Mike the Mad Biologist has an interesting twist on the race & IQ argument.

NAEP math scores have been used as proxies for IQ. If we look at the NAEP 8th grade math data for 2011, when we compare students with college educated parents who aren’t poor, there is a about a twenty point gap in scores for any given socioeconomic group between black and white students (where a ten point difference roughly corresponds to one grade level). We know conclusively, based on studies in marginal journals edited by racists, that this racial difference is largely genetic (and we have controlled for a deleterious environment by excluding poor students and poorly educated parents). For instance, in Massachusetts, white students (with college educated parents who aren’t poor) have an average score of 312, while black students have a score of 291 (p less than 10-6). Meanwhile, Alabama whites score 293, with no significance difference compared to black students in Massachusetts (p = 0.49). The gap between Massachusetts whites and Massachusetts blacks is the same as the gap between Massachusetts and Alabama whites.

Ergo, Alabama whites are also genetically inferior untermenschen whom we should not waste our time trying to educate. Look, I’m just bravely telling it like it is. If it doesn’t fit for your conservative preconceptions, that’s too bad. We have to heroically follow the data where they lead us. And when you look at other states, it’s clear: ‘heartland’ whites are genetically inferior to Massachusetts (and Maryland) whites, and we need to fundamentally rethink our social policies accordingly.

I live in the heartland, and although I was born in the west, I have to admit that my mother was born here in Minnesota, making me a kind of half-breed Heartlander. I may have superior genetics to the Minnesotans around me, but I graciously deign to acknowledge my inferiority to the pure-bred Coastal race, which means you now have to accept the thesis is truer, because why would I admit to something that affects me?

Look, it’s got math in it. It’s got to be right.

UMM is also bringing in good speakers with intelligent perspectives. Next week, we’re going to be graced with a visit from Adrienne Keene. If you can only make it to Morris one time, skip the jerk coming next month, and instead make the trip on Monday, 2 April to join us at 7:30pm in Imholte 109. It’s part of the Native American-Serving Nontribal Institutions program grant for the Morris Native American Student Success (NASS) Project.

It’s also free, but worth far, far more.

Jordan Peterson is quick to deflect accusations of bigotry by standing tall, throwing his shoulders back, and declaring that he was made a member of the Kwakwaka’wakw tribe, and he’s also quick to complain if anyone questions it.

You say "Peterson claims that he has been inducted into “the coastal Pacific Kwakwaka’wakw tribe” Just what do you mean by "claims" you peddler of nasty, underhanded innuendo, you dealer in lies and halftruths? https://t.co/ZLfe3Eg9Jn

— Jordan B Peterson (@jordanbpeterson) March 20, 2018

Unfortunately for him, though, all those protestations motivated Robert Jago to actually investigate them.

What first drew my attention to Peterson’s ties to the Kwakwaka’wakw, however, was the way he seemed to be exploiting that “friendship.” He appeared to be deploying it as a talisman to ward off any social consequences for helping spread racial stereotypes about Indigenous people. It was a defence rooted in identity politics—his language was okay, because he is, after all, an “Indian” through his connection to Charles Joseph. Yet Peterson himself, in a Youtube video, called that “whole group-identity thing” a “pathology” and “reprehensible.”

So he did the obvious thing: he asked the Kwakwaka’wakw people if Peterson was a member of the tribe. Whoops, he’s not. Everyone agrees he’s not. He’s been formally recognized as a good friend of one family, which is nice, but that’s it.

Peterson’s Twitter outburst against what he called Mishra’s “lies and halftruths” has ignited a heated debate within the Kwakwaka’wakw people. The debate isn’t about whether or not Peterson is truly a member of the tribe. I spoke to community members, and each confirmed that the naming ceremony that Peterson took part in does not grant him membership. Instead, there is concern about the harm caused by the way he has boasted of and exaggerated his Kwakwaka’wakw connections. Juli Holloway, a Kwakwaka’wakw community member whose family is in the process of arranging for a similar adoption ceremony for a non-Native friend, describes how she sees the problem: “It’s the lack of humility that bothers me the most, I guess. It should not be a badge of honour. It’s for within the community, not for without.”

#NotYourShield, Dr Peterson.

Peterson has posted a “rebuttal“, only it’s not, not at all. He posts a lot of photos of his naming ceremony, which no one disputes happened, and tells of his long friendship with a Kwakwaka’wakw artist, which no one has denied, but it doesn’t address at all the accusation that he has misrepresented the purpose of the ceremony. He does declare that Jago is “chock full of underhanded allegations” and was “a muckraker with an agenda and not to be trusted”. I guess that settles that.

A couple of chuckleheaded incompetent cops go running through a residential neighborhood, with their guns out.

Will they be fired for that recklessness? They should be. They won’t.

They were acting on a complaint that someone was breaking windows. Is that a death penalty offense? Were people in danger? No. So why did they need guns? Will they even be disciplined for that? No.

