.e. that value which transcends all the other sub-types of cognition such as spatial or reaction time. Jensen said that where tests were “better” at measuring g (and it is not specified how one test can be better than another in this regard), the disparity between black and white scores was higher. This indicates that in terms of overall intelligence, black people are inferior. Herrnstein and Murray go on to argue that although there were philosophical arguments against the need for such testing, no experts who reviewed the data could refute it. What’s peculiar, however, is how Herrnstein and Murray automatically see these results as evidence of the intelligence differences being determined by genetics, as opposed to the possibility that all the black people tested shared a common environmental disadvantage.

The Bell Curve is also rife with contradictions. If intelligence is determined mostly by genetics, and genes do not change in a person from birth to death, this means that IQ cannot change either. However, on page 303, the authors cite research by Arthur Jensen, saying:

“[Jensen] found that in black families in rural Georgia, the elder sibling typically has a lower IQ than the younger. The larger the age difference is between the siblings, the larger is the difference in IQ. The implication is that something in the rural Georgia environment was depressing the scores of black children as they grew older.”

Really? THAT is the implication? Are they serious? When I read that data, I interpret it to mean that due to gradual improvements in the environment, such as improvement of socioeconomic status or decreasing racism, later generations are less inhibited and thereby have more fertile ground for their IQs to develop. Their conclusion, on the other hand, contradicts their assertion that environmental factors are a smaller factor than genetics. As has always been the case everywhere throughout the United States, this rural Georgia environment will not be equal between black and white people; black people will still have a relative disadvantage, mired in discrimination.

As an aside, I would like to put forth a few interesting observations I’ve made. From 1986 to 1989, Murray was given an annual grant by the Bradley Foundation of $90,000, rising to $113,000 by 1991, and then to $163,000 following publication of The Bell Curve. (source: Wikipedia) Why is this significant? The Bradley Foundation is a wealthy, influential, right-wing foundation known for – amongst other things – researching potentially damaging information on President Bill Clinton with regards to his affair with Monica Lewinsky. Before that, they sought to discredit Anita Hill, the woman who brought sexual harassment charges against Clarence Thomas. At the time Thomas was being nominated by President George H.W. Bush for the Supreme Court. There are a few interesting things to note here.

On one hand, the Bradley Foundation worked hard to dismiss charges of sexual harassment, as they confliced with the conservative agenda. Clarence Thomas, despite being a black man, is someone whose personal ethics and politics are regressive in ways that are destructive to black people. He is simultaneously a weapon for conservative agendas and “proof” that those agendas are not racist in nature, making him doubly dangerous. On the other hand, the Bradley Foundation sought to exacerbate the negative sentiments towards Bill Clinton, in line with the conservative platform and its purported moral highground. Clinton is renowned for being a favorite amongst liberals and especially African-Americans. Interesting how their attitude towards sexual harassment changes to fit their agenda.

According to an ABC news report, $3.5 million was contributed to researchers cited in The Bell Curve, and almost half of the research cited to support the most controversial racial conclusions of the book, came from the Pioneer Fund. Now what is the Pioneer Fund? “The Pioneer Fund is a controversial non-profit foundation established to, in their words, “aid in conducting study and research into the problems of heredity and eugenics in the human race” (source: Wikipedia).

By and large, the prospect of eugenics has been used to further ideas of “racial purification”, the general idea – although not stated explicitly – being that that certain races are inferior, and therefore should be “weeded out”. Now here’s a curious coincidence. The Bell Curve and similar literature was funded by a group pushing conservative political agendas that aim to further disenfranchise and inconvenience minorities, justifiable on the basis of social Darwinistic ideology. At the same time it is funded by a group that implicitly suggests that minorities should be artificially selected out of existence, using eugenics. At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, I will say that perhaps all of these connections truly are a coincidence, although the thesis of the book would suggest otherwise. I will leave that open to interpretation.

In that the focus of the book is the difference between so-called “blacks” and “whites” (these two terms ignoring The many differences within each “race”), it could be seen as a case for white superiority, rather than a holistic argument for genetic cognitive differences across the spectrum of all humanity. Perhaps the authors didn’t feel like investing the time and effort it would take to compile such a massive study. Perhaps a truly comprehensive look at these supposed differences would’ve have become too large and too technical for the lay reader. If this book was intended for the lay reader, then the streamlining of the research is even more destructive, because then it becomes a mainstream reference. If “The Bell Curve” is one of the only books accessible (in terms of ease of reading for the average person) by the general public, while more comprehensive texts are mostly accessible by the academic sphere, The Bell Curve becomes the standard.

Also, I would say that I am more inclined than the average person to read this kind of literature, and yet even I feel it to be a chore to read the book in its entirety. How easy, then, is it for the average person predisposed to the underlying racist ideologies of the book, to gloss over the text and draw from it only those “facts” needed to support their preconceptions?

In the end, given the authors’ plethora of oversights, conclusion jumping, assumptions, and circular logic, a person can draw one of two conclusions about The Bell Curve. Either the motivation behind it is the propagation of racism, or racism is the transcendent context in which it was written (perhaps to some degree unbeknownst to the authors themselves). Herrnstein and Murray are either very determined and very clever racists (clever because they toss in enough seeming “objectivity” to deflect accusations), or grievously ignorant, a possibility that brings their very credibility as academics into question. Whatever the truth is, it is clear that “The Bell Curve” is not a dependable reference on the differences between people – in terms of intelligence or otherwise.

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