Stalking the Wild Taboo - Letter to the WSJ

"White Supremacy" not part of the IQ Debate

The Wall Street Journal of Monday, January 19th, 1999 had an interesting essay on the Editorial page entitled "Race and Responsibilities," by Shelby Steele. While I agreed with much of it, I took exception to the following: The second responsibility is for whites truly to give up in themselves, and to combat in the larger world, the odious idea of white supremacy. This is the subtle and ever-beckoning evil that peeks out from the racial paternalism of both the left and the right. It is just as surely present in those who support affirmative action because they believe blacks will never compete as it is in those who take the race-and-IQ debate seriously. ...

His linkage of anyone who takes the race-and-IQ debate seriously with "white supremacy" caused me to email the following response which was published in the January 22, 1999 edition of the Wall Street Journal without any editing. Herewith the letter -

Professor Shelby Steele makes some important points in his essay "Race and Responsibilities," (Editorial page, Jan. 18th) such as that the impact of civil rights victories on whites has been to turn them into a shamed society on all issues involving race. This is indeed a stumbling block to any long-term resolution of the issues.

However, he is entirely in error to proclaim that "the odious idea of white supremacy" necessarily pertains to "those who take the race and IQ-debate seriously." Among the many scholars I am aware of who take this debate very seriously, every single one of them - from Charles Murray to Richard Lynn and J. P. Rushton - arranges blacks, whites, and Asians (Chinese and Japanese) along a continuum that puts blacks on the bottom, whites in the middle, and Asians on top in terms of IQ test scores. It's hard to see how says that Asians are smarter is an expression of "white supremacy." I think Professor Steele owes them an apology for putting them in the same category as the racial paternalists of the left who outwardly profess egalitarianism while enacting policies that exclude blacks from responsibility for their own situations, as he so eloquently explains.

Louis Andrews
Augusta, GA