They see a black man standing in a yard. He runs from the two strangers, who did not announce that they were cops — all he knows is they are two chuckleheads with guns. Is running from guys with guns, even if he knew they were cops, a crime deserving of death? No. Will the cops suffer any consequences for terrorizing a neighborhood? No.

The asshole cops shoot an innocent man twenty times, because they think the white iPhone he holds is a gun. They murder him, because they think lethal force is an appropriate response to a property crime, to a man trying to avoid trouble, to a black man with a phone.

Will there be justice for Stephan Clark? Hell no.

Do not ever forget. The police are running amuck in this country, and are not ever, under any circumstances, to be trusted.

You will not be shocked to learn that Alex Jones is an asshole in the workplace, too.

Rob Jacobson, a former video editor who worked for the site for 13 years, alleges his co-workers and managers called him “The Jewish Individual” and “The Resident Jew,” and that Jones regularly humiliated and belittled him. As the Mail reports, “The abuse got so bad that one member of staff photo shopped Jacobson’s face on to the image of an Orthodox Jew under the words ‘THE JEWISH INDIVIDUAL DEMANDS YOUR HOT TOPICS’ and printed it out for all to see.” Jacobson, who was eventually fired, is planning to sue Jones for discrimination, harassment, and unfair dismissal, in addition to his EEOC complaint.

Meanwhile, Ashley Beckford, a former production assistant for InfoWars‘s parent company, Free Speech Systems, alleges Jones “often spent his time shirtless, and endlessly leering…at female employees and guests,” which created a “disgusting, hostile environment” that openly encouraged his staff to make inappropriate comments towards women. According to the EEOC statement from Beckford, who is African American, Jones made unwanted sexual advances and allegedly groped her while commenting, “Who wouldn’t want to have a black wife?”

Now if only we could also sue capitalism for setting up a system where a man needs a job that requires him to be humiliated for 13 years.

I would have thought these were all obvious points, but ContraPoints presents them well and succinctly. And of course, there are a heck of a lot of people who don’t get it.

I’m a creature of academia. I attended college starting in 1975, and essentially never left — I went on to do graduate school, post-docs, and taught at a couple. I’ve been at both the small liberal arts college (DePauw, UMM) and the great big state school (Universities of Washington, Oregon, and Utah, and Temple University). I talk to students and faculty and staff every day for decades now, and at worst you could say maybe I’m a little too close to this environment, but you certainly can’t argue that I know nothing about what goes on on college campuses.

But then I read these stories from outsiders about what it’s like to be on an American campus, mostly by people who haven’t been here in ages and probably had just a transient experience before leaving, and they’re all about as accurate as if I were trying to describe life on Mars. They are distinguished by their total lack of awareness of reality and the vehemence with which they condemn students.

Case in point: Andrew Sullivan. It’s pure madness.

Over the last year, the most common rebuttal to my intermittent coverage of campus culture has been: Why does it matter? These are students, after all. They’ll grow up once they leave their cloistered, neo-Marxist safe spaces. The real world isn’t like that. You’re exaggerating anyway. And so on. I certainly see the point. In the world beyond campus, few people use the term microaggressions without irony or an eye roll; claims of “white supremacy,” “rape culture,” or “white privilege” can seem like mere rhetorical flourishes; racial and gender segregation hasn’t been perpetuated in the workplace yet; the campus Title IX sex tribunals where, under the Obama administration, the “preponderance of evidence” rather than the absence of a “reasonable doubt” could ruin a young man’s life and future are just a product of a hothouse environment. And I can sometimes get carried away.

I’ll give him a different rebuttal: you’re clueless, Mr Sullivan. Your “intermittent coverage of campus culture” is so detached from reality, so thickly slathered with conservative bullshit, that it is an unrecognizable caricature.

What “neo-Marxist safe spaces”? “Neo-Marxism”, by the way, is an empty buzzword generally used by terrified “neo-conservatives” who are upset that students explore new ideas outside the conventional, capitalism-worshipping straitjackets conservatives would rather we brainwashed students into worshipping. We actually encourage students to think, rather than accept the received wisdom of hidebound old farts. We ask them to look at systems of thought with new eyes and a wider perspective, and we tell them it’s OK to question that system. That’s it. That does not imply that we’re sitting around inculcating them with the sacred words of Lenin and Mao.

Most of our students are solidly middle-class, not interested in rocking the boat too much. It’s kind of ironic that our universities are accused of promoting communism when the most common rationale students and administrators use to get students to attend is that it’s the path to a good, well-paying job. You’d think that if we were busy indoctrinating them into neo-Marxism that they’d wake up somewhere around their junior year, look around, and realize that they’re imbedded deeply into an institution with a vested interest in moving them into the bourgeoisie, and they’d riot. Or leave. We’re not seeing much of a revolution right now because the rising costs of a university education have already filtered out most of the citizens with an interest in overthrowing the system.

At best we can stir up a modicum of social consciousness. Yeah, you’re here at a university, we’re going to try and make sure you acquire at least middle-class status (here’s your alumni newsletter, please donate!), but hey, if we can make you aware of your privilege and advantages, and the fact that not everyone in our country shares them, we can dream that you’ll help promote some incremental change for the better.

That’s the extent of campus radicalism. Relax, hidebound old farts. David Brooks still has his sinecure at the NY Times, and Andrew Sullivan will still get TV appearances where he can pretend to be an enlightened conservative. I wish it were otherwise.

As for “white supremacy,” “rape culture,” or “white privilege” — those are real things. I know that when you get snugged down tightly in your socio-economic slot, it gets harder to see them, because you are no longer exposed to as many contrasts, and you’re now rewarded for conformity rather than enquiry. It’s not that campuses are narrow and constraining and forcing people into radicalism, it’s that your life as a cossetted, privileged, boring white man means it’s easy for you to move right into a secure bubble and never think again. You’re the one being warped by your milieu, not the students. They tend to be liberated to think in new ways, a freedom they may never have to the same degree again. There’s no hothouse here. That’s reserved for defenders of the status quo in the non-campus universe, who will forever strain to suppress novelties that might emerge from a free-thinking environment.

But Sullivan wants to claim that he’s not totally against new ideas. He just hates the boogeyman du jour of conservative thought, “identity politics”. It’s ironic that people like Sullivan who are so committed to preserving the privileges of a narrow group, white men, are also committed to demeaning efforts to extend those privileges to all citizens in the name of denial of opportunity to all others.

The reason I don’t agree with this is because I believe ideas matter. When elite universities shift their entire worldview away from liberal education as we have long known it toward the imperatives of an identity-based “social justice” movement, the broader culture is in danger of drifting away from liberal democracy as well. If elites believe that the core truth of our society is a system of interlocking and oppressive power structures based around immutable characteristics like race or sex or sexual orientation, then sooner rather than later, this will be reflected in our culture at large. What matters most of all in these colleges — your membership in a group that is embedded in a hierarchy of oppression — will soon enough be what matters in the society as a whole.

Oh, look at the projection! Identity politics is what people other than white males do to create oppressive power structures around race or sex; when white men erect power structures around their positions to block those others from achieving equality, well, that’s just fair and generous, not identity politics at all! The thoughtful people on college campuses aren’t at all interested in building silos of power for themselves and no others — they look at the identity politics of white men for white men and want to tear down those walls. That’s the ideal, anyway. I fear that most of them will graduate and find themselves forced to conform in order to keep themselves housed and fed within that hierarchy that Sullivan loves so much.

And, sure enough, the whole concept of an individual who exists apart from group identity is slipping from the discourse. The idea of individual merit — as opposed to various forms of unearned “privilege” — is increasingly suspect. The Enlightenment principles that formed the bedrock of the American experiment — untrammeled free speech, due process, individual (rather than group) rights — are now routinely understood as mere masks for “white male” power, code words for the oppression of women and nonwhites. Any differences in outcome for various groups must always be a function of “hate,” rather than a function of nature or choice or freedom or individual agency. And anyone who questions these assertions is obviously a white supremacist himself.

Oh, christ. So much nonsense.

Groups form in response to pressure from dominant, oppressive forces. They aren’t about suppressing individuality — to the contrary, they’re all about finding power in unity to resist the opposition of an overwhelming pressure to succumb to your myth that American culture is about “merit”. It ain’t.

For example, I often hear people mock the idea of different pronouns, or that the LGBT acronym keeps expanding to include more letters. How ridiculous, they say — I can’t be bothered to learn how to reference someone with all those weird new pronouns, and I will resist the neo-Marxist Left’s effort to pollute my language; or they laugh at the alphabet soup of LGBTTQQIAAP2S or QUILTBAG or whatever unique set of terms a particular group chooses to use. But there’s a reason for that: it’s not about conformity to a group, but the opposite of that, where people are trying to build structures under which everyone is free to express their personal, unique identity, where differences are encompassed with respect and no one is trying to dictate that individuals must fit into two and only two narrow types, the masculine and the feminine. How can Sullivan honestly defend the concept of individual agency while complaining about people who demand their own?

Speaking of conformity, though, I’ve noticed that status quo warriors like Sullivan are all speaking the same set of codes. Hierarchies are good. Everyone fits into the hierarchy on the basis of pure merit. Privilege doesn’t exist, except that dominance is good and natural, so somehow some people are privileged (but they must have earned it!). Cultural factors are negligible before the power of biology, and if it’s biological, it is necessarily good and true. History and environment don’t matter when Nature is the sole determinant of your status. Anyone who is not a conservative capitalist is a neo-Marxist.

It all makes me wish college campuses were seething hotbeds of chaos and rage, rising up to shatter these lies.

But I’m here. I know. They’re actually all fairly complacent places where students learn and maybe think a bit more than they do in Andrew Sullivan’s world, and just that is enough to make conservatives quake in their jackboots. That world is an upside-down place where demanding tolerance of diversity is bigotry, and where calling out men on harassment is a witch hunt. Let’s all hope his world continues its decay and dies off eventually.